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

by Joe Abercrombie

  Dow frowned at him. ‘You’re supposed to be my Second, old man. You should be the last one questioning me.’

  Craw held up his palms. ‘And I will be. I’m all for peace, believe me, just might help if I understood why you want it of a sudden.’

  ‘Want?’ barked Dow, jerking towards him like a hound got the scent. ‘Want?’ Closer still, making Craw back up against the wall. ‘I got what I want I’d hang the whole fucking Union and choke this valley with the smoke o’ their cooking meat and sink Angland, Midderland and all their bloody other land in the bottom o’ the Circle Sea, how’s that for peace?’

  ‘Right.’ Craw cleared his throat, rightly wishing he hadn’t asked the question. ‘Right y’are.’

  ‘But that’s being Chief, ain’t it?’ snarled Dow in his face. ‘A dancing fucking procession o’ things you don’t want to do! If I’d known what it meant when I took the chain I’d have tossed it in the river along with the Bloody-Nine. Threetrees warned me, but I didn’t listen. There’s no curse like getting what you want.’

  Craw winced. ‘So … why, then?’

  ‘Because the dead know I’m no peacemaker but I’m no idiot either. Your little friend Calder may be a pissing coward but he’s got a point. It’s a damn fool risks his life for what he can get just by the asking. Not everyone’s got my appetite for the fight. Men are getting tired, the Union are too many to beat and in case you hadn’t noticed we’re trousers down in a pit full of bloody snakes. Ironhead? Golden? Stranger-Come-Bragging? I don’t trust those bastards further’n I can piss with no hands. Better finish this up now while we can call it a win.’

  ‘Fair point,’ croaked Craw.

  ‘Got what I want there’d be no bloody talk at all.’ Dow’s face twitched, and he looked over at Ishri, leaning in the shadows against the wall, face a blank, black mask. He ran his tongue around the inside of his sneering mouth and spat. ‘But calmer heads have prevailed. We’ll try peace on, see whether it chafes. Now get that bitch back to her father ’fore I change my mind and cut the bloody cross in her for the fucking exercise.’

  Craw edged for the door sideways, like a crab. ‘On my way, Chief.’

  Hearts and Minds

  ‘How long should we spend out here, Corporal?’

  ‘As short a time as is possible without disgrace, Yolk.’

  ‘How long’s that?’

  ‘Until it’s too dark for me to see your gurning visage would be a start.’

  ‘And we patrol, do we?’

  ‘No, Yolk, we’ll just walk a few dozen strides and sit down for a while.’

  ‘Where will we find to sit that isn’t wet as an otter’s—’

  ‘Shh,’ hissed Tunny, waving at Yolk to get down. There were men in the trees on the other side of the rise. Three men, and two of them in Union uniforms. ‘Huh.’ One was Lance Corporal Hedges. A squinty, mean-spirited rat of a man who’d been with the First for about three years and thought himself quite the rogue but was no better than a nasty idiot. The kind of bad soldier who gives proper bad soldiers a bad name. His gangly sidekick was unfamiliar, probably a new recruit. Hedges’ version of Yolk, which was truly a concept too horrifying to entertain.

  They both had swords drawn and pointed at a Northman, but Tunny could tell right off he was no fighter. Dressed in a dirty coat with a belt around it, a bow over one shoulder and some arrows in a quiver, no other weapon visible. A hunter, maybe, or a trapper, he looked somewhat baffled and somewhat scared. Hedges had a black fur in one hand. Didn’t take a great mind to work it all out.

  ‘Why, Lance Corporal Hedges!’ Tunny grinned wide as he stood and strolled down the bank, his hand loose on the hilt of his sword, just to make sure everyone realised he had one.

  Hedges squinted guiltily over at him. ‘Keep out o’ this, Tunny. We found him, he’s ours.’

  ‘Yours? Where in the rule book does it say prisoners are yours to abuse because you found them?’

  ‘What do you care about the rules? What’re you doing here, I’d like to know.’

  ‘As it happens, First Sergeant Forest sent me and Trooper Yolk on patrol to make sure none of our men were out beyond the picket causing mischief. And what should I find but you, out beyond the picket and in the process of robbing this civilian. I call that mischievous. Do you call that mischievous, Yolk?’

