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

by Joe Abercrombie

  Calder had to nod at that. ‘A sound principle.’ He glanced up at Foss Deep, lately returned to his service following the end of hostilities and an apt display of the power of self-interest in the flesh. Despite his stated distaste for battles he’d somehow acquired, gleaming beneath his shabby coat, a splendid Union breastplate engraved with a golden sun. ‘A man should have some, eh, Deep?’

  ‘Some what?’

  ‘Principles.’

  ‘Oh, I’m a big, big, big believer in ’em. My brother too.’

  Shallow took a quick break from furiously picking his fingernails with the point of his knife. ‘I like ’em with milk.’

  A slightly uncomfortable silence. Then Calder turned back to Ironhead. ‘Last time we spoke you told me you’d stick with Dow. Then you pissed on my boots.’ He lifted one up, even more battered, gouged and stained from the events of the past few days than Calder was himself. ‘Best bloody boots in the North a week ago. Styrian leather. Now look.’

  ‘I’ll be more’n happy to buy you a new pair.’

  Calder winced at his aching ribs as he stood. ‘Make it two.’

  ‘Whatever you say. Maybe I’ll get a pair myself and all.’

  ‘You sure something in steel wouldn’t be more your style?’

  Ironhead shrugged. ‘No call for steel boots in peacetime. Anything else?’

  ‘Just keep your men handy, for now. We need to put a good show on ’til the Union get bored of waiting and slink off. Shouldn’t be long.’

  ‘Right y’are.’

  Calder took a couple of steps away, then turned back. ‘Get a gift for my wife, too. Something beautiful, since my child’s due soon.’

  ‘Chief.’

  ‘And don’t feel too bad about it. Everyone serves someone.’

  ‘Very true.’ Ironhead didn’t so much as twitch. A little disappointing, in fact – Calder had hoped to watch him sweat. But there’d be time for that later, once the Union were gone. There’d be time for all kinds of things. So he gave a lordly nod and smirked off, his two shadows trailing after.

  He had Reachey on-side, and Pale-as-Snow. He’d had a little word with Wonderful, and she’d had the same little word with Dow’s Carls, and their loyalty had washed with the rainwater, all right. Most of Tenways’ men had drifted off, and White-Eye Hansul had made his own appeal to self-interest and argued the rest around. Ironhead and Golden still hated each other too much to pose a threat and Stranger-Come-Knocking, for reasons beyond Calder’s ken, was treating him like an old and honoured friend.

  Laughing stock to king of the world in the swing of a sword. Luck. Some men have it, some don’t.

  ‘Time to plumb the depth of Glama Golden’s loyalty,’ said Calder happily. ‘Or his self-interest, anyway.’

  They walked down the hillside in the gathering darkness, stars starting to peep out from the inky skies, Calder smirking at the thought of how he’d make Golden squirm. How he’d have that puffed-up bastard tripping over his own tongue trying to ingratiate himself. How much he’d enjoy twisting the screw. They reached a fork in the path and Deep strolled off to the left, around the foot of the Heroes.

  ‘Golden’s camp is on the right,’ grunted Calder.

  ‘True,’ said Deep, still walking. ‘You’ve an unchallenged grasp on your rights and lefts, which puts you a firm rung above my brother on the ladder of learning.’

  ‘They look the bloody same,’ snapped Shallow, and Calder felt something prick at his back. A cold and surprising something, not quite painful but certainly not pleasant. It took him a moment to realise what it was, but when he did all his smugness drained away as though that jabbing point had already made a hole.

  How flimsy is arrogance. It only takes a bit of sharp metal to bring it all crashing down.

  ‘We’re going left.’ Shallow’s point prodded again and Calder set off, hands up, his smirk abandoned in the gloom.

  There were plenty of people about. Fires surrounded by half-lit faces. One set playing at dice, another making up ever more bloated lies about their high deeds in the battle, another slapping out stray embers on someone’s cloak. A drunken group of Thralls lurched past but they barely even looked over. No one rushed to Calder’s rescue. They saw nothing to comment on and even if they had, they didn’t care a shit. People don’t, on the whole.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Though the only real question was whether they’d dug his grave already, or were planning to argue over it after.

  ‘You’ll find out.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we’ll get there.’

