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

by Joe Abercrombie

Cosca spread his hands in helpless apology. ‘That’s mercenaries for you.’

  A scattering of laughter from the Company but their employer was in no mood to participate. ‘You have made me an accomplice to robbery! To murder! To massacre!’

  ‘I held no dagger to your neck. Superior Pike did ask for chaos, as I recall—’

  ‘To a purpose! You have perpetrated mindless slaughter!’

  ‘Mindful slaughter would surely be even worse?’ Cosca burst out in a chuckle but Lorsen’s black-masked Practicals, scattered about the shadows, lacked all sense of humour.

  The Inquisitor waited for silence. ‘Do you believe in anything?’

  ‘Not if I can help it. Belief alone is nothing to be proud of, Inquisitor. Belief without evidence is the very hallmark of the savage.’

  Lorsen shook his head in amazement. ‘You truly are disgusting.’

  ‘I would be the last to disagree, but you fail to see that you are worse. No man capable of greater evil than the one who thinks himself in the right. No purpose more evil than the higher purpose. I freely admit I am a villain. That’s why you hired me. But I am no hypocrite.’ Cosca gestured at the ragged remnants of his Company, fallen silent to observe the confrontation. ‘I have mouths to feed. You could just go home. If you are set on doing good, make something to be proud of. Open a bakery. Fresh bread every morning, there’s a noble cause!’

  Inquisitor Lorsen’s thin lip curled. ‘There truly is nothing in you of what separates man from animal, is there? You are bereft of conscience. An utter absence of morality. You have no principle beyond the selfish.’

  Cosca’s face hardened as he leaned forwards. ‘Perhaps when you have faced as many disappointments and suffered as many betrayals as I, you will see it – there is no principle beyond the selfish, Inquisitor, and men are animals. Conscience is a burden we choose to bear. Morality is the lie we tell ourselves to make its bearing easier. There have been many times in my life when I have wished it was not so. But it is so.’

  Lorsen slowly nodded, bright eyes fixed on Cosca. ‘There will be a price for this.’

  ‘I am counting on it. Though it seems an almost ludicrous irrelevance now, Superior Pike promised me fifty thousand marks.’

  ‘For the capture of the rebel leader Conthus!’

  ‘Indeed. And there he is.’

  There was a scraping of steel, a clicking of triggers, a rattling of armour as a dozen of Jubair’s men stepped forward. A circle of drawn swords, loaded flatbows, levelled polearms all suddenly pointed in towards Lamb, Sweet, Shy and Savian. Gently, Majud drew the wideeyed children close to him.

  ‘Master Savian!’ called Cosca. ‘I deeply regret that I must ask you to lay down your weapons. Any and all, if you please!’

  Betraying no emotion, Savian slowly reached up to undo the buckle on the strap across his chest, flatbow and bolts clattering to the mud. Lamb watched him do it, and calmly bit into a leg of chicken. No doubt that was the easy way, to stand and watch. God knew, Temple had taken that way often enough. Too often, perhaps . . .

  He dragged himself up onto the wagon to hiss in Cosca’s ear. ‘You don’t have to do this!’

  ‘Have to? No.’

  ‘Please! How does it help you?’

  ‘Help me?’ The Old Man raised one brow at Temple as Savian unbuttoned his coat and one by one shed his other weapons. ‘It helps me not at all. That is the very essence of selflessness and charity.’

  Temple could only stand blinking.

  ‘Are you not always telling me to do the right thing?’ asked Cosca. ‘Did we not sign a contract? Did we not accept Inquisitor Lorsen’s noble cause as our own? Did we not lead him a merry chase up and down this forsaken gulf of distance? Pray be silent, Temple. I never thought to say this, but you are impeding my moral growth.’ He turned away to shout, ‘Would you be kind enough to roll up your sleeves, Master Savian?’

  Savian cleared his throat, metal rattling as the mercenaries nervously shifted, took the button at his collar and undid it, then the next, then the next, the fighters and pedlars and whores all watching the drama unfold in silence. Hedges too, Temple noticed, for some reason with a smile of feverish delight on his face. Savian shrugged his shirt off and stood stripped to the waist, and his whole body from his pale neck to his pale hands was covered in writing, in letters large and tiny, in slogans in a dozen languages: Death to the Union, Death to the King. The only good Midderlander is a dead one. Never kneel. Never surrender. No Mercy. No Peace. Freedom. Justice. Blood. He was blue with them.

