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

by Joe Abercrombie

  The officer gave a shriek as he sprang to finish the work. Cosca’s flailing hand clutched for the nearest thing, gripped it, flung it. The severed head. It caught the young man in the face and sent him stumbling. Cosca floundered to his blade and snatched it up, spun about, hand, sword, face, clothes all daubed with red. Strangely fitting, for a man who had lived the life he had.

  The officer was already at him again with a flurry of furious cuts. Cosca gave ground as fast as he could without falling over, sword drooping, pretending at complete exhaustion and not having to pretend all that much. He collided with the table, nearly fell, his free hand fished behind him, found the rim of the ornamental jar. The officer came forwards, lifting his sword with a yelp of triumph. It turned to a gurgle of shock as the jar came flying at him. He managed to smash it away with the hilt of his sword, fragments of pottery bursting across one side of him, but that left his blade wide for a moment. Cosca made one last desperate lunge, felt a gentle resistance as his blade punched through the officer’s cheek and out through the back of his head with textbook execution.

  ‘Oh.’ The officer wobbled slightly as Cosca whipped his sword back and capered sharply away. ‘Is that . . .’ His look was one of bleary-eyed surprise, like a man who had woken up drunk to find himself robbed and tied naked to a post. Cosca could not quite remember whether it was in Etrisani or Westport that had happened to him, those years all rather blended into one.

  ‘Whasappenah?’ The officer slashed with exaggerated slowness and Cosca stepped out of the way, let him spin round in a wide circle and sprawl over onto his side. He laboriously rolled, clambered up, blood running gently from the neat little slit beside his nose. The eye above it was flickering now, face on that side gone slack as old leather.

  ‘Sluviduviduther,’ he drooled.

  ‘Your pardon?’ asked Cosca.

  ‘Slurghhh!’ And he raised his quivering sword and charged. Directly sideways into the wall. He crashed into the painting of the girl surprised while bathing, tore a great gash through it with his flailing sword arm, brought the great canvas keeling down on top of him as he fell, one boot sticking out from underneath the gilded frame. He did not move again.

  ‘The lucky bastard,’ Cosca whispered. To die beneath a naked woman. It was the way he had always wanted to go.

  The wound in Monza’s shoulder burned. The one through her left hand burned far worse. Her palm, her fingers, sticky with blood. She could barely make a fist, let alone grip a blade. No choice, then. She dragged the glove from her right hand with her teeth, reached out and took hold of the Calvez’ hilt with it, feeling the crooked bones shift as her twisted fingers closed around the grip, little one still painfully straight.

  ‘Ah. Right-handed?’ Ganmark flicked his sword spinning into the air, snatched it back with his own right hand as nimbly as a circus trickster. ‘I always did admire your determination, if not the goals on which you trained it. Revenge, now, eh?’

  ‘Revenge,’ she snarled.

  ‘Revenge. If you could even get it, what good would it do you? All this expenditure of effort, pain, treasure, blood, for what? Who is ever left better off for it?’ His sad eyes watched her slowly stand. ‘Not the avenged dead, certainly. They rot on, regardless. Not those who are avenged upon, of course. Corpses all. And what of the ones who take vengeance, what of them? Do they sleep easier, do you suppose, once they have heaped murder on murder? Sown the bloody seeds of a hundred other retributions?’ She circled around, trying to think of some trick to kill him with. ‘All those dead men at that bank in Westport, that was your righteous work, I suppose? And the carnage at Cardotti’s, a fair and proportionate reply?’

  ‘What had to be done!’

  ‘Ah, what had to be done. The favourite excuse of unexamined evil echoes down the ages and slobbers from your twisted mouth.’ He danced at her, their swords rang together, once, twice. He jabbed, she parried and jabbed back. Each contact sent a jolt of pain up her arm. She ground her teeth together, forced the scowl to stay on her face, but there was no disguising how much it hurt her, or how clumsy she was with it. If she’d had small chances with her left, she had none at all with her right, and he knew it already.

  ‘Why the Fates chose you for saving I will never guess, but you should have thanked it kindly and slunk away into obscurity. Let us not pretend you and your brother did not deserve precisely what you received.’

  ‘Fuck yourself! I didn’t deserve that!’ But even as she said it, she had to wonder. ‘My brother didn’t!’