  ‘Well, er …’

  Tunny didn’t wait for an answer. ‘You know what General Jalenhorm said. We’re out to win hearts and minds as much as anything else. Can’t have you robbing the locals, Hedges. Just can’t have it. Contrary to our whole approach up here.’

  ‘General fucking Jalenhorm?’ Hedges snorted. ‘Hearts and minds? You? Don’t make me laugh!’

  ‘Make you laugh?’ Tunny frowned. ‘Make you laugh? Trooper Yolk, I want you to raise your loaded flatbow and point it at Lance Corporal Hedges.’

  Yolk stared. ‘What?’

  ‘What?’ grunted Hedges.

  Tunny threw up an arm. ‘You heard me, point your bow!’

  Yolk raised the bow so that the bolt was aimed uncertainly at Hedges’ stomach. ‘Like this?’

  ‘How else exactly? Lance Corporal Hedges, how’s this for a laugh? I will count to three. If you haven’t handed that Northman back his fur by the time I get there I will order Trooper Yolk to shoot. You never know, you’re only five strides away, he might even hit you.’

  ‘Now, look—’

  ‘One.’

  ‘Look!’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘All right! All right.’ Hedges tossed the fur in the Northman’s face then stomped angrily away through the trees. ‘But you’ll fucking pay for this, Tunny, I can tell you that!’

  Tunny turned, grinning, and strolled after him. Hedges was opening his mouth for another prize retort when Tunny coshed him across the side of the head with his canteen, which represented a considerable weight when full. It happened so fast Hedges didn’t even try to duck, just went down hard in the mud.

  ‘You’ll fucking pay for this, Corporal Tunny,’ he hissed, and booted Hedges in the groin to underscore the point. Then he took Hedges’ new canteen, and tucked his own badly dented one into his belt where it had been. ‘Something to keep me in your thoughts.’ He looked up at Hedges’ lanky sidekick, fully occupied gawping. ‘Anything to add, pikestaff?’

  ‘I … I—’

  ‘I? What do you think that adds? Shoot him, Yolk.’

  ‘What?’ squeaked Yolk.

  ‘What?’ squeaked the tall trooper.

  ‘I’m joking, idiots! Bloody hell, does no one think at all but me? Drag your prick of a lance corporal back behind the lines, and if I see either one of you out here again I’ll bloody shoot you myself.’ The lanky one helped Hedges up, whimpering, bow-legged and bloody-haired, and the two of them shuffled off into the trees. Tunny waited until they’d disappeared from sight. Then he turned to the Northman and held out his hand. ‘Fur, please.’

  To be fair to the man, in spite of any troubles with the language, he fully understood. His face sagged, and he slapped the fur down into Tunny’s hand. It wasn’t that good a one, even, now he got a close look at it, rough-cured and sour-smelling. ‘What else you got there?’ Tunny came closer, one hand on the hilt of his sword, just in case, and started patting the man down.

  ‘We’re robbing him?’ Yolk had his bow on the Northman now, which meant it was a good deal closer to Tunny than he’d have liked.

  ‘That a problem? Didn’t you tell me you were a convicted thief?’

  ‘I told you I didn’t do it.’

  ‘Exactly what a thief would say! This isn’t robbery, Yolk, it’s war.’ The Northman had some strips of dried meat, Tunny pocketed them. He had a flint and tinder, Tunny tossed them. No money, but that was far from surprising. Coinage hadn’t fully caught on up here.

  ‘He’s got a blade!’ squeaked Yolk, waving his bow about.

  ‘A skinning knife, idiot!’ Tunny took it and put it in his own belt. ‘We’ll stick some rabbit bloo
d on it, say it came off a Named Man dead in battle, and you can bet some fool will pay for it back in Adua.’ He took the Northman’s bow and arrows too. Didn’t want him trying a shot at them out of spite. He looked a bit on the spiteful side, but then Tunny probably would’ve looked spiteful himself if he’d just been robbed. Twice. He wondered about taking the trapper’s coat, but it wasn’t much more than rags, and he thought it might have been a Union one in the first place anyway. Tunny had stolen a score of new Union coats out of the quartermaster’s stores back in Ostenhorm, and hadn’t been able to shift them all yet.

  ‘That’s all,’ he grunted, stepping back. ‘Hardly worth the trouble.’

