‘They were here overnight,’ she called.
‘We’re catching ’em, then?’ asked Leef as he jumped down, nocking an arrow loose to his bow.
‘I reckon.’ Though Shy couldn’t help wondering if that was a good thing. She dragged a length of frayed rope from the grass, found a cobweb torn between bushes at the treeline, then a shred of cloth left on a bramble.
‘Someone come this way?’ asked Leef.
‘More’n one. And fast.’ Shy slipped through after, keeping low, crept down a muddy slope, slick dirt and fallen leaves treacherous under her boots, trying to keep her balance and peer into the dimness—
She saw Pit, face down by a fallen tree, looking so small there among the knotted roots. She wanted to scream but had no voice, no breath even. She ran, slid on her side in a shower of dead leaves and ran again. She squatted by him, back of his head a clotted mass, hand trembling as she reached out, not wanting to see his face, having to see it. She held her breath as she wrestled him over, his body small but stiff as a board, brushed away the leaves stuck to his face with fumbling fingers.
‘Is it your brother?’ muttered Leef.
‘No.’ She was almost sick with relief. Then with guilt that she was relieved, when this boy was dead. ‘Is it yours?’
‘No,’ said Leef.
Shy slid her hands under the dead child and picked him up, struggled up the slope, Leef behind her. Lamb stood staring between the trees at the top, a black shape stamped from the glow of sunset.
‘Is it him?’ came his cracking voice. ‘Is it Pit?’
‘No.’ Shy laid him on the flattened grass, arms stuck out wide, head tipped back rigid.
‘By the dead.’ Lamb had his fingers shoved into his grey hair, gripping at his head like it might burst.
‘Might be he tried to get away. They made a lesson of him.’ She hoped Ro didn’t try it. Hoped she was too clever to. Hoped she was cleverer than Shy had been at her age. She leaned on the wagon with her back to the others, squeezed her eyes shut and wiped the tears away. Dug the bastard shovels out and brought them back.
‘More fucking digging,’ spat Leef, hacking at the ground like it was the one stole his brother.
‘Better off digging than getting buried,’ said Lamb.
Shy left them to the graves and the oxen to their grazing and spread out in circles, keeping low, fingers combing at the cold grass, trying to read the signs in the fading light. Trying to feel out what they’d done, what they’d do next.
‘Lamb.’
He grunted as he squatted beside her, slapping the dirt from his gloves. ‘What is it?’
‘Looks like three of ’em peeled off here, heading south and east. The rest struck on due west. What do you think?’
‘I try not to. You’re the tracker. Though when you got so damn good at it, I’ve no notion.’
‘Just a question of thinking it through.’ Shy didn’t want to admit that chasing men and being chased are sides to one coin, and at being chased she’d two years of the harshest practice.
‘They split up?’ asked Leef.
Lamb fussed at that notch out of his ear as he looked off south. ‘Some style of a disagreement?’
‘Could be,’ said Shy. ‘Or maybe they sent ’em to circle around, check if anyone was following.’
Leef fumbled for an arrow, eyes darting about the horizon.
Lamb waved him down. ‘If they’d a mind to check, they’d have seen us by now.’ He kept looking south, off along the treeline towards a low ridge, the way Shy thought those three had gone. ‘No. I reckon they had enough. Maybe it all went too far for ’em. Maybe they started thinking they might be the next left hanging. Either way we’ll follow. Hope to catch ’em before the wheels come off this cart for good. Or off me either,’ he added as he dragged himself up wincing into the wagon’s seat.
‘The children ain’t with those three,’ said Leef, turning sullen.
‘No.’ Lamb settled his hat back on. ‘But they might point us the right way. We need to get this wagon fixed up proper, find some new oxen or get ourselves some horses. We need food. Might be those three—’
‘You fucking old coward.’
There was a pause. Then Lamb nodded over at Shy. ‘Me and her spent years chewing over that topic and you got naught worth adding to the conversation.’ Shy looked at them, the boy stood on the ground glowering up, the big old man looking down calm and even from his seat.
Leef curled his lip. ‘We need to keep after the children or—’
‘Get up on the wagon, boy, or you’ll be keeping after the children alone.’
Leef opened his mouth again but Shy caught him by the arm first. ‘I want to catch ’em just as much as you, but Lamb’s right—there’s twenty men out there, bad men, and armed, and willing. There’s nothing we could do.’
‘We got to catch ’em sooner or later, don’t we?’ snapped Leef, breathing hard. ‘Might as well be now while my brother and yours are still alive!’
Shy had to admit he’d a point but there was no help for it. She held his eye and said it to his face, calm but with no give. ‘Get on the wagon, Leef.’
This time he did as he was told, and clambered up among their gear and sat there silent with his back to them.
Shy perched her bruised arse next to Lamb as he snapped the reins and got Scale and Calder reluctantly on the move. ‘What do we do if we catch these three?’ she muttered, keeping her voice down so Leef wouldn’t hear it. ‘Chances are they’re going to be armed and willing, too. Better armed than us, that’s sure.’
‘Reckon we’ll have to be more willing, then.’
Her brows went up at that. This big, gentle Northman who used to run laughing through the wheat with Pit on one shoulder and Ro on the other, used to sit out at sunset with Gully, passing a bottle between them in silence for hours at a time, who’d never once laid a hand on her growing up in spite of some sore provocations, talking about getting red to the elbows like it was nothing.
Shy knew it wasn’t nothing.
She closed her eyes and remembered Jeg’s face after she stabbed him, bloody hat brim jammed down over his eyes, pitching in the street, still muttering,
She rubbed her face hard with one hand, sweating of a sudden, heart banging in her ears hard as it had then, and she twisted inside her greasy clothes like she could twist free of the past. But it had good and caught her up. For Pit and Ro’s sake she had to get her hands red again. She curled her fingers around the grip of her knife, took a hard breath and set her jaw. No choice then. No choice now. And for men the likes of the ones they followed no tears needed shedding.
‘When we find ’em,’ her voice sounding tiny in the gathering darkness, ‘can you follow my lead?’
‘No,’ said Lamb.
‘Eh?’ He’d been following her lead so long she’d never thought he might find some other path.
When she looked at him, his old, scarred face was twisted like he was in pain. ‘I made a promise to your mother. ’Fore she died. Made a promise to look to her children. Pit and Ro… and I reckon it covers you too, don’t it?’
‘I guess,’ she muttered, far from reassured.
‘I broke a lot of promises in my life. Let ’em wash away like leaves on the water.’ He rubbed at his eyes with the back of one gloved hand. ‘I mean to keep that one. So when we find ’em… you’ll be following my lead. This time.’
‘All right.’ She could say so, if it helped him.
Then she could do what needed doing.
The Best Man
