The scratching woke Fia. The soft, swooping scrape of charcoal on paper. Thanks to the hangover she was wearing, it sounded like someone carving words into the floor with a chisel.
Blackness faded to red. Sleep gave way to the hard sunlight shining onto her face so that she could see the blood in her closed eyelids. Inwardly, she cursed consciousness. She tried to swallow. Couldn’t.
Fia moved her head a little, trying to remember where she'd fallen. Her skull felt a couple of sizes too small, her head pounding like a hot drum. She scraped her tongue with her top teeth, almost gagged at the shit that came off of it. She realised she didn’t have saliva enough to spit, and swallowed the gunk.
With an effort she hauled herself into a sitting position. Tried to open her eyes. Managed it on the third attempt.
The infernal scratching stopped.
“Well shit, it lives,” Gunn said sarcastically. “For a while there I was hopeful you might've succumbed to the bottle-rot all in an evening.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Life’s full of 'em.”
“Don’t I know it. Look at the gods-damn company I’m in.”
“Not so civil when you’re sufferin’ from the barrel flu, miss,” Gunn chuckled.
Fia rubbed her eyes and looked over at Gunn. The man was still chained to the leg of her solid ironbark bed. His calculating, cold grey eyes were appraising her where he sat with his back to the wall. Like a butcher eyeing up a fresh kill, trying to figure out the best way to joint it. An empty plate, a jug and a cup sat nearby. In his hand was a nub of charcoal and a scrap of paper.
Might still have been the red-eye running in her blood, but Fia found herself eyeing the man with a deal more interest than was wise.
“I do feel a little rough, Gunn,” she said, “but not as rough as you’re liable to be feeling soon, and not as rough as I’d feel if I had one of those respectable, paid jobs you hear so much about.”
Gunn curled his lip. “Salaried work? Fuck that.”
Fia went to reply but her voice rasped in her throat.
“Throat's coarse as a cow’s tongue,” she coughed.
“That'd probably be due to the singin’,” Gunn said.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Fia blurted.
Definitely still drunk, she thought.
Gunn held up his manacled hands. “Would if I could.”
Fia cracked the bones in her neck. She grunted and worked her jaw, touching a point just under her ear and finding it tender.
“That’d be where one of your party cracked you, after you turned down his advances, apparently,” Gunn supplied. “Ain’t no accountin’ for taste, I suppose. Fuckin’ hell of a way to start a journey.”
Fia snorted. “I've had worse,” she said truthfully. “But I thank you for your concern. Unselfish and carin’ for such a bad son of a bitch, ain’t you?”
Fia started getting her effects together; pistols and knives, broadsword and powder horn. She pulled on the one boot she’d managed to get off before passing out.
“Why d’you talk to me like that?” Gunn asked.
“Like what?”
“Like you don't think I’m the biggest piece of shit walkin’ the Five Isles.”
“Thinking a thing and saying a thing ain’t mutually exclusive, Gunn.”
Gunn snorted softly to himself and shook his head. “See, there you go again with your manners, Miss McCrae, and your fancy words,” he said. “Sometimes, I wonder why you’re not doing something up at Castle Dreymark already, with a mind and tongue like yours.”
Fia didn't answer, but staggered over to the cracked basin. Reached in. Found it was full of vomit.
“That’d be yours,” Gunn said helpfully, turning back to his scrap of parchment and scratching down a couple of words.
Fia opened the window, picked up the basin and tossed the contents out into the stable-yard below. A heartfelt oath from a stable-hand floated out of the peach-coloured fog below, mist set to glowing by a freshly minted sun. She took a moment to smell the wetness of the dawn, listen to the voices of the birds; the angry natter of the logrunners on the roofs, the clear piping of the honeyeaters leaving the gables of the town for the fields beyond it, and the good-natured babbling of the bellbirds.
“Fine time of day,” Gunn said behind Fia, as she sluiced some water around the basin, washing the last of the spew from it. “Truest time. Nothin’ changing except the light. All the shit you’ve done the day before is still wrapped in dreams, all the shit you’re about to do is yet to be done.”
