Archive of Our Own ^beta

First through the breach at Ulrioch, they say.

They wag it in his face, they like the sound of it on their lips. Little do they know that Major Collem West of the King’s Own is about to turn tail in front of an old woman. He has seen things no man ought have seen; done things no man ought have done, for that matter (in the morning the taste of blood sleeps under his tongue). Say one thing for Colonel Glokta’s mother, say she’d make a full regiment of Gurkish troops look a damn sight for sore eyes.

“My son”, she says, in that familiar half-whine of hers, not so different from a creaking door, “my son does not receive visitors from the army. He will have nothing more to do with the likes of you.”

West’s mouth sours, just like it used to before battle. The taste of things to come, old veterans always said. Better be ready for bitterness. And he is, alright, ready for battle, in his pristine dress uniform, red coat well-fitting, a length of golden braid dangling at his right shoulder in the latest officerly fashion— and he is a commoner, and Colonel Glokta’s mother has always hated him for it. A little man, she might have said to her son, but you know better than to befriend little men, don’t you? West tries his best placating smile, and derives the faintest pleasure from standing a head taller than the woman, who still looks down as if upon a street urchin. The pinch of her mouth tightens a fraction more. A whiplash glint in her eye.

Get you gone, nobody.

He has half a mind to go then and there. The rumours have reached him, of course. His former commander is in quite a state, having been tortured two years long by the worst of the Gurkish— no doubt he isn’t as fine-looking as he used to, nor half as witty. Yet hearsay is hearsay, and Major West is no man to desert a friend. His left hand rests against the hilt of his sword, angling for that nobleman’s nonchalance so often seen in his fellow officers.

“Madam”, his voice comes steady and smooth, “I understand you feel as though the army is sole responsible for what happened to S—” (no, no, it won’t do to call him by first name, not with her), “for what happened to your son, and that you bear no liking to me whatsoever. But I am his friend, and only come with well wishes.”

“Well wishes”, she spits, “and a fine parade uniform.”

Now he feels himself flush. Looks down at his black boots, polished to mirror-shine. He is only thankful he has not pinned his hard-earned medal to his breast before coming. She might have stabbed him on the spot.

“Please.” A humble man’s voice, a commoner’s voice, stripped of his military authority. A friend’s voice. “I ask only to see him. If he does not want me, I shall leave without delay.”

His mouth sours, as it used to before battle. Worse enemies have been slain for less. Clouds gather overhead; the thought of a headache shadows his brow.

“Please.”

*

Colonel Glokta’s chambers are dark, the curtains half-drawn to let in dwindling light. Soon it will rain, perhaps thunder. The man’s mother leaves West at the threshold with a glare.

It must be the lump in the bed. It’s hard to see by without a lantern or candle. It’s to be a shadowplay, then. One man stands with sword at his hip in bright officer reds, black polished boots. One man sags, back halfway propped against pillows, the cut of his profile offering little but a sharp nose, the hint of close-cropped hair. West spies a chair nearby. He drags it gingerly towards the bed. Wincing at the clumsy thud of his scabbard against his thigh. Better take the steel off altogether. He sits with the same cautious deference his betters are used to from him.

“It’s West, sir. Major West.”

(why are you so nervous)

“I’d heard of your return— well, I thought I could come and see you.”

The bent shape in the bed moves, catching the light now.

“How good of you, old friend, to visit me.”

West can see in the subtle widening of his greenish eyes that the man is surprised to see him. Chances are other officers have been rebuked at the front door, and not for lack of the right family name. He has to fight the shiver crawling up his spine at the sight of his former commander’s mouth. The first thing to strike him is that he smiles— West looks for the brilliant glint of his teeth only to find gaps. The rest of his face seems to have aged, and fast. Hardly five years older than West himself, and yet his skin is lined with a lifetime of worries, of fears and angers long snuffed out. Sweat dribbles down his cheek. It dawns on the visitor that he must be in great pain. West says nothing. His hands clutch his trousers at the knee. Glokta doesn’t seem to take offense. He smiles some more.

“So you see.” A sad, toothless smile. “What do you make of it?”

His voice sounds raspy, not quite itself, if still pleasant enough.

“What do I make of it, sir.”

