The Wisdom of Crowds

by Joe Abercrombie

  “Brother Pike!” called Risinau, with a cheery wave of one plump hand. “Sister Victarine!”

  Risinau worried Vick. The one-time Superior of Valbeck was considered a deep thinker, but far as she could tell he was an idiot’s notion of a genius, his ideas a maze with nothing at the centre, heavy on the righteous society to come but light as air on the route they’d take to get there. The pockets of his jacket bulged with papers. Scrawled theories, manifestos, proclamations. Speeches he whined out to eager throngs whenever the People’s Army halted. Vick didn’t like the way the crowd greeted his flowery appeals for reason with shaken weapons and howls of approving fury. She never saw more damage done than by folk acting on high principle.

  But Judge worried Vick a lot more. She wore a rusty old breastplate rattling with stolen chains over a ball gown crusted with chips of cracked crystal, but she sat her saddle astride not aside so the flounce of tattered petticoats was gathered up around her thighs, her muddy bare feet shoved into battered cavalry stirrups. Her face was like a bag of daggers, lean jaw angrily clenched, black eyes angrily narrowed, her usually flaming crest of hair turned brown by the rain and plastered wetly down one side of her skull. Principles only interested her as an excuse for mayhem. When her Burners had taken the courthouse in Valbeck, her jury had found no one innocent and the one sentence she’d given was death.

  If Risinau was forever gazing up, no thought for the wreckage he was stepping through, Judge was glaring down, trying to trample everything she could. And Pike? There were no clues on the ex-Arch Lector’s burned mask of a face. Who could say what Brother Pike was after?

  Vick nodded towards grime-streaked Adua, its pall of smoke inching irresistibly closer. “What happens when we get there?”

  “Change,” said Risinau, smug as a rooster. “The Great Change.”

  “From what, to what?”

  “I am not blessed with the Long Eye, Sister Victarine.” Risinau giggled at the thought. “From the pupa alone it is hard to know what kind of butterfly might emerge to greet the dawn. But change.” He wagged a thick finger at her. “Of that you can be sure! A new Union, built from high ideals!”

  “The world doesn’t need changing,” grunted Judge, black eyes fixed on the capital. “It needs burning.”

  Vick wouldn’t have trusted either one of them to herd pigs, let alone to herd the dreams of millions into a new future. She kept her face blank, of course, but Pike must have caught some hint of her feelings. “You appear to have doubts.”

  “I’ve never seen the world change quickly,” said Vick. “If I’ve seen it change at all.”

  “I begin to think Sibalt liked you so because you were his opposite.” Risinau laid a playful hand on her shoulder. “You are such a cynic, Sister!”

  Vick shrugged him off. “I think I’ve earned it.”

  “After a childhood stolen in the camps,” said Pike, “and a career of making friends to betray for Arch Lector Glokta, how could you be otherwise? But one can be too cynical. You will see.”

  Vick had to admit she’d been expecting the Great Change to collapse long before now. For Judge and Risinau to move past bickering to tearing each other apart, for the fragile coalition of Breakers and Burners, moderates and extremists, to shred into factions, for the resolve of the People’s Army to dissolve in the wet weather. Or, for that matter, for Lord Marshal Rucksted’s cavalry to crest every hill she saw and carve the ragged multitude to pieces.

  But Risinau and Judge continued to tolerate each other and the King’s Own made no appearance. Even now, as the rain slacked off and they marched into the ill-planned, ill-drained, ill-smelling maze of shacks outside the walls of the capital, water spattering from the broken gutters and into the muddy lanes below. Maybe Orso’s forces had been fought out against Leo dan Brock. Maybe there were other uprisings to deal with. Maybe these strange times had stretched their loyalties in so many directions they hardly knew who to fight for any more. Vick knew how they felt as the sun showed through, and she caught her first glimpse of the gates of Adua.

  For a moment, she wondered whether Tallow was in the city. Fretted that he might be in danger. Then she realised how foolish it was to worry over one person in the midst of all this. What could she do for him, anyway? What could anyone do for anyone?

  Risinau nervously eyed the damp-streaked battlements. “It might be wise to take a cautious approach. Deploy our cannon and, er—”

  Judge gave a great snort of disgust, dug her bare heels into her horse’s flanks and rode forwards.

