Prisoner of Fate (17 page)

T
hey rode south-east all afternoon into the hills to distance themselves from the city, deliberately skirting farms and villages, and keeping off the roads and tracks to avoid other travellers. As the sun sank in the cloud-swollen western sky and rain began to drift from the low grey clouds overhead, Ella urged Clear Moon up a steep mallee-studded slope, the horse’s hoofs striking sparks on the shale, until they crested the hill. A flock of white corellas rose from nearby gum trees, screeching as they circled, annoyed at the unexpected intrusion. ‘Wow,’ Ella breathed as she reined in. A broad, darkening valley opened before them, filled with a thick khaki patch of bushland that spread up the surrounding slopes to the south-west. A grey hint of river wound along the valley floor.

‘We need shelter,’ Swift suggested, conscious of the rain on her face as she twisted to check if anyone had followed them. ‘Let’s go down.’

Ella urged Clear Moon down the slope and into the bushland, and a short distance into the bush she reined in under a broad-canopied, white-barked gum. Swift seized the opportunity to ease down from the horse,
groaning softly as she stretched the muscles of her inner thighs. ‘That’s the furthest I have ever been on a horse,’ she said, rubbing her aching buttocks.

Ella joined her and also stretched. ‘Me too,’ she admitted, and she turned to secure Clear Moon’s reins to a nearby small sapling. ‘We only ever took the horse to the market.’ In the hiatus following her admission, surrounded by the soft whisper of the rain on the gum leaves, Swift held a finger to her lips to ask Ella to listen for a space of time. The two young women waited. ‘Very quiet place,’ Ella observed when her patience broke.

‘Not what I expected,’ said Swift.

‘Why? How’s the bush meant to sound?’

Swift glanced at Ella’s shadowy form. ‘I don’t know. I thought maybe we’d hear birds or animals.’

‘Haven’t you been out here before?’ Ella asked.

‘No. You?’

‘No,’ Ella replied. ‘It’s spooky.’ She shivered. ‘What about a fire? I’m cold and I want to dry out some of that rain.’

‘Let’s eat,’ Swift suggested. ‘That might help.’

‘And a fire? I’ll get some dry wood.’

‘I don’t think a fire would be smart. We don’t know what’s out here. Or who.’ Silence fell between them again, and as Ella stared into the surrounding gloom she imagined shapes moving in it—human shapes. ‘Don’t move,’ Swift hissed. Ella’s imagination took firmer form. Men emerged from the bush. ‘Swift!’ she screamed.

‘You’re very pretty,’ the hook-nosed man snarled between rotten teeth as he squeezed Ella’s cheeks. His face was tattooed with swirling symbols of his tribe and his ears were pierced and decorated with thin bones. ‘I think I’ll be first to have you.’

Ella squirmed against the rope lashing her arms to her sides and bracing her to a tree, but the knots were strong. Several paces away, a flickering campfire exposed Swift’s unconscious figure sprawled on the leaf-littered ground. Dark blood was caked on the back of her head and her left arm was scored with a deep sword cut. Eight men squatted or stood around the fire. Three were cleaning and soothing wounds, victims of Swift’s brief stand.

The hook-nosed man grinned at Ella. ‘You had a real man, little girl?’ he crooned. ‘Have you had a—’ His dark eyes suddenly snapped wide with surprise and his mouth hung open, caught on the phrase in his throat. Then he collapsed. Behind him, his companions were yelling and more men leapt into the firelight, swords flashing, the crack of a thundermaker echoing across the bush.

The fighting was brief. Ella’s captors fled into the bush.

A long-haired, bearded man stopped to look at Swift before he strode to the tree where Ella was tied. He appraised her with his glittering eyes, before he produced a wickedly curved and sharp knife. She tensed and gasped, but the stranger skilfully slipped the knife between the rope and her skin and cut her free. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked. She hesitated. ‘Relax,’ he coaxed. ‘I’m not going to slit your throat.’

‘Ella,’ she answered.

‘City girl’s foreign name,’ he muttered. ‘And your friend?’ Three men were lifting Swift onto Clear Moon’s back.

‘Swift,’ she told him nervously.

