Then, footsteps, and a rattling of the handle on the farmhouse door just a few yards from where he squatted. A tingling excitation of fear ran through the skin of his hands and arms. The door jerked open with some violence, and a lurching figure emerged in a flood of light.
A big man, but all his strength was in his chest and arms, for his hips were narrow and his legs spindly. Not someone Quire recognised. He staggered a little as he came out from the farmhouse, taking a few steps in and out of the pool of light falling from the open door. He laughed to himself as he did it, amused by his own incoherent feet. First belch, then fart escaped his swaying form. At which he laughed again.
Quire shrank back into whatever meagre shadows there might be beneath the window; he willed himself to fade, become thin and faint, and berated himself for not waiting for some cloud to veil that vast moon. He pressed his shoulders to the wall, narrowed his eyes to slits lest the whites of them should give him away. He held his breath.
Peering out between his touching eyelashes, he watched as the man set one wide hand against the wall of the farmhouse, leaned heavily on it and with the other unbuckled his trousers. A heavy ring of keys clattered on his belt as he did so. A strong stream of piss played over the stones. The man was humming to himself as he urinated. The flow faltered, and dwindled in fits and starts to nothing.
The man hauled his trousers up once more and fumbled clumsily with his belt. Still Quire did not breathe. He could feel a crushing tightness building in his chest and throat, but he kept his jaw clamped shut, and wished with all his might for this drunken fool of a farmhand to remember how to buckle his own belt.
A fox barked, some little way off in the fields behind Quire. The man straightened and looked that way, hands still at his waist. He blinked stupidly and frowned into the darkness. Quire counted his own heartbeats; fought with his desperate need to suck in some air. And the big man’s gaze dropped, fell upon Quire’s face, slipped drunkenly away from it. But then the eyes sharpened a touch. The gaze returned to Quire. The man opened his mouth.
Quire surged up, emptying his burning lungs and filling them again in the space of one long pace. He put his shoulder into the man’s midriff and lifted him bodily from the ground. It was not easy, to turn in mid-stride with that much weight across him, but he did it, and punched the man back against the farmhouse wall. He heard the bony crack of the man’s skull against stone, but had brawled with enough drunks to know that beer was a mighty shield against blows that would take any sober man down. He put a pair of hard, quick strikes in under the ribcage with his right fist; pushed up with his left hand under the chin to smack head against wall again. Then he could feel the strength go from the man’s legs, could feel his weight sinking him.
Quire lowered him to the ground and knelt beside him. His knee was in the pool of urine, and he could feel the last vestiges of its quickly fading warmth through his trousers, but he ignored that. He listened. Nothing. No cries of alarm, no pounding feet. The farmhouse door still stood open, its light and warmth flooding into the night, but no one emerged.
Quire put a hand under each armpit and dragged the insensible man across the farmyard. Hard boot heels scraped on the cobbles, but that seemed unlikely to rouse any pursuit if it had not already been sparked. He could smell the drink coming thickly off his captive. Hopefully any companions he had left behind in the farmhouse were similarly befuddled. All Quire wanted now was a bit of time. He knew better than to taunt the gods of luck. Discovered once was more than enough.
The closest of the farm’s many buildings was the long, low, rather decrepit cowshed at one end of the yard. The moonlight was falling full upon its face, and Quire could see a heavy bar across its door, secured by chain and padlock. He unceremoniously pulled the ring of keys from the man’s belt and examined them. One looked a likely fit for the lock.
He clamped the key crossways between his teeth and, one step at a time, hauled his captive towards the shed. Any unconscious man—or a dead one, for that matter—had a terrible weight to him, and Quire knew that. He had not expected, though, quite how quickly his damaged left arm would weary of the task. He could feel it slipping out from under the man’s shoulder, moment by moment.
