by John Marsden
Anyway, the horse I was on didn't slow down either. He went at it full speed. The ride stopped being exhilarating and became completely and utterly terrifying. I flattened myself along his neck but at the same time tried to keep my forehead up so I could get a bit of a look at what we were going to hit. I wanted to see it before I was splattered against it. There was plenty of noise now. To my left I could hear nothing but crashing and smashing as the other three thundered through the scrub. It sounded like not one of them had slowed down. I squealed as a low branch whipped over me, missing by a centimetre. At the same time the horse swerved wildly and I nearly came off. As the trunk of a sapling brushed my foot, I was glad then that he had swerved.
I glanced ahead again and this time screamed out loud. I felt so helpless. I was sure I was going to die. There was a mess of gum trees only a few metres away in front, medium growth stuff, no gap that I could see in the darkness. There was nothing to do but put my head down, bury it in the horse's mane and wait for the crash.
There was a crash, too. A low branch, solid and hard, thumped me across the back of my shoulders, then again on the bum. I've never been hit so hard in my life.
I clung on. The horse was blowing and steaming. Branches were thrashing against me. But I actually gave the horse a kick in the ribs to keep him going. I knew we couldn't stop. The pain in my body was terrible, like I'd been bashed on the back by a telegraph pole, but I knew the pain of a bullet would be worse. Then I was whipped by leaves and light branches. We were racing through another, thinner, clump of trees. I felt like my hair was being ripped from my scalp. I wanted to chicken out now and tell the horse to stop, but I realised he was beyond that. He was bolting and he wouldn't stop until he fell over. I was gasping with pain and shock and fear. I couldn't hear the others any more. I had no idea what was happening to them.
Then things changed again. I felt it, not so much from the fact that the leaves stopped flogging me, but because the air felt different. It was cooler. There was more of it. I dared to glance up again. To my left I thought I heard Homer or Kevin call out something. But I didn't need that. In the better light out here, in this clearer area, I could see exactly what they had seen.
There were three soldiers. They were reacting quickly. Too quickly. No doubt they'd heard us coming. They probably wouldn't have guessed exactly what was happening but the crashing of the horses had put them on their guard. Two of them were dropping to their knees and raising their rifles. The other must have preferred to stand, but she too had her rifle almost up to the firing position.
I put another desperate boot into the horse's ribs. He surged forward. He was a good horse. Fast. He would have been fantastic if he'd been given a bit of work. I reckon he might have had some thoroughbred in him. Poor beautiful chestnut gelding. It was bad luck for him, the night he met me.
I never even heard the shots. It wasn't like the other times. I did see one shot, or at least I saw a flash of flame from the soldier who was almost straight ahead of me, just slightly to my right. I don't know how many shots he got off. I do know that I deliberately set the horse at him and rode him down.
I'm trying to be unemotional about this. Sometimes I feel I've had enough of emotions, and when that happens I shut down and try not to feel anything. I don't know if it works or not, I don't know if it's good for me (Andrea would say it isn't), but I know it's all I can do.
So I rode the man down. The horse reared a little as we came at him but didn't really hesitate. He was already going too fast to stop or swerve. And the man was too slow to move. He tried to fire one extra shot. In a way he was doing the right thing—from his point of view. He knew that if he could fire that last shot he could get the horse. He did get him too, but I didn't realise that at the time. And what the man maybe didn't realise was that the horse was going so fast nothing would pull him up. It'd be like trying to stop a 25-tonne Kenworth when the brake cable's cut. For all I know the horse may have been dead before he hit the man. I think he probably was. That little leap he gave just before he thundered into him was probably the moment of his death.
I closed my eyes and screamed as we hit the soldier. I didn't see his face, thank God. Then I had other things to worry about as the horse went crashing to his knees. He hit the ground so hard. Slammed into it with frightening force. As he started to go down, I still didn't realise he was dead. I thought he'd just lost his footing and was falling. But already I was trying to work out which way to go to avoid being crushed. Because as he smashed into the ground he began to roll. It was at that moment that I realised he must be dead. There was something incredibly lifeless about him. He'd suddenly become nothing more than a huge lump of dead weight. But I didn't have time to spend a lot of thought on that. He rolled to the right and I threw myself to the left. At least I didn't have to worry about getting caught in stirrups. That was one advantage to riding bareback.
The fall winded me. I lay there hurting in the stomach and gasping for breath, making little wheezing noises. I could hear gunshots away to my left, so at least one soldier was still functioning. I got some breath back—not much—and got on my hands and knees. My back and bum still hurt, too. I ignored them and knelt up. I looked to the left. The only living person I could see was Fi who was wheeling her horse around. I couldn't work out how she'd got where she was. She was back behind me and was trying to line her horse up to come in my direction although she couldn't sec me. Maybe the horse had shied or something when he saw the soldiers.
I don't think anyone else could have got that horse organised. He was acting pretty crazy. But Fi, bareback, got him under control. They came racing towards me. I realised that they would be coming within ten metres of where I was kneeling.
