The Wisdom of Crowds

by Joe Abercrombie

  Isern narrowed her eyes. “That a fact?”

  “It is! And if it’s a hard one to swallow, you can take yourself back into the hills whence you came and make houses out o’ shit or whatever it is your lot do up there. You made a promise to my father, but my father’s back to the mud and as far as I’m concerned your promise went with him, d’you see.” And Rikke made a mocking imitation of Isern’s hillwoman accent on the d’you see which she was rather pleased with.

  Isern was less pleased. Indeed, she’d had a look of gathering fury during that last speech which was slightly troubling and made Rikke wonder whether she might’ve taken at least one step too far. “Well, have a shit, then, you little ingrate maggot!” she snarled, spraying chagga juice and making Rikke flinch back. “You little painted piss-smear! You fucking one-eyed wanker!”

  “There’s some very pleasant one-eyed folk,” grunted Shivers.

  “My arse to you!” hissed Isern in Rikke’s face. “And the moon’s curse to you and the dead drip on your Long Eye. You can roll your own chagga!” And she stalked off in high dudgeon, the very highest, indeed, shouldering Corleth aside, between the stones and away to the north the way they’d come.

  “I’ve a fear…” said Shivers, his scarred brow furrowed in a frown. “That was a mistake.”

  “Wasn’t my first,” snapped Rikke, well aware of what she’d done, “and I doubt it’ll be my last.”

  “Surely. But you might want to spread ’em out a bit.”

  “Daresay she’ll be back,” muttered Corleth, though she looked less than convinced and in fact slightly scared.

  “Don’t care a monthly bleed whether she is or isn’t,” snapped Rikke. “Away to fuck with you!” she roared after Isern, whose shaggy head was disappearing behind the frozen grass on the hilltop. She didn’t answer.

  “A bad time?” came a voice, from behind.

  And there he stood. No arcane robes or golden wands. Just a worn old coat and a time-polished stick, the winter sun gleaming on his bald head. He wasn’t breathing hard, though the dead knew there was no way to get to the Heroes without climbing the hill it stood on. It was as if he’d been there the whole time, but they’d only just now noticed him.

  “Bayaz!” Rikke stowed her mood away and strolled towards him with a smile, boots crunching in that circle of fresh snow, the Heroes a ring of disapproving giants frowning on their meeting. “First of the Magi! First apprentice of great Juvens! Don’t I feel special to get an audience?”

  “Rikke of the Long Eye!” He walked towards her, not seeming quite so smart and smug as he had in the Hall of Mirrors in Adua. He had a hungry look now. Sunken around the eyes. Scratty about the beard. “Daughter of the Dogman, mistress of Uffrith, Carleon and half the North besides. You have grown a great deal since we last saw one another.”

  “That’ll be the hood,” said Rikke, “gives me an inch at least.” And as they came together in the centre of the circle she pushed her hood back, and dragged her hair over to the side, and turned her left eye towards him.

  For an instant, she saw the flicker of shock. “Grown not so much in stature,” he breathed, eyes flickering over her face with keen curiosity, “as in power. Who tattooed the runes around your Long Eye?”

  “A friend. Up in the hills.”

  “A friend of rare talent, in these latter days. Eleven wards, and eleven wards reversed. Truly a most potent enchantment! I feel more blessed than ever that you consented to a meeting.”

  Rikke wasn’t above being pleased by flattery. But she was above letting it show. “Man o’ your age, outdoors in such bitter weather, figured it must be important.” And she grinned wide. Your best shield is a smile, her father used to say, and she’d a feeling she might need a shield or two in this conversation. “Besides, I was in the neighbourhood. Business in Osrung.” And she waved towards the thin smoke rising from the town’s chimneys, off down the river. “Been taking a little tour of the North. Or the bits I’m in charge of.”

  “And how have you found it?”

  “Seems I’m more in charge of some bits than others,” she said, casting a frown after Isern. “No easy business, keeping a crowd of Northmen all facing one way.”

  “I have been trying for centuries and it never seems to stick. When we met in Adua, I told you we should speak later.”

