The Devil's Highway

by Gregory Norminton

  Marcus closed his eyes; he breathed like a bellows and sleep, which he craved, kept its distance. He prayed for it but his mind had other intentions. It travelled back to his childhood hills – the drifting cloud shadows, the wheat in its summer burnish, the wheeling and screaming of swifts. His remains would never make it home. The insurgents wanted to rob his soul as well as his life. To trap it for ever as an offering to their idols. Had he such a thing to lose: an essence that survived death? If so, could it rise from any bonds that earth could make for it? His enemies, every one of them, had a soul. The young fanatics chasing him: so long as he could stand and manage a stick, he would not hesitate to kill any that came his way. There would be no honour in it: they were not worthy adversaries. Yet the druid had found a calling for them, an exalted purpose. Who, in their stultified tribe, had done the same? Only violence stirred the blood. It was a spring that never ran dry. Perhaps that was why the empire existed, pushing ever outwards to keep the rage of its young men from turning against home.

  He must have slept for a while, for he cried out with fear as a body scrabbled towards him.

  It was the boy. He extracted from his pack a few sprigs of elderberry, some hips and haws and bitter crabs. Marcus grimaced like a cat with a chicken bone to strip the flesh from the stems. The food was hateful to chew. Side by side they ate and spat and rested.

  The boy was quiet, sullen with unspoken words. This made Marcus voluble, for he feared despondency in this child whose purpose kept them alive.

  ‘Have you ever eaten a grape? Figs?’ He was not understood. He hoped that his tone, at least, might communicate to the boy. ‘Where I come from, there are fruits you have not dreamed of. And great plains of wheat, sweeping as far as the eye can see.’

  The boy looked at him without comprehension.

  ‘Do you like to hunt? I should have asked the word of Condatis. Animals.’ He said the last word in the native tongue. ‘There is good hunting in Tuscany. Do you like to …’ He made a dumbshow of tracking and spearing and skinning game. Yes: the Briton seemed to understand, and together they mimed in the gloom. Marcus felt the boy revive. Here was a brave lad; perhaps he might find a role for him, if they made it to safety.

  The boy was talking quickly, something impossible to follow about gifts. ‘You, Romani. You take.’

  ‘If it is there for the taking.’ He tried to marshal the native words at his command. How to explain sacrifice and its rewards? Hard work and wages? He knew that the natives did not own land privately but held it in common. No wonder they had little appetite to build in stone and leave their mark. These people used wood and mud. Their memory was like the black wax of a tablet with no stylus to reveal the light beneath. That was Rome’s mission. They were giving these barbarians the gift of history.

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘why your people fear the road. You find your way by it – only you do not want to find your way. I mean directly. You want to weave and stumble and turn about.’ He could hear the boy breathing. A child of the wild tangle. ‘We build roads to own the land, to make it ours. And you need them to sell your wares. To buy your ingots of iron, your salt. You need our peace. We bring you these things yet you despise us.’

  The boy said nothing. He sat with a coiled energy.

  ‘Why did they hold you prisoner? Why –?’ Marcus acted the bondage of rope and pointed at him, shrugging. ‘Are they your brothers? Your people?’ The boy shook his head. ‘Not your people? Another? Who are you to the bad men?’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘We are friends. You say.’

  ‘You help.’

  ‘Help me, yes. But why?’

  ‘Your king. You will let me speak to him.’

  ‘I have no king.’

  ‘The one with the red feathers.’

  Marcus tried to imagine it: this puny lad standing up to Aulus Pomponius Capito. ‘And what would you say to my king?’

  ‘Pax.’

  Marcus stared at him.

  The boy spoke slowly as if to make himself understood. ‘For my people. I spared you. You spare them.’

  So that was it. A gamble. A plea for mercy. Well, it might not be impossible. There would be baying for blood louder than a dozen hounds, yet if he pleaded – if he spoke, with Condatis to translate, the case of this brave lad. Perhaps. The road into the future was not yet built.

  ‘I try,’ said Marcus as he reached for the boy’s hand. Something hard, made of stone, lay in that trembling fist. ‘Peace,’ he said.