  ‘No. Why are you doing this?’

  They burst out laughing together, as though that was quite the joke. ‘Do you think we were watching you by accident, over at Caul Reachey’s camp?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ hummed Shallow. ‘No.’

  They were moving away from the Heroes, now. Fewer people, fewer fires. Hardly any light but the circle of crops picked out by Deep’s torch. Any hope of help fading into the black behind them along with the bragging and the songs. If Calder was going to be saved he’d have to do it himself. They hadn’t even bothered to take his sword away from him. But who was he fooling? Even if his right hand hadn’t been useless, Shallow could’ve cut his throat a dozen times before he got it drawn. Across the darkened fields he could pick out the line of trees far to the north. Maybe if he ran—

  ‘No.’ Shallow’s knife pricked at Calder’s side again. ‘No nee no no no.’

  ‘Really no,’ said Deep.

  ‘Look, maybe we can come to an arrangement. I’ve got money—’

  ‘There’s no pockets deep enough to outbid our employer. Your best bet is just to follow along like a good boy.’ Calder rather doubted that but, clever as he liked to think he was, he had no better ideas. ‘We’re sorry about this, you know. We’ve naught but respect for you just as we’d naught but respect for your father.’

  ‘What good is your sorry going to do me?’

  Deep’s shoulders shrugged. ‘A little less than none, but we always make a point of saying it.’

  ‘He thinks that lends us class,’ said Shallow.

  ‘A noble air.’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ said Calder. ‘You’re a right pair of fucking heroes.’

  ‘It’s a pitiable fellow who ain’t a hero to someone,’ said Deep. ‘Even if it’s only himself.’

  ‘Or Mummy,’ said Shallow.

  ‘Or his brother.’ Deep grinned over his shoulder. ‘How did your brother feel about you, my lordling?’

  Calder thought about Scale, fighting against the odds on that bridge, waiting for help that never came. ‘I’m guessing he went off me at the end.’

  ‘Wouldn’t cry too many tears about it. It’s a rare fine fellow who ain’t a villain to someone. Even if it’s only himself.’

  ‘Or his brother,’ whispered Shallow.

  ‘And here we are.’

  A ramshackle farmhouse had risen out of the darkness. Large and silent, stone covered with rustling creeper, flaking shutters slanting in the windows. Calder realised it was the same one he’d slept in for two nights, but it looked a lot more sinister now. Everything does with a knife at your back.

  ‘This way, if you please.’ To the porch on the side of the house, lean-to roof missing slates, a rotten table under it, chairs lying on their sides. A lamp swung gently from a hook on one of the flaking columns, its light shifting across a yard scattered with weeds, a slumping fence beyond separating the farm from its fields.

  There were a lot of tools leaning against the fence. Shovels, axes, pickaxes, caked in mud, as though they’d been hard used that day by a team of workmen and left there to be used again tomorrow. Tools for digging. Calder felt his fear, faded slightly on the walk, shoot up cold again. Through a gap in the fence and the light of Deep’s torch flared out across trampled crops and fell on fresh-turned earth. A knee-high heap of it, big as the foundations of a barn. Calder opened his mouth, maybe to make some desperate plea, strike some l
ast bargain, but he had no words any more.

  ‘They been working hard,’ said Deep, as another mound crept from the night beside the first.

  ‘Slaving away,’ said Shallow, as the torchlight fell on a third.

  ‘They say war’s an awful affliction, but you’ll have a hard time finding a gravedigger to agree.’

  The last one hadn’t been filled in yet. Calder’s skin crawled as the torch found its edges, five strides across, maybe, its far end lost in the sliding shadows. Deep made it to the corner and peered over the edge. ‘Phew.’ He wedged his torch in the earth, turned and beckoned. ‘Up you come, then. Walking slow ain’t going to make the difference.’

  Shallow gave him a nudge and Calder plodded on, throat tightening with each drawn-out breath, more and more of the sides of the pit crawling into view with each unsteady step.

  Earth, and pebbles, and barley roots. Then a pale hand. Then a bare arm. Then corpses. Then more. The pit was full of them, heaped up in a grisly tangle. The refuse of battle.