  “So later has arrived,” said Rikke.

  “It’s got a habit of doing that,” murmured Shivers, whose watchful presence a pace or two behind her she was rather grateful for.

  “I thought we might discuss the future,” said Bayaz.

  “We might.” And Rikke set off walking, slowly, pacing a circle around the old wizard. “But I’d have thought a man old as you would be more concerned with the past.”

  The magus smiled as he followed her with his eyes. “The past has never interested me. For better or worse it is done, and set, and littered with disappointments as a battlefield is littered with the dead. But the future is a ploughed field, full of potential. The future we can twist into wonderful shapes. With my help, the North could be yours. All of it, and not only for today. Imagine all the good we could do together.”

  “Who says I want to do good?”

  “Isn’t that what we all want?” Bayaz gave a sigh through his nose. “History is not the story of battles between right and wrong, but between one man’s right and another’s. Evil is not the opposite of good. It is what we call another man’s notion of good when it differs from ours.”

  Rikke had her doubts on that score. “So you want to help me stamp my notions on the North?”

  “Why not? We all need help, from time to time.”

  “Oh, we do. All I’ve got was got with help.” She’d come a full circle now, and she patted Shivers fondly on the shoulder as she passed, then turned to Bayaz with a thoughtful frown, still walking, slowly, crunch, crunch, crunch. She’d never liked standing still. “Bethod had your help, if I heard the story right. How’s he getting along?”

  “I made him king. But he grew arrogant, and fell.”

  “The Bloody-Nine, I think, had your help next. How’s he faring?”

  “I made him king, too. But he grew wrathful, and fell.”

  “Then it was Black Calder who had your help. He must’ve prospered!”

  “I made him the man who made kings,” said Bayaz as she passed behind his back, then he turned his head and caught her from the corner of his eye. “But he grew lazy, and let you in the back door. My help is not the word of Euz. It cannot protect a man from his own faults.”

  “So if I have your help, who’ll protect me from all my faults?”

  Bayaz took an impatient breath, like the teacher of a pupil who can’t get their sums straight. “I know things have not gone smoothly for you lately. I know some of your friends are friends no more. The Nail, and his people in the West Valleys. Even the hillwoman Isern-i-Phail loses patience. I know, on your little tour of the North, you are thought of as too soft, too wild, too strange. But then, as your list of names shows, sitting in Skarling’s Chair is one thing. Staying there is another.”

  She’d finished another circle now, leaving him in the centre of a ring of her snowy footprints, and she looked him in the eye. “You know a lot.”

  “Knowledge is the root of power. I could share mine with you.”

  Rikke doubted Bayaz became Bayaz by sharing more than he had to. “I see things, too,” she said, turning her left eye towards him and opening it very wide. “Who knows? Maybe even a thing or two you don’t. I know things haven’t gone smoothly for you lately. You left the North in Black Calder’s care and he pissed his trousers. His brother’s dead and his son’s in a cage and now you have to listen to me flap my lips. And then there’s your Union, where I saw you give such a fine address, the countless little people laid out before you like a carpet before an emperor. I doubt you’d be so welcome since their Great Change, eh? Not so many statues of you in the Agriont as there were. And who can blame ’em? Wasn’t long a
go you gave them your help, and it laid waste to their proud city and killed them by the cartload. Or did my father tell the story wrong?”

  “Talking to you is quite the adventure.” The weather might’ve been bitter, but the edge on Bayaz’s voice was chillier yet. “You wander off in every direction.”

  “I’m a constant surprise even to myself!”

  One more impatient puff of smoke, this time through gritted teeth, like a shepherd whose flock won’t obey. “Do you see these stones, child?”

  “I do.” And she set off wandering again, over towards the cloven one. “They’re hard to miss, old man.”

  “This is where Black Dow died. This very spot. He ruled the North, after the Bloody-Nine fell. A mighty warrior. A fearsome leader. He held off the Union here. But he thought he could manage without me.” Bayaz narrowed his eyes towards the flat, white country spread out to the north. “He lies in a pit out there, unmarked and unconsidered.”

