Among the women there was one man, who sat on a skin rug near the fireplace. He wore Will’s grandfather’s old gold-rimmed glasses and his grandfather’s square-toed leather shoes. Another man now entered from an adjoining room. It was old Moses, in his patched suit, clutching his bible. He gave Will an angry stare. Behind him Solomon came in. He pushed past Moses and went to Will. “Where’s Noor?” he said. “Is Noor coming?”
Young Surrey now stood in the door to the stairwell. He seemed reluctant to come any closer.
Will could finally say to the room at large “Get your bows. Hurry.”
Moses took a quick step toward Will. He said “What?” and held his bible as if he might strike Will with it. Solomon poked Will and said “Where’s Noor? Where’s Noor?”
The plastic over the door to outside parted. A one-legged man with a T-shaped crutch made out of two-by-two came in. He nodded briefly to Will and said “Langley’s attacking!”
Will shouted “Get your bows! You can all help!” But there was now such a commotion that he was ignored.
The man with the crutch came close to Will. “Is that what Frost says? Does Frost say come with our bows?”
Will looked back silently for a second before saying to the man “You can all help.”
The man gave Solomon a swat with his crutch and nodded toward the door that led to another room. Solomon said “No! I want to see Noor!” The man swatted him again. Moaning loudly, Solomon went through the plastic that covered the door. A few seconds later he came back, struggling under a messy armful of Daniel Charlie’s bows. He dropped these at the feet of the man with the crutch, whom he regarded with an expression of fear and fury.
The man with the crutch shouted to the room “Listen! Listen! We’ve got to help. If we don’t help, they’ll kill the rest of us.”
The first to come forward and slide a bow from the tangled pile was the woman in the camouflage trousers.
Will gripped Solomon’s arm. He said “Noor says she wants you to help.”
Will ran full out, but Solomon kept pace with him. In the rain and the fading light Wing and his men watched them race toward them up the shallow slope of Fundy’s Bridge. Wing ran a ways down the bridge to meet them. “What does Frost want us to do, Will? Tyrell says stay here, but…”
Solomon continued past Wing to a man from Fundy’s crew, one of the survivors of Langley’s attack on Fundy’s farm. In his quacking voice Solomon shouted “Noor says we got to fight! We got to fight! We got to fight!”
Wing laid a hand on Will’s shoulder. They walked the short distance to the others as Will caught his breath. The men all watched him. There were only three of Fundy’s crew. Among them was a boy near his age. Wing’s men were there too - Nordel, Bridgeport, Pender and Mitchell.
Solomon was still haranguing Fundy’s man. “Let’s fight! Noor says!”
Will was unhurried now. He said loudly to Solomon “Noor says Solomon has to be quiet and listen.”
And so Solomon could do nothing but try to convey his message with flapping hand signals and by waving his bow, and with body-feints toward the Town end of the bridge. Except for his low whines and the scrape of his sandals on the pavement and the hiss of the rain and wind, it was almost quiet. But when the wind dropped for a few seconds there were shouts from Frost’s Bridge a quarter-mile away. There were screams that caused the men to stiffen as they tried not to look in that direction.
Will cleared his throat. He said “One of the strongest weapons of offensive warfare is the surprise attack.”
For a few seconds no one said anything. Then Wing said “What?”
Will said “Von Clausewitz.”
“What? Will, please. Just tell us what Frost wants us to do. Do we stay here or what?”
One of Fundy’s men pointed down the bridge the way Will and Solomon had come. He said “What the hell?”
The women had reached the foot of the bridge. They all carried bows. The young woman in the camouflage trousers was well out in front of the rest.
Will said “Only when we cut off the enemy’s line of retreat are we assured of great success in victory.”
Wing thought for a moment, said “That don’t sound like Frost.”
Will stood there looking at Wing. He turned for a second to watch the pack of women in their long dresses running up the bridge through the rain. He turned back to Wing, stood there looking at him again. He said “Grampa says follow me.”
