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

by Joe Abercrombie

  And here they had been left, in the darkness. To wait for who knew what.

  As Finree slowly got her breath back the pain began to creep up on her. Her scalp burned, her head thumped, her neck sent vicious stings down between her shoulders whenever she tried to turn her head. But no doubt she was a great deal better off than most who had been trapped in that inn.

  She wondered if Hardrick had made it to safety, or if they had ridden him down in the fields, his useless message never delivered. She kept seeing that major’s face as he stumbled sideways with blood running from his broken head, so very surprised. Meed, fumbling at the bubbling wound in his neck. All dead. All of them.

  She took a shuddering breath and forced the thought away. She could not think of it any more than a tightrope walker could think about the ground. ‘You have to look forward,’ she remembered her father telling her, as he plucked another of her pieces from the squares board. ‘Concentrate on what you can change.’

  Aliz had been sobbing ever since the door shut. Finree wanted quite badly to slap her, but her hands were tied. She was reasonably sure they would not get out of this by sobbing. Not that she had any better ideas.

  ‘Quiet,’ Finree hissed. ‘Quiet, please, I need to think. Please. Please.’

  The sobbing stuttered back to ragged whimpering. That was worse, if anything.

  ‘Will they kill us?’ squeaked Aliz’ voice, along with a slobbering snort. ‘Will they murder us?’

  ‘No. They would have done it already.’

  ‘Then what will they do with us?’

  The question sat between them like a bottomless abyss, with nothing but their echoing breath to fill it. Finree managed to twist herself up to sitting, gritting her teeth at the pain in her neck. ‘We have to think, do you understand? We have to look forward. We have to try and escape.’

  ‘How?’ Aliz whimpered.

  ‘Any way we can!’ Silence. ‘We have to try. Are your hands free?’

  ‘No.’

  Finree managed to worm her way across the floor, dress sliding over the dirt until her back hit the wall, grunting with the effort. She shifted herself along, fingertips brushing crumbling plaster, damp stone.

  ‘Are you there?’ squeaked Aliz.

  ‘Where else would I be?’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Trying to get my hands free.’ Something tugged at Finree’s waist, cloth ripped. She wormed her shoulder blades up the wall, following the caught material with her fingers. A rusted bracket. She rubbed away the flakes between finger and thumb, felt a jagged point underneath, a sudden surge of hope. She pulled her wrists apart, struggling to find the metal with the cords that held them.

  ‘If you get your hands free, what then?’ came Aliz’ shrill voice.

  ‘Get yours free,’ grunted Finree through gritted teeth. ‘Then feet.’

  ‘Then what? What about the door? There’ll be guards, won’t there? Where are we? What do we do if—’

  ‘I don’t know!’ She forced her voice down. ‘I don’t know. One battle at a time.’ Sawing away at the bracket. ‘One battle at a—’ Her hand slipped and she lurched back, felt the metal leave a burning cut down her arm.

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Cut myself. Nothing. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Don’t worry? We’ve been captured by the Northmen! Savages! Did you see—’

  ‘Don’t worry about the cut, I meant! And yes, I saw it all.’ And she had to concentrate on what she could change. Whether her hands were free or not was challenge enough. Her legs were burning from holding her up against the wall, she could feel the greasy wetness of blood on her fingers, of sweat on her face. Her head was pounding, agony in her neck with every movement of her shoulders. She wriggled the cord against that piece of rusted metal, back and forward, back and forward, grunting with frustration. ‘Damn, bloody— Ah!’

  Like that it came free. She dragged her blindfold off and tossed it away. She could hardly see more without it. Chinks of light around the door, between the planks. Cracked walls glistening with damp, floor scattered with muddy straw. Aliz was kneeling a stride or two away, dress covered in dirt, bound hands limp in her lap.

  Finree jumped over to her, since her ankles were still tied, and knelt down. She tugged off Aliz’ blindfold, took both of her hands and pressed them in hers. Spoke slowly, looking her right in her pink-rimmed eyes. ‘We will escape. We must. We will.’ Aliz nodded, mouth twisting into a desperately hopeful smile for a moment. Finree peered down at her wrists, numb fingertips tugging at the knots, tongue pressed between her teeth as she prised at them with her broken nails—

  ‘How does he know I have them?’ Finree went cold. Or even colder. A voice, speaking Northern, and heavy footsteps, coming closer. She felt Aliz frozen in the dark, not even breathing.

