Redemption

by Philip E. Batt

'uns in the gang...and anyone else that will listen.'

  'Shut up,' Spike bit back, 'Smithy ain't heard it.'

  'Go on then,' Winterburne said, 'get on with it.'

  Spike slammed his eyes at Toady and then turned back to Winterburne to continue his story.

  'So,' he said, 'I came across this old church, and I had some road-biscuit left so I sat down to eat a bit, you know, what with my guts grumbling and all that. The wall looked safe enough and I thought maybe it might give me a bit of shelter from the rain that had just started coming down.'

  Toady jumped in, 'You said last time that you sat against the wall to get out of the sun!'

  'It don't matter whether it was rainin' or sunnin'.' Spike was getting annoyed with the other man now. 'The point is that there was a wall, alright?'

  Toady still chuckled away to himself.

  'Anyways,' Spike said, 'I sat down against the old church wall to try get out of the rain,' he glared across at Toady again, 'and just at that moment a bat as big as a bird crawled out of the stonework...only, I thought it was a spider.'

  Toady had stopped laughing by that point but this caused him to start again.

  'I'm not joking you,' Spike said, 'but I shit myself with fright.'

  Winterburne smiled at the story. 'Well, he said, 'I can certainly see how that might be alarming.'

  'No,' Spike replied, 'you miss my point, Smithy...I did shit myself.'

  All three men laughed together this time.

  oOo

  The afternoon shadows grew long as the three men skirted the deep forest, the sun beginning to lower in the clear sky. Winterburne took this as a signal to start turning east again, aiming for the group of men that would be wandering up ahead, miles away yet in the distance and at the moment far out of sight.

  He smiled as he saw Spike eyeing the depths of the forest, nervously staring into the breaks in the trees. He had no idea whatever it was that the man expected to see, but it was worth the question.

  'What's the matter with you?' he asked.

  'Don't make me go in there, Smythie,' Spike said. 'I'd rather wrestle a 'gator than go in there.'

  'You will if you need to.' Winterburne remembered Conn's words about these two not being tested and wondered how far he could actually push the men, or whether they might in fact just turn tail and run. 'Who are you more afraid of,' he said, 'Conn or me?'

  Spike looked back at Winterburne. 'Conn,' he said, 'no offence.'

  'Then you'll go if you have to, or else you'll answer to Conn, not me.'

  The unease of the two men seemed real as Winterburne watched them so he decided to try to take their mind of their predicament by finding out more a little more about them.

  'Why do they call you Toady anyway?' he asked.

  The man smiled. 'Lets just say,' he said, 'that I have a likin' for a certain toadstool that makes you a little light headed. They gives you, shall we say, nice dreams.'

  'They're hallucinogenic?' Winterburne asked.

  'I don't know about that,' Toady said, 'but they makes you see things.'

  Spike laughed. 'You fool,' he said, 'that's what the word means.'

  'Oh,' Toady replied.

  'What about you, Spike?' Winterburne asked. 'Why Spike?'

  'Cause he always wakes up with a...you know what...,' Toady said, pointing towards Spike's groin, 'in the mornings.'

  Spike looked embarrassed, as Toady laughed. 'Alright,' he said, 'you don't have to tell everyone that asks.'

  Winterburne was puzzled. 'A what?'

  'A morning thingy,' Toady said, laughing. 'You know, a ladies wedding present.'

  'I can't help it,' Spike said.

  Toady was still laughing.

  'Shut up,' Spike said, taking a swipe at him.

  'Remind me not to sleep anywhere near you, then,' Winterburne said.

  Toady's laughter continued for a minute or two as they carried on, with Spike's face a picture of dejection at being the brunt of yet another joke. Winterburne settled back into the routine of the ride until without warning, deep within the trees away to the men's right, they heard a loud crack, as if a large animal had stepped on a brittle branch and snapped it in two.

  'Quiet!' Winterburne said, his head spinning around and looking in the direction of the noise. 'That was no deer.'

  'What was it then?' Toady asked.

  'Don't know,' Winterburne replied, 'but whatever made that noise was heavy.' He stopped his mount and jumped off, drawing his sword in a single movement. 'Get them horses tied up and then come with me.'

  'Into the forest?' Spike's face looked a picture of terror.

