Red Country (49 page)

Shy said, ‘Shut your mouth,’ with as much fire as she could muster which right then wasn’t much.

‘What’ll you do?’ he sneered at her. ‘Slap me?’

That struck a hotter spark from her. ‘That’s right. With a fucking axe. Now shut your mouth.’

This time he did shut it, too, but by the moon’s glimmering she gathered he was working out how to even the score, and reckoned she’d better mind her back even closer than
before.

They kept watch in pairs, one from the mercenaries, one from the Fellowship that had been, and they watched each other every bit as hard as they watched the night for Dragon People. Shy marked
time by Sweet’s snoring, and when the moment came she shook Lamb and whispered in his ear.

‘Wake up, your Majesty.’

He gave a grunting sigh. ‘Wondered how long it’d be ’fore that floated up again.’

‘Pardon the foolishness of a witless peasant. I’m just overcome at having the King of the Northmen snoring in my blankets.’

‘I spent ten times as long poorer’n a beggar and without a friend to my name. Why does no one want to talk about that?’

‘In my case ’cause I know well enough what that feels like. I haven’t had occasion to wear a crown that often.’

‘Neither have I,’ he said, crawling stiffly clear of the bedding. ‘I had a chain.’

‘A golden one?’

‘With a diamond like that.’ And he made a shape the size of a hen’s egg with his thumb and forefinger and eyed her through it.

She still wasn’t sure whether this was all some kind of a joke. ‘You.’

‘Me.’

‘That got through a whole winter in one pair of trousers.’

He shrugged. ‘I’d lost the chain by then.’

‘Any particular way I should act around royalty?’

‘The odd curtsy wouldn’t go amiss.’

She snorted. ‘Fuck yourself.’

‘Fuck yourself,
your Majesty
.’

‘King Lamb,’ she muttered, crawling into the blankets to make the most of his already fading warmth. ‘King Lamb.’

‘I had a different name.’

Shy looked sideways at him. ‘What name?’

He sat there in the wide mouth of the cave, hunched black against the star-speckled night, and she couldn’t guess at what was on his face. ‘Don’t matter,’ he said.
‘No good ever came of it.’

Next morning the snow whirled down on a wind that came from every way at once, bitter as a bankrupt. They mounted up with all the joy of folk riding to their own hangings and pressed on, uphill,
uphill. The forest thinned out, trees shrinking, withering, twisting like folk in pain. They threaded through bare rocks and the way grew narrow – an old stream bed, maybe, though sometimes
it looked more like a man-made stair worn almost smooth by years and weather. Jubair sent one of his men back with the horses and Shy half-wished she was going with him. The rest of them toiled on
by foot.

‘What the hell are these Dragon bastards doing up here anyhow?’ Shy grunted at Sweet. Didn’t seem like a place anyone in their right mind would want to visit, let alone live
in.

‘Can’t say I know exactly . . . why they’re up here.’ The old scout had to talk in rushes between his heaving breaths. ‘But they been here a long time.’

‘She hasn’t told you?’ asked Shy, nodding at Crying Rock, striding on hard up ahead.

‘I reckon it’s on account . . . o’ my reluctance to ask those kind o’ questions . . . she’s stuck with me down the years.’

‘Ain’t for your good looks, I can tell you that.’

‘There’s more to life than looks.’ He glanced sideways at her. ‘Luckily for us both.’

‘What would they want with children?’

He stopped to take a swallow of water and offered one to her while the mercenaries laboured past under the considerable burden of their many weapons. ‘The way I hear it, no children are
born here. Something in the land. They turn barren. All the Dragon People were taken from someone else, one time or another. Used to be that meant Ghosts mostly, maybe Imperials, the odd Northman
strayed down from the Sea of Teeth. Looks like since the prospectors drove the Ghosts out they’re casting their net wider. Buying children off the likes of Cantliss.’

‘Less talk!’ hissed Crying Rock from above. ‘More walk!’

The snow came down weightier than ever but didn’t drift as deep, and when Shy peeled the wrappings off her face she found the wind wasn’t half so keen. An hour later the snow was
slippery slush on the wet rock, and she pulled her soaked gloves off and could still feel her fingertips. An hour after that the snow still fell but the ground was bare, and Shy was sweating fast
enough she had to strip her coat off and wedge it in her pack. The others were doing the same. She bent and pressed her palm to the earth and there was a strange warmth, like it was the wall of a
baker’s and the oven was stoked on the other side.

