Gunn was as bad as his word.

Fia watched, along with Darach Lees, Cleric Vass and Gil Allaway, while the rest of the battered company kept a watch in the woods. Once the interrogation started, it was not long before the still shaky cleric excused himself, saying that he would find Lorna’s body and say the proper words over it. Lees, looking green around the gills as he watched Gunn warm to his task, offered to watch the cleric’s back.

Gunn stripped Gray to his skin, lashing out with his fists when the bound man squirmed, and tied him, with Fia’s assistance, to a suitable tree.

“Miss McCrae’s going to ask you her questions, Gray,” he said in a soft and forbidding voice, “and you’re goin’ to answer them, or I’m gonna hurt you. I ain’t an imaginative man like you, but I’m sure I can come up with a few ways to get you chattin’ so much you’ll be in danger of beatin’ your own gums to death. And just to show you that I’m not messin’ around…”

Gunn squatted down, took hold of Gray’s big toe and snapped it back with a sickening crack. Fia’s stomach clenched. Gray’s eyes bulged but somehow he managed to withhold the scream that must have been clawing up his throat. Gunn looked up at the bound man, an evil light illuminating his countenance, and then he systematically broke every single one of Gray’s toes, so that they pointed accusingly up at the man’s own face.

This seemed to have a profound effect on the prisoner’s outlook on his future. He wailed incoherently for quite a while through his clenched teeth, spit flying from his lips as he threw every insult he could think of at Gunn.

For his part, Gunn just stood there and let the other man blow himself out. Waited until the black curses had subsided into whistling moans. Then he unsheathed a razor-sharp hunting knife that he must have taken from one of the fallen soldiers and held it up to Gray’s face.

“Question time,” he said.

Fia stepped forward to speak her piece.

“I’m going to say this once, so make sure you’re listening, Gray,” she said. “I want to know why Redmond Marr wants Gunn so bad. I want to know why the hell you picked me to find him. And, lastly, I want to know why you decided to kill us all, instead of sticking to the fucking deal as we agreed.”

Gray was breathing hard. His breath whistled through his nostrils as his cobalt eyes stared into Fia’s face.

Fia leaned in a little closer, careful to make sure that she didn’t stray into biting range.

“I don’t know what you’ve done to this man,” she said in a low voice, her eyes flicking briefly sideways to where Gunn was waiting, tapping his thigh with the knife and humming. “To be honest, I don’t give two shits. All I want to know is why my nice, quiet, obscure life’s been turned upside down. Why I suddenly find the past sniffing like a wolf at my door where it ain’t wanted.”

Fia’s eyes moved back to Gunn who had walked off a ways. He had stuck his knife into a tree and was rolling a cigarette while he continued to hum tunelessly to himself.

“That son of a bitch is going to carve you apart, Gray,” she whispered. “I don’t think I can stop him on that score. I’ll kill you quick though, if you tell me what the fuck is going on. You’ve my word on it.” Her voice dropped even lower, as her strange abalone-coloured eyes fixed on Gray’s. “I know you know who I am. I remember you. Long time ago, now. I remember you weren’t such a bad man. Just tell me why my––why the viscount has you doing this. Please.”

Gray’s gaze roved around Fia’s face. Just for a moment, she thought the man was going to spill his guts. Then, he hawked up a big old prairie oyster and spat it at her feet.

“Fine,” Fia sighed, stepping back. “You know the questions. All you have to do to end this is answer them.”

Through a cloud of baccy smoke, Gunn stepped forward like a demon from the pit. He cocked his head and scrutinised Gray. Took a long pull on his roll-up. Breathed smoke languidly through his nostrils.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“Go fuck yourself, Gunn,” Gray spat.

Gunn took another drag on his smoke. Then, he knelt down, roll-up wedged between his teeth, and systematically sliced off everyone of Gray’s toes. The knife was so sharp it went through sinew and bone on the first pass under Gunn’s practised hand. Only Gray’s big toes required a little sawing.

Gray thrashed and screamed. Hard, dry, raw screams unique to a man seeing his own body being mutilated in front of his own eyes.

From the toes, Gunn moved upwards, pausing at times to see if anything was forthcoming from his captive. He wasn’t humming anymore. His eyes were narrowed against the stream of smoke snaking off his roll-up wedged between his bearded lips.

