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

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘Good.’ And Kroy rode off, his indomitable aura fading into the night along with his staff. Jalenhorm stood frozen in a parting salute as the marshal clattered away, but Gorst looked back, when he had made it a few steps further down the road.

  The general still stood beside the track, alone, hunched over as the rain grew heavier, white streaks through the fizzing torchlight.

  Fair Treatment

  At a pace no faster’n Flood’s limping, which weren’t that fast at all, they made their way down the road towards Osrung, in the flitting rain. They’d only the light of Reft’s one guttering torch to see by, which showed just a few strides of rutted mud ahead, some flattened crops on either side, the scared little-boy faces of Brait and Colving and the clueless gawp of Stodder. All staring off towards the town, a cluster of lights up ahead in the black country, touching the weighty clouds above with the faintest glow. All holding tight to what passed for weapons in their little crew of beggars. As if they were going to be fighting now. Today’s fighting was all long done with, and they’d missed it.

  ‘Why the hell were we left at the back?’ grumbled Beck.

  ‘Because of my dodgy leg and your lack o’ practice, fool,’ snapped Flood over his shoulder.

  ‘How we going to get practice left at the back?’

  ‘You’ll get practice at not getting killed, which is a damn fine thing to have plenty o’ practice at, if you’re asking me.’

  Beck hadn’t been asking. His respect for Flood was waning with every mile they marched together. All the old prick seemed to care about was keeping the lads he led out of the fight and set to idiot’s tasks like digging, and carrying, and lighting fires. That and keeping his leg warm. If Beck had wanted to do women’s work he could’ve stayed on the farm and spared his self a few nights out in the wind. He’d come to fight, and win a name, and do business fit for the singing of. He was about to say so too, when Brait tugged at his sleeve, pointing up ahead.

  ‘There’s someone there!’ he squeaked. Beck saw shapes moving in the dark, felt a stab of nerves, hand fumbling for his sword. The torchlight fell across three somethings hanging from a tree by chains. All blackened up by fire, branch creaking gently as they turned.

  ‘Deserters,’ said Flood, hardly breaking his limping stride. ‘Hanged and burned.’

  Beck stared at ’em as he passed. Didn’t hardly look like men at all, just charred wood. The one in the middle might’ve had a sign hanging round his neck, but it was all scorched off and Beck couldn’t read anyway.

  ‘Why burn ’em?’ asked Stodder.

  ‘’Cause Black Dow got a taste for the smell o’ men cooking long time ago and it hasn’t worn off.’

  ‘It’s a warning,’ Reft whispered.

  ‘Warning what?’

  ‘Don’t desert,’ said Flood.

  ‘Y’idiot,’ added Beck, though mostly ’cause looking at those strange man-shaped ashes was making him all kinds of jumpy. ‘No better’n a coward deserves, if you’re asking—’ Another squeak, Colving this time, and Beck went for his sword again.

  ‘Just townsfolk.’ Reft lifted his torch higher and picked out a handful of worried faces.

  ‘We ain’t got nothing!’ An old man at the front, waving bony hands. ‘We ain’t got nothing!’

  ‘We don’t want nothing.’ Flood jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Go your ways.’

  They trudged on past. Mostly old men, a few women too, a couple of children. Children even younger than Brait, which meant barely talking yet. They were all weighed down by packs and gear, one or two pushing creaking barrows of junk. Bald furs and old tools and cookpots. Just like the stuff might’ve come out of Beck’s mother’s house.

  ‘Clearing out,’ piped Colving.

  ‘They know what’s coming,’ said Reft.

  Osrung slunk out of the night, a fence of mossy logs whittled to points, a high stone tower looming up by the empty gateway with lights at slitted windows. Sullen men with spears kept watch, eyes narrowed against the rain. Some young lads were digging a big pit, working away in the light of a few guttering torches on poles, all streaked with mud in the drizzle.

  ‘Shit,’ whispered Colving.

  ‘By the dead,’ squeaked Brait.

  ‘They’s the dead all right.’ Stodder, his fat lip dangling.

