Red Country (24 page)

‘Never been that good at pretending,’ Sallit muttered. Not pretending to like it, anyway. Got in the way of pretending not to be there at all.

‘Ain’t always about the fucking. Not always. Not just the fucking, anyway.’ Goldy had been around. She was hellish practical. Sallit wished she could be practical. Maybe
she’d get there. ‘Just treat ’em like they’re somebody. That’s all anyone wants, ain’t it?’

‘I suppose.’ Sallit would’ve liked to be treated like somebody, instead of a thing. Folk looked at her, they just saw a whore. She wondered if anyone in the Fellowship knew her
name. Less feeling than for cattle, and less value placed on you, too. What would her parents have made of this, their girl a whore? But they lost their say when they died, and it seemed Sallit had
lost her say as well. She guessed there was worse.

‘Just a living. That’s the way to look at it. You’re young, love. You’ve got time to work.’ A heated bitch was trotting along beside the column and a crowd of a
dozen or more dogs of every shape and size were loping hopefully after. ‘Way o’ the world,’ said Goldy, watching them pass. ‘Put the work in, you can come out rich. Rich
enough to retire comfortable, anyway. That’s the dream.’

‘Is it?’ Sounded like a pretty poor kind of dream to Sallit. To not have the worst.

‘Not much action now, that’s true, but we get to Crease, you’ll see the money come in. Lanklan knows what he’s about, don’t you worry on that score.’

Everyone wanted to get to Crease. They’d wake up talking of the route, begging Sweet to know how many miles they’d gone, how many still to go, counting them off like days of a hard
sentence. But Sallit dreaded the place. Sometimes Lanklan would talk about how many lonely men were out there, eyes aglitter, and how they’d have fifty clients a day like that was something
to look forward to. Sounded like hell to Sallit. Sometimes she didn’t much like Lanklan, but Goldy said as pimps went he was a keeper.

Najis’ squealing was building to a peak now, impossible to ignore.

‘How far is it still to go?’ asked Sallit, trying to cover over it with talk.

Goldy frowned out towards the horizon. ‘Lot of ground and a lot of rivers.’

‘That’s what you said weeks back.’

‘It was true then and it’s true now. Don’t worry, love. Dab Sweet’ll get us there.’

Sallit hoped he didn’t. She hoped the old scout led ’em round in a great circle and all the way back to New Keln and her mother and father smiling in the doorway of the old house.
That was all she wanted. But they were dead of the shudders, and out here in the great empty was no place for dreams. She took a hard breath, rubbed the pain out of her nose, making sure not to
cry. That wasn’t fair on the rest. Didn’t help her when they cried, did it?

‘Good old Dab Sweet.’ Goldy snapped the reins and clucked at the oxen. ‘Never been lost in his life, I hear.’

‘Not lost, then,’ said Crying Rock.

Sweet took his eyes off the coming rider to squint up at her, perched on top of one of the broken walls with the sinking sun behind, swinging a loose leg, that old flag unwrapped from her head
for once and her hair shook out long, silver with a few streaks of gold still in it.

‘When have you ever known me to be lost?’

‘When I’m not there to point the way?’

He gave a sorry grin at that. Only a couple of times on this trip he’d needed to slip off in the darkness on a clear night to fiddle at his astrolabe and take a proper bearing. He’d
won it off a retired sea-captain in a card game and it had proved damned useful down the years. It was like being at sea, sometimes, the plains. Naught but the sky and the horizon and the moaning
bloody cargo. A man needed a trick or two to keep pace with his legend.

That red bear? It was a spear he’d killed it with, not his bare hands, and it had been old, and slow, and not that big. But it had been a bear, and he’d killed it, all right. Why
couldn’t folk be satisfied with that? Dab Sweet killed a bear! But no, they had to paint a taller picture with every telling – bare hands, then saving a woman, then there were three
bears – until he himself could only disappoint beside it. He leaned back against a broken pillar, arms folded, and watched that horseman coming at a gallop, no saddle, Ghost fashion, with a
sour, sour feeling in his gut.

‘Who made me fucking admirable?’ he muttered. ‘Not me, that’s sure.’

‘Huh,’ said Crying Rock.

‘I never had an elevated motive in my life.’

‘Uh.’

