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

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘Alright,’ she hissed. ‘Doesn’t make you less of a man, you know. Your arse, your business. I’ll keep clear of it in—’

  ‘Not that. D’you hear something?’

  Monza couldn’t hear anything but her own fast breath and the faint sound of her fingers still sliding wetly up and down. She pushed her hips back up against him. ‘Come on. There’s nothing but—’

  The door crashed open, wood flying from the splintered lock. Shivers scrambled from the bed, tangled with the blanket. Monza was dazzled by lamplight, caught a glimpse of bright metal, armour, a shout and a sword swung.

  There was a metallic thud, Shivers gave a squawk and went down hard on the boards. Monza felt spots of blood patter on her cheek. She had the hilt of the Calvez in her hand. Right hand, stupidly, by force of habit, blade a few inches drawn.

  ‘No you don’t.’ A woman coming through the ruins of the door, loaded flatbow levelled, hair scraped back from a soft-looking round face. A man turned from standing over Shivers and towards Monza, sword in hand. She could scarcely see more of him than the outline of his armour, his helmet. Another soldier stomped through the door, lantern in one fist and an axe in the other, curved blade gleaming. Monza let her twisted fingers open and the Calvez clattered down beside the bed half-drawn.

  ‘That’s better,’ said the woman.

  Shivers gave a groan, tried to push himself up, eyes narrowed against the light, blood trickling down his face from a cut in his hair. Must have been clubbed with the flat. The one with the axe stepped forwards and swung a boot into his ribs, thud, thud, made him grunt, curled up naked against the wall. A fourth soldier walked in, some dark cloth over one arm.

  ‘Captain Langrier.’

  ‘What did you find?’ asked the woman, handing him the flatbow.

  ‘This, and some others.’

  ‘Looks like a Talinese uniform.’ She held the jacket up so Monza could see it. ‘Got anything to say about this?’

  The jolt of cold shock was fading, and an even frostier fear was pressing in fast behind it. These were Salier’s soldiers. She’d been so fixed on killing Ganmark, so fixed on Orso’s army, she hadn’t spared a thought for the other side. They’d got her attention now, alright. She felt a sudden need for another smoke, so bad she was nearly sick. ‘It’s not what you think,’ she managed to croak out, acutely aware she was stark naked and smelled sharply of fucking.

  ‘How do you know what I think?’

  Another soldier with a big drooping moustache appeared in the doorway. ‘A load of bottles and suchlike in one of the rooms. Didn’t fancy touching ’em. Looked like poison to me.’

  ‘Poison, you say, Sergeant Pello?’ Langrier stretched her head to one side and rubbed at her neck. ‘Well, that is damn suspicious.’

  ‘I can explain it.’ Monza’s mouth was dry. She knew she couldn’t. Not in any way these bastards would believe.

  ‘You’ll get your chance. Back at the palace, though. Bind ’em up.’

  Shivers grimaced as the axeman dragged his wrists behind his back and snapped manacles shut on them, hauled him to his feet. One of the others grabbed Monza’s arm, twisted it roughly behind her as he jammed the cuffs on.

  ‘Ah! Mind my hand!’ One of them dragged her off the bed, shoved her stumbling towards the door and she nearly slipped, getting her balance back without much dignity. There wasn’t much dignity to be had in all of this. Benna’s little glass statue watched from its niche. So much for household spirits. ‘Can we get some clothes at least?’

  ‘I don’t see why.’ They hauled her out onto the landing, into the light of another lantern. ‘Wait there.’ Langrier squatted down, frowning at the zigzag scars on Monza’s hip and along her thigh, neat pink dots of the pulled stitches almost faded. She prodded at them with one thumb as though she was checking a joint of meat in a butcher’s for rot. ‘You ever seen marks like that before, Pello?’

  ‘No.’

  She looked up at Monza. ‘How did you get these?’

  ‘I was shaving my cunt and the razor slipped.’

  The woman spluttered with laughter. ‘I like that. That’s funny.’

  Pello was laughing too. ‘That is funny.’

