Joe Abercrombie - Red Country

Temple had played many parts during his thirty ill-starred years alive. Beggar, thief, unwilling trainee priest, ineffective surgeon, disgusted butcher, sore-handed carpenter, briefly a loving husband and even more briefly a doting father followed closely by a wretched mourner and bitter drunk, overconfident confidence trickster, prisoner of the Inquisition then informant for them, translator, accountant and lawyer, collaborator with a whole range of different wrong sides, accomplice to mass murder, of course, and, most recently and disastrously, man of conscience. But rugged outdoorsman made no appearance on the list.

Temple did not even have the equipment to make a fire. Or, had he had it, known how to use it. He had nothing to cook anyway. And now he was lost in every sense of the word. The barbs of hunger, cold and fear had quickly come to bother him vastly more than the feeble prodding of his conscience ever had. He should probably have thought more carefully before fleeing, but flight and careful thought are like oil and water, ever reluctant to mix. He blamed Cosca. He blamed Lorsen. He blamed Jubair, and Sheel, and Sufeen. He blamed every fucker available excepting, of course, the one who was actually to blame, the one sitting in his saddle and getting colder, hungrier, and more lost with every unpleasant moment.

‘Shit!’ he roared at nothing.

His horse checked, ears swivelling, then plodded on. It was becoming resignedly immune to his outbursts. Temple peered up through the crooked branches, the moon casting a glow through the fast-moving streaks of cloud.

‘God?’ he muttered, too desperate to feel a fool. ‘Can you hear me?’ No answer, of course. God does not answer, especially not the likes of him. ‘I know I haven’t been the best man. Or even a particularly good one…’ He winced. Once you accept He’s up there, and all-knowing and all-seeing and so on, you probably have to accept that there’s no point gilding the truth for Him. ‘All right, I’m a pretty poor one, but… far from the worst about?’ A proud boast, that. What a headstone it would make. Except, of course, there would be no one to carve it when he died out here alone and rotted in the open. ‘I am sure I could improve, though, if you could just see your way to giving me… one more chance?’ Wheedling, wheedling. ‘Just… one more?’

No reply but another chill gust filling the trees with whispers. If there was a God, He was a tight-mouthed bastard, and no—

Temple caught the faintest glimmer of flickering orange through the trees.

A fire! Jubilation sprang to life in his breast!

Then caution smothered it.

Whose fire? Ear-collecting barbarians, but a step above wild animals?

He caught a whiff of cooking meat and his stomach gave a long, squelching growl, so loud he worried it might give him away. Temple had spent a great deal of his early life hungry and become quite adept at it, but, as with so many things, to do it well one has to stay in practice.

He gently reined in his horse, slid as quietly as he could from the saddle and looped the reins around a branch. Keeping low, he eased through the brush, tree-limbs casting clawing shadows towards him, breathing curses as he caught his clothes, his boots, his face on snatching twigs.

The fire had been built in the middle of a narrow clearing, a small animal neatly skinned and spitted on sticks above it. Temple suppressed a powerful impulse to dive at it teeth first. A single blanket was spread out between the fire and a worn saddle. A round shield leaned against a tree, metal rim and wooden front marked with the scars of hard use. Next to it was an axe with a heavy bearded head. It took no expert in the use of weapons to see this was a tool not for chopping wood but people.

The gear of one man, but clearly a man it would be a bad idea to be caught stealing the dinner of.

Temple’s eyes crawled from meat to axe and back, and his mouth watered with an intensity almost painful. Possible death by axe loomed large at any time, but at that moment certain death from hunger loomed larger yet. He slowly straightened, preparing to—

‘Nice night for it.’ Northern words in a throaty whisper of a voice, just behind Temple’s ear.

He froze, small hairs tingling up his neck. ‘Bit windy,’ he managed to croak.

‘I’ve seen worse.’ A cold and terrible point pricked at the small of Temple’s back. ‘Let’s see your weapons, slow as snails in winter.’

‘I am… unarmed.’

A pause. ‘You’re what?’

‘I had a knife, but…’ He had given it to a bony farmer who killed his best friend with it. ‘I lost it.’

‘Out in the big empty without a blade?’ As though it was strange as to be without a nose. Temple gave a girlish squeak as a big hand slipped under his arm and started to pat him down. ‘Nor have you, ’less you’re hiding one up your arse.’ An unpleasing notion. ‘I ain’t looking there.’ That was some relief. ‘You a madman?’

‘I am a lawyer.’

‘Can’t a man be both?’

Self-evidently. ‘I… suppose.’

Another pause. ‘Cosca’s lawyer?’

‘I was.’

‘Huh.’ The point slipped away, its absence leaving a prickling spot in Temple’s back. Even unpleasant things can be sorely missed, apparently, if you have lived with them long enough.

A man stepped past Temple. A great, black, shaggy shape, knife-blade glinting in one hand. He dragged a long sword from his belt and tossed it on the blanket, then lowered himself cross-legged, firelight twinkling red and yellow in the mirror of his metal eye.

‘Life takes you down some strange paths, don’t it?’ he said.

‘Caul Shivers,’ muttered Temple, not at all sure whether to feel better or worse.

Shivers reached out and turned the spit between finger and thumb, fat dripping into the flames. ‘Hungry?’

Temple licked his lips. ‘Is that just a question… or an invitation?’

‘I’ve got more’n I can eat. You’d best bring that horse up before it shakes loose. Watch your step, though.’ The Northman jerked his head back into the trees. ‘There’s a gorge that way might be twenty strides deep, and with some angry water at the bottom.’

Temple brought the horse up and hobbled it, stripped its saddle and the damp blanket beneath, abandoned it to nuzzle at whatever grass it could find. A sad fact, but the hungrier a man is the less he tends to care about the hunger of others. Shivers had carved the carcass down to the bones and was eating from a tin plate with the point of his knife. More meat lay gleaming on some torn-off bark on the other side of the fire. Temple sank to his knees before it as though it were a most hallowed altar.

‘My very great thanks.’ He closed his eyes as he began to eat, sucking the juice from every morsel. ‘I was starting to think I’d die out here.’

‘Who says you won’t?’

A shred of meat caught in Temple’s throat and he gave an awkward cough. ‘Are you alone?’ he managed to gasp out—anything but more of the crushing silence.

‘I’ve learned I make poor company.’

‘You aren’t worried about the Ghosts?’

The Northman shook his head.

‘I hear they’ve killed a lot of people in the Far Country.’

‘Once they’ve killed me I’ll worry.’ Shivers tossed down his plate and leaned back on one elbow, his ruined face shifting further into the darkness. ‘A man can spend the time he’s given crapping his arse out over what might be, but where does it get you?’

Where indeed? ‘Still hunting for your nine-fingered man?’

‘He killed my brother.’

Temple paused with another piece of meat halfway to his mouth. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’re sorrier’n me, then. My brother was a shit. But family is family.’