There is something odd about his face, familiar as it is. It takes West a second to realise it’s only the stubbly growth on the man’s jaws, dark-on-pale, creeping down his chin and throat. Even through the worst of the war he has never seen Colonel Glokta sport more than an officer’s tired day-old scruff. His face, his untouchable face, always in West’s mind coming smooth and regal, statuesque… When they fenced, even dripping with sweat, it had seemed as dignified as all those men of legend aligned down the Kingsway.

(what do you make of it)

West says nothing.

“Do you know, my face is not so bad. It’s my leg that’s the real trouble. One takes walking and running about for granted.” He gestures at the blanket draped over his lower body, gives a mirthless laugh. “Look at this! I used to run up the Tower of Chains every day before the Contest. Now the thought of a staircase knocks the breath out of me. War has made me useless, and most of all to myself.”

The taste of bile clogs West’s throat. He wishes to disagree, but it is hard to argue with that weak tilt of his neck, that wince of pain forever plastered to his pasty white face. What a fine man he was (what a waste).

“Now, Colonel—”

“Please”, Glokta sneers, the twist of his mouth near amused now, “I am hardly an army man anymore. A soldier’s reputation is feeble currency these days. How they must talk in Adua…”

And talk they do. In taverns one hears everything and nothing, and how many unsavoury in-betweens— West has nursed drinks and headaches, thinking that perhaps the past should stay buried; that heroes should stay heroes, and oftentimes heroes are too dead to taint their fame. Now here’s one that could’ve stayed buried and spared the city a whole lot of noise from its usual mill of rumourmongers. Colonel Glokta, have you heard— he’s a cripple now— they say his mother didn’t even recognise him— he’s lost his leg— no, he lost an eye— his teeth— it’s all the same anyway— a shame, the ladies liked him so well—

West’s hands tighten, wanting to curl into fists against his will. People who’ve not stared war in the face can’t understand, he knows, and yet contempt bubbles up, threatens to spill over. If one of them had even half of Glokta’s courage! But men such as him come once a century to shine brightly, briefly; to fall down harder. West doubts he will ever see a finer officer in his lifetime.

He sighs. Studies the broken man, who studies him in turn. Still that inquisitive tilt of the eyebrows he had when they were young, that roguish angle of his mouth. It’s all the same (it’s not).

“I hear you are quite the war hero yourself, eh, Major West.”

“Er, well, that is—”

Glokta’s piercing eyes cling to him, to the angles of his face. One of them is red-rimmed, as if threatening to tear up, and it does; the man’s thumb swipes at it, repeatedly. A habit, a well-oiled mechanism.

“Come now, you have no use for modesty, surely. A man like you who rose to the ranks by merits alone, you have nothing to be ashamed of, don’t you think?”

“I wouldn’t say I feel shame, no. Only, well—” A feeble smile dies halfway on his lips, his throat constricts. “I suppose you must hate the sight of this uniform, after all you’ve suffered for it.”

“Mhm.”

The man’s tongue gives a pensive lick at his gums. What an odd sight, this. He used to have such a dashing smile. A glint of teeth for ladies to swoon over.

“Depends who is wearing it, I should say. I’ve no reason to bear you any ill will— your heroics turned out better than mine, is all.” His eye tears up again; the swipe is impatient, angrier. “We both know that wars are won with more than a little luck. We can’t all be dealt good hands at cards.”

“Nor be the best fencer of one’s generation”, mutters West. “I see your point.”

Glokta’s mouth slackens somewhat. West thinks of a line of soldiers caught off guard by the heat of the South— his soldiers, his men (their men) trudging along barren roads to make war on strangers. A bead of sweat pearls down his brow, though the Colonel’s chambers are cold enough. This mouth, this mouth. Did he not use to dream of it, when he’d heard of the man’s capture; to miss it and its clever turns of phrase, and more besides? Now it looks as it did when they sparred and West took advantage for a split-second, only for his comrade to throw him arse-down with a swift twist of the wrist. The clatter of his steels on the ground still echoes in his head. Familiar, almost welcome.

They were young, then.

“I’m afraid my fencing days are behind me. Who knows, West, you might have a chance to best me now.”