  “The Great Leveller catches us all,” said Shivers, softly.

  “And he has no favourites and makes no exceptions.” Rikke reached up to run her fingertips down the great split in the stone, already a little smoothed, a little weathered in the years since the battle. “Where did the stones come from?” she asked.

  The First of the Magi frowned. “The Heroes?”

  “Aye. Who put them here? And how? And why?”

  “None alive know that.” Bayaz glared over at Corleth, and she swallowed, and blinked down at the ground. “They come from an age before the Old Time. They were ancient even when my master Juvens was born.”

  “So old as that? A good thing stones don’t wrinkle, eh, or run to flab, or lose their hair, or have all their little schemes fall apart around ’em? I daresay they mostly look as fine as the day they were raised. Though how did this one get so bruised? Magus Art?”

  Bayaz frowned harder. “No.”

  “A cannon,” said Shivers.

  “A cannon!” It was hard to walk back towards the magus. Like walking into a great wind. But Rikke made herself swan carefree across the snow, leaving a new track of footprints in the white. “Like the ones my good friend Savine dan Brock, who gave me these lovely emeralds, turns out by the dozen in her new foundry in Ostenhorm. So I know not whence the stones came, either, but I know what broke that one. In this matter, at least, it looks like I’m as wise as you. There was a time of stones before you. And there will be a time of cannons after. And the time before was, and the time after will be, so vasty and so deep that the age of your mastery will seem like the snapping of a child’s fingers.” And she snapped hers in Bayaz’s face. Click.

  His eye gave the slightest twitch of annoyance. “It appears that Tricky Rikke is a name well earned.”

  “And Sticky Rikke, too,” she muttered from the side of her mouth, “I promise you.”

  “No doubt there will be a time after me.” Bayaz’s eyes were fixed on hers, hard and glittering green. “But that time is not yet. For a girl blessed with the Long Eye, you have made some short-sighted blunders.”

  She got as close to a carefree shrug as she could, no easy thing, with the weight of his displeasure on her shoulders. “You told me once that people must be allowed to make their own mistakes.”

  His eyes narrowed, and he closed the gap between them with one step. She felt Shivers shift behind her, the faint rattle as he gripped his sword, and she had just the presence of mind to raise one finger to still him.

  “You are very brave,” said the First of the Magi, and his voice was almost painful on her ear. “Or very rash. To cavil with a man who has called up storms and snatched down lightning. Who scattered the mighty Hundred Words like chaff on the wind.” He leaned forwards, baring his teeth, and it was the most she could do to stop herself cringing, stumbling back, dropping to her knees. “Why, you must know, that with a thought I could make ash of you.”

  Now that was a hard moment. Worse than hiding in an icy stream while she heard her death plotted on the bank. Worse than when she watched the Young Lion losing to the Great Wolf. Worse than when

  she had to choose which eye to have pricked out. It took all she had to meet Bayaz’s gaze. All she’d learned and all she’d lost. As if his anger was a crushing grip, squeezing the breath from her chest. But she did it. Then she pushed her lips out in a thoughtful pout, then she pressed her finger against them for a moment, then she shrugged.

  “No,” she said brightly. “I don’t see it. If everyone knew you chose the kings, and you had all the power, they might get it in their heads to take it from you. I reckon you’d sooner stay behind the curtain, where it’s safe, and have others do the burning.”

  There was a chilly silence, then, as the cold wind cut between the stones and across the snow-heavy grass. A hard and chilly silence, stretching long, while Rikke wondered if she might’ve made her last mistake. Then the first of the Magi gave a sigh, and stepped back, and the awful pressure was released.

  “Then you have made your choice. Perhaps I will go to Currahome. Black Calder, I think, will be grateful for my support.”

  “I expect so,” she said, trying to stop her voice quavering with relief. “He needs it. Perhaps, when I’ve settled with him, we should talk again. By that time, you might want to buy secrets from me! Fare you well, First of the Magi.”

  “I would say fare you well, Rikke of the Long Eye.” He gave her the hint of a smile, even as he turned away. “But I fear you will fare badly.” And he walked swiftly between the stones, and was soon gone down the side of the hill.

