The Wisdom of Crowds

by Joe Abercrombie

Sholla liked Clover. But nowhere near enough to die for him. She gave him a nod, shrugged her bow over her shoulder, then caught Flick by the shirt and dragged him off towards the trees, arrow still clutched in her sweaty hand.

  Downside was watching it all with his teeth angrily bared as they passed, turning the haft of his axe around and around in his hand. Plain he couldn’t wait to get stuck into the mess, the mad bastard.

  Sholla wouldn’t miss him.

  “When’s our moment to be?” grunted Scenn, frowning through the wind-shook greenery towards the battle. Not that you could miss the battle, if you had your eyes open.

  ’Twas a vast battle. Ten battles put together. Biggest he ever saw by far. Bigger’n any his father saw, in spite of all his bloated boasting, which had been one o’ the man’s many failings. His father once claimed he killed two hundred men at Yarnvost and Scenn later learned there’d only been a hundred with both sides put together. Thinking of his father made him smile. He’d hated that fat bastard, but he’d been quite the laugh in the right mood. Beloved of the moon, he’d been. Beloved of the moon, and laughing with the moon now, no doubt, as they smiled down fondly on the slaughter.

  His sister Isern did not smile fondly. But then she never did. One of her many failings. “When the horn next blows,” she said, while picking her nose.

  “Sure we haven’t missed it?”

  “Caul Shivers knows what to do with a horn.” And she barked out a cackle. “Believe me. Learned it in Styria, he said.”

  Scenn thought that must be a joke, but he didn’t really get it. Which, he had to confess, was one of his many failings. “There’s good work being done and I itch for my part in it.” He held up the hammer and spun it about in his fist, smiling upon the many scars on its heavy head. “Our father’s hammer is hungry.”

  “It’s a bloody hammer,” said Isern, flicking the results of her nose-picking away among the leaf-rot. “It feels no hunger.”

  “Well, his axe is hungry, then,” said Scofen, holding up the axe, no less battle-weathered.

  “Likewise the axe. Might as well say his spear’s sleepy.” And Isern gave it a shake. “Load o’ nonsense. They’re wood and metal and have no feelings.”

  “But I want to get at these painted bastards!” snarled Scofen, rubbing impatiently at the tattoos on his face. To start on his failings would’ve kept the lot of them busy all day.

  “You’ll get your chance,” said Isern.

  And there was the horn, throbbing through the roots o’ the trees and giving Scenn a tickle in his toes.

  “There it is!” called Scofen. “It’s time!”

  Scenn grinned wide at his sister. “Da would’ve fucking loved this!”

  “Like I care what that bastard loved.” She leaped atop a rock, holding high their father’s spear, her skirts bound right up and the knotty sinews bulging from her bare legs. “Let’s give these Crinna sheepfuckers a fucking they’ll not forget!”

  With those rousing words still ringing, she sprang away and off they tumbled after, bursting from the trees and down the slope towards the grey city, the good wind rushing about them and their war-songs echoing around the valley.

  “For the moon!” someone wailed.

  “For the hills!” someone else.

  “For Crummock-i-Phail!” roared Scenn.

  At his back were any of the hillfolk who’d fancied a battle—which, o’ course, was pretty much the full tally, scoured from every cranny in the mountains. They’d been offered a chance to fight, which they loved, and to fight Black Calder, who they hated almost as much as they’d hated Bethod, and also Rikke had offered two rich valleys to those who fought, and though some might think the hillmen lived simple lives, in truth they were as greedy as anyone, if not a little more so.

  The Crinna bastards were spread out ahead in a spiked and painted line. Horrible savages, they were, all pierced and puckered and covered in bloody bones. They’d seen what had happened to their friends. Had time to shift away from the city, wheel to face the Nail and his boys as they poured down from the west. But they had no idea Crummock-i-Phail’s children were coming on ’em from the north, and the ones at the near end spun about white-eyed, scattered wailing and head-clutching as the hillmen crashed into ’em.

  Scenn saw Isern spit one through the face. Saw Scofen hack another’s chest open with their father’s axe, his red insides popping out. There was a silly bastard with a silly helmet made from jawbones and Scenn dropped his father’s hammer on it like a falling boulder and crushed his head into his shoulders in a great fountain of blood.

