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

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘Don’t matter exactly how, does it?’ snapped Craw.

  ‘I guess not. Mud is mud. He had the shadow over him since his brother died, though. You could see it on him. I could, anyway. The boy wasn’t going to last.’

  Some consolation, that. ‘The rest?’

  ‘Jolly Yon got a nick or two. Brack’s leg’s still bothering him, though he won’t say so. Other than that, they’re all good. Good as before, leastways. Wonderful thought we could try and bury Agrick next to his brother.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Let’s get a hole dug, then, shall we, ’fore someone else digs there?’

  Craw took a long breath as he looked around them. ‘If you can find a spare shovel. I’ll come say the words.’ A fitting end to the day that’d be. Before he got more’n a couple of steps, though, he found Caul Shivers in his way.

  ‘Dow wants you,’ he said, and with his whisper, and his scar, and his careless frown, he might’ve been the Great Leveller his self.

  ‘Right.’ Craw fought the urge to start chewing his nails again. ‘Tell ’em I’ll be back soon. I’ll be back soon, will I?’

  Shivers shrugged.

  Craw might not much have cared for what they’d done with the place, but Black Dow looked happy enough with the day’s work, leaning against one of the stones with a mostly eaten apple in one hand. ‘Craw, you old bastard!’ As he turned, Craw saw one side of his grinning face was all dashed and speckled with blood. ‘Where the hell did you get to?’

  ‘All honesty, limping along at the back.’ Splitfoot and a few of his Carls were scattered about, swords drawn and eyes peeled. A lot of bare steel, considering they’d won a victory.

  ‘Thought maybe you got yourself killed,’ said Dow.

  Craw winced as he worked his burning foot around, thinking there was still time. ‘I wish I could run fast enough to get myself killed. I’ll stand wherever you tell me, but this charging business is a young man’s game.’

  ‘I managed to keep up.’

  ‘Don’t all have your taste for blood, Chief.’

  ‘It’s been the making of me. Don’t reckon I’ve done a better day’s work than this, though.’ Dow put a hand on Craw’s shoulder and drew him out between the stones, out to the edge of the hill where they could get a look south across the valley. The very spot Craw had stood when they first saw the Union come. Things had changed a lot in a few hours.

  The tumbledown wall bristled with weapons, shining dully in the fading light. Men on the slope below as well, digging pits, whittling stakes, making the Heroes a fortress. Below them the south side of the hill was littered with bodies, all the way down to the orchards. Scavengers flitted from one to another, first men then crows, feathered undertakers croaking a happy chorus. Thralls were starting to drag the stripped shapes into heaps for burying. Strange constructions in which one corpse couldn’t be told from another. When a man dies in peacetime it’s all tears and processions, friends and neighbours offering each other comfort. A man dies in war and he’s lucky to get enough mud on top to stop him stinking.

  Dow crooked a finger. ‘Shivers.’

  ‘Chief.’

  ‘I hear tell they got a choice prisoner down in Osrung. A Union officer or some such. Why don’t you bring him up here, see if we can prick anything out of him worth hearing?’

  Shivers’ eye twinkled orange with the setting sun each time he nodded. ‘Right.’ And he strode off, stepping over corpses as careless as autumn leaves.

  Dow frowned after him. ‘Some men you have to keep busy, eh, Craw?’

  ‘I guess.’ Wondering what the hell Dow planned to keep him busy with.

  ‘Quite the day’s work.’ He tossed his apple core away and patted his stomach like a man who’d had the best meal of his life and a few hundred dead men were the leftovers.

  ‘Aye,’ muttered Craw. Probably he should’ve been celebrating himself. Doing a little jig. A one-legged one, anyway. Singing and clashing ale cups and all the rest. But he just felt sore. Sore and he wanted to go to sleep, and wake up in that house of his by the water, and never see another battlefield. Then he wouldn’t have to say the lies over Agrick’s mud.

  ‘Pushed ’em back to the river. All across the line.’ Dow waved at the valley, blood dried black into the skin around his fingernails. ‘Reachey got over the fence and kicked the Union out of Osrung. Scale got a hold o’ the Old Bridge. Golden drove this lot clean across the shallows. He got stopped there but … I’d worry if I started getting everything my way.’ Black Dow winked at him, and Craw wondered if he was about to get stabbed in the back. ‘Guess folk won’t be carping that I ain’t the fighter they thought I was, eh?’

