Airport and Boundary could not support the shields and use their bows at the same time. Airport reached behind him and dragged Salmon around to take his place. Her one arm was enough to hold the shield. She sat there with her head ducked, holding the shield at the necessary angle. Boundary swapped places with Brittany, who fit easily behind the car trunk lid. He and Airport stood and stepped away from the shields. They reached mechanically for arrow after arrow in the bags at their sides. There was not a second when the air between Frost’s people and the soldiers was not swarming with cattail canes tipped with sharpened metal.
Frost and Tyrell and Noor and Daniel Charlie and Richmond, who had pitched his shield off the bridge, stood in the open with Airport and Boundary. Crossbow bolts hissed past their shoulders, or bounced on the pavement between them and went skittering along the bridge, or caught some wrinkle or clump of winter weeds in the pavement and buzzed toward them end over end. Frost hauled King behind him and ordered him to stay. The occasional cracks of the 22 were barely heard among the noise of the bolts whirring past or striking pavement or corroded metal or sometimes clanging off the bridge railing or a support.
Frost could see that a hundred and fifty yards down the bridge Langley’s men were a bleeding mess. He could hear the screams of the badly wounded. He saw two or three bodies among the feet of the soldiers. He saw that the bolts were flying toward his people with less frequency as cut soldiers had trouble loading their crossbows. Behind the soldiers he saw that Langley was not in his rickshaw.
Deas slid out from the file of Frost’s people behind Salmon’s shield. He gave up trying to stand on his wounded leg. He sat on the wet pavement and dumped his bag of arrows out beside him and held his bow horizontally and continued shooting arrows down the bridge. Then he dropped his bow and clapped his hands to his face and shouted, and there was the report of the 22 like a twig snapping. Holding his face, he struggled to his feet and hobbled down the bridge back toward Frost’s farm.
Then a cartwheeling bolt knocked Daniel Charlie’s feet from under him, and he slammed to the pavement full length on his side. Frost tried to help him up, but Daniel Charlie shook his head. Still sitting, he held his bow horizontally as Deas had, and fitted an arrow.
Frost wrapped a hand around his bag of arrows. He could feel that there were not many left. He turned and told King to settle down, but King would not be silenced. Then there was a muted pop, and Brittany’s shield fell back on top of her. Frost saw the clean hole where the bolt had penetrated. Jessica crawled forward and hauled Brittany out from under the shield. There was a crossbow bolt protruding at an angle from Brittany’s forehead. Jessica scooped up her limp body and raced away down the bridge, wailing “No, no, no.”
In the confusion of other sounds Frost faintly heard what sounded like Langley’s voice. It was a few words, maybe a command, but the whine was unmistakeable. Frost looked away from Jessica, from the dangling stick-like legs of the body in her arms, and he saw Langley’s men drop their crossbows and draw their swords and charge up the bridge shouting. For the bleeding bunch that they were they moved fast. Frost’s people did not stop shooting arrows, but the range was different now. Arrows sailed over the heads of the soldiers. And when King took off full speed toward the soldiers some of Frost’s people stopped shooting completely so as not to hit the dog.
A heavier layer of raincloud had moved in with the dying day, so that now it was almost dark. But Will could see well enough what was happening up ahead on the Town-side slope of his grandfather’s bridge. At the crest, against a strip of southern sky paler than the rest of the overcast, he saw Frost’s tall thin form. He saw his sister, almost as tall. He saw the nameless silhouettes of the others. They were shooting arrows at close range into a confused mass of men. There were screams from these men.
Will and Solomon and the boy stood among a jumble of crossbows. A kind of two-wheeled cart stood empty except for a rifle that lay on a tangled pink quilt. Two men lay among the crossbows. They twisted from side to side and moaned with each exhalation. Another sat leaning back on his hands. He said “Give me a hand, eh?” An arrow protruded from his stomach. “Jesus Christ, give me a hand, will you?”
There was the barely audible tick of something skipping off the pavement up ahead, then another, closer, tick, and an arrow skidded and caught under a crossbow.
The man said “Please.”
Will felt around for something to hang on to. There was nothing. He heard running footsteps behind him. He turned and stood there wavering. It was young Surrey. The boy did not have a bow. He ignored Will and Solomon and the other boy. He ran to the wounded man who was leaning back on his hands. The man said “Give me a hand, will you, kid?” The man’s sword was lying beside him on the pavement. Surrey snatched it up and set to slashing at the man and shrieking. The man screamed and tried to protect himself with his arms.
Bent, with his hands reaching weakly toward the bloody pavement, Will shuffled a few feet back down the bridge. He half turned. Surrey was still slashing and screaming. The man was on his side with his arms around his head. Solomon had a sword now too. He was repeatedly stabbing one of the other wounded men. He shouted “You hurt my daddy! I hate you!” The other boy was standing there watching.
Will also dimly saw the battle near the crest of the bridge. The cloud had thinned a little, permitting the last light of the day to reveal that the soldiers had advanced no further. More of them had fallen. Many of the others were dancing away from a low form that dodged silently and rapidly among them.
In a mass the soldiers turned and ran. King pursued them. Soldiers cried out and stumbled as he bit, but most of them kept running free and fast toward Will and the others. They had not dropped their swords.
Surrey was still slashing at the man, who was still screaming with every stroke. Solomon had moved on to the third wounded man and was holding the sword with both hands and was stabbing him deeply and repeatedly. With each thrust he shouted “I hate you!”
A feeble cry of warning came from Will, but neither Surrey nor Solomon nor the boy appeared to hear him. The running soldiers were close. Will could see their panicked faces. With one hand outstretched, he headed for Surrey, still making his weak cries of warning.
Then behind him he heard two sounds. He stopped and looked back down the bridge. The first sound was the clattering of several pairs of sandals. It was Nordel, Bridgeport, Pender, Mitchell and the young woman in camouflage. They were racing up from the Town end of the bridge. They were about the same distance away as the approaching soldiers.
The second sound, a background to the racket of the sandals, resembled a keen wind, as if a concentrated storm had formed at the Town end of the bridge. Will shivered and stood upright and gaped. Well behind Bridgeport, Pender, Mitchell and the young woman in camouflage the bows of Fundy’s women were like pale stitches flashing in the fabric of the single dark shape they made as they howled toward Will up both lanes of the bridge. In the centre of that shape Wing’s scarlet warm-up jacket pulsed erratically.
51
Will leaned on the eastern railing, holding his bow and staring blankly down at the river. He had finished crying. The rain had stopped. It was too dark to discern colour, but the water gathered a little light from somewhere. With its manic eddies invisible in the growing darkness the river, the wide slouched form of it, seemed to brood between its darker banks. There was a splash, not loud. Will saw the spray toward the middle of the river, hardly visible. There was a scream up the bridge. There was another splash, of a soldier leaping or a body thrown.