The Great Leveller

by Joe Abercrombie

  Monza’s hands were shaking again, but that was no surprise. The danger, the fear, not knowing if she was going to live out the next moment. Her brother murdered, herself broken, everything she’d worked for gone. The pain, the withering need for husk, trusting no one, day after day, week after week. Then there was all the death she’d been the cause of, in Westport, in Sipani, gathering on her shoulders like a great weight of lead.

  The last few months had been enough to make anyone’s hands shake. But maybe it was just watching Shivers have his eye burned out and thinking she’d be next.

  She looked nervously towards the door between her room and his. He’d be awake soon. Screaming again, which was bad enough, or silent, which was worse. Kneeling there, looking at her with his one eye. That accusing look. She knew she should have been grateful, should have cared for him the way she used to for her brother. But a growing part of her just wanted to kick him and not stop. Maybe when Benna died everything warm, or decent, or human in her had been left rotting on the mountainside with his corpse.

  She pulled her glove off and stared at the thing inside. At the thin pink scars where the shattered bones had been put back together. The deep red line where Gobba’s wire had cut into her. She curled the fingers into a fist, or something close, except the little one, still pointing off like a signpost to nowhere. It didn’t hurt as badly as it used to, but more than enough to bring a grimace to her face, and the pain cut through the fear, crushed the doubts.

  ‘Revenge,’ she whispered. Kill Ganmark, that was all that mattered now. His soft, sad face, his weak, watery eyes. Calmly stabbing Benna through the stomach. Rolling his corpse off the terrace. That’s that. She squeezed her fist tighter, bared her teeth at it.

  ‘Revenge.’ For Benna and for herself. She was the Butcher of Caprile, merciless, fearless. She was the Snake of Talins, deadly as the viper and no more regretful. Kill Ganmark, and then . . .

  ‘Whoever’s next.’ And her hand was steady.

  Running footsteps slapped hard along the hallway outside and away. She heard someone shout in the distance, couldn’t make out the words, but couldn’t miss the edge of fear in the voice. She crossed to the window and pulled it open. Her room, or her cell, was high up on the north face of the palace. A stone bridge spanned the Visser upstream, tiny dots moving fast across it. Even from this distance she could tell people running for their lives.

  A good general gets to know the smell of panic, and suddenly it was reeking. Orso’s men must have finally carried the walls. The sack of Visserine had begun. Ganmark would be on his way to the palace, even now, to take possession of Duke Salier’s renowned collection.

  The door creaked open and Monza spun about. Captain Langrier stood in the doorway in a Talinese uniform, a bulging sack in one hand. She had a sword at one hip and a long dagger at the other. Monza had nothing of the kind, and she found herself acutely aware of the fact. She stood, hands by her sides, trying to look as if every muscle wasn’t ready to fight. And die, more than likely.

  Langrier moved slowly into the room. ‘So you really are Murcatto, eh?’

  ‘I’m Murcatto.’

  ‘Sweet Pines? Musselia? The High Bank? You won all those battles?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You ordered all those folk killed at Caprile?’

  ‘What the fuck do you want?’

  ‘Duke Salier says he’s decided to do it your way.’ Langrier dumped the sack on the floor and it sagged open. Metal gleamed inside. The Talinese armour Friendly had stolen out near the breach. ‘Best put this on. Don’t know how long we’ll have before your friend Ganmark gets here.’

  Alive, then. For now. Monza dragged a lieutenant’s jacket from the sack and pulled it on over her shirt, started to button it up. Langrier watched her for a minute, then started talking.

  ‘I just wanted to say . . . while there’s a chance. Well. That I always admired you, I guess.’

  Monza stared at her. ‘What?’

  ‘A woman. A soldier. Getting where you’ve been. Doing what you’ve done. You might’ve stood on the other side from us, but you always were something of a hero to—’

  ‘You think I care a shit?’ Monza didn’t know which sickened her more – being called a hero or who was saying it.

  ‘Can’t blame me for not believing you. Woman with your reputation, thought you’d be harder in a fix like that—’

  ‘You ever watched someone have their eye burned out of their head and thought you’d be next?’

  Langrier worked her mouth. ‘Can’t say I’ve sat on that side of the issue.’

