Ebony Hill

by Anna Mackenzie

  “Is that why this place had been abandoned?” I’d asked.

  Truso had pulled a speculative face. “In part. Certainly the land was in a poor way when the first group of settlers arrived, but I suspect isolation was as much of an issue. We sometimes forget how much having a community matters. Though we choose to live at Ebony Hill, we live here knowing that we have Vidya behind us.”

  Topping a rise, I cast an eye over the empty slopes that surround us and think about how far away Vidya must have felt before the rail line was opened. Finding a community at Summertops must have been a relief for the early settlers, especially a community that was open to communication and trade. I wonder whether Vidya’s attitudes will have permeated the older settlement or whether it will retain some sense of its own past.

  As for taking on more land – maybe Marta was right about land-sci being where I belong. Reclamation holds more appeal at Ebony Hill than on the industrial wasteland in Vidya.

  As I glimpse Ronan rounding a corner ahead of me, I envy him, suddenly, his immediate transfer to the farms. Esha did advise me likewise, and Marta too. Maybe I was wrong to ignore them. Swooping around the same corner, I wriggle myself free of my thoughts. For now, enjoying being here is enough.

  As Esha promised, the last climb is the hardest yet. When we finally reach the saddle that crosses the shoulder of Ebony Hill, I set my feet on the ground and sigh with relief. Before us the land sweeps down into a broad valley dotted with sheep, a cluster of buildings nestling in a fold of hill at its northern edge. Tan-coloured goats stand bunched on the slope to our left, heads turned inquisitively to inspect us.

  “If I remember correctly, you farmed goats on Dunnett?” Esha says, and I nod. “Did you have goats Ronan?”

  He shakes his head. I wonder whether Ronan was always so silent.

  “Well, Yanis will be pleased to see you regardless. And if after a week you’d rather return to Home Farm, you c—”

  A sudden sharp crack interrupts her. On the hillside the goats break and run. Esha’s mouth is wide with surprise. A stain has appeared like a dark thumbprint on her temple. As I stare she falls backwards, the cycle falling with her. She doesn’t move. Another crack sounds and something hisses past my ear.

  Ronan shoves into me, knocking me down, my legs still caught astride the cycle. “Wha—”

  “Rifle shots! Stay down!”

  He hauls me sideways as I try to escape him. “Esha!” I wriggle towards her. Her face is turned towards us, eyes wide. A trickle of blood runs from the corner of her mouth.

  “She’s dead.”

  My heart stops beating. Then starts again, disbelieving. “N—”

  Another crack sounds and dirt lifts in a puff of dust near Ronan’s boot. “Come on.” He wriggles backwards down the slope. “Move, Ness. Like a lizard.”

  My body is sluggish in its response, my brain screaming a denial. How can Esha be dead? Even the evidence of my eyes can’t convince me. Still, I roll over and wriggle after Ronan. The silence feels loud, hollow, waiting.

  A whistle pierces the air. Another answers above us. “They’re on the slopes above both sides of the road,” Ronan mutters.

  He shoves me towards a rock at the roadside. “Roll. Over there. Keep close to the rock.” He pulls his knees up beneath him.

  “What—?” I ask.

  “We need the cycles.”

  In the shelter of the rock, I rummage through my head for some explanation. It’s as if the world has been taken up and shaken, all the pieces falling askew. I’ve read of rifles, looting, war, but the reality overwhelms me. They don’t fit, here and now. Esha dead – I want to see her. Perhaps she’s not dead, perhaps … Ignoring Ronan’s advice, I begin to crawl back up the slope.

  Ahead of me Ronan darts across the track. From behind a rock he reaches forward, his fingers closing on the wheel of the cycle that lies where he left it, half propped against a bush. He pulls it backwards. It snags on a branch. He leans further out and a crack sounds. Chips fly off the rock near his face.

  Rage lights a flame in my belly. How dare anyone do this? Before I can plan what I’m doing my feet are beneath me, pushing me forwards. I dive up the slope, to where a moment ago I stood beside Esha, admiring the peaceful farm scene below us. I land hard, Ronan’s voice calling a warning in my ears. Esha’s face is less than an arm’s-reach from mine. I no longer doubt that she’s dead. A sob rips through me. Esha was my first friend in Vidya – my best friend. More than that: my family. My chest squeezes tight: I’m gasping for air. Every breath hurts, catching in my throat.

