The Great Leveller

by Joe Abercrombie

  They were just men, like Savian said. Now she got a proper look, she saw this one was a boy no older than Leef. No older than Leef had been. Five of the Fellowship were killed. Gentili’s cousin shot with arrows, and two of Buckhorm’s children found under a wagon with their ears cut off, and one of the whores had been dragged away and no one knew how or when.

  There weren’t many who didn’t have some cuts or scrapes and none who wouldn’t start when they heard a wolf howl for all their days. Shy couldn’t make her hands stop trembling, ear burning where the Ghost had made a start at claiming it for a prize. She wasn’t sure whether it was just a nick or if her ear was hanging by a flap and hardly dared find out.

  But she had to get up. She thought of Pit and Ro out in the far wilderness, scared as she was, and that put the heat into her and got her teeth gritted and her legs moving and she growled as she dragged herself up onto Majud’s wagon.

  She’d half-expected the Ghosts would have vanished, drifted away like smoke on the wind, but they were there, still of this world and this time even if Shy could hardly believe it, milling in chaos or rage away across the grass, singing and wailing to each other, steel still winking.

  ‘Kept your ears, then?’ asked Sweet, and frowned as he pressed his thumb against the cut and made her wince. ‘Just about.’

  ‘They’ll be coming again,’ she muttered, forcing herself to look at those nightmare shapes.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. They’re just testing us. Figuring whether they want to give us a proper try.’

  Savian clambered up beside him, face set even harder and eyes even narrower than usual. ‘If I was them I wouldn’t stop until we were all dead.’

  Sweet kept staring out across the plain. Seemed he was a man made for that purpose. ‘Luckily for us, you ain’t them. Might look a savage but he’s a practical thinker, your average Ghost. They get angry quick but they hold no grudges. We prove hard to kill, more’n likely they’ll try to talk. Get what they can by way of meat and money and move on to easier pickings.’

  ‘We can buy our way out of this?’ asked Shy.

  ‘Ain’t much God’s made can’t be bought out of if you’ve got the coin,’ said Sweet, and added in a mutter, ‘I hope.’

  ‘And once we’ve paid,’ growled Savian, ‘what’s to stop them following on and killing us when it suits?’

  Sweet shrugged. ‘You wanted predictable, you should’ve stayed in Starikland. This here is the Far Country.’

  And at that moment the axe-scarred door of Lestek’s wagon banged open and the noted actor himself struggled out, in his nightshirt, rheumy eyes wild and sparse white hair in disarray. ‘Bloody critics!’ he boomed, shaking an empty can at the distant Ghosts.

  ‘It will be all right,’ Temple said to Buckhorm’s son. His second son, he thought. Not one of the dead ones. Of course not one of them, because it would not be all right for them, they already had lost everything. That thought was unlikely to comfort their brother, though, so Temple said, ‘It will be all right,’ again, and tried to make it earnest, though the painful pounding of his heart, not to mention of his wounded buttock, made his voice wobble. It sounds funny, a wounded buttock. It is not.

  ‘It will be all right,’ he said, as if the emphasis made it a cast-iron fact. He remembered Kahdia saying the same to him when the siege had begun, and the fires burned all across Dagoska, and it was painfully clear that nothing would be all right. It had helped, to know that someone had the strength to tell the lie. So Temple squeezed the shoulder of Buckhorm’s second son and said, ‘It . . . will be . . . all right,’ his voice surer this time, and the boy nodded, and Temple felt stronger himself, that he could give strength to someone else. He wondered how long that strength would last when the Ghosts came again.

  Buckhorm thrust his shovel into the dirt beside the graves. He still wore his old chain-mail shirt, still with the buckles done up wrong so it was twisted at the front, and he wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand and left a smear of dirt across it.

  ‘It’d mean a lot to us if you’d suh . . . say something.’

  Temple blinked at him. ‘Would it?’ But perhaps worthwhile words could come from worthless mouths, after all.

