The Great Leveller by Joe Abercrombie
‘And sore,’ said Bright.
‘No doubt.’ Last night’s revelry again, and the riding again, and Cog’s arm still sore from the fall in the mountains and the old wound in his arse always aching. You wouldn’t think an arrow in the arse would curse you all your days but there it is. Arse armour. That was the key to the mercenary life.
‘It’s been a testing campaign,’ said Cog.
‘If you can apply the word to half a year’s hard riding, hard drinking, killing and theft.’
‘What else would y’apply it to?’
Bright considered that a moment. ‘True. Have you seen a worse, though? You been with Cosca for years.’
‘The North was colder. Kadir was dustier. That last Styrian mess was bloodier. Full-on revolt in the Company at one point.’ He shifted the manacles at his belt. ‘Gave up on using chains and had to go with hangings for every infraction. But all considered, no. I ain’t seen a worse.’ Cog sniffed up some snot, worked it thoughtfully about his mouth, gathering a good sense of its consistency, then leaned back and spat it arcing through a hovel’s open window.
‘Never saw a man could spit like you,’ said Bright.
‘It’s all about putting the practice in,’ said Cog. ‘Like anything else.’
‘Keep moving!’ roared Cosca over his shoulder, up at the head of the column. If you could call eighteen men a column. Still, they were the lucky ones. The rest of the Company were most likely still slogging across the plateau on foot. The ones that were still alive, anyway.
Bright’s thoughts were evidently marching in the same direction. ‘Lost a lot o’ good men these last few weeks.’
‘Good might be stretching it.’
‘You know what I mean. Can’t believe Brachio’s gone.’
‘He’s a loss.’
‘And Jubair.’
‘Can’t say I’m sorry that black bastard’s head ain’t attached no more.’
‘He was a strange one, right enough, but a good ally in a tough corner.’
‘I’d rather stay out o’ the tough corners.’
Bright looked sideways at him, then dropped his horse back a stretch so the others up front wouldn’t mark him. ‘Couldn’t agree more. I want to go home, is what I’m saying.’
‘Where’s home to men like us?’
‘I want to go anywhere but here, then.’
Cog glanced about at the tangled mass of wood and ruins that was Crease, never a place to delight a cultured fellow and less so than ever now by the looks of things, parts of it burned out and a lot of the rest near deserted. Those left looked like the ones who couldn’t find a way to leave, or were too far gone to try. A beggar of truly surpassing wretchedness hobbled after them for a few strides with his hand out before falling in the gutter. On the other side of the street a toothless old woman laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Mad. Or heard something real funny. Mad seemed likelier.
‘I take your point,’ said Cog. ‘But we’ve got that money to find.’ Even though he weren’t entirely sure he wanted to find it. All his life he’d been clutching at every copper he could get his warty fingers around. Then suddenly he had so much gold none of it seemed worth anything any more. So much the world seemed to make no sense in the light of it.
‘Didn’t you keep a little back?’
‘O’ course. A little.’ More than a little, in fact, the pouch under his armpit was heavy with coins. Not so much it made him sweat, but a tidy haul.
‘We all did,’ muttered Bright. ‘So it’s Cosca’s money we’re after really, ain’t it?’
Cog frowned. ‘There’s the principle ’n all.’
‘Principle? Really?’
‘Can’t let folks just up and rob you.’
‘We robbed it ourselves, didn’t we?’ said Bright, an assertion Cog could by no means deny. ‘I’m telling you, it’s cursed. From the moment we laid our hands on it things have gone from shit to shitter.’
‘No such thing as curses.’
‘Tell it to Brachio and Jubair. How many of us set off from Starikland?’
‘More’n four hundred, according to Friendly, and Friendly don’t get a count wrong.’
‘How many now?’
Cog opened his mouth, then closed it. The point was obvious to all.
‘Exactly,’ said Bright. ‘Hang around out here much longer we’ll be down to none.’
Cog sniffed, and grunted, and spat again, right into a first-floor window this time around. An artist has to challenge himself, after all. ‘Been with Cosca a long time.’
