Best Served Cold

by Joe Abercrombie

  Shivers grinned back. “Oh, I’m gone, don’t you worry on that score. I’ve had my fill of Styria.”

  He smiled as he stepped out of the darkness of the tunnel and onto the bridge that led away from Fontezarmo. He scratched at his itching face, took in a long breath of cold, free air. All things considered, and well against the run of luck, he reckoned he’d come out alright. Might be he’d lost an eye down here in Styria. Might be he was leaving no richer than when he’d stepped off the boat. But he was a better man, of that he’d no doubt. A wiser man. Used to be he was his own worst enemy. Now he was everyone else’s.

  He was looking forward to getting back to the North, finding some work that suited him. Maybe he’d make a stop in Uffrith, pay his old friend Vossula a little visit. He set off down the mountain, away from the fortress, boots crunching in the grey dust.

  Behind him, the sunrise was the colour of bad blood.

  Acknowledgments

  As always, four people without whom:

  Bren Abercrombie, whose eyes are sore from reading it.

  Nick Abercrombie, whose ears are sore from hearing about it.

  Rob Abercrombie, whose fingers are sore from turning the pages.

  Lou Abercrombie, whose arms are sore from holding me up.

  Then, my heartfelt thanks:

  To all the lovely and talented folks at my UK Publisher, Gollancz, and their parent Orion, particularly Simon Spanton, Jo Fletcher, Jon Weir, Mark Stay and Jon Wood. Then, of course, all those who’ve helped make, publish, publicise, translate and above all sell my books wherever they may be around the world.

  To the artists responsible for somehow making me look classy: Didier Graffet, Dave Senior and Laura Brett.

  To editors across the Pond: Devi Pillai and Lou Anders.

  To other hard-bitten professionals who’ve provided various mysterious services: Robert Kirby, Darren Turpin, Matthew Amos, Lionel Bolton.

  To all the writers whose paths have crossed mine either electronically or in the actual flesh, and who’ve provided help, laughs and a few ideas worth stealing, including but by no means limited to: James Barclay, Alex Bell, David Devereux, Roger Levy, Tom Lloyd, Joe Mallozzi, John Meaney, Richard Morgan, Adam Roberts, Pat Rothfuss, Marcus Sakey, Wim Stolk and Chris Wooding.

  And lastly, yet firstly:

  For unstinting support, advice, food, drink and, you know, editing above and beyond the call of duty, my editor, Gillian Redfearn. Long may it continue. I mean, I’m not going to write these damn things on my own…

  extras

  meet the author

  Lou Abercrombie

  JOE ABERCROMBIE was born in Lancaster, England, on the last day of 1974. He studied psychology at Manchester University, then spent twelve years living in London, working as a film editor on documentaries and live music for bands from Iron Maiden to Coldplay. He is now a full time writer, living in Bath with his wife and two daughters. Find out more about the author at www.joeabercrombie.com.

  interview

  Did you find the experience of writing BEST SERVED COLD, a standalone novel, to be more challenging than writing the First Law Trilogy?

  I did find it more challenging. I think mostly because I had the ideas and characters for the First Law Trilogy cooking in my head for a very long time—right back to childhood in some cases—so when I started writing, a lot came out quite easily, and more and more easily as I went along. Also, when I started writing The Blade Itself, I was doing it purely for the fun of it, as a hobby, with no pressure at all, so I was free to take as much time as I wanted and to experiment with what worked. For Best Served Cold, I had to come up with new characters and settings and implement them on a much tighter schedule, with some level of expectation from readers and publishers, which is a very different challenge. Although the plot was, in a way, much more straightforward than with the First Law, it took a long time for me to really get a feel for the characters in Best Served Cold. It wasn’t until I’d pretty much finished the first draft that I felt I’d gotten the voice for some of them, particularly Monza, anywhere near right. Then it was a case of revising the rest of the book to match.

  How did you develop the idea for the novel?

