Abercrombie, Joe - The Heroes

‘They say war’s an awful affliction, but you’ll have a hard time finding a gravedigger to agree.’

The last one hadn’t been filled in yet. Calder’s skin crawled as the torch found its edges, five strides across, maybe, its far end lost in the sliding shadows. Deep made it to the corner and peered over the edge. ‘Phew.’ He wedged his torch in the earth, turned and beckoned. ‘Up you come, then. Walking slow ain’t going to make the difference.’

Shallow gave him a nudge and Calder plodded on, throat tightening with each drawn-out breath, more and more of the sides of the pit crawling into view with each unsteady step.

Earth, and pebbles, and barley roots. Then a pale hand. Then a bare arm. Then corpses. Then more. The pit was full of them, heaped up in a grisly tangle. The refuse of battle.

Most were naked. Stripped of everything. Would some gravedigger end up with Calder’s good cloak? The dirt and the blood looked the same in the torchlight. Black smears on dead white skin. Hard to say which twisted legs and arms belonged to which bodies.

Had these been men a couple of days before? Men with ambitions, and hopes, and things they cared for? A mass of stories, cut off in the midst, no ending. The hero’s reward.

He felt a warmth down his leg and realised he’d pissed himself.

‘Don’t worry.’ Deep’s voice was soft, like a father to a scared child. ‘That happens a lot.’

‘We’ve seen it all.’

‘And then a little more.’

‘You stand here.’ Shallow took him by the shoulders and turned him to face the pit, limp and helpless. You never think you’ll just meekly do what you’re told when you’re facing your death. But everyone does. ‘A little to the left.’ Guiding him a step to the right. ‘That’s left, right?’

‘That’s right, fool.’

‘Fuck!’ Shallow gave him a harder yank and Calder slipped at the edge, boot heel sending a few lumps of earth down onto the bodies. Shallow pulled him back straight. There?’

‘There,’ said Deep. ‘All right, then.’

Calder stood, looking down, silently starting to cry. Dignity no longer seemed to matter much. He’d have even less soon enough. He wondered how deep the pit was. How many bodies he’d share it with when they picked those tools up in the morning and heaped the earth on top. Five score? Ten score? More?

He stared at the nearest of them, right beneath him, a great black wound in the back of its head. His head, Calder supposed, though it was hard to think of it as a man. It was a thing, robbed of all identity. Robbed of all … unless …

The face had been Black Dow’s. His mouth was open, half-full of dirt, but it was the Protector of the North, no doubt. He looked almost as if he was smiling, one arm flung out to welcome Calder, like an old friend, to the land of the dead. Back to the mud indeed. So quickly it can happen. Lord of all to meat in a hole.

Tears crept down Calder’s hot face, glistened in the torchlight as they pattered into the pit, making fresh streaks through the grime on Black Dow’s cold cheek. Death in the circle would’ve been a disappointment. How much worse was this? Tossed in a nameless hole, unmarked by those that loved or even those that hated him.

He was blubbing like a baby, sore ribs heaving, the pit and the corpses glistening through the salt water.

When would they do it? Surely, now, here it came. A breeze wafted up, chilling the tears on his face. He let his head drop back, squeezing his eyes shut, wincing, grunting, as if he could feel the knife sliding into his back. As if the metal was already in him. When would they do it? Surely now …

The wind dropped away, and he thought he heard clinking. Voices from behind him, from the direction of the house. He stood for a while longer, making a racking sob with every breath.

‘Fish to start,’ someone said.

‘Excellent.’

Trembling, cringing, every movement a terrifying effort, Calder slowly turned.

Deep and Shallow had vanished, their torch flickering abandoned at the edge of the pit. Beyond the ramshackle fence, under the ramshackle porch, the old table had been covered with a cloth and set for dinner. A man was unpacking dishes from a large basket. Another sat in one of the chairs. Calder wiped his eyes on the back of his wildly trembling hand, not sure whether to believe the evidence of his senses. The man in the chair was the First of the Magi.

Bayaz smiled over. ‘Why, Prince Calder!’ As if they’d run into each other by accident in the market. ‘Pray join me!’

Calder wiped snot from his top lip, still expecting a knife to dart from the darkness. Then ever so slowly, his knees wobbling so much he could hear them flapping against the inside of his wet trousers, he picked his way back through the gap in the fence and over to the porch.

The servant righted the fallen chair, dusted it off and held his open palm towards it. Calder sagged into it, numb, eyes still gently leaking by themselves, and watched Bayaz fork a piece of fish into his mouth and slowly, deliberately, thoroughly chew, and swallow.