Then he was running toward the Town end of the bridge with Solomon and the boy at his side. The wind and the slap of their steps and the clatter of arrows in the plastic bags at their sides drowned out the distant screams.
The wind was like a hand in the air that batted the lengths of cattail cane toward the upriver edge of the bridge. Deas said “Langley’s even talked the wind into working for him.” Then he shouted and fell, and there was the crack of the 22. But he rose again and took his weight on one foot and did not even look down at the red blotch on his poncho at the thigh. He fitted an arrow and let it fly and then fitted another. Like the others, he aimed downriver, off the side of the bridge. And now, like the arrows of the others, his arrows bounced upriver on the wind and swooped into the midst of the soldiers.
As they fitted their arrows Frost’s people crouched in two files behind the car-metal shields of Airport and Boundary. They stood, shot and crouched again. Airport and Boundary rested their shields at an angle on the pavement. There were deafening crashes as crossbow bolts struck the shields and ricocheted upward.
Airport and Boundary could not support the shields and use their bows at the same time. Airport reached behind him and dragged Salmon around to take his place. Her one arm was enough to hold the shield. She sat there with her head ducked, holding the shield at the necessary angle. Boundary swapped places with Brittany, who fit easily behind the car trunk lid. He and Airport stood and stepped away from the shields. They reached mechanically for arrow after arrow in the bags at their sides. There was not a second when the air between Frost’s people and the soldiers was not swarming with cattail canes tipped with sharpened metal.
Frost and Tyrell and Noor and Daniel Charlie and Richmond, who had pitched his shield off the bridge, stood in the open with Airport and Boundary. Crossbow bolts hissed past their shoulders, or bounced on the pavement between them and went skittering along the bridge, or caught some wrinkle or clump of winter weeds in the pavement and buzzed toward them end over end. Frost hauled King behind him and ordered him to stay. The occasional cracks of the 22 were barely heard among the noise of the bolts whirring past or striking pavement or corroded metal or sometimes clanging off the bridge railing or a support.
Frost could see that a hundred and fifty yards down the bridge Langley’s men were a bleeding mess. He could hear the screams of the badly wounded. He saw two or three bodies among the feet of the soldiers. He saw that the bolts were flying toward his people with less frequency as cut soldiers had trouble loading their crossbows. Behind the soldiers he saw that Langley was not in his rickshaw.
Deas slid out from the file of Frost’s people behind Salmon’s shield. He gave up trying to stand on his wounded leg. He sat on the wet pavement and dumped his bag of arrows out beside him and held his bow horizontally and continued shooting arrows down the bridge. Then he dropped his bow and clapped his hands to his face and shouted, and there was the report of the 22 like a twig snapping. Holding his face, he struggled to his feet and hobbled down the bridge back toward Frost’s farm.
Then a cartwheeling bolt knocked Daniel Charlie’s feet from under him, and he slammed to the pavement full length on his side. Frost tried to help him up, but Daniel Charlie shook his head. Still sitting, he held his bow horizontally as Deas had, and fitted an arrow.
Frost wrapped a hand around his bag of arrows. He could feel that there were not many left. He turned and told King to settle down, but King would not be silenced. Then there was a muted pop, and Brittany’s shield fell back on top of her. Frost saw
the clean hole where the bolt had penetrated. Jessica crawled forward and hauled Brittany out from under the shield. There was a crossbow bolt protruding at an angle from Brittany’s forehead. Jessica scooped up her limp body and raced away down the bridge, wailing “No, no, no.”
In the confusion of other sounds Frost faintly heard what sounded like Langley’s voice. It was a few words, maybe a command, but the whine was unmistakeable. Frost looked away from Jessica, from the dangling stick-like legs of the body in her arms, and he saw Langley’s men drop their crossbows and draw their swords and charge up the bridge shouting. For the bleeding bunch that they were they moved fast. Frost’s people did not stop shooting arrows, but the range was different now. Arrows sailed over the heads of the soldiers. And when King took off full speed toward the soldiers some of Frost’s people stopped shooting completely so as not to hit the dog.
