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

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘If we could only pack Meed off along with the rest of the clothes-obsessed old women, perhaps we’d have a chance of victory.’

  Hal soldiered on. ‘There’s only you and Aliz dan Brint, now, and I worry about you—’

  He was painfully transparent. ‘You worry that I’ll make a scene with your incompetent commanding officer, you mean.’

  ‘That too. Where’s my—’

  She kicked his sword rattling across the boards and he had to stoop to retrieve it. ‘It’s a shame, that a man like you should have to take orders from a man like Meed.’

  ‘The world is full of shameful things. That’s a long way from the worst.’

  ‘Something really should be done about him.’

  Hal was still busy fumbling with his sword-belt. ‘There’s nothing to be done but to make the best of it.’

  ‘Well … someone could mention the mess he’s making to the king.’

  ‘You may not be aware of this, but my father and the king had a minor falling out. I don’t stand very high in his Majesty’s favour.’

  ‘Your good friend Colonel Brint does.’

  Hal looked up sharply. ‘Fin. That’s low.’

  ‘Who cares how high it is if it helps you get what you deserve?’

  ‘I care,’ he snapped, dragging the buckle closed. ‘You get on by doing the right thing. By hard work, and loyalty, and doing as you’re told. You don’t get on by … by …’

  ‘By what?’

  ‘Whatever it is you’re doing.’

  She felt a sudden, powerful urge to hurt him. She wanted to say she could easily have married a man with a father who wasn’t the most infamous traitor of his generation. She wanted to point out he only had the place he had now through her father’s patronage and her constant wheedling, and that left to his own devices he’d have been demonstrating hard work and loyalty as a poor lieutenant in a provincial regiment. She wanted to tell him he was a good man, but the world was not the way good people thought it was. Fortunately, he got in first.

  ‘Fin, I’m sorry. I know you want what’s best for us. I know you’ve done a lot for me already. I don’t deserve you. Just … let me do things my way. Please. Just promise me you won’t do anything … rash.’

  ‘I promise.’ She’d make sure whatever she did was well thought out. That or she’d just break her promise. She didn’t take them terribly seriously.

  He smiled, somewhat relieved, and bent to kiss her. She returned it halfheartedly, but then, when she felt his shoulders slump, remembered he’d be in danger today, and she pinched his cheek and shook it about. ‘I love you.’ That was why she had come up here, no? Why she was slogging through the mud along with the soldiers? To be with him. To support him. To steer him in the right direction. The Fates knew, he needed it.

  ‘I love you more,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not a competition.’

  ‘No?’ And he went out, pulling on his jacket. She loved Hal. Really she did. But if she waited for him to get what they deserved through honesty and good nature she’d be waiting until the sky fell in.

  And she did not plan to live out her days as some colonel’s wife.

  Corporal Tunny had long ago acquired a reputation as the fiercest sleeper in his Majesty’s army. He could sleep on anything, in any situation, and wake in an instant ready for action or, better still, to avoid it. He’d slept through the whole assault at Ulrioch in the lead trench fifty strides from the breach, then woken just in time to hop between the corpses as the fighting petered out and snatch as fine a share of the booty as anyone who actually drew steel that day.

  So a patch of waterlogged forest in the midst of a spotty drizzle with nothing but a smelly oilskin over his head was good as a feather bed to him. His recruits weren’t anywhere near so tough in the eyelids, though. Tunny snapped awake in the chill gloom around dawn, back against a tree and the regimental standard in one fist, and nudged his oilskin up with one finger to see the two men he had left hunched over the damp ground.

  ‘Like this?’ Yolk was squeaking.

  ‘No,’ whispered Worth. ‘Tinder under there, then strike it like—’

  Tunny was up in a flash, stomped down hard on their pile of slimy sticks and crushed it flat. ‘No fires, idiots, if the enemy miss the flames they’ll see the smoke for sure!’ Not that Yolk would’ve got that pitiable collection of soaked rot lit in ten years of trying. He wasn’t even holding the flint properly.

  ‘How we going to cook our bacon, though, Corporal?’ Worth held up his skillet, a pale and unappetising slice lying limp inside.

  ‘You’re not.’

  ‘We’ll eat it raw?’

