The fire had been built in the middle of a narrow clearing, a small animal neatly skinned and spitted on sticks above it. Temple suppressed a powerful impulse to dive at it teeth first. A single blanket was spread out between the fire and a worn saddle. A round shield leaned against a tree, metal rim and wooden front marked with the scars of hard use. Next to it was an axe with a heavy bearded head. It took no expert in the use of weapons to see this was a tool not for chopping wood but people.
The gear of one man, but clearly a man it would be a bad idea to be caught stealing the dinner of.
Temple’s eyes crawled from meat to axe and back, and his mouth watered with an intensity almost painful. Possible death by axe loomed large at any time, but at that moment certain death from hunger loomed larger yet. He slowly straightened, preparing to—
‘Nice night for it.’ Northern words in a throaty whisper of a voice, just behind Temple’s ear.
He froze, small hairs tingling up his neck. ‘Bit windy,’ he managed to croak.
‘I’ve seen worse.’ A cold and terrible point pricked at the small of Temple’s back. ‘Let’s see your weapons, slow as snails in winter.’
‘I am . . . unarmed.’
A pause. ‘You’re what?’
‘I had a knife, but . . .’ He had given it to a bony farmer who killed his best friend with it. ‘I lost it.’
‘Out in the big empty without a blade?’ As though it was strange as to be without a nose. Temple gave a girlish squeak as a big hand slipped under his arm and started to pat him down. ‘Nor have you, ’less you’re hiding one up your arse.’ An unpleasing notion. ‘I ain’t looking there.’ That was some relief. ‘You a madman?’
‘I am a lawyer.’
‘Can’t a man be both?’
Self-evidently. ‘I . . . suppose.’
Another pause. ‘Cosca’s lawyer?’
‘I was.’
‘Huh.’ The point slipped away, its absence leaving a prickling spot in Temple’s back. Even unpleasant things can be sorely missed, apparently, if you have lived with them long enough.
A man stepped past Temple. A great, black, shaggy shape, knife-blade glinting in one hand. He dragged a long sword from his belt and tossed it on the blanket, then lowered himself cross-legged, firelight twinkling red and yellow in the mirror of his metal eye.
‘Life takes you down some strange paths, don’t it?’ he said.
‘Caul Shivers,’ muttered Temple, not at all sure whether to feel better or worse.
Shivers reached out and turned the spit between finger and thumb, fat dripping into the flames. ‘Hungry?’
Temple licked his lips. ‘Is that just a question . . . or an invitation?’
‘I’ve got more’n I can eat. You’d best bring that horse up before it shakes loose. Watch your step, though.’ The Northman jerked his head back into the trees. ‘There’s a gorge that way might be twenty strides deep, and with some angry water at the bottom.’
Temple brought the horse up and hobbled it, stripped its saddle and the damp blanket beneath, abandoned it to nuzzle at whatever grass it could find. A sad fact, but the hungrier a man is the less he tends to care about the hunger of others. Shivers had carved the carcass down to the bones and was eating from a tin plate with the point of his knife. More meat lay gleaming on some torn-off bark on the other side of the fire. Temple sank to his knees before it as though it were a most hallowed altar.
‘My very great thanks.’ He closed his eyes as he began to eat, sucking the juice from every morsel. ‘I was starting to think I’d die out here.’
‘Who says you won’t?’
A shred of meat caught in Temple’s throat and he gave an awkward cough. ‘Are you alone?’ he managed to gasp out – anything but more of the crushing silence.
‘I’ve learned I make poor company.’
‘You aren’t worried about the Ghosts?’
The Northman shook his head.
‘I hear they’ve killed a lot of people in the Far Country.’
‘Once they’ve killed me I’ll worry.’ Shivers tossed down his plate and leaned back on one elbow, his ruined face shifting further into the darkness. ‘A man can spend the time he’s given crapping his arse out over what might be, but where does it get you?’
Where indeed? ‘Still hunting for your nine-fingered man?’
‘He killed my brother.’
