I wonder at the history of the lieutenant and her men. They seem at least semi-soldierly, for all that they are obviously irregulars, looking out only for themselves, not part of any larger force nor paying any conspicuous allegiance to a greater cause. Still, their vehicles, it occurs to me, are army, or ex-army. Most of the bands of fighters now roaming the land - little more or less than bandits - we’ve heard favour, or have no choice but to requisition and employ, ordinary four-wheel drives, or pick-ups. In contrast, the lieutenant’s men have proper military trucks and jeeps, and their weapons seem of a piece: several heavy machine-guns, automatic rifles, rifle grenades, matching automatic pistols. I had thought they might add my shotguns and rifle to their arsenal, but if they have, such weapons are patently not their first choice. They seem, in retrospect, quite disciplined too. Were they a regular army unit, once?
I decide to ask. I look at the lieutenant, sitting, staring ahead, eyes hidden behind the black sunglasses. She turns her head briefly as we pass a road junction and a canted but still legible signpost, then looks forward again. I ponder the best way to approach. She takes out her silver cigarette case, opens it and selects one. I lean over towards her, past Karma’s intruding knees. ‘May I?’ I ask, pointing at the case as she is about to close it.
The mask that is the sunglasses regards me; I see my own distorted reflection. Her lips twist. She holds the case out towards me. ‘Sure. Help yourself.’
I take a cigarette; we bend towards each other as she lights mine, then hers. The cigarette tastes acrid and harsh; it must have dried out over a year or more ago to become so bitter. I had wondered where the lieutenant found her tobacco, surmising there might still be some link, however circuitous and unsafe, however much the preserve of smugglers and the desperate, to wherever peace and a semblance of prosperity might still prevail, but these dry tubes have surely been raided from ruined shops or taken from the fleeing dispossessed; no hint here of a fresh supply.
‘I didn’t know you smoked, Abel,’ she says over the noise of the jeep’s progress.
‘The occasional cigar,’ I say, trying not to cough.
‘Hmm,’ she says, drawing on the cigarette. ‘Nervous?’ she asks.
‘A little,’ I tell her. I smile. ‘I imagine you must be inured to this sort of thing by now.’
She shakes her head. ‘No. Some people get numb to it.’
She flicks ash to the wind, faces forward again. ‘But they usually die soon after. For most people the first time is the worst, then it gets better for a while, if you have time to recover in between, but after that, usually soon after that, it just gets worse and worse.’ She looks at me. ‘You get better at hiding it, that’s all.’ She shrugs. ‘Until you just crack up completely.’ Another draw on her caustic cigarette. ‘Opinion amongst us is divided on the subject of whether it is better to go a bit crazy every now and again and try to get it out of your system, though at the risk of losing it completely, or bottle it all up in the hope we are overtaken by events and peace breaks out, so we can be post-traumatically stressed in comfort.’
Grief, they have even thought this through. ‘A grim choice,’ I say. ‘But you must have been trained for this, mustn’t you?’
Her head jerks back and she makes a sound that may be a laugh. ‘The army’s training was a little rushed by the time most of our little band came along.’
‘Were you always--?’
The radio crackles; she holds one hand up to me as she raises the instrument to her ear. Wires trail from the base of the radio, leading under the driver’s seat in front. I realise suddenly that only the vehicle’s engines, and therefore fuel, keep the radios recharged and operating. I am not able hear what is transmitted, and her reply is so quick and terse I cannot make out those words either.
The lieutenant taps our driver on the shoulder and leans forward to speak in his ear; he begins to flash his lights at the jeep in front and wave one arm, while the lieutenant swivels to the rear, gesturing to the trucks behind.
We slow, the vehicles draw up by the roadside, and I am required to stand to one side, kicking stones into a waterlogged ditch while the lieutenant carries out another briefing of her men. I throw the cigarette end into the still, deep waters of the ditch; it hisses once. Beyond, whole fields are flooded, the irrigation and drainage system of the entire plain upset by the lack of human tending.
The lieutenant spreads maps over the front of a jeep, pointing and gesturing and looking in turn at her men, commanding them by name.
