by Aeryn Leigh
Ella pulled out the surprise gift. You're not supposed to be here, she thought with a smile. The sniper rifle optical magnification sight locked into position, she snapped on the carry sling, closed the carry case lid, and stood up. Again, she winced. Ella broke open the action and loaded three rounds, closed it, took off the sight, and slung the Sauer over her shoulder.
With the case in her off-hand, Ella Gruder set off to investigate, prepared as any woman could be.
Oh, and she thought, I shall call you Helena.
And there better be some answers. And water.
And my child.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The Village
Her left eye peered due west through the optical sight, from the top of the slight hill under a mile away, lying on her stomach and reproductive organs, which protested the only way they could. Her teeth ground together in agony. The village burned, the sounds of collapsing timbers carrying on the wind, in a cluster of no more than a dozen buildings arranged in a rough half-circle around a central well. A dirt road led south. Well there is civilisation at last, anyway, she thought. The stars at night had her doubting her sanity, let alone those two suns — but here, a village.
Okay, it was on fire, and it looked like it had been there a while, given the antiquated shape of the buildings, and someone or something must have caused the fires, but be optimistic, said part of herself. Maybe they know about Amelia. Children didn't come crashing to earth riding a parachute seat every day, did they? Someone ought to know something.
The pessimistic part of herself added, because you, dear Ella, you... you don't know scheisse.
She stood up, unslung the hunting rifle, re-attached the scope, tied the case handle to the bottom of the survival kit, and with precise steps walked towards the village across the field of grain.
Farmers out here? The grass came to her thighs, brushing past. To her right, an iron, horse-pulled plough lay abandoned in the field, a few hundred yards distant. That will do. Bending as low as her period would allow, she made for the cover. In the air, some birds flew overhead, catching the thermals.
The heavy farm tool didn't ooze tetanus, surprising her. She sniffed the iron. Fish oil as rust-proofing. Well then, someone does know what they're doing. Ella put down her kit, parachute, and the metal case at the base of the plough. The closest village building looked about four-hundred yards from her position. She eased Helena into the crook of her shoulder, tucking in the walnut stock, and took a closer look.
As a young girl, her father taught her how to shoot growing up on the farm. She remembered her father's advice, and how she'd proved adept at it, shooting old bottles with increasing accuracy and range, until her mother put an end of it.
Girls don't shoot guns, her mother said, and that was that. Learning to fly in gliders, well... no guns, no engines, nothing dirty or oily... her mother frowned, but hugged her and said yes to her father, who'd winked.
And much later joining the Luftwaffe, she could practice shoot all she wanted. Clay shooting was addictive. Pull.
The stone and wood building, the stones white, the timbers painted deep brown, burned from inside, fire licking out and up the sides of the windows, the steep pointed roof burning. The buildings behind, painted the same way, shared the same fate. No people put out fires, no-one ran around in hysterics.
Ella approached the village, rifle in front. Her stomach flipped in fear entering the little town. The biggest building, right in the centre, stood, its big wide double doors open, small tendrils of flame just beginning to arise from it's second-storey rooftop from embers and sparks next-door. She passed a few wheeled carts, empty, just sitting in the middle of the dirt road that ringed the village. Her ears pricked up. Neighing of frantic horses. Ella broke into a run ignoring the pain and made for the source of distress at the far end of the village, to what appeared to be a stable, given the picture of a horse above the main door.
She came to the building, panting. The horses inside were panicking, kicking their stalls by the sound of it. Ella tried the big iron latch across the door.
Locked.
Ella took a step back, aimed, and pulled the rear trigger. The latch disintegrated in the blast, and her boot kicked the door open.
The air rushed past her, feeding the flames. Four stalls lay either side, a horse in each. Embers and drops of fire fell to the ground from the rafters above, stuffed full of dry, brown hay.
It wouldn't be long before it went up.
Disregarding the thumping pain and running on full adrenaline she ran to each stall and opened it, and stood at the rear of the stable, in front of riding gear and coiled ropes. She grabbed a few coils and slung them around her neck.
"Come on you buggers, move,” she said. A few horses galloped out, others remained in their stalls. She pointed Helena up into the air and fired the other shotgun barrel. The rest reared up and ran outside as a herd, bar one. An old mare tethered to the side wall. Fire dripped down in front of her, and she glanced up. The hay above ignited.
Ella tried to get to the tether. The old mare kicked out at her. She ran around to the empty stall next to it, and stopped. The stall sides were too tall for her to climb over.
The fire roared.
She had moments to get out.
Ella brought the gun up in one movement, and put down the horse with a rifle shot. A beam crashed behind her. Ella ran for the doorway and made it out as the stable collapsed inwards with a roar and back into fresh air. The freed horses were on the southern side, around a water trough that marked the edge of the village, free of all things burning, under its little flat roof.
Water.
She broke open Helena, and reloaded, staggering to the water trough, dropping the ropes to the ground. A hand pump next to it seemed broken, but repairable, its lever broken off. Ignoring the horses protests she elbowed her way in and dunked her head in the cool liquid of life.
