Joe Abercrombie - Red Country

Shy snorted. ‘Ain’t he collected bullshit enough listening to you and

Lamb sing the glories o’ yesteryear?’

‘You can’t burn fond remembrances, more’s the pity, or I’d be toasty warm every night.’ Sweet stuck an arm out to the level sameness in every direction, the endless expanse of earth and sky and sky and earth away to nowhere. ‘Ain’t a stick of timber for a hundred miles. We’ll be burning cow flats ’til after we cross the bridge at Sictus.’

‘And cooking over ’em, too?’

‘Might improve the flavour o’ what we been eating,’ said Lamb.

‘All part o’ the charm,’ said Sweet. ‘Either way, all the young ’uns are gathering fuel.’

Leef ’s eyes flickered to Shy. ‘I ain’t that young.’ And as though to prove it he fingered his chin where he’d started to lovingly cultivate a meagre harvest of blond hairs.

Shy wasn’t sure she couldn’t have fielded more beard and Sweet was unmoved. ‘You’re young enough to get shitty-handed in service of the Fellowship, lad!’ And he slapped Leef on the back, much to the lad’s hunch-shouldered upset. ‘Why, brown palms are a mark of high courage and distinction! The medal of the plains!’

‘You want the lawyer to lend you a hand?’ asked Shy. ‘For three bits he’s yours for the afternoon.’

Sweet narrowed his eyes. ‘I’ll give you two for him.’

‘Done,’ she said. It was hardly worth haggling when the prices were so small.

‘Reckon he’ll enjoy that, the lawyer,’ said Lamb, as Leef and Sweet headed back towards the Fellowship, the scout holding forth again on how fine things used to be.

‘He ain’t along for his amusement.’

‘I guess none of us are.’

They rode in silence for a moment, just the two of them and the sky, so big and deep it seemed any moment there might be nothing holding you to the ground any more and you’d just fall into it and never stop. Shy worked her right arm a little, shoulder and elbow still weak and sore, grumbles up into her neck and down into her ribs but getting looser each day. For sure she’d lived through worse.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Lamb, out of nowhere.

Shy looked over at him, hunched and sagging like he’d an anchor chained around his neck. ‘I’ve always thought so.’

‘I mean it, Shy. I’m sorry. For what happened back there in Averstock. For what I did. And what I didn’t do.’ He spoke slower and slower until Shy got the feeling each word was a battle to fight. ‘Sorry that I never told you what I was… before I came to your mother’s farm…’ She watched him all the while, mouth dry, but he just frowned down at his left hand, thumb rubbing at that stump of a finger over and over. ‘All I wanted was to leave the past buried. Be nothing and nobody. Can you understand that?’

Shy swallowed. She’d a few memories at her back she wouldn’t have minded sinking in a bog. ‘I reckon.’

‘But the seeds of the past bear fruit in the present, my father used to say. I’m that much of a fool I got to teach myself the same lesson over and over, always pissing into the wind. The past never stays buried. Not one like mine, leastways. Blood’ll always find you out.’

‘What were you?’ Her voice sounded a tiny croak in all that space. ‘A soldier?’

That frown of his got harder still. ‘A killer. Let’s call it what it is.’

‘You fought in the wars? Up in the North?’

‘In wars, in skirmishes, in duels, in anything offered, and when I ran out of fights I made my own, and when I ran out of enemies I turned my friends into more.’

She’d thought any answers would be better than none. Now she wasn’t so sure. ‘I guess you had your reasons,’ she muttered, so weak it turned into a wheedling question.

‘Good ones, at first. Then poor ones. Then I found you could still shed blood without ’em and gave up on the bastards altogether.’

‘You got a reason now, though.’

‘Aye. I’ve a reason now.’ He took a breath and drew himself up straighter. ‘Those children… they’re all the good I done in my life. Ro and Pit. And you.’

Shy snorted. ‘If you’re counting me in your good works you got to be desperate.’

‘I am.’ He looked across at her, so fixed and searching she’d trouble meeting his eye. ‘But as it happens you’re about the best person I know.’

She looked away, working that stiff shoulder again. She’d always found soft words a lot tougher to swallow than hard. A question of what you’re used to, maybe. ‘You got a damn limited circle of friends.’

‘Enemies always came more natural to me. But even so. I don’t know where you got it, but you’ve a good heart, Shy.’

She thought of him carrying her from that tree, singing to the children, putting the bandages on her back. ‘So have you.’

‘Oh, I can fool folk. The dead know I can fool myself.’ He looked back to the flat horizon. ‘But no, Shy, I don’t have a good heart. Where we’re going, there’ll be trouble. If we’re lucky, just a little, but luck ain’t exactly stuck to me down the years. So listen. When I next tell you to stay out of my way, you stay out, you hear?’

‘Why? Would you kill me?’ She meant it half as a joke, but his cold voice struck her laughter dead.

‘There’s no telling what I’ll do.’

The wind gusted into the silence and swept the long grass in waves and Shy thought she heard shouting sifting on it. An unmistakable note of panic.

‘You hear that?’

Lamb turned his horse towards the Fellowship. ‘What did I say about luck?’

They were in quite the spin, all bunched up and shouting over or riding into each other, wagons tangled and dogs darting under the wheels and children crying and a mood of terror like Glustrod had risen from the grave up ahead and was fixed on their destruction.

‘Ghosts!’ Shy heard someone wail. ‘They’ll have our ears!’

‘Calm down!’ Sweet was shouting. ‘It ain’t bloody Ghosts and they don’t want your ears! Travellers like us, is all!’

Peering off to the north Shy saw a line of slow-moving riders, wriggling little specks between the vast black earth and the vast white sky.

‘How can you be sure?’ shrieked Lord Ingelstad, clutching a few prized possessions to his chest as if he was about to make a dash for it, though where he’d dash to was anyone’s guess.

‘’Cause Ghosts fixed on blood don’t just trot across the horizon! You lot sit tight here and try not to injure yourselves. Me and Crying Rock’ll go parley.’

‘Might be these travellers know something about the children,’ said Lamb, and he spurred his horse after the two scouts, Shy following.

She’d thought their own Fellowship worn down and dirty, but they were a crowd of royalty beside the threadbare column of beggars they came upon, broken-down and feverish in the eyes, their horses lean round the rib and yellow at the tooth, a handful of wagons lurching after and a few flyblown cattle dragging at the rear. A Fellowship of the damned and no mistake.

‘How do,’ said Sweet.

‘How do?’ Their leader reined in, a big bastard in a tattered Union soldier’s coat, gold braid around the sleeves all torn and dangling.

‘How do?’ He leaned from his horse and spat. ‘A year older’n when we come the other way and not a fucking hour richer, that’s how we do. Enough of the Far Country for these boys. We’re heading back to Starikland. You want our advice, you’ll do the same.’

‘No gold up there?’ asked Shy.

‘Maybe there’s some, girl, but I ain’t dying for it.’

‘No one’s ever giving aught away,’ said Sweet. ‘There’s always risks.’

The man snorted. ‘I was laughing at the risks when I came out last year. You see me laughing now?’ Shy didn’t, much. ‘Crease is at bloody war, killings every night and new folk piling in every day. They hardly even bother to bury the bodies any more.’