“Would you look at that, his balls have sucked right up into his body,” he said jovially at one point, prodding at Gray’s cock with his bloody knife. “Don’t you worry though, Gray, I’m gettin’ my eye in now. I’ll dig ‘em out of you if I have to keep at it all day.”

With a butcher’s skill, Gunn flayed the skin off one of Gray's shins so that the entire bone was revealed to the open air. Gray screamed himself hoarse and drifted out of consciousness at this point, but the longrider patiently brought him back around with a few hard slaps and some water from a flask.

Gray was blubbering and crying and moaning, but still he refused to talk.

“Honestly, Gray,” Gunn said lightly, “I’d never have thought you’d be such a tough oyster to shuck. Marr must be a hell of an employer, huh? Or maybe you’re just doin’ this to be a pain in my arse one last time?”

Gray slobbered something inaudible. Drool hung from his lips, tears streaking his face.

“Speaking of oysters that need to be shucked…” Gunn said.

He stabbed his knife into the top of one of the man’s knees and, using a rock as a crude hammer, popped the kneecap off with an awful sucking sound.

“Oh, that’s fuckin’ disgusting, Gray!” Gunn said, raising his voice so that it could be heard over Gray’s animal shrieks and bellowed roars, poking at the small pad of white fat that had been revealed.

As if on cue, the helpless Gray cried out for mercy. Snot sprayed everywhere. The sinews in the bound man’s neck, shoulders and chest stood out like ropes under his skin.

“Ain’t got any mercy. Not for you, Gray,” Gunn said in a frosty voice.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Just answer my questions, Gray!” Fia urged the man. Her spit tasted sour in her mouth, but she felt that if she wanted answers she could at least be here while Gunn prised them out of their captive.

“Do as she says, Gray,” Gunn said. “You think this is as bad as it gets, but that’s only ‘cause you ain’t ever known worse.”

“Please, Gray,” Fia urged quietly.

“What does Marr want with me all of a sudden, Gray?” Gunn asked. “Why’s he concerning himself so especially after all this time?”

“You?” Gray spluttered, keeping eyes averted from his maimed legs. “You? You’ve been naught but a happy bonus as of late, Gunn.”

“Happy bonus? What the fuck’re you on about, man? The Viscount could have had me killed any time he fancied it, I’m sure. I’ve been a thorn in his side ever since you destroyed my life, but he wants me alive––that much is obvious. Why?”

“Because, Gunn,” Gray slobbered, his face creasing up in pain as the incredible agony threatened to whisk him into velvet clutches of unconsciousness, “because he’s… been ordered to by… by the…”

He started to drift away, until Gunn crushed his lit roll-up out in one of his nostrils.

“Marr’s been ordered by who, Gray? Countess Vanora? The High Warden, is that who’s ordered him to bring me in alive?” Gunn asked.

Gray’s head hung forward. He was half chuckling, half sobbing as he looked down at his flayed and hacked up legs.

“Tell me, unless you want me to take off the other kneecap,” Gunn growled, holding his gore-slicked knife under Gray’s nose.

The bound man, vomited bile, shuddered, made a concerted effort to gather his fraying wits.

“The Imperator,” he said, forcing the word out as if it hurt him to say it. “The Imperator. That’s who wants you to die in public.”

Fia frowned. “You mean, this faceless fuck who apparently leads the Vansgriman army?” she asked.

Gray nodded.

“He’s the one who wanted Gunn alive?” Fia asked.

Gray nodded again.

“Why?” Fia asked.

“Viscount Marr came to an… agreement with the Imperator,” Gray slurred. “The Imperator is s-s-seeking to crush and subdue the whole of the Five Isles, to bring every person in our world under his sway. Viscount Marr assured h-him that there would be no opposition from Fallaros, that the Frekirie army would actually help him to subjugate the people of our isle.”

Fia swallowed.

“He’d betray his own people,” Gunn breathed. “Doom all the tribelands.”

“In return for what?” Fia said.

“When the Imperator has dominion over the entirety of the Five Isles and takes the title of Emperor, Viscount Marr will be given sole custody of Fallaros,” Gray said, speaking the words in a manner that told Fia he had had them spoken to him many times.

“The tribelands will be disbanded?” Fia said.

Gray nodded wearily. “Viscount Marr will be a lord, the most powerful man on this side of our world.”

