The Wisdom of Crowds

by Joe Abercrombie

  “They cut my legs.” And there was a tearful whine in Stour’s voice that made Rikke think of a child complaining over getting the smallest slice of cake. “They cut my legs.” She felt, of all things, a scratch of guilt, and had to remind herself of all the scores she had against him.

  “Well, he said he’d see me fucked by pigs,” called Rikke. “Break what they love, he said! I reckon he’s got off lightly.”

  Even at this distance she could see Calder grinding his teeth. “Carleon’s yours,” he growled. “Now cut him free and send him down.”

  “Well, I’ve got no more use for him.” Rikke snapped her fingers at Shivers. “Daresay you’ve a knife, don’t you?”

  “You can never have too many.” He pulled one out, the work-polished handle towards her. Not a big one. But a small blade can do the job, more often than not. “Sure you don’t want me to do it?” he asked, in that husky whisper.

  Rikke had seen this moment. Knew how it’d go. What came after was the question. She gently shook her head. “My father would’ve said there are some things a leader has to do themselves.”

  “Just one o’ you get on and do it,” snarled Stour over his shoulder, jerking his tied hands towards her.

  “Patience, Great Wolf.” And she plucked the knife from Shivers’ hand. She’d seen this come, knew it had to come, but even so, it wasn’t easy. Had to make of her heart a stone, like Isern always told her, even if her mouth was dry as dust and there was chill sweat on her back and the knife weighed like an anvil. She reached out, and took one of Stour’s wrists, and carefully sawed through the ropes that bound him.

  He grinned a twisted grin. “Been waiting for this a while.”

  She forced herself to grin back. “Oh, me, too.” And she stabbed him in the throat. The blade hardly made a sound as it punched into the crosspiece where his neck met his shoulder, and straight out again along with a spurt of blood that soaked her hand. Shocked her, how hot it was.

  He flinched, first, with a little gasp, like he’d been bee-stung. He stared at her, wet eyes wide, slack face all red-speckled from the bubbling wound.

  “Blith,” he said, drooling blood down his dirty shirt.

  Rikke looked up at Shivers, and her hand was shaking but her voice was steady. “Send him down, then.”

  “Right y’are.” And Shivers took one step and shoved the Great Wolf over the parapet.

  Clover had been there, when the Bloody-Nine fought the Feared. Before he won the name Steepfield, even. Long before he lost it. He’d held a shield at the duel. He’d watched Bethod flung from the walls. Now he watched Bethod’s grandson flung from about the same place, and crash down in about the same place, crumpled in the wet grass where the Circle had been marked out that day.

  Blood spattered Stand-i’-the-Barrows’ horse, but it hardly even twitched. Probably good and used to flying gore. Stour lay with his arms spread wide as if greeting his father, but with his head twisted all the way around, his ruined legs buckled under him and his blood spilling black into the green grass. Till a few moments ago he’d been the future of the North. Now he was mud. A stern lesson for anyone harbouring high ambitions.

  Calder stared down, mouth hanging open, then up at the gatehouse, where Rikke and Shivers were black figures against the bright sky.

  “Kill them!” he screamed, face twisting. “Kill them all!”

  If anyone had asked him, Clover would’ve said there was less than no chance this’d be settled with talk. But you never realise how much hope you’re holding till it gets knifed and thrown off a roof.

  “See you soon!” Rikke shrieked after them, stabbing at the sky with her bloody dagger. So maybe she wasn’t clever, and had seen nothing with her Long Eye at all, but was just the maddest of the whole crowd, and had doomed herself and everyone who followed her. Probably Clover, too, who’d done nothing but try to steer a safe course through a tempest of other men’s making.

  He’d had trouble controlling his horse at a walk. At a bone-rattling gallop away from the walls in the midst of a couple of dozen other barging, scraping, eye-rolling beasts he was helpless. He barely clung on, gripping with his aching legs, reins flapping everywhere. There were arrows falling around them, flickering down into the grass. His shoulders were itching, sure he was about to get a shaft right in the back. One of Stand-i’-the-Barrows’ savages did, long hair tangled around his painted face as he toppled screaming from his horse. There’s the big problem with bones as armour. They don’t bloody work.

