Paul Kane - Arrowhead

"A holy man, you say?" De Falaise had questioned, rubbing his chin.

"The… the one from Hope, my Lord," Javier spluttered, the side of his head a mess of dried blood.

De Falaise struck him. "You no longer have the right to call me that!"

"I'm sorry… I'm so sorry…"

De Falaise had leaned forward. "What was that, I didn't quite catch what you were saying?"

"I said I'm sorry!" Javier hissed, spittle flying from his mouth. "I was scared…"

"More scared of your 'maker' than you are of me?" De Falaise said. "Why?"

Javier couldn't answer, he just stared at De Falaise.

"Do you not understand, is it not apparent to you? Around here I am God! Your allegiance is to me! It is too late anyway for you to make your peace with whichever deity you choose to believe in. You've travelled too far down another path for that. The holy man lied to you if he was offering you salvation, you stupid turd. But I will keep you alive until you have learned your lesson, Javier. Which starts with telling me more about this Hooded Man's gang."

De Falaise had listened as his former major described a man in a checked shirt who carried a shotgun, someone small he hadn't got much of a look at, and now Granger, the halfwit they'd picked up down in London.

"Ah, yes, him," De Falaise had nodded knowingly. "I thought he might be trouble eventually."

Even including the men he'd commandeered from Savero, the man in the hood couldn't have much of an army… Unless more joined him from the villages.

It was nothing compared to De Falaise's militia, but it was still a worry.

Tanek left the man he was burning and turned his attention to the woman. "Please, I've told you everything I know," she said, sniffing back tears. "He lives in the forest somewhere. I haven't even seen him!"

"No need to cry," De Falaise said softly. "No need at all." A sharp nod of the head and Tanek was reaching for his knife – not the one he usually carried, the soldier's knife. This one was more like a scalpel. He brought the blade up with one hand, cupping the back of the woman's head with the other. His hand was so big it covered almost the whole of her scalp. Then Tanek jammed the blade into her left eye and scooped out the orb. The woman screamed, the cry louder and much more piercing than the man who'd endured the iron.

"You see," commented De Falaise. "No more tears now. Much better."

Tanek flicked the eye from the knife, then made to take out the other one.

"For pity's sake!" shouted the younger man.

"Pity?" asked De Falaise, turning towards him. "Pity? Pity is for the feeble and the foolish. You do not know this, which is why you are the one in the shackles, mon ami."

Tanek finished up with the woman. When he moved to the side De Falaise could see the holes in her face where the eyes had once been. Her scream had turned into a low moan. De Falaise gestured for Tanek to tackle the next subject.

"And it is also why, you see…" the Frenchman continued, stepping aside so that Tanek could get past – his next implement of torture ready, a drill. "…you will be next."

The man began screaming even before Tanek drove the drill bit into his kneecap.

The three prisoners told De Falaise nothing he hadn't already known. The people feared and hated him, they admired and cheered for The Hooded Man.

"Something has to be done about the situation," De Falaise commented when they exited the chamber, leaving the half-dead bodies behind them, "before it gets out of hand."

"What?" Tanek asked, climbing the steps behind De Falaise.

"I have an idea. You see it strikes me that if we cannot take him in his native environment, we must smoke him out somehow, non? And the way to do that is to eat at his conscience. You do know what that is, don't you?" said De Falaise laughing. Tanek didn't even crack a smile. "Yes, that is it. Tanek, if all goes to plan then we will soon bring down this 'hero' and his band. We will rewrite history, and I will have his head before the summer is out!"

Today had begun much the same as all the others since the world ended.

Though, to be honest, things hadn't really changed on the farm much anyway; work-wise at any rate. She still got up at sunrise, still fed the pigs and chickens at the same time, tended to the fields, saw to the bees in the back yard. Life was pretty much how it had been for as long as she could remember. Apart from the fact that her brother and father were gone.

Mary Louise Foster looked out over the tracts of land that formed the backdrop of her house. It was an inherited property, which strangely enough she never thought would be hers – and certainly didn't want to come by in the way that she had. Her mother left when Mary was only small, unable to cope with the lot of a farmer's wife, and the two kids that farmer had given her. In many ways Mary resented the fact she'd disappeared like that, leaving her father to cope on his own. In some ways, though, she totally understood. However, it meant that Mary and her sibling, David, had to grow up fast. They'd been set to work on the farm, David taking to it like one of their pigs to muck, while she always felt oddly out of place. And always scrutinised. In their eyes she could never lift as much as David or her father, could never work quite as hard as they did. So the older she became the more she was expected to do what they called the 'woman's work', cleaning the house, making the meals.

Then one day Mary decided enough was enough. She'd told them out and out that they had to do their fair share of work around the home.

"Only if you do your fair share out there, Moo-Moo," David had replied, using her nickname, a contraction of Mary-Lou.

"Fair enough, then, Diddy," Mary responded, folding her arms and using the ridiculous childhood name she, in turn, had saddled him with.

So she'd rolled up her sleeves and joined them again out on the farm, resolving to work not just as hard as them this time, but harder. She hadn't given up, not even when her limbs ached and her feet were sore. Mary lugged bales of hay, learnt how to drive the tractor, got stuck in with the pitchfork and, in return, demanded that David and her father get in the kitchen from time to time and learn exactly how a Hoover operated. The older of the two refused, no matter how hard Mary toiled. Bernhard Donald Foster was stuck in the past, and not just because he liked to collect his precious historical memorabilia. No, he came from a different generation, who had buried their heads in the sand when it came to treating women the same as men. He had taken his lead from his own father, and his grandfather before that, who thought their wives were put on this Earth just to serve them. Which was probably why Bernhard had spent so many nights alone in that big double bed. Sometimes she'd hear him tossing and turning in the small hours and her heart would go out to him. Then he'd get up the next morning and ask her what was for breakfast, when he could expect it, and all that sympathy would vanish.

David, on the other hand, had admired his little sister's tenacity: so much so that he began to help out with the cooking, did the dusting on a Saturday and even – shock, horror – gave a hand with the washing-up from time to time. Her father looked on this with great disdain but said nothing.

Before Bernard died of a massive stroke at the age of fifty-five, David and Mary had developed an extremely close bond. David had just turned twenty, so he took on the legal guardianship of Mary. Both agreed they didn't want to look for their estranged mother – who'd already been written out of the will. They'd be okay, here, together. They didn't need anyone else.

Like David before her, Mary attended the local school, only she excelled in the arts. When the time came to choose, though, between moving away to attend college and remaining on the farm, Mary stayed with David. He hadn't pressured her, but she'd felt it was her duty nonetheless. There was a big part of her that really didn't want to leave him, anyway. Every year that went by, however, it grew tougher and tougher for farmers. For them. She continued to draw and often wondered what it would have been like if she'd made it to college. Would she have had a successful career in graphic design, met the man of her dreams that she'd been saving herself for?