The Great Leveller

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘Leave me and run,’ said Shy.

  ‘Tempting . . .’ He cast about for another way up. ‘But I already tried that and it didn’t work out too well.’ He picked at some roots, brought down some gravel, the slope as unreliable as he’d been down the years. ‘I’m trying not to make the same mistakes over and over these days . . .’

  ‘How’s that going for you?’ she grunted.

  ‘Right now it could be better.’ The lip was only a couple of strides above his hand but it might as well have been a mile distant, there was no—

  ‘Hey, hey, Temple!’

  A single horseman came up the road at an easy walk, between the two ruts the wagon-wheels had left. Everyone else was thinner than when they left Starikland, but somehow not Brachio. He stopped not far away, leaning his bulk over his saddle horn and speaking in Styrian. ‘That was quite a chase. Didn’t think you had it in you.’

  ‘Captain Brachio! What a pleasure!’ Temple twisted around to put himself between Shy and the mercenary. A pathetic effort at gallantry, he was almost embarrassed to have made it. He felt her take his hand, though, fingers sticky with blood, and was grateful, even if it was just to keep her balance.

  Some more earth slid down behind and, looking around, he saw another rider above them, loaded flatbow loose in his hands. Temple realised his knees were shaking. God, he wished he was a brave man. If only for these last few moments.

  Brachio nudged his horse lazily forward. ‘I told the Old Man you couldn’t be trusted, but he always had a blind spot for you.’

  ‘Well, good lawyers are hard to find.’ Temple stared around as though the means of their salvation might suddenly present themselves. They did not. He struggled to put some confidence in his creaking voice. ‘Take us back to Cosca and maybe I can tidy this up—’

  ‘Not this time.’ Brachio drew his heavy sword, steel scraping, and Shy’s fingers tightened around Temple’s. She might not have understood the words but a naked blade never needs translating. ‘Cosca’s on his way, and I think he’ll want everything tidy when he gets here. That means you dead, in case you were wondering.’

  ‘Yes, I’d gathered,’ croaked Temple. ‘When you drew the sword. But thanks for the explanation.’

  ‘Least I could do. I like you, Temple. I always have. You’re easy to like.’

  ‘But you’re going to kill me anyway.’

  ‘You say it like there’s a choice.’

  ‘I blame myself. As always. Just . . .’ Temple licked his lips, and twisted his hand free of Shy’s, and looked Brachio in his tired eyes, and tried to conjure up that earnestness. ‘Maybe you could let the girl go? You could do that.’

  Brachio frowned at Shy for a moment, who’d sunk back against the bank and was sitting silent. ‘I’d like to. Believe it or not, I get no pleasure from killing women.’

  ‘Of course not. You wouldn’t want to take a thing like that back to your daughters.’ Brachio worked his shoulders uncomfortably, knives shifting across his belly, and Temple felt a crack there that he could work at. He dropped on his knees in the snow, and he clasped his hands, and he sent up a silent prayer. Not for him, but for Shy. She actually deserved saving. ‘It was all my idea. All me. I talked her into it. You know I’m awful that way, and she’s gullible as a child, poor thing. Let her go. You’ll feel better about it in the long run. Let her go. I’m begging you.’

  Brachio raised his brows. ‘That is quite moving, in fact. I was expecting you to blame her for the whole thing.’

  ‘I’m somewhat moved,’ agreed the man with the flatbow.

  ‘We’re none of us monsters.’ And Brachio reached up and dabbed some tears from his leaky eye. The other one stayed dry, however. ‘But she tried to rob us, whoever’s idea it was, and the trouble her father caused . . . No. Cosca wouldn’t understand. And it isn’t as if you’ll be repaying the favour, is it?’

  ‘No,’ muttered Temple. ‘No, I wouldn’t have thought so.’ He floundered for something to say that might at least delay the inevitable. That might borrow him a few more moments. Just an extra breath. Strange. It was hardly as though he was enjoying himself all that much. ‘Would it help if I said I was very drunk?’

  Brachio shook his head. ‘We all were.’

  ‘Shitty childhood?’

  ‘Mummy used to leave me in a cupboard.’

  ‘Shitty adulthood?’

