The Outlaw and the Upstart King

by Rod Duncan

  Jago’s camp came into view ahead. She would have to tell Charity, somehow. But not until they were off the Island. To save one of them would be a kind of victory. Stepping to the tent, she tried a smile, but knew it wasn’t working. So she turned her mind to all things practical. Charity’s eyes were bright with excitement or fear.

  “I thought you were one of them,” she said.

  She was dressed in a man’s hose and doublet, both a drab russet. The boots were her own, however. The rosy leather and the cut of them, distinctly feminine. The heels were too high. That might be a problem if they had to scramble over the rocks by the sea.

  “I couldn’t find anything else to fit,” she said, following Elizabeth’s eyes.

  “No matter. It’ll be dusk soon. And no one’s going to be looking down. Just step in the mud when you have a chance. We’ve plenty of that.”

  A heap of clothes had been dumped in the middle of the tent. “I didn’t know what to get. I stole a bit of everything.”

  Elizabeth knelt and began searching for garments small enough to fit.

  “Where’s Elias?” Charity asked, a tremor in her voice.

  “He should meet us when we get to the mainland.”

  “I thought he’d show us the way.”

  “He’s told me how to get there.”

  Elizabeth kept her gaze fixed on the clothes. Nothing was right, as if the woman had judged what to bring by her own stout build.

  A pair of moss-green canvas breeches were the best of a bad job. They would reach halfway down her calves, but at least she wouldn’t be tripping. A top was easier. There were several shirts that would do. They’d be long and baggy. All the better to hide her figure. She found a plaited rope belt that might be looped round her waist a couple of times.

  She laid them out and began to undo the hooks and eyes of the cerise dress.

  Charity turned her head, as if hearing a noise. Elizabeth froze. Then the tent flaps ripped open behind her. She twisted to look and jumped away in the same moment. Firehand lunged inside. She dived into a roll, trying to pass under his arm, but the wide skirts collapsed down over her face like a fishing net. One of the tent poles snapped with a sharp crack. She struggled free to see him stooped under the sagging apex. Charity was backed up as far as she could get from him. He rushed her. But his foot caught against the bent top of the iron spike and he stumbled. One missed step. It was enough for Elizabeth to get back to her feet. Grabbing Charity’s hand she ran headlong into the wall of canvas, pushing through, bringing the tent down behind them.

  They were sprinting. In a snatched back glance she saw him stoop to pull a club-like spar from the pile of firewood, then he was thundering after them. Charity couldn’t keep up. Her heels were sinking into the soft turf.

  They’d had forty yards on him at the start. Now it was fifteen. He’d have them in seconds. But she would choose the place of it. Dragging Charity by the hand, she veered off towards the cliff edge, out towards the point of a headland. At the brink, she turned to face him. Now that he had them cornered, Firehand slowed to a walk. He smiled as he swished the air with the club.

  She’d hoped for a sheer edge behind, something to stop him charging directly at them. But the land sloped away instead, steepening towards a drop. Inching back, she pulled Charity with her, feeling the angle of the ground under her feet. If they started to slide, there’d be no way to stop.

  “Fight,” he growled.

  “We shan’t.”

  “I caught you running. Now I can kill you.” He swung the club, forcing them back again.

  “Why?”

  “For honour.”

  “But we give up!”

  “You think you can poke your knife at my back and then take the coward’s road when things go bad?”

  The storeroom of the inn flashed in Elizabeth’s mind. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I just wanted to escape.”

  He held up the stub of his left arm. “You know what this means? I was bound to a Patron who wouldn’t go to war. I gave this arm to cut that oath! You think I won’t fight you now that I can?”

  Another swing, another inch, the slope almost too steep to stand on, earth crumbling under her feet.

  “Fight me. Die with honour. For die you must. All I am is to fight!”

  The faces around the table were a wall, and every eye focused on Elias. All stared poison. He needed a dose of his own poison to slow his heart. His breath was coming fast and shallow, the air stale from so many mouths. He gripped the table edge, steadying himself against a lurch of vertigo.

