The Collected Joe Abercrombie (454 page)

Then Jubair rounded the side of the inn, mud flicking from the hooves of his great horse, sword raised high. The boy tried to turn again, lurched one more desperate step before the blade caught him in the shoulder and spun him across the street. Jubair tore past, shouting something. More horsemen followed. People were running. Screaming. Faint over the rumble of hooves.

They should have had an hour.

Temple knelt beside Sufeen, reached out to turn him over, check his wounds, tear off a bandage, do those things Kahdia had taught him, long ago. But as soon as he saw Sufeen’s face he knew he was dead.

Mercenaries charged through the town, howling like a pack of dogs, waving weapons as though they were the winning cards in a game. He could smell smoke.

Temple picked up Sheel’s sword, notched blade red-speckled now, stood and walked over to the lame boy. He was crawling towards the inn, one arm useless. He saw Temple and whimpered, clutching handfuls of muck with his good hand. His satchel had come open and coins were spilling out. Silver scattered in the mud.

‘Help me,’ whispered the boy. ‘Help me!’

‘No.’

‘They’ll kill me! They’ll—’

‘Shut your fucking mouth!’ Temple poked the boy in the back with the sword and he gulped, and cowered, and the more he cowered the more Temple wanted to stick the sword through him. It was surprisingly light. It would have been so easy to do. The boy saw it in his face and whined and cringed more, and Temple poked him again.

‘Shut your mouth, fucker! Shut your mouth!’

‘Temple! Are you all right?’ Cosca loomed over him on his tall grey. ‘You’re bleeding.’

Temple looked down and saw his shirtsleeve was ripped, blood trickling down the back of his hand. He was not sure how that had happened. ‘Sufeen is dead,’ he mumbled.

‘Why do the Fates always take the best of us . . . ?’ But Cosca’s attention had been hooked by the glint of money in the mud. He held out a hand to Friendly and the sergeant helped him down from his gilt saddle. The Old Man stooped, fishing one of the coins up between two fingers, eagerly rubbing the muck away, and he produced that luminous smile of which only he was capable, good humour and good intentions radiating from his deep-lined face.

‘Yes,’ Temple heard him whisper.

Friendly tore the satchel from the boy’s back and jerked it open. A faint jingle spoke of more coins inside.

Thump, thump, thump, as a group of mercenaries kicked at the door of the inn. One hopped away cursing, pulling his filthy boot off to nurse his toes. Cosca squatted down. ‘Where did this money come from?’

‘We went on a raid,’ muttered the boy. ‘All went wrong.’ There was a crash as the inn’s door gave, a volley of cheering as men poured through the open doorway.

‘All went wrong?’

‘Only four of us made it back. So we had two dozen horses to trade. Man called Grega Cantliss bought ’em off us, up in Greyer.’

‘Cantliss?’ Shutters shattered as a chair was flung through the window of the inn and tumbled across the street beside them. Friendly frowned towards the hole it left but Cosca did not so much as twitch. As though there was nothing in the world but him, and the boy, and the coins. ‘What sort of man was this Cantliss? A rebel?’

‘No. He had nice clothes. Some crazy-eyed Northman with him. He took the horses and he paid with those coins.’

‘Where did he get them?’

‘Didn’t say.’

Cosca peeled up the sleeve on the boy’s limp arm to show his tattoo. ‘But he definitely wasn’t one of you rebels?’

The boy only shook his head.

‘That answer will not make Inquisitor Lorsen happy.’ Cosca gave a nod so gentle it was almost imperceptible. Friendly put his hands around the boy’s neck. That dog was still barking somewhere. Bark, bark, bark. Temple wished someone would shut it up. Across the street three Kantics were savagely beating a man while a pair of children watched.

‘We should stop them,’ muttered Temple, but all he did was sit down in the road.

‘How?’ Cosca had more of the coins in his hand, was carefully sorting through them. ‘I’m a general, not a God. Many generals get mixed up on that point, but I was cured of the misapprehension long ago, believe me.’ A woman was dragged screaming from a nearby house by her hair. ‘The men are upset. Like a flood, it’s safer to wash with the current than try to dam it up. If they don’t have a channel for their anger, why, it could flow anywhere. Even over me.’ He grunted as Friendly helped him up to standing. ‘And it’s not as though any of this was my fault, is it?’

