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

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘Oh, there’ll be more. The mountains of Gurkhul are made of gold, I hear.’ She peered at the charred edges of the hole in the corner of the barn, then happily clicked her tongue. ‘I still have it.’ And she twisted her body through the gap like a fox through a fence and was gone.

  Shivers left it a moment, then leaned close to Monza. ‘Can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something odd about her.’

  ‘You’ve got this amazing sense for people, haven’t you?’ She turned without smiling and followed Vitari out of the barn.

  Shivers stood there a moment longer, frowning down at Day’s body, working his face around, feeling the scars on the left side stretching, shifting, itching. Cosca dead, Day dead, Vitari gone, Friendly gone, Morveer fled and, by the look of things, turned against them. So much for the merry company. He should’ve been all nostalgic for the happy friends of long ago, the bands of brothers he’d been a part of. United in a common cause, even if it was no more’n staying alive. Dogman, and Harding Grim, and Tul Duru. Black Dow, even, all men with a code. All faded into the past, and left him alone. Down here in Styria, where no one had any code that meant a thing.

  Even then, his right eye was about as close to crying as his left.

  He scratched at the scar on his cheek. Ever so gently, just with his fingertips. He winced, scratched harder. And harder still. He stopped himself, hissing through his teeth. Now it itched worse than ever, and hurt into the bargain. He’d yet to work out a way to scratch that itch that didn’t make matters worse.

  There’s vengeance for you.

  The Old New Captain General

  Monza had seen wounds past counting, in all their wondrous variety. The making of them had been her profession. She’d witnessed bodies ruined in every conceivable manner. Men crushed, slashed, stabbed, burned, hanged, skinned, gutted, gored. But Caul Shivers’ scar might well have been the worst she’d ever seen on the face of a living man.

  It started as a pink mark near the corner of his mouth, became a ragged groove thick as a finger below his cheekbone, then widened, a stream of mottled, melted flesh flowing towards his eye. Streaks and spots of angry red spread out from it across his cheek, down the side of his nose. There was a thin mark to match slanting across his forehead and taking off half his eyebrow. Then there was the eye itself. It was bigger than the other. Lashes gone, lids shrivelled, the lower one drooping. When he blinked with his right eye, the left only twitched, and stayed open. He’d sneezed a while back, and it had puckered up like a swallowing throat, the dead enamelled pupil still staring at her through the pink hole. She’d had to will herself not to spew, and yet she was gripped with a horrified fascination, constantly looking to see if it would happen again, and it hardly helped that she knew he couldn’t see her looking.

  She should have felt guilt. She’d been the cause of it, hadn’t she? She should have felt sympathy. She’d scars of her own, after all, and ugly enough. But disgust was as close as she could get. She wished she’d started off riding on the other side of him, but it was too late now. She wished he’d never taken the bandages off, but she could hardly tell him to put them back on. She told herself it might heal, might get better, and maybe it would.

  But not much, and she knew it.

  He turned suddenly, and she realised why he’d been staring at his saddle. His right eye was on her. His left, in the midst of all that scar, still looked straight downwards. The enamel must have slipped, and now his mismatched eyes gave him a look of skewed confusion.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your, er . . .’ She pointed at her face. ‘It’s slipped . . . a bit.’

  ‘Again? Fucking thing.’ He put his thumb in his eye and slid it back up. ‘Better?’ Now the false one was fixed straight ahead while the real one glared at her. It was almost worse than it had been.

  ‘Much,’ she said, doing her best to smile.

  Shivers spat something in Northern. ‘Uncanny results, did he say? If I happen back through Puranti I’ll give that eye-making bastard a visit . . .’

  The mercenaries’ first picket came into view around a curve in the track – a scattering of shady-looking men in mismatched armour. She knew the one in charge by sight. She’d made it her business to know every veteran in the Thousand Swords, and what he was good for. Secco was this one’s name, a tough old wolf who’d served as a corporal for six years or more.

  He pointed his spear at her as they brought their horses to a walk, his fellows around him, flatbows, swords, axes at the ready. ‘Who goes—’

  She pushed her hood back. ‘Who do you think, Secco?’

