The Great Leveller

by Joe Abercrombie

  The tracks led to a river and forded at a shallow spot. Calder and Scale weren’t too keen on the crossing but in the end Shy goaded them over to a tall mill-house, stone-built on three stories. Those they were chasing hadn’t bothered to try and burn this one and its wheel still slapped around merrily in the chattering water. Two men and a woman were hanged together in a bunch from the attic window. One had a broken neck stretched out way too long, another feet burned raw, dangling a stride above the mud.

  Leef stared up big-eyed. ‘What kind o’ men do a thing like this?’

  ‘Just men,’ said Shy. ‘Thing like this don’t take no one special.’ Though at times it felt to her that they were following something else. Some mad storm blowing mindless through this abandoned country, churning up the dirt and leaving bottles and shit and burned buildings and hanged folk scattered in its wake. A storm that snatched away all the children to who knew where and to what purpose? ‘You care to go up there, Leef, and cut these folks down?’

  He looked like he didn’t much care to, but he drew his knife and went inside to do it anyway.

  ‘Feels like we’re doing a lot of burying lately,’ she muttered.

  ‘Good thing you got Clay to throw them shovels in,’ said Lamb.

  She laughed at that, then realised what she was laughing at and turned it into an ugly cough. Leef’s head showed at the window and he leaned out, started cutting at the ropes, making the bodies tremble. ‘Seems wrong, us having to clean up after these bastards.’

  ‘Someone has to.’ Lamb held one of the shovels out to her. ‘Or do you want to leave these folks swinging?’

  Towards evening, the low sun setting the edges of the clouds to burn and the wind making the trees dance and sweeping patterns in the grass, they came upon a campsite. A big fire had smouldered out under the eaves of a wood, a circle of charred branches and sodden ash three strides across. Shy hopped from the wagon while Lamb was still cooing Scale and Calder to a snorting halt, and she drew her knife and gave the fire a poke, turned up some embers still aglow.

  ‘They were here overnight,’ she called.

  ‘We’re catching ’em, then?’ asked Leef as he jumped down, nocking an arrow loose to his bow.

  ‘I reckon.’ Though Shy couldn’t help wondering if that was a good thing. She dragged a length of frayed rope from the grass, found a cobweb torn between bushes at the treeline, then a shred of cloth left on a bramble.

  ‘Someone come this way?’ asked Leef.

  ‘More’n one. And fast.’ Shy slipped through after, keeping low, crept down a muddy slope, slick dirt and fallen leaves treacherous under her boots, trying to keep her balance and peer into the dimness—

  She saw Pit, face down by a fallen tree, looking so small there among the knotted roots. She wanted to scream but had no voice, no breath even. She ran, slid on her side in a shower of dead leaves and ran again. She squatted by him, back of his head a clotted mass, hand trembling as she reached out, not wanting to see his face, having to see it. She held her breath as she wrestled him over, his body small but stiff as a board, brushed away the leaves stuck to his face with fumbling fingers.

  ‘Is it your brother?’ muttered Leef.

  ‘No.’ She was almost sick with relief. Then with guilt that she was relieved, when this boy was dead. ‘Is it yours?’

  ‘No,’ said Leef.

  Shy slid her hands under the dead child and picked him up, struggled up the slope, Leef behind her. Lamb stood staring between the trees at the top, a black shape stamped from the glow of sunset.

  ‘Is it him?’ came his cracking voice. ‘Is it Pit?’

  ‘No.’ Shy laid him on the flattened grass, arms stuck out wide, head tipped back rigid.

  ‘By the dead.’ Lamb had his fingers shoved into his grey hair, gripping at his head like it might burst.

  ‘Might be he tried to get away. They made a lesson of him.’ She hoped Ro didn’t try it. Hoped she was too clever to. Hoped she was cleverer than Shy had been at her age. She leaned on the wagon with her back to the others, squeezed her eyes shut and wiped the tears away. Dug the bastard shovels out and brought them back.

  ‘More fucking digging,’ spat Leef, hacking at the ground like it was the one stole his brother.

  ‘Better off digging than getting buried,’ said Lamb.

