The Great Leveller by Joe Abercrombie
‘Ain’t me you got to convince. It’s these old bastards.’
There were five of them, standing in a loose group at the head of the column. Temple was slightly unnerved to see the nearest was a Ghost woman, long and lean with a face worn tough as saddle-leather, bright eyes looking straight through Temple and off to the far horizon. Next to her, swaddled in a huge fur coat and with a pair of knives and a gilt-sheathed hunting sword at his belt, a smallish man with a shag of grey hair and beard and a curl to his mouth as if Temple was a joke he didn’t find funny but was too polite to frown at.
‘This here is the famous scout Dab Sweet and his associate Crying Rock. And this the leader of our merry Fellowship, Abram Majud.’ A bald, sinewy Kantic, face composed of unforgiving angles with two careful, slanted eyes in the midst. ‘This is Savian.’ A tall man, with iron grey stubble and a stare like a hammer. ‘And this is . . .’ Shy paused, as though trying to think up the right word. ‘Lamb.’
Lamb was a huge old Northman, slightly hunched as if he was trying to look smaller than he was, a piece missing from his ear and a face that, through a tangle of hair and beard, looked as if it had seen long use as a millstone. Temple wanted to wince just looking at that collection of breaks, nicks and scars, but he grinned through it like the professional he was, and smiled at each of these geriatric adventurers as though he never saw in one place such a collection of the beautiful and promising.
‘Gentlemen, and . . .’ He glanced at Crying Rock, realised the word hardly seemed to fit but had entirely backed himself into a corner. ‘Lady . . . it is my honour to meet you. My name is Temple.’
‘Speaks nice, don’t he?’ rumbled Sweet, as though that was a black mark against him already.
‘Where did you find him?’ growled Savian. Temple had not failed at as many professions as he had without learning to recognise a dangerous man, and he feared this one straight away.
‘Fished him out of the river,’ said Shy.
‘You got a reason not to throw him back?’
‘Didn’t want to kill him, I guess.’
Savian looked straight at Temple, flint-eyed, and shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t be killing him. Just letting him drown.’
There was a moment of silence for Temple to consider that, while the wind blew chill through his soaked trousers and the five old worthies treated him each to their own style of appraisal, suspicion or scorn.
It was Majud who spoke first. ‘And where did you float in from, Master Temple? You do not appear to be native to these parts.’
‘No more than you, sir. I was born in Dagoska.’
‘An excellent city for commerce in its day, rather less so since the demise of the Guild of Spicers. And how does a Dagoskan come to be out here?’
Here is the perennial trouble with burying your past. Others are forever trying to dig it up. ‘I must confess . . . I had fallen in with some bad company.’
Majud indicated his companions with a graceful gesture. ‘It happens to the best of us.’
‘Bandits?’ asked Savian.
All that and worse. ‘Soldiers,’ said Temple, putting it in the best light possible short of an outright lie. ‘I left them and struck out on my own. I was set upon by Ghosts, and in the struggle rolled down a slope and . . . into a gorge.’ He pressed gently at his battered face, remembering that sickening moment when he ran out of ground. ‘Followed by a long fall into water.’
‘I been there,’ murmured Lamb, with a faraway look.
Sweet puffed up his chest and adjusted his sword-belt. ‘Whereabouts did you run across these Ghosts?’
Temple could only shrug. ‘Upriver?’
‘How far and how many?’
‘I saw four. It happened at dawn and I’ve been floating since.’
‘Might be no more’n twenty miles south.’ Sweet and Crying Rock exchanged a long glance, grizzled concern on his part, stony blankness on hers. ‘We’d best ride out and take a look that way.’
‘Hmm,’ murmured the old Ghost.
‘Do you expect trouble?’ asked Majud.
‘Always. That way you’ll only be pleasantly surprised.’ Sweet walked between Lamb and Savian, giving each of them a slap on the shoulder as he passed. ‘Good work at the river. Hope I’m as useful when I reach your age.’ He slapped Shy, too. ‘And you, girl. Might want to let go the rope next time, though, eh?’ It was only then that Temple noticed the bloody bandage around her limp arm. He had never been particularly sensitive to the hurts of others.
