The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne PDF

 CONTENTS I: THE WILDS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 II: THE TOWN 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 III: THE RIVER 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 IV: THE ISLES 23 24 25 26  27 28 29 ABOUT THE AUTHOR COPYRIGHT For Kelsey, Naom...

 CONTENTS I: THE WILDS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 II: THE TOWN 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 III: THE RIVER 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 IV: THE ISLES 23 24 25 26  27 28 29 ABOUT THE AUTHOR COPYRIGHT For Kelsey, Naomi and Alex, with love 1 THAT MORNING, WITH THE DAWN HANGING WET AND PALE over the marshes, Scarlett McCain woke up beside four dead men. Four! She hadn’t realized it had been so many. No wonder she felt stiff. She tipped her prayer mat from its tube and unrolled it on the ground. Sitting cross-legged upon it, she tried to meditate. No luck, not with four corpses staring at her, and a knife wound throbbing in her arm. A girl couldn’t concentrate in those conditions. What she needed was food and coffee. She got to her feet and glared down at the nearest body. It was a portly, black-bearded Woldsman in a denim shirt and jeans. He looked old enough to be her father. Perhaps it was her father. His face, half resting on mud and stones, wore an aggrieved expression. “Yeah, we’ve all got problems,” Scarlett said. “You try to rob me, that’s what you get.” She stepped over the man and went down to the lake to inspect the animal snares. Yet again her luck was poor. The traps were broken, the noose strings bitten through. At the end of a smear of blood a rabbit’s head lay tilted in the bent, wet grass. The long rust-brown ears were cocked upwards as if giving her a furry two-finger salute. It was like the mud-rats had deliberately left it that way. Scarlett McCain swore feelingly in the direction of the forest. Then she took a penny from her pocket and transferred it to the leather cuss-box hanging at her neck. Already in the red! And she hadn’t even had her breakfast. Back at camp, she brewed coffee over the remains of the night’s fire. She drank standing up, straining the dregs through her teeth and spitting the black grit into the water of the stream. It would be a clear day; cool at first, but no rain. The hilltops of the Wolds were picked out in buttery yellow, the western flanks still dark and blue. Way off, beyond the edge of the fen, Scarlett could see the street lights of Cheltenham showing behind the fortifications. As she watched, they shut off the town generator and the lights winked out. In another half-hour, they’d open the gates and she could go in. She rolled up her blanket and slotted her prayer mat in its tube, then went to collect her sulphur sticks. Two had been trampled in the fight, but three were OK: the smell had kept the mud-rats off during the night. Scarlett shook her head. It was getting so you couldn’t take a kip in case one of those bristly bastards slunk out of a bush and bit your nose off. The bigger rats would do that. It had happened to people she knew. She stooped to her rucksack, unclipped the two empty bottles and carried them to the stream. One of the men she’d killed was lying half in the water, face up, blond hair swirling with the river weed, a white hand floating above the pebbles like a crimped and curling starfish. Scarlett went upstream of the obstruction. She didn’t want to catch anything. Her leather coat brushed against the reed stalks as she waded a few steps in and refilled the bottles. Mud and water reached halfway up her boots. She glimpsed her pale, round face hanging distorted beyond the ripples. Scarlett frowned at it, and the face frowned back at her. Its long red hair was tangled worse than the river weed. She’d have to sort that out before she went into town. She was tightening the bottle tops when she felt the skin prickle on the back of her neck. She looked behind her, suddenly alert, her senses operating at a new intensity. The sun was rising over the Wessex Wilds; everything was lit a fiery, optimistic gold. There was almost no breeze. Out on the lake the motionless water clung about the reed stems, as flat and blank as glass. Scarlett stood where she was, a bottle in each hand, trying to hollow herself out so that every available sensation came flooding in. Her eyes moved slowly round. No danger was visible, but that didn’t fool her. Something had come out of the forest, drawn by the smell of spilled blood. So where would it be? A short distance from the shore, midway between the lake and the trees, the remains of ancient buildings protruded from humped grass. The melted walls were crags now, harder than rock and fused into strange black shapes. A flock of birds, coiling like a streamer, wheeled and darted high above, then swept off across the forest. She could see nothing else, nor was there any sound. Scarlett walked back to her rucksack, fixed the bottles and tube in place, and hoisted the bag over her shoulders. She kicked soil onto the fire, circling slowly so as to scan the landscape in all directions. If time had allowed, she would have rifled the bodies of the outlaws in search of supplies, but now she just wanted to get away. She made a token inspection of the bearded man; just another failed farmer who thought possessing a knife, a paunch and a bad attitude made him capable of attacking a lone girl sitting by her campfire. The knife was not as sharp as the one Scarlett had in her belt, but he did have a greaseproof pack of sandwiches in the pocket of his jacket. So that was Scarlett’s lunch sorted. She left the camp and began threshing her way through the tall, wet grasses. Off to the west, clouds were massing to extraordinary heights, mountains of pink and white towering over the Welsh frontier. Scarlett moved away from the lake and made directly for the crags. Better to face the creature now, out in the open with the sun at her back, than be stalked across the marshes. Hide-and-seek wasn’t her thing. When she got within fifty yards of the walls, she stopped and waited. Presently a long, low-backed piece of darkness peeled off from the edge and loped into the sunlight. It was a brindled grey and black wolf, a mature adult, twice as long as Scarlett was tall. Its head was lowered, but the lazily swinging shoulder blades rose almost as high as her chest. The amber eyes were fixed upon her. It came forwards unhurriedly, with the confident swagger of a salesman about to close a deal. No fuss, no flurry. It too was keen to get the job done. Scarlett’s hand moved slowly towards her belt. Otherwise she stood where she was, a slight, slim figure in a battered brown coat, weighed down with a rucksack and tube and bottles and all the paraphernalia of a girl who walked the Wilds. The wolf slowed its pace. When it was six yards away, it halted. It raised its head to the level of Scarlett’s, and she and the animal appraised each other. Scarlett took note of the wet fangs, the black lips, the intelligence burning in its gaze. Perhaps the wolf noted something in Scarlett McCain too. It turned its head; all at once it was trotting past her and away. Its thick sharp tang whipped against her face and was gone. Girl and beast separated. The wolf ambled towards the lake, following the scent of the bodies. Scarlett took a comb from a pocket and ran it through the worst knots in her hair. Then she located a piece of bubblegum, tightened the straps on her rucksack, adjusted the hang of her gun-belt, and set off towards the distant town. Enough dawdling. Time to get on with business. Time to demonstrate how a robbery should be done. 2 AS ALWAYS, MR H. J. APPLEBY, MANAGER OF THE CHELTENHAM Co-Operative Bank, was enjoying his lunchtime cup of tea. He had already eaten his sandwiches. His biscuits, coarse-cut oat and ginger, Mrs Simpson’s best, were happily still to come. His waistcoat felt tight, and the prospect of making it even tighter gave Mr Appleby a familiar sense of well-being. In the corner of the room the grandfather clock – known as “Old Glory” to four generations of his family – continued its deep, reassuring count-out of the seconds. The bank below was shut, all the tellers having gone to enjoy their lunch hour in the late spring sunshine. If he swivelled the chair, Mr Appleby could see them; in fact, he could see a fair few of the good people of Cheltenham on the high street below his window. The shop workers gossiping, the post-girls finishing their rounds, his tellers queuing at Simpson’s the baker’s… Sunlight glinted on clean tarmac and on the chrome handlebars of the bicycles in their racks. Everything was nice and orderly, calm and quiet. Just the way, Mr Appleby reflected, that things should be. Without urgency, he surveyed the papers on his desk. They had been carefully stacked and labelled by Miss Petersen. From the coloured tabs, he knew there were some Faith House documents to review, payments to be authorized, letters to sign. Not onerous, and certainly nothing as important as the biscuits. He chuckled to himself, reached out towards the plate— —and paused. There had been no noise, but something had altered in the room. He looked up abruptly. A girl was standing in the doorway. “It’s lunch hour,” Mr Appleby said. He drew his hand back from the plate. “The bank is closed.” “I know,” the girl said. “That’s kind of the point.” One side of her mouth rose in a half-smile that did not reach her eyes. To Mr Appleby’s annoyance, she walked into the room. She had long red hair, held back from her pale and freckled face with a black bone clasp. Jeans, boots, some kind of old white sweater. Her hands were stuffed deep in the side-pockets of a long brown coat. Mr Appleby had a teenage daughter, but seldom paid attention to what she wore. Still, even he could see this wasn’t the usual Cheltenham fashion. “How did you get in?” he asked. The girl didn’t answer. Her eyes were a curious green colour, large and dark. They regarded him levelly. She was not showing much deference, Mr Appleby thought. Not any, in fact. And she was chewing something. Gum of some kind. Her jaws working steadily. His daughter did that too. He greatly disliked the habit. “I must insist you answer me,” he said. The girl took a step or two towards him, past the clock, past Mr Appleby’s collection of photographs arranged on the stripy papered wall. She peered casually at the photo of his wife at the cricket club fete, the one with her in the flowery dress and the wide straw hat. “My gods, they build them big out here,” she said. “No food shortages in these parts, clearly.” The bank manager’s lips drew tight. He half rose from his chair. “Young madam, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” With unexpected speed the girl came forward. She reached the leather chair in front of the desk. Like most of the study furniture, it had belonged to Mr Appleby’s father when he was manager here, and to his father before that. She swivelled it round, sat down and leaned back, her hands still in her pockets. “Hey, it reclines,” she said, chewing. “Fancy.” Mr Appleby returned his weight slowly to his own chair. After all, it was perhaps best not to make a scene. He ran dark fingers through the tight black curls at the crown of his head. “Well, then,” he asked, “what can I do for you?” “Oh, I want your money,” the girl said. Her jaws made another couple of rotations. She flashed her half-smile at him. “I’m here to rob the bank.” Mr Appleby made an involuntary sound deep in his throat. Was she mad? It was incredible how even with all the checking, the monitoring, the weeding out in childhood, a few deviants kept slipping through. The red hair and pale skin should have given the game away. Or the weird eyes should. “Are you indeed?” he said. “Are you indeed, Miss… I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.” “That’s because I didn’t bloody give it, did I?” the girl