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

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘I’ve got to go back,’ she said.

  ‘Madness!’ snapped Sweet, sitting his horse not far off. ‘Bloody madness!’

  ‘No doubt. And you’re coming with me.’

  A silence. ‘You know there’s more’n a hundred mercenaries up there, don’t you? Killers, every man?’

  ‘The Dab Sweet I heard stories of wouldn’t take fright at a few mercenaries.’

  ‘Don’t know if you noticed, but the Dab Sweet you heard stories of ain’t much like the one wearing my coat.’

  ‘I hear you used to be.’ She rode up to him and reined in close. ‘I hear you used to be quite a man.’

  Crying Rock slowly nodded. ‘That is true.’

  Sweet frowned at the old Ghost woman, and frowned at Shy, and finally frowned at the ground, scratching at his beard and bit by bit slumping down in his saddle. ‘Used to be. You’re young and got dreams ahead of you still. You don’t know how it is. One day you’re something, so promising and full o’ dares, so big the world’s too small a place to hold you. Then, ’fore you know it, you’re old, and you realise all them things you had in mind you’ll never get to. All them doors you felt too big to fit through have already shut. Only one left open and it leads to nothing but nothing.’ He pulled his hat off and scrubbed at his white hair with his dirty nails. ‘You lose your nerve. And once it’s gone where do you find it? I got scared, Shy South. And once you get scared there ain’t no going back, there just ain’t no—’

  Shy caught a fist of his fur coat and dragged him close. ‘I ain’t giving up this way, you hear me? I just ain’t fucking having it! Now I need that bastard who killed a red bear with his hands up at the source of the Sokwaya, whether it bloody well happened or not. You hear me, you old shit?’

  He blinked at her for a moment. ‘I hear you.’

  ‘Well? You want to get even with Cosca or you just want to swear about it?’

  Crying Rock had brought her horse close. ‘Maybe do it for Leef,’ she said. ‘And those others buried on the plains.’

  Sweet stared at her weather-beaten face for a long moment, for some reason with the strangest, haunted look in his eye. Then his mouth twitched into a smile. ‘How come after all this time you’re still so damn beautiful?’ he asked.

  Crying Rock just shrugged, like facts were facts, and stuck her pipe between her teeth.

  Sweet reached up and brushed Shy’s hand away. He straightened his fur coat. He leaned from his saddle and spat. He looked with narrowed eyes up towards Beacon and set his jaw. ‘If I get killed I’m going to haunt your skinny arse for life.’

  ‘If you get killed I doubt my life’ll be too long a stretch.’ Shy slipped down from her saddle and crunched stiff-legged to the wagon, stood looking down at her brother and sister. ‘Got something to take care of,’ she said, putting a gentle hand on each of them. ‘You go on with Majud. He’s a little on the stingy side but he’s one of the good ones.’

  ‘Where you going?’ asked Pit.

  ‘Left something behind.’

  ‘Will you be long?’

  She managed to smile. ‘Not long. I’m sorry, Ro. I’m sorry for everything.’

  ‘So am I,’ said Ro. Maybe that was something. For sure it was all she’d get.

  She touched Pit’s cheek. Just a brush with her fingertips. ‘I’ll see you two in Crease. You’ll hardly notice I’m gone.’

  Ro sniffed, sleepy and sullen, and wouldn’t meet her eye, and Pit stared at her, face all tracked with tears. She wondered if she really would see them in Crease. Madness, like Sweet said, to come all this way just to let them go. But there was no point to long goodbyes. Sometimes it’s better to do a thing than live with the fear of it. That’s what Lamb used to say.

  ‘Go!’ she shouted at Majud, before she had the chance to change her mind. He nodded to her, and snapped the reins, and the wagon rolled on.

  ‘Better to do it,’ she whispered at the night sky, and she clambered back into her saddle, turned her horse about, and gave it her heels.

  Answered Prayers

  Temple drank. He drank like he had after his wife died. As if there was something at the bottom of the bottle he desperately needed. As if it was a race he had bet his life on. As if drinking was a profession he planned on rising right to the top of. Tried most of the others, hadn’t he?

  ‘You should stop,’ said Sworbreck, looking worried.

  ‘You should start,’ said Temple, and laughed, even if he’d never felt like laughing less. Then he burped and there was some sick in it, and he washed the taste away with another swallow.

