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

by Joe Abercrombie

  Calder blinked, blinded for a moment. Dow had worked him around so the rising sun stabbed past the ragged edge of the standard and right in Calder’s eyes. He saw metal glint, waved his sword helplessly, felt something thud into his left shoulder and spin him sideways, making a breathless squeal, waiting for the agony. He slid, righted himself, was shocked to see none of his own blood spraying. Dow had only slapped him with the flat. Toying with him. Making a show of it.

  Laughter swept through the crowd, enough to sting some anger up in Calder. He gritted his teeth, hefting his sword. If he wasn’t attacking he was losing. He lunged at Dow but it was so slippery underfoot he couldn’t get any snap in it. Dow just turned sideways and caught Calder’s wobbling sword as he laboured past, blades scraping together, hilts locking.

  ‘Fucking weak,’ hissed Dow, and flung Calder away like a man might swat away a fly, heels kicking hopelessly at the slop as he reeled across the circle.

  The men on Dow’s side were less helpful than Hansul had been. A shield cracked Calder in the back of the skull and sent him sprawling. For a moment he couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, skin fizzing all over. Then he was dragging himself up, limbs feeling like they weighed a ton a piece, the circle of mud tipping wildly about, jeering voices all booming and burbling.

  He didn’t have his sword. Reached for it. A boot came down and squashed his hand into the cold mud, spraying flecks of it in his face. He gave a gasp, more shock than pain. Then another, definitely pain as Dow twisted his heel, crushing Calder’s fingers deeper.

  ‘Prince of the North?’ The point of Dow’s sword pricked into Calder’s neck, twisting his head towards the bright sky, making him slither helplessly up onto all fours. ‘You’re a fucking embarrassment, boy.’ And Calder gasped as the point flicked his head back and left a burning cut up the middle of his chin.

  Dow was trotting away, arms up, dragging out the show, a half-circle of leering, gurning, sneering faces showing above the shields behind him, all shouting. ‘Black … Dow … Black … Dow …’ Tenways chanting gleefully along, and Golden, and Shivers just frowning, weapons thrusting at the air behind them in time.

  Calder worked his hand trembling out of the mud. From what he could tell as red-black spots pattered onto it from his chin, not all of his finger-joints were where they used to be.

  ‘Get up!’ An urgent voice behind him. Pale-as-Snow, maybe. ‘Get up!’

  ‘Why?’ he whispered at the ground. The shame of it. Butchered by an old thug for the amusement of baying morons. He couldn’t say it was undeserved, but that made it no more appealing, and no less painful either. His eyes flickered around the circle, desperately seeking a way out. But there was no way through the thicket of stomping boots, punching fists, twisted mouths, rattling shields. No way out but blood.

  He took a few breaths until the world stopped spinning, then fished his sword from the mud with his left hand and got ever so slowly to his feet. Probably he should’ve been feigning weakness, but he didn’t know how he could look any weaker than he felt. He tried to shake the fuzz from his head. He had a chance, didn’t he? Had to attack. But by the dead, he was tired. Already. By the dead, his broken hand hurt, cold all the way to his shoulder.

  Dow flicked his sword spinning into the air with a flourish. Left himself open for a moment in a show of warrior’s arrogance. The moment for Calder to strike, and save himself, and earn a place in the songs besides. He tensed his leaden legs to spring, but by then Dow had already snatched the sword from the air with his left hand and was standing ready, his warrior’s arrogance well deserved. They faced each other as the crowd slowly quieted, and the blood ran from Calder’s slit chin and worked its way tickling down his neck.

  ‘Your father died badly, as I remember,’ Dow called to him. ‘Head smashed to pulp in the circle.’ Calder stood in silence, saving his breath for another lunge, trying to judge the space between them. ‘Hardly had a face at all once the Bloody-Nine was done with him.’ A big step and a swing. Now, while Dow was busy boasting. Two men fight, there’s always a chance. Dow grinned. ‘A bad death. Don’t worry, though—’

  Calder sprang, teeth rattling as his left boot thumped down and sprayed wet dirt, his sword going high and slicing hard towards Dow’s skull. There was a slapping of skin as Dow caught Calder’s left hand in his right, crushing Calder’s fist around the hilt of his sword, blade wrenched up to waggle harmlessly at the sky.

  ‘—I’ll make sure yours is worse,’ Dow finished.