said. “Right, there’s a safe in the wall behind you. You’ve got sixty seconds to open it, Mr…” She glanced at the silver nameplate on his desk. “Mr Horace Appleby. Ooh, so I know your name. Isn’t it good to be able to read? Sixty seconds, Horace, starting now.” “Maybe we can discuss this,” Mr Appleby said. “Would you take a cup of tea?” “Don’t drink the muck.” The girl crossed her legs and checked her watch. “That’s five seconds gone and fifty-five seconds left.” She winked broadly at him. “I do maths too.” “A biscuit, then?” He pushed the plate towards her. With the other hand he pressed the button under the desk. Eric would handle her. Eric was calm and big and not over-nice. He did what he was told. He’d take her to the quiet courtyard at the back. Nothing to scare the horses. Just a few slaps, bruises in soft places, send her weeping on her way. He smiled at the girl. His eyes flicked towards the door. Eric didn’t appear. “Fifty seconds,” the girl said. “If you’re waiting for that big guy stationed in the lobby, I’m afraid he won’t be coming. He’s a little … tied up right now.” Mr Appleby blinked at her; his surprise got the better of his caution. “You tied him up?” Now the girl did grin properly, both sides of her face scrunching up like a goblin. “Course not! The very idea!” The grin vanished. “I knocked him senseless. And if you don’t open the safe,” she added, “I’ll do the same to you.” Mr Appleby didn’t believe her about Eric, but all the same she was there, and Eric wasn’t. He sat slowly forwards, steepled his fingers, put his elbows on the desk. There was a gun in his drawer, a nice Cheltenham-made revolver. Bought from the gunsmith’s two doors down. But he’d have to get it out, fast maybe, and the drawer was stiff. “If you knock me out,” he said, keeping his voice light, “then I won’t open the safe. Will I? That’s logic, isn’t it?” “Sure,” the girl said. “If I do it in that order. Forty seconds.” Now that he was really looking, he could see the mud stains on her jeans and boots, the scuffs and patches on her coat, tell-tale signs of life led beyond the town. There was a peculiar leather cylinder hanging round her neck too, held in place by a dirty string. Penance box, maybe. So she was mad. Some kind of zealot. Mad and bad. He’d been misled by her youth, when she was just another filthy outlaw crept in from the Wessex Wilds. He could do it, though. Get the gun. He’d used to shoot birds out on the flats, blast them down when the beaters blew the horns. Did it almost before they took to the air. He was older now, but he wasn’t so slow. He could do it. The question was when. He realized that his hands were shaking. Maybe it was better to keep her talking. “You’re clearly rather an unhappy person, my dear,” he said. “You need guidance. If you want, we could pop along to the Faith House, get a Mentor to set you right.” “Oh, I don’t think so,” the girl said. “Thirty-five seconds.” Mr Appleby glanced at Old Glory. The hoary time-blackened face of the clock showed twelve twenty-seven. Miss Petersen never stayed out long. Yes, his staff would come back soon, find Eric, see something was wrong… “You’re not from here, I take it,” he said. “Maybe you didn’t see the cages in the square? Just opposite the tea shop?”  “Thirty seconds remaining,” the girl said. “Yeah, I saw them.” “Those cages are where we put petty criminals here in Cheltenham,” Mr Appleby said. “You quit this nonsense now, you’ll get away with a day or two in the cage. Nothing too painful – just a bit of public jeering, maybe some prodding with the poles of justice. Then you’re run out of town. But if you don’t quit it…” He tried to speak slow, put emphasis on every word. “If you don’t quit, we’ve got the iron posts at the far end of the fields. We’ll tether you there and leave you for the beasts. Or, who knows, maybe the Tainted will come out of the woods and carry you off alive. Do you want that, my dear? I’m an Appleby, one of the ruling families in this town. I can arrange it, easy as blinking. Thieves, deviants, bank robbers: that’s what we do to them.” “Yeah?” The girl’s green eyes gazed at him, unblinking. “Seems you’re pretty tough. But I do things too. Ask the big guy in the lobby downstairs. Ask four dead outlaws out there in the fens.” She blew a tiny bubble of pink gum, let it pop back into her mouth, continued chewing. “One thing I won’t do,” she added, “is waste time with my life on the line. Your speech there took fourteen seconds. I’ve used up another six. That’s ten left to get that safe open, to remember the combination and turn the wheel just right. And you with those poor old shaky hands and all.” Mr Appleby swallowed. “I’m not opening the safe,” he said. “Eight seconds.” Just a quick movement would be all he needed. Distract her, wrench the drawer, pull out the gun… “I really think,” he said, “we should talk about this.” Gabbling now. Calm down. She wasn’t going to do anything. “Six.” He looked towards the window. “Five,” the girl said. “Four.” “You’re too late.” Mr Appleby pointed down into the street. “The militia are here.” The girl rolled her eyes, but she turned her head to look, and Mr Appleby yanked at the gun drawer. Stiff, yes – but he had it open! Goddamn it, the gun was wrapped in a handkerchief! Why had he done that? What was he thinking? Who wrapped their revolver like a birthday present? He flicked off the cloth, had it in his hand. He jerked his arm up, cocked the gun— —and found the girl had a revolver of her own already pointed at his heart. She looked infinitely bored. Another bubble emerged, slowly, insolently, from the centre of her mouth. She moved a strand of hair away from her face. Bang! The bubble popped. With a groan of fear, Mr Appleby flinched backwards in his chair. He dropped the gun with a thump upon the desk. “Three, two, one,” the girl said. “Time’s up, Horace. Now open the bloody safe.” “All right!” Mr Appleby rose; in a flurry of frantic movements, he turned the circular dial, inputted his grandfather’s code, and swung the safe door open. He heaved the strongbox out and dumped it down between the revolver and the plate of biscuits. “There,” the girl said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” She gestured with the gun. “Now take off the lid.” He did so. Inside, as lovingly prepared by Mr Appleby himself, was the bank’s cash reserve: neatly wrapped wads of fifty-pound notes, Wessex issue, stacked, spotless and vulnerable. It made Mr Appleby sick at heart to see them like that, so naked and exposed. He stared at them miserably. The girl took a string bag from somewhere, shook it out. “Put the notes in, please.” Her eyes flicked towards the door. A great hatred rose in Mr Appleby as he obeyed her. It was hatred for the chaos that ruled beyond the walls of the Surviving Towns, out there in the endless fens and forests; chaos that had the impudence to skip into his study wearing dirty boots and a leather coat. “I’ll see you killed,” he said. “Where are you going to run to? Mercia? The Wilds? We’ve got trackers.” “Yeah. But they’re no good.” She was doing up the bag, looking at her watch. “I have friends in every town.” “Friends? With your personality? That I seriously doubt.” “You are stealing Faith House money. You understand that they have operatives? They’ll hunt you down.” The girl hefted the bag in her hand. “Will they? You heard of Jane Oakley, Mr Appleby?” “No.” “Jenny Blackwood?” He shook his head. The grin became a glare. “Jeez. Don’t you ever read the news-sheets?” “I assume they’re outlaws and brigands. Wicked females who beset the towns.” He leaned towards her across the desk, quivering with all the righteous fury of a rich, respectable man. “They’re your associates, I suppose?” “No.” The girl bent in close. He caught the smell of woods and water, and of a none-too-fragrant woollen sweater. “They’re not my associates, Mr Appleby. They’re me.” There was a soft cry from the doorway. Mr Appleby and the girl looked up. Miss Petersen stood there, open-mouthed and anguished, and with her – thank Shiva! – a militiaman in his dark green bowler hat. For an instant no one moved. To his own surprise, Mr Appleby reacted first. He snatched at the string bag, yanking it towards him. The girl came with it; he struck out wildly at her, but she ducked beneath the blow, swivelled and punched upwards with a strong, thin arm. Pain exploded in Mr Appleby’s midriff, in the region of his tea and sandwiches. He let go of the bag and toppled backwards in his chair. Moaning, flailing, through his streaming tears, he saw the militiaman begin to move. But where was the girl? Above him, on the desk! She’d jumped so fast he’d barely seen it. She caught his eye, smiled. Bending low, she clutched the bag of notes to her, then sprang straight over Mr Appleby and out through the plate-glass window, pulling it away with her in a cone of sparkling shards. Gone. Blue sky. Sunlight. A heartbeat of silence. A sudden outcry from below. Dead, surely! Clutching at his stomach, Mr Appleby hoisted himself up. He took a stumbling step, leaned out of the window, gazed down upon a wonderland of spreading glass and scattering pedestrians. Where was the body? He rubbed his eyes. Somewhere near, a bell gave a merry tinkle. Mr Appleby looked up the road. There – a bicycle! The girl on it, pedalling like a demon, the string bag bouncing at her shoulder. She looked back once, saw him peering, made an abusive sign. Then she swerved round a toddler, upended an old lady into the gutter, and sped on. Mr Appleby could hear Miss Petersen behind him, yabbling like a crow. He heard the militiaman blowing his whistle, blundering his way downstairs. He ignored these distractions, craned his head out of his broken window and watched his money receding up the street. Soon he could no longer see the bag, but only a dancing flash of bright red hair, which seemed to wave cheerily at him as it passed the post office and the duck pond and the bus stop, and so vanished at last through the gates of Cheltenham and out into the Wilds. 3 THE SECRET OF BEING A SUCCESSFUL OUTLAW WAS TO MOVE FAST and stay light on your feet. No ties, no allegiance. Rob one town, head for the next; fling yourself willingly into the wastes between. Never look back. That’s what set you apart from the fools in their little houses, cowering behind the safety of their walls. There were too many dangers in the forest. They never wanted to chase you far. Even so, the Cheltenham pursuit proved more capable than Scarlett McCain had expected. She sat under cover at the edge of the trees, looking through her binoculars at activity on the marsh road. The search teams were fanning out from the truck parked below the levees. Trackers with rifles; members of the militia in their green bowler hats; guys with big black dogs scurrying around. How those dogs could follow the scent of a bicycle, Scarlett didn’t know, but they were doing a decent job of it. Everyone moved swiftly, efficiently, with a grim and purposeful air. The Cheltenham Co-Operative was their bank, and she had their money in her bag. They’d definitely risk the woods a little way before it got dark. Scarlett wrinkled her nose. That was the drawback of doing a job at lunchtime. The chase would last a bit longer than usual. But it was OK. The bike was underwater in a ditch. The cash was in her rucksack, and her rucksack was once more on her back. She had everything she needed, nothing to slow her down. Tucking the binoculars away, and keeping her head low, she retreated through the bracken and into the shadow of the trees. To begin with, the woodlands were sporadic and half tamed. She passed loggers’ camps, rough fields for pasture, grassy apple orchards, rows of beehives. Armed guardsmen watched over the pigs rootling in the orchards, while shepherds walked close beside the sheep flocks, keeping an eye on the thickets beyond. Scarlett slipped by them all, unseen, and so came to a remote and sunlit meadow, where the town’s