  ‘He has his ways, apparently.’

  ‘His ways can sink in the dark places of the world for all I care.’ It was the voice of the giant. That soft, slow voice, but it had anger in it now. ‘The women are mine.’

  ‘He only wants one.’ The other sounded like his throat was full of grit, his voice a grinding whisper.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The brown-haired one.’

  An angry snort. ‘No. I had in mind she would give me children.’ Finree’s eyes went wide. Her breath crawled in her throat. They were talking about her. She went at the knot on Aliz’ wrists with twice the urgency, biting at her lip.

  ‘How many children do you need?’ came the whispering voice.

  ‘Civilised children. After the Union fashion.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. Civilised children.’

  ‘Who eat with a fork and that? I been to Styria. I been to the Union. Civilisation ain’t all it’s made out to be, believe me.’

  ‘A pause. ‘Is it true they have holes there in which a man can shit, and the turds are carried away?’

  ‘So what? Shit is still shit. It all ends up somewhere.’

  ‘I want civilisation. I want civilised children.’

  ‘Use the yellow-haired one.’

  ‘She pleases my eye less. And she is a coward. She does nothing but cry. The brown-haired one killed one of my men. She has bones. Children get their courage from the mother. I will not have cowardly children.’

  The whispering voice dropped lower, too quiet for Finree to hear. She tugged desperately at the knots with her nails, mouthing curses.

  ‘What are they saying?’ came Aliz’ whisper, croaky with terror.

  ‘Nothing,’ Finree hissed back. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Black Dow takes a high hand with me in this,’ came the giant’s voice again.

  ‘He takes a high hand with me and all. There it is. He’s the one with the chain.’

  ‘I shit on his chain. Stranger-Come-Knocking has no masters but the sky and the earth. Black Dow does not command—’

  ‘He ain’t commanding nothing. He’s asking nicely. You can tell me no. Then I’ll tell him no. Then we can see.’

  There was a pause. Finree pressed her tongue into her teeth, the knot starting to give, starting to give—

  The door swung open and they were left blinking into the light. A man stood in the doorway. One of his eyes was strangely bright. Too bright. He stepped under the lintel, and Finree realised that his eye was made of metal, and set in the midst of an enormous, mottled scar. She had never seen a more monstrous-looking man. Aliz gave a kind of stuttering wheeze. Too scared even to scream, for once.

  ‘She got her hands free,’ he whispered over his shoulder.

  ‘I said she had bones,’ came the giant’s voice from outside. ‘Tell Black Dow there will be a price for this. A price for the woman and a price for the insult.’

  ‘I’ll tell him.’ The metal-eyed man came forward, pulling something from his belt. A knife, she saw the flash of metal in the gloom. Aliz saw it too, whimpered, gripped hard at Finree’s fingers and she gripped back. She was not sure
what else she could do. He squatted down in front of them, forearms on his knees and his hands dangling, the knife loose in one. Finree’s eyes flickered from the gleam of the blade to the gleam of his metal eye, not sure which was more awful. ‘There’s a price for everything, ain’t there?’ he whispered to her.

  The knife darted out and slit the cord between her ankles in one motion. He reached behind his back and pulled a canvas bag over her head with another, plunging her suddenly into fusty, onion-smelling darkness. She was dragged up by her armpit, hands slipping from Aliz’ limp grip.

  ‘Wait!’ she heard Aliz shouting behind her. ‘What about me? What about—’

  The door clattered shut.

  The Bridge

  Your August Majesty,

  If this letter reaches you I have fallen in battle, fighting for your cause with my final breath. I write it only in the hope of letting you know what I could not in person: that the days I spent serving with the Knights of the Body, and as your Majesty’s First Guard in particular, were the happiest of my life, and that the day when I lost that position was the saddest. If I failed you I hope you can forgive me, and think of me as I was before Sipani: dutiful, diligent, and always utterly loyal to your Majesty.

