The Great Leveller

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘Eh?’ said Ferring, trying to get up, but his boots were tangled with the table. It wasn’t Lorsen who’d been knocking, it was the big Northman, the one with all the scars. He took a stride into the room, teeth bared, and crunch! Left a knife buried in Ferring’s face to the cross-piece, his nose flattened under it and blood welling and Ferring wheezed and arched back and kicked the table over, cards and coins flying.

  Wile stumbled up, the Northman turning to look at him, blood dotting his face and pulling another knife from inside his coat, and—

  ‘Stop!’ hissed Pauth. ‘Or I kill him!’ Somehow he’d got to the prisoner, kneeling behind the chair he was roped to, knife blade pressed against his neck. Always been a quick thinker, Pauth. Good thing someone was.

  Bolder had slid to the floor, was making a honking sound and drooling blood into a widening pool.

  Wile realised he was holding his breath and took a great gasp.

  The scarred Northman looked from Wile, to Pauth, and back, lifted his chin slightly, then gently lowered his blade.

  ‘Get help!’ snapped Pauth, and he tangled his fingers in the prisoner’s grey hair and pulled his head back, tickling his stubbled neck with the point of his knife. ‘I’ll see to this.’

  Wile circled the Northman, his knees all shaky, pushing aside one of the leather curtains that divided up the fort’s downstairs, trying to keep as safe a distance as possible. He slithered in Bolder’s blood and nearly went right over, then dived out of the open door and was running.

  ‘Help!’ he screeched. ‘Help!’

  One of the mercenaries lowered a bottle and stared at him, cross-eyed. ‘Wha?’ The celebrations were still half-heartedly dragging on, women laughing and men singing and shouting and rolling in a stupor, none of them enjoying it but going through the motions anyway like a corpse that can’t stop twitching, all garishly lit by the sizzling bonfire. Wile slid over in the mud, staggered up, dragging down his mask so he could shout louder.

  ‘Help! The Northman! The prisoner!’

  Someone was pointing at him and laughing, and someone shouted at him to shut up, and someone was sick all over the side of a tent, and Wile stared about for anyone who might exert some control over this shambles and suddenly felt somebody clutch at his arm.

  ‘What are you jabbering about?’ None other than General Cosca, dewy eyes gleaming with the firelight, lady’s white powder smeared across one hollow, rash-speckled cheek.

  ‘That Northman!’ squealed Wile, grabbing the captain general by his stained shirt. ‘Lamb! He killed Bolder! And Ferring!’ He pointed a trembling finger towards the fort. ‘In there!’

  To give him his due, Cosca needed no convincing. ‘Enemies in the camp!’ he roared, flinging his empty bottle away. ‘Surround the fort! You, cover the door, make sure no one leaves! Dimbik, get men around the back! You, put that woman down! Arm yourselves, you wretches!’

  Some snapped to obey. Two found bows and pointed them uncertainly towards the door. One accidentally shot an arrow into the fire. Others stared baffled, or continued with their revelry, or stood grinning, imagining that this was some elaborate joke.

  ‘What the hell happened?’ Lorsen, black coat flapping open over his nightshirt, hair wild about his head.

  ‘It would appear our friend Lamb attempted a rescue of your prisoner,’ said Cosca. ‘Get away from that door, you idiots – do you think this is a joke?’

  ‘Rescue?’ muttered Sworbreck, eyebrows raised and eyeglasses skewed, evidently having recently crawled from his bed.

  ‘Rescue?’ snapped Lorsen, grabbing Wile by the collar.

  ‘Pauth took the prisoner . . . prisoner. He’s seeing to it—’

  A figure lurched from the fort’s open door, took a few lazy steps, eyes wide above his mask, hands clasped to his chest. Pauth. He pitched on his face, blood turning the snow around him pink.

  ‘You were saying?’ snapped Cosca. A woman shrieked, stumbled back with a hand over her mouth. Men started to drag themselves from tents and shacks, bleary-eyed, pulling on clothes and bits of armour, fumbling with weapons, breath smoking in the cold.

  ‘Get more bows up here!’ roared Cosca, clawing at his blistered neck with his fingernails. ‘I want a pincushion of anything that shows itself! Clear the bloody civilians away!’

  Lorsen was hissing in Wile’s face. ‘Is Conthus still alive?’