  ‘Good thing you’ve got a sense of humour.’ Langrier stood up, brushing dust from her knees. ‘You’ll need that later.’ She thumped Monza on the side of the head with an open hand and sent her tumbling down the stairs. She fell on her shoulder with a jarring impact, the steps battered her back, skinned her knees, her legs went flying over. She squealed and grunted as the wood drove the air out of her, then the wall cracked her in the nose and knocked her sprawling, one leg buckled against the plaster. She lifted her head, groggy as a drunkard, the stairway still reeling. Her mouth tasted of blood. She spat it out. It filled up again.

  ‘Fuh,’ she grunted.

  ‘No more jokes? We’ve got a few more flights if you’re still feeling witty.’

  She wasn’t. She let herself be dragged up, grunting as pain ground at her battered shoulder-joint.

  ‘What’s this?’ She felt the ring pulled roughly off her middle finger, saw Langrier smiling as she held her hand up to the light, ruby glinting.

  ‘Looks good on you,’ said Pello. Monza kept her silence. If the worst she lost out of this was Benna’s ring, she’d count herself lucky indeed.

  There were more soldiers on the floors below, rooting through the tower, dragging gear from the chests and boxes. Glass crunched and tinkled as they upended one of Morveer’s cases onto the floor. Day was sitting on a bed nearby, yellow hair hanging over her face, hands bound behind her. Monza met her eye for a moment, and they stared at each other, but there wasn’t much pity to spare. At least she’d been lucky enough to have her shift on when they came.

  They shoved Monza down into the kitchen and she leaned against the wall, breathing fast, stark naked but past caring. Furli was down there, and his brother too. Langrier walked over to them and pulled a purse from her back pocket.

  ‘Looks like you were right. Spies.’ She counted coins out into the farmer’s waiting palm. ‘Five scales for each of them. Duke Salier thanks you for your diligence, citizen. You say there were more?’

  ‘Four others.’

  ‘We’ll keep a watch on the tower and pick them up later. You’d better find somewhere else for your family.’

  Monza watched Furli take the money, licking at the blood running out of her nose and thinking this was where charity got you. Sold for five scales. Benna would probably have been upset by the size of the bounty, but she had far bigger worries. The farmer gave her a last look as they dragged her stumbling out through the door. There was no guilt in his eyes. Maybe he felt he’d done the best thing for his family, in the midst of a war. Maybe he was proud that he’d had the courage to do it. Maybe he was right to be.

  Seemed it was as true now as it had been when Verturio wrote the words. Mercy and cowardice are the same.

  The Odd Couple

  It was Morveer’s considered opinion that he was spending entirely too much of his time in lofts, of late. It did not help in the slightest that this one was exposed to the elements. Large sections of the roof of the ruined house were missing, and the wind blew chill into his face. It reminded him most unpleasingly of that crisp spring night, long ago, when two of the prettiest and most popular girls had lured him onto the roof of the orphanage then locked him up there in his nightshirt. He was found in the morning, grey-lipped and shivering, close to having frozen to death. How they had all laughed.

  The company was far from warming him. Shylo Vitari crouched in the darkness, her head a spiky outline with the night sky behind, one eye shut, her eyeglass to the other. Behind them in the city, fires burned. War might be good for a poisoner’s business, but Morveer had always preferred to keep it at arm’s length. Considerably beyond, in fact. A city under siege was no place for a civilised man. He missed his orchard. He missed his good goose-down mattress. He attempted to shift the collars of his coat eve
n higher around his ears, and transferred his attention once again to the palace of Grand Duke Salier, brooding on its long island in the midst of the fast-flowing Visser.

  ‘Why ever a man of my talents should be called upon to survey a scene of this nature is entirely beyond me. I am no general.’

  ‘Oh no. You’re a murderer on a much smaller scale.’

  Morveer frowned sideways. ‘As are you.’

  ‘Surely, but I’m not the one complaining.’

  ‘I resent being dropped into the centre of a war.’

  ‘It’s Styria. It’s spring. Of course there’s a war. Let’s just come up with a plan and get back out of the night.’

  ‘Huh. Back to Murcatto’s charitable institution for the housing of displaced agricultural workers, do you mean? The stench of self-righteous hypocrisy in that place causes my bile to rise.’

  Vitari blew into her cupped hands. ‘Better than out here.’

