A giggle had him turning back into the dark mouth of the open doorway. His breath misted before his face. One last glance over his shoulder at the still grassland that surrounded them and he moved inside.
When he entered the stable, Kira was finger-combing her hair down while Nick pretended to sleep.
‘One more hour,’ Nick groaned as he pulled the horse-blanket over his head, which hid everything except a few golden tufts of hair.
Euan’s lips kicked up and his gaze met Kira’s. ‘I said he could have ten minutes,’ she told him.
The answering moan from beneath the blankets made both of them grin. ‘If we leave now, the next river we come across we’ll make time to wash up,’ Euan suggested. ‘Sound good?’
More grumbling, until finally, Nick reluctantly pushed the blankets down from his face to peer at Euan. ‘Promise?’
Euan jerked his chin.
As Nick bemoaned the unfair treatment, Kira was packing up their supplies. ‘He did take the longest watch,’ she commented.
Euan shook his head. ‘It’s his own fault. If he’d woken you when he was meant to, he’d have at least four hours sleep.’ His gaze cut to Nick. ‘Instead, he only had two. Think of it as a lesson.’
Kira’s smile beamed and Nick’s grumbles increased.
Euan was the last to leave their sanctuary. His pack weighed his shoulders down, but his heart was light. They had a destination, they had purpose, they had hope. The tension between them had broken, been destroyed by love. If they could make it to the mountains without being discovered, they would see the end of this road of suffering, maybe for all of mankind.
Nick took the lead and Euan came up from behind. Kira narrowed her eyes at their unsubtle layer of protection. She opened her mouth to speak, only to close it and shake her head. She wrapped her face in her black scarves, her blue eyes the only visible feature, and stomped off until they caught up.
The grass swayed at their hips. The earth slipped under their boots. The dirt was pungent, full of new growth as the warmer months beckoned with crooked fingers. Euan’s hands played with the tips of long stalks as he passed. He pulled them from their roots, threw them as he walked. Their black fatigues were a stark contrast to their golden surroundings. Slowly the sun rose and the mist dissipated, until a cloudless vibrant blue sky with a white sun was above them.
Euan rubbed at his eyepatch and scratched under the leather string that secured it to his head. A grumble of complaint wanted to be heard, but he bit it back. His feet ached and if he wasn’t careful where he stepped, a slice of pain would shoot up through his calf. It reminded him that his injuries were far from fully healed. But at least his nerves were working.
At his side, Nick removed a stalk of straw from his hair. ‘Tell me again why we didn’t sleep in the house.’
It was Kira who answered. ‘Too obvious. Even I know that.’ She smiled a cat-like smile.
Nick threw the straw at her, only for it to catch the wind and fly into his face.
He spluttered as Kira laughed, and Euan grunted in humour.
The ground steadily sloped upwards. It was Nick who first noticed him lag. His blond hair was hidden from view with a scarf of his own. Green eyes sharpened at Euan before he turned his focus back up towards the rising terrain. He stopped. Kira halted beside him.
When Euan reached them, his breath came out hard. ‘I’m fine.’
Nick snorted and Kira pressed her lips together to stifle her smirk.
‘One might think you’re getting old?’ Nick said without inflection.
Euan narrowed his eye, felt the muscles in his cheek tighten. ‘One might shut his mouth before I stick something in it to keep it quiet.’
There it was, a flash of hunger, a flare of need in those green depths. Euan couldn’t help the smile then, hidden by his own scarf. Nick bumped his shoulder as he passed. Kira did the same.
They reached the summit by midday. Below them, pasture, green and gold stretched out wide. Grass once used for domesticated animals now grew long without their attention. Fences bisected the land, broken and twisted and with no one to repair them, their prisoners had fled. Where they were now, was anyone’s guess. But Euan suspected it was most likely in the stomach of predators both native and introduced. Sheep and cows had not been bred to defend themselves from wolves and wild dogs.
To their right, the mountains, their destination. A blue-green wall of trees and earth with rounded peaks that reached for the sky.
In between them, and their end goal, was a forest of pines, a river.
And a road.
The black tar snaked its way through the land. Graceless, ugly, diseased. Even from this distance, the erosion was evident. The edges were lost to the landscape, the grey bisected with green and brown, where earth and vegetation had penetrated the darkness to reach the light. Its presence created a sickness in Euan’s belly. It bubbled, turned sour. Roads were harbourers of evil. Monsters and men travelled on roads.
Euan pulled his rifle from his shoulder. At his side, Nick and Kira did the same. The easiness and comraderie of their earlier trek was gone, evaporated. They moved forward as one unit, careful, watchful. Eyes scanned, ears and focus locked onto their environment.
Grassland turned into trees. Pasture into pine. They were careful and took their time to find their way through the close-knit forest that quickly surrounded them. The ferns of the undergrowth swished against their legs, hiding rocks and rotting logs. Each step was deliberate, careful. The air smelt of pine and earth. Euan’s fingers pulsed with his heartbeat.
Euan knew better than to make demands. To ask them to step back, to walk behind him. They were a trio now. A hunting pack, one
