Colin stood stock-still, stunned, his shirt held out before him, until the gusting breeze brought him back.
He hastily put the shirt back on, grimacing as the damp fabric stuck to his skin, then filled his pot and headed back home.
His mother gave him a raised eyebrow when she saw his shirt, but she said nothing. His father didn’t even notice.
“Ready to learn the sling?” he asked, as soon as Colin handed the pot of water over to his mother.
“Yes.”
“Then grab it and let’s head down to the shore.”
“The shore?” his mother asked. “I thought you were going to the plains?”
“I changed my mind. We’ll practice on the plains eventually, but for now there’ll be more stones on the beach.”
Colin retrieved his sling from his mother.
“Be careful,” she called after them, hands on hips. “Especially you, Tom.”
His father grunted as they ducked through the door, and then they were moving down through Lean-to, in the direction of Portstown, but toward the northern end. Most of the people they met nodded to them or raised a hand in greeting. A few of the men called out to his father.
When they reached the edge of Lean-to, a group of three men joined them, most craftsmen Colin recognized from the voyage east on Trader’s Luck.
“Mornin’, Tom. Heading down to the docks?” Paul asked, falling into step beside Colin. Shorter than his father and broader of shoulder, he’d been a smith in Andover with hopes of making master in fewer than the typical twelve years as journeyman here in the New World.
“Not today. I haven’t found work on the docks in over a week.”
“None of us have,” Paul said grimly, and the other two who’d joined them murmured agreement. “They’re using those of us in Lean-to less and less, preferring their own men or the crews on the ships, even when it’s obvious they could use the help. I don’t like it.”
Tom frowned. “Neither do I, but what can we do about it?”
Paul traded a look with the others. “We don’t know. But if you haven’t noticed, it’s becoming a little desperate here in Lean-to. Most of us have used up whatever money we brought with us from Andover, and the food is running short. We can’t afford anything in the town; they’ve jacked up their prices, at least for those of us from certain Families. And they don’t want to barter with us for goods or services.”
“And we can’t hunt the game in the forest any more,” one of the others mumbled.
His father halted in his tracks. “What?”
Paul nodded. “The Proprietor just issued a new decree. He’s claimed the forests to the north and south for himself and the Carrente Family. Anyone caught poaching is to be put in the penance locks in the center of town for two days. Anyone caught twice will be hanged. Or sent back to Andover in chains.”
“Which means death for certain.” Colin thought the man’s name was Sam. “They’ll put you in the Armory, send you to the front ranks once the Feud starts in earnest. Most of those here in Lean-to are already criminals, have already been given the choice of the Armory or the New World. If they’re sent back from here . . .”
A troubled look crossed his father’s face. After a pause, he continued toward Portstown. “Where does he expect us to find fresh meat then?” he asked.
“I don’t think the Proprietor expects us to find meat at all,” Paul grumbled.
“So what should we do?” Sam asked.
Tom didn’t answer for a moment. Then: “Nothing, for now. Except what we’ve been doing.”
“And what about meat? What about food?” the third man snarled. “I didn’t come here to starve at the Carrente’s hands.”
Tom caught his eye and held it. “I’ll think of something, Shay.”
Paul nodded and broke away, Sam and Shay following, headed toward the docks. Colin’s father watched, then turned toward the shore in the other direction, one hand on Colin’s shoulder. He squeezed once and smiled. “Nothing to worry about, Colin. Let’s find some rocks for that sling.”
But Colin heard the lie in his voice, saw it in the troubled look in his eyes.
They moved down from the grass into the sand along the beach, picking up stones as they went. Gulls and other shorebirds banked into the breeze overhead, and waves tumbled and crashed into the strand, foaming white as they drove up onto the beach. Seaweed had collected in clumps, left behind by the tide to dry out in the sun, and sand fleas hopped away in clouds as they passed. Small crabs—too small to be worth catching and eating—crawled among the occasional piece of driftwood. Closer to the water, where the tide was retreating, clams spit jets of water up from where they’d burrowed beneath the sand. The sharp scent of salt filled the air; Colin could taste it when he licked his lips.
