Joe Abercrombie - Red Country

‘This ain’t right,’ said the Keep.

‘How’s you being dead going to make it any righter?’ Lamb’s voice flat and quiet like it was no kind of threat, just a question. He didn’t have to scream it. Those two dead men were doing it for him.

The Keep’s eyes darted around but no heroes leaped to his side. All looked scared as if Lamb was death himself come calling. Except the old Ghost woman, sat tall in her chair just watching, and her companion in the fur coat, who still had his boots crossed and, without any quick movements, was pouring himself another drink.

‘Ain’t right.’ But the Keep’s voice was weak as watered beer.

‘It’s right as it’s getting,’ said Lamb.

‘We should put a panel together and judge him proper, ask some—’

Lamb loomed forward. ‘All you got to ask is do you want to be in my way.’ The Keep shrank back and Lamb dragged the lad past. Shy hurried after, suddenly unfroze, passing Leef loose-jawed in the doorway.

Outside the rain had slacked to a steady drizzle. Lamb was hauling Red Hair across the mired street towards the arch of crooked timbers the sign hung from. High enough for a mounted man to pass under. Or for one on foot to dangle from.

‘Lamb!’ Shy hopped down from the tavern’s porch, boots sinking to the ankles. ‘Lamb!’ He weighed the rope then tossed it over the crossbar. ‘Lamb!’ She struggled across the street, mud sucking at her feet. He caught the loose end of the rope and jerked the slack out, the red-haired lad stumbling as the noose went tight under his chin, bloated face showing dumb like he hadn’t worked out yet where he was headed.

‘Ain’t we seen enough folk hanged?’ called Shy as she slopped up. Lamb didn’t answer, didn’t look at her, just wound the free end of the rope about one forearm.

‘It ain’t right,’ she said. Lamb took a sniff and set himself to haul the lad into the air. Shy snatched hold of the rope by the lad’s neck and started sawing at it with the short-sword. It was sharp. Didn’t take a moment to cut it through.

‘Get running.’

The lad blinked at her.

‘Run, you fucking idiot!’ She kicked the seat of his trousers and he sloshed a few steps and went over on his face, struggled up and floundered away into the darkness, still with his rope collar.

Shy turned back to Lamb. He was staring at her, stolen sword in one hand, loose length of rope in the other. But like he was hardly seeing her. Like he was hardly him, even. How could this be the man who’d bent over Ro when she had the fever, and sung to her? Sung badly, but sung still, face all wrinkled with care? Now she looked in those black eyes and suddenly this dread crept on her like she was looking into the void. Standing on the edge of nothing and it took every grain of courage she had not to run.

‘Bring them three horses over!’ she snapped at Leef, who’d wandered out onto the porch with Lamb’s coat and hat in his hands. ‘Bring ’em now!’ And he hopped off to do it. Lamb just stood, staring after the red-haired lad, the rain starting to wash the blood off his face. He took hold of the saddle bow when Leef led the biggest horse over, started to swing himself up and the horse shied, and kicked out, and Lamb gave a grunt as he lost his grip and went over backwards, stirrup flapping as he caught it with a clutching hand, splashing down hard in the mud on his side. Shy knelt by him as he struggled to his hands and knees.

‘You hurt?’

He looked up at her and there were tears in his eyes, and he whispered, ‘By the dead, Shy. By the dead.’ She did her best to drag him up, a bastard of a task since he was a corpse-weight of a sudden. When they finally got him standing he pulled her close by her coat. ‘Promise me,’ he whispered. ‘Promise me you won’t get in my way again.’

‘No.’ She laid a hand on his scarred cheek. ‘I’ll hold your bridle for you, though.’ And she did, and the horse’s face, too, and whispered calm words to it and wished there was someone to do the same to her while Lamb dragged himself up into the saddle, slow and weary, teeth gritted like it was an effort. When he got up he sat hunched, right hand on the reins, left hand holding his coat closed at his neck. He looked an old man again. Older than ever. An old man with a terrible weight and worry across his hunched shoulders.

‘He all right?’ Leef ’s voice not much above a whisper, like he was scared of being overheard.

‘I don’t know,’ said Shy. Lamb didn’t seem like he could hear even, wincing off to the black horizon, almost one with the black sky now.

‘You all right?’ Leef whispered to her.

‘Don’t know that either.’ She felt the world was all broken up and washed away and she was drifting on strange seas, cut loose from land. ‘You?’

Leef just shook his head, and looked down at the mud with eyes all round.

‘Best get what we need from the wagon and mount up, eh?’

‘What about Scale and Calder?’

‘They’re blown and we’ve got to move. Leave ’em.’

The wind dashed rain in her face and she pulled her hat-brim down and set her jaw hard. Her brother and her sister, that’s what she’d fix on. They were the stars she’d set her course by, two points of light in the black. They were all that mattered.

So she heeled her new horse and led the three of them out into the gathering night. They hadn’t gone far when Shy heard noises beyond the wind and slowed to a walk. Lamb brought his horse about and drew the sword. An old cavalry sword, long and heavy, sharpened on one side.

‘Someone’s following!’ said Leef, fumbling with his bow.

‘Put that away! You’ll more likely shoot yourself in this light. Or worse yet, me.’ Shy heard hooves on the track behind them, and a wagon, too, a glimmer of torchlight through tree-trunks. Folk come out from Averstock to chase them? The Keep firmer set on justice than he’d seemed? She slid the short-sword out by its horn handle, metal glinting with the last red touch of twilight. Shy had no notion what to expect any more. If Juvens himself had trotted from the dark and bid them a good evening she’d have shrugged and asked which way he was headed.

‘Hold up!’ came a voice as deep and rough as Shy ever heard. Not Juvens himself. The man in the fur coat. He came into sight now, riding with a torch in his hand. ‘I’m a friend!’ he said, slowing to a walk.

‘You’re no friend o’ mine,’ she said back.

‘Let’s put that right as a first step, then.’ He delved into a saddlebag and tossed a half-full bottle across to Shy. A wagon trundled up with a pair of horses pulling. The old Ghost woman had the reins, creased face as empty as it had been at the inn, a singed old chagga pipe gripped between her teeth, not smoking it, just chewing it.

They all sat a moment, in the dark, then Lamb said, ‘What do you want?’

The stranger reached up slow and tipped his hat back. ‘No need to spill more blood tonight, big man, we’re no enemies o’ yours. And if I was I reckon I’d be reconsidering that position about now. Just want to talk, is all. Make a proposal that might benefit the crowd of us.’

‘Speak your piece, then,’ said Shy, pulling the cork from the bottle with her teeth but keeping the sword handy.

‘Then I will. My name’s Dab Sweet.’

‘What?’ said Leef ‘Like that scout they tell all the stories of?’

‘Exactly like. I’m him.’

Shy paused in her drinking. ‘You’re Dab Sweet? Who was first to lay eyes on the Black Mountains?’ She passed the bottle across to Lamb, who passed it straight to Leef, who took a swig, and coughed.

Sweet gave a dry chuckle. ‘The mountains saw me first, I reckon, but the Ghosts been there a few hundred years before, and the Imperials before that, maybe, and who knows who back when before the Old Time? Who’s to say who’s first to anything out in this country?’