  Most were naked. Stripped of everything. Would some gravedigger end up with Calder’s good cloak? The dirt and the blood looked the same in the torchlight. Black smears on dead white skin. Hard to say which twisted legs and arms belonged to which bodies.

  Had these been men a couple of days before? Men with ambitions, and hopes, and things they cared for? A mass of stories, cut off in the midst, no ending. The hero’s reward.

  He felt a warmth down his leg and realised he’d pissed himself.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Deep’s voice was soft, like a father to a scared child. ‘That happens a lot.’

  ‘We’ve seen it all.’

  ‘And then a little more.’

  ‘You stand here.’ Shallow took him by the shoulders and turned him to face the pit, limp and helpless. You never think you’ll just meekly do what you’re told when you’re facing your death. But everyone does. ‘A little to the left.’ Guiding him a step to the right. ‘That’s left, right?’

  ‘That’s right, fool.’

  ‘Fuck!’ Shallow gave him a harder yank and Calder slipped at the edge, boot heel sending a few lumps of earth down onto the bodies. Shallow pulled him back straight. There?’

  ‘There,’ said Deep. ‘All right, then.’

  Calder stood, looking down, silently starting to cry. Dignity no longer seemed to matter much. He’d have even less soon enough. He wondered how deep the pit was. How many bodies he’d share it with when they picked those tools up in the morning and heaped the earth on top. Five score? Ten score? More?

  He stared at the nearest of them, right beneath him, a great black wound in the back of its head. His head, Calder supposed, though it was hard to think of it as a man. It was a thing, robbed of all identity. Robbed of all … unless …

  The face had been Black Dow’s. His mouth was open, half-full of dirt, but it was the Protector of the North, no doubt. He looked almost as if he was smiling, one arm flung out to welcome Calder, like an old friend, to the land of the dead. Back to the mud indeed. So quickly it can happen. Lord of all to meat in a hole.

  Tears crept down Calder’s hot face, glistened in the torchlight as they pattered into the pit, making fresh streaks through the grime on Black Dow’s cold cheek. Death in the circle would’ve been a disappointment. How much worse was this? Tossed in a nameless hole, unmarked by those that loved or even those that hated him.

  He was blubbing like a baby, sore ribs heaving, the pit and the corpses glistening through the salt water.

  When would they do it? Surely, now, here it came. A breeze wafted up, chilling the tears on his face. He let his head drop back, squeezing his eyes shut, wincing, grunting, as if he could feel the knife sliding into his back. As if the metal was already in him. When would they do it? Surely now …

  The wind dropped away, and he thought he heard clinking. Voices from behind him, from the direction of the house. He stood for a while longer, making a racking sob with every breath.

  ‘Fish to start,’ someone said.

  ‘Excellent.’

  Trembling, cringing, every movement a terrifying effort, Calder slowly turned.

  Deep and Shallow had vanished, their torch flickering abandoned at the edge of the pit. Beyond the ramshackle fence, under the ramshackle porch, the old table had been covered with a cloth and set for dinner. A man was unpacking dishes from a large basket. Another sat in one of the chairs. Calder wiped his eyes on the back of his wildly trembling hand, not sure whether to believe the evidence of his senses. The man in the chair was the First of the Magi.

  Bayaz smiled over. ‘Why, Prince Calder!’ As if they’d run into each other by accident in the market. ‘Pray join me!’

  Calder wiped snot from his top lip, still expecting a knife to dart from the darkness. Then ever so slowly, his knees wobbling so much he could hear them flapping against the inside of his wet trousers, he picked his way back through the gap in the fence and over to the porch.

  The servant righted the fallen chair, dusted it off and held his open palm towards it. Calder sagged into it, numb, eyes still gently leaking by themselves, and watched Bayaz fork a piece of fish into his mouth and slowly, deliberately, thoroughly chew, and swallow.

  ‘So. The Whiteflow shall remain the northern boundary of Angland.’

  Calder sat for a moment, aware of a faint snorting at the back of his nose with every quick breath but unable to stop it. Then he blinked, and finally nodded.

  ‘The land between the Whiteflow and the Cusk, including the city of Uffrith, shall come under the governorship of the Dogman. It shall become a protectorate of the Union, with six representatives on the Open Council.’

  Calder nodded again.