  ‘Guess not.’ As if that was all that mattered. ‘Shivers said you needed me for something.’

  ‘Can’t a pair of old fighters have a chat after a battle?’

  That gave Craw a much bigger surprise than the blade in the back might’ve. ‘I reckon they can. Just didn’t reckon you’d be one of ’em.’

  Dow seemed to think about that for a moment. ‘Neither did I. Guess we’re both surprised.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Craw, no idea what else to say.

  ‘We can let the Union come to us tomorrow,’ said Dow. ‘Spare your old legs.’

  ‘You reckon they’ll come on? After this?’

  Dow’s grin was wider’n ever. ‘We gave Jalenhorm a hell of a beating, but half his men never even got across the river. And that’s only one division out of three.’ He pointed over towards Adwein, lights starting to twinkle in the dusk, bright dots marking the path of the road as marching men got torches lit. ‘And Mitterick’s just bringing his men up over there. Fresh and ready. Meed on the other side, I hear.’ And his finger moved over to the left, towards the Ollensand Road. Craw picked out lights there too, further back, his heart sinking all the time. ‘There’s still heaps more work here, don’t worry about that.’ Dow leaned close, fingers squeezing at Craw’s shoulder. ‘We’re just getting started.’

  The Defeated

  Your August Majesty,

  I regret to inform you that today your army and interests in the North suffered a most serious reverse. The foremost elements of General Jalenhorm’s division reached the town of Osrung this morning and took up a powerful position on a hill surmounted by a ring of ancient stones called the Heroes. Reinforcements were held up on the bad roads, however, and before they could move across the river the Northmen attacked in great numbers. Although they fought with the greatest courage, the Sixth and Rostod Regiments were overwhelmed. The standard of the Sixth was lost. Casualties may well be close to a thousand dead, perhaps the same number of wounded, and many more in the hands of the enemy.

  It was only by a valiant action of your Majesty’s First Cavalry that further disaster was averted. The Northmen are now well entrenched around the Heroes. One can see the lights of their campfires on the slopes. One can almost hear their singing when the wind shifts northerly. But we yet hold the ground south of the river, and the divisions of General Mitterick on the western flank, and Lord Governor Meed on the eastern, have begun to arrive and are preparing to attack at first light.

  Tomorrow, the Northmen will not be singing.

  I remain your Majesty’s most faithful and unworthy servant,

  Bremer dan Gorst, Royal Observer of the Northern War

  The gathering darkness was full of shouts, clanks and squeals, sharp with the tang of woodsmoke, the even sharper sting of defeat. Fires rustled in the wind and torches sputtered in pale hands, illuminating faces haggard from a day of marching, waiting, worrying. And perhaps, in a few cases, even fighting.

  The road up from Uffrith was an endless parade of overloaded wagons, mounted officers, marching men. Mitterick’s division grinding through, seeing the wounded and the beaten, catching the contagion of fear before they even caught a whiff of the enemy. Things that might have been just objects before the rout on the Heroes had assumed a crushing significance. A dead mule, lamplight shining in its
goggling eyes. A cart with a broken axle tipped off the road and stripped down for firewood. An abandoned tent, blown from its moorings, the yellow sun of the Union stitched into the trampled canvas. All become emblems of doom.

  Fear had been a rarity over the past few months, as Gorst took his morning runs through the camps of one regiment or another. Boredom, exhaustion, hunger, illness, hopelessness and homesickness, all commonplace. But not fear of the enemy. Now it was everywhere, and the stink of it only grew stronger as the clouds rolled steadily in and the sun sank below the fells.

  If victory makes men brave, defeat renders them cowards.

  Progress through the village of Adwein had been entirely stalled by several enormous wagons, each drawn by a team of eight horses. An officer was bellowing red-faced at an old man huddled on the seat of the foremost one.

  ‘I am Saurizin, Adeptus Chemical of the University of Adua!’ he shouted back, waving a document smudged by the first spots of rain. ‘This equipment must be allowed through, by order of Lord Bayaz!’