  Calder pawed at Dow’s shoulder with his broken hand, fingers flopping uselessly at his father’s chain. The thumb still worked, though, and he scraped at Dow’s pitted cheek with the nail, drawing a little bead of blood, growling as he tried to force it into the hole where Dow’s ear used to be along with all his disappointment, and his desperation, and his anger, finding that flap of scar with the tip, baring his teeth as—

  The pommel of Dow’s sword drove into his ribs with a hollow thud and pain flashed through him to the roots of his hair. He probably would’ve screamed if he’d had any breath in him, but it was all gone in one ripping, vomiting wheeze. He tottered, bent over, bile washing into his frozen mouth and dangling in a string from his bloody lip.

  ‘Thought you were the big thinker.’ Dow dragged him up by his left hand so he could hiss it right in his face. ‘Thought you could get the better o’ me? In the circle? Don’t look too clever now, do you?’ The pommel crunched into Calder’s ribs just as he was taking a shuddering breath and drove it whimpering out again, left him limp as a wet sheepskin. ‘Does he?’ The crowd heckled and cackled and spat, rattled their shields and shrieked for blood. ‘Hold this.’ Dow tossed his sword through the air and Shivers caught it by the hilt.

  ‘Stand up, fucker.’ Dow’s hand thumped shut around Calder’s throat, quick and final as a bear trap. ‘For once in your life, stand up.’ And Dow hauled Calder straight, not able to stand by himself, not able to move his one good hand or the sword still uselessly stuck in it, not able even to breathe. Singularly unpleasant, having your windpipe squeezed shut. Calder squirmed helplessly. His mouth tasted of sick. His face was burning, burning. It always catches people by surprise, the moment of their death, even when they should see it coming. They always think they’re special, somehow expect a reprieve. But no one’s special. Dow squeezed harder, making the bones in Calder’s neck click. His eyes felt like they were going to pop. Everything was getting bright.

  ‘You think this is the end?’ Dow grinned as he lifted Calder higher, feet almost leaving the mud. ‘I’m just getting started, you fu—’

  There was a sharp crack and blood sprayed up, dark streaks against the sky. Calder lurched back clumsily, gasping as his throat and his sword hand came free, near slipping over as Dow fell against him then flopped face down in the filth.

  Blood gushed from his split skull, spattering Calder’s ruined boots.

  Time stopped.

  Every voice sputtered out, coughed off, leaving the circle in sudden, breathless silence. Every eye fixed on the bubbling wound in the back of Black Dow’s head. Caul Shivers stood glowering down in the midst of those gaping faces, the sword that had been the Bloody-Nine’s in his fist, the grey blade dashed and speckled with Black Dow’s blood.

  ‘I’m no dog,’ he said.

  Calder’s eyes flicked to Tenways’, just as his flicked to Calder’s. Both their mouths open, both doing the sums. Tenways was Black Dow’s man. But Black Dow was dead, and everything was changed. Tenways’ left eye twitched, just a fraction.

  You get a chance, don’t hesitate. Calder flung himself forward, not much more than falling, his sword coming down as Tenways reached for the hilt of his, eyes going wide. He tried to bring his shield up, got it tangled with the man beside him, and Calder’s blade split his rashy face open right down to his nose, blood showering out across the men beside him.

  Just goes to show, a poor fighter can beat a great one easily, even with his left hand. As long as he’s the one w
ith the drawn sword.

  Beck looked around as he felt Shivers move. Saw the blade flash over and stared, skin prickling, as Dow hit the muck. Then he went for his sword. Wonderful caught his wrist before it got there.

  ‘No.’

  Beck flinched as Calder lurched at him, blade swinging. There was a hollow click and blood spattered around them, a spot on Beck’s face. He tried to shake Wonderful off, get at his sword, but Scorry’s hand was on his shield arm, dragging him back. ‘The right thing’s a different thing for every man,’ hissed in his ear.

  Calder stood swaying, his mouth wide open, his heart pounding so hard it was on the point of blowing his head apart, his eyes flickering from one stricken face to another. Tenways’ blood-speckled Carls. Golden, and Ironhead, and their Named Men. Dow’s own guards, Shivers in the midst of them, the sword that had split Dow’s head still in his hand. Any moment now the circle would erupt into an orgy of carnage and it was anyone’s guess who’d come out of it alive. Only certain thing seemed to be that he wouldn’t.