‘Times change. Look at this place.’ Bright nodded towards the vacant hovels that a month or two before had boiled over with humanity. ‘What’s that stink, anyway?’
Cog wrinkled his nose. The place had always stunk, o’ course, but that healthy, heartening stench of shit and low living that had always smelled like home to him. There was an acrid sort of a flavour on the air now, a pall of brownish smoke hanging over everything. ‘Don’t know. Can’t say I care for it one bit.’
‘I want to go home,’ said Bright, miserably.
The column was coming to the centre of town now, in so far as the place had one. They were building something on one side of the muddy street, teetering scaffold and lumber stacked high. On the other side the Church of Dice still stood, where Cog had spent several very pleasant evenings a month or two before. Cosca held up his fist for a halt in front of it and with the help of Sergeant Friendly disentangled himself from the saddle and clambered stiffly down.
The Mayor stood waiting on the steps in a black dress buttoned to the neck. What a woman that was. A lady, Cog would almost have said, dusting the word off in the deepest recesses of his memory.
‘General Cosca,’ she said, smiling warmly. ‘I did not think—’
‘Don’t pretend you’re surprised!’ he snapped.
‘But I am. You come at a rather inopportune time, we are expecting—’
‘Where is my gold?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘By all means play the wide-eyed innocent. But we both know better. Where is my damned notary, then?’
‘Inside, but—’
The Old Man shouldered past her and limped grumbling up the steps, Friendly, Sworbreck, and Captain Dimbik following.
The Mayor caught Lorsen’s arm with a gentle hand. ‘Inquisitor Lorsen, I must protest.’
He frowned back. ‘My dear Lady Mayor, I’ve been protesting for months. Much good it has done me.’
Cosca had seemed heedless of the half dozen frowning thugs lounging on either side of the door. But Cog noted them well enough as he climbed the steps after the others, and from the worried look on Bright’s face he did too. Might be that the Company had the numbers, and more coming across the plateau as fast as they could walk, but Cog didn’t fancy fighting right then and there.
He didn’t fancy fighting one bit.
Captain Dimbik straightened his uniform. Even if the front was crusted with dirt. Even if it was coming apart at the seams. Even if he no longer even belonged to any army, had no nation, fought for no cause or principle a sane man could believe in. Even if he was utterly lost and desperately concealing a bottomless hatred and pity for himself, even then.
Better straight than crooked.
The place had changed since last he visited. The gaming hall had been largely cleared to leave an expanse of creaking boards, the dice-and card-tables shifted against the walls, the women ushered away, the clients vanished. Only ten or so of the Mayor’s thugs remained, noticeably armed and scattered watchfully about under the empty alcoves in the walls, a man wiping glasses behind the long counter, and in the centre of the floor a single table, recently polished but still showing the stains of hard use. Temple sat there before a sheaf of papers, peculiarly unconcerned as he watched Dimbik’s men tramp in to surround him.
Could you even call them men? Ragged and haggard beyond belief and their morale, never the highest, ebbed to a sucking nadir. Not that they had ever been such
He watched the infamous Nicomo Cosca pace across the empty floor, bent spurs jingling, his eyes fixed upon Temple and his rat-like face locked in an expression of vengeful hatred. To the counter, he went, of course, where else? He took up a bottle, spat out its cork and swallowed a good quarter of the contents in one draught.
‘So here he is!’ grated the Old Man. ‘The cuckoo in the nest! The serpent in the bosom! The . . . the . . .’
‘Maggot in the shit?’ suggested Temple.
‘Why not, since you mention it? What did Verturio say? Never fear your enemies, but your friends, always. A wiser man than I, no doubt! I forgave you! Forgave you and how am I repaid? I hope you’re taking notes, Sworbreck! You can prepare a little parable, perhaps, on the myth of redemption and the price of betrayal.’ The author scrambled to produce his pencil as Cosca’s grim smile faded to leave him simply grim. ‘Where is my gold, Temple?’
‘I don’t have it.’ The notary held up his sheaf of papers. ‘But I do have this.’
