Best Served Cold

by Джо Аберкромби

  * * *

  Colonel Rigrat whipped his well-lathered horse between the tents, sending idle mercenaries scattering, and reined the beast in savagely not far away. He slid from the saddle, nearly fell, tore his boot from the stirrup and stormed up, ripping off his gloves, face flushed with sweaty fury. “Cosca! Nicomo Cosca, damn you!”

  “Colonel Rigrat! A fine morning, my young friend! I hope all is well?”

  “Well? Why are you not attacking?” He stabbed one finger down towards the river, evidently having misplaced his baton. “We are engaged in the valley! Most hotly engaged!”

  “Why, so you are.” Cosca rocked forwards and rose smoothly from the captain general’s chair. “Perhaps it would be better if we were to discuss this away from the men. Not good form, to bicker. Besides, you’re scaring my goat.”

  “What?”

  Cosca patted the animal gently on the back as he passed. “She’s the only one who truly understands me. Come to my tent. I have fruit there! Andiche! Come join us!”

  He strode off, Rigrat blustering after, Andiche falling into puzzled step behind. Past Nocau, on guard before the flap with his great scimitar drawn, and into the cool, dim interior of the tent, draped all around with the victories of the past. Cosca ran the back of his hand affectionately down one swathe of threadbare cloth, edges blackened by fire. “The flag that hung upon the walls of Muris, during the siege… was it truly a dozen years ago?” He turned to see Friendly sidle through the flap after the others and lurk near the entrance. “I brought it down from the highest parapet with my own hand, you know.”

  “After you tore it from the hand of the dead hero who was up there first,” said Andiche.

  “Whatever is the purpose of dead heroes, if not to pass on stolen flags to more prudent fellows in the rank behind?” He snatched the bowl of fruit from the table and shoved it under Rigrat’s nose. “You look ill, Colonel. Have a grape.”

  The man’s trembling face was rapidly approaching grape colour. “Grape? Grape?” He lashed at the flap with his gloves. “I demand that you attack at once! I flatly demand it!”

  “Attack.” Cosca winced. “Across the upper ford?”

  “Yes!”

  “According to the excellent plan you laid out to me last night?”

  “Yes, damn it! Yes!”

  “In all honesty, nothing would please me more. I love a good attack, ask anyone, but the problem is… you see…” Pregnant silence stretched out as he spread his hands wide. “I took such an enormous sum of money from Duke Rogont’s Gurkish friend not to.”

  Ishri came from nowhere. Solidified from the shadows at the edges of the tent, slid from the folds in the ancient flags and strutted into being. “Greetings,” she said. Rigrat and Andiche both stared at her, equally stunned.

  Cosca peered up at the gently flapping roof of the tent, tapping at his pursed lips with one finger. “A dilemma. A moral quandary. I want so badly to attack, but I cannot attack Rogont. And I can scarcely attack Foscar, when his father has also paid me so handsomely. In my youth I jerked this way and that just as the wind blew me, but I am trying earnestly to change, Colonel, as I explained to you the other evening. Really, in all good conscience, the only thing I can do is sit here.” He popped a grape into his mouth. “And do nothing.”

  Rigrat gave a splutter and made a belated grab for his sword, but Friendly’s big fist was already around the hilt, knife gleaming in his other hand. “No, no, no.” The colonel froze as Friendly slid his sword carefully from its sheath and tossed it across the tent.

  Cosca snatched it from the air and took a couple of practice swipes. “Fine steel, Colonel, I congratulate you on your choice of blades, if not of strategy.”

  “You were paid by both? To fight neither?” Andiche was smiling ear to ear as he draped one arm around Cosca’s shoulders. “My old friend! Why didn’t you tell me? Damn, but it’s good to have you back!”

  “Are you sure?” Cosca ran him smoothly through the chest with Rigrat’s sword, right to the polished hilt. Andiche’s eyes bulged, his mouth dropped open and he dragged in a great long wheeze, his pockmarked face twisted, trying to scream. But all that came out was a gentle cough.

  Cosca leaned close. “You think a man can turn on me? Betray me? Give my chair to another for a few pieces of silver, then smile and be my friend? You mistake me, Andiche. Fatally. I may make men laugh, but I’m no clown.”

