The Great Leveller by Joe Abercrombie
‘Do I?’
Calder snorted. ‘No fool gets where you are, Ironhead. Black Dow scarcely has more liking for you than me, I think.’
‘No liking? Has he not put me in the place of honour? Front and middle, boy!’
Calder got the unpleasant feeling there was a trace of mocking laughter in Ironhead’s voice. But it was some kind of opening and he had no choice but to charge in with his most scornful chuckle. ‘The place of honour? Black Dow? He turned on the man who spared his life, and stole my father’s chain for himself. The place of honour? He’s done what I’d do to the man I fear most. Put you where you’ll take the brunt of the enemy’s fury. My father always said you were the toughest fighter in the North, and Black Dow knows it. Knows you’ll never back down. He’s put you where your own strength will work against you. And who’s to benefit? Who’s been left out of the fight? Tenways and Golden.’ He’d been hoping for that name to work some magic, but Ironhead didn’t move so much as a hair. ‘They hang back while you, and my brother, and my wife’s father do the fighting. I hope your honour can stop a knife in the back, when it comes.’
There was a grunt. ‘Finally.’
‘Finally what?’
The sound of piss spattering below them. ‘That. You know, Calder, you said it yourself.’
‘Said what?’
‘No fool gets where I am. I’m a long way from convinced Black Dow’s set on my doom or even on yours. But if he is, what help can you offer me? Your father’s praise? That lost most of its worth when he got bested in the High Places, and all the rest when the Bloody-Nine smashed his skull to porridge. Oops.’ Calder felt piss spattering over his boots. ‘Sorry ’bout that. Guess we’re not all as nimble with our cocks as you are. Reckon I’ll stick with Dow, touched though I am by your offer of alliance.’
‘Black Dow’s got nothing to offer but war and the fear men have of him. If he dies there’s nothing left.’ Silence, while Calder wondered if he’d gone a step too far.
‘Huh.’ There was a jingling as Ironhead fastened his belt. ‘Kill him, then. But until you do, find other ears for your lies. Find another piss-pit too, you wouldn’t want to drown in this one.’ Calder was slapped on the back, hard enough to leave him teetering at the brink, waving his arms for balance. When he found it, Ironhead was gone.
Calder stood there for a moment. If talk sows seeds, he wasn’t sure at all what harvest he could expect from this. But that didn’t have to be a bad thing. He’d learned Cairm Ironhead was a subtler man than he appeared. That alone was worth some piss on his boots.
‘One day I’ll sit in Skarling’s Chair,’ Calder whispered into the darkness. ‘And I’ll make you eat my shit, and you’ll tell me nothing ever tasted so sweet.’ That made him feel a little better.
He shook the wet from his boots as best he could, and strutted off into the night.
Rest and Recreation
Finree did not make much noise. Neither did Gorst. But that suited him well enough. Knobs of backbone showed through pale skin, thin muscles in her hunched shoulders tensing and relaxing, an unsightly ripple going through her arse with every thrust of his hips. He closed his eyes. In his head it was prettier.
They were in her husband’s tent. Or no. That wasn’t working. My quarters in the palace. The ones he used to have when he was the king’s First Guard. Yes. That was better. Nice feel, they’d had. Airy. Or maybe her father’s headquarters? On his desk? In front of the other officers at a briefing? Hell, no. Urgh. His quarters in the palace were easiest, familiar from a thousand well-worn fantasies in which the Closed Council had never stripped him of his position.
I love you, I love you, I love you. It hardly felt like love, though. It hardly felt like much of anything. Certainly nothing beautiful. A mechanical action. Like winding a clock or peeling a carrot or milking a cow. How long had he been at it now? His hips were aching, his stomach was aching, his back and his shoulder were bruised as a trampled apple from the fight in the shallows. Slap, slap, slap, skin on skin. He bared his teeth, gripping hard at her hips, forcing himself back to his airy quarters at the palace …
Getting there, getting there, getting there—
‘Are you nearly done?’