Had the shed been a few yards further, he might have lost his grip. As it was, he reached the door with his left arm trembling and cramping. He took the key with that hand, bearing the man’s full weight on his right arm and hip. He was relieved at the ease and quiet with which the padlock clicked open. The chain made a little more noise as it came free, and the key fell from the lock and rang softly on the ground before skittering into shadows. Quire glanced back towards the house. There was still no further sign of life. It might be that fortune had belatedly chosen to smile upon him, and there was no one else around to trouble him.
He lifted the bar and eased the door open; not much, just enough to let him enter. The silence and darkness that awaited within were welcome. A few last, painful heaves and he and the farmhand were inside, and the door closed behind them.
Quire sat for a moment on the hard floor, sucking in a few deep breaths. He reached blindly in the darkness, found the man’s arms and folded them across his chest. He let his hand rest there, feeling the rise and fall of the ribcage. Satisfied that no lasting harm had been done, he ground a thumb into his left palm, trying to ease some of the taut discomfort in the muscles. As he did so, his surroundings slowly, subtly impressed themselves upon his senses.
The place smelled like no cowshed he had ever encountered. It had a dry, almost herbal scent to it. And the distinctive stink of goat. As his eyes adapted themselves to the traces of moonlight seeping in through the ill-fitting door, he picked out a strange complexity of shapes. There were no byres, no stalls, as best he could tell; none of what was needed to handle cattle. Only some odd constellation of objects—he could not tell what in the gloom— hanging from the rafters above him. Jars or other storage vessels along the walls. Down at the far end, at the very limit of what his eyes could detect, perhaps tables or desks.
And sound. So faint, so tenuous, that he had to hold his breath to track it. In the most distant corner, where the darkness was complete and impenetrable. Cloth brushing against flagstones. Something—fingernails?— scratching on wood.
Quire tugged his pistol out from the deep pocket inside his coat. Its weight in his hand was a comfort of sorts, but he sincerely hoped it would not be needed. The noise would dispel any last hope of concealment, and he had brought only enough powder and balls for three shots. He had come meaning only to look, not to fight.
He peered into the furthest corner of the shed. There was something there, something moving. Something or someone. But he could not see anything, only hear the telltale frictional scrapings.
Quire’s legs wanted to run, carry him out into the fields and away from this strangely desolate and dark farm. The unconscious man at his feet might wake at any moment; some other curious guard might emerge from the farmhouse. But he had not yet seen anything to explain Durand’s fear, or the importance of this place.
Though there was a hollow foreboding taking root in his guts, Quire set himself on his haunches and whispered: “Who’s there?”
The response was immediate. A thrashing about in the darkness. Limbs battering against walls or furniture. Not a word, though. Nothing to say if it was man or beast that lurked there. Quire could hear objects falling to the ground, breaking.
He tightened his grip on his pistol and cursed his misfortune. Or ill judgement, perhaps. It hardly mattered now which it was. He turned his back on the tumult in the shadows, his spine tingling with apprehension at the act, and peered out between the doors of the shed, angling his head to get a narrow view of the door to the farmhouse. Still open, still spilling light.
He heard wood cracking, splintering in the darkness behind him. His heart hammered. He looked back, blindly, into the depths of the cowshed. The frenzied thrashing grew louder still.
He slipped out of the shed and settled the bar down across its pegs on the door. He reached for the chain, at his feet, and found it tangled. He spent a precious moment or two trying to get it back in its place, but heard something overturned, a terrible crashing, from within; no longer in that far corner of the shed, he thought, but closer to the door. Time, he judged, was against him.
He let the chain fall and went on his toes—quickly, but quiet—to the corner of the shed and around into the deeper moon shadows. There was a crude outhouse of some sort leaning against the stone wall, with a sloping roof like a chicken coop. Quire brushed against it as he passed, and there was an eruption of excitement within. He recoiled from it, stifling a cry of alarm in his throat. This noise he could decipher more easily than the chaotic racket that still emanated from the main shed; this time, he could hear blunt claws scrabbling against the wooden planks. His nostrils caught the sharp, rotten stink of dog. Fear took hold of him. Simple, deep fear.
He ran, no longer caring about concealment. He pounded across the yard, the tail of his long coat flapping