Majud showed off a gold front tooth as he smiled. ‘I imagine you would be grateful to travel with our Fellowship?’
Temple sagged with relief. ‘Beyond grateful.’
‘Every member has either paid for their passage or contributes their skills.’
Temple unsagged. ‘Ah.’
‘Do you have a profession?’
‘I have had several.’ He thought quickly through the list for those that were least likely to land him immediately back in the river. ‘Trainee priest, amateur surgeon—’
‘We’ve got a surgeon,’ said Savian.
‘And a priest, more’s the pity,’ added Shy.
‘Butcher—’
‘We have hunters,’ said Majud.
‘—carpenter—’
‘A wagon-man?’
Temple winced. ‘House-builder.’
‘We need no houses out here. Your most recent work?’
Mercenary usually won few friends. ‘I was a lawyer,’ he said, before realising that often won still fewer.
Savian was certainly not one of them. ‘There’s no law out here but what a man brings with him.’
‘Have you ever driven oxen?’ asked Majud.
‘I am afraid not.’
‘Herded cattle?’
‘Sadly, no.’
‘Handled horses?’
‘One at a time?’
‘Experience in combat?’ grated Savian.
‘Very little, and that far more than I’d like.’ He feared this interview was not showing him in his best light, if there was such a thing. ‘But . . . I am determined to start fresh, to earn my place, to work as hard as any man – or woman – here and . . . keen to learn,’ he finished, wondering if so many exaggerations had ever been worked into one sentence.
‘I wish you every success with your education,’ said Majud, ‘but passengers pay one hundred and fifty marks.’
A brief silence as they all, particularly Temple, considered the likelihood of his producing such a sum. Then he patted at his wet trouser-pockets. ‘I find myself a little short.’
‘How short?’
‘One hundred and fifty marks-ish?’
‘You let us join for nothing and I reckon you’re getting your money’s worth,’ said Shy.
‘Sweet made that deal.’ Majud ran an appraising eye over Temple and he found himself trying to hide his bare foot behind the other. Without success. ‘And you at least brought two boots apiece. This one will need clothes, and footwear, and a mount. We simply cannot afford to take in every stray that happens across our path.’
Temple blinked, not entirely sure where this left him.
‘Where does that leave him?’ asked Shy.
‘Waiting at the ford for a Fellowship with different requirements.’
‘Or another set of Ghosts, I guess?’
Majud spread his hands. ‘If it were up to me I would not hesitate before helping you, but I have the feelings of my partner Curnsbick to consider, and he has a heart of iron where business is concerned. I am sorry.’ He did look a little sorry. But he did not look like he would be changing his mind.
Shy glanced sideways at Temple. All he could do was stare back as earnestly as possible.
‘Shit.’ She planted her hands on her hips and shook her head at the sky for a moment, then curled back her top lip to show a noticeable gap between her front teeth and neatly spat through it. ‘I’ll buy him in, then.’
‘Really?’ asked Majud, brows going up.
‘That’s right,’ she snapped. ‘You want the money now?’
‘Oh, don’t trouble yourself.’ Majud had the trace of a smile about his lips. ‘I know your touch with figures.’
‘I don’t like this.’ Savian propped the heel of his hand on the grip of one of his knives. ‘This bastard could be anyone.’
‘So could you,’ said Shy. ‘I’ve no notion what you were doing last month, or what you’ll get to next, and for a fact it’s none o’ my business. I’m paying, he’s staying. You don’t like it, you can float off downriver, how’s that?’ She glared right into Savian’s stony face all the while and Temple found he was liking her more and more.
Savian pursed his thin lips a fraction. ‘Got anything to say about this, Lamb?’
The old Northman looked slowly from Temple to Shy and back. It appeared he did nothing quickly. ‘I reckon everyone should get a chance,’ he said.
‘Even those don’t deserve it?’
‘Especially them, maybe.’