Gorst stopped dead, snatched to reality with an icy shock. Nothing like Finree’s voice. The side of her face turned towards him, gleaming damply in the light of the one candle, the dimple of an old acne scar inadequately covered by thick powder. Nothing like Finree’s face. All his thrusting seemed to have made little impression. She might have been a baker asking his apprentice if the pies were done.
His rasping breath echoed back from the canvas. ‘I thought I told you not to talk.’
‘I’ve a queue.’
So much for nearly there. His cock was already wilting. He struggled to his feet, sore head brushing against the ceiling of the tent. She was one of the cleaner ones, but still the air had a cloying feel. Too much sweat and breath, and other things, inadequately smothered by cheap flower-water. He wondered how many other men had already been through here tonight, how many more would come through. He wondered if they pretended they were somewhere else, she was someone else. Does she pretend that we are someone else? Does she care? Does she hate us? Or are we a procession of clocks to be wound, carrots to be peeled, cows to be milked?
She had her back to him, shrugging her dress on so she could shrug it off again. He felt as if he was suffocating. He dragged his trousers up and fumbled his belt shut. He tossed coins on a wooden box without counting, tore his way out through the flap into the night and stood there, eyes closed, breathing the damp air and swearing never to do this again. Again.
One of the pimps stood outside, apparently unbothered by the water gently dripping from the brim of his hat, with that knowing and slightly threatening smile they have to wear like uniforms. ‘Everything to your liking?’
My liking? I seem unable even to come in the allotted time. Most men are capable of that level of social interaction, at least, if no other, are they not? What am I, that I must debase and ruin even the one decent emotion I have? If one can call an entirely unhealthy obsession with another man’s wife decent. I don’t suppose one can. Well, probably he could.
Gorst looked at the man. Really looked, right in his eyes. Through that empty smile to the greed, and ruthlessness, and limitless boredom behind.
My liking? Shall I guffaw, and hug you like a brother? Hug you and hug you and twist your head all the way around, and your stupid fucking hat with it? If I beat your face until it has no bones in it, if I crush your scrawny throat with my hands, will that be a loss to the world, do you think? Will anyone even notice? Would I even notice? Would it be an evil deed, or a good? One less worm to get fat burrowing through the shit of the king’s glorious army?
Gorst’s mask must have slipped for a moment, or perhaps the man was more attuned by years of practice to hints of violence in a face than the cultured members of Jalenhorm’s staff and Kroy’s headquarters. His eyes narrowed and he took a cautious step back, one hand straying towards his belt.
Gorst found himself hoping the man would pull out a blade, excitement flaring briefly at the thought of seeing steel. Is that all that excites me now? Death? Facing it and causing it? Did he even feel the slightest renewed stirring in his sore groin at the possibility of violence? But the pimp only stood there, watching.
‘Everything is fine.’ And Gorst trudged past, boots squelching in the muck, away between the tents and into the mad carnival that sprang up behind the lines, as if by magic, whenever the army stopped for more than a couple of hours together. As full of bustle and variety as any market of the Thousand Isles, as full of blinding colour and choking fragrance as any Dagoskan bazaar, every need, taste or whim catered for a dozen times over.
Fawning merchants held swatches of bright cloth against officers too drunk to stand. Armourers battered out a shattering anvil music while salesmen demonstrated the strength, sharpness or beauty of wares nimbly replaced wit
‘The new self-sharpening sheath!’ someone roared. ‘Self-sharpening!’
‘Advances to officers! Loans at first-rate rates!’
‘Suljuk girls here! Best fuckery you’ll ever get!’
‘Flowers!’ in a voice somewhere between song and scream. ‘For your wife! For your daughter! For your lover! For your whore!’
‘For pet or pot!’ a woman shrieked, thrusting up a bemused puppy. ‘For pet or pot!’
Children old long before their time darted through the crowd offering polishing or prophecy, sharpening or shaving, grooming or gravedigging. Offering anything and everything that could be bought or paid for. A girl whose age could not be reckoned slipped all around Gorst in a capering dance, bare feet mud-caked to the knee. Suljuk, Gurkish, Styrian, who knew of what mongrel derivation. ‘Like this?’ she cooed, gesturing at a stick upon which samples of gold braid were stapled.
