The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘Back with us?’ His face flickered into focus, hanging limp and white as a flag of surrender. ‘I was worried, I confess. I never expected you to wake, but now that you have, it would be a shame if—’

  ‘Benna?’ Monza’s head was still floating. She grunted, tried to work one ankle, and the grinding ache brought the truth back, crushed her face into a hopeless grimace.

  ‘Still sore? Perhaps I have a way to lift your spirits.’ He rubbed his long hands together. ‘The stitches are all out, now.’

  ‘How long did I sleep?’

  ‘A few hours.’

  ‘Before that?’

  ‘Just over twelve weeks.’ She stared back, numb. ‘Through the autumn, and into winter, and the new year will soon come. A fine time for new beginnings. That you have woken at all is nothing short of miraculous. Your injuries were . . . well, I think you will be pleased with my work. I know I am.’

  He slid a greasy cushion from under the bench and propped her head up, handling her as carelessly as a butcher handles meat, bringing her chin forwards so she could look down at herself. So there was no choice but to. Her body was a lumpy outline under a coarse grey blanket, three leather belts across chest, hips and ankles.

  ‘The straps are for your own protection, to prevent you rolling from the bench while you slept.’ He hacked out a sudden chuckle. ‘We wouldn’t want you breaking anything, would we? Ha . . . ha! Wouldn’t want to break anything.’ He unbuckled the last of the belts, took the blanket between thumb and forefinger while she stared down, desperate to know, and desperate not to know at once.

  He whipped it away like a showman displaying his prize exhibit.

  She hardly recognised her own body. Stark naked, gaunt and withered as a beggar’s, pale skin stretched tight over ugly knobbles of bone, stained all over with great black, brown, purple, yellow blooms of bruise. Her eyes darted over her own wasted flesh, steadily widening as she struggled to take it in. She was slit all over with red lines. Dark and angry, edged with raised pink flesh, stippled with the dots of pulled stitches. There were four, one above the other, following the curves of her hollow ribs on one side. More angled across her hips, down her legs, her right arm, her left foot.

  She’d started to tremble. This butchered carcass couldn’t be her body. Her breath hissed through her rattling teeth, and the blotched and shrivelled ribcage heaved in time. ‘Uh . . .’ she grunted. ‘Uh . . .’

  ‘I know! Impressive, eh?’ He leaned forwards over her, following the ladder of red marks on her chest with sharp movements of his hand. ‘The ribs here and the breastbone were quite shattered. It was necessary to make incisions to repair them, you understand, and to work on the lung. I kept the cutting to the minimum, but you can see that the damage—’

  ‘Uh . . .’

  ‘The left hip I am especially pleased with.’ Pointing out a crimson zigzag from the corner of her hollow stomach down to the inside of her withered leg, surrounded on both sides by trails of red dots. ‘The thighbone, here, unfortunately broke into itself.’ He clicked his tongue and poked a finger into his clenched fist. ‘Shortening the leg by a fraction, but, as luck would have it, your other shin was shattered, and I was able to remove the tiniest section of bone to make up the difference.’ He frowned as he pushed her knees together, then watched them roll apart, feet flopping hopelessly outwards. ‘One knee slightly higher than the other, and you won’t stand quite so tall but, considering—’

  ‘Uh . . .’

  ‘Set, now.’ He grinned as he squeezed gently at her shrivelled legs from the tops of her thighs down to her knobbly ankles. She watched him touching her, like a cook kneading at a plucked chicken, and hardly felt it. ‘All quite set, and the screws removed. A wonder, believe me. If the doubters at the academy could see this now they wouldn’t be laughing. If my old master could see this, even he—’

  ‘Uh . . .’ She slowly raised her right hand. Or the trembling mockery of a hand that dangled from the end of her arm. The palm was bent, shrunken, a great ugly scar where Gobba’s wire had cut into the side. The fingers were crooked as tree roots, squashed together, the little one sticking out at a strange angle. Her breath hissed through gritted teeth as she tried to make a fist. The fingers scarcely moved, but the pain still shot up her arm and made bile burn the back of her throat.

