Red Country

by Joe Abercrombie

Perhaps, as Kahdia once told him, you are on the wrong side as soon as you pick one. But it had been Temple’s observation that it was those caught in the middle that always get the worst of it. And he was done with getting the worst.

To be brave among friends was nothing. To have the world against you and pick your path regardless–there is courage.

‘Never leave to God what you can do yourself!’

‘A man can spend the time he’s given crapping his arse out over what might be, but where does it get you?’

She’d learned early that once you were stuck with a task you were best off giving it your all.

‘I reckon everyone should get a chance,’ he said. ‘Even those don’t deserve it?’ ‘Especially them, maybe.’

‘She’s easy to fall in love with, the Far Country, but she’s a cruel mistress. Always leading you on. That’s how it’s been with me, ever since I was younger’n Leef here. The best grass is always just past the horizon. The sweetest water’s in the next river. The bluest sky over some other mountain.’ He gave a long sigh. Afore you know it, your joints snap of a morning and you can’t sleep two hours together without needing to piss and of a sudden you realise your best country’s all behind you, never even appreciated as you passed it by, eyes fixed ahead.’

‘But the seeds of the past bear fruit in the present, my father used to say.

I’ve always been a deeply disappointing man.’ ‘I know that feeling.’ Lamb scratched slowly at his shortened beard. ‘But there’s always tomorrow. Doing better next time. That’s what life is.’

It seemed to Temple he was that most dangerous kind of priest–one who really believes.

My old teacher used to say you know the righteous by what they give to those who can’t give back.

The trouble with running is wherever you run to, there you are. Temple’s problem was Temple, and it always had been.

Evil turned out not to be a grand thing. Not sneering Emperors with world-conquering designs. Not cackling demons plotting in the darkness beyond the world. It was small men with their small acts and their small reasons. It was selfishness and carelessness and waste. It was bad luck, incompetence and stupidity. It was violence divorced from conscience or consequence. It was high ideals, even, and low methods.

“Sooner or later you have to do something, or you’ll never do anything,”

That’s what courage is. Taking your disappointments and your failures, your guilt and your shame, all the wounds received and inflicted, and sinking them in the past. Starting again. Damning yesterday and facing tomorrow with your head held high. Times change. It’s those that see it coming, and plan for it, and change themselves to suit that prosper.

If there was a God, the world seemed exactly the way it would be if there wasn’t one.