Red Country

by Joe Abercrombie

Lamb was hunched lower than ever, like he was trying to vanish into his own chest. Shy snorted. ‘You’re such a bloody coward.’ He gave her a sideways look, then away. ‘There’s worse a man can be.’

‘That’s a hell of an appetite to satisfy,’ said Bermi, picking daisies and flicking them away. ‘Bigger every day. It rivals Sufeen’s guilt.’ ‘This is not guilt,’ said Sufeen, frowning towards the prisoners. ‘This is righteousness. Did the priests not teach you that?’ ‘Nothing like a religious education to cure a man of righteousness,’ muttered Temple.

‘Cowardly bastards!’ Cosca slapped at his thigh. ‘Could they not stand and be slaughtered like decent men? I’m all for fermentation but fomentation is a damned imposition!’

‘His one firm stipulation, clear in the contract, as you see, is that you avoid any Imperial entanglements. Any and all, am I understood?’

Sworbreck had rarely observed violence of even the mildest sort. A dispute over narrative structure between two authors of his acquaintance had turned quite ugly, but that scarcely seemed to qualify now.

‘Huh. I guess fucking a person don’t stop them fucking you.’

Glory is like bread, it stales with time!

‘A word or two wouldn’t have hurt.’ He leaned close. ‘Way I see it, we’ve got two choices. Try and use these bastards, or kill ’em all. Hard words have never won a battle yet, but they’ve lost a few. You mean to kill a man, telling him so don’t help.’

Shebat’s footsteps echoed in the silence, through the first hall to the place of weapons, his sore leg dragging behind him. Old wound, old wound that never heals. The glory of victory lasts a moment, the wounds are always.

Some men, especially young ones, are fixed on taking offence at everything, from a rain shower to a fallen tree. From that offence they can fashion an excuse for any folly and any outrage.

Sworbreck had come to see the face of heroism and instead he had seen evil. Seen it, spoken with it, been pressed up against it. 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.

‘Why does everyone pout so over children?’ Cosca called after him. ‘They’ll turn out just as old and disappointing as the rest of us!’

The man who looked like Lamb didn’t flinch as the needle pierced his skin. ‘The real demons you bring with you.’

Strange, how the best moments of our lives we scarcely notice except in looking back.

No man capable of greater evil than the one who thinks himself in the right. No purpose more evil than the higher purpose. I freely admit I am a villain. That’s why you hired me. But I am no hypocrite.’

Conscience is a burden we choose to bear. Morality is the lie we tell ourselves to make its bearing easier. There have been many times in my life when I have wished it was not so. But it is so.’

Sometimes it’s better to do a thing than live with the fear of it. That’s what Lamb used to say.

‘But… no one respects me.’ ‘Because you don’t respect yourself. Doubt, Temple. Indecision. You simply worry too much. Sooner or later you have to do something, or you’ll never do anything.

To feel fear was to be without faith. It is not given to man to understand God’s design. Only to accept his place in it.

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.

‘I’m bored,’ said Pit. ‘One day, young man, you will learn what a luxury it is to be bored.’

Lamb frowned off towards the horizon. Shy grumbled her grudging agreement. Temple smiled to himself, and closed his eyes, and tipped his face back to let the sun shine pink through his lids. He was alive. He was free. His debts were deeper than ever, but still, a fair result. If there was a God, He was an indulgent father, who always forgave no matter how far His children strayed.

Facing death certainly can take it out of you. Especially if you’ve spent most of your life doing your best to avoid facing anything.