  Beck found he’d nothing to say. What he’d taken without thinking for some pile of pale clay or something was actually a pile of corpses. He’d seen Gelda from up the valley laid out waiting to be buried after he drowned in the river and not thought much about it, counted himself hard-blooded, but this was different. They looked all strange, stripped naked and thrown together, face up and face down, slippery with the rain. Men, these, he had to tell himself, and the thought made him dizzy. He could see faces in the mess, or bits of faces. Hands, arms, feet, mixed up like they was all one monstrous creature. He didn’t want to guess at how many were there. He saw a leg sticking out, a wound in the thigh yawning black like a big mouth. Didn’t look real. One of the lads doing the digging stopped a moment, shovel clutched in white hands as they trudged past. His mouth was all twisted like he was about to cry.

  ‘Come on,’ snapped Flood, leading them in through the archway, broken doors leaning against the fence inside. A great tree trunk lay near, branches hacked off to easily held lengths, the heavy end filed to a point and capped with rough-forged black iron, covered with shiny scratches.

  ‘You reckon that was the ram?’ whispered Colving.

  ‘I reckon,’ said Reft.

  The town felt strange. Edgy. Some houses were shut up tight, others had windows and doorways wide and full of darkness. A set of bearded men sat in front of one, mean-eyed, passing round a flask. Some children hid in an alley mouth, eyes gleaming in the shadows as the torch passed ’em by. Odd sounds came from everywhere. Crashing and tinkling. Thumping and shouting. Groups of men darted between the buildings, torches in hands, blades glinting, all moving at a hungry half-jog.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Stodder, in that stodgy-stupid voice of his.

  ‘They’re at a bit of sacking.’

  ‘But … ain’t this our town?’

  Flood shrugged. ‘They fought for it. Some of ’em died for it. They ain’t leaving empty-handed.’

  A Carl with a long moustache sat under dripping eaves with a bottle in his hand, sneering as he watched ’em walk past. Beside him a corpse lay in the doorway, half-in, half-out, the back of its head a glistening mass. Beck couldn’t tell if it was someone who’d lived in the house or someone who’d been fighting in it. Whether it was a man or a woman, even.

  ‘You’re quiet all of a sudden,’ said Reft.

  Beck wanted to think of something sharp, but all he could manage was, ‘Aye.’

  ‘Wait here.’ And Flood limped up to a man in a red cloak, pointing Carls off this way and that. Some figures sat slumped in an alleyway nearby, hands tied, shoulders hunched against the drizzle.

  ‘Prisoners,’ said Reft.

  ‘They don’t look much different than our lot,’ said Colving.

  ‘They ain’t.’ Reft frowned at ’em. ‘Some o’ the Dogman’s boys, I guess.’

  ‘Apart from him,’ said Beck. ‘That’s a Union man.’ He had a bandage round his head and a funny Union jacket, one red sleeve ripped and the skin underneath covered in grazes, the other with some kind of fancy gold thread all around the cuff.

  ‘Right,’ said Flood as he walked back over. ‘You’re going to look to these prisoners while I find out what the work’ll be tomorrow. Just make sure none o’ them, and none o’ you, end up dead!’ he shouted as he made off up the street.

  ‘Looking to prisoners,’ grumbled Beck, some of his bitterness bubbling back as he looked down at their hangdog faces.

  ‘Reckon you deserve better work, do you?’ The one who spoke had a crazy look to him, a big bandage around his belly, stained through brown with some fresh red in the middle, ankles tied as well as wrists. ‘Bunch o’ fucking bo
ys, don’t even have their Names yet!’

  ‘Shut up, Crossfeet,’ grunted one of the other prisoners, not hardly looking up.

  ‘You shut up, y’arsehole!’ Crossfeet gave him a look like he might tear him with his teeth. ‘Whatever happens tonight, the Union’ll be here tomorrow. More o’ those bastards than ants in a hill. The Dogman too, and you know who the Dogman’s got with him?’ He grinned, eyes going huge as he whispered the name. ‘The Bloody-Nine.’ Beck felt his face go hot. The Bloody-Nine had killed his father. Killed him in a duel with his own sword. The one he had sheathed beside him now.

  ‘That’s a lie,’ squeaked Brait, looking scared to his bones even though they had weapons and the prisoners were trussed up tight. ‘Black Dow killed Ninefingers, years ago!’

  Crossfeet kept giving him that crazy grin. ‘We’ll see. Tomorrow, you little bastard. We’ll—’

  ‘Let him alone,’ said Beck.

  ‘Oh aye? And what’s your name?’

  Beck stepped up and booted Crossfeet in the fruits. ‘That’s my name!’ He kept on kicking him as he folded up, all his anger boiling out. ‘That’s my name! That’s my fucking name, you heard it enough?’