  Elizabeth’s words seemed to have come from a dream. The man next to him was cheating. Aaron Weaverbright loomed close.

  “Throw the bones, you fucking coward!”

  More than anything else, Elias wanted the man to die. He wanted him beaten. He wanted all the wrongs he’d suffered to be done against the Patrons who had plotted his downfall. Not just those wrongs, but a thousand more. He wanted to see them in agony and their children and all those they loved and the things they cared for brought to ruin.

  He squeezed his palm tighter, making the hard edges of the dice bite into his skin. He needed to think. He needed to breathe. His great uncle was at the far end of the table, staring with everyone else.

  “The coward won’t play,” Aaron jeered, then pushed the whole pile of his treasure into the middle of the table. Coins rolled and settled. “I’m all in.”

  Others followed his lead, pushing their silver and gold towards him.

  “Do you agree?” Patron Weaverbright demanded.

  Elias found himself nodding.

  Hands other than his own pushed Jago’s hoard towards the other bets.

  He might win. One more throw of the dice and his agony would be over. But not if they were cheating him again. He opened his hand to see the long dice. He took one of them and held it against the scar where his thumb had been severed. It was the right size. If only he could think straight. Elizabeth had said Aaron cheated, that he’d another die palmed.

  He could call the man out.

  “They’re better use as my dice than ever they were as your thumbs!”

  Aaron’s words stirred and stopped his thoughts again.

  “Water!” he called. “Someone bring me water.”

  The shout went back through the crowd. “Bring him water. He wants water.”

  “Coward!” Aaron hissed the word under his breath.

  Every time he was close to knowing what to do, the man goaded him again. He could feel it blinding him. But he couldn’t break the grip of it. He closed his eyes and saw an image of blood and flesh rent by blows from his own sword.

  Breathing fast, he tried to picture something else. New Whitby under the sun. The waves rolling in. Charity’s house. Her face.

  His breathing slowed.

  He could call Aaron a cheat, have him searched, perhaps. Within the table, the clockwork was counting off seconds. If the man were humiliated, and then the bomb went off, it would be a kind of victory.

  Behind closed eyelids, he imagined Charity’s face again. That crooked nose. Those full lips. She smiled at him. He saw her eyes as they were when she looked into his. And in that moment he saw himself as she must see him.

  “The coward’s crying!” Aaron shouted.

  He knew what he had to do. He would die anyway. So would they all, in their time. It felt as if a great boulder was being lifted from his chest.

  “Water,” someone said.

  He opened his eyes. A beaker was held out towards him.

  “There’s a bomb,” he said, his voice becoming louder as his certainty grew. “Within this table, there is a bomb. You all need to go.”

  Aaron was laughing. Others followed his lead. A wave of mirth spread back into the crowd. Even people who couldn’t have heard what he said were laughing.

  “The bet is taken,” Patron Weaverbright said. “You can’t back out.”

  “There is a bomb!” Elias shouted this time. “Leave
the table, or you’ll die!”

  His great uncle was looking directly at him, alert.

  Aaron shoved him in the shoulder, hard enough to make him stagger. “A liar and a coward!”

  But Patron Calvary was gesturing to his men, jabbing a finger away from the table, pushing back through the crowd.

  “You disgrace yourself,” Patron Weaverbright said. “If you walk from this table, you forfeit your entire treasure.”

  “Then that’s what I do. I give up. You win. But please leave this place or you’ll die!”

  They were still laughing further back. But for the first time, there was doubt in Aaron’s face. He looked to his father.

  And there was music. Somewhere. The small, beautiful chime of a watch. A nursery tune.

  He shouted, “Run!” Then he was running, himself. Or trying to, for the crowd jostled him as he barged through. They laughed, they jeered, they thumped him on the shoulder.

  “Run!”

  He screamed at them. He shoulder barged his way through. He wouldn’t make the distance in time. There was a rocky outcrop just ahead. A man and two women had perched themselves on top of it for a better view, holding on to each other to keep from falling off.

