‘What do we do?
She tossed the length of wood over her shoulder and it bounced away up the road behind them. ‘Not stop?’
The wagon shot from the trees and onto the plateau. The first glimmer of dawn was spilling from the east, a bright shaving of sun showing over the hills, starting to turn the muddy sky a washed-out blue, the streaked clouds a washed-up pink, setting the frozen snow that blanketed the flat country to glitter.
Shy worked the reins hard and insulted the horses again, which felt a little unfair to Temple until he remembered how much better insults had worked on him than encouragement. Their heads dipped and manes flew and the wagon picked up still more speed, wheels spinning faster on the flat, and faster yet, the snowy scrub whipping past and the wind blasting at Temple’s face and plucking at his cheeks and rushing in his cold nose.
Far ahead he could see horses scattering across the plateau, Sweet and Crying Rock no doubt further off with most of the herd. No dragon’s hoard to retire on, but they’d cash in a decent profit on a couple of hundred mounts. When it came to stock, people out here were more concerned with price than origin.
‘Anyone following?’ called Shy, without taking her eyes off the road.
Temple managed to pry his hand from the seat long enough to stand and look behind them. Just the jagged blackness of the trees, and a rapidly growing stretch of flat whiteness between them and the wagon.
‘No!’ he shouted, confidence starting to leak back. ‘No one… wait!’ He saw movement. A rider. ‘Oh God,’ he muttered, confidence instantly draining. More of them. ‘Oh God!’
‘How many?’
‘Three! No! Five! No! Seven!’ They were still a few hundred strides behind, but they were gaining. ‘Oh God,’ he said again as he dropped back down into the shuddering seat. ‘Now what’s the plan?’
‘We’re already off the end of the plan!’
‘I had a nasty feeling you’d say that.’
‘Take the reins!’ she shouted, thrusting them at him.
He jerked his hands away. ‘And do what?’
‘Can’t you drive?’
‘Badly!’
‘I thought you’d done everything?’
‘Badly!’
‘Shall I stop and give you a fucking lesson? Drive!’ She pulled her knife from her belt and offered that to him as well. ‘Or you could fight.’
Temple swallowed. Then he took the reins. ‘I’ll drive.’ Surely there was a God. A mean little trickster laughing His divine arse off at Temple’s expense. And hardly for the first time.
Shy wondered how much of her life she’d spent regretting her last decision. Too much, that was sure. Looked like today was going to plough the same old furrow.
She dragged herself over the wooden parapet and onto the wagon’s tar-painted roof, bucking under her feet like a mean bull trying to toss a rider. She lurched to the back, shrugged her bow off into her hand, clawed away her whipping hair and squinted across the plateau.
‘Oh, shit,’ she muttered.
Seven riders, just like Temple said, and gaining ground. All they had to do was get ahead of the wagon, bring down a horse or two in the team and that’d be that. They were out of range still, specially shooting from what might as well have been a raft in rapids. She wasn’t bad with a bow but she was no miracle-worker either. Her eyes went to the hatch on the roof, and she tossed the bow down and slithered over to it on her hands and knees, drew her sword and jammed it into the hasp the padlock was on. Way too strong and heavy. The tar around the hinges was carelessly painted, though, the wood more’n halfway rotten. She jammed the point of the sword into it, twisted, gouged, working out the fixings, digging at the other hinge.
‘Are they still following?’ she heard Temple shriek.
‘No!’ she forced through her gritted teeth as she wedged her sword under the hatch and hauled back on it. ‘I’ve killed them all!’
‘Really?’
‘No, not fucking really!’ And she went skittering over on her arse as the hatch ripped from its hinges and flopped free. She flung the sword away, thoroughly bent, dragged the hatch open with her fingertips, started clambering down into the darkness. The wagon hit something and gave a crashing jolt, snatched the ladder from her hands and flung her on her face.
Light spilled in from above, through cracks around the shutters of the narrow windows. Heavy gratings down both sides, padlocked and stacked with chests and boxes and saddlebags bouncing and thumping and jingling, treasure spilling free, gold gleaming, gems twinkling, coins sliding across the plank floor, five king’s ransoms and change left over for a palace or two. There were a couple of sacks under her, too, crunchy with money. She stood, bouncing from the gratings to either side as the wagon twitched left and right on its groaning springs, started dragging the nearest sack towards the bright line between the back doors. Heavy as all hell but she’d hauled a lot of sacks in her time and she wasn’t about to let this one beat her. Shy had taken beatings enough but she’d never enjoyed them.
She fumbled the bolts free, cursing, sweat prickling her forehead, then, holding tight to the grate beside her, booted the doors wide. The wind whipped in, the bright, white emptiness of the plateau opening up, the clattering blur of the wheels and the snow showering from them, the black shapes of the riders following, closer now. Much closer.
She whipped her knife out and hacked the sack gaping open, dug her fist in and threw a handful of coins out the back, and another, and the other hand, and then both, flinging gold like she was sowing seed on the farm. It came to her then how hard she’d fought as a bandit and slaved as a farmer and haggled as a trader for a fraction of what she was flinging away with every movement. She jammed the next fistful down into her pocket ’cause—well, why not die rich? Then she scooped more out with both hands, threw the empty bag away and went back for seconds.
The wagon hit a rut and tossed her in the air, smashed her head into the low ceiling and sent her sprawling. Everything reeled for a moment, then she staggered up and clawed the next sack towards the swinging, banging doors, growling curses at the wagon, and the ceiling, and her bleeding head. She braced herself against the grate and shoved the sack out with her boot, bursting open in the snow and showering gold across the empty plain.
A couple of the riders had stopped, one already off his horse and on his hands and knees after the coins, dwindling quickly into the distance. But the others came on regardless, more determined than she’d hoped. That’s hopes for you. She could almost see the face of the nearest mercenary, bent low over his horse’s dipping head. She left the doors banging and scrambled back up the ladder, dragged herself out onto the roof.
‘They still following?’ shrieked Temple.
‘Yes!’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Having a fucking lie down before they get here!’
The wagon was hurtling into broken land, the plateau folded with little streams, scattered with boulders and pillars of twisted rock. The road dropped down into a shallow valley, steep sides blurring past, wheels rattling harder than ever. Shy wiped blood from her forehead with the back of her hand, slithered across the shuddering roof to the rear, scooping up the bow and drawing an arrow. She squatted there for a moment, breathing hard.
Better to do it than live with the fear of it. Better to do it.
She came up. The nearest rider wasn’t five strides back from the swinging doors. He saw her, eyes going wide, yellow hair and a broad chin and cheeks pinked from the wind. She thought she’d seen him writing a letter back in Beacon. He’d cried while he did it. She shot his horse in the chest. Its head went back, it caught one hoof with the other and horse and rider went down together, tumbling over and over, straps and tackle flapping in a tangle, the others swerving around the wreckage as she ducked back down to get another arrow, thought she could hear Temple muttering something.
‘You praying?’
‘No!’
‘Better start!’ She came up again and an arrow shuddered into the wood just beside her. A rider, black
