The Great Leveller

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘Most business is,’ said Cosca, leaning closer and closer towards Cantliss. ‘They have more of these coins?’

  ‘All I could ever want, that’s what he said.’

  ‘Who said?’

  ‘Waerdinur. He’s their leader.’

  ‘All I could ever want.’ Cosca’s eyes glimmered as brightly as his imagined gold. ‘So you are telling me these Dragon People are in league with the rebels?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That these savages are funding, and perhaps harbouring, the rebel leader Conthus himself?’

  There was a silence while Cantliss blinked up. ‘Er . . . yes?’

  Cosca smiled very wide. ‘Yes. And when my employer Inquisitor Lorsen asks you the same question, what will your answer be?’

  Now Cantliss smiled, too, sensing that his chances might have drastically improved. ‘Yes! They got them that Conthus up there, no doubt in my mind! Hell, he’s more’n likely going to use their money to start a new war!’

  ‘I knew it!’ Cosca poured a measure of spirit into Lamb’s empty glass. ‘We must accompany you into the mountains and pull up this very root of insurrection! This wretched man will be our guide and thereby win his freedom.’

  ‘Yes, indeed!’ shouted Cantliss, grinning at Shy and Lamb and Savian, then squawking as Brachio hauled him to his feet and manhandled him towards the door, wounded leg dragging.

  ‘Fuckers,’ whispered Shy.

  ‘Realistic,’ Lamb hissed at her, one hand on her elbow.

  ‘What luck for all of us,’ Cosca was expounding, ‘that I should arrive as you prepare to leave!’

  ‘Oh, I’ve always had the luck,’ muttered Temple.

  ‘And me,’ murmured Shy.

  ‘Realistic,’ hissed Lamb.

  ‘A party of four is easily dismissed,’ Cosca was telling the room. ‘A party of three hundred, so much less easily!’

  ‘Two hundred and seventy-two,’ said Friendly.

  ‘If I could have a word?’ Dab Sweet was approaching the counter. ‘You’re planning on heading into the mountains, you’ll need a better scout than that half-dead killer. I stand ready and willing to offer my services.’

  ‘So generous,’ said Cosca. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Dab Sweet.’ And the famous scout removed his hat to display his own thinning locks. Evidently he had caught the scent of a more profitable opportunity than shepherding the desperate back to Starikland.

  ‘The noted frontiersman?’ asked Sworbreck, looking up from his papers. ‘I thought you’d be younger.’

  Sweet sighed. ‘I used to be.’

  ‘You’re aware of him?’ asked Cosca.

  The biographer pointed his nose towards the ceiling. ‘A man by the name of Marin Glanhorm – I refuse to use the term writer in relation to him – has penned some most inferior and far-fetched works based upon his supposed exploits.’

  ‘Those was unauthorised,’ said Sweet. ‘But I’ve exploited a thing or two, that’s true. I’ve trodden on every patch of this Far Country big enough to support a boot, and that includes them mountains.’ He beckoned Cosca closer, spoke softer. ‘Almost as far as Ashranc, where those Dragon People live. Their sacred ground. My partner, Crying Rock, she’s been even further, see . . .’ He gave a showman’s pause. ‘She used to be one of ’em.’

  ‘True,’ grunted Crying Rock, still occupying her place at the table, though Corlin had vanished leaving only her cards.

  ‘Raised up there,’ said Sweet. ‘Lived up there.’

  ‘Born up there, eh?’ asked Cosca.

  Crying Rock solemnly shook her head. ‘No one is born in Ashranc.’ And she stuck her dead chagga pipe between her teeth as though that was her last word on the business.

  ‘She knows the secret ways up there, though, and you’ll need ’em, too, ’cause those Dragon bastards won’t be extending no warm welcomes once you’re on their ground. It’s some strange, sulphurous ground they’ve got but they’re jealous about it as mean bears, that’s the truth.’

  ‘Then the two of you would be an invaluable addition to our expedition,’ said Cosca. ‘What would be your terms?’

  ‘We’d settle for a twentieth share of any valuables recovered.’

  ‘Our aim is to root out rebellion, not valuables.’

  Sweet smiled. ‘There’s a risk of disappointment in any venture.’