  Gorst left them arguing, strode past a quartermaster hammering on doors, searching for billets. A Northern woman stood in the street with three children pressed against her legs, staring at a handful of coins as the drizzle grew heavier. Kicked out of their shack to make way for some sneering lieutenant, who’ll be elbowed off to make way for some preening captain, who’ll be shuffled on to make way for some bloated major. Where will this woman and her children be by then? Will they slumber peacefully in my tent while I doss heroically on the damp sod outside? I need only reach out my hand … Instead he put his head down and trudged by them in silence.

  Most of the village’s mean buildings were already crowded with wounded, the less serious cases spilling out onto the doorsteps. They looked up at him, pain-twisted, dirt-smeared or bandaged faces slack, and Gorst looked back in silence. My skills are for making casualties, not comforting them. But he pulled the stopper from his canteen and offered it out, and each in turn they took a mouthful until it was empty. Apart from one who gripped his hand for a moment they did not thank him and he did not care.

  A surgeon in a smeared apron appeared at a doorway, blowing out a long sigh. ‘General Jalenhorm?’ Gorst asked. He was pointed down a rutted side-track and after a few strides heard the voice. That same voice he’d heard blathering orders for the last few days. Its tone was different now.

  ‘Lay them down here, lay them here! Clear a space! You, bring bandages!’ Jalenhorm was kneeling in the mud, clasping the hand of a man on a stretcher. He seemed to have shaken off his huge staff, finally, if he had not left them dead on the hill. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll have the best of care. You’re a hero. You’re all heroes!’ His knees squelched into the muck beside the next man. ‘You did everything that could have been asked. Mine was the fault, my friends, mine were the mistakes.’ He squeezed the casualty’s shoulder then stood, slowly, staring down. ‘Mine is the guilt.’

  Defeat, it seems, brings out the best in some men.

  ‘General Jalenhorm.’

  He looked up, face tipping into the torchlight, looking suddenly very old for a man so young. ‘Colonel Gorst, how are you—’

  ‘Marshal Kroy is here.’ The general visibly deflated, like a pillow with half the stuffing pulled out.

  ‘Of course he is.’ He straightened his dirt-smudged jacket, twisted his sword-belt into the correct position. ‘How do I look?’ Gorst opened his mouth to speak, but Jalenhorm cut him off. ‘Don’t bother to humour me. I look defeated.’ True. ‘Please don’t deny it.’ I didn’t. ‘That’s what I am.’ It is.

  Gorst led the way back down the crowded alleys, through the steam of the army’s kitchens and the glow from the stalls of enterprising pedlars, hoping for silence. He was disappointed. As so very often.

  ‘Colonel Gorst, I need to thank you. That charge of yours saved my division.’

  Perhaps it will also have saved my career. Your division can all drown if I can be the king’s First Guard again. ‘My motives were not selfless.’

  ‘Whose are? It’s the results that go down in history. Our reasons are written in smoke. And the fact is I nearly destroyed my division. My division.’ Jalenhorm snorted bitterly. ‘The one the king had most foolishly lent me. I tried to turn it down, you know.’ It seems you did not try hard enough. ‘But you know the king.’ All too well. ‘He has romantic notions about his old friends.’ He has romantic notions about everything. ‘No doubt I will be laughed at when I return home. Humiliated. Shunned.’ Welcome to my life. ‘Probably I deserve it.’ Probably you do. I don’t.

  And yet, as Gorst frowned sideways at Jalenhorm’s hanging head, hair plastered to his skull, a drop of rain clinging to the point of his nose, as thorough a picture of dejection as he could find without a mirror, he was swept up by a surprising wave of sympathy.

  He found he had put his hand on the general’s shoulder. ‘You did what you could,’ he said. ‘You should not blame yourself.’ If my experience is anything to go by, there will soon be legions of self-righteous scum queuing up to do it for you. ‘You must not blame yourself.’

  ‘Who should I blame, then?’ Jalenhorm whispered into the rain. ‘Who?’

