He could feel her breast press against his back as he lay uncomfortable atop her. Still, he would rather uncomfortably stay there than change position. Her leg was underneath his. He could feel the warmth of her body as she laughed against him. She started to shift and so did he, untangling themselves. Her lips brushed the back of his neck lightly as she moved and he felt the moist heat of her breath.
She put her hands on his back and pushed herself up to a sitting position. It felt as though there were warm dents left where she had pressed. He turned to the side and sat facing her. She smiled back at him.
“That was fun,” he said. The bucket lay beside him, turned over on its side. She giggled for a moment as she got up and patted herself down.
“Yes,” she agreed.
“What’s your name?” he asked suddenly as he got up too, the question popping into his head.
“Racquel.” She smiled at him. “And yours?”
“Liam,” he said and then felt lost for words. Looking at her, he suddenly realised she was beautiful. She had delicate features, as though her face could fracture and break if he squeezed it between his hands. He glanced at the bruise over her left eye and anger, sharp and fast, rose within him. That bastard! He noticed her expression change, a frown creasing her brow, and he realised that his thoughts must have shown. He allowed his features to relax once more.
“I better go back inside,” she said, glancing at the door of the baker’s.
“Okay,” said Liam. “Don’t go yet!” he said, changing his mind. Racquel laughed.
“I have to, my uncle will give out.”
“He won’t hit you, will he?”
“No, I don’t think so. I haven’t been gone long,” she said, walking over to the bucket.
“You wanna … hang out again?” he asked on the spur of the moment. She looked at him, and suddenly he couldn’t understand it. How did she look at him like that, devoid of any suspicion? It was only with her look that he realised the unconscious tension that was in his shoulders from asking the question. The edginess that he always carried didn’t seem to fit with her.
“Ya, sure,” she said. “I get some free time for an hour or two before it gets dark usually. Me and my friend Alison normally go down to the well around the corner. You wanna come?”
“Ya.” He stood dumbfounded for a moment, not sure what else to add.
“Okay,” she said, “see ya!” She picked up the bucket and ran over to the baker’s door, turning and giving a half wave on the way.
He waved back. Racquel, he thought, as he walked home.
******
Liam woke up the next morning with a groan. Rolling onto his side, he started coughing. His back was sore from how he had slept. He rubbed at his eyes as he lay on his side, giving himself time to wake. He had dreamed of drinking water, but no matter how much he drank he couldn’t quench his thirst. He needed to take a piss too. He got up groggily and went over to the latrine bucket. Pulling up his tunic, he let loose. He yawned as he went and had a brief glance about the room. There was no one else there. It must be late. He looked out the shuttered window but all he could tell was that it was bright outside. The sun was shining as usual at this time of year.
Walking back to his bed roll, he looked over at Calum’s, next to his. It didn’t seem to be disturbed. He wondered if he had been back last night at all. Liam had fallen fast asleep the moment he lay down the night before. He picked up his knife from underneath the pillow, where he kept it each night, and put it into his pocket.
He descended the stairs, opening the door to the bright sunlight outside. He was blinded by it for a moment. Shielding his eyes, he scanned the street around him. There were the usual kids at play and roughly patched together people about their morning chores.
He walked onto the middle of the street and stretched, feeling the dust and grit beneath his toes. His bare feet were toughened from years of walking the streets of Teruel. They held many scars and patches of tough, worn skin.
He searched for the sun and found it glaring back at him, lying just above the buildings to the east. He had slept in. It looked to be just over an hour from noon, when he would be meeting Carrick and his gang. He guessed he’d be meeting Calum there, too.
He smiled as the memory of last night hit him. He felt good.
There was one well in Ratville and, surprisingly, it worked. It was the only thing in the area that didn’t seem on the verge of collapse. It was two streets down.
He walked there at his leisure as the wind swirled dust about his feet. He could feel the dryness of the air around him.
