‘No,’ whispered Ardwyn, easing the knife down. ‘Don’t make yourself a threat.’
Everett did as he was told. Moccus grunted, apparently satisfied that there was no challenge here, then in an explosion of movement he was racing past them and into the trees, crashing sounds diminishing towards the stream gully and the thickest part of the woods.
During the customary hog roast on the green, Mother took him to one side. ‘Your work has been better than I could have hoped,’ she said. ‘You have a gift for bloodletting.’
‘Thank you, Mother. I’m sensing a “but”, though.’
She nodded. ‘But now is the time for you to go. Moccus will go out into the wild places of the world to hunt and mate, and there’s no place or purpose for you here until he returns.’
The deserter was surprised at how distressing he found this sudden change of plan. ‘What about Nikolai? My pig, I mean. I still need to complete my bracelet, don’t I, to become one of you properly?’
‘You already are one of us. The last six months should have proven that. I think sitting around here twiddling your thumbs for the next two or three years waiting for that pig to grow would be an unnecessary delay.’
‘I might get too comfortable, you mean.’
‘Something like that, yes.’
‘Too comfortable with your daughter.’
Mother sighed. ‘Ardwyn has told you what her part in the Farrow is, I take it?’
‘Yes, she has, to shack up with some stuffed shirt and set up a happy little coven of her own, which if you ask me—’
‘I didn’t,’ Mother cut him off, and the flatness of her tone was absolute. ‘And I won’t. You won’t be consulted. Your approval is neither required nor wanted. I am Mother, just as she will become Mother of her own sounder, you’re right, and she will have the final say over the fate of the males that come to her, just as I have over mine. Over you. You are a soldier. You’re accustomed to obeying orders. Well, obey this one.’
‘I’m a deserter,’ he reminded her. ‘I gave up taking orders. And I’ve never taken them from women.’
She met his gaze, and there was not one hint of indecision or mercy in it. ‘Then desert,’ she said. ‘Leave us. That’s exactly what I’m telling you to do, in case you weren’t paying attention. But if it satisfies your masculine pride to tell yourself that you’re going on your own terms and not because some woman told you, then I’m not going to argue.’
‘And come back in, what – 1942?’ He couldn’t keep the scepticism out of his voice. For all that he had seen and done, the horizon of his future had only ever been, at best, months at a time. To ask him to plan twenty-six years ahead, she might as well have been asking him to fly to the moon.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘But I like it here,’ he replied. ‘This is as close to a home as anything I can remember. I can be useful here in other ways.’
‘You mean farming? Building barns? We’ve already had this discussion. It’s not what you are, and you’d cease to be what we need if you tried to be anything else. In a quarter of a century you are going to have to sacrifice a god, and for that you will need the kind of strength that you won’t get from ploughing fields. You need to be out in the world, fighting it, letting it harden you. Moccus will be old, but his spirit might still be too much for you to cope with.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I know that Michael wasn’t fighting in that war for the sake of King and country. Or possibly I’m mistaken and you’re made of sterner stuff than he was?’
He had no answer to that.
* * *
The deserter went to where Nikolai was tethered in his pen. The boar was quite a bit larger than when he’d first been caught, his piglet striping beginning to fade and his lower tusks were curled halfway back on themselves, longer than natural but maybe not too long for him to survive in the wild. He eyed the deserter with undimmed suspicion. ‘Looks like you’re off the hook, young man,’ Everett said, and paused before untying him. ‘If you bite me I’ll bloody well leave you here.’
Nikolai let himself be untied without protest. The deserter held the gate open but the pig hesitated, possibly suspecting that it was a trap. ‘Look,’ said the deserter. ‘I know we haven’t exactly got on but I’ve tried to do all right by you. You’ve got a nice sty here – bit of clean straw to sleep on, some yummy old slops to eat if you want. It’s up to you.’
As he moved away from the gate there was a flash of movement behind him and a small dark shape bolted over the lane, through the hedge and off across night-darkened fields towards the woods that surrounded the village.
‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘I suppose so.’
And he went inside to pack.
9
1942
IT WAS WITH A MIXTURE OF EXCITEMENT AND apprehension churning his guts that Everett hiked down from the slopes of the Long Mynd and into the woods surrounding Swinley in late winter of 1942. It was like the feeling before battle, except worse, because this time he actually gave a damn about the outcome.
He’d done as Mother instructed and let his appetite for blood lead his feet out into the world. The Great War had finished not with a bang but with a whimper, and the mess of its aftermath had left plenty of opportunities given that there were so few men of fighting age left alive. Closest to home there had
