The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country (61 page)

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Authors: Joe Abercrombie

Tags: #Fantasy, #Omnibus

BOOK: The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country
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He sprang forwards with consummate nimbleness, nicked her ankle with his scalpel as he passed, rolled under the table and came up on the other side, grinning at her through the complexity of apparatus, the flickering flames of the burners, the distorting shapes of twisted tubes, the glinting surfaces of glass and metal.
‘Ha ha!’ He shouted, entirely alert and not dying in the least. ‘You, poison me? The great Castor Morveer, undone by his assistant? I think
not
!’ She stared down at her bleeding ankle, and then up at him, eyes wide. ‘There is no King of Poisons, fool!’ he cackled. ‘The method I showed you, that produces a liquid that smells, tastes and looks like water? It makes water! Entirely harmless! Unlike the concoction with which I just now pricked you, which was enough to kill a dozen horses!’
He slipped his hand inside his shirt, deft fingertips unerringly selecting the correct vial and sliding it out into the light. Clear fluid gleamed inside. ‘The antidote.’ She winced as she saw it, made to dive one way around the table then came the other, but her feet were clumsy and he evaded her with negligible effort. ‘Most undignified, my dear! Chasing each other around our apparatus, in a barn, in the middle of rural Styria! Most terribly undignified!’
‘Please,’ she hissed at him. ‘Please, I’ll . . . I’ll—’
‘Don’t embarrass us both! You have displayed your true nature now you . . . you ingrate
harpy
! You are unmasked, you treacherous cuckoo!’
‘I didn’t want to take the blame is all! Murcatto said sooner or later you’d go over to Orso! That you’d want to use me as the scapegoat! Murcatto said—’
‘Murcatto? You listen to Murcatto over me? That degenerate, husk-addled and notorious butcher of the bloody battlefield? Oh, commendable guiding light! Curse me for an imbecile to trust either one of you! It seems you were correct, at least, that I am like to a baby. All unspoiled innocence! All undeserved mercy!’ He flicked the vial through the air at Day. ‘Let it never again be said,’ as he watched her fumbling through the straw for it, ‘that I am not,’ as she clawed it up and ripped out the cork, ‘as generous, merciful and forgiving as any poisoner,’ as she sucked down the contents, ‘within the entire Circle of the World.’
Day wiped her mouth and took a shuddering breath. ‘We need . . . to talk.’
‘We certainly do. But not for long.’ She blinked, then a strange spasm passed over her face. Just as he had known it would. He wrinkled his nose as he tossed his scalpel clattering across the table. ‘The blade carried no poison, but you have just consumed a vial of undiluted Leopard Flower.’
She flopped over, eyes rolling back, skin turning pink, began to jerk around in the straw, froth gurgling from her mouth.
Morveer stepped forwards, leaned down over her, baring his teeth, stabbing at his chest with a clawing finger. ‘Kill me, would you? Poison me? Castor Morveer?’ The heels of her shoes drummed out a rapid beat on the hard-packed earth, sending up puffs of straw-dust. ‘I am the only King of Poisons, you . . . you child-faced fool !’ Her thrashing became a locked-up trembling, back arched impossibly far. ‘The simple insolence of you! The arrogance! The
insult
! The, the, the . . .’ He fumbled breathlessly for the right word, then realised she was dead. There was a long, slow silence as her corpse gradually relaxed.
‘Shit!’ he barked. ‘Entirely shit!’ The scant satisfaction of victory was already fast melting, like an unseasonable flurry of snow on a warm day, before the crushing disappointment, wounding betrayal and simple inconvenience of his new, assistant-less, employer-less situation. For Day’s final words had left him in no doubt that Murcatto was to blame. That after all his thankless, selfless toil on her behalf she had plotted his death. Why had he not anticipated this development? How could he not have expected it, after all the painful reverses he had suffered in his life? He was simply too soft a personage for this harsh land, this unforgiving epoch. Too trusting and too comradely for his own good. He was prone to see the world in the rosy tones of his own benevolence, cursed always to expect the best from people.
‘Thin as paper, am I? Shit! You . . . shit!’ He kicked Day’s corpse petulantly, his shoe thudding into her body over and over and making it shudder again. ‘Swollen-headed?’ he near shrieked it. ‘Me? Why, I am humility . . . its . . . fucking . . . self !’ He realised suddenly that it ill befit a man of his boundless sensitivity to kick a person already dead, especially one he had cared for almost as a daughter. He felt a sudden bubbling-up of melodramatic regret.
‘I’m sorry! So sorry.’ He knelt beside her, gently pushed her hair back, touched her face with trembling fingers. That vision of innocence, never more to smile, never more to speak. ‘I’m so sorry, but . . . but why? I will always remember you, but—Oh . . . urgh!’ There was a sharp smell of urine. The corpse voiding itself, an inevitable side effect of a colossal dose of Leopard Flower that a man of his experience really should have seen coming. The pool had already spread out through the straw and soaked the knees of his trousers. He tottered up, wincing with disgust.
‘Shit! Shit!’ He snatched up a flask and flung it against the wall in a fury, fragments of glass scattering. ‘Bully and coward in one?’ He gave Day’s body another petulant kick, bruised his toes and set off limping around the barn at a great pace.
‘Murcatto!’ That evil witch had incited his apprentice to treachery. The best and most loved apprentice he had trained since he was obliged to preemptively poison Aloveo Cray back in Ostenhorm. He knew he should have killed Murcatto in his orchard, but the scale, the importance and the apparent impossibility of the work she offered had appealed to his vanity. ‘Curse my vanity! The one flaw in my character!’
But there could be no vengeance. ‘No.’ Nothing so base and uncivilised, for that was not Morveer’s way. He was no savage, no animal like the Serpent of Talins and her ilk, but a refined and cultured gentleman of the highest ethical standards. He was considerably out of pocket, now, after all his hard and loyal work, so he would have to find a proper contract. A proper employer and an entirely orderly and clean-motived set of murders, resulting in ‘a proper, honest profit.’
And who would pay him to murder the Butcher of Caprile and her barbaric cronies? The answer was not so very difficult to fathom.
He faced a window and practised his most sycophantic bow, the one with the full finger twirl at the end. ‘Grand Duke Orso, an incom . . . parable honour.’ He straightened, frowning. At the top of the long rise, silhouetted against the grey dawn, were several dozen riders.
 
