Ruin

by Harry Manners

  *

  As Norman and Richard moved into the firelight, there was a moment in which the three men looked up from their food and only stared, too dumbstruck to respond.

  And then they burst into action. Norman froze as they leapt to their feet and grabbed their weapons, raising them to shoulder height as they stalked forwards. He couldn’t help glancing to the trees, afraid that the men would be dead in seconds, before he could ask a single question. He would need to act quickly, before Lucian felled them.

  “Who are you?” the youth bawled. His pencil-thin face was dominated by his bared teeth.

  “We’re from the city,” Norman said. “We’re looking for somebody.”

  The eldest of the men, hollow-cheeked and loose-skinned from severe malnourishment, frowned and gripped his rifle tighter. “What city?”

  “Canterbury,” Richard grated.

  The older man spoke again, lacking the hostility of his younger companion. “Who are you looking for?”

  Norman lowered his hands. “A murderer.”

  The friendlier man blinked. Now that Norman observed him in detail, he could see that he stood apart from his peers, dressed differently. “Canterbury…” He turned to his companions. “Isn’t that where Jason was… But you said…you promised that you—”

  “Shut up! If you ever want to see your boy again, shut it right now!” the younger man screeched.

  The older man fell silent. Suddenly he looked frightened.

  Norman hesitated, taking further stock of the other two men’s clothes, which were grimed by putrid plant matter. A pungent odour was coming from each of them. “We’re not here for revenge.” He did his best to emphasise those words, for Lucian’s sake. “We’re looking for answers. Now…lower your weapons. I’m sure we can work out some kind of deal.”

  The younger man sneered. “Answers? You mean you’re looking for a neck to tie a noose around. You expect us to put our guns down so you can drag us off to the wicker man?”

  “Like I said, somebody was murdered.”

  As he spoke, Norman’s attention was drawn to the final man, whose eyes alone unsettled his gut. A neckerchief had been pulled up around his nose and mouth, and long hair hung about his cheeks. Only his eyes were visible—eyes that Norman thought, for just a moment, he might have recognised.

  The thought was fleeting, but enough to make him start.

  “Why should we tell you anything?” the younger man jeered, raising his rifle to eye level. “What made you think that you could just follow us and expect to walk away? You people are all the same. You think that you own the country, trespassing on other people’s property, snooping around places you have no business with.”

  His hands were shaking with anger. The barrel of the rifle wandered from Norman’s head to his chest. “You’re the reason that nobody’s got anything to eat. You’re the reason that nobody has the balls to go within a hundred miles of London. You’ve stripped the place bare!”

  At that, he cocked his weapon and took aim. “I don’t think that we’ll be letting you run back to rustle up a posse.”

  “Peter, wait,” the older, emaciated man whispered.

  The youngest flinched at the use of his name. “Shut up!” he whispered.

  “Just wait. I knew you were up to something, but…not killing people!”

  “One more word and I’ll shoot your boy myself when we get back.”

  “Just wait. Think about it.”

  The man with the neckerchief kept still, his eyes darting back and forth between the other two. He’d lowered his rifle to his side, and showed no sign of interfering. In fact, he took a step back, away from them, towards the shadows.

  “You can’t just kill them,” the older man muttered.

  “I said SHUT UP!” the young man screamed. He licked his lips and took a step towards Norman. His finger crawled towards his rifle’s trigger, and began to depress it. “I’m gonna enjoy thi—”

  Norman closed his eyes as a high whine rang through the air, accompanied by an explosion of splintering wood. For a moment he thought he’d been shot, and waited for the pain to come, but none did. Instead, he felt a gush of air soar over his head, towards the three men.

  Movement erupted from the surrounding forest as dark shapes emerged from the gloom, surging into the clearing.

  Peter yelled in shock, whirling in circles and spraying bullets into the trees. His companions wasted no time. They threw themselves behind bushes, tall grass, and any other cover they could find.

  Another bullet whizzed past Norman’s ear and he flinched instinctively. And yet, he felt stupefied by the silent man’s gaze. The two of them had locked eyes across the clearing, even amidst the storm of gunfire.

  Those eyes burned into him, hypnotising him. Everything had slowed to a crawl.

  He was glued in place, unable to move. In a moment he’d be shot dead—he had to move!

  But those eyes. He recognised them.

  A tickling under his skin, behind the scar above his ear—

  A rough fist grabbed him by the collar and wrenched him to the ground. Over the gunfire he heard Richard shout something incoherent as he landed on top of him.

  Norman drew his face from the dirt just in time to watch Lucian pass the campfire, his body cast in brilliant crimson tones that caught the wild whites of his eyes. In a fraction of a second he had drawn his automatic and fired.

  A wet splatter and a scream of pain answered the shot, followed by the dull thud of a body hitting the floor. Norman turned to see one of the men topple out of sight with a bloody hole in his chest: the emaciated man. The one that had tried to save them. His limp body rolled over the ground, coming to rest upon the gnarled roots of the giant oak.

  Six shapes swooped in from the right, sending bullets snapping and bouncing around in the clearing. The tooth-rattling din threatened to burst Norman’s eardrums. He struggled to his feet, slipping in the mud and passing the scattered remains of the fire. He raised his pistol to the man with the neckerchief, now fleeing. “Stop,” he bellowed. His voice was barely audible over the hail of bullets. “I said stop!”

  The man paused for only a moment, at the edge of the clearing, and stared back at him.

  Norman caught a glimpse of his eyes once more: a rich, shimmering green.

  Emerald eyes. Eyes he’d seen before…

  Norman jerked as something stirred deep in his mind, something buried in the fog that obscured his youth, something he’d long forgotten.

  Then the man turned and melted into the dark.