bitching on the dust or the weather or the debt or his sore arse.
‘I’ll give him a sore arse,’ she muttered, ‘useless bastard…’
Maybe you’re best off looking for the best in people but if Temple had one he was keeping it well hid. Still. What can you expect when you fish men out of the river? Heroes?
Two towers had once stood watch at each end of the bridge. At the near side they were broken off a few strides up and the fallen stone scattered and overgrown. A makeshift gate had been rigged between them—as shoddy a piece of joinery as Shy ever saw and she’d done some injuries to wood herself—bits of old wagon, crate and cask bristling with scavenged nails and even a wheel lashed to the front. A boy was perched on a sheared-off column to one side, menacing the crowds with about the most warlike expression Shy ever saw.
‘Customers, Pa!’ he called as Lamb and Sweet and Shy approached, the wagons of the Fellowship spread out in the crush and jolting after.
‘I see ’em, son. Good work.’ The one who spoke was a hulking man, bigger’n Lamb even and with a riot of ginger beard. For company he had a stringy type with the knobbliest cheeks you ever saw and a helmet looked like it had been made for a man with cheeks of only average knobbliness. It fit him like a teacup on a mace end. Another worthy made himself known on top of one of the towers, bow in hand. Red Beard stepped in front of the gate, his spear not quite pointed at them, but surely not pointed away.
‘This here’s our bridge,’ he said.
‘It’s quite something.’ Lamb pulled off his hat and wiped his forehead. ‘Wouldn’t have pegged you boys for masonry on this scale.’
Ginger Beard frowned, not sure whether he was being insulted. ‘We didn’t build it.’
‘But it’s ours!’ shouted Knobbly, as though it was the shouting of it made it true.
‘You big idiot!’ added the boy from his pillar.
‘Who says it’s yours?’ asked Sweet.
‘Who says it isn’t?’ snapped Knobbly. ‘Possession is most o’ the law.’
Shy glanced over her shoulder but Temple was still back with the herd. ‘Huh. When you actually want a bloody lawyer there’s never one to hand…’
‘You want to cross, there’s a toll. A mark a body, two marks a beast, three marks a wagon.’
‘Aye!’ snarled the boy.
‘Some doings.’ Sweet shook his head as if at the decay of all things worthy. ‘Charging a man just to roll where he pleases.’
‘Some people will turn a profit from anything.’ Temple had finally arrived astride his mule. He’d pulled the rag from his dark face and the dusty yellow stripe around his eyes lent him a clownish look. He offered up a watery smile, like it was a gift Shy should feel grateful for.
‘One hundred and forty-four marks,’ she said. His smile slipped and that made her feel a little better.
‘Guess we’d better have a word with Majud,’ said Sweet. ‘See about a whip-around for the toll.’
‘Hold up there,’ said Shy, waving him down. ‘That gate don’t look up to much. Even I could kick that in.’
Red Beard planted the butt of his spear on the ground and frowned up at her. ‘You want to try it, woman?’
‘Try it, bitch!’ shouted the boy, his voice starting somewhat to grate at Shy’s nerves.
She held up her palms. ‘We’ve no violent intentions at all, but the Ghosts ain’t so peaceful lately, I hear…’ She took a breath, and let the silence do her work for her. ‘Sangeed’s got his sword drawed again.’
Red Beard shifted nervously. ‘Sangeed?’
‘The very same.’ Temple hopped aboard the plan with some nimbleness of mind. ‘The Terror of the Far Country! A Fellowship of fifty was massacred not a day’s ride from here.’ He opened his eyes very wide and drew his fingers down his ears. ‘Not an ear left between them.’
‘Saw it ourselves,’ threw in Sweet. ‘They done outrages upon those corpses it pains me to remember.’
‘Outrages,’ said Lamb. ‘I was sick.’
‘Him,’ said Shy, ‘sick. Things as they are I’d want a decent gate to hide behind. The one at the other end bad as this?’
‘We don’t got a gate at the other end,’ said the boy, before Red Beard shut him up with a dirty look.
The damage was done, though. Shy took a sharper breath. ‘Well, that’s up to you, I reckon. It is your bridge. But…’
‘What?’ snapped Knobbly.
‘It so happens we got a man along by the name of Abram Majud. A wonder of a smith, among other things.’
Red Beard snorted. ‘And he brought his forge with him, did he?’
‘Why, that he did,’ said Shy. ‘His Curnsbick patent portable forge.’
‘His what?’
‘As wondrous a creation of the modern age as your bridge is one of the ancient,’ said Temple, earnest as you like.
‘Half a day,’ said Shy, ‘and he’ll have you a set of bands, bolts and hinges both ends of this bridge it’d take an army to get through.’
Red Beard licked his lips, and looked at Knobbly, and he licked his lips, too. ‘All right, I tell you what, then. Half price if you fix up our gates—’
‘We go free or not at all.’
‘Half-price,’ growled Red Beard.
‘Bitch!’ added his son.’
Shy narrowed her eyes at him. ‘What do you reckon, Sweet?’
‘I reckon I’ve been robbed before and at least they didn’t dress it up any, the—’
‘Sweet?’ Red Beard’s tone switched from bullying to wheedling. ‘You’re Dab Sweet, the scout?’
‘The one killed that there red bear?’ asked Knobbly.
Sweet drew himself up in his saddle. ‘Twisted that furry fucker’s head off with these very fingers.’
‘Him?’ called the boy. ‘He’s a bloody midget!’
His father shut him up with a wave. ‘No one cares how big he is. Tell you what, could we use your name on the bridge?’ He swept one hand through the air, like he could see the sign already. ‘We’ll call it Sweet’s Crossing.’
The celebrated frontiersman was all bafflement. ‘It’s been here a thousand years, friend. Ain’t no one going to believe I built it.’
‘They’ll believe you use it, though. Every time you cross this river you come this way.’
‘I come whatever way makes best sense on that occasion. Reckon I’d be a piss-poor pilot were it any other how, now, wouldn’t I?’
‘But we’ll say you come this way!’
Sweet sighed. ‘Sounds a damn fool notion to me but I guess it’s just a name.’
‘He usually charges five hundred marks for the usage of it,’ put in Shy.
‘What?’ said Red Beard.
‘What?’ said Sweet.
‘Why,’ said Temple, nimble with this notion, too, ‘there is a manufacturer of biscuits in Adua who pays him a thousand marks a year just to put his face on the box.’
‘What?’ said Knobbly.
‘What?’ said Sweet.
‘But,’ went on Shy, ‘seeing as we’re using your bridge ourselves—’
‘And it is a wonder of the ancient age,’ put in Temple.
‘—we can do you a cut-price deal. One hundred and fifty only, our Fellowship cross free and you can put his name to the bridge. How’s that? You’ve made three hundred and fifty marks today and you didn’t even move!’
Knobbly looked delighted with his profit. Red Beard yet doubted. ‘We pay you that, what’s to stop you selling his name to every other bridge, ford and ferry across the Far Country?’
‘We’ll draw up a contract, good and proper, and all make our marks to it.’
‘A con… tract?’ He could hardly speak the word, it was that unfamiliar. ‘Where the hell you going to find a lawyer out here?’
