Joe Abercrombie - Red Country

‘So this is what success looks like,’ Sworbreck heard Temple murmur. ‘I have often wondered.’

The lawyer saw it. The way he took in the charnel-house scene with his black eyes wide and his jaw set tight and his mouth slightly twisted. It was some small comfort to know there was one man in this gang who, in better company, might have approached decency, but he was just as helpless as Sworbreck. All they could do was watch and, by doing nothing more, participate. But how could it be stopped? Sworbreck cowered as a horse thundered past, showering him with gory snow. He was one man, and that one no fighter. His pen was his only weapon and, however highly the scribes might rate its power, it was no match for axe and armour in a duel. If he had learned nothing else the past few months, he had learned that.

‘Dimbik!’ shrieked Cosca, and took another swig from his bottle. He had abandoned the flask as inadequate to his needs and would no doubt soon graduate to sucking straight from the cask. ‘Dimbik? There you are! I want you to lead off, root out any of these creatures left in the woods. Brachio, get your men ready to ride! Master Sweet will show us the way! Jubair and the others are waiting to open the gates! There’s gold to be had, boys, and no time to waste! And rebels!’ he added hastily. ‘Rebels, too, of course. Temple, with me, I want to be certain on the terms of the contract as regard plunder. Sworbreck, it might be better if you were to remain here. If you haven’t the stomach for this, well…’

‘Of course,’ said Sworbreck. He felt so very tired. So very far from home. Adua, and his neat office with the clean walls and the new Rimaldi printing press of which he had been so particularly proud. All so far away, across an immeasurable gulf in time and space and thinking. A place where straightening the collar seemed important and a bad review was a disaster. How could such a fantastical realm occupy the same world as this slaughter-yard? He stared at his hands: calloused, blood-daubed, dirt-scraped. Could they be the same ones that had so carefully set the type, inky at the fingertips? Could they ever do so again?

He let them drop, too tired to ride let alone write. People do not realise the crushing effort of creation. The pain of dragging the words from a tortured mind. Who read books out here, anyway? Perhaps he would lie down. He began to shamble for the fort.

‘Take care of yourself, author,’ said Temple, looking grimly down from horseback.

‘You too, lawyer,’ said Sworbreck, and patted him on the leg as he passed.

‘When do we go?’ whispered Shy.

‘When Savian says go,’ came Lamb’s voice. He was close enough she could almost feel his breath, but all she could see in the darkness of the tunnel was the faintest outline of his stubbled skull. ‘Soon as he sees Sweet bring Cosca’s men up the valley.’

‘Won’t these Dragon bastards see ’em, too?’

‘I expect so.’

She wiped her forehead for the hundredth time, rubbing the wet out of her eyebrows. Damn, but it was hot, like squatting in an oven, the sweat tickling at her, hand slippery-slick on the wood of her bow, mouth sticky-dry with heat and worry.

‘Patience, Shy. You won’t cross the mountains in a day.’

‘Easily said,’ she hissed back. How long had they been there? Might’ve been an hour, might’ve been a week. Twice already they’d had to slink back into the deeper blackness of the tunnel when Dragon People had strayed close, all pressed together in a baking panic, her heart beating so hard it made her teeth rattle. So many hundreds of thousands of things that could go wrong she could hardly breathe for their weight.

‘What do we do when Savian says go?’ she asked.

‘Open the gate. Hold the gate.’

‘And after?’ Providing they were still alive after, which she wouldn’t have wanted to bet good money on.

‘We find the children,’ said Lamb.

A long pause. ‘Starting to look like less and less of a plan, ain’t it?’

‘Do the best you can with what there is, then.’

She puffed her cheeks out at that. ‘Story of my life.’

She waited for an answer but none was forthcoming. She guessed danger makes some folk blather and some clamp tight. Sadly, she was in the former camp, and surrounded by the latter. She crept forwards on all fours, stone hot under her hands, up next to Crying Rock, wondering afresh what the Ghost woman’s interest in all this was. Didn’t seem the type to be interested in gold, or rebels, or children neither. No way of knowing what went on behind that lined mask of a face, though, and she wasn’t shining any lights inward.

‘What’s this Ashranc place like?’ asked Shy.

‘A city carved from the mountain.’

‘How many are in there?’

‘Thousands once. Few now. Judging from those who left, very few, and mostly the young and old. Not good fighters.’

‘A bad fighter sticks a spear in you, you’re just as dead as with a good one.’

‘Don’t get stuck, then.’

‘You’re just a mine of good advice, ain’t you?’

‘Fear not,’ came Jubair’s voice. Across the passageway she could only see the gleam of his eyes, the gleam of his ready sword, but she could tell he was smiling. ‘If God is with us, He will be our shield.’

‘If He’s against?’ asked Shy.

‘Then no shield can protect us.’

Before Shy could tell him what a great comfort that was there was scuffling behind, and a moment later Savian’s crackling voice. ‘It’s time. Cosca’s boys are in the valley.’

‘All of them?’ asked Jubair.

‘Enough of them.’

‘You’re sure?’ The shudder of nerves up Shy’s throat almost choked her. For months now she’d been betting everything she had on finding Pit and Ro. Now the moment might’ve come she would’ve given anything to put it off.

‘Course I’m bloody sure! Go!’

A hand shoved at her back and she knocked into someone and almost fell, staggered on a few steps, fingers brushing the stone to keep her bearings. The tunnel made a turn and suddenly she felt cooler air on her face and was out blinking into the light.

Ashranc was a vast mouth in the mountainside, a cavern cut in half, its floor scattered with stone buildings, a huge overhang of rock shadowing everything above. Ahead of them, beyond a daunting drop, a grand expanse of sky and mountain opened out. Behind the cliff was riddled with openings—doorways, windows, stairways, bridges, a confusion of wall and walkway on a dozen levels, houses half-built into the rock face, a city sunk in stone.

An old man stared at them, shaved bald, a horn frozen on the way to his mouth. He muttered something, took a shocked step back, then Jubair’s sword split his head and he went over in a shower of blood, horn bouncing from his hand.

Crying Rock darted right and Shy followed, someone whispering ‘Shit, shit, shit,’ in her ear and she realised it was her. She rushed along low beside a crumbling wall, breath punching hard, every part of her singing with an unbearable fear and panic and rage, so wild and strong she thought she might burst open with it, sick it up, piss it out. Shouting from high above. Shouting from all around. Her boots clanked over metal plates polished smooth and scrawled with writing, grit pinging and rattling from her heels. A tall archway in a cleft in the rocks, bouncing and shuddering as she ran. A heavy double-door, one leaf already closed, two figures straining to haul the other fast, a third on the wall above, pointing at them, bow in hand. Shy went down on one knee and nocked her own arrow. A shaft looped down, missed one of the running mercenaries and clattered away across the bronze. Snap of the bowstring as Shy let fly and she watched her own arrow cover the distance, hanging in the still air. It caught the archer in the side and she gave a yelp—a woman’s voice, or maybe a child’s—staggered sideways and off the parapet, bounced from the rock and fell crumpled beside the gate.