  ‘What do we do, then?’ Yolk’s big flatbow was wobbling all over the place. ‘You want me to shoot him?’

  ‘You bloodthirsty little bastard! Why would you do that?’

  ‘Well … won’t he tell his friends across the stream we’re over here?’

  ‘We’ve had, what, four hundred men sitting around in a bog for over a day. Do you really think Hedges has been the only one wandering about? They know we’re here by now, Yolk, you can bet on that.’

  ‘So … we just let him go?’

  ‘You want to take him back to camp and keep him as a pet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You want to shoot him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, then?’

  The three of them stood there for a moment in the fading light. Then Yolk lowered his bow, and waved with the other hand. ‘Piss off.’

  Tunny jerked his head into the trees. ‘Off you piss.’

  The Northman blinked for a moment. He scowled at Tunny, then at Yolk, then stalked off into the woods, muttering angrily.

  ‘Hearts and minds,’ murmured Yolk.

  Tunny tucked the Northman’s knife inside his coat. ‘Exactly.’

  Good Deeds

  The buildings of Osrung crowded in on Craw, all looking like they’d bloody stories to tell, each corner turned opening up a new stretch of disaster. A good few were all burned out, charred rafters still smouldering, air sharp with the tang of destruction. Windows gaped empty, shutters bristled with broken shafts, axe-scarred doors hung from hinges. The stained cobbles were scattered with rubbish and twisting shadows and corpses too, cold flesh that once was men, dragged by bare heels to their places in the earth.

  Grim-faced Carls frowned at their strange procession. A full sixty wounded Union soldiers shambling along with Caul Shivers at the back like a wolf trailing a flock and Craw up front with his sore knees and the girl.

  He found he kept glancing sideways at her. Didn’t get a lot of chances to look at women. Wonderful, he guessed, but that wasn’t the same, though she probably would’ve kicked him in the fruits for saying so. Which was just the point. This girl was a girl, and a pretty one too. Though probably she’d been prettier that morning, just like Osrung had. War makes nothing more beautiful. Looked as if she’d had a clump of hair torn from her head, the rest matted with clot on one side. A big bruise at the corner of her mouth. One sleeve of her dirty dress ripped and brown with dry blood. She shed no tears, though, not her.

  ‘You all right?’ asked Craw.

  She glanced over her shoulder at the shambling column, and its crutches, and stretchers, and pain-screwed faces. ‘I could be worse.’

  ‘Guess so.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Eh?’

  She pointed at his face and he touched the stitched cut on his cheek. He’d forgotten all about it until then. ‘What do you know, I could be worse myself.’

  ‘Just out of interest – if I wasn’t all right, what could you do about it?’ Craw opened his mouth, then realised he didn’t have much of an answer. ‘Don’t know. A kind word, maybe?’

  The girl looked around at the ruined square they were crossing, the wounded men propped against the wall of a house on the north side, the wounded men following them. ‘Kind words wouldn’t seem to be worth much in the midst of this.’

  Craw slowly nodded. ‘What else have we got, though?’

  He stopped maybe a dozen paces from the north end of the bridge, Shivers walking up beside him. That narrow path of stone flags stretched off ahead, a pair of torches burning at the far end. No sign of men, but Craw was sure as sure the black buildings beyond the far bank were crammed full of the bastards, all with flatbows and tickly trigger-hands. Wasn’t that big a bridge, but it looked a hell of a march across right then. An awful lot of steps, and at every footfall he might get an arrow in his fruits. Still, waiting about wasn’t going to make that any less likely. More, in fact, since it was getting darker every moment.

  So he hawked up some snot, made ready to spit it, realised the girl was watching him and swallowed it instead. Then he shrugged his shield off his shoulder and set it down by the wall, dragged his sword out from his belt and handed it to Shivers. ‘You wait here with the rest, I’ll go across and see if there’s someone around with an ear for reason.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘And if I get shot … weep for me.’

  Shivers gave a solemn nod. ‘A river.’

  Craw held his hands up high and started walking. Didn’t seem that long ago he was doing more or less the same thing up the side of the Heroes. Walking into the wolf’s den, armed with nothing but a nervy smile and an overwhelming need to shit.

