Spindrift (Exit Unicorns Series)

by Cindy Brandner

  It soon became apparent that the stop was deliberate, as if they knew their enemy was in the hills and wanted to taunt them. A man got out of the lead car, his stiff hat collecting snow, his shoulders square beneath the military-issued great coat. He had to be at least a major in rank, Terry thought, peering through the snow but unable to see the man’s insignia. The man barked out a couple of short, sharp commands and soldiers hopped down from the lumbering lorry and walked to the back of it. They dragged something out and it hit the ground with a thump. It appeared to be a bloody heap of old rags bound together.

  “Oh Jaysus,” Cass breathed out beside him, his breath turning to crystals immediately.

  Terry crossed himself reflexively as he realized that the heap of rags was a boy. They pulled him out into the roadway and shoved him to his knees, a clear goad to the men on the hill. Brendan swore softly under his breath. The boy had been beaten, badly, and it was clear he could hardly hold himself up, for he swayed back and forth, only to be steadied by the crack of a rifle against his shoulder. Terry, peering through the haze of sleet, recognized him as a lad newly-minted into the Brotherhood, just a country boy who wanted to believe in something bigger than himself. He was maybe seventeen, so not from their own brigade. Brendan didn’t accept lads under the age of nineteen, he said they didn’t know if they were coming or going before that age, and they were too immature to make a decision that would affect the rest of their lives. Hopefully he was so new that he didn’t know too much about his own brigade’s movements because it was easy enough to beat the information out of someone so green.

  The Major was out in the roadway now, looking up into the hillside with eyes that seemed to Terry to hold the arrogance of a hundred generations of people who knew themselves to be superior. It was only his imagination, but he had seen plenty of men like him these last months and knew what they thought of the Irish they had been sent to control.

  “Come out of the hills you Fenian scum,” he yelled, “come out and show yourselves like real men!”

  Terry heard Cass chuckle beside him and the blood went cold in his veins. He knew that chuckle and what it meant. Cass controlled one of the precious Lewis guns, with its deadly automatic spray of bullets. He wouldn’t need to aim, he need merely point in the general direction and fire. He kept his eyes on the road though, for Cass would do as he was meant to do. This was war, official or otherwise.

  The boy was pushed forward and then the soldier who had charge of him shoved him facedown into the muck of the road. The boy’s cry was muffled in the dirt and snow. The Major shot him in the back of the head, and then looked up into the hills with a smile on his face. Terry swore softly under his breath. The man was right out in the open, cool as a cat, directing his men over the body of a dead Irish boy.

  Brendan said, “Now!” and it seemed as if the one word split the very air around them and suddenly everyone was moving. Brendan was already running down the hillside, rifle to his shoulder and Terry was frozen for a moment as he saw the Tans raise their own weapons and point them at Brendan. They hesitated and Terry saw Brendan through a strange prism, as if he were a mad Celtic warrior from another age, outrageously contemptuous of his own life. He ran as if he was half-animal, a wild and fierce thing emerging from the snow and stone, as much smoke and earth as he was flesh, a being of blood and fury, out of time and place.

  Then Cass spoke and the prism shattered and Brendan was Brendan again, even if he still showed a crazed lack of concern for his life.

  “Feckin’ eejit,” Cass muttered and turned the gun on the Tans in the road. Terry stood and began to run down the hillside, keeping clear of Cass’ line of fire. The noise from the Lewis gun was deafening, echoing off the hills and coming back trebled in volume; it rattled through his blood, thumping hard in his veins. He ran fleet, though the ground beneath him was icy and slick. And then they were all running, charging down the hill, rifles and pistols held in front. His blood sang with the charge, the wind a battle cry in his ears, urging him on.

  A bullet winged past his head with the whine of a large insect and he felt a sharp sting. He kept running, low and erratic, just as Brendan had taught his men, running in the fields in Cork, laughing as though it were all a lark, for it had been, while deadly serious at the same time.

  The blood was pounding so hard in his skull that he thought it might burst open with the pressure. He could hardly feel his legs and was worried that he would fall, face-first, into the churned muck of the hillside.

