Red Country (44 page)

Majud dragged Curnsbick through it all, ignoring the fighting, the injured, a woman propped on her elbows staring at the bone sticking out of her leg. It was every man for himself and perhaps,
if they were lucky, those closest to him, no choice but to leave the rest to God.

‘Oh my,’ burbled Curnsbick.

In the street it was no longer like a battle, it was one. People dashed gibbering through the madness, lit by the spreading flames on Ring’s side of the street. Blades glinted, men clashed
and fell and rolled, floundered in the stream, the sides impossible to guess. He saw someone toss a burning bottle whirling onto a roof where it shattered, curling lines of fire shooting across the
thatch and catching hungrily in spite of the wet.

He glimpsed the Mayor, still staring across the maddened street from her balcony. She pointed at something, spoke to a man beside her, calmly directing. Majud acquired the strong impression that
she had never intended to sit back and meekly abide by the result.

Arrows flickered in the darkness. One stuck in the mud near them, burning. Majud’s ears rang with words screeched in languages he did not know. There was another thunderous detonation and
he cowered as timbers spun high, smoke roiling up into the wet sky.

Someone had a woman by the hair, was dragging her kicking through the muck.

‘Oh my,’ said Curnsbick, over and over.

A hand clutched at Majud’s ankle and he struck out with the flat of his sword, tore free and struggled on, not looking back, sticking to the porches of the buildings on the Mayor’s
side of the street. High above, at the top of the nearest column, three men were silhouetted, two with bows, a third lighting their pitch-soaked arrows so they could calmly shoot them at the houses
across the way.

The building with the sign that said
Fuck Palace
was thoroughly ablaze. A woman leaped from the balcony and crumpled in the mud, wailing. Two corpses lay nearby. Four men stood with naked
swords, watching. One was smoking a pipe. Majud thought he was a dealer from the Mayor’s Church of Dice.

Curnsbick tried to pull his arm free. ‘We should—’

‘No!’ snapped Majud, dragging him on. ‘We shouldn’t.’

Mercy, along with all the trappings of civilised behaviour, was a luxury they could ill afford. Majud tore out the key to their shop and thrust it into Curnsbick’s trembling hand while he
faced the street, sword up.

‘Oh my,’ the inventor was saying as he struggled with the lock, ‘oh my.’

They spilled inside, into the still safety, the darkness of the shop flickering with slashes of orange and yellow and red. Majud shouldered the door shut, gasped with relief as he felt the latch
drop, spun about when he felt a hand on his shoulder and nearly took Temple’s head off with his flailing sword.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ A strip of light wandered across one half of Temple’s stricken face. ‘Who won the fight?’

Majud put the point of his sword on the floor and leaned on the pommel, breathing hard. ‘Lamb tore Golden apart. Literally.’

‘Oh my,’ whimpered Curnsbick, sliding down the wall until his arse thumped against the floor.

‘What about Shy?’ asked Temple.

‘I’ve no idea. I’ve no idea about anything.’ Majud eased the door open a crack to peer out. ‘But I suspect the Mayor is cleaning house.’

The flames on Papa Ring’s side of the street were lighting the whole town in garish colours. The Whitehouse was ablaze to its top floor, fire shooting into the sky, ravenous, murderous,
trees burning on the slopes above, ash and embers fluttering in the rain.

‘Shouldn’t we help?’ whispered Temple.

‘A good man of business remains neutral.’

‘Surely there’s a moment to cease being a good man of business, and try to be merely a good man.’

‘Perhaps.’ Majud heaved the door shut again. ‘But this is not that moment.’

Old Friends

‘
W
ell, then!’ shouted Papa Ring, and he swallowed, and he blinked into the sun. ‘Here we are, I guess!’ There was a sheen
of sweat across his forehead, but Temple could hardly blame him for that. ‘I haven’t always done right!’ Someone had ripped the ring from his ear and the distorted lobe flopped
loose as he turned his head. ‘Daresay most of you won’t miss me none! But I’ve always done my best to keep my word, at least! You’d have to say I always kept
my—’

Temple heard the Mayor snap her fingers and her man booted Ring in the back and sent him lurching off the scaffold. The noose jerked tight and he kicked and twisted, rope creaking as he did the
hanged man’s dance, piss running from one of his dirty trouser-legs. Little men and big, brave men and cowards, powerful men and meagre, they all hang very much the same. That made eleven of
them dangling. Ring, and nine of his henchmen, and the woman who had been in charge of his whores. A half-hearted cheer went up from the crowd, more habit than enthusiasm. Last night’s events
had more than satisfied even Crease’s appetite for death.

