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

by Joe Abercrombie

  Craw snatched at another subject. ‘We waiting for your black-skinned friend?’

  ‘Not sure I’d call her a friend. But yes.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘One o’ those desert-dwellers. Don’t the black give it away?’

  ‘What’s her interest in the North, is my question?’

  ‘Couldn’t tell you that for sure, but from what I’ve gathered she’s got a war of her own to fight. An old war, and for now we’ve a battlefield in common.’

  Craw frowned. ‘A war between sorcerers? That something we want a part of?’

  ‘We’ve a part of it already.’

  ‘Where did you find her?’

  ‘She found me.’

  That was a long way from putting his fears to rest. ‘Magic. I don’t know—’

  ‘You were up on the Heroes yesterday, no? You saw Splitfoot.’

  Hardly a memory to lift the mood. ‘I did.’

  ‘The Union have magic, that’s a fact, and they’re happy to use it. We need to match fire with fire.’

  ‘What if we all get burned?’

  ‘I daresay we will.’ Dow shrugged. ‘That’s war.’

  ‘Can you trust her, though?’

  ‘No.’ Ishri was leaning against the wall by the door, one foot crossed over the other and a look like she knew what Craw was thinking and wasn’t much impressed. He wondered if she knew he’d been thinking about Calder and tried not to, which only brought him more to mind.

  Dow, meanwhile, didn’t even turn around. Just slid his torch into a rusted bracket on the wall, watching the flames crackle.

  ‘Seems our little gesture of peace fell on stony ground,’ he tossed over his shoulder.

  Ishri nodded.

  Dow stuck his bottom lip out. ‘Nobody wants to be my friend.’

  Ishri made one thin eyebrow arch impossibly high.

  ‘Well, who wants to shake hands with a man whose hands are bloody as mine?’

  Ishri shrugged.

  Dow looked down at his hand, made a fist of it and sighed. ‘Reckon I’ll just have to get ’em bloodier. Any idea where they’re coming from today?’

  ‘Everywhere.’

  ‘Knew you’d say that.’

  ‘Why ask, then?’

  ‘Least I got you to speak.’ There was a long silence, then Dow finally turned around, settling back with elbows on the narrow windowsill. ‘Go on, go for some more.’

  Ishri stepped away from the wall, letting her head drop back and roll in a slow circle. For some reason every movement of hers made Craw feel a little disgusted, like watching a snake slither. ‘In the east, a man called Brock has taken charge, and prepares to attack the bridge in Osrung.’

  ‘And what kind of man is he? Like Meed?’

  ‘The opposite. He is young, pretty and brave.’

  ‘I love those young brave pretty men!’ Dow glanced over at Craw. ‘It’s why I picked one out for my Second.’

  ‘None out of three ain’t bad.’ Craw realised he was chewing at his nail yet again, and whipped his hand away.

  ‘In the centre,’ said Ishri, ‘Jalenhorm has a great number of foot ready to cross the shallows.’

  Dow gave his hungry grin. ‘Gives me something to look forward to today. I quite enjoy watching men try to climb hills I’m sat on top of.’ Craw couldn’t say he was looking forward to it, however much the ground might have taken their side.

  ‘In the west Mitterick strains at the leash, keen to make use of his pretty horses. He has men across the little river too, in the woods on your western flank.’

  Dow raised his brows. ‘Huh. Calder was right.’

  ‘Calder has been hard at work all night.’

  ‘Damned if it ain’t the first hard work that bastard’s ever done.’

  ‘He stole two standards from the Union in the darkness. Now he taunts them.’

  Black Dow chuckled to himself. ‘You’ll not find a better hand at taunting. I’ve always liked that lad.’

  Craw frowned over at him. ‘You have?’

  ‘Why else would I keep giving him chances? I got no shortage of men can kick a door down. I can use a couple who’ll think to try the handle once in a while.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Though Craw had to wonder what Dow would say if he knew Calder was trying the handle on his murder. When he knew. It was a case of when. Wasn’t it?

  ‘This new weapon they’ve got.’ Dow narrowed his eyes to lethal slits. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Bayaz.’ Ishri did some fairly deadly eye-narrowing of her own. Craw wondered if there was a harder pair of eye-narrowers in the world than these two. ‘The First of the Magi. He is with them. And he has something new.’

  ‘That’s the best you can do?’

  She tipped her head back, looking down her nose. ‘Bayaz is not the only one who can produce surprises. I have one for him, later today.’

