Free Red Country by Joe Abercrombie Page B

could hardly stop
himself from cutting Dimbik’s throat just to find out what would happen.
    ‘Well, I never did!’ Cosca threw up his arms. ‘Sergeant Friendly, it’s our old companion-in-arms!’
    ‘Caul Shivers,’ said Friendly quietly, never taking his eyes from the Northman. Sworbreck was reasonably sure that looks cannot kill, but even so he was very glad he was not standing
between them.
    Without taking the blade from Dimbik’s throat, Shivers clumsily forked up some eggs, chewed as though none of those present had anything better to do, and swallowed. ‘Fucker tried to
take my eggs,’ he said in a grinding whisper.
    ‘You unmannerly brute, Dimbik!’ Cosca righted one of the chairs and dropped into it opposite Shivers, wagging a finger in the captain’s flushed face. ‘I hope this is a
lesson to you. Never take eggs from a metal-eyed man.’
    Sworbreck wrote that down, although it struck him as an aphorism of limited application. Dimbik tried to speak, perhaps to make that exact point, and Shivers pressed knuckles and knife a little
harder into his throat, cutting him off in a gurgle.
    ‘This a friend of yours?’ grunted the Northman, frowning down at his hostage.
    Cosca gave a flamboyant shrug. ‘Dimbik? He’s not without his uses, but I’d hardly say he’s the best man in the Company.’
    It was difficult for Captain Dimbik to make his disagreement known with the Northman’s fist pressed so firmly into his throat he could scarcely breathe, but he did
disagree, and most profoundly. He was the only man in the Company with the slightest care for discipline, or dignity, or proper behaviour, and look where it had landed him. Throttled by a barbarian
in a wilderness slop-house.
    To make matters worse, or at any rate no better, his commanding officer appeared perfectly willing to trade carefree smalltalk with his assailant. ‘Whatever are the chances?’ Cosca
was asking. ‘Running into each other after all these years, so many hundreds of miles from where we first met. How many miles, would you say, Friendly?’
    Friendly shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t like to guess.’
    ‘I thought you went back to the North?’
    ‘I went back. I came here.’ Evidently Shivers was not a man to embroider the facts.
    ‘Came for what?’
    ‘Looking for a nine-fingered man.’
    Cosca shrugged. ‘You could cut one off Dimbik and save yourself a search.’
    Dimbik spluttered and twisted, tangled with his own sash, and Shivers ground the point of the knife into his neck and forced him helplessly back against the tabletop.
    ‘It’s one particular nine-fingered man I’m after,’ came his gravelly voice, without the least hint of excitement at the situation. ‘Heard a rumour he might be out
here. Black Calder’s got a score to settle with him. And so have I.’
    ‘You didn’t see enough scores settled back in Styria? Revenge is bad for business. And for the soul, eh, Temple?’
    ‘So I hear,’ said the lawyer, just visible out of the corner of Dimbik’s eye. How Dimbik hated that man. Always agreeing, always confirming, always looking like he knew better,
but never saying how.
    ‘I’ll leave the souls to the priests,’ came Shivers’ voice, ‘and the business to the merchants. Scores I understand. Fuck!’ Dimbik whimpered, expecting the
end. Then there was a clatter as the Northman’s fumbled fork fell on the table, egg spattering the floor.
    ‘You might find that easier with both hands.’ Cosca waved at the mercenaries around the walls. ‘Gentlemen, stand down. Shivers is an old friend and not to be harmed.’ The
various bows, blades and cudgels drifted gradually from readiness. ‘Do you suppose you could release Captain Dimbik now? One dies and all the others get restless. Like ducklings.’
    ‘Ducklings got more fight in ’em than this crowd,’ said Shivers.
    ‘They’re mercenaries. Fighting is the last thing on their minds. Why don’t you fall in with us? It would be just like old