Swords & Dark Magic - By Jonathan Strahan Page 0,189
no one with the slightest sense would ever choose to live. Who knew how he thought?
“Told you it was a real piss-stain of a village, didn’t I?” Never was in the midst of stringing his bow. He had that grin he tended to have, like he’d made a joke on everyone else and no one but him had got it. Craw would’ve liked to know what it was, he could’ve done with a laugh. The joke was on all of ’em, far as he could see.
“Reckon you had the right of it,” said Wonderful as she strutted past into the clearing. “Piss. Stain.”
“Well, we didn’t come to settle down,” said Craw, “we came to get a thing.”
Jolly Yon achieved what many might’ve thought impossible by frowning deeper, black eyes grim as graves, dragging his thick fingers through his thick tangle of a beard. “What sort of a thing, exactly?”
Craw gave Raubin another look. “You want to dig that one over?” The fixer only spread his hands, helpless. “I hear we’ll know it when we see it.”
“Know it when we see it? What kind of a—”
“Tell it to the trees, Yon, the task is the task.”
“And we’re here now, aren’t we?” said Raubin.
Craw sucked his teeth at him. “Brilliant fucking observation. Like all the best ones, it’s true whenever you say it. Yes, we’re here.”
“We’re here,” sang Brack-i-Dayn in his up-and-down hillman accent, sucking the last shred o’ grease from his bone and flicking it into the bushes. “East of the Crinna where the moon don’t shine, a hundred miles from a clean place to shit, and with wild, crazy bastards dancing all around who think it’s a good idea to put bones through their own faces.” Which was a little rich, considering he was so covered in tattoos he was more blue than white. There’s no style of contempt like the stuff one kind of savage has for another, Craw guessed.
“Can’t deny they’ve got some funny ideas east of the Crinna.” Raubin shrugged. “But here’s where the thing is, and here’s where we are, so why don’t we just get the fucking thing and go back fucking home?”
“Why don’t you get the fucking thing, Raubin?” growled Jolly Yon.
“’Cause it’s my fucking job to fucking tell you to get the fucking thing is why, Yon fucking Cumber.”
There was a long, ugly pause. Uglier than the child of a man and a sheep, as the hillmen have it. Then Yon talked in his quiet voice, the one that still gave Craw prickles up his arms, even after all these years. “I hope I’m wrong. By the dead, I hope I’m wrong. But I’m getting this feeling…” He shifted forwards, and it was awfully clear all of a sudden just how many axes he was carrying, “like I’m being disrespected.”
“No, no, not at all, I didn’t mean—”
“Respect, Raubin. That shit costs nothing, but it can spare a man from trying to hold his brains in all the way back home. Am I clear enough?”
“’Course you are, Yon, ’course you are. I’m over the line. I’m all over it on both sides of it, and I’m sorry. Didn’t mean no disrespect. Lot o’ pressure, is all. Lot o’ pressure for everyone. It’s my neck on the block just like yours. Not down there, maybe, but back home, you can be sure o’ that, if she don’t get her way…” Raubin shuddered again, worse’n ever.
“A touch of respect don’t seem too much to ask—”
“All right, all right.” Craw waved the pair of ’em down. “We’re all sinking on the same leaky bloody skiff, there’s no help arguing about it. We need every man to a bucket, and every woman too.”
“I’m always helpful,” said Wonderful, all innocence.
“If only.” Craw squatted, pulling out a blade and starting to scratch a map of the village in the dirt. The way Threetrees used to do a long, low time ago. “We might not know exactly what this thing is, but we know where it is, at least.” Knife scraped through earth, the others all gathering around, kneeling, sitting, squatting, looking on. “A big hall, in the middle, with uprights on it carved like foxes. They look more like dragons to me, but, you know, that’s another story. There’s a fence around the outside, two gates, north and south. Houses and huts all around here. Looked like a pig pen there. That’s a forge, maybe.”
“How many do we reckon might be down there?” asked Yon.