‘Calm down!’ Sweet was shouting. ‘It ain’t bloody Ghosts and they don’t want your ears! Travellers like us, is all!’
Peering off to the north Shy saw a line of slow-moving riders, wriggling little specks between the vast black earth and the vast white sky.
‘How can you be sure?’ shrieked Lord Ingelstad, clutching a few prized possessions to his chest as if he was about to make a dash for it, though where he’d dash to was anyone’s guess.
‘’Cause Ghosts fixed on blood don’t just trot across the horizon! You lot sit tight here and try not to injure yourselves. Me and Crying Rock’ll go parley.’
‘Might be these travellers know something about the children,’ said Lamb, and he spurred his horse after the two scouts, Shy following.
She’d thought their own Fellowship worn down and dirty, but they were a crowd of royalty beside the threadbare column of beggars they came upon, broken-down and feverish in the eyes, their horses lean round the rib and yellow at the tooth, a handful of wagons lurching after and a few flyblown cattle dragging at the rear. A Fellowship of the damned and no mistake.
‘How do,’ said Sweet.
‘How do?’ Their leader reined in, a big bastard in a tattered Union soldier’s coat, gold braid around the sleeves all torn and dangling.
‘How do?’ He leaned from his horse and spat. ‘A year older’n when we come the other way and not a fucking hour richer, that’s how we do. Enough of the Far Country for these boys. We’re heading back to Starikland. You want our advice, you’ll do the same.’
‘No gold up there?’ asked Shy.
‘Maybe there’s some, girl, but I ain’t dying for it.’
‘No one’s ever giving aught away,’ said Sweet. ‘There’s always risks.’
The man snorted. ‘I was laughing at the risks when I came out last year. You see me laughing now?’ Shy didn’t, much. ‘Crease is at bloody war, killings every night and new folk piling in every day. They hardly even bother to bury the bodies any more.’
‘They were always keener there on digging than filling in, as I recall,’ said Sweet.
‘Well, they got worse. We pushed on up to Beacon, into the hills, to find us a claim to work. Place was crawling with men hoping for the same.’
‘Beacon was?’ Sweet snorted. ‘It weren’t more’n three tents last time I was there.’
‘Well, it’s a whole town now. Or was, at least.’
‘Was?’
‘We stopped there a night or two then off into the wilds. Come back to town after we’d checked a few creeks and found naught but cold mud…’ He ran out of words, just staring at nothing. One of his fellows took his hat off, the brim half-torn away, and looked into it. Strange to see in that hammered-out face, but there were tears in his eyes.
‘And?’ asked Sweet.
‘Everyone gone. Two hundred people in that camp, or more. Just gone, you understand?’
‘Gone where?’
‘To fucking hell was our guess, and we ain’t planning on joining ’em. The place empty, mark you. Meals still on the table and washing still hung out and all. And in the square we find the Dragon Circle painted ten strides across.’ The man shivered. ‘Fuck that, is what I’m saying.’
‘Fuck it to hell,’ agreed his neighbour, jamming his ruined hat back on.
‘Ain’t been no Dragon People seen in years,’ said Sweet, but looking a little worried. He never looked worried.
‘Dragon People?’ asked Shy. ‘What are they? A kind of Ghosts?’
‘A kind,’ grunted Crying Rock.
‘They live way up north,’ said Sweet. ‘High in the mountains. They ain’t to be dabbled with.’
‘I’d sooner dabble with Glustrod his self,’ said the man in the Union coat. ‘I fought Northmen in the war and I fought Ghosts on the plains and I fought Papa Ring’s men in Crease and I gave not a stride to any of ’em.’ He shook his head. ‘But I ain’t fighting those Dragon bastards. Not if the mountains was made of gold. Sorcerers, that’s what they are. Wizards and devils and I’ll have none of it.’
‘We appreciate the warning,’ said Sweet, ‘but we’ve come this far and I reckon we’ll go on.’
‘May you all get rich as Valint and Balk combined, but you’ll be doing it without me.’ He waved on his slumping companions. ‘Let’s go!’
Lamb caught him by the arm as he was turning back. ‘You heard of Grega Cantliss?’
The man tugged his sleeve free. ‘He works for Papa Ring, and you won’t find a blacker bastard in the Far Country. A Fellowship of thirty got killed and robbed up in the hills near Crease last summer, ears cut off and skinned and interfered with, and Papa Ring said it must be Ghosts and no one proved it otherwise. But I heard a whisper it was Cantliss did it.’
‘Him and us got business,’ said Shy.
The man turned his sunken eyes on her. ‘Then I’m sorry for you, but I ain’t seen him in months and I don’t plan to lay eyes on the bastard ever again. Not him, not Crease, not any part of this blasted country.’ And he clicked his tongue and rode away, heading eastwards.
They sat there a moment and watched the defeated shamble back the long way to civilisation. Not a sight to make anyone too optimistic about the destination, even if they’d been prone to optimism, which Shy wasn’t.
‘Thought you knew everyone in the Far Country?’ she said to Sweet.
The old scout shrugged. ‘Those who been about a while.’
‘Not this Grega Cantliss, though?’
His shrug rose higher. ‘Crease is crawling with killers like a tree-stump with woodlice. I ain’t out there often enough to tell one from another. We both get there alive, I can make you an introduction to the Mayor. Then you can get some answers.’
‘The Mayor?’
‘The Mayor runs things in Crease. Well, the Mayor and Papa Ring run things, and it’s been that way ever since there was two planks nailed together in that place, and all that time neither one’s been too friendly with the other. Sounds like they’re getting no friendlier.’
‘The Mayor can help us find Cantliss?’ asked Lamb.
Sweet’s shrug went higher yet. Any further and it’d knock his hat off. ‘The Mayor can always help you. If you can help the Mayor.’ And he gave his horse his heels and trotted back towards the Fellowship.
Oh God, the Dust
‘Wake up.’
‘No.’ Temple strove to pull his miserable scrap of blanket over his face. ‘Please, God, no.’
‘You owe me one hundred and fifty-three marks,’ said Shy, looking down. Every morning the same. If you could even call it morning. In the Company of the Gracious Hand, unless there was booty in the offing, few would stir until the sun was well up, and the notary stirred last of all. In the Fellowship they did things differently. Above Shy the brighter stars still twinkled, the sky about them only a shade lighter than pitch.
‘Where did the debt begin?’ he croaked, trying to clear yesterday’s dust from his throat.
‘One hundred and fifty-six.’
‘What?’ Nine days of back-breaking, lung-shredding, buttock-skinning labour and he had shaved a mere three marks from the bill. Say what you will about Nicomo Cosca, the old bastard had been a handsome payer.
‘Buckhorm docked you three for that cow you lost yesterday.’
‘I am no better than a slave,’ Temple murmured bitterly.
‘You’re worse. A slave I could sell.’ Shy poked him with her foot and he struggled grumbling up, pulled his oversized boots onto feet dewy from sticking out beyond the bottom of his undersized blanket, shrugged his fourth-hand coat over his one sweat-stiffened shirt and limped for the cook’s wagon, clutching at his saddle-