A heavier layer of raincloud had moved in with the dying day, so that now it was almost dark. But Will could see well enough what was happening up ahead on the Town-side slope of his grandfather’s bridge. At the crest, against a strip of southern sky paler than the rest of the overcast, he saw Frost’s tall thin form. He saw his sister, almost as tall. He saw the nameless silhouettes of the others. They were shooting arrows at close range into a confused mass of men. There were screams from these men.
Will and Solomon and the boy stood among a jumble of crossbows. A kind of two-wheeled cart stood empty except for a rifle that lay on a tangled pink quilt. Two men lay among the crossbows. They twisted from side to side and moaned with each exhalation. Another sat leaning back on his hands. He said “Give me a hand, eh?” An arrow protruded from his stomach. “Jesus Christ, give me a hand, will you?”
There was the barely audible tick of something skipping off the pavement up ahead, then another, closer, tick, and an arrow skidded and caught under a crossbow.
The man said “Please.”
Will felt around for something to hang on to. There was nothing. He heard running footsteps behind him. He turned and stood there wavering. It was young Surrey. The boy did not have a bow. He ignored Will and Solomon and the other boy. He ran to the wounded man who was leaning back on his hands. The man said “Give me a hand, will you, kid?” The man’s sword was lying beside him on the pavement. Surrey snatched it up and set to slashing at the man and shrieking. The man screamed and tried to protect himself with his arms.
Bent, with his hands reaching weakly toward the bloody pavement, Will shuffled a few feet back down the bridge. He half turned. Surrey was still slashing and screaming. The man was on his side with his arms around his head. Solomon had a sword now too. He was repeatedly stabbing one of the other wounded men. He shouted “You hurt my daddy! I hate you!” The other boy was standing there watching.
Will also dimly saw the battle near the crest of the bridge. The cloud had thinned a little, permitting the last light of the day to reveal that the soldiers had advanced no further. More of them had fallen. Many of the others were dancing away from a low form that dodged silently and rapidly among them.
In a mass the soldiers turned and ran. King pursued them. Soldiers cried out and stumbled as he bit, but most of them kept running free and fast toward Will and the others. They had not dropped their swords.
Surrey was still slashing at the man, who was still screaming with every stroke. Solomon had moved on to the third wounded man and was holding the sword with both hands and was stabbing him deeply and repeatedly. With each thrust he shouted “I hate you!”
A feeble cry of warning came from Will, but neither Surrey nor Solomon nor the boy appeared to hear him. The running soldiers were close. Will could see their panicked faces. With one hand outstretched, he headed for Surrey, still making his weak cries of warning.
Then behind him he heard two sounds. He stopped and looked back down the bridge. The first sound was the clattering of several pairs of sandals. It was Nordel, Bridgeport, Pender, Mitchell and the young woman in camouflage. They were racing up from the Town end of the bridge. They were about the same distance away as the approaching soldiers.
The second sound, a background to the racket of the sandals, resembled a keen wind, as if a concentrated storm had formed at the Town end of the bridge. Will shivered and stood upright and gaped. Well behind Bridgeport, Pender, Mitchell and the young woman in camouflage the bows of Fundy’s women were like pale stitches flashing in the fabric of the single dark shape they made as they howled toward Will up both lanes of the bridge. In the centre of that shape Wing’s scarlet warm-up jacket pulsed erratically.
51
Will leaned on the eastern railing, holding his bow and staring blankly down at the river. He had finished crying. The rain had stopped. It was too dark to discern colour, but the water gathered a little light from somewhere. With its manic eddies invisible in the growing darkness the river, the wide slouched form of it, seemed to brood between its darker banks. There was a splash, not loud. Will saw the spray toward the middle of the river, hardly visible. There was a scream up the bridge. There was another splash, of a soldier leaping or a body thrown.
Will closed his eyes and laid his forehead against the wet metal railing. The screams continued. The splashes. After a while there were no more screams, only the splashes at almost regular intervals.
