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

by Joe Abercrombie

  Shivers’ good eye crept across to Monza, and for a moment she was sure he’d say yes. Then he slowly shook his head. ‘I’ll stick with the chief I’ve got.’

  ‘Loyalty, eh?’ Cosca snorted. ‘Be careful with that nonsense, it can get you killed!’ A scattering of laughter. ‘The Thousand Swords is no place for loyalty, eh, boys? We’ll have none of that childishness here!’ More laughter, a score or more hard grins all aimed at Monza.

  She felt dizzy. The tent seemed too bright and too dark at once. Her nose caught a waft of something – sweaty bodies, or strong drink, or stinking cooking, or a latrine pit too close to the headquarters, and her stomach turned over, set her mouth to watering. A smoke, oh please, a smoke. She turned on her heel, somewhat unsteadily, shoved her way between a couple of chuckling men and through the flap, out of the tent and into the bright morning.

  Outside it was far worse. Sunlight stabbed at her. Faces, dozens of them, blurred together into a mass of eyes, all fixed on her. A jury of scum. She tried to look ahead, always ahead, but she couldn’t stop her lids from flickering. She tried to walk in the old way, head back, but her knees were trembling so hard she was sure they must be able to hear them slapping against the insides of her trousers. It was as if she’d been putting off the fear, the weakness, the pain. Putting it off, storing it up, and now it was breaking on her in one great wave, sweeping her under, helpless. Her skin was icy with cold sweat. Her hand was aching all the way to her neck. They saw what she really was. Saw she’d lost. A lonely cripple with a bloody past, just like Cosca said. Her guts shifted and she gagged, an acid tickle at the back of her throat. The world lurched.

  Hate only keeps you standing so long.

  ‘Can’t,’ she whispered. ‘Can’t.’ She didn’t care what happened, as long as she could stop. Her leg buckled and she started to fall, felt Shivers grab hold of her arm and drag her up.

  ‘Walk,’ he hissed in her ear.

  ‘Can’t—’

  His fist dug hard into her armpit, and the pain stopped the world spinning for a moment. ‘Fucking walk, or we’re finished.’

  Enough strength, with Shivers’ help, to make it to the horses. Enough to put a boot in a stirrup. Enough, with an aching groan, to get herself into the saddle, pull her horse around and get it facing the right way. As they rode from the camp she could hardly see. The great captain general, Duke Orso’s would-be nemesis, sagging in her saddle like dead meat.

  You make yourself too hard, you make yourself brittle too. Crack once, crack all to pieces.

  VI

  OSPRIA

  ‘I like a look of agony, because I know it’s true’

  Emily Dickinson

  It seemed a little gold could spare a lot of blood.

  Musselia could not be captured without an indefinite siege, this was well known. It had once been a great fortress of the New Empire, and its inhabitants placed great pride in their ancient walls. Too much pride in walls, perhaps, and not enough gold in the pockets of their defenders. It was for a sum almost disappointing that Benna arranged for a small side gate to be left unlocked.

  Even before Faithful and his men had taken possession of the defences, and long before the rest of the Thousand Swords spilled out into the city to begin the sack, Benna was leading Monza through the darkened streets. Him leading her was unusual enough in itself.

  ‘Why did you want to be at the front?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To get our money back. Plus interest.’

  Monza frowned as she hurried after him. Her brother’s surprises tended always to have a sting in them. Through a narrow archway in a narrow street. A cobbled courtyard inside, lit by two flickering torches. A Kantic man in simple travelling clothes stood beside a canvas-covered cart, horse hitched and ready. Monza did not know him, but he knew Benna, coming forwards, hands out, his smile gleaming in the darkness.

  ‘Benna, Benna. It is good to see you!’ They embraced like old comrades.

  ‘And you, my friend. This is my sister, Monzcarro.’

  The man bowed to her. ‘The famous and fearsome. An honour.’

  ‘Somenu Hermon,’ said Benna, smiling wide. ‘Greatest merchant of Musselia.’

  ‘No more than a humble trader, like any other. There are only a few last . . . things . . . to move. My wife and children have already left.’

  ‘Good. That makes this much easier.’