‘It better be valuable,’ snapped Cosca, taking another swallow. Sergeant Friendly had wandered to one of the dice-tables and was sorting dice into piles, apparently oblivious to the escalating tension. Inquisitor Lorsen gave Dimbik a curt nod as he entered. Dimbik respectfully returned it, licked a finger and slicked his front hairs into position, wondering if the Inquisitor had been serious about securing him a new commission in the King’s Own when they returned to Adua. Most likely not, but we all need pretty dreams to cling to. The hope of a second chance, if not the chance itself . . .
‘It is a treaty.’ Temple spoke loudly enough for the whole room to hear. ‘Bringing Crease and the surrounding country into the Empire. I suspect his Radiance the Emperor will be less than delighted to find an armed party sponsored by the Union has encroached upon his territory.’
‘I’ll give you an encroachment you won’t soon forget.’ Cosca let his left hand rest on the hilt of his sword. ‘Where the hell is my gold?’
With a draining inevitability, the atmosphere ratcheted towards bloodshed. Coats were flicked open, itchy fingers crept to ready grips, blades were loosened in sheaths, eyes were narrowed. Two of Dimbik’s men eased the wedges from the triggers of their loaded flatbows. The glass-wiper had put a surreptitious hand on something beneath the counter, and Dimbik did not doubt it would have a point on the end. He watched all this with a helpless sense of mounting horror. He hated violence. It was the uniforms he’d become a soldier for. The epaulettes, and the marching, and the bands—
‘Wait!’ snapped Lorsen, striding across the room. Dimbik was relieved to see that someone in authority still had a grip on their reason. ‘Superior Pike said most clearly there were to be no Imperial entanglements!’ He snatched the treaty from Temple’s hand. ‘This expedition has been enough of a disaster without our starting a war!’
‘You cannot mean to dignify this charade,’ sneered Cosca. ‘He lies for a living!’
‘Not this time.’ The Mayor glided into the room with another pair of her men, one of whom had lost an eye but in so doing gained considerably in menace. ‘That document is endorsed by elected representatives of the townspeople of Crease and is fully binding.’
‘I consider it my best work.’ If he was lying, Temple was even more smug about it than usual. ‘It makes use of the principle of inviolate ownership enshrined at the formation of the Union, refers back to the earliest Imperial claim on the territory, and is even fully binding under mining law. I feel confident you will find it incontestable in any court.’
‘Alas, my lawyer departed my service under something of a cloud,’ forced Cosca through gritted teeth. ‘If we contest your treaty it will have to be in the court of sharp edges.’
Lorsen snorted. ‘It’s not even signed.’ And he tossed the document flapping onto the table.
Cosca narrowed his bloodshot eyes. ‘What if it were? You of all people should know, Temple, that the only laws that matter are those backed by force. The nearest Imperial troops are weeks away.’
Temple’s smile only widened. ‘Oh, they’re a little closer than that.’
The doors were suddenly flung wide and, under the disbelieving eyes of the heavily armed assembly, soldiers tramped into the Church of Dice. Imperial troops, in gilded greaves and breastplates, with broad-bladed spears in their fists and short-bladed swords at their hips, with round shields marked with the hand of Juvens, and the five thunderbolts, and the sheaf of wheat, and all looking as if they had marched straight from antiquity itself.
‘What the shit . . .’ muttered Cosca.
In the centre of this bizarre honour guard strode an old man, his short beard white as snow, his gilded helm adorned with a tall plume. He walked slowly, deliberately, as though it caused him pain, yet perfectly erect. He looked neither to the left nor to the right, as if Cosca and his men, the Mayor and her men, Temple and Lorsen and everyone else were all insects utterly beneath his notice. As if he were a god obliged for this moment to walk among the filth of humanity. The mercenaries edged nervously away, repelled not so much by fear of the Emperor’s legions as by this old man’s aura of untouchable command.
The Mayor prostrated herself at his feet in a rustling of skirts. ‘Legate Sarmis,’ she breathed. ‘Your Excellency, we are inexpressibly honoured by your presence . . .’
