The Great Leveller by Joe Abercrombie
‘If he ain’t dead, which he is, and if he’s got the bones, which he don’t, he can come up here.’ And Irig leaned close to the lad, and tickled him under the chin with the spike on the end of his axe. ‘And he can deal with me.’
‘Aye!’ Temper was nearly shrieking it, veins popping out his head. ‘He can come up here and deal with … with him! With Irig! That’s right! Ironhead’s going to hang you bastards for running! Like he hung Crouch, and cut his guts out for treachery, he’ll fucking do the same to you, he will, and we’ll—’
‘You think you’re helping?’ snapped Irig.
‘Sorry, Chief.’
‘You want names? We got Cairm Ironhead up there at the Children. And at his back on the Heroes, we got Cracknut Whirrun, and Caul Shivers, and Black Dow his bloody self, for that matter—’
‘Up there,’ someone muttered.
‘Who said that?’ shrieked Temper. ‘Who fucking well said—’
‘Any man who stands now,’ Irig held up his axe and gave it a shake with each word, since he’d often found a shaken axe adds an edge to the bluntest of arguments, ‘and does his part, he’ll get his place at the fire and his place in the songs. Any man runs from this spot here, well,’ and Irig spat onto the curled-up coward next to his boot. ‘I won’t put Ironhead to the trouble o’ passing judgement, I’ll just give you to the axe, and there’s an end on it.’
‘An end!’ shrieked Temper.
‘Chief.’ Someone was tugging at his arm.
‘Can’t you see I’m trying to—’ snarled Irig, spinning around. ‘Shit.’
‘Never mind the Bloody-Nine. The Union were coming.
‘Colonel, you must dismount.’
Vinkler smiled. Even that was an effort. ‘Couldn’t possibly.’
‘Sir, really, this is no time for heroics.’
‘Then …’ Vinkler glanced across the massed ranks of men emerging from the fruit trees to either side. ‘When is the time, exactly?’
‘Sir—’
‘The bloody leg just won’t manage it.’ Vinkler winced as he touched his thigh. Even the weight of his hand on it was agonising now.
‘Is it bad, sir?’
‘Yes, sergeant, I think it’s quite bad.’ He was no surgeon, but he was twenty years a soldier and well knew the meaning of stinking dressings and a mottling of purple-red bruises about a wound. He had, in all honesty, been surprised to wake at all this morning.
‘Perhaps you should retire and see the surgeon, sir—’
‘I have a feeling the surgeons will be very busy today. No, Sergeant, thank you, but I’ll press on.’ Vinkler turned his horse with a twitch of the reins, worried that the man’s concern would cause his courage to weaken. He needed all the courage he had. ‘Men of his Majesty’s Thirteenth!’ He drew his sword and directed its point towards the scattering of stones high above them. ‘Forward!’ And with his good heel he urged his horse up onto the slope.
He was the only mounted man in the whole division now, as far as he could tell. The rest of the officers, General Jalenhorm and Colonel Gorst among them, had left their horses in the orchard and were proceeding on foot. Only a complete fool would have chosen to ride up a hill as steep as this one, after all. Only a fool, or the hero from an unlikely storybook, or a dead man.
The irony was that it hadn’t even been much of a wound. He’d been run through at Ulrioch, all those years ago, and Lord Marshal Varuz had visited him in the hospital tent, and pressed his sweaty hand with an expression of deep concern, and said something about bravery which Vinkler had often wished he could remember. But to everyone’s surprise, his own most of all, he had lived. Perhaps that was why he had thought nothing of a little nick on the thigh. Now it gave every appearance of having killed him.
‘Bloody appearances,’ he forced through gritted teeth. The only thing for it was to smile through the agony. That’s what a soldier was meant to do. He had written all the necessary letters and supposed that was something. His wife had always worried there would be no goodbye.
Rain was starting to flit down. He could feel the odd spot against his face. His horse’s hooves were slipping on the short grass and it tossed and snorted, making him grimace as his leg was jolted. Then a flight of arrows went up ahead. A great number of arrows. Then they began to curve gracefully downwards, falling from on high.