  ‘I think so . . . he was when I . . . when I—’

  ‘Cravenly fled? Pull your mask up, damn it, you’re a disgrace!’

  Probably the Inquisitor was right, and Wile was a disgraceful Practical. He felt strangely proud of that possibility.

  ‘Can you hear me, Master Lamb?’ called Cosca, as Sergeant Friendly helped him into his gilded, rusted breastplate, a combination of pomp and decay that rather summed up the man.

  ‘Aye,’ came the Northman’s voice from the black doorway of the fort. The closest thing to silence had settled over the camp since the mercenaries returned in triumph the previous day.

  ‘I am so pleased you have graced us with your presence again!’ The captain general waved half-dressed bowmen into the shadows around the shacks. ‘I wish you’d sent word of your coming, though, we could have prepared a more suitable reception!’

  ‘Thought I’d surprise you.’

  ‘We appreciate the gesture! But I should say I have some hundred and fifty fighting men out here!’ Cosca took in the wobbling bows, dewy eyes and bilious faces of his Company. ‘Several of them are very drunk, but still. Long established admirer though I am of lost causes I really don’t see the happy ending for you!’

  ‘I’ve never been much for happy endings,’ came Lamb’s growl. Wile didn’t know how a man could sound so steady under these circumstances.

  ‘Nor me, but perhaps we can engineer one between us!’ With a couple of gestures Cosca sent more men scurrying down either side of the fort and ordered a fresh bottle. ‘Now why don’t you two put your weapons down and come out, and we can all discuss this like civilised men!’

  ‘Never been much for civilisation either,’ called Lamb. ‘Reckon you’ll have to come to me.’

  ‘Bloody Northmen,’ muttered Cosca, ripping the cork from his latest bottle and flinging it away. ‘Dimbik, are any of your men not drunk?’

  ‘You wanted them as drunk as possible,’ said the captain, who had got himself tangled with his bedraggled sash as he tried to pull it on.

  ‘Now I need them sober.’

  ‘A few who were on guard, perhaps—’

  ‘Send them in.’

  ‘And we want Conthus alive!’ barked Lorsen.

  Dimbik bowed. ‘We will do our best, Inquisitor.’

  ‘But there can be no promises.’ Cosca took a long swallow from his bottle without taking his eyes from the house. ‘We’ll make that Northern bastard regret coming back.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have come back,’ grunted Savian as he loaded the flatbow.

  Lamb edged the door open to peer through. ‘Regretting it already.’ A thud, splinters, and the bright point of a bolt showed between the planks. Lamb jerked his head back and kicked the door wobbling shut. ‘Hasn’t quite gone the way I’d hoped.’

  ‘You could say that about most things in life.’

  ‘In my life, no doubt.’ Lamb took hold of the knife in the Practical’s neck and ripped it free, wiped it on the front of the dead man’s black jacket and tossed it to Savian. He snatched it out of the air and slid it into his belt.

  ‘You can never have too many knives,’ said Lamb.

  ‘It’s a rule to live by.’

  ‘Or die by,’ said Lamb as he tossed over another. ‘You need a shirt?’

  Savian stretched out his arms and watched the tattoos move. The words he’d tried to live his life by. ‘What’s the point in getting ’em if you don’t show ’em off? I’ve been covering up too long.’

  ‘Man’s got to be what he is, I reckon.’

  Savian nodded. ‘Wish we’d met thirty years ago.’r />
  ‘No you don’t. I was a mad fucker then.’

  ‘And now?’

  Lamb stuck a dagger into the tabletop. ‘Thought I’d learned something.’ He thumped another into the doorframe. ‘But here I am, handing out knives.’

  ‘You pick a path, don’t you?’ Savian started drawing the string on the other flatbow. ‘And you think it’s just for tomorrow. Then thirty years on you look back and see you picked your path for life. If you’d known it then, you’d maybe have thought more carefully.’

  ‘Maybe. Being honest, I’ve never been much for thinking carefully.’

  Savian finally fumbled the string back, glancing at the word freedom tattooed around his wrist like a bracelet. ‘Always thought I’d die fighting for the cause.’

  ‘You will,’ said Lamb, still busy scattering weapons around the room. ‘The cause of saving my fat old arse.’

  ‘It’s a noble calling.’ Savian slipped a bolt into place. ‘Reckon I’ll get upstairs.’