  They buried the pith and seeds of their meal under the fallen needles. The boy waited while Marcus, like a shrunken colossus unsure of its strength, tested the weight of his limbs.

  They resumed their journey.

  It was as if dawn would never come. The boy was always before him and Marcus dragged himself after, suffering at every step. His feet were blistered, his back scourged with spasms; pain had built a nest in the swollen wound of his face. He forgot, for long periods at a time, that they were in flight for their lives. There was only the heath and his body’s burden, as if the past until tonight had been a dream and he was awake in his true life, which was and always would be this ordeal in darkness, these wastes and snows, and his pain like the tribute of a slave to its master.

  They came to a river which the boy called Black Water. Each knew they could not endure the cold if they tried to ford it. The boy left Marcus propped against a leaning willow, then returned with hope in his step. He had found a bridge of fallen trees, which Marcus hauled himself across, whimpering as the alders scratched his skin and dignity.

  From the north bank of Black Water they walked perhaps a mile until they came to the road.

  Marcus stamped on the paving. No scrub to claw their faces, no tick-infested heather to snarl up their steps. Their path was clear, the road empty. When dawn came, there would be riders, oxen and carts, the busyness of civilisation. He almost wept to think of it.

  The going was good but the boy seemed uneasy. Twice, at noises only he heard, he chivvied Marcus after him into the roadside scrub. They lay there, scanning the empty sweep of the stones, then shook off the frost and frozen leaves to resume their journey. No words passed between them. Each was swaddled in his own thoughts. They found a rhythm and kept to it. Marcus had known the like many times when marching. The yielding to a greater motion; a willing servitude, with no task save to place one foot in front of the other and so continue until movement ceased.

  He was in this marching daze beyond fatigue, a kind of enchantment, when messengers of light raced along the road. The frost shone like a seam of gold. He turned a weary gaze to the east, where the sun skulked on the horizon.

  They were almost home. He could see orchards.

  The ambush revealed itself.

  ‘No!’ cried the boy as out they came, two with slings and one – the brute – swinging a club.

  Marcus shed his heaviness. He ran with the fury of hope. The boy ran too, shimmying and duping one of the conspirators. Marcus was not so agile. He bent, like a bull at charge, into the young man’s body, knocking the breath out of it. He caught the side of the rebel’s jaw with his fist and triumphed to see him fall.

  They were still running, the ramparts of the fort visible now. Marcus felt the wind of a club swung at his head. A stone struck the paving inches from the boy. He charged, crying out in hope of alerting the sentries. Another stone whistled close. He spun about to see the tall youth wrestling with the sling-bearer, as if trying to disarm him. He ran on, and when he looked a second time the youth he had struck was on his tail again, leather strap swirling.

  Marcus saw the redhead spasm after his throw.

  The child, yards ahead of him, fell without a sound. He had not tripped. The projectile skittered beyond him in the road.

  A trumpet sounded on the battlements. Marcus was level with the child; he meant to help him, but the redhead was armed again and sprinting to close the distance between them.

  A stone tore into his shoulder. H
e cried out in pain and indignation, but his feet and balance were sure. He sprinted, a furnace in his chest, until the gates of Calleva were opening …

  … and infantrymen, hastily armed, were spilling out …

  … and strong arms dragged him inside and he was sinking far, far into the deep waters of unknowing …

  … and the great armoured mechanism of retribution set to work while he slept, a retribution of which he would know nothing until it was sated, though had he been conscious he could not have stopped it, the pleas for mercy of a disgraced decurion counting for little when the peace and prosperity of an empire were at stake.

  17

  No Man’s Land

  He’d almost forgotten this – if forgetting is the same as not thinking about something. As soon as he got on the saddle and revved the Suzuki to warm her up, it all came back. The reek of exhaust, the power, even of a 50cc, under his control.

  It’s only him and Gary – Jim didn’t fancy it, too stoned or too chicken – and Gary is sound. He’s got a better bike, yet Aitch reckons he has the edge when it comes to experience. Even now, his knees know how to handle a camber, he can lean into a turn, giving it throttle whenever he slides on the gravel. There are no blind corners to pit himself against – it’s easy, and that’s OK. He’s flying. He’s only half attached to the Earth.