Fia and Gunn looked at one another. Dimly, Fia got the impression that she was standing on the edge of a sinkhole pulling her into a future that she could not escape.

“And the Imperator needs Gunn to die publicly, why?” she asked.

Gray stirred himself with a visible effort.

“He has gathered intelligence that Gunn has the sympathy and loyalty of a not insignificant number of the common folk of Frekifold, and some of the other tribelands. He’s concerned that should Gunn simply vanish then it will trigger an uprising.”

“And nothing fucks with an invasion like a good old-fashioned insurrection, is that about it?” Gunn said.

“Yes,” Gray said, through rubbery lips. “Yes. You must be tried and found guilty of being a traitor… and die for all the world to see. The evidence will be damning. Any rebellion stirring will be snuffed before the flames can be fanned. With his thaumaturgy and superior weaponry, the Imperator’s Vansgriman forces will be… unstoppable.”

Gunn puffed out his cheeks and regarded the bloody man in front of him. He turned to Fia.

“The death of the tribelands, the death of our very way of life,” he said. “I always heard that Redmond Marr was the kind of no account son of a bitch that’d steal the flowers from his grandmother’s grave, but this… This is somethin’ else.”

Fia held up her hand to cut Gunn off and stepped closer to the prisoner.

“You said Gunn had recently become a happy bonus, Gray,” she said. “What did you mean by that?”

Gray blinked and looked blearily up at her. It seemed to Fia that he was struggling to hold himself together.

“It’s the woman he wants,” he said, his eyelids fluttering, clearly not cognizant about who he was talking to.

“The woman…?” Gunn said slowly, turning to Fia, his grey eyes furrowed in confusion. “But, the girl is no one. Just an uncanny tracker.”

Gray made a horrible wet gargling sound. Laughter. Wet with blood. Lungs filling with it. When he spoke, his voice was unexpectedly sharp.

“Just a tracker,” he dribbled. “Gods, you don't even know who you’re riding with, do you, you ignorant son of a bitch?”

“Feel free to remedy my ignorance and I shall ease your passin’,” Gunn said, kneeling down to look into Gray’s face. He pressed the point of his dirk into the other man’s neck. Applied just enough pressure to break the skin. Traced a line around the other man’s mutilated face.

Gray laughed again. The sound was more grotesque this time. Wetter. Turned to a fit of racking coughing, blood spraying down his front.

“That there,” the man said thickly, his words slurring. “That there… is Fia Marr…”

Gunn’s head snapped around. “Can’t be,” he said softly. “The viscountess died long ago, you lyin’ sack of shit.”

Gray sucked in a rattling, clogged breath. More liquid than air.

“To the pit with you, Gunn,” he said, his head drooping. “Anything… you want me to… pass along to that dear daughter of yo––”

The final word morphed into a low squeal of agony as Gunn pushed his knife slowly, slowly into Gray’s ear. He twisted the blade as he did so, the metal scraping audibly on bone as it slid and jerked into the man’s head.

There was a nauseating squelching crunch, like a snail being stepped on. Gray let out a final breathy sigh and his head hung forward, blood drooling from his lips, bubbling from his ear.

Gunn pulled the knife out and regarded the dead man. Then, with painstaking care, he dug his dirk into the man’s eye sockets, one at a time. With a careless jerk and flick, he scooped and tore each of the man’s cool blue eyes out of his head. Let them fall to the forest floor. Crushed them under his boots.

“He’ll not lay eyes on my daughter in the land beyond this one,” he whispered to himself.

Only Fia’s unnaturally quick ears allowed her to catch the words.

Gunn straightened and turned his gaze on Fia.

“It’s true,” he said. It was no question. “You’re Viscount Marr’s older sister. The one that disappeared after killin’ her brother.”

Fia considered Gunn with her usual calm scrutiny. Her hand was resting on her sword hilt.

“It was an accident,” she said. The words were dry and jagged in her throat. “A hunting accident. I loved my brother. Miss him every day. That ain’t going to change what happened, though. Redmond’s my half-brother, born of the same mother. Yeah, I was a viscountess, but not any more.”

“Holy fucking fuck,” Hunter said succinctly, stepping out from behind a tree, her mouth agape, showing off her foul brown teeth. “A fucking authentic viscountess. Fuck me.”

“Not just a viscountess,” Gunn said softly. “This wildcat here is no less than the heir to the High Seat of Fallaros...”