  ‘Doing the right thing,’ he muttered under his breath. Playing peacemaker. Threetrees would’ve been proud. Which was a great comfort, because when he got shot in the neck he could use a dead man’s pride to pull the arrow out, couldn’t he? ‘Too bloody old for this.’ By the dead, he should be retired. Smiling at the water with his pipe and his day’s work behind him. ‘The right thing,’ he whispered again. Would’ve been nice if, just one time, the right thing could’ve been the safe thing too. But Craw guessed life wasn’t really set up that way.

  ‘That’s far enough!’ came a voice in Northern.

  Craw stopped, all kinds of lonely out there in the gloom, water chattering away underneath him. ‘Couldn’t agree more, friend! Just need to talk!’

  ‘Last time we talked it didn’t come out too well for anyone concerned.’ Someone was walking up from the other end of the bridge, a torch in his hand, orange light on a craggy cheek, a ragged beard, a hard-set mouth with a pair of split lips.

  Craw found he was grinning as the man stopped an arm’s length away. He reckoned his chances at living through the night just took a leap for the better. ‘Hardbread, ’less I’m mistook all over the place.’ In spite of the fact they’d been struggling to kill each other not a week before, it felt more like greeting an old friend than an old enemy. ‘What the hell are you doing over here?’

  ‘Lot o’ the Dogman’s boys hereabouts. Stranger-Come-Knocking and his Crinna bastards showed up without an invite, and we been guiding ’em politely to the door. Some messed-up allies your Chief makes, don’t he.’

  Craw looked over towards some Union soldiers who’d gathered in the torchlight at the south end of the bridge. ‘I could say the same o’ yours.’

  ‘Aye, well. Those are the times. What can I do for you, Craw?’

  ‘I got some prisoners Black Dow wants handed back.’

  ‘Hardbread looked profoundly doubtful. ‘When did Dow start handing anything back?’

  ‘He’s starting now.’

  ‘Guess it ain’t never too late to change, eh?’ Hardbread called something in Union, over his shoulder.

  ‘Guess not,’ muttered Craw, under his breath, though he was far from sure Dow had made that big a shift.

  A man came warily up from the south side of the bridge. He wore a Union uniform, high up by the markings but young, and fine-looking too. He nodded to Craw and Craw nodded back, then he traded a few words with Hardbread, then he looked over at the wounded starting to come across the bridge and his jaw dropped.

  Craw heard quick footsteps at his back, saw movement as he turned. ‘What the—’ He made a tardy grab fo
r his sword, realised it wasn’t there, by which point someone had already flashed past. The girl, and straight into the young man’s arms. He caught her, and they held each other tight, and they kissed, and Craw watched with his hand still fishing at the air where his hilt usually was and his eyebrows up high.

  ‘That was unexpected,’ he said.

  Hardbread’s were no lower. ‘Maybe men and women always greet each other that way down in the Union.’

  ‘Reckon I’ll have to move down there myself.’

  Craw leaned back against the pitted parapet of the bridge. Leaned back next to Hardbread and watched those two hold each other, eyes closed, swaying gently in the light of the torch like dancers to a slow music none could hear. He was whispering something in her ear. Comfort, or relief, or love. Words foreign to Craw, no doubt, and not just on account of the language. He watched the wounded shuffling across around the couple, a spark of hope lit in their worn-out faces. Going back to their own people. Hurt, maybe, but alive. Craw had to admit, the night might’ve been coming on cold but he’d a warmth inside. Not like that rush of winning a fight, maybe, not so strong nor so fierce as the thrill of victory.

  But he reckoned it might last longer.

  ‘Feels good.’ As he watched the soldier and the girl make their way across the bridge to the south bank, his arm around her. ‘Making a few folk happier, in the midst o’ this. Feels damn good.’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘Makes you wonder why a man chooses to do what we do.’

  Hardbread took in a heavy breath. ‘Too coward to do aught else, maybe.’

  ‘You might be right.’ The woman and the officer faded into darkness, the last few wounded shambling after. Craw pushed himself away from the parapet and slapped the damp from his hands. ‘Right, then. Back to it, eh?’

  ‘Back to it.’

  ‘Good to see you, Hardbread.’

  ‘Likewise.’ The old warrior turned away and followed the others back towards the south side of the town. ‘Don’t get killed, eh?’ he tossed over his shoulder.