Lorsen perked up at that. ‘Conthus.’
‘Besides.’ Cosca gestured at the rebels’ corpses with a loose waft of his sword that nearly took Sworbreck’s nose off. ‘I doubt we’ll be getting any further clues from these three. Life rarely turns out the way we expect. We must bend with the circumstances.’
Lorsen gave a disgusted grunt. ‘Very well. For now we follow the money.’ He turned his horse about and shouted to one of his Practicals. ‘Search the corpses for tattoos, damn it, find me any rebels still alive!’
Three doors down, a man had climbed onto the roof of a house and was stuffing bedding down the chimney while others clustered about the door. Cosca, meanwhile, was holding forth to Sworbreck. ‘I share your distaste for this, believe me. I have been closely involved in the burning of some of the world’s most ancient and beautiful cities. You should have seen Oprile in flames, it lit the sky for miles! This is scarcely a career highlight.’
Jubair had dragged some corpses into a line and was expressionlessly cutting their heads off. Thud, thud, thud, went his heavy sword. Two of his men had torn apart the arch over the road and were whittling the ends of the timbers to points. One was already rammed into the ground and had Sheel’s head on it, mouth strangely pouting.
‘Dear me,’ muttered Sworbreck again.
‘Severed heads,’ Cosca was explaining, ‘never go out of fashion. Used sparingly and with artistic sensibility, they can make a point a great deal more eloquently than those still attached. Make a note of that. Why aren’t you writing?’
An old woman had crawled from the burning house, face stained with soot, and now some of the men had formed a circle and were shoving her tottering back and forth.
‘What a waste,’ Lorsen was bitterly complaining to one of his Practicals. ‘How fine this land could be with the proper management. With firm governance, and the latest techniques of agriculture and forestry. They have a threshing machine now in Midderland which can do in a day with one operator what used to take a dozen peasants a week.’
‘What do the other eleven do?’ asked Temple, his mouth seeming to move by itself.
‘Find other employment,’ snarled the Practical.
Behind him another head went up on its stick, long hair stirring. Temple did not recognise the face. The smoked-out house was burning merrily now, flames whipping, air shimmering, the men backing off with hands up against the heat, letting the old woman crawl away.
‘Find other employment,’ muttered Temple to himself.
Cosca had Brachio by the elbow and was shouting in his ear over the noise. ‘You need to round up your men! We must head north and east towards Greyer and seek out news of this Grega Cantliss.’
‘It might take a while to calm ’em.’
‘One hour, then I ask Sergeant Friendly to bring in the stragglers, in pieces if necessary. Discipline, Sworbreck, is vital to a body of fighting men!’
Temple closed his eyes. God, it stank. Smoke, and blood, and fury, and smoke. He needed water. He turned to ask Sufeen for some and saw his corpse in the mud a few strides away. A man of principle must make hard choices and suffer the consequences.
‘We brought your horse down,’ said Cosca, as though that should make up for at least some of the day’s reverses. ‘If you want my advice, keep busy. Put this place at your back as swiftly as possible.’
‘How do I forget this?’
‘Oh, that’s too much to ask. The trick is in learning to just…’ Cosca stepped carefully back as one of the Styrians rode whooping past, a man’s corpse bouncing after his horse. ‘Not care.’
‘I have to bury Sufeen.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. But quickly. We have daylight and not a moment to waste. Jubair! Put that down!’ And the Old Man started across the street, waving his sword. ‘Burn anything that still needs burning and mount up! We’re moving east!’
When Temple turned, Friendly was wordlessly offering him a shovel. The dog had finally stopped barking. A big Northman, a tattooed brute from past the Crinna, had spiked its head on a spear beside the heads of the rebels and was pointing up at it, chuckling.
Temple took Sufeen by the wrists and hauled him onto his shoulder, then up and over the saddle of his scared horse. Not an easy task, but easier than he had expected. Living, Sufeen had been big with talk and movement and laughter. Dead he was hardly any weight at all.
‘Are you all right?’ Bermi, touching him on the arm.
His concern made Temple want to cry. ‘I’m not hurt. But Sufeen is dead.’ There was justice.
Two of the Northmen had smashed open a chest of drawers and were fighting over the clothes inside, leaving torn cloth scattered across the muddy street. The tattooed man had tied a stick below the dog’s head and was carefully arranging a best shirt with a frilly front upon it, face fixed with artist’s concentration.
‘You sure you’re all right?’ Bermi called after him from the midst of the rubbish-strewn street.
‘Never better.’
Temple led the horse out of town, then off the track, or the two strips of rutted mud that passed for one, the sounds of barked orders, and burning, and the men reluctantly making ready to leave fading behind him to be replaced by chattering water. He followed the river upstream until he found a pleasant enough spot between two trees, their hanging boughs trailing in the water. He slid Sufeen’s body down and rolled it over onto its back.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and tossed the shovel into the river. Then he pulled himself up into his saddle.
Sufeen would not have cared where he was laid out, or how. If there was a God, he was with Him now, probably demanding to know why He had so conspicuously failed as yet to put the world to rights. North and east, Cosca had said. Temple turned his horse towards the west, and gave it his heels, and galloped off, away from the greasy pall of smoke rising from the ruins of Averstock.
Away from the Company of the Gracious Hand. Away from Dimbik, and Brachio, and Jubair. Away from Inquisitor Lorsen and his righteous mission.
He had no destination in mind. Anywhere but with Nicomo Cosca.
New Lives
‘And there’s the Fellowship,’ said Sweet, reining in with forearms on saddle horn and fingers dangling.
The wagons were strung out for a mile or so along the bottom of the valley. Thirty or more, some covered with stained canvas, some painted bright colours, dots of orange and purple and twinkling gilt jumping from the dusty brown landscape. Specks of walkers alongside them, riders up ahead. At the back came the beasts—horses, spare oxen, a good-sized herd of cattle—and following hard after a swelling cloud of dust, tugged by the breeze and up into the blue to announce the Fellowship’s coming to the world.
‘Will you look at that!’ Leef kicked his horse forward, standing in his stirrups with a grin all the way across his face. ‘D’you see
‘I see it,’ she said.
‘A whole town on the move!’
‘True, it’s a fair cross section through society,’ said Sweet, shifting his old arse in his saddle. ‘Some honest, some sharp, some rich, some poor, some clever, some not so much. Lot of prospectors. Some herders and some farmers. Few merchants. All set on a new life out there beyond the horizon. We even got the First of the Magi down there.’
Lamb’s head jerked around. ‘What?’
‘A famous actor. Iosiv Lestek. His Bayaz mesmerised the crowds in Adua, apparently.’ Sweet gave his gravelly chuckle. ‘About a hundred bloody years ago. He’s hoping to bring theatre to the Far Country, I hear, but between you, me and half the population of the Union, his powers are well on the wane.’
‘Don’t convince as Bayaz any more, eh?’ asked Shy.
‘He scarcely convinces me as Iosiv Lestek.’ Sweet shrugged. ‘But what do I know about acting?’
