Red Country

by Joe Abercrombie

  ‘Not to mention those.’ Temple gave Majud an admonishing glance. ‘And, after all, your support for charity was clearly demonstrated when you refused to offer help to a drowning man.’

  ‘I assure you I am as charitable as anyone, but I have the feelings of my partner Curnsbick to consider and Curnsbick has an eye on every bit.’

  ‘So you often tell us.’

  ‘And you were not drowning at the time, only wet.’

  ‘One can still be charitable to the wet.’

  ‘You weren’t,’ added Shy.

  Majud shook his head. ‘You two would sell eyeglasses to a blind man.’

  ‘No less use than prayers to a villain,’ put in Temple, with a pious fluttering of his lashes.

  The merchant rubbed at his bald scalp. ‘Very well. But I buy nothing without a sample. A prayer now, and if the words convince me I will pay a fair price this morning and every morning. I will hope to write it off to sundry expenses.’

  ‘Sundry it is.’ Shy leaned close to Temple. ‘You wanted a break from riding drag, this could be a steady earner. Give it some belief, lawyer.’

  ‘All right,’ Temple muttered back. ‘But if I’m the new priest, I want the old one’s boots.’ He clambered up onto one of the wagons, makeshift congregation shuffling into an awkward crescent. To Shy’s surprise it was nearly half the Fellowship. Nothing moves people to prayer like death, she guessed, and last night’s demonstration of God’s wrath didn’t hurt attendance either. All the Suljuks were there. Lady Ingelstad tall and curious. Gentili with his ancient family. Buckhorm with his young one. Most of the whores and their pimp, too, though Shy had a suspicion he was keeping an eye on his goods rather than moved by love of the Almighty.

  There was a silence, punctuated only by the scraping of Hedges’ knife as he salvaged the dead cattle for meat, and the scraping of Savian’s shovel as he put the remains of the Fellowship’s previous spiritual advisor to rest. Without his boots. Temple held one hand in the other and humbly turned his face towards the heavens. Deep and clear now, with no trace of last night’s fury.

  ‘God—’

  ‘Close, but no!’ And at that moment old Dab Sweet came riding up, reins dangling between two fingers. ‘Morning, my brave companions!’

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ called Majud.

  ‘Scouting. It’s what you pay me for, ain’t it?’

  ‘That and help in storms.’

  ‘I can’t hold your hand across every mile o’ the Far Country. We been out north,’ jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

  ‘Out north,’ echoed Crying Rock, who had somehow managed to ride into the encampment from the opposite direction in total silence.

  ‘Following some Ghost signs, trying to guide you clear of any nasty surprises.’

  ‘Ghost signs?’ asked Temple, looking a little sick.

  Sweet held up a calming hand. ‘No need for anyone to shit their britches yet. This is the Far Country, there’s always Ghosts around. Question is which ones and how many. We was worried those tracks might belong to some o’ Sangeed’s people.’

  ‘And?’ asked Corlin.

  ‘’Fore we could get a sight of ’em, that storm blew in. Best thing we could do was find a rock to shelter by and let it blow along.’

  ‘Hah huh,’ grunted Crying Rock, presumably in agreement.

  ‘You should have been here,’ grumbled Lord Ingelstad.

  ‘Even I can’t be everywhere, your Lordship. But keep complaining, by all means. Scorn is the scout’s portion. Everyone’s got a better way of doing things ’til they’re called on to actually tell you what it might be. It was our surmise that among the whole Fellowship you’d enough stout hearts and level heads to see it through—not that I’d count your Lordship with either party—and what do you know?’ Sweet stuck out his bottom lip and nodded around at the dripping camp and its bedraggled occupants. ‘Few head of cattle lost but that was quite a storm last night. Could’ve been plenty worse.’

  ‘Shall I get down?’ asked Temple.

  ‘Not on my account. What you doing up there, anyhow?’

  ‘He was about to say the morning prayer,’ said Shy.

  ‘He was? What happened to the other God-tickler? What’s his name?’

  ‘Herd ran over him in the night,’ said Corlin, without emotion wasted on the fact.

  ‘I guess that’ll do it.’ Sweet reached into his saddlebag and eased out a half-full bottle. ‘Well, then, have at it, lawyer.’ And he treated himself to a long swig.

  Temple sighed, and looked at Shy. She shrugged, and mouthed, ‘Drag,’ at him. He sighed again and turned his eyes skywards.