  I bid you a fond farewell,

  Bremer dan Gorst

  He thought better of ‘a fond’ and crossed it out, realised he should probably rewrite the whole thing without it, then decided he did not have the time. He tossed the pen away, folded the paper without bothering to blot it and tucked it down inside his breastplate.

  Perhaps they will find it there, later, on my crap-stained corpse. Dramatically bloodied at the corner, maybe? A final letter! Why, to whom? Family? Sweetheart? Friends? No, the sad fool had none of those, it is addressed to the king! And borne upon a velvet pillow into his Majesty’s throne room, there perhaps to wring out some wretched drip of guilt. A single sparkling tear spatters upon the marble tiles. Oh! Poor Gorst, how unfairly he was used! How unjustly stripped of his position! Alas, his blood has watered foreign fields, far from the warmth of my favour! Now what’s for breakfast?

  Down on the Old Bridge the third assault had reached its critical moment. The narrow double span was one heaving mass, rows of nervous soldiers waiting unenthusiastically to take their turn while the wounded, exhausted and otherwise spent staggered away in the opposite direction. The resolve of Mitterick’s men was flickering, Gorst could see it in the pale faces of the officers, hear it in their nervous voices, in the sobs of the injured. Success or failure was balanced on a knife-edge.

  ‘Where the hell is bloody Vallimir?’ Mitterick was roaring at everyone and no one. ‘Bloody coward, I’ll have him cashiered in disgrace! I’ll go down there my bloody self! Where did Felnigg get to? Where … what … who …’ His words were buried in the hubbub as Gorst walked down towards the river, his mood lifting with every jaunty step as if a great weight was floating from his shoulders piece by leaden piece.

  A wounded man stumbled by, one arm around a fellow, clutching a bloody cloth to his eye. Someone will be missing from next year’s archery contest! Another was hauled past on a stretcher, crying out piteously as he bounced, the stump of his leg bound tightly with red-soaked bandages. No more walks in the park for you! He grinned at the injured men laid groaning at the verges of the muddy track, gave them merry salutes. Unlucky, my comrades! Life is not fair, is it?

  He strode through a scattered crowd, then threaded through a tighter mass, then shouldered through a breathless press, the fear building around him as the bodies squeezed tighter, and with it his excitement. Feelings ran high. Men shoved at each other, thrashed with their elbows, screamed pointless insults. Weapons waved dangerously. Stray arrows would occasionally putter down, no longer in volleys but in apologetic ones and twos. Little gifts from our friends on the other side. No, really, you shouldn’t have!

  The mud beneath Gorst’s feet levelled off, then began to rise, then gave way to old stone slabs. Between twisted faces he caught glimpses of the river, the bridge’s mossy parapet. He began to make out from the general din the metallic note of combat and the sound tugged at his heart like a lover’s voice across a crowded room. Like the whiff of the husk pipe to the addict. We all have our little vices. Our little obsessions. Drink, women, cards. And here is mine.

  Tactics and technique were useless here, it was a question of brute strength and fury, and very few men were Gorst’s match in either. He put his head down and strained at the press as he had strained at the mired wagon a few days before. He began to grunt, then growl, then hiss, and he rammed his way through the soldiers like a ploughshare through soil, shoving heedlessly with shield and shoulder, tramping over the dead and wounded. No small talk. No apologies. No petty embarrassments here.

  ‘Out of my fucking way!’ he screeched, sending a soldier sprawling on his face and using him for a carpet. He caught a flash of metal and a spear-point raked his shield. For a moment he thought a Union man had taken objection, then he realised the spear had a Northman on the other end. Greetings, my friend! Gorst was trying to twist his sword free of the press and into a useful attitude when he was given an almighty shove from behind and found himself suddenly squashed up against the owner of the spear, their noses almost touching. A bearded face, with a scar on the top lip.

  Gorst smashed his forehead into it, and again, and again, shoved him down and stomped on his head until it gave under his heel. He realised he was shouting at the falsetto top of his voice. He wasn’t even sure of the words, if they were words. All around him men were doing the same, spitting curses in each other’s faces that no one on the other side could possibly understand.

