Red Country (20 page)

‘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.’

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.’

‘They were always keener there on digging than filling in, as I recall,’ said Sweet.

‘Well, they got worse. We pushed on up to Beacon, into the hills, to find us a claim to work. Place was crawling with men hoping for the same.’

‘Beacon was?’ Sweet snorted. ‘It weren’t more’n three tents last time I was there.’

‘Well, it’s a whole town now. Or was, at least.’

‘Was?’

‘We stopped there a night or two then off into the wilds. Come back to town after we’d checked a few creeks and found naught but cold mud . . .’ He ran out of words, just
staring at nothing. One of his fellows took his hat off, the brim half-torn away, and looked into it. Strange to see in that hammered-out face, but there were tears in his eyes.

‘And?’ asked Sweet.

‘Everyone gone. Two hundred people in that camp, or more. Just gone, you understand?’

‘Gone where?’

‘To fucking hell was our guess, and we ain’t planning on joining ’em. The place empty, mark you. Meals still on the table and washing still hung out and all. And in the square
we find the Dragon Circle painted ten strides across.’ The man shivered. ‘Fuck that, is what I’m saying.’

‘Fuck it to hell,’ agreed his neighbour, jamming his ruined hat back on.

‘Ain’t been no Dragon People seen in years,’ said Sweet, but looking a little worried. He never looked worried.

‘Dragon People?’ asked Shy. ‘What are they? A kind of Ghosts?’

‘A kind,’ grunted Crying Rock.

‘They live way up north,’ said Sweet. ‘High in the mountains. They ain’t to be dabbled with.’

‘I’d sooner dabble with Glustrod his self,’ said the man in the Union coat. ‘I fought Northmen in the war and I fought Ghosts on the plains and I fought Papa Ring’s
men in Crease and I gave not a stride to any of ’em.’ He shook his head. ‘But I ain’t fighting those Dragon bastards. Not if the mountains was made of gold. Sorcerers,
that’s what they are. Wizards and devils and I’ll have none of it.’

‘We appreciate the warning,’ said Sweet, ‘but we’ve come this far and I reckon we’ll go on.’

‘May you all get rich as Valint and Balk combined, but you’ll be doing it without me.’ He waved on his slumping companions. ‘Let’s go!’

Lamb caught him by the arm as he was turning back. ‘You heard of Grega Cantliss?’

The man tugged his sleeve free. ‘He works for Papa Ring, and you won’t find a blacker bastard in the Far Country. A Fellowship of thirty got killed and robbed up in the hills near
Crease last summer, ears cut off and skinned and interfered with, and Papa Ring said it must be Ghosts and no one proved it otherwise. But I heard a whisper it was Cantliss did it.’

‘Him and us got business,’ said Shy.

The man turned his sunken eyes on her. ‘Then I’m sorry for you, but I ain’t seen him in months and I don’t plan to lay eyes on the bastard ever again. Not him, not
Crease, not any part of this blasted country.’ And he clicked his tongue and rode away, heading eastwards.

They sat there a moment and watched the defeated shamble back the long way to civilisation. Not a sight to make anyone too optimistic about the destination, even if they’d been prone to
optimism, which Shy wasn’t.

‘Thought you knew everyone in the Far Country?’ she said to Sweet.

The old scout shrugged. ‘Those who been about a while.’

‘Not this Grega Cantliss, though?’

His shrug rose higher. ‘Crease is crawling with killers like a tree-stump with woodlice. I ain’t out there often enough to tell one from another. We both get there alive, I can make
you an introduction to the Mayor. Then you can get some answers.’

‘The Mayor?’