  ‘Hate to interrupt.’

  ‘What?’ snarled Beck, spinning round with his fists clenched.

  A big man stood behind him, a half-head taller’n Beck, maybe, fur on his shoulders glistening with the rain. All across one side of his face, the biggest and most hideous scar Beck had ever seen, the eye on that side not an eye at all but a ball of dead metal.

  ‘Name’s Caul Shivers,’ voice a ground-down whisper.

  ‘Aye,’ croaked Beck. He’d heard stories. Everyone had. They said Shivers did tasks for Black Dow too black for his own hands. They said he’d fought at Black Well, and the Cumnur, and Dunbrec, and the High Places, fought beside old Rudd Threetrees, and the Dogman. The Bloody-Nine too. They said he’d gone south across the sea and learned sorcery. That he’d traded his eye willingly for that silver one, and that a witch had made it, and through it he could see what a man was thinking.

  ‘Black Dow sent me.’

  ‘Aye,’ whispered Beck, all his hairs standing up on end.

  ‘To get one o’ these. A Union officer.’

  ‘Reckon that’s this one.’ Colving used his toe to poke at the man with the tattered sleeve and made him grunt.

  ‘If it ain’t Black Dow’s bitch!’ Crossfeet was smiling up, teeth shining red, bandages round him reddened too. ‘Why don’t you bark, eh, Shivers? Bark, you bastard!’ Beck could hardly believe it. None of ’em could. Maybe he knew that wound in his gut was death, and it’d sent him mad.

  ‘Huh.’ Shivers jerked his trousers up so it was easy for him to squat down, boots grinding the dirt as he did it. When he got there he had a knife in his hand. Just a little one, blade no longer’n a man’s finger, glinting red and orange and yellow. ‘You know who I am, then?’

  ‘Caul Shivers, and I ain’t fucking scared of a dog!’

  Shivers raised one brow, the one above his good eye. The one above his metal eye didn’t shift much. ‘Well, ain’t you the hero?’ And he poked Crossfeet in the calf with the blade. Not much weight behind it. Like Beck might’ve poked his brother with a finger to wake him up of a frosty morning. The knife stuck into his leg, silent, and back out, and Crossfeet snarled and wriggled.

  ‘Black Dow’s bitch, am I?’ Shivers poked him in the other leg, knife going deeper into his thigh. ‘It’s true I get some shitty jobs.’ Poked him again, somewhere around his hip. ‘Dog can’t hold a knife, though, can it?’ He didn’t sound angry. Didn’t look angry. Bored, almost. ‘I can.’ Poke, poke.

  ‘Gah!’ Crossfeet twisted and spat. ‘If I had a blade—’

  ‘If?’ Shivers poked him in the side, where his bandages were. ‘You don’t, so there’s the end o’ that.’ Crossfeet had twisted over, so Shivers poked him in the back. ‘I’ve got one, though. Look.’ Poke, poke, poke. ‘Look at that, hero.’ Poked him in the backs of his legs, poked him in the arse, poked him all over, blood spreading out into his trousers in dark rings.

  Crossfeet moaned and shuddered, and Shivers puffed out his cheeks, and wiped his knife on the Union man’s sleeve, making the gold thread glint red. ‘Right, then.’ He made the Union man grunt as he jerked him to his feet, carefully sheathed his little knife somewhere at his belt. ‘I’ll take this one off.’

  ‘What should we do with him?’ Beck found he’d asked in a reedy little voice, pointing at Crossfeet, moaning softly in the mud, torn clothes all glistening sticky black.

  Shivers looked straight at Beck, and it felt like he was looking into him. Right into his thoughts, like they said he could. ‘Do nothing. You can manage that, no?’ He shrugged as he turned to go. ‘Let him bleed.’

  Tactics

  The valley was spread out below them, a galaxy of twinkling points of orange light. The torches and campfires of both sides, occasionally smudged as a new curtain of drizzle swept across the hillside. One cluster must have been the village of Adwein, another the hill they called the Heroes, a third the town of Osrung.

  Meed had made his headquarters at an abandoned inn south of the town and left his leading regiment digging in just out of bowshot of its fence, Hal with them, nobly wrestling to stamp some order on the darkness. More than half the division was still slogging up, ill-tempered and ill-disciplined, along a road that had begun the day as an uneven strip of dust and ended it churned to a river of mud. The rearmost elements would probably still not have arrived at first light tomorrow.

