The Great Leveller

by Joe Abercrombie

  He turned, clumsily raising the blade. She jerked the reins and sent her mount sideways so he hacked nothing but air. She stood in the stirrups, stabbed down with the spear, caught him in the shoulder and tore the armour from it, ripped a gash in his cloak and knocked him to his knees, sword left stuck in the earth. He moaned through gritted teeth, blood trickling down his breastplate, struggling to get up again. She pulled one boot from the stirrup, brought her horse closer and kicked him in the face, snapped his head back and sent him rolling down the bank and into the stream.

  She tossed the spear point-first into the soil, swung her leg over the saddle and slid down. She stood a moment, watching Carpi floundering, shaking the life back into her stiff legs. Then she snatched the spear up, took a long, slow breath and started picking her way down the bank to the water’s edge.

  Not far downstream the mill-house stood, waterwheel clattering as it slowly turned. The far bank had been walled up with rough stone, all bearded with moss. Carpi was fumbling at it, cursing, trying to drag himself up onto the far side. But weighed down with armour, his cloak heavy with water, a flatbow bolt in one shoulder and a spear wound in the other, he had less than no chance. So he waded doggedly along, up to his waist in the stream, while she shadowed him on the other bank, grinning, spear levelled.

  ‘You keep on going, Carpi, I’ll give you that. No one could call you a coward. Just an idiot. Stupid Carpi.’ She forced out a laugh. ‘I can’t believe you fell for this shit. All those years taking my orders, you should’ve known me better. Thought I’d be sitting waiting, did you, weeping over my misfortunes?’

  He edged back through the water, eyes fixed on the point of her spear, breathing hard. ‘That fucking Northman lied to me.’

  ‘Almost as if you can’t trust anyone these days, eh? You should’ve stabbed me in the heart, Faithful, instead of the guts.’

  ‘Heart?’ he sneered. ‘You don’t have one!’ He floundered through the water at her, sending up a shower of glittering spray, dagger in his fist. She thrust at him, felt the spear’s shaft jolt in her aching right hand as the point took him in the hip, twisted him round and sent him over backwards. He struggled up again, snarling through his gritted teeth. ‘I’m better’n you at least, you murdering scum!’

  ‘If you’re so much better than me, how come you’re the one in the stream and I’m the one with the spear, fucker?’ She moved the point in slow circles, shining with wet. ‘You keep on coming, Carpi, I’ll give you that. No one could call you a coward. Just a fucking liar. Traitor Carpi.’

  ‘Me a traitor?’ he dragged himself down the wall towards the slowly clattering waterwheel. ‘Me? After all those years I stuck with you? I wanted to be loyal to Cosca! I was loyal to him. I’m Faithful!’ He thumped his wet breastplate with his bloody hand. ‘That’s what I am. What I was. You stole that from me! You and your fucking brother!’

  ‘I didn’t throw Cosca down a mountain, bastard!’

  ‘You think I wanted to do it? You think I wanted any of this?’ There were tears in the old mercenary’s eyes as he struggled away from her. ‘I’m not made to lead! Ario comes to me, says Orso’s decided you can’t be trusted! That you have to go! That you’re the past and I’m the future, and the rest of the captains already agreed. So I took the easy way. What was my choice?’

  Monza wasn’t enjoying herself any more. She remembered Orso standing smiling in her tent. Cosca is the past, and I have decided that you are the future. Benna smiling beside him. It’s better like this. You deserve to lead. She remembered taking the easy way. What had been her choice? ‘You could’ve warned me, given me a chance to—’

  ‘Like you warned Cosca? Like you warned me? Fuck yourself, Murcatto! You pointed out the path and I followed, that’s all! You sow bloody seeds, you’ll reap a bloody harvest, and you sowed seeds across Styria and back! You did this to yourself! You did this to—Gah!’ He twisted backwards, fumbling weakly at his neck. That fine cloak of his had floated back and got all caught up in the gears of the waterwheel. Now the red cloth was winding tighter and tighter, dragging him hard against the slowly turning wood.

  ‘Fucking . . .’ He fumbled with his one half-good arm at the mossy slats, at the rusted bolts of the great wheel, but there was no stopping it. Monza watched, mouth half-open but no words to say, spear hanging slack from her hands as he was dragged down, down under the wheel. Down, down, into the black water. It surged and bubbled around his chest, then around his shoulders, then around his neck.

