Road Brothers

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‘You can walk away from it.’ Darin looked down at the dead men. ‘This doesn’t define you.’

‘Forgive me then.’ Alann got to his feet, drawing the sword the soldier had failed to pull and taking the dagger that he should have reached for instead.

‘You need to forgive yourself, brother.’ Darin offered him that smile, the only one he ever had, the almost smile, sadder than moonset. The smile faded. ‘You have to go to the house now.’

‘The house! They came from the house!’ Even as Alann said it he started to run up the slope toward the rise concealing his home. He ran fast but the sorrow caught him just the same, a chokehold, misting his eyes. His life had never fitted, his wife, his children, always seeming as though they should belong to someone else, someone better, but Mary he had grown to love, in his way, and the boys had taken hold of his heart before they ever knew how to reach.

Alann ran, pounding up the slope. The flames had the house in their grip by the time he cleared the ridge. The heat stopped him as effectively as a wall. Some men, better men perhaps, would have run on, impervious to the inferno, impervious to the fact that nothing could live within those walls, too wrapped in grief to do anything but die beside their loved ones. For Alann though, the furnace blast that blistered his cheeks and took the tears from his eyes, burned away the mist of emotion and left him empty. He stepped back from the crackle and the roar, one pace, three paces, five until the heat could be endured. He dropped both weapons and stared into his empty hands as if they might hold his sorrow.

‘I’m sorry.’ Darin, standing at his side, untouched by the heat, untroubled by the run.

‘You!’ Alann turned, hands raised. ‘You did this!’

‘No.’ A plain denial. A slow shake of his head.

‘You brought this curse … you never forgave me!’

‘It didn’t happen for a reason, Alann. These things never do. Hurt spills over into hurt, like water over stones. There’s no foreseeing it, no knowing who it will touch, who will be left standing.’

Alann knelt to take up the sword and the knife.

‘You’ve got to get to the village, warn the elders. There needs to be a defence—’

‘No.’ Alann’s turn to offer flat refusal. He turned and walked toward the shelter where the sheep huddled against winter storms. Kindling lay stacked in the lee of the dry-stone wall, and in a niche set into its thickness, wrapped in oil-cloth, an old hatchet, a whetstone alongside. Alann thrust sword and dagger into his belt and took the hand-axe, and the stone to set an edge on it.

‘There’s another side to this, Alann. It’s a storm like any other, the worst of them, but it will end—’

‘You want me to rebuild? Find a new wife? Make more sons?’ Alann scanned the distant fields as he spoke, his hands already busy with the whetstone on the hatchet blade. He could see the lines where the soldiers had set off through the beet, angling towards Warren Wood. Robert Good’s farm lay beyond, and Ren Hay’s, the village past those. Alann pocketed the stone and set off after his prey at a steady jog.

Darin was waiting for him at the wood’s edge.

‘You’ll die, and for nothing. You won’t save anyone, won’t get revenge. You’ll die as the man you never wanted to be. God will see you—’

‘God sent the soldiers. God made me a killer. Let’s see how that turns out.’

‘No.’ And Darin stepped into his path, careless of the hatchet in his brother’s hand.

‘It’s over.’ Alann didn’t pause. ‘And you’re just a ghost.’ He stepped through Darin and went on into the trees.

Six soldiers rested at the base of one of the old-stones, monoliths scattered through the Warren Wood, huge and solitary reminders of men who lived off these lands before Christ first drew breath. They had insignias beneath the grime of their tunics but Alann wouldn’t have known which lord they took their coin from even if the coat of arms had flown above them on a new-sewn banner. He slipped back through the holly that hid him and in the clearer space behind drew the sword he had taken. It would serve him poorly in the close confines beneath the trees and he had never swung one before. He stepped around the bush, breaking through the reaching branches of a beech, the sword held in two hands over his shoulder.

The soldiers started to rise as he emerged into the clearing around the old-stone. He threw the sword and it made half a turn in the ten yards between them, impaling a bearded man through the groin. Alann pulled the hatchet and knife from his belt and charged, arms crossed before him.

The quickest of the patrol came forward before he covered the ground, one with sword in hand, helm on head, the other bare-headed, his knife in his fist, shield awkward on his arm. At the last moment before they closed Alann threw himself to the ground before the pair, feet first, sliding between them through the dirt and dry leaves. He swung out with both arms, hatchet to the back of one knee, knife to the other. A farmer butchers his own meat, he knows about such things as tendons and the purpose they serve.

Alann’s slide ended at the base of the old-stone, taking the feet from under a third soldier as he stood. He rolled into space and threw himself clear as a sword struck sparks from the monolith just above his head. He ran, sure-footed, a tight circle around the base of the old-stone, thicker than a pair of grandfather oaks. Two soldiers gave pursuit but were yards behind him as he came again upon the three felled men and a fourth seeking to help one of the injured men up. Alann powered through the cluster, a quick hatchet blow to the back of the standing man as he bent over, followed by a knife slash across the neck of the groin-stabbed man as he gained his feet.

A tight turn around the monolith and Alann spun about, crouching low. The two soldiers thundered round the corner, swords before them. Alann launched himself into the foremost, beneath the man’s sword, both legs driving him forward and up, shoulder turned to take the impact against the man’s belly. The two of them crashed back into the third, taking him down. Four quick stabs to the man’s abdomen at the tempo of a fast clap. Alann clambered over him, pinning his sword arm beneath his knee, and lunging, brought his hatchet down into the face of the soldier behind. The man had been scrabbling away on his backside to get clear, but too slow.