  Without warning it seemed, he was in the thick of it, men and bullets and grunting and a high-pitched scream and the scent of fear thick in the cold air. The Lewis gun still rent the air around them, and he hoped to hell that none of them were hit by a friendly bullet.

  The sleet was coming down even harder, thick crystals that stung his skin and clung to his eyelashes, freezing there in clumps and obscuring his vision. He had one of those fleeting thoughts of what a strange thing was war, if one could call these roadside skirmishes war. Could killing one another ever be said to prove anything, other than who had the most might, who counted the least dead at the end of the day? He shook his head, setting loose the ice that had gathered on his wool cap. He needed to focus or he was going to get himself killed.

  He found himself down on one knee, at the edge of the fight, pistol cocked, his hands not even shaking. Brendan always said ‘If ye can’t hit them direct in the heart, aim a little up an’ over to the right an’ ye’ll hit something essential.’ There was a Tan in his line of fire, a hard-looking bugger who had probably seen far more than his share of violence, and no doubt had participated in plenty too. Terry thought of the three women who, just the week before, had been dragged from their home and tarred and feathered before the Tans put the torch to their house, and hardened his resolve. He knew with a terrible certainty that if he shot, he would kill the man. His finger was on the trigger and he could feel the strange energy that killing devices held just before they released the bullet or cut through flesh, as though this inanimate object could taste the blood that thrummed beneath the skin.

  The soldier had sensed him; even in the heat of battle, he knew the hairs would rise on a man’s neck to tell him that he was in someone’s sights. The soldier turned and within seconds, it was kill or be killed as the man pointed his pistol at him. His belly understood it even if his head couldn’t quite grasp that fact. But he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t pull the trigger and put a bullet through a man, he couldn’t end a life, even if that man was intent on ending his own. He wanted to say a prayer, something profound, or even just a quick introductory sentence or two, so that God might know he was on his way. Nothing came though, neither words nor wisdom, just a simple stupefaction and the world slowing to a crawl. The man’s eyes were a hard chilly blue, and Terry could see his death in them. He felt a ridiculous desire to laugh, hysteria, he supposed. He would keep his eyes open; he would have that much dignity. He couldn’t breathe, though he supposed that hardly mattered now.

  Then suddenly the man dropped like a stone, backwards into the ditch, a small neat hole in his forehead, the snow around him stained crimson and steaming with the hot salt smell.

  “Jaysus Murphy, Terry,” said a voice over his shoulder, “when a man points a gun at ye, ye don’t just stand there an’ pray that he misses.”

  “I—I know—I—thank ye, man.”

  “Yer welcome,” Brendan said gruffly, and then moved along, leaving Terry to realize that it was over. So quickly, no more than ten minutes could have passed, and yet it felt like days had gone by since he was crouched at the top of the rocky hill. Slowly, slowly his blood went quiet, and his skin turned cold and the sound of the wind sang once more in his ears, only now it sang a threnody, an ode to warriors fallen and lives cut short. He looked around, his vision clearing; every last one of the British soldiers was dead, fallen like trees into the roadway, some tumbled into the ditch. It was a rout, or a massacre, depending on a man’s viewpoint. They had
their own dead, three of the forty. Not bad odds, but when it was life that was lost, not good either.

  Brendan stood apart, silhouetted against the gunmetal sky, surveying the damage, going through the list in his head, Terry knew, of what would need to be done. An echo remained though, in that tall figure, of the bloody Celtic warrior, flying down over the hill, brute strength coupled with a fearlessness that was awesome to behold. But he saw, also, his friend, and knew the grief that was coupled with the blood fury, and how he would already be thinking of what to say to the parents, the wives, the girlfriends of the men lying below, snow drifting over their bodies, men who had been his friends, and in his capacity as their leader, his responsibility. Terry was relieved and ashamed at the same time that the burdens of leadership were not his own to bear.