  ‘Whose isn’t?’ Brachio nudged his horse forward again, its great shadow falling over Temple. ‘Stand up, then, eh? I’d rather get it done quick.’ He worked the shoulder of his sword-arm. ‘Neither one of us wants me hacking away at you.’

  Temple looked back at Shy, sitting there bloody and exhausted. ‘What did he say?’ she asked.

  He gave a tired shrug. She gave a tired nod. It looked like even she had run out of fight. He blinked up at the sky as he got to his feet. An unremarkable, greyish sky. If there was a God, He was a humourless banker. A bloodless pedant, crossing off His debts in some cosmic ledger. All take their loan and, in the end, all must repay.

  ‘Nothing personal,’ said Brachio.

  Temple closed his eyes, the sun shining pink through the lids. ‘Hard not to take it personally.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  There was a rattling sound. Temple winced. He’d always dreamed of facing death with some dignity, the way Kahdia had. But dignity requires practice and Temple had none. He couldn’t stop himself cringing. He wondered how much it would hurt, having your head cut off. Did you feel it? He heard a couple of clicks, and a grunt, and he cringed even more. How could you not feel it? Brachio’s horse snuffled, pawing the ground, then the metallic clatter of a sword falling.

  Temple prised one eye open. Brachio was looking down, surprised. There was an arrow through his neck and two others in his chest. He opened his mouth and blathered blood down his shirt, then slowly tipped from the saddle and crumpled face down on the ground next to Temple’s boots, one foot still tangled in its stirrup.

  Temple looked around. The man with the flatbow had vanished. His mount stood peacefully riderless at the top of the canyon wall.

  ‘Here’s a surprise,’ croaked Shy.

  A horse was approaching. In the saddle, hands crossed over the horn and the breeze stirring her short hair about her sharp-boned frown, sat Corlin. ‘A pleasant one, I hope.’

  ‘Little late.’ Shy took hold of Temple’s limp hand and used it to drag herself wincing up. ‘But I guess we’ll live with the timing.’

  Horses appeared at the valley sides, and riders on the horses, perhaps three dozen of them, all well armed and some armoured. There were men and women, old and young, some faces Temple recognised from Crease, others strange to him. Three or four held half-drawn bows. They weren’t pointed right at Temple. But they weren’t pointed far away either. Some had forearms showing, and on the forearms were tattoos. Doom to the Union. Death to the King. Rise up!

  ‘Rebels,’ whispered Temple.

  ‘You always did have a talent for stating the obvious.’ Corlin slid from the saddle, kicked Brachio’s boot from his stirrup and rolled his corpse over with her foot, leaving him goggling at the sky, fat face caked with dirt. ‘That arm all right?’

  Shy pulled her ripped sleeve back with her teeth to show a long cut, still seeping, blood streaked down to her fingertips. The sight of it made Temple’s knees weak. Or even weaker. It was a surprise he was still standing, all in all. ‘Bit sore,’ she said.

  Corlin pulled a roll of bandage from her pocket. ‘Feels as if we’ve been here before, doesn’t it?’ She turned her blue, blue eyes on Temple as she started to unroll it around Shy’s arm. She never seemed to blink. Temple would have found that unnerving if he’d had any nerves left. ‘Where’s my uncle?’

  ‘In Beacon,’ he croaked, as the rebels dismounted and began to lead their horses down the steep sides of the canyon, scattering dirt.

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Shy. ‘They found out he was Conthus.’

&n
bsp; ‘That so?’ Corlin took Temple’s limp hand and clamped it around Shy’s wrist. ‘Hold that.’ She started to unbutton her coat.

  ‘Lamb went back for him but they ran into some trouble. That’s when we took the wagon. Sweet stampeded the horses, to give them some . . . time . . .’

  Corlin shrugged off her coat and tossed it over her horse’s neck, her sinewy arms blue with letters, words, slogans from shoulder to wrist.

  ‘I’m Conthus,’ she said, pulling a knife from her belt.

  There was a pause.

  ‘Oh,’ said Temple.

  ‘Ah,’ said Shy.

  Corlin, or Conthus, cut the bandage with one quick movement then pushed a pin through it. Her narrowed eyes moved towards the wreckage of the wagon, calmly taking in the gold twinkling in the snow. ‘Looks like you came into some money.’