  The great majority of the Fellowship were busy strengthening the defences, such as they were, or staring at the horizon while they chewed their fingernails bloody, or too busy panicking about the great likelihood of their own deaths to concern themselves with anyone else’s. In attendance about the five mounds of earth were Buckhorm, his stunned and blinking wife and their remaining brood of eight, who ranged from sorrow to terror to uncomprehending good humour; two of the whores and their pimp, who had been nowhere to be seen during the attack but had at least emerged in time to help with the digging; Gentili and two of his cousins; and Shy, frowning down at the heaped earth over Leef’s grave, shovel gripped white-knuckle hard in her fists. She had small hands, Temple noticed suddenly, and felt a strange welling of sympathy for her. Or perhaps that was just self-pity. More than likely the latter.

  ‘God,’ he croaked, and had to clear his throat. ‘It seems . . . sometimes . . . that you are not out here.’ It had mostly seemed to Temple, with all the blood and waste that he had seen, that He was not anywhere. ‘But I know you are,’ he lied. He was not paid for the truth. ‘You are everywhere. Around us, and in us, and watching over us.’ Not doing much about it, mind you, but that was God for you. ‘I ask you . . . I beg you, watch over these boys, buried in strange earth, under strange skies. These men and women, too. You know they had their shortcomings. But they set out to make something in the wilderness.’ Temple felt the sting of tears himself, had to bite his lip for a moment, look to the sky and blink them back. ‘Take them to your arms, and give them peace. There are none more deserving.’

  They stood in silence for a while, the wind tugging at the ragged hem of Temple’s coat and snatching Shy’s hair across her face, then Buckhorm held out his palm, coins glinting there. ‘Thank you.’

  Temple closed the drover’s calloused hand with both of his. ‘My honour to do it.’ Words did nothing. The children were still dead. He would not take money for that, whatever his debts.

  The light was starting to fade when Sweet swung down from Majud’s wagon, the sky pinking in the west and streaks of black cloud spread across it like breakers on a calm sea. ‘They want to talk!’ he shouted. ‘They’ve lit a fire halfway to their camp and they’re waiting for word!’ He looked pretty damn pleased about it. Probably Temple should have been pleased, but he was sitting near Leef’s grave, weight uncomfortably shifted off his throbbing buttock, feeling as if nothing would ever please him again.

  ‘Now they want to talk,’ said Luline Buckhorm, bitterly. ‘Now my two boys are dead.’

  Sweet winced. ‘Better’n when all your boys are. I’d best go out there.’

  ‘I’ll be coming,’ said Lamb, dry blood still speckled on the side of his face.

  ‘And me,’ said Savian. ‘Make sure those bastards don’t try anything.’

  Sweet combed at his beard with his fingers. ‘Fair enough. Can’t hurt to show ’em we’ve got iron in us.’

  ‘I will be going, too.’ Majud limped up, grimacing badly so that gold tooth glinted, trouser-leg flapping where Corlin had cut it free of his wound. ‘I swore never to let you negotiate in my name again.’

  ‘You bloody won’t be going,’ said Sweet. ‘Things tend sour we might have to run, and you’re running nowhere.’

  Majud ventured some weight on his injured leg, grimaced again, then nodded over at Shy. ‘She goes in my place, then.’

  ‘Me?’ she muttered, looking over. ‘Talk to those fuckers?’

  ‘There is no one else I trust to bargain. My partner Curnsbick would insist on the best price.’

  ‘I could get to dislike Curnsbick without ever having met the man.’

  Sweet was shaking his head. ‘Sangeed won’t take much to a woman being there.’

  It looked to Temple as th
ough that made up Shy’s mind. ‘If he’s a practical thinker he’ll get over it. Let’s go.’

  They sat in a crescent about their crackling fire, maybe a hundred strides from the Fellowship’s makeshift fort, the flickering lights of their own camp dim in the distance. The Ghosts. The terrible scourge of the plains. The fabled savages of the Far Country.

  Shy tried her best to stoke up a towering hatred for them, but when she thought of Leef cold under the dirt, all she felt was sick at the waste of it, and worried for his brother and hers who were still lost as ever, and worn through and chewed up and hollowed out. That and, now she saw them sitting tame with no death cries or shook weapons, she’d rarely seen so wretched-looking a set of men, and she’d spent a good stretch of her life in desperate straits and most of the rest bone-poor.