Temple’s head was throbbing. He felt so tired he could hardly move. ‘It was mine?’

‘I know you meant well.’ Flames were already hungrily licking at the eaves of the inn’s roof. ‘But that’s how it is with good intentions. Hopefully we’ve all learned a lesson here today.’ Cosca produced a flask and started thoughtfully unscrewing the cap. ‘I, about indulging you. You, about indulging yourself.’ And he upended it and steadily swallowed.

‘You’re drinking again?’ muttered Temple.

‘You fuss too much. A nip never hurt anyone.’ Cosca sucked the last drops out and tossed the empty flask to Friendly for a refill. ‘Inquisitor Lorsen! So glad you could join us!’

‘I hold you responsible for this debacle!’ snapped Lorsen as he reined his horse up savagely in the street.

‘It’s far from my first,’ said the Old Man. ‘I shall have to live with the shame.’

‘This hardly seems a moment for jokes!’

Cosca chuckled. ‘My old commander Sazine once told me you should laugh every moment you live, for you’ll find it decidedly difficult afterward. These things happen in war. I’ve a feeling there was some confusion with the signals. However carefully you plan, there are always surprises.’ As if to illustrate the point, a Gurkish mercenary capered across the street wearing the bard’s beribboned jacket. ‘But this boy was able to tell us something before he died.’ Silver glinted in Cosca’s gloved palm. ‘Imperial coins. Given to these rebels by a man called . . .’

‘Grega Cantliss,’ put in Friendly.

‘That was it, in the town of Greyer.’

Lorsen frowned hard. ‘Are you saying the rebels have Imperial funding? Superior Pike was very clear that we avoid any entanglements with the Empire.’

Cosca held a coin up to the light. ‘You see this face? Emperor Ostus the Second. He died some fourteen hundred years ago.’

‘I did not know you were such a keen devotee of history,’ said Lorsen.

‘I am a keen devotee of money. These are ancient coins. Perhaps the rebels stumbled upon a tomb. The great men of old were sometimes buried with their riches.’

‘The great men of old do not concern us,’ said Lorsen. ‘It’s today’s rebels we’re after.’

A pair of Union mercenaries were screaming at a man on his knees. Asking him where the money was. One of them hit him with a length of wood torn from his own shattered door and when he got groggily up there was blood running down his face. They asked him again. They hit him again, slap, slap, slap.

Sworbreck, the biographer, watched them with one hand over his mouth. ‘Dear me,’ he muttered between his fingers.

‘Like everything else,’ Cosca was explaining, ‘rebellion costs money. Food, clothes, weapons, shelter. Fanatics still need what the rest of us need. A little less of it, since they have their high ideals to nourish them, but the point stands. Follow the money, find the leaders. Greyer appears on Superior Pike’s list anyway, does it not? And perhaps this Cantliss can lead us to this . . . Contus of yours.’

Lorsen perked up at that. ‘Conthus.’

‘Besides.’ Cosca gestured at the rebels’ corpses with a loose waft of his sword that nearly took Sworbreck’s nose off. ‘I doubt we’ll be getting any further clues from these three. Life rarely turns out the way we expect. We must bend with the circumstances.’

Lorsen gave a disgusted grunt. ‘Very well. For now we follow the money.’ He turned his horse about and shouted to one of his Practicals. ‘Search the corpses for tattoos, damn it, find me any rebels still alive!’

Three doors down, a man had climbed onto the roof of a house and was stuffing bedding down the chimney while others clustered about the door. Cosca, meanwhile, was holding forth to Sworbreck. ‘I share your distaste for this, believe me. I have been closely involved in the burning of some of the world’s most ancient and beautiful cities. You should have seen Oprile in flames, it lit the sky for miles! This is scarcely a career highlight.’

Jubair had dragged some corpses into a line and was expressionlessly cutting their heads off. Thud, thud, thud, went his heavy sword. Two of his men had torn apart the arch over the road and were whittling the ends of the timbers to points. One was already rammed into the ground and had Sheel’s head on it, mouth strangely pouting.

