Joe Abercrombie - Red Country

Temple blinked, not entirely sure where this left him.

‘Where does that leave him?’ asked Shy.

‘Waiting at the ford for a Fellowship with different requirements.’

‘Or another set of Ghosts, I guess?’

Majud spread his hands. ‘If it were up to me I would not hesitate before helping you, but I have the feelings of my partner Curnsbick to consider, and he has a heart of iron where business is concerned. I am sorry.’ He did look a little sorry. But he did not look like he would be changing his mind.

Shy glanced sideways at Temple. All he could do was stare back as earnestly as possible.

‘Shit.’ She planted her hands on her hips and shook her head at the sky for a moment, then curled back her top lip to show a noticeable gap between her front teeth and neatly spat through it. ‘I’ll buy him in, then.’

‘Really?’ asked Majud, brows going up.

‘Really?’ asked Temple, no less shocked.

‘That’s right,’ she snapped. ‘You want the money now?’

‘Oh, don’t trouble yourself.’ Majud had the trace of a smile about his lips. ‘I know your touch with figures.’

‘I don’t like this.’ Savian propped the heel of his hand on the grip of one of his knives. ‘This bastard could be anyone.’

‘So could you,’ said Shy. ‘I’ve no notion what you were doing last month, or what you’ll get to next, and for a fact it’s none o’ my business. I’m paying, he’s staying. You don’t like it, you can float off downriver, how’s that?’ She glared right into Savian’s stony face all the while and Temple found he was liking her more and more.

Savian pursed his thin lips a fraction. ‘Got anything to say about this, Lamb?’

The old Northman looked slowly from Temple to Shy and back. It appeared he did nothing quickly. ‘I reckon everyone should get a chance,’ he said.

‘Even those don’t deserve it?’

‘Especially them, maybe.’

‘You can trust me,’ said Temple, treating the old men to his most earnest look. ‘I won’t let you down, I promise.’ He had left a trail of broken promises across half the Circle of the World, after all. One extra would hardly keep him out of heaven.

‘You saying so don’t necessarily make it so, does it?’ Savian leaned forward, narrowing his eyes even further, a feat that might have been considered impossible but a moment before. ‘I’m watching you, boy.’

‘That is… a tremendous comfort,’ squeaked Temple as he backed slowly away. Shy had already turned on her heel and he hurried to catch her up.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Truly. I’m not sure what I can do to repay you.’

‘Repay me.’

He cleared his throat. ‘Yes. Of course.’

‘With one-quarter interest. I ain’t no charity.’

Now he was liking her less. ‘I begin to see that. Principal plus a quarter. Far more than fair. I always pay my debts.’ Except, perhaps, the financial ones.

‘Is it true you’re keen to learn?’

He was keener to forget. ‘I am.’

‘And to work as hard as any man here?’

Judging by the dustiness, sweatiness, sunburn and generally ruined appearance of most of the men, that claim seemed now rather rash. ‘Yes?’

‘Good, ’cause I’ll work you, don’t worry on that score.’

He was worrying on several scores, but the lack of hard labour had not been among them. ‘I can… hardly wait to start.’ He was getting the distinct sensation that he had whisked his neck from one noose only to have another whipped tight around it. Looked at with the benefit of hindsight, his life, which at the time had felt like a series of ingenious escapes, resembled rather more closely a succession of nooses, most of them self-tied. The self-tied ones will still hang you, though.

Shy was busy kneading at her injured arm and planning strategy. ‘Might be Hedges has some clothes’ll fit. Gentili’s got an old saddle will serve and Buckhorm’s got a mule I believe he’d sell.’

‘A mule?’

‘If that’s too fucking lowly you can always walk to Crease.’

Temple thought it unlikely he would make it as far as the mule on foot, so he smiled through the pain and consoled himself with the thought that he would repay her. For the indignity, if not the money.

‘I shall feel grateful for every moment spent astride the noble beast,’ he forced out.

‘You should feel grateful,’ she snapped.

‘I will,’ he snapped back.

‘Good,’ she said.

‘Good.’

A pause. ‘Good.’

‘Some country, ain’t it?’

‘Looks like quite a bloody lot of country to me,’ said Leef.

Sweet spread his arms and pulled in such a breath you’d have thought he could suck the whole world through his nose. ‘It’s the Far Country, true enough! Far ’cause it’s so damn far from anywhere a civilised man would care to go. And Far ’cause it’s so damn far from here to anywhere else he’d want to go.’

‘Far ’cause it’s so damn far to anything at all,’ said Shy, staring out across that blank expanse of grass, gently shifting with the wind. A long, long way off, so pale they might’ve been no more’n wishes, the grey outline of hills.

‘But damn civilised men, eh, Lamb?’

Lamb raised a mild eyebrow. ‘We can’t just let ’em be?’

‘Maybe even borrow some hot water off ’em once in a while,’ muttered Shy, scratching at her armpit. She’d a fair few passengers along for the ride now, not to mention dust crusted to every bit of her and her teeth tasting of salt dirt and dry death.

‘Damn ’em, say I, and hot water, too! You can strike off south to the Empire and ask old Legate Sarmis for a bath if that’s your style. Or trek back east to the Union and ask the Inquisition.’

‘Their water might be too hot for comfort,’ she muttered.

‘Just tell me where a body can feel as free as this!’

‘Can’t think of nowhere,’ she admitted, though to her mind there was something savage in all that endless empty. You could come to feel squashed by all that room.

But not Dab Sweet. He filled his lungs to bursting one more time. ‘She’s easy to fall in love with, the Far Country, but she’s a cruel mistress. Always leading you on. That’s how it’s been with me, ever since I was younger’n Leef here. The best grass is always just past the horizon. The sweetest water’s in the next river. The bluest sky over some other mountain.’ He gave a long sigh. ‘Afore you know it, your joints snap of a morning and you can’t sleep two hours together without needing to piss and of a sudden you realise your best country’s all behind you, never even appreciated as you passed it by, eyes fixed ahead.’

‘Summers past love company,’ mused Lamb, scratching at the star-shaped scar on his stubbled cheek. ‘Seems every time you turn around there’s more o’ the bastards at your back.’

‘Comes to be everything reminds you of something past. Somewhere past. Someone. Yourself, maybe, how you were. The now gets fainter and the past more and more real. The future worn down to but a stub.’

Lamb had a little smile at his mouth’s corner as he stared into the distance. ‘The happy valleys o’ the past,’ he murmured.

‘I love old-bastard talk, don’t you?’ Shy cocked a brow at Leef. ‘Makes me feel healthy.’

‘You young shrimps think tomorrow can be put off for ever,’ grumbled Sweet. ‘More time got like money from a bank. You’ll learn.’

‘If the Ghosts don’t kill us all first,’ said Leef.

‘Thanks for raising that happy possibility,’ said Sweet. ‘If philosophy don’t suit, I do have other occupation for you.’

‘Which is?’

The old scout nodded down. Scattered across the grass, flat and white and dry, were a bumper harvest of cow-leavings, fond mementoes of some wild herd roving the grassland. ‘Collecting bullshit.’