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The Devil’s Highway
Gregory Norminton


Three journeys. Three thousand years. One destination. The Devil’s Highway is a thrilling, epic and intimate tale of love, loss, fanaticism, heroism and sacrifice.A Roman road, an Iron Age hill fort, a hand-carved flint, and a cycle of violence that must be broken.An ancient British boy, discovering a terrorist plot, must betray his brother to save his tribe. In the twenty-first century, two people – one traumatised by war, another by divorce – clash over the use and meaning of a landscape. In the distant future, a gang of feral children struggles to reach safety in a broken world. Their stories are linked by one ancient road, the ‘Devil’s Highway’ in the heart of England: the site of human struggles that resemble one another more than they differ.Spanning centuries, and combining elements of historical and speculative fiction with the narrative drive of pure thriller, this is a breathtakingly original novel that challenges our dearly held assumptions about civilisation.










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Copyright (#u70e862f7-ce63-520b-9cac-7aa47501b11c)


4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)

This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2018

Copyright © Gregory Norminton 2018

Cover illustration by John Walker

Map and Hare, wood ant and bee-eater drawings by John Walker

Gregory Norminton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008243753

Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008243777

Version: 2018-07-23




Dedication (#u70e862f7-ce63-520b-9cac-7aa47501b11c)


In memory of my mother,

Catherine Norminton-Mallein

(1946–2015)




Epigraph (#u70e862f7-ce63-520b-9cac-7aa47501b11c)


Those that despise Scotland, and the north part of England, for being full of vast and barren land, may take a view of this part of Surrey, and look upon it as a foil to the beauty of the rest of England; … here is a vast tract of land, some of it within seventeen or eighteen miles of the capital city, which is not only poor, but even quite sterile, given up to barrenness, horrid and frightful to look on, not only good for little but good for nothing …

DANIEL DEFOE, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain

It is not a celebrated patch of Earth. There are few books and no ballads about it. It is four thousand acres of plantation pine, grassland and heath, hemmed in by roads and houses and industrial estates. In autumn the air smells of mushrooms, in summer of resin and the slough of pine needles. There is a Roman road and an Iron Age hill fort. Few locals visit either, for our lives are too hectic: we drive everywhere and rarely walk. Yet set out on foot, at dawn, and you can sense the ancient place beyond the pines. Open to the sky. Fully itself perhaps only when experienced. Made by the eye that sees it.

RICHARD BOROWSKI, The Blasted Heath

The Roman road; the eagle’s flight … the meeting of present, past and future.

VALERY LARBAUD





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Contents


Cover (#ucf9dc89a-056b-5885-92db-58971e8cd4e4)

Title Page (#u71146578-3762-5da0-a8f2-c90deeac7711)

Copyright (#u862dc69d-c5bf-5e32-93a9-7750d520a15b)

Dedication (#u444ef92e-4752-5bd8-a131-5eacd7903edb)

Epigraph (#ua14445d3-ca00-514a-af27-36b512c87099)

Map (#u0d343f57-028d-5aae-a093-142cf62b4f43)

1 Blueface (#u1419aa36-6a4d-5bd6-ac71-34f20de5b1d9)

2 No Man’s Land (#u4093d348-968e-5453-b1e2-990cb32739a3)

3 The Heave (#uf85a7981-6592-5e78-940d-c52a7a7d2df8)

4 Blueface (#udc7cbee2-0b26-5178-9411-94a15a9cf8a3)

5 No Man’s Land (#litres_trial_promo)

6 The Heave (#litres_trial_promo)

7 Blueface (#litres_trial_promo)

8 No Man’s Land (#litres_trial_promo)

9 The Heave (#litres_trial_promo)

10 Blueface (#litres_trial_promo)

11 No Man’s Land (#litres_trial_promo)

12 The Heave (#litres_trial_promo)

13 Blueface (#litres_trial_promo)

14 No Man’s Land (#litres_trial_promo)

15 The Heave (#litres_trial_promo)

16 Blueface (#litres_trial_promo)

17 No Man’s Land (#litres_trial_promo)

18 The Heave (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)



1




Blueface (#u70e862f7-ce63-520b-9cac-7aa47501b11c)







They worked in the byre by torchlight. In the stalls the cow bellowed. Andagin feared she would wake their father, who had succumbed to sleep like a warrior to his wounds.

‘I looked for it,’ he said, ‘where I left it on the heath.’

‘You mistook the place.’

‘No.’

‘The wind carried it off.’

‘My cord was strong. She unfastened it. That means spring will come.’

‘Spring always comes.’ Judoc buried his fork in straw and dung. ‘Corn dolls are for children.’

‘But Ma says –’

‘Ma says.’ Judoc’s voice was fierce but he took care to whisper: ‘Will you stay her whelp for ever or would you become a man?’

Andagin felt the heat rise in his face. ‘Do not call me whelp.’

‘Why not? You whine like one. We need strong gods. Male gods like Taran. Thunder, not Earth. There – enough shovelling for me.’

They contemplated the steaming baskets. Judoc’s face was hard to read for the torch burning behind it.

‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘for barking at you. But dreams will not save us.’ He pulled Andagin into his arms and held him. He reeked of sweat and damp wool. ‘Be strong,’ said Judoc, and releasing Andagin he hoisted a basket to his midriff. Then he was gone.

Andagin patted the cow’s hot flank. Taking the torch, he left the byre and walked into a weeping wind.

Snowflakes clung like burrs to his cloak and the stung tips of his eyelids. Winter searched for every rent in his gear. After the smoke and fug of the hut, after his father’s nightlong coughing, the cold was welcome, a familiar enemy. Andagin contemplated the shuddering pelt of the heath. He pissed into the heather, expectorated as Judoc had taught him – a lusty hoick into the wind. He returned to the sorrow of the hut.

His mother was up and doing. He ducked out from under her tousling hand and sat beside the fire, where Nyfain greeted him with her habitual scowl.

‘Where’s your brother gone? Back to his pack again?’

Andagin shrugged. To think about last night’s shouting made his heart clench. He watched Nyfain’s fingers weave a basket of heather stems.

‘Will you patch my cap for me?’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘It has a hole.’

‘You made the hole.’

She was angry because Judoc was missing. Were he near she would have been no happier.

‘The snow will get in.’

His cousin huffed and pulled the cap off his head. She inspected it and pushed a little finger through the gap. He watched her reach for the bone needle she kept and some thread.

‘Will you be wheedling all morning or have you things to do? Now that your brother’s at the hole game with his idiot friends.’

‘There’s no playing in winter.’

‘Men are always at play.’

His mother reached down a bundle of mugwort from the rafters and tossed it into the fire. The medicinal fumes filled the hut and Nyfain’s scowl tightened, for she hated the smell, though she knew better than to complain of it.

‘You will be trapping again,’ his mother said as she handed Andagin the pot of gruel.

When he had eaten his share and a mouthful of heather honey, he crawled to the bench and felt under it for his shoulder pack. His fingers found the arrows he stowed there: antler tips that Judoc had carved for him, back in the summer, before the strangeness took him.

‘Vala. Vala.’

‘Hush.’

‘He’s out again.’ The coughing was long and liquid. ‘Those hotheads …’

‘Drink this and lie quiet.’

Andagin took up his bow. He looked to where his father lay, hoping for a glance, a raised hand – some gesture that still had blood in it.

He left the hut disappointed.

To the east the cloud was stained with light. He bathed his gaze in it as he shrugged the pack more comfortably onto his shoulders. He sorted mentally through the contents. The knife was there. Some water in a gourd. Cordage. Her stone. He sensed, as if it were an old dog watching him, the hill fort at his back. He did not have to look at the smoking thatch and dilapidated fencing; he knew the talismans hooked on what had been battlements, wooden heads to keep evil spirits at bay. Andagin had rarely entered the fort. He knew only the cattle enclosure where livestock and brides were bartered, and the open field hedged with gorse where the dead were returned to the sky. There was also, forbidden to him and to all males, the shrine where his mother went to give him life, where Judoc was born and two others that never drew breath.

He thought about the dead babies. He could picture them only as dolls for an offering. ‘She took them back,’ his mother said. ‘You must not be angry. She can take, for without Her we would have nothing to give.’

Andagin recited the story. He did it so that the dead might lie easy.