‘You can trust me,’ said Temple, treating the old men to his most earnest look. ‘I won’t let you down, I promise.’ He had left a trail of broken promises across half the Circle of the World, after all. One extra would hardly keep him out of heaven.
‘You saying so don’t necessarily make it so, does it?’ Savian leaned forward, narrowing his eyes even further, a feat that might have been considered impossible but a moment before. ‘I’m watching you, boy.’
‘That is . . . a tremendous comfort,’ squeaked Temple as he backed slowly away. Shy had already turned on her heel and he hurried to catch her up.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Truly. I’m not sure what I can do to repay you.’
‘Repay me.’
He cleared his throat. ‘Yes. Of course.’
‘With one-quarter interest. I ain’t no charity.’
Now he was liking her less. ‘I begin to see that. Principal plus a quarter. Far more than fair. I always pay my debts.’ Except, perhaps, the financial ones.
‘Is it true you’re keen to learn?’
He was keener to forget. ‘I am.’
‘And to work as hard as any man here?’
Judging by the dustiness, sweatiness, sunburn and generally ruined appearance of most of the men, that claim seemed now rather rash. ‘Yes?’
‘Good, ’cause I’ll work you, don’t worry on that score.’
He was worrying on several scores, but the lack of hard labour had not been among them. ‘I can . . . hardly wait to start.’ He was getting the distinct sensation that he had whisked his neck from one noose only to have another whipped tight around it. Looked at with the benefit of hindsight, his life, which at the time had felt like a series of ingenious escapes, resembled rather more closely a succession of nooses, most of them self-tied. The self-tied ones will still hang you, though.
Shy was busy kneading at her injured arm and planning strategy. ‘Might be Hedges has some clothes’ll fit. Gentili’s got an old saddle will serve and Buckhorm’s got a mule I believe he’d sell.’
‘A mule?’
‘If that’s too fucking lowly you can always walk to Crease.’
Temple thought it unlikely he would make it as far as the mule on foot, so he smiled through the pain and consoled himself with the thought that he would repay her. For the indignity, if not the money.
‘I shall feel grateful for every moment spent astride the noble beast,’ he forced out.
‘You should feel grateful,’ she snapped.
‘I will,’ he snapped back.
‘Good,’ she said.
‘Good.’
A pause. ‘Good.’
Reasons
‘Some country, ain’t it?’
‘Looks like quite a bloody lot of country to me,’ said Leef.
Sweet spread his arms and pulled in such a breath you’d have thought he could suck the whole world through his nose. ‘It’s the Far Country, true enough! Far ’cause it’s so damn far from anywhere a civilised man would care to go. And Far ’cause it’s so damn far from here to anywhere else he’d want to go.’
‘Far ’cause it’s so damn far to anything at all,’ said Shy, staring out across that blank expanse of grass, gently shifting with the wind. A long, long way off, so pale they might’ve been no more’n wishes, the grey outline of hills.
‘But damn civilised men, eh, Lamb?’
Lamb raised a mild eyebrow. ‘We can’t just let ’em be?’
‘Maybe even borrow some hot water off ’em once in a while,’ muttered Shy, scratching at her armpit. She’d a fair few passengers along for the ride now, not to mention dust crusted to every bit of her and her teeth tasting of salt dirt and dry death.
‘Damn ’em, say I, and hot water, too! You can strike off south to the Empire and ask old Legate Sarmis for a bath if that’s your style. Or trek back east to the Union and ask the Inquisition.’
‘Their water might be too hot for comfort,’ she muttered.
‘Just tell me where a body can feel as free as this!’
‘Can’t think of nowhere,’ she admitted, though to her mind there was something savage in all that endless empty. You could come to feel squashed by all that room.
But not Dab Sweet. He filled his lungs to bursting one more time. ‘She’s easy to fall in love with, the Far Country, but she’s a cruel mistress. Always leading you on. That’s how it’s been with me, ever since I was younger’n Leef here. The best grass is always just past the horizon. The sweetest water’s in the next river. The bluest sky over some other mountain.’ He gave a long sigh. ‘Afore you know it, your joints snap of a morning and you can’t sleep two hours together without needing to piss and of a sudden you realise your best country’s all behind you, never even appreciated as you passed it by, eyes fixed ahead.’