  ‘Come on!’ he croaked, taking a wobbling step towards Tenways’ men. Just to get it over with. Just to get it done.

  But they stumbled back as if Calder was Skarling himself. He couldn’t understand why. Until he felt a shadow fall across him, then a great weight on his shoulder. So heavy it almost made his knees buckle.

  The huge hand of Stranger-Come-Knocking. ‘This was well done,’ said the giant, ‘and fairly done too, for anything that wins is fair in war, and the greatest victory is the one that takes the fewest blows. Bethod was King of the Northmen. So should his son be. I, Stranger-Come-Knocking, Chief of a Hundred Tribes, stand with Black Calder.’

  Whether the giant thought whoever was in charge stuck Black before his name, or whether he thought Calder claimed it having won, or whether he just thought it suited, who could say? Either way it stuck.

  ‘And I.’ Reachey’s hand slapped down on Calder’s other shoulder, his grinning, grizzled face beside it. ‘I stand with my son. With Black Calder.’ Now the proud father, nothing but support. Dow was dead, and everything was changed.

  ‘And I.’ Pale-as-Snow stepped up on the other side, and suddenly all those words Calder had thought wasted breath, all those seeds he’d thought dead and forgotten, sprouted forth and bore amazing blooms.

  ‘And I.’ Ironhead was next, and as he stepped from his men he gave Calder the faintest nod.

  ‘And I.’ Golden, desperate not to let his rival get ahead of him. ‘I’m for Black Calder!’

  ‘Black Calder!’ men were shouting all around, urged on by their Chiefs. ‘Black Calder!’ All competing to shout it loudest, as though loyalty to this sudden new way of doing things could be proved through volume. ‘Black Calder!’ As though this had been what everyone wanted all along. What they’d expected.

  Shivers squatted down and dragged the tangled chain over Dow’s ruined head. He offered it to Calder, dangling from one finger, the diamond his father had worn swinging gently, made half a ruby by blood.

  ‘Looks like you win,’ said Shivers.

  In spite of the very great pain, Calder found it in himself to smirk.

  ‘Doesn’t it, though?’

  What was left of Craw’s dozen slipped unnoticed back through the press even as most of the crowd were straining forwards.

  Wonderful still had Beck’s arm, Scorry at his shoulder. They bundled him away from the circle, past a set of wild-eyed men already busy tearing Dow’s standard down and ripping it up between ’em, Yon and Flood behind. They weren’t the only ones sloping off. Even as Black Dow’s War Chiefs were stumbling over his corpse to kiss Black Calder’s arse, other men were drifting away. Men who could feel which way the wind was blowing, and thought if they stuck about it might blow ’em right into the mud. Men who’d stood tight with Dow, or had scores with Bethod and didn’t fancy testing his son’s mercy.

  They stopped in the long shadow of one of the stones, and Wonderful set her shield down against it and took a careful look around. Folk had their own worries though, and no one was paying ’em any mind.

  She reached into her coat, pulled something out and slapped it into Yon’s hand. ‘There’s yours.’ Yon even had something like a grin as he closed his big fist around it, metal clicking inside. She slipped another into Scorry’s hand, a third for Flood. Then she offered one to Beck. A purse. And with plenty in it too, by the way it was bulging. He stood, staring at it, until Wonderful shoved it under his nose. ‘You get a half-share.’

  ‘No,’ said Beck.

  ‘You’re new, boy. A half-share is more’n fair—’

  ‘I don’t want it.’

  They were all frowning at him now. ‘He don’t want it,’ muttered Scorry.

  ‘We should’ve done …’ Beck weren’t at all sure what they should’ve done. ‘The right thing,’ he finished, lamely.

  ‘The what?’ Yon’s face screwed up with scorn. ‘I hoped to have heard the last of that shit! Spend twenty years in the black business and have naught to show for it but scars, then you can preach to me about the right fucking thing, you little bastard!’ He took a step at Beck but Wonderful held her arm out to stop him.

  ‘What kind of right ends up with more men dead than less?’ Her voice was soft, no anger in it. ‘Well? D’you know how many friends I lost the last few days? What’s right about that? Dow was done. One way or another, Dow was done. So we should’ve fought for him? Why? He’s nothing to me. No better’n Calder or anyone else. You saying we should’ve died for that, Red Beck?’