  ‘I knew there had to be a reason why I took you under my wing,’ said Dow.

  ‘Your wing shelters all the North, oh mighty Protector.’ Ishri’s eyes rolled slowly to the ceiling. ‘The Prophet shelters under the wing of God. I shelter under the wing of the Prophet. That thing that keeps the rain from your head?’ And she held her arm up, long fingers wriggling, boneless as a jar of bait. Her face broke out in a grin too white and too wide. ‘Great or small, we all must find some shelter.’ Dow’s torch popped, its light flickered for a moment, and she wasn’t there.

  ‘Think on it,’ came her voice, right in Craw’s ear.

  Names

  Beck hunched his shoulders and stared at the fire. Not much more’n a tangle of blackened sticks, a few embers in the centre still with a glow to ’em and a little tongue of flame, whipped, and snatched, and torn about, helpless in the wind. Burned out. Almost as burned out as he was. He’d clutched at that dream of being a hero so long that now it was naught but ashes he didn’t know what he wanted. He sat there under fading stars named for great men, great battles and great deeds, and didn’t know who he was.

  ‘Hard to sleep, eh?’ Drofd shuffled up into the firelight cross-legged, blanket around his shoulders.

  Beck gave the smallest grunt he could. Last thing he wanted to do was talk.

  Drofd held out a piece of yesterday’s meat to him, glistening with grease. ‘Hungry?’

  Beck shook his head. He weren’t sure when he last ate. Just before he last slept, most likely, but the smell alone was making him sick.

  ‘Might keep it for later, then.’ Drofd stuck the meat into a pocket on the front of his jerkin, bone sticking out, rubbed his hands together and held ’em to the smear of fire, so dirty the lines on his palms were picked out black. He looked about of an age with Beck, but smaller and darker, some spare stubble on his jaw. Right then, in the darkness, he looked a little bit like Reft. Beck swallowed, and looked away. ‘So you got yourself a name, then, eh?’

  A little nod.

  ‘Red Beck.’ Drofd gave a chuckle. ‘It’s a good ’un. Fierce-sounding. You must be pleased.’

  ‘Pleased?’ Beck felt a stinging urge to say, ‘I hid in a cupboard and killed one o’ my own,’ but instead he said, ‘I reckon.’

  ‘Wish I had a name. Guess it’ll come in time.’

  Beck kept staring into the fire, hoping to head off any more chatter. Seemed Drofd was the chattering sort, though.

  ‘You got family?’

  All the most ordinary, obvious, lame bloody talk a lad could’ve thought of. Dragging the words out felt like a painful effort to begin with. ‘A mother. Two little brothers. One’s ’prenticed to the smith in the valley.’ Lame, maybe, but once he’d started talking, thoughts drifting homewards, he found he couldn’t stop. ‘More’n likely my mother’s making ready to bring the harvest in. Was getting ripe when I left. She’ll be sharpening the scythe and that. And Festen’ll be gathering up after her …’ And by the dead, how he wished he was with ’em. He wanted to smile and cry at once, didn’t dare say more for fear of doing it.

  ‘I got sev
en sisters,’ said Drofd, ‘and I’m the youngest. Like having eight mothers fussing over me, and putting me right all day long, and each with a tongue sharper’n the last. No man in the house, and no man’s business ever talked of. Home was a special kind of hell, I can tell you that.’

  A warm house with eight women and no swords didn’t sound so awful right then. Beck had thought his home was a special kind of hell once. Now he had a different notion of what hell looked like.

  Drofd blathered on.

  ‘But I got a new family now. Craw, and Wonderful, and Jolly Yon and the rest. Good fighters. Good names. Stick together, you know, mind their own. Lost a couple o’ people the last few days. Couple of good people, but …’ Seemed he ran out of words himself for a moment. Didn’t take him long to find more, though. ‘Craw was Second to old Threetrees, you know, way back. Been in every battle since whenever. Does things the old way. Real straight edge. You fell on your feet to fall in with this lot, I reckon.’

  ‘Aye.’ Beck didn’t feel like he’d fallen on his feet. He felt like he was still falling and, sooner or later but probably sooner, the ground would smash his brains out.

  ‘Where did you get the sword?’

  Beck blinked at the hilt, almost surprised to see it was still there beside him. ‘It was my father’s.’

  ‘He was a fighter?’

  ‘Named Man. Famous one, I guess.’ And how he’d loved to boast about it once. Now the name was sour on his tongue. ‘Shama Heartless.’