We resume our transport, shortly turning on to smaller roads, then taking to a steep track that leads up the side of a small valley. The lieutenant seems tense, and does not wish to talk; my attempts to revive our earlier conversation elicit only grunts and monosyllables. She smokes no more cigarettes. Our jeep takes the lead and, after someone has gone on ahead on foot, we arrive at the rear of a farm on the hillside; the lieutenant leaps out and disappears inside the farmhouse.
She reappears a few minutes later, goes to the rear of one of the trucks and is handed down a bag I recognise. It is the one I put the shotguns and my rifle in when we fled in the carriage. By the look of it, it is still as heavy. She carries it into the farmhouse. Behind me, Karma scans the hillsides and woods with a pair of binoculars, tensing to concentrate on one skyline, then relaxing. ‘Scarecrow,’ I hear him mutter.
The lieutenant comes back without the bag. ‘Okay,’ she says to the others in the jeep, reaching in to take the satchel that was at her feet.
Both trucks and one of the jeeps are parked in a tall, three-sided barn facing into the farm’s courtyard. The lieutenant checks the maps with me. I point out the first part of the route from here while one of the soldiers - face painted with streaks of green, black and yellow - looks on too. A man I have not seen before - a farmer from his dress and manner - opens a stable door and leads out a dozen horses. They constitute a mixture of old and young, colts, mares and geldings. There are two that look like thoroughbreds, and a huge muscled pair with broad, hair-fringed hooves. Saddles are placed on the smaller animals; packs from the trucks are loaded on to the farm horses’ broad backs.
‘Hop on,’ the lieutenant tells me, climbing inexpertly on to the saddle of a black mare and fumbling with the reins. She looks down at me. ‘You do ride, don’t you?’
I swing up and into the saddle of the chestnut gelding alongside her mount. I pat its neck and settle, ready, while she is still sorting the reins and trying to find her other stirrup.
I stroke my mount’s mane. ‘What’s his name?’ I ask the farmer.
‘Jonah,’ he replies, walking off.
I rather wish I had not asked.
Mr Cuts and another half-dozen soldiers clamber on to the remaining horses.
Three soldiers take the jeep not secreted in the barn and drive back down the track we arrived on. Two men are left at the farm to guard the other three vehicles. One of the lieutenant’s soldiers - the one who studied the map with us - scouts ahead. He carries a small radio but no pack and is armed only with a knife and pistol. Horses to the front, we set off following him further up the hill, across a steep field and into a dense and tangled wood.
The lieutenant manages to make her nag drop back until for a moment she is level with me. ‘We keep very quiet from now, all right?’
I nod. She does too, then kicks her horse ahead again.
The path narrows; branches scrape and tug and try for eyes. We have to duck, avoiding, and the heavy horses wait patiently for their caught packs to be freed. Our lessened band plods on, over a succession of jumbled dips and crests in the earth like an ocean swell made solid and fixed aslant to the hillside. The air is still and silent in the dim half-light beneath the crowding tracery of boughs and dark towers of conifers. The lieutenant takes the lead, ungainly on her black mare. I alone ride well. My mount snorts, its own breath wavering a reversal in the chilling air.
Behind us, trying to quiet their weapons’ clatter and still control their nag
s, the lieutenant’s brave brutes struggle, battling already.
Someone retches, near the back of our troop.
We stop at a fork in the track, where our scout is waiting. His fatigues and steel helmet appear to have sprouted a small forest of twigs, fir fronds and tufts of grass. The lieutenant and I consult the map, our legs touching, horses nuzzling each other. I indicate our route to her and the scout. As I point at the map, I notice that my hand is shaking. I withdraw it quickly, hoping the lieutenant has not noticed.
We ride on up the steep and narrow path. I think I detect the smell of death upon the air as it filters through these dank woods. In my belly something stirs, as though fear is a child that either sex may nurture within their bowels. The continual trough and rise of stunted ridges, convoluted, seem like the contours of the human brain exposed by the surgeon’s knife beneath the bloody plates of skull, each surface-deep division concealing a malignant thought.
Above the thick pelts of the evergreens and beyond the fractured assemblage of black, leaf-bare branches, the sky that once was blue now seems leeched of colour, turned to the shade of wind-dried bones.
CHAPTER TWELVE
This will not go well, something says within me. The body knows (something whispers); the ancient instincts, the part of the mind we once called heart or soul can judge such situations more shrewdly than the intellect, can sniff the air and clearly know that only evil can result from whatever’s been embarked upon.
