The jaw muscles worked on the side of his head. ‘Sometimes ignorance is the sweetest medicine.’ He turned this strange, sick, guilty look on her, like a man who’s been caught doing murder and knows the game’s all up. ‘But I don’t know how I’d stop you.’ And she felt worried to the pit of her stomach and could hardly bring herself to speak, but couldn’t stand to stay silent either.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered. ‘I mean… who were you? I mean—shit.’
She caught movement—a figure flitting through the trees towards Sweet and Crying Rock.
‘Shit!’ And she was running, stumbling, blundering, snagged a numb foot at the edge of the hollow and went tumbling through the brush, floundered up and was off across the bare slope, legs so caught in the virgin snow it felt like she was dragging two giant stone boots after her.
‘Sweet!’ she wheezed. The figure broke from the trees and over the unspoiled white towards the old scout, hint of a snarling face, glint of a blade. No way Shy could get there in time. Nothing she could do.
‘Sweet!’ she wailed one more time, and he looked up, smiling, then sideways, eyes suddenly wide, shrinking away as the dark shape sprang for him. It twisted in the air, fell short and went tumbling through the snow. Crying Rock rushed up and hit it over the head with her club. Shy heard the sharp crack a moment after.
Savian pushed some branches out of his way and trudged through the snow towards them, frowning at the trees and calmly cranking his flatbow.
‘Nice shot,’ called Crying Rock, sliding her club into her belt and jamming that pipe between her teeth.
Sweet pushed back his hat. ‘Nice shot, she says! I’ve damn near shat myself.’
Shy stood with her hands on her hips and tried to catch her smoking breath, chest on fire from the icy coldness of it.
Lamb walked up beside her, sheathing his sword. ‘Looks like they sometimes go in threes.’
Among the Barbarians
‘They hardly look like demons.’ Cosca nudged the Dragon Woman’s cheek with his foot and watched her bare-shaved head flop back. ‘No scales. No forked tongues. No flaming breath. I feel a touch let down.’
‘Simple barbarians,’ grunted Jubair.
‘Like the ones out on the plains.’ Brachio took a gulp of wine and peered discerningly at the glass. ‘A step above animals and not a high step.’
Temple cleared his sore throat. ‘No barbarian’s sword.’ He squatted down and turned the blade over in his hands: straight, and perfectly balanced, and meticulously sharpened.
‘These ain’t no common Ghosts,’ said Sweet. ‘They ain’t really Ghosts at all. They aim to kill and know how. They don’t scare at nothing and know each rock o’ this country, too. They did for every miner in Beacon without so much as a struggle.’
‘But clearly they bleed.’ Cosca poked his finger into the hole made by Savian’s flatbow bolt and pulled it out, fingertip glistening red. ‘And clearly they die.’
Brachio shrugged. ‘Everyone bleeds. Everyone dies.’
‘Life’s one certainty,’ rumbled Jubair, rolling his eyes towards the heavens. Or at least the mildewed ceiling.
‘What is this metal?’ Sworbreck pulled an amulet from the Dragon Woman’s collar, a grey leaf dully gleaming in the lamplight. ‘It is very thin but…’ He bared his teeth as he strained at it. ‘I cannot bend it. Not at all. The workmanship is remarkable.’
Cosca turned away. ‘Steel and gold are the only metals that interest me. Bury the bodies away from the camp. If I’ve learned one thing in forty years of warfare, Sworbreck, it’s that you have to bury the bodies far from camp.’ He drew his cloak tight at the icy blast as the door was opened. ‘Damn this cold.’ Hunched jealously over the fire, he looked like nothing so much as an old witch over her cauldron, thin hair hanging lank, grasping hands like black claws against the flames. ‘Reminds me of the North, and that can’t be a good thing, eh, Temple?’
‘No, General.’ Being reminded of any moment in the past ten years was no particularly good thing in Temple’s mind—the whole a desert of violence, waste and guilt. Except, perhaps, gazing out over the free plains from his saddle. Or down on Crease from the frame of Majud’s shop. Or arguing with Shy over their debt. Dancing, pressed tight against her. Leaning to kiss her, and her smile as she leaned to kiss him back… He shook himself. All thoroughly, irredeemably fucked. Truly, you never value what you have until you jump out of its window.
‘That cursed retreat.’ Cosca was busy wrestling with his own failures. There were enough of them. ‘That damned snow. That treacherous bastard Black Calder. So many good men lost, eh, Temple? Like… well… I forget the names, but my point holds.’ He turned to call angrily over his shoulder. ‘When you said “fort” I was expecting something more… substantial.’
Beacon’s chief building was, in fact, a large log cabin on one and a half floors, separated into rooms by hanging animal skins and with a heavy door, narrow windows, access to the broken tower in one corner and a horrifying array of draughts.
Sweet shrugged. ‘Standards ain’t high in the Far Country, General. Out here you put three sticks together, it’s a fort.’
‘I suppose we must be glad of the shelter we have. Another night in the open you’d have to wait for spring to thaw me out. How I long for the towers of beautiful Visserine! A balmy summer night beside the river! The city was mine, once, you know, Sworbreck?’
The writer winced. ‘I believe you have mentioned it.’
‘Nicomo Cosca, Grand Duke of Visserine!’ The Old Man paused to take yet another swig from his flask. ‘And it shall be mine again. My towers, my palace, and my respect. I have been often disappointed, that’s true. My back is a tissue of metaphorical scars. But there is still time, isn’t there?’
‘Of course.’ Sworbreck gave a false chuckle. ‘You have many successful years ahead of you, I’m sure!’
‘Still a little time to make things right…’ Cosca was busy staring at the wrinkled back of his hand, wincing as he worked the knobbly fingers. ‘I used to be a wonder with a throwing knife, you know, Sworbreck. I could bring down a fly at twenty paces. Now?’ He gave vent to an explosive snort. ‘I can scarcely see twenty paces on a clear day. That’s the most wounding betrayal of all. The one by your own flesh. Live long enough, you see everything ruined…’
The next whirlwind heralded Sergeant Friendly’s arrival, blunt nose and flattened ears slightly pinked but otherwise showing no sign of discomfort at the cold. Sun, rain or tempest all seemed one to him.
‘The last stragglers are into camp along with the Company’s baggage,’ he intoned.
Brachio poured himself another drink. ‘Hangers-on swarm to us like maggots to a corpse.’
‘I am not sure I appreciate the image of our noble brotherhood as a suppurating carcass,’ said Cosca.
‘However accurate it may be,’ murmured Temple.
‘Who made it all the way here?’
Friendly began the count. ‘Nineteen whores and four pimps—’
‘They’ll be busy,’ said Cosca.
‘—twenty-two wagon-drivers and porters including the cripple Hedges, who keeps demanding to speak to you—’
‘Everyone wants a slice of me! You’d think I was a feast-day currant cake!’
‘—thirteen assorted merchants, pedlars and tinkers, six of whom complain of having been robbed by members of the Company—’
‘I consort with criminals! I was a Grand Duke, you know. So many disappointments.’
‘—two blacksmiths, a horse trader, a fur trader, an undertaker, a barber boasting of surgical qualifications, a pair of laundry women, a vintner with no stock, and seventeen persons of no stated profession.’
‘Vagrants and layabouts hoping to grow fat on my crumbs! Is there no honour left, Temple?’
‘Precious little,’ said Temple. Certainly his own stock was disgracefully meagre.
‘And is Superior Pike’s…’ Cosca leaned close to Friendly and after taking another swallow from his flask whispered, entirely audibly, ‘
‘It is,’ said Friendly.
