Joe Abercrombie - Red Country

‘What the hell?’ Shy was tiring of not knowing what Lamb would do one moment to the next. ‘What’s the plan now, then?’

‘Plans have a habit o’ falling apart when you lean on ’em,’ said Lamb. ‘We’ll just have to think up another.’

The Kantic cracked a bastard of a frown. ‘I do not like a man who breaks an agreement.’

‘Try and push me off a cliff.’ Lamb gave Jubair a flat stare. ‘We can find out who God likes best.’

Jubair pressed one fingertip against his lips and considered that for a long, silent moment. Then he shrugged. ‘I prefer not to trouble God with every little thing.’

‘I’ve finished the spear!’ called Pit, doing his best to say the new words just the way Ro had taught him, and he offered it up for his father to see. It was a good spear. Shebat had helped him with the binding and declared it excellent, and everyone said that the only man who knew more about weapons than Shebat was the Maker himself, who knew more about everything than anyone, of course. So Shebat knew a lot about weapons, was the point, and he said it was good, so it must be good.

‘Good,’ said Pit’s father, but he didn’t really look. He was walking fast, bare feet slapping against the ancient bronze, and frowning. Pit wasn’t sure he’d ever seen him frown before. Pit wondered if he’d done wrong. If his father could tell his new name still sounded strange to him. He felt ungrateful, and guilty, and worried that he’d done something very bad even though he hadn’t meant to.

‘What have I done?’ he asked, having to hurry to keep up, and realised he’d slipped back to his old talk without thinking.

His father frowned down, and it seemed then he did it from a very long way up.

‘Who is Lamb?’

Pit blinked. It was about the last thing he’d expected his father to ask.

‘Lamb’s my father,’ he said without thinking, then put it right, ‘ was my father, maybe… but Shy always said he wasn’t.’ Maybe neither of them were his father or maybe both, and thinking about Shy made him think about the farm and the bad things, and Gully saying run, run, and the journey across the plains and into the mountains and Cantliss laughing and he didn’t know what he’d done wrong and he started to cry and he felt ashamed and so he cried more, and he said ‘Don’t send me back.’

‘No!’ said Pit’s father. ‘Never!’ Because he was Pit’s father, you could see it in the pain in his face. ‘Only death will part us, do you understand?’

Pit didn’t understand the least bit but he nodded anyway, crying now with relief that everything would be all right, and his father smiled, and knelt beside him, and put his hand on Pit’s head.

‘I am sorry.’ And Waerdinur was sorry, truly and completely, and he spoke in the Outsiders’ tongue because he knew it was easier on the boy. ‘It is a fine spear, and you a fine son.’ And he patted his son’s shaved scalp. ‘We will go hunting, and soon, but there is business I must see to first, for all the Dragon People are my family. Can you play with your sister until I call for you?’

He nodded, blinking back tears. He cried easily, the boy, and that was a fine thing, for the Maker taught that closeness to one’s feelings was closeness to the divine.

‘Good. And… do not speak to her of this.’

Waerdinur strode to the Long House, his frown returning. Six of the Gathering were naked in the hot dimness, hazy in the steam, sitting on the polished stones around the fire-pit, listening to Uto sing the lessons, words of the Maker’s father, all-mighty Euz, who split the worlds and spoke the First Law. Her voice faltered as he strode in.

‘There were outsiders at the Seeking Pool,’ he growled as he stripped off his robe, ignoring the proper forms and not caring.

The others stared upon him, shocked, as well they might be. ‘Are you sure?’ Ulstal’s croaking voice croakier still from breathing the Seeing Steam.

‘I spoke to them! Scarlaer?’

The young hunter stood, tall and strong and the eagerness to act hot in his eye. Sometimes he reminded Waerdinur so much of his younger self it was like gazing in Juvens’ glass, through which it was said one could look into the past.

‘Take your best trackers and follow them. They were in the ruins on the north side of the valley.’

‘I will hunt them down,’ said Scarlaer.

‘They were an old man and a young woman, but they might not be alone. Go armed and take care. They are dangerous.’ He thought of the man’s dead smile, and his black eye, like gazing into a great depth, and was sore troubled. ‘Very dangerous.’

‘I will catch them,’ said the hunter. ‘You can depend on me.’

‘I do. Go.’

He bounded from the hall and Waerdinur took his place at the fire-pit, the heat of it close to painful before him, perching on the rounded stone where no position was comfortable, for the Maker said they should never be comfortable who weigh great matters. He took the ladle and poured a little water on the coals, and the hall grew gloomier yet with steam, rich with the scents of mint and pine and all the blessed spices. He was already sweating, and silently asked the Maker that he sweat out his folly and his pride and make pure choices.

‘Outsiders at the Seeking Pool?’ Hirfac’s withered face was slack with disbelief. ‘How did they come to the sacred ground?’

‘They came to the barrows with the twenty Outsiders,’ said Waerdinur. ‘How they came further I cannot say.’

‘Our decision on those twenty is more pressing.’ Akarin’s blind eyes were narrowed. They all knew what decision he would favour. Akarin tended bloody, and bloodier with each passing winter. Age sometimes distils a person—rendering the calm more calm, the violent more violent.

‘Why have they come?’ Uto leaned forward into the light, shadow patching in the hollows of her skull. ‘What do they want?’

Waerdinur glanced around the old sweat-beaded faces and licked his lips. If they knew the man and woman had come for his children they might ask him to give them up. A faint chance, but a chance, and he would give them up to no one but death. It was forbidden to lie to the Gathering, but the Maker set down no prohibition on offering half the truth.

‘What all outsiders want,’ said Waerdinur. ‘Gold.’

Hirfac spread her gnarled hands. ‘Perhaps we should give it to them? We have enough.’

‘They would always want more.’ Shebat’s voice was low and sad. ‘Theirs is a hunger never satisfied.’

A silence while all considered, and the coals shifted and hissed in the pit and sparks whirled and glowed in the dark and the sweet smell of the Seeing Steam washed out among them.

The colours of fire shifted across Akarin’s face as he nodded. ‘We must send everyone who can hold a blade. Eighty of us are there, fit to go, who did not travel north to fight the Shanka?’

‘Eighty swords upon my racks.’ Shebat shook his head as if that was a matter for regret.

‘It worries me to leave Ashranc guarded only by the old and young,’ said Hirfac. ‘So few of us now—’

‘Soon we will wake the Dragon.’ Ulstal smiled at the thought.

‘Soon.’

‘Soon.’

‘Next summer,’ said Waerdinur, ‘or perhaps the summer after. But for now we must protect ourselves.’

‘We must drive them out!’ Akarin slapped knobbly fist into palm. ‘We must journey to the barrows and drive out the savages.’

‘Drive them out?’ Uto snorted. ‘Call it what it is, since you will not be the one to wield the blade.’

‘I wielded blades enough in my time. Kill them, then, if you prefer to call it that. Kill them all.’