  The mercenary’s coat glistened with dark blood, his trembling face had turned bright red, veins bulging in his neck. He clawed weakly at Cosca’s breastplate, bloody bubbles forming on his lips. Cosca let go the hilt, wiped his hand on Andiche’s sleeve and shoved him over. He fell on his side, spitted, gave a gentle groan and stopped moving.

  “Interesting.” Ishri squatted over him. “I am rarely surprised. Surely Murcatto is the one who stole your chair. You let her go free, no?”

  “On reflection, I doubt the facts of my betrayal quite match the story. But in any case, a man can forgive all manner of faults in beautiful women that in ugly men he finds entirely beyond sufferance. And if there’s one thing I absolutely cannot abide, it’s disloyalty. You have to stick at something in your life.”

  “Disloyalty?” screeched Rigrat, finally finding his voice. “You’ll pay for this, Cosca, you treacherous-”

  Friendly’s knife thumped into his neck and out, blood showered across the floor of the tent and spattered the Musselian flag that Sazine had taken the day the Thousand Swords were formed.

  Rigrat fell to his knees, one hand clutched to his throat, blood pouring down the sleeve of his jacket. He flopped forwards onto his face, trembled for a moment, then was still. A dark circle bloomed out through the material of the groundsheet and merged with the one already creeping from Andiche’s corpse.

  “Ah,” said Cosca. He had been planning to ransom Rigrat back to his family. It did not seem likely now. “That was… ungracious of you, Friendly.”

  “Oh.” The convict frowned at his bloody knife. “I thought… you know. Follow your lead. I was being first sergeant.”

  “Of course you were. I take all the blame myself. I should have been more specific. I have ever suffered from… unspecificity? Is that a word?”

  Friendly shrugged. So did Ishri.

  “Well.” Cosca scratched gently at his neck as he looked down at Rigrat’s body. “An annoying, pompous, swollen-headed man, from what I saw. But if those were capital crimes I daresay half the world would hang, and myself first to the gallows. Perhaps he had many fine qualities of which I was unaware. I’m sure his mother would say so. But this is a battle. Corpses are a sad inevitability.” He crossed to the tent flap, took a moment to compose himself, then clawed it desperately aside. “Some help here! For pity’s sake, some help!”

  He hurried back to Andiche’s body and squatted beside it, knelt one way and then another, found what he judged to be the most dramatic pose just as Sesaria burst into the tent.

  “God’s breath!” as he saw the two corpses, Victus bundling in behind, eyes wide.

  “Andiche!” Cosca gestured at Rigrat’s sword, still where he had left it. “Run through!” He had observed that people often state the obvious when distressed.

  “Someone get a surgeon!” roared Victus.

  “Or better yet a priest.” Ishri swaggered across the tent towards them. “He’s dead.”

  “What happened?”

  “Colonel Rigrat stabbed him.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Ishri.”

  “He was a great heart!” Cosca gently touched Andiche’s staring-eyed, gape-mouthed, blood-spattered face. “A true friend. He stepped before the thrust.”

  “Andiche did?” Sesaria did not look convinced.

  “He gave his life… to save mine.” Cosca’s voice almost croaked away to nothing at the end, and he dashed a tear from the corner of his eye. “Thank the Fates Sergeant Friendly moved as quickly as he did or I’d have been done for too.” He beat at Andiche’
s chest, fist squelching on his warm, blood-soaked coat. “My fault! My fault! I blame myself!”

  “Why?” snarled Victus, glaring down at Rigrat’s corpse. “I mean, why did this bastard do it?”

  “My fault!” wailed Cosca. “I took money from Rogont to stay out of the battle!”

  Sesaria and Victus exchanged a glance. “You took money… to stay out?”

  “A huge amount of money! There will be shares by seniority, of course.” Cosca waved his hand as though it was a trifle now. “Danger pay for every man, in Gurkish gold.”

  “Gold?” rumbled Sesaria, eyebrows going up as though Cosca had pronounced a magic word.

