Red Country

‘Smaller audience, but otherwise not much different.’ They could hear Najis seeing to one of Gentili’s old cousins in the back of the wagon, moaning away. ‘Seem to like it, might be a tip in it.’ At least there was the chance it would finish quicker. That had to be a good thing.

‘Never been that good at pretending,’ Sallit muttered. Not pretending to like it, anyway. Got in the way of pretending not to be there at all.

‘Ain’t always about the fucking. Not always. Not just the fucking, anyway.’ Goldy had been around. She was hellish practical. Sallit wished she could be practical. Maybe she’d get there. ‘Just treat ’em like they’re somebody. That’s all anyone wants, ain’t it?’

‘I suppose.’ Sallit would’ve liked to be treated like somebody, instead of a thing. Folk looked at her, they just saw a whore. She wondered if anyone in the Fellowship knew her name. Less feeling than for cattle, and less value placed on you, too. What would her parents have made of this, their girl a whore? But they lost their say when they died, and it seemed Sallit had lost her say as well. She guessed there was worse.

‘Just a living. That’s the way to look at it. You’re young, love. You’ve got time to work.’ A heated bitch was trotting along beside the column and a crowd of a dozen or more dogs of every shape and size were loping hopefully after. ‘Way o’ the world,’ said Goldy, watching them pass. ‘Put the work in, you can come out rich. Rich enough to retire comfortable, anyway. That’s the dream.’

‘Is it?’ Sounded like a pretty poor kind of dream to Sallit. To not have the worst.

‘Not much action now, that’s true, but we get to Crease, you’ll see the money come in. Lanklan knows what he’s about, don’t you worry on that score.’

Everyone wanted to get to Crease. They’d wake up talking of the route, begging Sweet to know how many miles they’d gone, how many still to go, counting them off like days of a hard sentence. But Sallit dreaded the place. Sometimes Lanklan would talk about how many lonely men were out there, eyes aglitter, and how they’d have fifty clients a day like that was something to look forward to. Sounded like hell to Sallit. Sometimes she didn’t much like Lanklan, but Goldy said as pimps went he was a keeper.

Najis’ squealing was building to a peak now, impossible to ignore.

‘How far is it still to go?’ asked Sallit, trying to cover over it with talk.

Goldy frowned out towards the horizon. ‘Lot of ground and a lot of rivers.’

‘That’s what you said weeks back.’

‘It was true then and it’s true now. Don’t worry, love. Dab Sweet’ll get us there.’

Sallit hoped he didn’t. She hoped the old scout led ’em round in a great circle and all the way back to New Keln and her mother and father smiling in the doorway of the old house. That was all she wanted. But they were dead of the shudders, and out here in the great empty was no place for dreams. She took a hard breath, rubbed the pain out of her nose, making sure not to cry. That wasn’t fair on the rest. Didn’t help her when they cried, did it?

‘Good old Dab Sweet.’ Goldy snapped the reins and clucked at the oxen. ‘Never been lost in his life, I hear.’

‘Not lost, then,’ said Crying Rock.

Sweet took his eyes off the coming rider to squint up at her, perched on top of one of the broken walls with the sinking sun behind, swinging a loose leg, that old flag unwrapped from her head for once and her hair shook out long, silver with a few streaks of gold still in it.

‘When have you ever known me to be lost?’

‘When I’m not there to point the way?’

He gave a sorry grin at that. Only a couple of times on this trip he’d needed to slip off in the darkness on a clear night to fiddle at his astrolabe and take a proper bearing. He’d won it off a retired sea-captain in a card game and it had proved damned useful down the years. It was like being at sea, sometimes, the plains. Naught but the sky and the horizon and the moaning bloody cargo. A man needed a trick or two to keep pace with his legend.

That red bear? It was a spear he’d killed it with, not his bare hands, and it had been old, and slow, and not that big. But it had been a bear, and he’d killed it, all right. Why couldn’t folk be satisfied with that? Dab Sweet killed a bear! But no, they had to paint a taller picture with every telling—bare hands, then saving a woman, then there were three bears—until he himself could only disappoint beside it. He leaned back against a broken pillar, arms folded, and watched that horseman coming at a gallop, no saddle, Ghost fashion, with a sour, sour feeling in his gut.

‘Who made me fucking admirable?’ he muttered. ‘Not me, that’s sure.’

‘Huh,’ said Crying Rock.

‘I never had an elevated motive in my life.’

‘Uh.’

There was a time he’d heard tales of Dab Sweet and he’d stuck thumbs in his belt and chin to the sky and tricked himself that was how his life had been. But the years scraped by hard as ever and he got less and the stories more ’til they were tales of a man he’d never met succeeding at what he’d never have dreamed of attempting. Sometimes they’d stir some splinter of remembrance of mad and desperate fights or tedious slogs to nowhere or withering passages of cold and hunger and he’d shake his head and wonder by what fucking alchemy these episodes of rank necessity were made noble adventures.

‘What do they get?’ he asked. ‘A parcel o’ stories to nod their heads to. What do I got? Naught to retire on, that’s sure. Just a worn-out saddle and a sack full of other men’s lies to carry.’

‘Uh,’ said Crying Rock, like that was just the way of things.

‘Ain’t fair. Just ain’t fair.’

‘Why would it be fair?’

He grunted his agreement to that. He wasn’t getting old no more. He was old. His legs ached when he woke and his chest ached when he lay down and the cold got in him deep and he looked at the days behind and saw how heavily they outnumbered those ahead. He’d set to wondering how many more nights he could sleep under the pitiless sky, yet still men looked at him awestruck like he was great Juvens, and if they landed in a real fix he’d sing a storm to sleep or shoot down Ghosts with lightning from his arse. He had no lightning, not he, and sometimes after he’d talked to Majud and played that role of knows-it-all-and-never-shirks better than Iosiv Lestek himself could have managed, he’d mount his horse and his hands would be all atremble and his eye dim and he’d say to Crying Rock, ‘I’ve lost my nerve,’ and she’d just nod like that was the way of things.

‘I was something once, wasn’t I?’ he muttered.

‘You’re still something,’ said Crying Rock.

‘What, though?’

The rider reined in a few strides distant, frowning at Sweet, and at Crying Rock, and at the ruins they were waiting in, suspicious as a spooked stag. After a moment he swung a leg over and slid down.

‘Dab Sweet,’ said the Ghost.

‘Locway,’ said Sweet. It’d have to be him. He was one of the new type, sulky-like, just saw the bad in everything. ‘Why ain’t Sangeed here?’

‘You can speak to me.’

‘I can, but why should I?’

Locway bristled up, all chafe and pout like the young ones always were. Most likely Sweet had been no different in his youth. Most likely he’d been worse, but damn if all the posturing didn’t make him tired these days. He waved the Ghost down. ‘All right, all right, we’ll talk.’ He took a breath, that sour feeling getting no sweeter. He’d been planning this a long time, argued every side of it and picked his path, but taking the last step was still proving an effort.

‘Talk, then,’ said Locway.

‘I’m bringing a Fellowship, might be a day’s quick ride south of us. They’ve got money.’

‘Then we will take it,’ said Locway.

‘You’ll do as you’re fucking told is what you’ll do,’ snapped Sweet. ‘Tell Sangeed to be at the place we agreed on. They’re jumpy as all hell as it is. Just show yourselves in fighting style, do some riding round, shout a lot and shoot an arrow or two and they’ll be keen to pay you off. Keep things easy, you understand?’

‘I understand,’ said Locway, but Sweet had his doubts that he knew what easy looked like.

He went close to the Ghost, their faces level since he was fortunately standing upslope, and put his thumbs