  ‘The rest of the North as far as the Crinna is yours.’ Bayaz popped the last piece of fish into his mouth and waved his fork around. ‘Beyond the Crinna it belongs to Stranger-Come-Knocking.’

  Yesterday’s Calder might’ve snapped out some defiant jibe, but all he could think of now was how very lucky he felt not to be gushing blood into the mud, and how very much he wanted to carry on not gushing blood. ‘Yes,’ he croaked.

  ‘You don’t need time to … chew it over?’

  Eternity in a pit full of corpses, perhaps? ‘No,’ whispered Calder.

  ‘Pardon me?’

  Calder took a shuddering breath. ‘No.’

  ‘Well.’ Bayaz dabbed his mouth with a cloth, and looked up. ‘This is much better.’

  ‘A very great improvement.’ The curly-headed servant had a pouty smile as he whisked Bayaz’ plate away and replaced it with a clean one. Probably much the same as Calder’s habitual smirk, but he enjoyed seeing it on another man about as much as he might have enjoyed seeing another man fuck his wife. The servant whipped the cover from a dish with a flourish.

  ‘Ah, the meat, the meat!’ Bayaz watched the knife flash and flicker as wafer slices were carved with blinding skill. ‘Fish is all very well, but dinner hasn’t really started until you’re served something that bleeds.’ The servant added vegetables with the dexterity of a conjuror, then turned his smirk on Calder.

  There was something oddly, irritatingly familiar about him. Like a name at the tip of Calder’s tongue. Had he seen him visit his father once, in a fine cloak? Or at Ironhead’s fire with a Carl’s helmet on? Or at the shoulder of Stranger-Come-Knocking, with paint on his face and splinters of bone through his ear? ‘Meat, sir?’

  ‘No,’ whispered Calder. All he could think of was all the meat in the pits just a few strides away.

  ‘You really should try it!’ said Bayaz. ‘Go on, give him some! And help the prince, Yoru, he has an injured right hand.’

  The servant doled meat onto Calder’s plate, bloody gravy gleaming in the gloom, then began to cut it up at frightening speed, making Calder flinch with each sweep of the knife.

  Across the table, the Magus was already happily chewing. ‘I must admit, I did not entirely enjoy the tenor of our last conversation. It reminded me somewhat of y
our father.’ Bayaz paused as if expecting a response, but Calder had none to give. ‘That is meant as a very small compliment and a very large warning. For many years your father and I had … an understanding.’

  ‘Some good it did him.’

  The wizard’s brows went up. ‘How short your family’s memory! Indeed it did! Gifts he had of me, and all manner of help and wise counsel and oh, how he thrived! From piss-pot chieftain to King of the Northmen! Forged a nation where there were only squabbling peasants and pigshit before!’ The edge of Bayaz’ knife screeched against the plate and his voice sharpened with it. ‘But he became arrogant in his glory, and forgot the debts he owed, and sent his puffed-up sons to make demands of me. Demands,’ hissed the Magus, eyes glittering in the shadows of their sockets. ‘Of me.’

  Calder’s throat felt uncomfortably tight as Bayaz sat back. ‘Bethod turned his back on our friendship, and his allies fell away, and all his great achievements withered, and he died in blood and was buried in an unmarked grave. There is a lesson there. Had your father paid his debts, perhaps he would be King of the Northmen still. I have high hopes you will learn from his mistake, and remember what you owe.’

  ‘I’ve taken nothing from you.’

  ‘Have … you … not?’ Bayaz bit off each word with a curl of his lip. ‘You will never know, nor could you even understand, the many ways in which I have interceded on your behalf.’

  The servant arched one brow. ‘The account is lengthy.’

  ‘Do you suppose things run your way because you think yourself charming? Or cunning? Or uncommonly lucky?’

  Calder had, in fact, thought exactly that.

  ‘Was it charm that saved you from Reachey’s assassins at his weapon-take, or the two colourful Northmen I sent to watch over you?’

  Calder had no answer.

  ‘Was it cunning that saved you in the battle, or my instructions to Brodd Tenways that he should keep you from harm?’

  Even less to that. ‘Tenways?’ he whispered.

  ‘Friends and enemies can sometimes be difficult to tell apart. I asked him to act like Black Dow’s man. Perhaps he was too good an actor. I heard he died.’