There was a queue at the well as he got there, but he didn’t have to wait long before he was able to run his head underneath the water of the bucket. The water was warm but refreshing, and he drank it greedily before washing his hands and face in it, scrubbing the dust and dirt from his skin.
He stepped aside to allow a worn-down middle-aged woman use it. She carried a clay pot that she filled up with the water. I have to get one of those. He looked about at the people around him. Today he felt immune to the fear that sometimes overtook him when he looked too closely; that he would end up just like them. He was determined not to. They were worn down, beaten up by life. They seemed to continue on living only because they didn’t know what else to do. They had no hope, no plans for progression. They just continued on, if anything their situation deteriorating as they grew older, until some horrible disease born of promiscuity or malnutrition brought them to a slow, decaying end.
Liam felt sure, with Calum at his side, that they would break from the cycle of their birth, leave all of this filth behind, progress, improve their lives and prosper. And maybe he could marry someone like Racquel. He smiled.
He left them all behind as he walked the streets, for once allowing himself to consider the future and seeing it brightly. He was strong and so was Calum, they would work their way up through the ranks of the matis, making their own moves, running their own plays, until they had wealth behind them. Then they might even make a move from the slums.
He looked towards the distant city, covered from view by the ramshackle buildings of the slums. Perhaps they would even move inside the walls. He could only guess at the wonders that lay inside the city proper. Clean streets, clean people. A real house.
He made his way to the meeting point earlier than planned and was not surprised to see that he was the first there. He finished eating a meat pie he had bought on the way and sat down to wait.
Calum was the first to arrive. Liam smiled at him as he walked up, wondering what he had been up to the night before and why he hadn’t made it back. They only had time for a routine greeting, however, before Liam saw Carrick and his crew walk around the corner to meet them.
Liam shared a glance with Calum, some of his good mood evaporating suddenly as he remembered what a fool’s errand this was. He realised how much he disliked Carrick as he swaggered over to them as if he was the matis king.
“Alright, lads, ye know what to do, so let’s go do it,” he said.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Calum, spitting on the ground.
Carrick looked at him. “What’s your problem?”
“That’s it, is it, that’s the plan?” replied Calum. “Go in there and do it!”
“What the fuck else you want?”
Calum turned away, looking at Liam. “This is fucking stupid.”
“You got a fuckin’ problem, Calum?” said Carrick. Calum just looked at him. “No? Then shut the fuck up and just get on with it.”
Calum shook his head and spat on the ground again. “Alright,” he said, turning away. Liam was surprised to see him so angry.
“We’ll be waitin’ outside, a few yards down the road with these boys here.” He hefted a club; they all had one strapped to their waists. “You fish ’em out and send ’em towards the market, we’ll get ’em before the end of the street.”
“And how the fuck are we meant to do that?” Calum muttered
.
Carrick pretended he didn’t hear.
They all moved down the street, fanning out to either side. Liam and Calum broke off a little from the rest.
“How come you’re so pissed?” asked Liam as they walked side by side. Calum looked over at him and spat for the third time.
“Dono, man, I’ve been thinkin’ about this the last couple of days, and more and more I’ve been thinkin’ how stupid it is. Carrick over there,” he nodded his head in his direction, not bothering to cover his anger as Carrick glared back at him, “doesn’t have the balls to go back in there himself. So he’s sendin’ us instead.”
Liam frowned beside him.
“I was talkin’ to a few people last night,” Calum went on, “and this blacksmith is meant to be one mean son of a whore. They said Carrick was a fool to go after him and was lucky to get away with what he got.”
Liam felt a small ball of anxiety build within him. He squashed it down as well as he could and tried to think of their options.
“Can we back out of it?” asked Liam.
Calum shook his head. “Carrick won’t use us again if we chicken out now. And I’m not in with the gang yet.”
