Red Country by Joe Abercrombie Read Free Book Online Page B

but he didn’t and she was glad. Maybe she
needed it there more than he did.
    On they went, gone from two to three but otherwise not much changed. Same wind, same sky, same tracks to be followed, same worried silence between them. The wagon was wearing
out on the battered tracks, lurching more with each mile rattled behind those patient oxen. One of the wheels had near shook itself to pieces inside its iron tyre. Shy felt some sympathy, behind
her frown she was all shook to pieces herself. They loaded out the gear and let the oxen loose to crop grass, and Lamb lifted one side of the wagon with a grunt and a shrug while Shy did the best
she could with the tools she had and her half-sack of nails, Leef eager to do his part but that no more than passing her the hammer when she asked.
    The tracks led to a river and forded at a shallow spot. Calder and Scale weren’t too keen on the crossing but in the end Shy goaded them over to a tall mill-house, stone-built on three
stories. Those they were chasing hadn’t bothered to try and burn this one and its wheel still slapped around merrily in the chattering water. Two men and a woman were hanged together in a
bunch from the attic window. One had a broken neck stretched out way too long, another feet burned raw, dangling a stride above the mud.
    Leef stared up big-eyed. ‘What kind o’ men do a thing like this?’
    ‘Just men,’ said Shy. ‘Thing like this don’t take no one special.’ Though at times it felt to her that they were following something else. Some mad storm blowing
mindless through this abandoned country, churning up the dirt and leaving bottles and shit and burned buildings and hanged folk scattered in its wake. A storm that snatched away all the children to
who knew where and to what purpose? ‘You care to go up there, Leef, and cut these folks down?’
    He looked like he didn’t much care to, but he drew his knife and went inside to do it anyway.
    ‘Feels like we’re doing a lot of burying lately,’ she muttered.
    ‘Good thing you got Clay to throw them shovels in,’ said Lamb.
    She laughed at that, then realised what she was laughing at and turned it into an ugly cough. Leef ’s head showed at the window and he leaned out, started cutting at the ropes, making the
bodies tremble. ‘Seems wrong, us having to clean up after these bastards.’
    ‘Someone has to.’ Lamb held one of the shovels out to her. ‘Or do you want to leave these folks swinging?’
    Towards evening, the low sun setting the edges of the clouds to burn and the wind making the trees dance and sweeping patterns in the grass, they came upon a campsite. A big fire had smouldered
out under the eaves of a wood, a circle of charred branches and sodden ash three strides across. Shy hopped from the wagon while Lamb was still cooing Scale and Calder to a snorting halt, and she
drew her knife and gave the fire a poke, turned up some embers still aglow.
    ‘They were here overnight,’ she called.
    ‘We’re catching ’em, then?’ asked Leef as he jumped down, nocking an arrow loose to his bow.
    ‘I reckon.’ Though Shy couldn’t help wondering if that was a good thing. She dragged a length of frayed rope from the grass, found a cobweb torn between bushes at the treeline,
then a shred of cloth left on a bramble.
    ‘Someone come this way?’ asked Leef.
    ‘More’n one. And fast.’ Shy slipped through after, keeping low, crept down a muddy slope, slick dirt and fallen leaves treacherous under her boots, trying to keep her balance
and peer into the dimness—
    She saw Pit, face down by a fallen tree, looking so small there among the knotted roots. She wanted to scream but had no voice, no breath even. She ran, slid on her side in a shower of dead
leaves and ran again. She squatted by him, back of his head a clotted mass, hand trembling as she reached out, not wanting to see his face, having to see it. She held her breath as she wrestled him
over, his body small but stiff