  Smashing left and right, he was, and roaring and spinning the hammer and sending men screaming and reeling and flying. He was a bloody whirlwind, like his father at his best. Or his worst. Beloved o’ the moon, he was, and smiled upon by chances. He thought someone might’ve cut him but it didn’t seem to make much difference. He was still swinging the hammer so he reckoned he’d live and if he didn’t, well, here was a death the moon would smile upon.

  A tall one was pointing, screeching at his men in a jagged tongue, but Isern bounded up on a wagon in a shower of bones and sprang down on him, spear darting out and taking him in the breastbone and he sprayed blood from his mouth and fell on his knees and Scofen split his head in half with their father’s axe.

  They might’ve competed over which of ’em hated their da more, but for better or worse he’d given ’em this, made ’em ready for this, brought ’em to the moon’s notice.

  A Crinna bastard covered in bones came gibbering at him and Scenn roared, and swung, and the hammer caught him in the side with all its weight, brushed him away like cobwebs, shattered the bones in him and the bones on him and flung him spinning in a shower of red specks and white splinters. A great maddened dog ran past with an arrow in its side. Another came at Scenn but Scofen caught it in the belly with a great sweep of his axe and sent it tumbling away to roll and mewl and wriggle.

  There was death smeared all over and the good grass watered with good blood and the moon could not but smile on this day’s work. Rikke-o’-the-Long-Eye in particular, who’d looked but a pale and stringy streak when she was carried into the hills but had seen this come, made this come, laid out the good gifts so they could all take their fill.

  Scenn laughed as he kicked a limping savage in the back and smashed his arse in with the hammer, smashed his head in as he crawled. Swung for another as he ran and missed, and stumbled around in a circle and was nearly dragged right over.

  It was a fearsome weapon, the hammer, but heavy as mountains. He rather wished he’d got the spear, now, then maybe he could’ve flitted about the battlefield like his sister, darting in and out like a toad’s tongue. Mind you, he hadn’t the belly for that slippery business, nor honestly the wits, nor honestly the puff.

  He set the hammer head-down and leaned on it, catching his breath, watching Scofen hack at the dead and Isern stand on a man’s back and stab him through the throat and the rest of the hillmen stream into the back of the Crinna bastards and send them scattering like starlings.

  Made him proud to see the hillfolk fighting as one. Hadn’t happened in many a long year. Not since the Battle in the High Places, maybe, where the Bloody-Nine had killed his brother Rond. Thanks to his father’s endless appetite for wives, though, he had brothers and sisters in plenty, so not too much lost. It’s a poor life ploughed that hasn’t left a few dead siblings in its furrow. The weak are winnowed out to leave the strong. The chaff is taken by the wind, so the seed beloved of the moon can flourish.

  He frowned over at a set of great pots, man high, fires banked underneath ’em, steam pouring from inside.

  “What the bloody hell are the pots for?” asked Scenn. “Soup or something?”

  “They’re for rendering down the corpses, d’you see.” Isern frowned at her spear’s bloody head. “So they can get at the bones.”

  Scenn shook his head in disbelief. “What a pack of arseholes.”

  Rance held his axe
tight and tried to work up the anger. They’d come to burn his city, hadn’t they? Come to kill his people. Time to be a man.

  At a fourth blast from Shivers’ horn, ear-splitting from being so close, two big Carls hefted the bar from its brackets, and two others shoved the doors wide, and they sallied from the gates of Carleon and out into the fields in front.

  By the dead, the noise. At the last moment, Rance’s feet seemed stuck to the cobbles but he was carried along anyway, among the warriors spilling from the city like a cork in a flood.

  Calder’s men weren’t ready. Panicked by the attacks from behind, now panicked by an attack from in front. They wavered, spears wobbling, but Rance didn’t fancy running at ’em. Didn’t fancy it at all. It came to him, of a sudden, how hard and unforgiving is a spearhead, and how soft and easily torn is a man’s belly.

  He stumbled from the flow of howling, screaming, charging men. He flinched as someone toppled from the walls a few strides away, a ladder flung down in ruin on top of him. The world smelled of blood and smoke. Bodies everywhere. Wounded crawling, moaning, clutching.

