The Wisdom of Crowds

by Joe Abercrombie

  “You choose to have a man like that in your crew, you could do a better job o’ reining him in.” Trapper shook his head in disgust. “You could hardly have done a worse.”

  “Not entirely fair,” said Clover. “You’re still casting a shadow.”

  No surprise that they walked the rest of the way in moody silence. There was snow on the sloping fields, and the low stone walls, and the bare trees on the valley side, and on the steep roofs of the houses scattered towards the top. There were tents about, too, and campfires, and fighting men huddled close around their warmth. Fewer than Clover had been expecting, though. Thralls and Carls, a few grizzled old faces he recognised. Not enough to pose any threat to Rikke, even now the Nail and his West Valley boys had cleared off.

  Maybe Black Calder had lost his edge. Happens to everyone, in the end. Folk get comfortable. Get so stuck on thinking they’re the best, the strongest, the most cunning, that when someone better, stronger, more cunning comes along they don’t even realise they’re yesterday’s bread. Not till it’s too late.

  He was waiting, under the ice-fringed eaves of the hall at the top of the hill. The man who’d ruled the North for twenty years. A little greyer, maybe, than last time Clover saw him. A little more lined. But wasn’t everyone? He looked relaxed, for a man whose dreams had all come crashing down.

  “Jonas Clover!” He spread his arms like he was greeting an old friend, a gesture which Clover found anything but reassuring. “Welcome to Currahome. What d’you think of the place?”

  “A charming winter scene,” said Clover as he looked back down the valley, catching his breath and trying to rub the chill from his pink fingertips. “I’m climbing a lot more hills than I’d like to be at my time o’ life, mind you.”

  Calder waved towards the smattering of men camped on the hillside. “You think mustering warriors was what I’d been planning for my dotage, you lazy bastard? I much preferred Carleon but my fool of a son lost it. Give him his sword back, Trapper, what are you doing?”

  Trapper frowned sideways at Clover. “I thought, you know, he might try something.”

  “It’s Jonas Clover, what would he try? Bad jokes? There’s probably not even a blade in the scabbard. Just a spare sausage or something.”

  Clover felt a touch offended about that as he buckled his sword back on. Probably he shouldn’t have. Offence did no one any good, after all, and Calder was right. Trying anything here was the style o’ manly madness Jonas Steepfield might’ve contemplated. And look what happened to that idiot.

  “Let’s get in out of the cold.” Calder turned towards the hall. “You’re a connoisseur of sword-work, you’ll enjoy this.”

  As the doors were opened, the unmistakable clanging of steel on steel rang out. Blade-music, as the skalds have it, making their living setting poetic terms to the world’s horrors. Shadows danced among the carved rafters of the firelit hall, hot as a forge after the chill outside, bringing a prickle to Clover’s frost-numbed extremities. Men sat on benches, drinking, eating, oohing and ahhing at the sight of two men fighting. Or maybe training. Or one big man and a stringy lad. Seemed quite the mismatch at first, but as Clover got closer he saw it wasn’t going the way you’d expect.

  During his long and undistinguished career teaching sword-work, he’d watched hundreds of boys practise with a blade, usually while wearing a look of pained disappointment. He’d seen no more’n a dozen with any high talent for the business. It wasn’t so much bravery that it took, which was reasonably common, as a lack of fear. Lack of fear that you’d get hurt, which was rare. Lack of fear that you’d hurt someone else which, strange to say, was rarer yet.

  Thick black hair was stuck to the lad’s face with sweat, and every time he outfoxed the big man, or slipped around one of his efforts, or brought a gasp from the onlookers, he noticeably didn’t smile, or shout, or throw his arms up in triumph. It was like his face was sculpted from pale clay and could make no expression at all. Wasn’t so much a lack of fear as a hole where his fear should’ve been. There was a scar between his mouth and his nose. A cleft lip.

  “I know this lad,” said Clover, fumbling off his hat and scrubbing at the sweaty wisps stuck to his pate. “He was with you that day I offered you an apple.”

  “He was.”

  The boy darted around a lunge, flicked his sword out and nicked the big man’s hand. He gasped through clenched teeth, blade dropping to the straw. The lad stepped in, sword raised.

