The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country (194 page)

‘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.

They stopped for a day beside wide water flowing and Ro asked him, ‘Where are you taking us?’ and he just said, ‘Upstream.’ A keelboat had tied off at the bank and upstream they’d gone, poled and roped and rowed by a set of men all sinew while the flat land slid by, and way, way off north through the haze three blue peaks showed against the sky.

Ro thought at first it would be a mercy, not to have to ride no more, but now all they could do was sit. Sit under a canopy up front and watch the water and the land drift past and feel their old lives dwindle further and further off, the faces of the folks they’d known harder to bring to mind, until the past all felt like a dream and the future an unknown nightmare.

Blackpoint would get off now and again with his bow, a couple of the others with him, and they’d come back later with meat they’d hunted up. Rest of the time he sat smoking, and watched the children, and grinned for hours at a spell. When Ro saw the missing teeth in that grin she thought about him shooting Gully and leaving him swinging there on the tree full of arrows. When she thought about that she wanted to cry, but she knew she couldn’t because she was one of the oldest and the little ones were looking to her to be strong and that’s what she meant to be. She reckoned if she didn’t cry that was her way of beating them. A little victory, maybe, but Shy always said a win’s a win.

Few days on the boat and they saw something burning far off across the grass, plumes of smoke trickling up and fading in that vastness of above and the black dots of birds circling, circling. The chief boatman said they should turn back and he was worried about Ghosts and Cantliss just laughed, and shifted the knife in his belt, and said there was things closer at hand for a man to worry on and that was all the conversation.

That evening one of the men had shaken her wakeful and started talking about how she reminded him of someone, smiling though there was something wrong in his eye and his breath sour with spirits, and he’d caught hold of her arm and Pit had hit him hard as he could which wasn’t that hard. Bee woke and screamed and Cantliss came and dragged the man away and Blackpoint kicked him ’til he stopped moving and tossed him in the river. Cantliss shouted at the others to leave the goods well alone and just use their fucking hands, ’cause no bastard would be costing him money, you could bet on that.

She knew she should never have said nothing about it but she couldn’t help herself then and she’d burst out, ‘My sister’s following, you can bet on that if you want to bet! She’ll find you out!’

She’d thought Cantliss might hit her then but all he’d done was look at her like she was the latest of many afflictions fate had forced upon him and said, ‘Little one, the past is gone, like to that water flowing by. The sooner you put it from your pinprick of a mind the happier you’ll be. You got no sister now. No one’s following.’ And he went off to stand on the prow, tutting as he tried to rub the spotted blood out of his fancy clothes with a damp rag.