Temple paused with another piece of meat halfway to his mouth. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’re sorrier’n me, then. My brother was a shit. But family is family.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’ Temple’s relatives had rarely stayed long in his life. A dead mother, a dead wife, a dead daughter. ‘Closest thing I have to family is . . .’ He realised he had been about to say Sufeen, and now he was dead as well. ‘Nicomo Cosca.’
Shivers grunted. Almost a chuckle. ‘In my experience, he ain’t the safest man to have at your back.’
‘What is your experience?’
‘We were both hired to kill some men. In Styria, ten years ago or so. Friendly, too. Some others. A poisoner. A torturer.’
‘Sounds quite the merry company.’
‘I ain’t the wag I seem. Things got . . .’ Shivers scratched ever so gently at the great scar under his metal eye. ‘A bit unpleasant.’
‘Things tend to get unpleasant when Cosca’s involved.’
‘They can get plenty unpleasant without him.’
‘More so with,’ muttered Temple, looking into the fire. ‘He never cared much, but he used to care a little. He’s got worse.’
‘That’s what men do.’
‘Not all of them.’
‘Ah.’ Shivers showed his teeth. ‘You’re one of them optimists I’ve heard about.’
‘No, no, not me,’ said Temple. ‘I always take the easy way.’
‘Very wise. I find hoping for a thing tends to bring on the opposite.’ The Northman slowly turned the ring on his little finger round and around, the stone glittering the colour of blood. ‘I had my dreams of being a better man, once upon a time.’
‘What happened?’
Shivers stretched out beside the fire, boots up on his saddle, and started to shake a blanket over himself. ‘I woke up.’
Temple woke to that first washed out, grey-blue touch of dawn, and found himself smiling. The ground was cold and hard, the blanket was far too small and smelled powerfully of horse, the evening meal had been inadequate, and yet it was a long time since he had slept so soundly. Birds twittered, wind whispered and through the trees he could hear the faint rushing of water.
Fleeing the Company suddenly seemed a masterful plan, boldly executed. He wriggled over under his blanket. If there was a God, it turned out He was the forgiving fellow Kahdia had always—
Shivers’ sword and shield had gone and another man squatted on his blanket.
He was stripped to the waist, his pale body a twisted mass of sinew. Over his bottom half he wore a filthy woman’s dress, slit up the middle then stitched with twine to make loose trousers. One side of his head was shaved, the orange hair on the other scraped up into stiff spikes with some kind of fat. In one dangling hand he held a hatchet, in the other a bright knife.
A Ghost, then.
He stared unblinking across the dead fire at Temple with piercing blue eyes and Temple stared back, considerably less piercingly, and found he had gently pulled his horse-stinking blanket up under his chin in both fists.
Two more men slipped silently from the trees. One wore as a kind of helmet, though presumably not for protection against any earthly weapon, an open box of sticks joined at the corners with feathers and secured to a collar made from an old belt. The other’s cheeks were striped with self-inflicted scars. In different circumstances – on stage, perhaps, at a Styrian carnival – they might have raised quite the laugh. Here, in the untracked depths of the Far Country and with Temple their only audience, merriment was notable by its absence.
‘Noy.’ A fourth Ghost had
appeared as if from nowhere, between man and boy with yellow hair about his pale face and a line of dried-out brown paint under his eyes. Temple hoped it was paint. The bones of some small animal, stitched to the front of a shirt made from a sack, rattled as he danced from one foot to the other, smiling radiantly all the while. He beckoned Temple up.
‘Noy.’
Temple very slowly got to his feet, smiling back at the boy, and then at the others. Keep smiling, keep smiling, everything on a friendly footing. ‘Noy?’ he ventured.
The boy hit him across the side of the head.
It was the shock more than the force that put Temple down. So he told himself. The shock, and some kind of primitive understanding that there was nothing to be gained by staying up. The world swayed as he lay there. His hair was tickly. He touched his scalp and there was blood on his fingers.
Then he saw the boy had a rock in his hand. A rock painted with blue rings. And now with just a few spots of Temple’s red blood.
‘Noy!’ called the boy, beckoning again.
Temple was in no particular rush to rise. ‘Look,’ he said, trying common first. The boy slapped him with his empty hand. ‘Look!’ Giving Styrian a go. The boy slapped him a second time. He tried Kantic. ‘I do not have any—’ The boy hit him with the rock again, caught him across the cheek and put him on his side.