Dimbik’s jaw dropped. Legate Sarmis, who had crushed the Emperor’s enemies at the Third Battle of Darmium and ordered every prisoner put to death. Who across the Circle of the World was famous for his military brilliance and infamous for his ruthlessness. Who they had all supposed was many hundreds of miles away to the south. Standing before them now, in the flesh. Dimbik somehow felt he had seen that magnificent face before, somewhere. On a coin, perhaps.
‘You are honoured,’ pronounced the old man, ‘for my presence is the presence of his Radiance, the Emperor, Goltus the First.’ The Legate’s body might have been withered by age but his voice, seasoned with the slightest Imperial accent, was that of a colossus, booming from the lofty rafters, as awe-inspiring as deep thunder close at hand. Dimbik’s knees, always weakened by authority, positively itched to bend.
‘Where is the instrument?’ intoned the Legate.
The Mayor rose and abjectly indicated the table, on which Temple had arranged pen and document. Sarmis grunted as he stiffly leaned over it.
‘I sign with the name Goltus, for this hand is the hand of the Emperor.’ With a flourish that would have been outrageous under any other circumstances, he signed. ‘And so it is done. You stand now upon Imperial soil, and are Imperial subjects under the protection of his Radiance! Warmed by his bounty. Humbled beneath his law.’ The ringing echoes faded and he frowned, as though he had only just become aware of the mercenaries. His merciless gaze swept over them and Dimbik felt a chill to his very core.
Sarmis formed his words with fearsome precision. ‘Who are these . . . people?’
Even Cosca had been silenced by the theatre of the moment, but now, much to everyone’s dismay, he found his voice again. It sounded cracked, weak, almost ridiculous after the Legate’s, but he found it nonetheless, waving his half-emptied bottle for added emphasis. ‘I am Nicomo Cosca, Captain General of the Company of the Gracious Hand, and—’
‘And we were just leaving!’ snapped Lorsen, seizing Cosca’s elbow.
The Old Man refused to be moved. ‘Without my gold? I hardly think so!’
Dimbik did not care in the least for the way things were going. Probably no one did. There was a gentle rattle as Friendly threw his dice. The Mayor’s one-eyed thug sudd
‘Enough!’ hissed Lorsen, halfway now to wrestling the Old Man by his armpit. ‘When we reach Starikland every man will get a bonus! Every man!’
Sworbreck was crouching against the counter, apparently trying to vanish into the floor while madly scribbling in his notebook. Sergeant Cog was edging towards the doorway, and he had good instincts. The odds had changed, and not for the better. Dimbik had begged Cosca to wait for more men, the old fool, but he might as well have argued with the tide. And now all it would take was a loose trigger and there would be a bloodbath.
Dimbik held one hand up to the flatbowmen as to a skittish horse. ‘Easy . . .’
‘I shit on your bonus!’ snarled Cosca, struggling with scant dignity to shake Lorsen off. ‘Where’s my fucking gold?’
The Mayor was backing away, one pale hand against her chest, but Sarmis only appeared to grow in stature, his white brows drawing inwards. ‘What is this impertinence?’
‘I can only apologise,’ blathered Temple, ‘we—’
Sarmis struck him across the face with the back of his hand and knocked him to the floor. ‘Kneel when you address me!’
Dimbik’s mouth was dry, the pulse pounding in his head. That he would have to die for Cosca’s absurd ambitions seemed horribly unfair. His sash had already given its life for the dubious cause and that seemed more than sacrifice enough. Dimbik had once been told that the best soldiers are rarely courageous. That was when he had been sure it was the career for him. He started to slide one hand towards his sword, far from sure what he would do with it once it reached the hilt.
‘I will not be disappointed again!’ shrieked the Old Man, struggling to reach his own hilt with Lorsen restraining him and a half-full bottle still clutched in his other fist. ‘Men of the Gracious Hand! Draw your—’
‘No!’ Lorsen’s voice barked out like a slamming door. ‘Captain General Dimbik, take the traitor Nicomo Cosca under arrest!’
There was the very slightest pause.
Probably no more than a breath, for all it felt far longer. While everyone assessed the odds and the outcomes. While everyone judged just where the shifting power sat. While everything dropped into place in Dimbik’s mind and, no doubt, the minds of every other person present. Just a breath, and everything was rearranged.