  Shy left them to the graves and the oxen to their grazing and spread out in circles, keeping low, fingers combing at the cold grass, trying to read the signs in the fading light. Trying to feel out what they’d done, what they’d do next.

  ‘Lamb.’

  He grunted as he squatted beside her, slapping the dirt from his gloves. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Looks like three of ’em peeled off here, heading south and east. The rest struck on due west. What do you think?’

  ‘I try not to. You’re the tracker. Though when you got so damn good at it, I’ve no notion.’

  ‘Just a question of thinking it through.’ Shy didn’t want to admit that chasing men and being chased are sides to one coin, and at being chased she’d two years of the harshest practice.

  ‘They split up?’ asked Leef.

  Lamb fussed at that notch out of his ear as he looked off south. ‘Some style of a disagreement?’

  ‘Could be,’ said Shy. ‘Or maybe they sent ’em to circle around, check if anyone was following.’

  Leef fumbled for an arrow, eyes darting about the horizon.

  Lamb waved him down. ‘If they’d a mind to check, they’d have seen us by now.’ He kept looking south, off along the treeline towards a low ridge, the way Shy thought those three had gone. ‘No. I reckon they had enough. Maybe it all went too far for ’em. Maybe they started thinking they might be the next left hanging. Either way we’ll follow. Hope to catch ’em before the wheels come off this cart for good. Or off me either,’ he added as he dragged himself up wincing into the wagon’s seat.

  ‘The children ain’t with those three,’ said Leef, turning sullen.

  ‘No.’ Lamb settled his hat back on. ‘But they might point us the right way. We need to get this wagon fixed up proper, find some new oxen or get ourselves some horses. We need food. Might be those three—’

  ‘You fucking old coward.’

  There was a pause. Then Lamb nodded over at Shy. ‘Me and her spent years chewing over that topic and you got naught worth adding to the conversation.’ Shy looked at them, the boy stood on the ground glowering up, the big old man looking down calm and even from his seat.

  Leef curled his lip. ‘We need to keep after the children or—’

  ‘Get up on the wagon, boy, or you’ll be keeping after the children alone.’

  Leef opened his mouth again but Shy caught him by the arm first. ‘I want to catch ’em just as much as you, but Lamb’s right – there’s twenty men out there, bad men, and armed, and willing. There’s nothing we could do.’

  ‘We got to catch ’em sooner or later, don’t we?’ snapped Leef, breathing hard. ‘Might as well be now while my brother and yours are still alive!’

  Shy had to admit he’d a point but there was no help for it. She held his eye and said it to his face, calm but with no give. ‘Get on the wagon, Leef.’

  This time he did as he was told, and clambered up among their gear and sat there silent with his back to them.

  Shy perched her bruised arse next to Lamb as he snapped the reins and got Scale and Calder reluctantly on the move. ‘What do we do if we catch these three?’ she muttered, keeping her voice down so Leef wouldn’t hear it. ‘Chances are they’re going to be armed and willing, too. Better armed than us, that’s sure.’

  ‘Reckon we’ll have to be more willing, then.’

  Her brows went up at that. This big, gentle Northman who used to run laughing through the wheat with Pit on one shoulder and Ro on the other, used to sit out at sunset with Gully, passing a bottle between them in silence for hours at a time, who’d never once laid a hand on her growing up in spite of some sore provocations, talking ab
out getting red to the elbows like it was nothing.

  Shy knew it wasn’t nothing.

  She closed her eyes and remembered Jeg’s face after she stabbed him, bloody hat brim jammed down over his eyes, pitching in the street, still muttering, Smoke, Smoke. That clerk in the store, staring at her as his shirt turned black. The look Dodd had as he gawped down at her arrow in his chest. What did you do that for?

  She rubbed her face hard with one hand, sweating of a sudden, heart banging in her ears hard as it had then, and she twisted inside her greasy clothes like she could twist free of the past. But it had good and caught her up. For Pit and Ro’s sake she had to get her hands red again. She curled her fingers around the grip of her knife, took a hard breath and set her jaw. No choice then. No choice now. And for men the likes of the ones they followed no tears needed shedding.

  ‘When we find ’em,’ her voice sounding tiny in the gathering darkness, ‘can you follow my lead?’

  ‘No,’ said Lamb.

