The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country (191 page)

Merely the best writer.

Cosca swung from his saddle, grunted as he twisted the life into his venerable hips, then, somewhat stiffly, advanced on the would-be peacemaker in the apron. ‘Good afternoon! I am Nicomo Cosca, captain general of the Company of the Gracious Hand.’ He indicated the four Styrians, elbows and sticks rising and falling as they continued their beating. ‘I see you have already met some of my brave companions.’

‘Name’s Clay,’ said the fat man, jowls trembling with fear. ‘I own the store here—’

‘A store? Excellent! May we browse?’ Brachio’s men were already carrying supplies out by the armload under the watchful eye of Sergeant Friendly. No doubt ensuring any thieving from the Company remained within acceptable limits. Thieving outside the Company was, it appeared, entirely to be encouraged. Sworbreck shuffled his pencil around. A further note about the lack of heroism seemed superfluous.

‘Take whatever you need,’ said Clay, showing his flour-dusted palms. ‘There’s no call for violence.’ A pause, broken by the crashing of glass and wood and the whimpering of the man on the ground as he was occasionally and unenthusiastically kicked. ‘Might I ask why you’re here?’

Lorsen stepped forward. ‘We are here to root out disloyalty, Master Clay. We are here to stamp out rebellion.’

‘You’re . . . from the Inquisition?’

Lorsen said nothing, but his silence spoke volumes.

Clay swallowed. ‘There’s no rebellion here, I assure you.’ Though Sworbreck sensed a falseness in his voice. Something more than understandable nervousness. ‘We’re not interested in politics—’

‘Really?’ Lorsen’s profession evidently required a keen eye for deception also. ‘Roll up your sleeves!’

‘What?’ The merchant attempted to smile, hoping to defuse the situation with soft movements of his fleshy hands, perhaps, but Lorsen would not be defused. He jerked one hard finger and two of his Practicals hastened forward: burly men, masked and hooded.

‘Strip him.’

Clay tried to twist away. ‘Wait—’

Sworbreck flinched as one of them punched the merchant soundlessly in his gut and doubled him up. The other ripped his sleeve off and wrenched his bare arm around. Bold script was tattooed from his wrist to his elbow, written in the Old Tongue. Somewhat faded with age, but still legible.

Lorsen turned his head slightly sideways so he could read. ‘
Freedom and justice
. Noble ideals, with which we could all agree. How do they sit with those innocent citizens of the Union massacred by the rebels at Rostod, do you suppose?’

The merchant was only just reclaiming his breath. ‘I never killed anyone in my life, I swear!’ His face was beaded with sweat. ‘The tattoo was a folly in my youth! Did it to impress a woman! I haven’t spoken to a rebel for twenty years!’

‘And you supposed you could escape your crimes here, beyond the borders of the Union?’ Sworbreck had not seen Lorsen smile before, and he rather hoped he never did again. ‘His Majesty’s Inquisition has a longer reach than you imagine. And a longer memory. Who else in this miserable collection of hovels has sympathies with the rebels?’

‘I daresay if they didn’t when we arrived,’ Sworbreck heard Temple mutter, ‘they’ll all have them by the time we leave . . .’

‘No one.’ Clay shook his head. ‘No one means any harm, me least of—’

‘Where in the Near Country are the rebels to be found?’

‘How would I know? I’d tell you if I knew!’

‘Where is the rebel leader Conthus?’

‘Who?’ The merchant could only stare. ‘I don’t know.’

‘We will see what you know. Take him inside. Fetch my instruments. Freedom I cannot promise you, but there will be some justice here today, at least.’

The two Practicals dragged the unfortunate merchant towards his own store, now entirely plundered of anything of value. Lorsen stalked after, every bit as eager to begin his work as the mercenaries had been to begin theirs. The last of the Practicals brought up the rear, the polished wooden case containing the instruments in one hand. With the other he swung the door quietly shut. Sworbreck swallowed, and considered putting his notebook away. He was not sure he would have anything to write today.

‘Why do these rebels tattoo themselves?’ he muttered. ‘Makes them damned easy to identify.’

Cosca was squinting up at the sky and fanning himself with his hat, making his sparse hairs flutter. ‘Ensures their commitment, though. Ensures there can be no turning back. They take pride in them. The more they fight, the more tattoos they add. I saw a man hanged up near Rostod with a whole armful.’ The Old Man sighed. ‘But then men do all manner of things in the heat of the moment that turn out, on sober reflection, to be not especially sensible.’