  The words froze on his lips and he stood, spear limp, as she rode past. On into the camp, men going about their morning rituals, eating their breakfasts, getting ready to march. A few looked up as she and Shivers passed on the track, or at any rate the widest stretch of mud between the tents. A few of them started staring. Then a few more, watching, following at a distance, gathering along the way.

  ‘It’s her.’

  ‘Murcatto.’

  ‘She’s alive?’

  She rode through them the way she used to, shoulders back, chin up, sneer locked on her mouth, not even bothering to look. As if they were nothing to her. As if she was a better kind of animal than they were. And all the while she prayed silently they didn’t work out what they’d never worked out yet, but what she was always afraid to the pit of her stomach they would.

  That she didn’t know what the hell she was doing, and a knife would kill her just as dead as anyone else.

  But none of them spoke to her, let alone tried to stop her. Mercenaries are cowards, on the whole, even more so than most people. Men who’ll kill because it’s the easiest way they’ve found to make a living. Mercenaries have no loyalty in them, on the whole, by definition. Not much to their leaders, even less to their employers.

  That was what she was counting on.

  The captain general’s tent was pitched on a rise in a big clearing, red pennant hanging limp from its tallest pole, well above the jumble of badly pitched canvas around it. Monza kicked her horse up, making a couple of men scurry out of her way, trying not to let the nerves that were boiling up her throat show. It was a long enough gamble as it was. Show one grain of fear and she’d be done.

  She swung down from her horse, tossed the reins carelessly round a sapling trunk. She had to sidestep a goat someone had tethered there, then strode up towards the flap. Nocau, the Gurkish outcast who’d guarded the tent during the daylight since way back in Sazine’s time, stood staring, his big scimitar not even drawn.

  ‘You can shut your mouth now, Nocau.’ She leaned in close and pushed his slack jaw shut with her gloved finger so his teeth snapped together. ‘Wouldn’t want a bird nesting in there, eh?’ And she pushed through the flap.

  The same table, even if the charts on it were of a different stretch of ground. The same flags hanging about the canvas, some of them that she’d added, won at Sweet Pines and the High Bank, at Musselia and Caprile. And the same chair, of course, that Sazine had supposedly stolen from the Duke of Cesale’s dining table the day he formed the Thousand Swords. It stood empty on a pair of crates, waiting for the arse of the new captain general. For her arse, if the Fates were kind.

  Though she had to admit they weren’t usually.

  The three most senior captains left in the great brigade stood close to the improvised dais, muttering to each other. Sesaria, Victus, Andiche. The three Benna had persuaded to make her captain general. The three who’d persuaded Faithful Carpi to take her place. The three she needed to persuade to give it back to her. They looked up, and they saw her, and they straightened.

  ‘Well, well,’ rumbled Sesaria.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ muttered Andiche. ‘If it isn’t the Serpent of Talins.’

  ‘The Butcher of Caprile herself,’ whined Victus. ‘Where’s Faithful?’

  She looked him right in the eye. ‘Not coming. You boys need a new captain general.’

  Th
e three of them swapped glances, and Andiche sucked noisily at his yellowed teeth. A habit Monza had always found faintly disgusting. One of many disgusting things about the lank-haired rat of a man. ‘As it happens, we’d reached the same conclusion on our own.’

  ‘Faithful was a good fellow,’ rumbled Sesaria.

  ‘Too good for the job,’ said Victus.

  ‘A decent captain general needs to be an evil shit at best.’

  Monza showed her teeth. ‘Any one of you three is more than evil enough, I reckon. There aren’t three bigger shits in Styria.’ It was no kind of joke. She should’ve murdered these three rather than Faithful. ‘Too big a set of shits to work for each other, though.’

  ‘True enough,’ said Victus sourly.

  Sesaria tipped his head back and stared at her down his flat nose. ‘We need someone new.’

  ‘Or someone old,’ said Monza.

  Andiche grinned at his two fellows. ‘As it happens, we’d reached the same conclusion on our own,’ he said again.

  ‘Good for you.’ This was going more smoothly even than she’d hoped. Eight years she’d led the Thousand Swords, and she knew how to handle the likes of these three. Greed, nice and simple. ‘I’m not the type to let a little bad blood get in the way of a lot of good money, and I damn well know that none of you are.’ She held Ishri’s coin up to the light, a Gurkish double-headed coin, Emperor on one side, Prophet on the other. She flicked it to Andiche. ‘There’ll be plenty more like that, to go over to Rogont.’