  His uncle had warned him it was no business for a boy o’ twelve. Now he saw it wasn’t only man’s work, but madman’s work. Someone barged him from behind and he nearly fell, tangled in his uncle’s old oversized mail. He nearly tripped over a corpse. A young man, his helmet fallen off to show blond hair matted with blood. One eye open, staring at nothing much.

  He saw Caul Shivers cutting his way through the enemy, grey sword going up and whipping down with such terrible speed, with such horrible force, and it came to him how razor-sharp and ruthless is a sword-blade, and how fragile a man’s skull. Calder’s men were falling back. Falling apart. Hardly seemed like he was needed, really. Most likely there’d be time to be a man later.

  He slipped along the wall and back through the gate, into the shadows.

  “Run!” roared Stand-i’-the-Barrows, and he broke for the trees, and Scunlich loped along after. A great fighter must not only know when to fight, but when not to, and Scunlich was as proud of the few bad fights they’d got away from as the many good ones they’d won. This was a bad one, very bad, the worst.

  The hillmen chased after them a way, but fell to picking over the dead for trinkets and were left behind. They sent arrows flitting after, whistling farewells, twittering into the greenwood, clicking into the trunks with their feathers fluttering. Stand-i’-the-Barrows kept up a fast pace on his long shanks and the sound of battle soon faded.

  They stopped to catch their breath and listen. Gromma had an arrow in his back and sat down beside a tree, wheezing red, and did not get up.

  “We were fools to trust in Black Calder!” shouted Yort. “The cunning of cunning men always runs out, and usually at the worst moment. I said so back in—”

  Stand-i’-the-Barrows caught him around the neck and bore him down onto the ground and squatted over him, throttling him, beating his skull against a tree root until the blood flowed, then catching his head and twisting it right around until his neck came apart with a thick crunching.

  “That was well done,” said Scunlich.

  “Aye,” he said, standing up. “I wish I could take his bones.” And the others grunted their agreement. It was a worthy thought. Then Stand-

  i’-the-Barrows ran on, his axe in his hand, and Scunlich ran on with him, but it seemed the further they went into the wood and the darker and dimmer and greener it grew, the fewer of them were left.

  There was a chill among the trees. A damp chill and a mist clinging to the scrub so the twigs came lashing from nowhere and the brambles clutched out from the grey to snag foot and ankle and bring men down squealing in the undergrowth.

  “Whence comes this mist?” hissed Stand-i’-the-Barrows, creeping forwards slowly, and it was true it seemed a thing alive, twisting between the black trunks, sticking to men in tatters.

  They blundered into a clearing, Scunlich stumbling forwards with his hands stretched out like a blind man searching. A stunted tree loomed from the murk. Or no, a stump, and on the stump a figure. An old woman, bent, but something gleamed on her forehead as she looked up, and Scunlich tottered back amazed, for he saw that her face was split by a great scar, and the two halves were stitched together with golden wire.

  “A devil,” he whispered. “A devil!”

  The bone-pickers had gathered into a knot, no more than a dozen left where there’d been hundreds, thousands. Now they crowded close about Stand-i’-the-Barrows, back to back, drawing strength from his strength.

  “Did you make this mist?” he snarled at the woman.

  “I did,” she said, “and reckon it a good one.” And though she was old her voice was young, as beautiful to listen to as she was dreadful to look upon.

  “I do not, witch.” Stand-i’-the-Barrows took a step forwards, feet falling heavy in the silence. “Remove it.”

  “As you wish.”

  Like water from a broken bowl, the mist drained from the clearing, but Scunlich felt no joy at its passing. He saw figures among the trees at its edge. Ghosts at first, all around, but turning more horribly real with every moment, and Scunlich found he was wishing that the mist would come again.

  “Gods,” he whispered, his blood turning cold.

  They were twisted things. Unholy things. Things of flesh and metal. Of tusks and teeth and rivets. Of rusted plates and criss-crossed scars. Things with flattened heads and bent limbs, cut apart and stitched together. Clutched in their claws they had cruel spears, cruel bows, cruel knives and axes and daggers.

