‘Lamb!’ Shy hopped down from the tavern’s porch, boots sinking to the ankles. ‘Lamb!’ He weighed the rope then tossed it over the crossbar. ‘Lamb!’ She
struggled across the street, mud sucking at her feet. He caught the loose end of the rope and jerked the slack out, the red-haired lad stumbling as the noose went tight under his chin, bloated face
showing dumb like he hadn’t worked out yet where he was headed.
‘Ain’t we seen enough folk hanged?’ called Shy as she slopped up. Lamb didn’t answer, didn’t look at her, just wound the free end of the rope about one forearm.
‘It ain’t right,’ she said. Lamb took a sniff and set himself to haul the lad into the air. Shy snatched hold of the rope by the lad’s neck and started sawing at it with
the short-sword. It was sharp. Didn’t take a moment to cut it through.
‘Get running.’
The lad blinked at her.
‘Run, you fucking idiot!’ She kicked the seat of his trousers and he sloshed a few steps and went over on his face, struggled up and floundered away into the darkness, still with his
rope collar.
Shy turned back to Lamb. He was staring at her, stolen sword in one hand, loose length of rope in the other. But like he was hardly seeing her. Like he was hardly him, even. How could this be
the man who’d bent over Ro when she had the fever, and sung to her? Sung badly, but sung still, face all wrinkled with care? Now she looked in those black eyes and suddenly this dread crept
on her like she was looking into the void. Standing on the edge of nothing and it took every grain of courage she had not to run.
‘Bring them three horses over!’ she snapped at Leef, who’d wandered out onto the porch with Lamb’s coat and hat in his hands. ‘Bring ’em now!’ And he
hopped off to do it. Lamb just stood, staring after the red-haired lad, the rain starting to wash the blood off his face. He took hold of the saddle bow when Leef led the biggest horse over,
started to swing himself up and the horse shied, and kicked out, and Lamb gave a grunt as he lost his grip and went over backwards, stirrup flapping as he caught it with a clutching hand, splashing
down hard in the mud on his side. Shy knelt by him as he struggled to his hands and knees.
‘You hurt?’
He looked up at her and there were tears in his eyes, and he whispered, ‘By the dead, Shy. By the dead.’ She did her best to drag him up, a bastard of a task since he was a
corpse-weight of a sudden. When they finally got him standing he pulled her close by her coat. ‘Promise me,’ he whispered. ‘Promise me you won’t get in my way
again.’
‘No.’ She laid a hand on his scarred cheek. ‘I’ll hold your bridle for you, though.’ And she did, and the horse’s face, too, and whispered calm words to it
and wished there was someone to do the same to her while Lamb dragged himself up into the saddle, slow and weary, teeth gritted like it was an effort. When he got up he sat hunched, right hand on
the reins, left hand holding his coat closed at his neck. He looked an old man again. Older than ever. An old man with a terrible weight and worry across his hunched shoulders.
‘He all right?’ Leef ’s voice not much above a whisper, like he was scared of being overheard.
‘I don’t know,’ said Shy. Lamb didn’t seem like he could hear even, wincing off to the black horizon, almost one with the black sky now.
‘You all right?’ Leef whispered to her.
‘Don’t know that either.’ She felt the world was all broken up and washed away and she was drifting on strange seas, cut loose from land. ‘You?’
Leef just shook his head, and looked down at the mud with eyes all round.
‘Best get what we need from the wagon and mount up, eh?’
‘What about Scale and Calder?’
‘They’re blown and we’ve got to move. Leave ’em.’
The wind dashed rain in her face and she pulled her hat-brim down and set her jaw hard. Her brother and her sister, that’s what she’d fix on. They were the stars she’d set her
course by, two points of light in the black. They were all that mattered.
So she heeled her new horse and led the three of them out into the gathering night. They hadn’t gone far when Shy heard noises beyond the wind and slowed to a walk. Lamb brought his horse
about and drew the sword. An old cavalry sword, long and heavy, sharpened on one side.
‘Someone’s following!’ said Leef, fumbling with his bow.
‘Put that away! You’ll more likely shoot yourself in this light. Or worse yet, me.’ Shy heard hooves on the track behind them, and a wagon, too, a glimmer of torchlight through
tree-trunks. Folk come out from Averstock to chase them? The Keep firmer set on justice than he’d seemed? She slid the short-sword out by its horn handle, metal glinting with the last red
touch of twilight. Shy had no notion what to expect any more. If Juvens himself had trotted from the dark and bid them a good evening she’d have shrugged and asked which way he was
headed.