  Temple cleared his throat. ‘Little bit. Lawyers’ fees have been shooting up lately—’

  ‘We could use a couple of horses.’ Shy twisted her bandaged forearm free of Temple’s grip and worked the fingers. ‘Nicomo Cosca won’t be far behind us.’

  ‘You just can’t stay clear of trouble, can you?’ Corlin patted Brachio’s mount on the neck. ‘We have two spare, as it goes. But it’ll cost.’

  ‘Don’t suppose you feel like haggling?’

  ‘With you? I don’t think so. Let’s just call it a generous contribution to the liberation of Starikland.’ She jerked her head at her fellows and they hurried forward, sacks and saddlebags at the ready. One big lad nearly knocked Temple over with a shoulder in his hurry. Some started rooting on hands and knees, scooping up the gold scattered about the wreck. Others wriggled inside and soon could be heard smashing the gratings and breaking open the boxes to steal the dragon’s hoard for a third time that week.

  A few moments ago, Temple had been rich beyond the hopes of avarice, but since a few moments later he had been on the point of losing his head, it felt rude to complain about this outcome.

  ‘A noble cause,’ he whispered. ‘Do help yourselves.’

  Times Change

  The Mayor stood in her accustomed position at her balcony, hands at their familiar, polished places on the rail, and watched Curnsbick’s men hard at work on his new manufactory. The huge frame already towered over the amphitheatre, the new over the ancient, cobwebbed with scaffolding on the site Papa Ring’s Whitehouse had once occupied. That had been a repugnant building in every sense. A building towards which for years she had directed all her hatred, cunning and fury. And how she missed it.

  Never mind Mayor, she had been Queen of the Far Country when Ring stopped swinging, but no sooner had she clutched the garland of triumph than it had withered to wretched stalks. The violence and the fires drove off half the population. Whispers mounted that the gold was running dry. Then word came of a strike to the south near Hope and suddenly people were pouring out of Crease by the hundred. With no one left to fight she had dismissed most of her men. Disgruntled, they had dabbled in arson on their way out of town and burned down a good part of what remained. Even so there were buildings empty, and no rents coming in. Lots in town and claims in the hills that men had killed for lost all value overnight. The gaming halls and the bawdy houses were mostly boarded up, only a trickle of passing custom below her in the Church of Dice, where once she had coined money as though she ran a mint.

  Crease was her sole dominion. And it was next to worthless.

  Sometimes the Mayor felt she had spent her life building things, with painstaking sweat and blood and effort, only to watch them destroyed. Through her own hubris, and others’ vindictiveness, and the fickle thrashings of that blind thug fate. Fleeing one debacle after another. Abandoning even her name, in the end. Even now, she always kept a bag packed. She drained her glass and poured herself another.

  That’s what courage is. Taking your disappointments and your failures, your guilt and your shame, all the wounds received and inflicted, and sinking them in the past. Starting again. Damning yesterday and facing tomorrow with your head held high. Times change. It’s those that see it coming, and plan for it, and change themselves to suit that prosper. And so she had struck her deal with Curnsbick, and split her hard-won little empire again without so much as a harsh word spoken.

  By that time his small manufactory, which had looked pretty damn big when he converted it from an empty brothel, was already belching black smoke from its two tin chimneys, then from three brick ones, which smogged the whole valley on a still day and chased the few whores still plying a threadbare trade off their balconies and back indoors.

  By the looks of it, his new manufactory would have chimneys twice the size. The biggest building within a hundred miles. She hardly even knew what the place was for, except that it had something to do with coal. The hills had hidden little gold in the end but they were surrendering the black stuff in prodigious quantities. As the shadows of the manufactory lengthened, the Mayor had started to wonder whether she might have been better off with Ring across the street. Him, at least, she had understood. But Ring was gone, and the world they had fought over was gone with him, drifted away like smoke on the breeze. Curnsbick was bringing men in to build, and dig, and stoke his furnaces. Cleaner, calmer, more sober men than Crease was used to, but they still needed to be entertained.