Long ago, when the world was young, there was nothing but forest from sea to sea. The sea was blue and the land was green, a sea of leaf and wood. There were many wolves and bears in the forest and men were their prey – for men could not find their way in the shadows and they never saw the face of the sun. One day our Mother took pity on men and sent a great wind to open up the forest. In the clearings made by fallen trees, corn and barley grew and heather for cattle to browse – and into these places men stumbled, giving thanks to she who had lifted the darkness. So to this day we worship our Mother for her mercy, and leave her corn dolls and a knot from the first sheaf. And we tread lightly on her mantle, for she is our parent that loves us, and will return us to life when our lives come to an end.

The hill fort burrowed out of sight. Andagin tracked south through croplands, praying to the hare that might sacrifice itself, to the woodcock and the fox. His belly was full only of hunger. He was sick of cutting the pith and seed from rosehips, of watery soup and stale hazelnuts.

Deep heather gathered like a rampart. He shook spumes of snow from its dead flowers.

He waded a mile towards the oak wood.

His first snare was untouched – rope taut and sapling flexed as he had left them. The same sight awaited him at the next. A third had a squirrel snared about the midriff. Death and the cold had stiffened it. Pink haws of blood lay in the snow where it had struggled.

Andagin untied the squirrel. Mere scraps, yet he gave it thanks for giving what it had. He inspected the russet fur to assess its condition. He took off his pack and extracted the cordage. He trimmed off a length with his knife and bound the squirrel by its neck to the strap of his pack. He swung the pack over his shoulder, feeling the sway of the corpse behind him.

He inspected his fourth snare at the woodland edge and found that one of the nooses had come undone. He set to replacing it and soon his eyes were so fused to the running knot, his mind so bound up with it, that it took a gasp to break his concentration and name that shape as it burst, in a spatter of snow, from cover.

A hare. Sprinting to close open ground. Passing so near he fancied he could see the ember of its soul rushing to catch up with it.

Andagin’s heart pounced and his body followed. Already the bow was in his left hand, an arrow in the right, its flights crushed between his fingers and the haft.

The hare was quick – it leapt into a bank of heather. Andagin watched for tremors that might break the crust of snow. He began, with arrow poised, to close in on its hiding place. He let his feet do the thinking. Snow and brittle winter grass creaked beneath him. Closer each step, his eyes bridging the heather and the blunt tip of his arrow. It was like a raindrop on the edge of a leaf – at any instant the bond would break. Now. Or now. He trailed his foot in the snow. He stamped the ground.

The hare broke cover. It bolted and his arrow followed. He was in that flight. He felt it strike and the hare leapt as if the ground were a snake rearing up to bite.

The hare was not dead but knocked awry. Andagin gave chase, the animal in his chest hammering against its cage of bone. The hare stumbled, thwarted by a modest bank of earth. He saw, or thought he saw, the white blizzard of its terror as he fell upon it.

He was in the snow, his arms full of kicking muscle and tendons and fur. He managed to kneel and the snow was churned up and there was blood in it. He gripped the hare between his knees; more than its teeth, he feared those amber eyes. He hooded them with his hands and wrenched up and sideways. The hare shuddered. Andagin shut his eyes and swallowed his cry of triumph lest it spoil the gift.

He contemplated the hare in his lap. The light passed out of it. It was his duty to witness this, and not merely in beasts. He recalled the efforts of his aunt to be gone, the fever-light sharp in her eyes when he was brought to tell her goodbye. She had tried to touch his face and he remembered Judoc’s grip on his nape preventing him from shying away.

Other deaths were not to be witnessed. His grandfather had walked one frozen night into the heath. Men found the corpse and took it to the hill fort for burning. Andagin had wept at the flames, though his mother told him that life had two gates and both led into the world.

Was this true? Had he walked the heath before as another? Would he again? He poked with his finger at the dead hare. If only he could see its spirit run on into the heather. Into the earth, like a seed in darkness to germinate there and rise again.

His father would cross that threshold soon. Andagin would have to keep his face strong as they lit a pyre in the place of ancestors. The lintel of their house would fall and who but he remained to keep the other timbers from following?

His mind left the wood. It flew like a roosting crow to his father’s sickbed. He saw the ribs stark in that ruined chest. Saw his father’s roiling eyes as the coughing hacked him. And Judoc had turned against them all. Had they not been taught to walk their anger until it was spent: to shed a grievance on the heath and mark the spot of release with a stake plunged into the ground? Yet his brother disappeared for days without explanation. He seemed to crave his heart’s burden. He let the rage walk him.

Andagin squirmed the pack off his shoulders. She beckoned to him. She promised him comfort.

His fingers fastened about Her stone. He brought it to the light and held it to his nose. There was lightning locked inside. He rolled the stone in his palm to give it the heat of his body. The likeness turned to flesh against his flesh. Opening his hand and lifting the stone to his face, he traced with his thumb the indentations, the beads about her breast and crown.

She had come to him, catching his eye where she lay among dull flints. She alone among the stones had spoken.

He raised the figure to his lips and breathed on her as if stone could thaw or kindle. He knew that the likeness was a prayer in stone. His friends collected flints and some of these were thunderstones which had cooled and kept their shape. The arrows of heaven. Yet his talisman fitted his palm and was more precious, for no thundercloud had forged it. Another than him had sensed the presence within and released it from bondage. Those hands had failed or forgotten: she had been lost, or escaped, to lie in wait for another. For him. For Andagin.

The chatter of fieldfare returned him to the day. Last snowflakes drifted like white bees above the heather. He stowed the stone in the pack, slung the hare over his shoulder and followed his bow into the wood.

Alone for a spell – a breath of respite – Marcus Severus stood on the battlements and contemplated the day. Snow still fell in gusts, yet the bronze disc of the sun was attempting a breakthrough and where, to the south, it had burned a breach in the cloud, the stubble-pricked snowfields and frozen dykes gleamed.

It was a relief, after weeks of leaden skies, to see light again. Saturnalia was past, the worst of the darkness with it, yet this supposedly temperate island creaked in winter’s vice. Marcus felt the cold in every inch of his being. Stamping his boots and slapping his biceps, he turned to survey the orderly grid of leather ridge tents and, beyond these, the bedraggled huts, the random smoke and disorder of the natives. A useless tribe, his superiors said: obstinate, dull-witted and indolent. Yet they had built long ago the earthworks above which he stood and the foundations of a city to come. Signs of progress were everywhere. Already, beyond the young orchards and cleared scrub, the circle of an amphitheatre had been scored into the earth. Posted as he was above the east gate, the decurion could send his eye along the straight flight of the new road.

‘You’ll get the measure of the place,’ his commanding officer had said as they dressed in the unfinished bathhouse. ‘It’s all rain and thistles. They boil mutton till it tastes like old boot. And don’t look for action in these parts. They’ve been tame for a hundred years.’

Aulus Pomponius Capito had been with the Legion when the rebel queen was vanquished. Four months into his posting, Marcus could not counter with similar experience. Aquitaine had been a soft province, yet he knew that country folk altered little with the climate. He was familiar with gossip and low cunning, the superstition that knitted fertility dolls from wheat stalks and hung the corpses of crows from the branches of wayside trees. He was a countryman himself, as the centurion never tired of reminding him:

‘To a wheat weevil like you, this heath must look blasted. Its dismal hills. Its useless soil. A wet desert.’

‘In winter, perhaps –’

‘You’ve not lived through summer here. It so pelts with rain your feet start to rot. I’ve never waded through mud like I did last year.’

Marcus had learned all he cared to about the suppression of the revolt, yet he listened with every semblance of interest to his superior’s account of the horrors that met the Legion: the noblewomen with their severed breasts sewn into their mouths, the veterans skewered in their fields as offerings to a savage god. Aulus Pomponius described, with relish, how the insurgents used barbed arrows to increase the difficulty of extraction, how they daubed the points with grease and animal blood and wrapped the shafts with fibres to contaminate a wound.

‘Savage bastards. Wiping them out was a joy for us, like killing horseflies. I tell you, it’s a good thing their cunt of a queen did herself in. There wasn’t a soldier in Britain who wouldn’t have taken his turn with her till her guts ruptured …’

Alone on the rampart, Marcus shook the centurion from his thoughts. He noticed that he had failed to scrape a smear of mud from his ankle and was bending to rub it off when he saw, through a lattice of stairs and crossing points, his servant in the forecourt.

Condatis climbed the steps, watching that he spilled nothing from his bowls and flagon.