‘Hold up!’ came a voice as deep and rough as Shy ever heard. Not Juvens himself. The man in the fur coat. He came into sight now, riding with a torch in his hand. ‘I’m a
friend!’ he said, slowing to a walk.
‘You’re no friend o’ mine,’ she said back.
‘Let’s put that right as a first step, then.’ He delved into a saddlebag and tossed a half-full bottle across to Shy. A wagon trundled up with a pair of horses pulling. The old
Ghost woman had the reins, creased face as empty as it had been at the inn, a singed old chagga pipe gripped between her teeth, not smoking it, just chewing it.
They all sat a moment, in the dark, then Lamb said, ‘What do you want?’
The stranger reached up slow and tipped his hat back. ‘No need to spill more blood tonight, big man, we’re no enemies o’ yours. And if I was I reckon I’d be reconsidering
that position about now. Just want to talk, is all. Make a proposal that might benefit the crowd of us.’
‘Speak your piece, then,’ said Shy, pulling the cork from the bottle with her teeth but keeping the sword handy.
‘Then I will. My name’s Dab Sweet.’
‘What?’ said Leef ‘Like that scout they tell all the stories of?’
‘Exactly like. I’m him.’
Shy paused in her drinking. ‘You’re Dab Sweet? Who was first to lay eyes on the Black Mountains?’ She passed the bottle across to Lamb, who passed it straight to Leef, who took
a swig, and coughed.
Sweet gave a dry chuckle. ‘The mountains saw me first, I reckon, but the Ghosts been there a few hundred years before, and the Imperials before that, maybe, and who knows who back when
before the Old Time? Who’s to say who’s first to anything out in this country?’
‘But you killed that great red bear up at the head of the Sokwaya with no more than your hands?’ asked Leef, passing the bottle back to Shy.
‘I been to the head of the Sokwaya times enough, that’s true, but I take some offence at that particular tale.’ Sweet grinned, friendly lines spreading out across his weathered
face. ‘Fighting even a little bear with your hands don’t sound too clever to me. My preferred approach to bears – alongside most dangers – is to be where they ain’t.
But there’s all kind of strange water flowed by down the years, and my memory ain’t all it was, I’ll confess that, too.’
‘Maybe you misremembered your name,’ said Shy, and took another swig. She had a hell of a thirst on her.
‘Woman, I’d accept that for a strong possibility if I didn’t have it stamped into my old saddle here.’ And he gave the battered leather a friendly pat. ‘Dab
Sweet.’
‘Felt sure from what I’ve heard you’d be bigger.’
‘From what I’ve heard I should be half a mile high. Folk like to talk. And when they do, ain’t really up to me what size I grow to, is it?’
‘What’s this old Ghost to you?’ asked Shy.
So slow and solemn it might’ve been the eulogy at a funeral, the Ghost said, ‘He’s my wife.’
Sweet gave his grinding laugh again. ‘Sometimes it do feel that way, I’ll concede. That there Ghost is Crying Rock. We been up and down every speck o’ the Far Country and the
Near Country and plenty o’ country don’t got no names. Right now we’re signed on as scouts, hunters and pilots to take a Fellowship of prospectors across the plains to
Crease.’
Shy narrowed her eyes. ‘That so?’
‘From what I heard back there, you’ll be headed the same way. You’ll be finding no keelboat of your own, not one stopping off to pick you up leastways, and that means out on
the lone and level by hoof or wheel or boot. With the Ghosts on the rampage you’ll be needing company.’
‘Meaning yours.’
‘I may not be throttling any bears on the way, but I know the Far Country. Few better. Anyone’s going to get you to Crease with your ears still on your head, it’s
me.’
Crying Rock cleared her throat, shifting her dead pipe from one side of her mouth to the other with her tongue.
‘It’s me and Crying Rock.’
‘And what’d possess you to do us such a favour?’ asked Shy. Specially after what they’d just seen.
Sweet scratched at his stubbly beard. ‘This expedition got put together before the trouble started on the plains and we’ve got all sorts along. A few with iron in ’em, but not
enough experience and too much cargo.’ He was looking over at Lamb with an estimating expression. The way Clay might’ve sized up a haul of grain. ‘Now there’s trouble in the
Far Country we could use another man don’t get sickly at the sight o’ blood.’ His eyes moved over to Shy. ‘And I’ve a sense you can hold a blade steady too when
it’s called for.’