  He dived down behind it and lay flat. They were staring at him, jeering that he was a coward. Then the air turned white and the people were flung away like rag dolls. He never heard the sound.

  On the edge of the cliff, Firehand swung the wooden spar. Elizabeth pulled back her head. This time, she felt the waft of air moving against her face. He took another step towards them and pulled his one arm back for the final blow. His feet were on the slope, but not the steepest part. The thin soil kept slipping under her boots.

  She must have edged back again because suddenly her feet went from under her. Only Charity’s grip stopped her going over the edge. She dropped to one knee as the wooden spar hummed over her head. Clinging to the scrubby grass she hauled herself up towards his feet. If she could catch his ankle, she might pull him off balance.

  She lunged up the slope, but the soil under her knee slid back and she landed short. He raised his club to bring down on her.

  Then all the seagulls took off in the same moment. She felt a touch on her face, light as a feather. Firehand must have felt it too. The club lowered. He glanced over his shoulder. Then came the sound: like a thunderclap but many times more powerful. The first wave of it hit and then the echoes, which came rolling back from the cliffs and hills of the mainland.

  Releasing Charity’s hand, she dived forwards again, under the club that wavered in the air. The damn skirts tangled her legs. She fell, her chin jarring against the ground. Then she was up. Charity had rounded him on the other side. He swung the club. Elizabeth ducked under it. But it was Charity who charged into him, her shoulder crashing against his ribs. He stumbled back, onto the steeper slope, flailing his one arm. The club fell over the edge. Elizabeth ran at him. His feet were sliding down the steepening slope as she hit his chest. His windmilling arm caught her dress. He was falling, but she was being dragged. Charity grabbed at her. They locked hands. The mud-stained fabric of the dress began to rip. And then Firehand was toppling over the edge, a strip of bright satin trailing behind.

  Chapter 39

  The air had turned white. Then there was blackness and a whistling sound, growing louder. He opened his eyes. No, that was wrong. They had been open all the while. The people who’d been looking down at him were gone. He remembered the blur of them being ripped away by the explosion.

  The whistle in his ears had grown to a high-pitched scream. He was looking at the sky, though it seemed he’d been lying on his side before. He must have been flipped over. He didn’t know how long he’d been lying there.

  He turned his head and saw a severed arm beside him.

  He sat, pushed himself into a squat then stood. The ground seemed to tilt like the deck of a ship. He turned, stumbled, saw that he’d been facing away from the blast and not towards it. But the landscape made no sense. Dust was still falling. Through it, he made out a great rocky circle, a crater, he supposed, and then a cliff edge and beyond it, a void until the cliffs of the mainland loomed up further away than they should have been.

  The table had been standing there. And hundreds of people, the highborn, the oath-holders, the oath-wrights. All were gone. He understood that. But the rock ridge was gone also and that seemed somehow harder to grasp.

  In a flash of panic he reached for his pocket and found the glass pot still whole. Then he was laughing, unable to stop, and crying at the same time.

  He’d not been meant to live. Nor would he. Even if he got off the Island, the small lump of glycer-fortis would keep him only for a few days. He’d betrayed Jago. He’d betrayed the smugglers. He’d betrayed the dark power in the west that had plotted it all. There was no way back. When that small bead of poisonous medicine was gone, his heart would seize up in his chest. And yet he felt cut free.

  His feet took him around the rim of the crater, limping, for the calf of his left leg was somehow numb. The path ended. He looked down the newly formed cliff and saw two men scrambling away, as if racing each other. At the bottom the waves churned over piles of freshly broken rock. The ridge had collapsed to the left. The Island had become a real island. More men were clambering up the cliff on the other side.

  It came to him that time must be flowing more slowly than it should. Or perhaps he was thinking faster. Either way, the dust hadn’t cleared enough for him to see what was happening at the round towers. From the distance, he heard the clash of metal on metal.