‘For honour, glory and, above all, a decent pay-off!’ A scattering of laughter as Faithful drew his sword and held it up high. ‘Let’s go!’ And the long line of horsemen started moving, keeping loosely together as they thrashed through the wheat and out into the paddock, upping the pace to a trot.
Shivers went along with ’em. There wasn’t much choice since Faithful was right at his side. Hanging back would’ve seemed poor manners. He would’ve liked his axe to hand, but hoping for a thing often brought on the opposite. Besides, as they picked up speed to a healthy canter, keeping both hands on the reins seemed like an idea with some weight to it.
Maybe a hundred strides out now, and all still looking peaceful. Shivers frowned at the farmhouse, at the low wall, at the barn, gathering himself, making ready. It all seemed like a bad plan, now. It had seemed a bad plan at the time, but having to do it made it seem a whole lot worse. The ground rushed past hard under his horse’s hooves, the saddle jolted at his sore arse, the wind nipped at his narrowed eye, tickled at the raw scars on the other side of his face, bitter cold without the bandages. Faithful rode on his right, sitting up tall, cloak flapping behind him, sword still raised, shouting, ‘Steady! Steady!’ On his left the line shifted and buckled, eager faces of men and horses in a twisting row, spears jolting up and down at all angles. Shivers worked his boots free of the stirrups.
Then the shutters of the farmhouse flew open all together with an echoing bang. Shivers saw the Osprians at the windows, first light glinting on their steel caps as a long row of ’em came up from behind the wall together, flatbows levelled. Comes a time you just have to do a thing, shit on the consequences. The air whooped in his throat as he sucked in a great breath and held it, then threw himself sideways and tumbled from the saddle. Over the batter of hooves, the clatter of metal, the rushing of wind he heard Monza’s sharp cry.
Then the dirt struck him, jarred his teeth together. He rolled, grunting, over and over, took a mouthful of mud. The world spun, all dark sky and flicking soil, flying horses, falling men. Hooves thudded around him, mud spattered in his eyes. He heard screams, fought his way up as far as his knees. A corpse dropped, flailing, crashed into Shivers and knocked him on his back again.
 