I'd never called out to Fi for help before. Not like that. Not that desperate call for help that says, "I want you to put your life at risk for me." I hadn't ever asked her to do that before. But I was too panic-stricken to do anything else. I could still hear the gunshots every few seconds, but I don't think they were aimed at Fi. I couldn't see Homer or Kevin. But there and then all I could think about was myself. I didn't want to be left on my knees in this anonymous patch of scrub, to die. I didn't want to be left alone to die. I didn't have Robyn's courage.
So I called out, with all the breath I could find: "Fi! Fi! Help me, please!"
Even as I said it I felt guilty. I knew I was exposing Fi to a terrible risk. But I thank God she heard me. My horse had tumbled down a slope and was lying behind a fallen tree trunk, so I don't think she saw him at all.
But she heard me. She turned her horse as much as she could and got him to pull up, which was difficult. I staggered over to where she was easing the horse down and trying to persuade him to stop completely. I was looking for a stump I could use so I could get on the horse. As I did I felt, rather than saw, a movement to my right, almost behind me. I turned and in the dim light could just see a soldier. I thought that the firing had probably stopped in the last minute or so, but I hadn't been too conscious of it, yet as soon as I saw this guy I realised, "Yes, that's funny, there haven't been any shots for the last bit and, anyway, this guy's too close, couldn't have been him."
The soldier wasn't in the best shape. He was a bit like me, staggering to his feet, only the difference between us was that he had a rifle and I didn't. He was struggling to get the rifle up to his shoulder so I did realise, in the dim part of my mind that was working, that he had been hurt and was not functioning well. But, of course, you don't have to function all that well if you've got a rifle. He had his eyes on Fi and after he got her I guessed he'd get me. I knew the deadly peril in which I'd placed Fi. There was nothing I could do. The man was too far away for me to reach him. Fi had her back to him now and there was nothing she could do, either. She was about to be shot dead from behind. No way could this guy miss: even with whatever injuries he had, a sitting target at that range is hard to miss.
I screamed at Fi, although there was no point, but like so many things you do by in
stinct, there doesn't have to be a point. She just yelled at me: "Hurry! Hurry!" She'd decided there was no use getting excited about whatever was happening behind her. That was brave. It gave me the energy to get moving: even though I was sure we were both going to be killed. It seemed better to die doing something than to give up. So I staggered to the tree stump, at the same time looking at the soldier and holding my hands out towards him in some stupid way, as though that would stop the bullets.
And then I saw Homer.
Bloody Homer, fancy owing my life to Homer. But I do. He's not the best rider in the world but he's not bad, and somehow he'd got his horse under control. He was coming at this bloke from behind, at a million miles an hour. The soldier heard him at the last minute and started to turn. He'd already been hit once and now as soon as he heard Homer he must have realised he had no hope, because he didn't even try to do anything with his rifle, just chucked it away. And only a second later he went down under the hoofs of the horse. It's frightening to see something like that, terrible. A horse travelling at fifty k's an hour, and the weight of it, and those hoofs as hard as rocks, I think this man got a hoof in the face and I'd say he was dead before he hit the ground, but I don't know that. We didn't waste time trying to find out.
Homer's horse stumbled, and I paused, willing it to get up, terrified that it'd keep falling. Somehow it got its balance. It skewed around a bit and took a few staggering small steps, but then it was OK and Homer turned it in the direction we wanted, towards Wirrawee. I didn't stand there watching any more. I ran to the stump and, with a lot of awkward messing about, got on the horse behind Fi. It was difficult, because we still had our packs, so I had to hang on to Fi's pack, and I had to sit further back than I normally would.
Fi didn't wait too long for me to get organised. She turned the horse around and suddenly, with a lurch, we were off. It was the opposite to before because now we didn't want the horses to go flat out, but they were too excited and they still wanted to go at a mad speed. Like I said, they can be pretty crazy, horses. Not as sensible as sheep.
We followed Homer who we hoped was following Kevin, and the horses calmed down after a while, mainly because they were stuffed, I think, from the violent exercise. Before they calmed down we had a few more hair-raising moments, ducking under branches and swerving to miss tree trunks. But at last we came to a fenceline and when we looked as far as we could to the left we could just see a gate, and at the gate waiting for us was Kevin.
Twelve
The horses were blowing hard and very distressed. They'd taken a terrible beating. Kevin's was limping, while Homer's had two legs stripped and blood running down them and a bad laceration down one side. It really needed stitches, but there was as much chance of us getting veterinary help for the poor things as there was of having breakfast at McDonald's.
We decided to leave them. We were now very close to Wirrawee and we couldn't risk the noise they would make. I didn't like to leave them in such a state, but maybe they would be looked after by their new owners when they found them in the morning. It sure had been a bad night for them when we arrived on the scene. Not only had they taken such awful punishment, but they had lost one of their friends.
I felt sorry for them, losing a friend.
So we left them there, the three of them, standing in their little huddle again, but now looking shocked and dejected and sore. Their heads were down. I wouldn't blame them if they never trusted any humans after this. I gave Fi's horse a quick thank-you pat on the nose but I don't think it meant a lot to him.