punishment posts stood on an ancient concrete platform. The chains hung empty. Light pierced the clouds; the trees around were soft and golden. There was an atmosphere of sombre melancholy in the glade. Scarlett felt a twinge in her belly, a deep, soft, remembered pain that she did not want to acknowledge. Far away came the yammering of dogs. She plunged on into the deeper Wilds and left the Cheltenham paths behind. She went at a brisk pace, boots scuffing through the sandy soil, past shadowy boles and fallen branches, without bothering to disguise her trail. From time to time she checked the compass on her belt-chain, keeping north by east, in the general direction of the Mercian border town of Stow. If she kept away from the roads, she would reach Stow’s safe-lands early the following afternoon. It meant a night out under the trees, but that didn’t bother Scarlett. She had done many such journeys, and nothing had killed her yet. An hour into the forest she came to a dead zone, where black mould rimed the trunks and a sour smell of ash persisted in the air. Here she saw crude symbols on the rocks, animal skulls wedged in crevices, dark blue slashes daubed on branches. The marks were old and faint, but it was a place to tread cautiously. Scarlett listened, and heard the noises of animals in the undergrowth and birds calling overhead. Her movements became easier. If the wildlife was relaxed, the Tainted were unlikely to be near. Another hour, and with the trees once again verdant and the air clean, her pace had slowed. She began to think of Stow’s attractions: its pubs, gaming tables and hot food. When she got there, she would first pay off her debt to the Brothers of the Hand, then start enjoying herself. In the meantime, she was on her own in the wilderness, which was just how Scarlett McCain liked it. She could not hear the dogs. The search parties were surely far behind. Provided she kept clear of wolves and other dangers, she had little to worry about. It was then that she found the bus. Coming out of a fern-choked gully, she saw ahead of her the curved embankment of a metalled road cutting its way through the forest. It was probably the one linking Cheltenham with Evesham to the north. The slope rose steeply, almost as high as the canopy of the trees, but Scarlett’s eyes were fixed on its foot, where an upturned motor-coach lay, wrecked and broken, its battered side pointing at the sky. She could see where it had pitched off the highway at the curve of the road, splintering the posts of the barrier fence, before turning over onto its roof and sliding most of the way down. A great black smear had been gouged through the vegetation, with many stones pulled loose by the fury of the descent. Near the bottom of the hill, the bus had struck rocks and tipped again, coming to rest on its side across the middle of a little stream. The undercarriage faced her, black, shining, indecently exposed. The wheels were still; there was silence in the little forest valley. A thin trail of oil danced and twisted in the water passing out from under the coach, shimmering away beneath the sun. A company of flies moved in the air either side of the metal carcass, like black lace curtains quivering in a breeze. But there was no wind, and other than the flies no sign of life. Even so, Scarlett McCain did not stir from her position in the shadow of the ferns, but remained still, watching the rise and fall of the flies. Something swift and blue flashed above the water. A kingfisher looped along the stream and veered away into the trees. Scarlett came out of the brake. She walked to where the coach lay like a stricken beast: a vast thing, stupid in its haplessness. A great hole had been torn in the side of the coach that faced the sky. The metal around the hole was peeled up and outwards like the petals of an iron flower. There was a smell of petrol and spilled blood. Scarlett halted with her boot caps resting in the oily water and listened again. Just the insects’ buzzing, the indifferent trickle of the stream. Fragments of gory clothing were strewn across the stones on either bank, where the soft ground had been churned by giant paws. She could see the prints in the mud, and bloody drag marks glittering beneath quivering coatings of flies. The marks curved away from the embankment and into the trees. It had been a Wessex Countryman, one of the bus services that linked the fortified towns. The blood on the ground was no longer fresh. The crash had happened at least the day before. Possibly some survivors had got out before the beasts emerged from the woods; but they had certainly not all escaped. In any event they were gone now, leaving their possessions behind. Scarlett put her hand under her hair and scratched the back of her neck. Then she assessed the position of the sun. The creatures that had scoured the coach were unlikely to return before dark. It was still only mid afternoon. She vaulted up onto the exposed side of the coach and walked along it towards the great torn hole. Through the windows under her feet she could see broken seats, cases, scattered clothes – a spoil-heap of bloody debris. Some of the eating had been done inside the coach. Bears or wolves, maybe, obeying the urgency of their hunger. Only when they were full would they have hauled the remaining bodies away. When she reached the crater, Scarlett paused again for a time, pondering the implications of the outward curl of metal, the way the hole had been punched from within… But nothing stirred inside the coach, so she lowered herself carefully over the edge, swung like a pendulum for a moment, then dropped into the space beneath. She landed lightly, knees flexing, coat billowing stiffly about her. Soft yellow daylight, thick with dust and death, streamed down from the line of windows above. Everything in the coach was turned ninety degrees out of true. Double rows of seats projected towards her from the side, forming deep recesses like the cells of a monstrous hive. One set of seats was low; the other hung above her head. Everything was strewn with a chaos of shoes, clothes and pieces of light baggage that had been thrown around the tumbling coach and later torn by claws. Scarlett saw little of immediate interest, but after ten minutes’ careful inspection she had forced open several bags and collected certain useful items: three tins of meat, one of chocolate pudding; a torch with a wind-up battery; and two books, much battered and repaired. Scarlett could read and knew the value of books. They would fetch a good price at the Mercian fairs. There was also a little metal briefcase, secured with a padlock that Scarlett could not break. She didn’t bother searching for the key. It had probably been in someone’s pocket, which meant it was now in the belly of a wolf. But the case was just heavy enough to be interesting, and she took that too. She returned to her starting point beneath the hole, packed her prizes in her rucksack, and hung the briefcase securely beside the prayer tube. She was just gazing up at the sky and clouds, preparing to climb back out, when she heard the noise. Freezing was easy; the hard part was rewinding her brain sufficiently to figure out what she’d actually heard. Not a single sound, she thought, but sounds – a thump, a scuffle, a whispered snatch of words. She looked back, and for the first time noticed the large, box-like construction projecting from the ceiling. It was an amenity that all coaches had: the toilet cubicle. Its door was shut. Everything was dead quiet. Scarlett looked up through the hole at the wandering clouds, at the freedom of the sky. She lifted her hands, arm muscles tensing, ready to launch herself out— And sighed. With silent steps she left the hole and approached the cubicle again. When she got near the door, so that she was almost beneath it, she noticed a red bar showing beside the metal handle. There was a word on it: OCCUPIED There were also many long scratches scored deep into the varnished wood, showing where something had made frantic attempts to get inside. Scarlett listened. No sound came from the cubicle. She moved closer. The door was a few inches above her head. From the looks of the hinges, it would open downwards. She had an odd impulse to knock politely on the door, but resisted it as absurd. Instead she cleared her throat; she had not spoken since leaving the bank, three hours before. “Hello?” It was strange to hear her voice at all in that wrecked and ruined place. It sounded false and heavy. No response came from behind the door. “Is someone there?” She waited. Not a movement, not a rustle. Scarlett leaned back against the roof of the coach, scratched her nose, blew out her cheeks. This time she did reach up and tap gently on the side of the cubicle. “It’s almost four,” she said. “Soon the sun will move behind the trees and the glade will be in shadow. The creatures will return. They will smell you and attack the door. Eventually they will tear it down. I am a traveller, a simple pilgrim and a girl of God. I am here now, but soon I will leave. No other aid will come to you. If you are injured, I have medicines. I can help you up onto the road. But you have to come out,” Scarlett said, “in twenty seconds. That’s the deal. Otherwise I go.” Her ears caught the trace of a whispered conversation. It was not a big space for two people to be trapped in. She imagined the stifling heat and dark. She imagined being inside there while the coach was rolling down the slope. She imagined being inside while the beasts ate the other passengers; while wolves howled and slavered and scratched at the plywood door. Scarlett McCain had plenty of imagination. Too much, in fact: it was something she could not eat, nor fight with, nor sell to give her tangible benefit, and she regretted having it. “Ten seconds,” she said. Someone said something inside the cubicle; almost at the same moment, a flurry of rapid impacts struck the wood close above Scarlett’s head. She stepped away – but not fast enough. The door swung open, slamming her hard on the side of the skull. As she reeled back, stars sparking behind her eyes, the cubicle disgorged its occupant. It fell at her feet, rolled across the debris in a blur of flailing legs and arms. Scarlett McCain, clutching at the nearest seats, teeth ringing in her jaw, levered herself upright. She gazed wordlessly down at a single sprawled person. It was a youth, wiry, pale and angular, possessed of enormous staring eyes and a mane of wild black hair that spiked outwards like a fountain of water caught by sudden frost. Just one curl of it flopped forwards over his face as if someone had slapped him from behind. He raised a slender hand and pushed the strands away from his eyes, then resumed his original position. A boy, staring up at her. “Holy crap,” Scarlett said. With fumbling fingers, she took a coin from her pocket and transferred it to her cuss-box. 4 IN ALL HER TRAVELS ACROSS THE BROKEN LANDS OF BRITAIN, Scarlett had seldom been so uncertain about what to do. Bearded outlaws she could deal with, beasts and bank managers too. These were things she could outmanoeuvre, flee from or, as a last resort, shoot. She could rely on her speed, her endurance, and a wide range of antisocial talents to dispose of them. But she’d had little experience of helpless-looking boys. He just sat on the floor, staring up at her like a puppy. Scarlett McCain gazed back at him. “Who are you?” she asked. She couldn’t tell how old he was. His shock of hair had been very roughly cut, perhaps with a knife. It emphasized his bony features. His eyes were wide and unnaturally bright. He looked a little younger than Scarlett – mid-teens, perhaps? – but he also looked malnourished, which meant he might be anything. He wore a white T-shirt, a green coarse-knit jumper, shapeless and very dirty, and loose-fitting flannel trousers. An enormous pair of grubby trainers encased his out-flung feet. “Who are you?” Scarlett repeated. “Come on – talk.” The boy shifted his position, murmured something that Scarlett couldn’t hear. She frowned at him. “What?” This time his voice was surprisingly loud. “I said, are you one of the Tainted?” Scarlett grunted. “If I was, you would already be dead.” She glanced back along the coach at the tilted planes of sunlight streaming down through the upturned windows. No time to waste. Even while she’d been inside, the angle had changed. With a finger she nudged the swinging cubicle door. “You been on your own in that thing?” The boy looked up. Little droplets of water were falling from inside the cubicle. There was a faint smell of disinfectant and other scents. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I was alone.” “Thought I heard you talking to someone.” “No.” “I definitely heard you talking.” He considered this, his head held slightly on one side. “Perhaps I was talking to myself.” “Uh-huh…” Scarlett rubbed her chin. “Well, that’s not great, but we’ll let it slide. You been in there for how long now? Hours? Days?” “I really couldn’t tell you,” the boy said. “I’ve been in there since the crash. Since before the screaming started, before the things came.” His gaze changed, became momentarily remote. Then he smiled up at her, smiled broadly, his hands clasped across his bony knees. Gods, his eyes were too bright. He was sick or something. Scarlett could see right off she should leave him and get out. Looking like that and talking to himself… Whether it was fever or he was just plain crazy, he wouldn’t bring her luck. Her jaw clenched. She glanced back at the steepled rays of sunlight, aching to be gone. “It’s getting late,” she said. “You need to come out of here now.” The boy shrugged. “I guess. Are you from Stonemoor?” “I don’t know what that is. Can you walk?” “Well,” he said, “I expect I’m a bit stiff. It was cramped in there, you see, and also dark, and I was kind of wedged beside the toilet. I couldn’t sit on it on account of the slant, and all the water and stuff had fallen out on me earlier when we were rolling down the hill, so it was very uncomfortable. Plus I didn’t like to put my weight on the door in case it opened, or the things outside heard me. Of course, when all the screaming had finished, they did hear me – or smelled me, more like. Then there was trouble. They were biting at the door and scratching, and howling, howling, for the longest time…” His eyes drifted again, focusing on something Scarlett couldn’t see. Then he blinked. “Sorry, what was your question again?” Scarlett glared at him. “I’ve forgotten myself, it was so long ago. I asked whether you could walk. At least we know your jaw’s operating fine. Get up.” The boy did so, awkwardly, silently but in evident pain, supporting himself against the upturned roof of the coach. He was taller than Scarlett had thought, almost the same height as her – but all bones and gristle, no muscle to him, and shaking badly too. He radiated weakness. She felt a wave of irritation. “I’ve got pins and needles in some pretty strange areas,” the boy said. Scarlett had already turned and was marching down the aisle. When she got below the gap in the metal, she looked back and saw with annoyance that the boy had not followed her. He was still leaning against the roof in a state of limp exhaustion. “Hurry it up!” she called. “You can climb out through here.” The boy didn’t respond at first. Then he said: “Is there anybody else outside?” “No. They’re all dead.” “Is there a limping man? A woman with black eyes?” “No. Neither of them. Of course not. On account of everyone being dead, like I just said.” “I don’t want to meet that woman.” Scarlett stared at him. “That’s fine. You won’t. What you will meet soon, if you stand there like a fool, is a wolf, a bear or a dire-fox, because that’s what’s likely to show up in this bus after dark. Or the Tainted, which is even worse. There’s no natural man or woman within six miles, apart from me,” Scarlett added, “and I’m buggering off. I can help you before I go, or I can leave you to be eaten. Choose now, chum. It’s all one to me.” She lifted an arm towards the hole, squinting upwards into the light. One flex, one jump, and she’d be gone. She felt a powerful temptation to do just that. Maybe that’s what the boy wanted. Maybe he wanted her to leave him. Please gods, let that be the way of it. He’d just ask her to go. “Don’t go,” the boy said in a feeble voice. “Wait up. I’m coming…” He lurched upright, began shuffling along the aisle. Scarlett let out a long and narrow breath. Fine. She could help him up onto the road and leave him there. Someone would be along eventually. A supply lorry, another long-distance coach. She gazed up at the sky’s deepening blue. Only likely not this evening… But that wouldn’t be her problem. She glanced across. The boy was still tottering listlessly through the debris. “Can’t you go a bit faster than that?” she said. “A corpse would have made it by now.” The boy looked pained. “I’m trying. My bottom’s numb.” “What’s that got to do with it?” “Makes my legs stiff. Right up here, see, at the back of my thighs. Ooh, my buttocks are like concrete. If you prodded them, I wouldn’t feel a thing.” “Well, we’ll never know.” Scarlett waited, tapping her fingernails pointedly against the roof. The boy reached her. She indicated the hole. “Right. This is the way out.” The boy smoothed his shock of black hair away from his face and considered the gap. His skin was smooth and unlined, his expression one of calm contemplation. He seemed to have no interest in the bloodstained clothing they were standing on, nor any true understanding of the dangers of their situation. It was almost like he wasn’t really there. “Well?” Scarlett demanded. “Can you climb to the hole?” “No.” She snorted. “Predictable. All right, stand there. I’ll give you a leg up.” She did so, taking his weight on her hands while he scrambled up into the light. His trainers were big, his movements flapping and clumsy, but he hardly weighed anything. Scarlett had a brief fantasy of propelling him upwards with a mighty flex of the arms so that he disappeared over the treetops and was never seen again. Somehow, she resisted the urge. With much gasping and flailing, he clambered over the rim of the hole and onto the top of the bus. In a single rapid movement, she pulled herself up beside him. They crouched together on the expanse of warm metal, above the rocks and stream. The air was good and fresh after the bloody confinement of the interior, but the boy’s face was scrunched up in pain against the daylight. He folded an arm over his eyes. Scarlett ignored him and jumped to the ground, to a dry place beside the water. All around her the trunks of elms and silver birches hung in black shadow. She listened to the flies buzzing on dried blood, and to a silence that lay upon the forest beyond. It was a deep silence. Possibly too deep. She couldn’t hear the calling of the birds. She rotated slowly, her hand making an unconscious movement to the knife hilt at her belt. Not the Tainted, surely. They were mostly out beyond the borderlands. Not the Cheltenham search parties. They’d have turned back long ago. Something else? Nothing moved in the bracken. Heat haze swam on the lip of the road embankment high above, where the coach had come down. Maybe not… Her hand relaxed. Even so, it was best to remain watchful, quick and quiet. “THANK YOU!” The joyous cry came from atop the bus, where the boy had got to his feet. He was making tentative motions towards climbing down, standing at the edge, peering over, but also waving and grinning at her. His arms jutted out at angles, the sleeves of his enormous jumper flapped as he waved; he looked like a great green fledgling about to take flight. “Thank you!” he called again. “It feels so good to be out!” Moving stiffly, he sought to negotiate his descent, lost his balance, toppled back, and fell against the metal with a thud that echoed around the glade. He lay there a moment, with his feet and legs sticking over the edge, then sort of flowed bonelessly forwards and dropped in a heap to the ground. Scarlett rolled her eyes. Turning away, she unclipped a bottle and took a swig of water. By her watch, it was well past four. In a couple of hours it would be getting dark, and she’d need to have found shelter. She shrugged her pack off her back, tightened the cords securing the tube and the little metal briefcase. She’d get that opened in Stow. For sure, it contained something of value. Money? Weapons? Maybe. The boy had picked himself up. The reverberations of his impact against the coach were still echoing faintly among the trees. “Shouldn’t prat about like that,” Scarlett remarked. “Noise is not good here.” “Sorry,” the boy said, “it’s just I’m so—” “And if you mention your stiff bum again, I’ll punch you.” He stopped talking. “Just a little tip there,” Scarlett said. He blinked at her. The sun caught his black hair, made it shine like a dark flame. For the first time she noticed a purplish bruise on his forehead, a thin red weal across the side of his neck. His body was shaking slightly; he dropped his gaze, and looked off in a distracted way at the trees and stream. Scarlet nodded. “So, if you’re ready,” she said, “I’ll take you up to the road, where you can wait for help. Then I’ll be off.” She stepped out into the stream, moving lightly from rock to rock in the direction of the embankment. Halfway across, she glanced back. The boy hadn’t stirred. “This is such a beautiful place,” he said. “Aside from all the flies and bloodstains, you mean? It really isn’t. Come on.” “I guess you’re right. I’ve never been somewhere like this.” He set off after her, slowly, diffidently, stumbling on the stones. “Thank you for rescuing me. You are a kind person.” It was an absurd comment, and Scarlett did not respond to it. “You do realize you didn’t actually need me,” she said. “You could have come out of that cubicle at any time.” “I was too frightened. And too weak. Do you have any  food?” “No.” “I haven’t eaten for a while.” She walked on a couple of steps, then stopped. “I suppose I do have water. Take a drink from one of these bottles. Or use the stream.” “Ah, no, I’m OK for water, thanks. There was a tap in the cubicle. I drank from that.” “Yeah? So you’re fine.” Impatience swirled inside her. She walked on, rounded the carcass of the coach, began clambering up the embankment. “There wasn’t much to do apart from drink,” the boy added in a small voice. “I just sat there, listening to what was going on outside…” He meant the beasts eating the passengers, of course. Scarlett wasn’t interested in that. It was something that had already happened, and happened to someone other than herself, which made it doubly irrelevant. Her only concern was with what lay ahead for her in the forest – and getting safely to Stow. Still, the boy’s presence was distracting, and the fate of the bus was strange. She might have asked him about it, and he might have answered. But her impatience and irritation were too great, and all she wanted was to be rid of him. And thirty seconds later it was too late. The sun had crested the top of the embankment; it danced behind the broken barrier fence, casting forth shadows like cage bars that striped the slope before them. The ground was steep, its long grass spattered with black clumps of earth ripped up by the coach’s slide. It was not easy going, even for Scarlett. She could hear the boy wheezing and puffing behind her. Get to the top, dump him, and move on. She turned to hurry him, saw him lit clear and golden, a scarecrow in a bright green sweater, struggling but smiling, his eyes fixed on her with a look of stupid gratitude; and beyond, rising up beside the coach, where it had lain concealed as they passed it, a shape, large as a standing stone, but brindled with red-brown fur; a black-throated, black-pawed monolith that lowered itself upon its forelegs and hastened up the slope towards them with a romping stride. Scarlett knew in that instant that she didn’t have enough time. The bear was too fast; the boy too near, too unaware, too downright hopeless in a dozen ways. He was talking again – probably offering up more pointless thanks – completely insensible of the on-rushing, swing-bellied death that shook the ground behind him. She had no time. She knew that this was so even as she took three strides down the slope – and jumped. She knew it as she collided with the boy, one arm thrusting him sideways, the other reaching for her belt… She knew it as she scrambled for her knife. Then the bear slammed into her, and the impact and the pain and the onset of the teeth and claws and hot, foul breath only proved that she’d been right. 