‘Oh, bloody hell.’ He narrowed his eyes and hunched his shoulders instinctively as a man might stepping from a porch into a hailstorm. Some of them dropped down around him, sticking silently into the turf to either side. He heard clanks and rattles behind as they bounced from shields or armour. He heard a shriek, followed by another. Shouting. Men hit.
Damned if he was going to just sit there. ‘Yah!’ And Vinkler gave his horse the spurs, wincing as it lurched up the hill, well ahead of his men. He stopped perhaps twenty strides from the enemy’s earthworks. He could see the archers peering down, their bows picked out black against the sky, which was starting to darken again, drizzle prickling at Vinkler’s helmet. He was terribly close. An absurdly easy target. More arrows whizzed past him. With a great effort he turned in his saddle and, lips curled back against the pain, stood in his stirrups, raising his sword.
‘Men of the Thirteenth! At the double now! Have you somewhere else to be?’
A few soldiers fell as more arrows whipped past into the front rank, but the rest gave a hearty roar and broke into something close to a run, which was a damned fine testament to their spirit after the march they’d already had.
Vinkler became aware of an odd sensation in his throbbing leg, looked down, and was surprised to see an arrow poking from his dead thigh. He burst out laughing. ‘That’s my least vulnerable spot, you bloody arseholes!’ he roared at the Northmen on the earthworks. The foremost of his charging men were level with him now, pounding up the hill, yelling.
An arrow stuck deep into his horse’s neck. It reared, and Vinkler bounced in his saddle, only just keeping hold of the reins, which proved a waste of time anyway as his mount tottered sideways, twisted, fell. There was an almighty thud.
Vinkler tried to shake the dizziness from his head. He tried to look about him but was trapped beneath his horse. Worse yet, it seemed he had crushed one of his soldiers and the man’s spear had run him through as he fell. The bloody blade of it was poking through Vinkler’s hip now, just under his breastplate. He gave a helpless sigh. It seemed that, wherever you put armour, you never had it where you needed it.
‘Dear, dear,’ he said, looking down at the broken arrow-shaft protruding from his leg, the spear-point from his hip. ‘What a mess.’ It hardly hurt, that was the strange thing. Maybe that was a bad sign, though. Probably. Boots were thumping at the dirt all around him as his men charged up the hill. ‘On you go, boys,’ waving one hand weakly. They would have to make it the rest of the way without him. He looked towards the earthworks, not far off. Not far off at all. He saw a wild-haired man perched there, bow levelled at him.
‘Oh, damn,’ he said.
Temper shot at the bastard who’d been on the horse. He was flattened under it, and no danger to no one, but a man acting that bloody fearless within shot of Temper’s bow was an insult to his aim. As luck had it, luck being a fickle little shit, his elbow got jogged just as he was letting go the string and he shot his shaft off high into the air.
He snatched at another arrow, but by then things were getting a bit messy. A bit more’n a bit. The Union were up to the ditch they’d dug and the earth wall they’d thrown up, and Temper wished now they’d dug it a deal deeper and thrown it up a deal higher, ’cause there were a bloody lot of Southerners crowding round it, and plenty more on the way.
Irig’s boys were packed in on the packed earth, jabbing down with spears, doing a lot of shouting. Temper saw a fair few spears jabbing the other way too. He went up on tiptoes trying to see, then lurched out the way of Irig’s axe as it flashed past his nose. Once his blood was going that big bastard didn’t care much who got caught
A Northman staggered past, tangling with Temper and nearly dragging him over, scrabbling at his chest as blood bubbled through his torn chain mail. A Union man sprang up onto the earth-wall in the gap he’d left like he was on a bloody spring. A neckless bastard with a great heavy jaw and hard brows wrinkled over hard little eyes. No helmet but thick plates of scuffed armour on the rest of him, shield in one hand, heavy sword in the other already dark with blood.
Temper stumbled away from him, since he only had his bow to hand and had always liked to keep fighting at a polite distance anyway, making way for a more willing Carl whose sword was already swinging. Neckless seemed off balance, the blade sure to take his head right off, but in one quick movement he blocked it with a clang of steel, and blood showered, and the Carl reeled back onto his face. Before he was still, Neckless had hit another man so hard he took him right off his feet, turned him over in the air and sent him tumbling down the hillside.