  The issue of just who was the informer lingered into the spring. It was necessary to find the man, before he could do any more damage. Brendan had his spies in place, as well as his own network of informers spread across the countryside like a spider’s web, woven from invisible filaments. It was only a matter of time before the answer came, but when it did, it was even more unpleasant than Terry had anticipated. It was an unseasonably warm day in April when Brendan called him to the back room off a pub that served as his office.

  “It’s Cass,” Brendan said bluntly, giving Terry no lead in. He understood at once though, Cass—who had been their friend since youth, Cass who was the left hand of Brendan, where Terry was the right—was the informer. Cass, whom they had both trusted implicitly. All the starch went out of Terry’s legs and he sat down opposite Brendan, his knees butting up against the desk.

  Brendan didn’t speak and neither did Terry at first, they had been born and raised in a Republican world and there was only one consequence for traitors, and while it wasn’t merciful, it was quick.

  “It’s certain?”

  “Aye, he’s admitted to it.”

  “Why—why would he do such a thing?”

  Brendan shook his head. “I don’t know, an’ he’s not sayin’ why exactly.”

  Terry felt as though the bottom had dropped out of the world and nothing made sense anymore. Cass, the third point on their triangle. Laughing Cass. Vain Cass. Cass the ladies’ man. He rubbed a hand over his forehead, pinching his leg with his other hand, just to check and see if this was real or some horrible dream from which he could hope to wake. But it wasn’t. That became all too clear as Brendan opened the drawer of his desk and took out the revolver he kept there. It was clean and primed. He had so long been a moving target that he kept his gun near at all times.

  “I should like ye to come with me, Terry. The lads are holdin’ him at a wee place near Macroom.”

  “Ye want me to come with ye?”

  “Aye,” Brendan’s face was cold, as though he had suddenly become the man the British army described on broadsheets. “I want ye to do it.”

  “Ye want me to do it?” Terry felt like a parrot that had been knocked hard off its perch. “Have ye gone mad?”

  “No,” Brendan said, and butter wouldn’t have melted in the man’s mouth he was that cool.

  “I won’t do it,” Terry said, pulling his scrawny self up to his full extent, “ye can’t ask this of me, man.”

  “Can’t I? I believe I just have.”

  Terry swallowed, feeling like he might be sick right there on the neat piles of paperwork spread over the man’s desk. If he disobeyed Brendan, it would be a direct violation of his commander’s orders. And he knew it was his commander he was facing now, not his friend.

  “Terry, I wouldn’t ask ye to do this, but there have been whispers, that if Cass could fool me as he did, then perhaps there are others near to me who should not be trusted as well. I won’t have them questionin’ ye.”

  He knew Brendan wasn’t wrong, he knew the other men that day on the hillside were aware he hadn't shot his gun at all, knew that he had a fear of killing another man. This army was small, but only the more strict for its size. He had never questioned a command before, and truth be told, had Brendan asked him to dance naked with a rose between his teeth in front of a church on Sunday, he would have done it without question.

  “No, I’ll not do it,” he repeated, though it took every scrap of courage he had left to utter the words.

  “Indeed,” Brendan said, too agreeable by half for Terry’s comfort, “an’ that’s yer last word on the subject?’

  “It is,” he replied, courage dwindling quickly.

  “Well then ye leave me with little choice,” Brendan said. He stood and picked up the gun, walked to the door and opened it.

  “Terry, I’d appreciate it if ye’d join me.”

  There, thought Terry, was the other shoe dropping with a resounding thump, for Brendan knew it would be no less difficult for him to stand and watch Brendan do it, than to pull the trigger himself.

  He swallowed over the lump of ice that had formed below his throat. “Brendan, there has to be another way, Cass is our friend…”

  Brendan turned back to face him, slow in his movements as though he were exhausted beyond all bearing. “There are no friends in this business, Terry, d’ye understand? Ye are always alone in this business.”

  The ride to where Cass was kept was a silent one, fraught with a terrible thrumming tension. It was deep in the countryside, though the beauty of the spring landscape was lost on Terry entirely. Stone walls and hedges and sparkling green pastures rolled past and he saw nothing but the terrible deed that lay ahead of them. His brain seemed to be greased with panic, unable to hold a thought or string a sentence together or present him with one idea to convince Brendan this wasn’t an act they could come back from—it would change something essential in both of them.