  Ganmark snorted. ‘No one is quicker to forgive a handsome man than I, but your brother was a vindictive coward. A charming, greedy, ruthless, spineless parasite. A man of the very lowest character imaginable. The only thing that lifted him from utter worthlessness, and utter inconsequence, was you.’ He sprang at her with lethal speed and she reeled away, fell against a cherry tree with a grunt and stumbled back through the shower of white blossom. He could surely have spitted her but he stayed still as a statue, sword at the ready, smiling faintly as he watched her thrash her way clear.

  ‘And let us face the facts, General Murcatto. You, for all your undeniable talents, have hardly been a paragon of virtue. Why, there must be a hundred thousand people with just reasons to fling your hated carcass from that terrace!’

  ‘Not Orso. Not him!’ She came low, jabbing sloppily at his hips, wincing as he flicked her sword aside and jarred the grip in her twisted palm.

  ‘If that’s a joke, it’s not a funny one. Quibble with the judge, when the sentence is self-evidently more than righteous?’ He placed his feet with all the watchful care of an artist applying paint to a canvas, steering her back onto the cobbles. ‘How many deaths have you had a hand in? How much destruction? You are a bandit! A glorified profiteer! You are a maggot grown fat on the rotting corpse of Styria!’ Three more blows, rapid as a sculptor’s hammer on his chisel, snapping her sword this way and that in her aching grip. ‘Did not deserve, you say to me, did not deserve? That excuse for a right hand is embarrassing enough. Pray do not shame yourself further.’

  She made a tired, pained, clumsy lunge. He deflected it disdainfully, already stepping around her and letting her stumble past. She expected his sword in her back; instead she felt his boot thud into her arse and send her sprawling across the cobbles, Benna’s sword bouncing from her numb fingers one more time. She lay there a moment, panting for breath, then slowly rolled over, came up to her knees. There hardly seemed much point standing. She’d be back here soon enough, once he ran her through. Her right hand throbbed, trembled. The shoulder of her stolen uniform was dark with blood, the fingers of her left hand were dripping with it.

  Ganmark flicked his wrist, whipped the head from a flower and into his waiting palm. He lifted it to his face and breathed in deep. ‘A beautiful day, and a good place to die. We should have finished you up at Fontezarmo, along with your brother. But now will do.’

  She couldn’t think of much in the way of sharp last words, so she just tipped her head back and spat at him. It spattered against his neck, his collar, the pristine front of his uniform. Not much vengeance, maybe, but something. Ganmark peered down at it. ‘A perfect lady to the end.’

  His eyes flickered sideways and he jerked away as something flashed past him, twittered into a flower bed behind. A thrown knife. There was a snarl and Cosca was on him, barking like a mad dog as he harried the general back across the cobbles.

  ‘Cosca!’ Fumbling her sword up. ‘Late, as ever.’

  ‘I was somewhat occupied next door,’ growled the old mercenary, pausing to catch his breath.

  ‘Nicomo Cosca?’ Ganmark frowned at him. ‘I thought you were dead.’

  ‘There have always been false reports of my death. Wishful thinking—’

  ‘On the part of his many enemies.’ Monza stood, shaking the weakness out of her limbs. ‘You’ve got a mind to kill me, you should get it done instead of talking about it.’

  Ganmark backed slowly away, slidi
ng his short steel from its sheath with his left hand, pointing it towards her, the long towards Cosca, his eyes flitting back and forth between them. ‘Oh, there’s still time.’

  Shivers weren’t himself. Or maybe he finally was. The pain had turned him mad. Or the eye they’d left him wasn’t working right. Or he was still all broken up from the husk he’d been sucking at the past few days. Whatever the reasons, he was in hell.

  And he liked it.

  The long hall pulsed, glowed, swam like a rippling pool. Sunlight burned through the windows, stabbing and flashing at him through a hundred hundred glittering squares of glass. The statues shone, smiled, sweated, cheered him on. He might’ve had one eye less than before, but he saw things clearer. The pain had swept away all his doubts, his fears, his questions, his choices. All that shit had been dead weight on him. All that shit was weakness, and lies, and a waste of effort. He’d made himself think things were complicated when they were beautifully, awfully simple. His axe had all the answers he needed.