  ‘Can’t advise it,’ said Tunny, ‘especially not to you, Worth, given the sensitivity of your intestines.’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Your dodgy guts.’

  His shoulders slumped. ‘What do we eat, then?’

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘That’s what you’re eating, then. Unless you can find something better.’ Even considering he’d been woken before dawn, Tunny was unusually grumpy. He had a lurking sense he had something to be very annoyed about, but wasn’t sure what. Until he remembered the dirty water closing over Klige’s face, and kicked Yolk’s embarrassment of a fire away into the dripping brush.

  ‘Colonel Vallimir came up a while ago,’ murmured Yolk, as though that was the very thing Tunny needed to lift his spirits.

  ‘Wonderful,’ he hissed. ‘Maybe we can eat him.’

  ‘Might be some food came up with him.’

  Tunny snorted. ‘All officers ever bring up is trouble, and our boy Vallimir’s the worst kind.’

  ‘Stupid?’ muttered Worth.

  ‘Clever,’ said Tunny. ‘And ambitious. The kind of officer climbs to a promotion over the bodies of the common man.’

  ‘Are we the common man?’ asked Yolk.

  Tunny stared at him. ‘You are the fucking definition.’ Yolk even looked pleased about it. ‘No sign of Latherliver yet?’

  ‘Lederlingen, Corporal Tunny.’

  ‘I know his name, Worth. I choose to mispronounce it because it amuses me.’ He puffed out his cheeks. His standard for amusement really had plummeted since this campaign got underway.

  ‘Haven’t seen him,’ said Yolk, gazing sadly at that forlorn slice of bacon.

  ‘That’s something, at least.’ Then, when the two lads looked blankly at him. ‘Leperlover went to tell the tin-soldier pushers where we are. Chances are he’ll be the one bringing the orders back.’

  ‘What orders?’ asked Yolk.

  ‘How the hell should I know what orders? But any orders is a bad thing.’ Tunny frowned off towards the treeline. He couldn’t see much through the thicket of trunk, branch, shadow and mist, but he could just hear the sound of the distant stream, swollen with half the drizzle that had fallen last night. The other half felt like it was in his underwear. ‘Might even be an order to attack. Cross that stream and hit the Northmen in the flank.’

  Worth carefully set his pan down, pressing at his stomach. ‘Corporal, I think—’

  ‘Well, I don’t want you doing it here, do I?’

  Worth dashed off into the shadowy brush, already fumbling with his belt. Tunny sat back against his trunk, slipped out Yolk’s flask and took the smallest nip.

  Yolk licked his pale lips. ‘Could I—’

  ‘No.’ Tunny regarded the recruit through narrowed eyes as he took another. ‘Unless you’ve something to pay with.’ Silence. ‘There you go, then.’

  ‘A tent would be something,’ whispered Yolk in a voice almost too soft to hear.

  ‘It would, but they’re with the horses, and the king has seen fit to supply his loyal soldiers with a new and spectacularly inefficient type which leaks at every seam.’ Leading, as it happened, to a profitable market in the old type in which Tunny had already twice turned a handsome profit. ‘How would you pitch one here anyway?’ And he wriggled back ag
ainst his tree so the bark scratched his itchy shoulder blades.

  ‘What should we do?’ asked Yolk.

  ‘Nothing whatsoever, trooper. Unless specifically and precisely instructed otherwise, a good soldier always does nothing.’ In a narrow triangle between black branches, the sky was starting to show the faintest sickly tinge of light. Tunny winced, and closed his eyes. ‘The thing folks at home never realise about war is just how bloody boring it is.’

  And like that he was asleep again.

  Calder’s dream was the same one as always.

  Skarling’s Hall in Carleon, dim with shadows, sound of the river outside the tall windows. Years ago, when his father was King of the Northmen. He was watching his younger self, sitting in Skarling’s Chair and smirking. Smirking down at Forley the Weakest, all bound up, Bad-Enough standing over him with his axe out.

  Calder knew it for a dream, but he felt the same freezing dread as ever. He was trying to shout, but his mouth was all stopped up. He was trying to move, but he was bound as tight as Forley. Bound by what he’d done, and what he hadn’t.

  ‘What shall we do?’ asked Bad-Enough.

  And Calder said, ‘Kill him.’