  ‘Times change, eh?’ She held her drink up in salute to no one. To Papa Ring, maybe. Or to herself, when she still had a name. She caught something through the distorting window of her glass, and lowered it. Two riders were coming down the main street, looking as if they’d been going hard, one cradling an injured arm. It was that girl Shy South. Her and Temple, the lawyer.

  The Mayor frowned. After twenty years dodging catastrophes she could smell danger at a thousand paces, and her nose was tickling something fierce as those two riders reined in at her front door. Temple slithered from his horse, fell in the mud, stumbled up and helped down Shy, who was limping badly.

  The Mayor drained her glass and sucked the liquor from her teeth. As she crossed her rooms, buttoning her collar tight, she glanced at the cupboard where she kept that packed bag, wondering if today would be its day.

  Some people are trouble. Nicomo Cosca was one. Lamb was another. Then there are people who, without being troublesome in themselves, always manage to let trouble in when they open your door. Temple, she had always suspected, was one of those. Looking at him now as she swept down the stairs, leaning against the counter in her sadly deserted gaming hall, she was sure of it. His clothes were torn and bloodied and caked in dust, his expression wild, his chest heaving.

  ‘You look as if you’ve come in a hurry,’ she said.

  He glanced up, the slightest trace of guilt in his eye. ‘You might say that.’

  ‘And ran into some trouble on the way.’

  ‘You might say that, too. Might I ask you for a drink?’

  ‘Can you pay for it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m no charity. What are you doing here?’

  He took a moment to prepare and then produced, like a magician’s trick, an expression of intense earnestness. It put her instantly on her guard. ‘I have nowhere else to go.’

  ‘Are you sure you’ve tried hard enough?’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Where’s Cosca?’

  He swallowed. ‘Funny you should ask.’

  ‘I’m not laughing.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So it’s not funny?’

  ‘No.’ He visibly abandoned earnestness and settled for simple fear. ‘I would guess he’s no more than a few hours behind us.’

  ‘He’s coming here?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘With all his men?’

  ‘Those that remain.’

  ‘Which is how many?’

  ‘Some died in the mountains, a lot deserted—’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘I would guess at least a hundred still.’

  The Mayor’s nails dug at her palms as she clenched her fists. ‘And the Inquisitor
?’

  ‘Very much present, as far as I am aware.’

  ‘What do they want?’

  ‘The Inquisitor wants to torture his way to a brighter tomorrow.’

  ‘And Cosca?’

  ‘Cosca wants a fortune in ancient gold that he stole from the Dragon People, and that . . .’ Temple picked nervously at his frayed collar. ‘I stole from him.’

  ‘And where is this twice-stolen fortune now?’

  Temple grimaced. ‘Stolen. The woman Corlin took it. She turns out to be the rebel leader Conthus. It’s been a day of surprises,’ he finished, lamely.

  ‘So . . . it . . . appears,’ whispered the Mayor. ‘Where is Corlin?’

  Temple gave that helpless shrug of which he was so fond. ‘In the wind.’

  The Mayor was less fond of that shrug. ‘I have not the men to fight them,’ she said. ‘I have not the money to pay them off. I have no ancient hoard for Nicomo bloody Cosca and for damn sure no brighter tomorrow for Inquisitor fucking Lorsen! Is there any chance your head will pacify them?’

  Temple swallowed. ‘I fear not.’

  ‘So do I. But in the absence of a better suggestion I may have to make the offer.’

  ‘As it happens . . .’ Temple licked his lips. ‘I have a suggestion.’

  The Mayor took a fistful of Temple’s shirt and dragged him close. ‘Is it a good one? Is it the best suggestion I ever heard?’

  ‘I profoundly doubt it, but, circumstances being what they are . . . do you have that treaty?’

  ‘I’m tired,’ said Corporal Bright, glancing unimpressed at the piled-up hovels of Crease.

  ‘Aye,’ grunted Old Cog in reply. He kept having to force his eyelids up, they were that heavy from last night’s revelry, then the terror o’ the stampede, then a healthy trek on foot and a hard ride to follow.

  ‘And dirty,’ said Bright.

  ‘Aye.’ The smoke of last night’s fires, and the rolling through the brush running from stomping horses, then the steady showering of dirt from the hooves of the galloping mounts in front.