It was always the screamers that got to Hoff. Always. The damned screamers who didn't have the good graces to die quietly; to leave the world with the dignity they'd lacked whilst they lived in it. They cried and they whimpered and they bleated and they promised this and that. In the end, they all made the same sound. That beautiful, blissful, brilliant sound of silence.

After the screamers came the cursers. These were mostly the warrior types; the ones that thought they could talk their way down from the timber by challenging combat of one sort or another. Hoff didn't mind the cursers so much because they were entertaining. They hurt his ears far less than the screamers and, at the very least, waited for after the drop before they soiled themselves. The books never say anything about that when they tell you how men die.

He nudged his palfrey forward, right up to the edge of the timber. Behind him, the mountains swept outward; innumerable spires and valleys that braved the bitter cold of the west for century after century. At some point – Hoff didn't really know when – the steep slopes that decorated Scavania would become the sleek hills and lush plains of Green Country; the heart of the Empire and a place he'd heard a man could exhale and not see his own breath. Hoff had never been to Green Country, but it had to beat enduring Scavania. Its women weren't as fierce, its ale not as strong, but it was flat and it was warm. Dreams for another day, Hoff thought. Today was not for dreaming. Today was for working.

He adjusted his woollen cloak and ran a gloved hand through his dirty blond beard. It was nice and bushy now, just in time for the thick of winter. When the snows fell and the rivers froze, he would be thankful for the bastard thing, even if it did make him look ten winters older than he actually was. His palfrey whinnied impatiently and Hoff realised the stumpman was waiting for him beneath the gallows. He took in the five condemned properly for the first time. Two screamers, three cursers. That's our lot and call me Emperor if it ain't.

The two screamers had already started with their unabashed begging. Hoff found it amusing, what a man might say when he thought it could save his neck. He'd heard it all before though; the two today had as much distinction as the wind. He reckoned the cursers were a safe bet, too, though they normally refrained from making noise until it was their turn.

Hoff regarded the first, a heavy-set Mountainman of fifty winters or so; grey hair thinning to bald and cheeks blue with the bite of the breeze. His eyes were working as quickly as his mouth was. Come on, up here on the edge of the map? With this view? Plenty worse places to die, old man, Hoff thought to himself.

'You have been condemned to death by Haeorl Magni of Halvard, for crimes committed on his land. If you have any last words before you meet the Elders, say them now.' It was a speech Hoff had been delivering for twelve years, give or take. In twelve years, he'd heard precisely no last words that amounted to anything significant. It was his duty to ask all the same.

'I've got gold, lord! Gold, buried under the ...'

Hoff let the pleas fade like snow in summer and waved his right hand down. The stumpman did his job and the Mountainman said no more. He gurgled, he choked, he choked, he gurgled, but he said no more. It's difficult to talk when your neck's half-broken.

Hoff nudged the palfrey to the next in line. It was another Mountainman. This one was slim where the other was thick, young where he was old. He tried blaming his crimes on the dying man beside him before Hoff had even asked his question. It failed to stir any sentiment. Hoff repeated his line and gave the stumpman the signal after a short delay.

By the time he'd moved onto the third, the cursers had well and truly found their feet - so to speak. The third and fourth might have been brothers, they looked similar in any case. Greenmen, perhaps; more olive of complexion than the pale Mountainmen. It was rare to see a Greenman without his armour in these parts, really. Not that it could possibly have saved them now.

'Let me down you savage,' the third one, a tall man with a long neck ripe for the task at hand, screamed. 'I'll fight you with sword, spear, mace. You bastards love your axes, don't you? Let me down and I'll put an axe in your fuckin brow.'

Hoff sighed, exchanged a glance with the two guardsmen he'd brought with him from Halvard, and engaged in the rigmarole again.

Cough. Splutter. Choke. Repeat. After the first one, it usually all got a bit boring. The Greenmen both went the same way, the fourth failing to present anything other than the idea that he'd wait for Hoff in the Great Inbetween and hunt him in the Ever After.

The palfrey rattled over the dry rock and drew level with the fifth. 'You have been condemned to death by King ...' Hoff stopped. The fifth was silent. Not a curser after all? Elders be damned. But no screaming, either.

Now that Hoff could give him his undivided attention, he appeared a puzzle. He was thickset and well-defined, a loose white jerkin offering no protection from the cold and a pair of brown breeches that had seen better days many winters ago all he had in terms of clothing. Long blond hair framed a chiselled face, one that edged outwards from a nose at least thrice-broken. And those eyes. Vivid as the Great Blue. He realised then that the man was staring right back at him. Is that a smile on his face?

'Have you any last words before you meet the Elders?' Hoff asked the man.