Marcus took his breakfast and Condatis began to prise open oyster shells with his knife.

‘I have been admiring our road.’ His servant looked up, attempting to gauge what was required of him. ‘It is not like your sandy paths. Your wayfarer routes that twist and turn.’

‘My people,’ said Condatis, ‘do not see as yours do. We are not so here to there. We turn,’ he said and, defeated by language, traced a snail’s shell in the air.

The veins showed blue beneath the man’s pale skin. He was lean and wiry; the grey hairs on his scalp were too sparse to be limewashed into a warrior’s mane. He handed over the shucked oysters.

‘My nurse used to warn me about your people. She liked to frighten me with tales of the dreaded Keltoi who once sacked Rome.’

‘Long ago,’ said the Briton in his own tongue. The decurion had learned enough of it to understand. It was hard to square the horrors of the uprising with this mild man. Marcus regarded that bowed head. The dwelling-place of the soul. To take a head in battle was to possess the soul of one’s enemy – did they not believe that?

‘Rome’s past is your past,’ Marcus said in the language of Rome. ‘Do you not think it a glorious heritage to have come so close to the seat of your enemy?’

‘My people are herders. We know nothing of old wars.’

‘That is deftly spoken. Rome’s peace will absorb your people. Our gods were the vanguard. Is not your Taranis our Jupiter in a local guise? And your Camulos is, I think, no match for our Mars.’

Marcus contemplated his manservant. There was strength in that leanness. Would he be of use as a guide in the hunt? Aulus Pomponius had plans to stir the blood by spilling some.

‘Do you hunt, Condatis?’

‘Hunt?’

Marcus spoke the local word – or what he took it to be.

The tribesman blanched. ‘The killing days are over.’

‘You misunderstand. I mean for meat. Hunting beasts.’

Marcus hesitated. A local’s sense of the land might help but not, perhaps, the local reverence for brute nature. It was good to set one’s wits against a quarry – to boast over its flesh as if in victory. Why speak softly to a carcass, why thank its spirit that had none?

‘What sort of man was your father?’

‘A good man, sir. He died when I was young.’

‘Was he a religious man?’ Again, that muted bewilderment. ‘Did he fear the gods?’

‘Who does not fear the gods?’

‘And the wild places, did he revere them? I have heard of a British man who ran mad when the Legion felled a grove of oaks.’

‘I know nothing of this.’

‘No, you are very tactful.’

Condatis had put on a cape of evasion. Marcus regretted his interrogation and wanted to share something of himself, to make a peace offering. ‘My father is still alive. As far as I know. His trade is tableware. He sells to ambitious men who want their wealth to speak for itself.’ The Briton nodded, secure in his deferential burrow. ‘My brother stands to inherit the foundry and the business. I have soldiering. Perhaps it will keep me here, in your country.’

‘It is your country now.’

Ah, thought Marcus, I have lured you out. ‘Well, I will be pensioned off to fatter pastures. In the midlands, no doubt, where I shall dig turnips until another uprising finishes me off.’ He sensed his servant weighing these words, sifting them for a nugget of intention.

‘When that time comes,’ the Briton said, ‘perhaps you will consider my services.’

Marcus felt his lips open and close. ‘Perhaps,’ he managed to reply.

Condatis bowed and took back the breakfast vessels. Marcus watched him withdraw, negotiating with hands full the narrow wooden steps to the camp.

A raven cronked from one of the granary towers. Marcus looked for it through the smoke and growing clamour of the settlement. He noticed that the snow had stopped falling. It would be a bright day for once; all the better because unlooked for. A blessing.



2




No Man’s Land (#u70e862f7-ce63-520b-9cac-7aa47501b11c)







She realises only after she has woken that she did so braced for the smell of smoke on her pillow. The bedroom is hot and whiffy like a sickroom in summer, and the heavy curtains admit a sliver of breeze in which she expects, almost avidly, the scent of wildfire.

She lies on her back, looking at the spines of Polish thrillers on the bookshelves. Shutting her eyes, she wills sleep to reclaim her, but she is cut adrift and washed ashore on another day.

She gets up from the hardness of the bed and pulls back the curtains. A bright morning, another one, the sky pale blue and slashed with contrails. She fights with the stiff latch and lurches out –

– blossom and earth and cut grass. The neighbour leaning on the frame of his lawnmower. No smoke, at least not yet. She pads to the bathroom, pees, then goes downstairs. In the kitchen she finds a note folded and propped up against one of her grandfather’s ashtrays.

Gone out on fire watch! Dad xx

She stares at the words as if she expects them to rearrange themselves on the paper. He has left her again to her homework and the heavy tutting of the kitchen clock.

Bobbie slouches, slack-bellied, at the sink and looks out at the garden. The oaks are naked but elsewhere it’s leaf-burst, the beech and chestnuts incandescent with spring. What her father calls the green mist. He wrote about it for the book he was working on before Mum left, before they came to Bagshot these Easter holidays to sort through fifty years of stuff – files, folders, clothes, books, pictures, furniture, garden tools, dusty junk in the garage. She wanders into the sitting room, barefoot on the worn carpet, and contemplates the cardboard boxes left open and gaping. When her father isn’t filling these with his inheritance – though some are marked ‘Mum’, ‘Roberta’, ‘Dump’ – he is out on the heath. Why should she wait for him if he cannot be bothered to greet her when she rises? It’s not as if there are DVDs to watch, or music worth listening to in her grandfather’s record collection.

Bobbie returns to the kitchen. She pulls the dry loaf from the bread bin, hacks at it with the breadknife and fills the ticking toaster. Her friends will be playing in their North Oxford gardens. They will be cycling in University Park or going shopping with their mums. She has no one to hang out with. Only the Lost Boys. She imagines the heat coming off the sand on the Poors Allotment. Waiting for her toast, she pictures the journey – imagines setting herself against the hill, the soil clenching beneath her boots.

A sunburst – a flashbulb going off in his face – and the air pulses. The noise is a giant punching him in both ears. Then (but there is no sequence, it’s all now) the hot splash of shrapnel. He lies on the ground with the high, shocked whine in his ears. He feels but cannot hear the patter of dust falling. Someone is screaming.

He is on his back, waving his legs in the air to restrict blood flow. His heart isn’t so much pounding as taking one. Air escapes his lungs –

– ah!

He’s in bed.

He’s in bed. He eases himself down and the sheets are damp with sweat. He focuses on his breathing – in through the nostrils, out through the mouth. Something catches in his throat and he hacks it loose, trying to do so quietly.

He reaches for his watch on the bedside table. 7:39. The Rev will be up, all cheery and wholesome and unfuckable in her kitchen.

He swings his legs over the side of the bed and the floor is cold and that feels good. He’s in England. He’s almost home. Almost back.

Ten minutes and a crafty fag later, he is dressed and kitted out at the breakfast table. Rachel is sitting behind her second or third cup of coffee. He can see on her face how he must look – wired and worn out at the same time.

‘What’s it today?’ he asks.

‘Wednesday. Holy Communion. You’re most welcome.’

‘Na, it’s all right.’

She has left out the Rice Krispies and a sweating bottle of milk. The Rev sees but never mentions his shaking hands. She’s careful not to slam doors and to set the volume low on the radio and the television so they don’t come on with a blast. Even so, she makes mistakes. Like that time she invited him into the kitchen when there was raw lamb mince on the chopping board.

‘You wouldn’t care,’ she says, ‘for a grapefruit?’

‘Uh …’

‘This has been languishing in the fruit bowl. It’s on my conscience.’ She holds the grapefruit as he would hold her breast. ‘I bought it in a fit of healthy-mindedness. Can’t face it now.’

‘Bitter.’

‘I could manage it with a liberal sprinkling of sugar but I fear that would be missing the point.’

The Rev gets this way with food. Some people need things to feel guilty about. ‘I don’t fancy it,’ he says. He sloshes milk into his breakfast cereal, hears it pucker and snap. He doesn’t fancy this, either, but he needs to get something inside him.

‘Rough night?’

‘Why, d’I wake you?’

Rachel shakes her head. Sneaking a peek in her room that time, he saw the earplugs lying bent and mottled on her bedside table. ‘Have you given any thought,’ she asks, ‘to my suggestion? I have that number at Veterans Aid.’

‘I’m not a charity case.’

‘Aitch, you literally are right now, and you’re welcome, but staying here is no life, is it?’

‘You want me to leave.’