  “One cannot fault her courage,” said Pike.

  “Just her sanity.” Vick was rather hoping for a shower of arrows, but it never came. Judge trotted on towards the walls, chin scornfully raised, in eerie silence.

  “You inside!” she screamed, reining in before the gate. “Soldiers of the Union! Men of Adua!” She stood in her stirrups, pointing back at the horde crawling up the soggy road towards the capital. “This is the People’s Army, and it’s come to set the people free! We only need to know one thing from you lot!” She held high one clawing finger. “Are you with the people… or against ’em?”

  Her horse shied, and she ripped at the reins and dragged it around in a tight circle, that finger still extended, while the thunder of thousands upon thousands of tramping feet grew steadily louder.

  Vick flinched at an echoing clatter from behind the gates, then a slit of light showed between the two doors and, with a creaking of hinges in need of oil, they swung slowly open.

  A soldier leaned from the parapet, grinning madly and waving his hat. “We’re with ’em!” he bellowed. “The Great Change!”

  Judge tossed her head, and dragged her horse from the road, and with an impatient flick of her arm beckoned the People’s Army forwards.

  “Fuck the king!” screeched that lone soldier, to a wave of laughter from the oncoming Breakers, and he took his life in his hands by shinning up the wet flagpole to tear down the standard above the gatehouse.

  The High King’s banner, which had flown over the walls of Adua for centuries. The golden sun of the Union, given to Harod the Great as his emblem by Bayaz himself. The flag folk had knelt to, prayed to, sworn their loyalty to… came fluttering down to lie in the puddle-pocked road before the gate.

  “The world can change, Sister Victarine.” Pike raised one hairless brow at Vick. “Just watch.” And he clicked his tongue and rode on towards the open gates.

  So it was with almost over-heavy symbolism that the People’s Army marched into Adua, trampling the flag of the past into the mud.

  The Little People

  “They’re here!” Jakib was so choked with excitement his voice cracked and went all warbly. “The Breakers are bloody here!” All the days and weeks and months waiting and now he stared wildly around their little parlour with his hands opening and closing, hardly knowing what to do first.

  Petree didn’t look excited. She looked worried. Sour, even. The lads had warned him he was marrying a sour woman, but he hadn’t seen it then. He’d always been a hoper. “You’re a hoper,” they’d said. Now every day she seemed more sour. But this was hardly the time to be fretting about his marriage. “They’re bloody here!”

  When he grabbed his coat he sent pamphlets scattering off the table. Wasn’t as if he’d read them. Wasn’t as if he could read, really. But having ’em felt like a fine step towards freedom. And who needed pamphlets, when the Breakers were come in person?

  He went to fetch his grandfather’s sword from the hook above the fire. Hissed a curse that Petree had made him hang it out of reach. Had to go up on tiptoes to get the damn thing down and near dropped it on his head.

  He felt bad when he saw her face. Maybe she wasn’t sour so much as scared. That’s what the bastards wanted, the Inquisition and the Closed Council. Everyone scared. He caught her by the shoulder. Tried to shake some of his hope into her. “Price o’ bread’ll go down now,” he said, “you’ll see. Bread for everyone!”

 
“You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  She put her fingertips on the battered scabbard. “Don’t take the sword. Having it might make you try to use it. You don’t know how.”

  “I know how,” he snapped, though they both knew he didn’t, not really, and he wrenched it from her hand, twisted it the wrong way up and the rust-spotted blade slithered halfway out of the scabbard before he caught it and slapped it back in. “A man should be armed, on the day of the Great Change! Enough of us have ’em, we won’t need to use ’em.” And before she could voice any more doubts he dashed out, letting the door clatter against the frame.

  The streets were bright outside, everything glossy and gleaming and seeming new-made after the rain just fallen. People everywhere, somewhere between a riot and a carnival. People running, people shouting. Some faces he knew. Most were strangers. A woman grabbed him around the neck, kissed him on the cheek. A whore stood on some railings, clinging to the side of a building with one hand, pulling her dress up with the other to give the crowd an eyeful. “Half price all day!” she screeched.

