Benjamin Tate - Well of Sorrows

And then he grew still as well.

He lowered the glass slowly, eyes flashing toward Arten. “They look somewhat like us, but they certainly aren’t from Andover. Set as many guardsmen as you want. We’ll circle the wagons around the kills. It will take time to butcher the animals and prepare the meat and hides. We’ll camp here tonight, set up some defenses in case those.. . people decide to come closer.”

Walter bristled. “I’m the Proprietor. I’ll decide where we’ll camp and what we’ll do.”

Colin’s father met Walter’s gaze, his eyes full of withheld fury. “You lost those rights back at the Bluff, at the burial.”

As he spoke, one of the men still watching the distance gasped.

Everyone turned sharply, the Armory reaching toward weapons that they didn’t have yet, the rest drawing knives or daggers.

“They’re gone,” the man who’d gasped said with a swallow. “They were there one moment, and then the next…”

Uneasy murmurs arose, the group unconsciously pulling in tighter to one another. Colin suppressed a frustrated shudder. He’d desperately wanted to look through the spyglass, had willed his father to hand it to him, but now it didn’t matter.

Instead, his father handed the spyglass back to Jackson.

“You can’t do this,” Walter spat. “This is my expedition, given to me by my father-”

“This isn’t Portstown,” Tom said, anger creeping into his voice. Anger Colin realized he’d held for days, since they’d left the Bluff. He turned to Arten, ignoring Walter. “Circle the wagons and set up the defenses.”

“No,” Walter said. “We’ll butcher the animals, but we’ll move on after that. Arten, go tell the others.”

Arten didn’t move.

Walter spun. “Do it! You work for the Carrente Family! You work for me!”

Arten shook his head. “Not any more. Not since we left Carrente lands.”

Walter turned, caught the black expressions on everyone’s faces, all except Jackson’s. Rage filled his eyes, smothering the shocked disbelief. He drew himself upright, fuming.

His gaze fell on Colin, jaw clenched, a moment before he stormed down the bank, back toward the wagons. Frowning, Jackson followed.

Colin’s father let out a long, heavy sigh.

“It needed to be done,” Arten said as the men carrying the Armory’s swords and other assorted weapons arrived. “The rest of the expedition would never follow him, not after what he said at the Bluff.”

“I know. But I was hoping he’d change.”

Arten snorted, strapping his sword around his waist. “No one changes. Not that drastically anyway.”

Colin had finished passing out some of the cooked deer meat to the guards on sentry duty and was headed back toward the camp when Walter found him. He never even saw the Proprietor’s son or Jackson. Darkness had settled, the last of the light fading from the sky to the west. As he stepped into the shadows thrown by the wagons and the campfires of the expedition inside their protective circle, a hand reached around his neck from behind and clamped tight to his mouth, fingers digging in with bruising force. An arm reached across his chest from the opposite side, jerking him backward, bringing him up tight against his assailant’s chest a moment before their two bodies hit the side of the wagon. Colin’s eyes flew wide, thoughts of the strange men they’d seen on the plains flaring bright into his mind And then, in a hoarse whisper right next to his ear, breath hot against his neck, he heard Walter mutter, “So your father thinks he owns this little wagon train, does he?”

All of Colin’s fear-all of the prickling terror that had flooded down through his arms and legs and gut, making them fluid and rubbery-vanished. The rage that he’d buried, that had sat locked inside since his day in the penance lock, burned forth, searing through his chest.

He lashed out, kicking, body writhing beneath Walter’s hold, realizing as he did so that he wasn’t as small as he used to be, that he and Walter were nearly the same height now. Walter cursed, his grip tightening, fingers digging even deeper into Colin’s cheek, into his side. Still kicking, Colin reached up and back with his hands, went for Walter’s face, for his hair. He felt Walter’s head jerk backward, heard it thud into the side of the wagon, but Walter’s grip didn’t loosen. Instead, he hissed, “Punch him! Punch him, you pissant Company bastard!”

He sensed more than saw Jackson move, the shadows too deep And then the fist landed in his stomach, awkwardly, but with enough force to double Colin over, Walter dragged down with him before the Proprietor’s son caught his balance and jerked him back upright.

“Again!” Walter barked. “Harder!”

The second blow drove the wind from him. He gasped, breathed in and out through his nose, nostrils flaring, as Walter chuckled.

Before he’d recovered, Walter spun and shoved him face first into the wagon. The Proprietor’s son leaned hard into his back. One of Colin’s arms was trapped between his chest and the wagon at a painful angle. Colin slammed his other hand into the side of the wagon, tried to push himself away, but Walter had his full weight behind him.

“You’d better hope that your father wises up, or I’m going to make your life miserable,” Walter said through clenched teeth.

“I’m not afraid of you anymore, Walter,” Colin gasped.

He grunted. “We’ll see. I don’t have my father holding me back anymore. I’ll find some way to hurt you. And out here… no one’s safe out here.”

Then he pushed back, the pressure against Colin gone.

Colin spun, back against the wagon, but he couldn’t see anything except the flicker of firelight from behind the wagons and the stars and moonlight farther out on the plains. In the lee of the wagon, there was nothing.

He thought he was alone until another voice, soft and low, said, “Your father must realize that the Company will never accept this.”

Colin sucked in a sharp breath, the Company representative’s cold, implacable voice slicing through his rage with a thin blade of fear. But then he heard the rustle of grass as Jackson retreated, and the silence of the night descended again.

When he stepped into the reach of the firelight, where his mother had set up camp inside the circle of wagons, other fires scattered around to either side, he’d managed to stop trembling. He found his father, Sam, Paul, Lyda, Karen, and her father joking and laughing together, his mother stirring the pot and checking on the skewers of meat set over the flames. The scent of the charred, sizzling meat was strong. Someone nearby had pulled out a fiddle, and low music floated out over the group. A few tents had been erected, children and some of those that would stand guard later already bedded down.

His mother stood as he halted. “I see you’ve decided to return to camp,” she said, and then her smile faltered. “What’s wrong, Colin? What happened?”

He glanced toward his father, toward Karen. “Nothing.”

His mother sighed. “Well, they’ve finished with the butchering, but we could use more water.” She reached down to retrieve a bucket from the ground and held it out to Colin expectantly. “The stream’s on the other side of the gap.”

Colin almost refused to take the bucket-his stomach hurt from Jackson’s punches, and he’d barely managed to control his rage-but then he stepped forward, snagged its handle, and headed off in the direction of the gap without a word.

Behind, he heard Paul resume his interrupted story, the rest bursting into laughter, and then he passed beyond hearing.

Preoccupied with thoughts of Walter, he made his way down between the two banks, nodded to the guards on duty, then paused to listen for the sound of the stream. Water gurgled over stones off to the right, so he headed in that direction, one hand massaging the ache in his abdomen.