A moment later, the boy buried his face in his hands and wept, shaking his head silently as if to deny the night’s events. But the truth could never completely be denied, no matter how much a man might wish it. So the boy continued to weep, looking for solace where there was none, and Cutter turned and stared back at the path they had taken, back toward the direction in which the village of Brighton had once stood—but, he did not doubt, stood no longer.
The heavy snow had done much to obscure their footsteps, destroying any evidence that they had ever trod upon the surface of this white-blasted world, that they had ever existed at all. That’s all men were, he thought, in a rare moment of introspection, all men left behind them. Footprints, indentations which might be covered in a moment. It was a dark thought, but that did not change the fact that it was also a true one.
Yet for all the snow’s efforts at hiding their passage, he knew that those men who had come upon the village of Brighton would find them, sooner or later. They would not rest until they had. After all, it was for Cutter that they had come. A man could never really outrun his past, not forever, for the past did not rest, did not sleep or drink or eat or laugh. It only trailed after, waiting to catch a man up when he was unaware.
He had set a grueling pace for himself and the boy, as much as he had thought the lad capable of handling and then a little more, but he knew that despite his efforts, they could not hope to outrun those who came after them. Besides, the boy was done in—anyone with eyes to see could tell that much. Exhausted from the march, true, and from his own loss. “Rest.” Cutter told him, unslinging a bedroll from the pack at his back and tossing it to him. “Sleep and time are the best medicines.”
“D-do they work?” the boy asked through his sobs.
No. Cutter only stared at him though, saw the boy’s fragile eyes asking him for some words of comfort, of hope. But Cutter had never been good at lying.
“But…but they’ll catch us. Won’t they?”
“Sleep,” he said again. The boy, perhaps because of his shock or his loss, perhaps because he courted death whether he knew it or not, made no further argument. Instead, he took the bedroll and laid it out on the blanket of snow, climbing, shivering, inside.
Cutter watched him, watched him close his eyes and turn his back toward him, toward the village of Brighton where his mother now lay dead, as if such a gesture might banish them from his life, from his thoughts. And, perhaps, it would. For a time. But the past, like a mongrel dog once fed, always returned, sooner or later.
“Sleep,” Cutter said for the third time, and moments later, the boy did.
CHAPTER FIVE
Blood in the snow.
Is there anything more terrible?
Is there anything more beautiful?
—Unknown Poet
It did not take him long to find them. They had made good time, as he’d known they would, and he caught sight of them less than two hours away from where the boy lay sleeping. Six in all, a forward scouting party which would be followed, he knew, by a much larger force. These six were meant to root out their quarry, to keep sight of them until the greater force arrived. It was the way it was done—that, he knew better than most, for it had been he who had decided it was so.
He stood waiting for them in the snow, weaponless. The old him, the man he had once been, would have been offended that they had only sent six. That man would have been furious at the insult, would have been keen to display his rage on the bodies of those he felt had wronged him, would have rushed toward them to do just that.
But Cutter was that man no longer, no longer the berserker warrior with a belly full of fire. He was not angry or furious, not eager at the bloodshed to come…he was only tired. That and nothing more. Not too tired to run, if he’d had a mind to, but he did not—was still, in that way, the same as the man he had once been. So he stood in the heavy-falling snow, watching the vague shapes of their forms approach. And he waited.
Another several minutes passed, and they were about a hundred yards away before they became aware of him, a fact made apparent by the way they began to spread out, meaning to encircle him, to surround him and offer no means of escape. Not that he would try. The old him would have gripped his axe in anticipation as he watched, fanning the flames of his love of violence as he did, but Cutter had no axe, not any longer, had no love for violence any longer either, so he only stood and watched. And waited.
They continued to spread out as they drew closer until they formed a circle, a circle of snow-covered specters. He could not see their faces, not yet, but he did not mind. Perhaps if he had, he might have recognized them, might have known them as men he had once shared a drink with, perhaps ones he had saved on one battlefield or another. But he did not see their faces, and he did not care.
He would see them later, he knew, when he slept and the dreams came as they always did. Dreams in which a procession of the dead marched