  Monza frowned at her brother. ‘What’s going—’

  Benna snatched her dagger from her belt and stabbed Hermon overhand in his face. It happened so fast that the merchant was still smiling as he fell. Monza drew her sword on an instinct, staring into the shadows around the courtyard, out into the street, but all was quiet.

  ‘What the hell have you done?’ she snarled at him. He was up on the cart, ripping back the canvas, a mad, eager look on his face. He fumbled open the lid of a box underneath, delved inside and let coins slowly drop with the jingling rattle of falling money.

  Gold.

  She hopped up beside him. More gold than she had ever seen at once. With a sickly widening of her eyes she realised there were more boxes. She pushed the canvas back with trembling hands. Many more.

  ‘We’re rich!’ squeaked Benna. ‘We’re rich!’

  ‘We were already rich.’ She was looking down at her knife stuck through Hermon’s eye, blood black in the lamplight. ‘Did you have to kill him?’

  He stared at her as if she had gone mad. ‘Rob him and leave him alive? He would have told people we had the money. This way we’re safe.’

  ‘Safe? This much gold is the opposite of safe, Benna!’

  He frowned, as though he was hurt by her. ‘I thought you’d be pleased. You of all people, who slaved in the dirt for nothing.’ As though he was disappointed in her. ‘This is for us. For us, do you understand?’ As though he was disgusted with her. ‘Mercy and cowardice are the same, Monza! I thought you knew that.’

  What could she do? Unstab Hermon’s face?

  It seemed a little gold could cost a lot of blood.

  His Plan of Attack

  The southernmost range of the Urval Mountains, the spine of Styria, all shadowy swales and dramatic peaks bathed in golden evening light, marched boldly southwards, ending at the great rock into which Ospria itself was carved. Between the city and the hill on which the headquarters of the Thousand Swords had been pitched, the deep and verdant valley was patched with wild flowers in a hundred colours. The Sulva wound through its bottom and away towards the distant sea, touched by the setting sun and turned the orange of molten iron.

  Birds twittered in the olive trees of an ancient grove, grasshoppers chirped in the waving long grass, the wind kissed at Cosca’s face and made the feather on his hat, held gently in one hand, heroically thrash and flutter. Vineyards were planted on the slopes to the north of the city, green rows of vines on the dusty hillsides that drew Cosca’s eye and made his mouth water with an almost painful longing. The best vintages in the Circle of the World were trampled out on that very ground . . .

  ‘Sweet mercy, a drink,’ he mouthed.

  ‘Beautiful,’ breathed Prince Foscar.

  ‘You never before looked upon fair Ospria, your Highness?’

  ‘I had heard stories, but . . .’

  ‘Breathtaking, isn’t she?’ The city was built upon four huge shelves cut into the cream-coloured rock of the steep hillside, each one surrounded by its own smooth wall, crammed with lofty buildings, stuffed with a tangle of roofs, domes, turrets. The ancient Imperial aqueduct curved gracefully down from the mountains to meet its outermost rampart, fifty arches or more, the tallest of them twenty times the height of a man. The citadel clung impossibly to the highest crag, four great towers picked out against the darkening azure sky. The lamps were being lit in the windows as the sun sank, the outline of the city dusted with pinprick points of light. ‘There can be no other place quite like this one.’

  A pause. �
��It seems almost a shame to spoil it with fire and sword,’ observed Foscar.

  ‘Almost, your Highness. But this is war, and those are the tools available.’

  Cosca had heard that Count Foscar, now Prince Foscar following his brother’s mishap in a famous Sipanese brothel, was a boyish, callow, weaknerved youth, and was therefore pleasantly impressed by what he had seen thus far. The lad was fresh-faced, true, but every man begins young, and he seemed thoughtful rather than weak, sober rather than bloodless, polite rather than limp. A young man very much like Cosca himself had been at that age. Only the absolute reverse in every particular, of course.

  ‘They appear to be most powerful fortifications . . .’ murmured the prince, scanning the towering walls of the city with his eyeglass.

  ‘Oh, indeed. Ospria was the furthest outpost of the New Empire, built as a bastion to hold back the restless Baolish hordes. Parts of the walls have been standing firm against the savage for more than five hundred years.’

  ‘Then will Duke Rogont not simply retreat behind them? He does seem prone to avoid battle whenever possible . . .’