5 THE BOY, TUMBLING BACKWARDS IN THE GRASS, CAME TO A HALT, raised his head and saw the bear rearing and thrashing a few feet away. What a hideous snarling it made! The noise crescendoed, and its back bucked and reared in weightless frenzy, until – all at once, as if belatedly conscious of the proprieties of its bulk – it subsided in a single shuddering movement. The growling ebbed into nothing. The hairy sides relaxed; the bear lay still and sprawling on the sunlit ground. For a few moments the boy blinked at it. His own hair was over his face. He blew it away from his forehead and got carefully to his feet, his limbs quivering, light as water, and stood looking at the vast shape that lay there like a red-brown outcrop of the earth. Black paw pads with dirtily translucent claws were splayed out at the corners, like the carved leg supports on Doctor Calloway’s desk in her office at Stonemoor. The boy thought about that desk, about standing before it on the half-moon rug, waiting for whatever trouble would inevitably come to him; and for a few moments he was no longer on the slope in the forest. Then he snapped back into the present and remembered the existence of the girl. She was nowhere to be seen. He gazed around him in the silence. No, she was gone. Devoured or crushed by the bear. A mild regret stirred inside the boy, an emotion he wanted to acknowledge aloud. “Unknown girl or woman,” he said softly, “I thank you for your companionship, brief though it was, and wish you well in whatever afterlife you find yourself. I shall remember you always – your hair, your scowl, the roll of your green eyes. I am only sorry I never learned your name.” A voice came from the bear, a muffled growl as from a pit in the earth. “Will you stop that warbling and help me?” it cried. “I’m not dead!” The boy had stepped back in shock; now he stared at the hairy shape in sober doubt. “Sir Bear, I believe you tried to kill me. You have certainly killed the only person who was ever kind to me, and thus I owe you nothing. I wish you no harm, of course – but I fear you must fend for yourself.”  A flurry of swear words emerged from somewhere beneath the bear. “Are you kidding me?” the voice roared. “I’m down here! Get me out!” The boy bent close, and with some difficulty moved the hot, damp foreleg aside, revealing a glimpse of the girl’s face, somewhat compressed and sweaty, and surrounded by a tangle of long grey armpit fur. A hand protruded and made a series of vigorous gestures, some of which were practical, others merely expressive. Terse verbal instructions followed. By such means the boy understood what was required. He pattered back down to the treeline and returned with a long stick; using it as a lever, he was able to lift a portion of the bear’s shoulder, and give the girl space to wriggle free. She emerged stiffly and in some disorder, hair matted, eyes blazing. To the boy’s horror, she was also stained red from neck to waistline. Her front was soused and dripping. “You’re covered in blood,” he whispered. “Yeah,” the girl said, holding up a knife. “Because I killed the bear, see? Killed it as it leaped on me. In return I was almost flattened beneath it. An idiot would have understood the situation. A baby would have grasped it in a glance. Not you. I had to lie trapped under a bear’s arse while you gave a little speech.” She was angry again; it seemed her default mode. The buzz of her thoughts beset him. But the boy, who had been in the power of people who were never angry, yet who did terrible things to him, was undaunted and even reassured. He gave her a beaming smile. “For a second there,” he said, “I did think it was the bear talking. You’ve got to admit appearances were deceptive. But I’m overjoyed to see that I was wrong, and that you are alive! And that you saved my life again! But are you all right? I think you’re bleeding.” She inspected some lacerations on her shoulder, places where the cloth of her jacket hung down in ribbons. The flesh below was pulpy and torn. “I’ve got a few scratches, yeah – and I’m also slightly thinner than I was before.” She glared meaningfully at him. “Yes.” The boy gave a sombre nod. “Well, it puts my stiff bum in perspective. I won’t be mentioning that again. Now, there is something very important to be done. I realized it when I thought you were dead. We do not know one another’s names. We have not been introduced, and I won’t go a moment longer without remedying this omission.” He waited, smiling at her. She had crouched down, and was wiping the blade of her knife on a tussock. Now she glanced up at him, shielding her eyes with her hand. “Our names? Does it matter?” “Why, certainly it does. I shall offer mine first, for I am in your debt. My name is Albert Browne.”  She scowled. “I’m Scarlett McCain, for all the good that’ll do you. So, we are acquainted. And now we must say farewell.” The boy gave a small twitch, his face suddenly slack. It was as if she had pricked him in the heart with the point of her knife. “Say farewell?” he asked. “Why?” “Because you’re going up to the road, where you can wait for another bus to come by. I’m cleaning myself up, then I’m heading into the forest.” She had taken the bag off her back and was inspecting it sourly, prodding and plumping and feeling for damage. She paid particular attention to a long tube, Albert noticed, checking its seal, wiping off flecks of bear blood. A pair of shattered binoculars were brought out and discarded with a curse. She didn’t look at him. “Can’t I come with you?” “No.” “I’ve got to wait out here?” “That’s about the size of it.” “There may be more bears around.” She shrugged, didn’t answer. “And the things that ate the bodies in the bus,” he added. “They’ll be back for sure. You said so.” She tightened a strap. “Someone will drive past first. It’s a working road.” “When will they come, though? Before dark?” “Before dark, yeah.” Her hesitation had been minute, but he’d spotted it. He read the evasiveness in her mind. “What if they don’t? I’ll be eaten.” “You’ll be fine.” She straightened, hefted the bag. “Anyway, you can’t come with me.” “Why not? I won’t be any trouble.” “You just can’t, that’s all.” “But they’ll tear me apart. Pull my legs off. You’ll hear me screaming.” “I won’t,” the girl said. “I’ll be much too far away. And anyway,” she added, “I’m sure you won’t be eaten. It’s not likely at all. They’ll eat this bear first, and there’s lots of meat on him. He’ll keep them going half the night.” “It’s what happens in the other half that worries me.” Albert’s expression was forlorn. “You’ll hear my arms being pulled off, you know. There’ll be this distant popping noise. Pop, pop, pop, gone. That’ll be me.” “No, it won’t. And how many arms have you got? Three? No, I’m just as likely to get eaten as you,” the girl said. “I’m heading for the deep forest. That’s much worse than here. It’s where the Tainted live…”  “If it’s so bad, two of us would be better than one.” He smiled brightly at her. “I could look after you.” Albert’s first clue that this comment was a mistake came when a bloodied hand reached out and grappled him round the throat. It drew him bodily forwards, trainers scratching on the ground; drew him close to the white face, curtained by twisted coils of damp red hair. The girl’s lips were tight; the green eyes stared at him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What did you say?” The quality of her anger had shifted; her voice was quieter, more dangerous. Albert Browne, who knew a thing or two about the imminent onset of violence, spoke rapidly. “I’m sorry if I offended you, Scarlett. It is Scarlett, isn’t it? It’s just I’m a bit light-headed and I haven’t had anything to eat for two days. The thought kind of came out wrong. What I meant was, obviously I wouldn’t ‘look after’ you – that’s a stupid idea. But I could help out, maybe. Keep watch for things. Make myself useful…” Albert paused. He sensed his words dropping lifeless to the earth. The girl just looked at him. “I got you out from under the bear, didn’t I?” he added. She let out an oath, flung him away. “Yes!” she said. “But only after I’d bloody saved you from being swallowed whole! And I wouldn’t have been in that predicament if it wasn’t for you!” Albert stopped himself falling over only with difficulty. “Ah,” he said, “but you only turned round and saw the bear because I was talking. Without me, it would have crept up and got us both. So, there you are – an example of our perfect teamwork! We both helped out each other.” The girl ran her hand back through her mess of hair and gazed at him. “Gods almighty,” she said. She shook her head disgustedly, though whether at herself or him, he couldn’t tell. Then she rummaged in her coat, took out a coin, and inserted it in the dirty leather box hanging from her neck. After reflection, she added several more. “I’m running out of room in here,” she growled. “Thanks to you, I’ve been swearing blue murder all afternoon…” She folded her arms, stared off into nothing, then back at him. “I’ll say three things,” she said. “One. I’m not slowing my pace for you. If you drag behind, or get your backside caught on a thorn-bush – well, tough luck, baby: I’ll leave you without a goodbye glance. Two. You do what I say, no argument and no discussion. Three. We cross the Wilds, get to a town – finito, that’s when we part ways. That’s the deal. OK?” “Well—” “No argument and no discussion, I said! My rules start now!” She settled her pack comfortably in the small of her back and jerked a serene thumb in the direction of the hill. “If you don’t like it, fine. The road’s up there.” With that she turned and began walking down towards the stream. Albert Browne did not follow her immediately. He sensed his new companion required a bit of space. But nor did he dally too long. He was weak and he was hungry, and if he was going to reach his objective alive, he needed all the help he could get. For the present, that meant he had to stick with Scarlett McCain. But it was good. Everything was going his way. The sun was shining, the trees were green and he was free to walk the world. Putting his hands in the pockets of his prison trousers, and whistling huskily between his teeth, he set off after the girl. They left the old A-road behind, moved steadily east and north. At times they could hear running water below them, but the thickets of bramble and holly were too dense for streams to be seen. The route they took was not a path; at least, not one made by human feet. Rather it was a trail, a high road for the beasts of the Wessex woods as they weaved their way between the tree boles and buried ruins, following the hidden contours of the valleys. The soft earth of the trail was dotted with punctuation marks that had been made by running claws. They were crossing a spur of the Wolds, where low, rounded hills broke clear of the woods like shoals of fat, bald swimmers coming up for air. Once, this had been a populated country. Stumps of ancient concrete bridges rose among the trees. Across the centuries, the rivers had moved and the ground had risen, swallowing the bridges, the towns, the roads that served them. In places sections of buried roofs were visible, their tiles lying like scattered jigsaw pieces amid carpets