  Its blade caught the sunlight and left a great white, fizzing smear, hacked into a man’s arm sending black streaks flying. Cloth flapping. Flesh torn. Bone splintered. Metal bent and twisted. A spear squealed across Shivers’ shield and he could taste the roar in his mouth, sweet as he swung the axe again. It crashed into a breastplate and left a huge dent, sent a body flailing into a pitted urn, burst it apart, writhing on the floor in a mass of shattered pottery.

  The world was turned inside out, like the glistening innards of the officer he’d gutted a few moments before. He used to get tired when he fought. Now he got stronger. The rage boiled up in him, leaked out of him, set his skin on fire. With every blow he struck it got worse, better, muscles burning until he had to scream it out, laugh it out, weep, sing, thrash, dance, shriek.

  He smashed a sword away with his shield, tore it from a hand, was on the soldier behind it, arms around him, kissing his face, licking at him. He roared as he ran, ran, legs pounding, rammed him into one of the statues, sent it over, crashing into another, and another beyond that, tipping, smashing on the floor, breaking apart into chunks in a cloud of dust.

  The guard groaned, sprawling in the ruins, tried to roll over. Shivers’ axe stoved the top of his helmet in deep with a hollow clonk, drove the metal rim right down over his eyes and squashed his nose flat, blood running out from underneath.

  ‘Fucking die!’ Shivers bashed in the side of the helmet and sent his head one way. ‘Die!’ Swung back and crumpled the other side, neck crunching like a sock full of gravel. ‘Die! Die!’ Bonk, bonk, like pots and pans clattering in the river after mealtime. A statue looked on, disapproving.

  ‘Look at me?’ Shivers smashed its head off with his axe. Then he was on top of someone, not knowing how he got there, ramming the edge of his shield into a face until it was nothing but a shapeless mess of red. He could hear someone whispering, whispering in his ear. Mad, hissing, croaking voice.

  ‘I am made of death. I am the Great Leveller. I am the storm in the High Places.’ The Bloody-Nine’s voice, but it came from his own throat. The hall was strewn with fallen men and fallen statues, scattered with bits of both. ‘You.’ Shivers pointed his bloody axe at the last of them, cringing at the far end of the dusty hallway. ‘I see you there, fucker. No one gets away.’ He realised he was talking in Northern. The man couldn’t understand a word he said. Hardly mattered, though.

  He reckoned he got the gist.

  Monza forced herself on down the arcade, wringing the last strength from her aching legs, snarling as she lunged, jabbed, cut clumsily, not letting up for a moment. Ganmark was on the retreat, dropping back through sunlight, then shadow, then sunlight again, frowning with furious concentration. His eyes flickered from side to side, parrying her blade and Cosca’s as it jabbed at him from between the pillars on her right, their hard breathing, their shuffling footsteps, the quick scraping of steel echoing from the vaulted ceiling.

  She cut at him, then back the other way, ignoring the burning pain in her fist as she tore the short steel from his hand and sent it clattering into the shadows. Ganmark lurched away, only just turned one of Cosca’s thrusts wide with his long steel, left his unguarded side facing her. She grinned, was pulling her arm back to lunge when something crashed into the window on her left, sent splinters of glass flying into her face. She thought she heard Shivers’ voice, roaring in Northern from the other side. Ganmark slipped between two pillars as Cosca slashed at him and away across the lawn, backing off into the centre of the garden.

  ‘Could you get on and kill this bastard?’ wheezed Cosca.

  ‘Doing my best. You go left.’

  ‘Left it is.’ They moved apart, herding Ganmark towards the statue. He looked spent now, blowing hard, soft cheeks turned blotchy pink and shining with sweat. She smiled as she feinted at him, sensing victory, felt her smile slip as he suddenly sprang to meet her. She dodged his first thrust, slashed at his neck, but he caught it and pushed her away. He was a lot less spent than she’d thought, and she was a lot more. Her foot came down badly and she tottered sideways. Ganmark darted past and his sword left a burning cut across her thigh. She tried to turn, screeched as her leg crumpled, fell and rolled, the Calvez tumbling from her limp fingers and bouncing away.

  Cosca sprang past with a hoarse cry, swinging wildly. Ganmark dropped under his cut, lunged from the ground and ran him neatly through the stomach. Cosca’s sword clanged hard into The Warrior’s shin and flew from his hand, stone chips spinning. The general whipped his blade free and Cosca dropped to his knees, sagged sideways with a long groan.

