Joe Abercrombie - Red Country

The two Dragon People who’d been shutting the doors had found weapons. Old men, she saw now, very old. Jubair hacked at one and sent him reeling into the rock face. Two of the mercenaries caught up with the other and cut him down, swearing, chopping, stamping.

Shy stared at the girl she’d shot, lying there. Not much older’n Ro, she reckoned. Part Ghost, maybe, from the whiteness of her skin and the shape of her eyes. Just like Shy. Blame it on your Ghost blood. She stared down and the girl stared up, breathing fast and shallow, saying nothing, eyes so dark and wet and blood across her cheek. Shy’s free hand opened and closed, useless.

‘Here!’ roared Jubair, raising one hand. Shy heard a faint answering call, through the gate saw men struggling up the mountainside. Cosca’s men, weapons drawn. Caught a glimpse of Sweet, maybe, struggling along on foot. The other mercenaries started dragging the doors wide to let them through. Doors of metal four fingers thick but swinging as smooth as a box lid.

‘God is with us,’ said Jubair, his grin spotted with blood.

God might’ve been, but Lamb was nowhere to be seen. ‘Where’s Lamb?’ she asked, staring about.

‘Don’t know.’ Savian only just managed to force the words out. He was breathing hard, bent over. ‘Went the other way.’

She took off again.

‘Wait!’ Savian wheezed after her, but he weren’t running anywhere. Shy dashed to the nearest house, about enough thought in her pounding head to sling her bow over her shoulder and pull her short-sword. Wasn’t sure she’d ever swung a sword in anger. When she killed that Ghost that killed Leef, maybe. Wasn’t sure why she was thinking about that now. Heaved in a great breath and tore aside the hide that hung in the doorway, leaped in, blade-first.

Maybe she’d been expecting Pit and Ro to look up, weeping grateful tears. Instead a bare room, naught there but strips of light across a dusty floor.

She barrelled into another house, empty as the first.

She dashed up a set of steps and through an archway in the rock face. This room had furniture, polished by time, bowls neatly stacked, no sign of life.

An old man blundered from the next doorway and right into Shy, slipped and fell, a big pot dropping from his hands and shattering across the ground. He scrambled away, holding up a trembling arm, muttering something, cursing Shy, or pleading for his life, or calling on some forgotten god, and Shy lifted the sword, standing over him. Took an effort to stop herself killing him. Her body burned to do it. But she had to find the children. Before Cosca’s men boiled into this place and caught the killing fever. Had to find the children. If they were here. She let the old man crawl away through a doorway.

‘Pit!’ she screamed, voice cracking. Back down the steps and into another dim, hot, empty room, an archway at the back leading to another yet. The place was a maze. A city built for thousands, like Crying Rock had said. How the hell to find two children in this? A roar came from somewhere, strange, echoing.

‘Lamb?’ She clawed sweaty hair out of her face.

Someone gave a panicked screech. There were people spilling from the doorways now, from the low houses below, some with weapons, others with tools, one grey-haired woman with a baby in her arms. Some stared about, sensing something was wrong but not sure what. Others were hurrying off, away from the gate, away from Shy, towards a tall archway in the rock at the far end of the open cavern.

A black-skinned man stood beside it, staff in hand, beckoning people through into the darkness. Waerdinur. And close beside him a much smaller figure, thin and pale, shaven-headed. But Shy knew her even so.

‘Ro!’ she screamed, but her voice was lost. The clatter of fighting echoed from the rocky ceiling, bounced from the buildings, coming from everywhere and nowhere. She vaulted over a parapet, hopped a channel where water flowed, startled as a huge figure loomed over her, realised it was a tree-trunk carved into a twisted man-shape, ran on into an open space beside a long, low building and slid to a stop.

A group of Dragon People had gathered ahead of her. Three old men, two old women and a boy, all shaven-headed, all armed, and none of them looking like they planned to move.

Shy hefted her sword and screamed, ‘Get out o’ my fucking way!’

She knew she wasn’t that imposing a figure, so it was something of a shock when they began to back off. Then a flatbow bolt flitted into the stomach of one of the old men and he clutched at it, dropping his spear. The others turned and ran. Shy heard feet slapping behind her and mercenaries rushed past, whooping, shouting. One of them hacked an old woman across the back as she tried to limp away.

Shy looked towards that archway, flanked by black pillars and full of shadow. Waerdinur had vanished inside now. Ro too, if it had been her. It must have been.

She set off running.

In so far as Cosca had a best, danger brought it out in him. Temple hurried cringing along, sticking so close to the walls that he would occasionally scrape his face upon them, his fingernails so busy with the hem of his shirt he was halfway to unravelling the whole thing. Brachio scuttled bent almost double. Even Friendly prowled with shoulders suspiciously hunched. But the Old Man had no fear. Not of death, at least. He strode through the ancient settlement utterly heedless of the arrows that occasionally looped down, chin high, eyes aglitter, steps only slightly wayward from drink, snapping out orders that actually made sense.

‘Bring down that archer!’ Pointing with his sword at an old woman on top of a building.

‘Clear those tunnels!’ Waving towards some shadowy openings beside them.

‘Kill no children if possible, a deal is a deal!’ Wagging a lecturing finger at a group of Kantics already daubed with blood.

Whether anyone took any notice of him, it was hard to say. The Company of the Gracious Hand were not the most obedient at the best of times, and these times in no way qualified.

Danger brought no best from Temple. He felt very much as he had in Dagoska, during the siege. Sweating in that stinking hospital, and cursing, and fumbling with the bandages, and tearing up the clothes of the dead for more. Passing the buckets, all night long, lit by fires, water slopping, and for nothing. It all burned anyway. Weeping at each death. Weeping with sorrow. Weeping with gratitude that it was not him. Weeping with fear that it would be him next. Months in fear, always in fear. He had been in fear ever since.

A group of mercenaries had gathered around an ancient man, growling unintelligible insults through clenched teeth in a language something like Old Imperial, swinging a spear wildly in both hands. It did not take long for Temple to realise he was blind. The mercenaries darted in and out. When he turned, one would poke him in the back with a weapon, when he turned again, another would do the honours. The old man’s robe was already dark with blood.

‘Should we stop them?’ muttered Temple.

‘Of course,’ said Cosca. ‘Friendly?’

The sergeant caught the blind man’s spear just below the blade in one big fist, whipped a cleaver from his coat with the other and split his head almost in half in one efficient motion, letting his body slump to the ground and tossing the spear clattering away.

‘Oh God,’ muttered Temple.

‘We have work to do!’ snapped the Old Man at the disappointed mercenaries. ‘Find the gold!’

Temple tore his hands away from his shirt and scratched at his hair instead, scrubbed at it, clawed at it. He had promised himself, after Averstock, that he would never stand by and watch such things again. The same promise he had made in Kadir. And before that in Styria. And here he was, standing uncomplaining by. And watching. But then he had never been much for keeping promises.