forgave no matter how far His children strayed.
‘Reckon our old friend Buckhorm’s prospered,’ said Lamb, as they crested a rise and looked down on his farmstead.
It had been carefully sited beside a stream, a set of solid-looking cabins arranged in a square, narrow windows facing outwards, a fence of sharpened logs closing up the gaps and a wooden tower twice a man’s height beside the gate. A safe, and civilised, and comfortable-looking place, smoke slipping gently up from a chimney and smudging the sky. The valley around it, as far as Temple could see, was carpeted with tall green grass, patched white with snow in the hollows, dotted brown with cattle.
‘Looks like he’s got stock to trade,’ said Shy.
Sweet stood in his stirrups to study the nearest cow. ‘Good stock, too. I look forward to eating ’em.’ The cow peered suspiciously back, apparently less enamoured of that idea.
‘Maybe we should pick up some extra,’ said Shy, ‘get a herd together and drive ’em back to the Near Country.’
‘Always got your eyes open for a profit, don’t you?’ asked Sweet.
‘Why close your eyes to one? Specially when we’ve got one of the world’s foremost drag riders sitting idle.’
‘Oh God,’ muttered Temple.
‘Buckhorm?’ bellowed Sweet as the four of them rode up. ‘You about?’ But there was no reply. The gate stood ajar, a stiff hinge faintly creaking as the breeze moved it. Otherwise, except for the cattle lowing in the distance, all was quiet.
Then the soft scrape as Lamb drew his sword. ‘Something ain’t right.’
‘Aye,’ said Sweet, laying his flatbow calmly across his knees and slipping a bolt into place.
‘No doubt.’ Shy shrugged her own bow off her shoulder and jerked an arrow from the quiver by her knee.
‘Oh God,’ said Temple, making sure he came last as they eased through the gateway, hooves of their horses squelching and crunching in the half-frozen mud. Was there no end to it? He peered at the doors and into the windows, grimacing with anticipation, expecting any and every horror from a welter of bandits, to a horde of Ghosts, to Waerdinur’s vengeful dragon erupting from the earth to demand its money back.
‘Where’s my gold, Temple?’
The dragon would have been preferable to the awful phantom that now stooped beneath the low lintel of Buckhorm’s house and into the light. Who else but that infamous soldier of fortune, Nicomo Cosca?
His once-fine clothes were reduced to muddy rags, corroded breastplate lost and his filthy shirt hanging by two buttons, one trouser-leg torn gaping and a length of scrawny, trembling white calf exposed. His magnificent hat was a memory, the few strands of grey hair he had so carefully cultivated to cross his liver-spotted pate now floating about his skull in a grease-stiffened nimbus. His rash had turned crimson, scabbed with nail marks and, like mould up a cellar wall, spread flaking up the side of his head to speckle his waxy face. His hand quivered on the door, his gait was uncertain, he looked like nothing so much as a corpse exhumed, brought to a mockery of life by sorcerous intervention.
He turned his mad, bright, feverish eyes on Temple and slapped the hilt of his sword. One trapping of glory he had managed to retain. ‘Like the ending of a cheap storybook, eh, Sworbreck?’ The writer crept from the darkness behind Cosca, equally filthy and with bare feet to add to his wretchedness, one lens of his eyeglasses cracked, his empty hands fussing with each other. ‘One final appearance for the villains!’
Sworbreck licked his lips, and remained silently loitering. Perhaps he could not tell who were the villains in this particular metaphor.
‘Where’s Buckhorm?’ snapped Shy, training her drawn bow on Cosca and prompting his biographer to cower behind him for cover.
The Old Man was less easily rattled. ‘Driving some cattle down to Hope with his three eldest sons, I understand. The lady of the house is within but, alas, cannot see visitors just at present. Ever so slightly tied up.’ He licked at his chapped lips. ‘I don’t suppose any of you have a drink to hand?’
‘Left mine over the rise with the rest of the Fellowship.’ Shy jerked her head towards the west. ‘I find if I have it, I drink it.’
‘I’ve always had the very same problem,’ said Cosca. ‘I would ask one of my men to pour me a glass, but thanks to Master Lamb’s fearsome talents and Master Temple’s underhanded machinations, my Company is somewhat reduced.’
‘You played your own hand in that,’ said Temple.
‘Doubtless. Live long enough, you see everything ruined. But I still hold a few cards.’ Cosca gave a high whistle.
The doorway of the barn banged open and several of Buckhorm’s younger children shuffled through into the courtyard, wide-eyed and fearful, some of their faces streaked with tears. Sergeant Friendly was their shepherd, an empty manacle swinging by the chain, the other still locked around his thick wrist. The blade of his cleaver glimmered briefly in the sun.
‘Hello, Temple,’ he said, showing as little emotion as if they’d been reunited at a tavern counter.
‘Hello,’ croaked Temple.
‘And Master Hedges was good enough to join us.’ Cosca pointed past them, finger shaking so badly it was hard at first to tell at what. Looking around, Temple saw a black outline appear at the top of the little turret by the gate. The self-professed hero of the Battle of Osrung, and pointing a flatbow down into the yard.
‘Real sorry about this!’ he shouted.
‘You’re that sorry, you can drop the bow,’ growled Shy.
‘I just want what I’m owed!’ he called back.
‘I’ll give you what you’re fucking owed, you treacherous—’
‘Perhaps we can establish exactly what everyone is owed once the money is returned?’ suggested Cosca. ‘As a first step, I believe throwing down your weapons would be traditional?’
Shy spat through the gap in her front teeth. ‘Fuck yourself.’ The point of her arrow did not deviate by a hair.
Lamb stretched his neck out one way, then the other. ‘We don’t hold much with tradition.’
Cosca frowned. ‘Sergeant Friendly? If they do not lay down their arms within the count of five, kill one of the children.’
Friendly shifted his fingers around the grip of his cleaver. ‘Which one?’
‘What do I care? You pick.’
‘I’d rather not.’
Cosca rolled his eyes. ‘The biggest one, then, and work your way down. Must I manage every detail?’
‘I mean I’d rather not—’
‘One!’ snapped the Old Man.
Nobody gave the slightest impression of lowering their weapons. Quite the reverse. Shy stood slightly in her stirrups, scowling down her arrow. ‘One o’ those children dies, you’re next.’
‘Two!’
‘Then you!’ For that of a war hero, Hedges’ voice had risen to a decidedly unheroic register.
‘Then the fucking lot of you,’ growled Lamb, hefting his heavy sword.
Sworbreck stared at Temple around Cosca’s shoulder, palms open, as though to say,
‘Three!’
‘Wait!’ shouted Temple. ‘Just… wait, damn it!’ And he scrambled down from his horse.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Shy snarled around the flights of her arrow.
‘Taking the hard way.’
Temple began to walk slowly across the courtyard, mud and straw squelching under his boots, the breeze stirring his hair, the breath cold in his chest. He did not go with a smile, as Kahdia had gone to the Eaters when they padded into the Great Temple, black figures in the darkness, giving his life for the lives of his students. It took a mighty effort, wincing as if he was walking into a gale. But he went.
The sun found a chink in the clouds and glinted on the drawn steel, each edge and point picked out with
