Red Country (54 page)

Temple’s nose kept running, tickling, running. He rubbed it with the heel of his hand until it bled, and it ran again. He tried to look only at the ground, but sounds kept jerking his wet
eyes sideways. To crashes and screams and laughs and bellows, to whimpers and gurgles and sobs and screeches. Through the windows and the doorways he caught glimpses, glimpses he knew would be with
him as long as he lived and he rooted his running eyes on the ground again and whispered to himself, ‘Oh God.’

How often had he whispered it during the siege? Over and over as he hurried through the scorched ruins of the Lower City, the bass rumble of the blasting powder making the earth shake as he
rolled over the bodies, seeking for survivors, and when he found them burned and scarred and dying, what could he do? He had learned he was no worker of miracles. Oh God, oh God. No help had come
then. No help came now.

‘Shall we burn ’em?’ asked a bow-legged Styrian, hopping like a child eager to go out and play. He was pointing up at some carvings chiselled from ancient tree-trunks, wood
polished to a glow by the years, strange and beautiful.

Cosca shrugged. ‘If you must. What’s wood for, after all, if not to take a flame?’ He watched the mercenary shower oil on the nearest one and pull out his tinderbox. ‘The
sad fact is I just don’t care much any more, either way. It bores me.’

Temple startled as a naked body crashed into the ground next to them. Whether it had been alive or dead on the way down, he could not say. ‘Oh God,’ he whispered.

‘Careful!’ bellowed Friendly, frowning up at the buildings on their left.

Cosca watched the blood spread from the corpse’s broken skull, scarcely interrupted in his train of thought. ‘I look at things such as this and feel only . . . a mild ennui. My mind
wanders on to what’s for dinner, or the recurrent itch on the sole of my foot, or when and where I might next be able to get my cock sucked.’ He started to scratch absently at his
codpiece, then gave up. ‘What horror, eh, to be bored by such as this?’ Flames flickered merrily up the side of the nearest carving, and the Styrian pyromaniac skipped happily over to
the next. ‘The violence, treachery and waste that I have seen. It’s quite squeezed the enthusiasm out of me. I am numbed. That’s why I need you, Temple. You must be my conscience.
I want to believe in something!’

He slapped a hand down on Temple’s shoulder and Temple twitched, heard a squeal and turned just in time to see an old woman kicked from the precipice.

‘Oh God.’

‘Exactly what I mean!’ Cosca slapped him on the shoulder again. ‘But if there is a God, why in all these years has He not raised a hand to stop me?’

‘Perhaps we are His hand,’ rumbled Jubair, who had stepped from a doorway wiping blood from his sword with a cloth. ‘His ways are mysterious.’

Cosca snorted. ‘A whore with a veil is mysterious. God’s ways appear to be . . . insane.’

Temple’s nose tickled with perfumed smoke as the wood burned. It had smelled that way in Dagoska when the Gurkish finally broke into the city. The flames spraying the slum buildings,
spraying the slum-dwellers, people on fire, flinging themselves from the ruined docks into the sea. The noise of fighting coming closer. Kahdia’s face, lit in flickering orange, the low
murmur of the others praying and Temple tugging at his sleeve and saying, ‘You must go, they will be coming,’ and the old priest shaking his head, and smiling as he squeezed at
Temple’s shoulder, and saying, ‘That is why I must stay.’

What could he have done then? What could he do now?

He caught movement at the corner of his eye, saw a small shape flit between two of the low stone buildings. ‘Was that a child?’ he muttered, already leaving the others behind.

‘Why does everyone pout so over children?’ Cosca called after him. ‘They’ll turn out just as old and disappointing as the rest of us!’

Temple was hardly listening. He had failed Sufeen, he had failed Kahdia, he had failed his wife and daughter, he had sworn always to take the easy way, but perhaps this time . . . he rounded the
corner of the building.

A boy stood there, shaven-headed. Pale-skinned. Red-brown eyebrows, like Shy’s. The right age, perhaps, could it—

Temple saw he had a spear in his hands. A short spear, but held with surprising purpose. In his worry for others, Temple had for once neglected to feel worried for himself. Perhaps that showed
some level of personal growth. The self-congratulations would have to wait, however.

‘I’m scared,’ he said, without needing to dissemble. ‘Are you scared?’

No response. Temple gently held out his hands, palms up. ‘Are you Pit?’