  Seven villains for Monza to wreak vengeance on felt like a good number, and so it seemed like a good idea as well that there should be seven heroes (and I’m using “hero” and “villain” in their loosest possible senses, of course). I filled as many of those roles as I thought was reasonable with characters readers might already have met in the First Law because, although I wanted the book to stand alone, I also wanted there to be some reward and feeling of continuation for people who’d read the trilogy. The book split naturally into seven parts, in each of which Monza and her motley group of helpers visits a different city and tries to kill the next man on the list. I tried to make each effort different in nature, and in some way to reflect the character both of the target and the city that the events takes place in, and also for the scale of the plots and the numbers of people involved to steadily grow, so that hopefully the tone of each part is different enough to keep the reader interested. I then approached each part separately, planning it in detail before writing it, and to some degree letting the overall story develop as it seemed appropriate in each part. I try to plan pretty carefully in advance, but at the same time, you have to give the plot a bit of room to squirm around as new ideas come to you and the characters take on firmer personalities.

  Monza Murcatto is a brilliantly intriguing character. Who or what were your inspirations in creating her?

  It’s always difficult to say exactly where the ideas for characters come from, since often the basic idea will just seem to be there in your head when you begin but the details only develop as you write the book and get a sense of how they talk, think, and behave. The First Law had been a very male set of books, and so I wanted to try my hand at a female main character. I’d always been fascinated by renaissance Italy, the complex and treacherous politics of feuding city-states, the mixture of terrible destruction and wild creativity, the poisonous popes, the intriguing merchants, the rampaging mercenaries, and so I took that as my inspiration for setting. The book was intended to be a fantasy thriller, and I wanted my central character to have one foot in the underworld but the other in the political world. A mercenary general seemed perfect—as well as having the ideal skill set for a revenger. I also felt that, since the leadership of mercenary companies tended to be pretty fluid and more based on merit than birth or tradition, a female mercenary leader was believable, and not without historical precedent. Then it was a case of thinking about what characteristics such a woman would need to have to succeed in such a male-dominated sphere as war. Some personal capacity for violence was clearly important, but ruthlessness, intelligence, dedication, and superhuman single-mindedness seemed even more so. An acid sense of humor wouldn’t hurt either. Then it was a question of seeing whether I could make such a character in any way sympathetic to the reader.

  As one of the main progenitors of the subgenre known as “scoundrel lit,” how do you feel about the direction the genre is moving in?

  I tend to think of it as “unheroic fantasy,” but certainly there seems to be a real current within epic fantasy lately toward darker, grittier, more morally ambiguous, more character-centered writing. I heartily approve of it because it’s to my personal taste, but also because I feel that epic fantasy had become a bit repetitive and predictable and variety has got to be a good thing. George R.R. Martin, I think, was very important in demonstrating that this kind of work could be commercially successful, that you could produce books that were recognizably epic fantasy—and gave readers everything they hoped for from the form—but at the same time were unpredictable, challenging, and unapologetically adult in every sense of the word. But guys like Fritz Leiber and Jack Vance were writing morally questionable heroes and seedy settings long before I was born, so I’m not sure I regard myself as any kind of progenitor, just a humble practitioner
in a long and proud tradition.

  Alright, not so humble.

  Your books are often compared to films. How does your film editing background influence your books?

  I spent ten years or so as a freelance editor, mostly working on live music (concerts, festivals, and awards shows) and documentaries. Certainly, that was important experience. I think it gave me a good idea of timing, of how to come into and get out of a scene, of how you can cut between different strands of action to get the most drama out of both. I was also lucky to see some really skilled producers work on scripts for documentary, where the aim is often to tell the story in the most economical number of words. But above all, I think it taught me how to get on with people and the value of listening to others’ opinions and making changes. As an editor, you can’t be too precious—you do your best with the material, but if a director, producer, or client wants something different, you have to make changes. You might resent that to begin with, but often you find that looking again with the benefit of a new viewpoint allows you to make improvements. The same is true of a writer. You need to be able to listen to your editor, listen to the opinions of readers, and not necessarily do exactly what they tell you, but always be looking for ways to improve what you’re doing.

