The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country (250 page)

‘Reckon our old friend Buckhorm’s prospered,’ said Lamb, as they crested a rise and looked down on his farmstead.

It had been carefully sited beside a stream, a set of solid-looking cabins arranged in a square, narrow windows facing outwards, a fence of sharpened logs closing up the gaps and a wooden tower twice a man’s height beside the gate. A safe, and civilised, and comfortable-looking place, smoke slipping gently up from a chimney and smudging the sky. The valley around it, as far as Temple could see, was carpeted with tall green grass, patched white with snow in the hollows, dotted brown with cattle.

‘Looks like he’s got stock to trade,’ said Shy.

Sweet stood in his stirrups to study the nearest cow. ‘Good stock, too. I look forward to eating ’em.’ The cow peered suspiciously back, apparently less enamoured of that idea.

‘Maybe we should pick up some extra,’ said Shy, ‘get a herd together and drive ’em back to the Near Country.’

‘Always got your eyes open for a profit, don’t you?’ asked Sweet.

‘Why close your eyes to one? Specially when we’ve got one of the world’s foremost drag riders sitting idle.’

‘Oh God,’ muttered Temple.

‘Buckhorm?’ bellowed Sweet as the four of them rode up. ‘You about?’ But there was no reply. The gate stood ajar, a stiff hinge faintly creaking as the breeze moved it. Otherwise, except for the cattle lowing in the distance, all was quiet.

Then the soft scrape as Lamb drew his sword. ‘Something ain’t right.’

‘Aye,’ said Sweet, laying his flatbow calmly across his knees and slipping a bolt into place.

‘No doubt.’ Shy shrugged her own bow off her shoulder and jerked an arrow from the quiver by her knee.

‘Oh God,’ said Temple, making sure he came last as they eased through the gateway, hooves of their horses squelching and crunching in the half-frozen mud. Was there no end to it? He peered at the doors and into the windows, grimacing with anticipation, expecting any and every horror from a welter of bandits, to a horde of Ghosts, to Waerdinur’s vengeful dragon erupting from the earth to demand its money back.

‘Where’s my gold, Temple?’

The dragon would have been preferable to the awful phantom that now stooped beneath the low lintel of Buckhorm’s house and into the light. Who else but that infamous soldier of fortune, Nicomo Cosca?

His once-fine clothes were reduced to muddy rags, corroded breastplate lost and his filthy shirt hanging by two buttons, one trouser-leg torn gaping and a length of scrawny, trembling white calf exposed. His magnificent hat was a memory, the few strands of grey hair he had so carefully cultivated to cross his liver-spotted pate now floating about his skull in a grease-stiffened nimbus. His rash had turned crimson, scabbed with nail marks and, like mould up a cellar wall, spread flaking up the side of his head to speckle his waxy face. His hand quivered on the door, his gait was uncertain, he looked like nothing so much as a corpse exhumed, brought to a mockery of life by sorcerous intervention.

He turned his mad, bright, feverish eyes on Temple and slapped the hilt of his sword. One trapping of glory he had managed to retain. ‘Like the ending of a cheap storybook, eh, Sworbreck?’ The writer crept from the darkness behind Cosca, equally filthy and with bare feet to add to his wretchedness, one lens of his eyeglasses cracked, his empty hands fussing with each other. ‘One final appearance for the villains!’

Sworbreck licked his lips, and remained silently loitering. Perhaps he could not tell who were the villains in this particular metaphor.

‘Where’s Buckhorm?’ snapped Shy, training her drawn bow on Cosca and prompting his biographer to cower behind him for cover.

The Old Man was less easily rattled. ‘Driving some cattle down to Hope with his three eldest sons, I understand. The lady of the house is within but, alas, cannot see visitors just at present. Ever so slightly tied up.’ He licked at his chapped lips. ‘I don’t suppose any of you have a drink to hand?’

‘Left mine over the rise with the rest of the Fellowship.’ Shy jerked her head towards the west. ‘I find if I have it, I drink it.’

‘I’ve always had the very same problem,’ said Cosca. ‘I would ask one of my men to pour me a glass, but thanks to Master Lamb’s fearsome talents and Master Temple’s underhanded machinations, my Company is somewhat reduced.’

‘You played your own hand in that,’ said Temple.

‘Doubtless. Live long enough, you see everything ruined. But I still hold a few cards.’ Cosca gave a high whistle.