  His bulging eyes rolled up towards her. ‘I’m no worse’n you, Murcatto! Just did what I had to!’ He was fighting to keep his mouth above the frothing water. ‘I’m . . . no worse . . . than—’

  His face disappeared.

  Faithful Carpi, who’d led five charges for her. Who’d fought for her in all weathers and never let her down. Faithful Carpi, who she’d trusted with her life.

  Monza floundered down into the stream, cold water closing around her legs. She caught hold of Faithful’s clutching hand, felt his fingers grip hers. She pulled, teeth gritted, growling with the effort. She lifted the spear, rammed it into the gears hard as she could, felt the shaft jam there. She hooked her gloved hand under his armpit, up to her neck in surging water, fighting to drag him out, straining with every burning muscle. She felt him starting to come up, arm sliding out of the froth, elbow, then shoulder, she started fumbling at the buckle on his cloak with her gloved hand but she couldn’t make the fingers work. Too cold, too numb, too broken. There was a crack as the spear shaft splintered. The waterwheel started turning, slowly, slowly, metal squealing, cogs grating, and dragged Faithful back under.

  The stream kept on flowing. His hand went limp, and that was that.

  Five dead, two left.

  She let it go, breathing hard. She watched as his pale fingers slipped under the water, then she waded out of the stream and limped up onto the bank, soaked to the skin. There was no strength left in her, legs aching deep in the bones, right hand throbbing all the way up her forearm and into her shoulder, the wound on the side of her head stinging, blood pounding hard as a club behind her eyes. It was all she could manage to get one foot in the stirrup and drag herself into the saddle.

  She took a look back, felt her guts clench and double her over, spat a mouthful of scalding sick into the mud, then another. The wheel had pulled Faithful right under and now it was dragging him up on the other side, limbs dangling, head lolling, eyes wide open and his tongue hanging out, some waterweed tangled around his neck. Slowly, slowly, it hoisted him up into the air, like an executed traitor displayed as an example to the public.

  She wiped her mouth on the back of her arm, scraped her tongue over her teeth and tried to spit the bitterness away while her sore head spun. Probably she should have cut him down from there, given him some last shred of dignity. He’d been her friend, hadn’t he? No hero, maybe, but who was? A man who’d wanted to be loyal in a treacherous business, in a treacherous world. A man who’d wanted to be loyal and found it had gone out of fashion. Probably she should have dragged him up onto the bank at least, left him somewhere he could lie still. But instead she turned her horse back towards the farm.

  Dignity wasn’t much help to the living, it was none to the dead. She’d come here to kill Faithful, and he was killed.

  No point weeping about it now.

  Harvest Time

  Shivers sat on the steps of the farmhouse, trimming some loose skin from the big mass of grazes on his forearm and watching some man weep over a corpse. Friend. Brother, even. He weren’t trying to hide it, just sat slumped over, tears dripping off his chin. A moving sight, most likely, if you were that way inclined.

  And Shivers always had been. His brother had called him pig-fat when he was a boy on account of his being that soft. He’d cried at his brother’s grave and at his father’s. When his friend Dobban got stabbed through with a spear and took two days going back to the mud. The night after the fight at Dunbrec, when they buried half hi
s crew along with Threetrees. After the battle in the High Places, even, he’d gone off and found a spot on his own, let fall a full puddle of salt water. Though that might’ve been relief the fighting was done, rather than sorrow some lives were.

  He knew he’d wept all those times, and he knew why, but he couldn’t remember for the life of him how it had felt to do it. He wondered if there was anyone left in the world he’d cry for now, and he wasn’t sure he liked the answer.

  He took a swig of sour water from his flask, and watched a couple of Osprian soldiers picking over the bodies. One rolled a dead man over, some bloody guts slithering out of his split side, wrestled his boot off, saw it had a hole in the sole, tossed it away. He watched another pair, shirt-sleeves rolled up, one with a shovel over his shoulder, arguing the toss over where’d be easiest to start digging. He watched the flies, floating about in the soupy air, already gathering round the open mouths, the open eyes, the open wounds. He looked at ragged gashes and broken bone, cut-off limbs and spilled innards, blood in sticky streaks, drying spots and spatters, red-black pools across the stony yard, and felt no pleasure at a job well done, but no disgust either, no guilt and no sorrow. Just the stinging of his grazes, the uncomfortable stickiness of the heat, the tiredness in his bruised limbs and a niggling trace of hunger, since he’d missed breakfast.