Once they’d moved far enough north of the town, they halted.
“Now,” his father said, taking the sling from Colin’s grip and unwrapping the straps, “the sling is a weapon, not a toy. It can be extremely dangerous, and your mother made me promise that I’d teach you how to use it properly.
“See these ties here? They’re used to anchor this end of the sling to your wrist.” As he spoke, his father tied the sling to his own wrist. “The strap on this side is meant to dangle between your thumb and first finger, like this. The other strap, the one with the knot tied in the end, is held in the same hand. This forms a small pouch with the rectangular piece of leather, like a little hammock. To load it, you let the sling dangle down and place the stone in the pocket.” His father placed a rounded stone in the pouch. “When you want to release the stone, or whatever it is that you’re trying to throw, you let go of the knot.” His father let the knot go and the stone dropped down into the sand with a soft thump. His father reached down to retrieve it. “Obviously, you need to get some momentum behind the stone before you release it. You do that by twirling the sling, either to the side if you want to sling it underhand, or if you want more power behind it, overhead.”
His father placed the stone back in the sling, then looked at Colin. “So, let’s see if I remember how to sling at all. You’d better step back.”
Colin took a few quick steps backward, and his father began twirling the sling for an underhanded throw down the beach. The sling picked up speed, his father using his entire arm—
And then suddenly the strap with the knot snapped outward. The stone arched up, a black speck against the light blue of the sky, then fell and kicked up a plume of sand a significant distance away. Tom let out a yelp of laughter, then turned toward Colin. “Not where I was aiming, but . . .” He trailed off into a grin. “Now it’s your turn.”
Colin leaped forward.
His father tied the sling to his right arm, crossing the cords back and forth in a lattice pattern, then placed the knot in his hand, closing Colin’s fist with one hand and squeezing once before letting him go and stepping back. Held at his side, the sling nearly touched the sand; he was a full foot shorter than his father.
“Just spin it at first,” his father said. “Get a feel for it.”
Colin placed one of the water- smoothed stones from the beach into the pouch, then began twirling the sling, a thrill coursing up his arm and down into his chest, into his gut. He found himself smiling uncontrollably. The weight of the stone, the tension he could feel in the cords around his arm, thrummed in his body, and he began to spin the rock faster.
“Not so fast, Colin,” his father said, but Colin didn’t need the warning. He could feel the loss of control in his arm, could feel the swing becoming erratic.
He backed off, concentrating, until he regained control. He was using the underhand swing, as his father had done, and he could already feel the strain in his arm and shoulder, muscles he wasn’t used to using beginning to burn.
“When you’re ready, let the knot go.”
Colin waited, focusing on the rock. Then he let the knot loose.
He felt the sling jerk in his arm as the release cord snapped o
utward. A surge of adrenalin shuddered through his body, cold and warm at the same time—
And then the stone thudded into the sand not two feet from him, spitting up a spume that pattered back down with a hiss.
His father burst out laughing, and he flushed to the roots of his hair, his scalp prickling with the sensation.
He almost turned to run, but his father gasped, “Colin! Colin, wait!” Between chuckles, wiping the tears from his eyes, he clapped a hand to Colin’s shoulder and said, “Everyone does that the first time. You need to find where the release point is, that’s all. And how to change it so you can hit targets at different distances. It takes practice. Lots and lots of practice.” He passed over another stone. “Let’s try it again. If you work at it, you can learn to hit just about anything—rabbits, birds, deer. And if you build up your strength, you can even kill with it. But it won’t happen overnight.
“Do you think you can keep at it? Truly learn how to use it?”
He looked into his father’s eyes, saw the smile there, the pride, and behind it the worry. Worry for his mother, for him. Worry about Portstown and the Proprietor, about their survival here in the New World, on this new coast.