‘So. The Whiteflow shall remain the northern boundary of Angland.’

Calder sat for a moment, aware of a faint snorting at the back of his nose with every quick breath but unable to stop it. Then he blinked, and finally nodded.

‘The land between the Whiteflow and the Cusk, including the city of Uffrith, shall come under the governorship of the Dogman. It shall become a protectorate of the Union, with six representatives on the Open Council.’

Calder nodded again.

‘The rest of the North as far as the Crinna is yours.’ Bayaz popped the last piece of fish into his mouth and waved his fork around. ‘Beyond the Crinna it belongs to Stranger-Come-Knocking.’

Yesterday’s Calder might’ve snapped out some defiant jibe, but all he could think of now was how very lucky he felt not to be gushing blood into the mud, and how very much he wanted to carry on not gushing blood. ‘Yes,’ he croaked.

‘You don’t need time to … chew it over?’

Eternity in a pit full of corpses, perhaps? ‘No,’ whispered Calder.

‘Pardon me?’

Calder took a shuddering breath. ‘No.’

‘Well.’ Bayaz dabbed his mouth with a cloth, and looked up. ‘This is much better.’

‘A very great improvement.’ The curly-headed servant had a pouty smile as he whisked Bayaz’ plate away and replaced it with a clean one. Probably much the same as Calder’s habitual smirk, but he enjoyed seeing it on another man about as much as he might have enjoyed seeing another man fuck his wife. The servant whipped the cover from a dish with a flourish.

‘Ah, the meat, the meat!’ Bayaz watched the knife flash and flicker as wafer slices were carved with blinding skill. ‘Fish is all very well, but dinner hasn’t really started until you’re served something that bleeds.’ The servant added vegetables with the dexterity of a conjuror, then turned his smirk on Calder.

There was something oddly, irritatingly familiar about him. Like a name at the tip of Calder’s tongue. Had he seen him visit his father once, in a fine cloak? Or at Ironhead’s fire with a Carl’s helmet on? Or at the shoulder of Stranger-Come-Knocking, with paint on his face and splinters of bone through his ear? ‘Meat, sir?’

‘No,’ whispered Calder. All he could think of was all the meat in the pits just a few strides away.

‘You really should try it!’ said Bayaz. ‘Go on, give him some! And help the prince, Yoru, he has an injured right hand.’

The servant doled meat onto Calder’s plate, bloody gravy gleaming in the gloom, then began to cut it up at frightening speed, making Calder flinch with each sweep of the knife.

Across the table, the Magus was already happily chewing. ‘I must admit, I did not entirely enjoy the tenor of our last conversation. It reminded me somewhat of your father.’ Bayaz paused as if expecting a response, but Calder had none to give. ‘That is meant as a very small compliment and a very large warning. For many years your father and I had … an understanding.’

‘Some good it did him.’

The wizard’s brows went up. ‘How short your family’s memory! Indeed it did! Gifts he had of me, and all manner of help and wise counsel and oh, how he thrived! From piss-pot chieftain to King of the Northmen! Forged a nation where there were only squabbling peasants and pigshit before!’ The edge of Bayaz’ knife screeched against the plate and his voice sharpened with it. ‘But he became arrogant in his glory, and forgot the debts he owed, and sent his puffed-up sons to make demands of me. Demands,’ hissed the Magus, eyes glittering in the shadows of their sockets. ‘Of me.’

Calder’s throat felt uncomfortably tight as Bayaz sat back. ‘Bethod turned his back on our friendship, and his allies fell away, and all his great achievements withered, and he died in blood and was buried in an unmarked grave. There is a lesson there. Had your father paid his debts, perhaps he would be King of the Northmen still. I have high hopes you will learn from his mistake, and remember what you owe.’

‘I’ve taken nothing from you.’

‘Have … you … not?’ Bayaz bit off each word with a curl of his lip. ‘You will never know, nor could you even understand, the many ways in which I have interceded on your behalf.’

The servant arched one brow. ‘The account is lengthy.’

‘Do you suppose things run your way because you think yourself charming? Or cunning? Or uncommonly lucky?’

Calder had, in fact, thought exactly that.

‘Was it charm that saved you from Reachey’s assassins at his weapon-take, or the two colourful Northmen I sent to watch over you?’

Calder had no answer.

‘Was it cunning that saved you in the battle, or my instructions to Brodd Tenways that he should keep you from harm?’

Even less to that. ‘Tenways?’ he whispered.

‘Friends and enemies can sometimes be difficult to tell apart. I asked him to act like Black Dow’s man. Perhaps he was too good an actor. I heard he died.’