  They race north, through heath and pines, under greening beeches, in and out of shadow. Up to the big crossroads where all paths and firebreaks meet. There, Gary tacks west and Aitch follows – and instantly he sees the green Land Rover and some fatso flagging him down, and he reckons he can get around him, but the car is sideways on and the guy’s built like a brick shithouse.

  Gary performs a clumsy, skidding turn and Aitch turns likewise, making a tighter job of it.

  East of the crossroads, they realise what they are in for. It’s a shock, seeing a British Army Snatch on home soil.

  Ambush. He can’t believe it, the bad flaming luck. On the other hand, if they reckon they’re going to catch him, they’ve no idea who they’re dealing with.

  Gary whines past as the army Land Rover rumbles Aitch’s way. He watches the soldier coming on. Maybe he could wait and talk to him. One of his own. But he thinks better of it. He’s not a soldier now, just a scrot on a dirt-bike.

  Aitch pivots and speeds down the firebreak, back the way he came.

  The bikers must have seen the rangers on the Roman road. Their noise clarifies and Bobbie guesses that the pair have separated, for all she can hear is the belch of one engine.

  She spies a white dot above the gorse.

  The biker tears past the entrance to the bridle path. Bobbie has two seconds to take in the T-shirt and the black visor. ‘He’s heading straight for the police,’ she cries.

  Her father rises from his crouching position and Bobbie does the same. Something is niggling at her eardrums. The air pulses, and above the treeline a circular blur becomes the whirring blades of a helicopter.

  ‘Here comes the cavalry,’ her father shouts.

  The helicopter crowns the pines, then swoops low, nosing the heath as if following a scent. It guns towards them, a roaring dragon, then lists south in pursuit of the biker.

  He cannot believe the chopper. Why would they go to such lengths for two guys having a laugh? He knows the bylaws, and part of him wouldn’t care if they pressed charges – what has he got to lose? But another part of him is enraged. Holy fucking fury, how dare they hunt him down like a criminal on the run?

  Gary has vanished – it’s just Aitch and his wits. Skimming past the railing to the Poors, he checks out that option and spots him easily – a dicker in the gorse. Not exactly subtle, with his Aussie hat and binoculars.

  He keeps going towards the Old Dean. Odds are they’ll be waiting for him at the entrance. So he slows down and leans out to turn his head.

  The two Land Rovers are coming after him. Their tactic’s so obvious it’s almost insulting. Gary must have gone cross-country – he’ll do likewise. One dicker on stag is no obstacle if he goes at him fast.

  He hurtles towards the oncoming Snatch, then veers right – a grit-spilling skid. The bloke in the hat sees him and ducks behind the gorse. It’s enough to make Aitch laugh, even though the chopper is bearing down on him, the rotors echoing in his guts.

  He clambers off the bike, tucks it sideways under the barrier pole, gets back on. Where’s your hangover now, Aitch? He revs, just for the noise and stink of it. Off he goes, across the Poors where he once was king.

  ‘In,’ he says, ‘get down.’

  Her father bustles and chivvies her deeper into the gorse, then runs towards the footpath.

  Bobbie can hear the bike’s engine idling. She stands on tiptoe amid the thorns.

  The biker is back on his saddle. He waits at the entrance to the Poors, one leg out to support his machine. The helmet and visor make him inhuman, insect. He cannot see Bobbie, only her father where he stands, arms crossed over his chest, in the middle of the footpath. The helicopter pivots above the stand-off. The biker looks up several times and appears, from the clenching in his upper body, to be cursing it.

  ‘Come on!’ Her father is shouting: ‘Come on, let’s have you!’

  The biker goads his engine.

  He’s going for it!

  Bobbie scalds herself on gorse as she fights it, but the thorns let her go abruptly and she falls into the heather, her cheeks pelted by grit from the bike’s retreating treads. She sees Dad hold his ground, too surprised or afraid to move, and the biker careens off the track to avoid a collision. Bobbie watches the bike bounce and jolt over uneven ground, rodeo-jumping through old growth. The rider is tearing the ling but it retaliates, for however much he bucks and kicks and wrings his handlebars, he is losing momentum.