Sworbreck raised his brows, licked his pencil and copied that down in his notebook. A faint cry echoed from behind the closed door, then another. It made it very difficult to concentrate. Undoubtedly the man was guilty, but Sworbreck could not help placing himself in the merchant’s position, and he did not at all enjoy being there. He blinked around at the banal robbery, the careless vandalism, the casual violence, looked for somewhere to wipe his sweaty palms, and ended up wiping them on his shirt. All manner of his standards were rapidly lapsing, it seemed.

‘I was expecting it all to be a little more . . .’

‘Glorious?’ asked Temple. The lawyer had an expression of the most profound distaste on his face as he frowned towards the store.

‘Glory in war is rare as gold in the ground, my friend!’ said Cosca. ‘Or constancy in womenfolk, for that matter! You may use that.’

Sworbreck fingered his pencil. ‘Er—’

‘But you should have been at the Siege of Dagoska with me! There was glory enough for a thousand tales!’ Cosca took him by the shoulder and swept his other arm out as if there were a gilded legion approaching, rather than a set of ruffians dragging furniture from a house. ‘The numberless Gurkish marching upon our works! We dauntless few ranged at the battlements of the towering land-walls, hurling our defiance! Then, at the order—’

‘General Cosca!’ Bermi hurried across the street, lurched back as a pair of horses thundered past, dragging a torn-off door bouncing after them, then came on again, wafting their dust away with his hat. ‘We’ve a problem. Some Northern bastard grabbed Dimbik, put a—’

‘Wait.’ Cosca frowned. ‘Some Northern bastard?’

‘That’s right.’

‘
One
. . . bastard?’

The Styrian scrubbed at his scruffy golden locks and perched the hat on top. ‘A big one.’

‘How many men has Dimbik?’

Friendly answered while Bermi was thinking about it. ‘One hundred and eighteen men in Dimbik’s contingent.’

Bermi spread his palms, absolving himself of all responsibility. ‘We do anything he’ll kill the captain. He said to bring whoever’s in charge.’

Cosca pressed the wrinkled bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. ‘Where is this mountainous kidnapper? Let us hope he can be reasoned with before he destroys the entire Company.’

‘In there.’

The Old Man examined the weathered sign above the doorway. ‘Stupfer’s Meat House. An unappetising name for a brothel.’

Bermi squinted up. ‘I believe it’s an inn.’

‘Still less appetising.’ With a sharp intake of breath, the Old Man stepped over the threshold, gilt spurs clinking.

It took Sworbreck’s eyes a moment to adjust. Brightness glimmered through the gaps in the plank walls. Two chairs and a table had been overturned. Several mercenaries stood about, weapons including two spears, two swords, an axe and two flatbows pointed inwards towards the hostage taker, who sat at a table in the centre of the room.

He was the one man who showed no sign of nervousness. A big Northman indeed, hair hanging about his face and mingling with a patchy fur across his shoulders. He sniffed, and calmly chewed, a plate of meat and eggs before him, a fork held clumsily in his left fist in a strangely childlike manner. His right fist held a knife in a much more practised style. It was pressed against the throat of Captain Dimbik, whose bulge-eyed face was squashed helpless into the tabletop.

Sworbreck snatched a breath. Here, if not heroism, was certainly fearlessness. He had himself published controversial material on occasion, and that took admirable strength of will, but he could scarcely understand how a man could so coolly face such odds as these. To be brave among friends was nothing. To have the world against you and pick your path regardless – there is courage. He licked his pencil to scribble out a note to that effect. The Northman looked over at him and Sworbreck noticed something gleam through the lank hair. He felt a freezing shock. The man’s left eye was made of metal, glimmering in the gloom of the benighted eatery, his face disfigured by a giant scar. The other eye held only a terrible willingness. As though he could hardly stop himself from cutting Dimbik’s throat just to find out what would happen.

‘Well, I never did!’ Cosca threw up his arms. ‘Sergeant Friendly, it’s our old companion-in-arms!’

‘Caul Shivers,’ said Friendly quietly, never taking his eyes from the Northman. Sworbreck was reasonably sure that looks cannot kill, but even so he was very glad he was not standing between them.

Without taking the blade from Dimbik’s throat, Shivers clumsily forked up some eggs, chewed as though none of those present had anything better to do, and swallowed. ‘Fucker tried to take my eggs,’ he said in a grinding whisper.