‘That’s not what I’m saying.’

‘Sounds like it.’

‘You can stay as long as you’ve nowhere else, but we need to come up with a long-term plan. Where do you see yourself, three-four years from now?’

‘Dunno, dead?’

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘All right, stacking shelves, driving a forklift truck, working in a call centre selling shit to people who don’t need it.’

‘In a home of your own. Maybe with a partner, a kid.’

‘I don’t want kids.’

‘Fine.’

‘I’m not having kids.’

‘Aitch, I’m being hypothetical. My point is, organisations exist to help people like you.’

‘I’m dealing with it.’

‘You scream in your sleep. You get up looking like you’ve been on a three-day bender and I know you haven’t, it’s just what sleep has done to you, it’s what your dreams have done to you. There’s nothing wrong with accepting help.’ Her plump hands cup her mug of coffee that has COFFEE written on it. He stares at them because he feels the pressure of her watching and there’s no way in the world he can push his eyes up to meet hers. ‘Tell me you’ll think about it.’

‘Right.’

‘Is that a yes?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I can do all the preliminary work – the talking, the forms …’

Christ. She lifts her mug to drink and he feels the weight of her attention lift, so he looks up and sees red hair and the pink of her face, and in the garden the apple blossom is getting picked apart by the wind and he has to get out, into the woods. He looks directly at her, and if only he could pin her down on the table, his thighs slapping against her bare arse, pounding her till she shouts his name like it’s not a sad puppy.

‘Thank you,’ she says.

‘What for?’

‘For being willing to listen.’

‘It’s your house.’

‘Technically it’s not.’

Aitch fiddles with his shemagh, drapes it across his shoulder. ‘Reckon I’ll go see Bekah,’ he says.

‘Is that wise?’

‘Stu’s at work. Then maybe I’ll go for a run.’

‘Okey-doke,’ says Rachel. She drains her mug, gets up and puts it in the sink. Job done, parishioners to see. ‘Will you be going through the heath?’

‘Eh?’

‘To your sister’s?’

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s just the ground’s very dry. We’re supposed to take care not to drop cigarettes.’

‘“Don’t burn everything, Aitch!”’

Rachel hiccups a laugh. ‘I don’t mean that.’

‘Cross my heart, Rev, hope to die, I promise I will not burn down the heath.’

Locking the front door, she tastes the air. Nothing but the exhalation of flowers and, fainter, diesel fumes from a ride-on mower. She walks to the junction with College Ride. Putting Bagshot behind her, she follows the holly hedge as far as Pennyhill Park Hotel and its pungent hinterland of skips. At the crest of the hill she turns right, scaling a low bank of gravel shored up by oil drums. She pushes through holly and laurel, looking out for dog mess underfoot or bagged and hung from branches.

In the wood the footpath is obstructed with logging debris. Someone has been grubbing up rhododendron, leaving the wrack snagged in trees as if deposited by a great flood. She walks among roots and torn branches. Machines have carved deep ruts in the mud.

She drags a stick through the skeletons of last year’s bracken, knocking tentacles of new growth. Everywhere the understorey is in leaf – rowans with their stems nibbled by deer, birches spangled with sunlight. A blackbird, threshing leaves in search of springtails, flies scolding at her approach. Birds seem to call from every corner – chaffinch, robin, wren – and she imagines their song as silver threads tying up the wood. Above the trees the sky is raw with the rasp of jet engines.

Bobbie enters the beech plantation. Her father has shown her the damage done to it by deer and squirrels. Inattentive, she treads in a rare puddle and tiny insects rise like vapour about her ankles.

Has she ever known the woods this dry this early? She thinks about the fire on the ranges. They were in the Vauxhall at the time, taking more of Grandpa’s stuff to the dump. ‘That’s smoke,’ her father said. The air flashed blue and they bumped onto the verge to let a fire engine pass.

‘Could be a bonfire,’ said Bobbie, seeing the expression on her father’s face.

‘It’s not a bonfire.’

After that, he swerved as he drove because he was fiddling with the car radio to find a local news station. He swore at Dolly Parton, he swore at travel updates.

When they got back to Grandpa’s house, he left Bobbie in the hallway and ran to fetch his iPad. The heath in Pirbright was in flames. Sparks, they reckoned, from ordnance or a soldier’s cooking fire. Her father was scrolling in a sweat. ‘Says here a thousand acres.’

‘Is that a lot?’

‘That’s the lot. Jesus.’

It was because of drought, he said, and the winter dieback. Spring is the worst time of year for it – nestlings in the heather eaten by flames, lizards cooked on the blackened soil. Bobbie listened but she failed to make the necessary noises. It made her father sullen all evening.

She picks at shreds of bark torn from a beech by a gnawing squirrel. He reckons she doesn’t care about the land, but that’s not true. Didn’t they come here every summer, and every autumn half-term, to endure Grannie’s cooking and Grandpa’s lectures? And weren’t things easiest on those visits when all together they took off on long hikes, picking blackberries in August and mushrooms in October? Sometimes they found Sparassis, or brains as Bobbie calls it, spongy growths from pine stumps that you bake in casseroles or use to flavour omelettes. Deep amid the trees, they found boletus mushrooms with slimy caps. Best of all were the cep, so mild and nutty, filling her grandparents’ house with the smell of autumn woods.

Those were among the few occasions when her grandfather, who considered the kitchen to be his wife’s domain, commandeered the means of production and banished the family to the sitting room, summoning them with a crier’s voice to grzybowa or mushroom soup, with poppy seedcake that he’d ordered from a Polish shop in Hounslow. That soup, Bobbie thinks, is lost to them now. Her father never learned how to make it – he’s tetchy about picking mushrooms for ecological reasons – and Grandpa was not one to write his recipes down.

She sits on a stump among sweet chestnuts. The chestnuts are warped and dying, their flanks blackened by fire. Bobbie drinks from her water bottle and the cold makes her teeth ache. She lowers herself into stillness as her father taught her, trying to expand her peripheral vision – casting a web of attention to see what lands in it. She hears aircraft noise, traffic on Nine Mile Ride and the A30. Nearer, fainter, there is the shaken bell of a robin, the breeze in the pines. She tries to give herself to this moment, to stake a claim in it, but there are human voices at the edge of hearing and her wide-eyed stare contracts. She perceives, so dimly it might be a twinge of gristle in her jaw, the squeak of bicycle brakes. She stows the water in her rucksack and touches as she does so the patterned stone in its inner pocket.

She retrieves the stone. It soothes her to roll the familiar shape in her palm.

Her father found it twenty years ago – long before she existed – on a dig at Silchester. She imagines him with a full head of hair, on padded knees in a trench, scraping off the dirt with his thumbnail. The stone is shaped like a withered pear and carved with ribs and pockmarks. It was never knapped to kill or cut – its markings are odd, with hatchings like decoration about what Bobbie thinks of as its waist and neck. It’s impossible to guess its age – it might have been carved by a schoolboy on a field trip, or a soldier resting on manoeuvres. Bobbie likes to claim it’s prehistoric. No roads back then. No England. Only foraging and hunting, small groups of people your only shelter and hope of survival. When he presented her with the stone, her father had been circumspect. ‘I can’t guarantee that it’s of archaeological interest.’ Even so, it matters that the stone is hers, that it came into her keeping. In the first hand that held it, it would have felt the same as it does in hers.

She puts the stone in her left trouser pocket and picks up the footpath towards Surrey Hill.

Here he is, slouching behind the sports hall of the country park hotel. There’s gash everywhere: smashed beer bottles, cans of Red Bull, plastic bags with dogshit inside. It’s a relief to get under the trees. In the beech wood there’s a girl, or maybe a boy, of ten or so, thrashing old bracken with a stick. He doesn’t often see kids here, mostly dog walkers and lads from the estate on their way to the pub.

This path was one of his favourites on the Yamaha, taking turns with Donnie to punish their guts on its roots and stones. On foot, the gradient is starting to cost him. How can he be short of breath already? He’s seriously out of shape. Not that the weather helps. Never known an April like it. Still, chilly after Helmand.

Ten litres a day he got through at first, the water warm and tasting of bottle plastic. Sweating like a pig out in the ulu. His arse-crack like a river. Mid-summer it got so hot his brain went numb. He only wanted to sit and breathe, and even that was like sucking the air inside an oven. But there were duties to perform, orders to keep them knocking about while the heat squeezed the sweat out of him and even the flipflops were sitting it out in their hovels, waiting for nightfall.