He turns to the half-open curtain, giving West that age-old sign of trust; the back of his head, the nape of his neck, ripe for the killing. Neatly shorn hair, grey with a touch of its old brown. His bony hands clutch at the blanket. West knows the sight all too well, the white-knuckling force battling against a wall of quiet. Often it wages war in his own skull.

“I would ask a favour of you, Major.”

Strange. The use of his rank, it usually puts West at ease. At safe distance. Now it’s like being called by another man’s name (of course: to Colonel Glokta he was only ever Lieutenant West).

“No, please—” He clears his throat, fighting a flush. “Collem.”

A pensive tilt of the eyebrow, then a subtle mellowing of the features, if one could call it that. Glokta’s sharp eyes peer into his. Something troubling there, amongst this wreckage— something like life, and a hunger for it. It comes with another grin, baring those sad gaps in his teeth.

“Collem. Would you be kind enough to help me out of bed?”

West blinks. It catches him off guard, this; a question, not an order. He stands and gently offers the man his arm, tasting the sound of his own name in that ruined mouth. Sour, the taste-before-battle.

*

It hasn’t rained, after all.

Clear light comes from the sky and into the window’s open arms, casting sharp shadows across the room. Across Glokta’s face, now sat down to shave, his back oddly bent. West makes out the path of pain in his posture— the hunch of a shoulder, the taut tension in his neck, the thick strain of veins there. The strict, neat line of hair above his collar (where West, long ago, has liked to run a warm thumb). Sounds of the world come too; the song of birds has never been so mournful, not even that of crows picking at battlefields. And the Colonel sits there, silent. Grooming for a funeral.

They used to do such things hastily in their officers’ tents down South. West remembers giving himself a nasty nick of one morning, half-asleep still, way out of order and uniform. It’d been hot and sweat-sticky all night, he was tired. He picks at the tiny scar under his chin, still there. Looks at Glokta’s nape, at the slow work of his hand lathering his cheeks. Here’s a man who’s never cut himself. Handy with a steel, still. West smiles, eyeing the mirror propped upon the desk. He can glimpse his own face in the small glass, smooth, still barely youthful, not yet thirty. He finds that he has an anxious look, and frowns, and looks anxious some more. The straight blade glides down Glokta’s white cheek. For a man broken in many places, he’s kept a steady hand; could slit a throat easy, and no mistake. Shame about his leg (his teeth, his brilliant smile). The man’s cane leans against the desk, an ill omen.

“You’re the only one who dared to come see me so far”, says Glokta, wiping a lick of soap from under his nose. “It’s rather harsh, after two years, for one to realise his friends were no friends at all.”

“But surely not. Last week only, one of our old comrades told me he came by, having heard that you were—”

Glokta’s eye narrows to a suspicious slit, pins him down. West swallows.

“Well, he told me that your mother had refused to let him in. That you refused to see the slightest hint of an army man.”

He pauses, the razor’s edge dangerously close to his cheek. West can see red welling up (a man who’s never cut himself). The broken man thumbs at it with nary a wince.

“She did not mention any of it to me.” His voice, stone-cold.

“I suppose not.” West has no idea what it’s like, to grieve a son who’s died only to come back in pieces, only that he cannot begrudge the old woman her resentment for the uniform. “I was turned down at the door myself.”

“Indeed?”

The slow, calculated rhythm of the blade resumes as Glokta scrapes at his throat. West’s eyes follow. He thinks of those two years the man has spent in a cell. How many men have had cause to put a knife to his neck? Did it always befall the same one to put him through his tortures, did they take turns? Did they wish to hear anything, did they carry on for the pleasure of it? Many questions, many missing answers. He does not wish to know. The damage is done.

“Then I am surprised”, Glokta says, wiping the razor, scraping again, slowly, “that you managed to bypass her at all. Surprised, and pleasantly so. But then, you were always the one friend I could count on.”

It may be true — West knows it to be true — yet the acknowledgement startles him. Ill-fitting, like an old coat too tight at the seams. Ill-fitting and underserved, for he has spent two years in comfortable posting on the Agriont, amongst lords and ladies, and only spared occasional thought to his lost commander. And now his commander is returned to him, if not in rank then in body, and not quite whole either, but willing to renew their friendship as if nothing had changed.

Sand dan Glokta is a nobleman, and Collem West remains a commoner. In that way, at least, the world goes on.