  ‘Eh?’ He’d been following her lead so long she’d never thought he might find some other path.

  When she looked at him, his old, scarred face was twisted like he was in pain. ‘I made a promise to your mother. ’Fore she died. Made a promise to look to her children. Pit and Ro . . . and I reckon it covers you too, don’t it?’

  ‘I guess,’ she muttered, far from reassured.

  ‘I broke a lot of promises in my life. Let ’em wash away like leaves on the water.’ He rubbed at his eyes with the back of one gloved hand. ‘I mean to keep that one. So when we find ’em . . . you’ll be following my lead. This time.’

  ‘All right.’ She could say so, if it helped him.

  Then she could do what needed doing.

  The Best Man

  ‘I believe this is Squaredeal,’ said Inquisitor Lorsen, frowning at his map.

  ‘And is Squaredeal on the Superior’s list?’ asked Cosca.

  ‘It is.’ Lorsen made sure there was nothing in his voice that could be interpreted as uncertainty. He was the only man within a hundred miles in possession of anything resembling a cause. He could entertain no doubts.

  Superior Pike had said the future was out here in the west, but the town of Squaredeal did not look like the future through Inquisitor Lorsen’s eyeglass. It did not look like a present anyone with the choice would want a part in. The people scratching a living out of the Near Country were even poorer than he had expected. Fugitives and outcasts, misfits and failures. Poor enough that supporting a rebellion against the world’s most powerful nation was unlikely to be their first priority. But Lorsen could not concern himself with likelihoods. Allowances, explanations and compromises were likewise unaffordable luxuries. He had learned over many painful years managing a prison camp in Angland that people had to be sorted onto the right side or the wrong, and those on the wrong could be given no mercy. He took no pleasure in it, but a better world comes at a price.

  He folded his map, scored the sharp crease with the back of his thumbnail and thrust it inside his coat. ‘Get your men ready to attack, General.’

  ‘Mmmm.’ Lorsen was surprised to see, on glancing sideways, that Cosca was in the midst of sipping from a metal flask.

  ‘Isn’t it a little early for spirits?’ he forced through clenched teeth. It was, after all, but an hour or two after dawn.

  Cosca shrugged. ‘A good thing at teatime is surely a good thing at breakfast, too.’

  ‘Likewise a bad thing,’ grated Lorsen.

  Heedless, Cosca took another taste and noisily smacked his lips. ‘Though it might be best if you didn’t mention this to Temple. He worries, bless him. He thinks of me almost as a father. He was in some extremity when I came upon him, you know—’

  ‘Fascinating,’ snapped Lorsen. ‘Get your men ready.’

  ‘Right away, Inquisitor.’ The venerable mercenary screwed the cap back on – tightly, as if he was resolved never again to unscrew it – then began, with much stiffness and little dignity, to slither down the hillside.

  He gave every impression of being a loathsome man, and one who the rude hand of time had in no way improved: inexpressibly vain, trustworthy as a scorpion and an utter stranger to morality. But after a few days with the Company of the Gracious Hand, Inquisitor Lorsen had regretfully concluded that Cosca, or the Old Man as he was fondly known, might be the best among them. His direct underlings offered no counter-arguments. Captain Brachio was a vile Styrian with an eye made always weepy by an old wound. He was a fine rider but fat as a house, and had turned self-serving indolence into a religion. Captain Jubair, a hulking, tar-black Kantic, had done the opposite and turned religion into self-serving madness. Rumour had it he was an ex-slave who had once fought in a pit. Though now far removed, Lorsen suspected some part of the pit remained within him. Captain Dimbik was at least a Union man, but a reject from the army for incompetence and a weak-chinned, petulant one at that who felt the need to affect a threadbare sash as a reminder of past glories. Though balding he had grown his hair long and, rather than merely bald, he now looked both bald and a fool.

  As far as Lorsen could tell, none of them truly believed in anything but their own profit. Notwithstanding Cosca’s affection, the lawyer, Temple, was the worst of the crew, celebrating selfishness, greed and underhanded manipulation as virtues, a man so slimy he could have found employment as axle grease. Lorsen shuddered as he looked across the other faces swarming about Superior Pike’s huge fortified wagon: wretched leavings of every race and mongrel combination, variously scarred, diseased, besmirched, all leering in anticipation of plunder and violence.

