The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country (75 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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The sun flickered at her, searing bright along with her whooping breath, then blurred and sparkling with muffled gurgles as the river washed over her face. No strength left to twist herself out of the water. Was this what Faithful’s last moments had been like, drowned on the mill-wheel?
Here was justice.
A black shape blotted out the sun. Shivers, seeming ten feet tall as he stood over her. Something gleamed bright in the socket of his blinded eye. He lifted one boot slowly clear of the river, frowning hard, water trickling from the edges of the sole and into her face. For a moment she was sure he was going to plant that foot on her neck and push her under. Then it splashed down beside her. She heard him growling, straining at the corpse of her horse. She felt the weight across her leg release a little, then a little more. She squirmed, groaned, breathed in water and coughed it out, finally dragged her leg free and floundered up.
She trembled on hands and knees, up to her elbows in the river, babbling water sparkling and flickering in front of her, drips falling from her wet hair. ‘Shit,’ she whispered, every breath shuddering in her sore ribs. ‘Shit.’ She needed a smoke.
‘They’re coming,’ came Shivers’ voice. She felt his hand rammed into her armpit, dragging her up. ‘Get a blade.’
She staggered under the weight of wet clothes and wet armour to a bobbing corpse caught on a rock. A heavy mace with a metal shaft was still hanging by its strap from his wrist, and she dragged it free with fumbling fingers, pulled a long knife from his belt.
Just in time. An armoured man was bearing down on her, planting his feet carefully, peering at her with hard little eyes over the top of his shield, sword beaded with wet sticking out sideways. She backed off a step or two, pretending to be finished. Didn’t take much pretending. As he took another step she came at him. Couldn’t have called it a spring. More of a tired half-dive, hardly able to shove her feet through the water fast enough to keep up with the rest of her body.
She swung at him mindlessly with the mace and it clanged off his shield, made her arm sing to the shoulder. She grunted, wrestled with him, stabbed at him with her knife, but it caught the side of his breastplate and scraped off harmless. The shield barged into her and sent her stumbling. She saw one swing of his sword coming and just had the presence of mind to duck it. She flailed with the mace and caught air, reeled off balance, hardly any strength left, gulping for air. His sword went up again.
She saw Shivers’ mad grin behind him, a flash as the red blade of his axe caught the sun. It split the man’s armoured shoulder down to his chest with a heavy thud, sent blood spraying in Monza’s face. She reeled away, ears full of his gargling shriek, nose full of his blood, trying to scrape her eyes clear on the back of one hand.
First thing she saw was another soldier, open helmet with a bearded face inside, stabbing with a spear. She tried to twist away but it caught her hard in the chest, point shrieked down her breastplate, sent her toppling, head snapping forwards. She was on her back in the ford and the soldier stumbled past, floundering into a crack in the river bed, sending water showering in her eyes. She fought her way up to one knee, bloody hair tangled across her face. He turned, lifting the spear to stab at her again. She twisted round and rammed the knife between two plates of armour, into the side of his knee right to the crosspiece.
He bent down over her, eyes bulging, opened his mouth wide to scream. She snarled as she jerked the mace up and smashed it into the bottom of his jaw. His head snapped back, blood and teeth and bits of teeth flew high. He seemed to stay there for a moment, hands dangling, then she clubbed his stretched-out throat with the mace, sprawled on top of him as he fell, rolled about in the river and came up spitting.
There were men around her still, but none of them fighting. Standing or sitting in their saddles, staring about. Shivers stood watching her, axe hanging from one hand. For some reason he was stripped half-naked, his white skin dashed and spattered with red. The enamel was gone from his eye and the bright metal ball behind it gleamed in the socket with the midday sun, dewy with beads of wet.
‘Victory!’ She heard someone scream. Blurry, quivering, wet-eyed, she saw a man on a brown horse, in the midst of the river, standing in his stirrups, shining sword held high. ‘Victory!’
She took a wobbling step towards Shivers and he dropped his scarred axe, caught her as she fell. She clung on to him, right arm around his shoulder, left dangling, still just gripping the mace, if only because she couldn’t make the fingers open.
‘We won,’ she whispered at him, and she felt herself smiling.
‘We won,’ he said, squeezing her tight, half-lifting her off her feet.
‘We won.’
 