  “Stop!” called Calder. “I don’t have so many warriors you can go carving ’em up for your amusement. You remember Jonas Clover? Used to be Steepfield? Won some duels?”

  “And lost one,” muttered Clover, under his breath.

  “I remember,” said the lad, watching from behind that curtain of black hair. Showed no sign of respect. Showed no sign of scorn. Just took it all in.

  “Don’t say much, does he?” said Clover.

  “No, but he can make a sword sing.” A thickset old bald bastard with a short grey beard had stepped up beside them. Clover didn’t know his face, which was odd, since he thought he knew everyone in the North with a big enough name to start spilling his thoughts to Black Calder. “He reminds me of a young Skarling, in that regard.”

  “Really?” asked Clover, brows high, since Skarling Hoodless was back in the mud lifetimes ago.

  “This is Bayaz.” Calder had acquired the grin of a man keen to please, which by no means fit him well. “The First of the Magi.”

  Clover raised his brows even higher. That explained a few things. His being on intimate terms with long-dead heroes for one. The way Black Calder scraped around him for another. He hadn’t the look of a legendary wizard, truth be told. Thicker in the neck and quicker to smile. But there was something in Bayaz’s eyes as he took Clover’s measure. Something that made him think this would be a bad enemy to have.

  “Steepfield was the name?” he asked.

  Clover had a policy of never setting magi right. “It was.”

  “Come to Currahome as I have, no doubt, to make sure the proper person sits in Skarling’s Chair.”

  Since opinions might differ on the best arse to fill that uncomfortable piece of furniture, it was easy for Clover to give a hearty, “That’s right.”

  “We cannot have our plans for the North wrecked by some over-clever girl with a magic eye.”

  Clover cleared his throat. “Without wishing offence, seems she’s knocked ’em a bit crooked already.”

  Bayaz’s eyes glittered in the light of the fire-pit. “Nothing that cannot be straightened out again, with the right knowledge and the right friends.” All in good fun, it seemed, but there was a threat in there somewhere.

  “You can never have too many friends,” said Clover, while thinking that there were a few a man was better off without.

  Calder was twisting one hand with the other, like a serving girl hoping some lord didn’t take against the ale she’d poured him. “You know how grateful I’ve always been for your help.”

  “You lacked somewhat of manners when you first came to visit me, as I recall.” Bayaz peered down his nose at Calder as if he was still a prideful pup. “But in all the years since the battle at the Heroes, my support for you has never wavered.”

  “Nor mine for you.” Calder swallowed, a little queasily. “Manners should be answered with like manners, I’ve always felt.”

  “Well said. If only the younger generation had your hard-won wisdom.” And Bayaz gave Clover a nod and made for the door, sparing a sideways smile at that black-haired lad, already making a fool of another grown warrior.

  Clover frowned after him. “Haven’t I heard you say the help of magi is never worth the cost?”

  “He only shows up when he knows you’ve got no choice.” Calder’s face had snapped back into its frown like a bent willow switch snaps back into the shape it grew in. “But there comes a time you have to play every card, no matter the price.” He led Clover past the fire-pit to the high chair at its end, le
aving the clash of steel and the appreciation of the warriors behind. “This was my father’s hall. Before he took Carleon. This was where his dream of a North united was born.”

  “Like most births,” said Clover, “I hear there was a lot of blood.”

  “Couldn’t get anything done without a lot of blood in those days.”

  “And now?”

  Calder conceded the point with a little shrug of his shoulders and dropped into the chair Bethod must once have sat in. “You want some ale, Clover?”

  “I’ve never yet said no to ale.” He swung one leg over a bench, tossed his hat down as a cushion and perched himself by the fire-pit, watched a girl slosh ale into a cup for him. “Have to say I feared I might not get so warm a welcome.”

  “Always got along, haven’t we?”

  “We have.” Clover glanced about at the hard faces. The hard hands near the hard weapons. He decided if Calder had wanted him dead he wouldn’t have wasted poison, and took a sup. “But then I turned on you and your son.” Might’ve seemed madness to bring it up, but he judged it better to face it now than find it stabbing him in the arse later.

  Calder narrowed his eyes. “I’d assumed you must’ve come to tell me how sorry you are for that.”

