‘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
