She snatched in a breath and blew it out hard, dashed spit from her lip, blood from her forehead, caught another breath and forced it free. Then she gathered up Jeg’s sword, gritting her teeth against the urge to spew rising in waves along with the thumping pain in the side of her face. Shit but she wanted to sit down. Just stop. But she made herself turn away. Forced herself up to the back door of the tavern. The one Jeg had come through, still alive, a few moments before. Takes a lifetime of hard work to make a man. Only takes a few moments to end one.
Neary had dragged himself out of the hole his fall had put through the floorboards, clutching at his bloody trouser leg and looking quite put out about it. ‘Did you catch that fucking bitch?’ he asked, squinting towards the doorway.
‘Oh, no doubt.’
His eyes went wide and he tried to drag himself towards his bow, not far out of reach, whimpering all the way. She hefted Jeg’s big sword as she got close and Neary turned over, eyes wide with terror, holding up one desperate arm. She hit it full-blooded with the flat of the sword and he moaned, clutching it to his chest. Then she hit him across the side of the head and rolled him over, blubbering into the boards. Then she padded past him, sliding the sword through her belt, picked up the bow and dragged some arrows from his quiver. She made for the door, stringing one as she went, and peered out into the street.
Dodd was still scraping coins from the dust and into the bag, working his way towards the well. Insensible to the fates of his two companions. Not as surprising as you might suppose. If one word summed up Dodd, it was insensible.
She padded down the steps of the tavern, near to their edges where they were less likely to give a warning creak, drawing the bow halfway and taking a good aim on Dodd, bent over in the dust with his back to her, dark sweat patch down the middle of his shirt. She gave some long, hard consideration to making that sweat patch the bull’s eye and shooting him in the back right there. But killing a man isn’t easy, especially after hard consideration. She watched him pick up the last coin and drop it in the bag, then stand, pulling the drawstrings, then turn, smiling. ‘I got the—’
They stayed there a while. He with the bag of silver in one hand, uncertain smile lit up in the sun, but his eyes looking decidedly scared in the shadow of his cheap hat. She on the bottom step of the tavern – bloody bare feet, bloody split mouth, bloody hair plastered across her bloody forehead – but the bow good and steady.
He licked his lips, swallowed, then licked them again. ‘Where’s Neary?’
‘In a bad way.’ She was surprised by the iron in her voice. Sounded like someone she didn’t even know. Smoke’s voice, maybe.
‘Where’s my brother?’
‘In a worse.’
Dodd swallowed, sweaty neck shifting, starting to ease gently backwards. ‘You kill him?’
‘Forget about them two and stop still.’
‘Look, Shy, you ain’t going to shoot me, are you? Not after all we been through. You ain’t going to shoot. Not me. Are you?’ His voice was rising higher and higher, but he kept edging back towards the well. ‘I didn’t want this. It weren’t my idea!’
‘Course not. You need to think to have an idea and you ain’t up to it. You just went along. Even if it happened to mean me getting hanged.’
‘Now look, Shy—’
‘Stop still, I said.’ She drew the bow all the way, string cutting tight into her bloody fingers. ‘You fucking deaf, boy?’
‘Look, Shy, let’s just talk this out, eh? Just talk.’ He held his trembly palm up like that might stop an arrow, his pale blue eyes were fixed on her, and suddenly she got a memory rise up of the first time she met him, leaning back against the livery, smiling free and easy, none too clever but plenty of fun. She’d had a profound lack of fun in her life since she’d left home. You’d never have thought she left home to find it.
‘I know I done wrong, but … I’m an idiot.’ And he tried out a smile, no steadier than his palm. He’d been worth a smile or two, Dodd, at least to begin with, and though no artist of a lover had kept the bed warm, which was something, and made her feel as if she weren’t on her own on one side with the whole rest of the world on the other, which was something more.
‘Stop still,’ she said, but more softly now.
‘You ain’t going to shoot me.’ He kept on edging back towards the well. ‘It’s me, right? Me. Dodd. Just don’t shoot me, now. What I’m going to do is—’
She shot him.
