The Great Leveller

by Joe Abercrombie

  Tofric, who was known to be the best skinner anywhere, staggered two stiff-legged steps and dropped to his knees. A dozen wounds in him turned dark the furs he wore and one under his eye dripped a black line. He stared, not looking pained, but sad and puzzled at the way the world had changed so suddenly, all quiet, all in silence, and Scarlaer wondered, What sorcery is this?

  Uto lay next to him. He put a hand under her head and lifted it. She shuddered, twitched, teeth rattling, red foam on her lips. She tried to pass the blessed pouch to him but it was ripped open and the sacred dust of Ashranc spilled across the bloodied snow.

  ‘Uto? Uto?’ He could not hear his own voice.

  He saw friends running down the street to their aid, Canto in the lead, a brave man and the best to have beside you in a fix. He thought how foolish he had been. How lucky he was to have such friends. Then as they passed one of the barrows smoke burst from its mouth and Canto was flung away and over the roof of the shack beside. Others tumbled sideways, spun about, reeled blinking in the fog or strained as if into a wind, hands over their faces.

  Scarlaer saw shutters open, the glint of metal. Arrows flitted silently across the street, lodged in wooden walls, dropped harmlessly in snow, found tottering targets, brought them to their knees, on their faces, clutching, calling, silently screaming.

  He struggled to his feet, the camp tipping wildly. The old man still stood in the doorway, pointing with the bottle, saying something. Scarlaer raised his sword but it felt light, and when he looked at his hand his bloody palm was empty. He tried to search for it and saw there was a short arrow in his leg. It did not hurt, but it came upon him like a shock of cold water that he might fail. And then that he might die. And suddenly there was a fear upon him like a weight.

  He tottered for the nearest wall, saw an arrow flicker past and into the snow. He laboured on, chest shuddering, floundering up the slope. He snatched a look over his shoulder. The camp was shrouded in smoke as the Gathering was in the Seeing Steam, giant shadows moving inside. Some of his people were running for the trees, stumbling, falling, desperate. Then shapes came from the whirling fog like great devils – men and horses fused into one awful whole. Scarlaer had heard tales of this obscene union and laughed at its foolishness but now he saw them and was struck with horror. Spears and swords flashed, armour glittered, towering over the runners, cutting them down.

  Scarlaer struggled on but his arrow-stuck leg would hardly move, a trail of blood following him up the slope and a horse-man following that, his hooves mashing the snow, a blade in his hand.

  Scarlaer should have turned and shown his defiance, at least, proud hunter of the Dragon People that he was. Where had his courage gone? Once there had seemed no end to it. Now there was only the need to run, as desperate as a drowning man’s need to breathe. He did not hear the rider behind him but he felt the jarring blow across his back and the snow cold, cold on his face as he fell.

  Hooves thumped about him, circling him, showering him with white dust. He fought to get up but he could get no further than his hands and knees, trembling with that much effort. His back would not straighten, agony, all burning, and he whimpered and raged and was helpless, his tears melting tiny holes in the snow beneath his face, and someone seized him by the hair.

  Brachio put his knee in the lad’s back and forced him down into the snow, pulled a knife out and, taking care not to make a mess of it, which was something of a challenge with the lad still struggling and gurgling, cut his ears off. Then he wiped the knife in the snow and slipped it back into his bandolier, reflecting that a bandolier of knives was a damn useful thing to have in his business and wondering afresh why it hadn’t caught on more widely. Might be the lad was alive when Brachio winced and grunted his bulk back up into his saddle, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Not with that sword-cut in him.

  Brachio chuckled over his trophies and, riding down to the camp, thought they’d be the perfect things to scare his daughters with when Cosca had made him rich and he finally came home to Puranti. Genuine Ghost ears, how about that? He imagined the laughter as he chased them around the parlour, though in his imaginings they were little girls still, and it made him sad to think they would be nearly women grown when he saw them again.

  ‘Where does the time go?’ he muttered to himself.

  Sworbreck was standing at the edge of the camp, staring, mouth open as the horsemen chased the last few savages up into the woods. He was a funny little fellow but Brachio had warmed to him.