Cosca lowered his eyeglass, blinked and rubbed his eyes, one half-blind from being shut for the best part of the hour, the other half-blind from being jammed into the eyepiece for the same period. ‘Well, there we are.’ He shifted uncomfortably in the captain general’s chair. His trousers had become wedged in the sweaty crack of his arse and he wriggled as he tugged them free. ‘God smiles on results, do you Gurkish say?’
Silence. Ishri had melted away as swiftly as she had appeared. Cosca swivelled the other way, towards Friendly. ‘Quite the show, eh, Sergeant?’
The convict looked up from his dice, frowned down into the valley and said nothing. Duke Rogont’s timely charge had plugged the gaping hole in his lines, crushed the Baolish, driven deep into the Talinese ranks and left them broken. Not at all what the Duke of Delay was known for. In fact, Cosca was oddly pleased to perceive the audacious hand, or perhaps the fist, of Monzcarro Murcatto all over it.
The Osprian infantry, the threat on their right wing extinguished, had blocked off the eastern bank of the lower ford entirely. Their new Sipanese allies had well and truly joined the fray, won a brief engagement with Foscar’s surprised rearguard and were close to sealing off the western bank. A good half of Orso’s army – or of those that were not now scattered dead on the slopes, on the banks downstream or floating face-down out to sea – were trapped hopelessly in the shallows between the two, and were laying down their arms. The other half were fleeing, dark specks scattered across the green slopes on the valley’s western side. The very slopes down which they had so proudly marched but a few short hours ago, confident of victory. Sipanese cavalry moved in clumps around their edges, armour gleaming in the fierce noon sun, rounding up the survivors.
‘All done now, though, eh, Victus?’
‘Looks that way.’
‘Everyone’s favourite part of a battle. The rout.’ Unless you were in it, of course. Cosca watched the tiny figures spilling from the fords, spreading out across the trampled grass, and had to shake off a sweaty shiver at the memory of Afieri. He forced the carefree grin to stay on his face. ‘Nothing like a good rout, eh, Sesaria?’
‘Who’d have thought it?’ The big man slowly shook his head. ‘Rogont won.’
‘Grand Duke Rogont would appear to be a most unpredictable and resourceful gentleman.’ Cosca yawned, stretched, smacked his lips. ‘One after my own heart. I look forward to having him as an employer. Probably we should help with the mopping up.’ The searching of the dead. ‘Prisoners to be taken and ransomed.’ Or murdered and robbed, depending on social station. ‘Unguarded baggage that should be confiscated, lest it spoil in the open air.’ Lest it be plundered or burned before they could get their gauntlets on it.
Victus split a toothy grin. ‘I’ll make arrangements to bring it all in from the cold.’
‘Do so, brave Captain Victus, do so. I declare the sun is on its way back down and it is past time the men were on the move. I would be ashamed if, in after times, the poets said the Thousand Swords were at the Battle of Ospria . . . and did nothing.’ Cosca smiled wide, and this time with feeling. ‘Lunch, perhaps?’
To the Victors . . .
 
B
lack Dow used to say the only thing better’n a battle was a battle then a fuck, and Shivers couldn’t say he disagreed. Seemed she didn’t either. She was waiting there for him, after all, when he stalked into the darkened room, bare as a baby, stretched out on the bed, her hands behind her head and one long, smooth leg pointing out towards him.
‘What kept you?’ she asked, rocking her hips from one side to the other.
Time was he’d reckoned himself a quick thinker but the only thing moving fast right then was his cock. ‘I was . . .’ He was having trouble thinking much beyond the patch of dark hair between her legs, his anger all leaked away like beer from a broken jar. ‘I was . . . well . . .’ He kicked the door shut and walked slowly to her. ‘Don’t matter much, does it?’
‘Not much.’ She slipped off the bed, started undoing his borrowed shirt, going about it as if it was something they’d arranged.
‘Can’t say I was expecting . . . this.’ He reached out, almost scared to touch her in case he found he was dreaming it. Ran his fingertips down her bare arms, skin rough with gooseflesh. ‘Not after last time we spoke.’
She pushed her fingers into his hair and pulled his head down towards her, breath on his face. She kissed his neck, then his chin, then his mouth. ‘Shall I go?’ She sucked gently at his lips again.
‘Fuck, no,’ his voice hardly more’n a croak.
She had his belt open now, dug inside and pulled his cock free, started working at it with one hand while his trousers sagged slowly down, catching on his knees, belt buckle scraping on the floor.
Her lips were cool on his chest, on his stomach, her tongue tickled his belly. Her hand slid under his fruits, cold and ticklish and he squirmed, gave a womanly kind of a squeak. He heard a quiet slurp as she wrapped her lips around him and he stood there, bent over some, knees weak and trembling and his mouth hanging open. Her head started bobbing slowly in and out, and he moved his hips in time without thinking, grunting to himself like a pig got the swill.
 
Monza wiped her mouth on the back of her arm, squirmed her way onto the bed, pulling him after, kissing at her neck, at her breastbone, nipping at her chest, growling to himself like a dog got the bone.
She brought her knee up and flipped him over onto his back. He frowned, left side of his face all in darkness, right side full of shadows from the shifting lamplight, running his fingertips gently along the scars on her ribs. She slapped his hand away. ‘Told you. I fell down a mountain. Get your trousers off.’
He wriggled eagerly free of them, got them tangled around his ankles. ‘Shit, damn, bastard—Ah!’ He finally kicked them off and she shoved him down onto his back, clambered on top of him, one of his hands sliding up her thigh, wet fingers working between her legs. She stayed there a while, crouched over him, growling in his face and feeling his breath coming quick back at her, grinding her hips against his hand, feeling his prick rubbing up against the inside of her thigh—
‘Ah, wait!’ He wriggled away, sitting up, winced as he fiddled with the skin at the end of his cock. ‘Got it. Go!’
‘I’ll tell you when to go.’ She worked her way forwards on her knees, finding the spot and then nudging her cunt against him softly, gently, not in and not out, halfway between.
‘Oh.’ He wriggled his way up onto his elbows, straining vainly up against her.
‘Ah.’ She leaned down over him, her hair tickling his face, and he smiled, snapped his teeth at it.
‘Oh-urgh.’ She pushed her thumb into his mouth, dragged his head sideways and he sucked at it, bit at it, catching her wrist, licking at her hand, then her chin, then her tongue.
‘Ah.’ She started to push down on him, smiling herself, grunting in her throat and him grunting back at her.
‘Oh.’
 
She had the root of his cock in one hand, rubbing herself against the end of it, not in and not out, always halfway between. She had the other round the back of Shivers’ head, holding his face against her tits while he gathered them up, squeezed them, bit at them.
Her fingers worked under his jaw, thumb-tip sliding ever so gently onto his ruined cheek, tickling, teasing, scratching. He felt a sudden stab of fury, snatched hold of her wrist, hard, twisted it round, twisted her off him and onto her knees, twisted her arm behind her, face pushed down into the sheet, making her gasp.

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