  ‘The best I could do. Small bones, you see, badly damaged, and the tendons of the little finger were quite severed.’ Her host seemed disappointed. ‘A shock, of course. The marks will fade . . . somewhat. But really, considering the fall . . . well, here.’ The mouthpiece of the husk-pipe came towards her and she sucked on it greedily. Clung to it with her teeth as if it was her only hope. It was.

  He tore a tiny piece from the corner of the loaf, the kind you might feed birds with. Monza watched him do it, mouth filling with sour spit. Hunger or sickness, there wasn’t much difference. She took it dumbly, lifted it to her lips, so weak that her left hand trembled with the effort, forced it between her teeth and down her throat.

  Like swallowing broken glass.

  ‘Slowly,’ he murmured, ‘very slowly, you have eaten nothing but milk and sugar-water since you fell.’

  The bread caught in her craw and she retched, gut clamping up tight around the knife-wound Faithful had given her.

  ‘Here.’ He slid his hand round her skull, gentle but firm, lifted her head and tipped a bottle of water to her lips. She swallowed, and again, then her eyes flicked towards his fingers. She could feel unfamiliar lumps there, down the side of her head. ‘I was forced to remove several pieces of your skull. I replaced them with coins.’

  ‘Coins?’

  ‘Would you rather I had left your brains exposed? Gold does not rust. Gold does not rot. An expensive treatment, of course, but if you had died, I could always have recouped my investment, and since you have not, well . . . I consider it money well spent. Your scalp will feel somewhat lumpy, but your hair will grow back. Such beautiful hair you have. Black as midnight.’

  He let her head fall gently back against the bench and his hand lingered there. A soft touch. Almost a caress.

  ‘Normally I am a taciturn man. Too much time spent alone, perhaps.’ He flashed his corpse-smile at her. ‘But I find you . . . bring out the best in me. The mother of my children is the same. You remind me of her, in a way.’

  Monza half-smiled back, but in her gut she felt a creeping of disgust. It mingled with the sickness she was feeling every so often, now. That sweating need.

  She swallowed. ‘Could I—’

  ‘Of course.’ He was already holding the pipe out to her.

  ‘Close it.’

  ‘It won’t close!’ she hissed, three of the fingers just curling, the little one still sticking out straight, or as close to straight as it ever came. She remembered how nimble-fingered she used to be, how sure, and quick, and the frustration and the fury were sharper even than the pain. ‘They won’t close!’

  ‘For weeks you have been lying here. I did not mend you so you could smoke husk and do nothing. Try harder.’

  ‘Do you want to fucking try?’

  ‘Very well.’ His hand closed relentlessly around hers and forced the bent fingers into a crunching fist. Her eyes bulged from her head, breath whistling too fast for her to scream.

  ‘I doubt you understand how much I am helping you.’ He squeezed tighter and tighter. ‘One cannot grow without pain. One cannot improve without it. Suffering drives us to achieve great things.’ The fingers of her good hand plucked and scrabbled uselessly at his fist. ‘Love is a fine cushion to rest upon, but only hate can make you a better person. There.’ He let go of her and she sagged back, whimpering, watched her trembling fingers come gradually halfway open, scars standing out purple.

  She wanted to kill him. She wanted to shriek every curse she knew. But she needed him too badly. So she held her tongue, sobbed, gasped, ground her teeth, smacked the back of her head against the bench.

  ‘Now, close your hand.’ She stared i
nto his face, empty as a fresh-dug grave. ‘Now, or I must do it for you.’

  She growled with the effort, whole arm throbbing to the shoulder. Gradually, the fingers inched closed, the little one still sticking straight. ‘There, you fucker!’ She shook her numb, knobbly, twisted fist under his nose. ‘There!’

  ‘Was that so hard?’ He held the pipe out to her and she snatched it from him. ‘You need not thank me.’

  ‘And we will see if you can take the—’

  She squealed, knees buckling, would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her.

  ‘Still?’ He frowned. ‘You should be able to walk. The bones are knitted. Pain, of course, but . . . perhaps a fragment within one of the joints, still. Where does it hurt?’

  ‘Everywhere!’ she snarled at him.