“I doubt she would let me pass if I decided to come back a second time. I daresay her tenacity might be a great asset to the Union’s army in case of a siege. That is, if she didn’t loathe the idea of us.”

“Bah!” Glokta grins, examines his reflection, prodding at his smoothed cheek with a deft thumb. “I shall tell her not to make trouble for you. In my state, she can hardly refuse me a thing. That would make her cruel. Another sort of torturer.”

With care the razor is dipped into the basin, then rinsed. Water sloshes, barely troubled by soap and stray hairs. Glokta towels at his face and this too seems to bring him pain a lesser man would kneel before. A strip of muscle tightens in his neck, his jaw flexes. The veins in his long hands pop out, ripe for a bleeding. These hands, West can see, are little scarred, and most resemble what they were before the war. A great man’s, a master’s hands. He used to think the Master Maker’s must have looked just so. The fingernails are clipped short and clean, unlike his own, on which he still chews the way he used to as a boy when his father loomed about, drunk and angry. Only now his own temper does the scaring.

West is not bold enough to watch when the other man strips off his nightshirt to dress. He can hear, though, that it takes more time than it ought. That it causes a deal of pain no man should bear by putting his trousers on. He is glad when the ordeal is over, and he can finally see in his old friend more of his former self. A commoner like him, he knows that fine clothes do not make a man, but they can be of help. Glokta too seems a little less sour with a good coat and a sturdy pair of boots. His thin fingers clutch the handle of a sleek, simple cane.

“Would you care for a walk, then?” He looks at his leg with a wince. “A slow walk. Seeing a bit of the grounds would do me better than to stare at these walls all day long, anyhow. I’d welcome the company.”

As would I, agrees West. He only regrets coming here in uniform.

*

West remembers the way he used to walk.

Colonel Glokta, brisk pace and scarcely a look back, his coattails flapping behind him— now the wreck of his leg makes it painful to watch, impossible to admire. Traces of that martial bearing remain in the tight lock of his spine, in the sure stride of his right heel across the lawn. Then comes the click of his cane, and the slow drag of his left foot, obviously harrowing as it twists the man’s face into a hard grimace. West tries not to focus on the way his remaining teeth dig into his lip, or the tear that wells up once more in his red-rimmed eye. Instead he takes in the shirt grown too large for his narrowed shoulders and fails to suppress a pang. Is this the same man who beat him time and time again in the fencing circle, the same man who led his troops, fearless, up until they’d hacked at his leg and brought him a fate worse than death?

(but oh, what a waste)

The estate has always seemed a little unwelcoming to West. It was hard, as a young man, to try and impress upon Glokta’s mother that he was not merely a commoner but an army officer. More than that, a comrade and a friend to her son. Now its quiet and sprawling green soothes him, for after fighting a war he knows not to take such things for granted. There are things he’s lost, yes, but none so much as his Colonel (his friend, the brightest star in the sky). Still young, still nimble, he can parade and strut in his uniform, he can wield his steels well. He can walk the grass without need of a cane, he can chew his food. Simple things.

The sky’s gloom has let up entirely and a pale sun shrieks at his eyes. A headache lives there, just behind. He has yet to learn that it will keep biting at his heels, dig the anger out of him— but out there he finds no cause for anger, only that melancholy he remembers from after the great battle— the day they’d pronounced Glokta dead on the Agriont for want of other news. He had not cried then. He could cry now, he wants to. Knees on the earth and eyes turned heavensward in silent thanks.

It’s a short walk to the garden table and chairs where they used to take tea after sparring. Old wood, wrought iron rust; this too has aged. West leans his sheathed sword against his chair and sits down, stiff but not so stiff as his battered friend, whose mask of pain tightens, whose restless eye leaks anew. Bloodshot, it reminds West of their campaign in the South, of his own eyes meeting his reflection’s in the shaving mirror. After the battle his cheek had been streaked with other men’s blood, his hair wild as a woodsman’s, his teeth caught in his lip. What had Glokta looked like after the battle, he wonders, with no legs to stand on, face in the dirt and a waning sun at his back— with the fallen carcass of his horse nearby, with his sword just out of reach— with his teeth still there, and digging at his lip, just like West’s (just like these teeth had dug, pleasantly, into West’s lip when they were young).