  Will we see previous characters returning in your next novel? Maybe even Murcatto?

  Having finished the First Law, I really wanted to write some standalone books set in the same world, which could be accessible to new readers and serve as a jumping-in point but that hopefully, at the same time, would serve as some kind of continuation of the life of the world for readers who had read the trilogy. So I wanted there to be plenty of characters in common—for major characters from the trilogy to appear in the background of the standalones while minor characters took center stage. I enjoy the sense of threads coming in and out of the narrative, of the nods and references that long-term readers might pick up on and the sense it gives of a complete, interconnected world. The next novel takes place in the North, so we’ll see a lot of the Northman characters from the First Law making an appearance—Black Dow, Caul Shivers, Princes Calder, and Scale, among others, as well as quite a few Union soldiers—Kroy, Jalenhorm, Bremer dan Gorst. Even a certain Magus makes an appearance. Most of the characters from Best Served Cold are sitting this one out, but they’ll be there on the bench in case I need them in the future.

  What can you tell us about your next novel?

  It’s called The Heroes and it is the story of one battle for control of the North, most of the book taking place in the same location and over the course of three days. It follows six characters as they variously take part in the fighting or try to avoid it, as their paths cross and interweave throughout the course of the battle. On the Union side, we have the most disreputable corporal in His Majesty’s whole army, the venomously ambitious daughter of the Marshal in command, and a depressive master swordsman who once served as the king’s bodyguard. With the Northmen, we have a hard-bitten veteran who’s losing his nerve, a young lad eager to prove himself a warrior, and a disinherited prince eager to reclaim his father’s throne by any means necessary, apart from fighting. So where Best Served Cold was a fantasy thriller, The Heroes is a fantasy war story that attempts to investigate the whole notion of heroism. My five-second pitch is Lord of the Rings meets a Bridge Too Far.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  BEST SERVED COLD,

  look out for

  THE HEROES

  by Joe Abercrombie

  They say Black Dow’s killed more men than winter, and clawed his way to the throne of the North up a hill of skulls. The King of the Union, ever a jealous neighbor, is not about to stand smiling by while he claws his way any higher. The orders have been given and the armies are toiling through the northern mud. Thousands of men are converging on a forgotten ring of stones, on a worthless hill, in an unimportant valley, and they’ve brought a lot of sharpened metal with them.

  THE HEROES

  For glory, for victory, for staying alive.

  Colonel Wetterlant was still having trouble believing it, but it appeared the King’s Own Sixth Regiment was in a great deal of difficulty. The wall, he thought, was lost. Knots of resistance but basically overrun, and Northmen were flooding into the circle of stones from the north. Where else would Northmen come from? It had all happened so damnably fast.

  “We have to withdraw!” screamed Major Culfer over the din of combat. “There are too many of them!”

  “No! General Jalenhorm will bring reinforcements! He promised us—”

  “Then where the hell is he?” Culfer’s eyes were bulging in his face. Wetterlant would never have had him down as the panicky type. “He’s left us here to die, he’s—”

  Wetterlant simply turned away. “We stand! We stand and fight!” He was a proud man of a proud family, and he would stand. He would stand until the bitter end, if necessary, and die fighting with sword in hand, as his grandfather was said to have done. He would die under the regimental colours. Well, he wouldn’t, in fact, because that boy he ran through had torn them from the pole when he fell. But Wetterlant would stand, there was no question. He had often told himself so. Usually while admiring himself in the mirror after dressing for one official function or another. Straightening his sash.

  These were very different circumstances, however, it had to be admitted. No one was wearing a sash, not even him. And there was the blood, the corpses, the spreading panic. The unearthly wailing of the Northmen, who were flooding through the gaps between the stones and into the trampled circle of grass at their centre. Virtually a constant press of them now, as far as Wetterlant could see. The difficulty with a ring of standing stones as a defensive position is undoubtedly the gaps between them. The Union line, if you could use the phrase about an improvised clump of soldiers and officers fighting desperately wherever they stood, was bulging back under the pressure, in imminent danger of dissolving all together. Even now men were fleeing for the rear, clutching at wounds or, appallingly, entirely healthy.