Ella lifted her head out, and stepped sideways back past the horses drinking like no tomorrow, or for that matter, no next week given their thirst. She looked at the flaming town, and at the stable which resembled a Roman candle in its ferocity.
Was anything else still alive? The thought nagged at her. You better hurry, it said.
She moved from vacant building to vacant building, shouting "Hello,” searching for survivors, yet coming back out of each building with nought but odds and ends that might prove useful, throwing them into the middle of the road. She came to the big building. By the look of it, fire would engulf it in minutes. She stepped onto the wooden porch, and walked in.
A moment later, she walked back out again and threw up over the guard rail.
Ella took a deep breath, wiped her mouth, and tried a second time.
Human bodies, naked human bodies, littered the main entrance room of the town hall, scattered this way and that, like abused puppets with broken strings and excess red paint.
"Hello," she yelled over the noise. "Is anyone alive?" She strained her ears. Stairs led up on the right to the upper floor, next to a wooden podium. A red banner hung limp over it, large golden-weaved Roman numerals in the middle. IX.
She moved from body to body, checking for pulses. She passed the bodies minus their heads or all their limbs hacked off, moving onto the next, all been killed with edged weapons.
She reached the foot of the stairs.
Again, Ella called out.
She heard movement, steps, and something heavy crashed onto the floorboards above her. She readied Helena and climbed the stairs to the landing. The small room appeared to be the office. A crude desk and a chair sat in front of the window. On the far side, a giant wooden chest rested, a fallen candelabra in front of it.
"I mean no harm," said Ella, and crossed the room. She slung the rifle over her shoulder, took out the pistol, and with a grunt opened the chest. She looked down and into the scared face of a small child. The child shrank back, pressing against the wood, curled away from her.
"It's
okay, it's okay," said Ella, sliding the pistol back into its side holster. Her hands up, palms out, she repeated the phrase, and moved forward. The child, naked as well, blinked rapidly, its eyes rimmed with tears. Smoke poured in, filling the room as the roof ignited, the haze above Ella's waist.
She didn't have time for this. She reached in and picked up the now wailing child, slung it over her free shoulder and hurried down the stairs. On the way past the podium, Ella grabbed the banner and made for the doorway, picking her steps through the carnage until she reached the air outside.
The air, only slightly better than inside, carried the total conflagration of the entire village past them. Ella blinked her own tears from the smoke, the town roaring as it consumed itself. She looked around, saw the closest cart, and ran to it, wrapping the little human in the banner, dumping the child inside. She lifted up the wooden handles, and pulled the cart back to horses, picking up the items she'd thrown onto the road as she did so.
Ella uncoiled a rope, and looped the two strongest horses together, hitching them to the cart. The knots ended up messy, and Ella looked at them.
She shrugged. The child cried from the cart. "Healthy lungs you have there, sport," she said, and led the horses and cart in a wide circle back to the plough to pick up her gear.
They reached the plough. Only the plough sat in the wheat field. No survival kit, parachute or metal case lay at the iron foot.
Ella's right eye twitched.
She clambered to the top of the plough and swung her head around as fast as she could, squinting through the scope, looking for anything.
There, movement, a black, hooded figure running north, carrying her gear, at the edge of the field.
Ella attached the scope, and raised Helena. Tendrils of smoke drifted between her and the figure as it ran. Piers voice came into her head. "Centre-of-mass," he would say, out on the firing range.
Shit. She couldn't risk killing the figure and any information dying with it. The horses. She swung a foot up and mounted the left horse, spurring the two onward and gave chase.
"It's okay," she said to the terrified child, closing the distance across the bumpy field. Eighty-yards from the man, the figure stopped, dropped the loot, and swung its arm up, pointing a wicked black crossbow at her.
Fired.
The bolt smashed into her upper right arm.
Mother of Gott.
The figure stooped to reload. She hefted the Drilling with her left arm and pulled the lever.
When the horses stopped, Ella dismounted with care. The child stopped crying, too exhausted to bellow. She approached the figure, the shape writhing on flattened wheat stalks.
Ah. Bird-shot. The crossbow lay by its side, and with a quick movement she kicked it away. She pointed Helena right at the figures head, their shadows close together against the wheat. Her finger curled around the trigger.
"Roll over," she said, "slowly." Nothing happened. Her boot prodded where the ribs ought to be, hard. "I said roll over." Incoherent mumblings came from the figure. "Fine." Ella backed away, and looking at the figure, reached out and rummaged for the other coil of rope.
"Son of a bitch," Ella said, her upper arm registering quite clearly that a metal bolt seemed to be stuck in it. Tying one end to the cart, she made a quick noose of the other end and looped it around the figures left bare foot, black wiry hairs sticking out under the fabric.
Ella gathered her possessions, eased herself up onto the cart, sat astride the seat facing backwards, and dragged the man back to the horse trough, her jaw locked.
Chapter Forty
The Inquisition
The fires burnt all afternoon, until the flames died down around sunset. It cast a beautiful glow on the northern horizon, and with the sunset, bathing the three figures and five horses in golden light a few miles down the dirt path where she'd made camp.
