Saevus Corax Gets Away With Murder by K. J. Parker

Author:K. J. Parker [PARKER, K. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2023-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

We carried on walking, in what we hoped was the right direction. Gombryas kept pointing to a distant range of mountains, though I was fairly sure they weren’t what he thought they were. Stauracia was having problems with her boots, which I tried to fix with the needle and thread I’d thoughtfully brought with me, but failed. I kept thinking about the man I’d seen at the village: was he all right, had he found something to eat, had anyone turned up to rescue him or had the enemy come back and got him? None of my business, I tried to tell myself, but apparently I wasn’t listening.

We came across two more burned-out villages – no survivors in either of them – and a third which wasn’t burned, just abandoned. They’d taken everything with them, all the food and the clothes and the boots (much to Stauracia’s disgust), and they’d put a dead dog down the well. And this wasn’t even the war, just some trifling local dispute in a faraway place of which we knew little. Soon, all the places I knew, Scona and Beloisa and Choris and Auxentia City, Olbia and Mezentia and Sirupat, they’d be like this, just as quiet and peaceful and safe to walk about in. The Sashan aren’t colonists; they have enough trouble populating their own turf, which is vast and empty because of the wars they had to fight to get it, so they wouldn’t be filling up the gaps with their tired, their poor, their huddled masses yearning to breathe free. No, what the Sashan like is a cordon sanitaire of empty desert, or its temperate-climate equivalent, where the only substantial communities are anthills. In ten years’ time, say, a man could go there and clear away the brush and chop down the thorn trees to build a modest cabin and live like a king, or at least the monarch of all he chose to survey. Provided, of course, that he had the energy and the optimism, which more or less ruled me out. There it is; one man’s graveyard is another man’s brave new world, and all it takes to make it tolerable is a comprehensive ignorance of history.

“You could try packing it out with a bit of the lining of your coat,” Gombryas suggested, which made Stauracia turn and stare at him. It was the first civil or constructive thing he’d said to her since Lachsar, even if it was patently impractical. “Then at least it wouldn’t chafe your toe.”

“Nothing left to pack,” she said, looking down at her boot. “God, I hate this place. That last village we came to – no, I tell a lie, it was the one before that – there was a wagon with its wheels staved in and nine horses in a stable with their throats cut. What a stupid fucking waste. We could be riding instead of walking. We’d probably be there by now.”

“Talking of which,” I said, “do we have any idea

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.