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

by Joe Abercrombie

  Your August Majesty,

  Morning on the second day of battle, and the Northmen occupy strong positions on the north side of the river. They hold the Old Bridge, they hold Osrung, and they hold the Heroes. They hold the crossings and invite us to take them. The ground is theirs, but they have handed the initiative to Lord Marshal Kroy and, now that all our forces have reached the battlefield, he will not be slow to seize it.

  On the eastern wing, Lord Governor Meed has already begun an attack in overwhelming force upon the town of Osrung. I find myself upon the western, observing General Mitterick’s assault upon the Old Bridge.

  The general delivered a rousing speech this morning as the first light touched the sky. When he asked for volunteers to lead the attack every man put up his hand without hesitation. Your Majesty would be most proud of the bravery, the honour, and the dedication of your soldiers. Truly, every man of them is a hero.

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

  Bremer dan Gorst, Royal Observer of the Northern War

  Gorst blotted the letter, folded it and passed it to Younger, who sealed it with a blob of red wax and slid it into a courier’s satchel with the golden sun of the Union worked into the leather in elaborate gilt.

  ‘It will be on its way south within the hour,’ said the servant, turning to go.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Gorst.

  But is it? Does it truly matter whether it goes sooner, or later, or if Younger tosses it into the latrine pits along with the rest of the camp’s ordure? Does it matter whether the king ever reads my pompous platitudes about General Mitterick’s pompous platitudes as the first light touched up the sky? When did I last get a letter back? A month ago? Two? Is just a note too much to ask? Thanks for the patriotic garbage, hope you‘re keeping well in ignominious exile?

  He picked absently at the scabs on the back of his right hand, wanting to see if he could make them hurt. He winced as he made them hurt more than he had intended to. Ever a fine line. He was covered with grazes, cuts and bruises he could not even recall the causes of, but the worst pain came from the loss of his Calvez-made short steel, drowned somewhere in the shallows. One of the few relics remaining of a time when he was the king’s exalted First Guard rather than an author of contemptible fantasies. I am like a jilted lover too cowardly to move on, clinging tremble-lipped to the last feeble mementoes of the cad who abandoned her. Except sadder, and uglier, and with a higher voice. And I kill people for a hobby.

  He stepped from under the dripping awning outside his tent. The rain had slackened to a few flitting specks, and there was even some blue sky torn from the pall of cloud that smothered the valley. He surely should have felt some flicker of optimism at the simple pleasure of the sun on his face. But there was only the unbearable weight of his disgrace. The fool’s tasks lined up in crushingly tedious procession. Run. Practice. Shit a turd. Write a letter. Eat. Watch. Write a turd. Shit a letter. Eat. Bed. Pretend to sleep but actually lie awake all night trying to wank. Up. Run. Letter …

  Mitterick had already presided over one failed attempt on the bridge: a bold, rash effort by the Tenth Foot which had crossed unresisted to a lot of victorious whooping. The Northmen had met them with a hail of arrows as they attempted to find their order on the far side, then sprang from hidden trenches in the barley and charged with a blood-freezing wail. Whoever was in command of them knew his business. The Union soldiers fought hard but were surrounded on three sides and quickly cut down, forced back into the river to flounder helplessly in the water, or crushed into a hellish confusion on the bridge itself, mingled with those still striving mindlessly to cross from behind.

  A great line of Mitterick’s flatbowmen had then appeared from behind a hedgerow on the south bank and raked the Northmen with a savage volley, forcing them into a disorganised retreat back to their trenches, leaving the dead scattered in the trampled crops on their side of the bridge. The Tenth had been too mauled to take advantage of the opening, though, and now archers on both sides were busy with a desultory exchange of ammunition across the water while Mitterick and his officers marshalled their next wave. And, one imagines, their next batch of coffins too.

  Gorst watched the whirling clouds of gnats that haunted the bank, and the corpses that floated past beneath them. The bravery. Turning with the current. The honour. Face up and face down. The dedication of the soldiers. One sodden Union hero wallowed to a halt in some rushes, bobbing for a moment on his side. A Northman drifted up, bumped gently into him and carried him from the bank and through a patch of frothy yellow scum in an awkward embrace. Ah, young love. Perhaps someone will hug me after my death. I certainly haven’t had many before. Gorst had to stop himself snorting with spectacularly inappropriate laughter.