She weighed the sword. ‘I can just about keep myself from dropping one. What’s your offer?’
‘Normally folk bring a skill to the company or pay their way. Then everyone shares supplies, helps each other out where they can. The big man—’
‘Lamb.’
Sweet raised a brow. ‘Really?’
‘One name’s good as another,’ said Lamb.
‘I won’t deny it, and you go free. I’ve stood witness to your usefulness. You can pay a half-share, woman, and a full share for the lad, that comes to . . .’ Sweet
crunched his face up, working the sums.
Shy might’ve seen two men killed and saved another that night, her stomach still sick and her head still spinning from it, but she wasn’t going to let a deal go wandering past.
‘We’ll all be going free.’
‘What?’
‘Leef here’s the best damn shot with a bow you ever saw. He’s an asset.’
Sweet looked less than convinced. ‘He is?’
‘I am?’ muttered Leef.
‘We’ll all be going free.’ Shy took another swig and tossed the bottle back. ‘It’s that way or no way.’
Sweet narrowed his eyes as he took his own long, slow drink, then he looked over at Lamb again, sat still in the darkness, just the glimmer of the torch in the corners of his eyes, and sighed.
‘You like to drive a bargain, don’t you?’
‘My preferred approach to bad deals is to be where they ain’t.’
Sweet gave another chuckle, and he nosed his horse forward, and he stuck the bottle in the crook of his arm, pulled off his glove with his teeth and slapped his hand into hers. ‘Deal.
Reckon I’m going to like you, girl. What’s your name?’
‘Shy South.’
Sweet raised that brow again. ‘Shy?’
‘It’s a name, old man, not a description. Now hand me back that bottle.’
And so they headed off into the night, Dab Sweet telling tales in his grinding bass, talking a lot and saying nothing and laughing a fair bit too just as though they hadn’t left two men
murdered not an hour before, passing the bottle about ’til it was done and Shy tossed it away into the night with a warmth in her belly. When Averstock was just a few lights behind she reined
her horse back to a walk and dropped in beside the closest thing she’d ever had to a father.
‘Your name hasn’t always been Lamb, has it?’
He looked at her, and then away. Hunching down further. Pulling his coat tighter. Thumb slipping out between his fingers over and over, rubbing at the stump of the middle one. The missing one.
‘We all got a past,’ he said.
Too true, that.
The Stolen
T
he children were left in a silent huddle each time Cantliss went to round up more. Rounding ’em up, that’s what he called it, like
they was just unclaimed cattle and no killing was needed. No doing what they’d done at the farm. No laughing about it after when they brought more staring little ones. Blackpoint was always
laughing, a lopsided laugh with two of the front teeth missing. Like he’d never heard a joke so funny as murder.
At first Ro tried to guess at where they were. Maybe even leave some sign for those who must be coming after. But the woods and the fields gave way to just a scrubby emptiness in which a bush
was quite the landmark. They were headed west, she gathered that much, but no more. She had Pit to think about and the other children too and she tried to keep them fed and cleaned and quiet the
best she could.
The children were all kinds, none older than ten. There’d been twenty-one ’til that boy Care had tried to run and Blackpoint came back from chasing him all bloody. So they were down
to twenty and no one tried to run after that.
There was a woman with them called Bee who was all right even if she did have scars on her arms from surviving the pox. She held the children sometimes. Not Ro, ’cause she didn’t
need holding, and not Pit, ’cause he had Ro to hold, but some of the younger ones, and she whispered at them to hush when they cried ’cause she was scared as piss of Cantliss.
He’d hit her time to time, and after when she was wiping the blood from her nose she’d make excuses for him. She’d say how he’d had a hard life and been abandoned by his
folks and beaten as a child and other such. That sounded to Ro like it should make you slower rather’n quicker to beat others, but she guessed everyone’s got their excuses. Even if
they’re feeble ones.
The way Ro saw it, Cantliss had nothing in him worth a damn. He rode up front in his fancy tailored clothes like he was some big man with important doings to be about, ’stead of a
child-thief and murderer and lowest of the low, aiming to make himself look special by gathering even lower scum about him for a backdrop. At night he’d get a great big fire built
’cause he loved to watch things burn, and he’d drink, and once he’d set to drinking his mouth would get a bitter twist and he’d complain. About how life weren’t fair
and how he’d been tricked out of an inheritance by a banker and how things never seemed to go his way.