  ‘You’re a man of learning,’ he called as he rode up, holding high the ears. ‘What do you think I should do? Dry them? Pickle them?’ Sworbreck did not answer, only stood there looking decidedly bilious. Brachio swung down from his saddle. There was riding to do but damn it if he’d be hurrying anywhere, he was out of breath already. No one was as young as they used to be, he supposed. ‘Cheer up,’ he said. ‘We won, didn’t we?’ And he clapped the writer on his scrawny back.

  Sworbreck stumbled, put out a hand to steady himself, felt a warmth, and realised he had sunk his fingers into a savage’s steaming guts, separated by some distance from the ruined body.

  Cosca took another deep swallow from his bottle – if Sworbreck had read in print the quantity of spirits the Old Man was currently drinking each day he would have cursed it for an outrageous lie – and rolled the corpse over with his boot, then, wrinkling his pinked nose, wiped the boot on the side of the nearest shed.

  ‘I have fought Northmen, Imperials, Union men, Gurkish, every variety of Styrian and plenty more whose origin I never got to the bottom of.’ Cosca gave a sigh. ‘And I am forced to consider the Dragon Person vastly overrated as an opponent. You may quote me on that.’ Sworbreck only just managed to swallow another rush of nausea while the Old Man burbled on. ‘But then courage can often be made to work against a man in a carefully laid ambuscade. Bravery, as Verturio had it, is the dead man’s virtue— Ah. You are . . . discomfited. Sometimes I forget that not everyone is familiar with such scenes as this. But you came to witness battle, did you not? Battle is . . . not always glorious. A general must be a realist. Victory first, you understand?’

  ‘Of course,’ Sworbreck found he had mumbled. He had reached the point of agreeing with Cosca on instinct, however foul, ridiculous or outrageous his utterances. He wondered if he had ever come close to hating anyone as much as he did the old mercenary. Or relying on anyone so totally for everything. No doubt the two were not unrelated. ‘Victory first.’

  ‘The losers are always the villains, Sworbreck. Only winners can be heroes.’

  ‘You are absolutely right, of course. Only winners.’

  ‘The one good way to fight is that which kills your enemy and leaves you with the breath to laugh . . .’

  Sworbreck had come to see the face of heroism and instead he had seen evil. Seen it, spoken with it, been pressed up against it. Evil turned out not to be a grand thing. Not sneering Emperors with world-conquering designs. Not cackling demons plotting in the darkness beyond the world. It was small men with their small acts and their small reasons. It was selfishness and carelessness and waste. It was bad luck, incompetence and stupidity. It was violence divorced from conscience or consequence. It was high ideals, even, and low methods.

  He watched Inquisitor Lorsen move eagerly among the bodies, turning them to see their faces, waving away the thinning, stinking smoke, tugging up sleeves in search of tattoos. ‘I see no sign of rebels!’ he rasped at Cosca. ‘Only these savages!’

  The Old Man managed to disengage lips from bottle for long enough to shout back, ‘In the mountains, our friend Cantliss told us! In their so-called sacred places! In this town they call Ashranc! We will begin the pursuit right away!’

  Sweet looked up from the bodies to nod. ‘Crying Rock and the rest’ll be waiting for us.’

  ‘Then it would be rude to delay! Particularly with the enemy so denuded. How many did we kill, Friendly?’

  The sergeant wagged his thick index finger as he att
empted to number the dead. ‘Hard to say which pieces go with which.’

  ‘Impossible. We can at least tell Superior Pike that his new weapon is a great success. The results scarcely compare to when I blew up that mine beneath the fortress of Fontezarmo but then neither does the effort involved, eh? It employs explosive powders, Sworbreck, to propel a hollow ball which shatters upon detonation sending splinters— boom!’ And Cosca demonstrated with an outward thrusting of both hands. An entirely unnecessary demonstration, since the proof of its effectiveness was distributed across the street in all directions, bloody and raw and in several cases barely recognisable as human.

  ‘So this is what success looks like,’ Sworbreck heard Temple murmur. ‘I have often wondered.’