  ‘What? The one who fought a duel against the Bloody-Nine? The one who …’

  Lost. ‘Aye. The Bloody-Nine brought an axe to the duel, and my father brought this blade, and they spun the shield, and the Bloody-Nine won, and he chose the sword.’ Beck slid it out, stupidly worried he might stab someone without meaning to. He’d a respect of sharp metal he hadn’t had the night before. ‘They fought, and the Bloody-Nine split my father’s belly wide open.’ Seemed mad now that he’d rushed to follow the man’s footsteps. A man he’d never known, whose footsteps led all the way to his own spilled guts.

  ‘You mean … the Bloody-Nine held that sword?’

  ‘Guess he must’ve.’

  ‘Can I?’

  Time was Beck would’ve told Drofd to fuck himself, but acting the loner hadn’t worked out too well for anyone concerned. This time around maybe he’d try and coax out a friendship or two. So he handed the blade across, pommel first.

  ‘By the dead, that’s a damn good sword.’ Drofd stared at the hilt with big eyes. ‘There’s still blood on it.’

  ‘Aye,’ Beck managed to croak.

  ‘Well, well, well.’ Wonderful strutted up, hands on hips, tip of her tongue showing between her teeth. ‘Two young lads, handling each other’s weapons by firelight? Don’t worry, I see how it can happen. You think no one’s watching, and there’s a fight coming, and you might never get another chance to try it. Most natural thing in the world.’

  Drofd cleared his throat and gave the sword back quick. ‘Just talking about … you know. Names. How’d you come by yours?’

  ‘Mine?’ snapped Wonderful, narrowing her eyes at ’em. Beck didn’t rightly know what to make of a woman fighting, let alone one who led a dozen. One who was his Chief, now, even. He had to admit she scared him a little, with that hard look and that knobbly head with an old scar down one side and a fresh one down the other. Being scared by a woman might’ve shamed him once, but it hardly seemed to matter now he was scared of everything. ‘I got it giving a pair of curious young lads a wonderful kicking.’

  ‘She got it off Threetrees.’ Jolly Yon rolled over in his blankets and propped himself on an elbow, peering at the fire through one hardly open eye, scratching at his black and grey thatch of a beard. ‘Her family had a farm just north of Uffrith. Stop me if I’m wrong.’

  ‘I will,’ she said, ‘don’t worry.’

  ‘And when trouble started up with Bethod, some of his boys came down into that valley. So she shaved her hair.’

  ‘Shaved it a couple of months before. Always got in my way when I was following the plough.’

  ‘I stand corrected. You want to take over?’

  ‘You’re doing all right.’

  ‘No need for the shears, then, but she took up a sword, and she got a few others in the valley to do the same, and she laid an ambush for ’em.’

  Wonderful’s eyes gleamed in the firelight. ‘Did I ever.’

  ‘And then Threetrees turned up, and me and Craw along with him, expecting to find the valley all burned out and the farmers scattered and instead he finds a dozen of Bethod’s boys hanged and a dozen more prisoner and this bloody girl watching over ’em with quite the smile. What was it he said now?’

  ‘Can’t say I recall,’ she grunted.

  ‘Wonderful strange to have a woman in charge,’ said Yon, putting on a gravelly bass. ‘We called her Wonderful Strange for a week or two, then the strange dropped off, and there you have it.’

  Wonderful nodded grimly at the fire. ‘And a month later Bethod came in earnest and the valley got all burned out anyway.’

  Yon shrugged. ‘Still a good ambush, though.’

  ‘And what about you, eh, Jolly Yon Cumber?’

  Yon dragged his blankets off and sat up. ‘Ain’t much to it.’

  ‘Don’t be modest. Jolly was said straight in the old days, ’cause he used to be quite the joker, did Yon. Then his cock was tragically cut off in the battle at Ineward, a loss more mourned by the womenfolk of the North than all the husbands, sons and fathers killed there. Ever since then, not a single smile.’

  ‘A cruel lie.’ Yon pointed a thick finger across at Beck. ‘I never had a sense o’ humour. And it was just a little nick out of my thigh at Ineward. Lot of blood but no damage. Everything still working down below, don’t you worry.’

  Over his shoulder and out of his sight, Wonderful was pointing at her crotch. ‘Cock and fruits,’ she mouthed, miming a chopping action with one open hand. ‘Cock … and …’ Then when Yon looked around peered at her fingernails like she’d done nothing.

  ‘Up already?’ Flood came limping between the sleepers and the fires along with a man Beck didn’t know, lean with a mop of grey-streaked hair.