  There was a man screaming inside the farmhouse, where they were dealing with the wounded. Screaming, screaming, hoarse and blubbery. But there was a bird tweeting happily from the eaves of the stable too, and Shivers found without too much effort he could concentrate on one and forget the other. He smiled and nodded along with the bird, leaned back against the door frame and stretched his leg out. Seemed a man could get used to anything, in time. And he was damned if he was going to let some screaming shift him off a good spot on the doorstep.

  He heard hoofbeats, looked round. Monza, trotting slowly down the slope, a black figure with the bright-blue sky behind her. He watched her pull her lathered horse up in the farmyard, frowning at the bodies. Her clothes were sodden wet, as if she’d been dunked in a stream. Her hair was matted with blood on one side, her pale cheek streaked with it.

  ‘Aye aye, Chief. Good to see you.’ Should’ve been true but it felt like some kind of a lie, still. He felt not much of anything either way. ‘Faithful dead, is he?’

  ‘He’s dead.’ She slid stiffly down. ‘Have any trouble getting him here?’

  ‘Not much. He wanted to bring more friends than we’d planned for, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn ’em down. You know how it is when folk hear about a party. They looked so eager, poor bastards. Have any trouble killing him?’

  She shook her head. ‘He drowned.’

  ‘Oh aye? Thought you’d have stabbed him.’ He picked her sword up and offered it to her.

  ‘I stabbed him a bit.’ She looked at the blade for a moment, then took it from his hand and sheathed it. ‘Then I let him drown.’

  Shivers shrugged. ‘Up to you. Drowning’ll do it, I reckon.’

  ‘Drowning did it.’

  ‘Five of seven, then.’

  ‘Five of seven.’ Though she didn’t look like celebrating. Hardly any more than the man crying over his dead friend. It weren’t much of a joyous occasion for anyone, even on the winning side. There’s vengeance for you.

  ‘Who’s that screaming?’

  ‘Someone. No one.’ Shivers shrugged. ‘Listen to the bird instead.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Murcatto!’ Vitari stood, arms folded, in the open doorway of the barn. ‘You’ll want to see this.’

  It was cool and dim inside, sunlight coming in through a ragged hole in the corner, through the narrow windows, throwing bright stripes across the darkened straw. One fell over Day’s corpse, yellow hair tangled across her face, body twisted awkwardly. No blood. No marks of violence at all.

  ‘Poison,’ muttered Monza.

  Vitari nodded. ‘Oh, the irony.’

  A hellish-looking mess of copper rods, glass tubes and odd-shaped bottles was stood on the table beside the body, a couple of lamps with yellow-blue flames flickering underneath, stuff bubbling away inside, trickling, dripping. Shivers liked the look of the poisoner’s equipment even less than the look of the poisoner’s corpse. Bodies he was good and familiar with, science was all unknown.

  ‘Fucking science,’ he muttered. ‘Even worse’n magic.’

  ‘Where’s Morveer?’ asked Monza.

  ‘No sign.’ The three of them looked hard at each other for a moment.

  ‘Not among the dead?’

  Shivers slowly shook his head. ‘It’s a shame, but I didn’t see him.’

  Monza took a worried step back. ‘Best not touch anything.’

  ‘You think?’ growled Vitari. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Difference of opinion between master and apprentice, by the look of things.’

  ‘Serious difference,’ muttered Shivers.

  Vitari slowly shook her spiky head. ‘That’s it. I’m finished.’

  ‘You’re what?’ asked Monza.

  ‘I’m out. In this business you have to know when to quit. It’s war now, and I try not to get involved with that. Too hard to pick the outcome.’ She nodded towards the yard where, out in the sunshine, they were piling up the corpses. ‘Visserine was a step too far for me, and this is a step further. That and I’ve no taste for being on the wrong side of Morveer. I could do without looking over my shoulder every day of my life.’

  ‘You’ll still be looking over your shoulder for Orso,’ said Monza.

  ‘Knew it when I took the job. Needed the money.’ Vitari held out her open palm. ‘Talking of which . . .’