The doorway of the barn banged open and several of Buckhorm’s younger children shuffled through into the courtyard, wide-eyed and fearful, some of their faces streaked with tears. Sergeant Friendly was their shepherd, an empty manacle swinging by the chain, the other still locked around his thick wrist. The blade of his cleaver glimmered briefly in the sun.

‘Hello, Temple,’ he said, showing as little emotion as if they’d been reunited at a tavern counter.

‘Hello,’ croaked Temple.

‘And Master Hedges was good enough to join us.’ Cosca pointed past them, finger shaking so badly it was hard at first to tell at what. Looking around, Temple saw a black outline appear at the top of the little turret by the gate. The self-professed hero of the Battle of Osrung, and pointing a flatbow down into the yard.

‘Real sorry about this!’ he shouted.

‘You’re that sorry, you can drop the bow,’ growled Shy.

‘I just want what I’m owed!’ he called back.

‘I’ll give you what you’re fucking owed, you treacherous—’

‘Perhaps we can establish exactly what everyone is owed once the money is returned?’ suggested Cosca. ‘As a first step, I believe throwing down your weapons would be traditional?’

Shy spat through the gap in her front teeth. ‘Fuck yourself.’ The point of her arrow did not deviate by a hair.

Lamb stretched his neck out one way, then the other. ‘We don’t hold much with tradition.’

Cosca frowned. ‘Sergeant Friendly? If they do not lay down their arms within the count of five, kill one of the children.’

Friendly shifted his fingers around the grip of his cleaver. ‘Which one?’

‘What do I care? You pick.’

‘I’d rather not.’

Cosca rolled his eyes. ‘The biggest one, then, and work your way down. Must I manage every detail?’

‘I mean I’d rather not—’

‘One!’ snapped the Old Man.

Nobody gave the slightest impression of lowering their weapons. Quite the reverse. Shy stood slightly in her stirrups, scowling down her arrow. ‘One o’ those children dies, you’re next.’

‘Two!’

‘Then you!’ For that of a war hero, Hedges’ voice had risen to a decidedly unheroic register.

‘Then the fucking lot of you,’ growled Lamb, hefting his heavy sword.

Sworbreck stared at Temple around Cosca’s shoulder, palms open, as though to say,
What can reasonable men do under such circumstances?

‘Three!’

‘Wait!’ shouted Temple. ‘Just . . . wait, damn it!’ And he scrambled down from his horse.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Shy snarled around the flights of her arrow.

‘Taking the hard way.’

Temple began to walk slowly across the courtyard, mud and straw squelching under his boots, the breeze stirring his hair, the breath cold in his chest. He did not go with a smile, as Kahdia had gone to the Eaters when they padded into the Great Temple, black figures in the darkness, giving his life for the lives of his students. It took a mighty effort, wincing as if he was walking into a gale. But he went.

The sun found a chink in the clouds and glinted on the drawn steel, each edge and point picked out with painful brightness. He was scared. He wondered if he might piss himself with each step. This was not the easy way. Not the easy way at all. But it was the right way. If there is a God, He is a solemn judge, and sees to it that each man receives his rightful deservings. So Temple knelt in the dung before Nicomo Cosca, and looked up into his bloodshot eyes, wondering how many men he had killed during that long career of his.

‘What do you want?’ he asked.

The ex-captain general frowned. ‘My gold, of course.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Temple. He even was a little. ‘But it’s gone. Conthus has it.’

‘Conthus is dead.’

‘No. You got the wrong man. Conthus took the money and it isn’t coming back.’ He did not try to be earnest. He simply gazed into Cosca’s worn-out face and told the truth. In spite of the fear, and the high odds on his imminent death, and the freezing water leaking through the knees of his trousers, it felt good.

There was a pause pregnant with doom. Cosca stared at Temple, and Shy at Cosca, and Hedges at Shy, and Sweet at Hedges, and Friendly at Sweet, and Lamb at Friendly, and Sworbreck at everyone. All poised, all ready, all holding their breath.

‘You betrayed me,’ said Cosca.

‘Yes.’

‘After all I did for you.’

‘Yes.’

The Old Man’s wriggling fingers drifted towards his sword hilt. ‘I should kill you.’

‘Probably,’ Temple was forced to admit.

‘I want my money,’ said Cosca, but the slightest plaintive note had crept into his voice.

‘It isn’t your money. It never was. Why do you even want it?’

Cosca blinked, hand hovering uncertainly. ‘Well . . . I can use it to take back my dukedom—’

‘You didn’t want the dukedom when you had it.’

‘It’s . . . money.’