  ‘Why, Colonel Gorst!’ The First of the Magi strolled up with staff in one hand and teacup in the other. He took in the river and its floating cargo, heaved a long breath through his nose and exhaled satisfaction. ‘Well, you couldn’t say they aren’t giving it a good try, anyway. Successes are all very well, but there’s something grand about a glorious failure, isn’t there?’

  I can’t see what, and I should know.

  ‘Lord Bayaz.’ The Magus’ curly-headed servant snapped open a folding chair, brushed an imaginary speck of dust from its canvas seat and bowed low.

  Bayaz tossed his staff on the wet grass without ceremony and sat, eyes closed, tipping his smiling face towards the strengthening sun. ‘Wonderful thing, a war. Done in the right way, of course, for the right reasons. Separates the fruit from the chaff. Cleans things up.’ He snapped his fingers with an almost impossibly loud crack. ‘Without them societies are apt to become soft. Flabby. Like a man who eats only cake.’ He reached up and punched Gorst playfully on the arm, then shook out his limp fingers in fake pain. ‘Ouch! I bet you don’t eat only cake, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  Like virtually everyone Gorst ever spoke to, Bayaz was hardly listening. ‘Things don’t change just by the asking. You have to give them a damn good shake. Whoever said war never changes anything, well … they just haven’t fought enough wars, have they? Glad to see this rain’s clearing up, though. It’s been playing hell with my experiment.’

  The experiment consisted of three giant tubes of dull, grey-black metal, seated upon huge wooden cradles, each closed at one end with the other pointed across the river in the vague direction of the Heroes. They had been set up with immense care and effort on a hump of ground a hundred strides from Gorst’s tent. The ceaseless din of men, horses and tackle would have kept him awake all night had he not been half-awake anyway, as he always was. Lost in the smoke of Cardotti’s House of Leisure, searching desperately for the king. Seeing a masked face in the gloom, at the stairway. Before the Closed Council as they stripped him of his position, the bottom dropping out of the world all over again. Twisted up with Finree, holding her. Holding smoke. Coughing smoke, as he stumbled through the twisted corridors of Cardotti’s House of—

  ‘Pitiful, isn’t it?’ asked Bayaz.

  For a moment, Gorst wondered if the Magus had read his thoughts. And yes, it certainly fucking is. ‘Pardon?’

  Bayaz spread his arms to encompass the scene of crawling activity. ‘All the doings of men, still at the mercy of the fickle skies. And war most of all.’ He sipped from his cup again, grimaced and flung the dregs out across the grass. ‘Once we can kill people at any time of day, in any season, in any weather, why, then we’ll be civilised, eh?’ And he chuckled away to himself.

  The two old Adepti from the University of Adua scraped up like a pair of priests given a personal audience with God. The one called Denka was ghoul-pale and trembling. The one called Saurizin had a sheen of sweat across his wrinkled forehead which sprang back as fast as he could wipe it off.

  ‘Lord Bayaz.’ He tried to bow and grin at once and couldn’t manage either with any conviction. ‘I believe the weather has improved to the point where the devices can be tested.’


  ‘At last,’ snapped the Magus. ‘Then what are you waiting for, the Midwinter Festival?’

  The two old men fled, Saurizin snarling fiercely at his colleague. They had an ill-tempered discussion with the dozen aproned engineers about the nearest tube, including a deal of arm-waving, pointing at the skies and reference to some brass instruments. Finally one produced a long torch, flames licking at the tarred end. The Adepti and their minions hurried away, squatting behind boxes and barrels, covering their ears. The torch-bearer advanced with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man to the scaffold, touched the brand at arm’s length to the top of the tube. A few sparks flew, a lick of smoke curled up, a faint pop and fizzle were heard.

  Gorst frowned. ‘What is—’

  There was a colossal explosion and he shrank to the ground, hands clasped over his head. He had heard nothing like it since the Siege of Adua, when the Gurkish put fire to a mine and blew a hundred strides of the walls to gravel. Guardsmen peeped terrified from behind their shields. Exhausted labourers scrambled gaping from their fires. Others struggled to control terrified horses, two of which had torn a rail free and were galloping away with it clattering behind them.