  Clover had never been more grateful to reach a treeline in his life, managed to slow his horse by dragging on the reins, then nearly set it trotting back towards the walls, probably would’ve if Sholla hadn’t grabbed the bridle. He slithered from the saddle and stood there with his hands on his trembling knees, just breathing.

  “You all right?” Sholla asked him.

  “By the dead,” he croaked, holding on to her arm as he straightened up. Still felt dizzy. “I think I nearly shit myself.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “What happened is…” Clover narrowed his eyes towards the walls of Carleon, like a man wincing into a storm. “I was hoping I’d never have to fight in another battle.” Black Calder’s men had started forwards. Not the most eager of charges, after all the shit they’d waded through to get here. But they’d started forwards even so. Clover gave a sigh, right from his guts. “But there’s hopes for you.”

  The Little People

  Corleth had been sure she had everything tied up neat. She’d known exactly how it’d turn out. Couldn’t have known better if she’d seen it with the Long Eye herself.

  Then Rikke stabbed Stour in the neck and pushed him off the gatehouse. So now there’d be a battle, then there’d be a sack, and who could say how the hell that’d end? Of a sudden, everyone’s life was balanced on the brink, including hers. Hard to see how anything could’ve been less tied up than this.

  All around the city, Calder’s men were surging towards the walls. Thousands of ’em. Tattered mobs, muddy and messy with metal glinting in the midst, torn standards snatched by the wind, dozens of ladders among ’em, their bloodthirsty cries echoing across the valley. Men on the walls bent their bows, sent arrows flickering out into the oncoming crowd. From where she stood, clinging to the pole of Rikke’s standard, Corleth saw a couple fall. Far too few to make any difference.

  She’d been sure she had everything tied up neat. Could pick Rikke’s every move. Knew she was too soft, too trusting. But there was naught soft about her now, her grin dotted with Stour’s blood, that one eye starting from her tattooed face and fixed on Corleth. Staring at her, and

  smiling, that bloody knife loose in her hand and Caul Shivers huge

  and craggy beside her. And Corleth got this bad feeling in her stomach, and not the moon pains.

  Shafts were flying the other way now, some on fire. Dropping in the town, clattering from the slate roofs. Corleth hunched down, not too keen on being arrow-pricked. She thought she could smell smoke. Shouting everywhere. Panic everywhere. Except here on the gatehouse roof. Except in Rikke’s face.

  “Your granny gets a lot o’ visitors,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Isern-i-Phail’s a suspicious sort. Maybe that’s what happens when you’ve a madman for a father and no mother but the moon. She took against you right off. So she set some folk to watch your granny and, phew.” Rikke puffed out her cheeks. “They’re in and out of her house like it’s a brothel.”

  “Folk come for advice.” Corleth tried to keep her voice level, no mean feat in the midst of a battle. “They hold her in high regard—”

  “Three brothers in particular. They get lots of advice.”

  “Once a week,” said Shivers, frowning down at Corleth. With his hair bound back to show the full scale of his scar he looked a monster, that metal eye flashing as the sun peeped through the clouds. How had she ever got halfway used to it? She couldn’t stop her eyes flitting about. Lot of har
d faces up on that roof now and, given there was a battle unfolding in the other direction, a lot of ’em pointed at her.

  “And they’re brewers, you know, these brothers,” Rikke was saying, “so they head out on carts all over. There’s one place their ale is very much appreciated.”

  “Currahome,” grunted Shivers.

  “Hold on, though.” Rikke frowned. “Who do I know lives in Currahome? It’s someone whose son I just killed. Name’s on the tip o’ my tongue…”

  “Black Calder?”

  Rikke’s tattooed face lit up. “That is the bastard.”

  Corleth’s body was tensed to run, but there was nowhere to go. They were setting ladders, outside the walls. She could see a couple swung up against the parapet, men struggling to shove ’em back down.

  Rikke was blathering away like there was no danger at all. “Last time one o’ those brothers headed up to Currahome, we stopped him ’fore he got there, and the strangest thing… his kegs were all empty.”

  “Very disappointing,” said Shivers. “If you like ale.”

