Shadow's Edge - Brent Weeks [85]
Her dress tore and she fell on top of Logan. He was barely able to break her fall, only trying to angle her away from the abyss.
Logan staggered to his feet and saw Gorkhy’s face livid in the torchlight, still exposed, just waiting for a noose to drop around his neck, just begging to be dragged into the Hole and torn apart. Turning, Logan saw Fin just feet away, but the man had dropped his lasso. Logan barely had time to see the glittering steel in Fin’s hand before Fin stabbed him.
Flesh parted along Logan’s ribs and his left arm as he twisted hard to avoid the blade. Fin’s hand got caught between Logan’s left arm and his body as Logan twisted and Logan heard the knife fall to the stone floor. Logan brought a fist toward Fin’s head, but the man ducked, fell to the floor and scurried back. Logan started to go after him, determined to kill the man while he had the chance, but as he moved forward, behind him the Holers closed on the girl.
He couldn’t leave her. He knew what they saw when they looked at a young, half-naked woman, dazed from her fall. He’d heard the rapists reminisce about it, tell how many sweets they’d banged. Some of them couldn’t even bang Lilly: a willing woman left them limp.
Logan roared with pain and frustration. The animals collapsed backward.
The girl had picked up the knife and was standing now with her back to the wall. She braced herself to keep from falling. From the way she stood, she’d sprained her ankle in the fall.
“Stay back,” she said, waving the knife around ineffectually. “Stay back!” Her eyes darted from Logan to the abyss and then to Gnasher.
The girl was shaking. She was pretty in a fragile sort of way, with long blond hair and fine features. She was barely dirty, though, so she couldn’t have been in prison long. Long enough for Gorkhy, though, damn him to the ninth circle of hell. There was fresh blood staining her torn dress between her legs.
Logan held his hands up. “Easy,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you. But we need to move or they’ll start falling on us.”
Her eyes flashed up the grate and she began scooting along the circular wall.
Gorkhy had been pulled away from the grate by the other guards. The rest of the prisoners were herded to the grate. The first man didn’t want to jump in, so they pushed him.
The fifteen-foot fall onto solid rock broke his legs, and the Holers were on him in seconds. To Logan’s dismay, Gnasher joined them, flinging aside others and sinking filed teeth into living flesh.
The second man froze at the spectacle he could hear but barely see. The guards pushed him in and he, too, became meat. After that, most of the other prisoners were willing to hang from the grate and drop in themselves.
Logan had no time for it. On another day, he might have fought for meat himself. But he wouldn’t feed today, not with this girl here. Her presence made him remember better things. He wanted to weep.
“Gods,” he said. “Natassa Graesin.” The words escaped his lips. He shouldn’t have said anything, but the shock of seeing another noble was too great. At seventeen, Natassa was the second-eldest Graesin daughter. She was his cousin.
Natassa Graesin stared at him, her wide, frightened eyes taking in the tall, emaciated wreck of what had been a huge, athletic body. He was a shadow of what he had been, but though he had withered, he was still tall, unmistakably tall.
He held his hands up to silence her, but he was too late.
“Logan? Logan Gyre?” she said.
He felt his world ending. In all the time he’d been down here, he’d been only King or Thirteen. In the madness of hunger, he’d eventually joined the others who stood around the Hole to catch bread—with his long reach, he got more than most, at the cost of letting Gorkhy know that a tall blond man was in the Hole. But he’d never, never, never used his real name.
Shooting a glance over his shoulder, he saw that new prisoners were still dropping in the hole, sprawling as they hit the ground. In the near-total darkness, they were blind, terrified, whimpering and shrieking and cursing