Best Served Cold

by Джо Аберкромби

  They thundered across an unplanted field, hooves hammering at the thick mud, towards a crease in the ground that looked like a stream. A whitewashed building gleamed beside it in the brightening morning sun, a mill-house from what Monza could tell with the world shaking, wobbling, rushing around her. She strained forwards over her horse’s neck, gripping hard at the spear couched under her arm, wind rushing at her narrowed eyes. Willing herself closer to Faithful Carpi. Willing herself closer to vengeance. It looked as though his horse might have picked up a niggle when he spoiled that jump, she was making ground on him now, making ground fast.

  There were just three lengths between them, then two, specks of mud from the hooves of Carpi’s warhorse flicking in her face. She drew herself up in the saddle, pulling back the spear, sun twinkling on the tip for a moment. She caught a glimpse of Faithful’s familiar face as he jerked his head round to look over his shoulder, one grey eyebrow thick with blood, streaks down his stubbly cheek from a cut on his forehead. She heard him growl, digging hard with his spurs, but his horse was a heavy beast, better suited to charging than fleeing. The bobbing head of her mount crept slowly closer and closer to the streaming tail of Carpi’s, the ground a brown blur rushing by between the two.

  She screamed as she rammed the spear point into the horse’s rump. It jerked, twisted, head flailing, one eye rolling wild, foam on its bared teeth. Faithful jolted in the saddle, one boot torn from the stirrup. The warhorse carried on for a dizzy moment, then its wounded leg twisted underneath it and all at once it went down, pitching forwards, head folding under its hurtling weight, hooves flailing, mud flying. She heard Carpi squeal as she flashed past, heard the thumping behind her as his horse tumbled over and over across the muddy field.

  She hauled on the reins with her right hand, pulled her horse up, snorting and tossing, legs shaky from the hard ride. She saw Carpi pushing himself drunkenly from the ground, tangled with his long red cloak, all spattered and streaked with dirt. She was surprised to see him still alive, but not unhappy. Gobba, Mauthis, Ario, Ganmark, they’d had their part in what Orso had done to her, done to her brother, and they’d paid their price for it. But none of them had been her friends. Faithful had ridden beside her. Eaten with her. Drunk from her canteen. Smiled, and smiled, then stabbed her when it suited him, and stolen her place.

  She had a mind to stretch this out.

  He took a dizzy step, mouth hanging open, eyes wide in his bloody face. He saw her and she grinned, held the spear up high and gave a whoop. Like a hunter might do, seeing the fox in the open. He started limping desperately away towards the edge of the field, wounded arm cradled against his chest, the shaft of the flatbow bolt jutting broken from his shoulder.

  The smile tugged hard at her face as she trotted up closer, close enough to hear his wheezing breath as he struggled pointlessly towards the stream. The sight of that treacherous bastard crawling for his life made her happier than she’d been in a long while. He hauled his sword from its scabbard with his left hand, floundering desperately forwards, using it as a crutch.

  “Takes time,” she called to him, “to learn to use the wrong hand! I should know! You don’t have that much fucking time, Carpi!” He was close to the stream, but she’d be on him before he got there, and he knew it.

  He turned, clumsily raising the blade. She jerked the reins and sent her mount sideways so he hacked nothing but air. She stood in the stirrups, stabbed down with the spear, caught him in the shoulder and tore the armour from it, ripped a gash in his cloak and knocked him to his knees, sword left stuck in the earth. He moaned through gritted teeth, blood trickling down his breastplate, struggling to get up again. She pulled one boot from the stirrup, brought her horse closer and kicked him in the face, snapped his head back and sent him rolling down the bank and into the stream.

  She tossed the spear point-first into the soil, swung her leg over the saddle and slid down. She stood a moment, watching Carpi floundering, shaking the life back into her stiff legs. Then she snatched the spear up, took a long, slow breath and started picking her way down the bank to the water’s edge.

