Joe Abercrombie: Best Served Cold

Stones clattered down around her, sticks and gravel. Dust slowly settled. She heard wind, creaking in the branches, crackling in the leaves. Or her own breath, creaking and crackling in her broken throat. The sun flickered through black trees, jabbing at one eye. The other was dark. Flies buzzed, zipping and swimming in the warm morning air. She was down with the waste from Orso’s kitchens. Sprawled out helpless in the midst of the rotten vegetables, and the cooking slime, and the stinking offal left over from the last month’s magnificent meals. Tossed out with the rubbish.

“Huuurrhhh…”

A jagged, mindless sound. She was embarrassed by it, almost, but couldn’t stop making it. Animal horror. Mad despair. The groan of the dead, in hell. Her eye darted desperately around. She saw the wreck of her right hand, a shapeless, purple glove with a bloody gash in the side. One finger trembled slightly. Its tip brushed against torn skin on her elbow. The forearm was folded in half, a broken-off twig of grey bone sticking through bloody silk. It didn’t look real. Like a cheap theatre prop.

“Huurrhhh…”

The fear had hold of her now, swelling with every breath. She couldn’t move her head. She couldn’t move her tongue in her mouth. She could feel the pain, gnawing at the edge of her mind. A terrible mass, pressing up against her, crushing every part of her, worse, and worse, and worse.

“Huurhh… uurh…”

Benna was dead. A streak of wet ran from her flickering eye and she felt it trickle slowly down her cheek. Why was she not dead? How could she not be dead?

Soon, please. Before the pain got any worse. Please, let it be soon.

“Uurh… uh… uh.”

Please, death.

“To have a good enemy, choose a friend: he knows where to strike”

Diane de Poitiers

J appo Murcatto never said why he had such a good sword, but he knew well how to use it. Since his son was by five years his younger child and sickly too, from a tender age he passed on the skill to his daughter. Monzcarro had been her father’s mother’s name, in the days when her family had pretended at nobility. Her own mother had not cared for it in the least, but since she had died giving birth to Benna that scarcely mattered.

Those were peaceful years in Styria, which were as rare as gold. At ploughing time Monza would hurry behind her father while the blade scraped through the dirt, weeding any big stones from the fresh black earth and throwing them into the wood. At reaping time she would hurry behind her father while his scythe-blade flashed, gathering the cut stalks into sheaves.

“Monza,” he would say, smiling down at her, “what would I do without you?”

She helped with the threshing and tossed the seed, split logs and drew water. She cooked, swept, washed, carried, milked the goat. Her hands were always raw from some kind of work. Her brother did what he could, but he was small, and ill, and could do little. Those were hard years, but they were happy ones.

When Monza was fourteen, Jappo Murcatto caught the fever. She and Benna watched him cough, and sweat, and wither. One night her father seized Monza by her wrist, and stared at her with bright eyes.

“Tomorrow, break the ground in the upper field, or the wheat won’t rise in time. Plant all you can.” He touched her cheek. “It’s not fair that it should fall to you, but your brother is so small. Watch over him.” And he was dead.

Benna cried, and cried, but Monza’s eyes stayed dry. She was thinking about the seed that needing planting, and how she would do it. That night Benna was too scared to sleep alone, and so they slept together in her narrow bed, and held each other for comfort. They had no one else now.

The next morning, in the darkness, Monza dragged her father’s corpse from the house, through the woods behind and rolled it into the river. Not because she had no love in her, but because she had no time to bury him.

By sunrise she was breaking the ground in the upper field.

Land of Opportunity

F irst thing Shivers noticed as the boat wallowed in towards the wharves, it was nothing like as warm as he’d been expecting. He’d heard the sun always shone in Styria. Like a nice bath, all year round. If Shivers had been offered a bath like this he’d have stayed dirty, and probably had a few sharp words to say besides. Talins huddled under grey skies, clouds bulging, a keen breeze off the sea, cold rain speckling his cheek from time to time and reminding him of home. And not in a good way. Still, he was set on looking at the sunny side of the case. Probably just a shitty day was all. You get ’em everywhere.

There surely was a seedy look about the place, though, as the sailors scuttled to make the boat fast to the dock. Brick buildings lined the grey sweep of the bay, narrow windowed, all squashed in together, roofs slumping, paint peeling, cracked-up render stained with salt, green with moss, black with mould. Down near the slimy cobbles the walls were plastered over with big papers, slapped up at all angles, ripped and pasted over each other, torn edges fluttering. Faces on them, and words printed. Warnings, maybe, but Shivers weren’t much of a reader. Specially not in Styrian. Speaking the language was going to be enough of a challenge.

The waterfront crawled with people, and not many looked happy. Or healthy. Or rich. There was quite the smell. Or to be more precise, a proper reek. Rotten salt fish, old corpses, coal smoke and overflowing latrine pits rolled up together. If this was the home of the grand new man he was hoping to become, Shivers had to admit to being more’n a touch disappointed. For the briefest moment he thought about paying over most of what he had left for a trip straight back home to the North on the next tide. But he shook it off. He was done with war, done with leading men to death, done with killing and all that went along with it. He was set on being a better man. He was going to do the right thing, and this was where he was going to do it.

“Right, then.” He gave the nearest sailor a cheery nod. “Off I go.” He got no more’n a grunt in return, but his brother used to tell him it was what you gave out that made a man, not what you got back. So he grinned like he’d got a merry send-off, strode down the clattering gangplank and into his brave new life in Styria.

He’d scarcely taken a dozen paces, staring up at looming buildings on one side, swaying masts on the other, before someone barged into him and near knocked him sideways.

“My apologies,” Shivers said in Styrian, keeping things civilised. “Didn’t see you there, friend.” The man kept going, didn’t even turn. That prickled some at Shivers’ pride. He had plenty of it still, the one thing his father had left him. He hadn’t lived through seven years of battles, skirmishes, waking with snow on his blanket, shit food and worse singing so he could come down here and get shouldered.

But being a bastard was crime and punishment both. Let go of it, his brother would’ve told him. Shivers was meant to be looking on the sunny side. So he took a turn away from the docks, down a wide road and into the city. Past a clutch of beggars on blankets, waving stumps and withered limbs. Through a square where a great statue stood of a frowning man, pointing off to nowhere. Shivers didn’t have a clue who he was meant to be, but he looked pretty damn pleased with himself. The smell of cooking wafted up, made Shivers’ guts grumble. Drew him over to some kind of stall where they had sticks of meat over a fire in a can.

“One o’ them,” said Shivers, pointing. Didn’t seem much else needed saying, so he kept it simple. Less chance of mistakes. When the cook told him the price he near choked on his tongue. Would’ve got him a whole sheep in the North, maybe even a breeding pair. The meat was half fat and the rest gristle. Didn’t taste near so good as it had smelled, but by that point it weren’t much surprise. It seemed most things in Styria weren’t quite as advertised.