‘Dear me,’ muttered Sworbreck again.

‘Severed heads,’ Cosca was explaining, ‘never go out of fashion. Used sparingly and with artistic sensibility, they can make a point a great deal more eloquently than those still attached. Make a note of that. Why aren’t you writing?’

An old woman had crawled from the burning house, face stained with soot, and now some of the men had formed a circle and were shoving her tottering back and forth.

‘What a waste,’ Lorsen was bitterly complaining to one of his Practicals. ‘How fine this land could be with the proper management. With firm governance, and the latest techniques of agriculture and forestry. They have a threshing machine now in Midderland which can do in a day with one operator what used to take a dozen peasants a week.’

‘What do the other eleven do?’ asked Temple, his mouth seeming to move by itself.

‘Find other employment,’ snarled the Practical.

Behind him another head went up on its stick, long hair stirring. Temple did not recognise the face. The smoked-out house was burning merrily now, flames whipping, air shimmering, the men backing off with hands up against the heat, letting the old woman crawl away.

‘Find other employment,’ muttered Temple to himself.

Cosca had Brachio by the elbow and was shouting in his ear over the noise. ‘You need to round up your men! We must head north and east towards Greyer and seek out news of this Grega Cantliss.’

‘It might take a while to calm ’em.’

‘One hour, then I ask Sergeant Friendly to bring in the stragglers, in pieces if necessary. Discipline, Sworbreck, is vital to a body of fighting men!’

Temple closed his eyes. God, it stank. Smoke, and blood, and fury, and smoke. He needed water. He turned to ask Sufeen for some and saw his corpse in the mud a few strides away. A man of principle must make hard choices and suffer the consequences.

‘We brought your horse down,’ said Cosca, as though that should make up for at least some of the day’s reverses. ‘If you want my advice, keep busy. Put this place at your back as swiftly as possible.’

‘How do I forget this?’

‘Oh, that’s too much to ask. The trick is in learning to just . . .’ Cosca stepped carefully back as one of the Styrians rode whooping past, a man’s corpse bouncing after his horse. ‘Not care.’

‘I have to bury Sufeen.’

‘Yes, I suppose so. But quickly. We have daylight and not a moment to waste. Jubair! Put that down!’ And the Old Man started across the street, waving his sword. ‘Burn anything that still needs burning and mount up! We’re moving east!’

When Temple turned, Friendly was wordlessly offering him a shovel. The dog had finally stopped barking. A big Northman, a tattooed brute from past the Crinna, had spiked its head on a spear beside the heads of the rebels and was pointing up at it, chuckling.

Temple took Sufeen by the wrists and hauled him onto his shoulder, then up and over the saddle of his scared horse. Not an easy task, but easier than he had expected. Living, Sufeen had been big with talk and movement and laughter. Dead he was hardly any weight at all.

‘Are you all right?’ Bermi, touching him on the arm.

His concern made Temple want to cry. ‘I’m not hurt. But Sufeen is dead.’ There was justice.

Two of the Northmen had smashed open a chest of drawers and were fighting over the clothes inside, leaving torn cloth scattered across the muddy street. The tattooed man had tied a stick below the dog’s head and was carefully arranging a best shirt with a frilly front upon it, face fixed with artist’s concentration.

‘You sure you’re all right?’ Bermi called after him from the midst of the rubbish-strewn street.

‘Never better.’

Temple led the horse out of town, then off the track, or the two strips of rutted mud that passed for one, the sounds of barked orders, and burning, and the men reluctantly making ready to leave fading behind him to be replaced by chattering water. He followed the river upstream until he found a pleasant enough spot between two trees, their hanging boughs trailing in the water. He slid Sufeen’s body down and rolled it over onto its back.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and tossed the shovel into the river. Then he pulled himself up into his saddle.

Sufeen would not have cared where he was laid out, or how. If there was a God, he was with Him now, probably demanding to know why He had so conspicuously failed as yet to put the world to rights. North and east, Cosca had said. Temple turned his horse towards the west, and gave it his heels, and galloped off, away from the greasy pall of smoke rising from the ruins of Averstock.