He makes it to the top of the hill. Twenty-three and he can still hack a bit of exercise. A few more paces and the trees give way to patchy scrub. He trained on land like this in Germany, but the sand and soil were no preparation for Afghanistan, its thin dust a powder over everything – in his skin, his hair, the parts of his rifle. Some days the dust was a beast, surging up in the downdraught from a chopper as if it wanted to smother it. Like the brownout when the Slick came for Chris and Gobby.

Who washed the dust out of their wounds? Did some of it travel home in their plywood coffins?

Fuck it – he lights a bine.

What is he going to say to Bekah? What arrangement of words can he come up with that would change anything with his sister?

He walks across the Poors Allotment, treading down the heather, dropping ash into it. He sees the burnt-out car, its rusted hull pierced by birch saplings. Strangely comforting that, knowing even the ugliest things will disappear. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking. What could grow out of him to obscure the sights in his head? They come at him in the day but worse at night. Sometimes, too anxious to sleep, he walks up and down Church Road or into the dark of the forest. Last Saturday, after pub closing, he kept going along the A30 as far as the golf shop on Jenkin’s Hill. Stood in its empty car park thinking: top spot for a sniper, you can see a mile down the road.

He is level now with the telecoms tower. It stands behind gates and razor wire, though it wouldn’t be hard to get in if the fancy took him. He drops his fagbutt on the gravel and crushes it under his boot-heel. Has a quick sniff of his armpits. Tests his breath. She won’t chuck him out if he pongs, not without a second reason. Still, a man has his pride.

In the Old Dean estate, people are either at work, asleep, or plonked in front of breakfast TV. Plenty of curtains are drawn and there’s nobody about on the pale grass between houses. Outside Bekah’s block he looks for Stu’s van, but it’s not there.

He rings the buzzer and waits a long time. Probably she’s trying to pick Annie up, or yelling at Barry to turn his music down.

‘Hello?’

‘Bekah, it’s me.’ The intercom breathes static. ‘Can I come up?’

She lets him in and he goes slowly up the stairs. The echoey landing, the dead tomato plants outside 2C, then ARCHER, Stu’s surname where theirs used to be.

Bekah has put the latch on. He steps into the hallway that smells of last night’s supper and the nappy bin. There are noises from the utility space, where he finds Bekah putting a load on while Annie sits playing with an empty bottle of Fairy Liquid. His sister presents him with a hard, perfumed jaw to kiss. His niece pays him no attention – she knows Aitch has nothing for her.

‘You didn’t tell me you were coming over.’

‘It’s not exactly far. Where’s Barry?’

‘How should I know?’

‘Stu’s at work, is he?’

‘Where else would he be?’ Bekah closes the drum of the washing machine and selects the economy cycle. Annie has shaken a drop of soap from the bottle and is spreading it with her foot on the lino.

‘I’m parched – can I get a glass of something?’

‘We’re out of squash.’

‘Tap’s fine.’

Aitch escapes to the kitchen and pours himself a glass. He does a quick recce in the drawers and finds a pack of fags under some fliers. He shakes it at her when she comes in. ‘Silk Cut? That’s like inhaling air.’

‘Oi, thief.’

‘When d’you start on these?’

‘I haven’t,’ says Bekah, ‘they’re just in case.’

‘In case you give up?’

‘Go on, you can have one.’

‘Hardly worth it.’ Yet he scrabbles for a cigarette and steps out on the balcony to smoke it. A hand appears behind him and shuts the French window.

When he’s down to the filter, he flicks the butt to the pavement and knocks for readmission. Bekah has made a brew and he sits beside her in the living room, Annie squatting on her heels making marks on the Etch A Sketch.

‘You just come to say hello?’ asks Bekah.

‘As opposed to?’

‘As opposed to having news. Job interviews, getting on benefits.’

‘I’m not a scrounger.’

‘Neither am I, but I take what’s owed to me and the kids.’ Bekah pushes a plate of chocolate Hobnobs his way. ‘So there’s nothing?’

‘Can’t I just come for company?’

‘Course you can.’

‘When Stu’s at work.’

‘He’s not gonna stop you calling.’

‘He stopped me living here.’

‘Don’t start.’

‘I wasn’t taking up much space, was I?’

‘Harry, it was like having a fucking black hole in the living room. You sat around all day looking depressed.’

‘I needed something to do.’

‘Yeah and you got it.’

The stacking job at the Co-op. Long days under neon. Christ, it was bone. But it got him out of the flat, out of Bekah’s hair. Till he decked a punter who startled him with a question about broccoli.

‘I’ll get myself sorted.’

‘How?’ Bekah stares at him. ‘What’s different, what’s changed since you were stoned on that sofa playing Xbox and watching …?’

She can’t say it: filth. ‘You don’t think I can hack it.’

‘Course I do.’

‘No you don’t. You think I’m fucked for life, some wreck with a Rupert in his head telling him he’s shit.’

‘What are you talking about?’ His little niece begins to whine. Bekah picks her up and Annie pats her mother’s face, almost slapping it. Bekah carries her into the bedroom and he can hear the quack and jingle of some kids’ cartoon. She comes back at him. ‘What are you talking about, a voice in your head?’

‘Forget it.’

‘That’s not good, Harry.’

‘Don’t call me Harry.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t like it.’

She stares at him. He looks for somewhere safe to bury his eyes. ‘Don’t you think you should see someone?’

‘Christ, if I’d known it was gonna be like this I’d have stayed in bed.’

‘Why’d you come and see me then?’

He looks at her feet that are swelling over the edge of her grey pumps. Her ankles look grey, elderly. ‘I thought I could stay for lunch. Take Annie to the playpark. I don’t mean on my own – obviously you’d be there.’

In the bedroom his niece laughs and shouts ‘dog, dog’.

‘I’m only doing spaghetti hoops,’ says Bekah.

‘That’s OK.’

‘Then I have to put her down for her nap.’

‘I won’t stop you.’

‘I’ll just go and check on her.’

Even now he can’t talk to his sister. Like on tour, when he got his twenty-minute phone call. Standing there hearing the kids in the background and Bekah asking how he was, what it was like, and him thinking, I saw three men get vaporised in a drone strike, we held a memorial service in the cookhouse for a teenager from Crawley, I’m scared I’ll bottle it next time there’s a contact. None of this would have made sense back home, so he told her it was hot and Gobby sent his love and how were the kiddies, how was work?

The front door opens and he’s off the sofa before Stu has put his toolkit down. It’s as if he can smell Aitch, coming straight into the living room with his long snarky face. ‘Wasn’t expecting to find you here,’ Stu says.

‘All right, mate.’

‘Where’s Bekah?’

‘With Annie.’

Stu is lean, a greyhound of a man, but he fills the room. ‘How’s things with the trendy vicar?’

‘All right.’

He looks at Aitch down his long nose. ‘She’s relaxed with your mess, is she?’

‘She’s not up my arse like some RSM, if that’s what you mean.’

‘She let you up her arse yet?’

‘Fuck off, Stu.’

‘Single woman, strapping young bloke under her roof. Sounds like something you’d watch on telly. Mind you, a lady vicar – she’s probably a lezzer.’

‘If all blokes were like you, who could blame her?’

Stu wets his lips, grins. ‘Good to see you, mate. Staying long?’

‘Just came to see Bekah.’

‘Yeah, well you seen her now, ain’t ya.’

His sister returns with Annie on her hip. ‘Dada,’ Annie cries and casts off from her mother into Stu’s arms. He makes a big show of kissing her cheeks and the tip of her nose.

‘I wasn’t expecting you back,’ Bekah tells Stu, and the lack of warmth in her voice cheers Aitch up.

‘You know me, efficient worker. I see we got the pleasure of a guest for lunch.’

‘Na,’ Aitch says, ‘it’s fine.’

‘You’re welcome, mate.’

‘I got things to do.’

Bekah protests, or feels the need to pretend to. Even so he can tell she wants him gone.

‘You give my best to Barry, yeah? See you, Annie. Stu. Bex …’



3




The Heave (#u70e862f7-ce63-520b-9cac-7aa47501b11c)







First come our boy Malk.

He hold the guidin stick, it bein his turn.

He hold Abans knife. The knife they take off Feo in the bad time.

Feo they slaver beat Malk so black Aban so blue one night they bled him like a porker.