  Gorst slowly, suspiciously, stood. Smoke was issuing gently from the end of one of the pipes, engineers swarming around it. Denka and Saurizin were arguing furiously with each other. What had been the effect of the device beyond the noise, Gorst had not the slightest idea.

  ‘Well.’ Bayaz stuck a finger in one ear and waggled it around. ‘They’re certainly loud enough.’

  A faint rumble echoed over the valley. Something like thunder, though it seemed to Craw the weather was just clearing up.

  ‘You hear that?’ asked Splitfoot.

  Craw could only shrug up at the sky. Plenty of cloud still, even if there were a few blue patches showing. ‘More rain, maybe.’

  Dow had other things on his mind. ‘How are we doing at the Old Bridge?’

  ‘They came just after first light but Scale held ’em,’ said Splitfoot. ‘Drove ’em back across.’

  ‘They’ll be coming again, ’fore too long.’

  ‘Doubtless. Reckon he’ll hold?’

  ‘If he don’t we got a problem.’

  ‘Half his men are across the valley with Calder.’

  Dow snorted. ‘Just the man I’d want at my back if I was fighting for my life.’

  Splitfoot and a couple of the others chuckled.

  There was a right way of doing things, far as Craw was concerned, and it didn’t include letting men laugh at your friends behind their backs, however laughable they may be. ‘That lad might surprise you,’ he said.

  Splitfoot smirked wider. ‘Forgot you and him were tight.’

  ‘Practically raised the boy,’ said Craw, squaring up and giving him the eye.

  ‘Explains a lot.’

  ‘Of what?’

  Dow spoke over ’em, an edge to his voice. ‘The pair o’ you can wank Calder off once the light’s gone. In case you hadn’t noticed we’ve got bigger business. What about Osrung?’

  Splitfoot gave Craw a parting look, then turned back to his Chief. ‘Union are over the fence, fighting on the south side of town. Reachey’ll hold ’em, though.’

  ‘He better,’ grunted Dow. ‘And the middle? Any sign of ’em crossing the shallows?’

  ‘They keep marching around down there, but no—’

  Splitfoot’s head vanished and something went in Craw’s eye.

  There was a cracking sound then all he could hear was a long, shrill whine.

  He got knocked in the back hard and he fell, rolled, scrambled up, bent over like a drunken man, the ground weaving.

  Dow had his axe out, waving it at something, shouting, but Craw couldn’t hear him. Just that mad ringing. There was dust everywhere. Choking clouds, like fog.

  He nearly tripped over Splitfoot’s headless corpse, blood welling out of it. Knew it was his from the collar of his mail coat. He was missing an arm as well. Splitfoot was. Not Craw. He had both his. He checked. Blood on his hands, though, not sure whose.

  Probably he should’ve drawn his sword. He waved at the hilt but couldn’t work out how far away it was. People ran about, shapes in the murk.

  Craw rubbed at his ears. Still nothing but that whine.

  A Carl was sitting on the ground, screaming silently, tearing at his bloody chain mail. Something was sticking out of it. Too fat to be an arrow. A splinter of stone.

  Were they attacked? Where from? The dust was settling. People shambling about, knocking into each other, kneeling over wounded men, pointing every which way, cowering on their faces.

  The top half of one of the Heroes was missing, the old stone sheared off jagged in a fresh, shiny edge. Dead men were scattered around its base. More’n dead. Smashed apart. Folded and twisted. Split open and gutted. Ruined like Craw had never seen before. Even after the Bloody-Nine did his black work up in the High Places.

  A boy sat alive in the midst of the bodies and the chunks of rock, blood-sprayed, blinking at a drawn sword on his knees, a whetstone held frozen in one hand. No sign how he’d been saved, if he had been.

  Whirrun’s face loomed up. His mouth moved like he was talking but Craw could only hear a crackle.

  ‘What? What?’ Even his own words made no sound. Thumbs poked at his cheek. It hurt. A lot. Craw touched his face and his fingers were bloody. But his hands were bloody anyway. Everything was.

  He tried to push Whirrun away, tripped over something and sat down heavily on the grass.