It’s a strange thing about a bow. Stringing it, and drawing it, and nocking the arrow, and taking your aim – all that takes effort, and skill, and a decision. Letting go the string is nothing. You just stop holding it. In fact, once you’ve got it drawn and aimed it’s easier to let fly than not to.
Dodd was no more than a dozen strides distant, and the shaft flitted across the space between them, missed his hand by a whisker and stuck silently into his chest. Surprised her, the lack of a sound. But then flesh is soft. Specially in comparison to an arrowhead. Dodd took one more wobbly pace, like he hadn’t quite caught up with being arrow-stuck yet, his eyes going very wide. Then he blinked down at the shaft.
‘You shot me,’ he whispered, and he sank to his knees, blood already spreading out into his shirt in a dark oval.
‘Didn’t I bloody warn you!’ She flung the bow down, suddenly furious with him and with the bow, too.
He stared at her. ‘But I didn’t think you’d do it.’
She stared back. ‘Neither did I.’ A silent moment, and the wind blew up one more time and stirred the dust around them. ‘Sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ he croaked.
Might’ve been the stupidest thing she’d ever said, and that with some fierce competition, but what else could she say? No words were going to take that arrow out. She gave half a shrug. ‘I guess.’
Dodd winced, hefting the silver in one hand, turning towards the well. Shy’s mouth dropped open and she took off running as he toppled sideways, hauling the bag into the air. It turned over and over, curving up and starting to fall, drawstrings flapping, Shy’s clutching hand straining for it as she sprinted, lunged, fell …
She grunted as her sore ribs slammed into the wall around the well, right arm darting down into the darkness. For a moment she thought she was going in after the bag – which would probably have been a fitting conclusion – then her knees hit the dirt outside.
She had it by one of the bottom corners, loose canvas clutched by broken nails, drawstrings dangling as dirt and bits of loose stone filtered down around it.
Shy smiled. For the first time that day. That month, maybe.
Then the bag came open.
Coins tumbled into the darkness in a twinkling shower, silver pinging and rattling from the earthy walls, disappearing into the inky nothingness, and silence.
She straightened up, numb.
She backed away slowly from the well, hugging herself with one hand while the empty bag hung from the other.
She looked over at Dodd, lying on his back with the arrow sticking straight up from his chest, his wet eyes fixed on her, his ribs going fast. She heard his shallow breaths slow, then stop.
Shy stood there a moment, then doubled over and blew puke onto the ground. Not much of it, since she’d eaten nothing that day, but her guts clenched hard and made sure she retched up what there was. She shook so bad she thought she was going to fall, hands on her knees, sniffing bile from her nose and spluttering it out.
Damn but her ribs hurt. Her arm. Her leg. Her face. So many scrapes, twists and bruises she could hardly tell one from another, her whole body was one overpowering fucking throb.
Her eyes crawled over to Dodd’s corpse. She felt another wave of sickness and forced them away, over to the horizon, fixing them on that shimmering line of nothing.
Not nothing.
There was dust rising in the distance. S
he wiped her face on her ripped sleeve one more time, so filthy now that it was as like to make her dirtier as cleaner. She straightened, squinting into the haze, hardly able to believe it. Riders. No doubt. A good way off, but as many as a dozen.
‘Oh, hell,’ she whispered, and bit her lip. Things kept going this way she’d soon have chewed right through the bloody thing. ‘Oh, hell!’ And Shy put her hands over her eyes and squeezed them shut and hid in self-inflicted darkness in the desperate hope she might have somehow been mistaken. Would hardly be her first mistake, would it?
But when she took her hands away the dust was still there. The world’s a mean bully, all right, and the lower down you are the more it delights in kicking you. Shy put her hands on her hips, arched her back and screamed up at the sky, the word drawn out as long as her sore lungs would allow.
‘Fuck!’
