Red Country (46 page)

‘A party of four is easily dismissed,’ Cosca was telling the room. ‘A party of three hundred, so much less easily!’

‘Two hundred and seventy-two,’ said Friendly.

‘If I could have a word?’ Dab Sweet was approaching the counter. ‘You’re planning on heading into the mountains, you’ll need a better scout than that half-dead
killer. I stand ready and willing to offer my services.’

‘So generous,’ said Cosca. ‘And you are?’

‘Dab Sweet.’ And the famous scout removed his hat to display his own thinning locks. Evidently he had caught the scent of a more profitable opportunity than shepherding the desperate
back to Starikland.

‘The noted frontiersman?’ asked Sworbreck, looking up from his papers. ‘I thought you’d be younger.’

Sweet sighed. ‘I used to be.’

‘You’re aware of him?’ asked Cosca.

The biographer pointed his nose towards the ceiling. ‘A man by the name of Marin Glanhorm – I refuse to use the term writer in relation to him – has penned some most inferior
and far-fetched works based upon his supposed exploits.’

‘Those was unauthorised,’ said Sweet. ‘But I’ve exploited a thing or two, that’s true. I’ve trodden on every patch of this Far Country big enough to support a
boot, and that includes them mountains.’ He beckoned Cosca closer, spoke softer. ‘Almost as far as Ashranc, where those Dragon People live. Their sacred ground. My partner, Crying Rock,
she’s been even further, see . . .’ He gave a showman’s pause. ‘She used to be one of ’em.’

‘True,’ grunted Crying Rock, still occupying her place at the table, though Corlin had vanished leaving only her cards.

‘Raised up there,’ said Sweet. ‘Lived up there.’

‘Born up there, eh?’ asked Cosca.

Crying Rock solemnly shook her head. ‘No one is born in Ashranc.’ And she stuck her dead chagga pipe between her teeth as though that was her last word on the business.

‘She knows the secret ways up there, though, and you’ll need ’em, too, ’cause those Dragon bastards won’t be extending no warm welcomes once you’re on their
ground. It’s some strange, sulphurous ground they’ve got but they’re jealous about it as mean bears, that’s the truth.’

‘Then the two of you would be an invaluable addition to our expedition,’ said Cosca. ‘What would be your terms?’

‘We’d settle for a twentieth share of any valuables recovered.’

‘Our aim is to root out rebellion, not valuables.’

Sweet smiled. ‘There’s a risk of disappointment in any venture.’

‘Then welcome aboard! My notary will prepare an agreement!’

‘Two hundred and seventy-four,’ mused Friendly. His dead eyes drifted to Temple. ‘And you.’

Cosca began to slosh out drinks. ‘Why are all the really interesting people always advanced in years?’ He nudged Temple in the ribs. ‘Your generation really isn’t
producing the goods.’

‘We cower in giants’ shadows and feel our shortcomings most keenly.’

‘Oh, you’ve been missed, Temple! If I’ve learned one thing in forty years of warfare, it’s that you have to look on the funny side. The tongue on this man!
Conversationally, I mean, not sexually, I can’t vouch for that. Don’t include that, Sworbreck!’ The biographer sullenly crossed something out. ‘We shall leave as soon as the
men are rested and supplies gathered!’

‘Might be best to wait ’til winter’s past,’ said Sweet.

Cosca leaned close. ‘Do you have any notion what will happen if I leave my Company quartered here for four months? The state of the place now barely serves as a taster.’

‘You got any notion what’ll happen if three hundred men get caught in a real winter storm up there?’ grunted Sweet, pulling his fingers through his beard.

‘None whatsoever,’ said Cosca, ‘but I can’t wait to find out. We must seize the moment! That has always been my motto. Note that down, Sworbreck.’

Sweet raised his brows. ‘Might not be long ’til your motto is, “I can’t feel my fucking feet.” ’

But the captain general was, as usual, not listening. ‘I have a premonition we will all find what we seek in those mountains!’ He threw one arm about Savian’s shoulders and the
other about Lamb’s. ‘Lorsen his rebels, I my gold, these worthy folk their missing children. Let us toast our alliance!’ And he raised Temple’s nearly empty bottle high.