  Probably best all round if he stayed there a bit.

  ‘A hit!’ cackled Saurizin, shaking a mystifying arrangement of brass screws, rods and lenses at the sky like a geriatric warrior brandishing a sword in victory.

  ‘A palpable hit with the second discharge, Lord Bayaz!’ Denka could barely contain his delight. ‘One of the stones on the hill was struck directly and destroyed!’

  The First of the Magi raised an eyebrow. ‘You talk as if destroying stones was the point of the exercise.’

  ‘I am sure considerable injury and confusion were inflicted upon the Northmen at the summit as well!’

  ‘Considerable injury and confusion!’ echoed Saurizin.

  ‘Fine things to visit upon an enemy,’ said Bayaz. ‘Continue.’

  The mood of the two old Adepti sagged. Denka licked his lips. ‘It would be prudent to check the devices for evidence of damage. No one knows what the consequences of discharging them frequently might be—’

  ‘Then let us find out,’ said Bayaz. ‘Continue.’

  The two old men clearly feared carrying on. But a great deal less than they fear the First of the Magi. They scraped their way back towards the tubes where they began to bully their helpless engineers as they themselves had been bullied. And the engineers no doubt will harangue the labourers, and the labourers will whip the mules, and the mules will kick at the dogs, and the dogs will snap at the wasps, and with any luck one of the wasps will sting Bayaz on his fat arse, and thus the righteous wheel of life will be ready to turn once again …

  Away to the west a second attempt on the Old Bridge was just petering out, having achieved no more than the first. This time an ill-advised effort had been made to cross the river on rafts. A couple had broken up not long after pushing off, leaving their passengers floundering in the shallows or dragged under by their armour in deeper water. Others were swept off merrily downstream while the men on board flailed pointlessly with their paddles or their hands, arrows plopping around them.

  ‘Rafts,’ murmured Bayaz, sticking out his chin and scratching absently at his short beard.

  ‘Rafts,’ murmured Gorst, watching an officer on one furiously brandish his sword at the far bank, about as likely ever to reach it as he was the moon.

  There was another thunderous explosion, followed almost immediately by a chorus of gasps, sighs and cheers of wonder from the swelling audience, gathered at the top of the rise in a curious crescent. This time Gorst scarcely f
linched. Amazing how quickly the unbearable becomes banal. More smoke issued from the nearest tube, wandering gently up to join the acrid pall already hanging over the experiment.

  That weird rumble rolled out again, smoke rising from somewhere across the river to the south. ‘What the hell are they up to?’ muttered Calder. Even standing on the wall, he couldn’t see a thing.

  He’d been there all morning, waiting. Pacing up and down, in the drizzle, then the dry. Waiting, every minute an age, with his thoughts darting round and round like a lizard in a jar. Peering to the south and not being able to see a thing, the sounds of combat drifting across the fields in waves, sometimes sounding distant, sometimes worryingly near. But no call for help. Nothing but a few wounded carried past, scant reinforcement for Calder’s wavering nerve.

  ‘Here’s news,’ said Pale-as-Snow.

  Calder stretched up, shading his eyes. It was White-Eye Hansul, riding up hard from the Old Bridge. He had a smile on his wrinkled face as he reined in, though, which gave Calder a trace of hope. Right then putting off the fighting seemed almost as good as not doing it at all.

  He wedged a boot up on the gate in what he hoped was a manly style, trying to sound cool as snow while his heart was burning. ‘Scale got himself in a pickle, has he?’

  ‘It’s the Southerners pickled so far, the stupid bastards.’ White-Eye pulled his helmet off and wiped his forehead on the back of his sleeve. ‘Twice Scale’s driven them back. First time they came strolling across like they thought we’d just give the bridge over. Your brother soon cured them of that notion.’ He chuckled to himself and Pale-as-Snow joined him. Calder offered up his own, though it tasted somewhat sour. Everything did today.

  ‘Second time they tried rafts as well.’ White-Eye turned his head and spat into the barley. ‘Could’ve told them the current’s way too strong for that.’

  ‘Good thing they never asked you,’ said Pale-as-Snow.

  ‘That it is. I reckon you lot can sit back here and take your boots off. We’ll hold ’em all day at this rate.’