The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country (230 page)

‘
T
hey hardly look like demons.’ Cosca nudged the Dragon Woman’s cheek with his foot and watched her bare-shaved head flop back. ‘No scales. No forked tongues. No flaming breath. I feel a touch let down.’

‘Simple barbarians,’ grunted Jubair.

‘Like the ones out on the plains.’ Brachio took a gulp of wine and peered discerningly at the glass. ‘A step above animals and not a high step.’

Temple cleared his sore throat. ‘No barbarian’s sword.’ He squatted down and turned the blade over in his hands: straight, and perfectly balanced, and meticulously sharpened.

‘These ain’t no common Ghosts,’ said Sweet. ‘They ain’t really Ghosts at all. They aim to kill and know how. They don’t scare at nothing and know each rock o’ this country, too. They did for every miner in Beacon without so much as a struggle.’

‘But clearly they bleed.’ Cosca poked his finger into the hole made by Savian’s flatbow bolt and pulled it out, fingertip glistening red. ‘And clearly they die.’

Brachio shrugged. ‘Everyone bleeds. Everyone dies.’

‘Life’s one certainty,’ rumbled Jubair, rolling his eyes towards the heavens. Or at least the mildewed ceiling.

‘What is this metal?’ Sworbreck pulled an amulet from the Dragon Woman’s collar, a grey leaf dully gleaming in the lamplight. ‘It is very thin but . . .’ He bared his teeth as he strained at it. ‘I cannot bend it. Not at all. The workmanship is remarkable.’

Cosca turned away. ‘Steel and gold are the only metals that interest me. Bury the bodies away from the camp. If I’ve learned one thing in forty years of warfare, Sworbreck, it’s that you have to bury the bodies far from camp.’ He drew his cloak tight at the icy blast as the door was opened. ‘Damn this cold.’ Hunched jealously over the fire, he looked like nothing so much as an old witch over her cauldron, thin hair hanging lank, grasping hands like black claws against the flames. ‘Reminds me of the North, and that can’t be a good thing, eh, Temple?’

‘No, General.’ Being reminded of any moment in the past ten years was no particularly good thing in Temple’s mind – the whole a desert of violence, waste and guilt. Except, perhaps, gazing out over the free plains from his saddle. Or down on Crease from the frame of Majud’s shop. Or arguing with Shy over their debt. Dancing, pressed tight against her. Leaning to kiss her, and her smile as she leaned to kiss him back . . . He shook himself. All thoroughly, irredeemably fucked. Truly, you never value what you have until you jump out of its window.

‘That cursed retreat.’ Cosca was busy wrestling with his own failures. There were enough of them. ‘That damned snow. That treacherous bastard Black Calder. So many good men lost, eh, Temple? Like . . . well . . . I forget the names, but my point holds.’ He turned to call angrily over his shoulder. ‘When you said “fort” I was expecting something more . . . substantial.’

Beacon’s chief building was, in fact, a large log cabin on one and a half floors, separated into rooms by hanging animal skins and with a heavy door, narrow windows, access to the broken tower in one corner and a horrifying array of draughts.

Sweet shrugged. ‘Standards ain’t high in the Far Country, General. Out here you put three sticks together, it’s a fort.’

‘I suppose we must be glad of the shelter we have. Another night in the open you’d have to wait for spring to thaw me out. How I long for the towers of beautiful Visserine! A balmy summer night beside the river! The city was mine, once, you know, Sworbreck?’

The writer winced. ‘I believe you have mentioned it.’

‘Nicomo Cosca, Grand Duke of Visserine!’ The Old Man paused to take yet another swig from his flask. ‘And it shall be mine again. My towers, my palace, and my respect. I have been often disappointed, that’s true. My back is a tissue of metaphorical scars. But there is still time, isn’t there?’

‘Of course.’ Sworbreck gave a false chuckle. ‘You have many successful years ahead of you, I’m sure!’

‘Still a little time to make things right . . .’ Cosca was busy staring at the wrinkled back of his hand, wincing as he worked the knobbly fingers. ‘I used to be a wonder with a throwing knife, you know, Sworbreck. I could bring down a fly at twenty paces. Now?’ He gave vent to an explosive snort. ‘I can scarcely see twenty paces on a clear day. That’s the most wounding betrayal of all. The one by your own flesh. Live long enough, you see everything ruined . . .’

The next whirlwind heralded Sergeant Friendly’s arrival, blunt nose and flattened ears slightly pinked but otherwise showing no sign of discomfort at the cold. Sun, rain or tempest all seemed one to him.