“Yes,” Colin said, his hand tightening on the sling’s knot. “Yes, I can learn it.”
And he meant it. He meant to practice until his arm ached, until he could hit anything within a hundred yards, accurately and repeatedly, standing still or moving.
And then he intended to use the sling on the Proprietor’s son.
He intended to hunt Walter down and make him pay.
2
COLIN CROUCHED DOWN IN THE GRASS at the lip of a knoll, his head just above the waving stalks, the knot of his sling clutched in his right hand. The late summer sun beat down on the plains spread out around him, turning the grass gold. Spring had come and gone, most of summer as well. The heat had dried out the ground and the grain had ripened, the seed heads pattering lightly against Colin’s face as he stared down onto the flat land below.
Mounds of dirt pockmarked the ground in all directions, the entrances to the burrows beneath like black eyes. An occasional prairie dog poked its head up, chirruped briefly, before vanishing again. But they were relaxing, growing used to Colin’s presence. He’d arrived over an hour ago, had settled into position downwind of the burrows for the wait.
One of the prairie dogs slid out from its burrow and stood on its hind legs, nose twitching, tan fur blending into the grasses around it. It scanned the area, turning with quick shifts of its body. It chirruped, went down to all fours, and slid away from the entrance. Three more heads appeared in other burrows, surveying the area, and farther away two more slunk out of their protection into the sun. They called to each other, moving onto the plains warily, at least a third of them standing up and on guard while the rest foraged through the grasses. Clouds passed by, and in the breeze coming from the east Colin could smell a hint of coming rain. But he didn’t move. He waited, the prairie dogs edging farther and farther from their burrows. He’d learned the hard way that the little buggers were quick, that with a single chirp of warning from one of the guards all of them could vanish into safety beneath the earth in the blink of an eye.
One of the prairie dogs inched closer, picking through the grass with his nose and front feet. Colin focused in, clenched his hand around the knot of the sling. His breathing slowed as he watched. The bands of the sling tied around his forearm pressed into muscle as he raised his arm, as he began to gently twirl the stone already placed in the pouch. An overhead throw, because the distance was short.
And because he needed a killing blow.
The motion caught the prairie dog’s attention and it stilled, then lifted its head in one swift jerk. At the same instant, one of the guardians emitted a piercing chirp.
Every prairie dog in sight stood up, long bodies rigid, small front feet dangling over the soft lighter fur of their underbellies. All of them turned in his direction.
Colin swore and released the sling, cords snapping out, stone flung.
In puffs of dirt, every prairie dog vanished.
Except one.
Colin released his pent breath with a fierce whoop of triumph and wiped the sweat from his forehead, grinning so hard it hurt. Skidding down the incline, he crouched down next to the body of the prairie dog, noted the splash of blood and matted fur where the stone had struck its head. Exactly where he’d intended.
He sat back on his haunches and smiled. He’d been practicing for months, first on the beach, getting the feel for the sling, for distance, for accuracy. Blocks of driftwood served as targets, set at intervals down the sand, where they remained stationary, then thrown out into the ocean, where he could practice hitting a moving target as the wood bobbed and rocked in the waves. Hours of practice, begun as soon as his chores were finished.
His father had watched him on occasion, had come to throw with him when he could, when he wasn’t doing some menial labor in Portstown or helping someone in Lean-to. It had been his idea to send Colin and others out to the plains to hunt for rabbits and fowl and whatever else they could find in this new world that everyone had started to call New Andover. Others from Lean-to were sent down to the beaches to dig for clams or to catch the occasional large crab that had wandered up onto the sand. Still others were sent out in boats into the channel to fish.
Yet over half of those in Lean-to—mostly criminals and miscreants who’d chosen the New World over the Armory in Andover—were doing nothing except seething in discontent and squalor.
Colin had had little success at first on the plains—real animals were harder to hunt than driftwood—but now . . .
