Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie

mask. “So it’s true then, you are still alive.” Just barely.
    Cosca prised open one red-rimmed eye, blinked, squinted up, and then slowly began to smile. “Shylo Vitari, I swear. The world can still surprise me.” He worked his mouth, grimacing, glanced down and saw the bottle in his lap, lifted it and took a long, thirsty pull. Deep swallows, just as if it were water in the bottle. A practised drunkard, as though there was any doubt. Hardly the man one would choose to entrust the defence of the city to, at first glance. “I never expected to see you again. Why don’t you take off the mask? It’s robbing me of your beauty.”
    “Save it for your whores, Cosca. I don’t need to catch what you’ve got.”
    The mercenary gave a bubbling sound, half laugh, half cough. “You still have the manners of a princess,” he wheezed.
    “Then this shithouse must be a palace.”
    Cosca shrugged. “It all looks the same if you’re drunk enough.”
    “You think you’ll ever be drunk enough?”
    “No. But it’s worth trying.” As if to prove the point he sucked another mouthful from the bottle.
    Vitari perched herself on the edge of the table. “So what brings you here? I thought you were busy spreading the cock-rot across Styria.”
    “My popularity at home had somewhat dwindled.”
    “Found yourself on both sides of a fight once too often, eh?”
    “Something like that.”
    “But the Dagoskans welcomed you with open arms?”
    “I’d rather you welcomed me with open legs, but a man can’t get everything he wants. Who’s your friend?”
    Glokta slid out a rickety chair with one aching foot and eased himself into it, hoping it would bear his weight. Crashing to the floor in a bundle of broken sticks would hardly send the right message, now, would it? “My name is Glokta.” He stretched his sweaty neck out to one side, and then the other. “Superior Glokta.”
    Cosca looked at him for a long time. His eyes were bloodshot, sunken, heavy-lidded. And yet there is a certain calculation there. Not half as drunk as he pretends, perhaps. “The same one who fought in Gurkhul? The Colonel of Horse?”
    Glokta felt his eyelid flicker. You could hardly say the same man, but surprisingly well remembered, nonetheless. “I gave up soldiery some years ago. I’m surprised you’ve heard of me.”
    “A fighting man should know his enemies, and a hired man never knows who his next enemy might be. It’s worth taking notice of who’s who, in military circles. I heard your name mentioned, some time ago, as a man worth taking notice of. Bold and clever, I heard, but reckless. That was the last I heard. And now here you are, in a different line of work. Asking questions.”
    “Recklessness didn’t work out for me in the end.” Glokta shrugged. “And a man needs something to do with his time.”
    “Of course. Never doubt another’s choices, I say. You can’t know his reasons. You come here for a drink, Superior? They’ve nothing but this piss, I’m afraid.” He waved the bottle. “Or have you questions for me?”
    That I have, and plenty of them. “Do you have any experience with sieges?”
    “Experience?” spluttered Cosca, “Experience, you ask? Hah! Experience is one thing I am not short of—”
    “No,” murmured Vitari over her shoulder, “just discipline and loyalty.”
    “Yes, well,” Cosca frowned up at her back, “that all depends on who you ask. But I was at Etrina, and at Muris. Serious pair of sieges, those. And I besieged Visserine myself for a few months and nearly had it, except that she-devil Mercatto caught me unawares. Came on us with cavalry before dawn, sun behind and all, damned unfriendly trick, the bitch—”
    “I heard you were passed out drunk at the time,” muttered Vitari.
    “Yes, well… Then I held Borletta against Grand Duke Orso for six months—”
    Vitari snorted. “Until he paid you to open the gates.”
    Cosca gave a sheepish grin. “It was an awful lot of money. But