  Beck paused for a moment, mouth open. ‘I don’t know. But I don’t want the money. Whose is it, even?’

  ‘Ours,’ she said, looking him right in the eye.

  ‘This ain’t right.’

  ‘Straight edge, eh?’ She slowly nodded, and her eyes looked tired. ‘Well. Good luck with that. You’ll need it.’

  Flood looked a patch guilty, but he wasn’t giving aught back. Scorry had a little smile as he dropped his shield on the grass and sank cross-legged onto it, humming some tune in which noble deeds were done. Yon was frowning as he rooted through the purse, working out how much he’d got.

  ‘What would Craw have made o’ this?’ muttered Beck.

  Wonderful shrugged. ‘Who cares? Craw’s gone. We got to make our own choices.’

  ‘Aye.’ Beck looked from one face to another. ‘Aye.’ And he walked off.

  ‘Where you going?’ Flood called after him.

  He didn’t answer.

  He passed by one of the Heroes, shoulder brushing the ancient rock, and kept moving. He hopped over the drystone wall, heading north down the hillside, shook the shield off his arm and left it in the long grass. Men stood about, talking fast. Arguing. One pulled a knife, another backing off, hands up. Panic spreading along with the news. Panic and anger, fear and delight.

  ‘What happened?’ someone asked him, grabbing at his cloak. ‘Did Dow win?’

  Beck shook his hand off. ‘I don’t know.’ He strode on, almost breaking into a run, down the hill and away. He only knew one thing. This life weren’t for him. The songs might be full of heroes, but the only ones here were stones.

  The Currents of History

  Finree had gone where the wounded lay, to do what women were supposed to do when a battle ended. To soothe parched throats with water tipped to desperate lips. To bind wounds with bandages torn from the hems of their dresses. To calm the dying with soft singing that reminded them of Mother.

  Instead of which she stood staring. Appalled by the mindless chorus of weeping, whining, desperate slobbering. By the flies, and the shit, and the blood-soaked sheets. By the calmness of the nurses, floating among the human wreckage as serene as white ghosts. Appalled more than anything else by the numbers. Laid out in ranks on pallets or sheets or cold ground. Companies of them. Battalions.

  ‘There are more than a dozen,’ a young surgeon told her.

  ‘There are scores,’ she croaked back, struggling not to cover her m
outh at the stink.

  ‘No. More than a dozen of these tents. Do you know how to change a dressing?’

  If there was such a thing as a romantic wound there was no room for them here. Every peeled-back bandage a grotesque striptease with some fresh oozing nightmare beneath. A hacked-open arse, a caved-in jaw with most of the teeth and half the tongue gone, a hand neatly split leaving only thumb and forefinger, a punctured belly leaking piss. One man had been cut across the back of the neck and could not move, only lie on his face, breath softly wheezing. His eyes followed her as she passed and the look in them made her cold all over. Bodies skinned, burned, ripped open at strange angles, their secret insides laid open to the world in awful violation. Wounds that would ruin men as long as they lived. Ruin those who loved them.

  She tried to keep her eyes on her work, such as it was, chewing her tongue, trembling fingers fumbling with knots and pins. Trying not to listen to the whispers for help that she did not know how to give. That no one could give. Red spots appearing on the new bandages even before she finished, and growing, and growing, and she was forcing down tears, and forcing down sick, and on to the next, who was missing his left arm above the elbow, the left side of his face covered by bandages, and—

  ‘Finree.’

  She looked up and realised, to her cold horror, that it was Colonel Brint. They stared at each other for what felt like for ever, in awful silence, in that awful place.

  ‘I didn’t know …’ There was so much she did not know she hardly knew how to continue.

  ‘Yesterday,’ he said, simply.

  ‘Are you …’ She almost asked him if he was all right, but managed to bite the words off. The answer was horribly obvious. ‘Do you need—’

  ‘Have you heard anything? About Aliz?’ The name alone was enough to make her guts cramp up even further. She shook her head. ‘You were with her. Where were you held?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was hooded. They took me away and sent me back.’ And oh, how glad she was that Aliz had been left behind in the dark, and not her. ‘I don’t know where she’ll be now …’ Though she could guess. Perhaps Brint could too. Perhaps he was spending all his time guessing.