  And then they arrived. It was as remote as he had feared it might be. A small cottage tucked deep in a glen with a brook running behind and down through the rocky incline that backed the cottage. It was a beautiful location, which somehow only served to make their business that much more difficult.

  Cass was brought outside, and Terry was relieved to see he could still walk under his own power. A man ought to have at least that much dignity allowed him. He had been worked over well though, that was clear. Treachery of this sort risked everyone’s lives and was taken with a seriousness that was, literally, deadly. Cass had known that when he betrayed them all. He had cost six men their lives, and harmed countless more. He looked now to Brendan, a dense appeal in the bruised face. Brendan paid no more mind to him than he did the stones on the ground.

  “Out in the field,” Brendan said curtly and walked off into the grass that had already grown knee high in the warm spring days.

  Terry turned to Cass, the blue eyes were almost hidden beneath swollen lids and bruising, and there was no gleam of mischief or fun there anymore.

  “Come on, man,” he said softly, “I’ll walk ye out into the field. I’ll stand with ye until—until it’s done.”

  “Terry no. Talk to him, please man. Yer the only one he listens to. Please Terry, I’m beggin’ ye.”

  Cass wrenched his arm free from Terry’s hand as they passed Brendan, and dropped to his knees, clutching at Brendan’s pant leg, fingers grasping at the material as though it were the thread between him and hell. Which wasn’t, Terry thought, too far from the truth of the matter.

  “Please, Brendan, don’t do this—I—I made a mistake, I was a fool. I swear to ye, I’ll never do such a thing again.”

  Brendan merely looked down at him, dark eyes as cold and hard as obsidian. Cass was too panicked to comprehend the message in the man’s face, though, so Terry knelt down and detached his fingers one by one from Brendan’s leg.

  “Cass, don’t do this, yer only makin’ it harder on yerself. Get up off yer knees, an’ face it like a man. Ye knew what the punishment would be if ye betrayed the Brotherhood. Face it with courage, because it’s the last chance ye have to exercise it in this life.”

  Cass let Terry pull him up off the g
round, and Terry hooked his arm under the man’s shoulder, so that he could bear him out on this last walk. There was an old crumbling stone wall part way into the field and it was here that Terry led Cass, so that he had something against which to lean.

  “Terry,” Cass clutched at Terry’s arm and the sheer desperate strength in his fingers caused Terry to gasp with pain. “Please man, ye’ve got to hear my confession, I won’t go with sin on my heart.”

  “Yer confession? I’m no priest, man. I have no right to hear confession.”

  “I know that, Terry, but yer uncle’s a priest an’ that’s good enough for me right now. An’ if ye can forgive me, man, surely God can too.”

  Terry didn’t see as he had much choice but to hear the man’s confession and so he knelt down with him and heard his final words, which were part plea and part prayer that he might be forgiven by those he had loved best and then betrayed. He looked Cass in the eyes then, those blue eyes that had always been merry and laughing, and had covered over so many things neither he nor Brendan had recognized. It was then that the memory came like the echo of a bell rung moments before. The three of them had been lying near a stream, having spent the entire morning fishing. The afternoon sun was deliciously warm and they had succumbed to the seduction of it, lying on their backs in a field. It was a rare afternoon of idleness, for both Brendan and Cass lived on farms, where there was work enough to last from dawn until well past dusk. Their talk had ranged all around the kingdoms of fact and fantasy until Cass asked a question about what they would do once they were grown men, and not just half-grown weeds with addled wits, as Brendan’s father had called them only that morning.

  “I am goin’ to have a full cupboard all the time, an’ use a fresh set of tea leaves once a day,” Terry said. As the youngest of six, he knew too well what it was to go to bed hungry and never to have, it seemed, enough of anything—food, money, space in the bed, shoes that fit, sweaters that weren’t holey, coal for the fire, room to think.