Dan Vyleta - Smoke

Then Price is hit. The swing of a bat, an axe, a sledgehammer: invisible, trailing a bang like an afterthought. What sort of gun is this that slams a man into the side of a coach and leaves his chest a hole open for perusal?

Then it’s my turn. I feel a punch, then heat, a branding iron plunged into my temple. My last thought is another question of sorts, mute wonder at the fact that neither Price nor I found time to shroud our fall in Smoke.

Then hard hands grab me from behind.

As metaphors of death go, this is one I can believe.

Thomas goes down hard. It’s Charlie who is pulling him. The force of it surprises Livia: he grabs him at throat and shoulder, kicks his feet out from under him. Anything to get Thomas away from the door. Out of the line of fire. On the way down, Thomas’s shoulder collides with the edge of the seat. It twists the body and makes him land facedown, his arms trapped beneath him at odd angles. He may well have broken bones. Then again, what does it matter? He is already dead. Livia saw him being hit. Something dislodged itself, some clump of him, of his face, his head. It flew through the air. She will see it to her dying day. Livia’s face is speckled with his blood.

And still it isn’t over. Another shot sounds — the fifth, the sixth? — rips a hole in the door the size of a fist. Then the whole coach buckles and leaps. It is as though even the wood and wheels are trying to get away from the shooters. For a breath it stops, gathering strength. Then it leaps again, tilts, topples. The next moment the very ground has given way and they are falling, rolling, her scream drowned out by those of the horses. The impact throws them into a tangle of limbs and breaks open the coach like a conker: sunshine above, the play of sun and cloud.

It is only when she sees the trees that she understands what has happened. She should have thought of it before: she knows this road, has ridden it a hundred times. Across from the old windmill, running parallel to the road, is a sharp dip — almost a ravine — that drops some seven or eight yards, down to the edge of a forest below. In mortal terror, the horses must have dragged them off the path. Three hang dead within the harness now, two bleeding from gunshot wounds, the third with its head twisted backwards atop its broken neck. It’s the fourth horse that keeps on screaming. Two of its legs are broken, spill out of their knee joints like limp flippers. When she starts moving, it is to get away from these screams. Next to her, Charlie is already pulling Thomas’s body out of the wreckage. It takes courage to turn and help him lift it up over his shoulder. She is glad she finds this courage and gladder yet she isn’t asked for more. They run for the trees, away from the attack, Thomas’s head, chest, and arms dangling limp down Charlie’s back.

The forest is dense. There is no obvious path and, near the edge, shrubs cut their clothing to shreds. Fifty steps in, their progress improves. There’s older growth here, tall trees that throw mighty shadows. They eat too much light for shrubs to grow along the forest floor. Dead leaves swallow their boots up to the ankles; their crackle follows them, the forest’s whisper, showing their pursuers the way. Neither she nor Charlie suggests slowing down.

They have to stop eventually. The weight of a second body becomes too much for Charlie. It is astonishing he has borne it for this long. He staggers and drops his burden; falls down next to it. When Livia slides to her knees beside him, she finds Thomas’s blood has soaked Charlie’s jacket, at the small of his back. It is impossible to think of him now as Mr. Cooper.

“Is he alive?” Charlie asks. He has to speak through his panting breath, sneaking the words out in between inhalations. It gives an odd, dispassionate quality to his voice, like he is too exhausted for emotion.

“We must feel his pulse,” she answers. “It’s easiest here. At the throat.”

Without hesitation, Charlie sticks his fingers into the blood that covers Thomas’s neck. The wound above is still bleeding. It’s the left side that’s been hit, near the ear. There is no way of telling how deep the wound is. Leaves have become stuck to it, and clumps of dirt, as though the earth is already claiming him as hers.

“I cannot feel it, Livia. My hands aren’t working.”

When she bends to slip her own fingers onto the side of Thomas’s throat, she sees what he means. Each of her fingers is drumming, her own pulse shoving blood all the way down to its tips. It is impossible to feel anything. She lets go, bends lower, presses one ear right to Thomas’s mouth . Tell me your secret , she thinks. Are you alive? Charlie bends down with her, lying almost flat on the forest floor, his eyes level with hers, his mouth three inches away. There is something to his face. She studied it all through the coach ride, as they sat there, too awkward to talk. The cast of the mouth, the wide-open eyes. The kind of face saints sometimes have, painted on the glass of church windows. A face so little guarded, so unmarked by Discipline, it taunts her, terrifies her. What sort of creature is he that he can afford to live so naked and not sin?

Something reaches her. Her ear. Not a sound: a sliver of air, like the lick of a tiny tongue.

“He’s breathing.” She lets go of Thomas, turns around, lifts her skirt and starts ripping off strips of petticoat. “He mustn’t bleed to death.”

Behind her, Charlie starts praying, his voice light and firm.

ф

The woman appears like a ghost. One moment she isn’t there, then she steps out of the shadow of a tree, four yards away. Charlie does not notice her. He is desperately trying to fashion a bandage out of the strips of cloth Livia has supplied. They have no water, cannot clean the wound.

“Quick,” he keeps berating himself. “We must keep moving.”

When Livia puts a hand on his shoulder, he does not react.

The woman has no colour. She wears a sort of shift made from patches of leather and cloth. Everything about her — her clothes, her skin, her hair — is uniformly grey, the shade of spent embers. Ashen. She stands motionless, her knees bent, back humped, ready to run. It reminds Livia of nothing so much as a cat watching the goings-on of the kitchen. Curious, shy, twitchy; its ears pressed back against its skull. And all the while the woman is smoking, smoking just as steadily as she is breathing, rhythmically, ceaselessly, adding dye to her ashen skin.

Charlie notices her at last. He starts. His movement is answered by the woman’s twitch. But she does not run, not even when he rises and shows her his blood-smeared palms.

“Our friend is wounded,” he says, calmly, soothingly, the way Charlie can. Evidently he has decided the woman is not their enemy. Livia agrees with his assessment. Whoever she is, she does not belong to those who shot at them. She is part of the forest. There may be a sharp stone hidden in her fist, even a knife. But not a gun.

“We need help. Water. A doctor. Are there people around?”

The woman does not answer but moves two steps to the side, to gain a better view of Thomas. Livia follows the look. The bandage sits loosely around his head and face. Already it is spotted with red. It will soak through before they have carried him a quarter mile.