  Not far downstream the mill-house stood, waterwheel clattering as it slowly turned. The far bank had been walled up with rough stone, all bearded with moss. Carpi was fumbling at it, cursing, trying to drag himself up onto the far side. But weighed down with armour, his cloak heavy with water, a flatbow bolt in one shoulder and a spear wound in the other, he had less than no chance. So he waded doggedly along, up to his waist in the stream, while she shadowed him on the other bank, grinning, spear levelled.

  “You keep on going, Carpi, I’ll give you that. No one could call you a coward. Just an idiot. Stupid Carpi.” She forced out a laugh. “I can’t believe you fell for this shit. All those years taking my orders, you should’ve known me better. Thought I’d be sitting waiting, did you, weeping over my misfortunes?”

  He edged back through the water, eyes fixed on the point of her spear, breathing hard. “That fucking Northman lied to me.”

  “Almost as if you can’t trust anyone these days, eh? You should’ve stabbed me in the heart, Faithful, instead of the guts.”

  “Heart?” he sneered. “You don’t have one!” He floundered through the water at her, sending up a shower of glittering spray, dagger in his fist. She thrust at him, felt the spear’s shaft jolt in her aching right hand as the point took him in the hip, twisted him round and sent him over backwards. He struggled up again, snarling through his gritted teeth. “I’m better’n you at least, you murdering scum!”

  “If you’re so much better than me, how come you’re the one in the stream and I’m the one with the spear, fucker?” She moved the point in slow circles, shining with wet. “You keep on coming, Carpi, I’ll give you that. No one could call you a coward. Just a fucking liar. Traitor Carpi.”

  “Me a traitor?” He dragged himself down the wall towards the slowly clattering waterwheel. “Me? After all those years I stuck with you? I wanted to be loyal to Cosca! I was loyal to him. I’m Faithful!” He thumped his wet breastplate with his bloody hand. “That’s what I am. What I was. You stole that from me! You and your fucking brother!”

  “I didn’t throw Cosca down a mountain, bastard!”

  “You think I wanted to do it? You think I wanted any of this?” There were tears in the old mercenary’s eyes as he struggled away from her. “I’m not made to lead! Ario comes to me, says Orso’s decided you can’t be trusted! That you have to go! That you’re the past and I’m the future, and the rest of the captains already agreed. So I took the easy way. What was my choice?”

  Monza wasn’t enjoying herself anymore. She remembered Orso standing smiling in her tent. Cosca is the past, and I have decided that you are the future. Benna smiling beside him. It’s better like this. You deserve to lead. She remembered taking the easy way. What had been her choice? “You could’ve warned me, given me a chance to-”

  “Like you warned Cosca? Like you warned me? Fuck yourself, Murcatto! You pointed out the path and I followed, that’s all! You sow bloody seeds, you’ll reap a bloody harvest, and you sowed seeds across Styria and back! You did this to yourself! You did this to-Gah!” He twisted backwards, fumbling weakly at his neck. That fine cloak of his had floated back and got all caught up in the gears of the waterwheel. Now the red cloth was winding tighter and tighter, dragging him hard against the slowly turning wood.

  “Fucking…” He fumbled with his one half-good arm at the mossy slats, at the rusted bolts of the great wheel, but there was no stopping it. Monza watched, mouth half-open but no words to say, spear hanging slack from her hands as he was dragged down, down under the wheel. Down, down, into the black water. It surged and bubbled around his chest, then around his shoulders, then around his neck.

  His bulging eyes rolled up towards her. “I’m no worse’n you, Murcatto! Just did what I had to!” He was fighting to keep his mouth above the frothing water. “I’m… no worse… than-”

  His face disappea
red.

  Faithful Carpi, who’d led five charges for her. Who’d fought for her in all weathers and never let her down. Faithful Carpi, who she’d trusted with her life.

  Monza floundered down into the stream, cold water closing around her legs. She caught hold of Faithful’s clutching hand, felt his fingers grip hers. She pulled, teeth gritted, growling with the effort. She lifted the spear, rammed it into the gears hard as she could, felt the shaft jam there. She hooked her gloved hand under his armpit, up to her neck in surging water, fighting to drag him out, straining with every burning muscle. She felt him starting to come up, arm sliding out of the froth, elbow, then shoulder, she started fumbling at the buckle on his cloak with her gloved hand but she couldn’t make the fingers work. Too cold, too numb, too broken. There was a crack as the spear shaft splintered. The waterwheel started turning, slowly, slowly, metal squealing, cogs grating, and dragged Faithful back under.