  ‘You should try it, see how fucking hard you end up.’ Monza pulled some stolen boots on, not so bad a fit.

  ‘Here.’ Langrier was holding Benna’s ring out to her, big stone gleaming the colour of blood. ‘Doesn’t suit me anyway.’

  Monza snatched it from her hand, twisted it onto her finger. ‘What? Give me back what you stole in the first place and think that makes us even?’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry about your man’s eye and the rest, but it isn’t about you, understand? Someone’s a threat to my city, I have to find out how. I don’t like it, it’s just what has to be done. Don’t pretend you haven’t done worse. I don’t expect we’ll ever share any jokes. But for now, while we’ve got this task to be about, we’ll need to put it behind us.’

  Monza kept her silence as she dressed. It was true enough. She’d done worse, alright. Watched it done, anyway. Let it be done, which was no better. She buckled on the breastplate, must’ve come from some lean young officer and fitted her well enough, pulled the last strap through. ‘I need something to kill Ganmark with.’

  ‘Once we get to the garden you can have a blade, not—’

  Monza saw a hand close around the grip of Langrier’s dagger. She started to turn, surprised. ‘Wha—’ The point slid out of the front of her neck. Shivers’ face loomed up beside hers, white and wasted, bandages bound tight over one whole side of it, a pale stain through the cloth where his eye used to be. His left arm slid around Langrier’s chest from behind and drew her tight against him. Tight as a lover.

  ‘It ain’t about you, understand?’ He was almost kissing at her ear as blood began to run from the point of the knife and down her neck in a thick black line. ‘You take my eye, I’ve got to take your life.’ She opened her mouth, and her tongue flopped out, and blood started to trickle from the tip of it and down her chin. ‘I don’t like it.’ Her face turned purple, eyes rolling up. ‘Just what has to be done.’ Her legs kicked, her boot heels clattering against the boards as he lifted her up in the air. ‘Sorry about your neck.’ The blade ripped sideways and opened her throat up wide, black blood showering out across the bedclothes, spraying up the wall in an arc of red spots.

  Shivers let her drop and she crumpled, sprawling face down as if her bones had turned to mud, another gout of blood spurting sideways. Her boots moved, toes scraping. One set of nails scratched at the floor. Shivers took a long breath in through his nose, then he blew it out, and he looked up at Monza, and he smiled. A friendly little grin, as if they’d shared some private joke that Langrier just hadn’t got.

  ‘By the dead but I feel better for that. Ganmark’s in the city, did she say?’

  ‘Uh.’ Monza couldn’t speak. Her skin was flushed and burning.

  ‘Then I reckon we got work ahead of us.’ Shivers didn’t seem to notice the rapidly spreading slick of blood creep between his toes, around the sides of his big bare feet. He dragged the sack up and peered inside. ‘Armour in here, then? Guess I’d better get dressed, eh, Chief? Hate to arrive at a party in the wrong clothes.’

  The garden at the centre of Salier’s gallery showed no signs of imminent doom. Water trickled, leaves rustled, a bee or two floated lazily from one flower to another. White blossom occasionally filtered down from the cherry trees and dusted the well-shaved lawns.

  Cosca sat cross-legged and worked the edge of his sword with a whetstone, metal softly rin
ging. Morveer’s flask pressed into his thigh, but he felt no need for it. Death was at the doorstep, and so he was at peace. His blissful moment before the storm. He tipped his head back, eyes closed, sun warm on his face, and wondered why he could never feel this way unless the world was burning down around him.

  Calming breezes washed through the shadowy colonnades, through doorways into hallways lined with paintings. Through one open window Friendly could be seen, in the armour of a Talinese guardsman, counting every soldier in Nasurin’s colossal painting of the Second Battle of Oprile. Cosca grinned. He tried always to be forgiving of other men’s foibles. He had enough of his own, after all.

  Perhaps a half-dozen of Salier’s guards had remained, disguised as soldiers from Duke Orso’s army. Men loyal enough to die beside their master at the last. He snorted as he ran the whetstone once more down the edge of his sword. Loyalty had always sat with honour, discipline and self-restraint on his list of incomprehensible virtues.