  He woke with a jolt as the axe came down, floundering with his blankets. The room was fizzing black. There was none of that warm wash of relief you get when you wake from a nightmare. It had happened. Calder swung from his bed, rubbing at his sweaty temples. He’d given up on being a good man long ago, hadn’t he?

  Then why did he still dream like one?

  ‘Peace?’ Calder looked up with a start, heart jumping at his ribs. There was a great shape in the chair in the corner. A blacker shape than the darkness. ‘It was talk of peace got you banished in the first place.’

  Calder breathed out. ‘And a good morning to you, brother.’ Scale was wearing his armour, but that was no surprise. Calder was starting to think he slept in it.

  ‘I thought you were the clever one? At this rate you’ll clever yourself right back into the mud, and me along with you, and so much for our father’s legacy then. Peace? On a day of victory?’

  ‘Did you see their faces, though? Plenty even at that meet are ready to stop fighting, day of victory or not. There’ll be harder days coming, and when they come more and more will see it our way—’

  ‘Your way,’ snapped Scale, ‘I’ve a battle to fight. A man doesn’t get to be reckoned a hero by talking.’

  Calder could hardly keep the contempt out of his voice. ‘Maybe what the North needs is fewer heroes and more thinkers. More builders. Maybe our father’s remembered for his battles, but his legacy is the roads he laid, the fields he cleared, the towns, and the forges, and the docks, and the—’

  ‘He built the roads to march his armies on. He cleared the fields to feed them. The towns bred soldiers, the forges made swords, the docks brought in weapons.’

  ‘Our father fought because he had to, not because he—’

  ‘This is the North!’ bellowed Scale, voice making the little room ring. ‘Everyone has to fight!’ Calder swallowed, suddenly unsure of himself and ever so slightly scared. ‘Whether they want to or not. Sooner or later, everyone has to fight.’

  Calder licked his lips, not ready to admit defeat. ‘Our father preferred to get what he wanted with words. Men listened to—’

  ‘Men listened because they knew he had iron in him!’ Scale smashed the arm of his chair with his fist, wood cracking, struck it again and broke it off, sent it clattering across the boards. ‘Do you know what I remember him telling me? “Get what you can with words, because words are free, but the words of an armed man ring that much sweeter. So when you talk, bring your sword.”’ He stood, and tossed something across the room. Calder squeaked, half-caught it, half-hit painfully in the chest by it. Heavy and hard, metal gleaming faintly. His sheathed sword. ‘Come outside.’ Scale loomed over him. ‘And bring your sword.’

  It was hardly any lighter outside the ramshackle farmhouse. Just the first smear of dawn in the heavy eastern sky, picking out the Heroes on their hilltop in solemn black. The wind was coming up keen, whipping drizzle in Calder’s eyes, sweeping waves through the barley and making him hug himself tight. A scarecrow danced a mad jig on a pole near the house, torn gloves endlessly beckoning for a partner. Clail’s Wall was a chest-high heap of moss running through the fields from beyond a rise on their right to a good way up the steep flank of the Heroes. Scale’s men were huddled in its lee, most still swaddled in blankets, exactly where Calder wished he was. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the world this early and it was an even uglier place than usual.

  Scale pointed south, through a gap in the wall and down a rough track scarred with puddles. ‘Half the men are hidden in sight of the Old Bridge. When the Union try to cross, we’ll stop the bastards.’

  Calder didn’t want to deny it, of course, but he had to ask. ‘How many Union on the other side of the river now?’

  ‘A lot.’ Scale looked at him as if daring him to say something. Calder only scratched his head. ‘You’re staying back here, with Pale-as-Snow and the rest of the men, behind Clail’s Wall.’ Calder nodded. Staying behind a wall sounded like his kind of job. ‘Sooner or later, though, chances are I’ll need your help. When I send for it, come forward. We’ll fight together.’ Calder winced into the wind. That sounded less like his kind of job. ‘I can trust you to do that, right?’

  Calder frowned sideways. ‘Of course.’ Prince Calder, a byword for trustiness. ‘I won’t let you down.’ Brave, bold, good Prince Calder.