  ‘Our youngest woke us,’ grunted Wonderful. ‘Drofd was having a feel of Beck’s weapon.’

  ‘You can see how it can happen, though …’ said Yon.

  ‘You can check mine over if you like.’ Flood grabbed the mace at his belt and stuck it up at an angle. ‘It’s got a big lump on the end!’ Drofd gave a chuckle at that, but it seemed most of the rest weren’t in a laughing mood. Beck surely weren’t. ‘No?’ Flood looked around at ’em expectantly. ‘It’s ’cause I’m old, ain’t it? You can say. It’s ’cause I’m old.’

  ‘Old or not, I’m glad you’re here,’ said Wonderful, one eyebrow up. ‘The Union won’t dare attack now we’ve got you two.’

  ‘Never would have given ’em the chance but I had to go for a piss.’

  ‘Third of the night?’ asked Yon.

  Flood peered up at the sky. ‘Think it was the fourth.’

  ‘Which is why they call him Flood,’ murmured Wonderful under her breath. ‘’Case you were wondering.’

  ‘I ran into Scorry Tiptoe on the way.’ Flood jerked his thumb at the lean man beside him.

  Tiptoe took a while weighing up the words, then spoke ’em soft. ‘I was taking a look around.’

  ‘Find anything out?’ asked Wonderful.

  He nodded, real slow, like he’d come upon the secret of life itself.

  ‘There’s a battle on.’ He slid down next to Beck on crossed legs and held out a hand to him. ‘Scorry Tiptoe.’

  ‘On account of his gentle footfall,’ said Drofd. ‘Scouting, mostly. And back rank, with a spear, you know.’

  Beck gave it a limp shake. ‘Beck.’

  ‘Red Beck,’ threw in Drofd. ‘That’s his name. Got it yesterday. Off Reachey. Down in the fight in Osrung. Now he’s joined up … with us
… you know …’ He trailed off, Beck and Scorry both frowning at him, and huddled down into his blanket.

  ‘Craw give you the talk?’ asked Scorry.

  ‘The talk?’

  ‘About the right thing.’

  ‘He mentioned it.’

  ‘Wouldn’t take it too seriously.’

  ‘No?’

  Scorry shrugged. ‘Right thing’s a different thing for every man.’ And he started pulling knives out and laying ’em on the ground in front of him, from a huge great thing with a bone handle only just this side of a short sword to a tiny little curved one without even a grip, just a pair of rings for two fingers to fit in.

  ‘That for peeling apples?’ asked Beck.

  Wonderful drew a finger across her sinewy neck. ‘Slitting throats.’

  Beck thought she was probably having a laugh at him, then Scorry spat onto a whetstone and that little blade gleamed in the firelight and suddenly he weren’t so sure. Scorry pressed it to the stone and gave it a lick both ways, snick, snick, and all of a sudden there was a thrashing of blankets.

  ‘Steel!’ Whirrun sprang up, reeling about, sword all tangled up with his bed. ‘I hear steel!’

  ‘Shut up!’ someone called.

  Whirrun tore his sword free, jerking his hood out of his eyes. ‘I’m awake! Is it morning?’ Seemed the stories about Whirrun of Bligh being always ready were a bit overdone. He let his sword drop, squinting up at the black sky, stars peeping between shreds of cloud. ‘Why is it dark? Have no fear, children, Whirrun is among you and ready to fight!’

  ‘Thank the dead,’ grunted Wonderful. ‘We’re saved.’

  ‘That you are, woman!’ Whirrun pulled his hood back, scratched at his hair, plastered flat on one side and sticking out like a thistle on the other. He stared about the Heroes and, seeing nought but guttering fires, sleeping men and the same old stones as ever, crawled up close to the flames, yawning. ‘Saved from dull conversation. Did I hear some talk of names?’

  ‘Aye,’ muttered Beck, not daring to say more. It was like having Skarling himself to talk to. He’d been raised on stories about Whirrun of Bligh’s high deeds. Listened to old drunk Scavi tell ’em down in the village, and begged for more. Dreamed of standing beside him as an equal, claiming a place in his songs. Now here he was, sitting beside him as fraud, and coward, and friend-killer. He dragged his mother’s cloak tight, felt something crusted under his fingers. Realised the cloth was still stiff with Reft’s blood and had to stop a shiver. Red Beck. He’d blood on his hands, all right. But it didn’t feel like he’d always dreamed it would.