Runnin ever since with the blade that done it.

Malk reckon a knife done red work cut a way for us. Stedders smell blood keep out its way an the way its people. Cant say for hoofers but they go sly an void the roads cos they gods say so.

Aban talk bout the roads. The Thirsty with its robbers. The Empty where stedders have they tolls. So many dangers on our way to West Cunny. West Cunny where the rains still fall. Where Malk Aban Efia Nathin Becca Rona Lan headin. The pastures there. Tight bellies plus an end to roamin.

Fastest ways the road, say Malk.

Walk on till wind spew up sand an grit. Becca Lan pull they hoods tight. Nathin spit. Efia look at the spit, how Momma swallow it like she swallow everythin.

On the road, say Aban, trollers see for miles.

Yeah an we see em too.

Trumpet finches bust up from the dunes. Aban put a hand on Malks arm, feel the muscles there. His bro, his mate from wayback.

Safer ways off road.

Aint nuthin but scrub an sand. What if we lose us?

Follow the sun. Least we stay hid.

I got the guidin stick.

Whats it tellin?

Malk look like he dont know.

Efia touch Malks neck. Trollers mean slavers, she say. You got pricey heads.

Malk feel Aban Efia Nathin Becca Rona Lan press eyes on him. He turn the guidin stick in his hand, feel the right grain of it, true grain that know the way an give rightness to its holder. Off roads slow, he say.

Nuthin slow like never arrivin.

The group all gree when Malk lift the guidin stick. Then Becca say she thirsty. Whole groups thirsty, say Rona, an suns gearin up for a hotten. One hour since dayup an the sands bakin, the airs meltin an carders workin up they skikishik. Lan give Becca the dregs from her jercan.

In a kayshas shade we share beetle grubs cook in last nights ashes. Nathin give up three strips of jerk he bin keepin in his belt. The stink of jerk bring flies. We sit flappin our swats. Long wait fall on us then. No thinks, just breathin. Rest our eyes on the plain, all swimmy like water tho there aint none. Watch birds hangin up high, specks turnin to wild dog, camel, blackbuck.

We cant stay here, say Malk. Grubs low an water too. How fars the nearest well?

The Winnel, say Nathin. Bout an hour. Half at night.

Stedder place, say Becca. Why risk it?

Cos we jercans empty, say Rona.

Winshams close, say Nathin. Shop there after.

Can do, say Aban. Need fresh legs if stedders catch us.

Well it is, say Malk liftin the guidin stick. Hole up an wet throats till nightfall. Then we shop at Winsham.

In parch time a waterin place show from its palms an willows. We creep in slow, lookin out for stedders. Fresh earth smells. Hoopoes in the branches. Soil between our toes cool an sucky after sand an dust. Only mud tho so long the dry an stream gone underground. In wintertime a waterin place flood again or should do. Old wintertimes leastways before the rains fail.

The Winnel have three wells. Two in use by stedders but one near us just gapin sayin, Coo-yoo, wet yer beaks here.

We run to the well our jercans ready. Nathin Aban bend they backs to lift the bucket. Soon as done the group fan out lookin for things to eat. Lan find a ditch of slime boilin with frogs. We catch the frogs, stuff em in our packs, skewer em on sharpsticks. Good eatin if we risk a fire. Not tonight tho. Best eat raw. Keep out of stedders sight. Fat up our nerves for shoppin.

Lan put a snail on her tongue an all the group laugh. Malk take out the knife an start to skin frogs. Efia watch the bodies fall at his feet like squirmy little blokes.

Our jercans full, we hole up the day in a cork grove. Far enuf from hearin but close enuf to watch. Sussin out the doins on the Winsham palisades.

When shadows spread, Aban crawl out thru scrub an grass to the gate of the sted. He look round, see women poundin grain, carryin water on they heads. Sentries dozin in a cedars shade. Others nabberin by the meetin tree. Creepin closer Aban find gaps in the fence, look at the market stalls. Suss out the grain store. Then snake an scrabble back to us.

Wassup, say Malk.

Hungers comin.

How so?

Winsham folk sellin goods an stocks. Fuelwood. Dung cakes. Nuthin blokes can sink they teef in.

Less blokes eat shit, say Lan.

What grains?

Sorghum. Maize. Meat too an cows blood.

Killin what they cant keep, say Rona.

The group turn quiet. Look into the trees so pictures in our heads stay hid. None of us as dont know the pain of hunger.

Abans first to bright up. Makes sense shop now then dunnit? Go in fast an quick.

Take what? You say theres nuthin sellin.

We aint buyin. Look they got grain stores on stilts. Keep rats an coons out give us nifty cover. Drill our way in.

Like in Whey Bitch, say Becca.

No, say Malk. This shop we get back. All on us.

What if some don’t, say Becca.

We go nifty. Not like last once.

Sez you, say Becca an Rona hug her for quiet. Malk take his eyes off Becca slow an warnin.

Boys go, say Nathin.

Balls, say Rona. You shop grain stores we scout the sted. See whats goin.

An the sentries?

Run if we can fight if we cant. Malk take up his sharpstick. On my signal, he say. Click an slick.

Slicks our movin. Clicks our speakin without words. All on us kneel in mud an black our faces.

When the sun cook like an egg on the ground, its time. Hoods down. Turbs in place. Pray patches on our clothin. Sit in our heads readyin for danger.

The sky hatch a fat moon. Nightspit on the grass an spidie threads like smoke on the ground. Cool breeze good as sleep after the blazin day.

Fires in the sted die out. Stedders go sleep in they huts. Only sentries pacin over the gate.

Now, say Malk an we move. Like Aban before we shift cross the plain to our bizness.

Malk bein strongest hoist us over. Lan Efia Rona Becca hide next a pigsty but Aban almost land on a billy, it run bleatin, bell janglin an Nathin go to split its throat but Malk stop him. Goats get spook for nuthin, he say, leave it be. Nathin nod tho his eyeballs dancin. Grains this way, say Aban an he click, Upyer.

Aban wriggle under the grain store. Down in the dark best not think on rats or spidies. Lan Efia Nathin follow with packs open an Aban use the drill. Happen the floors made of wood so he blow dust from his hands an spin till a breakthru. Nuthin here so start again. An again. Fourth time some grain come tricklin so he gouge hard with his sharpstick an out it come like steam. Aban shove fast now makin holes an everyones sweatin, the sand an sawdust in our eyes, our packs gapin yorr an gobbin up the spillin grain.

Outsight samewhile, Malk Rona Becca creepin bout the sted seein what they find tho nuthin much, all lock up for the night. Clothes dryin worth a trade. Some blokes hoe by a wall, a pair of sandals, a clutch of piggly pears. Malk Rona Becca drop when a watch pass nabberin too loud to know shoppers near.

More clicks from Aban. Lan Efia Nathin scrape clear of the grain store, packs bulgin. Malk Rona Becca scurry to join us but Lans pointin, Look, an all look at lights winkin an wavin in the huts. Lanterns movin in the darkness.

Quick!

First Becca Rona jump over an fall crump on other side. Aban next then Nathin but the crys up, the watch hollerin an lantern lights nippin at our faces. Lan hop, she skip like shes standin on hot sand an quick, shout Malk, quick, but Lan run from the chasin lights. Malk reach out but grab only the wind of her. Toss over his loot, his sharpstick, help Efia an take a run after, splinterin his fingers, warpin his nails to get over.

Other side of stockade its no use creepin. We run till our hearts bash gainst our ribs. Back to the grove. Find others, grab loot, get away from Lans cries.

Malk Efia tumble into the hidin place. Lost for thinks we say nuthin, only Beccas sobbin.

Lets go, say Nathin.

No, say Becca.

Winshams got Lan now. They learn our hideyway then come for us.

But Lan! You say we get back. All on us.

Malk say nuthin his head droppin but Aban see him look his way. Too late, Aban say. They got her now but she wont come to harm leastways not killin.

Forced hitchin, say Efia. Forced hitchin an sprogs till she die of one in her upways.

Or grindin, say Becca, till some bloke pox her.

Shes lost, say Malk. Like us if we dont shift. You on yer backs an Aban me kickin on a gibber.

Blokes voices on the plain. Lamps swingin, old church bells dangin an all Winsham up searchin for us. No time to say, Lan oh Lan, but uppin quick we check our packs an sharpsticks. Malk hand the guidin stick to Aban, nuthin sayin. Aban think before he take it but Malk push it an up it go in Abans fist.