‘You don’t even like money. When you get it you throw it away.’

Cosca opened his mouth to refute that statement, then had to accept its obvious truth. He stood there, rashy, quivering, hunched, aged even beyond his considerable years, and looked down at Temple as though he was seeing him for the first time. ‘Sometimes,’ he muttered, ‘I think you’re hardly like me at all.’

‘I’m trying not to be. What do you want?’

‘I want . . .’ Cosca blinked over at the children, Friendly with one hand on the shoulder of the eldest and his cleaver in the other. Then at Lamb, grim as a gravedigger with his sword drawn. Then at Shy, bow trained on him, and at Hedges, bow trained on her. His bony shoulders sagged.

‘I want a chance to do it all again. To do it . . .
right
.’ Tears showed in the Old Man’s eyes. ‘How ever did it go so wrong, Temple? I had so many advantages. So many opportunities. All squandered. All slipped away like sand through a glass. So many disappointments . . .’

‘Most of them you brought on yourself.’

‘Of course.’ Cosca gave a ragged sigh. ‘But they’re the ones that hurt the worst.’ And he reached for his sword.

It was not there. He frowned down, puzzled. ‘Where’s my— uh?’

The blade slid out of his chest. He and Temple both stared at it, equally shocked, sun glinting on the point, blood spreading quickly out into his filthy shirt. Sworbreck let go of the hilt and stepped back, mouth hanging open.

‘Oh,’ said Cosca, dropping to his knees. ‘There it is.’

Behind him Temple heard a flatbow go off and, almost simultaneously, another. He spun clumsily about, falling in the muck on one elbow.

Hedges gave a cry, bow tumbling from his hand. There was a bolt through the palm of the other. Sweet lowered his own bow, at first looking shocked, then rather pleased with himself.

‘I stabbed him,’ muttered Sworbreck.

‘Am I shot?’ asked Shy.

‘You’ll live,’ said Lamb, flicking at the flights of Hedges’ bolt. It was stuck through her saddle horn.

‘My last words . . .’ With a faint groan, Cosca toppled onto his side in the mud next to Temple. ‘I had some wonderful ones . . . worked out. What were they now?’ And he broke out into that luminous smile of which only he was capable, good humour and good intentions radiating from his deep-lined face. ‘Ah! I remember . . .’

Nothing more. He was still.

‘He’s dead,’ said Temple, voice flat. ‘No more disappointments.’

‘You were the last,’ said Friendly. ‘I told him we’d be better off in prison.’ He tossed his cleaver in the muck and patted Buckhorm’s eldest son on the shoulder. ‘You four can go inside to your mother.’

‘You shot me!’ shrieked Hedges, clutching at his skewered hand.

Sworbreck adjusted his broken eyeglasses as though he could scarcely credit the evidence of his senses. ‘Astonishing skill!’

‘I was aiming for his chest,’ said the scout, under his breath.

The author stepped gingerly around Cosca’s corpse. ‘Master Sweet I wonder whether I might speak to you about a book I have in mind.’

‘Now? I really don’t see—’

‘A generous share of the profits would be forthcoming.’

‘—any way I could turn you down.’

Cold water was leaking through the seat of Temple’s trousers, gripping his arse in its icy embrace, but he found he could not move. Facing death certainly can take it out of you. Especially if you’ve spent most of your life doing your best to avoid facing anything.

He realised Friendly was standing next to him, frowning down at Cosca’s body. ‘What do I do now?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Temple. ‘What does anyone do?’

‘I plan an authentic portrait of the taming and settlement of the Far Country,’ Sworbreck was blathering. ‘A tale for the ages! One in which you have played a pivotal role.’

‘I’m pivotal, all right,’ said Sweet. ‘What’s pivotal?’

‘My hand!’ shrieked Hedges.

‘You’re lucky it’s not through your face,’ said Lamb.

Somewhere inside, Temple could hear the tearful sounds of the Buckhorm children being reunited with their mother. Good news, he supposed. A fair result.

‘My readers will thrill to your heroic exploits!’

‘I’ve certainly thrilled to ’em,’ snorted Shy. ‘The heroic scale of your digestive gases would never be believed back east.’

Temple looked up, and watched the clouds moving. If there was a God, the world seemed exactly the way it would be if there wasn’t one.

‘I must insist on absolute honesty. I will entertain no more exaggeration! Truth, Master Sweet, is at the heart of all great works of art.’

‘No doubt at all. Which makes me wonder – have you heard of the time I killed a great red bear with naught but these two hands . . .’