  But filthy tools can be put to righteous purposes, can they not, and achieve noble ends? He hoped it would prove so. The rebel Conthus was hiding somewhere in this forsaken land, skulking and plotting more sedition and massacre. He had to be rooted out, whatever the costs. He had to be made an example of, so that Lorsen could reap the glory of his capture. He took one last look through his eyeglass towards Squaredeal – all still quiet – before snapping it closed and working his way down the slope.

  Temple was talking softly to Cosca at the bottom, a whining note in his voice which Lorsen found especially aggravating. ‘Couldn’t we, maybe . . . talk to the townspeople?’

  ‘We will,’ said Cosca. ‘As soon as we’ve secured forage.’

  ‘Robbed them, you mean.’

  Cosca slapped Temple on the arm. ‘You lawyers! You see straight to the heart of things!’

  ‘There must be a better way—’

  ‘I have spent my life searching for one and the search has led me here. We signed a contract, Temple, as you well know, and Inquisitor Lorsen means to see us keep our end of the bargain, eh, Inquisitor?’

  ‘I will insist upon it,’ grated Lorsen, treating Temple to a poisonous glare.

  ‘If you wanted to avoid bloodshed,’ said Cosca, ‘you really should have spoken up beforehand.’

  The lawyer blinked. ‘I did.’

  The Old Man raised helpless palms to indicate the mercenaries arming, mounting, drinking and otherwise preparing themselves for violence. ‘Not eloquently enough, evidently. How many men have we fit to fight?’

  ‘Four hundred and thirty-two,’ said Friendly, instantly. The neckless sergeant appeared to Lorsen to have two uncanny specialities: silent menace and numbers. ‘Aside from the sixty-four who chose not to join the expedition, there have been eleven deserters since we left Mulkova, and five taken ill.’

  Cosca shrugged them away. ‘Some wastage is inevitable. The fewer our numbers, the greater each share of glory, eh, Sworbreck?’

  The writer, a ludicrous indulgence on this expedition, looked anything but convinced. ‘I . . . suppose?’

  ‘Glory is hard to count,’ said Friendly.

  ‘So true,’ lamented Cosca. ‘Like honour and virtue and all those other desirable intangibles. But the fewer our numbers, the greater each share of the profits too.’

  ‘Profits can be counted.’

  ‘And w
eighed, and felt, and held up to the light,’ said Captain Brachio, rubbing gently at his capacious belly.

  ‘The logical extension of the argument,’ Cosca twisted the waxed points of his moustaches sharp, ‘would be that all the high ideals in existence are not worth as much as a single bit.’

  Lorsen shivered with the most profound disgust. ‘That is a world I could not bear to live in.’

  The Old Man grinned. ‘And yet here you are. Is Jubair in position?’

  ‘Soon,’ grunted Brachio. ‘We’re waiting for his signal.’

  Lorsen took a breath through gritted teeth. A crowd of madmen, awaiting the signal of the maddest.

  ‘It is not too late.’ Sufeen spoke softly so the others could not hear. ‘We could stop this.’

  ‘Why should we?’ Jubair drew his sword, and saw the fear in Sufeen’s eyes, and felt a pity and a contempt for him. Fear was born of arrogance. Of a belief that everything was not the will of God, and could be changed. But nothing could be changed. Jubair had accepted that many years ago. Since then, he and fear had been entire strangers to each other. ‘This is what God wants,’ he said.

  Most men refused to see the truth. Sufeen stared at him as though he was mad. ‘Why would it be God’s desire to punish the innocent?’

  ‘Innocence is not for you to judge. Nor is it given to man to understand God’s design. If He desires someone saved, He need only turn my sword aside.’

  Sufeen slowly shook his head. ‘If that is your God, I do not believe in Him.’

  ‘What kind of God would He be if your belief could make the slightest difference? Or mine, or anyone’s?’ Jubair lifted the blade, patchy sunlight shining down the long, straight edge, glinting in the many nicks and notches. ‘Disbelieve this sword, it will still cut you. He is God. We all walk His path regardless.’