  They wore half-cured hides, and ragged skins, and threadbare fragments of a dozen different scavenged costumes, the bare skin showing stretched pale and hungry-tight over the bone. One was smiling, maybe at the thought of the riches they were soon to win, and he’d but one rotten tooth in his head. Another frowned solemnly under a helmet made from a beaten-out copper kettle, spout sticking from his forehead. Shy took the old Ghost in the centre for the great Sangeed. He wore a cloak of feathers over a tarnished breastplate looked like it had made some general of the Empire proud a thousand years ago. He had three necklaces of human ears, proof she supposed of his great prowess, but he was long past his best. She could hear his breathing, wet and crackly, and one half of his leathery face sagged, the drooping corner of his mouth glistening with stray spit.

  Could these ridiculous little men and the monsters that had come screaming for them on the plain be the same flesh? A lesson she should’ve remembered from her own time as a fearsome bandit – between the horrible and pitiful there’s never much of a divide, and most of that is in how you look at it.

  If anything, it was the old men on her side of the fire that scared her more now – deep-lined faces made devilish strangers by the shifting flames, eyes gleaming in chill-shadowed sockets, the head of the bolt in Savian’s loaded flatbow coldly glistening, Lamb’s face bent and twisted like a weather-worn tree, etched with old scars, no clue to his thoughts, not even to her who’d known him all these years. Especially not to her, maybe.

  Sweet bowed his head and said a few words in the Ghosts’ tongue, making big gestures with his arms. Sangeed said a few back, slow and grinding, coughed, and managed a few more.

  ‘Just exchanging pleasantries,’ Sweet explained.

  ‘Ain’t nothing pleasant about this,’ snapped Shy. ‘Let’s get done and get back.’

  ‘We can talk in your words,’ said one of the Ghosts in a strange sort of common like he had a mouthful of gravel. He was a young one, sitting closest to Sangeed and frowning across the fire. His son, maybe. ‘My name is Locway.’

  ‘All right.’ Sweet cleared his throat. ‘Here’s a right fucking fuck up, then, ain’t it, Locway? There was no call for no one to die here. Now look. Corpses on both sides just to get to where we could’ve started if you’d just said how do.’

  ‘Every man takes his life in his hands who trespasses upon our lands,’ said Locway. Looked like he took himself mighty seriously, which was quite the achievement for someone wearing a ripped-up pair of old Union cavalry trousers with a beaver pelt over the crotch.

  Sweet snorted. ‘I was ranging these plains long before you was sucking tit, lad. And now you’re going to tell me where I can ride?’ He curled his tongue and spat into the fire.

  ‘Who gives a shit who rides where?’ snapped Shy. ‘Ain’t like it’s land any sane man would want.’

  The young Ghost frowned at her. ‘She has a sour tongue.’

  ‘Fuck yourself.’

  ‘Enough,’ growled Savian. ‘If we’re going to deal, let’s deal and go.’

  Locway gave Shy a hard look, then leaned to speak to Sangeed, and the so-called Emperor of the Plains mulled his words over for a moment, then croaked a few of his own.

  ‘Five thousands of your silver marks,’ said Locway, ‘and twenty of cattle, and twenty of horses, and you leave with your ears. That is the word of dread Sangeed.’ And the old Ghost lifted his chin and grunted.

  ‘You can have two thousand,’ said Shy.

  ‘Three thousand, then, and the animals.’ His haggling was almost as piss-weak as his clothes.

  ‘My people agreed to two. That’s what you’re getting. Far as cattle go, you can have the dozen you were fool enough to make meat of with your arrows, that’s all. The horses, no.’

  ‘Then perhaps we will come and take them,’ said Locway.

  ‘You can come and fucking try.’

  His face twisted and he opened his mouth to speak but Sangeed touched his shoulder and mumbled a few words, looking all the time at Sweet. The old scout nodded to him, and the young Ghost sourly worked his mouth. ‘Great Sangeed accepts your offering.’

  Sweet rubbed his hands on his crossed legs and smiled. ‘All right, then. Good.’

  ‘Uh.’ Sangeed broke out in a lopsided grin.

  ‘We are agreed,’ said Locway, no smile of his own.

  ‘All right,’ said Shy, though she took no pleasure in it. She was worn down to a nub, just wanted to sleep. The Ghosts stirred, relaxing a little, the one with the rotten tooth grinning wider’n ever.

  Lamb slowly stood, the sunset at his back, a towering piece of black with the sky all bloodstained about him.

  ‘I’ve a better offer,’ he said.