  Lies would get him nowhere with Black Calder. The truth might not, either, but he liked the odds better. “For turning on you, I’m sorry. For turning on your son, I’m not.”

  “You’re saying he deserved it?”

  “I’m saying he fucking demanded it.”

  Calder sat back, tendons standing from the backs of his thin hands as he gripped the arms of his chair. “I heard Caul Shivers hobbled him.”

  Clover wiped sweat from his forehead and tried to flap some air in around his collar. By the dead, it was hot in here. He was doubly glad he’d left that cloak behind now. “He did. And the Nail beat the snot out of him and Tricky Rikke’s keeping him in the cage he had forged for his own amusement. You can’t say she don’t have a sense of humour.”

  Fury wouldn’t have surprised him, but all Calder did was stare into the glowing embers and slowly nod. “Might be he’ll finally learn the lessons I could never bring myself to teach him. Love can be a weakness. I blame myself.”

  “I’ve done a bit of that, down the years.” Clover took another swallow from his cup. “Didn’t help.”

  “Huh.” And Calder grinned at him, teeth shining in the light of the fire-pit. “I still like you, Clover. I never can bring myself to trust loyal men. Can’t understand the bastards.”

  “I’m with you there.”

  “Man who’ll be loyal to someone might one day up and decide he’d rather be loyal to someone else.” He wagged a finger at Clover. “But a man who’s first loyalty is to himself? It always will be. You don’t pretend to be what you’re not. You’re reliable.”

  “I am?”

  “Let’s say reliably unreliable. Which makes you an interesting choice of messenger.”

  “She didn’t say so in so many words, but I’ve a feeling Rikke thought you might not listen to someone less flexible. Might send their head back in a bag, in fact.”

  “But I won’t send yours?”

  Clover scratched gently at his sweaty neck. “Honestly, I doubt she cares much on that score either way.”

  “Clever, isn’t she?”

  “She is.”

  “A little too clever for her own good, maybe.”

  “Maybe.”

  “So what’s the message?”

  Clover leaned forwards. Towards Calder. Towards the warmth of the fire-pit. “She sent me with an offer. Split the North. Leave it as it is now. She’ll keep Uffrith and Carleon. You’ll keep what you’ve got. And you get your son back.”

  Calder watched him, in silence calm as a mountain lake. There was some laughter and clapping down where the sword-work was happening. There was a crunch and a whirl of sparks as a glowing log shifted in the fire-pit. Clover glanced around. Still the hard faces, the hard weapons. Still the ever-present threat of a quick trip back to the mud.

  He cleared his throat. “So…”

  “Truth is I’m tired, Clover.” Calder sagged back with a weary grunt. “Lots of folk gone back to the mud. My father, my wife, my brother. Friends beyond counting. I’m tired and I’m lonely and I can’t remember when I last laughed. Maybe that’s what she’s counting on. Ruthlessness belongs to the young.” And he frowned into the fire like it was full o’ disappointments. “To those who don’t know where it gets you.”

  “So… you’ll make a deal?”

  Black Calder’s eyes slid across to Clover’s. “Make a deal, with that scrag?”

  “So… you won’t make a deal?”

  “I’m tired. I’m not dead.” And he stood up. “Come with me.”

  Clover drained his cup, put his hat back on, and followed Black Calder out the back of the hall.

  There was a valley behind the hill, too. That’s how hills and valleys work, after all. Snow on the fields, and the low stone walls, and the gorse and sedge on the slopes, and the roofs of the huts and the hovels. This valley wasn’t scattered with men, though. It was crawling with the bastards. Tents everywhere, dotted all the way down to the half-frozen stream in its bottom and up the far side again. Fires and torches like stars in a night sky. He heard laughter, and snatches of song, and the constant clang of hammers from the many smithies, smoke drifting up in thin streams from their chimneys and into the pink evening.

  “By the fucking dead,” whispered Clover, slapped in the face by the sight and the cold both at once.