Fia smiled ruefully out into the mist, making sure Gunn couldn’t see her. The bastard may as well have been picking her thoughts out of her head and reading them aloud.
“What’s with those verses you write, Gunn? Those poems?" she asked.
“How d’you know their poems?”
“They’re too short to be tales or songs, and you don’t strike me as the sort that goes in for making lists. I ain’t a fool, Gunn.”
“No, you certainly are not,” Gunn said, folding the little piece of paper and slipping it into the inside of his coat. “They’re just things. Observations. A man should have a hobby. Keeps him out of mischief.”
“Unless mischief is his hobby,” Fia said, filling the basin with the jug and setting it on the window ledge so that she could wash her face and neck. She scrubbed the dirt and crusted spittle away with her hands, turning the water in the basin slightly brown.
“Right.”
“From what I’ve seen, you ain’t as harsh or hard a man as I was led to believe,” Fia said, tossing the water and turning back to the room.
Gunn gave her a cold smile. “And what’ve you seen, girl? Me sittin’ in this room for a few days, eating and drinking and writing my words.”
“I’ve seen you not trying to escape,” Fia pointed out.
“Why’d I bother?” Gunn replied amicably. “I know Cameron Gray, don’t I just. I know what sort of man he is. If he’s posted men to keep watch for Boniface Woe and the rest of my crew then there’ll be nothin’ to be gained by trying to leg it. Not while there’s all the long miles between here and Frekifold to traverse. That’s wild country––and that ain’t even taking the Foldwood into account. I hope your new crew is up to it. Be an interesting ride, that’s for certain.”
“The only certainty in this life is that there ain’t nothing certain about it,” Fia said. “And speaking of crew, I best be dragging your arse outside to meet them as are willing to risk their necks so that Redmond Marr can stretch yours.”
* * *
“You’ve drunk my ale and you’ve taken my gold,” Fia said, her hands crossed atop her saddle horn, her strange eyes moving from one rider to the next. “You’ve had the best part of three days to change your mind. As far as I’m concerned that’s a pact acknowledged and accepted between us. Are there any here who disagree?”
None of the riders moved. There were eight of them. Thirteen had come forward when Fia, standing by the fire in the taproom of the Three Horseshoes, had asked for riders for hire who might be interested in a jaunt north to Frekifold. Prisoner escort. Nothing to it. Five had laughed or shaken their heads and sat their arses back down again when she’d told them the name of the prisoner.
Nine of them––six men and three women––looking to outrun and outsmart gods knew how many of Gunn’s gang.
“All right then,” Fia said. “Now, what with one thing and another, the process of hiring the lot of you is somewhat of a blur to me, I’ll not deny––”
“Godsdamn, I ain’t surprised on that score, missy!” a burly man with a huge gut and bushy beard said, slouching on a grey horse. His cloak was grubby and faded and the neck of his shirt opened to reveal a thatch of greying chest hair. “I drink enough for twins and you still almost had me under the table the other night.” He pushed his hood off his head and wiped sweat from a shiny bald pate. “It was that display more than your purse, almost, that had me signing up to ride with you.”
Fia looked at the man, trying to dredge his name from the silt of her whisky-fogged memory.
“Farlan, wasn’t it?” she said.
“Fergus Allaway, if you please, missy,” the fat man corrected her.
“Can you shoot that rifle you’ve got holstered in that saddle scabbard, Fergus?”
“It isn’t just there for show, missy,” Fergus said. “I prefer to do my killing from afar, if killing must be done. Saves me hauling this bulk of mine down and up and up and down. I’m a big man, not a pair of whore’s drawers.”
His round face creased in merriment at his own gag, his beard moving up and down like a duck’s tail as he had himself a laugh.
“Sharpshooter’ll be handy to have on the road,” Fia said. “Although, I’d keep your rifle hidden for as long as you can if we’re pursued. I’d try to kill the man carrying a rifle first off if I were chasing us.”