  ‘Is it? Downstairs, the farmer’s brats wail into the night. Upstairs, our employer’s profoundly unsubtle erotic adventures with our barbarian companion keep the floorboards groaning at all hours. I ask you, is there anything more unsettling than the sound of other . . . people . . . fucking?’

  Vitari grinned. ‘You’ve got a point there. They’ll have that floor in before they’re done.’

  ‘They’ll have my skull in before that. I ask you, is an iota of professionalism too much to ask for?’

  ‘Long as she’s paying, who cares?’

  ‘I care if her carelessness leads to my untimely demise, but I suppose we must make do.’

  ‘Less whining and more work, then, maybe? A way in.’

  ‘A way in, because the noble leaders of Styrian cities are trusting folk, always willing to welcome uninvited guests into their places of residence . . .’

  Morveer moved his eyeglass carefully across the front of the sprawling building, rising up sheer from the frothing waters of the river. For the home of a renowned aesthete, it was an edifice of minimal architectural merit. A confusion of ill-matched styles awkwardly mashed together into a jumble of roofs, turrets, cupolas, domes and dormers, its single tower thrusting up into the heavens. The gatehouse was comprehensively fortified, complete with arrow loops, bartizans, machicolations and gilded portcullis facing the bridge into the city. A detachment of fifteen soldiers were gathered there in full armour.

  ‘The gate is far too well guarded, the front elevation far too visible to climb, either to roof or window.’

  ‘Agreed. The only spot we’d have a chance of getting in without being seen is the north wall.’

  Morveer swung his eyeglass towards the narrow northern face of the building, a sheer expanse of mossy grey stone pierced by darkened stained-glass windows and with a begargoyled parapet above. Had the palace been a ship sailing upriver, that would have been its prow, and fast-flowing water foamed with particular energy around its sloping base. ‘Unobserved, perhaps, but also the most difficult to reach.’

  ‘Scared?’ Morveer lowered his eyeglass with some irritation to see Vitari grinning at him.

  ‘Let us say rather that I am dubious as to our chances of success. Though I confess I feel some warmth at the prospect of your plunging from a rope into the frothing river, I am far from attracted by the prospect of following you.’

  ‘Why not just say you’re scared?’

  Morveer refused to rise to such ham-fisted taunting. It had not worked in the orphanage; it would most certainly not work now. ‘We would require a boat, of course.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be too hard to find something upriver.’

  He pursed his lips as he weighed the benefits. ‘The plan would have the added advantage of providing a means of egress, an aspect of the venture by which Murcatto seems decidedly untroubled. Once Ganmark has been put paid to, we might hope to reach the roof, still disguised, and back down the rope to the boat. Then we could simply float out to sea and—’

  ‘Look at that.’ Vitari pointed at a group moving briskly along the street below, and Morveer trained his eyeglass upon them. Perhaps a dozen armoured soldiers marched on either side of two stumbling figures, entirely naked, hands bound behind them. A woman and a large man.

  ‘Looks like they’ve caught some spies,’ said Vitari. ‘Bad luck for them.’

  One of the soldiers jabbed the man with the butt of his spear and knocked him over in the road, bare rump sticking into the air. Morveer chuckled. ‘Oh yes, indeed, even among Styrian prisons, the dungeons beneath Salier’s palace enjoy a black reputation.’ He frowned through the eyeglass. ‘Wait, though. The woman looks like—’

  ‘Murcatto. It’s fucking them!’

  ‘Can nothing run smoothly?’ Morveer felt a mounting sense of horror he had in no way expected. Stumbling along at the back in her nightshirt, hands bound behind her, was Day. ‘Curse it all! They have my assistant!’

  ‘Piss on your assistant. They have our employer! That means they have my pay!’

  Morveer could do nothing but grind his teeth as the prisoners were herded across the bridge and into the palace, the heavy gates tightly sealed behind them. ‘Damn it! The tower-house is no longer safe! We cannot return there!’

  ‘An hour ago you couldn’t stand the thought of going back to that den of hypocrisy and erotic adventure.’

  ‘But my equipment is there!’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Vitari nodded her spiky head towards the palace. ‘It’ll be with all the boxes they carried in there.’