  “But I would sink it all in the ocean for one minute longer in my old friend’s company! To hear him speak again! To see him smile. But never more. Forever…” Cosca swept off his hat, laid it gently over Andiche’s face and hung his head. “Silent.”

  Victus cleared his throat. “How much gold are we talking about, exactly?”

  “A… huge… quantity.” Cosca gave a shuddering sniff. “As much again as Orso paid us to fight on his behalf.”

  “Andiche dead. A heavy price to pay.” But Sesaria looked as if he perceived the upside.

  “Too heavy a price. Far too heavy.” Cosca slowly stood. “My friends… could you bring yourselves to make arrangements for the burial? I must observe the battle. We must stumble on. For him. There is one consolation, I suppose.”

  “The money?” asked Victus.

  Cosca slapped down a hand on each captain’s shoulder. “Thanks to my bargain we will not need to fight. Andiche will be the only casualty the Thousand Swords suffer today. You could say he died for all of us. Sergeant Friendly!” And Cosca turned and pushed past into the bright sunlight. Ishri glided silently at his elbow.

  “Quite the performance,” she murmured. “You really should have been an actor rather than a general.”

  “There’s not so much air between the two as you might imagine.” Cosca walked to the captain general’s chair and leaned on the back, feeling suddenly tired and irritable. Considering the long years he had dreamed of taking revenge for Afieri, it was a disappointing pay-off. He was in terrible need of a drink, fumbled for Morveer’s flask, but it was empty. He frowned down into the valley. The Talinese were engaged in a desperate battle perhaps half a mile wide at the bank of the lower ford, waiting for help from the Thousand Swords. Help that would never come. They had the numbers, but the Osprians were still holding their ground, keeping the battle narrow, choking them up in the shallows. The great melee heaved and glittered, the ford crawling with men, bobbing with bodies.

  Cosca gave a long sigh. “You Gurkish think there’s a point to it all, don’t you? That God has a plan, and so forth?”

  “I’ve heard it said.” Ishri’s black eyes flicked from the valley to him. “And what do you think God’s plan is, General Cosca?”

  “I have long suspected that it might be to annoy me.”

  She smiled. Or at least her mouth curled up to show sharp white teeth. “Fury, paranoia and epic self-centredness in the space of a single sentence.”

  “All the fine qualities a great military leader requires…” He shaded his eyes, squinting off to the west, towards the ridge behind the Talinese lines. “And here they are. Perfectly on schedule.” The first flags were showing there. The first glittering spears. The first of what appeared to be a considerable body of men.

  The Fate of Styria

  Up there.” Monza’s gloved forefinger, and her little finger too, of course, pointed towards the ridge.

  More soldiers were coming over the crest, a mile or two to the south of where the Talinese had first appeared. A lot more. It seemed Orso had kept a few surprises back. Reinforcements from his Union allies, maybe. Monza worked her sore tongue around her sour mouth and spat. From faint hopes to no hopes. A small step, but one nobody ever enjoys taking. The leading flags caught a gust of wind and unfurled for a moment. She peered at them through her eyeglass, frowned, rubbed her eye and peered again. There was no mistaking the cockleshell of Sipani.

  “Sipanese,” she muttered. Until a few moments ago, the world’s most neutral men. “Why the hell are they fighting for Orso?”

  “Who says they are?” When she turned to Rogont, he was smiling like a thief who’d whipped the fattest purse of his career. He spread his arms out wide. “Rejoice, Murcatto! The miracle you asked for!”

  She blinked. “They’re on our side?”

  “Most certainly, and right in Foscar’s rear! And the irony is that it’s all your doing.”

  “Mine?”

  “Entirely yours! You remember the conference in Sipani, arranged by that preening mope the King of the Union?”

  The great procession through the crowded streets, the cheering as Rogont and Salier led the way, the jeering as Ario and Foscar followed. “What of it?”

  “I had no more intention of making peace with Ario and Foscar than they had with me. My only care was to talk old Chancellor Sotorius over to my side. I tried to convince him that if the League of Eight lost then Duke Orso’s greed would not end at Sipani’s borders, however neutral they might be. That once my young head was off, his ancient one would be next on the block.”