Now, he felt ready for his real target.
His smile twisted with anger as his eyes narrowed. His hand clenched on the cords of the sling.
A gust of air, leaden with the weight of rain, pushed against his face. Shoving the anger down, but not the anticipation, Colin closed his eyes and bowed his head, murmuring a quick prayer of thanks to Diermani for the kill, as his mother had taught him, then gathered up the limp body of the prairie dog and placed it into the satchel at his side that contained the two rabbits he’d caught that morning. Shading his eyes, he squinted up at the sun, then stood and scanned the horizon to the east.
“Time to head back,” he said to himself.
But he didn’t move.
The breeze brushed his hair back from his eyes, the scent of rain stronger now. In the distance, he could see the leading edge of the storm, white clouds at the forefront, darker clouds behind. It would arrive within the hour.
He sighed, removed his sling and stowed it in a separate pocket of the satchel, and headed back to the west, trudging up the incline where he’d waited for the prairie dogs and down the far side. The satchel bounced against his side as he moved, as he picked up his pace.
Half an hour later—the wind gusting at his back with enough force to flatten the grass around him, the clouds beginning to blot out the sun overhead—Colin came upon the outermost farms still close enough to be considered part of Portstown. He paused as he drew alongside the first. The house had yet to be completed, but the barn, twice as large as the house, had been raised the week before in the span of two days. A large tract of land had already been carved out of the grassland, freshly plowed, and if Colin shaded his eyes he could see a team of horses in the distance, digging out another stretch of field. A woman worked in the garden plot nearest the house, a basket tucked in tight to her hip. Two children rough-housed around her.
She stood as soon as she noticed Colin, glared at him, face set with hostility.
Colin spat to one side—a habit his father had picked up in the past months whenever those in Portstown were mentioned—and continued on his way.
He entered Lean-to with the first fat drops of rain pattering down from the sky. Men and women cursed and shot black looks at the clouds, then tucked pots and baskets under their arms, shielding them from the rain as they ducked in
to huts and tents, flaps falling closed behind them. One woman bellowed, “Come here you little terrors!” and rounded up the last of her four children, ushering them into a shack made from pieces of discarded boat hulls and driftwood.
Colin ducked into his parents’ hut to the first grumble of thunder. He squatted and pulled a shutter of wood over the front of the opening before letting the blanket drop, then turned.
And halted. His parents had guests.
“They’ve shut us out completely!” Paul spat, then took a pull from an aleskin. He shoved it at Sam, who wiped the mouthpiece on his shirt before taking his own pull.
“What is he talking about, Sam?” Colin’s mother asked in disgust, motioning Colin toward her where she worked near the fire, taking his satchel.
Colin settled down next to his mother, away from the table where his father, Paul, Sam, and Shay sat on various crates and stools, a game of Crook and Row set out before them. Sam glared at his cards, then threw one before answering, Shay snorting as he picked up the tossed card.
“The Proprietor has banned anyone from Lean-to from the docks. We can no longer seek work there or at the warehouses. It’s as if we have the plague!”
“He can’t do that.”
“Oh, he didn’t officially ‘ban’ us,” Paul said, his words slurred with more than derision. “No, no, he’s too crafty for that.”
Shay played a stretch of four and discarded. “The bastard has sent out the Armory, men just over from Andover, sent by the Family. They’ve started patrolling the docks.”
“I don’t understand it,” Ana said, knife slicing through the first rabbit with rough jerks as she began gutting and cleaning it. She motioned for Colin to help her. “He should want to have refugees flooding the town. He could double its size within months. There’d be more land producing goods, more tradesmen producing wares. Trade would increase. He’d be wallowing in the profits!”
“Portstown has already doubled in size,” his father said, as he continued with his own move. “There’s a new mill along the river, at least five new merchant houses, two taverns, a granary. But none of that matters. He doesn’t need profit, he’s already wallowing in it.”
Well of Sorrows Page 3