  Orders. He was in command, and had to give orders. “Er!” he shouted, brandishing his sword. “Er…” It had all happened so very, very fast. What orders would Lord Marshal Varuz have given at a time like this? He had always admired Varuz. Unflappable.

  Culfer gave a thin scream. A narrow split had appeared in his shoulder, right down to his chest, splinters of white bone showing through it. Wetterlant wanted to tell him not to scream in a manner so unbefitting of an officer in the King’s Own. A scream like that might be good enough for one of the levy regiments, but in the Sixth he expected a manly roar. Culfer fell gently, blood bubbling from the wound, almost gracefully subsided to the ground, and a large Northman stepped up with an axe in his fist and began to cleave him into pieces.

  Wetterlant was vaguely conscious that he should have jumped to the aid of his second-in-command. But he seemed unable to move, fascinated by the Northman’s expression of business-like calm as he hacked Culfer apart. Like a bricklayer getting a difficult piece of wall to fit his high standards. Eventually satisfied by the number of pieces he had made of Culfer, who still, impossibly, seemed to be making a quiet squealing sound, he turned to look at Wetterlant.

  The far side of his face was crossed by a giant scar, a bright ball of dead metal in his eye socket. When he saw Wetterlant the ruined side twisted faintly like old leather, but the other broke out in a smile. Not a vicious, menacing, killing smile at all. A beatific, ecstatic smile. A smile of pure joy while behind him men screamed and roared and died, metal flashed and blood flew in spots and sprays against the sky.

  Wetterlant ran. There was not the slightest thought involved. His mind was turned off like a candle snuffed out. He ran faster than he had in thirty years or more, faster than he thought a man of his years possibly could have. He sprang between two of the great stones and jolted down the hillside, boots thrashing at the grass, vaguely conscious of other men running all around him, of screams and hi
sses and threats, of arrows whipping through the air about his head, shoulders itching with the inevitability of death at his back. His foot found a small depression and the shock made his knee buckle. He bit his tongue, flew headlong, wailing, hit the ground and tumbled over and over, no way of stopping himself. He rolled into shadow, slid to an ungainly stop in a shower of leaves, twigs, dirt. It smelled of rotten apples.

  He rolled stiffly over, groaning. His sword was gone, his right hand red raw. Twisted from his grip as he fell. The blade his father had given him the day he received his commission in the King’s Own. So proud. He wondered if his father would have been proud now. He was in amongst trees. The orchard, probably. He had abandoned his regiment. Or had they abandoned him? The normal rules of military behaviour, so unshakeable a foundation up until a few moments ago, had vanished like smoke in a breeze. It had happened so fast.

  His wonderful Sixth Regiment, his life’s work, built out of copious polish, and rigorous drill, and unflinching discipline, had been utterly shattered and broken in a few insane moments. If anyone survived it would be those that chose to run first. The rawest recruits and the worst cowards. And he was one. His first instinct was to ask Major Culfer for his opinion. He almost opened his mouth to do it, then realised the man had been butchered by a lunatic with a metal eye.

  He heard voices, the sounds of men crashing through the trees, shrank against the nearest trunk, peering round it like a scared child over their bedclothes. Union soldiers. He shuddered with relief, stumbled out from behind the tree, waving his good arm.

  “You! Men!”

  They snapped round, but not at attention. In fact they stared at him as if he was a ghost risen from a grave. He thought he knew their faces, but it seemed they had turned suddenly from the most polished and disciplined of soldiers into trembling, mud-smeared animals. Wetterlant had never been afraid of his own men before, had taken their obedience entirely for granted, but he had no choice but to blather on, his voice shrill and crackly with fear and exhaustion.