  ‘You have to pace yourself,’ said Cosca, who was not pacing himself in the least. ‘Drinking is an art, not a science. You caress the bottle. You tease it. You romance it. A drink . . . a drink . . . a drink . . .’ kissing at the air with each repetition, eyelids flickering. ‘Drinking is like . . . love.’

  ‘What the fuck do you know about love?’

  ‘More than I’d like,’ answered the Old Man, a faraway look in his yellowed eye, and he gave a bitter laugh. ‘Despicable men still love Temple. Still feel pain. Still nurse wounds. Despicable men most of all, maybe.’ He slapped Temple on the back, sent a searing swig the wrong way and induced a painful coughing fit. ‘But let’s not be maudlin! We’re rich, boy! All rich. And rich men need make no apologies. To Visserine for me. Take back what I lost. What was stolen.’

  ‘What you threw away,’ muttered Temple, quietly enough not to be heard over the racket.

  ‘Yes,’ mused Cosca. ‘Soon there’ll be space for a new captain general.’ He took in the noisy, crowded, sweltering room with a sweep of his arm. ‘All this will be yours.’

  It was quite a scene of debauch to cram into a one-roomed hovel, lit by a single guttering lamp and hazy with chagga smoke, noisy with laughter and conversations in several languages. Two big Northmen were wrestling, possibly in fun, possibly with the intention of killing each other, people occasionally lurching out of their way. Two natives of the Union and an Imperial bitterly complained as their table was jogged in the midst of a card-game, bottles tottering on top. Three Styrians had shared a husk-pipe and were blissfully lounging on a burst mattress in one corner, somewhere between sleep and waking. Friendly was sitting with legs crossed and rolling his dice between them, over and over and over, frowning down with furious concentration as though the answers to everything would soon appear on their dozen faces.

  ‘Hold on,’ muttered Temple, his pickled mind only now catching up. ‘Mine?’

  ‘Who better qualified? You’ve learned from the best, my boy! You’re a lot like me, Temple, I’ve always said so. Great men march often in the same direction, did Stolicus say?’

  ‘Like you?’ whispered Temple.

  Cosca tapped his greasy grey hair. ‘Brains, boy, you’ve got the brains. Your morals can be stiff at times but they’ll soon soften up once you have to make the tough choices. You can talk well, know how to spot people’s weaknesses, and above all you understand the law. The strong-arm stuff’s all going out of fashion. I mean, there’ll always be a place for it, but the law, Temple, that’s where the money’s going to be.’

  ‘What about Brachio?’

  ‘Family in Puranti.’

  ‘Really?’ Temple blinked across the room at Brachio, who was in a vigorous embrace with a large Kantic woman. ‘He never mentioned them.’

  ‘A wife and two daughters. Who talks about their family with scum like us?’

  ‘What about Dimbik?’

  ‘Pah! No sense of humour.’

  ‘Jubair?’

  ‘Mad as a plum jelly.’

  ‘But I’m no soldier. I’m a fucking coward!’

  ‘Admirable thing in a mercenary.’ Cosca stretched forward his chin and scratched at his rashy neck with the backs of his yellowed nails. ‘I’d have done far better with a healthy respect for danger. It’s not as if you’ll be swinging the steel yourself. The job’s all talk. Blah, blah, blah and big hats. That and knowing when not
to keep your word.’ He wagged a knobbly finger. ‘I was always too bloody emotional. Too bloody loyal. But you? You’re a treacherous bastard, Temple.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘You abandoned me when it suited and found new friends, then when it suited you abandoned them and sauntered straight back without so much as a by-your-leave!’

  Temple blinked at that. ‘I rather had the feeling you’d have killed me otherwise.’

  Cosca waved it away. ‘Details! I’ve had you marked as my successor for some time.’

  ‘But . . . no one respects me.’

  ‘Because you don’t respect yourself. Doubt, Temple. Indecision. You simply worry too much. Sooner or later you have to do something, or you’ll never do anything. Overcome that, you could be a wonderful captain general. One of the greats. Better than me. Better than Sazine. Better than Murcatto, even. You might want to cut down on the drinking, though.’ Cosca tossed his empty bottle away, pulled the cork from another with his teeth and spat it across the room. ‘Filthy habit.’