‘Shit on this,’ breathed Shy through gritted teeth.

Temple could only agree. But that appeared to be all his say in the matter.

Nowhere to Go

R
o pulled off the chain with the dragon’s scale and laid it gently on the furs. Shy once told her you can waste your life waiting for the
right moment. Now was good as any.

She touched Pit’s cheek in the dark and he stirred, the faintest smile on his face. He was happy here. Young enough to forget, maybe. He’d be safe, or safe as he could be. In this
world there are no certainties. Ro wished she could say goodbye but she was worried he’d cry. So she gathered her bundle and slipped out into the night.

The air was sharp, snow gently falling but melting as soon as it touched the hot ground and dry a moment later. Light spilled from some of the houses, windows needing neither glass nor shutter
cut from the mountain or from walls so old and weathered Ro couldn’t tell them from the mountain. She kept to the shadows, rag-wrapped feet silent on the ancient paving, past the great black
cooking slab, surface polished to a shine by the years, steam whispering from it as the snow fell.

The Long House door creaked as she passed and she pressed herself against the pitted wall, waiting. Through the window she could hear the voices of the elders at their Gathering. Three months
here and she already knew their tongue.

‘The Shanka are breeding in the deeper tunnels.’ Uto’s voice. She always counselled caution.

‘Then we must drive them out.’ Akosh. She was always bold.

‘If we send enough for that there will be few left behind. One day men will come from outside.’

‘We put them off in the place they call Beacon.’

‘Or we made them curious.’

‘Once we wake the Dragon it will not matter.’

‘It was given to me to make the choice.’ Waerdinur’s deep voice. ‘The Maker did not leave our ancestors here to let his works fall into decay. We must be bold. Akosh, you
will take three hundred of us north into the deep places and drive out the Shanka, and keep the diggings going over winter. After the thaw you will return.’

‘I worry,’ said Uto. ‘There have been visions.’

‘You always worry . . .’

Their words faded into the night as Ro padded past, over the great sheets of dulled bronze where the names were chiselled in tiny characters, thousands upon thousands stretching back into the
fog of ages. She knew Icaray was on guard tonight and guessed he would be drunk, as always. He sat in the archway, head nodding, spear against the wall, empty bottle between his feet. The Dragon
People were just people, after all, and each had their failings like any other.

Ro looked back once and thought how beautiful it was, the yellow-lit windows in the black cliff-face, the dark carvings on the steep roofs against a sky blazing with stars. But it wasn’t
her home. She wouldn’t let it be. She scurried past Icaray and down the steps, hand brushing the warm rock on her right because on her left, she knew, was a hundred strides of empty drop.

She came to the needle and found the hidden stair, striking steeply down the mountainside. It scarcely looked hidden at all but Waerdinur had told her that it had a magic, and no one could see
it until they were shown it. Shy had always told her there were no such things as Magi or demons and it was all stories, but out here in this far, high corner of the world all things had their
magic. To deny it felt as foolish as denying the sky.

Down the winding stair, switching back and forth, away from Ashranc, the stones growing colder underfoot. Into the forest, great trees on the bare slopes, roots catching at her toes and tangling
at her ankles. She ran beside a sulphurous stream, bubbling through rocks crusted with salt. She stopped when her breath began to smoke, the cold biting in her chest, and she bound her feet more
warmly, unrolled the fur and wrapped it around her shoulders, ate and drank, tied her bundle and hurried on. She thought of Lamb plodding endlessly behind his plough and Shy swinging the scythe
sweat dripping from her brows and saying through her gritted teeth,
You just keep on. Don’t think of stopping. Just keep on
, and Ro kept on.

The snow had settled in slow melting patches here, the branches dripping tap, tap and how she wished she had proper boots. She heard wolves sorrowful in the high distance and ran faster, her
feet wet and her legs sore, downhill, downhill, clambering over jagged rock and sliding in scree, checking with the stars the way Gully taught her once, sitting out beside the barn in the dark of
night when she couldn’t sleep.