Temper scrambled back up the slope, mouth wide open and salty with someone’s blood, sure he was looking the Great Leveller in the face at last, and an ugly face it was, too. Then Irig came rushing from the side, axe following close behind.
Neckless went down hard, a great dent smashed into his shield. Temper hooted with laughter but the Union man only went down as far as his knees would bend then burst straight back up, flinging Irig’s great bulk away and slicing him across the guts all in one motion, sending him staggering, blood spraying from his chain mail coat, eyes popping more with shock than pain. Just couldn’t believe he’d been done so easy, and neither could Temper. How could a man run up that hill and still move so hard and so fast at the top of it?
‘It’s the Bloody-Nine!’ someone wailed, though it bloody obviously weren’t the Bloody-Nine at all. He was causing quite a bloody panic all the same. Another Carl went at him with a spear and he slid around it, sword crashing down and leaving a mighty dent in the middle of the Carl’s helmet, folding him on his face, arms and legs thrashing mindless in the mud.
Temper gritted his teeth, raised his bow, took a careful bead on the neckless bastard, but just as Temper let go the string Irig pushed himself up, clutching his bloody guts with one hand while he raised his axe in the other. Luck being luck, he got himself right in the way of the arrow and it took him in the shoulder, made him grunt.
The Union man’s eyes flicked sideways, and his sword flicked out with ’em and took Irig’s arm off just like that, and almost before the blood began to spurt from the stump the blade lashed back the other way and ripped a bloody gash in his chest, back the other way and laid Irig’s head wide open between his mouth and his nose, top teeth snatched through the air and off down the hill.
Neckless crouched there still, dented shield up in front, sword up behind, big face all spotted with red and his eyes ahead, calm as a fisherman waiting for a tug on the line. Four carved Northmen dead as ever a man could be at his feet and Irig toppling gently sideways and into the ditch, even deader.
He might as well have been the Bloody-Nine, this neckless bastard, Carls falling over ’emselves to get away from him. More Union men started to pull themselves up to either side, over the earth wall in numbers, and the shift backwards became a run.
Temper went with ’em, as eager as any. He caught an elbow in the neck from someone, slipped over and slapped his chin on the grass, gave his tongue an awful bite, scrambled up and ran on, men shouting and shrieking all around. He snatched one desperate look back, saw Neckless hack down a running Carl calmly as you might swat a fly. Beside him a tall Union man in a bright breastplate was pointing towards Temper with a drawn blade, shouting at the top of his voice.
‘On!’ roared Jalenhorm, waving his sword towards the Children. Bloody hell, he was out of breath. ‘Up! Up!’ They had to keep the momentum. Gorst had opened the gate a crack, and they had to push through before it closed. ‘On! On!’ He bent down, offering his hand to haul men over the ditch and slapping them on the back as they laboured off uphill again.
It looked as if the fleeing Northmen were causing chaos at the drystone wall above, tangling with the defenders there, spreading panic, letting the foremost of Jalenhorm’s men clamber up after them without resistance. As soon as he had the breath to do it he followed himself, lurching up the steep slope. He had to push on.
Bodies. Bodies, and wounded men scattered on the grass. A Northman stared at him, bloody hands clapped to the top of his head. A Union soldier clutched dumbly at his oozing thigh. A soldier running just beside him made a hiccupping sound and fell on his back, and when Jalenhorm glanced over his shoulder he saw the man had an arrow in his face. He could not stop for him. Could only press on, swallowing a sudden wave of nausea. His own thudding heartbeat and his own whooshing breath damped the war cries and the clashes of metal down to an endless nagging rattle. The thickening drizzle was far from helping, turning the trampled grass slippery slick. The world jumped and wobbled, full of running men, slipping and sliding men, occasional whirring arrows, flying grass and mud.
‘On,’ he grunted, ‘on.’ No one could have heard him. It was himself he was ordering. ‘On.’ This was his one chance at redemption. If they could only capture the summit. Break the Northmen where they were strongest. ‘Up. Up.’ Then nothing else would matter. He would be no longer the king’s incompetent old drinking partner, who fumbled his command on the first day. He would have finally earned his place. ‘On,’ he wheezed, ‘up!’