  “And who doesn’t? Must’ve been some other cargo he was taking up there. He didn’t want to say what. But men tell Caul Shivers things they wouldn’t tell their own mothers.” Rikke clapped him fondly on the arm. “It’s that pretty metal eye of his, maybe.”

  Shivers shrugged. “That or I just won’t stop cutting ’em.”

  “Aye, maybe it’s that. Do you know what his cargo was?”

  Corleth licked her lips. This wasn’t tied up neat at all. This was all coming unravelled. “How would I know?” she whispered.

  “’Cause you gave it to him, silly!”

  And Corleth felt herself caught from behind. Caught and held, the standard clattering on the stones. She struggled, more of an instinct than any real effort to get free, but one man had her left arm and another her right and a third caught her around the neck and held a dagger to her throat, and the cold brush of steel against her skin made her go slack as rags.

  “Secrets,” said Rikke, walking closer, the pupil of her Long Eye yawning huge, the other just a blind pinprick. “That was the cargo. What we’re doing up here. How many men there are. Who’s fallen out with who. What I’m saying. What I’m thinking. Or what you think I’m thinking, anyway, which might not be quite the same thing. You told granny, and granny told the brothers, and the brothers toddled up to Currahome on their fucking empty ale cart and told Black Calder all about it.”

  By the dead, not far away down the wall some of Calder’s men had made it to the top, blades twinkling as they struggled. Couldn’t be long, now, till the city fell. Too long for Corleth, though, maybe.

  There was no point clinging to the lie. They’d found her out long before. “Look,” she said, voice wobbling, “I can talk to Calder, after the battle’s done, make some kind o’ deal—”

  “After it’s done?” Rikke looked at her like she was the one who’d lost her reason. “Why would I need your help then? After it’s done, Calder’ll be begging to talk to me.”

  Corleth blinked at her. “You can’t win!”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  “You’re way outnumbered! You chased all your friends away!”

  “Did I?” Rikke tapped the tattoo on her cheek. “Or did I see all this coming, and it’s just the way I wanted it?”

  Corleth had thought she had everything tied up neat. Now it looked like she was the one who’d been tied up all along. “You’re mad,” she whispered.

  “I’ve heard that before, too! But mad’s just a different way of seeing things. Shivers, you reckon it’s time for a toot on that horn o’ yours?”

  Shivers looked out at the fighting like Corleth’s granny looking at the soup, judging whether it was the right moment to toss in the carrots. “Aye,” he said, one loose strand of grey hair flicking around his frown with the wind, “rude to keep everyone waiting.” And he raised his horn to his lips and gave a great blast.

  “What’s happening?” muttered Hardbread, trying to get a look through the trees. But all he could see was more trees. Distant twinkle of daylight, maybe, between the trunks, through the leaves. But the whole idea was being far enough into the woods they wouldn’t be seen. And that meant, pretty much by definition, not seeing much themselves.

  “Calder’s attacking, I reckon,” muttered Brandal, chewing at his thumbnail.

  “Yes, that, I know that, I can bloody hear it!” A distant clamour of voices, echoing lazily from far off. Like a fair in the next valley. “But other than that, I mean.”

  Damn, he was nervous. Aside from a couple of Calder’s scouts they’d captured and another one they’d shot as he rode away, they’d seen no action. It seemed a mad plan. It had seemed a mad plan all along. No way a man sharp as Black Calder would fall for it. But Rikke had just nodded and tapped her cheek in that knowing way and said, I’ve seen it. It couldn’t be denied that she’d seen her way to her father’s bench in Uffrith. It couldn’t be denied that she’d seen her way to Skarling’s Chair in Carleon. That had all seemed mad, too. Who knew what was sane any more? Certainly not Hardbread. And, frankly, it would’ve taken a braver man than him to tell her no.

  But that didn’t mean he wasn’t nervous. Stomach churning away. He smothered a burp, rubbed at his breastbone where the sore fire seemed to burn up his throat. By the dead, if they waited much longer he’d need to shit again. That’d be just his luck, to get the call while he was squatting in the brush, trousers down.