I become my own tormentor; every sense with every other fights to make the most of each sensation, and so the least of sense in all, producing a hall of clashing mirrors for nervous over-emphasis itself to ambush there. I try to calm my distraught thoughts, but the very substance of my self seems to lack all purchase. What was solidly dependable is now liquefied and draining and there is nothing to hold that does not quickly seep away, leaving behind a hollow vessel whose emptiness only magnifies every rumour of peril the scraped-raw nerves rush to report.
Around me, every shaded patch of ground becomes the lurking shape of men with guns, each bird flitting between the branches transforms itself into a grenade hurled straight at me, every animal rustling in the underbrush at the path’s side is the prelude to a leap, attack, and either the hammer-blows of gunfire striking my body or a hand clamped over my eyes and a blade pulled merciless and slicing across my throat. My nose and mouth are filled with the reek of forests in decay, the scent of brutal, pitiless men lying sweating as they prepare to fire, and the odour of sleekly oiled guns, each one filled with death and swinging to us as surely as weathercocks point out the breeze. At the same time, it seems to me that our every passing noise - the horses’ breath, the merest flick of slid-past leaf or snap of twig - screams with furious enunciation, broadcasting our progress and intent to the forests, plains and hills.
I close my eyes, clench my hands. I will my gut to cease its churning. One of the soldiers was sick, I tell myself. I know; I heard him just a few moments ago. Their faces have been pale all day, nobody has eaten since breakfast. Several disappeared round the back of the farm when we stopped, to void from one end or other. You must not give in. Think of the shame; to have to stop, to dismount, run for cover, drop your trousers, have them laugh at you as you squat there, forced to listen to their remarks. Think of the lieutenant’s expression, her feeling of victory, of superiority over you. Do not let this be. Do not give in!
Then my horse comes to a halt.
I open my eyes. We are all stopped. The soldier sent ahead earlier is standing by the path-side, whispering to the lieutenant. She turns back, looks down the line of mounted men. She makes some hand signals I do not follow, and two soldiers dismount, hurrying forward, past me. Both have camouflaged faces and uniforms stuck with pieces of plants. One carries a long, black crossbow. So we are already reduced to this, I think.
The lieutenant gives them orders; the three men lope on ahead.
The lieutenant holds up her arm, points at her watch and splays five fingers. I look round to see most of the others dismounting. Several disappear silently into the bushes. The men, I notice, have become more conventionally soldierly in their dress; the gaudy items of their dress, the found mementoes from the castle have all vanished to be replaced by the dull drabness of camouflage gear. The lieutenant watches them, smiling. I pat Jonah gently on the neck, then sit back, arms folded. The lieutenant turns forward again, looking on up the path where the three soldiers disappeared. Her back looks tense.
I slide quietly off my horse and pace quietly through the undergrowth downhill, aware of the lieutenant watching me. I stop by a tree and undo my fly. I stand, apparently ready, then look to my side, as though only now noticing her watching me. I regard her for a moment, then walk a little further away, behind a tall bush. I think I see her smile, before I’m hidden from her.
At last. I quickly tug my belt free, squat and release. A happy breeze above provides a gently overwhelming susurration of sound. I have chosen the right direction; the current of the air here flows away from the path. A handkerchief suffices, sacrificed.
I rejoin the rest, carefully buttoning my fly. The lieutenant is still intent on the path ahead. As I remount, there is some movement at the point where the lieutenant’s attention seems focused. She makes another signal to the rest, and shortly we continue up the rising path.
We pass the two killed sentries a minute later. They were in a little covered trench some way off the path, uphill in the trees. They have been dragged out of their nest, loose and slack and left together on the sloping ground outside. Both are young, dressed in combat fatigues; one has a crossbow bolt through his left eye, the other has had his throat cut so deeply his head is almost severed from his body. Looking closer, the other’s throat has been cut too, but more elegantly, less messily. Our two soldiers wipe their knives upon the fatigues of the men they’ve killed, and look proud. The lieutenant nods in appreciation and makes a signal; the bodies are bundled back inside the trench, falling slackly. Horses are led forward for our two heroes to remount; the third man, the scout, has disappeared again.