  ‘Why so happy?’ Day sat beside him on the grass, a flatbow across her knees, chewing at her lip. The uniform she wore must have come from some dead drummer-boy, it fit her well. Very well. Cosca wondered if it was wrong of him to find something peculiarly alluring about a pretty girl in a man’s clothes. He wondered furthermore if she might be persuaded to give a comrade-in-arms . . . a little help sharpening his weapon before the fighting started? He cleared his throat. Of course not. But a man could dream.

  ‘Perhaps something is wrong in my head.’ He rubbed a blemish from the steel with his thumb. ‘Getting out of bed.’ Metal rang. ‘A day of honest work.’ Whetstone scraped. ‘Peace. Normality. Sobriety.’ He held the sword up to the light and watched the metal gleam. ‘These are the things that terrify me. Danger, by contrast, has long been my only relief. Eat something. You’ll need your strength.’

  ‘I’ve no appetite,’ she said glumly. ‘I’ve never faced certain death before.’

  ‘Oh, come, come, don’t say such a thing.’ He stood, brushed the blossom from the captain’s insignia on the sleeves of his stolen uniform. ‘If there is one thing I have learned in all my many last stands, it is that death is never certain, only . . . extremely likely.’

  ‘Truly inspirational words.’

  ‘I try. Indeed I do.’ Cosca slapped his sword into its sheath, picked up Monza’s Calvez and ambled away towards the statue of The Warrior. His Excellency Duke Salier stood in its muscular shadow, arrayed for a noble death in a spotless white uniform festooned with gold braid.

  ‘How did it end like this?’ he was musing. The very same question Cosca had so often asked himself, while sucking the last drop from one cheap bottle or another. Waking baffled in one unfamiliar doorway, or another. Carrying out one hateful, poorly paid act of violence. Or another. ‘How did it end . . . like this?’

  ‘You underestimated Orso’s venomous ambition and Murcatto’s ruthless competence. Don’t feel too badly, though, we’ve all done it.’

  Salier’s eyes rolled sideways. ‘The question was intended to be rhetorical. But you are right, of course. It seems I have been guilty of arrogance, and the penalty will be harsh. No less than everything. But who could have expected a young woman would win one unlikely victory over us after another? How I laughed when you made her your second, Cosca. How we all laughed when Orso gave her command. We were already planning our triumphs, dividing his lands between us. Our chuckles are become sobs now, eh?’

  ‘I find chuckles have a habit of doing so.’

  ‘I suppose that makes her a very great soldier and me a very poor one. But then I never aspired to be a soldier, and would have been perfectly happy as merely a grand duke.’

  ‘Now you are nothing, instead, and so am I. Such is life.’

  ‘Time for one last performance, though.’

  ‘For both of us.’

  The duke grinned back. ‘A pair of dying swans, eh, Cosca?’

  ‘A brace of old turkeys, maybe. Why aren’t you running, your Excellency?’

  ‘I must confess I am wondering myself. Pride, I think. I have spent my life as the Grand Duke of Visserine, and insist on dying the same way. I refuse to be simply fat Master Salier, once of importance.’

  ‘Pride, eh? Can’t say I ever had much of the stuff.’

  ‘Then why aren’t you running, Cosca?’

  ‘I suppose . . .’ Why was he not running? Old Master Cosca, once of importance, who always kept his last thought for his own skin? Foolish love? Mad bravery? Old debts to pay? Or simply so that merciful death could spare him from further shame? ‘But look!’ He pointed to the gate. ‘Only think of her and she appears.’

  She wore a Talinese uniform, hair gathered up under a helmet, jaw set hard. Just like a serious young officer, clean-shaven this morning and keen to get stuck into the manly business of war. If Cosca had not known, he swore he would never have guessed. A tiny something in the way she walked, perhaps? In the set of her hips, the length of her neck? Again, the women in men’s clothes. Did they have to torture him so?

  ‘Monza!’ he called. ‘I was worried you might not make it!’

  ‘And leave you to die gloriously alone?’ Shivers came behind her wearing breastplate, greaves and helmet stolen from a big corpse out near the breach. Bandages stared accusingly from one blind eyehole. ‘From what I can hear, they’re at the palace gate already.’

  ‘So soon?’ Salier’s tongue darted over his plump lips. ‘Where is Captain Langrier?’

  ‘She ran. Seems glory didn’t appeal.’

  ‘Is there no loyalty left in Styria?’