  ‘Then welcome aboard! My notary will prepare an agreement!’

  ‘Two hundred and seventy-four,’ mused Friendly. His dead eyes drifted to Temple. ‘And you.’

  Cosca began to slosh out drinks. ‘Why are all the really interesting people always advanced in years?’ He nudged Temple in the ribs. ‘Your generation really isn’t producing the goods.’

  ‘We cower in giants’ shadows and feel our shortcomings most keenly.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve been missed, Temple! If I’ve learned one thing in forty years of warfare, it’s that you have to look on the funny side. The tongue on this man! Conversationally, I mean, not sexually, I can’t vouch for that. Don’t include that, Sworbreck!’ The biographer sullenly crossed something out. ‘We shall leave as soon as the men are rested and supplies gathered!’

  ‘Might be best to wait ’til winter’s past,’ said Sweet.

  Cosca leaned close. ‘Do you have any notion what will happen if I leave my Company quartered here for four months? The state of the place now barely serves as a taster.’

  ‘You got any notion what’ll happen if three hundred men get caught in a real winter storm up there?’ grunted Sweet, pulling his fingers through his beard.

  ‘None whatsoever,’ said Cosca, ‘but I can’t wait to find out. We must seize the moment! That has always been my motto. Note that down, Sworbreck.’

  Sweet raised his brows. ‘Might not be long ’til your motto is, “I can’t feel my fucking feet.”’

  But the captain general was, as usual, not listening. ‘I have a premonition we will all find what we seek in those mountains!’ He threw one arm about Savian’s shoulders and the other about Lamb’s. ‘Lorsen his rebels, I my gold, these worthy folk their missing children. Let us toast our alliance!’ And he raised Temple’s nearly empty bottle high.

  ‘Shit on this,’ breathed Shy through gritted teeth.

  Temple could only agree. But that appeared to be all his say in the matter.

  Nowhere to Go

  Ro pulled off the chain with the dragon’s scale and laid it gently on the furs. Shy once told her you can waste your life waiting for the right moment. Now was good as any.

  She touched Pit’s cheek in the dark and he stirred, the faintest smile on his face. He was happy here. Young enough to forget, maybe. He’d be safe, or safe as he could be. In this world there are no certainties. Ro wished she could say goodbye but she was worried he’d cry. So she gathered her bundle and slipped out into the night.

  The air was sharp, snow gently falling but melting as soon as it touched the hot ground and dry a moment later. Light spilled from some of the houses, windows needing neither glass nor shutter cut from the mountain or from walls so old and weathered Ro couldn’t tell them from the mountain. She kept to the shadows, rag-wrapped feet silent on the ancient paving, past the great black cooking slab, surface polished to a shine by the years, steam whispering from it as the snow fell.

  The Long House door creaked as she passed and she pressed herself against the pitted wall, waiting. Through the window she could hear the voices of the elders at their Gathering. Three months here and she already knew their tongue.

  ‘The Shanka are breeding in the deeper tunnels.’ Uto’s voice. She always counselled caution.

  ‘Then we must drive them out.’ Akosh. She was always bold.

  ‘If we send enough for that there will be few left behind. One day men will come from outside.’

  ‘We put them off in the place they call Beacon.’

  ‘Or we made them curious.’

  ‘Once we wake the Dragon it will not matter.’

 
‘It was given to me to make the choice.’ Waerdinur’s deep voice. ‘The Maker did not leave our ancestors here to let his works fall into decay. We must be bold. Akosh, you will take three hundred of us north into the deep places and drive out the Shanka, and keep the diggings going over winter. After the thaw you will return.’

  ‘I worry,’ said Uto. ‘There have been visions.’

  ‘You always worry . . .’

  Their words faded into the night as Ro padded past, over the great sheets of dulled bronze where the names were chiselled in tiny characters, thousands upon thousands stretching back into the fog of ages. She knew Icaray was on guard tonight and guessed he would be drunk, as always. He sat in the archway, head nodding, spear against the wall, empty bottle between his feet. The Dragon People were just people, after all, and each had their failings like any other.