Temple shook his head. Groggy. Couldn’t hear that well.
He grabbed at the nearest thing. The boy’s leg, maybe.
He clambered up as far as his knees. His knees or the boy’s knees. Someone’s knees.
His mouth tasted of blood. His face was throbbing. Not hurting exactly. Numb.
The boy was saying something to the others, raising his arms as if asking for approval.
The one with the spikes of hair nodded gravely and opened his mouth to speak, and his head flew off.
The one beside him turned, slightly impeded by his stick helmet. Shivers’ sword cut his arm off above the elbow and thudded deep into his chest, blood flooding from the wound. He stumbled wordlessly back, the blade lodged in his ribs.
The one with the scarred face flew at Shivers, stabbing at him, clawing at his shield, the two of them lurching about the clearing, feet kicking sparks from the embers of the fire.
All this in a disbelieving, wobbly breath or two, then the boy hit Temple over the head again. That seemed ridiculously unfair. As if Temple was the main threat. He dragged himself up the leg with a surge of outraged innocence. Shivers had forced the scarred Ghost onto his knees now and was smashing his head apart with the rim of his shield. The boy hit Temple again but he clung on, caught a fistful of bone-stitched shirt as his knees buckled.
They went down, scratching, punching, gouging. Temple was on the bottom, teeth bared, and he forced his thumb up the Ghost’s nose and wrestled him over and all the while he could not help thinking how amazingly silly and wasteful this all was, and then that effective fighters probably leave the philosophising until after the fight.
The Ghost kneed at him, screaming in his own language, and they were rolling between the trees, sliding downhill, and Temple was punching at the Ghost’s bloody face with his bloody knuckles, screeching as the Ghost caught his forearm and bit it, and then there were no trees, only loose earth under them, then the sound of the river grew very loud, and there was no earth at all, and they were falling.
He vaguely remembered Shivers saying something about a gorge.
Wind rushed, and turning weightlessness, and rock and leaf and white water. Temple let go of the Ghost, both of them falling without a sound. It all felt so unlikely. Dreamlike. Would he wake soon with a jolt, back with the Company of the—
The jolt came when he hit the water.
Feet-first, by blind luck, and then he was under, gripped by cold, crushed by the surging weight of it, ripped five ways at once in a current so strong it felt as though it would tear his arms from their sockets. Over and over, a leaf in the torrent, helpless.
His head left the flood and he heaved in a shuddering breath, spray in his face, roar of the furious water. Dragged under again and something thumped hard at his shoulder and twisted him over, showed him the sky for just a moment. Limbs so heavy now, a sore temptation to stop fighting. Temple had never been much of a fighter.
He caught a glimpse of driftwood, dried-out and bleached bone-white by sun and water. He snatched at it, lungs bursting, clawed at it as he came right-side-up. It was part of a tree. A whole tree-trunk with leafless branches still attached. He managed to heave his chest over it, coughing, spitting, face scraping against rotten wood.
He breathed. A few breaths. An hour. A hundred years.
Water lapped at him, tickled him. He raised his head so he could see the sky. A mighty effort. Clouds shifted across the deep and careless blue.
‘Is this your idea of a fucking joke?’ he croaked, before a wave slapped him in the face and made him swallow water. No joke, then. He lay still. Too tired and hurting for anything else. The water had calmed now, at least. The river wider, slower, the banks lower, long grass shelving down to the shingle.
He let it all slide by. He trusted to God, since there was no one else. He hoped for heaven.
But he fully expected the alternative.
Driftwood
‘Whoa!’ called Shy. ‘Whoa!’
Maybe it was the noise of the river, or maybe they somehow sensed she’d done some low-down things in her life, but, as usual, the oxen didn’t take a shred of notice and kept on veering for the deeper water. Dumb stubborn bloody animals. Once they’d an idea in mind they’d keep towards it regardless of all urgings to the contrary. Nature giving her a taste of her own cooking, maybe. Nature was prone to grudges that way.