There was a time he’d heard tales of Dab Sweet and he’d stuck thumbs in his belt and chin to the sky and tricked himself that was how his life had been. But the years scraped by hard
as ever and he got less and the stories more ’til they were tales of a man he’d never met succeeding at what he’d never have dreamed of attempting. Sometimes they’d stir
some splinter of remembrance of mad and desperate fights or tedious slogs to nowhere or withering passages of cold and hunger and he’d shake his head and wonder by what fucking alchemy these
episodes of rank necessity were made noble adventures.

‘What do they get?’ he asked. ‘A parcel o’ stories to nod their heads to. What do I got? Naught to retire on, that’s sure. Just a worn-out saddle and a sack full of
other men’s lies to carry.’

‘Uh,’ said Crying Rock, like that was just the way of things.

‘Ain’t fair. Just ain’t fair.’

‘Why would it be fair?’

He grunted his agreement to that. He wasn’t getting old no more. He
was
old. His legs ached when he woke and his chest ached when he lay down and the cold got in him deep and he
looked at the days behind and saw how heavily they outnumbered those ahead. He’d set to wondering how many more nights he could sleep under the pitiless sky, yet still men looked at him
awestruck like he was great Juvens, and if they landed in a real fix he’d sing a storm to sleep or shoot down Ghosts with lightning from his arse. He had no lightning, not he, and sometimes
after he’d talked to Majud and played that role of knows-it-all-and-never-shirks better than Iosiv Lestek himself could have managed, he’d mount his horse and his hands would be all
atremble and his eye dim and he’d say to Crying Rock, ‘I’ve lost my nerve,’ and she’d just nod like that was the way of things.

‘I was something once, wasn’t I?’ he muttered.

‘You’re still something,’ said Crying Rock.

‘What, though?’

The rider reined in a few strides distant, frowning at Sweet, and at Crying Rock, and at the ruins they were waiting in, suspicious as a spooked stag. After a moment he swung a leg over and slid
down.

‘Dab Sweet,’ said the Ghost.

‘Locway,’ said Sweet. It’d have to be him. He was one of the new type, sulky-like, just saw the bad in everything. ‘Why ain’t Sangeed here?’

‘You can speak to me.’

‘I can, but why should I?’

Locway bristled up, all chafe and pout like the young ones always were. Most likely Sweet had been no different in his youth. Most likely he’d been worse, but damn if all the posturing
didn’t make him tired these days. He waved the Ghost down. ‘All right, all right, we’ll talk.’ He took a breath, that sour feeling getting no sweeter. He’d been
planning this a long time, argued every side of it and picked his path, but taking the last step was still proving an effort.

‘Talk, then,’ said Locway.

‘I’m bringing a Fellowship, might be a day’s quick ride south of us. They’ve got money.’

‘Then we will take it,’ said Locway.

‘You’ll do as you’re fucking told is what you’ll do,’ snapped Sweet. ‘Tell Sangeed to be at the place we agreed on. They’re jumpy as all hell as it is.
Just show yourselves in fighting style, do some riding round, shout a lot and shoot an arrow or two and they’ll be keen to pay you off. Keep things easy, you understand?’

‘I understand,’ said Locway, but Sweet had his doubts that he knew what easy looked like.

He went close to the Ghost, their faces level since he was fortunately standing upslope, and put his thumbs in his sword-belt and jutted his jaw out. ‘No killing, you hear? Nice and simple
and everyone gets paid. Half for you, half for me. You tell Sangeed that.’

‘I will,’ said Locway, staring back, challenging him. Sweet had a sore temptation to stab him and damn the whole business. But better sense prevailed. ‘What do you say to
this?’ Locway called to Crying Rock.

She looked down at him, hair shifting with the breeze, and kept swinging that loose leg. Just as if he hadn’t spoke at all. Sweet had himself a bit of a chuckle.

‘Are you laughing at me, little man?’ snapped Locway.

‘I’m laughing and you’re here,’ said Sweet. ‘Draw your own fucking conclusions. Now off and tell Sangeed what I said.’

He frowned after Locway for a long time, watching him and his horse dwindle to a black spot in the sunset and thinking how this particular episode weren’t likely to show up in the legend
of Dab Sweet. That sour feeling was worse’n ever. But what could he do? Couldn’t be guiding Fellowships for ever, could he?

‘Got to have something to retire on,’ he muttered. ‘Ain’t too greedy a dream, is it?’

