‘I should,’ said Dunbar, softly, ‘have killed you when I had the chance.’
‘You should have left me alone when you had the chance.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Any weapons?’
‘Why should I tell you?’
‘Fair enough.’ Nervous, Kleist kept watching the trees. This was too risky.
‘This could take hours. Finish me.’
‘So I should, but it’s easier said than done.’
‘Why? You did for those two without much problem.’
‘Yeah, but I was angry then.’
‘When all’s said, I let you go. Finish it.’
‘Your men will be back. Let them do it.’
‘Not for hours. Maybe not at all.’
‘Well I don’t want to, see.’
‘You’d best be ...’
There was a loud ‘THWACK!’ as Kleist loosed the bow almost point blank into Dunbar’s chest. His eyes widened and he breathed out for what seemed like minutes but was only a few seconds. Fortunately for both of them that was that.
Behind him the man on his knees still groaned and whistled. Kleist dropped to his knees and heaved. But there was nothing in his stomach to come out. It was not easy to keep on retching and keep an eye on the trees. He dropped the bow – he needed his hands free to search his new possessions and claim his old. He stood up slowly and screamed.
Standing five yards away was a girl. She looked at him wide-eyed and then threw herself into his arms and burst into tears.
‘Thank you! Thank you!’ she sobbed, hugging him as if he were a lost parent, her hands clutching him with desperate relief and gratitude. She kissed him full on the lips, then pushed herself into his chest, her hands squeezing his upper back as if she would never let him go. ‘You were so brave, so brave.’ She stepped back to examine him, eyes brimming with admiration.
It would not have taken a talented student of human nature to have read Kleist’s not only astonished look but also the deep shiftiness of his expression as she looked adoringly at him. He watched the understanding that he had not arrived to rescue her move over her face like a fast sunrise. The admiration washed out and her eyes began to become wet with tears. It was not often that Kleist felt mean-spirited.
She stepped back rather more than the emotion of her discovery warranted and produced the knife she had lifted from Kleist’s belt while she was so gratefully hugging him.
The look of astonishment and anger on Kleist’s face was so comic in its effect, the girl burst into laughter.
His face went red with anger, which only made her laugh harder. Then he stepped forward, knocked the knife out of her hand and punched her in the face. She went down like a sack of coal and fetched her head a nasty blow. He picked up the knife, keeping his eyes on her, then gave a quick scan of the trees. Things were getting out of control. Her expression now was one of shock and pain at her bloody nose. She sat up.
‘Laughing on the other side of your face now.’
She said nothing as he backed away and started examining the bundles around the camp for his own stuff and anything else portable. The man on his knees was still moaning and his punctured lung still whistling.
The girl started crying again. Kleist carried on searching. In what must have been Lord Dunbar’s pack he found his money. Otherwise the pickings were scant. Their lives as robbers can’t have been up to much. And they only had three horses, including the one they stole from Kleist. The girl’s crying became louder and more uncontrollable. Along with the groan and whistle of the kneeling man it was getting on Kleist’s nerves. But more than that.
The tears of a woman are an alcahest to the soul of man, Redeemer Fraser had once said to him. A tearful bitch can dissolve all a man’s good judgement in its liquid gerrymandering.
At the time this warning had seemed of dubious relevance, given that he had no memory of ever having seen a woman. His experience in Memphis, though it had very much expanded his experience of women in some ways, was not helpful when it came to tears, the whores of Kitty Town not being given much to weeping.
‘Shut up,’ he said.
She reduced the sound to a grizzling and the occasional heavy sob.
‘What the hell were you doing with these desperadoes?’
She could not answer at first, trying to bring herself under control with wet gasps of emotion.
‘They kidnapped me,’ she said, which was not true or not entirely true, ‘and they all raped me.’ His time in Memphis had made Kleist familiar with the term. He had heard a number of puzzling amusing stories about rape and had caused even more laughter by asking for an explanation. He was shocked by the answer and did not approve. She was clearly a liar but she looked as distraught as even Kleist would have expected. But then a few minutes ago she’d been laughing at him.
‘If you’re telling the truth, I’m sorry.’
‘Let me have one of the horses.’
‘That would mean you could keep up with me. I don’t think so.’
‘You’ll have the best horse – the others are just kick-bags.’
This was true enough.
‘I could sell them in the next town. Why should I give one to you when you’re a thief? Or worse.’
‘They’re both branded. They’ll hang you for a horse thief if you try to sell them.’
‘Well, you look as if you’d know,’ he said, tying his newly filled bag onto his horse saddle.
‘Please. Two of them are still out there.’
‘One of them isn’t going to be following anyone for quite some time.’
‘But the other one could.’
‘All right. Just shut up. But you go in that direction,’ he said, pointing to the west. ‘If I see you again, I’ll cut your bloody head off.’ With that he mounted his horse and set off, leaving the girl sitting on the forest floor, next to the kneeling man, still wheezing and whistling. If his actions in leaving the young woman in the clearing were ignoble, they were in the light of the appalling consequences of his only other experience of rescuing young women in distress at least understandable.
‘Do you think he’s right?’ asked Gil.
‘What do you think?’ said Bosco.
‘I think he’s wrong,’ replied Gil, ‘I think the Purgators are where they deserve to be. Their fate is their character. If God has not been able to change their hearts not even someone who is the anger of God made flesh can change them, blessing be upon him.’
‘We must hope, Redeemer, that you are wrong. Cale is full of surprises.’
‘Now I know why I never loved him.’
They both laughed.
‘Should I continue?’ said Gil. ‘With the plan to invest Bose Ikard?’ Bose Ikard was the Burgrave of Switzerland, notionally second only to the notorious King Zog of that country, but a very close second. With the Materazzi empire having collapsed Bose Ikard was now the most powerful of all the rainmakers in the four quarters. He had made, in Bosco and Gil’s eyes, the mistake of allowing a remnant of the Materazzi to take refuge in Spanish Leeds, something they rightly regarded as hostile to their interests. What they did not realize was that Bose Ikard took the same view and only a screaming fit by King Zog had forced his hand to allow the Materazzi to take refuge in Spanish Leeds. The Redeemer Diplomatic Service was not adept at either diplomacy or the gathering of intelligence and Bosco had limited access to its findings, which in any case did not include the fact that Bose Ikard had done everything possible to encourage the Materazzi to go away. Beyond simply allowing them to stay he offered no help and no money, a lack of assistance he hoped would effectively starve them into moving on somewhere else where they would no longer be his problem. Understandably he did not want their presence to give the Redeemers an opportunity to cause trouble. However, Bosco knew nothing of this reluctance and could only infer Ikard’s attitudes from his apparently hospitable treatment of the Materazzi. He’d thought it might be a good idea to have him killed to mark Zog’s card and to discourage anyone else who might be thinking of harbouring the Materrazi or anyone else the Redeemers had taken a dislike to.