The Keep eyed his guests with scant delight. ‘I could do with some sort o’ business turns a profit. Hear tell there’s crowds coming through the Near Country but they
ain’t crowding through here. You looking for a drink?’
Lamb pulled his gloves off and tossed them careless on the counter. ‘I’ll take a beer.’
The tender reached for a metal cup polished bright by his wiping.
‘Not that one.’ Lamb pointed at a great pottery mug, old-fashioned and dusty on a high shelf. ‘I like something I can feel the heft on.’
‘We talking about cups or women now?’ asked the Keep as he stretched up to fetch it.
‘Why not both?’ Lamb was grinning. How could he smile, now? Shy’s eyes flickered to the three men down the other end of the counter, bent quiet over their drinks.
‘Where you in from?’ asked the Keep.
‘East.’ Lamb shrugged his sodden coat off. ‘North and east, near Squaredeal.’
One of the three men, the one with the red hair, looked over at Lamb, and sniffed, and looked away.
‘That’s a distance. Might be a hundred mile.’
‘Might be more, the route I’ve took, and on a bloody ox-cart, too. My old arse is ground to sausage-meat.’
‘Well, if you’re thinking of heading further west I’d think again. Lots of folks going that way, gold-hungry. I hear they’ve got the Ghosts all stirred up.’
‘That a fact?’
‘A certainty, friend,’ threw out the man in the fur coat, sticking his head up like a tortoise from its shell. He’d about the deepest, most gravel-throated voice Shy ever
heard, and she’d given ear to some worn-down tones in her time. ‘They’s stirred up all across the Far Country like you trod on an ant’s nest. Riled up and banded up and out
looking for ears, just like the old days. I heard Sangeed’s even got his sword drawed again.’
‘Sangeed?’ The Keep wriggled his head around like his collar was too tight.
‘The Emperor of the Plains his self.’ Shy got the sense the old bastard was quite enjoying his scaremongering. ‘His Ghosts massacred a whole fellowship o’ prospectors out
on the dusty not two weeks ago. Thirty men, maybe. Took their ears and their noses and I shouldn’t wonder got their cocks besides.’
‘What the hell do they
do
with them?’ asked the farmer, staring at the old Ghost woman and giving a shudder. She didn’t comment. Didn’t even move.
‘If you’re fixed on going west I’d take plenty of company, and make sure that company has a little good humour and a lot o’ good steel, so I would.’ And the
old-timer sank back into his fur coat.
‘Good advice.’ Lamb lifted that big mug and took a slow swallow. Shy swallowed with him, suddenly desperate for a beer of her own. Hell, but she wanted to get out of there. Get out
or get on with it. But somehow Lamb was just as patient now as when he did the ploughing. ‘I ain’t sure yet exactly where I’m headed, though.’
‘What brought you this far?’ asked the Keep.
Lamb had started rolling up his damp shirtsleeves, thick muscles in his grey-haired forearms squirming. ‘Followed some men out here.’
Red Hair looked over again, a flurry of twitches slinking through his shoulder and up his face, and this time he kept looking. Shy let the knife slide from her sleeve, out of sight behind her
arm, fingers hot and tacky round the grip.
‘Why’d you do that?’ asked the Keep.
‘They burned my farm. Stole my children. Hanged my friend.’ Lamb spoke like it wasn’t much to comment on, then raised his mug.
The place had fallen so silent of a sudden you could hear him swallow. One of the traders had turned to look over, brow all crinkled up with worry. Tall Hat reached for his cup and Shy saw the
tendons start from the back of his hand, he was gripping on so tight. Leef picked out that moment to ease through the door and hover on the threshold, wet and pale and not knowing what to do with
himself. But everyone was too fixed on Lamb to pay him any mind.
‘Bad men, these, with no scruple,’ he went on. ‘They been stealing children all across the Near Country and leaving folk hanging in their wake. Might be a dozen I’ve
buried the last few days.’
‘How many of the bastards?’
‘About twenty.’
‘Do we need to get a band up and seek ’em out?’ Though the Keep looked like he’d far rather stay and wipe his cups some more, and who could blame him?
Lamb shook his head. ‘No point. They’ll be long gone.’
‘Right. Well. Reckon justice’ll be catching up with ’em, sooner or later. Justice is always following, they say.’