  ‘God,’ he began for a second time. ‘For reasons best known to yourself, you have chosen to put a lot of bad people in the world. People who would rather steal a thing than make it. Who would rather break a thing than grow it. People who will set fire to a thing just to watch it burn. I know. I’ve run across a few of them. I’ve ridden with them.’ Temple looked down for a moment. ‘I suppose I’ve been one of them.’

  ‘Oh, he’s good,’ muttered Sweet, handing the bottle to Shy. She took a taste, making sure it wasn’t too deep.

  ‘Perhaps they seem like monsters, these people.’ Temple’s voice rose high and fell low, hands stroking and plucking and pointing in a fashion Shy had to concede was quite arresting. ‘But the truth is, it takes no sorcery to make a man do bad things. Bad company. Bad choices. Bad luck. A no more than average level of cowardice.’ Shy offered the bottle to Lamb but he was fixed so tight to the sermon he didn’t notice. Corlin took it instead.

  ‘But gathered here today, humbly seeking your blessing, you see a different kind of people.’ Quite a few of them, in fact, as the flock was steadily swelling. ‘Not perfect, surely. Each with their faults. Some uncharitable.’ And Temple gave Majud a stern look. ‘Some prone to drink.’ Corlin paused with the bottle halfway to her mouth. ‘Some just a little on the grasping side.’ His eye fell on Shy, and damn it if she didn’t even feel a little shamed for a moment, and that took some heavy doing.

  ‘But every one of these people came out here to make something!’ A ripple of agreement went through the Fellowship, heads bobbing as they nodded along. ‘Every one of them chose to take the hard way! The right way!’ He really was good. Shy could hardly believe it was the same man who moaned ten times a day about dust, pouring out his heart like he’d God’s words in him after all. ‘To brave the perils of the wilderness so they could build new lives with their hands and their sweat and their righteous effort!’ Temple spread his own hands wide to encompass the gathering. ‘These are the good people, God! Your children, ranged before you, hopeful and persevering! Shield them from the storm! Guide them through the trials of this day, and every day!’

  ‘Hurrah!’ cried the idiot, leaping up and punching the air, faith switched smoothly to a new Prophet, whooping and capering and shouting, ‘Good people! Good people!’ until Corlin caught hold of him and managed to shut him up.

  ‘Good words,’ said Lamb as Temple hopped down from the wagon. ‘By the dead, those were some good words.’

  ‘Mostly another man’s, if I’m honest.’

  ‘Well, you surely say ’em like you believe ’em,’ said Shy.

  ‘A few days riding drag and you’ll believe in anything,’ he muttered. The congregation was drifting apart, heading to their morning tasks, a couple of them thanking Temple as they moved off to get under way. Majud was left, lips appraisingly pressed together.

  ‘Convinced?’ asked Shy.

  The merchant reached into his purse—which wasn’t far from a miracle in itself—and pulled out what looked like a two mark piece. ‘You should have stuck to prayers,’ he said to Temple. ‘They’re in greater demand than laws out here.’ And he flicked the coin spinning into the air, flashing with the morning sun.

  Temple grinned, reaching out to catch it.

  Shy snatched it from the air first.

  ‘One hundred and twelve,’ s
he said.

  The Practical Thinkers

  ‘You owe me—’

  ‘One hundred and two marks,’ said Temple, turning over.

  He was already awake. He had started waking before dawn, lately, ready the moment his eyes came open.

  ‘That’s right. Get up. You’re wanted.’

  ‘I’ve always had that effect on women. It’s a curse.’

  ‘For them, no doubt.’

  Temple sighed as he started to roll up his blanket. He was a little sore, but it would wear off. He was getting hard from the work. Tough in places that had been soft a long time. He had been obliged to tighten his belt by a couple of notches. Well, not notches exactly, but he had twice shifted the bent nail that served for a buckle in the old saddle-girth that served for a belt.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘I’m riding drag.’

  ‘No. Once you’ve led the Fellowship in prayer, Lamb’s lending you his horse. You’re coming hunting with me and Sweet today.’

  ‘Do you have to taunt me like this every morning?’ he asked as he pulled his boots on. ‘What happened to make you this way?’

  She stood looking at him, hands on hips. ‘Sweet found a stretch of timber over yonder and reckons there might be game. If you’d rather ride drag, you can ride drag. Thought you might appreciate the break is all, but have it your way.’ And she turned and started to walk off.