We find the gun ten minutes later. At a signal from the scout the lieutenant has us gather in a hollow and dismount. The men shoulder their heavy packs and heft their weapons; the horses are tethered to trees. The lieutenant looks over her men, eyes flitting over faces, packs, guns. She whispers to a few, smiles, pats them on the arm.
She comes to me and puts her mouth to my ear. ‘This is the dangerous bit, Abel,’ she whispers. ‘Soon the shooting starts.’ I can feel her breath on my cheek, sense the physicality of this low murmur entering the soft convolutions of cartilage and flesh. ‘You can stay here with the horses, if you like,’ she tells me. ‘Or come on with us.’
I shift my head, put my lips to her ear. Her olive-dark skin smells of nothing at all. ‘You’d trust me with the horses?’ I ask, amused.
‘Oh, you’d have to be tied up,’ she says softly.
‘Tied up or getting to watch,’ I tell her. ‘You spoil me. I’ll come.’
‘I thought you might.’ Suddenly there is a huge, serrated knife in front of my eyes, its blade covered with matt stripes of dark paint, only the extremity of its scalloped edge left naked in a wavy, shining line. ‘But not a sound after this, Abel,’ she breathes, ‘or it’ll be your last.’ I tear my gaze from that fearsome blade and try to detect some irony in those grey eyes, but see only the reflection of still greyer steel. My eyes have gone wide; I narrow them and smile as tolerantly as I can, but she is already turned and gone. In the distance, on the breeze, I can hear an engine running.
We leave the horses, cross a low bank and another shallow depression then clamber up the steep, root-rutted side of a taller ridge; the engine noise grows louder all the time. At the summit of the incline, in the midst of damp, brown bracken through which the lieutenant and her men insinuate themselves with delicate grace and minimal disturbance - which I attempt to emulate - we come out above a cliff.
The gun sta
nds caught in sunlight, barely a grenade’s throw away. It lies in the middle of an old mine’s buildings, surrounded by the ruins of a failed enterprise; a corroded lattice of brown, narrow-gauge rails, a tilted, rickety wooden tower topped with a single wheel, peeling, tumbledown sheds with vacant, shattered windows, skewed and crumpled corrugated iron roofs and a scatter of dented, rusting drums.
The gun alone looks efficient and whole, its metal form a dull, dark green. Its body is longer than the trucks we left in the farm. It rests on two tall rubber-tyred wheels; beneath the barrel there is a parallel pair of long, sealed tubes and protecting its crew there is a flat plate sloped over the breech, where a confusion of wheels, handles, levers and two small bucket-seats are perched above a broad circular base that looks as if it can be lowered to take the weapon’s weight.
Behind, two long, spade-footed legs have been swivelled together to form a towing bar. A group of soldiers is engaged in hooking it up to a noisy farm tractor, while behind them an open-decked civilian truck waits, engine idling. A few other uniformed men are loading bags, packs and boxes on to the truck, making journeys from the least ruined of the mine’s buildings; a two-storey brick construction that looks as if it was an office. I count only a dozen men altogether, none of them carrying obvious weapons. The smell of diesel exhaust drifts on the air.
The lieutenant, beside me, uses her field-glasses, then whispers urgently to her men; orders are passed along the line in each direction, over my head. I sense an excitement in her communicating itself to her soldiers, two groups of whom are scuttling away on either side just below the summit of the ridge, their shadows scattering, merging dark in darkness. They are moving quicker than they did on the approach, any noise they make covered by the engines and the favouring wind. The lieutenant and the remaining third of her little force are all reaching into packs, withdrawing magazines and grenades.
I look around, at the perfect, lifeless blue of the sky above, at the mass of dark fir-trees on the ochre slope behind the mine, at the orange sun, hanging on the hill’s far rim like fingers clawing a ledge, then down at the gun again, now held within the shade of the western hills. It has been secured to the tractor. The truck behind is moving now, the driver leaning half out of his opened door as the vehicle backs up by the side of a fallen-down building towards a twin-axled trailer covered with a tarpaulin. Four soldiers get behind the trailer and try to shift it forward to meet the truck, but fail. They laugh, voices echoing, and shake their heads, settling for beckoning the truck onwards.