  Ro looked back once and thought how beautiful it was, the yellow-lit windows in the black cliff-face, the dark carvings on the steep roofs against a sky blazing with stars. But it wasn’t her home. She wouldn’t let it be. She scurried past Icaray and down the steps, hand brushing the warm rock on her right because on her left, she knew, was a hundred strides of empty drop.

  She came to the needle and found the hidden stair, striking steeply down the mountainside. It scarcely looked hidden at all but Waerdinur had told her that it had a magic, and no one could see it until they were shown it. Shy had always told her there were no such things as Magi or demons and it was all stories, but out here in this far, high corner of the world all things had their magic. To deny it felt as foolish as denying the sky.

  Down the winding stair, switching back and forth, away from Ashranc, the stones growing colder underfoot. Into the forest, great trees on the bare slopes, roots catching at her toes and tangling at her ankles. She ran beside a sulphurous stream, bubbling through rocks crusted with salt. She stopped when her breath began to smoke, the cold biting in her chest, and she bound her feet more warmly, unrolled the fur and wrapped it around her shoulders, ate and drank, tied her bundle and hurried on. She thought of Lamb plodding endlessly behind his plough and Shy swinging the scythe sweat dripping from her brows and saying through her gritted teeth, You just keep on. Don’t think of stopping. Just keep on, and Ro kept on.

  The snow had settled in slow melting patches here, the branches dripping tap, tap and how she wished she had proper boots. She heard wolves sorrowful in the high distance and ran faster, her feet wet and her legs sore, downhill, downhill, clambering over jagged rock and sliding in scree, checking with the stars the way Gully taught her once, sitting out beside the barn in the dark of night when she couldn’t sleep.

  The snow had stopped falling but it was drifted deep now, sparkling as dawn came fumbling through the forest, her feet crunching, her face prickling with the cold. Ahead the trees began to thin and she hurried on, hoping perhaps to look out upon fields or flower-filled valleys or a merry township nestled in the hills.

  She burst out at the edge of a dizzy cliff and stared far over high and barren country, sharp black forest and bare black rock slashed and stabbed with white snow fading into long grey rumour without a touch of people or colour. No hint of the world she had known, no hope of deliverance, no heat now from the earth beneath and all was cold inside and out and Ro breathed into her trembling hands and wondered if this was the end of the world.

  ‘Well met, daughter.’ Waerdinur sat cross-legged behind her, his back against a tree-stump, his staff, or his spear – Ro still was not sure which it was – in the crook of one arm. ‘Do you have meat there in your bundle? I was not prepared for a journey and you have led me quite a chase.’

  In silence she gave him a strip of meat and sat down beside him and they ate and she found she was very glad he had come.

  After a time he said, ‘It can be difficult to let go. But you must see the past is done.’ And he pulled out the dragon scale that she had left behind and put the chain around her neck and she did not try to stop him.

  ‘Shy’ll be coming . . .’ But her voice sounded tiny, thinned by the cold, muffled in the snow, lost in the great emptiness.

  ‘It may be so. But do you know how many children have come here in my lifetime?’

  Ro said nothing.

  ‘Hundreds. And do you know how many families have come to claim them?’

  Ro swallowed, and said nothing.

  ‘None.’ Waerdinur put his great arm around her and held her tight and warm. ‘You are one of us now. Sometimes people choose to leave us. Sometimes they are made to. My sister was. If you really wish to go, no one will stop you. But it is a long, hard way, and to what? The world out there is a red country, without justice, without meaning.’

  Ro nodded. That much she’d seen.

  ‘Here life has purpose. Here we need you.’ He stood and held out his hand. ‘Can I show you a wondrous thing?’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘The reason why the Maker left us here. The reason we remain.’

  She took his hand and he hoisted her up easily onto his shoulders. She put her palm on the smooth stubble of his scalp and said, ‘Can we shave my head tomorrow?’

  ‘Whenever you are ready.’ And he set off up the hillside the way she had come, retracing her footprints through the snow.

  In Threes

  ‘Fuck, it’s cold,’ whispered Shy.