  ‘Wait, you’re serious?’ Trying to hurry after her and pull on his other boot at the same time.

  ‘Would I toy with your feelings?’

  ‘I’m going hunting?’ Sufeen had asked him to go hunting a hundred times and he had always said he could not imagine anything more boring. After a few weeks with the dust, had he been the quarry he would have dashed off laughing across the plains.

  ‘Calm down,’ said Shy. ‘No one’s fool enough to give you a bow. Me and Sweet’ll do the shooting while Crying Rock scares up the game. You and Leef can follow on and skin, butcher and cart. Wouldn’t be a bad idea to grab some wood for a shitless fire or two either.’

  ‘Skinning, butchering and shitless fires! Yes, my Queen!’ He remembered those few months butchering cattle in the sweltering meat district of Dagoska, the stink and the flies, the back-breaking effort and horrible clamour. He had thought it like hell. Now he dropped to his knees, and grabbed her hand, and kissed it in thanks for the chance.

  She jerked it free. ‘Stop embarrassing yourself.’ It was still too dark to see her face, but he thought he could hear a smile in her voice. She slid her sheathed knife from her belt. ‘You’ll need this.’

  ‘A knife of my own! And quite a large one!’ He stayed on his knees and thrust his fists into the sky. ‘I’m going hunting!’

  One of Gentili’s venerable cousins, on his way shambling past to empty his bladder, shook his head and grumbled, ‘Who gives a fuck?’

  As the first signs of dawn streaked the sky and the wheels of the Fellowship began to turn, the five of them rode off across the scrubby grass, Leef on an empty wagon for carrying the carcasses, Temple trying to persuade Lamb’s horse that they were on the same side. They crested the edge of what passed for a valley out here but would barely have qualified as a ditch anywhere else, some ill-looking trees huddling in its base, browned and broken. Sweet sat slumped in his saddle, scanning those unpromising woods. God only knew what for.

  ‘Look about right?’ he grunted to Crying Rock.

  ‘About.’ The Ghost gave her old grey a tap with her heels and they were off down the long slope.

  The lean deer that came bouncing from the trees and straight into Sweet’s bolts and Shy’s arrows were a different prospect from the big, soft oxen that had swung from the hooks in Dagoska’s stinking warehouses, but the principles came back quickly enough. Soon Temple was making a few swift slits with the blade then peeling the skins off whole while Leef held the front hooves. He even took a sprinkling of pride in the way he got the guts sliding out in one mass, steaming in the chill morning. He showed Leef the trick of it and soon they were bloody to their elbows, and laughing, and flicking bits of gut at each other like a pair of boys.

  Soon enough they had five tough little carcasses stretched out and glistening in the back of the wagon and the last skinned and headed, the offal in a flyblown heap and the hides in a red and brown tangle like clothes discarded by a set of eager swimmers.

  Temple wiped Shy’s knife on one of them and nodded off up the rise. ‘I’d best see what’s keeping those two.’

  ‘I’ll get this last one gutted.’ Leef grinned up at him as he dragged himself onto Lamb’s horse. ‘Thanks for the pointers.’

  ‘Teaching is the noblest of callings, Haddish Kahdia used to tell me.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  Temple thought about that. ‘A good, dead man, who gave his life for mine.’

  ‘Sounds like a shitty trade,’ said Leef.

  Temple snorted. ‘Even I think so. I’ll be back before you know it.’ He pushed up the valley, following the treeline, enjoying the turn of speed he got from Lamb’s horse and congratulating himself that he was finally making some progress with that boy. A hundred strides further on and he saw Sweet and Shy watching the trees from horseback.

  ‘Can’t you sluggards kill any faster?’ he called at them.

  ‘You finish that lot already?’ asked Shy.

  ‘Skinned, gutted and eager for the pot.’

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ grunted Sweet, ivory-stocked flatbow propped on his thigh. ‘Reckon someone who knows the difference better check up on the lawyer’s handiwork. Make sure he hasn’t skinned Leef by mistake.’

  Shy brought her horse around and they rode back towards the wagon. ‘Not bad,’ she said, giving him an approving nod. It might well have been the first he had received from her, and he found he quite liked having one. ‘Reckon we might make a plainsman o’ you yet.’

