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

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘Like your mother, maybe. You’ve left out getting so drunk you’d shit in your clothes. I owed you, but there’s a limit.’ She circled him, looking for an opening, no more than the thickness of a finger between the points of their swords. ‘I might’ve followed you to hell, but I wasn’t taking my brother there with me.’

  ‘Why not? He’d have been right at home.’

  ‘Fuck yourself!’ She tricked him with a feint, switched angle and forced him to hop away with all the grace of a dying frog. He had forgotten how much work swordplay required. His lungs were burning already, shoulder, forearm, wrist, hand, all aching with a vengeance. ‘If it hadn’t been me it would’ve been one of the other captains. Sesaria! Victus! Andiche!’ She pushed home each hated name with a sharp cut, jarring the sword in his hand. ‘They were all falling over themselves to be rid of you at Afieri!’

  ‘Can we not mention that damn place!’ He parried her next effort and switched smartly to the attack with something close to his old vigour, driving her back towards the corner of the roof. He needed to bring this to a close before he died of exhaustion. He lunged again and caught her sword on his. He drove her off balance against the parapet, bent her back over the battlements, guards scraping together until their faces were no more than a few inches apart, the long drop to the street looming into view behind her head. He could feel her quick breath on his cheek. For the briefest moment he almost kissed her, and he almost pushed her off the roof. Perhaps it was only because he could not decide which to do that he did neither one.

  ‘You were better with your right hand,’ he hissed.

  ‘You were better ten years ago.’ She slid from under his sword and her gloved little finger came from nowhere and poked him in the eye.

  ‘Eeeee!’ he squealed, free hand clapped to his face. Her knee thudded almost silently into his fruits and sent a lance of pain through his belly as far as his neck. ‘Oooooof . . .’ He tottered, blade clattering from his clutching fingers, bent over, unable to breathe. ‘A little something to remember me by.’ And the glittering point of Monza’s sword left him a burning scratch across his cheek.

  ‘Gah!’ He sank down slowly to the roofing lead. Back on his knees. There really is no place like home . . .

  Through the savage pain he heard slow clapping coming from the stairway. ‘Vitari,’ he croaked, squinting over at her as she ambled out into the sunlight. ‘Why is it . . . you always find me . . . at my lowest moments?’

  ‘Because I enjoy them so.’

  ‘You bitches don’t know your luck . . . that you’ll never feel the pain . . . of a blow to the fruits.’

  ‘Try childbirth.’

  ‘A charming invitation . . . if I were a little less bruised in the relevant areas, I would definitely take you up on it.’

  But, as so often, his wit was wasted. Vitari’s attention was already fixed far beyond the battlements, and Monza’s too. Cosca dragged himself up, bow-legged. A long column of horsemen had crested a rise to the west of the city, framed between two nearby towers, a cloud of dust rising from the hooves of their horses and leaving a brown smear across the sky.

  ‘They’re here,’ said Vitari. From somewhere behind them a bell began to ring, soon joined by others.

  ‘And there,’ said Monza. A second column had appeared. And a pillar of smoke, drifting up beyond a hill to the north.

  Cosca stood as the sun slowly rose into the blue sky, no doubt administering a healthy dose of sunburn to his spreading bald patch, and watched Duke Orso’s army steadily deploy in the fields outside the city. Regiment after regiment smoothly found their positions, well out of bowshot from the walls. A large detachment forded the river to the north and completed the encirclement. The horse screened the foot as they formed neat lines, then fell back behind them, no doubt to set about the business of ravaging anything carelessly left unravaged last season.

  Tents began to appear, and carts too as the supplies came up, stippling the muddy land behind the lines. The tiny defenders at the walls could do nothing but watch as the Talinese dug in around them, as orderly as the workings of a gigantic clock. Not Cosca’s style, of course, even when sober. More engineering than artistry, but one had to admire the discipline.

  He spread his arms wide. ‘Welcome, one and all, to the siege of Visserine! ’

  The others had all gathered on the roof to watch Ganmark’s grip on the city tighten. Monza stood with her left hand on her hip, gloved right slack on the pommel of her sword, black hair stirring around her scowl. Shivers was on Cosca’s other side, staring balefully out from under his brows. Friendly sat near the door to the stairs, rolling his dice between his crossed legs. Day and Vitari muttered to each other further along the parapet. Morveer looked even more sour than usual, if that was possible.