  The two men had reached the bottom of the cliff and were scrambling across the shallows. One picked up a rock and hurled it at the other, catching him on the back of the head, flooring him. There was blood. A wave washed over the body.

  Suddenly the world was moving again at normal speed. He heard a scream from the direction of the round towers. The weapons. They were trying to get to the store of weapons.

  A movement in the corner of his eye made him duck. A man swinging a knotted rope, catching him on the shoulder with the weight of a punch. He fell. The rope whipped back and swung again. Elias jabbed his elbow at the attacker’s knee. The man folded.

  Grabbing the rope, Elias scrambled over the edge and started down the cliff. He had to get hold of a real weapon. Something to defend himself. And Charity. If she’d survived.

  The numbness in his leg had turned to a throbbing pain. He didn’t want to look. The long bones couldn’t have been broken or he wouldn’t have been able to climb down at all. That was enough for now.

  Halfway across the rubble at the bottom, a wave surged up, tugging at him as it pulled back. He looked down and saw the white foam stained pink. Then he was at the other cliff and climbing.

  The jabs of pain were sharper with each step. The rush of men scrambling to cross seemed to be over. There would be others on the Island still alive who’d run in the opposite direction. And what of the Calvary clan? His great uncle had ordered them away. But unless they’d gone far enough, they’d be lying among the corpses. Or they could have crossed the rock ridge and be waiting above to cut down anyone who tried to climb. If so, he was about to find out.

  The rock was smoother near the top. He’d run out of handholds. Crouching lower for a moment, he jumped, launching himself upwards to catch a jutting rock that had been just out of reach. He dangled, feet scrabbling, until one found a crevice big enough to wedge in. Then he was clambering the last few feet and over the lip, clawing the turf, hauling himself onto the grass.

  No sword ran him through. No words were called. Lying flat out, but with his arms braced, ready to leap, he surveyed the ground ahead. Bodies lay around the two storehouses. Up on the ridge, the shantytown of camp followers seemed like a nest of ants, stirred up with a stick. Riders were leaving at speed, ox carts followed. Tents were coming down. Some seemed to have abandoned their possessions and were running over the rise of the hill and out of sight.

>   Elias stood. Only now, he realised that the bodies of oath-wrights lay among the dead. He could see no blood on them, but a bruise circled the neck of the nearest corpse. He reached down and turned the head, feeling the vibration of broken bones grinding against each other.

  Uncoiling the rope from his shoulder, he began to circle the nearest of the stone towers. The doorway came into view. A hole had been punched through the middle of the iron door, the jagged ends bent inwards. Whoever had killed the oath-wrights would surely be inside.

  Elizabeth stood frozen, watching the huge dust cloud rolling across the turf. Then figures emerged, running towards the camps, as if they’d find sanctuary anywhere in a world that had just been turned upside down. Most were women or children. The few men among them were low status servants who’d not been able to get close to the dice game.

  Firehand had ripped half the dress away from her. But for the first time since she’d set out from New Whitby, no one was looking.

  Charity ran, reaching the collapsed tent ahead of her, burrowing under the canvas, hauling out the clothes.

  The wounded men and women were passing now, limping, bleeding. One crawled, dragging a leg behind. Elizabeth tore off the remains of the dress and pulled on the breeches.

  “Hats!” she ordered. By the time Charity was back from under the canvas, she’d pulled on a couple of loose shirts and had the belt tied. The hats were billycocks, one brown, one black. The brims were too narrow to hide their faces but it would do.

  Charity drew in a gulp of air and pointed. A man stumbled over the rise cradling the mangled remains of a girl in his arms, his face blank. He seemed to be sleepwalking.

  Charity cast her eyes around. “Where is Elias?”

  “We’ll find him later.”

  “You said he was safe.”

  “He is,” said Elizabeth, knowing he would be dead.

  She took Charity’s hand and set off against the tide of wounded. Walking then running, not breaking step when they crested the rise and saw the crater and the bodies. The worst of the wounded were here. Crawling or dragging themselves or simply lying and waiting to die.