Morveer made it to the double doors of the barn and wrestled one wide enough to stick his head through, just in time to see the Osprian soldiers rise from behind the farmyard wall and deliver a disciplined and deadly volley of flatbow fire.
Out in the grassy paddock men jerked and tumbled from their saddles, horses fell and threw their riders. Flesh plunged down, ploughed into the wet dirt, limbs flailing. Beasts and men roared and wailed in shock and fury, pain and fear. Perhaps a dozen riders dropped, but the rest broke into a full charge without the slightest hint of reluctance, weapons raised and gleaming, releasing war cries to match the death screams of their fallen comrades.
Morveer whimpered, shoved the door shut and pressed his back against it. Red-edged battle. Rage and randomness. Pointed metal moving at great speed. Blood spilled, brains dashed, soft bodies ripped open and their innards laid sickeningly bare. A most uncivilised way to carry on, and decidedly not his area of expertise. His own guts, thankfully still within his abdomen, shifted with a first stab of bestial terror and revulsion, then constricted with a more reasoned wash of fear. If Murcatto won, her lethal intentions towards him had already been clearly displayed. She had not balked for a moment at engineering the death of his innocent apprentice, after all. If the Thousand Swords won, well, he was an accomplice of Prince Ario’s killer. In either case his life would undoubtedly be painfully forfeit.
‘Damn it!’
Beyond the one doorway the farmyard was rapidly becoming a slaughteryard, but the windows were too narrow to squeeze through. Hide in the hayloft? No, no, what was he, five years old? Lay down beside poor Day and play dead? What? Lie down in urine? Never! He dashed to the back of the barn with all despatch, poked desperately at the planking for a way through. He found a loose board and began kicking at it.
‘Break, you wooden bastard ! Break! Break! Break! ’ The sounds of mortal combat were growing ever more intense in the yard behind him. Something crashed against the side of the barn and made him startle, dust filtering down from the rafters with the force of it. He turned back to the carpentry, whimpering now with fear and frustration, face prickling with sweat. One last kick and the wood tore free. Wan daylight slunk in through a narrow gap between two ragged-edged planks. He knelt, turning sideways on, forced his head through the crack, splinters digging at his scalp, gained a view of flat country, brown wheat, a stand of trees perhaps two hundred strides distant. Safety. He worked one arm through into the free air, clutching vainly at the weathered outside of the barn. One shoulder, half his chest, and then he stuck fast.
It had been optimistic of him, to say the least, to imagine that he might have effortlessly slipped through that gap. Ten years ago he had been slender as a willow-swatch, could have glided through a space half the width with the grace of a dancer. Too many pastries in the interim had rendered such an operation impossible, however, and there appeared to be a growing prospect that they might have cost him his life. He wriggled, squirmed, sharp wood digging at his belly. Is this how they would find him? Is this the tale that they would snigger over in after years? Would that be his legacy? The great Castor Morveer, death without a face, most feared of all poisoners, finally brought to book, wedged in a crack in the back of a barn while fleeing?
‘Damn pastries!’ he screamed, and with one last effort tore himself through, teeth gritted as a rogue nail ripped his shirt half-off and left him a long and painful cut down his ribs. ‘Damn it! Shit!’ He dragged his aching legs through after him. Finally liberated from the clawing embrace of poor-quality joinery and riddled with splinters, he began to dash towards the proffered safety of the trees, waist-high wheat stalks tripping him, thrashing him, snatching at his legs.
He had progressed no further than five wobbly strides when he fell headlong, sprawling in the damp crop with a squeal. He struggled up, cursing. One of his shoes had been snatched off by the jealous wheat as he went down. ‘Damn wheat!’ He was just beginning to cast about for it when he became aware of a loud drumming sound. To his disbelieving horror, a dozen horsemen had burst from the trees towards which he had been fleeing, and were even now bearing down on him at full gallop, spears lowered.
He gave vent to a breathless squeak, spun, slipped on his bare foot, began to limp back to the crack that had so mauled him on their first acquaintance. He wedged one leg through, whimpered at a stab of agony as he accidently squashed his fruits against a plank. His back prickled as the hammering of hooves grew louder. The riders were no more than fifty strides from him, eyes of men and beasts starting, teeth of men and beasts bared, brightening morning sun catching warlike metal, chaff flying from threshing hooves. He would never tear his bleeding body back through the narrow gap in time. Would he be thrashed, now? Poor, humble Castor Morveer, who only ever wanted to be—

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