  ‘Can no one’s sense of humour withstand so small a thing as a siege? Cheer up, my comrades!’ Cosca gave Shivers a hearty clap on his broad back. ‘It isn’t every day you get to see so large an army handled so well! We should all congratulate Monza’s friend General Ganmark on his exceptional patience and discipline. Perhaps we should pen him a letter.’

  ‘My dear General Ganmark.’ Monza worked her mouth, curled her tongue and blew spit over the battlements. ‘Yours ever, Monzcarro Murcatto. ’

  ‘A simple missive,’ observed Morveer, ‘but no doubt he will treasure it.’

  ‘Lot o’ soldiers down there,’ Shivers grunted.

  Friendly’s voice drifted gently over. ‘Thirteen thousand four hundred, or thereabouts.’

  ‘Mostly Talinese troops.’ Cosca waved at them with the eyeglass. ‘Some regiments from Orso’s older allies – flags of Etrisani on the right wing, there, near the water, and some others of Cesale in the centre. All regulars, though. No sign of our old comrades-in-arms, the Thousand Swords. Shame. It would be fine to renew some old friendships, wouldn’t it, Monza? Sesaria, Victus, Andiche. Faithful Carpi too, of course.’ Renew old friendships . . . and be revenged on old friends.

  ‘The mercenaries will be away to the east.’ Monza jerked her head across the river. ‘Holding off Duke Rogont and his Osprians.’

  ‘Great fun for all involved, no doubt. But we, at least, are here.’ Cosca gestured towards the crawling soldiers outside the city. ‘General Ganmark, one presumes, is there. The plan, to bring us all together in a happy reunion? We presume you have a plan?’

  ‘Ganmark is a cultured man. He has a taste for art.’

  ‘And?’ demanded Morveer.

  ‘No one has more art than Grand Duke Salier.’

  ‘His collection is impressive.’ Cosca had admired it on several occasions, or at any rate pretended to, while admiring his wine.

  ‘The finest in Styria, they say.’ Monza strode to the opposite parapet, looking towards Salier’s palace on its island in the river. ‘When the city falls, Ganmark will make straight for the palace, eager to rescue all those priceless works from the chaos.’

  ‘To steal them for himself,’ threw in Vitari.

  Monza’s jaw was set even harder than usual. ‘Orso will want to be done with this siege quickly. Leave as much time as possible to put an end to Rogont. Finish the League of Eight for good and claim his crown before winter comes. That means breaches, and assaults, and bodies in the streets.’

  ‘Marvellous!’ Cosca clapped his hands. ‘Streets may boast noble trees, and stately buildings, but they never feel complete without a dusting of corpses, do they?’

  ‘We take armour, uniforms, weapons from the dead. When the city falls, which will be soon, we disguise ourselves as Talinese. We find our way into the palace, and while Ganmark is going about the rescue of Salier’s collection and his guard is down . . .’

  ‘Kill the bastard?’ offered Shivers.

  There was a pause. ‘I believe I perceive the most minute of flaws in the scheme.’ Morveer’s whining words were like nails driven into the back of Cosca’s skull. ‘Grand Duke Salier’s palace will be among the best-guarded locations in Styria at the
present moment, and we are not in it. Nor likely to receive an invitation.’

  ‘On the contrary, I have one already.’ Cosca was gratified to find them all staring at him. ‘Salier and I were quite close some years ago, when he employed me to settle his boundary issues with Puranti. We used to dine together once a week and he assured me I was welcome whenever I found myself in the city.’

  The poisoner’s face was a caricature of contempt. ‘Would this, by any chance, have been before you became a wine-ravaged sot?’

  Cosca waved one careless hand while filing that slight carefully away with the rest. ‘During my long and most enjoyable transformation into one. Like a caterpillar turning into a beautiful butterfly. In any case, the invitation still stands.’

  Vitari narrowed her eyes at him. ‘How the hell do you plan to make use of it?’

  ‘I imagine I will address the guards at the palace gate, and say something along the lines of – “I am Nicomo Cosca, famed soldier of fortune, and I am here for dinner.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence, quite as if he had contributed a giant turd rather than a winning idea.