  “Ness!”

  Ronan’s voice cuts through my tears. I suck in a breath and hold it.

  Resolutely turning my face away from Esha, I look for my cycle. It lies an arm’s-length away and slightly uphill. I wiggle forward on my elbows. Two sharp cracks sound and a metallic ping. The machine jumps – towards me! My fingers lock around the cool metal of its carrier.

  I snake backwards, towing it. Stones rip at my skin where my shirt rucks up. A hand grabs my foot and hauls me down the slope. My face ploughs the dirt.

  “Idiot,” Ronan says. I wipe a hand across my eyes, smearing snot and blood.

  Ronan slides the cycle around so it’s facing back along the road we’ve just climbed. “Back the way we came, Ness, as fast as you can. And keep low.”

  I stare at him. Ronan’s face has purpose, as if something has leapt to life inside him, at the same time that – I push away the thought of Esha.

  “If anything happens, just keep going,” he says.

  Something’s already happened. Something dreadful. Something – it hits me what he means: if anything happens to him. I swallow. “You think they’ll …?” I glance back towards the place where Esha lies, arm outflung, her fingers all that I can see from where we lie.

  “We need to warn the others,” Ronan says.

  “But who—”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He nudges my shoulder. “Truso. Think about warning Truso.”

  I fumble to my knees. In a crouch, Ronan stands my cycle beside me. “Together, Ness. Come on.”

  Bent as an old crone I take the cycle from his hands, expecting at any moment to hear the crack of the rifle, to feel a bullet.

  “Hurry, Ness,” Ronan urges.

  Obedient, I fling my leg over the crossbar. Ronan takes a breath. “Okay. Go.”

  His hand on my back pushes me forwards and I sail down the slope, bent low, legs and heart pumping. There are no shots. I hear Ronan clattering over the potholes behind me. We swoop around the curves of the track, up a rise, down another. There’s a pain high in my chest stabbing sharp beneath my collarbone. My lungs don’t seem able to inflate. A sob slips past my lips.

  Without warning a man springs onto the track just ahead of me. I swerve aside, scream. The cycle hurtles off the path and dives deep into a scrubby bush. I’m thrown forward, my knees crashing into the handlebars, branches stabbing at my face. Winded, I lie still, clutching for a breath, dragging another. Ronan. I force myself up and clamber away from the cycle and the grasping branches that tear at my clothes and skin.

  Ronan and the man are locked together on the ground. Ronan’s hands are around the stranger’s throat. Suddenly the man thrusts his palm upwards, snapping Ronan’s head back, causing his hands to lose their grip. They roll over. The man, on top now, snarls and pulls back a fist. Ronan’s mouth is a mess of blood. I can’t bear to see that fist connect.

  There’s a rock beside my boot. Without taking my eyes from the fight, I drop to one knee, rummage in the dirt. My fingers locate it, tighten. I straighten, step forward, and bring my arm down like a club.

  CHAPTER 6

  My eyes are locked on the dark, spreading stain. Suddenly my stomach heaves. I lean sideways as thin strings of yellow vomit spatter the track.

  Ronan, on hands and knees, is gasping for breath. He drags a leg beneath him, lurches upright, wobbles and drops back down. “Thanks,” he scrapes out. Our eyes meet. �
��We have to go,” he adds.

  I gape.

  “There’ll be others.” His face is smeared with blood and dirt, his lip cut, eye swelling. “Soon.” He gets up again and reaches for his cycle.

  Mine is still snared in the bush. Mind dull as a lump of clay, I force myself upright and walk stiff-legged towards it. When I yank it free it groans a protest. The front wheel is damaged, two of the spokes hanging like snapped twigs. Ronan kicks out the remains of the broken spokes then grasps my handlebars – I’ve not even noticed that they’re twisted at an odd angle to the wheel. He straightens them.

  Without a word we mount the cycles and retrace our morning’s journey. I blank my mind with a chant: “Keep going, tell Truso, keep going, tell Truso.” My legs pump to its rhythm, slower where the track rises, faster where it falls, shutting out all thought of what it is I must tell him. Still it feels as if we’ll never get there.

