Red Country by Joe Abercrombie Read Free Book Online

himself.
    ‘The future. And the future does not belong to the Old Empire – their time is a thousand years past. Nor does it belong to the Ghosts, savages that they are. Nor does it belong to
the fugitives, adventurers and opportunist scum who have put the first grasping roots into its virgin soil. No. The future belongs to the Union. We must seize it.’
    ‘We must not be afraid to do what is necessary to seize it,’ added Lorsen.
    ‘Never fear, gentlemen.’ Cosca grinned as he scratched out the parting swirl of his signature. ‘We will seize the future together.’

 
     
     
     
    Just Men
     
     
     
     
    T he rain had stopped. Shy peered through trees alive with the tap-tap of falling water, past a felled trunk abandoned on its trestles,
part-stripped, the drawknife left wedged under a curl of bark, and towards the blackened bones of the house.
    ‘Not hard bastards to follow,’ muttered Lamb. ‘Leave burned-out buildings wherever they go.’
    Probably they thought they’d killed anyone cared enough to follow. What might happen once they noticed Lamb and Shy toddling after in their rickety wagon, she was trying not to think
about.
    Time was she’d thought out everything, every moment of every day – hers, Lamb’s, Gully’s, Pit and Ro’s, too – all parcelled into its proper place with its
proper purpose. Always looking forwards, the future better than the now, its shape clear to her as a house already built. Hard to believe since that time it was just five nights spent under the
flapping canvas in the back of the cart. Five mornings waking stiff and sore to a dawn like a pit yawning under her feet. Five days following the sign across the empty grassland and into the woods,
one eye on her black past, wondering what part of it had crept from the cold earth’s clutches and stolen her life while she was grinning at tomorrow.
    Her fingertips rubbed nervously against her palm. ‘Shall we take a look?’ Truth was she was scared what she might find. Scared of looking and scared of not looking. Worn out and
scared of everything with a hollow space where her hopes used to be.
    ‘I’ll go round the back.’ Lamb brushed his knees off with his hat and started circling the clearing, twigs crunching under his boots, a set of startled pigeons yammering into
the white sky, giving anyone about fair notice of their arrival. Not that there was anyone about. Leastways, no one living.
    There was an overgrown vegetable patch out back, stubborn soil scraped away to make a trench no more than ankle-deep. Next to it a soaked blanket was stretched over something lumpy. From the
bottom stuck a pair of boots and a pair of bony bare feet with dirt under the bluish nails.
    Lamb squatted down, took one corner and peeled it back. A man’s face and a woman’s, grey and slack, both with throats cut deep. The woman’s head lolled, the wound in her neck
yawning wet and purple.
    ‘Ah.’ Shy pressed her tongue into the gap between her front teeth and stared at the ground. Would’ve taken quite the optimist to expect anything else, and she by no means
qualified, but those faces still tore at something in her. Worry for Pit and Ro, or worry for herself, or just a sick memory of a sick time when bodies weren’t such strange things for her to
see.
    ‘Leave ’em be, you bastards!’
    First thing Shy took in was the gleam on the arrowhead. Next was the hand that held the drawn bow, knuckles white on dark wood. Last was the face behind – a boy maybe sixteen, a mop of
sandy hair stuck to pale skin with the wet.
    ‘I’ll kill you! I’ll do it!’ He eased from the bushes, feet fishing for firm earth to tread on, shadows sliding across his tight face and his hand trembling on the
bow.
    Shy made herself stay still, some trick to manage with her first two burning instincts to get at him or get away. Her every muscle was itching to do one or the other, and there’d been a
time Shy had chased off wherever her instincts