them not to drink for it was poison.
‘This place is wrong,’ said Pit.
‘It’s just a place.’ But Ro saw the fear in the eyes of the other children, and in the eyes of Cantliss’ men, and felt it, too. It was a dead place.
‘Is Shy still following?’
‘Course she is.’ But Ro didn’t think she could be, not so far as this, so far it seemed they weren’t in the world any more. She could hardly remember what Shy looked like, or Lamb, or the farm as it had been. She was starting to think all that was gone, a dream, a whisper, and this was all there was.
The way grew too steep for horses, then for mules, so one man was left waiting with the animals. They climbed a deep, bare valley where the cliffs were riddled with holes too square for nature to have made, heaped mounds of broken rock beside the way that put Ro in mind of the spoil of mines. But what ancient miners had delved here and for what excavated in this blasted place she could not guess.
After a day breathing its ugly fume, noses and throats raw from the stink, they came upon a great needle of rock set on its end, pitted and stained by weather and time but bare of moss or lichen or plant of any kind. As they came close in a group all tattered reluctance, Ro saw it was covered with letters, and though she couldn’t read them knew it for a warning. In the rocky walls above, the blue sky so far away, were more holes, many more, and towering, creaking scaffolds of old wood held platforms, ropes and buckets and evidence of fresh diggings.
Cantliss held up his open hand. ‘Stop here.’
‘What now?’ asked Blackpoint, fingering the hilt of his sword.
‘Now we wait.’
‘How long?’
‘Not long, brother.’ A man leaned against a rock, quite at his ease. How Ro had missed him there she could not tell because he was by no means small. Very tall, and dark-skinned, head shaved to the faintest silver stubble, and he wore a simple robe of undyed cloth. In the crook of one heavy-muscled arm he had a staff as tall as he was, in the other hand a small and wrinkled apple. Now he bit into it and said, ‘Greetings,’ with his mouth half-full, and he smiled at Cantliss, and at Blackpoint and the other men, his face alive with friendly creases unfitting to these grim surroundings, and he smiled at the children, and at Ro in particular, she thought. ‘Greetings, children.’
‘I want my money,’ said Cantliss.
The smile did not leave the old man’s face. ‘Of course. Because you have a hole in you and you believe gold will fill it.’
‘Because I got a debt, and if I don’t pay I’m a dead man.’
‘We are all dead men, brother, in due course. It is how we get there that counts. But you will have your fair price.’ His eyes moved over the children. ‘I count but twenty.’
‘Long journey,’ said Blackpoint, one hand resting on his sword. ‘Bound to be some wastage.’
‘Nothing is bound to be, brother. What is so is so because of the choices we make.’
‘I ain’t the one buys children.’
‘I buy them. I do not kill them. Is it the hurting of weak things that fills the hole in you?’
‘I ain’t got no hole in me,’ said Blackpoint.
The old man took a last bite from his apple. ‘No?’ And he tossed the core to Blackpoint. The Northman reached for it on an instinct, then grunted. The old man had covered the ground between them in two lightning steps and struck him in the chest with the end of his staff.
Blackpoint shuddered, letting fall the core and fumbling for his sword but he had no strength left to draw it, and Ro saw it was not a staff but a spear, the long blade sticking bloody from Blackpoint’s back. The old man lowered him to the ground, put a gentle hand on his face and closed his eyes.
‘It is a hard thing to say, but I feel the world is better without him.’
Ro looked at the Northman’s corpse, clothes already dark with blood, and found that she was glad, and did not know what that meant.
‘By the dead,’ breathed one of Cantliss’ men, and looking up Ro saw many figures had come silent from the mines and out onto the scaffolds, looking down. Men and women of all races and ages, but all wearing the same brown cloth and all with heads shaved bald.
‘A few friends,’ said the old man, standing.
Cantliss’ voice quavered, thin and wheedling. ‘We did our best.’
‘It saddens me, that this might be your best.’
‘All I want is the money.’
‘It saddens me, that money might be all a man wants.’
‘We had a deal.’
‘That also saddens me, but so we did. Your money is there.’ And the old man pointed out a wooden box sitting on a rock they had passed on the way. ‘I wish you joy of it.’
Cantliss snatched up the box and Ro saw the glitter of gold inside. He smiled, dirty face warm with the reflected glow. ‘Let’s go.’ And he and his men backed off.
One of the little children started snivelling then, because little children will come to love even the hateful if that is all they have, and Ro put a hand on her shoulder and said, ‘Shhh,’ and tried to be brave as the old man walked up to stand towering over her.
Pit clenched his little fists and said, ‘Don’t hurt my sister!’
The man swiftly knelt so that his bald head was level with Ro’s, huge-looking so close, and he put one great hand gently upon Ro’s shoulder and one upon Pit’s and he said, ‘Children, my name is Waerdinur, the thirty-ninth Right Hand of the Maker, and I would never harm either one of you, nor allow anyone else so to do. I have sworn it. I have sworn to protect this sacred ground and the people upon it with my last blood and breath and only death will stop me.’
He brought out a fine chain and hung it around Ro’s neck, and strung upon it, resting on her chest, was a piece of dull, grey metal in the shape of a teardrop.
‘What’s this?’ she asked.
‘It is a dragon’s scale.’
‘A real one?’
‘Yes, a real one. We all have them.’ He reached into his robe and pulled out his own to show to her.
‘Why do I have one?’
He smiled, eyes glimmering with tears. ‘Because you are my daughter now.’ And he put his arms around her and held her very tight.
III
CREASE
‘The town, with less than one thousand permanent residents, was filled with so much vileness that the very atmosphere appeared impregnated with the odour of abomination: murder ran riot, drunkenness was the rule, gambling a universal pasttime, fighting a recreation.’
Hell on the Cheap
Crease at night?
Picture hell on the cheap. Then add more whores.
The greatest settlement of the new frontier, that prospector’s paradise, the Fellowship’s long-anticipated destination, was wedged into a twisting valley, steep sides dotted with the wasted stumps of felled pines. It was a