  ‘Reckon you’d better.’ Lamb drew the sword he’d taken from Waerdinur, long and dull with that silver letter glinting. ‘We ain’t got all night.’

  ‘You’ll be all right down here?’

  ‘Might be best if you just stay up there. That mad fucker from thirty years ago – sometimes he comes visiting.’

  ‘Then I’ll leave the two of you to it. You shouldn’t have come back.’ Savian held out his hand. ‘But I’m glad you did.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have missed it.’ Lamb took a grip on Savian’s hand and gave it a squeeze, and they looked each other in the eye. Seemed in that moment they had as good an understanding between them as if they had met thirty years ago. But the time for friendship was over. Savian had always put more effort into his enemies, and there was no shortage outside. He turned and took the stairs three at a time, up into the garret, a flatbow in each hand and the bolts over his shoulder.

  Four windows, two to the front, two to the back. Straw pallets around the walls and a low table with a lit lamp, and in its flickering pool of light a hunting bow and a quiver of arrows, and a spiked mace, too, metal gleaming. One handy thing about mercenaries, they leave weapons lying about wherever they go. He slipped in a crouch to the front, propped one of the flatbows carefully under the left-hand window and then scurried over to the right with the other, hooking the shutters open and peering out.

  There was a fair bit of chaos under way outside, lit by the great bonfire, sparks whirling, folk hurrying this way and that on the far side. Seemed some of those who’d come to get rich on the Company’s scraps hadn’t reckoned on getting stuck in the middle of a fight. The corpse of one of the Practicals was stretched out near the door but Savian shed no tears for him. He’d cried easily as a child, but his eyes had good and dried up down the years. They’d had to. With what he’d seen, and what he’d done, too, there wouldn’t have been enough salt water in the world.

  He saw archers, squatting near the shacks, bows trained towards the fort, made a quick note of the positions, of the angles, of the distances. Then he saw men hurrying forward, axes at the ready. He snatched the lamp off the table and tossed it spinning through the dark, saw it shatter on the thatch roof of one of the shacks, streaks of fire shooting hungrily out.

  ‘They’re coming for the door!’ he shouted.

  ‘How many?’ came Lamb’s voice from downstairs.

  ‘Five, maybe!’ His eyes flickered across the shadows down there around the bonfire. ‘Six!’ He worked the stock of the flatbow into his shoulder, settling down still and steady around it, warm and familiar as curling around a lover’s back. He wished he’d spent more of his time curled around a lover and less around a flatbow, but he’d picked his path and here was the next step along it. He twitched the trigger and felt the bow jolt and one of the axemen took a tottering step sideways and sat down.

  ‘Five!’ shouted Savian as he slipped away from the window and over to another, setting down the first bow and hefting the second. Heard arrows clatter against the frame behind, one spinning into the darkness of the room. He levelled the bow, caught a black shape against the fire and felt the shot, a mercenary staggered back and tripped into the flames and even over the racket Savian could hear him screaming as he burned.

  He slid down, back against the wall under the window. Saw an arrow flit through above him and shudder into a rafter. He was caught for a moment with a coughing fit, managed to settle it, breath rasping, the burns around his ribs all stinging fresh. Axes at the door, now, he could hear them thudding. Had to leave that to Lamb. Only man alive he’d have trusted alone with that task. He heard voices at the back, quiet, but he heard them. Up onto his feet and he scuttled to the back wall, taking up the hunting bow, no time to buckle the quiver, just wedging it through his belt.

  He dragged in a long, crackling breath, stifled a cough and held it, nocked an arrow, drew the string, in one movement poked the limb of the bow behind the shutters and flicked them open, stood, leaned out and pushed the air slow through his pursed lips.

  Men crouched in the shadows against the foot of the back wall. One looked up, eyes wide in his round face, and Savian shot him in his open mouth no more than a stride or two away. He nocked another shaft. An arrow whipped past him, flicking his hair. He drew the bow, calm and steady. He could see light gleam on the archer’s arrowhead as he did the same. Shot him in the chest. Drew another arrow. Saw a man running past. Shot him too and saw him crumple in the snow. Crunching of footsteps as the last of them ran away. Savian took a bead and shot him in the back, and he crawled and whimpered and coughed, and Savian nocked an arrow and shot him a second time, elbowed the shutters closed and breathed in again.

  He was caught with a coughing fit and stood shuddering against the wall. He heard a roar downstairs, clash of steel, swearing, crashing, ripping, fighting.

