Her fingertips rubbed nervously against her palm. ‘Shall we take a look?’ Truth was she was scared what she might find. Scared of looking and scared of not looking. Worn out and scared of everything with a hollow space where her hopes used to be.
‘I’ll go round the back.’ Lamb brushed his knees off with his hat and started circling the clearing, twigs crunching under his boots, a set of startled pigeons yammering into the white sky, giving anyone about fair notice of their arrival. Not that there was anyone about. Leastways, no one living.
There was an overgrown vegetable patch out back, stubborn soil scraped away to make a trench no more than ankle-deep. Next to it a soaked blanket was stretched over something lumpy. From the bottom stuck a pair of boots and a pair of bony bare feet with dirt under the bluish nails.
Lamb squatted down, took one corner and peeled it back. A man’s face and a woman’s, grey and slack, both with throats cut deep. The woman’s head lolled, the wound in her neck yawning wet and purple.
‘Ah.’ Shy pressed her tongue into the gap between her front teeth and stared at the ground. Would’ve taken quite the optimist to expect anything else, and she by no means qualified, but those faces still tore at something in her. Worry for Pit and Ro, or worry for herself, or just a sick memory of a sick time when bodies weren’t such strange things for her to see.
‘Leave ’em be, you bastards!’
First thing Shy took in was the gleam on the arrowhead. Next was the hand that held the drawn bow, knuckles white on dark wood. Last was the face behind—a boy maybe sixteen, a mop of sandy hair stuck to pale skin with the wet.
‘I’ll kill you! I’ll do it!’ He eased from the bushes, feet fishing for firm earth to tread on, shadows sliding across his tight face and his hand trembling on the bow.
Shy made herself stay still, some trick to manage with her first two burning instincts to get at him or get away. Her every muscle was itching to do one or the other, and there’d been a time Shy had chased off wherever her instincts led. But since they’d usually led her by an unpleasant route right into the shit, she let the bastards run off without her this time and just stood, looking this boy steady in the eyes. Scared eyes, which was no surprise, open wide and shining in the corners. She kept her voice soft, like they’d met at a harvest dance and had no burned-out buildings, dead folk or drawn bows between them.
‘What’s your name?’
His tongue darted over his lips, point of the arrow wobbling and making her chest horrible itchy about where it was aimed.
‘I’m Shy. This is Lamb.’
The boy’s eyes flicked across, and his bow too. Lamb didn’t flinch, just put the blanket back how he’d found it and slowly stood. Seeing him with the boy’s fresh eyes, he looked anything but harmless. Even with that tangle of grey beard you could tell a man would have to be real careless with his razor to pick up scars like Lamb’s by accident. Shy had always guessed he’d got them in some war up North, but if he’d been a fighter once there was no fight in him now. Some kind of coward like she’d always said. But this boy wasn’t to know.
‘We been following some men.’ Shy kept her voice soft, soft, coaxing the boy’s eyes and his arrow’s point back to her. ‘They burned our farm, up near Squaredeal. They burned it, and they killed a man worked for us, and they took my sister and my little brother…’ Her voice cracked and she had to swallow and press it out smooth again. ‘We been following on.’
‘Reckon they been here, too,’ said Lamb.
‘We been tracking ’em. Maybe twenty men, moving quick.’ The arrow-point started to drift down. ‘They stopped off at a couple more farms on the way. Same thing. Then we followed ’em into the woods. And here.’
‘I’d been hunting,’ said the boy quietly.
Shy nodded. ‘We were in town. Selling our crop.’
‘I came back, and…’ That point made it right down to the ground, much to Shy’s relief. ‘Nothing I could’ve done.’
‘No.’
‘They took my brother.’
‘What was his name?’
‘Evin. He was nine years old.’
Silence, with just the trees still dripping and the gentle creak as the boy let his bowstring go slack.
‘You know who they were?’ asked Lamb.
‘I didn’t see ’em.’
‘You know why they took your brother?’
‘I said I wasn’t here, didn’t I? I wasn’t here.’
‘All right,’ said Shy, calming. ‘I know.’
‘You following after ’em?’ asked the boy.
‘We’re just about keeping up,’ said Lamb.
‘Going to get your sister and your brother back?’
‘Count on it,’ said Shy, as if sounding certain made it certain.
‘Can you get mine, too?’
Shy looked at Lamb, and he looked back, and he didn’t say nothing. ‘We can try,’ she said.
‘Reckon I’ll be coming along with you, then.’
Another silence. ‘You sure?’ asked Lamb.
‘I can do what needs doing, y’old bastard!’ screamed the boy, veins popping from his neck.
Lamb didn’t twitch a muscle. ‘We don’t know what’ll need doing yet.’
‘There’s room in the wagon, though, if you want to take your part.’ Shy held her hand out to the boy, and he looked at it for a moment, then stepped forward and shook it. He squeezed it too hard, that way men do when they’re trying to prove they’re tougher than they are.
‘My name’s Leef.’
Shy nodded towards the two bodies. ‘These your folks?’
The boy blinked down at them. ‘I been trying to do the burying, but the ground’s hard, and I got nothing to dig with.’ He rubbed at his broken fingernails with his thumb. ‘I been trying.’
‘Need some help?’ she asked.
His face crushed up, and he hung his head, and he nodded, wet hair dangling.
‘We all need some help, time to time,’ said Lamb. ‘I’ll get them shovels down.’
Shy reached out, checked a moment, then gently put her hand on the boy’s shoulder. She felt him tense, thought he’d shake it off, but he didn’t and she was glad. Maybe she needed it there more than he did.
On they went, gone from two to three but otherwise not much changed. Same wind, same sky, same tracks to be followed, same worried silence between them. The wagon was wearing out on the battered tracks, lurching more with each mile rattled behind those patient oxen. One of the wheels had near shook itself to pieces inside its iron tyre. Shy felt some sympathy, behind her frown she was all shook to pieces herself. They loaded out the gear and let the oxen loose to crop grass, and Lamb lifted one side of the wagon with a grunt and a shrug while Shy did the best she could with the tools she had and her half-sack of nails, Leef eager to do his part but that no more than passing her the hammer when she asked.
The tracks led to a river and forded at a shallow spot. Calder and Scale weren’t too keen on the crossing but in the end Shy goaded them over to a tall mill-house, stone-built on three stories. Those they were chasing hadn’t bothered to try and burn this one and its wheel still slapped around merrily in the chattering water. Two men and a woman were hanged together in a bunch from the attic window. One had a broken neck stretched out way too long, another feet burned raw, dangling a stride above the mud.
Leef stared up big-eyed. ‘What kind o’ men do a thing like this?’
‘Just men,’ said Shy. ‘Thing like this don’t take no one special.’ Though at times it felt to her that they were following something else. Some mad storm blowing mindless through this abandoned country, churning up the dirt and leaving bottles and shit and burned buildings and hanged folk scattered in its wake. A storm that snatched away all the children to who knew where and to what purpose? ‘You care to go up there, Leef, and cut these folks down?’