Will stood upright and turned away from the river. The three men lay twisted and still among the jumbled crossbows. The rickshaw stood there empty, with its roof hanging loose, its rain-soaked comforter, the rifle slantwise across the seat. Someone passed on the other side of the bridge, on the western sidewalk, a man in a dark jacket and trousers walking purposefully toward Town. The man carried a sword but did not turn toward Will. For a minute Will watched him continue down the bridge. The man neither glanced back nor altered his pace. The one-legged man from Fundy’s house was labouring up the middle of the bridge on his crutch. He stopped and also turned to watch the man pass and merge step by step with the night. Will looked up the bridge, dimly made out the quiet and slowly shifting forms of people. He dropped his bow and started up the sidewalk.
As he approached the scene of the fight he stepped from the sidewalk and walked alongside the lane divider so as to avoid the pairs of men, or man and woman, or woman and woman who were carrying bodies to the railing and struggling them over and letting them drop. King was lying beside the divider. He raised his head and whined as Will drew near. He managed to stand unsteadily and to take three or four halting steps as he wagged his tail. Will fell to his knees and let King lick his face. As he hugged the dog he felt the slick wetness seeping and spreading over the fur. He lifted the animal, who weighed as much as he did, and walked with him cradled in his arms through the sprawl of corpses.
In the main room of Frost’s apartment, by the poor light of a peat fire, the wounded were tended. Daniel Charlie sat on the narrow plastic-covered mattress under the window. One leg was extended and resting on a concrete building block. The ankle was splinted with a length of one-by-two and wrapped in white cloth. Against his upper arm a dark circle stained the wool of his poncho. One hand lay limp, palm upward, on the mattress. His braid hung forward over his shoulder, and the other hand loosely gripped the threadbare eagle feather. His chin rested on his chest. His eyes were closed.
Deas lay in front of the fire. His poncho was hitched above the thigh, which was wrapped in the same cloth as Daniel Charlie’s ankle. His the face was bandaged, and the bandages were blotched red. Jessica was holding his head up and was letting him drink some skag in water.
For a minute Frost stared at the small bag Jessica held in the same hand as the bottle, as the weak light winked against the plastic. It was the bag he had found under Grace’s mattress. Then he continued helping Will administer to King, who stood swaying as they wrapped his wounds. Frost carried King to the fireplace and laid him beside Deas.
Salmon sat against the edge of the table, holding a plastic bottle of alcohol in her single hand. She seemed stunned. She stared blankly
. Old Brandon stood in the doorway with his bow held loose at his side. Like Salmon he appeared rooted, mute and incapable of action, although his lips worked, perhaps feeling through his battered memory for a song. When the bow dropped from his fingers he did not seem to notice. A few residents muttered out in the hallway. Someone had looked after the addicts. The rest of the residents were elsewhere, in their rooms or walking the dark farm, sickened by what they had been capable of.
Frost left the apartment. He passed Marpole, Hastings and Oak. They looked at Frost as if he might be able to fix what they were feeling. Frost touched each of them lightly and continued on to the hooch room. For a few minutes he tried to guess where the numbers of the combination were on the dial of the lock. Then Hastings came with a burning cattail to help him see. Marpole carried the heavy white plastic container of hooch back to Frost’s apartment, and the guards rooted through cupboards for containers.
Will was kneeling beside King, stroking his head. Frost motioned for him to stand. As Will did so Frost gripped him beneath the arms as if he were a toddler and lifted him, and Will wrapped his legs around Frost’s waist. Carrying his grandson, pausing to close the door to the smaller room where Brittany lay dead, Frost walked from his apartment.
He walked out and down the steps and to the graveyard. The overcast had torn in places, and there was a tossed handful of stars. A paleness in the remaining cloud-cover indicated the position of the moon. It was too dark to make out any of the markers, but Frost stepped surely among the graves.
Will’s head rested on his shoulder. The boy’s warm breath touched his neck. Frost said “Soon spring.” He felt the slight movement as Will nodded. “It’s been a wet winter. There’ll be a good crop.” He set Will down, and they walked hand in hand to the river bank. He said “Do you think Daniel will ever finish the water wheel?”
Since Tomorrow Page 33