  He’d been ready to fight. Ready to charge ranks of royalist spears, freedom and equality as his armour. Petree had not cared for that idea, and honestly, he’d been having some doubts of his own as the day grew closer. But he only saw a few soldiers, and they had smiles on their faces and jackets hanging open, cheering and jumping and celebrating like everyone else.

  Someone was singing. Someone was crying. Someone was dancing in puddles, spraying everyone. Someone lay in a doorway. Drunk, maybe, then Jakib saw blood on their face. Maybe he should help? But he was swept along by people running. Couldn’t tell why. Couldn’t tell anything.

  Out onto the Sparway that cut wide through the mills of the Three Farms towards the centre of the city. He saw armed men there—polished armour, brand new and glittering. He froze at the corner, heart in his mouth, sword half-hidden behind his back, thinking they must be King’s Own. Then he saw their bearded faces, and their swaggering gait, and the banners they carried, roughly stitched with broken chains, and he knew this was the People’s Army, marching to freedom.

  Workers were pouring from the manufactories to join the throng and he pushed through them, laughing and shouting himself hoarse. He clambered around a cannon. A bloody cannon wheeled along by grinning dye-women, their forearms stained strange colours. Folk sang, and embraced, and wept, and Jakib wasn’t a shoemaker any more but a fighter for justice, a proud brother of the Breakers, struggling in the great endeavour of the age.

  He saw a woman at the head of the crowd, on a white horse, wearing a soldier’s breastplate. Judge! Had to be Judge. More beautiful and furious and righteous through the blurring tears in his eyes than he’d dared to hope. A spirit, she was, an idea made into flesh. A goddess, leading the people to their destiny.

  “Brothers! Sisters! To the Agriont!” And she pointed up the road towards freedom. “I’ve a fancy to greet His August fucking Majesty!”

  And there was another raucous wave of laughter and delight, and down an alley Jakib thought he saw some men kicking someone on the ground, over and over, and he drew his grandfather’s rusty sword, and lifted it high in the air, and joined in with the singing.

  “They’re here,” whispered Grey.

  Captain Leeb drew his sword. Felt like the right thing to do. “I am aware, Corporal.” He tried to project an air of confidence. Confidence defines an officer. He remembered his brother telling him so. “I can hear them.”

  Judging by the noise, there was a considerable number of them. A considerable number, and steadily approaching. It put Leeb in mind of the crowd’s clamour at the Contest. Hundreds of voices raised in delighted excitement. Thousands of voices. But there was a definite edge of madness to it. A touch of fury. An occasional punctuation of shattering glass, splintering wood.

  Leeb would have very much liked to run away. He didn’t want anyone’s blood on his hands, especially not his own. And he wasn’t without sympathy for their cause, up to a point. Freedom and justice and so on, who doesn’t like that stuff, in principle? But he had sworn an oath to the king. Not to the king directly, of course, but, you know, he’d sworn it even so. He’d been happy to swear it when things were going well and supposed he couldn’t just unswear it the moment things turned dicey. What kind of an oath would it be then?

  His colonel had assured him help was coming. From the King’s Own. Then from Westport. Then from Starikland. From ever less likely directions. But no help appeared to have arrived at all.

  Leeb glanced at his men, spread out across the width of the Sparway. What a flimsy little red line they looked. Perhaps forty flatbowmen, eighty spearmen. Half of his company hadn’t come out. Somewhat looser in their oaths than he was. He’d always thought there was no more admirable quality than being a man of your word. Loyalty defines an officer. His father had often told him so. But it was starting to look as if a certain elasticity could be a useful thing.

  “They’re here,” whispered Grey again.

  “I am aware, Corporal.” Leeb’s mouth turned very dry as the murk from the foundry down the street was thinned out by the breeze. “I can see them.”

  More of them, indeed, and more. Many looked like ordinary citizens, women and children among them, brandishing chair-legs and hammers and knives and spears made from mops. Others looked like professionals, armour and bright weapons glinting as the sun peeped through. Leeb’s jaw slowly dropped as he began to appreciate the sheer number of them.

  Plainly the Closed Council’s increasingly shrill proclamations, curfews, threats, examples had not achieved the desired effect. Quite the reverse.