‘The last stragglers are into camp along with the Company’s baggage,’ he intoned.

Brachio poured himself another drink. ‘Hangers-on swarm to us like maggots to a corpse.’

‘I am not sure I appreciate the image of our noble brotherhood as a suppurating carcass,’ said Cosca.

‘However accurate it may be,’ murmured Temple.

‘Who made it all the way here?’

Friendly began the count. ‘Nineteen whores and four pimps—’

‘They’ll be busy,’ said Cosca.

‘—twenty-two wagon-drivers and porters including the cripple Hedges, who keeps demanding to speak to you—’

‘Everyone wants a slice of me! You’d think I was a feast-day currant cake!’

‘—thirteen assorted merchants, pedlars and tinkers, six of whom complain of having been robbed by members of the Company—’

‘I consort with criminals! I was a Grand Duke, you know. So many disappointments.’

‘—two blacksmiths, a horse trader, a fur trader, an undertaker, a barber boasting of surgical qualifications, a pair of laundry women, a vintner with no stock, and seventeen persons of no stated profession.’

‘Vagrants and layabouts hoping to grow fat on my crumbs! Is there no honour left, Temple?’

‘Precious little,’ said Temple. Certainly his own stock was disgracefully meagre.

‘And is Superior Pike’s . . .’ Cosca leaned close to Friendly and after taking another swallow from his flask whispered, entirely audibly, ‘
secret wagon
in the camp?’

‘It is,’ said Friendly.

‘Place it under guard.’

‘What’s in it, anyway?’ asked Brachio, wiping some damp from his weepy eye with a fingernail.

‘Were I to share that information, it would no longer be a secret wagon, merely . . . a wagon. I think we can agree that lacks mystique.’

‘Where will all this flotsam find shelter?’ Jubair wished to know. ‘There is hardly room for the fighting men.’

‘What of the barrows?’ asked the Old Man.

‘Empty,’ said Sweet. ‘Robbed centuries ago.’

‘I daresay they’ll warm up something snug. The irony, eh, Temple? Yesterday’s heroes kicked from their graves by today’s whores!’

‘I thrill to the profundity,’ muttered Temple, shivering at the thought of sleeping in the dank innards of those ancient tombs, let alone fucking in them.

‘Not wanting to spoil your preparations, General,’ said Sweet, ‘but I’d best be on my way.’

‘Of course! Glory is like bread, it stales with time! Was it Farans who said so, or Stolicus? What is your plan?’

‘I’m hoping that scout’ll run straight back and tell his Dragon friends there’s no more’n twenty of us down here.’

‘The best opponent is one befuddled and mystified! Was that Farans? Or Bialoveld?’ Cosca treated Sworbreck, busy with his notebooks, to a contemptuous glare. ‘One
writer
is very much like another. You were saying?’

‘Reckon they’ll set to wondering whether to stay tucked up at Ashranc and ignore us, or come down and wipe us out.’

‘They’ll trip over a shock if they try it,’ said Brachio, jowls wobbling as he chuckled.

‘That’s just what we want ’em to do,’ said Sweet. ‘But they ain’t prone to come down without good reason. A little trespass on their ground should hook ’em. Prickly as all hell about their ground. Crying Rock knows the way. She knows secret ways right into Ashranc, but that’s a hell of a risk. So all we do is creep up there and leave some sign they won’t miss. A burned-out fire, some nice clear tracks across their road—’

‘A turd,’ said Jubair, pronouncing the word as solemnly as a prophet’s name.

Cosca raised his flask. ‘Marvellous! Lure them with a turd! I’m reasonably sure Stolicus never recommended
that
, eh, Temple?’

Brachio squeezed his big lower lip thoughtfully between finger and thumb. ‘You’re sure they’ll fall for this turd trap?’

‘They’ve been the big dogs around here for ever,’ said Sweet. ‘They’re used to slaughtering Ghosts and scaring off prospectors. All that winning’s made ’em arrogant. Set in old ways. But they’re dangerous, still. You’d best be good and ready. Don’t reel ’em in ’til they’ve swallowed the hook.’

Cosca nodded. ‘Believe me when I say I have stood at both ends of an ambush and fully understand the principles. What would be your opinion of this scheme, Master Cantliss?’

The wretched bandit, his clothes splitting at the seams and stuffed with straw against the cold, had until then been sitting in the corner of the room nursing his broken hand and quietly sniffling. He perked up at the sound of his name and nodded vigorously, as though his support might be help to any cause. ‘Sounds all right. They think they own these hills, that I can chime with. And that Waerdinur killed my friend Blackpoint. Snuffed him out casual as you please. Can I . . .’ licking his scabbed lips and reaching towards Cosca’s flask.