‘You unmannerly brute, Dimbik!’ Cosca righted one of the chairs and dropped into it opposite Shivers, wagging a finger in the captain’s flushed face. ‘I hope this is a lesson to you. Never take eggs from a metal-eyed man.’

Sworbreck wrote that down, although it struck him as an aphorism of limited application. Dimbik tried to speak, perhaps to make that exact point, and Shivers pressed knuckles and knife a little harder into his throat, cutting him off in a gurgle.

‘This a friend of yours?’ grunted the Northman, frowning down at his hostage.

Cosca gave a flamboyant shrug. ‘Dimbik? He’s not without his uses, but I’d hardly say he’s the best man in the Company.’

It was difficult for Captain Dimbik to make his disagreement known with the Northman’s fist pressed so firmly into his throat he could scarcely breathe, but he did disagree, and most profoundly. He was the only man in the Company with the slightest care for discipline, or dignity, or proper behaviour, and look where it had landed him. Throttled by a barbarian in a wilderness slop-house.

To make matters worse, or at any rate no better, his commanding officer appeared perfectly willing to trade carefree smalltalk with his assailant. ‘Whatever are the chances?’ Cosca was asking. ‘Running into each other after all these years, so many hundreds of miles from where we first met. How many miles, would you say, Friendly?’

Friendly shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t like to guess.’

‘I thought you went back to the North?’

‘I went back. I came here.’ Evidently Shivers was not a man to embroider the facts.

‘Came for what?’

‘Looking for a nine-fingered man.’

Cosca shrugged. ‘You could cut one off Dimbik and save yourself a search.’

Dimbik spluttered and twisted, tangled with his own sash, and Shivers ground the point of the knife into his neck and forced him helplessly back against the tabletop.

‘It’s one particular nine-fingered man I’m after,’ came his gravelly voice, without the least hint of excitement at the situation. ‘Heard a rumour he might be out here. Black Calder’s got a score to settle with him. And so have I.’

‘You didn’t see enough scores settled back in Styria? Revenge is bad for business. And for the soul, eh, Temple?’

‘So I hear,’ said the lawyer, just visible out of the corner of Dimbik’s eye. How Dimbik hated that man. Always agreeing, always confirming, always looking like he knew better, but never saying how.

‘I’ll leave the souls to the priests,’ came Shivers’ voice, ‘and the business to the merchants. Scores I understand. Fuck!’ Dimbik whimpered, expecting the end. Then there was a clatter as the Northman’s fumbled fork fell on the table, egg spattering the floor.

‘You might find that easier with both hands.’ Cosca waved at the mercenaries around the walls. ‘Gentlemen, stand down. Shivers is an old friend and not to be harmed.’ The various bows, blades and cudgels drifted gradually from readiness. ‘Do you suppose you could release Captain Dimbik now? One dies and all the others get restless. Like ducklings.’

‘Ducklings got more fight in ’em than this crowd,’ said Shivers.

‘They’re mercenaries. Fighting is the last thing on their minds. Why don’t you fall in with us? It would be just like old times. The camaraderie, the laughter, the excitement!’

‘The poison, the treachery, the greed? I’ve found I work better alone.’ The pressure on Dimbik’s neck was suddenly released. He was taking a whooping breath when he was lifted by the collar and flung reeling across the room. His legs kicked helplessly as he crashed into one of his fellows, the two of them going down tangled with a table.

‘I’ll let you know if I run into any nine-fingered men,’ said Cosca, pressing hands to knees, baring his yellowed teeth and levering himself to his feet.

‘Do that.’ Shivers calmly turned the knife that had been at the point of ending Dimbik’s life to cutting his meat. ‘And shut the door on your way out.’

Dimbik slowly stood, breathing hard, one hand to the sore graze left on his throat, glaring at Shivers. He would have greatly liked to kill this animal. Or at any rate to order him killed. But Cosca had said he was not to be harmed and Cosca, for better or worse, though mostly worse, was his commanding officer. Unlike the rest of this chaff, Dimbik was a soldier. He took such things as respect, and obedience, and procedure seriously. Even if no one else did. It was especially important that he take them seriously because no one else did. He wriggled his rumpled sash back into position, noting with disgust that the worn silk was now sullied with egg. What a fine sash it had been once. One would never know. How he missed the army. The real army, not this twisted mockery of the military life.

He was the best man in the Company, and he was treated with scorn. Given the smallest command, the worst jobs, the meanest share of the plunder. He jerked his threadbare uniform smooth, produced his comb and rearranged his hair, then strode from the scene of his shame and out into the street with the stiffest bearing he could manage.