  A glimpse of sky through a thicket of pole-arms and Gorst thrust his sword into it, another Northman bent sideways, breath wheezing silently through a mouth frozen in a drooling ring of surprise. Too tangled to swing, Gorst gritted his teeth and jabbed away, jabbed, jabbed, jabbed, point grating against armour, pricking at flesh, opening an arm up in a long red slit.

  A growling face showed for a moment over the rim of Gorst’s shield and he set his boots and drove the man back, battering at his chest, jaw, legs. Back he went, and back, and squealing over the parapet, his spear splashing into the fast-flowing water below. Somehow he managed to cling on with the other hand, desperate fingers white on stone, blood leaking from his bloated nose, looking up imploringly. Mercy? Help? Forbearance, at least? Are we not all just men? Brothers eternal, on this crooked road of life? Could we be bosom friends, had we met in other circumstances?

  Gorst smashed his shield down on the hand, bones crunching under the metal edge, watched the man fall cartwheeling into the river. ‘The Union!’ someone shrieked. ‘The Union!’ Was it him? He felt soldiers pushing forward, their blood rising, surging across the bridge with an irresistible momentum, carrying him northwards, a stick on the crest of a wave. He cut someone down with his long steel, laid someone’s else’s head open with the corner of his shield, strap twisting in his hand, his face aching he was smiling so hard, every breath burning with joy. This is living! This is living! Well, not for them, but—

  He tottered suddenly into empty space. Fields opened wide before him, crops shifting in the breeze, golden in the evening sun like the paradise the Prophet promises to the Gurkish righteous. Northmen ran. Some running away, and more running towards. A counter-attack, and leading it a huge warrior, clad in plates of black metal strapped over black chain mail, a long sword in one gauntleted fist, a heavy mace in the other, steel glinting warm and welcoming in the mellow afternoon. Carls followed in a mailed wedge, painted shields up and offering their bright-daubed devices, screaming a chant – ‘Scale! Scale!’ in a thunder of voices.

  The Union drive faltered, the vanguard still shuffling reluctantly forward from the weight of those behind. Gorst stood at their front and watched, smiling into the dropping sun, not daring to move a muscle in case the feeling ended. It was sublime. Like a scene from the tales he had read as a boy. Like that r
idiculous painting in his father’s library of Harod the Great facing Ardlic of Keln. A meeting of champions! All gritted teeth and clenched buttocks! All glorious lives, glorious deaths and glorious … glory?

  The man in black hammered up onto the bridge, big boots thumping the stones. His blade came whistling at shoulder height and Gorst set himself to parry, the breathtaking shock humming up his arm. The mace came a moment later and he caught it on his shield, the heavy head leaving a dent just short of his nose.

  Gorst gave two savage cuts in return, high and low, and the man in black ducked the first and blocked the second with the shaft of his mace, lashed at Gorst with his sword and made him spin away, using a Union soldier’s shield as a backrest.

  He was strong, this champion of the North, and brave, but strength and bravery are not always enough. He had not studied every significant text on swordsmanship ever committed to paper. Had not trained three hours a day every day since he was fourteen. Had run no ten thousand miles in his armour. Had endured no bitter, enraging years of humiliation. And, worst of all, he cares whether he loses.

  Their blades met in the air with a deafening crash but Gorst’s timing was perfect and it was the Northman who staggered off balance, favouring perhaps a weak left knee. Gorst was on him in a flash but someone else’s stray weapon struck him on the shoulder-plate before he could swing, sent him stumbling into the man in black’s arms.

  They lumbered in an awkward embrace. The Northman tried to beat at him with the haft of his mace, trip him, shake him off. Gorst held tight. He was vaguely aware of fighting around them, of men locked in their own desperate struggles, of the screams of tortured flesh and tortured metal, but he was lost in the moment, eyes closed.

  When was the last time I truly held someone? When I won the semi-final in the contest, did my father hug me? No. A firm shake of the hand. An awkward clap on the shoulder. Perhaps he would have hugged me if I’d won, but I failed, just as he said I would. When, then? Women paid to do it? Men I scarcely know in meaningless drunken camaraderie? But not like this. By an equal, who truly understands me. If only it could last…