‘Of course,’ said Cosca, draining it, upending it to show it was empty, then shrugging. ‘Captain Jubair has picked out eight of his most competent men to accompany you.’

Sweet looked less than reassured as he gave the hulking Kantic a sidelong glance. ‘I’d rather stick with folks I know I can count on.’

‘So would we all, but are there truly any such in life, eh, Temple?’

‘Precious few.’ Temple certainly would not have counted himself among their number, nor anyone else currently in the room.

Sweet affected an air of injured innocence. ‘You don’t trust us?’

‘I have been often disappointed by human nature,’ said Cosca. ‘Ever since Grand Duchess Sefeline turned on me and poisoned my favourite mistress I have tried never to encumber working relationships with the burden of trust.’

Brachio gave vent to a long burp. ‘Better to watch each other carefully, stay well armed and mutually suspicious, and keep our various self-interests as the prime motives.’

‘Nobly said!’ And Cosca slapped his thigh. ‘Then, like a knife in the sock, we make trust our secret weapon in the event of emergencies.’

‘I tried a knife in the sock,’ muttered Brachio, patting the several he had stowed in his bandolier. ‘Chafed terribly.’

‘Shall we depart?’ rumbled Jubair. ‘Time is wasting, and there is God’s work to be done.’

‘There’s work, anyway,’ said Sweet, pulling the collar of his big fur coat up to his ears as he ducked out into the night.

Cosca tipped up his flask, realised it was empty and held it aloft for a refill. ‘Bring me more spirit! And Temple, come, talk to me as you used to! Offer me comfort, Temple, offer me advice.’

Temple took a long breath. ‘I’m not sure what advice I can offer. We’re far beyond the reach of the law out here.’

‘I don’t speak of the law, man, but of the righteous path! Thank you.’ This as Sergeant Friendly began to decant a freshly opened bottle into Cosca’s waving flask with masterful precision. ‘I feel I am adrift upon strange seas and my moral compass spins entirely haywire! Find me an ethical star to steer by, Temple! What of God, man, what of God?’

‘I fear we may be far beyond the reach of God as well,’ muttered Temple as he made for the door. Hedges limped in as he opened it, clutching tight to his ruin of a hat and looking sicker than ever, if that was possible.

‘Who’s this now?’ demanded Cosca, peering into the shadows.

‘The name’s Hedges, Captain General, sir, one of the drovers from Crease. Injured at Osrung, sir, leading a charge.’

‘The very reason charges are best left led by others.’

Hedges sidled past into the room, eyes nervously darting. ‘Can’t say I disagree, sir. Might I have a moment?’ Grateful for the distraction, Temple slipped out into the bitter darkness.

In the camp’s one street, secrecy did not seem a prime concern. Men swathed in coats and furs, swaddled in torn-up blankets and mismatched armour stomped cursing about, churning the snow to black slush, holding rustling torches high, dragging reluctant horses, unloading boxes and barrels from listing wagons, breath steaming from wrappings around their faces.

‘Might I accompany you?’ asked Sworbreck, threading after Temple through the chaos.

‘If you’re not scared my luck will rub off.’

‘It could be no worse than mine,’ lamented the biographer.

They passed a group huddled in a hut with one missing wall, playing dice for bedding, a man sharpening blades at a shrieking grindstone, sparks showering into the night, three women arguing over how best to get a cook-fire started. None had the answer.

‘Do you ever feel . . .’ Sworbreck mused, face squashed down for warmth into the threadbare collar of his coat, ‘as though you have somehow blundered into a situation you never intended to be in, but now cannot see your way clear of?’

Temple looked sidelong at the writer. ‘Lately, every moment of every day.’

‘As if you were being punished, but you were not sure what for.’

‘I know what for,’ muttered Temple.

‘I don’t belong here,’ said Sworbreck.

‘I wish I could say the same. But I fear that I do.’

Snow had been dug away from one of the barrows and torchlight flickered in its moss-caked archway. One of the pimps was busy hanging a worn hide at the entrance of another, a disorderly queue already forming outside. A shivering pedlar had set up shop between the two, offering belts and boot-polish to the heedless night. Commerce never sleeps.

Temple caught Inquisitor Lorsen’s grating tones emerging from a cabin’s half-open door, ‘. . . Do you really believe there are rebels in these mountains, Dimbik?’

‘Belief is a luxury I have not been able to afford for some time, Inquisitor. I simply do as I’m told.’