The echoes clapped from the buildings and died a quick death. No answer came. Perhaps the faint droning of a fly already showing some interest in Dodd. Neary’s horse eyed her for a moment then looked away, profoundly unimpressed. Now Shy had a sore throat to add to her woes. She was obliged to ask herself the usual questions.
What the fuck now?
She clenched her teeth as she hauled Dodd’s boots off and sat in the dust beside him to pull them on. Not the first time they’d stretched out together in the dirt, him and her. First time with him dead, though. His boots were way too loose on her, but a long stride better than no boots at all. She clomped back into the tavern in them.
Neary was making some pitiable groans as he struggled to get up. Shy kicked him in the face and down onto his back, plucked the rest of the arrows from his quiver and took his heavy belt-knife, too. Out into the sun again and she picked up the bow, jammed Dodd’s hat onto her head, also somewhat on the roomy side but at least offering a bit of shade as the sun got up. Then she dragged the three horses together and roped them into a string – quite a ticklish operation since Jeg’s big stallion was a mean bastard and looked determined to kick her brains out.
When she’d got it done she frowned off towards those dust trails. They were headed for the town all right, and fast. With a closer look she reckoned on about nine or ten, which was two or three better than twelve but still an almighty inconvenience.
Bank agents after the stolen money. Bounty hunters looking to collect her price. Other outlaws got wind of a score. A score that was currently in the bottom of a well, as it went. Could be anyone. Shy had an uncanny knack for making enemies. She found she’d looked over at Dodd, face down in the dust with his bare feet limp behind him. The only thing she had worse luck with was friends.
How had it come to this?
She shook her head, spat through the little gap between her front teeth and hauled herself up into the saddle of Dodd’s horse. She faced it away from those impending dust clouds, towards which quarter of the compass she knew not.
Shy gave the horse her heels.
Near Barden, Autumn 584
Tinder stood in his doorway, and watched the Union ruin his crop.
No pleasant pastime, just standing there and watching hours, and days, and months of your dawn-to-dusk hard work and hard worry crushed into the mud. But what were his choices? Charge out there with his pitchfork swinging and chase off the Union on his own? Tinder let out a bitter snort. Black Dow and all his War Chiefs and every Carl and Named Man in the wide and barren North were giving that their best effort and having little enough success. Tinder weren’t the fighter he used to be, and he’d never been the hardest around.
So he stood in his doorway, and watched the Union ruin his crop.
First had come the scouts, hooves pounding. Then the soldiers, row upon row of ’em, boots tramping. Then the wagons, creaking and groaning like the dead in hell, wheels ripping up Tinder’s land. Dozens. Hundreds. They’d churned the track to knee-deep slop, then they’d spilled off it and onto the verge and churned that to slop, then they’d spilled off that and into his crops and made slop of an ever-widening strip of them, too.
There’s war for you. You start with something worth something, you end up with slop.
The morning after the first scouts passed through they’d come for his chickens, a dozen jumpy Union soldiers and a Northman to make ’em understood. Tinder understood well enough without words. He knew when he was being robbed. The Northman had looked sorry about it, but a sorry look was all he’d got in trade. What could you do, though? Tinder was no hero. He’d been to war, and he’d seen no heroes there, either.
He gave a long, rough sigh. Probably he deserved it, for the misdeeds of his youth, but deserving it made the thought of a hungry winter no sweeter. He shook his head and spat out into the yard. Bloody Union. Though it was no worse’n when Ironhead and Golden had their last little disagreement, and both came through here robbing whatever they could get their fat hands on. Put a few men with swords together, even men with usually pleasant manners, and it’s never long before they’re all acting like animals. It was like old Threetrees always said – a sword’s a shitty thing to give a man. Shitty for him, and shitty for everyone around him.
‘Are they gone yet?’ asked Riam, creeping up close beside him to peer out, sunlight turning one half of her face white while the other was in shadow. She looked more like her mother with every day.