  The stream kept on flowing. His hand went limp, and that was that.

  Five dead, two left.

  She let it go, breathing hard. She watched as his pale fingers slipped under the water, then she waded out of the stream and limped up onto the bank, soaked to the skin. There was no strength left in her, legs aching deep in the bones, right hand throbbing all the way up her forearm and into her shoulder, the wound on the side of her head stinging, blood pounding hard as a club behind her eyes. It was all she could manage to get one foot in the stirrup and drag herself into the saddle.

  She took a look back, felt her guts clench and double her over, spat a mouthful of scalding sick into the mud, then another. The wheel had pulled Faithful right under and now it was dragging him up on the other side, limbs dangling, head lolling, eyes wide open and his tongue hanging out, some waterweed tangled around his neck. Slowly, slowly, it hoisted him up into the air, like an executed traitor displayed as an example to the public.

  She wiped her mouth on the back of her arm, scraped her tongue over her teeth and tried to spit the bitterness away while her sore head spun. Probably she should have cut him down from there, given him some last shred of dignity. He’d been her friend, hadn’t he? No hero, maybe, but who was? A man who’d wanted to be loyal in a treacherous business, in a treacherous world. A man who’d wanted to be loyal and found it had gone out of fashion. Probably she should have dragged him up onto the bank at least, left him somewhere he could lie still. But instead she turned her horse back towards the farm.

  Dignity wasn’t much help to the living, it was none to the dead. She’d come here to kill Faithful, and he was killed.

  No point weeping about it now.

  Harvest Time

  Shivers sat on the steps of the farmhouse, trimming some loose skin from the big mass of grazes on his forearm and watching some man weep over a corpse. Friend. Brother, even. He weren’t trying to hide it, just sat slumped over, tears dripping off his chin. A moving sight, most likely, if you were that way inclined.

  And Shivers always had been. His brother had called him pig-fat when he was a boy on account of his being that soft. He’d cried at his brother’s grave and at his father’s. When his friend Dobban got stabbed through with a spear and took two days going back to the mud. The night after the fight at Dunbrec, when they buried half his crew along with Threetrees. After the battle in the High Places, even, he’d gone off and found a spot on his own, let fall a full puddle of salt water. Though that might’ve been relief the fighting was done, rather than sorrow some lives were.

  He knew he’d wept all those times, and he knew why, but he couldn’t remember for the life of him how it had felt to do it. He wondered if there was anyone left in the world he’d cry for now, and he wasn’t sure he liked the answer.

  He took a swig of sour water from his flask, and watched a couple of Osprian soldiers picking over the bodies. One rolled a dead man over, some bloody guts slithering out of his split side, wrestled his boot off, saw it had a hole in the sole, tossed it away. He watched another pair, shirt-sleeves rolled up, one with a shovel over his shoulder, arguing the toss over where’d be easiest to start digging. He watched the flies, floating about in the soupy air, already gathering round the open mouths, the open eyes, the open wounds. He looked at ragged gashes and broken bone, cut-off limbs and spilled innards, blood in sticky streaks, drying spots and spatters, red-black pools across the stony yard, and felt no pleasure at a job well done, but no disgust either, no guilt and no sorrow. Just the stinging of his grazes, the uncomfortable stickiness of the heat, the tiredness in his bruised limbs and a niggling trace of hunger, since he’d missed breakfast.

  There was a man screaming inside the farmhouse, where they were dealing with the wounded. Screaming, screaming, hoarse and blubbery. But there was a bird tweeting happily from the eaves of the stable too, and Shivers found without too much effort he could concentrate on one and forget the other. He smiled and nodded along with the bird, leaned back against the door frame and stretched his leg out. Seemed a man could get used to anything, in time. And he was damned if he was going to let some screaming shift him off a good spot on the doorstep.