He pushed on, bent over, clawing at the wet grass with his free hand, so intent on the ground that the wall caught him by surprise. He stood, waving his sword uncertainly, not sure whether it would be held by his men or the enemy, or what he should do about it in either case. Someone reached down with a gloved hand. Gorst. Jalenhorm found himself hauled up with shocking ease, scrambled over the damp stones and onto the flat top of the spur.
The Children stood just ahead. Much larger at close quarters than he had imagined, a circle of rough-hewn rocks a little higher than a man. There were more bodies here, but fewer than on the slopes below. It seemed resistance had been light and, for the moment at least, had disappeared altogether. Union soldiers stood about in various stages of exhausted confusion. Beyond them the hill sloped up towards the summit. Towards the Heroes themselves. A gentler incline, and covered with retreating Northmen. More of an organised withdrawal than a rout this time, from what Jalenhorm could gather at a glance.
A glance was all he could manage. With no immediate peril, his body sagged. He stood for a moment, hands on his knees, chest heaving, belly squeezing uncomfortably against the inside of his wondrous breastplate with every in-breath. Damn thing didn’t bloody fit him any more. It had never bloody fit him.
‘The Northmen are falling back!’ Gorst’s weird falsetto jangled in Jalenhorm’s ears. ‘We must pursue!’
‘General! We should regroup.’ One of Jalenhorm’s staff, his armour beaded with wet. ‘We’re well ahead of the second wave. Too far ahead.’ He gestured towards Osrung, shrouded now in the thickening rain. ‘And Northern cavalry have attacked the Stariksa Regiment, they’re bogged down on our right—’
Jalenhorm managed to straighten up. ‘The Aduan Volunteers?’
‘Still in the orchard, sir!’
‘We’re getting split up from our support—’ chimed in another.
‘Gorst waved them angrily away, his piping voice making a ludicrous contrast with his blood-spotted aspect. He barely even looked out of breath. ‘Damn the support! We press on!’
‘General, sir, Colonel Vinkler is dead, the men are exhausted, we must pause!’
Jalenhorm stared up at the summit, chewing at his lip. Seize the moment, or wait for support? He saw the spears of the Northmen against the darkening sky. Gorst’s eager, red-speckled face. The clean, nervous ones of his staff. He winced, looked at the handful of men to hand, then shook his head. ‘We will hold here a little while for reinforcements. Secure this position and gather our strength.’
&nb
Jalenhorm put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I share your eagerness, Bremer, believe me, but not everyone can run for ever. Black Dow is ready, and cunning, and this retreat might only be a ruse. I do not intend to be fooled by him a second time.’ He squinted up, the clouds getting steadily angrier above them. ‘The weather is against us. As soon as we have the numbers, we must attack.’ They might not be resting long. Union soldiers were flooding over the wall now, choking the stone circle.
‘Where’s Retter?’
‘Here, sir,’ called the lad. He looked pale, and scared, but so did they all.
Jalenhorm smiled to see him. There, indeed, was a hero. ‘Sound the assembly, boy, and ready on the advance.’
They could not be reckless, but nor could they afford to waste the initiative. This was their one chance at redemption. Jalenhorm stared yearningly up at the Heroes, rain tinkling on his helmet. So very near. The last Northmen were swarming up the slopes towards the top. One stood, looking back through the rain.
Ironhead frowned back towards the Children, already riddled with Union soldiers.
‘Shit,’ he hissed.
Hurt him to do this. He’d a hard-won name for never giving ground, but he hadn’t won it in fights he was sure to lose. He wasn’t about to face the might of the Union on his own just so men could blow their noses and say Cairm Ironhead died bravely. He’d no plans to follow after Whitesides, or Littlebone, or Old Man Yawl. They’d all died bravely, and who sang about those bastards these days?
‘Pull back!’ he bellowed at the last of his men, urging ’em between the planted stakes and up towards the Heroes. A shameful thing to show your back to the enemy, but better their eyes on your back than their spears in your front. If Black Dow wanted to fight for this worthless hill and these worthless stones he could do it his worthless self.
He strode up frowning through the thickening rain, through the gap in the mossy wall that ringed the Heroes. He walked slow, shoulders back and head high, hoping folk would think this was all well planned and he’d done nothing the least bit cowardly—