They needed the money that working for Carrick brought in. Cutting purses and stealing from venders only brought them so far. If they wanted to get anywhere, they needed to work jobs. Carrick was an idiot and careless, but he was fairly straight with what he said. That was the only reason Liam could think of why he had anyone at all following his lead as opposed to the other way around.
He had said that after another couple of jobs he would bring Calum and Liam in proper, giving them a fair split of the earnings. At the moment, they got less than half what the rest of the crew did. Although Liam knew that a couple might end up meaning five or six, he also knew they would get there eventually with Carrick. He thought he knew anyway.
“Alright,” he said, “so how we goin’ a do this?”
“Go in and hope for the best,” said Calum. “I don’t know if his sons are there or not. If they are, we’re fucked. Either way, we need to get in and out fast, before he has a chance to call them out from the back or somethin’.”
“So we need to go in and try to snatch somethin’ quick that will draw ’em out after us.” Liam took a deep breath as they approached the smith’s. “Why are we doing this in the middle of the day?”
“Because Carrick thinks the smith won’t be expectin’ anyt’in’ in daytime and he wants everyone to see what happens when you cross Carrick Flattop.”
Liam almost laughed at the reference to Carrick’s nickname.
“We’ll go in, we’ll have a look. If we can’t see anything that could get him outside, we’ll leave again and just tell Carrick to fuck off.” Even as Calum said it, Liam knew that it would be no easy thing to do. They had to try something at least.
They were only two buildings down from the smithy, towards the end of Caipur Street. It was a busy street close to the market. The carpenter’s lay behind the blacksmith’s on the street parallel. The street was full of tradesmen. There was a leather worker’s, a pottery, a cobbler’s and even a stable. The street saw a lot of business coming from the Great Road to Darwin at the far side of the market.
Anything from a wagon needing a new wheel or a horse needing to be re-shod, tools needing to be fixed, weapons sharpened. It was often cheaper and easier for the travellers of the road to get it done here in the slums as opposed to inside the city proper.
The street was mostly filled with common slummers but there were the occasional foreigners, sometimes on their own or sometimes in small groups. A common trait that Liam had noticed about foreigners was that they generally seemed to have a look of disgust and an upturned nose when walking through the slums. It made him both dislike them and wonder about the places they came from.
Liam looked over the street and saw Carrick and his two cronies take position, trying to appear idle as they waited. He looked to Calum and they shared a moment of determination. It was time to focus on the task at hand.
He felt grim as they walked towards the entrance to the smithy.
The smithy was a solid-looking building made completely of stone. Huge wooden doors at the front opened wide, tall enough to let in a horse and wide enough for a wagon. The doors gave the building a very open feel, at odds to what Liam was used to in the slums. It made him uneasy.
Inside was a disorganised mess.
A large, rough-looking wooden table stood on the right-hand side of the room. It was made of thick chunks of wood, practical as opposed to aesthetically pleasing. The table top bore many scars from use over the years, and a large array of tools hung from metal pegs hammered into the wall above it. There must have been a dozen hammers of different shapes and sizes, tongs, metal tools that were similar in appearance to chisels and more that Liam didn’t recognise.
The floor was littered with old horse-shoes, nails, pieces of discarded metal and large metal anvils.
A large furnace built from stone stood against the far wall, longer than a man lying flat on the floor. At shoulder height the stonework curved upwards in an arc, meeting from both sides to form a chimney that extended up into the ceiling above. A charcoal fire burned on the stone and metal grill in the centre of the furnace. Off to the left side was a huge wood and leather bellows, propped up on wooden supports, connected to a leather pipe that ran into a hole in the stonework of the furnace and disappeared.
The smith himself stood in front of the forge, shovelling charcoal into the fire from a pile on the floor. A boy a little older than Liam was working the bellows, pumping air up under the fire, driving the flames up in great bursts. His face glistened with sweat as he worked. He showed the beginnings of a muscular bearing from all the hard work. He must have been the smith’s apprentice.