Fergus’ laughter died.
“And these are your brothers if I’m not mistaken?” Fia said, turning her attention to the two identical men sitting on their identical bay horses. They were as thin as Fergus was fat. Matching pairs of clever brown eyes and dexterous hands. “Hard to forget a face when there are two of them the same, eh?”
The men inclined their red-haired heads.
“Gil’s my name,” said one.
“Lenix is mine,” said the other.
“Gil and Lenix,” Fia repeated. She pointed down at the scabbard that Lenix had attached to the side of his saddle. “Lenix is a bowman. Easy enough to remember.”
“And I’ve the far bigger cock of the two of us,” Lenix said, smiling widely at Fia. “Just in case you were interested, McCrae.”
“I’m interested to know that if I stab you in the thigh there might be a bonus in it for me,” Fia said levelly.
Gil burst out laughing. “Brother, you don’t have the bigger cock, remember? You are the bigger cock.” He turned to Fia with a commiserating look on his face. “He’s always getting that mixed up, miss,” he said.
Lenix swatted at his brother with a backhand and the pair fell to arguing. As they jostled one another, Fia caught a glimpse of two bandoliers, bristling with knives, strapped across Gil’s chest. Gil caught her looking.
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“I’m not like my dear gluttonous brother, Fergus,” he said, abandoning his sport with his twin. “I prefer to get up nice and close to them that’d do me harm.”
One of the women snorted. “All hat and no cattle is what that sounds like to me,” she said.
Gil just grinned at her and winked.
“You’re a hunter, is that right?” Fia said, addressing the woman.
The woman had a hungry, pinched face, brown teeth and hair that was as blonde and as brittle as year-old straw. She looked ill, and her horse didn’t look much better. She had a thin cigar wedged into her mouth. It flicked from the left corner to the right as she returned Fia’s gaze. “No, my name is Hunter,” she said.
“You sure you’re happy to see this through, Hunter?” Fia asked.
“Ain’t happy about anything concerning this job,” Hunter said moodily. “But I need the coin and there’s an end to it.”
“That's why we’re all here, isn’t it?” said the woman at the end of the line of riders, sitting easily on top of a small black gelding. She spoke in a clear, crisp voice, her words coming out of a face that Fia thought both proud and sad; brown hair, brown eyes and an aquiline nose. She had two flintlocks sitting on either hip, a cheap shortsword hanging underneath the pistol on the left. “Money.”
“Name?” Fia asked her.
“Lorna Forbes,” Forbes said.
“You sound like you grew up with a silver spoon in your mouth, friend,” leered the last of the three women. She was a dirty bitch, wearing a long duster and mismatched boots. What teeth she still had in her head looked rotten. Her face was pale as snow and her mean little eyes were like two pissholes in it. “You sure you’re not here for the glory.” She slapped the hilt of the broadsword at her belt and gave a grunting laugh.
If Fia had had to wager money on who smelled better, the woman or the filthy white horse she was sitting on, she would’ve had to flip a coin to decide.
“Shut the hell up, Faith,” the man next to her said. “Closest you’ve ever come to glory is them holes that you suck cocks through for a penny a time.”
Fia appraised the man who’d spoken. He had a luxuriant moustache and sat his bay horse stiffly. His clothes were cheap but clean.
“And who’re you?” she asked.
The man drew himself up. “The name’s Darach Lees, former Keldland infantryman. I’m here escorting the Cleric Vass.”
Fia looked at the man sitting on the roan mare next to Lees. He was older, though he still sat straight on his horse, with more grey in the hair pulled into a tight topknot in the very middle of his crown than black. Across his coffee-coloured cheeks were the unique red tattoos of whatever order or god he served.
Cleric Vass bowed his head. “I am here not so much for the gold––though my creed will be glad of that––but because this man, Gunn, plundered a tax wagon on which my brother was stationed as a guard.”
Cleric Vass turned his eyes to Gunn, who, as of yet, no one else had dared to look directly at. Gunn returned the cleric’s smouldering gaze with a blank one of his own.