We walked as fast as we could towards Wirrawee. We were pretty shocked and sore ourselves, but there was no time for that. We'd barely gone half a k when we heard unwelcome sounds behind us. First a gunshot, then a whistle, or maybe two whistles, blown hard and frantically and long. We listened for more sounds as we hurried on. There were none. But we knew the chase would be on now, with a vengeance.
Exhausted though we were, we walked even faster, breaking into a jog as often as we could. I was trying to work out where we would come into Wirrawee. I thought it'd be somewhere around Coachman's Lane. I didn't ask the others. I didn't dare talk. Partly because it was too dangerous but also because everyone seemed in such a fragile mood. I knew, just looking at their faces, what they were feeling. They all looked the same: staring eyes, but not focused on anything, trembling lips, terrible frowns. We weren't a pretty sight.
Our pace got faster and faster. We'd stopped walking now and were half-jogging, half-running. Another whistle came from behind, but much closer, and that really got us going. Our best hope was to get to Wirrawee as fast as possible because if we had a long chase through the bush, we would lose. We had no energy left, no speed, no stamina. In the streets of Wirrawee there was at least a chance of using our brains to get some advantage.
When we got our first glimpse of Wirrawee we acted pretty much automatically. I was nearly right about the street: it was the subdivision off Coachman's Lane: lots of little curving streets with names like Sunrise Crescent. I don't know the name of the street we ended up in. We were coming out of light scrub and approaching some houses that were recently built on big blocks of a hectare or more. There wasn't much cover. These places were so new that the trees put in by the owners were still only my height. There seemed to be lots of grass and not much else. At weekends in peacetime you'd see the owners on their little ride-ons, going round and round their blocks.
But all that grass was no use to us now, of course.
We spread out, got over the first fence one at a time, and started moving cautiously across the block. It was a cream-coloured brick-veneer house, big enough, with a gravel drive and a kids' swing in the back. The place was in darkness and luckily, being on the edge of town, there were no streetlights. But from behind came the blast of another whistle and at the same moment we saw headlights coming towards us down the street. Could have been two vehicles, could have been three.
"We've got to get out of here," Homer said.
I remembered again Lee telling me how that was the most used line in movies. I felt a sudden pang of longing to see Lee, to touch him and hold his hand. One day I'd sort out my feelings about him, but not while running out of the bush, before dawn with soldiers coming at us from two directions and our routes of escape rapidly getting cut off.
We swerved off in a new direction, to the east. At first I thought Homer had chosen it at random but then I realised he was taking us away from the roads so that anyone chasing us would have to do it on foot. That gave us some help but not much, because we were so tired we had little energy left for being chased. It was a hot night and the sweat was running off us. To make things worse we were now going uphill, which was a real grunt.
Miraculously we all had our packs, but they slowed us down like they always did. Still, I guess the soldiers, poor things, had their rifles to carry.
We worked our way across onto a spur and struggled up to a knoll. Suddenly I realised where we were. For Wirrawee to have a lookout is a bit of a joke, because there's not an awful lot to look at. But the Rotary Club built one, years ago. And we were coming towards the back of the lookout now. I'd only been up there once and I couldn't remember a lot about it. But there was a gravel road leading to it, and a cairn made of dark-coloured rocks cemented together with a plaque on top. As a tourist attraction it was small time.
It took us another five minutes to get there, even though it wasn't far. We were going so slowly we might as well have been running on the spot. And the lookout was pretty much as I'd thought. There was the cairn, a couple of picnic tables and a gas barbeque: nothing else that I could see in the moonlight.
We were stuffed. If we'd had rifles I think we would have stopped right there and made a stand, using the guns to blaze away at them as they came up the hill. It would have been a good spot for that because we would have had cover and they'd have had none. We could have pinned them down there, then faded away into the bush.
But that wasn't goin
g to happen. We weren't armed. We had to do something, though. It was obvious we couldn't go much further. We were at the limits of our endurance. I looked at the others and they looked at me. They were a mess: haggard, frightened, exhausted. I knew what they wanted. Another idea like the horses. For a moment I was annoyed. Why were they waiting for me to think of something? Didn't they have brains of their own?
Then, to my surprise, I did come up with an idea. It was a combination of things that led to it: the word "blaze," which was still in my mind from thinking how we could have blazed away at the enemy with guns, the memory of the officer playing with his cigarette when I'd been hiding in the tree, the memories of all the warnings I'd had as a kid about matches and fires.
Normally lighting a fire at night, in dewy grass, would be hard, but this had been a hot dry night, and the wind was getting up to quite a blast. It was a hot dry wind too blowing down the spur. If anyone was still operating the bushfire warning on the road into town they would have it on "severe." Not quite "extreme" but high enough considering it was early in the season.
We all carried matches, of course. It was just one of those things you always put in your packs, even if we didn't light so many cooking fires these days. When the others saw me pulling the little box out from a side pocket they got the idea fast. I crouched down, shielded the match with my hand, and lit it. Up here on the hill, where the water would run as fast as it fell, the grass was crackling with dryness. It took me four matches to get it to light but when it did catch, my God, did it go. It went up so fast I took a step back to save my eyebrows. I looked across at the others. Kevin already had a nice fire going, Homer was fanning a little flame about the size of his matchbox, and Fi was still frantically looking in her pack for the matches.