  ‘He’ll give battle, your Highness,’ said Andiche.

  ‘He must,’ rumbled Sesaria, ‘or we’ll just camp in his pretty valley and starve him out.’

  ‘We outnumber him three to one or more,’ whined Victus.

  Cosca could not but agree. ‘Walls are only useful if one expects help, and no help is coming to the League of Eight now. He must fight. He will fight. He is desperate.’ If there was one thing he understood, it was desperation.

  ‘I must confess I have some . . . concerns.’ Foscar nervously cleared his throat. ‘I understood that you always hated my father with a passion.’

  ‘Passion. Hah.’ Cosca dismissed it with a wave. ‘As a young man I let my passion lead me by the nose, but I have learned numerous harsh lessons in favour of a cool head. I and your father have had our disagreements but I am, above all else, a mercenary. To let my personal feelings reduce the weight of my purse would be an act of criminal unprofessionalism.’

  ‘Hear, hear.’ Victus wore an unsightly leer. Even more so than usual.

  ‘Why, my own three closest captains,’ and Cosca took them in with a theatrical sweep of his hat, ‘betrayed me utterly and put Murcatto in my chair. They fucked me to their balls, as they say in Sipani. To their balls, your Highness. If I had a taste for vengeance, it would be on these three heaps of human shit.’ Then Cosca chuckled, and they chuckled, and the vaguely uncomfortable atmosphere was swiftly dispelled. ‘But we can all be useful to each other, and so I have forgiven them everything, and your father too. Vengeance brings no man a brighter tomorrow, and when placed on the scales of life, does not outweigh a single . . . scale. You need not worry on that score, Prince Foscar, I am all business. Bought and paid for, and entirely your man.’

  ‘You are generosity itself, General Cosca.’

  ‘I am avarice itself, which is not quite the same, but will do in a pinch. Now, perhaps, for dinner. Would any of you gentlemen care for a drink? We came by a crate of a very fine vintage in a manor house upstream only yesterday, and—’

  ‘It might be best if we were to discuss our strategy before the levity begins.’ Colonel Rigrat’s shrill voice was as a file applied directly to Cosca’s sensitive back teeth. He was a sharp-faced, sharp-voiced, sharply self-satisfied man in his late thirties and a well-pressed uniform, previously General Ganmark’s second in command and now Foscar’s. Presumably the military brains behind the Talinese operation, such as they were. ‘Now, while everyone still has their wits close to hand.’

  ‘Believe me, young man,’ though he was neither young, nor yet a man as far as Cosca was concerned, ‘my wits and I are not easily parted. You have a plan in mind?’

  ‘I do!’ Rigrat produced his baton with a flourish. Friendly loomed out from under the nearest olive tree, hands moving to his weapons. Cosca sent him melting back into the shadows with the faintest smile and shake of his head. No one else even noticed.

  Cosca had been a soldier all his life, of a kind, and had yet to understand what the purpose of a baton truly was. You could not kill a man with one, or even look like you might. You could not hammer in a tent peg, cook a good side of meat or even pawn it for anything worthwhile. Perhaps they were intended for scratching those hard-to-reach places in the small of the back? Or stimulating the anus? Or perhaps simply for marking a man out as a fool? For that purpose, he reflected as Rigrat pointed self-importantly towards the river with his baton, they served admirably.

  ‘There are two fords across the Sulva! Upper . . . and lower! The lower is much the wider and more reliable crossing.’ The colonel indicated the point where the dirty stripe of the Imperial road met the river, glimmering water flaring out in the gently sloping bottom of the valley. ‘But the upper, perhaps a mile upstream, should also be usable at this time of year.’

  ‘Two fords, you say?’ It was a fact well known there were two damn fords. Cosca himself had crossed in glory by one when he came into Ospria to be toasted by Grand Duchess Sefeline and her subjects, and fled by another just after the bitch had tried to poison him. Cosca slid his battered flask from his jacket pocket. The one that Morveer had flung at him back in Sipani. He unscrewed the cap.

  Rigrat gave him a sharp glance. ‘I thought we agreed that we would drink once we had discussed strategy.’