Glokta’s head takes a pensive tilt under his wide-brimmed hat. He said earlier, offhand, that it takes time for his eyes to adjust to the sun now that he scarcely takes a step out. West knows the cost of this, written ashen white in the flesh of the man’s knuckles, in the everlasting tension of his neck. He learns to appreciate the gesture.

“I’d forgotten”, he says, “how much I liked the view.”

Truth be told it is not much. A once well-tended yard falling into disarray, as if neglected by its once-an-army of gardeners and servants. Peering eastwards, West makes out the silhouette of that old birdbath he was so fond of. Robins and house sparrows used to crowd there in summerlight. Now the stone waits for no one, with a beard of green moss kissing its foot. Beyond the house, only the high wrought iron gates still stand as they always have, proud, looming, with that splendid bearing the scion of the family was known for. Look at him now, slumped in his chair. Look at him lying in bed and asking for a helping hand to get up and stumble to his desk, look at him withering, an old man hardly thirty.

Still, on the inside of West’s closing eyelids, he is young, and beautiful, he moves with a dancer’s grace.

“I used to think”, Glokta’s voice is low, it rasps against the inner walls of his throat. “I used to think, in the fencing circle, that I would live forever. The weight of a pair of steels in one’s hands, the first sweat dripping down one’s neck, the cheer of the crowd thumping in one’s blood along with his heart. It was enough to get drunk on. And then after the Contest a man would hear his name in every mouth and care only for it on a lady’s lips.”

I know, West thinks. I know, I’ve been there. Only with half as many girls at his heels, but then he is only half the fencer Glokta was.

“I still get drunk on it in my sleep”, the nobleman goes on. “Even in a sweltering tent down South, waking was never so harsh. Even in that cell…” His tongue seeks out the gaps in his teeth once more.

West’s own tongue, behind the careful wall of his closed mouth, imitates. It glides against the hard enamel of his own front teeth, healthy, all accounted for. It makes him smile, that. One could argue getting back from a battle with all his teeth is more impressive an achievement than winning a Contest; than being first through the breach at Ulrioch, too. Major West is a hero because he came back home whole and still able to smile. No one sees the scars under his uniform, all the pale blemishes slashed into his skin by sword, by knife, by arrowhead. No one sees the scars hiding in the shadow of his headaches. Glokta would not frown at them. Glokta, who has so many more scars and is not afraid to shove them into his face— so you see.

Glokta, who may be a dull-edged sword but still holds over West’s head his inexplicable animal magnetism. He looks at me, and it is as gulping a large mouthful of air after near-drowning. It sweetens the sour taste of things to come in his mouth. This has not aged (this will live forever).

They sit there for a long time in that half-silence, broken only by the sounds of life around them, a life from which they are excluded. A birdcry high in the sky, and another. The fingers of a breeze creeping into West’s starched collar. The smell of the lawn, for now cropped as sharp as the nobleman’s hair, and the possibility of it overgrowing. When his mother is gone, perhaps, if she is gone before him. West reckons a man broken in so many places might not want to grow much older. If it was him sitting on that chair, hand tightly clasped about a cane’s handle, he would get drunk on the nearness of death and try to charm her the way a lover does. Glokta was always a good sort of lover, it might take him only minutes for her to do his bidding (God knows West never lasted half that long).

They sit there for a long time. West closes his eyes, curls his fingers upon his left thigh; curls them some more, as if wanting to dig for the pain that inhabits the other man’s and might lay dormant within his own body. It does not come, and he is ashamed to find relief. He welcomes it all the same. His thumb finds the small scar under his chin, and stays there, summoning the memory of another’s claiming the same space.

“Do you know”, Glokta murmurs after a while, “you were in a dream of mine. We were young, in the middle of a fencing bout. There was that— that thing you did, a lunge and a clever turn of wrist, so that I dropped my long steel. You held my throat at swordspoint with a glint in your eye…” He laughs, and this time it’s not half so bitter. “It’s the first time you ever beat me.”

West bites at his lip (in the morning the taste of blood sleeps under his tongue). He smiles, he lights up his eyes with sunlight and green grass. Like this, the nobleman’s face seems almost peaceful and handsome as it used to be.

“Do you know”, he retorts, “I had this dream a hundred times.”