Darkthaw (27 page)

“You only offered your bow to win our trust. You did it so we'd drop our guard around you.”

“I was trying to do something useful. Something you might remember favorable if the going got rough. But I could tell you weren't never going to accept me, even after all that.” I fight down a pang of guilt that surfaces, but it deepens as he mutters, “Was just looking out for my family.”

His family. Josiah gunned down. Rebecca, so close to having that baby, a prisoner at the Keep.

Now's not the right time—
Charlie said that to Rebecca. I straighten up. He wasn't talking about the baby.

“You were planning to take Matisa all along,” I say.

His eyes drop away from mine. The gesture speaks his truth. My insides twist, and I realize how bad I was hoping Isi was wrong. How bad I was hoping that me doing the right thing would help Charlie do the right thing. Why did I think that? Why did I even want that?

Brother Stockham swims in my vision again, raising the gun to his mouth.
You have lifted the burden
, he'd said, right before he pulled the trigger.

I press on my bad foot. Why is he in my thoughts again? What does he have to do with any of this?

When we found Charlie, I told myself I was giving him the chance I never got, the chance to choose a life without the shame of our family's actions shadowing it.

And now I see how wrong that was. Charlie doesn't deserve it.

I rest my head against the rough bark of the tree. Can't look at his pitiful, lying face.

At the fire, Emmett is lost in his fiddle playing. The high, strange melody fills the space around us.

“Em, you would'a done the same th—”

“Stop talking,” I hiss. “Or I'll get them to bust your mouth so that you can't ever again.”

I turn away from him, the drumbeat of my heart drowning out the fiddle.

No, not drowning it out. The fiddle has stopped.

MY HEAD SNAPS OVER MY SHOULDER TO THE
wagon. Emmett is peering into the cage, his fiddle abandoned at the fire.

Kane is stirring.

My breath gets fast. I throw a look to the little boys. Thanks be, they're still sleeping.

“Well, good morning.” Julian appears out of nowhere. He climbs the riverbank like he's been out for a pleasure stroll. “He wakes.”

My heart clenches as Julian saunters onto the flats. Kane rolls to his side and tries to push to his knees. His wrists give out, and he collapses face-first, back to the floor of the cage.

“Aw, c'mon, half blood, rise and shine,” Emmett says with a laugh. He looks over to Julian, who grins back.

“Get a poker.” Julian jerks his head at the fire. “We'll see if that gets him moving.”

No.

Emmett steps to the fire and grabs the stick Julian was using to stir it. The end glows white-hot in the muted light of dawn. He hands Julian the stick, still grinning.

No
.

“Hey!” I scream. The men stop dead. Julian turns incredulous eyes on me. My heart stutters. Think of something . . . “The girl—she needs water.”

Julian exchanges a glance with Emmett. “Oh?” He tilts his head, an awful look on his face—like he's amused by me, and happy to kill me once he's done laughing.

“Y-y-yes,” I say. I try to think fast. How can Charlie's tale buy us some time? “They won't . . . want her back like that.”

The men glance at each other.

“Well, look who knows something all of a sudden,” Emmett says. He and Julian leave the cage, their attention on me. My stomach plummets as they approach. Why did I say that? Got no idea how far I can stretch this lie. Don't know what Charlie told them.

Bleed it!
Why didn't I learn more from him when I had the chance? Why'd I let my anger, my disgust with him, cloud my good sense?

Julian's before me now. He looks me over, a wolf eyeing a sickly lamb. “Tell me, just how will they want her?”

I swallow. “Healthy-like,” I say.

Emmett steps closer. Squints. “You talk funny, you know that?”

The men glance at each other again. A strange look passes between them.

Behind them, Kane is on his haunches. He and Isi bend their heads together, talking low. Kane gestures to his moccasin.
He's moving quick, alert. Was he playing at being hurt?

“You are not the half-wit you pretend,” Julian says. He takes the poker from Emmett and steps close. “Where did you come from?”

When I don't answer, he juts the poker forward, stopping it shy of my face. The heat makes my eyelids flutter, my eyes water.

“Where did you come from?” he asks again.

My heart pounds in my ears. “Up north,” I say.

His eyes narrow. “That's what the boy said, too. The thing is, we're quite interested in the north. So where, exactly?”

I swallow.

“Where?” he demands, lowering the stick to my neck.

“I—I . . .”

He presses the point of the poker into the hollow above my collarbone. Searing pain, a thousand bee stings at once, courses through my body. A cry tears from my mouth, but I remember the little boys and I swallow it back, choking.

Julian pulls the stick away. I gasp, expecting relief, but the sensation remains. Like an open cut, it pulses hot and raw.

“I think you had better tell—”

Emmett lets out a piercing yell. Julian spins. Emmett's eyes are wide and disbelieving. His hands are clenched around his thigh, around a bloody gash in his torn pant leg. He points to the ground. Kane's knife lies in the dirt.

Both men swivel and look at the cage, at Kane, who's crouched at the bars, his face contorted with despair. And I realize what happened.

Kane missed.

“You'll pay, boy!” Emmett hollers, holding his leg, his nostrils flaring, his face white.

Julian throws the poker to the earth. “Get him out of there,” he growls, his voice low. Deadly. He grabs the key on his belt.

A hot wind blows through my head as they start toward the cart. Kane backs away from the bars, his eyes wide and scared. Isi cowers at the end closest to Matisa, his head turned away.

Julian grabs for the lock and twists the key in it as Emmett heads for the fire, where his rifle lies. Julian's hands shake with fury as he fumbles with the lock and pulls it from the bolt.

My heart is in my throat. The sun crests the riverbank over my shoulder, blinding me an instant. I blink, trying to find Kane in the gold glare. I close one eye, find the cage again, search for Kane and Isi—

But they are a blur.