‘It happens,’ croaked Calder.

‘Not to you.’ The ‘yet’ was unsaid, but still deafening. ‘Even though you faced Black Dow in a duel to the death! And was it luck that tipped the balance towards you when the Protector of the North lay dead at your feet, or was it my old friend Stranger-Come-Knocking?’

Calder felt as if he was up to his chest in quicksand, and had only just realised. ‘He’s your man?’

Bayaz did not gloat or cackle. He looked almost bored. ‘I knew him when he was still called Pip. But big men need big names, eh, Black Calder?’

‘Pip,’ he muttered, trying to square the giant with the name.

‘I wouldn’t use it to his face.’

‘I don’t reach his face.’

‘Few do. He wants to bring civilisation to the fens.’

‘I wish him luck.’

‘Keep it for yourself. I gave it to you.’

Calder was too busy trying to think his way through it. ‘But … Stranger-Come-Knocking fought for Dow. Why not have him fight for the Union? You could have won on the second morning and saved us all a—’

‘He was not content with my first offer.’ Bayaz sourly speared some greens with his fork. ‘He demonstrated his value, and so I made a better one.’

‘This was all a disagreement over prices?’

The Magus let his head tip to one side. ‘Just what do you think a war is?’ That sank slowly into the silence between them like a ship with all hands. ‘There are many others who have debts.’

‘Caul Shivers.’

‘No,’ said the servant. ‘His intervention was a happy accident.’

Calder blinked. ‘Without him … Dow would’ve torn me apart.’

‘Good planning does not prevent accidents,’ said Bayaz, ‘it allows for them. It makes sure every accident is a happy one. I am not so careless a gambler as to make only one bet. But the North has ever been short of good material, and I admit you are my preference. You are no hero, Calder. I like that. You see what men are. You have your father’s cunning, and ambition, and ruthlessness, but not his pride.’

‘Pride always struck me as a waste of effort,’ murmured Calder. ‘Everyone serves.’

‘Keep that in mind and you will prosper. Forget it, well …’ Bayaz forked a slice of meat into his mouth and noisily chewed. ‘My advice would be to keep that pit of corpses always at your feet. The feeling as you stared down into it, waiting for death. The awful helplessness. Skin tickling with the expectation of the knife. The regret for everything left undone. The fear for those you leave behind.’ He gave a bright smile. ‘Start every morning and end every day at the brink of that pit. Remember, because forgetfulness is the curse of power. And you may find yourself once again staring into your own grave, this time with less happy results. You need only defy me.’

‘I’ve spent the last ten years kneeling to one man or another.’ Calder didn’t have to lie. Black Dow had let him live, then demanded obedience, then made threats. Look how that turned out. ‘My knees bend very easily.’

The Magus smacked his lips as he swallowed the last piece of carrot and tossed his cutlery on the plate. ‘That gladdens me. You cannot imagine how many similar conversations I have had with stiff-kneed men. I no longer have the slightest patience for them. But I can be generous to those who see reason. It may be that at some point I will send someone to you requesting … favours. When that day comes, I hope you will not disappoint me.’

‘What sort of favours?’

‘The sort that will prevent you from ever again being taken down the wrong path by men with knives.’

Calder cleared his throat. ‘Those kinds of favours I will always be willing to grant.’

‘Good. In return you will have gold from me.’

‘That’s the generosity of Magi? Gold?’

‘What were you expecting, a magic codpiece? This is no children’s storybook. Gold is everything and anything. Power, love, safety. Sword and shield together. There is no greater gift. But I do, as it happens, have another.’ Bayaz paused like a jester about to deliver the joke. ‘Your brother’s life.’

Calder felt his face twitch. Hope? Or disappointment? ‘Scale’s dead.’

‘No. He lost his right hand at the Old Bridge but he lives. The Union are releasing all prisoners. A gesture of goodwill, as part of the historic peace accord that you have so gratefully agreed to. You can collect the pinhead at midday tomorrow.’

‘What should I do with him?’

‘Far be it from me to tell you what to do with your gift, but you do not get to be a king without making some sacrifices. You do want to be king, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’ Things had changed a great deal since the evening began, but of that Calder was more sure than ever.

The First of the Magi stood, taking up his staff as his servant began nimbly to clear away the dishes. ‘Then an elder brother is a dreadful encumbrance.’

Calder watched him for a moment, looking calmly off across the darkened fields as though they were full of flowers rather than corpses. ‘Have you eaten here, within a long piss of a mass grave … just to show me how ruthless you are?’