Calum and Liam stepped through the doorway and were hit by a blast of heat. Liam immediately saw their target. He breathed in deeply, not knowing whether to be relieved or deflated. There was a gold plated ornamental shield hanging up on the wall to the right of the furnace. It easily looked valuable enough to have the smith chasing their tails. Now, at least, the objective was clear. They just had to swipe the shield and get out of the room with it.
The smith looked up as they walked in. Instantly, his eyes narrowed and he stood up, leaning on the shovel. He was a huge man, wide of shoulder with a barrel chest. He wore a leather jerkin with nothing but his hairy chest underneath. His legs seemed too small for his body.
“What do you fellas want?” he asked. The bellows the apprentice stood beside was at the left of the forge, the smith was directly in front of it and the shield was hanging up on the right of it. It would only take the smith two quick strides to get across to the shield. Liam glanced across at Calum, not needing to speak to him to know he was considering the same things. They would have to pull the smith away from the furnace and towards the front of the room so that one of the boys could get behind him and take the shield from the wall.
The problem then lay in how to get back out with the smith between that person and the door. Liam reluctantly conceded that they would have to use their knives. Calum walked to the right while Liam spread to the left.
“Never seen a forge before,” said Calum, trailing his hand along the table at the right side of the room. He stopped and looked at the smith with interest. “How do you make the metal?”
The smith eyed him. “We don’t make metal here, boy. I’m surprised you’ve never seen my forge before. Where do you live, down in Ratville?” His scepticism was plain in his voice.
“Ya,” replied Liam. He stood to the far left of the room. “We only heard about your place last week. Normally don’t venture this far over, thought we’d come over and have a look.” Liam sat on an old anvil. “Funny stool,” he remarked.
“That’s not a stool, boy. Tommy,” said the smith, looking over at his apprentice. “Take a break from the bellows and escort these boys out.”
“Well,
you’ve seen the forge now,” the smith addressed them, “and you’ll be taking your leave. We’ve got work to do, and I don’t have time to be watching over two slum rats!”
Tommy walked over to Liam as he stood up. Suddenly, Liam knew what to do. Things always became obvious once you saw things clearly, without restrictions. Liam gave the shallowest of nods to Calum. Calum took a step away from the table.
Liam waited until Tommy put a hand on him to push him towards the door. The second he did, Liam’s fist lashed out, taking Tommy full force on the nose. The boy let out a gasp of shock as he fell to the floor, holding a hand up to his nose. It came away bloody. Violence always worked best when it was unexpected.
“Keep yer fuckin’ hands off me,” Liam said. He looked up at the smith, who gave a guffaw in disbelieve.
He dropped his shovel. “By Lev,” he exclaimed as he plodded towards Liam, his face like thunder, his hands making fists. Calum backed away into the wooden table as though in fear, taking a few sidesteps towards the shield as the smith strode towards Liam.
Liam pulled his knife from his pocket, buying time. The smith pulled up short at that, his eyes widening in disbelief.
“You’d want to put that away, boy!” he growled. Calum was at the shield now, lifting it from the wall. The apprentice sat up. He glanced Calum’s way, and Liam cursed quietly.
“Master!” said the apprentice.
“Not now, Tommy,” said the smith, his eyes on Liam. He took a step towards him.
“The other’s takin the shield!” Calum was a few steps from the wall now.
“What?” said the smith, turning to see Calum with the shield in hand. Calum stood still, trapped but waiting for his moment. The apprentice stood up and pottered towards Calum. The smith glanced at Liam, then took a step towards Calum.
Liam darted in, knife in hand, and stabbed the smith in the ass. The smith let out a yell, threw a backhand at Liam and narrowly missed. Calum made to move but the apprentice jumped in his way. He threw the shield low towards Liam. It bounced along the ground, rolling to him. Liam dashed over to it, grabbing it as Calum and the apprentice grappled.
Daygo's Fury Page 6