  More than likely true. Neutrality was no better defence against Orso than it was against the pox. His ambitions had never stopped at one river or the next. One reason why, until the moment he’d tried to kill her, he’d made Monza such a fine employer.

  “But the old man clung to his cherished neutrality, tight as a captain to the wheel of his sinking ship, and I despaired of dislodging him. I am ashamed to admit I began to despair entirely, and was seriously considering fleeing Styria for happier climes.” Rogont closed his eyes and tilted his face towards the sun. “And then, oh, happy day, oh, serendipity…” He opened them and looked straight at her. “You murdered Prince Ario.”

  Black blood pumping from his pale throat, body tumbling through the open window, fire and smoke as the building burned. Rogont grinned with all the smugness of a magician explaining the workings of his latest trick.

  “Sotorius was the host. Ario was under his protection. The old man knew Orso would never forgive him for the death of his son. He knew the doom of Sipani was sounded. Unless Orso could be stopped. We came to an agreement that very night, while Cardotti’s House of Leisure was still burning. In secret, Chancellor Sotorius brought Sipani into the League of Nine.”

  “Nine,” muttered Monza, watching the Sipanese host march steadily down the gentle hillside towards the fords, and Foscar’s almost undefended rear.

  “My long retreat from Puranti, which you thought so ill-advised, was intended to give him time to prepare. I backed willingly into this little trap so I could play the bait in a greater one.”

  “You’re cleverer than you look.”

  “Not difficult. My aunt always told me I looked a dunce.”

  She frowned across the valley at the motionless host on top of Menzes Hill. “What about Cosca?”

  “Some men never change. He took a very great deal of money from my Gurkish backers to keep out of the battle.”

  It suddenly seemed she didn’t understand the world nearly as well as she’d thought. “I offered him money. He wouldn’t take it.”

  “Imagine that, and negotiation so very much your strong point. He wouldn’t take the money from you. Ishri, it seems, talks more sweetly. ‘War is but the pricking point of politics. Blades can kill men, but only words can move them, and good neighbours are the surest shelter in a storm.’ I quote from Juvens’ Principles of Art. Flim-flam and superstition mostly, but the volume on the exercise of power is quite fascinating. You should read more widely, General Murcatto. Your book-learning is narrow in scope.”

  “I came to reading late,” she grunted.

  “You may enjoy the full use of my library, once I’ve butchered the Talinese and conquered Styria.” He smiled happily down towards the bottom of the valley, where Foscar’s army w
ere in grave danger of being surrounded. “Of course, if Orso’s troops had a more seasoned leader today than the young Prince Foscar, things might have been very different. I doubt a man of General Ganmark’s abilities would have fallen so completely into my trap. Or even one of Faithful Carpi’s long experience.” He leaned from his saddle and brought his self-satisfied smirk a little closer. “But Orso has suffered some unfortunate losses in the area of command, lately.”

  She snorted, turned her head and spat. “So glad to be of help.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t have done it without you. All we need do is hold the lower ford until our brave allies of Sipani reach the river, crush Foscar’s men between us, and Duke Orso’s ambitions will be drowned in the shallows.”

  “That all?” Monza frowned towards the water. The Affoians, an untidy red-brown mass on the neglected far right of the battle, had been forced back from the bank. No more than twenty paces of churned-up mud, but enough to give the Talinese a foothold. Now it looked as if some Baolish had waded through the deeper water upstream and got around their flank.

  “It is, and it appears that we are already well on our way to… ah.” Rogont had seen it too. “Oh.” Men were beginning to break from the fighting, struggling up the hillside towards the city.

  “Looks as if your brave allies of Affoia have tired of your hospitality.”

  The mood of smug jubilation that had swept through Rogont’s headquarters when the Sipanese appeared was fading rapidly as more and more dots crumbled from the back of the bulging Affoian lines and began to scatter in every direction. Above them the companies of archers grew ragged as bowmen looked nervously up towards the city. No doubt they weren’t keen to get closer acquainted with the men they’d been shooting arrows down at for the last hour.

  “If those Baolish bastards break through they’ll take your people in the flank, roll your whole line up. It’ll be a rout.”