Gorst felt a sudden choking need to weep, and gave her a sad smile, and shook his head. She spat at his feet, and was gone. A pair of elderly ladies stood at the flap of a dripping tent, handing out printed papers extolling the virtues of temperance and sobriety to illiterate soldiers who had already left them trampled in the mud for a half-mile in every direction, worthy lessons gently erased by the rain.
A few more steps, each an unimaginable effort, and Gorst stopped in the track, alone in the midst of all that crowd. Cursing soldiers slopped through the mud around him, all stranded like him with their petty despairs, all shopping like him for what cannot be bought. He looked up, open-mouthed, rain tickling his tongue. Hoping for guidance, perhaps, but the stars were shrouded in cloud. They light the happy way for better men. Harod dan Brock, and his like. Shoulders and elbows knocked and jostled him. Someone help me, please.
But who?
‘You can’t say that civilisation don’t advance,
however, for in every war they kill you in a new way’
Will Rogers
Dawn
When Craw dragged himself from his bed, cold and clammy as a drowned man’s grave, the sun was no more’n a smear of mud-brown in the blackness of the eastern sky. He fumbled his sword through the clasp at his belt then stretched, creaked and grunted through his morning routine of working out exactly how much everything hurt. His aching jaw he could blame on Hardbread and his lads, his aching legs on a lengthy jog across some fields and up a hill followed by a night huddled in the wind, but the bastard of a headache he’d have to take the blame for himself. He’d had a drink or two or even a few more last night, softening the loss of the fallen, toasting the luck of the living.
Most of the dozen were already gathered about the pile of damp wood that on a happier day would’ve been a fire. Drofd was bent over it, cursing softly while he failed to get it lit. Cold breakfast, then.
‘Oh, for a roof,’ whispered Craw as he limped over.
‘I slice the bread thin, d’you see?’ Whirrun had the Father of Swords gripped between his knees with a hand’s length drawn, and now he was rubbing loaf against blade with ludicrous care, like a carpenter chiselling at a vital joint.
‘Sliced bread?’ Wonderful turned away from the black valley to watch him. ‘Can’t see it catching on, can you?’
Yon spat over his shoulder. ‘Either way, could you bloody get on with it? I’m hungry.’
Whirrun ignored ’em. ‘Then, when I’ve got two cut,’ and he dropped a pale slab of cheese on one slice then slapped the other on top like he was catching a fly, ‘I trap the cheese between them, and there you have it!’
‘Bread and cheese.’ Yon weighed the half-loaf in one hand and the cheese in the other. ‘Just the same as I’ve got.’ And he bit a lump off the cheese and tossed it to Scorry.
Whirrun sighed. ‘Have none of you no vision?’ He held up his masterpiece to such light as there was, which was almost none. ‘This is no more bread and cheese than a fine axe is wood and iron, or a live person is meat and hair.’
‘What is it, then?’ asked Drofd, rocking back from his wet wood and tossing the flint aside in disgust.
‘A whole new thing. A forging of the humble parts of bread and cheese into a greater whole. I call it … a cheese-trap.’ Whirrun took a dainty nibble from one corner. ‘Oh, yes, my friends. This tastes like … progress. Works with ham, too. Works with anything.’
‘You should try it with a turd,’ said Wonderful.
Drofd laughed up snot but Whirrun hardly seemed to notice. ‘This is the thing about war. Forces men to do new things with what they have. Forces them to think new ways. No war, no progress.’ He leaned back on one elbow. ‘War, d’you see, is like the plough that keeps the earth rich, like the fire that clears the fields, like—’
‘The shit that makes the flowers grow?’ asked Wonderful.