They spring forward, throwing themselves at the door, knocking Julian backward. He falls as they barrel out of the cage and leap from the cart. Isi stumbles as he hits the earth and falls, unable to catch himself with his wrists bound. He lets out an awful scream, and somewhere in the back of my mind I picture those stitches I gave him tearing all the way open.

Emmett swings around from the fire with his rifle while Kane leaps onto Julian, fists flying. Julian's on his back, but he's big, strong. He bucks his body from under Kane, launching himself upward and grabbing at Kane's neck. They roll, the big man throwing his weight around like a bear, Kane fighting like a wildcat.

Isi swings an awkward double-fisted punch as Emmett rushes toward him, but he's off balance, and Emmett dances back. The movement must tear Isi's wound wide because he cries out and loses his balance, stumbling to the side.

Julian is on top of Kane now, his weight bearing down as Kane struggles, hands scrabbling, trying to keep them free of the big man's grasp.

Emmett steps forward and swings the butt end of the rifle against Isi's temple as Julian's fist connects, and Kane's head snaps back onto the earth.

There's a dead silence. It fills my head—somehow silent and deafening at once. I swallow air, trying to keep my thoughts from flying away, shattering.

Kane moves, anchoring me here. Still here.

The big man heaves himself up, breathing hard.

“Goddamn it,” he spits. A gob of red lands in the dust. He looks at Emmett's gun. “Teach him,” he barks, kicking Kane's body.

Emmett steps over Isi and levels the gun at Kane's head. He draws back the hammer.

Everything stops. The roar fills my head again. Can't speak. Can't think—

“You shouldn't!”
It's Charlie's voice, echoing through the roar.
“They'll want him, too.”
He's speaking so far off, at the end of a tunnel or . . . or . . .

“They will,”
Charlie's voice comes clear. “They'll want them all.”

My eyes refocus. Emmett looks at Julian, gun still leveled at Kane.

Julian's eyes narrow. “Why?”

“They have claim. To this girl, too,” Charlie says. “It's why they talk funny. Been living with them.”

Them.
Them
. My mind works slow. Matisa's people, he means.

Julian tilts his head like he's considering. He spits red again. “Fine,” he says.

A soft cry of relief escapes me. My knees are so weak I have trouble staying upright.

“But we'll make sure he can't try that again.”

I watch, frozen, as Julian grabs Kane by the arms and rolls him over, facedown. Kane's body lolls in his grasp. Julian puts one knee on the center of Kane's back.

“Emmett, get the twine.”

Emmett retrieves a leather strap from the back of the cart.

“You notice if he's left- or right-handed?”

Emmett looks at his thigh. “I'd say left.”

Julian takes Kane's left hand and ties the binding around his wrist. He hops over to the cart and stretches Kane's arm long, tying the other end to the cart wheel.

What are they—

“Watch that red,” Julian tells Emmett, nodding at Isi's lifeless form. Emmett walks over and presses the rifle into Isi's back. Julian fishes around in the back of the wagon. He finds what he's looking for and holds it high. It looks as long as the club but has a metal blade; some sort of long knife.

My throat closes off, heart pounds like it aims to bust right through my chest. Fear crowds into my mind like a rush of wind.

As Julian kneels again on his back, Kane begins to come
to, tries to pull his head up. His head snaps to the side, and I can see his wide eyes. This time, I can tell he's not playing at it.

He's terrified.

“Guess you'll have to learn with your right,” Julian says, weighing the knife in his hand.

Kane's struggling now, pulling frantic at his tie. The big man's weight pins him to the earth—he can't move.

I find my tongue. “Don't!” But my throat is parched, and my voice is choked. I gather all of my strength and cry again, “Don't!” I fumble with my hand ties, rubbing my raw wrists against the leather, cutting the skin to shreds.

The little boys are stirring with the commotion, waking up—I can see them out of the corner of my eye. They're going to see—rage starts in the base of my gut, flooding my throat, burning into my brain. “No!” I scream.

Julian stops and looks back at me. He frowns.

“You need to still your tongue,” he says. “Or you'll be short fingers, too.” He looks at Emmett. “She could be kept for the men who like the freaks. Lame leg, fingerless hand . . .”

Emmett laughs but doesn't take his eyes, his rifle, off Isi.

Kane stops struggling and looks at me. He shakes his head.
Stop
. He closes his eyes. Breathes deep.

“I'll kill you!” I scream.

Julian smiles, turns away, and puts the tip of his knife to the knuckles on Kane's hand. “I'll just take two.”

“I WILL KILL YOU!”

“Don't move now.”

Julian raises the large knife high above his shoulder. He moves to pull his arm forward, bring the knife down—

Crack!
The loudest sound, echoing through space, around my head.

The knife drops from Julian's hand. He swings around toward us, grabbing for his shoulder, his eyes wide and wild. A large spurt of blood springs from inside his armpit, a crimson puddle spreading around the shoulder of his shirt. He staggers, mouth open in confusion.

Emmett drops into a crouch. He raises the rifle's sight to his eye and swings around in a desperate circle, looking around wild.

Another shot rings out. Comes from behind us, in the trees. Emmett hollers and drops the gun like its a fire rock, clutching at his wrist.

It's one shooter. Can only be one shooter. One shooter with perfect aim.

And whoever it is approaches. Can't see from where I'm bound, but I can see it on the men's faces. Julian's glassy eyes focus on something behind us. Emmett freezes in place.

Julian puts his hands up as if in surrender. The blood is still flowing out like some nightmare spring—leaping out with each move he makes, staining his shirt shoulder to cuff, filling the hand clutching his shoulder.

A figure appears to the side of me, can see the gun barrel extending first. I hear the click of a hammer drawing back.