  ‘I don’t want to do this any more,’ Temple whispered.

  Cosca waved that away, too. ‘You say that all the time. Yet here you are.’

  Temple lurched up. ‘Got to piss.’

  The cold air slapped him so hard he nearly fell against one of the guards, sour-faced from having to stay sober. He stumbled along the wooden side of Superior Pike’s monstrous wagon, thinking how close his palm was to a fortune, past the stirring horses, breath steaming out of their nosebags, took a few crunching steps into the trees, sounds of revelry muffled behind him, shoved his bottle down in the frozen snow and unlaced with drunken fingers. Bloody hell, it was cold still. He leaned back, blinking at the sky, bright stars spinning and dancing beyond the black branches.

  Captain General Temple. He wondered what Haddish Kahdia would have thought of that. He wondered what God thought of it. How had it come to this? He’d always had good intentions, hadn’t he? He’d always tried to do his best.

  It’s just that his best had always been shit.

  ‘God?’ he brayed at the sky. ‘You up there, you bastard?’ Perhaps He was the mean bully Jubair made Him out to be, after all. ‘Just . . . give me a sign, will you? Just a little one. Just steer me the right way. Just . . . just give me a nudge.’

  ‘I’ll give you a nudge.’

  He froze for a moment, still dripping. ‘God? Is that you?’

  ‘No, fool.’ There was a crunch as someone pulled his bottle out of the snow.

  He turned. ‘I thought you left.’

  ‘Came back.’ Shy tipped the bottle up and took a swig, one side of her face all dark, the other lit by the flickering bonfire in the camp. ‘Thought you’d never come out o’ there,’ she said, wiping her mouth.

  ‘Been waiting?’

  ‘Little while. Are you drunk?’

  ‘Little bit.’

  ‘That works for us.’

  ‘It works for me.’

  ‘I see that,’ she said, glancing down.

  He realised he hadn’t laced-up yet and started fumbling away. ‘If you wanted to see my cock that badly, you could just have asked.’

  ‘No doubt a thing o’ haunting beauty but I came for something else.’

  ‘Got a window needs jumping through?’

  ‘No. I might need your help.’

  ‘Might?’

  ‘Things run smooth you can just creep back to drowning your sorrows.’

  ‘How often do things run smooth for you?’

  ‘Not often.’

  ‘Is it likely to be dangerous?’

  ‘Little bit.’

  ‘Really a little bit?’

  She drank again. ‘No. A lot.’

  ‘This about Savian?’

  ‘Little bit.’

  ‘Oh God,’ he muttered, rubbing at the bridge of his nose and willing the dark world to be still. Doubt, that was his problem. Indecision. Worrying too much. He wished he was less drunk. Then he wished he was more. He’d asked for a sign, hadn’t he? Why had he asked for a sign? He’d never expected to get one.

  ‘What do you need?’ he muttered, his voice very small.

  Sharp Ends

  Practical Wile slid a finger under his mask to rub at the little chafe marks. Not the worst part of the job, but close.

  ‘There it is, though,’ he said, rearranging his cards, as if that made his hand any less rotten, ‘I daresay she’s found someone else by now.’

  ‘If she’s got any sense,’ grunted Pauth.

  Wile nearly thumped the table, then worried that he might hurt his hand and stopped short. ‘This is what I mean by undermining! We’re supposed to look out for each other but you’re always talking me down!’

  ‘Weren’t nothing in the oaths I swore about not talking you down,’ said Pauth, tossing a couple of cards and sliding a couple more off the deck.

  ‘Loyalty to his Majesty,’ threw out Bolder, ‘and obedience to his Eminence and the ruthless rooting out of treasons, but nothing about looking out for no one.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea,’ grumbled Wile, rerearranging his rotten hand.

  ‘You’re confusing how you’d like the world to be with how it is,’ said Bolder. ‘Again.’

  ‘A little solidarity is all I’m asking. We’re all stuck in the same leaky boat.’

  ‘Start baling and stop bloody moaning, then.’ Pauth had a good scratch under his own mask. ‘All the way out here you’ve done nothing but moan. The food. The cold. Your mask sores. Your sweetheart. My snoring. Bolder’s habits. Lorsen’s temper. It’s enough to make a man quite aggravated.’