  They’d found a shred of shelter wedged in a hollow among frozen tree-roots, but when the wind whipped up it was still like a slap in the face, and even with a piece of blanket double-wrapped around her head so just her eyes showed, it left Shy’s face red and stinging as a good slapping might’ve. She lay on her side, needing a piss but hardly daring to drop her trousers in case she ended up with a yellow icicle stuck to her arse to add to her discomforts. She dragged her coat tight around her shoulders, then the frost-crusted wolfskin Sweet had given her tight around that, wriggled her numb toes in her icy boots and pressed her dead fingertips to her mouth so she could make the most of her breath while she still had some.

  ‘Fuck, it’s cold.’

  ‘This is nothing,’ grunted Sweet. ‘Got caught in drifts one time in the mountains near Hightower for two months. So cold the spirits froze in the bottles. We had to crack the glass off and pass the booze around in lumps.’

  ‘Shhh,’ murmured Crying Rock, faintest puff of smoke spilling from her blued lips. ’Til that moment Shy had been wondering whether she’d frozen to death hours before with her pipe still clamped in her mouth. She’d scarcely even blinked all morning, staring through the brush they’d arranged the previous night as cover and down towards Beacon.

  Not that there was much to see. The camp looked dead. Snow in the one street was drifted up against doors, thick on roofs toothed with glinting icicles, pristine but for the wandering tracks of one curious wolf. No smoke from the chimneys, no light from the frozen flaps of the half-buried tents. The old barrows were just white humps. The broken tower which in some forgotten past must’ve held the beacon the place was named for held nothing but snow now. Aside from wind sad in the mangy pines and making a shutter somewhere tap, tap, tap, the place was silent as Juvens’ grave.

  Shy had never been much for waiting, that wasn’t news, but lying up here in the brush and watching reminded her too much of her outlaw days. On her belly in the dust with Jeg chewing and chewing and spitting and chewing in her ear and Neary sweating an inhuman quantity of salt water, waiting for travellers way out of luck to pass on the road below. Pretending to be the outlaw, Smoke, half-crazy with meanness, when what she really felt like was a painfully unlucky little girl, half-crazy with constant fear. Fear of those chasing her and fear of those with her and fear of herself most of all. No clue what she’d do next. Like some hateful lunatic might seize her hands and her mouth and use them like a puppet any moment. The thought of it made her want to wriggle out of her own sore skin.

  ‘Be still,’ whispered Lamb, motionless as a felled tree.

  ‘Why? There’s no one b
loody here, place is dead as a—’

  Crying Rock raised one gnarled finger, held it in front of Shy’s face, then gently tilted it to point towards the treeline on the far side of the camp.

  ‘You see them two big pines?’ whispered Sweet. ‘And them three rocks like fingers just between? That’s where the hide is.’

  Shy stared at that colourless tangle of stone and snow and timber until her eyes ached. Then she caught the faintest twitch of movement.

  ‘That’s one of them?’ she breathed.

  Crying Rock held up two fingers.

  ‘They go in pairs,’ said Sweet.

  ‘Oh, she’s good,’ whispered Shy, feeling a proper amateur in this company.

  ‘The best.’

  ‘How do we flush ’em out?’

  ‘They’ll flush ’emselves out. Long as that drunk madman Cosca comes through on his end of it.’

  ‘Far from a certainty,’ muttered Shy. In spite of Cosca’s talk about haste his Company had loitered around Crease like flies around a turd for a whole two weeks to resupply, which meant to cause every kind of unsavoury chaos and steadily desert. They’d taken even longer slogging across the few dozen miles of high plateau between Crease and Beacon as the weather turned steadily colder, a good number of Crease’s most ambitious whores, gamblers and merchants straggling after in hopes of wrenching free any money the mercenaries had somehow left unspent. All the while the Old Man smiled upon this tardy shambles like it was exactly the plan discussed, spinning far-fetched yarns about his glorious past for the benefit of his idiot biographer. ‘Seems to me talk and action have come properly uncoupled for that bastard—’

  ‘Shhh,’ hissed Lamb.

  Shy pressed herself against the dirt as a gang of outraged crows took off clattering into the frozen sky below. Shouting drifted deadened on the wind, then the rattle of gear, then horsemen came into view. Twenty or more, floundering up through the snow drifted in the valley and making damned hard work of it, dipping and bobbing, riders slapping at their mounts’ steaming flanks to keep them on.