‘Summers past love company,’ mused Lamb, scratching at the star-shaped scar on his stubbled cheek. ‘Seems every time you turn around there’s more o’ the bastards at your back.’
‘Comes to be everything reminds you of something past. Somewhere past. Someone. Yourself, maybe, how you were. The now gets fainter and the past more and more real. The future worn down to but a stub.’
Lamb had a little smile at his mouth’s corner as he stared into the distance. ‘The happy valleys o’ the past,’ he murmured.
‘I love old-bastard talk, don’t you?’ Shy cocked a brow at Leef. ‘Makes me feel healthy.’
‘You young shrimps think tomorrow can be put off for ever,’ grumbled Sweet. ‘More time got like money from a bank. You’ll learn.’
‘If the Ghosts don’t kill us all first,’ said Leef.
‘Thanks for raising that happy possibility,’ said Sweet. ‘If philosophy don’t suit, I do have other occupation for you.’
‘Which is?’
The old scout nodded down. Scattered across the grass, flat and white and dry, were a bumper harvest of cow-leavings, fond mementoes of some wild herd roving the grassland. ‘Collecting bullshit.’
Shy snorted. ‘Ain’t he collected bullshit enough listening to you and
Lamb sing the glories o’ yesteryear?’
‘You can’t burn fond remembrances, more’s the pity, or I’d be toasty warm every night.’ Sweet stuck an arm out to the level sameness in every direction, the endless expanse of earth and sky and sky and earth away to nowhere. ‘Ain’t a stick of timber for a hundred miles. We’ll be burning cow flats ’til after we cross the bridge at Sictus.’
‘And cooking over ’em, too?’
‘Might improve the flavour o’ what we been eating,’ said Lamb.
‘All part o’ the charm,’ said Sweet. ‘Either way, all the young ’uns are gathering fuel.’
Leef’s eyes flickered to Shy. ‘I ain’t that young.’ And as though to prove it he fingered his chin where he’d started to lovingly cultivate a meagre harvest of blond hairs.
Shy wasn’t sure she couldn’t have fielded
‘You want the lawyer to lend you a hand?’ asked Shy. ‘For three bits he’s yours for the afternoon.’
Sweet narrowed his eyes. ‘I’ll give you two for him.’
‘Done,’ she said. It was hardly worth haggling when the prices were so small.
‘Reckon he’ll enjoy that, the lawyer,’ said Lamb, as Leef and Sweet headed back towards the Fellowship, the scout holding forth again on how fine things used to be.
‘He ain’t along for his amusement.’
‘I guess none of us are.’
They rode in silence for a moment, just the two of them and the sky, so big and deep it seemed any moment there might be nothing holding you to the ground any more and you’d just fall into it and never stop. Shy worked her right arm a little, shoulder and elbow still weak and sore, grumbles up into her neck and down into her ribs but getting looser each day. For sure she’d lived through worse.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Lamb, out of nowhere.
Shy looked over at him, hunched and sagging like he’d an anchor chained around his neck. ‘I’ve always thought so.’
‘I mean it, Shy. I’m sorry. For what happened back there in Averstock. For what I did. And what I didn’t do.’ He spoke slower and slower until Shy got the feeling each word was a battle to fight. ‘Sorry that I never told you what I was . . . before I came to your mother’s farm . . .’ She watched him all the while, mouth dry, but he just frowned down at his left hand, thumb rubbing at that stump of a finger over and over. ‘All I wanted was to leave the past buried. Be nothing and nobody. Can you understand that?’
Shy swallowed. She’d a few memories at her back she wouldn’t have minded sinking in a bog. ‘I reckon.’
‘But the seeds of the past bear fruit in the present, my father used to say. I’m that much of a fool I got to teach myself the same lesson over and over, always pissing into the wind. The past never stays buried. Not one like mine, leastways. Blood’ll always find you out.’