  ‘I only asked for the sleeves,’ said Cosca, ‘but I feel the point is made.’

  Savian gave the faintest smile. ‘What if I said I’m not Conthus?’

  ‘I doubt we’d believe you.’ The Old Man looked over at Lorsen, who was staring at Savian with a hungry intensity. ‘In fact, I very much doubt we would. Do you have any objections, Master Sweet?’

  Sweet blinked around at all that sharpened metal and opted for the easy way. ‘Not me. I’m shocked as anyone at this surprising turn of events.’

  ‘You must be quite discomfited to learn you’ve been travelling with a mass-murderer all this time.’ Cosca grinned. ‘Well, two, in fact, eh Master Lamb?’ The Northman still picked at his drumstick as though there was no steel pointed in his direction. ‘Anything to say on behalf of your friend?’

  ‘Most o’ my friends I’ve killed,’ said Lamb around a mouthful. ‘I came for the children. The rest is mud.’

  Cosca pressed one sorry hand to his breastplate. ‘I have stood where you stand, Master Savian, and entirely sympathise. We all are alone in the end.’

  ‘It’s a hard fucking world,’ said Savian, looking neither right nor left.

  ‘Seize him,’ growled Lorsen, and his Practicals swarmed forwards like dogs off the leash. For a moment it looked as if Shy’s hand was creeping towards her knife but Lamb held her arm with his free hand, eyes on the ground as the Practicals marched Savian towards the fort. Inquisitor Lorsen followed them inside, smiled grimly out into the camp and slammed the door with a heavy bang.

  Cosca shook his head. ‘Not even so much as a thank you. Doing right is a dead end, Temple, as I have often said. Queue up, my boys, it’s time for an accounting!’

  Brachio and Dimbik began to circulate, ushering the men into a grumbling queue, the excitement of Savian’s arrest already fading. Temple stared across at Shy, and she stared back at him, but what could either of them do?

  ‘We will need sacks and boxes!’ Cosca was shouting. ‘Open the wagon and find a table for the count. A door on trestles, then, good enough! Sworbreck? Fetch pen and ink and ledger. Not the writing you came to do, but no less honourable a task!’

  ‘Deeply honoured,’ croaked the writer, looking slightly sick.

  ‘We’d best be heading out.’ Dab Sweet had made his way over to the wagon and was looking up. ‘Get the children back to Crease, I reckon.’

  ‘Of course, my friend,’ said Cosca, grinning down. ‘You will be sorely missed. Without your skills – let alone the fearsome talents of Master Lamb – the task would have been nigh impossible. The tall tales don’t exaggerate in your cases, eh, Sworbreck?’

  ‘They are legends made flesh, captain general,’ mumbled the writer.

  ‘We will have to give them a chapter to themselves. Perhaps two! The very best of luck to you and your companions. I will recommend you wherever I go!’ Cosca turned away as though that concluded their business.

  Sweet looked to Temple, and Temple could only shrug. There was nothing he could do about this either.

  The old scout cleared his throat. ‘There’s just the matter of our share o’ the proceeds. As I recall, we discussed a twentieth—’

  ‘What about my share?’ Cantliss elbowed his way past Sweet to stare up. ‘It was me told you there’d be rebels up there! Me who found those bastards out!’

  ‘Why, so you did!’ said Cosca. ‘You are a veritable child-stealing Prophet and we owe you all our success!’<
br />
  Cantliss’ bloodshot eyes lit with a fire of greed. ‘So . . . what am I due?’

  Friendly stepped up from behind, innocuously slipped a noose over his head, and as Cantliss glanced around, Jubair hauled with all his considerable weight on the rope, which had been looped over a beam projecting from the side of the broken tower. Hemp grated as the bandit was hoisted off his feet. One kicking foot knocked a black spray of ink across Sworbreck’s ledger and the writer stumbled up, ashen-faced, as Cantliss pawed feebly at the noose with his broken hand, eyes bulging.

  ‘Paid in full!’ shouted Cosca. Some of the mercenaries half-heartedly cheered. A couple laughed. One threw an apple core and missed. Most barely raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Oh God,’ whispered Temple, picking at the stitching on his buttons and staring at the tarred planks under his feet. But he could still see Cantliss’ squirming shadow there. ‘Oh God.’