  'Just do it, Spike,' Winterburne said, 'or else I'll really give you something to be scared of.'

  He stepped across the natural boundary of the tree-line, and into the shade of the canopy above, searching the depths of the forest for any sign of the cause of the noise. A minute or two passed before Spike and Toady joined Winterburne beneath the branches, and after being in the brightness outside it had taken a moment or so for them to get used to the darkness beneath the leaves.

  The undergrowth was full of sweet smelling rotting leaf litter, and ferns grew to waist height brushing against his legs as he advanced. He signalled across to the two men to spread out and sweep around in a circle. Winterburne shook his head and sighed as Spike trudged his way through the woodland, stepping on dry branches and making more noise than a herd of bulls.

  Toady was more quiet as Winterburne looked across to where the man had entered the woodland. He had drawn his own sword and was sweeping around to the left and was about level with him. The three men moved deeper into the gloom, the treeline falling further behind them as they tried to find out what had alerted them.

  They continued on for some time, before Winterburne noticed that the forest thickened the deeper they ventured and the two men fanning out on either side of him were more difficult to see through the trunks and ground foliage. A fallen tree lay across his path, blocking his route. He veered around to his right to pass it by before continuing onwards. He looked across towards Spike and the man raised his hand to wave back. Winterburne nodded in his direction.

  He rounded the fallen beam and lifted his eyes towards the direction that Toady had taken but through the shade the man was nowhere to be seen. He stopped and looked left and right, trying to work out any other line that the man may have taken, but now he was sure. He had gone. He looked back across to Spike, and the man waved a hand although he was still crashing through the undergrowth, and sure to be attracting attention. Where had Toady disappeared to? he thought, as he continued on, looking around him. Winterburne veered to his left a little, changing direction to look for the missing man, but as much as he tried, Toady was nowhere to be seen.

  Then, he realised, there was now total silence, and he stopped. Turning in a circle to look around the forest he could see that there was no Spike. There was no Toady. In fact, there was nothing but the sound of the breeze brushing the leafy rooftops high above, and the brushing of fronds against his leggings. Far away in the distance, probably miles, the sound of a woodpecker reached his ears as he strained to listen, the noise echoing through the trunks.

  Winterburne gripped his sword and turned towards the direction that he had last seen Spike, stepping carefully through the brush, trying not to make any more noise than he had to. Then, without warning, a heavy blow hit him in the back with such force than he was knocked forward, face down in the leaf-litter, a dead weight settling on his back. He could not move.

  'Well, well, what do we have here?' a voice said, close to his ear. 'Is it a stray, I wonder?'

  'What have you done with the others,' Winterburne asked. But, he suspected that he already knew the answer.

  'Let's just say,' the voice said, 'that they won't be bothering anyone any time soon.'

  As quickly as it had landed there, the weight lifted from Winterburne's back and he rolled himself over. Rampton removed the hood from his head, his face painted
was with green and black streaks but it was without doubt him.

  'How long have you been following us?' Winterburne asked.

  'Weeks,' the man said, his white teeth standing out against his painted face.

  Winterburne wiped the leaves from his own face, and shook his head at the soldier.

  'Thought you were dead for a while,' Rampton said, 'especially after seeing your ass washed away down that river like that.'

  'Why did you have to kill them?' Winterburne said, lifting himself up on his elbows. 'They were harmless enough.'

  Rampton raised an eyebrow. 'It's good to see you too,' he said, offering his hand for Winterburne to take.

  'Why, John?' Winterburne asked again, pulling himself up to standing.

  'You don't care about these animals, do you?' Rampton looked mystified at Winterburne's response. 'You've not gone feral, have you? Or have you just forgotten what we came here to do?'

  'We're not going to get anywhere by killing them all.' Winterburne thought about how he had been managing to work his way deeper into the group, but this was going too far. 'All they seemed to care about was the gold. I was finding things out.'

  'Well none of that matters any more.'

  'What are you talking about? Of course it matters.'

  Rampton frowned.

  Winterburne said, 'There's more going on here than we ever thought. These men are being bankrolled on a regular basis and they are way too well organised for any of this to be a matter of chance.'

  'What are you saying?' Rampton asked. 'That you're thinking about going back?'

  'I have to.'

  'Why, in God's name?'

  'I'm close to finding out who's