“His men killed him like he was nothing,” the cleric said. “Left him in the road to have his eyes and lips eaten by the ravens. Hearing you appeal for riders in the tavern, I felt like it was my duty to see that this savage receives justice.”
“That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing, cleric,” Fia said.
Cleric Vass bowed so that his forehead touched his horse’s neck. “May the goodwill and benevolence of––”
“I think it’s safe to say that the gods will be sitting this one out, cleric,” Fia said, cutting him off.
“Hey, Lees,” the vile woman, Faith, called to the moustachioed man, “if you’re escorting the priest, does that mean we get to divvy up your share of the money between the rest of us? What with you doin’ this out of devout charity, or whatever the fuck you wanna call it?”
“Let’s not kid one another, the reason that the majority, if not all, of you are here is because you fell into the trap of letting your yearnings get ahead of your earnings,” Fia said, her voice surfing over Lees’ angry retort. “That’s fine with me. Money as motivation is easy to understand. I’ll just reiterate my point once more, though––”
“The fuck is reiterate?” Hunter demanded, though a cloud of foul cigar smoke.
“Make clear,” Lorna Forbes said, not looking at the other woman.
Hunter scowled. “The fuck do you need to make clear to us, McCrae?” she spat. “You’ve a job to do and the money to pay us to do it. So, let’s be gettin’ on with it.”
“We will,” Fia said placatingly. “The plan’s to ride out under cover of darkness tonight, but we still need to get provisions before that.”
“Then, if I might be so impolite, McCrae,” Fergus Allaway said, scratching his vast stomach, “why the hell did you bring us out here, to the bank of this river, at such a time. We should be breaking our fast, and breaking it heartily if we’ve a journey this evening.”
“Because, Fergus, I wanted to make sure that the eight of you were resolved,” Fia said. “Resolved in the cold light of morning, without beer propping up your courage, and cognizant of just what the fuck this mission of ours entails. We’re riding out against Torsten Gunn’s gang. You've heard what they do. Maybe you’ve seen it. They’ll kill us the first chance they get and do it slow if opportunity allows it. I’ve had a taste of their determination on getting Gunn back. They’re longriders that are willing to do all that is required, and more. Know that. They do not fuck about. They’re probably going to be led by a man named Kerr, an individual who’s––”
Gunn started to laugh, even as he licked the edge of his rolling paper and placed the smoke between his lips with his manacled hands.
“Kerr won’t be leadin’ shit, Miss McCrae,” the outlaw said, lighting his roll-up with a small blue flame cupped in the palm of his hand. “No, no. By now he’ll have your ball out of him and be all patched up, and my right hand, Boniface Woe, will be on her way.”
Silence greeted his words. River mist swirled and lifted as the strengthening sun rose higher. Gunn watched the exchange of uncomfortable glances with evident satisfaction. His eyes as cold, grey and remorseless as the sea.
“Aye,” he said, “so you’ve heard of her, then.”
* * *
The scent of the sleeping sword grass and honey gorse, crushed under the hooves of the ten horses, rose like perfume in the still night air. Above the riders, the moon was just a sliver cut from the sable sky, the stars threadbare holes in the black mantle that shrouded the plains. The sound of the horses breathing, the clink of metal on metal, and the crunch and clatter of hooves on rocks, seemed to echo traitorously off the stony bones of the grazing country. Fia felt, as she always did when travelling at night, that she was breaking a sacred solitude that had lain across that land since time immemorial.
The rocky, broken grasslands that they rode carefully now crossed Kynthwaite to the west, before lapping at the knees of the mountains that marked the Kynthwaite-Arifold border. They paused at the Foldwood only to resume on the other side in Frekifold, the land of her home. If a rider were to let them, the same prairies the horses of Fia’s motley company navigated now could take them all the way to Skyvolla in the far north. Only there, were they crushed out and buried by the eternal snow and ice of that desolate and beautiful tribeland.