‘Exactly!’ Whirrun pointed at her sharply with his whole new thing and the cheese fell out into the unlit fire. Wonderful near fell over from laughing. Yon snorted so hard he blew bread out of his nose. Even Scorry stopped his singing to have a high chuckle. Craw laughed along, and it felt good. Felt like too long since the last time. Whirrun frowned at his two flapping slices of bread. ‘Don’t think I trapped it tight enough.’ And he shoved ’em in his mouth all at once and started rooting through the damp twigs for the cheese.
‘Union showed any sign of moving?’ asked Craw.
‘None that we’ve seen.’ Yon squinted up at the stains of brightness in the east. ‘Dawn’s on the march, though. Reckon we’ll see more soon.’
‘Best get Brack up,’ said Craw. ‘He’ll be pissy all day if he misses breakfast.’
‘Aye, Chief.’ And Drofd trotted off to where the hillman was sleeping.
Craw pointed down at the Father of Swords, short stretch of grey blade drawn. ‘Don’t it have to be blooded now?’
‘Maybe crumbs count,’ said Wonderful.
‘Alas, they don’t.’ Whirrun brushed the heel of his hand against its edge, then wiped it with his last bit of crust and slid the sword gently back into its scabbard. ‘Progress can be painful,’ he muttered, sucking the cut.
‘Chief?’ Far as Craw could tell in the gloom, and with Drofd’s hair blown across his face by the wind, the lad looked worried. ‘Don’t reckon Brack wants to get up.’
‘We’ll see.’ Craw strode over to him, a big shape swaddled up on his side, shadow pooling in the folds of his blanket. ‘Brack.’ He poked him with the toe of his boot. ‘Brack?’ The tattooed side of Brack’s face was all beaded with dew. Craw put his hand on it. Cold. Didn’t feel like a person at all. Meat and hair, like Whirrun said.
‘Up you get, Brack, you fat hog,’ snapped Wonderful. ‘Before Yon eats all your—’
‘Brack’s dead,’ said Craw.
*
Finree could not have said how long she had been awake, sitting on her travelling chest at the window with her arms resting on the cold sill and her chin resting on her wrists. Long enough to watch the ragged line of the fells to the north become distinct from the sky, for the quick-flowing river to emerge glittering from the mist, for the forests to the east to take on the faintest texture. Now, if she squinted, she could pick out the jagged top of the fence around Osrung, a light twinkling at the window of a single tower. In the few hundred strides of black farmland between her and the town a ragged curve of flickering torches marked out the Union positions.
A little more light in the sky, a little more detail in the world, and Lord Governor Meed’s men would be rushing from those trenches and towards the town. The strong right fist of her father’s army. She bit down on the tip of her tongue, so hard it was painful. Excited and afraid at once.
She stretched, looking over her shoulder into the cobwebby little r
She crossed to the bed, or the straw-filled mattress they were sharing, and leaned down over Hal, studying his face. He looked young, eyes closed and mouth open, cheek squashed against the sheet, breath whistling in his nose. Young, and innocent, and ever so slightly stupid.
‘Hal,’ she whispered, and sucked gently at his top lip. His eyelids fluttered open and he stretched back, arms above his head, craned up to kiss her, then saw the window and the glimmer of light in the sky.
‘Damn it!’ He threw the blankets back and scrambled out of bed. ‘You should’ve woken me sooner.’ He splashed water from the cracked bowl onto his face and rubbed it with a cloth, started pulling yesterday’s trousers on.
‘You’ll still be early,’ she said, leaning back on her elbows and watching him dress.
‘I have to be twice as early. You know I do.’
‘You looked so peaceful. I didn’t have the heart to wake you.’
‘I’m supposed to be helping coordinate the attack.’
‘I suppose someone has to.’
He froze for a moment with his shirt over his head, then pulled it down. ‘Perhaps … you should stay at your father’s headquarters today, up on the fell. Most of the other wives have already headed back to Uffrith.’
‘If we could only pack Meed off along with the rest of the clothes-obsessed old women, perhaps we’d have a chance of victory.’
Hal soldiered on. ‘There’s only you and Aliz dan Brint, now, and I worry about you—’