  ‘Even if life weren’t aggravating enough to begin with,’ said Ferring, who was out of the game and had been sitting with his boots up on the table for the best part of an hour. Ferring had the most unnatural patience with doing nothing.

  Pauth eyed him. ‘Your boots are pretty damn aggravating.’

  Ferring eyed him back. Those sharp blue eyes of his. ‘Boots is boots.’

  ‘Boots is boots? What does that even mean? Boots is boots?’

  ‘If you’ve nothing worth saying, you two might consider not saying it.’ Bolder nodded his lump of a head towards the prisoner. ‘Take a page out of his book.’ The old man hadn’t said a word to Lorsen’s questions. Hadn’t done much more than grunt even when they burned him. He just watched, eyes narrowed, raw flesh glistening in the midst of his tattoos.

  Ferring’s eyes shifted over to Wile’s. ‘You think you’d take a burning that well?’

  Wile didn’t reply. He didn’t like thinking about taking a burning. He didn’t like giving one to someone else, whatever oaths he’d sworn, whatever treasons, murders or massacres the man was meant to have masterminded. One thing holding forth about justice at a thousand miles removed. Another having to press metal into flesh. He just didn’t like thinking about it at all.

  It’s a steady living, the Inquisition, his father had told him. Better asking the questions than giving the answers anyway, eh? And they’d laughed together at that, though Wile hadn’t found it funny. He used to laugh a lot at unfunny things his father said. He wouldn’t have laughed now. Or maybe that was giving himself too much credit. He’d a bad habit of doing that.

  Sometimes Wile wondered whether a cause could be right that needed folk burned, cut and otherwise mutilated. Hardly the tactics of the just, was it, when you took a step back? Rarely seemed to produce any truly useful results either. Unless pain, fear, hate and mutilation were what you were after. Maybe it was what they were after.

  Sometimes Wile wondered whether the torture might cause the very disloyalty the Inquisition was there to stop, but he kept that notion very much to himself. Takes courage to lead a charge, but you’ve got people behind you there. Takes a different and rarer kind to stand up all alone and say, ‘I don’t like the way we do things.’ Especially to a set of torturers. Wile didn’t have either kind of courage. So he just did as he was told and tried not to think about it, and wondere
d what it would be like to have a job you believed in.

  Ferring didn’t have that same problem. He liked the work. You could see it in those blue, blue eyes of his. He grinned over at the tattooed old man now and said, ‘Doubt he’ll be taking a burning that well by the time he gets back to Starikland.’ The prisoner just sat and watched, blue-painted ribs shifting with his crackly breathing. ‘Lot of nights between here and there. Lot of burnings, maybe. Yes, indeedy. Reckon he’ll be good and talkative by—’

  ‘I already suggested you shut up,’ said Bolder. ‘Now I’m thinking o’ making it an instruction. What do you—’

  There was a knock at the door. Three quick knocks, in fact. The Practicals looked at each other, eyebrows up. Lorsen back with more questions. Once Lorsen had a question in mind, he wasn’t a man to wait for an answer.

  ‘You going to get that?’ Pauth asked Ferring.

  ‘Why would I?’

  ‘You’re closest.’

  ‘You’re shortest.’

  ‘What’s that got to fucking do with anything?’

  ‘It amuses me.’

  ‘Maybe my knife up your arse will amuse me!’ And Pauth slipped his knife out of his sleeve, blade appearing as if by magic. He loved to do that. Bloody show-off.

  ‘Will you two infants please shut up?’ Bolder chucked down his cards, levered his bulk from his chair and slapped Pauth’s knife aside. ‘I came out here to get a break from my bloody children, not to mind three more.’

  Wile rearranged his cards again, wondering if there was some way he could win. One win, was that too much to ask? But such a rotten hand. His father had always said there are no rotten hands, only rotten players, but Wile believed otherwise.

  Another insistent knocking. ‘All right, I’m coming!’ snapped Bolder, dragging back the bolts. ‘It’s not as if—’

  There was a clatter, and Wile looked up to see Bolder lurching against the wall looking quite put out and someone barging past. Seemed a bit strong even if they’d taken a while to answer the door. Bolder obviously agreed, because he opened his mouth to complain, then looked surprised when he gurgled blood everywhere instead. That was when Wile noticed there was a knife-handle sticking from his fat throat.