‘And that’s the end of that,’ said the Mayor under her breath.

‘It’s the end of a lot,’ said Temple. One of the ancient pillars the Whitehouse had stood between had toppled in the heat. The other loomed strangely naked, cracked and
soot-blackened, the ruins of the present tangled charred about the ruins of the past. A good half of the buildings on Ring’s side of the street had met the same fate, yawning gaps burned from
the jumble of wooden shack and shanty, scavengers busy among the wreckage.

‘We’ll rebuild,’ said the Mayor. ‘That’s what we do. Is that treaty ready yet?’

‘Very nearly done,’ Temple managed to say.

‘Good. That piece of paper could save a lot of lives.’

‘I see that saving lives is our only concern.’ He trudged back up the steps without waiting for a reply. He shed no tears for Papa Ring, but he had no wish to watch him kick any
longer.

With a fair proportion of the town’s residents dead by violence, fire or hanging, a larger number run off, a still larger number even now preparing to leave, and most of the rest in the
street observing the conclusion of the great feud, the Mayor’s Church of Dice was eerily empty, Temple’s footsteps echoing around the smoke-stained rafters. Dab Sweet, Crying Rock and
Corlin sat about one table, playing cards under the vacant gaze of the ancient armour ranged about the walls.

‘Not watching the hanging?’ asked Temple.

Corlin glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and treated him to a hiss of contempt. More than likely she had heard the story of his naked dash across the street.

‘Nearly got hanged myself one time, up near Hope,’ said Sweet. ‘Turned out a misunderstanding, but even so.’ The old scout hooked a finger in his collar and dragged it
loose. ‘Strangled my enthusiasm for the business.’

‘Bad luck,’ intoned Crying Rock, seeming to stare straight through her cards, half of which faced in and the other half out. Whether it was the end of Sweet’s enthusiasm, or
his near-hanging, or hanging in general that was bad luck she didn’t clarify. She was not a woman prone to clarification.

‘And when there’s death outside is the one time a man can get some room in here.’ Sweet rocked his chair back on two legs and deposited his dirty boot on the table. ‘I
reckon this place has turned sour. Soon there’ll be more money in taking folk away than bringing ’em in. Just need to round up a few miserable failures desperate to see civilisation
again and we’re on our way back to the Near Country.’

‘Maybe I’ll join you,’ said Temple. A crowd of failures sounded like ideal company for him.

‘Always welcome.’ Crying Rock let fall a card and started to rake in the pot, her face just as slack as if she’d lost. Sweet tossed his hand away in disgust. ‘Twenty
years I been losing to this cheating bloody Ghost and she still pretends she don’t know how to play the game!’

Savian and Lamb stood at the counter, warming themselves at a bottle. Shorn of hair and beard the Northman looked younger, even bigger, and a great deal meaner. He also looked as if he had made
every effort to fell a tree with his face. It was a misshapen mass of scab and bruise, a ragged cut across one cheekbone roughly stitched and his hands both wrapped in stained bandages.

‘All the same,’ he was grunting through bloated lips, ‘I owe you big.’

‘Daresay I’ll find a way for you to pay,’ answered Savian. ‘Where d’you stand on politics?’

‘These days, as far away from it as I can . . .’

They shut up tight when they saw Temple. ‘Where’s Shy?’ he asked.

Lamb looked at him, one eye swollen nearly shut and the other infinitely tired. ‘Upstairs in the Mayor’s rooms.’

‘Will she see me?’

‘That’s up to her.’

Temple nodded. ‘You’ve got my thanks as well,’ he said to Savian. ‘For what that’s worth.’

‘We all give what we can.’

Temple wasn’t sure whether that was meant to sting. It was one of those moments when everything stung. He left the two old men and made for the stairs. Behind him he heard Savian mutter,
‘I’m talking about the rebellion in Starikland.’

‘The one just finished?’

‘That and the next one . . .’

