Frost nodded in the direction Solomon had come from. He said “Go on.” And Tyrell and the men and the dogs continued running toward Little Bridge and Fundy’s farm beyond.
32
As he approached Little Bridge Frost started to hear the screams of women. He also heard men yelling and he heard dogs barking frantically and the piercing yelps of dogs in pain. He could not run anymore. In heavy rain he walked gasping over Little Bridge. He had no poncho and no weapon.
Fundy’s Bridge rose three hundred yards to his right. One of Langley’s men was limping backward up the wide, empty span, swinging his sword wildly at a small black dog that dodged and feinted in front of him. Frost saw, standing alone halfway to the crest of the bridge, the tall bald form of Abraham Bundy. As the soldier and the dog passed him on the other side of the lane divider, Bundy turned to watch them. He did not raise his hands from his sides. He turned back and stood looking out over his field.
Frost left the road on the south side, away from the bridge, and let gravity impel him running down a sloping concrete embankment. He had caught his breath to a degree, and he continued running across the fractured and bush-grown asphalt of an approach ramp, across a stretch of boggy grass, over another ramp and then across the main road. His men were crouched in a line with their dogs behind the near verge of a further ramp. Wing’s man, Pender, was among them, apparently unharmed.
Frost threw himself down on his back behind Tyrell. He looked up into the rain, letting it beat into his face. Water slid from the lenses of his glasses as he waited for the world to become more solid. In a minute he rose to his knees and turned and leaned on Tyrell’s back and peered across the roadway, through the winter weeds and the leafless brush. He took his glasses off and ran the lenses once across his wet shirt and put them back on.
Fundy’s house, a long, rectangular two-storey concrete structure, lay off to the left, back beyond the main road. But up on the west end of the overpass, just at the point where it had collapsed, stood a half-dozen of Fundy’s people, those still unharmed. They were women in long dresses of cloth. Two of them held infants. It was from this group that the wailing and shrieking came, as they looked down into the part of the field that was near the foot of Fundy’s Bridge. Over a chunk of the overpass that had fallen flat to the ground Frost could see what they saw.
On the black soil and rotted leaves of the potato field about fifteen of Langley’s men milled in a disordered, widespread group among the bodies of men, women and dogs. A dog and a dead or wounded soldier lay in a kind of embrace. The milling soldiers all had their crossbows slung over their backs, and they had their swords out. They paid no attention to the screams of the women watching them from the stub of the overpass. Some of the soldiers appeared to be searching the ground for crossbow bolts. One of them bent and jerked one from the body of a man. He crouched and wiped it carefully on the man’s poncho. He picked up the man’s bent sword, examined it, turning it in his hand, let it fall.
A dog was sitting and yelping. A soldier walked up behind it and thrust his sword deep into its back. The dog gave a final sharp squeal and collapsed, and the soldier pulled the sword out and wiped the blade on the dog’s fur.
Frost said “That’s Wolf.”
The soldiers killed two more yelping dogs.
There were only two or three women among the fallen, but one of them was moving. Her dress was no more brightly coloured than the dirt over which she was attempting to crawl, but as she drew a knee forward her lower legs flashed like scribbles of chalk against the delta soil. There was a big soldier in a long poncho and cut-down rubber boots. He walked quickly forward and held his sword with two hands and plunged it through the woman and deep into the ground. A new wave of screams rose from the watchers on the overpass.
Tyrell said “There’s our friend.”
Frost choked back a surge of nausea. He said “Freeway.”
Another dog was standing between the soldiers and the river, barking furiously, afraid to come nearer. Freeway slid his sword through his twine belt and swung his crossbow from his back. He lowered the nose of the crossbow to the ground and slipped a foot through a loop attached there. He pulled the twine smoothly back and hooked it on a catch. He took a short metal bolt from a bag at his side, leveled the crossbow and set the bolt on it. He aimed at the dog. There was a snap. The dog executed a rapid back-flip and lay still. Freeway went to retrieve his bolt.
Tyrell said “We can drive them away before they can load.”
Frost said “Yes.”
“We’ll probably hit some of Fundy’s people.”
Frost said “Christ.” He waited, said “They’re past feeling it.”
“We shoot. The son of a butches run. We chase after them with our spears.”
Frost glanced at Tyrell’s spear lying on the ground: the sturdy six-foot length of straight-grained one-by-two; the wide heart-shaped blade sharpened and gleaming at the edges. “Don’t follow them up the bridge. Just stay and block this end so they can’t come back. We’ll bring these two bows.”
Tyrell said “Do we let the dogs go?”
“I think we better. Once the bastards are on the run. To make sure they keep going. But don’t let the dogs go up the bridge. Too dangerous for them.”
Tyrell crawled back along the crouching line of his men, whispering his orders. Each man lifted a fistful of arrows from his bag, but they spun in fear as there was a quick pounding of feet behind them. Daniel Charlie threw himself down behind Frost.
He had two bows and a bag of arrows, which he dropped. He knelt on hands and knees, gasping for breath. Frost was cursing quietly and shaking his head and did not greet him.
Tyrell crouched beside Daniel Charlie. “Get out some arrows, Daniel.” Daniel Charlie rose from his hands and did so. The canes rattled as he dropped them near his knees. He took his bow in his left hand.
Tyrell edged along beside Frost and laid Daniel Charlie’s second bow and a handful of arrows near his hand. He touched Frost on the shoulder and said “We’re about ready.”
Frost nodded and removed his glasses and wiped a sleeve across his eyes and put the glasses back on and picked up the bow. He plucked an arrow from his pile and rested the shaft on his left fist, which held the bow. He placed the thin end of the arrow against the twine. He turned to wait for Tyrell’s orders.
But Tyrell shook his head. Marpole and Oak were creeping forward with three dogs each. They were whispering to the dogs and making soothing sounds, for the dogs were prancing and throwing their heads around, ready to make a din. Frost set the bow down, and Marpole handed him his three leashes and crept back to his bow. Oak passed his leashes to Daniel Charlie.
Tyrell stood. His men rose and moved away from the verge of the roadway and lined up facing the widespread milling soldiers near the foot of the bridge a hundred and fifty yards away. They laid their spears on the ground at their feet and their batches of nail-tipped cattail canes beside the spears, and they each plucked a single arrow and set it against the bowstring and drew the bow back and raised it.
Frost and Daniel Charlie also stood.
Tyrell said “Okay.”
Before the eleven arrows landed another eleven were in the air, and before those struck, eleven more.
The women on the stub end of overpass fell silent, so that the only sounds were the anxious whines of the dogs, the dull snap of the bowstrings and the whisper of the pounding rain.