‘Justice can have what’s left when I’m done.’ Lamb finally had his sleeves rolled how he wanted and turned sideways, leaning easy against the counter, looking straight at
those three men at its far end. Shy hadn’t known what to expect, but not this, not Lamb just grinning and chatting like he’d never known a worry. ‘When I said they’ve gone
that ain’t quite all the truth. Three broke off from the rest.’
‘That a fact?’ Tall Hat spoke up, snatching the conversation from the Keep like a thief snatching a purse.
Lamb caught his eye and held it. ‘A certainty.’
‘Three men, you say?’ Handsome’s fussing hand crept round his belt towards his axe. The mood of the place had shifted fast, the weight of coming violence hanging heavy as a
storm cloud in that little room.
‘Now look,’ said the Keep, ‘I don’t want no trouble in my—’
‘I didn’t want no trouble,’ said Lamb. ‘It blew in anyway. Trouble’s got a habit that way.’ He pushed his wet hair out of his face, and his eyes were wide
open and bright, bright, mouth open too, breathing fast, and he was smiling. Not like a man working his way up to a hard task. Like a man enjoying getting to a pleasant one, taking his time about
it like you might over a fine meal, and of a sudden Shy saw all those scars anew, and felt this coldness creeping up her arms and down her back and every hair on her standing.
‘I tracked those three,’ said Lamb. ‘Picked up their trail and two days I’ve followed it.’
Another breathless pause, and the Keep took a step back, cup and cloth still limp in his hands, the ghost of a smile still clinging to his face but the rest all doubt. The three had turned to
face Lamb, spreading out a little, backs to Shy, and she found herself easing forwards like she was wading through honey, out of the shadows towards them, tingling fingers shifting around the
knife’s handle. Every moment was a drawn-out age, breath scratching, catching in every throat.
‘Where’d the trail lead?’ asked Tall Hat, voice cracking at the end and tailing off.
Lamb’s smile spread wider. The smile of a man got exactly what he wanted on his birthday. ‘The ends o’ your fucking legs.’
Tall Hat twitched his coat back, cloth flapping as he went for his sword.
Lamb flung the big mug at him underhand. It bounced off his head and sent him tumbling in a shower of beer.
A chair screeched as the farmer tried to stumble up and ended tripping over it.
The red-haired lad took a step back, making room or just from shock and Shy slipped her knife around his neck and pressed the flat into it, folding him tight with the other arm.
Someone shouted.
Lamb crossed the room in one spring. He caught Handsome’s wrist just as he pulled his axe free, wrenched it up and with the other hand snatched the knife from his fancy belt and rammed it
in his groin, dragging up the blade, ripping him wide open, blood spraying the pair of them. He gave a gurgling scream appalling loud in that narrow space and dropped to his knees, eyes goggling as
he tried to hold his guts in. Lamb smashed him across the back of the head with the pommel of the knife, cut his scream off and laid him out flat.
One of the trader women jumped up, hands over her mouth.
The red-haired one Shy had a hold of squirmed and she squeezed him tighter and whispered, ‘Shush,’ grinding the point of her knife into his neck.
Tall Hat floundered up, hat forgotten, blood streaming from the gash the mug had made across his forehead. Lamb caught him around the neck, lifting him easily as if he was made of rags, and
smashed his face into the counter, again with a crunch like a breaking pot, again head flopping like a doll’s, and blood spotted the Keep’s apron, and the wall behind him, and the
ceiling, too. Lamb lifted the knife high, flash of his face still stretched wide in that crazy grin, then the blade was a metal blur, through the man’s back and with an almighty crack left a
split down the length of the bar, splinters flying. Lamb left him nailed there, knees just clear of the floor and his boots scraping at the boards, blood tip-tapping around them like a spilled
drink.
All took no longer than Shy would’ve needed to take three good breaths, if she hadn’t been holding hers the while. She was hot now, and dizzy, and the world was too bright. She was
blinking. Couldn’t quite get a hold on what had happened. She hadn’t moved. She didn’t move. No one did. Only Lamb, walking forward, eyes gleaming with tears and one side of his
face black-dashed and speckled and his bared teeth glistening in his mad smile and each breath a soft growl in his throat like a lover’s.
Red Hair whimpered, ‘Fuck, fuck,’ and Shy pushed the flat of the knife harder into his neck and shushed him up again. He’d a big blade halfway to a sword tucked in his belt and
with her free hand she slid that out. Then Lamb was looming over the shrinking pair of them, his head near brushing the low rafters, and he twisted a fistful of the lad’s shirt and jerked him
out of Shy’s limp grip.
