The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness #2) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,48

weren’t a lot of things would bring someone to Slorfa, but they made good ale, the hillmen, her head was dizzy with it. Or maybe that was the sickness of the Long Eye. Hard to tell the difference. Scenn frowned, settling his bulk cross-legged.

“She has a sense of humour, then. She’ll need that, up in the High Places. There are few laughs at the forbidden lake.” He frowned towards Isern again. “Do you really think this little shred of gristle, this little snot with the ring through her nose, is beloved of the moon?”

Isern spat ale in the fire and made it hiss. “What would you know about it, Scenn-i-Phail, who carries our father’s hammer?”

Scenn stuck his beard out at her. “I’d know as much as you, Isern-i-Phail, who carries our father’s spear. Just because he loved you best, don’t think you learned the most from him.”

“You’re joking, you sheep-fucker! Our father hated me.”

“He did. He loathed the guts and face and arse of you, head to toe.” Scenn paused a moment. “And you were his favourite.”

And the two of them burst out laughing together. They might not have looked much alike but their laughter was the same. Mad, cackling peels that sounded halfway to wolves howling while overhead the full moon hung fat and round, and they smashed their cups together and sent up a fountain of ale and drained what was left and carried on laughing.

Shivers watched them, face in shadow. “This’ll be a long month, I reckon.”

“No,” said Rikke, snuggling into that smelly fur and shutting her eyes. “This hasn’t happened yet.”

“Always upwards,” gasped Rikke, shading her eyes against the sun and squinting uphill.

“That’s going into the hills for you.” Isern wasn’t even out of breath. Nothing ever tired her.

“Where are we headed, exactly?” asked Shivers, his boots crunching on the dirt path.

“To the forbidden lake.”

“That much I know. I’m asking where it is.”

“If they told everyone where it was, it wouldn’t be very forbidden, would it?”

Shivers rolled his eyes. Or eye, at least. “Do you have any straight answers, woman?”

“What use are straight answers in a crooked world?”

Shivers gave Rikke a glance, but she was too out of breath to do much more than shrug. “How… do we get there… then?” she asked between her wheezes.

“My brother Scenn knows the way. He is a turd in the shape of a man, but he’ll help. We’ll head to his village first, which is a turd in the shape of a village. Slorfa, they call it, at the head of the valley four valleys on.”

“Sounds… a long way,” muttered Rikke.

“One foot in front of the other will get it done with time.”

“How many brothers do you have?” asked Shivers.

“Eleven of the bastards, and each more like a dog’s arse than the last.”

Rikke raised her brows. “You don’t… talk about ’em much.”

“We all had different mothers,” said Isern, as though that explained the whole business. “My upbringing was less than happy. An ordeal, d’you see? Living through it once was bad enough but had to be done. Remembering it is a thing I aim to avoid.”

Isern stopped on a heap of rocks, and pulled out a flask, and splashed water over her head and some more in her mouth and offered it to Rikke.

By the dead, she was weary. She stood, swallowed water, wiped sweat from her forehead. It was springing out about as fast as she could drink it. Her vest was soaked through. She reeked like a haystack after the rains. The air was cool, but her eye, her eye was always hot. Burning in her head. There’d been a time, she was sure, when she could run and run and never stop. Now a few paces had her panting, and her head pounding, and her sight swimming, ghosts haunting the edges of her vision.

She looked back the way they’d come, out of the hills over the crinkling valleys towards the lowlands. Back down the long miles walked towards Uffrith. Into the past.

“Let’s make some footprints,” grunted Isern, turning back to the steeply climbing trail. “The forbidden lake won’t be coming to us, will it?”

Rikke blew out so hard she made her lips flap and wiped a fresh sheen of sweat from her forehead.

“Need to ride on my shoulders?” asked Shivers. Most folk couldn’t even have told he was smiling. But she knew how to tell.

“Never, you old bastard,” she growled, setting off. “More likely I’ll be carrying you.”

“That I’d like to see,” Isern threw over her