  The lawyer saw it. The way he took in the charnel-house scene with his black eyes wide and his jaw set tight and his mouth slightly twisted. It was some small comfort to know there was one man in this gang who, in better company, might have approached decency, but he was just as helpless as Sworbreck. All they could do was watch and, by doing nothing more, participate. But how could it be stopped? Sworbreck cowered as a horse thundered past, showering him with gory snow. He was one man, and that one no fighter. His pen was his only weapon and, however highly the scribes might rate its power, it was no match for axe and armour in a duel. If he had learned nothing else the past few months, he had learned that.

  ‘Dimbik!’ shrieked Cosca, and took another swig from his bottle. He had abandoned the flask as inadequate to his needs and would no doubt soon graduate to sucking straight from the cask. ‘Dimbik? There you are! I want you to lead off, root out any of these creatures left in the woods. Brachio, get your men ready to ride! Master Sweet will show us the way! Jubair and the others are waiting to open the gates! There’s gold to be had, boys, and no time to waste! And rebels!’ he added hastily. ‘Rebels, too, of course. Temple, with me, I want to be certain on the terms of the contract as regard plunder. Sworbreck, it might be better if you were to remain here. If you haven’t the stomach for this, well . . .’

  ‘Of course,’ said Sworbreck. He felt so very tired. So very far from home. Adua, and his neat office with the clean walls and the new Rimaldi printing press of which he had been so particularly proud. All so far away, across an immeasurable gulf in time and space and thinking. A place where straightening the collar seemed important and a bad review was a disaster. How could such a fantastical realm occupy the same world as this slaughter-yard? He stared at his hands: calloused, blood-daubed, dirt-scraped. Could they be the same ones that had so carefully set the type, inky at the fingertips? Could they ever do so again?

  He let them drop, too tired to ride let alone write. People do not realise the crushing effort of creation. The pain of dragging the words from a tortured mind. Who read books out here, anyway? Perhaps he would lie down. He began to shamble for the fort.

  ‘Take care of yourself, author,’ said Temple, looking grimly down from horseback.

  ‘You too, lawyer,’ said Sworbreck, and patted him on the leg as he passed.

  The Dragon’s Den

  ‘When do we go?’ whispered Shy.

  ‘When Savian says go,’ came Lamb’s voice. He was close enough she could almost feel his breath, but all she could see in the darkness of the tunnel was the faintest outline of his stubbled skull. ‘Soon as he sees Sweet bring Cosca’s men up the valley.’

  ‘Won’t these Dragon bastards see ’em, too?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  She wiped her forehead for the hundredth time, rubbing the wet out of her eyebrows. Damn, but it was hot, like squatting in an oven, the sweat tickling at her, hand slippery-slick on the wood of her bow, mouth sticky-dry with heat and worry.

  ‘Patience, Shy. You won’t cross the mountains in a day.’

  ‘Easily said,’ she hissed back. How long had they been there? Might’ve been an hour, might’ve been a week. Twice already they’d had to slink back into the deeper blackness of the tunnel when Dragon People had strayed close, all pressed together in a baking panic, her heart beating so hard it made her teeth rattle. So many hundreds of thousands of things that could go wrong she could hardly breathe for their weight.

  ‘What do we do when Savian says go?’ she asked.

  ‘Open the gate. Hold the gate.’

  ‘And after?’ Providing they were still alive after, which she wouldn’t have wanted to bet good money on.

  ‘We find the children,’ said Lamb.

  A long pause. ‘Starting to look like less and less of a plan, ain’t it?’

  ‘Do the best you can with what there is, then.’

  She puffed her cheeks out at that. ‘Story of my life.’

  She waited for an answer but none was forthcoming. She guessed danger makes some folk blather and some clamp tight. Sadly, she was in the former camp, and surrounded by the latter. She crept forwards on all fours, stone hot under her hands, up next to Crying Rock, wondering afresh what the Ghost woman’s interest in all this was. Didn’t seem the type to be interested in gold, or rebels, or children neither. No way of knowing what went on behind that lined mask of a face, though, and she wasn’t shining any lights inward.

  ‘What’s this Ashranc place like?’ asked Shy.

  ‘A city carved from the mountain.’

  ‘How many are in there?’

  ‘Thousands once. Few now. Judging from those who left, very few, and mostly the young and old. Not good fighters.’