  “These I made, too,” sang the witch, stroking the hairless head of one of them. They slipped forwards, a tightening ring, dozens of them, hundreds, eyes gleaming in the gloom of the greenwood.

  “What do you want?” And Scunlich heard a thing he had never heard before in the voice of Stand-i’-the-Barrows and had never thought to hear. The quaver of fear.

  The witch smiled, skin twisting and puckering around the golden stitches.

  “Your bones,” she said.

  Satisfaction and Regret

  “It’s all done,” said Calder.

  He sounded puzzled. But, for a man watching all his dreams dissolve, very calm. Handled defeat a lot better than most great warriors Clover had known. He looked almost amused by the sudden turn towards disaster. “My son’s dead. The North’s lost. It’s all done.”

  No one was disagreeing, and Clover least of all.

  Calder’s guards had made a crescent-shaped wall around that little green hill with the one flat rock on top, their shields locked and their weapons ready. Might well have been the only order left in the whole army. The right wing crumbled when the men of Uffrith came pouring down. The centre was shattered when the men of the West Valleys ripped through the baggage into their rear. The hillmen had come howling from the trees and taught those Crinna bastards who the real savages were. Then the gates opened and Caul Shivers caught the last resistance between hammer and anvil. All managed with a few blasts of his horn as neatly as a spring dance. But with a lot more corpses.

  Not far off one of those great dogs bounced and rolled and barked, its side somehow on fire, frisking madly across the grass, trying to escape from itself. Something Clover had been trying to do for years, with as little success.

  “We’ve got to run,” he muttered, giving the trees a wistful glance. “Run, or give up.”

  “Run or give up.” Calder gave him a withering look. “Ever the counsel of Jonas Clover. I’m surprised you’re not advising me to switch sides.”

  Clover winced. “Fear it’s a bit late for that.”

  “Aye. Just one thing I have to do first. Meant to do it after I won.” He breathed in, and sighed out. “But I guess it’ll have to be now.”

  Maybe the years hadn’t dulled Clover’s instinct as much as he’d always thought, because somehow he felt it coming. He threw himself sideways, the wind of the axe kissing his scalp. He rolled clumsily, scrambled back fast enough that Downside’s s
econd swing thudded into the turf right between his legs. He stumbled to his feet, nearly fell again as he tottered backwards up the hill, then dodged behind the big stone at the top, breathing hard.

  Not very dignified, but then Clover long ago decided he’d rather have his life than his dignity. The dead help him, he drew his sword. Always the first lesson whenever he taught sword-work—never draw the bastard thing. But he drew it now, and he weighed it, and he saw the gleam run down the polished metal.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Downside?” he shouted over the noise of battle.

  “Killing you. Ain’t that obvious?”

  “’Cause Calder paid you to?”

  Downside looked confused. “’Course.”

  “But he’s done!” Clover waved with his free hand towards the battle, which was hard not to wave at, since it was all around ’em, pressing in closer on Calder’s guards with every breath they took. “Anyone can see he’s fucking done! He’s saying he’s done himself!”

  “I’ll tell you the truth, Clover.” Downside stepped towards him, probing for an opening, his heavy boot working its way into the turf. “I’m not clever enough to keep track of all the twisting and turning. Makes my head hurt. All that cunning, just to end up where you started? No. I say a thing, I follow through.”

  And he sprang forward. He was fast for such a big man. Best Clover could do was dodge back, stumble and near trip over his own feet before he found his balance again. They circled each other, that flat stone between them. At least the rest of Calder’s guards weren’t posing any danger. They were too busy fighting for their own lives, enemies pressing in tighter with every breath.

  Seemed most unfair, after he gave Downside a place when no one wanted the mad bastard. But Clover supposed a man who’d let down as many people as he had couldn’t get too upset at being let down himself.

  He’d lost count o’ those he’d failed. Those he’d turned on. Cairm Ironhead, and Glama Golden, and Stour Nightfall. Magweer with the flatbow bolt in his throat. Wonderful, too, pointing that beautiful raised eyebrow. An accusing crowd of disappointed friends, comrades, leaders, shaking their heads at him from the land of the dead. Clover shook the thought off. Hardly the kind you want weighing on you in a fight. He felt heavy enough already as he backed away, glancing about for anything that might help him and not finding it.