  Friendly wound the rope about a tree-stump and tied it off. Hedges, who’d been shoving his way towards the wagon, cleared his throat and carefully retreated, smiling no longer. Shy spat through the gap in her front teeth, and turned away. Lamb stood watching until Cantliss stopped twisting about, one hand resting slack on the hilt of the sword he had taken from the Dragon People. Then he frowned towards the door through which Savian had been taken, and flicked his stripped chicken bone into the mud.

  ‘Seventeen times,’ said Friendly, frowning up.

  ‘Seventeen times what?’ asked Cosca.

  ‘He kicked. Not counting that last one.’

  ‘That last one was more of a twitch,’ said Jubair.

  ‘Is seventeen a lot?’ asked the Old Man.

  Friendly shrugged. ‘About average.’

  Cosca looked down at Sweet, grey brows high. ‘You were saying something about a share, I think?’

  The old scout watched Cantliss creaking back and forth, with a hooked finger gently loosened his collar and opted for the easy way again. ‘Must’ve misremembered. Reckon I’ll just be heading on back to Crease, if that’s all the same with you.’

  ‘As you wish.’ Below them, the first man in line upended his pack and sent gold and silver sliding across the table in a glittering heap. The captain general plumped his hat back on and flicked the feather. ‘Happy journey!’

  Going Back

  ‘That fucking old shit-fucker!’ snarled Sweet, slashing with a stick at a branch that hung across the road and showering snow all over himself. ‘Prickomo fucking Cocksca! That bastard old arsehole-fucker!’

  ‘You said that one already, as I recall,’ muttered Shy.

  ‘He said old arsehole bastard-fucker,’ said Crying Rock.

  ‘My mistake,’ said Shy. ‘That’s a whole different thing.’

  ‘Ain’t fucking disagreeing, are you?’ snapped Sweet.

  ‘No I’m not,’ said Shy. ‘He’s a hell of a fucker, all right.’

  ‘Shit . . . fuck . . . shit . . . fuck . . .’ And Sweet kicked at his horse and whipped at the tree-trunks in a rage as he passed. ‘I’ll get even with that maggot-eaten bastard, I can tell you that!’

  ‘Let it be,’ grunted Lamb. ‘Some things you can’t change. You got to be realistic.’

  ‘That was my damn retirement got stole there!’

  ‘Still breathing, ain’t you?’

  ‘Easy for you to say! You didn’t lose no fortune!’

  Lamb gave him a look. ‘I lost plenty.’

  Sweet worked his mouth for a moment, then shouted, ‘Fuck!’ one last time and flung his stick away into the trees.

  A cold and heavy quiet, then. The iron tyres of Majud’s wagon scrape-scraping and some loose part in Cursnbick’s apparatus in the back clank-clanking under its canvas cover and the horse’s hooves crunch-crunching in the snow on the road, rutted from the business flowing up from Crease. Pit and Ro lay in the back under a blanket, faces pressed up against each other, peaceful now in sleep. Shy watched them rocking gently as the axles shifted.

  ‘I guess we did it,’ she said.

  ‘Aye,’ said Lamb, but looking a long stretch short of a celebration. ‘Guess so.’

  They rounded another long bend, road switching back one last time as it dropped down steep off the hills, the stream beside half-frozen, white ice creeping out jagged from each bank to almost meet in the middle.

  Shy didn’t want to say anything. But once a thought was in her head she’d never been much good at keeping it there, and this thought had been pricking at her ever since they left Beacon. ‘They’re going to be cutting into him, ain’t they? Asking questions.’

  ‘Savian?’

  ‘Who else?’

  The scarred side of Lamb’s face twitched a little. ‘That’s a fact.’

  ‘Ain’t a pretty one.’

  ‘Facts don’t tend to be.’

  ‘He saved me.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘He saved you.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘We really going to fucking leave him, then?’

  Lamb’s face twitched again, jaw-muscles working as he frowned out hard across the country ahead. The trees were thinning as they dropped out of the mountains, the moon fat and full in a clear sky star-dusted, spilling light over the high plateau. A great flat expanse of dry dirt and thorny scrub looked like it could never have held life, all half carpeted now with sparkling snow. Through the midst, straight as a sword-cut, the white strip of the old Imperial Road, a scar through the country angling off towards Crease, wedged somewhere in the black rumour of hills on the horizon.