He lifted his fist outside the door, and paused. There was nothing to stop him letting it drop and riding straight out of town, to Bermi’s claim, maybe, or even on to somewhere no one knew
what a disappointing cock he was. If there was any such place left in the Circle of the World. Before the impulse to take the easy way could overwhelm him, he made himself knock.

Shy’s face looked little better than Lamb’s, scratched and swollen, nose cut across the bridge, neck a mass of bruises. It hurt him to see it. Not as much as if he’d taken the
beating, of course. But it hurt still. She didn’t look upset to see him. She didn’t look that interested. She left the door open, limping slightly, and showed her teeth as she sank down
on a bench under the window, bare feet looking very white against the floorboards.

‘How was the hanging?’ she asked.

He stepped inside and gently pushed the door to. ‘Very much like they always are.’

‘Can’t say I’ve ever understood their appeal.’

‘Perhaps it makes people feel like winners, seeing someone else lose so hard.’

‘Losing hard I know all about.’

‘Are you all right?’

She looked up and he could hardly meet her eye. ‘Bit sore.’

‘You’re angry with me.’ He sounded like a sulking child.

‘I’m not. I’m just sore.’

‘What good would I have done if I’d stayed?’

She licked at her split lip. ‘I daresay you’d just have got yourself killed.’

‘Exactly. But instead I ran for help.’

‘You ran all right, that I can corroborate.’

‘I got Savian.’

‘And Savian got me. Just in time.’

‘That’s right.’

‘That’s right.’ She held her side as she slowly fished up one boot and started to pull it on. ‘So I guess what we’re saying is, I owe you my life. Thanks, Temple,
you’re a fucking hero. Next time I see a bare arse vanishing out my window I’ll know to just lie back and await salvation.’

They looked at each other in silence, while outside in the street the hanging crowd started to drift away. Then he sank into a chair facing her. ‘I’m fucking ashamed of
myself.’

‘That’s a great comfort. I’ll use your shame as a poultice on my grazes.’

‘I’ve got no excuse.’

‘And yet I feel one’s coming.’

His turn to grimace. ‘I’m a coward, simple as that. I’ve been running away so long it’s come to be a habit. Not easy, changing old habits. However much we
might—’

‘Don’t bother.’ She gave a long, pained sigh. ‘I got low expectations. To be fair, you already exceeded ’em once when you paid your debt. So you tend to the
cowardly. Who doesn’t? You ain’t the brave knight and I ain’t the swooning maiden and this ain’t no storybook, that’s for sure. You’re forgiven. You can go your
way.’ And she waved him out the door with the scabbed back of her hand.

That was closer to forgiveness than he could have hoped for, but he found he was not moving. ‘I don’t want to go.’

‘I’m not asking you to jump again, you can use the stairs.’

‘Let me make it right.’

She looked up at him from under her brows. ‘We’re heading into the mountains, Temple. That bastard Cantliss’ll show us where these Dragon People are, and we’re going to
try and get my brother and sister back, and I can’t promise there’ll be anything made right at all. A few promises I can make – it’ll be hard and cold and dangerous and
there won’t even be any windows to jump out of. You’ll be about as useful there as a spent match, and let’s neither one of us offend honesty by pretending otherwise.’

‘Please.’ He took a wheedling step towards her, ‘Please give me one more—’

‘Leave me be,’ she said, narrowing her eyes at him. ‘I just want to sit and hurt in peace.’

So that was all. Maybe he should have fought harder, but Temple had never been much of a fighter. So he nodded at the floor, and quietly shut the door behind him, and went back down the steps,
and over to the counter.

‘Get what you wanted?’ asked Lamb.

‘No,’ said Temple, spilling a pocketful of coins across the wood. ‘What I deserved.’ And he started drinking.

He was vaguely aware of the dull thud of hooves out in the street, shouting and the jingle of harness. Some new Fellowship pulling into town. Some new set of forthcoming disappointments. But he
was too busy with his own even to bother to look up. He told the man behind the counter to leave the bottle.

This time there was no one else to blame. Not God, not Cosca, certainly not Shy. Lamb had been right. The trouble with running is wherever you run to, there you are. Temple’s problem was
Temple, and it always had been. He heard heavy footsteps, spurs jingling, calls for drink and women, but he ignored them, inflicted another burning glassful on his gullet, banged it down, eyes
watering, reached for the bottle.

Someone else got there first.

‘You’d best leave that be,’ growled Temple.

‘How would I drink it then?’