  Corleth puffed out her cheeks and rubbed sweat from her forehead on the back of her hand. “Don’t much care for that old bastard,” she muttered.

  “Nor I,” murmured Rikke, folding her arms and hoping her thumping heart would soon settle.

  Shivers was frowning towards the white fells on the south side of the valley. “He was here, after the battle.”

  “I guess there were a lot o’ crows, picking at the leftovers.”

  “Him in particular. When Black Calder and the Union and your father struck a deal.”

  “And my father spat in Calder’s hand and swore to kill him if he ever crossed the Cusk again.”

  “That’s right. Bayaz was the one pulling all the strings.”

  “Well, he won’t be plucking ours.”

  Shivers’ good eye turned towards her. “Better to have ’em plucked than cut, maybe.”

  “Maybe.” But her father fought all his life so they could be free. She gave a shiver, and pulled her fur collar tight and her hood low, and headed back the way they’d come. Northwards, leaving the Heroes behind. “Till then, we’ll dance to our own tune.”

  Far from Finished

  Clover nudged some wet bushes out of the way and peered across the river. His eyes weren’t all they once were, but he’d an unpleasant sense there were some familiar faces at the far end of the bridge.

  “By the dead, my luck,” he muttered, trying to catch any warmth his breath might hold in his cupped hands. “Is that Trapper and his boys?”

  “Aye,” said Sholla. “The ones Downside didn’t kill, leastways.”

  “Better that than leave scores at your back,” said Downside.

  Sholla rolled her eyes. “And what about the score Trapper has against us ’cause you killed three of his people?”

  Downside scratched his thick beard as he pondered that. “So you’re saying… I should’ve killed the rest, too?”

  Clover sighed. “Life surely has a way of bringing old offences back to haunt you.”

  “Was only a few weeks back,” said Flick.

  “New offences, then.” Clover had arrived with small expectations of living out the day and his odds just took another tumble. “You lot better stay out here.”

  “I’d no idea you cared, Chief.”

  “I don’t.” He raised a brow at Flick. “But you’re so dumb you’d make things worse.” He pointed it at Sholla. “And you’re far too skinny to hide behind.” He p
ointed it at Downside. “And let’s not even start on you.”

  “Sure you want to wear that?” asked Sholla. “For this?”

  Clover frowned down at the fine wolfskin cloak Stour used to wear. She had a point. Turning up to talk to Black Calder in his stolen son’s stolen finery would be less than wise. “Shit,” he said, undoing the buckle with some reluctance, since it was by no means the weather for disrobing, and tossed it over to Sholla. “If my luck’s a lot better’n usual, I’ll see you back here soon.”

  “And if your luck’s about like usual?” Sholla hissed after him, grinning as she pulled the cloak about her own bony shoulders.

  “Then I reckon you got a good cloak out of it.” And Clover stepped from the trees, wedged his hands under his armpits and trudged towards the bridge.

  Trapper stood at the far end with his thumbs in his sword-belt and a wrinkle to his lip. “If it isn’t Jonas fucking Clover.”

  “It’s the longer version of my name,” said Clover, already shivering, “but used often enough that I’m obliged to answer to it.”

  “Funny.” It was the one with the lambskin coat, the one Downside coshed on the head last time they met. “I’d find the sight of your guts funnier yet.”

  “You don’t seem to be killing me, mind you.”

  Trapper turned his head and sourly spat. “No.”

  “A better result than I’d expected, if I’m honest.”

  “Aye. Black Calder told us you’d be along.”

  “How did he know?”

  “He’s Black Calder, ain’t he? Knowing things is what he’s known for.” He held out his hand and snapped his fingers.

  “Right y’are.” Clover unbuckled his sword-belt and handed it over. Could scarcely remember the last time he drew the damn thing except to oil it anyway. “You should know I regret what happened last time we met,” he said, following Trapper up the muddy road. “Didn’t want anyone dead, but bloody Downside, he’s one o’ those bastards leaves a trail o’ wreckage with every stride.”