  If Lord Marshal Kroy was infected by fear he showed no symptoms, and nor did anyone else in range of his iron frown. Within his sight soldiers marched in perfect step, officers spoke clearly but did not shout, and the wounded bit down on their howls and remained stoically silent. Within a circle perhaps fifty strides across, with Kroy bolt upright in his saddle at its centre, there was no lag in morale, there was no lapse in discipline, and there had certainly been no defeat.

  Jalenhorm’s bearing noticeably stiffened as he strode up and gave a rigid salute. ‘Lord Marshal Kroy.’

  ‘General Jalenhorm.’ The marshal glared down from on high. ‘I understand there was an engagement.’

  ‘There was. The Northmen came in very great numbers. Very great, and very quickly. A well-coordinated assault. They made a feint for Osrung and I sent a regiment to reinforce the town. I went to find more but, by that time … it was too late to do anything but try to keep them on the far side of the river. Too late to—’

  ‘The condition of your division, General.’

  Jalenhorm paused. In one sense the condition of his division was painfully obvious. ‘Two of my five regiments of foot were held up on the bad roads and have yet to see action. The Thirteenth were holding Osrung and withdrew in good order when the Northmen breached the gate. Some casualties.’ Jalenhorm recited the butcher’s bill in a dull monotone. ‘The majority of the Rostod Regiment, some nine companies, I believe, were caught in the open and routed. The Sixth were holding the hill when the Northmen attacked. They were comprehensively broken. Ridden down in the fields. The Sixth has …’ Jalenhorm’s mouth twitched silently. ‘Ceased to exist.’

  ‘Colonel Wetterlant?’

  ‘Presumed among the dead on the far side of the river. There are very many dead there. Many wounded we cannot reach. You can hear them crying for water. They always want water, for some reason.’ Jalenhorm gave a horrifically inappropriate snort of nervous laughter. ‘I’d have thought they might want … spirits, or something.’

  Kroy kept his silence. Gorst was unlikely to break it.

  Jalenhorm droned on, as if he could not bear the quiet. ‘One regiment of cavalry took losses near the Old Bridge and withdrew, but held the south bank. The First is split in two. One battalion made their way through the marshes to a position in the woods on our left flank.’

  ‘That could be useful. The other?’

  ‘Fought valiantly alongside Colonel Gorst in the shallows, and turned back the enemy at great cost on both sides. Our one truly successful action of the day.’

  Kroy turned his frown on Gorst. ‘More heroics, eh, Colonel?’

  Only the bare minimum of action necessary to prevent disaster turning into catastrophe. ‘Some action, sir. No heroics.’

  ‘I was mindful, Lord Marshal,’ cut in Jal
enhorm, ‘of the urgency. You wrote to me of some urgency.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I was mindful that the king wished for quick results. And so I seized the chance to get at the enemy. Seized it … much too ardently. I made a terrible mistake. A most terrible mistake, and I alone bear the full responsibility.’

  ‘No.’ Kroy gave a heavy sigh. ‘You share it with me. And with others. The roads. The nature of the battlefield. The undue haste.’

  ‘Nonetheless, I have failed.’ Jalenhorm drew his sword and offered it up. ‘I humbly request that I be removed from command.’

  ‘The king would not hear of it. Neither will I.’

  Jalenhorm’s sword drooped, the point scraping against the mud. ‘Of course, Lord Marshal. I should have scouted the trees more thoroughly—’

  ‘You should have. But your orders were to push north and find the enemy.’ Kroy looked slowly around the torchlit chaos of the village. ‘You found the enemy. This is a war. Mistakes happen, and when they do … the stakes are high. But we are not finished. We have barely even begun. You will spend tonight and tomorrow behind the shallows where Colonel Gorst fought his unheroic action this afternoon. Regrouping in the centre, re-equipping your division, looking to the welfare of the wounded, restoring morale and,’ glowering balefully around at the decidedly unmilitary state of the place, ‘imposing discipline.’

  ‘Yes, Lord Marshal.’

  ‘I will be making my headquarters on the slopes of Black Fell, where there should be a good view of the battlefield tomorrow. Defeat is always painful, but I have a feeling you will get another chance to be involved in this particular battle.’

  Jalenhorm drew himself up, something of his old snap returning at being given a straightforward goal. ‘My division will be ready for action the day after tomorrow, you may depend upon it, Lord Marshal!’