‘There is fire below,’ said Crying Rock.

‘There is?’ Shy snatched her hand back like flames might pop from the dirt then and there. ‘Can’t say that notion floods a woman with optimism.’

‘Better’n freezing the crap up my arse, ain’t it?’ said Sweet, pulling his shirt off to reveal another underneath. Shy wondered how many he had on. Or if he’d keep
taking them off until he disappeared altogether.

‘Is that why the Dragon People live up here?’ Savian pressed his own palm to the warm dirt. ‘Because of the fire?’

‘Or because they live here there is a fire.’ Crying Rock stared up the slope, bare rock and scree now, crusted in places with stains of yellow sulphur, overlooked by a towering
bastard of a rock face. ‘This way may be watched.’

‘Certainly it will be,’ said Jubair. ‘God sees all.’

‘Ain’t God as’ll put an arrow in your arse if we keep on this path,’ said Sweet.

Jubair shrugged. ‘God puts all things where they must be.’

‘What now, then?’ asked Savian.

Crying Rock was already uncoiling a rope from her pack. ‘Now we climb.’

Shy rubbed at her temples. ‘Had a nasty feeling she’d say that.’

Damn it if the climbing wasn’t even harder than the walking and a long drop scarier. Crying Rock swarmed up like a spider and Lamb wasn’t much slower, seeming well at home among the
mountains, the two of them getting ropes ready for the rest. Shy brought up the rear with Savian, cursing and fumbling at the slick rock, arms aching from the effort and her hands burning from the
hemp.

‘Haven’t had the chance to thank you,’ she said as she waited on a ledge.

He didn’t make a sound but the hissing of the rope through his gnarled hands as he pulled it up behind them.

‘For what you did back in Crease.’ Silence. ‘Ain’t had my life saved so often that I overlook it.’ Silence. ‘Remember?’

She thought he gave the tiniest shrug.

‘Get the feeling you’ve been avoiding mention of it.’

Silence. He avoided mentioning anything wherever possible.

‘Probably you ain’t much of a one for taking thanks.’

More silence.

‘Probably I ain’t much of a one for giving ’em.’

‘You’re taking your time about it, all right.’

‘Thanks, then. Reckon I’d be good and dead if it weren’t for you.’

Savian pressed his thin lips together even tighter and gave a throaty grunt. ‘Reckon you or your father would’ve done the same for me.’

‘He ain’t my father.’

‘That’s between you two. But if you were to ask, I’d say you could do worse.’

Shy snorted. ‘I used to think so.’

‘This isn’t what he wanted, you know. Or the way he wanted it.’

‘I used to think that, too. Not so sure any more. Family, eh?’

‘Family.’

‘Where’s Corlin got to?’

‘She can look after herself.’

‘Oh, no doubt.’ Shy dropped her voice. ‘Look, Savian, I know what you are.’

He looked up at her hard. ‘That so?’

‘I know what you got under there,’ and she moved her eyes down to his forearms, blue with tattoos, she knew, under his coat.

‘Can’t fathom your meaning,’ but tweaking one of his sleeves down even so.

She leaned closer and whispered, ‘Just pretend you can, then. When Cosca got to talking about rebels, well, my big fucking mouth ran away with me, like always. I meant well, like always,
trying to help out . . . but I haven’t, have I?’

‘Not a lot.’

‘My fault you’re in this fix. If that bastard Lorsen finds out what you got there . . . what I’m saying is, you should go. This ain’t your fight. Naught to stop you
slipping away, and no shortage of empty to slip into.’

‘And you’d say what? Forgot all about my lost boy, did I? It’d just make ’em curious. Might make trouble for you. Might make trouble for me, in the end. Reckon I’ll
just keep my head down and my sleeves down too and stick with you. Best all round.’

‘My big fucking mouth,’ she hissed to herself.

Savian grinned. It might have been the first time she’d ever seen him do it and it was like a lantern uncovered, the lines shifting in his weathered face and his eyes suddenly gleaming.
‘You know what? Your big fucking mouth ain’t to everyone’s taste but I’ve almost got to like it.’ And he put his hand down on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
‘You’d best watch out for that prick Sacri, though. Don’t think he sees it that way.’