of yellow flowers. Evening was approaching. It would not do, Scarlett knew, to be caught in the deep forest after dark. A safe place would have to be found. And that meant a cave, a ruin, a high tree that might be defended. She kept a lookout as they went, and did her best to ignore the youth scuttling behind her on his skinny legs, his trainers scuffing at the dust and leaves. Exactly why she had let him come with her, she did not attempt to fathom. It was certainly not that she wanted company! Perhaps it was something to do with the tug of the prayer mat in its tube upon her shoulder; the knowledge of the guilt she might have felt had she left him on the road to die. But such introspection irritated her; worse, it slowed her down. She was more concerned with reaching Stow and settling up with the Brothers, before playing the tables in The Bull with any profit that remained. The fairs might be on too, with entertainments to be had: steam wheels, shotgun alleys, seers and sweetmeats – and also their markets where healthy youths were bought and sold. This last detail lingered in her brain. In silence she eyed the boy as he negotiated the way beside her. The trail had been climbing for some time. At last it broke free of the trees and they found themselves on the top of a broad hill, with chalk underfoot and a soft land of woods and water stretching away to blue horizons. Far away, a cluster of pale electric lights marked the location of a settlement where the generator had already been switched on for evening. The rest of the country was quiet and cold. Scarlett felt a great wave of loneliness wash up from the landscape, crest the slopes of the hill and break against her. It always hit her in such places, this: the emptiness of England. At her side the boy shivered, though the afternoon’s late sunlight still shone on the waving grasses and stretched their shadows long before them. “What are those dark shapes?” he asked. He meant the black towers and spires that here and there across the depths of the view broke above the line of trees. “Deserted villages. Towns, maybe.” She glanced askance at him. “The usual.” “I have read about such things.” It was an odd comment, and Scarlett realized vaguely that she had not asked the boy anything about himself… Well, tough. She wasn’t going to start now. He was gazing east, his black hair shining in the sun. If someone fed him properly, Scarlett thought, if he’d stop being so wide-eyed and drippy all the time, he’d be really quite saleable. It was easier to see that out here than in the green gloom of the trees. True, he was awkward, skinny and wide mouthed, like a frightened skeleton, but he was nice enough looking in a way. There were no missing limbs, no obvious deformities… His skin was healthy too, which was a bonus. The traders at Stow would appreciate that. She could point it out to them. “It is a very lovely view…” he said. Scarlett stared at him. She had never considered the Wilds beautiful, nor heard anyone else say so. It was empty and dangerous. People were easily lost there. She’d seen the bones. “Not really,” she said. “Your eyesight is askew. You also thought the gully with the bus was nice, and that had bits of viscera hanging from the trees.” “I suppose. Which kingdom are we in?” “Wessex. How do you not know that? We are near the frontier with Mercia. Over there is the Vale of Oxford. There was a great town in it long ago, though you can’t see the ruins from here. They are another four days’ march, and much of the plain is flooded.” He nodded slowly. “I should like to visit those ruins.” “You wouldn’t. They are surrounded by black marshland, where nothing grows and the air makes you sick. Also in the borderlands are the Tainted, who will peel away your flesh and eat it while you watch. I’d say Stow Town, where we are headed, is a rather better bet.” “It sounds safer.” “Yes.” “Are you going to sell me at the fairs?” She frowned at him. The sharp jab she experienced inside her was mostly one of annoyance. “Of course not. Why would you say that? I will leave you at Stow as agreed. If we don’t meet any more bears, we will be there tomorrow afternoon.” “That long?” The boy seemed taken aback. “We must spend a night out here?” Scarlett shrugged. “We are not yet halfway across the forest. Look behind us. You can trace where we have come.” She turned and pointed west, almost directly into the light of the sun. “You see that patch of bare hill across the valley? That’s just above where I found you. We were there an hour ago…” Her voice trailed off. She reached for her binoculars, but they were gone; instead, she cupped her hand across her brow, frowning. The sun made it difficult to make out details, but surely… She glanced aside at the youth. What was his name, now? Albert… “Albert,” she said, “do you see the place I’m talking about? Where the trees draw back?” “Certainly, Scarlett. I see it.” “Take a look for me. Are there people moving there?” He looked. His tone was bland, uninterested. “Yes…” Yes. Like black ants, moving in a line. Six of them at least, dark-clothed, advancing at a steady pace. Dogs with them. As she watched, they halted; one figure bent to the earth, studying the ground. They came on again. Even so far away she could sense their pace and purpose. In seconds both dogs and men had disappeared into the trees. The boy was watching her. “Why are you frightened of those people?” “I’m not frightened.” “Perhaps they are hunters – or farmers, maybe.” “They are neither. We need to speed up. We need to speed up now.” She was walking as she spoke, bee-lining the crest of the hill. It wasn’t enough. Anxiety spiked her, goaded her on. Within seconds, her walk became a jog and the jog became a run. 6 DUSK BEGAN TO FALL SOON AFTER. THEY HAD DROPPED BACK down towards the level of the forest, out of daylight and into the evening shadow of the hill. Presently they came to a place of uneven ground, pocked by holes and lines of tumbled brick. A settlement had once stood there. Triangular fragments of concrete wall, blackened by fire, thin and sharp as shark fins, rose above them in the half-dark. Everything was smothered with giant knotweed, high and pale and tangled like the chest-hair of an ogre. Scarlett led the way onwards, with many glances over her shoulder at the hill above. Once she saw movement up near the ridge, and her heart clenched tight, but it was only a bird riding the air currents. Faintly they heard its croaking on the wind. Her discovery of the coach had driven the Cheltenham bank raid from her mind. She had almost forgotten the search parties; certainly it had never occurred to her they would pursue her so far, so deep into the forest. But they had. Now, with unpleasant clarity, she recalled the bank manager’s vivid threats; also the iron punishment posts with their glinting chains, standing in sunshine at the edge of the fields. Pushing through the knotweed, fast as she could, she felt a sharp, dense weight growing in the pit of her belly. They were close, less than an hour behind. Her only ally was the oncoming night. In the centre of the ruins, they came upon a tumbledown farmhouse from a later age, grey and stooped and soft with brambles. Here the knotweed had grown undisturbed for years, gaining, in places, the thickness of a child’s waist. It curled through the eye sockets of the buildings, over their red-brick bones, pushing against the doors till the panels burst and were carried up and out towards the sky. They hung there now, higher than Scarlett’s head. There were birds too, fluttering among the milky flowers, and the scent of the air was vegetative and sporous. It made Albert Browne sneeze, and even Scarlett’s skin began to itch. She came to a decision. “We’ll stop here.”  “Spend the night?” He stared round at the darkness twining through the weeds. “Easy to defend. We can keep the animals away.” “And the men behind us?” The boy hadn’t mentioned them since the top of the ridge and had never asked why she was being chased. But he had been watching her all this while. “They’ll halt on the hill. It’s night. No one moves through the forest at night.” She spoke with an airy confidence she didn’t quite feel. No one tracked outlaws so deep into the Wilds either. But she had to stop. It was dark, the boy was grey with fatigue, and she too needed to rest. They explored the ruin until they found a room where the roof beams had not yet fallen and the flagstone floor was covered in dry dead moss and quantities of leaves. It was a good place to sleep. Its only animal traces were small-scale – tight, twisting tunnels among the leaves, the discarded casings of insects, and dried seed pods that had been piled in corners to make winter homes for mice. In the shell of a neighbouring room Scarlett discovered a ground-pheasant’s nest, with a fat mother bird sitting on a clutch of pale blue eggs. It snapped its beak at her, but was ignorant of humans and did not know enough to be afraid. She wrung its neck and pocketed the eggs, then went to locate some brushwood. When she returned to the roofed room, she found Albert Browne sitting cross-legged on the floor in the last of the dying light, examining a collection of bright red seed pods and yellow leaves. He was staring at them in rapt admiration. Scarlett stood and scowled at him. “Don’t tell me: you find them beautiful.” He gave her a beatific smile. “Aren’t they just?” He was arranging them in a line. “So delicate, so intricately textured…” She dumped the wood on the floor with a clatter. “Yes – well, don’t let me bother you. I’ll just make a fire… Cook this dead bird… Set up defences… Won’t take me more than an hour. You just holler if I get in your way.” “OK.” He went back to his study of the seed pods. Scarlett stared mutely at his bent head. A large piece of brushwood was near at hand. It was the work of a moment to connect the two with a single short, sharp blow. The boy did a backflip and ended up with his jumper over his face and his bottom in the air. He rearranged himself indignantly. “What did you hit me for?” “For your impudence and laziness! For leaving me to do all the work!”  “But, Scarlett, you told me to do everything that you said! ‘No argument! No discussion!’ Those were the exact words you used! And just now you told me to leave you in peace while you did those jobs.” He rubbed sadly at the back of his head. “I don’t understand how I have offended you.” “Your main offence is an appalling ignorance of sarcasm.” Scarlett tossed the branch back onto the pile. “Let me be clearer: I make the fire; you pluck the bird. Then you roast it, while I fix up the sulphur sticks. Is that plain enough?” “Certainly. Though you might have said that in the first place.” He picked up the pheasant. “Ooh, look at the pretty speckled feathers— All right, all right, you don’t have to hit me again.” After that, preparations proceeded in silence. Firelight ignited the colour of the ancient bricks. The pheasant roasted on a skewer above a roaring blaze. Scarlett had built the fire in the innermost corner, to allow as little light as possible to escape. There was a risk it might be seen, but this could not be avoided. They had to eat. While the boy tended to the pheasant, she unpacked her acrid-smelling sulphur sticks and lit them near the door and window to ward off mud-rats and other smaller predators. This done, she stepped out into the farmhouse yard. It was overgrown, a place of bushes and brambles. The sun was gone; a dim red glow shone in the west above the hill. Some animal was howling in the woods; when it abruptly ceased, there was intense quiet. Scarlett’s senses strained against it, listening for footsteps… Nothing. Of course there was nothing. It was night. She spun on her heel and went back into the room. The boy was listlessly turning the skewer, his face passive and serene, his skin glimmering darkly in the firelight. He might have been made of fossilized wood or stone. He was doing nothing overtly annoying, but his collection of coloured leaves and pods lay beside him on the ground. He had arranged it in size order. The sight of this – in fact his very presence – made Scarlett suddenly sick with anger. She took a long, slow breath to calm herself. In the previous twenty-four hours, she had killed four men, committed a bank robbery, walked many miles across difficult country, been squashed by a bear, and acquired the unwanted company of an idiot. By any standards it had been a long day. But worst of all, she had been unable to meditate that morning. She knew that all her anger, her pent-up agitation, was rising from that omission. She needed to relieve the pressure – and do it soon. Right after the meal would be nice. She went to her pack and unclipped her plastic tube. Tipping out the mat, she spread it carefully on the ground at a distance from the fire, patting and smoothing out its rucks and curls. The boy was watching her. “Why are you doing this? What is that thing?” “I am setting out my prayer mat. I wish to pray.” He nodded. “Praying? I have heard of that. So you do it on that old rag?” Scarlett paused. “I use this fragile, sacred cloth, yes. And, by the way, once I’m sitting on it, there are rules. You don’t bother me, prod me, talk to me, or flick soil at my ears. You leave me alone and wait for me to finish.” Albert Browne considered the matter. “So it’s like a toilet, then? Old Michael at Stonemoor used to express himself in similar terms.” Scarlett clutched pre-emptively at her cuss-box, then took another deep slow breath. “I won’t strike you… Self-evidently you are a simpleton and have a head filled with clay. No, Albert, it is not like a toilet. Quite the reverse! This mat, when it’s unrolled, is holy ground.” “Yet you plant your backside on it,” the boy observed. “That is a sorry act, and surely disrespectful to the sacred cloth.” Scarlett gave a bleak half-smile. “It is not really so strange. When I sit upon it, I am in a state of grace.” “So if I sat on it, would I be in a state of grace too?” “No. You would be in a state of some discomfort, for I would beat you with a stick. Listen to me closely. Never let me catch you touching this cloth with your dirty fingers, let alone your ragged arse, or it’ll be the worse for you. It is my mat, and mine alone. Do you understand?” “I do, Scarlett, I do.” The boy nodded vigorously, rocking back and forth on the moss with his skinny arms wrapped tight around his bony legs, but Scarlet McCain noted that he could not take his eyes off the mat and that it continued to exert a powerful fascination. Not even a haunch of roast pheasant could fully distract him, and his bright eyes still glittered in the firelight as, after the meal, she finally sat cross-legged on the mat to begin her meditations. The prayer mat was made of coarse cloth, roughly woven out of yellow and red threads. As a physical object it had no value; indeed, its material worth was negative, for it was grimy and malodorous. But for Scarlett it was the symbol of her daily retreat from the world and more particularly from herself. It represented her ability to escape. Now she sat straight backed, her hands folded; half closing her eyes, she let the light of the fire swim and dance behind her lashes, as her mind untethered itself and took off on a series of vaulting leaps. She thought of the four outlaws by the mere that morning. Well, their deaths had not been her fault. They had attacked her, and self-defence was the right of all. They should have guessed the person she was, used common sense, and let her be. Who would miss them? Not even their mothers. They were worthless and incompetent, and by killing them she was doing the world a favour. Yes, she could safely scratch them from her mind. She thought next of the Cheltenham bank job. It had been carried out efficiently and well, and without causing any gratuitous harm – aside from the bank guard, of course, and she’d made sure he wasn’t dead. The haul was good enough to settle her debt with the Brothers of the Hand, then let her live like a queen, if only for a month or two. Not only that, it was another successful strike at the Faith Houses and the Surviving Towns, which anyone with a conscience would celebrate. In sum, it was an act to make a girl proud, rather than ashamed. So, no need for guilt there, either. By now Scarlett enjoyed a feeling of warm satisfaction. True, the militiamen were doggedly tracking her, but she could evade them the following day. She knew there were rivers in the lowlands ahead – somewhere near, even the ancient Thames had its source – and it would be an easy matter to swim these to throw the dogs off their scent. A good sleep, an early start – soon the Cheltenham men would be left behind. What was she worried about? She had everything under control! Thus Scarlett’s meditations proceeded. She ended as she always did, thinking of the Seven Kingdoms. She imagined looking down on them from a great height – at the wastes, forests and mountains, at the tiny towns and villages nestling in between. It always did her good to remember how insignificant her misdeeds were when set against the catastrophes of the past, the misfortunes of humanity, the landscape’s colossal emptiness, the vast indifference of the surrounding skies… Scarlett’s mind looped back into the present. She felt calm and composed. The mat had done its job. It was like a great weight had fallen from her and left her shiny and renewed. She opened an eye. The fire burned low in the corner of the room. The boy was standing at the window, looking out into the dark. “What is it?” she said. “What’s the matter?” “I thought I heard something.” “What kind of something?” “A long, low whistle.” She was already on her feet, rolling up the prayer mat. Her calm was gone; still, she was cool and decisive. “The kind of whistle you might use to call an obedient dog?” “Maybe.” “How near?” “That’s hard to say. I thought it was fairly close, but it happened five minutes ago, and I’ve heard nothing since.” “Five minutes?” Scarlett gritted her teeth. “You didn’t think to call me?” “Well, you were in a state of grace. You told me not to bother you.” “Christ. Where’s my tube? Where’s my bag?” “Here by the window. I’ve already packed them. I thought we might change rooms.” “We’ll need to do more than that.” Scarlett was beside him, moving at speed, stowing the mat, shouldering the pack, squinting around the side of the window into the black night. She could see nothing, but thought she heard faint noises, the softest of rustlings, the lightest of footsteps. They might have come from any single direction – or from all around. The pursuers hadn’t stopped. They’d kept on going after nightfall. Scarlett chewed her bottom lip. It didn’t make sense: that simply wasn’t what normal militia trackers did. “We can’t be trapped in here,” she said. “We’re going to have to make a dash for it. So – we burst out the door, make a break for the bindweed on the left. They’ll shoot; we run the gauntlet. Ten to one they won’t hit both of us. If we’re unlucky and we run straight into them, we’ll have to fight hand-to-hand, force our way into the forest beyond. OK? It’s easy.” She looked at him. Easy for her. No doubt about it, the boy was going to die. Albert Browne nodded. “Yes. Or we might nip out up there.” He pointed to a side wall. In the dwindling firelight, Scarlett saw that an area of bricks near the top had collapsed, creating a gap that led to the neighbouring room. “They won’t see us if we go that way.” A noise sounded out in the knotweed, a low, husky, repeated trill that might have been birdsong, but wasn’t. Scarlett moved from the window. “That’s probably the first sensible thing you’ve said in your life, Albert,” she said. “Come on.” The boy’s attempts to scale the bricks were haphazard, and twice Scarlett had to put out a hand to support him when he slipped. But he reached the opening, inched sideways into it like a crab, and was gone. Scarlett removed her rucksack, bundled it into the gap and followed him. She was through. On the other side of the wall was a roofless, starlit space, surrounded by broken stonework. It was choked with ferns and weed, and phosphorescent night-flowers that shone eerily in the dark. By their glow, Scarlett saw the boy moving hesitantly across it, stumbling on the uneven ground, making little noises with each step. She groaned inwardly. He was so hopeless; a one-legged man would have proceeded with more finesse. Dropping soundlessly down, she flitted to his side and took ungentle hold of his ear. “Stop making such a racket,” she whispered. “They’ll hear you.” The boy shook his head, pointed. “It’s OK. They think we’re still by the fire.” The wall ahead had tumbled low; through a gap in the stones, they could see onto the overgrown yard at the front of the farmhouse. Firelight glinted from the open doorway of the room they’d just vacated. The roof showed black against the stars. Out in the knotweed forest, darkness hung like shrouds. And within this darkness, shadows moved: figures in bowler hats converging on the yard. Militias weren’t stupid. The Cheltenham men knew who she was. They wouldn’t risk tackling her one-on-one. They’d try to overwhelm her, five or six at once… Scarlett bent close to the boy. “We may have a chance here,” she breathed. “They’ll rush that room together. When they do, we shin over the wall and make for the forest.” “They’ll all go in together? Think that’s what’ll happen?” “Yeah. It’s a guarantee.” A flash of red light among the knotweed. The fizzing of a fuse. A figure danced forwards, lobbed a cylinder through the doorway of the cottage, darted back again. The room exploded. Gouts of yellow-white flame plumed out of the door and window, spiking upwards between the roof beams. Timbers cracked, stones fell. In the room alongside, Scarlett and Albert Browne were thrown sideways by the force of the blast. Echoes of the eruption rebounded off the hills above and out into the Wilds. A beam toppled from the wall beside them and crashed among the ferns. Scarlett picked herself up, blew hair out of her eyes. “Course,” she said, “I might be wrong.” 7 THERE WAS BLOOD ON THE SIDE OF HER FACE, WHERE SHE’D HIT it against a stone in falling. Other than that, she was in one piece. She still had the rucksack too, with the prayer mat and the cash. Everything essential was accounted for. Scarlett crawled through the ferns and debris to where a shape uttered feeble groans. “Keep it down,” she hissed. “If you’re dying, do it quietly. Are you all right?” Albert Browne sat up. His hair was covered in brick dust. “I’m one big bruise. Also, I think I landed on a thistle.” “In short, you’re fine. Stop moaning and follow me. I want to see what they’re doing.” With infinite caution they returned to their vantage point overlooking the yard. The wall was intact, but the neighbouring room, where their campfire had been, was a pile of jumbled stone. Small tongues of flame flickered amid the rubble, and a stream of luminescent smoke flowed up towards the stars. By its light, they could see the outline of six figures congregated a short way from the farmhouse. All wore tweed jackets and bowler hats. One man held two dogs on chains; others had revolvers in their hands. There was an air of tension; the men watched the smoke in silence, without drawing near. Scarlett ducked back behind the wall, scowling into the darkness. OK, so they thought she was dead. They were waiting to make sure. Perhaps that was fair enough, but it didn’t explain why they were being so damn fearful. As far as they knew, she was crushed beneath a heap of stones. Something was off. Something didn’t quite make sense. The boy tugged at her arm; his voice sounded close beside her. “That explosion, Scarlett – what made it?” “A stick of gelignite.” She shook her head sourly. “It’s crazy. Why choose to blow up the banknotes?” “Banknotes?” Even at a whisper, she could hear the interest in his voice. “Doesn’t