‘Whoa, I said, you bastards!’ She gripped at her soaked saddle with her soaked legs, wound the rope a couple of times around her right forearm and gave a good haul. The other end was tight-knotted to the lead yoke and the line snapped taut and sprayed water. Same time Leef nudged his pony up from the downstream side and snapped out a neat little flick with his goad. He’d turned out to have quite a knack as a drover. One of the front pair gave an outraged snort but its blunt nose shifted left, back to the chosen course, towards the stretch of wheel-scarred shingle on the far bank where the half of the Fellowship already across was gathered.
Ashjid the priest was one of them, arms thrust up to heaven like his was the most important job around, chanting a prayer to calm the waters. Shy had observed no becalming. Not of the waters, and for damn sure not of her.
‘Keep ’em straight!’ growled Sweet, who’d reined his dripping horse up on a sandbar and was taking his ease – something he took an aggravating amount of.
‘Keep them straight!’ echoed Majud from behind, gripping so hard to the seat of his wagon it was a wonder he didn’t rip it off. He wasn’t comfortable with water, apparently, which was quite an inconvenience in a frontiersman.
‘What d’you think I’m aiming to do, you idle old fucks?’ hissed Shy, digging her horse out left and giving the rope another heave. ‘See us all flushed out to sea?’
It didn’t look unlikely. They’d doubled up the oxen, teams of six or eight or even a dozen hitched to the heaviest loads, but still it was far from easy going. If the wagons weren’t hitting deep water and threatening to float away, they were doing the opposite and getting bogged in the shallows.
One of Buckhorm’s wagons was stranded now and Lamb was in the river to his waist, straining at the back axle while Savian leaned from his horse to smack at the lead oxen’s rump. He hit it that hard Shy was worried he’d break the beast’s back, but in the end he got it floundering on and Lamb sloshed back wearily to his horse. Unless your name was Dab Sweet, it was hard work all round.
But then work had never scared Shy. She’d learned early that once you were stuck with a task you were best off giving it your all. The hours passed quicker then, and you were less likely to get a belting, too. So she’d worked hard at errands soon as she
could run, at farming when a woman grown, and between the two at robbing folk and been damn good at it, though that was probably better not dwelt on. Her work now was finding her brother and sister, but since fate had allotted her oxen to drive through a river in the meantime, she reckoned she’d try her hardest at that in spite of the smell and the strain on her sore arms and the freezing water washing at her arse-crack.
They finally floundered out onto the sandbar, animals streaming and blowing, cartwheels crunching in the shingle, Shy’s horse trembling under her and that the second one she’d blowed out that day.
‘Call this a damn ford?’ she shouted at Sweet over the noise of the water.
He grinned back at her, leathery face creased up with good humour. ‘What’d you call it?’
‘A stretch of river ’bout the same as any other, and just as apt to be drowned in.’
‘You should’ve told me if you couldn’t swim.’
‘I can, but this wagon’s no fucking salmon, I can tell you that.’
Sweet turned his horse about with the slightest twist of his heel. ‘You disappoint me, girl. I had you marked for an adventurer!’
‘Never by choice. You ready?’ she called out to Leef. The lad nodded. ‘How about you?’
Majud waved a weak hand. ‘I fear I will never be ready. Go. Go.’
So Shy wound the rope tight again, heaved in a good breath, gave herself a thought of Ro’s face and Pit’s, and set off after Sweet. Cold gripped her calves, then her thighs, oxen peering nervous towards the far bank, her horse snorting and tossing its head, none of them any keener on another dip than she was, Leef working the goad and calling out, ‘Easy, easy.’
The last stretch was the deepest, water surging around the oxen and making white bow-waves on their upstream flanks. Shy hauled at the rope, making them strain into the current at a diagonal just to end up with a straight course, while the wagon jolted over the broken stream-bed, wheels half-under, then squealing axles under, then the whole thing halfway to floating and a damn poor shape for a boat.
She saw one of the oxen was swimming, neck stretched as it struggled to keep its flaring nostrils above the water, then two, scared eyes rolling towards her, then three, and Shy felt the rope tugging hard, and she wound it tighter about her forearm and put all her weight into it, hemp gripping at her leather glove, biting at the skin above it.
The Great Leveller Page 147