  ‘Forgive me,’ murmured Monza, ‘but I doubt your name opens doors the way it used to.’

  ‘Latrine doors, maybe.’ Morveer gave a sneering shake of his head. Day chuckled softly into the wind. Even Shivers had a dubious curl to his lip.

  ‘Vitari and Morveer, then,’ snapped Monza. ‘That’s your job. Watch the palace. Find us a way in.’ The two of them gave each other an unenthusiastic frown. ‘Cosca, you know something about uniforms.’

  He sighed. ‘Few men more. Every employer wants to give you one of their own. I had one from the Aldermen of Westport cut from cloth of gold, about as comfortable as a lead pipe up the—’

  ‘Something less eye-catching might be better suited to our purpose.’

  Cosca drew himself up and snapped out a vibrating salute. ‘General Murcatto, I will do my straining utmost to obey your orders!’

  ‘Don’t strain. Man of your age, you might rupture something. Take Friendly with you, once the assaults begin.’ The convict shrugged, and went back to his dice.

  ‘We will most nobly strip the dead to their naked arses!’ Cosca turned towards the stairs, but was brought up short by the sight in the bay. ‘Ah! Duke Orso’s fleet has joined the fun.’ He could just see ships moving on the horizon, white sails marked with the black cross of Talins.

  ‘More guests for Duke Salier,’ said Vitari.

  ‘He always was a conscientious host, but I’m not sure even he can be prepared for so many visitors at once. The city is entirely cut off.’ And Cosca grinned into the wind.

  ‘A prison,’ said Friendly, and almost with a smile of his own.

  ‘We are helpless as rats in a sack!’ snapped Morveer. ‘You speak quite as if that were a good thing.’

  ‘Five times I have been under siege, and always quite relished the experience. It has a wonderful way of limiting the options. Of freeing the mind.’ Cosca took a long breath in through his nose and blew it happily out. ‘When life is a cell, there is nothing more liberating than captivity.’

  The Forlorn Hope

  Fire. Visserine by night had become a place of flame and shadow. An endless maze of broken walls, fallen roofs, jutting rafters. A nightmare of disembodied cries, ghostly shapes flitting through the darkness. Buildings loomed, gutted shells, the eyeless gaps of window and doorway screaming open, fire spurting out, licking through, tickling at the darkness. Charred beams stabbed at the flames and they stabbed back. Showers of white sparks climbed into the black skies, and a black snow of ash fell softly the other way. The city had new towers now, crooked towers of smoke, glowing with the light of the fires that gave them birth, smudging out the stars.

  ‘How many did we get the last time?’ Cosca’s eyes gleamed yellow from the flames across the square. ‘Three was it?’

  ‘Three,’ croaked Friendly. They were safe in the chest in his room: the armour of two Talinese soldiers, one with the square hole left by a flatbow bolt, and the uniform of a slight young lieutenant he had found crushed under a fallen chimney. Bad luck for him, but then Friendly supposed it was his side throwing the fire everywhere.

  They had catapults beyond the walls, five on the west side of the river, and three on the east. They had catapults on the twenty-two white-sailed ships in the harbour. The first night, Friendly had stayed up until dawn watching them. They had thrown one hundred and eighteen burning missiles over the walls, scattering fires about the city. Fires shifted, and burned out, and split, and merged one with another, and so they could not be counted. The numbers had deserted Friendly, and left him alone and afraid. It had taken but six short days, three nights times two, for peaceful Visserine to turn to this.

  The only part of the city untouched was the island on which Duke Salier’s palace stood. There were paintings there, Murcatto said, and other pretty things that Ganmark, the leader of Orso’s army, the man they were here to kill, wished to save. He would burn countless houses, and countless people in them, and order murder night and day, but these dead things of paint had to be protected. Friendly thought this was a man who should be put in Safety, so that the world outside could be a safer place. But instead he was obeyed, and admired, and the world burned. It seemed all turned around, all wrong. But then Friendly could not tell right from wrong, the judges had told him so.

  ‘You ready?’

  ‘Yes,’ lied Friendly.

  Cosca flashed a crazy grin. ‘Then to the breach, dear friend, once more!’ And he trotted off down the street, one hand on the hilt of his sword, the other clasping his hat to his head. Friendly swallowed, then followed, lips moving silently as he counted the steps he took. He had to count something other than the ways he could die.