‘Talk to me.’ And he hit the lad across the face, open-handed but hard enough to knock him down if he hadn’t been held up.
‘I . . .’ muttered the lad.
Lamb slapped him again, the sound loud as a clap, the traders up the far end flinching at it but not a one moving. ‘Talk.’
‘What d’you—’
‘Who was in charge?’
‘Cantliss. That’s his name.’ The lad started blathering, words tumbling over each other all slobbery like he couldn’t say them fast enough. ‘Grega Cantliss.
Didn’t know how bad a crew they was, just wanted to get from here to there and make a bit of money. I was in the ferrying business back east and one day the rain come up and the ferry got
swep’ away and—’ Slap. ‘We didn’t want it, you got to believe—’ Slap. ‘There’s some evil ones in with ’em. A Northman called Blackpoint,
he shot an old man with arrows. They laughed at it.’
‘See me laughing?’ said Lamb, cuffing him again.
The red-haired lad held up one useless, shaking hand. ‘I didn’t laugh none! We didn’t want no part of all them killings so we split off! Supposed to be just some robbing,
Cantliss told us, but turned out it was children we was stealing, and—’
Lamb cut him off with a slap. ‘Why’d he take the children?’ And he set him talking with another, the lad’s freckled face cut and swelling down one side, blood smearing
his nose.
‘Said he had a buyer for ’em, and we’d all be rich men if we got ’em there. Said they weren’t to be hurt, not a hair on their heads. Wanted ’em perfect for
the journey.’
Lamb slapped him again, opening another cut. ‘Journey where?’
‘To Crease, he said, to begin with.’
‘That’s up at the head of the Sokwaya,’ said Shy. ‘Right the way across the Far Country.’
‘Cantliss got a boat waiting. Take him upriver . . . upriver . . .’
‘To Crease and then where?’
The red-haired lad had slumped in half a faint, lids fluttering. Lamb slapped him again, both sides, shook him by his shirt. ‘To Crease and then where?’
‘Didn’t say. Not to me. Maybe to Taverner.’ Looking towards the man nailed to the counter with the knife handle sticking out his back. Shy didn’t reckon he’d be
telling any tales now.
‘Who’s buying children?’ asked Lamb.
Red Hair drunkenly shook his swollen head. Lamb slapped him again, again, again. One of the trader women hid her face. The other stared, standing rigid. The man beside her dragged her back down
into her chair.
‘Who’s buying?’
‘Don’t know,’ words mangled and bloody drool dangling from his split lip.
‘Stay there.’ Lamb let the lad go and crossed to Tall Hat, his boots in a bloody puddle, reached around and unbuckled his sword, took a knife from his coat. Then he rolled Handsome
over with his foot, left him staring wonky-eyed at the ceiling, a deal less handsome with his insides on the outside. Lamb took the bloody rope from his belt, walked to the red-haired lad and
started tying one end around his neck while Shy just watched, numb and weak all over. Weren’t clever knots he tied, but good enough, and he jerked the lad towards the door, following along
without complaint like a beaten dog.
Then they stopped. The Keep had come around the counter and was standing in the doorway. Just goes to show you never can quite figure what a man will do, or when. He was holding tight to his
wiping cloth like it might be a shield against evil. Shy didn’t reckon it’d be a very effective one, but she’d some high respect for his guts. Just hoped Lamb didn’t end up
adding them to Handsome’s, scattered bloody on the boards.
‘This ain’t right,’ said the Keep.
‘How’s you being dead going to make it any righter?’ Lamb’s voice flat and quiet like it was no kind of threat, just a question. He didn’t have to scream it. Those
two dead men were doing it for him.
The Keep’s eyes darted around but no heroes leaped to his side. All looked scared as if Lamb was death himself come calling. Except the old Ghost woman, sat tall in her chair just
watching, and her companion in the fur coat, who still had his boots crossed and, without any quick movements, was pouring himself another drink.
‘Ain’t right.’ But the Keep’s voice was weak as watered beer.
‘It’s right as it’s getting,’ said Lamb.
‘We should put a panel together and judge him proper, ask some—’
Lamb loomed forward. ‘All you got to ask is do you want to be in my way.’ The Keep shrank back and Lamb dragged the lad past. Shy hurried after, suddenly unfroze, passing Leef
loose-jawed in the doorway.
Outside the rain had slacked to a steady drizzle. Lamb was hauling Red Hair across the mired street towards the arch of crooked timbers the sign hung from. High enough for a mounted man to pass
under. Or for one on foot to dangle from.