Part 5 (1/2)

'May I sit down, Eric?'

'You can do what you like. I can't stop you,' said the boy miserably.

Shannow pulled up a chair and reversed it. 'Do you wan to talk about it?'

'About what?'

'I don't know, Eric. I only know that you are troubled Do you want to talk about your father? Or Fletcher? O me?'

'I expect Mother wishes I wasn't here,' said the boy sitting up and hugging his knees. 'Then she could be with you all the time.'

'She has not said that to me.'

'Mr Burry doesn't like you and I don't like you either.'

'Sometimes I don't like myself,' said Shannow. That keeps me in the majority.'

'Everything was all right until you came,' said Eric, tears starting as he bit his lip and looked away. 'Mother and me were fine. She slept in here and I didn't have bad dreams.

And Mr Fletcher was my friend - and everything was fine.'

'I'll be gone soon,' Shannow told him softly, and the truth of the words. .h.i.t him like a blow.

The pool settles, and the ripples fade, and everything returns to the way it was.

'It won't be the same,' said Eric, and Shannow could offer no argument.

'You are very wise, Eric. Life changes - and not always for the better. It is the mark of a man how he copes with that fact. I think you will cope well, for you are strong; stronger than you think.'

'But I won't be able to stop them taking our house.'

'No.'

'And Mr Fletcher will force mother to live with him?'

'Yes,' said Shannow, swallowing hard and keeping the awful images from his mind.

'I think you had better stay for a little while, Mr Shannow,' said Eric.

'I think perhaps I had. It would be nice if we could be friends, Eric.'

'I don't want to be your friend.'

'Why?'

'Because you took my mother away from me, and now I am all alone.'

'You are not alone, but I cannot convince you of that, even though I probably know more about loneliness than any man alive. I have never had a friend, Eric. When I was your age, my father and mother were killed. I was raised for some time by a neighbour called Claude Vurrow; then he too was killed and since then I have been alone. People do not like me. I am the Jerusalem Man, the Shadow, the Brigand-slayer. Wherever I am I will be hated and hunted -or used by ”better” men. That is loneliness, Eric - sitting with a frightened child, and not being able to reach out and convince even him - that is loneliness.

'When I die, Eric, no one will mourn for me. It will be as if I never was. Would you like to be that lonely, boy?'

Eric said nothing and Shannow left the room.

The three men watched Shannow ride from the farmhouse heading east towards the forests of pine. Swiftly they saddled their ponies and rode after him.

Jerrik took the lead, for he was the man with the long rifle, a muzzle-loading flintlock a mere thirty-five years old. It was a fine gun which had seen three owners murdered for owning it. Jerrik had acquired it as settlement for a gambling debt two years before, and had then used it to kill the former owner who was tracking him to steal it back. It seemed poetic, somehow, though Jerrik could not verbalize the reason.

Behind him rode Pearson and Swallow, men Jerrik could rely on ... so long as all three were poor. The trio had arrived only recently in Rivervale, but had swiftly come under Bard's watchful eye. He had recommended them to Fletcher, and this task was their entry to the Committee.

'Hunt down and kill the Jerusalem Man.' The long rifle could handle that, given a fixed target, and Swallow was an expert crossbowman. Pearson was more of a knife expert, but he could hurl a blade with uncanny accuracy. Jerrik was confident that the deed could be completed without tears.

'Do you think he's leaving the area?' asked Swallow. Jerrik showed his contempt at the question by ignoring it but Pearson grinned, showing broken teeth.

'No saddlebags,' he said.

'Why don't we wait and hit him when he comes back?' asked Swallow.

'What if he comes back at night?' answered Jerrik.

Swallow lapsed into silence. Younger than the others, he felt a need to be heard with respect, yet every time he spoke he left himself open to mockery. Pearson slapped the blond youngster on the shoulder and grinned at him. He knew what the lad was thinking, as he knew also the cause of his problem. Swallow was too stupid to know that he was stupid. But Pearson liked him and they were well-matched in many ways. Both disliked the company of women, both enjoyed the power that came from a lack of conscience and the G.o.d-like joy of holding a life in their hands before snuffing it out. The only difference lay in the fact that Swallow enjoyed killing men, whereas Pearson found the torture of women to be an exquisite pleasure.

Jerrik was unlike them in that regard. He neither enjoyed nor abhorred killing. It was merely a task - like weeding, or felling trees, or skinning rabbits; something to be done swiftly. Watching Pearson and Swallow at their work only bored him, and the screams always kept him awake. Jerrik was approaching fifty and felt it was tune to settle down and raise children; he had his eye on a farm in Rivervale, and the young widow who owned it.

With the Barta coins he expected for the Jerusalem Man he would have some woollen clothes made, and pay court to the widow. She would have to treat him seriously, as a Committee man.

The trio followed Shannow's tracks high into the pine forest and it was coming to dusk when they spotted his camp-fire.

The three dismounted and hobbled their horses, creeping through the undergrowth towards the small blaze. Some fifty feet from the fire Jerrik saw the shadowy outline of the Jerusalem Man sitting with his back against a tree, his wide-brimmed hat tipped down over his eyes.

'You just sit there and think,' whispered Jerrik, hunkering down and priming his musket.

He directed Pearson and Swallow to the left and right, ready to rush in once the mortal shot was fired. Then the two crept off into the trees.

Jerrik c.o.c.ked the musket and sat back, resting his elbow on his knee. The gun was levelled on the seated figure . . .

Something cold touched Jerrik's temple.

And his head exploded.

At the sound of the shot Pearson loosed his crossbow bolt. It flashed across the clearing, slicing through Shannow's coat and the bush inside it. Swallow ran up, hurdling the camp- fire, and his knife followed Pearson's bolt. The coat fell from the bush, the hat toppling with it, and Swallow's mouth fell open. Something hit him a wicked blow in the back and a hole the size of a man's fist appeared in his chest. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Pearson backed away from the carnage and sprinted to his pony. Loosing the hobble, he leapt to the saddle and booted the animal into a run. The boom of Jerrik's musket came just as Pearson's pony had reached a gallop; the animal fell headlong and Pearson flew over its neck to land on his back against a tree. He rolled and came up with a knife in his hand.

'Show yourself!' he screamed.

The Jerusalem Man stepped from the screen of trees and moved into Pearson's view. In his hand was the ivory-handled percussion pistol.

'You don't have to kill me,' said Pearson, eyes locked on the pistol. 'I won't come back - I'll just ride away.'

'Who sent you?'