Red Country - Logen and Caul

 L'altra volta vi ho presentato Roland di Gilead, l'ultimo pistolero o gunslinger. Oggi tocca a un altro splendido personaggio nato dalla penna di Joe Abercrombie: Logen Ninefingers, aka the Bloody Nine, aka Lamb. Un personaggio magnifico, tragico, protagonista della prima trilogia della First Law e che ricompare quasi alla chetichella in Red Country. In queste ultime pagine incontra un suo vecchio amico/nemico, Caul Shivers, ed è una scena da brividi. E da stupida speranza per le sorti dell'uomo :)

‘Stay out of it, Shy. It’s an old debt we got. Past time it was paid.’ Then he spoke to Shivers in Northern. ‘Whatever’s between me and you, it don’t concern these.’

Shivers looked at Shy, and at Ro, and it seemed to her there was no more feeling in his living eye than in his dead. ‘It don’t concern these. Shall we head outside?’

They walked down the steps in front of the store, not slow and not fast, keeping a space between them, eyes on each other all the way. Ro, and Shy, and Pit, and Wist edged after them onto the porch, watching in a silent group.

‘Lamb, eh?’ said Shivers.

‘One name’s good as another.’

‘Oh, not so, not so. Threetrees, and Bethod, and Whirrun of Bligh, and all them others forgotten. But men still sing your songs. Why’s that, d’you reckon?’

‘’Cause men are fools,’ said Lamb.

The wind caught a loose board somewhere and made it rattle. The two Northmen faced each other, Lamb’s hand dangling loose at his side, stump of the missing finger brushing the grip of his sword, and Shivers gently swept his coat clear of his own hilt and held it back out of the way.

‘That my old sword you got there?’ asked Lamb.

Shivers shrugged. ‘Took it off Black Dow. Guess it all comes around, eh?’

‘Always.’ Lamb stretched his neck out one way, then the other. ‘It always comes around.’

Time dragged, dragged. Those children were still laughing somewhere, and maybe the echoing shout of their mother calling them in. That old woman’s rocker softly creak, creaking on the porch. That weathervane squeak, squeaking. A breeze blew up then and stirred the dust in the street and flapped the coats of the two men, no more than four or five strides of dirt between them.

‘What’s happening?’ whispered Pit, and no one answered.

Shivers bared his teeth. Lamb narrowed his eyes. Shy’s hand gripped almost painful hard at Ro’s shoulder, the blood pounding now in her head, the breath crawling in her throat, slow, slow, the rocker creaking and that loose board rattling and a dog barking somewhere.

‘So?’ growled Lamb.

Shivers tipped his head back, and his good eye flickered over to Ro. Stayed on her for a long moment. And she bunched her fists, and clenched her teeth, and she found herself wishing he’d kill Lamb. Wishing it with all her being. The wind came again and stirred his hair, flicked it around his face.

Squeak. Creak. Rattle.

Shivers shrugged. ‘So I’d best be going.’

‘Eh?’

‘Long way home for me. Got to tell ’em that nine-fingered bastard is back to the mud. Don’t you think, Master Lamb?’

Lamb curled his left hand into a fist so the stump didn’t show, and swallowed. ‘Long dead and gone.’

‘All for the best, I reckon. Who wants to run into him again?’ And just like that Shivers walked to his horse and mounted up. ‘I’d say I’ll be seeing you but . . . I think I’d best not.’

Lamb still stood there, watching. ‘No.’

‘Some men just ain’t stamped out for doing good.’ Shivers took a deep breath, and smiled. A strange thing to see on that ruined face. ‘But it feels all right, even so. To let go o’ something.’ And he turned his horse and headed east out of town.