“Too much death,” he said after a while. “Too much death. Too much death…”
Cormac wanted to console him, but he knew it wouldn’t help to say that he was alive and Thunder was alive and Bran was alive and Mary Morrigan was alive.
“Well,” Cormac did say, “maybe they’ve all gone to the Other-world. Where it’s warm, Da, where they want for naught.”
“Maybe,” he said, without conviction. “I hope…”
They rode for hours, saying little, with Thunder’s hooves clip-clopping on the frozen path, his hot breath making white clouds and his breathing as steady as a clock. Fergus had wrapped his face in a dark blue scarf, and Cormac buried his own face in the collars of his coat. His mind, thrummed by the rhythm of horse and loaded cart, eased into a dark, private cave with a fire burning low and his face hot with flesh and hair.
Then Thunder slowed.
Cormac was alert, his heart moving faster. Thinking: Something is not right. Thinking: Thunder should not be moving slower. Not yet. He knows the way. And we’re at least six miles from home.
But the clip-clop, clip-clop became something else.
Clip.
Clop.
Fergus was fully alert, his eyes wide, pulling the scarf down to his chin. He glanced back. There was nothing behind them. But the road ahead curved to the left and then vanished behind a hill. Cormac thought: Whatever danger Thunder senses, it lies beyond that curve.
“Get ready to run,” Fergus said.
They moved slowly around the curve.
Clip.
Clop.
Clip.
And there in front of them were six men on horses, one holding the gathered reins of two horses without riders. They were stretched across the road, blocking the way, as still as death. Each of the men was armed with a pistol. Fergus and Cormac knew two of them. One was Patch, his bald head covered with a fur hat. The other was the Earl of Warren.
Fergus tugged on the reins, and Thunder stopped about thirty feet from the fence of men on horseback. Nobody moved.
There were dense brown thickets on each side of the road, and a drainage ditch to Cormac’s right, its surface frozen.
“Are you looking for the road to Rome?” the earl said, smiling in an amused way while the others laughed. His abrupt English accent was sharp and hurting, with an odd feminine pitch to its tone, as if squeezed by the cold. Cormac remembered the day of his mother’s death in the mud of Belfast, when the earl’s voice was uncertain and trembling. That voice was gone. After the brutal Siberian winter, he seemed harder now, dressed for command in a long black coat, heavy wool scarf, broad-brimmed hat, high polished boots. He did not seem to remember Cormac. The boy who had once flailed at him so bitterly was now a young man of sixteen.
Fergus whispered again to Cormac that he must prepare to run. The young man’s heart thumped in fear and anger.
“I won’t run,” he said.
“You’ll run if I say so,” Fergus insisted, not moving his lips.
The earl nudged his gray stallion with his knees, and the horse moved forward. Thunder shuddered and tensed, as if challenged. Cormac saw Patch jam his pistol into his belt and slide a musket from his saddlebag.
“You must run,” Fergus whispered in Irish. “If you don’t, there will be no witness, and nobody to avenge what might happen.”
“Is that Latin you’re speaking, my proud blacksmith?” the earl said. “Listen, Patch, listen to them talk Latin. Can’t manage the King’s English, but listen to them spout the old Latin.”
Fergus said nothing. Cormac could feel tension coming off him like bristles.
“That’s a lovely horse you’ve got there,” the earl said. As he came closer, Cormac noticed for the first time that the earl had a diamond cemented into his right bicuspid, worn like a badge of fashion.
Fergus stared at the earl.
“I’d say he’s worth about eight pounds,” the earl said. He turned to Patch. “Don’t you think, Patch? About eight pounds’ worth?”
“At least, milord,” Patch said, grinning. “P’raps more, sir.” The earl looked at Fergus for a long, calculating moment. His doughy face was very still.
“I want the horse,” the earl said.
“The horse is not for sale,” Fergus said.
“Is that so?” the earl said.
“Yes.”
“My good man, I don’t think you understand me. I want that horse.”
The diamond glittered when he smiled.
“You see, this blasted famine has killed a lot of horses. Including many of my horses. So we’re buying horses. And that horse, dear fellow, looks to be worth at least eight pounds.”
He gestured with the pistol in a weary manner while he talked, his gun hand flopping loosely. Then, with a sigh, he slipped the pistol into his belt, as if deciding that even two Irishmen must understand that they had no way to resist. He took some coins from his coat pocket and slapped them together. Cormac wondered if he was about to do his juggling act. Patch and the others seemed impatient. Then, coming closer, the earl adopted a harder tone.
“And since it’s well known that you’re a papist, and since the law of this land clearly states that no papist can own a horse worth more than five pounds, and since—”
“I know the law,” Fergus said. “It does not apply to me. I’m not a Catholic.”
“Of course, what else would you say? But we have reason to believe otherwise, don’t we, Patch?” Cormac heard the coins slapping. “And, of course, sir, you can always go to argue your case in the assizes.” He turned to his men. “You lot, unhitch the horse, and Patch, you—”
And then Fergus shoved Cormac off the seat and said, “Run!”
Cormac hit the frozen ground and rolled into the iced ditch and what he saw, rolling and hurting and flopping on the brown drainage ice, were a series of jagged moments: Patch’s horse bucking in fear, and his father’s face in fierce resistance, and the earl moving to the right, and Thunder rearing: huge; enraged, striking at the earl, at his horse’s gray head, blood suddenly spouting from the horse’s split brow, and the earl wide-eyed, and a last glance at Cormac from his father.
And then Patch fired the musket.
“No, you fecking idiot!” the earl screamed. “Don’t—”
The noise of the shot echoed in the emptiness. Birds rose and cawed and beat their wings. Horses whinnied.
Then Cormac glimpsed his father sprawled back awkwardly in the seat of the cart. His eyes were wide, staring at the sky. His body made the effort to rise, but a great crimson stain seeped from his chest. His scarf was slippery with blood. All of this glimpsed in seconds. And punctuated by the thin, panicky voice of the earl.
“God damn it all!”
“He’s twitching, milord,” Patch said.
“Then finish him off, you bloody fool! And find his son! He’s a fecking witness. And we can’t—”
Then, as Cormac rolled into the thicket, frantic, panicky, terrified, enraged, pushing belly-flat under the needles of the briar, as Bran always did, he looked back, and saw the earl’s extended arm, his finger pointing, and then Patch gripping a pistol, and heard a smaller explosion as another ball was buried in his father’s body. And the earl’s voice: “The horse, Patch, calm the bloody horse! And take the oats and the firewood too, and—where’s that other one? The young one. Find him!”