‘I’ll tell you when they’re gone!’ he growled at her, blocking the door with his body. He’d been on that march, down through Angland with Bethod. He’d done things, and he’d seen things done. Tinder knew how narrow the line was between folk in their house just minding their business and black bones in a burned-out shell. Tinder knew every moment those Union men were at the bottom of his field, him and his children were only just on the right side of that line. ‘Stay inside!’ he called after her as she made sulkily for the back room. ‘And keep the shutters closed!’
When he looked outside again, Cowan was coming around the side of the house, milking pail in one hand, plain as day, just like it was any old morning.
‘You soft in the head, boy?’ Tinder snapped at him as he slipped through the doorway. ‘Thought I told you to stay out o’ sight?’
‘You didn’t say how. They’re crawling everywhere. If they see me creeping they’ll just think we’ve got something to hide.’
‘We have got something to hide! You want ’em to take the goat as well?’
Cowan hung his head. ‘She ain’t giving much.’
Now Tinder felt guilty as well as scared. He reached out and ruffled his son’s hair. ‘No one’s giving much right now. There’s a war on. You just need to keep low and move quick, you hear?’
‘Aye.’
Tinder took the pail from Cowan and put it down beside the door. ‘Get back there with your sister, eh?’ Then he snatched a quick peek around the frame and cursed under his breath.
A Union man was walking up to the house, and one Tinder liked the look of even less than most. Big, with too little neck and too much armour, a long sword sheathed on one side and a shorter on the other. Tinder might not have been the hardest, but he’d seen enough to spot a killer in a crowd, and something in the set of this big man got the back of his neck to tingling.
‘What is it?’ asked Cowan.
‘Just get inside like I told you!’ Tinder slid the hatchet from the table and let it fall down behind his leg, working his fist around the cool, smooth handle, mouth suddenly dry.
He might not be the fighter he once was, and he might never have been the hardest, but a man’s no man who won’t die for his children.
Tinder had been half-expecting the neckless bastard to draw one of those swords and kick the door right down and Tinder along with it. But all he did was take two slow steps up to the porch, Tinder’s poor carpentry creaking under his big boots, and smile. An unconvincing, almost sorry-looking smile, slow to come, like doing it took an effort. Like he was smiling in s
pite of some burning wound.
‘Hello,’ he said, in Northern. Tinder felt his brows go up. He’d never heard such a strange, high little voice on a man, ’specially one big as this. Closer up his eyes were sad, not fierce. He had a satchel over his shoulder, a golden sun stamped into it.
‘Hello.’ Tinder tried to keep his face slack. Not angry. Not scared. Nothing and nobody. Certainly nobody who needed killing.
‘My name is Gorst.’ Tinder didn’t see a need to reply to that. Like anything else, a name’s a thing you share when you need to. Silence stretched out. An ugly, dangerous silence with the faint bad-tempered calls of men and animals floating over from the bottom of the field. ‘Did I see your son with milk?’
Tinder narrowed his eyes. Here was a tester. Deny what this Gorst had already seen and risk riling him up, maybe put Tinder and his children in deeper danger? Or admit it and risk losing his goat along with all the rest? The Union man shifted in the doorway and the light caught the pommel of one of his swords, brought a steely glint to it.
‘Aye,’ croaked Tinder. ‘A little.’
Gorst reached into his satchel, Tinder’s eye following that big hand all the way, and came out with a wooden cup. ‘Might I trouble you for some?’
Tinder had to put the axe down so he could pick up the bucket, but he didn’t see much choice. Never seemed to have any choice these days, no more’n a leaf on the wind can pick its path. That’s what it is to be ordinary folk with a war at the doorstep, he guessed.
The Union man dipped his cup, held it so a couple of drips fell, then looked up. They looked at each other for a long moment. No anger in the big man’s eyes, or spite, or even much of anything. Tired eyes, and slow, and Tinder swallowed, sure he was looking his death in its face, and far from a pretty face, too. But in the end Gorst only nodded his balding rock of a head towards the trees, where a little smoke from the forge was smudging the iron-grey sky. ‘Can you tell me the name of that village?’