‘Hungry?’ the man asked. She nodded. ‘Good. We’ve got fresh meat. It’ll be cooked by the time we get back to camp. Can you walk?’ She nodded again. ‘Cold?’ The question was brusque. Ella studied the darkbearded face, but she could see no gentleness in the
man’s expression. She nodded. The stranger bent and pulled the leather jacket from the hook-nosed man’s corpse, wiped blood from a small section where a bullet had punctured it, and handed the jacket to Ella, saying, ‘Wear this. He’s got no further use for it.’

Reluctantly, she accepted the gift and put it over her shoulders, noting that the stranger’s companions were stamping out the fire. ‘You haven’t told me your name,’ she said.

‘Dogskinner Trapper,’ he replied gruffly. ‘Now that we’re acquaintances, let’s go.’

Dogskinner Trapper came to Ella, after inspecting Swift’s head wound, carrying a bowl of steaming broth. A large yellow animal trotted beside him, eyes shining in the firelight. ‘I brought you some broth,’ he announced, passing the bowl to her, and noticing her concerned stare at his accompanying animal, he continued, ‘This is Ghost. It’s all right. He’s a dingo, but he thinks people are better companions than his own kind. Give him some time and he’ll get to know you.’ He reached down and scratched the dingo’s neck ruff. ‘I’ve tried to tell him that people are less trustworthy than dingoes, but he seems to disagree.’ Ghost stared up at Ella, liquid eyes burning with reflected firelight, a vision that made her shiver. Trapper smiled beneath his thick brown beard. ‘Go guard the west corner,’ he told Ghost. The dingo’s ears twitched and he trotted across the campsite into the darkness.

‘He understands you?’ Ella asked.

‘We talk,’ he replied. ‘I use my language. He uses his. It’s a complicated business, but it seems to work for us. Eat,’ he urged, and sat on a fallen tree branch.

She sat beside him and sipped at her broth, enjoying the flow of warmth through her chilled chest. ‘Why are you called Dogskinner?’ she asked. ‘Do you skin dogs?’

‘That’s my trade,’ Trapper replied. ‘I hunt and trap dingoes and sell the skins.’

‘But you have a dingo as a friend,’ she protested.

‘Ghost isn’t the kind of dingo I’m paid to hunt. Local shepherds and farmers pay me to hunt dingoes that kill their animals. I only hunt dingoes that cause trouble. Dingoes like Ghost I leave alone.’

Ella screwed up her face. ‘You’re like Swift.’

‘Your friend hunts dingoes?’

‘People,’ she replied.

Trapper’s brown eyes reflected his surprise. ‘Your friend hunts people?’

She sipped at her broth. ‘Yes,’ she answered, after she swallowed.

Trapper stood and a note of caution entered his voice. ‘Your friend is a bounty hunter?’

‘No.’

‘Then what?’

‘I think she’s an assassin,’ she said.

He glanced in the direction where Swift was wrapped in a blanket, asleep. ‘What do you mean by you “think she’s an assassin”?’ he asked warily.

‘I don’t really know,’ she replied. ‘No. Well, I guess I do. I saw her kill someone.’

‘Who?’

She looked nervously in Swift’s direction before she said, ‘Prince Shortear.’

Trapper sucked in his breath and turned his head slightly aside as if what he was hearing was making him uncertain. ‘Shortear? Are you sure?’

She shivered and lowered her gaze. ‘I’m sure,’ she replied.

Trapper looked in Swift’s direction again. ‘Your friend killed one of the Kerwyn princes.’ He snorted. ‘Good story.’

‘It’s true,’ Ella insisted. ‘I was there. It was—horrible.’

‘Then tell me how she did it.’

Her eyes widened. ‘I can’t.’

His steady gaze made her fear that he was going to make her describe the murder against her will, but instead he asked, ‘What about you? What do you do?’

‘I work in a tavern,’ she replied, grateful for the change in topic. ‘The Magpie and Maid. Have you heard of it?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I keep out of the city. What do you do there?’

‘Serve customers.’

‘But now the two of you are out here alone.’

‘It wasn’t my choice,’ Ella said testily. ‘She’s being hunted by the king’s guards.’ She looked up at Trapper, a pleading expression on her face. ‘Can you take me back to the city? I don’t want to go with her.’

‘Why did she kill Prince Shortear?’ he asked.

‘Did you hear what I asked?’ she insisted indignantly.

‘I heard you. I’ll decide in the morning. Why did she kill Shortear?’

‘I don’t know. Ask her when she wakes up.’