  Sparks whirled about his flicking heels as he jumped the fire. There was a flash of orange steel and Sangeed clutched his neck, toppling backwards. Savian’s bowstring went and the Ghost with the kettle fell, bolt through his mouth. Another leaped up but Lamb buried his knife in the top of his head with a crack like a log splitting.

  Locway scrambled to his feet just as Shy was doing the same, but Savian dived and caught him around the neck, rolling over onto his back and bringing the Ghost with him, thrashing and twitching, a hatchet in his hand but pinned helpless, snarling at the sky.

  ‘What you doing?’ called Sweet, but there wasn’t much doubt by then. Lamb was holding up the last of the Ghosts with one fist and punching him with the other, knocking out the last couple of teeth, punching him so fast Shy could hardly tell how many times, whipping sound of his arm inside his sleeve and his big fist crunching, crunching and the black outline of the Ghost’s face losing all shape, and Lamb tossed his body fizzling in the fire.

  Sweet took a step back from the shower of sparks. ‘Fuck!’ His hands tangled in his grey hair like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Shy could hardly believe it either, cold all over and sitting frozen, each breath whooping a little in her throat, Locway snarling and struggling still but caught tight in Savian’s grip as a fly in honey.

  Sangeed tottered up, one hand clutching at his chopped-open throat, clawing fingers shining with blood. He had a knife but Lamb stood waiting for it, and caught his wrist as though it was a thing ordained, and twisted it, and forced Sangeed down on his knees, drooling blood into the grass. Lamb planted one boot in the old Ghost’s armpit and drew his sword with a faint ringing of steel, paused a moment to stretch his neck one way and the other, then lifted the blade and brought it down with a thud. Then another. Then another, and Lamb let go of Sangeed’s limp arm, reached down and took his head by the hair, a misshapen thing now, split open down one cheek where one of Lamb’s blows had gone wide of the mark.

  ‘This is for you,’ he said, and tossed it in the young Ghost’s lap.

  Locway stared at it, chest heaving against Savian’s arm, a strip of tattoo showing below the old man’s rucked-up sleeve. The Ghost’s eyes moved from the head to Lamb’s face, and he bared his teeth and hissed out, ‘We will be coming for you! Before dawn, in the darkness, we will be coming for you!’

  ‘No.’ Lamb smiled, his teeth and his eyes and the blood streaked down his face all shining with the firelight. ‘Before dawn . . .’
He squatted in front of Locway, still held helpless. ‘In the darkness . . .’ He gently stroked the Ghost’s face, the three fingers of his left hand leaving three black smears down pale cheek. ‘I’ll be coming for you.’

  They heard sounds, out there in the night. Talking at first, muffled by the wind. People demanded to know what was being said and others hissed at them to be still. Then Temple heard a cry and clutched at Corlin’s shoulder. She brushed him off.

  ‘What’s happening?’ demanded Lestek.

  ‘How can we know?’ snapped Majud back.

  They saw shadows shifting around the fire and a kind of gasp went through the Fellowship.

  ‘It’s a trap!’ shouted Lady Ingelstad, and one of the Suljuks started yammering in words not even Temple could make sense of. A spark of panic, and there was a general shrinking back in which Temple was ashamed to say he took a willing part.

  ‘They should never have gone out there!’ croaked Hedges, as though he had been against it from the start.

  ‘Everyone be calm.’ Corlin’s voice was hard and level and did no shrinking whatsoever.

  ‘There’s someone coming!’ Majud pointed out into the darkness. Another spark of panic, another shrinking back in which, again, Temple was a leading participant.

  ‘No one shoot!’ Sweet’s gravel bass echoed from the darkness. ‘That’s all I need to crown my fucking day!’ And the old scout stepped into the torchlight, hands up, Shy behind him.

  The Fellowship breathed a collective sigh of relief, in which Temple was among the loudest, and rolled away two barrels to let the negotiators into their makeshift fort.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Did they talk?’

  ‘Are we safe?’

  Sweet just stood there, hands on hips, slowly shaking his head. Shy frowned off at nothing. Savian came behind, narrowed eyes giving away as little as ever.

  ‘Well?’ asked Majud. ‘Do we have a deal?’

  ‘They’re thinking it over,’ said Lamb, bringing up the rear.

  ‘What did you offer? What happened, damn it?’