  ‘Whatever we’ve lost, we’ve got each other still.’ Scale put his big hand on Calder’s shoulder. ‘It’s not easy, is it? Being a great man’s son. You’d have thought it would come with all kinds of advantages – with borrowed admiration, and respect. But it’s only as easy as it is for the seeds of a great tree, trying to grow in its choking shadow. Not many make it to the sunlight for themselves.’

  ‘Aye.’ Calder didn’t mention that being a great man’s younger son was twice the trial. Then you’ve two trees to take the axe to before you can spread your leaves in the sunshine.

  Scale nodded up towards Skarling’s Finger. A few fires still twinkled on the flanks of the hill where Tenways’ men had their camps. ‘If we can’t hold up, Brodd Tenways is meant to be helping.’

  Calder raised his brows. ‘I’ll expect Skarling himself to ride to my aid before I count on that old bastard.’

  ‘Then it’s you and me. We might not always agree, but we’re family.’ Scale held out his hand, and Calder took it.

  ‘Family.’ Half-family, anyway.

  ‘Good luck, brother.’

  ‘And to you.’ Half-brother. Calder watched Scale swing up onto his horse and spur off sharply down that track towards the Old Bridge.

  ‘Got a feeling you’ll need more’n luck today, your Highness.’ Foss Deep was under the dripping ruins of a porch beside the house, his weathered clothes and his weathered face fading into the weathered wall behind.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Shallow sat wrapped in a grey blanket so only his grinning head showed, disembodied. ‘The biggest mountain of best luck ever might do it.’

  Calder turned away from them in sulky silence, frowning across the fields to the south. He’d a feeling they might have the truth of it.

  Theirs wasn’t the only bit of earth being turned over. Few other wounded men must’ve died in the night. You could see the little groups, hunched in the drizzle with sorrow, or more likely self-pity, which looks about the same and serves just as well at a funeral. You could hear the Chiefs trotting out their empty babble, all aiming at that same sorry tone. Splitfoot was one, standing over the grave of one of Dow’s Named Men not twenty paces distant, giving it the moist eye. No sign of Dow himself, mind you. Moist eyes weren’t really his style.

  Meanwhile the ordinary business of the day got started like the burial parties were ghosts themselves, invisible. Men grumbling as they crawled from wet beds, cursing at damp
clothes, rubbing down damp weapons and armour, searching out food, pissing, scratching, sucking the last drops from last night’s bottles, comparing trophies stole from the Union, chuckling over one joke or another. Chuckling too loud because they all knew there’d be more dark work today and chuckles had to be grabbed where they could be.

  Craw looked at the others, all with heads bowed. All except Whirrun, who was arching back, hugging the Father of Swords in his folded arms, letting the rain patter on his tongue. Craw was a little annoyed by that, and a little jealous of it. He wished he was known as a madman and didn’t have to go through the empty routines. But there’s a right way of doing things, and for him there was no dodging it.

  ‘What makes a man a hero?’ he asked the wet air. ‘Big deeds? Big name? Tall glory and tall songs? No. Standing by your crew, I reckon.’ Whirrun grunted his agreement, then stuck his tongue out again. ‘Brack-i-Dayn, come down from the hills fifteen years ago, fought beside me fourteen of ’em, and always thought of his crew ’fore himself. Lost count on the number o’ times that big bastard saved my life. Always had a kind word, or a funny one. Think he even made Yon laugh one time.’

  ‘Twice,’ said Yon, face harder’n ever. Got any harder he’d be knocking lumps from the Heroes with it.

  ‘He made no complaints. Except not enough to eat.’ Craw’s voice went for a moment and he gave a kind of squeaky croak. Stupid bloody noise for a Chief to make, ’specially at a time like this. He cleared his throat and hammered on. ‘Never enough for Brack to eat. He died … peaceful. Reckon he’d have liked that, even if he loved a good fight. Dying in your sleep is a long stretch better’n dying with steel in your guts, whatever the songs say.’

  ‘Fuck the songs,’ said Wonderful.

  ‘Aye. Fuck ’em. Don’t know who’s buried under here, really. But if it’s Skarling his self he should be proud to share some earth with Brack-i-Dayn.’ Craw curled his lips back. ‘And if not, fuck him too. Back to the mud, Brack.’ He knelt, not having to try too hard to look in pain since his kneecap felt like it was going to pop off, clawed up a fistful of damp black soil and shook it out again over the rest.