  By the time we reach the point where we rested this morning – the top of the first climb – I feel anaesthetised by exhaustion. The cycle’s tyre has begun to rub against the forks each rotation. Halfway down the hill, the wheel locks, sending me shooting forward over the handlebars. Tears ooze down my cheeks as I lie in a boneless heap on the track.

  “Ness,” Ronan says, squatting beside me. “We have to keep going.”

  He helps me to my feet. My wrist aches where it took the brunt of my fall, but at least it’s not broken. Ronan studies my cycle then abandons it as beyond repair. He reaches for his own. “I’ll pedal. You sit on the back.”

  I look at the metal rack, designed for carrying cartons of freight, maybe, not girls. “Better than walking,” he says. And better, too, than having more of the men who killed Esha catch up with us.

  The carrier’s metal frame digs uncomfortably into my thighs as I arrange myself side-saddle. Beneath my hands each of Ronan’s ribs is outlined through his shirt. “I’ll go slowly,” he promises.

  I’m past fear, I think, closing my eyes and thrusting my legs outwards, away from the spinning wheel. “Ow,” I yelp as we jounce over a pothole.

  “Sorry.”

  The cycle twists and swerves. I do my best not to cry out as every bump jars through me. Finally the road levels. Ronan glances over his shoulder. “Not far now,” he says, his voice hoarse.

  I remember my morning’s eagerness: to see the hill farm, to spend time with Esha before she returns to Vidya. Tears start to flow again, dribbling off my chin. Esha will never, now, be returning to Vidya.

  The bike swerves suddenly and my heel nicks the rear wheel, slewing us sideways. I tumble from the carrier, landing hard on hands and knees in the road. Past the point of despair, I creak myself upright and rub dirt from my grazed palms. Ronan is leaning forward across the handlebars, his breathing laboured.

  “Shall I pedal for a bit?” I ask. There are indentations in my behind from the carrier rack. I stamp my feet to get blood flowing back into my legs.

  He shakes his head. “Can’t see properly,” he mutters.

  It’s true. Around us, sky has merged with land in a uniform grey. There’s just enough light to make out the blood crusted on his mouth.

  With a grunt of effort, Ronan swings his leg off the cycle. I make a grab for it as he staggers and we find our balance like that, each holding one handlebar.

  “Got to keep going,” Ronan says. He doesn’t look as if he can, but somehow we manage, walking the cycle between us like an errant goat. Perhaps it’s more leading us than the other way round.

  With the last of the light gone, the only way to find the track is by the feel and sound of it beneath our feet. Often one or other of us stumbles onto the verge and we have to pause to redirect ourselves before we go on.

  “Who do you suppose they were?” I say at last, my mind, despite my exhaustion, unable to leave the horror alone.

  “Someone who wants the land,” Ronan answers. “Esha said something about para-militaries the day we arrived.”

  I don’t want to think about the day we arrived. A worse thought overcomes me. “The people at Summertops. You don’t suppose …”

  Silence.

  Esha’s face rises before me, empty-eyed.

  “You knew it was a rifle.”

  Silence.

  “Did she – would it have hurt?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve never seen a rifle. I’ve read about them but I didn’t know …” My voice chokes off.

  “Don’t think about it, Ness. Think about warning Truso, or a hot bath, or … or the best thing that ever happened to you.”

  His voice is filled with longing. I follow his advice, and think of the day Dev and I left Dunnett Island, of the sense of freedom and relief I felt as our little boat sailed out of reach of the islanders and their rocks. If they’d had rifles we wouldn’t have been out of reach. We’d have been dead, like Esha. For once I have reason to be grateful for Dunnett’s ban on teck.

  Nothing ever turns out to be what you expect.

  “There’s a light.”

  I look ahead and see it, a pinprick in the blackness. Reaching it seems to take longer than it should. Just as I decide my aching body can’t take any more, Ronan shouts, a hoarse, desperate sound that opens the door and spills light towards us.

  “Who’s that?”

  I have no voice to answer. Releasing the cycle I stumble forward, the packed earth of the road rising up to meet me.