  Sesaria stared at her from under his thick grey brows. ‘Fight for Rogont, against Orso?’

  ‘Fight all the way back across Styria?’ The chains round Victus’ neck rattled as he tossed his head. ‘The same ground we’ve fought over the past eight years?’

  Andiche looked up from the coin to her, and puffed out his acne-scarred cheeks. ‘Sounds like an awful lot of fighting.’

  ‘You’ve won against longer odds, with me in charge.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a fact.’ Sesaria gestured at the tattered flags. ‘We’ve won all kinds of glory with you in the chair, all kinds of pride.’

  ‘But try paying a whore with that.’ Victus was grinning, and that weasel never grinned. Something was wrong about their smiles, something mocking in them.

  ‘Look.’ Andiche rested one lazy hand on the arm of the captain general’s chair and dusted the seat off with the other. ‘We don’t doubt for a moment that when it comes to a fight, you’re the best damn general a man could ask for.’

  ‘Then what’s the problem?’

  Victus’ face twisted into a snarl. ‘We don’t want to fight! We want to make . . . fucking . . . money!’

  ‘Who ever brought you more money than me?’

  ‘Ahem,’ came a voice right in her ear. Monza jerked round, and froze, hand halfway to the hilt of her sword. Standing just behind her, with a faintly embarrassed smile, was Nicomo Cosca.

  He’d shaved off his moustache, and all his hair besides, left only a black and grey stubble over his knobbly skull, his sharp jaw. The rash had faded to a faint pink splash up the side of his neck. His eyes were less sunken, his face no longer trembling or beaded with sweat. But the smile was the same. The faint little smile and the playful gleam in his dark eyes. The same he used to have, when she first met him.

  ‘A delight to see you both well.’

  ‘Uh,’ grunted Shivers. Monza found she’d made a kind of strangled cough, but no words came with it.

  ‘I am in resplendent health, your concern for my welfare is most touching.’ Cosca strolled past, slapping a puzzled-looking Shivers on the back, more captains of the Thousand Swords pushing their way through the flap after him and spreading out around the edges of the tent. Men whose names, faces, qualities, or lack of them, she knew well. A thick-set man with a stoop, a worn coat and almost no neck came at the rear. He raised his heavy brows at her as he passed.

  ‘Friendly?’ she hissed. ‘I thought you were going back to Talins!’

  He shrugged, as if it was nothing. ‘Didn’t make it all the way.’

  ‘So I fucking see!’

  Cosca stepped up onto the packing cases and turned to the assembly with a self-satisfied flourish. He’d acquired a grand black breastplate with golden scrollwork from somewhere, a sword with a gilded hilt, fine black boots with shining buckles. He settled himself into the captain general’s chair with as much pomp as an Emperor into his throne, Friendly standing watchful beside the cases, arms crossed. As Cosca’s arse touched the wood the tent broke into polite applause, every captain tapping their fingers against their palms as daintily as fine ladies attending the theatre. Just as they had for Monza, when she stole the chair. If she hadn’t felt suddenly so sick she might almost have laughed.

  Cosca waved away the applause while obviously encouraging it. ‘No, no, really, entirely undeserved. But it’s good to be back.’

  ‘How the hell—’

  ‘Did I survive? The wound, it appears, was not quite so fatal as we all supposed. The Talinese took me, on account of my uniform, for one of their own, and bore me directly to an excellent surgeon, who was able to staunch the bleeding. I was two weeks abed, then slipped out of a window. I made contact in Puranti with my old friend Andiche, who I had gathered might be desirous of a change in command. He was, and so were all his noble fellows.’ He gestured to the captains scattered about the tent, then to himself. ‘And here I am.’