  He heard hoofbeats, looked round. Monza, trotting slowly down the slope, a black figure with the bright-blue sky behind her. He watched her pull her lathered horse up in the farmyard, frowning at the bodies. Her clothes were sodden wet, as if she’d been dunked in a stream. Her hair was matted with blood on one side, her pale cheek streaked with it.

  “Aye aye, Chief. Good to see you.” Should’ve been true but it felt like some kind of a lie, still. He felt not much of anything either way. “Faithful dead, is he?”

  “He’s dead.” She slid stiffly down. “Have any trouble getting him here?”

  “Not much. He wanted to bring more friends than we’d planned for, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn ’em down. You know how it is when folk hear about a party. They looked so eager, poor bastards. Have any trouble killing him?”

  She shook her head. “He drowned.”

  “Oh aye? Thought you’d have stabbed him.” He picked her sword up and offered it to her.

  “I stabbed him a bit.” She looked at the blade for a moment, then took it from his hand and sheathed it. “Then I let him drown.”

  Shivers shrugged. “Up to you. Drowning’ll do it, I reckon.”

  “Drowning did it.”

  “Five of seven, then.”

  “Five of seven.” Though she didn’t look like celebrating. Hardly any more than the man crying over his dead friend. It weren’t much of a joyous occasion for anyone, even on the winning side. There’s vengeance for you.

  “Who’s that screaming?”

  “Someone. No one.” Shivers shrugged. “Listen to the bird instead.”

  “What?”

  “Murcatto!” Vitari stood, arms folded, in the open doorway of the barn. “You’ll want to see this.”

  It was cool and dim inside, sunlight coming in through a ragged hole in the corner, through the narrow windows, throwing bright stripes across the darkened straw. One fell over Day’s corpse, yellow hair tangled across her face, body twisted awkwardly. No blood. No marks of violence at all.

  “Poison,” muttered Monza.

  Vitari nodded. “Oh, the irony.”

  A hellish-looking mess of copper rods, glass tubes and odd-shaped bottles was stood on the table beside the body, a couple of lamps with yellow-blue flames flickering underneath, stuff bubbling away inside, trickling, dripping. Shivers liked the look of the poisoner’s equipment even less than the look of the poisoner’s corpse. Bodies he was good and familiar with, science was all unknown.

  “Fucking science,” he muttered. “Even worse’n magic.”

  “Where’s Morveer?” asked Monza.

  “No sign.” The three of them looked hard at each other for a moment.

  “Not among the dead?”

  Shivers slowly shook his head. “It’s a shame, but I didn’t see him.”

  Monza took a worried step back. “Best not touch anything.”<
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  “You think?” growled Vitari. “What happened?”

  “Difference of opinion between master and apprentice, by the look of things.”

  “Serious difference,” muttered Shivers.

  Vitari slowly shook her spiky head. “That’s it. I’m finished.”

  “You’re what?” asked Monza.

  “I’m out. In this business you have to know when to quit. It’s war now, and I try not to get involved with that. Too hard to pick the outcome.” She nodded towards the yard where, out in the sunshine, they were piling up the corpses. “Visserine was a step too far for me, and this is a step further. That and I’ve no taste for being on the wrong side of Morveer. I could do without looking over my shoulder every day of my life.”

  “You’ll still be looking over your shoulder for Orso,” said Monza.

  “Knew it when I took the job. Needed the money.” Vitari held out her open palm. “Talking of which…”

  Monza frowned at her hand, then her face. “You’ve only come halfway. Halfway, half what we agreed.”

  “Seems fair. All the money and dead is no kind of payment. I’ll settle for half and live.”

  “I’d sooner keep you on. I can use you. And you won’t be safe as long as Orso’s alive-”

  “Then you’d best get on and kill the bastard, hadn’t you? But without me.”

  “Your choice.” Monza reached inside her coat and pulled out a flat leather pouch, a little stained with water. She unfolded it twice and slid a paper from inside, damp at one corner, covered with fancy-looking script. “More than half what we agreed. Five thousand two hundred and twelve scales, in fact.” Shivers frowned at it. He still couldn’t see how you could turn such a weight of silver into a scrap of paper.