Dodd was still scraping coins from the dust and into the bag, working his way towards the well. Insensible to the fates of his two companions. Not as surprising as you might suppose. If one word summed up Dodd, it was “insensible.”
She padded down the steps of the tavern, near to their edges where they were less likely to give a warning creak, drawing the bow halfway and taking a good aim on Dodd, bent over in the dust with his back to her, a dark sweat patch down the middle of his shirt. She gave some long, hard consideration to making that sweat patch the bull’s-eye and shooting him in the back right there. But killing a man isn’t easy, especially after hard consideration. She watched him pick up the last coin and drop it in the bag, then stand, pulling the drawstrings, then turn, smiling. “I got the—”
They stayed there awhile. He crouched in the dusty street, bag of silver in one hand, uncertain smile lit up in the sun, but his eyes looking decidedly scared in the shadow of his cheap hat. She on the bottom step of the tavern, bloody bare feet, bloody split mouth, bloody hair plastered across her bloody forehead, but the bow good and steady.
He licked his lips, swallowed, then licked them again. “Where’s Neary?”
“In a bad way.” She was surprised by the iron in her voice. Sounded like someone she didn’t even know. Smoke’s voice, maybe.
“Where’s my brother?”
“In a worse.”
Dodd swallowed, sweaty neck shifting, starting to ease gently backwards. “You kill him?”
“Forget about them two and stop still.”
“Look, Shy, you ain’t going to shoot me, are you? Not after all we been through. You ain’t going to shoot. Not me. Are you?” His voice was rising higher and higher, but still he edged back towards the well. “I didn’t want this. It weren’t my idea!”
“Course not. You need to think to have an idea, and you ain’t up to it. You just went along. Even if it happened to mean me getting hung.”
“Now, look, Shy—”
“Stop still, I said.” She drew the bow all the way, string cutting tight into her bloody fingers. “You fucking deaf, boy?”
“Look, Shy, let’s just talk this out, eh? Just talk.” He held his trembly palm up like that might stop an arrow. His pale blue eyes were fixed on her, and suddenly she had a memory rise up of the first time she met him, leaning back against the livery, smiling free and easy, none too clever but plenty of fun. She’d had a profound lack of fun in her life since she’d left home. You’d never have thought she left home to find it.
“I know I done wrong, but … I’m an idiot.” And he tried out a smile, no steadier than his palm. He’d been worth a smile or two, Dodd, at least to begin with, and though no artist of a lover, had kept the bed warm, which was something, and made her feel as if she weren’t on her own on one side with the whole rest of the world on the other, which was something more.
“Stop still,” she said, but more softly now.
“You ain’t going to shoot me.” Still he was edging back towards the well. “It’s me, right? Me. Dodd. Just don’t shoot me, now.” Still going. “What I’m going to do is—”
She shot him.
It’s a strange thing about a bow. Stringing it, and drawing it, and nocking the arrow, and taking your aim—all that takes effort, and skill, and a decision. Letting go the string is nothing. You just stop holding it. In fact, once you’ve got it drawn and aimed, it’s easier to let fly than not to.
Dodd was less than a dozen strides distant, and the shaft flitted across the space between them, missed his hand by a whisker and stuck silently into his chest. Surprised her, the lack of a sound. But then, flesh is soft. ’Specially in comparison to an arrowhead. Dodd took one more wobbly pace, like he hadn’t quite caught up with being arrow-stuck yet, his eyes going very wide. Then he blinked down at the shaft.
“You shot me,” he whispered, and he sank to his knees, blood already spreading out on his shirt in a dark oval.
“Didn’t I bloody warn you!” She flung the bow down, suddenly furious with him and with the bow too.
He stared at her. “But I didn’t think you’d do it.”
She stared back. “Neither did I.” A silent moment, and the wind blew up one more time and stirred the dust around them. “Sorry.”
“Sorry?” he croaked.
Might’ve been the stupidest thing she’d ever said, and that with some fierce competition, but what else could she say? No words were going to take that arrow out. She gave half a shrug. “I guess.”
Dodd winced, hefting the silver in one hand, turning towards the well. Shy’s mouth dropped open, and she took off running as he toppled sideways, hauling the bag into the air. It turned over and over, curving up and starting to fall, drawstrings flapping, Shy’s clutching hand straining for it as she sprinted, lunged, fell …
She grunted as her sore ribs slammed into the wall around the well, right arm darting down into the darkness. For a moment she thought she was going in after the bag—which would probably have been a fitting conclusion—then her knees came back down on the dirt outside.
She had it by one of the bottom corners, loose canvas clutched by broken nails, drawstrings dangling as dirt and bits of loose stone filtered down around it.
Shy smiled. For the first time that day. That month, maybe.
Then the bag came open.
Coins tumbled into the darkness in a twinkling shower, silver pinging and rattling from the earthy walls, disappearing into the inky nothingness, and silence.
She straightened up, numb.
She backed away slowly from the well, hugging herself with one hand while the empty bag hung from the other.
She looked over at Dodd, lying on his back with the arrow sticking straight up from his chest, his wet eyes fixed on her, his ribs going fast. She heard his shallow breaths slow, then stop.
Shy stood there a moment, then doubled over and blew puke onto the ground. Not much of it, since she’d eaten nothing that day, but her guts clenched up hard and made sure she retched up what there was. She shook so bad she thought she was going to fall, hands on her knees, sniffing bile from her nose and spluttering it out.
Damn, but her ribs hurt. Her arm. Her leg. Her face. So many scrapes, twists, and bruises, she could hardly tell one from another: her whole body was one overpowering fucking throb.
Her eyes crawled over to Dodd’s corpse, she felt another wave of sickness and forced them away, over to the horizon, fixing them on that shimmering line of nothing.
Not nothing.
There was dust rising there. She wiped her face on her ripped sleeve one more time, so filthy now that it was as like to make her dirtier as cleaner. She straightened, squinting into the distance, hardly able to believe it. Riders. No doubt. A good way off, but as many as a dozen.
“Oh, hell,” she whispered, and bit her lip. Things kept going this way she’d soon have chewed right through the bloody thing. “Oh, hell!” And Shy put her hands over her eyes and squeezed them shut and hid in self-inflicted darkness in the desperate hope she might have somehow been mistaken. Would hardly have been her first mistake, would it?
But when she took her hands away, the dust was still there. The world’s a mean bully, all right, and the lower down you are, the more it delights in kicking you. Shy put her hands on her hips, arched her back, and screamed up at the sky, the word drawn out as long as her sore lungs would allow.
“Fuck!”
The echoes clapped from the buildings and died a quick death. No answer came. Perhaps the faint droning of a fly already showing some interest in Dodd. Neary’s horse eyed her for a moment, then looked away, profoundly unimpressed. Now Shy had a sore throat to add to her woes. She was obliged to ask herself the usual questions.