  “By the Fates,” someone muttered.

  “Steady,” said Leeb, but it came out a squeak that couldn’t have steadied anyone. It might have unsteadied those already steady, indeed. It was painfully obvious that his brittle little line had no chance of stopping that boiling tide. No chance at all.

  When they saw Leeb and his soldiers they wobbled to a halt, bunching up uncertainly, chants and cheers dying on their lips. There was an intensely awkward silence, and an inappropriate memory floated up from the depths of Leeb’s mind. The intensely awkward silence after he, drunk, had tried to kiss his cousin Sithrin at that dance and she jerked away in horror so he ended up sort of kissing her ear. This silence was like that one. But a great deal more terrifying.

  What to do? By the Fates, what to do? Let them through? Join them? Fight them? Run and never stop? There were no good ideas. Leeb’s lower lip twitched stupidly, but no sound emerged. Even a least-bad idea was beyond him. Decisiveness defines an officer, but he hadn’t been trained for this. They don’t train you for the world suddenly coming unravelled.

  And now a rider pushed through to the front of the throng. A woman, with a tangle of damp red hair and a furious sneer. It was as if her rage was an infection, spreading instantly through the crowd. Faces twisted, weapons lifted, screams and cries and taunts burst forth, and suddenly Leeb had no choice at all.

  “Raise bows!” he spluttered. Almost as if, running out of time to think of a better idea, he was left only with this self-evidently terrible one. His men glanced at each other, stirred uncomfortably.

  “Raise bows!” roared Corporal Grey, veins bulging from his thick neck. At the same time, he looked at Leeb with a vaguely desperate expression. The pilot of a foundering vessel, perhaps, looking to his captain, silently asking if they really did intend to go down with the ship. Perhaps that’s why captains do go down with their ships. No better ideas.

  “Shoot!” squeaked Leeb, chopping downwards with his sword.

  He wasn’t sure how many actually shot. Less than half. Afraid to shoot at so many? Unwilling to shoot at men who might have been their fathers, brothers, sons? Women who might have been their mothers, sisters, daughters? A couple shot high, on purpose or in haste. There was a scream. Did two or three fall in the front rank of that seething mob? It made not the slightest difference. How could
it?

  The terrifying she-devil at the front stabbed towards Leeb with a clawing finger.

  “Kill those fuckers!”

  And they charged in their hundreds.

  Leeb was a reasonably brave man, a reasonably honourable man, a reasonable monarchist who took his oath to his king very seriously. But Leeb was not a fool. He turned and ran with his men. It was not a company any more, but a squealing, jostling, whimpering herd of pigs.

  Someone shoved him and he fell, rolled. He thought it might’ve been Corporal Grey, damn him. They all were scattering now, tossing their weapons, and he scrambled towards an alleyway, barging past a surprised-looking beggar and nearly falling again. How could one man keep his oath when everyone else was breaking theirs, after all? An army very much relied on unity of purpose.

  Run for the Agriont, that was all he could think of. He plunged through the crooked backstreets, his neck prickling with fear, his breath sawing at his chest. Damn weak lungs, he’d been cursed with them all his life. Can you name a lord marshal with weak lungs? his brother used to ask. Lungs define an officer! Adua’s foul vapours hardly helped. He sagged into a doorway, trying to suppress his cough. He’d dropped his sword somewhere. Or had he thrown it away?

  “Bloody hell.” He stared down at his officer’s jacket. Bright red. How could it be redder? The whole purpose was to make him stand out. Like a bullseye on a target.

  He stumbled from the doorway, struggling with the brass buttons, and almost straight into a group of heavyset men. Workers, maybe, from one of the foundries in the neighbourhood. But there was a wildness in their eyes, whites showing stark in their grease-smeared faces.

  They stared at him, and he at them.

  “Now listen,” he said, raising one weak hand. “I was just doing—”

  They were not interested. Not in his duty, or his oath, or his sympathy for their cause, or his reasonable monarchism. It was not a day for the reasonable, let alone for whatever defines an officer. One of them put his head down and charged. Leeb managed to throw a single punch as he came. A harmless one, which missed the mark and bounced off the man’s forehead.