  “Were you thinking that dusting out front was all I could gather?” asked Calder. “My son’s mean temper might’ve bruised some feelings but I’ve got a few friends yet. In the south, down near Ollensand. In the High Valleys, up towards Yaws. A fair few men still wandering back from that fucking disaster in Midderland.” He pointed towards the top of the ridge ahead, where the fires were brightest, and as far as Clover could tell there were ragged standards poking up against the chilly dusk. “And, thanks to the First of the Magi, I’ve some friends out beyond the Crinna, too. You meet Stand-i’-the-Barrows yet?”

  “No, but I’ve a sense the name gives some hint o’ what to expect.”

  “You remember Stranger-Come-Knocking?”

  “Wi’ some reluctance.”

  “Stand-i’-the-Barrows makes him look quite the humorist.”

  “And bringing the likes of them into the North is a strong notion?”

  “Wasn’t my choice. You’re worried over the mess they’ll make, I’d take it up with your friend Rikke.”

  “I’ll get the chance?”

  “When we march on Carleon.”

  Clover gave a smoky sigh. “I was worried you’d say that.”

  “I was thinking my work was done. Time to put my feet up, leave the plotting to the next generation. But you know what? I find I’m rather pleased to be called on to save the North once more.”

  “Ah. So you’re the hero here, are you?”

  “As a man who’s been cast as both hero and villain, you should know better’n anyone, Jonas Steepfield—the hero’s whoever wins.” And Calder smiled out at all those fires, the deep lines spreading around the corners of his eyes. “Reckon I’ve a trick or two to teach Tricky Rikke yet. No doubt she’s crafty, but I heard she’s making mistakes. Heard she had a little falling out with the Nail.”

  “Aye, well, he’s one o’ those bastards folk start falling out with the moment they meet him. You hear a lot.”

  “It’s just a question of listening.” Calder took a satisfied breath of the chill evening air, and let it sigh away. “This was where my father’s dream was born. One North. One nation with one king. My idiot brother’s folly couldn’t stop that dream. My idiot son’s folly won’t, either. The Dogman couldn’t stop it, even with the whole Union at his back. His daughter damn sure won’t, Long Eye, Short Eye, or whatever bloody eye.”

  “I should bring my people into the warm,”
said Clover. “They’re down in the woods at the—”

  “They’re rounded up and disarmed.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Huh.” Clover scratched thoughtfully at his scar and resisted the urge to ask whether they’d live out the day. Calder knew what he was thinking anyway.

  “Don’t worry, I’m treating ’em as guests. I’m not my brother or my son. I don’t break things I can use. There’s only one question you need to worry about.”

  “Where I go to piss?”

  “Which side you’re on.”

  Clover puffed out his cheeks. In all the strutting and waste when Stour was in charge, he’d forgotten what a formidable bastard Black Calder could be. They’re like that, thinkers. While your eyes are on the fighters, they creep up on you. This wasn’t how he’d wanted it. But when was anything?

  “Well, if I’m so damn reliable…” He looked out at the valley, and all those fires, right to the far hills. “You already know what side I’m on.”

  The Only Explanation

  “The only explanation for your defeat is treason!” screeched Sworbreck, bashing the rail with his fist.

  Leo had lost a battle with the odds well in his favour, so he could think of plenty of others. Recklessness, arrogance, trickery, hesitation, bad weather, bad allies, bad luck. Or, for instance, that when money was finally found to send the army new boots, Risinau had ordered them supplied with a collection of his essays instead. Sworbreck had written the foreword. But treason was the only explanation the Court of the People wanted to hear.

  “I did everything I could to win, sir!” bellowed General Bell. “I mean, Citizen. You won’t find a more loyal man than me!”

  “Precisely what a traitor would say!” screeched Sworbreck, while drunks in the gallery jeered like the crowd at a slum prizefight.

  Leo had watched them turn Sergeant Bell into General Bell after Judge seized power, standing red-faced on the very spot where he now stood trial. Made commander of the People’s Army without a day’s experience as an officer. Brint’s jacket had fitted him badly. Brint’s responsibilities fitted him even worse. But the Representatives had filled the dome with sentimental applause even so. Slapped his back as they sent him up the aisle to fight Lord Marshal Forest and his royalists. Most of them must’ve guessed how it’d end. Leo certainly had. But since the Great Change, appearances were more important than realities. Savine would’ve said they always had been.