  ‘That or I’ll make snivelling townsfolk of the lot of you.’

  ‘Take stronger stuff than you’re made of to get that done.’

  ‘I’m made of pretty weak stuff, all in all.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She was looking sideways at him, one appraising brow up. ‘I’m starting to think there might be some metal under all that paper.’

  He tapped his chest with a fist. ‘Tin, maybe.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t forge a sword from it, but tin’ll make a decent bucket.’

  ‘Or a bath.’

  She closed her eyes. ‘By the dead, a bath.’

  ‘Or a roof.’

  ‘By the dead, a roof,’ as they crested the rise and looked down towards the trees, ‘can you remember what a roof—’

  The wagon came into view below, and the heap of skins, and next to them Leef lying on the ground. Temple knew it was him because of his boots. He couldn’t see the rest, because two figures knelt over him. His first thought was that the lad must have had a fall and the other two were helping him up.

  Then one turned towards them, and he was dressed in a dozen different skins all patchwork-stitched and carried a red knife. He gave a hellish shriek, tongue sticking stiff from his yawning mouth, high and heedless as a wolf at the moon, and started to bound up the slope towards them.

  Temple could only sit and gawp as the Ghost rushed closer, until he could see the eyes bulging in his red-painted face. Then Shy’s bowstring hummed just by his ear, and the arrow flickered across the few strides between them and into the Ghost’s bare chest, stopped him cold like a slap in the face.

  Temple’s eyes darted to the other Ghost, standing now in a cloak of grass and bones, slipping his own bow off his back and reaching for an arrow from a skin quiver tied to his bare leg. Shy rode down the hill, giving a scream hardly more human than the Ghost’s had been, tugging out that short-sword she wore.

  The Ghost got his arrow free, then spun around and sat down. Temple looked over to see Sweet lowering his flatbow. ‘There’ll be more!’ he shouted, hooking the stirrup on the end of his bow over one boot a
nd hauling the string back with one hand, turning his horse with a twitch of the other and scanning the treeline.

  The Ghost tried to lift his arrow and fumbled it, tried to reach for another, couldn’t straighten his arm because of the bolt in it. He screamed something at Shy as she rode up, and she hit him across the face with her sword and sent him tumbling.

  Temple spurred down the slope after her and slid from his saddle near Leef. One of the boy’s legs kicked as if he was trying to get up. Shy leaned over him and he touched her hand and opened his mouth but only blood came. Blood from his mouth and from his nose and from the jagged leavings where his ear used to be and the knife-cuts in his arms and the arrow wound in his chest. Temple stared down, hands twitching in dumb helplessness.

  ‘Get him on your horse!’ snarled Shy, and Temple came alive of a sudden and seized Leef under his arms. Crying Rock had come from somewhere and was beating the Ghost Shy had shot with a club. Temple could hear the crunching of it as he started dragging Leef towards his horse, stumbled and fell, struggled up and on again.

  ‘Leave him!’ shouted Sweet. ‘He’s all done, a fool can see it!’

  Temple ignored him, teeth gritted, trying to haul Leef up onto the horse by belt and bloody shirt. For a skinny lad he was quite the weight. ‘Not leaving him,’ hissed Temple. ‘Not leaving him… not leaving him…’

  The world was just him and Leef and the horse, just his aching muscles and the boy’s dead weight and his mindless, bubbling groan. He heard the hooves of Sweet’s horse thumping away. Heard shouting in no language he knew, voices hardly human. Leef lolled, and slipped, and the horse shifted, then Shy was there next to him, growling in her throat, effort and fear and anger, and together they hauled Leef up over the saddle horn, broken arrow-shaft sticking black into the air.

  Temple’s hands were covered in blood. He stood looking at them for a moment.

  ‘Go!’ shrieked Shy. ‘Go you fucking idiot!’

  He scrambled into the saddle, fumbling for the reins with sticky fingers, hammering with his heels, almost falling off as his horse—Lamb’s horse—leaped into life, and he was riding, riding, wind whipping in his face, whipping the garbled shouting from his mouth, whipping the tears from his eyes. The flat horizon bounced and shuddered and Leef jolted over the saddle horn, Sweet and Crying Rock two wriggling specks against the sky. Shy up ahead, bent low over the saddle, tail of her horse streaming, and she snatched a look behind, and he saw the fear in her face, didn’t want to look, had to look.