  Bobbie lies in the heather while the helicopter rips up the sky. Her hand’s emptiness rings in her mind. She realises that she has let go of her stone.

  Her father is running and the biker has stalled. He kicks at his pedal, then flips them two fingers. Bobbie sees her father yell – or could it be a laugh? – whereupon the engine comes back to life and the biker, instead of taking the opportunity to escape off-road, performs a shredding turn in the heather.

  He looks over his shoulder. There’s someone on the ground. He didn’t hit them. So there’s that.

  Only one way out. Down the hill, through the trees, behind the tower. Get back to Gary’s. Dump the bike behind the bins, make a run for it to his sister’s. Only the dicker’s coming at him and there’s the fat ranger at the barrier. He feels them closing in. The breath roars in his helmet – the darkness inside is a trap – and all the time that fucking chopper, buzzing and goading him like they reckon he’s livestock for rounding up.

  He gives the civilian two fingers. Kicks at the bike. Kicks and kicks – and the ugly beast wakes up under him – roars! He feels the engine in his groin and belly, and the chopper’s trying to part him from it, wants him to cringe and surrender.

  That’s what they want him to do. So he rides. He fucking rides.

  Bobbie tries to pick herself up. She sees the biker hunch his shoulders and, in a haze of exhaust, speed towards Dad.

  Her father stops running – retreats – only his heel wobbles on a stone and he falls on his arse as the bike fills the space where he was standing.

  Bobbie’s legs are dead flesh beneath her but she pushes against the earth because her father is on the ground and searching for something, and the biker has turned yet again, and they and the biker are caught in the gale, the storm-dome of the helicopter’s blades.

  The motorbike roars and fumes. It tears towards Dad – is upon him – but Dad rolls over on his knees and rises and his body spasms after it.

  Bobbie thinks for an instant that a bird is flying. It casts off her father’s wrist like a hawk.

  He has thrown something.

  It is as if the biker has snagged a tripwire, or encountered an invisible branch. He tumbles backwards off
his saddle, and the bike continues, appearing to accelerate for an instant, like a horse relieved of its rider, before mindlessly it wobbles, lists and falls.

  Bobbie runs.

  The biker is writhing on his back in the heather, his face hidden by the helmet. ‘Cunt,’ he shouts, ‘cunt.’

  Her father is holding a stone – it’s a flint, big and grey and blunt – and he lifts the stone above his head and brings it down several times in the middle of the biker’s chest. Bobbie feels the impact in her own body, but the only sound is from the helicopter blades.

  The biker stops writhing. Her father sits beside him in the heather.

  In the corner of Bobbie’s vision, the wheels of the dirt-bike continue to spin.

  Here’s the ranger, look, trying to run!

  Her father lifts his face to the sun, the stone fallen from his fist, and waits for the ranger to reach them.

  18

  The Heave

  Aban look at Efia. Theres a picture in his head he want to put in hers. How he an she are like water drops on waste ground wantin to join the river they left, only the world wont let em. But he cant find a way into her head. Down in the ditch where they stop, heavin hot air into they lungs, Aban reach in his backpack an lend his jercan. For a sec its like she dont see it but he shake it an the water slosh reach her.

  Have some.

  She shake her head.

  Efia we got to get back. Drink an we go after.

  We lost em.

  Malk ul find us.

  He wont be lookin. Him an Nathin take the girls to West Cunny. He dont want us back I reckon.

  Aban stare at her then at his jercan. You thirsty is all. Thirsty thinks aint straight thinks. Drink an it come right.

  So Efia drink. But it dont come right. Nuther hour till dusk, she say. Best find a hidey place. More blokes patrollin herebouts.

  No more sayin, she up an he after. Crouchin thru scrub an dead grasses. Lookin till we find a ruin in the brush. Aban check it out for trouble. Nuthin home save spidies an dirt. So in we go for the night. Aban an Efia. Facin the heave on our lonesum.