Nor did she. Not long after that, a rock came clattering down that missed her head by a whisker. She saw Sacri grinning above and was sure he’d kicked it loose on purpose. Soon as she got
the chance she told him so and where she’d stick her knife if another rock came along. The other mercenaries were quite tickled by her language.

‘I should teach you some manners, girl,’ snapped Sacri, sticking his jutting jaw out even further, trying to save what face he could.

‘You’d have to fucking know some to teach some.’

He put his hand on his sword, more bluster than meaning to use it, but before he even got the chance Jubair loomed between them.

‘There will be weapons drawn, Sacri,’ he said, ‘but when and against whom I say. These are our allies. We need them to show us the way. Leave the woman be or we will quarrel
and a quarrel with me is a heavy weight to carry.’

‘Sorry, Captain,’ said Sacri, scowling.

Jubair offered him the way with one open hand. ‘Regret is the gateway to salvation.’

Lamb scarcely even looked over while they were arguing, and trudged off when they were done like none of it was his concern.

‘Thanks for your help back there,’ she snapped as she caught him up.

‘You’d have had it if you’d needed it. You know that.’

‘A word or two wouldn’t have hurt.’

He leaned close. ‘Way I see it, we’ve got two choices. Try and use these bastards, or kill ’em all. Hard words have never won a battle yet, but they’ve lost a few. You
mean to kill a man, telling him so don’t help.’

Lamb walked on, and left her to think about that.

They camped near a steaming stream that Sweet said not to drink from. Not that anyone was keen to try since it smelled like feast-day farts. All night the water hissing in Shy’s ears and
she dreamed of falling. Woke sweating with her throat raw from the warm stink to see Sacri on guard and watching her and thought she caught the gleam of metal in his hand. She lay awake after that,
her own knife drawn in her fist. The way she had long ago when she was on the run. The way she’d hoped she never would again. She found herself wishing that Temple was there. Surely the man
was no hero, but somehow he made her feel braver.

In the morning, grey shadows of crags loomed over them that through the shifting veil of snow looked like the ruins of walls, towers, fortresses. Holes were cut in the rock, too square to be
natural, and near them mounds of spoil.

‘Prospectors get this far?’ one of the mercenaries asked.

Sweet shook his head. ‘Nowhere near. These is older diggings.’

‘How much older?’

‘Much older,’ said Crying Rock.

‘Seems like the closer we get the more I worry,’ Shy muttered at

Lamb as they set off, bent and sore.

He nodded. ‘Starting to think about all the thousand things could go wrong.’

‘Scared we won’t find ’em.’

‘Or scared we will.’

‘Or just plain scared,’ she muttered.

‘Scared is good,’ he said. ‘The dead are fearless and I don’t want either of us joining ’em.’

They stopped beside a deep gorge, the sound of water moving far below, steam rising and everywhere the reek of brimstone. An arch spanned the canyon, black rock slick with wet and bearded with
dripping icicles of lime. From its middle a great chain hung, links a stride high, rust-eaten metal squealing faintly as the wind stirred them. Savian sat with his head back, breathing hard. The
mercenaries slouched in a group nearby, passing round a flask.

‘And here she is!’ Sacri chuckled. ‘The child hunter!’ Shy looked at him, and at the drop beside him, and thought how dearly she’d like to introduce one to the
other. ‘What kind of fool would hope to find children alive in a place like this?’

‘Why do big mouths and little brains so often go together?’ she muttered, but she thought about Lamb’s words, realised her question might apply to herself just as easily, and
stopped her tongue for once.

‘Nothing to say?’ Sacri grinned down his nose as he tipped his flask up. ‘At least you’ve learned some—’

Jubair put out a great arm and brushed him off the cliff. The Styrian made a choking whoop, flask tumbling from his hand, and he was gone. A thump and a clatter of stones, then another, and
another, fading out of hearing in the gorge below.

The mercenaries stared, one with a piece of dried meat halfway to his open mouth. Shy watched, skin prickling, as Jubair stepped to the brink, lips thoughtfully pursed, and looked down.
‘The world is filled with folly and waste,’ he said. ‘It is enough to shake a man’s faith.’

‘You killed him,’ said one of the mercenaries, with that talent for stating the obvious some men have.

‘God killed him. I was but the instrument.’

‘God sure can be a thorny bastard, can’t He?’ croaked Savian.

Jubair solemnly nodded. ‘He is a terrible and a merciless God and all things must bend to His design.’

‘His design’s left us a man short,’ said Sweet.