Fia led her crew north, trusting her brumby to pick its own path. She rode point, leading the shackled Gunn behind her on the horse that she had stolen in Yellowbend. The others followed as they would, though the three Allaway brothers had formed a rearguard the moment they had left Last Hallow.
Fia turned in her saddle, as she crested a low ridge, and looked back at the few lights twinkling in Last Hallow at this unsociable hour.
“Take a good gander, Gunn,” she said. “Might be that the next lights you clap eyes on are the ever-burning lamps of Castle Dreymark.”
Gunn said nothing. Didn’t even look back. His hood was up, his face a pool of ink in its depths.
They rode slowly due to the darkness of the night, stopping only to listen to the trail behind them for any hint of pursuit. All they heard though, was the chuckle of water running off the hills to the north-west, the wind sighing through the abrasive raspweed, the occasional magnificent, heart-piercing howl of a distant wolf.
There wasn’t much in the way of conversation. The other riders gave Gunn a wide berth and didn’t speak much amongst themselves. Nerves were too taught, resolutions to not turn back too strained. During one brief halt however, when Fia dismounted and walked a little way away from the rest of the crew so that her ears might be free of the sound of shifting horses, she heard Faith needling Gunn in a low, abrasive voice.
“Gods, but it must be a heady thing, Gunn, to see the effect you have on people,” she heard Faith croon, her horse pressed almost wither to wither with the longrider’s. “Bet it leaves a sour taste in your mouth, knowin’ that the ride’s almost over, that you won’t get to scare the shit out o’ people no more. You scare the piss out of these jokers, you notice that? Not me though.”
“I’m not surprised that you’re not afeared of me, woman,” Gunn replied in a bored voice. “Livin’ with breath like that every day probably makes a person immune to fear. I know people chew baccy, but I ain’t never heard of someone chewin’ bear shit.”
“And I heard that you’ve a code o’ sorts. Won’t go harmin’ womenfolk for some reason or another.”
“You should be careful believing every rumour you hear, woman.”
“Can’t see myself what difference it makes whether someone you kill’s got a cunt or not, but there it is,” Faith mused. “Still, once you’re dead and danglin’, I don’t suppose you’ll have to worry much about that sort o’ thing. Speakin’ of which, you ain’t got nothin’ on you that you don’t fancy the hangman gettin’ his hands on after you take the big jump, do you?”
“I never stole anything to keep,” Fia heard Gunn reply in a low growl. “Only ever stole to make them as rule us poorer.”
Fia heard Faith spit and gurgle out a vile little laugh. “So you say, but I think I’ll be takin’ this as a little bonus all the same. ‘Tis a perilous job, after all, escorting the great, soon to be late, Torsten Gunn, eh?”
As Fia walked away, she cast an eye back and saw faith lean in and snatch something from the inside of Gunn’s collar. Bound and shackled as he was, Gunn could do nothing to stop the woman.
“You only get one chance with me,” she heard Gunn say, in a voice of hoarfrost and black ice.
Faith snickered derisively. “Just like the noose, eh, Gunn?”
“Just like the noose,” Gunn replied.
They camped as soon as the first light of the rising sun gilt the eastern horizon. It was a cold camp, much to the poor opinion of Fergus Allaway, but Fia wouldn’t let them risk a fire. They ate cold chicken and pears, hard cheese and hard biscuits, washed down with creek water. Fia caught the smell of red-eye being passed around before the rest of her band rolled themselves in their blankets to get some sleep. She declined the skin offered to her mutely by Lorna Forbes, but took a nip of her own flask when everyone else had turned in.
Fia took first watch. She wanted to think and to drink and to make sure that Gunn was going to behave himself. Since leaving the township of Last Hallow, he had become surlier and less prone to chat civilly to her. Fia reckoned it was because he was starting to comprehend that he might not get out of this situation alive. Maybe, he was starting to doubt that his gang hadn’t up and left him, and picked some new piece of shit to lead them.