We run cross scrub till dayup an stedders long gone back to bed.

Scaldin light an sky like a furnace door left open. Hidin in a wood of yewkas after a fire, leaves still hangin like yellow petals. Becca Rona Nathin Efia. Nathin with the guidin stick case Aban Malk dont make it back. They gone to Bad Shot to shift goods. Hopin news of the raid on Winsham dont beat em to it. Becca Rona moanin, Lan oh Lan, till it get too hot for moans an they sleep. Nathin turnin over the guidin stick praise it, stroke its carvins. Efia search for grubs an locusts tho in her head too its, Lan oh Lan. The group grieve but Efia reckon she an the group not always the same an her pains sharper an deeper cos Lan was her best her closest since they kids together in Roil Wells. How they scape the same fate. Hitchin to old blokes. Old blokes with land an plenty of kids from the wives they bust up havin em. Tho they moms say thats just The Way they aint gonna walk it. Live free together. Live on the run. All lost now an broke.

Samewhile up north, Malk Aban take booty into Bad Shot. Aban tell all this later. Later when we share whats done. Bad Shot he says a richer sted than Winsham, its walls stronger an more stedders on count of Thirsty Roads traffic an trade. Richer the sted the more talismans outsight. Bad Shots got all see-see boxes with they bust up eyes an coily tails. Heads of crits on poles. Grass dolls hangin from rusty nails. Keep out if you mean bad. Malk Aban mean good. Trade an scarper. No shoppin in Bad Shot. No riskin any lives.

Wassup, bloke at the gate say. Malk Aban stand whiles stedders frisk em an bung they snouts in our loot. Clothes, a hoe, a pair of sandals, some grain. Aban note the stedders in cammo like juntamen. Two on the ramparts holdin akays.

Hotten innit, say Malk but the stedders ignore him. One, a heavy bloke with a bust nose an face tattoos, point his cosh at him. Do you follow the Law, he say.

How so bro, say Malk.

How so you worship the Law yer maker an fear the Law yer breaker.

Oh for show, say Aban, for show.

Bad Shots a loyal sted an a christun.

We trade, say Aban, only with christun folk.

The big bloke suck his teeth lookin at em. Dont sound like hoofers, he say an gob over his shoulder. Biddy welcome.

Cheers, say Malk but he walk into the blokes cosh. Hot breath in his face an black eyes borin into him. Any grief, say the bloke, an kites ul peck out yer eyes.

Makes sense dunnit, say Aban.

The Law have eyes an see you. Send fleshflies to blow yer corse if you cross him. Malk Aban watch the cosh fall an draggin the loot they enter Bad Shot under the akays waitin muzzles.

Cheerful bloke, say Malk.

Cheerful sted, say Aban. Soon as done we best be off.

Rightyer, say Malk.

Bad Shot stink an swelt in the sun. Houses of tarp an breezeblock from the Fast Time manshuns. Stedders in white curters an jelabas. Women carryin water in bark pots. Bowleg kids young as five heave they bros an sissies on they backs. Smell of dead crits an donkey shit. Dogs skulkin for grub, cowerin gainst sticks or stones. More blokes in junta gear watchin from doorways. Aban whisper, Jorjes Army?

Malk shake his head. Long time since the junta send its army west. Boys find the market at a crossroads. Few stalls under canvas. Women pickin over dusty melons, piggly pears, roast locusts. Bunnies showin pink where they innards cut out, the bald flesh peppery with flies. Stedders eyes slide to the goods the boys carryin. Costin. Considerin. Aban find one stall got what they lookin for. What for a dewcloth, he ask the stall bloke.

What you got?

This hoe.

Bloke shake his head.

This hoe an these sandals.

Bloke or bitch?

Small bloke big bitch, say Malk an the stedder crack a smile. Got him now.

Bloke hand over a dewcloth. Know how to use it, he ask.

We know, say Malk. How bout plasters?

Some. You?

Malk Aban take out stole clothes but keep the grain hid in they packs. Stall bloke make a lemon suck face. For yer wife, say Aban. He tug out a yellow sari. Gotcha gain think Malk cos the blokes eyes bulge an, Maybe why not, he say, tryin too late to swallow his greedy look.

This for plasters an that bucket there.

Keep her smiling, say the stall bloke as he stow the sari out of sight. Where you boys from?

Whey Bitch, say Aban fast an easy. The Wen before that.

Wenners eh? Met a bloke once ran slave ships in Canny Wolf.

Dunno Canny Wolf, say Aban.

Tradin place innit. Where you headin?

Malk go shifty, look to move, but Aban play it fast. North, he say. Lookin for harvest work. No sooner the words loose than he want to catch em back cos the stall bloke frown an wall up gainst em. Best scapes forward, Aban think, an fearin a sweat on him he say, Wassup bro? North no good is it?

Dunno, say the stall bloke. Not up the Middens leastways. Word is its steds vee hoofers like when you was lads. The bloke lean close, his fat arm in his wares. Hoofers like weeds, he say. Pluck em up an they grow back all over. Cos of the Dry see an folk what grow stuff claimin land off the lifestock.

So whats new, say Malk.

Its numbers innit. Breed like rats them hoofers. Loud enuf for half Bad Shot to hear the bloke add, Ousters most on em. Not christun folk thats for show. Lose animals in the Dry an they raid a sted. Stedders wont have it an why should they? Call on Jorjes Army. Back to axes an mashtis.

Nuthin stedders cant sort out, say Aban, wantin to go. Jorjes lot ul see it right.

Rightyer but they – The stall bloke lean in again an whisper. They bring trouble an all. Looters do. Rob good folk soon as bad.

Aban Malk give no thinks to this. Seein as we headin west, fightin in the Middens no fret of ours. Fact, worse things get the better, cos stedders watchin hoofers mean less eyes for us. Aban Malk go to leave but the blokes not done. Like he want to warn the boys.

Looters bad enuf, he say. But worse follow.

Like what?

Slavers. Blokes huntin fresh meat. Bounty men.

Aban burn on a sudden hotter than the day call it. He drop his grain pack.

If theres a price, say the stall bloke, after kids whats grown up runnin –

Not our prob, say Malk.

For show for show. Still an I mean watchyer. For bounty men a lookylikes good enuf. Theres prizes on all sorts of heads. Crims on the run. Scaped slaves. You name it they lookin. Not so many blocks on bizness when wars afoot.

The boys get away fast as clever. Did the stall bloke know em? Guess they story? Fast an nabber free they barter clothes for saltmeat, rope an bundles of tarp. Grain goes for bags of sorghum an maize. Supplies better than Aban see in Winsham but here too signs of hunger. One bloke in a side streets skinnin a dog strung up by its back legs.

What yer think, say Malk as they shoulder they packs. Bout slaver talk an bounty men?

Think nuthin, say Aban. Nor say nuthin till we far from this shithouse. Silent they walk under the gate where the sentries sit, scannin the Thirsty for signs of trouble.

Crawlin thru scrub longside the Thirsty Road. Keepin low case stedder patrols or juntamen see us. Packs on our backs. Sweat drippin from our chins an guts full but brains hungerin for shade. On, keep on. Till Rona Becca crump to they knees.

Upyer, say Malk.

Upyer own, say Becca.

Crits aint stirrin, say Rona. Birds shush. Even carders restin.

Aban offer his jercan but Rona shake her head an push it back.

So Nathin Aban scout off ahead whiles Rona Becca Malk Efia rest in sharp an furzy shade. Soon Nathin Aban come back.

Got a place, say Nathin. Up the hill an not far off. No blokes about.

One bloke, say Aban. But he wont say nuthin.

Up at the ruin off the Thirsty we all look up. The corse hang from the gibber in a halo of flies. Eyes et by crows, face black like a bad fruit. Efia look at the square of bark danglin from the dead foot. She can read tho no one else can.

They hang him, she say, for startin a bush fire.

Way to go, say Nathin.

Stinks an all, say Rona. Leave him to his thinks.

Becca take Efias hand. We cant stay here, she say. Not next to that.

Best place for us, say Malk. Smell ul drive blokes elseways. Bad luck an cross a workin gibber.

Its bad luck is bad on us too, say Becca. Cant sleep the night an him rottin just outsight.

Malk pull angry at the pray patch in his cloak. Look, he say. Alla Man give em to us. Magic powers in magic words from far off. Magic an the Laws word.