The snow had stopped falling but it was drifted deep now, sparkling as dawn came fumbling through the forest, her feet crunching, her face prickling with the cold. Ahead the trees began to thin
and she hurried on, hoping perhaps to look out upon fields or flower-filled valleys or a merry township nestled in the hills.

She burst out at the edge of a dizzy cliff and stared far over high and barren country, sharp black forest and bare black rock slashed and stabbed with white snow fading into long grey rumour
without a touch of people or colour. No hint of the world she had known, no hope of deliverance, no heat now from the earth beneath and all was cold inside and out and Ro breathed into her
trembling hands and wondered if this was the end of the world.

‘Well met, daughter.’ Waerdinur sat cross-legged behind her, his back against a tree-stump, his staff, or his spear – Ro still was not sure which it was – in the crook of
one arm. ‘Do you have meat there in your bundle? I was not prepared for a journey and you have led me quite a chase.’

In silence she gave him a strip of meat and sat down beside him and they ate and she found she was very glad he had come.

After a time he said, ‘It can be difficult to let go. But you must see the past is done.’ And he pulled out the dragon scale that she had left behind and put the chain around her
neck and she did not try to stop him.

‘Shy’ll be coming . . .’ But her voice sounded tiny, thinned by the cold, muffled in the snow, lost in the great emptiness.

‘It may be so. But do you know how many children have come here in my lifetime?’

Ro said nothing.

‘Hundreds. And do you know how many families have come to claim them?’

Ro swallowed, and said nothing.

‘None.’ Waerdinur put his great arm around her and held her tight and warm. ‘You are one of us now. Sometimes people choose to leave us. Sometimes they are made to. My sister
was. If you really wish to go, no one will stop you. But it is a long, hard way, and to what? The world out there is a red country, without justice, without meaning.’

Ro nodded. That much she’d seen.

‘Here life has purpose. Here we need you.’ He stood and held out his hand. ‘Can I show you a wondrous thing?’

‘What thing?’

‘The reason why the Maker left us here. The reason we remain.’

She took his hand and he hoisted her up easily onto his shoulders. She put her palm on the smooth stubble of his scalp and said, ‘Can we shave my head tomorrow?’

‘Whenever you are ready.’ And he set off up the hillside the way she had come, retracing her footprints through the snow.

In Threes

‘
F
uck, it’s cold,’ whispered Shy.

They’d found a shred of shelter wedged in a hollow among frozen tree-roots, but when the wind whipped up it was still like a slap in the face, and even with a piece of blanket
double-wrapped around her head so just her eyes showed, it left Shy’s face red and stinging as a good slapping might’ve. She lay on her side, needing a piss but hardly daring to drop
her trousers in case she ended up with a yellow icicle stuck to her arse to add to her discomforts. She dragged her coat tight around her shoulders, then the frost-crusted wolfskin Sweet had given
her tight around that, wriggled her numb toes in her icy boots and pressed her dead fingertips to her mouth so she could make the most of her breath while she still had some.

‘Fuck, it’s cold.’

‘This is nothing,’ grunted Sweet. ‘Got caught in drifts one time in the mountains near Hightower for two months. So cold the spirits froze in the bottles. We had to crack the
glass off and pass the booze around in lumps.’

‘Shhh,’ murmured Crying Rock, faintest puff of smoke spilling from her blued lips. ’Til that moment Shy had been wondering whether she’d frozen to death hours before with
her pipe still clamped in her mouth. She’d scarcely even blinked all morning, staring through the brush they’d arranged the previous night as cover and down towards Beacon.

Not that there was much to see. The camp looked dead. Snow in the one street was drifted up against doors, thick on roofs toothed with glinting icicles, pristine but for the wandering tracks of
one curious wolf. No smoke from the chimneys, no light from the frozen flaps of the half-buried tents. The old barrows were just white humps. The broken tower which in some forgotten past
must’ve held the beacon the place was named for held nothing but snow now. Aside from wind sad in the mangy pines and making a shutter somewhere tap, tap, tap, the place was silent as
Juvens’ grave.