Red Country Read Online Free PDF Page A

way onto the wrong side. Again. But it’s not always easy to tell when you’re picking. 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.
    Sufeen stood by the prisoners, an empty canteen in one hand.
    ‘What are you about?’ asked Temple.
    ‘He is wasting water,’ said Bermi, lounging in the sun nearby and scratching at his blond beard.
    ‘On the contrary,’ said Sufeen. ‘I am trying to administer God’s mercy to our prisoners.’
    One had a terrible wound in his side, undressed. His eyes flickered, his lips mouthed meaningless orders or meaningless prayers. Once you could smell a wound there was little hope. But the
outlook for the others was no better. ‘If there is a God, He is a smarmy swindler and never to be trusted with anything of importance,’ muttered Temple. ‘Mercy would be to kill
them.’
    Bermi concurred. ‘I’ve been saying so.’
    ‘But that would take courage.’ Sufeen lifted his scabbard, offering up the hilt of his sword. ‘Have you courage, Temple?’
    Temple snorted.
    Sufeen let the weapon drop. ‘Nor I. And so I give them water, and have not enough even of that. What is happening at the top of the hill?’
    ‘We await our employers. And the Old Man is feeding his vanity.’
    ‘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. He thought of Haddish Kahdia speaking the lessons in the plain white room, and his younger self
scoffing at them. Charity, mercy, selflessness. How conscience is that piece of Himself that God puts in every man. A splinter of the divine. One that Temple had spent long years struggling to
prise out. He caught the eye of one of the rebels. A woman, hair tangled across her face. She reached out as far as the chains would allow. For the water or the sword, he could not say.
Grasp
your future!
called the words inked into her skin. He pulled out his own canteen, frowned as he weighed it in his hand.
    ‘Some guilt of your own?’ asked Sufeen.
    It might have been a while since he wore them, but Temple had not forgotten what chains felt like. ‘How long have you been a scout?’ he snapped.
    ‘Eighteen years.’
    ‘You should know by now that conscience is a shitty navigator.’
    ‘It certainly doesn’t know the country out here,’ added Bermi.
    Sufeen spread wide his hands. ‘Who then shall show us the way?’
    ‘Temple!’ Cosca’s cracked howl, floating from above.
    ‘Your guide calls,’ said Sufeen. ‘You will have to give them water later.’
    Temple tossed him the canteen as he headed back up the hillside. ‘You do it. Later, the Inquisition will have them.’
    ‘Always the easy way, eh, Temple?’ called Sufeen after him.
    ‘Always,’ muttered Temple. He made no apology for it.
    ‘Welcome, gentlemen, welcome!’ Cosca swept off his outrageous hat as their illustrious employers approached, riding in tight formation around a great fortified wagon. Even though the
Old Man had, thank God, quit spirits yet again a few months before, he still seemed always slightly drunk. There was a floppy flourish to his knobbly hands, a lazy drooping of his withered eyelids,
a rambling music to his speech. That and you could never be entirely sure what he would do or say next. There had been a time Temple had found that constant uncertainty thrilling, like watching the
lucky wheel spin and wondering if his number would come up. Now it felt more like cowering beneath a storm-cloud and waiting for the lightning.
    ‘General Cosca.’ Superior Pike, head