  It only grew worse the closer they got to the city’s western edge. The fires rose up in terrible magnificence, creaking and roaring, towering devils, gnawing at the night. They burned Friendly’s eyes and made them weep. Or perhaps he wept anyway, to see the waste of it. If you wanted a thing, why burn it? And if you did not want it, why fight to take it from someone else? Men died in Safety. They died there all the time. But there was no waste like this. There was not enough there to risk destroying what there was. Each thing was valued.

  ‘Bloody Gurkish fire!’ Cosca cursed as they gave another roaring blaze a wide berth. ‘Ten years ago no one had dreamed of using that stuff as a weapon. Then they made Dagoska an ash-heap with it, knocked holes in the walls of the Agriont with it. Now no sooner does a siege begin than everyone’s clamouring to blow things up. We liked to torch a building or two in my day, just to get things moving, but nothing like this. War used to be about making money. Some degree of modest misery was a regrettable side effect. Now it’s just about destroying things, and the more thoroughly the better. Science, my friend, science. Supposed to make life easier, I thought.’

  Lines of sooty soldiers tramped by, armour gleaming orange with reflected flames. Lines of sooty civilians passed buckets of water from hand to hand, desperate faces half-lit by the glow of unquenchable fires. Angry ghosts, black shapes in the sweltering night. Behind them, a great mural on a shattered wall. Duke Salier in full armour, sternly pointing the way to victory. He had been holding a flag, Friendly thought, but the top part of the building had collapsed, and his raised arm along with it. Dancing flames made it look as if his painted face was twitching, as if his painted mouth was moving, as if the painted soldiers around him were charging onwards to the breach.

  When Friendly was young, there had been an old man in the twelfth cell on his corridor who had told tales of long ago. Tales of the time before the Old Time, when this world and the world below were one, and devils roamed the earth. The inmates had laughed at that old man, and Friendly had laughed at him too, since it was wise in Safety to do just as others did and never to stand out. But he had gone back when no one else was near, to ask how many years, exactly, it had been since the gates were sealed and
Euz shut the devils out of the world. The old man had not known the number. Now it seemed the world below had broken through the gates between again, flooding out into Visserine, chaos spreading with it.

  They hurried past a tower in flames, fire flickering in its windows, pluming up from its broken roof like a giant’s torch. Friendly sweated, coughed, sweated more. His mouth was endlessly dry, his throat endlessly rough, his fingertips chalky with soot. He saw the toothed outline of the city’s walls at the end of a street strangled with rubble.

  ‘We’re getting close! Stay with me!’

  ‘I . . . I . . .’ Friendly’s voice croaked to nothing on the smoky air. He could hear a noise, now, as they sidled down a narrow alley, red light flickering at its end. A clattering and clashing, a surging tide of furious voices. A noise like the great riot had made in Safety, before the six most feared convicts, Friendly among them, had agreed to put a stop to the madness. Who would stop the madness here? There was a boom that made the earth shudder, and a ruddy glare lit the night sky.

  Cosca slipped up to the trunk of a scorched tree, keeping low, and crouched against it. The noise grew louder as Friendly crept after, terribly loud, but his heart pounding in his ears almost drowned it out.

  The breach was no more than a hundred strides off, a ragged black patch of night torn from the city wall and clogged with heaving Talinese troops. They crawled like ants over the nightmare of fallen masonry and broken timbers that formed a ragged ramp down into a burned-out square at the city’s edge. There might have been an orderly battle when the first assault came, but now it had dissolved into a shapeless, furious mêlée, defenders crowding in from barricades thrown up before the gutted buildings, attackers fumbling their way on, on through the breach, adding their mindless weight to the fight, their breathless corpses to the carnage.

  Axe and sword blades flashed and glinted, pikes and spears waved and tangled, a torn flag or two hung limp over the press. Arrows and bolts flitted up and down, from the Talinese crowding outside the walls, from defenders at their barricades, from a crumbling tower beside the breach. While Friendly watched, a great chunk of masonry was sent spinning down from the top of the wall and into the boiling mass below, tearing a yawning hole through them. Hundreds of men, struggling and dying by the hellish glare of burning torches, of burning missiles, of burning houses. Friendly could hardly believe it was real. It all looked false, fake, a model staged for a lurid painting.