So, say Becca.

So we got cover. Words keep danger off.

An we think good on the corse, say Efia, puttin a hand on Beccas neck, corse think good on us. Right?

The group all gree till Becca stop her moanin.

Into the ruin we go. Nuthin but a dusty shell, tho cooler in than out. Some keep watch while others sleep. Efia sit with Aban. She look round the room wonderin if its a Fast Time manshun. Not built for now, thats for show. In Roil Wells back when she serve in a salt merchants house, it were tall an deep an dark, it were like a net to catch the breeze. Him an his wife baskin in it like fish in water. This ruin tho made for easy livin. No breeze holes nor ducts save whats done by time an weather.

Tell me, say Efia, what you see.

Aban shrug. He watch the road all slick like a river of heat. Sand each side like a cauldron simmerin. Land curvin off in a smudge of haze.

Efia drink from her jercan an Aban from his. Share some saltmeat an beetle grubs from the yewka grove.

Beccas fraid, say Efia.

Aint she always?

Rona keep her strong but she cant carry her all the way.

Dont worry bout Becca.

You reckon its true, say Efia. Bout the patch magic?

Dont you?

Dunno. Aint what I hold to.

Its what we got.

Efia Aban sit sweatin with no more thinks between em. So begin the Numb. Waitins not the word, for waitins a doin an the Numb dont act nor want neither. Its like gettin to be a stone. Or a lizard on a rock. Head empty an heart slow. No pictures, no sayin. All shut down till the heat drop. Wait without waitin for time to start again.

Aban stand when Malk Rona join us. Malk naked, his brown skin gleamin, scars like a map of rivers cross his torso. Efia see Malk hard. Rona fix him, Malk fix her back, her eyes black an sweat on her lip, her breasts bare, Lans necklace of shells tuck between em. No word sayin Efia stir beside him, she lift her shirt an Abans risin too. Efias breasts small, the nips dark an scars in rings bout her belly nub. Malk Rona curl like cats on the floor, Rona take Malk in her gob, Malk groan oh, an Efia bare now, her dress like a pool bout her feet, her feet specky with sand, the slave brand like a half moon on her hip. Aban fix her face, shes weepin Lan, an he lift his jelaba, smell of him sheddin like a skin. Naked Aban go to Malk Rona tremblin place his hands on Ronas head, Malk groanin. Efia creep to bind Aban in her arms, her breasts gainst his back. Some time after, the room blue with shadow, an Becca come step over Rona Aban Malk Efia, step over us, see into her, she squat an the stink of her, Efias black hair tangle in Beccas red an Becca Efia Malk Rona Aban tangle blue in moonlight an now Nathin come, Becca Rona part to take him, he sink into the river of flesh, the one current drag us all one, Rona Becca Aban Efia Malk Nathin, all fuse writhin an bodies blue in moonlight an his on her an my on his an Becca Rona Nathin Aban an Malk Aban an Rona Aban oh Lan Aban Aban

Efia!

wake in belly of night, the moon set an the group flesh to flesh. No sound but the trees only. Leaf whisper Efia take at first for rain. Not rain tho. None for months now. She lie with Rona pressin gainst her, the room smellin of sweat an sleep an cum. The group smell. Becca lie curl up knees gainst her elbows, gob open, corner of her thumb restin in it. Cool at last. Cool that wont stay cos a new days heatin up already out east where the days hatch, but for now a breeze an hearin Efia shiver Aban grope for clothes, his or hers or others, he crawl with the clothes an pull em gentle cross her thigh an belly.

Aban feel to the window look out cross the black still river of the road. See the lighter body of sand each side. Star shadow of the gibber an its lonely corse. Feel the breeze on his skin. More than the corse ul ever do. Live for this. For the dark hours an the smell of night.

Light flickers in the web of trees. Like a star but not so high. Flicker again. Not one star but four or five. More than five. Like part of the nights come down to earth.

Malks beside him. Malks hand on his shoulder.

Bad Shot?

Aban shake his head. Closer, he say. Aban Malk lean half out like stoats sniffin the air, like crits peerin from a burrow. Fraid of the world an its hunger. Come, whisper Malk, an Aban follow cross sleepers into the house, up broke stairs all dusty an heaps of stuff too dark an smash to reckon. Into the room where Malk Rona Becca Nathin sleep out the hot time earlier. Aban grope in the dark but Malk know his way. To a window facin west. Still glass in this, leastways fangs of glass, the middle smash out long ago. Malk Aban look out cross the Thirsty Road, other side all the way to West Cunny. All our hopes there. An more lights strollin. Far off gainst trees a glow of flames. Mid the rain song of nearby trees they listen. Voices just. Grumblin of camels an horses cryin.

Stedders, say Aban.

Could be hoofers.

Middens too far off. More likely stedders. Or juntamen diggin in. Leastways Thirstys under watch.

Road go straight our way.

Till we get done. Load of trollers versus you me an Nathin? Walkin into bad lucks bedroom innit.

Sez you.

Full on campments Malk? Stedders in cammo an akays bout they necks? You see em in Bad Shot.

I see em.

Go low, say Aban. Cross country.

You fraid of slavers? Fraid we hang for Feo?

Fraid on lots of things Malk. Dayup soon. Best be off.

Cross scrub you reckon?

Elseways a dead way.

Livins a dead way. Only place we know we goin.

But not yet Malk.

No.

Not yet.

Malk nod. Thirsty Roads shut to us. Empty Road further souths a junta supply route.

Well before dayup the groups gone an melted into the heave.



4




Blueface (#u70e862f7-ce63-520b-9cac-7aa47501b11c)







The canopy knitted above him, the bones of its oaks clattering and creaking in the wind. Andagin was not afraid. He knew how, after leaf-burst, the trees would transform into a green net to catch the sun. For now they slept, they whispered in their dreaming and he slowed his pace not to wake them.

In the midst of the wood there was a brook the colour of rust. He meant to try his luck there. He had a few hazelnuts in his pack but hoped it would be enough to break the ice and use the flowing water as bait.

He had not been long at setting new snares, the nettle string unspooled between his fingers, when he heard the snapping of branches. His first thought was to reach for his bow, but it took only a breath to gauge the size of what broke the quiet.

He strained to hear voices and knew from their cadence that these were his people. Footfalls cracked twigs, crunched in snow, and he watched through a veil of alders the familiar shapes of his brother and Barocunas and their cousin Lugh.

Barocunas was first, leaning his bulk into the undergrowth to fray a passage. Lugh, his ginger mane dusted with snow, appeared intent on explaining something which Judoc bent sideways to hear.

Andagin crossed the brook at a single bound. The noise startled the others, for as he skipped towards them, anticipating his cousin’s wrestling embrace and a brotherly hand on his shoulder, he saw the young men stiffen.

‘I am laying traps. I caught a hare.’

Lugh waved, not to greet him but to urge him back. Andagin faltered as Barocunas lumbered towards him.

‘Are you spying on us?’

Andagin held out the cordage and knife. Barocunas inspected the objects as if unsure what to make of them.

‘You must not follow us.’

‘I was not.’

‘We are just walking.’ This did not account for the cold reception so Barocunas spoke again. Words seemed to cost him. ‘We have things to do.’

‘What things?’

‘Our own.’

‘Can I speak to Judoc?’

‘No.’

‘He is needed at home.’

Barocunas rested a heavy hand on the boy’s skull. ‘Go back to the heath. Lay your traps there. Stay away from the trees.’

Andagin watched his brother and the others walk away, into the fastness of the snowbound wood.

The cold was a mask on his face that made his tears sting. He hated himself for his weakness.

He waited until the trees and the hill had swallowed Judoc, Lugh and Barocunas.

Defiance and indecision churned within him. He felt them settle.

The hare would slow him down so he stowed it in the fork of a pollarded birch and covered it with dead bracken. The squirrel he broke and folded into his pack so that it would not snag.

The oak wood closed over his head like a wave.

It was easy to read the signs of their passage. One of the boys must have been swinging a stick, for the ruined lace of old bracken lay on either side of the milled snow. He listened out for voices, moving at a half run to make up lost ground. Then he faltered – for a line of unfamiliar prints joined those he was following.

He crouched to study these prints that came from the south, where the forest began. He discerned the feet of a man and the paws of a dog: a large one to judge from its pads. He spanned the place where the trajectories met, and wondered if this confluence of paths indicated a meeting or a pursuit.




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