  ‘I trust this is not simply your stubbornness. I would hate to open the wounds in your legs again unnecessarily.’ He hooked one arm under her knees and lifted her without much effort back onto the bench. ‘I must go for a while.’

  She clutched at him. ‘You’ll be back soon?’

  ‘Very soon.’

  His footsteps vanished down the corridor. She heard the front door click shut, the sound of the key scraping in the lock.

  ‘Son of a fucking whore.’ And she swung her legs down from the bench. She winced as her feet touched the floor, bared her teeth as she straightened up, growled softly as she let go of the bench and stood on her own feet.

  It hurt like hell, and it felt good.

  She took a long breath, gathered herself and began to waddle towards the far side of the room, pains shooting through her ankles, knees, hips, into her back, arms held out wide for balance. She made it to the cupboard and clung to its corner, slid open the drawer. The pipe lay inside, a jar of bubbly green glass beside it with some black lumps of husk in the bottom. How she wanted it. Her mouth was dry, her palms sticky with sick need. She slapped the drawer closed and hobbled back to the bench. Everything was still pierced with cold aches, but she was getting stronger each day. Soon she’d be ready. But not yet.

  Patience is the parent of success, Stolicus wrote.

  Across the room, and back, growling through her clenched teeth. Across the room and back, lurching and grimacing. Across the room and back, whimpering, wobbling, spitting. She leaned against the bench, long enough to get her breath.

  Across the room and back again.

  The mirror had a crack across it, but she wished it had been far more broken.

  Your hair is like a curtain of midnight!

  Shaved off down the left side of her head, grown back to a scabby stubble. The rest hung lank, tangled and greasy as old seaweed.

  Your eyes gleam like piercing sapphires, beyond price!

  Yellow, bloodshot, lashes gummed to clumps, rimmed red-raw in sockets purple-black with pain.

  Lips like rose petals?

  Cracked, parched, peeling grey with yellow scum gathered at the corners. There were three long scabs across her sucked-in cheek, sore brown against waxy white.

  You look especially beautiful this morning, Monza . . .

  On each side of her neck, withered down to a bundle of pale cords, the red scars left by Gobba’s wire. She looked like a woman just dead of the plague. She looked scarcely better than the skulls stacked on the mantelpiece.

  Beyond the mirror, her host was smiling. ‘What did I tell you? You look well.’

  The very Goddess of War!

  ‘I look a fucking carnival curiosity!’ she sneered, and the ruined crone in the mirror sneered back at her.

  ‘Better than when I found you. You should learn to look on the happy side of the case.’ He tossed the mirror down, stood and pulled on his coat. ‘I must leave you for the time being, but I will be back, as I always am. Continue working the hand, but keep your strength. Later I must cut into your legs and establish the cause of your difficulty in standing.’

  She forced a sickly smile onto her face. ‘Yes. I see.’

  ‘Good. Soon, then.’ He threw his canvas bag over his shoulder. His footsteps creaked down the corridor, the lock closed. She counted slowly to ten.

  Off the bench and she snatched up a pair of needles and a knife from the tray. She limped to the cupboard, ripped open the drawer, stuffed the pipe into the pocket of the borrowed trousers hanging from her hip bones, the jar with it. She lurched down the hall, boards creaking under bare feet. Into the bedroom, grimacing as she fished the old boots from under the bed, grunting as she pulled them on.

  Out into the corridor again, her breath hissing with effort, and pain, and fear. She knelt down by the front door, or at least lowered herself by creaking degrees until her burning knees were on the boards. It was a long time since she’d worked a lock. She fished and stabbed with the needles, twisted hand fumbling.

  ‘Turn, you bastard. Turn.’

  Luckily the lock wasn’t good. The tumblers caught, turned with a satisfying clatter. She grabbed the knob and hauled the door open.

  Night, and a hard one. Cold rain lashed an overgrown yard, rank weeds edged with the slightest glimmer of moonlight, crumbling walls slick with wet. Beyond a leaning fence bare trees rose up, darkness gathered under their branches. A rough night for an invalid to be out of doors. But the chill wind whipping at her face, the clean air in her mouth, felt almost like being alive again. Better to freeze free than spend another moment with the bones. She ducked out into the rain, hobbled across the garden, nettles snatching at her. Into the trees, between their glistening trunks, and she struck away from the track and didn’t look back.