  Morveer slapped petulantly at the bare rafter by his head, winced as he took a splinter in his forefinger and was forced to suck it. ‘Damn and shitting blast!’

  ‘Calm, Morveer, calm.’

  ‘I am calm!’ The sensible thing to do was undeniably to find a boat, to float silently up to Duke Salier’s palace, then past it and out to sea, writing off his losses, return to the orchard and train another assistant, leaving Murcatto and her imbecile Northman to reap the consequences of their stupidity. Caution first, always, but . . .

  ‘I cannot leave my assistant behind in there,’ he barked. ‘I simply cannot!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, because . . .’ He was not sure why. ‘I flatly refuse to go through the trouble of instructing another!’

  Vitari’s irritating grin had grown wider. ‘Fine. You need your girl and I need my money. You want to cry about it or work on a way in? I still say boat down the river to the north wall, then rope and grapple to the roof.’

  Morveer squinted unhopefully towards the sheer stonework. ‘You can truthfully secure a grapple up there?’

  ‘I could get a grapple through a fly’s arse. It’s you getting the boat into position that worries me.’

  He was not about to be outdone. ‘I challenge you to find a more accomplished oarsman! I could hold a boat steady in a deluge twice as fierce, but it will not be needful. I can drive a hook into that stonework and anchor the boat against those rocks all night.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘Good. Excellent.’ His heart was beating with considerable urgency at the argument. He might not have liked the woman, but her competence was in no doubt. Given the circumstances he could not have selected a more suitable companion. A most handsome woman, too, in her own way, and no doubt every bit as firm a disciplinarian as the sternest nurse at the orphanage had been . . .

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘I hope you’re not going to make the same suggestion you made last time we worked together.’

  Morveer bristled. ‘There will be no repetition of that whatsoever, I can assure you!’

  ‘Good. Because I’d still rather fuck a hedgehog.’

  ‘You made your preferences quite clear on that occasion!’ he answered shrilly, then moved with all despatch to shift the topic. ‘There is no purpose in delay. Let us find a vessel appropriate to our needs.’ He took one last look down as he slithered back into the attic, and paused. ‘Who’s this now?’ A single figure was striding boldly towards the palace gates. Morveer felt his heart
sink even lower. There was no mistaking the flamboyant gait. ‘Cosca. What ever is that horrible old drunkard about?’

  ‘Who knows what goes through that scabby head?’

  The mercenary strode towards the guards quite as if it was his palace rather than Duke Salier’s, waving one arm. Morveer could just hear his voice in between the sighing of the wind, but had not the slightest notion of the words. ‘What are they saying?’

  ‘You can’t read lips?’ Vitari muttered.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nice to find there’s one subject you’re not the world’s greatest expert on. The guards are challenging him.’

  ‘Of course!’ That much was clear from the halberds lowered at Cosca’s chest. The old mercenary swept off his hat and bowed low.

  ‘He is replying . . . my name is Nicomo Cosca . . . famed soldier of fortune . . . and I am here . . .’ She lowered the eyeglass, frowning.

  ‘Yes?’

  Vitari’s eyes slid towards him. ‘And I am here for dinner.’

  Darkness

  Utter dark. Monza opened her eyes wide, squinted and stared, and saw nothing but fizzing, tingling blackness. She wouldn’t have been able to see her hand before her face. But she couldn’t move her hand there anyway, or anywhere else.

  They’d chained her to the ceiling by her wrists, to the floor by her ankles. If she hung limp, her feet just brushed the clammy stones. If she stretched up on tiptoe, she could ease the throbbing ache through her arms, through her ribs, through her sides, a merciful fraction. Soon her calves would start to burn, though, worse and worse until she had to ease back down, teeth gritted, and swing by her skinned wrists. It was agonising, humiliating, terrifying, but the worst of it was, she knew – this was as good as things were going to get.

  She wasn’t sure where Day was. Probably she’d blinked those big eyes, shed a single fat tear and said she knew nothing, and they’d believed her. She had the sort of face that people believed. Monza never had that sort of face. But then she probably didn’t deserve one. Shivers was struggling somewhere in the inky black, metal clinking as he twisted at his chains, cursing in Northern, then Styrian. ‘Fucking Styria. Fucking Vossula. Shit. Shit.’