  Monza frowned at her hand, then her face. ‘You’ve only come halfway. Halfway, half what we agreed.’

  ‘Seems fair. All the money and dead is no kind of payment. I’ll settle for half and live.’

  ‘I’d sooner keep you on. I can use you. And you won’t be safe as long as Orso’s alive—’

  ‘Then you’d best get on and kill the bastard, hadn’t you? But without me.’

  ‘Your choice.’ Monza reached inside her coat and pulled out a flat leather pouch, a little stained with water. She unfolded it twice and slid a paper from inside, damp at one corner, covered with fancy-looking script. ‘More than half what we agreed. Five thousand two hundred and twelve scales, in fact.’ Shivers frowned at it. He still couldn’t see how you could turn such a weight of silver into a scrap of paper.

  ‘Fucking banking,’ he murmured. ‘Even worse’n science.’

  Vitari took the bill from Monza’s gloved hand, gave it a quick look over. ‘Valint and Balk?’ Her eyes went even narrower than usual, which was some achievement. ‘This paper better pay. If not, there’s no place in the Circle of the World you’ll be safe from—’

  ‘It’ll pay. If there’s one thing I don’t need it’s more enemies.’

  ‘Then let’s part friends.’ Vitari folded the paper and pushed it down into her shirt. ‘Maybe we’ll work together again some time.’

  Monza stared right into her face, that way she had. ‘I’ll count the minutes.’

  Vitari backed off for a few steps, then turned towards the sunlit square of the doorway.

  ‘I fell in a river!’ Shivers called after her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘When I was young. First time I went raiding. I got drunk, and I went for a piss, and I fell in the river. Current sucked my trousers off, dumped me half a mile downstream. Time I got back to camp I’d more or less turned blue with cold, shivering so bad I near shook my fingers off.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That’s why they called me Shivers. You asked. Back in Sipani.’ And he grinned. Seemed like he could see the funny side of it, these days. Vitari stood there for a moment, a lean black outline, then slid out through the door. ‘Well, Chief, looks like it’s just you and me—’

  ‘And me!’ He snapped round, reaching for his axe. Beside him Monza crouched, sword alr
eady half-drawn, both straining into the darkness. Ishri’s grinning face hung on one side, over the edge of the hayloft. ‘And a fine afternoon to my two heroes.’ She slid down the ladder face first, as smooth as if her bandaged body had no bones in it. Up onto her feet, looking impossibly thin without her coat, and she sauntered across the straw towards Day’s corpse. ‘One of your killers killed the other. There’s killers for you.’ She looked at Shivers, eyes black as coal, and he gripped his axe tight.

  ‘Fucking magic,’ he mumbled. ‘Even worse’n banking.’

  She crept up, all white-toothed, hungry grin, touched one finger to the pick on the back of his axe and pushed it gently down towards the floor. ‘Do I take it you murdered your old friend Faithful Carpi to your satisfaction?’

  Monza slapped her sword back into its sheath. ‘Faithful’s dead, if that’s the point of your fucking performance.’

  ‘You have a strange manner of celebration.’ She lifted her long arms to the ceiling. ‘Vengeance is yours! Praise be to God!’

  ‘Orso still lives.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Ishri opened her eyes very wide, so wide Shivers wondered if they might drop out. ‘When Orso dies you will smile.’

  ‘What do you care whether I smile?’

  ‘I, care? Not a particle. You Styrians have a habit of boasting, and boasting, and never following through. I am pleased to find one who can get the job done. Do the job, scowl by all means.’ She ran her fingers across the table-top then casually snuffed the flames of the burners out with the palm of her hand. ‘Speaking of which, you told our mutual friend Duke Rogont you could bring the Thousand Swords over to his side, as I recall?’

  ‘If the Emperor’s gold is forthcoming—’

  ‘In your shirt pocket.’

  Monza frowned as she pulled something from her pocket and held it up to the light. A big red-gold coin, shining with that special warmth gold has that somehow makes you want to hold it. ‘Very nice, but it’ll take more than one.’

  ‘Oh, there’ll be more. The mountains of Gurkhul are made of gold, I hear.’ She peered at the charred edges of the hole in the corner of the barn, then happily clicked her tongue. ‘I still have it.’ And she twisted her body through the gap like a fox through a fence and was gone.