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?’