Ella passed the survival kit's bottle of rum to the child. "Rum," she said, "alcohol." The child sat against the tree, wrapped in the banner, and looked at the bottle. The thief sat tied to the cart, hands and feet bound, unconscious.
Should have answered me. Being dragged half-a-mile and covered in buck-shot pellets must wear you down.
"Hold this too," said Ella, giving the child a clean cloth. She pulled out the knife and cut the flight-suit around the shoulder, the shaft of the bolt sticking out through the red-stained cloth, wincing in the struggle to get it off, and managed to do so in a final hack of the blade. The child looked at Ella, eyes moving all the way up and all the way down. The flight suit flapped around her waist, her stained white singlet over her bra.
"Ready?" The child blinked. With her left hand, she broke the wooden shaft above the fabric. Her vision wobbled.
Well, Ella concluded, not bad as my period. Yet. She dropped the tufted end of the bolt, and lifted the fabric up and off the bolt's broken stub and the sleeve fell to the ground. Ella lifted her right arm and examined it in the firelight as best she could.
The bolt pierced the meat of her upper arm, missing the bone, but had not quite gone all the way through. Only the tip of the arrowhead punctured the underarm skin. "Hmm."
She took a breath. She exhaled. Ella picked up the sleeve, and padding her palm, drove the bolt down.
Pain.
White.
Blood.
Her stomach heaved. When her sight returned the bolt head had come out. Ella gestured for the bottle.
The child gave it to her, transfixed. She unscrewed the top off with her teeth and poured some rum over the wound.
Christ.
Now, now, you must do it now, she thought, now, and without more thinking pulled the shaft of wood down through her arm and out.
The wobbling child — no it was she who wobbled, not the youngster — held out the cloth. Ella poured rum into the hole, missing half of it, watching morbidly the liquid burn right through and drip out the other side along with all the blood. She reached out and took it the bandage, and wrapped it tight. And took a swig of rum.
The child ate the food she'd cooked like a puppy given a platter of steak and gravy. Messy, glorious and over oh so quick.
She blew out the cooking stove. Ella couldn't work out whether it was a boy or a girl, but concluded it didn't matter, at least not tonight. She'd know soon enough. Ella had picked up the child in a hurry from the chest, and hadn't seen dangly bits one way or the other in the rush. The child looked around four to five years old, black hair cut into a rough bob, and yet to speak a word.
And now, well now time to sort out the mystery figure. Ella picked up a long thin stick, and went to the cart. She lifted the hood back. Brown hair fell out.
Ah hell.
With the knife, she cut the perforated cloak off in one, long rip. A young man, maybe in his early twenties – it being hard to tell with the grime, buckshot wounds and gaunt features – lay there, wearing the pale-red metal armour of the Roman Legion. The metal looked ancient.
A Roman? thought Ella. It didn't make sense.
Oh yes, said the other part of herself, and any of this does? You were over the English Channel one second, and now look where you are. Look above you, it said, at the wrong stars if you want any more proof.
With her crippled right arm just able to hold the pistol, she pried out buckshot with the tip of the survival knife, each metal pellet falling to the ground with a tiny thud. She found a few knives and daggers on the man's body along the way and tucked them into her own belt.
Satisfied, she stood up, and joined the child at the fire, checking the horses as she did.
The child held both arms out towards her. "I'm not lifting you," said Ella, gesturing to her arm. The child waved its arms about harder. "Oh, alright then," she said, "give me a second." She sat down against the tree, the bark hard against her back. Facing the figure, the child on her right, Ella pulled the child onto her lap with her left hand.
Ella sang a nursery rhyme she'd sing to Amelia, and before long the child slept.
&nb
sp; The figure tied to the cart moaned. The child dozed at her feet, on a scavenged brown wool blanket. Ella got up from the camp-fire, and stepped towards him, PPK in hand. She crouched down.
"Aqua," he said in little more than a croak.
She got back up, retrieved the water canteen, and squatted back down. "Aqua," she said. Ella threw the canteen underarm, right into his lap. The man sat upright, back against the cart's wheel, and with tied hands drank a long draught.
Against the sunset, the silhouette lowered the bottle, and sighed.
"Ready to talk?" said Ella, leaning against the tree. The shadows hid her face. "I'm having a bad couple of days, and you're not helping." Her right shoulder twitched. "Who are you?"
No response. She tried again, this time in English. Her brows furrowed. "Who are you?"
"My name is Merrion." He snorted. "Did you really have to drag my form through the scrub like some pitiful animal?" His words were rich, luxurious overtones. He sounds like my English teacher at school, she thought.
"Tell me Merrion, are you just a petty thief, or a common one?"
"Are you just a murderer?" he shot back.
"A what?"
In the silence the fire crackled, sending sparks into the night.
"So, you are dumb, and also deaf."
He's trying to get you angry, said the voice in her head. Don't bite. Ella kicked the nearest log instead. Now, along with her shoulder and pelvis, her big toe hurt.
"Temper, temper."
Swear to god, one more word and I'll shoot him right now, she thought, standing on one leg. She saw her shadow in the camp-fire's light, a one-legged woman jumping up and down on one foot. She laughed.