She had watched the man while they ate dinner and the sun ascended into a wide sky filled with high white clouds. Gunn had kept his eyes fixed thoughtfully on Faith. The dirty woman occasionally looked up from her food and leered across the circle at the longrider, touching at something hidden in the noisome depths of her cleavage. Gunn only chewed his food and watched the woman.
They were up and back in the saddle before midday.
“With the path I mean to take, we’ve a couple of full days at least until we get to the Foldwood,” Fia said. “We’re going to be riding hard until we get there, so go easy on the drink and keep your eyes sharp. We’re all of us watchmen, all of the time, out here.”
Under the light of day, Fia urged her tireless brumby on across the rugged, brutal steppe. The company was quiet, except for the constant sniping and jesting of the Allaway twins at one another, and the occasional rebuke from Fergus when he’d had enough of their shit. The sky was all layered cloud; layer upon layer of whites, greys and hazy blues, the sun ducking in and out between them as she chose. Shadows as big as mountains swept across the plains. All around the riders, grass waved in the ceaseless breeze. It moved like an ocean, rising above the knees of their mounts, making footing treacherous so that they were obliged to trot more slowly than Fia would have liked.
“I like it out here,” Gunn said, his horse coming up to graze beside Fia’s as they stopped for a bite and a drink. He looked around, scanning, Fia imagined, for some sign of his gang. “I like how a man gets the sense that everything is touchin’ everythin––the grass touchin’ the hills, the hills touchin’ the mountains, all connected, all the way to the seas. Might be hundreds of miles separating us from the hill country of Aldinfang, the fishing ports of Keldland, but we’re all touching nonetheless.”
Fia eyed the outlaw as she took a pull on her water skin.
“You know you're goin’ to have to ditch the skinny one, don’t you?” Gunn said abruptly, his clear grey eyes screwed up against the harsh flat light of the sky. “The skinny, sorry-looking blonde that a wolf wouldn’t bother stoppin’ at the door of. That nag of hers won’t last the trip.”
Fia looked over at the woman that called herself Hunter. She was checking the hooves of her mount, a meek-looking thing with a brindle-coloured coat.
“Might be your right,” she said grudgingly to the man. “No point wasting my breath on telling her to go back, though. Clear as day she needs the silver. If she wants to die out here trying to earn it, then who am I to tell her no.”
Fia woke that night, in a moonless blackness diffused only by the stars, to a persistent noise like someone beating wet laundry on a riverbank. Suddenly alert, she sat up. Saw a blacker shape cut out of the blackness of the sky behind. Took her all of a splintered second to realise that it was Gunn.
“What the…” she muttered, as her eyes adjusted.
Fia surged out of her blanket. Her movement woke Gil and Lenix Allaway, who were sleeping nearest her.
“The fuck?” Lenix mumbled.
“Attack?” Gil blurted drowsily.
Gunn was on his knees. He had a large rock in his manacled hands and was pounding it into Faith’s face, where she lay quite still in her bedroll. As Fia moved towards him––too slowly––a hiss escaped Gunn’s lips.
Faith’s spiteful face was a mess of blood and pulped flesh. Shards of bone stuck out through her split cheeks. Her jaw was crushed to one side, a few of her rotten teeth caught in her matted hair. One eye stared upward, reflecting the chill light of a distant star. The other had been reduced to a jelly that had run down one ruined cheek into the dust. Gunn brought the rock down again and smashed a shallow dent into the woman’s forehead. Then he lunged forward and pulled something from around Faith’s neck. Jerked it free with a grunt of satisfaction.
Fia hit Gunn in the temple with the pommel of her dirk, sending him tumbling sideways. He dropped the rock and rolled into Fergus Allaway, who was still struggling to extricate his bulk from his blankets. The big man sat up, recognised what was happening and headbutted Gunn with his big, bald dome. Gunn, who had risen to one knee, went over backwards, spitting blood that was black in the starlight.
Fia straddled the longrider where he lay and held her dirk to his throat. He was laughing to himself through a split lip. His eyes glinted in the dim light. His fist was closed tight around something.
“One chance,” he chuckled. “That’s the most any of us can expect.”