‘School, that’s all. But everything we know about where people live: along rivers, on the coast, especially where rivers flow out into the sea. We should have already found a town, a couple of villages, and farms everywhere. There’s nothing. Nothing at all.’ Dalip spread his hands wide. ‘There’s no one here. This is a, I don’t know what to call it, a blank slate, a new world.’
‘Yet,’ said Stanislav, ‘when we do find what we could call a village, it has been deserted for many, many years. The number of people should be increasing, not decreasing. There is no lack of space for them to spread out into.’
He rumbled deep in his chest, a noise that made Dalip look askance.
‘Have you seen this before?’
‘Yes,’ said Stanislav. ‘Twice before. Once when I was young, and again when I was not so young.’
‘And?’
‘The cause was the same. War.’
‘That’s not good.’
‘No.’ Stanislav looked over his shoulder, either to see who might be listening, or to check that the others were still there. Dalip looking behind him, too. There was Mary, and further back, possibly Luiza.
‘But you think this might have been twenty years ago.’
‘Yes. There is another question, of course. How did the wolfman find us so quickly, if this is an empty land?’
‘I… don’t know.’ Dalip didn’t, either. ‘Chance?’
‘Perhaps. Have we met anyone else? By chance?’
‘No. No, we haven’t.’
‘So he was waiting for us, yes?’
‘But we didn’t know we were coming,’ said Dalip. ‘How could he possibly do that?’
‘When I mean waiting, I mean watching. He did not know when we might appear, but if he knew where we would appear? Then it is very possible. Then we must consider why he would keep watch over a door which, until we passed through it, we did not know existed.’
‘Other people must have come through.’
‘Yes. What do you think happened to them?’
‘The same thing that happened to us.’ Dalip stopped walking, right there in the forest within earshot of the slow flow of the river. ‘They were told about the geomancer. They went to find her.’
‘The wolfman did not explain any of this. He had the opportunity to do so, and yet did not. He led us with his answers, so that we would choose to go in this direction, to choose to find the geomancer, choose to knock on her door and ask to see her.’ He pursed his lips. ‘I think we should reconsider.’
They stopped and waited for the others. Mary arrived first.
‘Is this where we’re stopping for the night?’ She looked up and around. ‘I suppose it doesn’t make much difference, right?’
She started to head off towards the river, to see if it could offer them anything, when Dalip called after her. ‘Don’t go far.’
‘Fuck off, all right?’ she said, and kept going.
Stanislav jerked his head in her direction, and Dalip got up to follow her.
She was lying down, looking over the river bank at the slack water beneath, trying to see if there were any fish there, when Dalip came up behind her.
‘We need to stay together,’ said Dalip.
‘Fuck off, Dalip. I’m fine.’
‘No,’ he said, and tried to explain, but the words got stuck. He sat down, back to a tree trunk. ‘Stanislav thinks we’re walking into a trap.’
Now he had her attention. She rolled over and leaned on one arm. ‘We’re what?’
He wanted to explain, and he tried, but Mary wasn’t at all convinced.
‘This geomancer is paying the wolfman to be her lookout, to send people up to her, whatever, church? What the fuck is she going to do to us when we get there? We can just walk out if she gets heavy on us.’
‘I don’t think it’s that simple. I don’t think the wolfman’s on his own.’
‘He’s got a gang? So have we.’
‘He’s got wolves, Mary! I mean, look at us. We’re dressed in bright orange clothes, we have a cigarette lighter, a small blunt knife and a rusty axe between us. We’re not a gang. We’re just a bunch of people thrown together by the fact that we didn’t die.’ Then the final penny dropped. ‘He’s watching us now. We’ll never spot him, but he’s followed us this far, and he’ll follow us until we get where we’re supposed to go.’
She sat up and stared into the forest, checking random directions.
‘You’re scaring me.’
‘I’m scaring myself. But it’s too much of a coincidence that he’s the first and only person we’ve met. We should’ve been more careful.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with what we did,’ she said, and was suddenly distracted by something happening behind Dalip.
Shouting. Rushing. A scream.
‘Get down.’
Dalip rolled to one side, pressing himself against the ground. After a moment, he started to raise himself, to see over the undergrowth. It was as if the forest itself was moving, brown and green shapes darting from cover to cover, and the few orange boilersuits he could see were running.
‘We’ve been so stupid. Naive, trusting… idiots.’
Mary crawled next to him. ‘Who are these people? Why are they doing this?’
‘I don’t know, and we need to find out. But not from them.’ He looked forward, then back at the river. ‘We’re going to have to go that way.’
‘We can’t just leave the others,’ she said, and straight away doubted her words. ‘Can we?’
‘We have literally nothing. If we can cross the river without being seen, it might mean we can get away. Go. I’ll be right behind you.’
There was another scream, and more shouting. Something that sounded like a laugh.
‘I can’t swim.’
‘Bank to bank, it’s not even the length of the local baths. Just do it.’
‘I really can’t swim.’
‘You can probably walk halfway across.’ He raised himself up again, and dropped down immediately. ‘They’re coming.’
They were several shapes he could barely make out, as tall as a man but blending with the background in a way he couldn’t quite believe. They were close and closing.
‘Come on!’
He sprang to his feet, grabbed Mary’s wrist and pulled her toward the river. She wasn’t even standing by the time he got her to the bank and he pushed her in.
There were noises right behind him. If she was to get away, he would have to stay. Even if she drowned because for some inexplicable reason she hadn’t learnt to swim, and he wasn’t there to hold her up.
He reached into his boilersuit and drew his kirpan, then turned to face them.
Perhaps they realised by the way his hand shook that he’d never used the blade in anger before. Perhaps it was because there were three of them, lean, toothy, skin tanned like leather, all used to casual violence and pain.
Could he keep them at bay for long enough for Mary to escape? They had knives in their hands: proper knives, almost swords, thick bladed and curve-edged. Never mind. It was his duty. It was his honour. It was the first time he’d had to act out his faith on his own accord, and it felt like something inside him had finally shifted into place.
Any fight would be quick and dirty, and it’d be him losing and losing badly. These men in brown and green were fighters, warriors. He was an engineering student with decent batting average and a fierce spin.
And still. He jabbed forward with his kirpan at the face of the man on the left, causing him to dodge back. The man on the right caught his arm, stepped close and punched him hard in the kidneys.
The pain was extraordinary. He felt his legs start to fold, and decided that he’d be better on his feet. He brought his arm back, elbow first. He made some sort of contact because the grip on his wrist loosened.
They’d had enough of his nonsense, clearly. The other two laid into him with no finesse. A fist to the gut, a blow to the side of his head, and he was reeling. He couldn’t see straight. He lashed out, hit something, and his hand felt like he’d struck solid wood.