  He stumbled to the front window again, nocking an arrow, saw two men rushing for the door, shot one in the face and his legs went from under him. The other skidded to a stop, scuttled off sideways. Arrows were frozen in the firelight, clattering against the front of the building as Savian twisted away.

  A crack and the shutters in the back window swung open showing a square of night sky. Savian saw a hand on the sill, let fall the bow and snatched up the mace as he went, swinging it low and fast to miss the rafters and smashing it into a helmeted head as it showed itself, knocking someone tumbling out into the night.

  He spun, black shape in the window as a man slipped into the attic, knife in his teeth. Savian lunged at him but the haft of the mace glanced off his shoulder and they grappled and struggled, growling at each other. Savian felt a burning in his gut, fell back against the wall with the man on top of him, reached for the knife at his belt. He saw one half of the mercenary’s snarling face lit by firelight and Savian stabbed at it, ripped it open, black pulp hanging from his head as he stumbled, thrashing blindly around the attic. Savian clawed his way up and fell on him, dragged him down and stabbed and coughed and stabbed until he stopped moving, knelt on top of him, each cough ripping at the wound in his guts.

  A bubbling scream had started downstairs, and Savian heard someone squealing, ‘No! No! No!’ slobbering, desperate, and he heard Lamb growl, ‘Yes, you fucker!’ Two heavy thuds, then a long silence.

  Lamb gave a kind of groan downstairs, another crash like he was kicking something over.

  ‘You all right?’ he called, his own voice sounding tight and strange.

  ‘Still breathing!’ came Lamb’s, even stranger. ‘You?’

  ‘Picked up a scratch.’ Savian peeled his palm away from his tattooed stomach, blood there gleaming black. Lot of blood.

  He wished he could talk to Corlin one last time. Tell her all those things you think but never say because they’re hard to say and there’ll be time later. How proud he was of what she’d become. How proud her mother would’ve been. To carry on the fight. He winced. Or maybe to give up the fight, because you only get one life and do you want to look back on it
and see just blood on your hands?

  But it was too late to tell her anything. He’d picked his path and here was where it ended. Hadn’t been too poor a showing, all told. Some good and some bad, some pride and some shame, like most men. He crawled coughing to the front, took up one of the flatbows and started wrestling at the string with sticky hands. Damn hands. Didn’t have the strength they used to.

  He stood up beside the window, men still moving down there, and the shack he threw the lamp on sending up a roaring blaze now, and he bellowed out into the night. ‘That the best you can do?’

  ‘Sadly for you,’ came Cosca’s voice. ‘No!’

  Something sparked and fizzled in the darkness, and there was a flash like daylight.

  It was a noise like to the voice of God, as the scriptures say, which levelled the city of the presumptuous Nemai with but a whisper. Jubair peeled his hands from his ears, all things still ringing even so, and squinted towards the fort as the choking smoke began to clear.

  Much violence had been done to the building. There were holes finger-sized, and fist-sized, and head-sized rent through the walls of the bottom floor. Half of the top floor had departed the world, splintered planks smouldering in places, three split beams still clinging together at one corner as a reminder of the shape of what had been. There was a creaking and half the roof fell in, broken shingles clattering to the ground below.

  ‘Impressive,’ said Brachio.

  ‘The lightning harnessed,’ murmured Jubair, frowning at the pipe of brass. It had nearly leaped from its carriage with the force of the blast and now sat skewed upon it, smoke still issuing gently from its blackened mouth. ‘Such a power should belong only to God.’

  He felt Cosca’s hand upon his shoulder. ‘And yet He lends it to us to do His work. Take some men in there and find those two old bastards.’

  ‘I want Conthus alive!’ snapped Lorsen.

  ‘If possible.’ The Old Man leaned close to whisper. ‘But dead is just as good.’

  Jubair nodded. He had come to a conclusion long years before that God sometimes spoke through the person of Nicomo Cosca. An unlikely prophet, some might say – a treacherous, lawless pink drunkard who had never uttered a word of prayer in all his long life – but from the first moment Jubair had seen him in battle, and known he had no fear, he had sensed in him some splinter of the divine. Surely he walked in God’s shadow, as the Prophet Khalul had walked naked through a rain of arrows with only his faith to protect him and emerged untouched, and so forced the Emperor of the Gurkish to honour his promise and abase himself before the Almighty.