  Lamb’s horse slowed to a walk, then stopped.

  ‘Shall we halt?’ asked Majud.

  ‘You told me you’d be my friend for life,’ said Lamb.

  The merchant blinked. ‘And I meant it.’

  ‘Then keep on.’ Lamb turned in his saddle to look back. Behind them, somewhere high up in the folded, forested ridges there was a glow. The great bonfire the mercenaries had stacked high in the middle of Beacon to light their celebrations. ‘Got a good road here and a good moon to steer by. Keep on all night, quick and steady, you might make Crease by dark tomorrow.’

  ‘Why the rush?’

  Lamb took a long breath, looked to the starry sky and breathed out smoke in a grumbling sigh. ‘There’s going to be trouble.’

  ‘We going back?’ asked Shy.

  ‘You’re not.’ The shadow of his hat fell across his face as he looked at her so his eyes were just two gleams. ‘I am.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re taking the children. I’m going back.’

  ‘You always were, weren’t you?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Just wanted to get us far away.’

  ‘I’ve only had a few friends, Shy. I’ve done right by even fewer. Could count ’em on one hand.’ He turned his left hand over and looked at the stump of his missing finger. ‘Even this one. This is how it has to be.’

  ‘Ain’t nothing has to be. I ain’t letting you go alone.’

  ‘Yes y’are.’ He eased his horse closer, looking her in the eye. ‘Do you know what I felt, when we came over that hill and saw the farm all burned out? The first thing I felt, before the sorrow and the fear and the anger caught up?’

  She swallowed, her mouth all sticky-dry, not wanting to answer, not wanting to know the answer.

  ‘Joy,’ whispered Lamb. ‘Joy and relief. ’Cause I knew right off what I’d have to do. What I’d have to be. Knew right off I could put an end on ten years of lying. A man’s got to be what he is, Shy.’ He looked back at his hand and made a three-fingered fist of it. ‘I don’t . . . feel evil. But the things I done. What else can you call ’em?’

  ‘You ain’t evil,’ she whispered. ‘You’re just . . .’

  ‘If it hadn’t been for Savian I’d have killed you in them caves. You and Ro.’

  Shy swallowed. She knew it well enough. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, we’d never have got the children back.’

  Lamb looked at the pair of ’em, Ro with her arm ove
r Pit. Stubble of hair showing dark now, almost grown over the scratch down her scalp. Both so changed. ‘Did we get ’em back?’ he asked, and his voice was rough. ‘Sometimes I think we just lost us, too.’

  ‘I’m who I was.’

  Lamb nodded, and it seemed he had the glimmer of tears in his eyes. ‘You are, maybe. But I don’t reckon there’s any going back for me.’ He leaned from his saddle then and hugged her tight. ‘I love you. And them. But my love ain’t a weight anyone should have to carry. Best of luck, Shy. The very best.’ And he let her go, and turned his horse, and he rode away, following their tracks back towards the trees, and the hills, and the reckoning beyond.

  ‘What the hell happened to being realistic?’ she called after him.

  He stopped just a moment, a lonely figure in all that moonlit white. ‘Always sounded like a good idea but, being honest? It never worked for me.’

  Slow, and numb, Shy turned her back on him. Turned her back and rode on across the plateau, after the wagon and Majud’s hired men, after Sweet and Crying Rock, staring at the white road ahead but seeing nothing, tongue working at the gap between her teeth and the night air cold, cold in her chest with each breath. Cold and empty. Thinking about what Lamb had said to her. What she’d said to Savian. Thinking about all the long miles she’d covered the last few months and the dangers she’d faced to get this far, and not knowing what she could do. This was how it had to be.

  Except when folk told Shy how things had to be, she started thinking on how to make ’em otherwise.

  The wagon hit a lump and with a clatter Pit got jolted awake. He sat up, and he stared blinking about him, and said, ‘Where’s Lamb?’ And Shy’s hands went slack on the reins, and she let her horse slow, then stop, and she sat there solemn.

  Majud looked over his shoulder. ‘Lamb said keep on!’

  ‘You got to do what he tells you? He ain’t your father, is he?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said the merchant, pulling up the horses.

  ‘He’s mine,’ muttered Shy. And there it was. Maybe he wasn’t the father she’d want. But he was still the only one she’d got. The only one all three of ’em had got. She’d enough regrets to live with.