  “At least two, maybe more. Yes, armed. Yes, rifles.”

  Ronan’s voice is battling to answer a flurry of questions. I slit my eyes open and blurt out the most important thing. “They killed Esha.”

  Truso’s pale hand is on my arm, his face looming above me. “Are you all right, Ness?”

  I nod, embarrassed that I should have fainted. Someone shines a light in my eyes and I flinch. As more questions break out, Truso holds up a hand. “Enough! Can’t you see the state they’re in? Let’s get them inside.”

  As he gathers me up in his arms, relief slides through me, seductive and sweet. I close my eyes as he lowers me into a chair and wraps me in a blanket. Someone bathes my face and hands and holds a drink to my lips. I force my eyes open. It’s Manet who tends me.

  I look around for Ronan, and see him wince as Saice presses a damp cloth against his swollen eye.

  “Now,” Truso says. “Are you up to telling us what happened? If not, we’ll wait.” He scowls down the voices that start up.

  “We were almost there,” I blurt. “We’d stopped to rest at the saddle where you can see Summertops for the first time. We were just standing there looking down at the farm. Esha was right beside me and Ronan was a little behind.” I look to Ronan for confirmation. “There was a sound, sharp and hard. Esha … Esha fell.” There’s a gasp and I realise, belatedly, that this is the first of the story that most of the people gathered around us have heard. “She’s dead,” I say, forcing the words out hard and low, refusing to give way to tears. Murmurs of disbelief rush towards me. Someone stifles a sob.

  “Go on,” Truso says gently. Manet squeezes my arm. “Ronan knocked me down. He said it was rifle shots. There were more: three or four.”

  “Five,” he confirms.

  “Why would they shoot at you?” someone demands. Neither Ronan nor I answer: how can we?

  “How did you know she was dead?” another voice asks. “How could you be sure?”

  “I was standing right beside her,” I say stonily.

  Truso starts to interrupt the rush of questions, but Ronan’s voice proves clearest. “The first bullet hit her in the temple.”

  “How do you come to know so much about weapons?” The suspicion strung through the handful of words turns everyone’s eyes to Ronan.

  “We had rifles on Ister,” he says.

  “What happened after you knocked Ness to safety?” Truso asks, overriding the others.

  Ronan says nothing so I answer for him. “We got hold of our cycles,” I tell them. “I … I checked Esha again.” I stare a
t my hands, at the dried blood beneath my nails. “They were shooting at us,” I hurry on. “Ronan pulled me away. He said we had to get back here and warn you.”

  “You didn’t have any more trouble?” Truso prompts.

  “We did.” My tongue baulks.

  Ronan fills my silence. “One of them got round ahead of us. He tried to stop us, but we got away.”

  I’m grateful that he doesn’t tell them what I did.

  “That’s when you got those bruises?”

  Ronan nods.

  “They might have been followed!” A man leaps up. “They might have led them back here. We—”

  “It’s no mystery, how to get here from Summertops,” Truso interrupts. “You follow the track.” An amused murmur ripples through the room and the shouter subsides. “If whoever did this has plans to move against us, then thanks to Ness and Ronan they’ve at least lost the benefit of surprise.”

  “We need to send a group to Summertops, to find out what’s happening.”

  Truso shakes his head. “Not tonight. And not without thinking it through.” He pauses. “I think we have to assume that whoever fired those shots has taken Summertops. Possibly days ago.”

  “You can’t know that,” someone shouts. “You—”

  “If they hadn’t taken the farm before this morning, they’ll certainly have done so by now. The community at Summertops has no defence against rifles.”

  “We’ve got to find out for certain. We can’t—”

  “Our first priority is ensuring our own security.” Truso raises his voice over the sudden babble of discussion. “Whoever it is we’re up against, we know that they’re brutal and armed. They have sentries posted and their policy, quite clearly, is not to ask questions. We need to strengthen our defences.” He scans the room, his eyes settling on the man I saw, our first day, fitting shoes to one of the draft horses. “Tino, we need to get word to Vidya. That two-man jigger, is it ready to run?”

  “It is, but I’ll need help getting it to the line – on a wagon will be easiest, then we can ramp it onto the rails.”