  ‘I wanted to thank you,’ said Colonel Brint, rain dripping from the peak of his hat.

  ‘Me?’ asked Finree, all innocence. ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘For looking after Aliz these past few days. I know she’s not terribly worldly—’

  ‘It’s been my pleasure,’ she lied. ‘You’ve been such a good friend to Hal, after all.’ Just a gentle reminder that she damn well expected him to carry on being one.

  ‘Hal’s an easy man to like.’

  ‘Isn’t he, though?’

  They rode past a picket, four Union soldiers swaddled in sodden cloaks, spear-points glistening in the light of the lanterns of Meed’s officers. There were more men beyond, unloading rain-spoiled gear from packhorses, struggling to pitch tents, wet canvas flapping in their faces. An unhappy queue of them were hunched beside a dripping awning clutching an assortment of tins, cups and boxes while rations were weighed out.

  ‘There’s no bread?’ one was asking.

  ‘Regulations say flour’s an acceptable substitute,’ replied the quartermaster, measuring out a tiny quantity on his scales with frowning precision.

  ‘Acceptable to who? What are we going to bake it on?’

  ‘You can bake it on your fat arse far as I’m— Oh, begging your pardon, my lady,’ tugging his forelock as Finree rode past. As though seeing men go hungry for no good reason could cause no offence but the word ‘arse’ might overcome her delicate sensibilities.

  What looked at first to be a hump in the steep hillside turned out to be an ancient building, covered with wind-lashed creeper, somewhere between a cottage and a barn and probably serving as both. Meed dismounted with all the pomp of a queen at her coronation and led his staff in file through the narrow doorway, leaving Colonel Brint to hold back the queue so Finree could slip through near the front.

  The bare-raftered room beyond smelled of damp and wool, wet-haired officers squeezed in tight. The briefing had the charged air of a royal funeral, every man vying to look the most solemn while they wondered eagerly whether there might be anything for them in the will. General Mitterick stood against one rough stone wall, frowning mightily into his moustache with one hand thrust between two buttons of his uniform, thumb sticking up, as if he was posing for a portrait, and an insufferably pretentious one at that. Not far from him Finree picked out Bremer dan Gorst’s impassive slab of a face in the shadows, and smiled in acknowledgement. He scarcely tipped his head i
n return.

  Finree’s father stood before a great map, pointing out positions with expressive movements of one hand. She felt the warm glow of pride she always did when she saw her father at work. He was the very definition of a commander. When he saw them enter, he came over to shake Meed’s hand, catching Finree’s eye and giving her the slightest smile.

  ‘Lord Governor Meed, I must thank you for moving north with such speed.’ Though if it had been left to his Grace to navigate they would still have been wondering which way was north.

  ‘Lord Marshal Kroy,’ grated the governor, with little enthusiasm. Their relationship was a prickly one. In his own province of Angland, Meed was pre-eminent, but as a lord marshal carrying the king’s commission, in time of war Finree’s father outranked him.

  ‘I realise it must have been a wrench to abandon Ollensand, but we need you here.’

  ‘So I see,’ said Meed, with characteristic bad grace. ‘I understand there was a serious—’

  ‘Gentlemen!’ The press of officers near the door parted to let someone through. ‘I must apologise for my late arrival, the roads are quite clogged.’ A stocky bald man emerged from the crowd, flapping the lapels of a travel-stained coat and heedlessly spraying water over everyone around him. He was attended by only one servant, a curly-haired fellow with a basket in one hand, but Finree had made it her business to know every person in his Majesty’s government, every member of the Open Council and the Closed and the exact degrees of their influence, and the lack of pomp did not fool her for a moment. Put simply, whether he was said to be retired or not, Bayaz, the First of the Magi, outranked everyone.

  ‘Lord Bayaz.’ Finree’s father made the introductions. ‘This is Lord Governor Meed, of Angland, commanding his Majesty’s third division.’

  The First of the Magi somehow managed to press his hand and ignore him simultaneously. ‘I knew your brother. A good man, much missed.’ Meed attempted to speak but Bayaz was distracted by his servant, who at that moment produced a cup from his basket. ‘Ah! Tea! Nothing seems quite so terrible once there is a cup of tea in your hand, eh? Would anyone else care for some?’ There were no takers. Tea was generally considered an unpatriotic Gurkish fashion, synonymous with moustache-twiddling treachery. ‘Nobody?’