Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

Egar blinked back to the present. Scent of stale beer and the sifting, low-angle sunlight. He’d evidently missed a chunk of the publican’s rant.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Look, don’t get me wrong. I got nothing against you people, right. Really. And I still serve Harath in here just the same as anyone else, same as I always did before. I just think you got to know who you are, is all. Can’t make a decision like that just because you’re cunt-struck. He really wants to convert, hey, fine with me. Revelation says it’s for all men to make that choice—even outlanders. But you can’t turn around later and say you want out just cuz your little whore fucks off and dumps you. That’s apostasy, it’s serious shit up at the temples. He can’t blame the ones who still carry steel for the Citadel when they give him the cold shoulder.”

“So.” Egar made a quick estimate on the shape of what he’d missed. “You’re saying this Harath started the fight?”

“I’m saying he was here, is all. And I’ve seen the way he gets when the others are around. Starts yelling about the old gods, how the Citadel is full of shit. You can’t expect to talk like that and not get a kicking.”

“True enough.” Egar turned his tankard back and forth a little on the bar, frowning. “You know where he flops these days?”

It got him a funny look. “Yeah, and what’s it to you?”

Shrug it off. “Sounds like this guy I’m looking for, is all. Mother’s cousin’s son, it’s the same name. Bit of a fuckup by all accounts, but I’m supposed to check on him. No big deal. Family. You know how it is.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Does he still come in here? Since the fight, I mean.”

The publican glowered into the middle distance for a moment or two. Maybe he was remembering the broken fixtures.

“Try up on the An-Monal road, other side of the Span,” he said. “Someplace above a pawnshop, I heard.”

They reached the river without event, followed the sounds it made and the flash glimpses through sun-metaled foliage that the path afforded them. They tracked along the eastern bank for a while until finally, a hundred yards downstream from the last set of rapids and craggy falls, the trail broke cover and went to the water’s edge. It was the same fording point they’d used coming in, and they already knew the water never went worse than waist-deep. Still, Ringil dismounted there into the long grass and stood for a while, watching. He wanted, he told himself, to check the far bank for any sign of an ambush before they crossed.

Getting a bit jumpy in our advancing years, aren’t we, Gil? What’s the matter, you planning to die old and in bed all of a sudden?

Not planning to die at all just yet .

It was a beautiful day, drowsy with heat and insect hum. Late-morning sunlight lay on the water in splashes too bright to look at directly. Ringil shaded his face and screwed up his eyes, peered across to the trees on the other side. It was about thirty yards, an easy crossing for the horses, no swimming required.

If there was anyone in the trees, they were keeping very still.

There’s no one in the fucking trees, Gil, and you know it. This is local militia and the border patrol we’re dealing with here, not a skirmish ranger advance party. They’re all back at Snarl’s encampment, butchering your men and probably the slaves as well for good measure. Just face it—you got away from this one without a scratch .

Nonetheless, he took the reins and led his horse into the water on foot, moving slowly, ready to scoot back and use its bulk for cover if the far bank suddenly sprouted militiamen with crossbows. He tested each boot-hold on the river bottom, and he never took his eyes from the greenery.

Behind him, Eril dismounted and followed suit.

They crossed without a word, wading through the soft swirl of water at their waists and a curious sun-touched silence that seemed to exist separated from the muted roar of the rapids upstream. A pair of birds bickered brightly and chased each other in dipping flight a scant couple of feet above the surface of the river. Pine needles and bright yellow specks of forest detritus slid by on the flow. It was—

The corpse was on him before he knew it. Bumping at his side in the water, carried on the current. One trailing arm wrapped around his hip like the final effort of an exhausted swimmer.

“Fuck!”

The curse jolted loose, as if punched out of him. Nerves still raw from the morning’s slaughter, cranked newly taut again from watching the bank ahead; he flinched like some upriver maiden touching her first erect cock. Floundered back, hands up and warding, almost off his feet with the shock.

Just about had the presence of mind to let go the reins and not drown his fucking horse.

Hoiran’s sake, Gil. Get a grip .

He found his footing, reached back to the horse, and clucked at it. The dead man caught at his waist, seemed inclined to cling there. A little embarrassed at being so girlish, Ringil cleared his throat and looked the body over. He saw drenched clothing bubbled full of air at the back, facedown under a floating mop of lank, dark hair. Crossbow fletches standing stiffly clear of the water where the quarrel protruded from the man’s back.

Some dark and weary war-stained impulse made him reach down and touch the corpse at the shoulder. He rolled the man in the water, pulled the clinging arm gently loose, and turned the body faceup. It told him nothing. Nondescript Naom face, about forty, worn with hard-scrabble living, and a couple of small scars that didn’t look like the result of combat. The sharp end of the quarrel jutted a handbreadth out from the chest. The floating hand that had until a moment ago been wrapped around Ringil’s waist was blunt-fingered and scarred from a lifetime of labor, but it had raw manacle sores around the wrist, leached pale and whitish pink by the water.

The corpse opened dead black eyes and stared up at him.

“Better run,” it hissed.

This time the shock held him rigid, came shuddering in along his veins like icy water and put cold clamps at his temples. His grip on the corpse clenched as if to drown it, he heard his throat make a locked-up sound.

A hand fell on his shoulder.

“You all right, mate?”

Eril’s voice, concerned. He’d led his horse up level with Ringil’s, was peering at his companion curiously. Ringil blinked back at him, and something shifted in the sun-bladed air. He stared down at the heavy, black-barked tree branch in the water and the death grip he had it in. The crooked twist and reach of one arm off the main body, the way it tried to roll in the swirl of the river’s flow.

It was just a chunk of tree.

“Must have washed down from near the bluffs,” Eril said. “Seen a lot of fallen trunks choked up in rapids and falls back there. Something that size, the whole tree’s probably gone in, got jammed, and now it’s rotting off a piece at a time.”

Ringil cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

He let go of the branch and stepped back to let the current take it. Watched it drift downstream to the next bend in the river, the lifted arm still wagging slightly from the motion, as if waving good-bye.

He watched it out of sight. Cleared his throat again.

“There’s nothing in those trees,” he said brusquely, and led his horse forward again, wading hard for the bank.

“YOU RECKON WE CAN RISK THE CARAVAN ROAD?”

This high up, they could see it from where they sat—a thin, pale line snaking through the wooded uplands east of Hinerion, lost repeatedly to forest and valley shadow on its way north. Ringil narrowed his eyes against the sun, as if at that distance he’d somehow be able to pick out the glint of plate armor and lance-points on the carriageway. He shook his head.