  ‘I never noticed any before.’ Cosca tossed the Calvez over in its scabbard and Monza snatched it smartly from the air. ‘Unless you count each man for himself. Is there any plan, besides wait for Ganmark to come calling?’

  ‘Day!’ She pointed up to the narrower windows on the floor above. ‘I want you up there. Drop the portcullis once we’ve had a try at Ganmark. Or once he’s had a try at us.’

  The girl looked greatly relieved to be put at least temporarily out of harm’s way, though Cosca feared it would be no more than temporary. ‘Once the trap’s sprung. Alright.’ She hurried off towards one of the doorways.

  ‘We wait here. When Ganmark arrives we tell him we’ve captured Grand Duke Salier. We bring your Excellency close, and then . . . you realise we may well all die today?’

  The duke smiled weakly, jowls trembling. ‘I am not a fighter, General Murcatto, but nor am I a coward. If I am to die, I might as well spit from my grave.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Monza.

  ‘Oh, nor me,’ Cosca threw in. ‘Though a grave’s a grave, spit or no. You are quite sure he’ll come?’

  ‘He’ll come.’

  ‘And when he does?’

  ‘Kill,’ grunted Shivers. Someone had given him a shield and a heavy studded axe with a long pick on the reverse. Now he took a brutal-looking practice swipe with it.

  Monza’s neck shifted as she swallowed. ‘I guess we just wait and see.’

  ‘Ah, wait and see.’ Cosca beamed. ‘My kind of plan.’

  A crash came from somewhere in the palace, distant shouting, maybe even the faint clash and clatter of steel. Monza worked her left hand nervously around the hilt of the Calvez, hanging drawn beside her leg.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Salier’s soft face was pale as butter beside her. His guards, scattered about the garden fingering their borrowed weapons, looked hardly more enthusiastic. But that was the thing about facing death, as Benna had often pointed out. The closer it gets, the worse an idea it seems. Shivers didn’t look like he had any doubts. Hot iron had burned them out of him, maybe. Cosca neither, his happy grin widening with each moment. Friendly sat cross-legged, rolling his dice across the cobbles.

  He looked up at her, face blank as ever. ‘Five and four.’

  ‘That a good thing?’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s nine.’ Monza raised her brows. A strange group she’d gathered, surely, but when you have
a half-mad plan you need men at least half-mad to see it through.

  Sane ones might be tempted to look for a better idea.

  Another crash, and a thin scream, closer this time. Ganmark’s soldiers, working their way through the palace towards the garden at its centre. Friendly threw his dice once more, then gathered them up and stood, sword in hand. Monza tried to stay still, eyes fixed on the open doorway ahead, the hall lined with paintings beyond it, beyond that the archway that led into the rest of the palace. The only way in.

  A helmeted head peered round the side of the arch. An armoured body followed. A Talinese sergeant, sword and shield raised and ready. Monza watched him creep carefully under the portcullis, across the marble tiles. He stepped cautiously out into the sunlight, frowning about at them.

  ‘Sergeant,’ said Cosca brightly.

  ‘Captain.’ The man straightened up, letting his sword point drop. More men followed him. Well-armed Talinese soldiers, watchful and bearded veterans tramping into the gallery with weapons at the ready. They looked surprised, at first, to see their own side already in the garden, but not unhappy. ‘That him?’ asked the sergeant, pointing to Salier.

  ‘This is him,’ said Cosca, grinning back.

  ‘Well, well. Fat fucker, ain’t he?’

  ‘That he is.’

  More soldiers were coming through the entrance now, and behind them a knot of staff officers in pristine uniforms, with fine swords but no armour. Striding at their head with an air of unchallengeable authority came a man with a soft face and sad, watery eyes.

  Ganmark.

  Monza might have felt some grim satisfaction that she’d predicted his actions so easily, but the swell of hatred at the sight of him crowded it away. He had a long sword at his left hip, a shorter one at his right. Long and short steels, in the Union style.

  ‘Secure the gallery!’ he called in his clipped accent as he marched out into the garden. ‘Above all, ensure no harm comes to the paintings!’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ Boots clattered as men moved to follow his orders. Lots of men. Monza watched them, jaw set aching hard. Too many, maybe, but there was no use weeping about it now. Killing Ganmark was all that mattered.