A twitch of shock across the boy’s face. Temple slowly knelt and tried to dig out that old earnestness, not easy with the noises of destruction filtering from all around them. ‘My
name is Temple. I am a friend of Shy’s.’ That brought out another twitch. ‘A good friend.’ A profound exaggeration at that moment, but a forgivable one. The point of the
spear wavered. ‘And of Lamb’s too.’ It started to drop. ‘They came to find you. And I came with them.’

‘They’re here?’ It was strange to hear the boy speak the common tongue with the accent of the Near Country.

‘They’re here,’ he said. ‘They came for you.’

‘Your nose is bleeding.’

‘I know.’ Temple wiped it on his wrist again. ‘No need to worry.’

Pit set down his spear, and walked to Temple and hugged him tight. Temple blinked for a moment, then hesitantly put his arms around the boy and held him.

‘You are safe now,’ he said. ‘You are safe.’

It was hardly the first lie he had ever told.

Shy padded down the hallway, desperate to run on and scared to the point of shitting herself at once, clinging to the slippery grip of her sword. The place was lit only by
flickering little lamps that struck a gleam from the metal designs on the floor – circles within circles, letters and lines – and from the blood smeared across them. Her eyes flicked
between the tricking shadows, jumped from body to body – Dragon People and mercenaries, too, hacked and punctured and still leaking.

‘Lamb?’ she whispered, but so quietly even she could hardly hear it.

Sounds echoed from the warm rock, spilled from the openings to either side – screams and crashes, whispering steam, weeping and laughter leaching through the walls. The laughter worst of
all.

‘Lamb?’

She edged to the archway at the end of the hall and pressed herself to the wall beside it, a hot draught sweeping past. She clawed the wet hair from her stinging eyes again, flicked sweat from
her fingertips and gathered her tattered courage. For Pit and Ro. No turning back now.

She slipped through and her jaw fell. A vast emptiness opened before her, a great rift, an abyss inside the mountain. A ledge ahead was scattered with benches, anvils, smith’s tools.
Beyond a black gulf yawned, crossed by a bridge no more than two strides wide, no handrail, arching through darkness to another ledge and another archway, maybe fifty strides distant. The heat was
crushing, the bridge lit underneath by fires that growled far out of sight below, streaks of crystal in the rocky walls sparkling, everything metal from the hammers and anvils and ingots to her own
sword catching a smelter’s glow. Shy swallowed as she edged out towards that empty plunge and the far wall dropped down, down, down. As if this were some upper reach of hell the living never
should’ve broached.

‘You’d think they’d give it a fucking rail,’ she muttered.

Waerdinur stood on the bridge behind a great square shield, a dragon worked into the face, bright point of a spear-blade showing beside it, blocking the way. One mercenary lay dead in front of
him, another was trying to ease back to safety, poking away wildly with a halberd. A third knelt not far from Shy, cranking a flatbow. Waerdinur lunged and smoothly skewered the halberdier with his
spear, then stepped forward and brushed him off the bridge. He fell without a sound. Not of his falling. Not of his reaching the bottom.

The Dragon Man set himself again, bottom edge of that big shield clanging against the bridge as he brought it down, and he shouted over his shoulder in words Shy didn’t understand. People
shuffled through the shadows behind him – old ones, and children, too, and a girl running last of all.

‘Ro!’ Shy’s scream was dead in the throbbing heat and the girl ran on, swallowed in the shadows at the far end of the bridge.

Waerdinur stayed, squatting low behind his shield and watching her over the rim, and she gritted her teeth and gave a hiss of frustrated fury. To come so close, and find no way around.

‘Have this, arsehole!’ The last mercenary levelled his flatbow and the bolt rattled from Waerdinur’s dragon shield and away into the dark, spinning end-over-end, a tiny orange
splinter in all that inky emptiness. ‘Well, he’s going nowhere.’ The archer fished a bolt from his quiver and set to cranking back the string again. ‘Couple more bows up
here and we’ll get him. Sooner or later. Don’t you fucking worry about—’

Shy saw a flicker at the corner of her eye and the mercenary lurched against the wall, Waerdinur’s spear right through him. He said, ‘Oh,’ and slid to sitting, setting his bow
carefully on the ground. Shy was just taking a step towards him when she felt a gentle touch on her shoulder.

Lamb was at her back, but no kind of reassurance. He’d lost his coat and stood in his leather vest all scar and twisted sinew and his sword broken off halfway, splintered blade slathered
in blood to his elbow.