  “What the fuck’s—”

  And he heard the horn. A long, low, throbbing blast, echoing about the valley. Hardbread had been waiting for it for hours. Thinking of it for days. He’d dreamed of it in his fitful sleep the night before. But somehow when it came it caught him by total surprise.

  “By the dead!” He scrambled to his feet, winced at a sharp twinge through his stiff ankle, near fell over and half-swallowed his tongue as he bellowed the order. “That’s it!” And he fumbled his sword out and held it high. “Charge!”

  There was a great rattle, a great clatter, a great cry as all around him men jumped to their feet and started rushing through the woods.

  Hardbread hobbled along for a moment. Bloody hell, his knees, his hips, he was creaking like a wooden man from squatting in the cold damp for hours. He had to stop, hold on to Brandal’s shoulder while he tried to shake some life into his legs and men surged past him towards the daylight.

  “There we go!” And he set to running again. More of a jog, being honest, it was tough through the trees. Broken ground and fallen branches and tree roots ready to trip you. He was wheezing as he burst from the woods and heard the noise, far louder, far closer, far harsher.

  His eyes were weaker than they once were and had tears in ’em from the wind of running, and he had to squint into the brightness, down towards Carleon. Calder’s men, crawling in the fields around the city. Swarms of the bastards. They were at the walls already, ladders up, arrows flitting this way and that.

  “By the dead,” he muttered.

  It had seemed a mad plan, but it looked very much as if Calder had fallen for it, and fallen hard. The enemy had their arses stuck right out, trapped between Hardbread’s men and the walls.

  “Charge!” he roared, though his voice was weak from the effort and the wind soon snatched it away and everyone was charging anyway, men bounding from the trees and into the open, pouring down the hillside. He set off again, Brandal beside him with the standard held high. More of an amble than a run, being honest, it was tough outside the trees. Tough on the knees, the uneven ground on the ploughed field jolting him, making his teeth rattle, the sun flashing and flickering at him as the clouds rushed overhead. Couldn’t they have found a nice smooth stretch o’ road to charge down?

  He tottered to a halt, one hand propped on his thigh and his sword dangling from the other. Damn it, he was blown. There’d been a time he could run for hours. Fastest runner in Uffrith. Used to be sent running over the fells with messages.
Thinking on it, though, that had been forty years ago.

  “All right, Chief?” asked Brandal, thumping Hardbread’s standard into the turf beside him. “You want some water?” And he offered out a flask.

  “Aye.” Hardbread burped, spat, took the flask and a swig and a swallow. “By the dead, but it’s a young man’s game, this.”

  “What is?” asked Brandal.

  “War, what d’you think?”

  “Running, maybe?”

  “Aye, well, the two are not unconnected.” Hardbread burped again, and was nearly sick, but managed to swallow it. “The old man’s job is to get the young bastards in the right place.” He propped his hands on his hips, watched the proud warriors of Uffrith pouring down the long slope ahead of him towards the city. “And from that point of view… it has to be said… I feel rather pleased wi’ my old self.” He felt the grin spreading across his face. Spent so many years scared of losing he’d forgot how fine it felt to win. “All right, Brandal, hoist that standard up, lad, we can’t dawdle. There’s a battle to fight!”

  “Up you go, you fucker!” roared Flatstone, slapping one man on the back and sending him up the ladder. “Get up there, you bastard!” Thumping the next man on the shoulder soon as there were a few rungs free. “Climb, you shit, climb!” Slapping the next man across his arse. They were getting to the walls way too slow, choked up on the broken ground outside the city, arrows flitting down among ’em. Had to push on. Had to throw ’em forward.

  “Go, damn you! Go!” And he swung onto the ladder himself and started climbing.

  The bastards at the top have all the advantages—fresh, and fed, and dry, and with the height and the parapet—so you’ve got to swarm ’em, storm ’em, fling men at ’em, care nothing for your losses. But you can’t go too fast. Then you’ll slip, fall, knock off the men below. You’ll run out of puff, so you can’t fight if you do get to the top. And Flatstone’s men were mostly sick and all tired. A bastard of a march down from Currahome, through the thaw. One o’ the worst he’d ever seen, and he’d seen some bad ones.