  ‘You agreed. I just stood here.’ Cosca closed his eyes, took a deep breath, tilted up the flask and took a long swallow, then another, felt the coolness fill his mouth, wash at his dry throat. A drink, a drink, a drink. He gave a happy sigh. ‘Nothing like a drink of an evening.’

  ‘May I continue?’ hissed Rigrat, riddled with impatience.

  ‘Of course, my boy, take your time.’

  ‘The day after tomorrow, at dawn, you will lead the Thousand Swords across the lower ford—’

  ‘Lead? From the front, do you mean?’

  ‘Where else would a commander lead from?’

  Cosca exchanged a baffled glance with Andiche. ‘Anywhere else. Have you ever been at the front of a battle? The chances of being killed there really are very high.’

  ‘Extremely high,’ said Victus.

  Rigrat ground his teeth. ‘Lead from what position pleases you, but the Thousand Swords will cross the lower ford, supported by our allies from Etrisani and Cesale. Duke Rogont will have no choice but to engage you with all his power, hoping to crush your forces while you are still crossing the river. Once he is committed, our Talinese regulars will break from hiding and cross the upper ford. We will take the enemy in the flank, and—’ He snapped his baton into his waiting palm with a smart crack.

  ‘You’ll hit them with a stick?’

  Rigrat was not amused. Cosca had to wonder whether he ever had been. ‘With steel, sir, with steel! We will rout them utterly and put them to flight, and thus put an end to the troublesome League of Eight!’

  There was a long pause. Cosca frowned at Andiche, and Andiche frowned back. Sesaria and Victus shook their heads at one another. Rigrat tapped his baton impatiently against his leg. Prince Foscar cleared his throat once more, nervously pushed his chin forwards. ‘Your opinion, General Cosca?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Cosca gloomily shook his head, eyeing the sparkling river with the weightiest of frowns. ‘Hmm. Hmm. Hmmmm.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Victus tapped his pursed lips with one finger.

  ‘Humph.’ Andiche puffed out his cheeks.

  ‘Hrrrrrm.’ Sesaria’s unconvinced voice throbbed at a deeper pitch.

  Cosca removed his hat, scratched his head and placed it back with a flick at the feather. ‘Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm—’

  ‘Are we to take it that you disapprove?’asked Foscar.

  ‘I somehow let slip my misgivings? Then I cannot in good conscience suppress them. I am not convinced that the Thousand Swords are well suited to the task you have assigned.’

  ‘Not convinced,’ said Andiche.

  ‘Not well suited,’ s
aid Victus.

  Sesaria was a silent mountain of reluctance.

  ‘Have you not been well paid for your services?’ demanded Rigrat.

  Cosca chuckled. ‘Of course, and the Thousand Swords will fight, you may depend on that!’

  ‘They will fight, every man!’ asserted Andiche.

  ‘Like devils!’ added Victus.

  ‘But it is how they are to be made to fight best that concerns me as their captain general. They have lost two leaders in a brief space.’ He hung his head as if he regretted the fact, and had in no way benefited hugely himself.

  ‘Murcatto, then Faithful.’ Sesaria sighed as if he had not been one of the prime agents in the changes of command.

  ‘They have been relegated to support duties.’

  ‘Scouting,’ lamented Andiche.

  ‘Clearing the flanks,’ growled Victus.

  ‘Their morale is at a terribly low ebb. They have been paid, but money is never the best motivation for a man to risk his life.’ Especially a mercenary, it needed hardly to be said. ‘To throw them into a pitched mêlée against a stubborn and desperate enemy, toe to toe . . . I’m not saying they might break, but . . . well . . .’ Cosca winced, scratching slowly at his neck. ‘They might break.’

  ‘I hope this is not an example of your notorious reluctance to fight,’ sneered Rigrat.

  ‘Reluctance . . . to fight? Ask anyone, I am a tiger!’ Victus snorted snot down his chin but Cosca ignored him. ‘This is a question of picking the right tool for the task. One does not employ a rapier to cut down a stubborn tree. One employs an axe. Unless one is a complete arse.’ The young colonel opened his mouth to retort but Cosca spoke smoothly over him. ‘The plan is sound, in outline. As one military man to another I congratulate you upon it unreservedly.’ Rigrat paused, unbalanced, not sure if he was being taken for a fool or not, though he most obviously was.