‘Lamb?’ she whispered. He didn’t even look at her, just brushed her away with the back of his arm, black eyes picking up a fiery glimmer and fixed across that bridge, muscles
starting from his neck, head hanging on one side, pale skin all sweat-beaded, blood-dotted, his bared teeth shining in a skull-grin. Shy shrank out of his way like death itself had come tapping at
her shoulder. Maybe it had.

As if it was a meeting long arranged, Waerdinur drew a sword, straight and dull, a silver mark glinting near the hilt.

‘I used to have one o’ those.’ Lamb tossed his own broken blade skittering across the floor and over the edge into nothingness.

‘The work of the Maker himself,’ said Waerdinur. ‘You should have kept it.’

‘Friend o’ mine stole it.’ Lamb stepped towards one of the anvils, fingers whitening as he wrapped them around a great iron bar that lay against it, tall as Shy was. ‘And
everything else.’ Metal grated as he dragged it after him towards the bridge. ‘And it was better’n I deserved.’

Shy thought about telling him not to go but the words didn’t come. Like she couldn’t get the air to speak. Wasn’t another way through that she could see, and it wasn’t as
if she was about to turn back. So she sheathed her sword and shrugged her bow into her hand. Waerdinur saw it and took a few cautious steps away, light on the balls of his bare feet, calm as if he
trod a dance floor rather’n a strip of stone too narrow for the slimmest of wagons to roll down.

‘Told you I’d be back,’ said Lamb as he stepped out onto the bridge, the tip of the metal bar clattering after him.

‘And so you are,’ said Waerdinur.

Lamb nudged the corpse of the dead mercenary out of his way with a boot and it dropped soundless into the abyss. ‘Told you I’d bring death with me.’

‘And so you have. You must be pleased.’

‘I’ll be pleased when you’re out o’ my way.’ Lamb stopped a couple of paces short of Waerdinur, a trail of glistening footprints left behind him, the two old men
facing each other in the midst of that great void.

‘Do you truly think the right is with you?’ asked the Dragon Man.

‘Who cares about right?’ And Lamb sprang, lifting that big length of metal high and bringing it down on Waerdinur’s shield with a boom made Shy wince, leaving a great dent in
the dragon design and one corner bent right back. The Dragon Man was driven sprawling, legs kicking as he scrambled from the brink. Before the echoes had faded Lamb was roaring as he swung
again.

This time Waerdinur was ready, though, angled his shield so the bar glanced clear and swung back. Lamb jerked away snake-quick and the sword missed him by a feather, jerked forward snake-quick
and caught Waerdinur under the jaw, sent him tottering, spitting blood. He found his balance fast, though, lashed left and right, sent sparks and splinters flying from the metal bar as Lamb brought
it up to block.

Shy drew a bead but even close as she was the two old men were moving too fast – deadly, murderous fast so any step or twitch could be their last – no telling who she’d hit if
she let loose the arrow. Her hand jerked about as she eased onto the bridge, trying to find the shot, always a few moments behind, sweat tickling at her flickering eyelids as she looked from the
fight ahead to the void under her feet.

Waerdinur saw the next blow coming and slipped clear, nimble for all his size. The bar caught the bridge with a shrieking crash, struck sparks, left Lamb off balance long enough for the Dragon
Man to swing. Lamb jerked his head away and rather’n splitting his skull the bright point left a red line down his face, drops of blood flicking into nothingness. He staggered three steps,
heel slapping at the very brink on the last, space opening between the two men for just a breath as Waerdinur brought his sword back to thrust.

Shy might not have been much at waiting but when the moment came she’d always had a talent for just diving in. She didn’t even think about shooting. Her arrow flitted through the
darkness, glanced the edge of the shield and into Waerdinur’s sword-arm. He grunted, point of his blade dropping and scraping harmlessly against the bridge as Shy lowered her bow, hardly
believing she’d taken the shot, still less hit the target.

Lamb bellowed like a mad bull, swinging that length of metal as if it was no heavier than a willow switch, knocking Waerdinur this way and that, sending him reeling along the bridge, no chance
to hit back even if he’d been able with Shy’s arrow through his arm, no chance to do anything but fight to keep his footing. Lamb kept after, tireless, merciless, driving him off the
bridge and onto the ledge at the far end. One last blow tore the shield from Waerdinur’s arm and sent it tumbling away into the darkness. He stumbled against the wall, sword clattering from
his limp hand, bloody now from the leaking arrow-wound.