  ‘And that’s that.’ Ganmark turned towards her, Bonatine’s greatest work looming up behind him. A few flakes of marble trickled from the statue’s ankle, already cracked where Monza’s sword had chopped into it. ‘You’ve given me some exercise, I’ll grant you that. You are a woman – or have been a woman – of remarkable determination.’ Cosca dragged himself across the cobbles, leaving spotty smears of blood behind him. ‘But in keeping your eyes always ahead, you blinded yourself to everything around you. To the nature of the great war you fight in. To the natures of the people closest to you.’ Ganmark flicked out his handkerchief again, dabbed sweat from his forehead, carefully wiped blood from his steel. ‘If Duke Orso and his state of Talins are no more than a sword in the hand of Valint and Balk, then you were never more than that sword’s ruthless point.’ He flicked the shining point of his own sword with his forefinger. ‘Always stabbing, always killing, but never considering why.’ There was a gentle creaking, and over his shoulder The Warrior’s own great sword wobbled ever so slightly. ‘Still. It hardly matters now. For you the fight is over.’ Ganmark still wore his sad smile as he came to a stop a stride from her. ‘Any pithy last words?’

  ‘Behind you,’ growled Monza through gritted teeth, as The Warrior rocked ever so gently forwards.

  ‘You must take me for—’ There was a loud bang. The statue’s leg split in half and the whole vast weight of stone toppled inexorably forwards.

  Ganmark was just beginning to turn as the point of Stolicus’ giant sword pinned him between the shoulder blades, drove him onto his knees, burst out through his stomach and crashed into the cobbles, spraying blood and rock chips in Monza’s stinging face. The statue’s legs broke apart as they hit the ground, noble feet left on the pedestal, the rest cracking into muscular chunks and rolling around in a cloud of white marble dust. From the hips up, the proud image of the greatest soldier of history stayed in one magnificent piece, staring sternly down at Orso’s general, impaled on his monstrous sword beneath him.

  Ganmark made a sucking sound like water draining from a broken bath, and coughed blood down the front of his uniform. His head fell forwards, steel clattering from his dangling hand.

  There was a moment of stillness.

  ‘Now that,’ croaked Cosca, ‘is what I call a happy accident.’

  Four dead, three left. Monza saw someone creep out from one of the colonnades, grim
aced as she shuffled to her sword and dragged it up for the third time, hardly sure which ruined hand to hold it in. It was Day, loaded flatbow levelled. Friendly trudged along behind her, knife and cleaver hanging from his fists.

  ‘You got him?’ asked the girl.

  Monza looked at Ganmark’s corpse, kneeling spitted on the great length of bronze. ‘Stolicus did.’

  Cosca had kicked his way as far as one of the cherry trees and sat with his back against the trunk. He looked just like a man relaxing on a summer’s day. Apart from the bloody hand pressed to his stomach. She limped up to him, stuck the Calvez point-first into the turf and knelt down.

  ‘Let me have a look.’ She fumbled with the buttons on Cosca’s jacket, but before she got the second one undone he reached up, gently took her bloody hand and her twisted one in his.

  ‘I’ve been waiting years for you to tear my clothes off, but I think I’ll have politely to decline. I’m finished.’

  ‘You? Never.’

  He squeezed her hands tighter. ‘Right through the guts, Monza. It’s over.’ His eyes rolled towards the gate, and she could hear the faint clattering as soldiers on the other side struggled to lever the portcullis open. ‘And you’ll have other problems soon enough. Four of seven, though, girl.’ He grinned. ‘Never thought you’d make four of seven.’

  ‘Four of seven,’ muttered Friendly, behind her.

  ‘I wish I could’ve made Orso one of them.’

  ‘Well.’ Cosca raised his brows. ‘It’s a noble calling, but I guess you can’t kill everyone.’

  Shivers was walking slowly over from one of the doorways. He barely even glanced at Ganmark’s impaled corpse as he passed. ‘None left?’

  ‘Not in here.’ Friendly nodded towards the gate. ‘Some out there, though.’

  ‘Reckon so.’ The Northman stopped not far away. His hanging axe, his dented shield, his pale face and the bandages across one half of it were all dashed and speckled dark red.