He squinted up at Crying Rock, binding her hair back into that twisted flag again. Most men would’ve seen nothing, maybe. But he who’d known her so many years caught the
disappointment in her face. Or maybe just his own, reflected back like in a still pool.

‘I never been no fucking hero,’ he snapped. ‘Whatever they say.’

She just nodded, like that was the way of things.

The Folk were camped among the ruins, Sangeed’s tall dwelling built in the angle of the fallen arm of a great statue. No one knew now who the statue had been. An old God, died and fallen
away into the past, and it seemed to Locway that the Folk would soon join him.

The camp was quiet and the dwellings few, the young men ranging far to hunt. On the racks only lean shreds of meat drying. The shuttles of the blanket weavers clacked and rattled, chopping the
time up into ugly moments. Brought to this, they who had ruled the plains. Weaving for a pittance, and stealing money so they could buy from their destroyers the things that should have been theirs
already.

The black spots had come in the winter and carried away half the children, moaning and sweating. They had burned their dwellings and drawn the sacred circles in the earth and said the proper
words but it made no difference. The world was changing, and the old rituals held no power. The children had still died, the women had still dug, the men had still wept, and Locway had wept most
bitterly of all.

Sangeed had put his hand upon his shoulder and said, ‘I fear not for myself. I had my time. I fear for you and the young ones, who must walk after me, and will see the end of
things.’ Locway feared, too. Sometimes he felt that all his life was fear. What way was that for a warrior?

He left his horse and picked his way through the camp. Sangeed was brought from his lodge, his arms across the shoulders of his two strong daughters. His spirit was being taken piece by piece.
Each morning there was less of him, that mighty frame before which the world had trembled withered to a shell.

‘What did Sweet say?’ he whispered.

‘That a Fellowship is coming, and will pay. I do not trust him.’

‘He has been a friend to the Folk.’ One of Sangeed’s daughters wiped the spit from the corner of his slack mouth. ‘We will meet him.’ And already he was starting to
sleep.

‘We will meet him,’ said Locway, but he feared what might happen.

He feared for his baby son, who only three nights before had given his first laugh and so become one of the Folk. It should have been a moment for rejoicing, but Locway had only fear in him.
What world was this to be born into? In his youth the Folk’s flocks and herds had been strong and numerous, and now they were stolen by the newcomers, and the good grazing cropped away by the
passing Fellowships, and the beasts hunted to nothing, and the Folk scattered and taken to shameful ways. Before, the future had always looked like the past. Now he knew the past was a better
place, and the future full of fear and death.

But the Folk would not fade without a fight. And so Locway sat beside his wife and son as the stars were opened, and dreamed of a better tomorrow he knew would never come.

The Wrath of God

‘
D
on’t much care for the look o’ that cloud!’ called Leef, pushing hair out of his face that the wind straight away
snatched back into it.

‘If hell has clouds,’ muttered Temple, ‘they look like that one.’ It was a grey-black mountain on the horizon, a dark tower boiling into the very heavens, making of the
sun a feeble smudge and staining the sky about it strange, warlike colours. Every time Temple checked it was closer. All the endless, shelterless Far Country to cast into shadow and where else
would it go but directly over his head? Truly, he exerted an uncanny magnetism on anything dangerous.

‘Let’s get these fires lit and back to the wagons!’ he called, as though some planks and canvas would be sure protection against the impending fury of the skies. The wind was
not helping with the task. Nor did the drizzle, when it began to fall a moment later. Nor did the rain that came soon after that, whipping from everywhere at once, cutting through Temple’s
threadbare coat as if he was wearing nothing. He bent cursing over his little heap of cow-leavings, dissolving rapidly in his wet hands into their original, more fragrant state while he fumbled
with a smouldering stick of wood.

‘Ain’t much fun trying to set fire to wet shit, is it?’ shouted Leef.

‘I’ve had better jobs!’ Though the same sense of distasteful futility had applied to most of them, now Temple considered it.

He heard hooves and saw Shy swing from her saddle, hat clasped to her head. She had to come close and shout over the rising wind and Temple found himself momentarily distracted by her shirt,
which had stuck tight to her with wet and come open a button, showing a small tanned triangle of skin below her throat and a paler one around it, sharp lines of her collarbones faintly glistening,
perhaps just the suggestion of—