matter.” But it did matter. She’d never experienced a pursuit like this before, not even after the Norwich heist, when powerboats of men carrying harpoon guns hunted her skiff up and down the Anglian floodlands. Not even after the robbery at Frome, when their trackers trapped her on the edge of the drowned quarry – five men, armed with knives and axes, eager to cast her corpse into the black water. Tight corners: Scarlett was used to them. This felt different. The remorseless chase across the Wilds… The gelignite… It wasn’t what normal trackers did. No point dwelling on it. The main thing was to get away. Motioning the boy to silence, she looked over the wall again. The pursuers seemed to be gaining in confidence. They drew closer to the pile of steaming rubble. The dogs sniffed here and there. Someone laughed. An abrupt order was given. A man with a stick began to prod among the stones. They were searching for her body, or perhaps the cash. Either way, it was time to go. Scarlett retreated noiselessly through the ruins with Albert at her back. In seconds they had scaled a tumbled wall, flitted across an open space and vanished into the darkness of the forest. It was not easy going in the pitch black, but they went on blindly, feeling a path among the knotweed, until exhaustion overcame Albert at last. Scarlett heard him slump to the ground. She crouched alongside, trying to think. They had travelled a fair distance from the cottage. If the militia came after them again, there was little she could do. Clearly Albert was going no further. Her own limbs were as heavy as marble; the rough earth felt like a goose-down bed… “All right, we rest here,” she said. “At daybreak, we move on.” She waited; Albert did not answer. After a few moments, with her own thoughts drifting, she realized he was asleep. They woke in the grey dawn. Mist wound like a solid thing through the arches of the knotweed. The forest around was silent. “I’m mighty hungry this morning,” the boy said. “My tum’s shrunk as small as a walnut. Think we could go foraging? Maybe we could actually find some walnuts. Or mushrooms. Mushrooms grow in forests, don’t they? I’ve never seen a mushroom. I’d like to experience that.” He rubbed his midriff sadly. “Mainly I just want food.” Scarlett was trying her best not to listen to him. She had taken her compass from her belt and was considering the ruins and the surrounding knotweed, trying to recall the layout of the eastern Wolds. From what she could recall, it was mainly forests and rivers. North by north-east for Stow was what they wanted, but in the heat of the pursuit the night before, she’d lost precisely where they were. And the militias were not far away. She scratched the back of her neck. It was hard to concentrate because the boy was still prattling on about how famished he was. Scarlett had forgotten so many words existed. To shut him up, she rooted in her rucksack and found the greaseproof package she had taken from the dead outlaw by the lake the morning before. “Oh, Scarlett – sandwiches for me? You are generous! What kind are they?” “Cheese and pickle. Ignore the red stains on the wrapping.” “Lovely! Are you sure you don’t want a bite? No? I’ll just tuck in, then.” Which he did. Scarlett had never seen a mouth so large. It was like those giant man-eating frogs you got in Anglia, the ones that came up at you from under your boat. Those frogs would be proud to have a mouth that wide. Without waiting for him to finish, she wrestled her rucksack onto her shoulders and set off briskly to the north. It was high time they were on their way. They zigzagged through the knotweed, through the mists and its strange half-light, moving gradually downhill. Minutes passed, an unknowable tract of time. They skirted other stone walls, swathed in moss. Everything was muffled – their steps, the brush of their coats against the weed stems, their ragged breathing. “Why are there so many ruins here?” the boy said. “They seem so old and sad.” Scarlett grunted. “Well, they’re certainly old. Probably abandoned during the days of the Great Dying. Or maybe during the Frontier Wars. Your guess is as good as mine.” “It isn’t, really,” Albert said. “I don’t know about any of that.” He didn’t seem to know about anything. Scarlett glanced aside at him. He was stumbling as he walked, and had dark rings below his eyes. “Bet you wish you’d stayed by the bus,” she said. “You could’ve hitched a lift by now.” He flashed her his bright-eyed smile. “Oh, no, Scarlett. I much prefer being here with you. Tell me – I wanted to ask yesterday, but I hardly knew you then, and now we’ve been through so much together, I feel we’re on a firmer footing – tell me, what is your profession? Why are you out here in this wild place, all alone?” Scarlett shrugged evasively. “I am a traveller, a pilgrim. I go where my prayers take me.” “And where is that?” The boy was watching her with his big dark eyes. “Where do you go?” “I sell sacred relics among the Surviving Towns of Wessex,” Scarlett said. “I carry a number of such objects in this bag, as it happens. Also I do good works, perform random acts of charity … that sort of thing. It keeps me occupied. Your bus, for instance. I saw that yesterday and climbed inside to help.” The ground steepened abruptly. The knotweed was suddenly sparse around them, and there were rocks and pine needles at their feet. Straight ahead they saw a slope of pine trees angling sharply down. Beyond their tops was a gulf of air. Scarlett consulted her compass again. “Ah, the bus,” Albert said. “You were kind enough to come on board to rescue me.” “Yes…” “And also rob it. If I am not much mistaken, the briefcase on your back was carried by one of my fellow passengers.” Scarlett had forgotten the little metal briefcase, still dangling from her rucksack. She scowled at him. “Not rob. Retrieve. I hope to return it to that victim’s heirs or relatives.” “Oh, yes. Of course. You must be a very holy person.” The shape of one of the nearby pine trees changed. Scarlett’s head jerked up; she saw a man with a tweed jacket and a grey bowler hat step out from the shadows of its trunk. He raised a gun towards them. She reached under her coat, pulled out her revolver and fired. The man spun on his heels and fell on his back without a sound. “Not exactly holy,” Scarlett said. “I wouldn’t claim that. Come on – we need to run.” She plunged away down the slope, and the boy followed. At the edge of her vision, she glimpsed other figures coming through the trees. Dogs barked. Shots were fired. The noise was dull and deadened, as if in a locked room. It was a precipitous descent. The lower branches of the pines were dead and bare; the grey trunks rose out of an undulating duff of dropped needles, frozen in waves and stretching into the distance. This carpet was years deep, and Scarlett found her boots skidding and slipping, ploughing a V shaped shower of needles with every step. Beside her, Albert Browne went with a jerking, stumbling rhythm that suggested imminent collapse. As Scarlett already knew, he had no meat on him, no oomph in the legs to withstand the downward impacts. She could have gone at twice the speed, but he was already struggling. A rush of spraying pine needles; glancing back, Scarlet saw several men from the pursuit party careering down the slope. A bullet whizzed between her and the boy. The trees were growing sparser. Sunlight shimmered far ahead; they were scree-running between the trunks towards a line of green and blue. A river. One of the rivers was there. Scarlett cursed; she could easily accelerate. Get to the water and away. But the boy would be shot in the back. She stopped running. “Albert.” “What is it, Scarlett?” He caught up, the sleeves of his jumper flapping around his skinny arms. His breath squeaked like a rusty bellows, but his face was calm.  “You go on ahead,” Scarlett said. “Follow the slope down to the river. When you get there, jump in. Let it carry you downstream. Can you swim?” “No.” “Of course you can’t. Why did I even ask? Well, find a branch or log or something; hang on to it. Try not to drown.” She looked at him. “But drowning’s probably better than being caught by these guys, so don’t mess about – jump in.” He blinked at her. “What about you?” “I’ll follow. I’m going to delay them.” A rapturous smile formed on his face. “Thank you, Scarlett.” “For what? I need you out of my way. It’s a good vantage point, is all.” “You’re such a noble, thoughtful person.” “Oh, I’m really not.” She glared at him. “Now get going. Go! Now would be nice.” Figures came into view among the pines. Even then, Albert Browne looked tempted to continue the conversation, like some halfwit townsman gossiping on a high street. In a few seconds they’d have him in shooting distance. Scarlett fired a dissuading bullet uphill, making the pursuers dive for cover. The action seemed to ignite something in the boy. All at once he was plunging away from her down the slope, stumbling and skidding. An old pine tree stood near by, its broad foot thick with shadow. Scarlett took cover there, pressed her back against it. She opened her revolver, checked the cylinder, closed it again. Four cartridges left. Enough to be going on with. The trunk smelled of sap and dust, and there were spiders’ webs in the curls of the bark. She stuck her head out from behind the tree, looked up the slope. A storm of gunfire. Small geysers of pine needles erupted near her feet. She ducked back in again, the position of three men fixed in her mind’s eye. Two were well concealed behind a tree stump and a patch of broken wall; the third, less favourably, in the shadow of a mossy concrete horse trough. She rubbed her face, chose, held the gun ready, made a feint with one arm so it briefly showed around the tree. Another round of shots. Needles leaped and danced. A piece of pine trunk exploded, sending fragrant splinters against Scarlett’s face. She waited till the gunfire subsided. Then she stepped out from behind the tree, raised the revolver and shot the man crouched behind the concrete trough. Before he began his slump sideways, before he even realized he was dead, she had stepped back into the cover of the tree. The next volley of bullets was lighter and more ragged, as was to be expected from two barrels instead of three. She waited for it to finish, watching the outline of the boy far down the slope. Now he had reached the sunlight… Now he was out of sight. He would be in the water in a moment. She’d done what she could for him; there was no need to delay any longer in case reinforcements came. Stepping out the second time, she chose the tracker hidden behind the broken wall. Either he’d moved slightly, or her memory was off: the first shot struck the lip of the stonework, sparking in the dimness, an inch to the right of the peeping bowler hat. She adjusted her aim, fired again, had the satisfaction of seeing the hat flip up and backwards, though whether or not she’d hit its owner, she couldn’t tell. And no time to find out; she was already diving downslope, surfing the pine needles on enormous vaulting strides. Bullets whined about her – she felt one strike the rucksack – then she was dodging around trees, ducking under branches, plunging crazily from one foot to another, down, ever down… And now there was silence behind, and the band of sunlight growing stronger up ahead. Scarlett shot out over a raised bank in a shower of needles and landed in long grass. The day’s brightness stung her eyes. She was out of the pines. Straight in front of her, the slope continued steeply to an abrupt and unexpected edge. The river showed far below, patches sparkling, parts in deep blue shadow. It had cut a shallow gorge here on the edge of the Wolds, and was deep and fast-flowing. To left and right it bent away, was lost among the folds of the hill. Scarlett took this all in as she ran forwards. Most of all, though, she noticed the boy. He was still there. Standing feebly at the edge of the d