  Up a long slope, bent double, good hand dragging at the muddy ground, pulling her on. She grunted at each slipping footfall, every muscle screeching at her. Black rain dripped from black branches, pattered on fallen leaves, crept through her hair and plastered it across her face, crept through her stolen clothes and stuck them to her sore skin.

  ‘One more step.’

  She had to make some distance from the bench, and the knives, and that slack, white, empty face. That face, and the one in the mirror.

  ‘One more step . . . one more step . . . one more step.’

  The black ground lurched past, her hand trailing against the wet mud, the tree roots. She followed her father as he pushed the plough, long ago, hand trailing through the turned earth for stones.

  What would I do without you?

  She knelt in the cold woods beside Cosca, waiting for the ambush, her nose full of that damp, crisp smell of trees, her heart bursting with fear and excitement.

  You have a devil in you.

  She thought of whatever she needed to so she could keep going, memories rushing on ahead of her clumsy boots.

  Off the terrace and let us be done.

  She stopped, stood bent over, shuddering smoky breaths into the wet night. No idea how far she’d come, where she’d started, where she was going. For now, it hardly mattered.

  She wedged her back against a slimy tree-trunk, prised at her belt buckle with her good hand, shoved at it with the side of the other one. It took her a teeth-gritted age to finally get the damn thing open. At least she didn’t have to pull her trousers down. They sagged off her bony arse and down her scarred legs under their own weight. She paused a moment, wondering how she’d get them back up.

  One battle at a time, Stolicus wrote.

  She grabbed a low branch, slick with rain, lowered herself under it, right hand cradled against her wet shirt, bare knees trembling.

  ‘Come on,’ she hissed, trying to make her knotted bladder unclench. ‘If you need to go, just go. Just go. Just—’

  She grunted with relief, piss spattering into the mud along with the rain, trickling down the hillside. Her right leg was burning worse than ever, wasted muscles quivering. She winced as she tried to move her hand down the branch, shift her weight to her other leg. In a sick instant one foot flew out from under her and she went over backwards, breath whooping in, reason all blotted out by the dizzy memory of falling. She bit her ton
gue as her head cracked down in the mud, slid a stride or two, flailed to a stop in a wet hollow full of rotting leaves. She lay in the tapping rain, trousers tangled round her ankles, and wept.

  It was a low moment, no doubt of that.

  She bawled like a baby. Helpless, heedless, desperate. Her sobs racked her, choked her, made her mangled body shake. She didn’t know the last time she’d cried. Never, maybe. Benna had done the weeping for both of them. Now all the pain and fear of a dozen black years and more came leaking out of her screwed-up face. She lay in the mud, and tortured herself with everything she’d lost.

  Benna was dead, and everything good in her was dead with him. The way they made each other laugh. That understanding that comes from a life together, gone. He’d been home, family, friend and more, all killed at once. All snuffed out carelessly as a cheap candle. Her hand was ruined. She held the aching, mocking remnant of it to her chest. The way she used to draw a sword, use a pen, firmly shake a hand, all crushed under Gobba’s boot. The way she used to walk, run, ride, all scattered broken down the mountainside under Orso’s balcony. Her place in the world, ten years’ work, built with her own sweat and blood, struggled for, sweated for, vanished like smoke. All she’d worked for, hoped for, dreamed of.

  Dead.

  She worked her belt back up, dead leaves dragged up with it, and fumbled it shut. A few last sobs, then she snorted snot down, wiped the rest from under her nose on her cold hand. The life she’d had was gone. The woman she’d been was gone. What they’d broken could never be mended.

  But there was no point weeping about it now.

  She knelt in the mud, shivering in the darkness, silent. These things weren’t just gone, they’d been stolen from her. Her brother wasn’t just dead, he’d been murdered. Slaughtered like an animal. She forced her twisted fingers closed until they made a trembling fist.