'That depends,' the prisoner quipped back, 'how long do you have?'

'What?'

'How long do you have? I'd like to say I'm a man of few words, but that would be a lie. My friends call me Bard.'

He's got spirit, Elders know I don't see enough of that. It's almost a shame ... Almost.

Hoff raised his hand and the stumpman took position.

'What peak are we on?' the prisoner asked, trivial as though he were a lost traveller.

'What?'

'This is Three-Peak Pass, yes? Then what peak are we on? C'mon, it's either Litill, Stór or Midjan, unless of course it's become Four-Peak Pass in the last day or so.'

Elders, his mind is addled. Hoff had heard of such madness gripping men in their final moments. He'd never seen it before, but it was hardly a wonder that it existed.

'Well?' the man asked, gaze piercing Hoff like a well-honed dirk. 'Litill, Stór or Midjan?'

'Stór ...' Hoff found himself saying. It can't hurt to humour him at the last, Elders save his lack-witted soul. He raised his hand again.

'Oh, well that is a relief. I thought for a moment I was in the wrong place.'

In the wrong place? 'Prepare to die.'

'Are you sure this is Stór?'

Enough. Hoff let his hand drop ... and the stump stayed exactly where it was. The prisoner stared down at him, a dazzling smile on his face.

'Stumpman, do your duty,' Hoff barked.

It was then, and only then, that he saw the end of the knife. It peeked out through the stumpman's chest like the first flower of a spring bloom. Red it was, just like the spreading patch around it. The stumpman blinked twice, big obvious blinks, then pitched forward and hit the dirt behind the fifth stump, the knife slipping back out of him. Hoff was stunned to see a child holding the other end, a child of no more than fourteen winters. The lad grinned a toothy grin.

Hoff went instinctively for his axe. Before he could haul it over his shoulder, he felt two thuds in his lower back; two punches delivered by granite fists. They drove the air out of him and made his horse rear up in alarm. The palfrey skittered and slipped on the rocks and Hoff came off the back. He landed on his feet but his legs betrayed him instantly. There was another thud and he went onto one knee, hand on his axe shaft and head turning madly in a bid to find the invisible foes.

A pool of glistening red gradually seeped into his periphery. He glanced across and saw the bodies of the two guardsmen, both of them face down on the trail, both of them haemorrhaging life quicker than Hoff could make sense of things.

There came a fourth thud, this one higher up his back, and he gave up trying to stay upright. His cheek hit the ground hard and he reached his arm around to his back. Wooden shafts? ... Arrows? Hoff felt no pain, only an icy numbness. The black spots at the corners of his eyes had begun to rob him of light and colour.

'Took your time!' It was the prisoner's voice; Bard. 'Cut me the fuck down.' Maybe he is a curser after all.

Hoff was blind by that point. He heard the sound of knife-on-rope and then the crunch of feet hitting the floor.

'Elders, Bodkin, we're meant to have him unblemished. You can't go putting arrows in everyone. How many ... Four! Four arrows? How're we gonna collect anything now?'

Hoff heard a replying grunt from close by.

'And you, Weasel, you're meant to stab him in the neck, you fool. What if he'd have kicked that stump?' It was the prisoner again, his voice coming from the gallows.

'Sorry, Bard. He died, didn't he?' This one another voice. Younger, much younger. The child, perhaps.

'That's not the point,' Hoff heard Bard say, 'next time copy Taaj and Tall Toyne, like I told you to. Just look at their work. Masterful.'

'Why, thank you, Bard. How does it feel to cheat death?' A third voice now, exotically flavoured. Zaffaar perhaps? Sand Country, for sure. Hoff could feel his senses slipping, the ebb-and-flow of his being oozing away.

'The same as all the other times, Taaj,' Bard said. 'And about that, next time we're finding new bait. I ain't doing it no more.'

'Yeah, yeah,' said the third voice, 'Toyne, use that bloody trident and finish him off will you, we've got places to be, gold to collect. This list ain't gonna finish itself, is it?'

'He deserves it slow.' A fourth voice boomed somewhere in the impossibly far-off distance.

'Toyne?'

'Alright, but next time-'

'Toyne!'

Hoff felt a sudden nip. And all went black.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Please remember to vote if you liked the chapter (hit the star). It all helps towards increasing awareness of the work and thereby letting others to enjoy it as well :) Would also greatly appreciate comments/feedback/reviews whenever possible. If you take the time to read it, please let me know what you think. 

*Book art courtesy of the amazing Max Panks Artist. Visit here to browse his vast array of work. Commissions available at reasonable prices. https://www.instagram.com/maxpanksart/