  ‘A bad fighter sticks a spear in you, you’re just as dead as with a good one.’

  ‘Don’t get stuck, then.’

  ‘You’re just a mine of good advice, ain’t you?’

  ‘Fear not,’ came Jubair’s voice. Across the passageway she could only see the gleam of his eyes, the gleam of his ready sword, but she could tell he was smiling. ‘If God is with us, He will be our shield.’

  ‘If He’s against?’ asked Shy.

  ‘Then no shield can protect us.’

  Before Shy could tell him what a great comfort that was there was scuffling behind, and a moment later Savian’s crackling voice. ‘It’s time. Cosca’s boys are in the valley.’

  ‘All of them?’ asked Jubair.

  ‘Enough of them.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ The shudder of nerves up Shy’s throat almost choked her. For months now she’d been betting everything she had on finding Pit and Ro. Now the moment might’ve come she would’ve given anything to put it off.

  ‘Course I’m bloody sure! Go!’

  A hand shoved at her back and she knocked into someone and almost fell, staggered on a few steps, fingers brushing the stone to keep her bearings. The tunnel made a turn and suddenly she felt cooler air on her face and was out blinking into the light.

  Ashranc was a vast mouth in the mountainside, a cavern cut in half, its floor scattered with stone buildings, a huge overhang of rock shadowing everything above. Ahead of them, beyond a daunting drop, a grand expanse of sky and mountain opened out. Behind the cliff was riddled with openings – doorways, windows, stairways, bridges, a confusion of wall and walkway on a dozen levels, houses half-built into the rock face, a city sunk in stone.

  An old man stared at them, shaved bald, a horn frozen on the way to his mouth. He muttered something, took a shocked step back, then Jubair’s sword split his head and he went over in a shower of blood, horn bouncing from his hand.

  Crying Rock darted right and Shy followed, someone whispering ‘Shit, shit, shit,’ in her ear and she realised it was her. She rushed along low beside a crumbling wall, breath punching hard, every part of her singing with an unbearable fear and panic and rage, so wild and strong she thought she might burst open with it, sick it up, piss it out. Shouting from high above. Shouting from all around. Her boots clanked over metal plates polished smooth and scrawled with writing, grit pinging and rattling from her heels. A tall archway in a cleft in the rocks, bouncing and shuddering as she ran. A heavy double-door, one leaf already closed, two figures straining to hau
l the other fast, a third on the wall above, pointing at them, bow in hand. Shy went down on one knee and nocked her own arrow. A shaft looped down, missed one of the running mercenaries and clattered away across the bronze. Snap of the bowstring as Shy let fly and she watched her own arrow cover the distance, hanging in the still air. It caught the archer in the side and she gave a yelp – a woman’s voice, or maybe a child’s – staggered sideways and off the parapet, bounced from the rock and fell crumpled beside the gate.

  The two Dragon People who’d been shutting the doors had found weapons. Old men, she saw now, very old. Jubair hacked at one and sent him reeling into the rock face. Two of the mercenaries caught up with the other and cut him down, swearing, chopping, stamping.

  Shy stared at the girl she’d shot, lying there. Not much older’n Ro, she reckoned. Part Ghost, maybe, from the whiteness of her skin and the shape of her eyes. Just like Shy. Blame it on your Ghost blood. She stared down and the girl stared up, breathing fast and shallow, saying nothing, eyes so dark and wet and blood across her cheek. Shy’s free hand opened and closed, useless.

  ‘Here!’ roared Jubair, raising one hand. Shy heard a faint answering call, through the gate saw men struggling up the mountainside. Cosca’s men, weapons drawn. Caught a glimpse of Sweet, maybe, struggling along on foot. The other mercenaries started dragging the doors wide to let them through. Doors of metal four fingers thick but swinging as smooth as a box lid.

  ‘God is with us,’ said Jubair, his grin spotted with blood.

  God might’ve been, but Lamb was nowhere to be seen. ‘Where’s Lamb?’ she asked, staring about.

  ‘Don’t know.’ Savian only just managed to force the words out. He was breathing hard, bent over. ‘Went the other way.’