Red Country by Joe Abercrombie Page A

for it. She held his eye and said it to his face, calm but with no give. ‘Get on the wagon, Leef.’
    This time he did as he was told, and clambered up among their gear and sat there silent with his back to them.
    Shy perched her bruised arse next to Lamb as he snapped the reins and got Scale and Calder reluctantly on the move. ‘What do we do if we catch these three?’ she muttered, keeping her
voice down so Leef wouldn’t hear it. ‘Chances are they’re going to be armed and willing, too. Better armed than us, that’s sure.’
    ‘Reckon we’ll have to be more willing, then.’
    Her brows went up at that. This big, gentle Northman who used to run laughing through the wheat with Pit on one shoulder and Ro on the other, used to sit out at sunset with Gully, passing a
bottle between them in silence for hours at a time, who’d never once laid a hand on her growing up in spite of some sore provocations, talking about getting red to the elbows like it was
nothing.
    Shy knew it wasn’t nothing.
    She closed her eyes and remembered Jeg’s face after she stabbed him, bloody hat brim jammed down over his eyes, pitching in the street, still muttering,
Smoke, Smoke
. That clerk in
the store, staring at her as his shirt turned black. The look Dodd had as he gawped down at her arrow in his chest.
What did you do that for?
    She rubbed her face hard with one hand, sweating of a sudden, heart banging in her ears hard as it had then, and she twisted inside her greasy clothes like she could twist free of the past. But
it had good and caught her up. For Pit and Ro’s sake she had to get her hands red again. She curled her fingers around the grip of her knife, took a hard breath and set her jaw. No choice
then. No choice now. And for men the likes of the ones they followed no tears needed shedding.
    ‘When we find ’em,’ her voice sounding tiny in the gathering darkness, ‘can you follow my lead?’
    ‘No,’ said Lamb.
    ‘Eh?’ He’d been following her lead so long she’d never thought he might find some other path.
    When she looked at him, his old, scarred face was twisted like he was in pain. ‘I made a promise to your mother. ’Fore she died. Made a promise to look to her children. Pit and Ro .
. . and I reckon it covers you too, don’t it?’
    ‘I guess,’ she muttered, far from reassured.
    ‘I broke a lot of promises in my life. Let ’em wash away like leaves on the water.’ He rubbed at his eyes with the back of one gloved hand. ‘I mean to keep that one. So
when we find ’em . . . you’ll be following my lead. This time.’
    ‘All right.’ She could say so, if it helped him.
    Then she could do what needed doing.

 
     
     
     
    The Best Man
     
     
     
     
    ‘ I believe this is Squaredeal,’ said Inquisitor Lorsen, frowning at his map.
    ‘And is Squaredeal on the Superior’s list?’ asked Cosca.
    ‘It is.’ Lorsen made sure there was nothing in his voice that could be interpreted as uncertainty. He was the only man within a hundred miles in possession of anything resembling a
cause. He could entertain no doubts.
    Superior Pike had said the future was out here in the west, but the town of Squaredeal did not look like the future through Inquisitor Lorsen’s eyeglass. It did not look like a present
anyone with the choice would want a part in. The people scratching a living out of the Near Country were even poorer than he had expected. Fugitives and outcasts, misfits and failures. Poor enough
that supporting a rebellion against the world’s most powerful nation was unlikely to be their first priority. But Lorsen could not concern himself with likelihoods. Allowances, explanations
and compromises were likewise unaffordable luxuries. He had learned over many painful years managing a prison camp in Angland that people had to be sorted onto the right side or the wrong, and
those on the wrong could be given no mercy. He took no pleasure in it, but a better world comes at a price.
    He