  Monza snapped her mouth shut. There was no planning for this. Nicomo Cosca, the very definition of an unpredictable development. Still, a plan too brittle to bend with circumstances is worse than no plan at all. ‘My congratulations, then, General Cosca,’ she managed to grate. ‘But my offer still stands. Gurkish gold in return for your services to Duke Rogont—’

  ‘Ah.’ Cosca winced, sucking air through his teeth. ‘Tiny little problem there, unfortunately. I already signed a new engagement with Grand Duke Orso. Or with his heir, to be precise, Prince Foscar. A promising young man. We’ll be moving against Ospria just as Faithful Carpi planned, prior to his untimely demise.’ He poked at the air with his forefinger. ‘Putting paid to the League of Eight! Taking the fight to the Duke of Delay! There’s plenty to sack in Ospria. It was a good plan.’ Agreeing mutters from the captains. ‘Why work out another?’

  ‘But you hate Orso!’

  ‘Oh, I despise him utterly, that’s well known, but I’ve nothing against his money. It’s the exact same colour as everybody else’s. You should know. He paid you enough of it.’

  ‘You old cunt,’ she said.

  ‘You really shouldn’t talk to me that way.’ Cosca stuck his lips out at her. ‘I am a mature forty-eight. Besides, I gave my life for you!’

  ‘You didn’t fucking die!’ she snarled.

  ‘Well. Rumours of my death are often exaggerated. Wishful thinking, on the part of my many enemies.’

  ‘I’m beginning to know how they feel.’

  ‘Oh, come, come, whatever were you thinking? A noble death? Me? Very much not my style. I mean to go with my boots off, a bottle in my hand and a woman on my cock.’ His eyebrows went up. ‘It’s not that job you’ve come for, is it?’

  Monza ground her teeth. ‘If it’s a question of money—’

  ‘Orso has the full support of the Banking House of Valint and Balk, and you’ll find no deeper pockets anywhere. He’s paying well, and better than well. But it’s not about the money, actually. I signed a contract. I gave my solemn word.’

  She stared at him. ‘When have you ever cared a shit about your word?’

  ‘I’m a changed man.’ Cosca pulled a flask from a back pocket, unscrewed it and took a long swig, never taking his amused eyes from her face. ‘And I must admit I owe it all to you. I’ve put the past behind me. Found my principles.’ He grinned at his captains, and they grinned back. ‘Bit mossy, but they should polish up alright. You forged a good relationship with Orso. Loyalty. Honesty. Stability. Hate to toss all your hard work down the latrine. Besides, the
re’s the soldier’s first rule to consider, isn’t there, boys?’

  Victus and Andiche spoke in unison, just the way they’d used to, before she took the chair. ‘Never fight for the losing side!’

  Cosca’s grin grew wider. ‘Orso holds the cards. Find a good hand of your own, my ears are always open. But we’ll stick with Orso for now.’

  ‘Whatever you say, General,’ said Andiche.

  ‘Whatever you say,’ echoed Victus. ‘Good to have you back.’

  Sesaria leaned down, muttering something in Cosca’s ear. The new captain general recoiled as though stung. ‘Give them over to Duke Orso? Absolutely not! Today is a happy day! A joyous occasion for one and all! There’ll be no killing here, not today.’ He wafted a hand at her as though he was shooing a cat out of the kitchen. ‘You can go. Better not come back tomorrow, though. We might not be so joyous, then.’

  Monza took a step towards him, a curse half-out of her mouth. There was a rattling of metal as the assorted captains began to draw their weapons. Friendly blocked her path, arms coming uncrossed, hands dropping to his sides, expressionless face turned towards her. She stopped still. ‘I need to kill Orso!’

  ‘And if you manage it, your brother will live again, yes?’ Cosca cocked his head to one side. ‘You’ll get your hand back? No?’

  She was cold all over, skin prickling. ‘He deserves what’s coming!’

  ‘Ah, but most of us do. All of us will get it regardless. How many others will you suck into your little vortex of slaughter in the meantime?’

  ‘For Benna—’

  ‘No. For you. I know you, don’t forget. I’ve stood where you stand now, beaten, betrayed, disgraced, and come out the other side. As long as you have men to kill you are still Monzcarro Murcatto, the great and fearsome! Without that, what are you?’ Cosca’s lip curled. ‘A lonely cripple with a bloody past.’

  The words were strangled in her throat. ‘Please, Cosca, you have to—’

  ‘I don’t have to do a thing. We’re even, remember? More than even, say I. Out of my sight, snake, before I pack you off back to Duke Orso in a jar. You need a job, Northman?’