‘So why did you run away with her?’

‘I told you. I had no choice. She was afraid I’d identify her to the king’s guards.’

‘And would you?’

His tone made her hesitate before she answered. ‘Depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On whether or not I had to say anything.’

Trapper’s eyes creased in a grim smile. ‘There’s some meat when you’ve finished the broth,’ he told her. ‘I’ll get my brother to bring you a blanket. We’ll be moving on before dawn. Get some sleep.’

‘Are you going to take me home?’ Ella persisted.

‘When the time is right,’ he replied, standing.

‘Please,’ she begged.

‘Sleep,’ he ordered. ‘We’re travelling quickly in the morning,’ and he walked towards his companions who were hunkered by the fire.

Swift’s head ached. Gingerly, she opened her eyes to discover that she was cloaked in darkness. She felt her head and found a cloth bandage wrapped over the sorest part at the back and the cloth was damp at that point. She listened. Someone was snoring. She slid her hand to her belt, but her knife was missing, as was her tiny crossbow. Stealthily, wincing silently as her head thumped with pain, she rolled onto her side and paused. Soft murmurs. Conversation. She rose and warily crept toward the voices, drawn by her curiosity to know her captors before she escaped. Two shadows squatted beside the dull campfire embers. ‘…to the city.’

‘We aren’t going there for at least four weeks. You agreed to that.’

‘But what do we do with them?’

‘Let them go.’

‘The king’s guards are hunting the skinny one.’

‘Good reason to let them go. You said she killed a prince. Let her deal with it.’ Swift crouched in the silence that descended between the two men, straining in vain to make out their forms in the darkness. ‘We have to move out of here anyway. The old chief isn’t going to like hearing that we attacked one of his hunting parties.’

‘These girls aren’t going to be safe in the bush, Trackmarker. They’re city women. We have to at least get them away from here.’

‘So? That’s not our problem, Trapper. They’ll slow us down.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘What about the killer? You’re not going to trust her, are you, Trapper?’

‘I’ve got her weapons. She won’t be all that mobile with that head wound for…’ Swift felt blood rush through her head and the world started to wobble and darken. She groaned and knew she was falling sideways, and knew she couldn’t stop falling.

S
tanding on the ochre-stained rock on the bank, she gazed with admiration at the river meandering through the bush. The mid-morning sun was dazzling, flecking the surface with sparkling jewels of silver light. The only river she’d seen up close until now was the dirty, tepid yellow water, polluted with human waste and the decomposing corpses of animals, that rolled slowly through the city. The water where she stood was clear to the shale.

‘We cross about a half-day’s walk further along,’ said Trapper as he joined her. ‘How’s the head?’

Swift’s hand automatically reached for the bandage. ‘Itchy.’

‘Good. Then it’s healing. You can take the bandage off tomorrow and let the air do its work.’

‘Where exactly are we heading?’ she asked and looked past Trapper’s shoulder at Ella. The girl was leading Clear Moon along the narrow trail past where Swift and Trapper stood and she was smiling and deep in conversation with Trapper’s companion, Trackmarker.

‘We’re taking you to a safer point in the hills where you can stay for a few days. After that, my advice is to go back to the city.’

‘Ella can’t go back.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s not safe for her. There are people hunting her now.’

‘I thought you were the assassin.’

Swift narrowed her eyes as she returned Trapper’s gaze. ‘She was there when I killed Prince Shortear. People know that. I can look after myself, but she’s easy prey.’

‘She can’t stay in the bush alone.’

‘I was hoping you might look after her.’

‘She can’t stay with me,’ Trapper said adamantly.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m busy. We’re hunting a rogue dingo. He’s headed towards the mountains and we need to track him down before he gets too high. A city girl will only slow us down.’ He turned and stepped off the rock.

Swift was silent as she followed Trapper in the wake of the small hunting party. Ella was a burden she didn’t need. Escaping into the bush was a stupid idea, one she hadn’t thought through thoroughly. Normally she simply laid low in the city with people she knew until trouble passed, but Ella had forced her to change her strategy. She had hoped that the coincidental encounter with the hunters would open an opportunity to release her of her obligation to the girl prostitute. Apparently it hadn’t. She realised she should have eliminated Ella when she killed Shortear, but Ella had reminded her of her sister, preventing her doing what was pragmatic. Frustration bubbling, she caught up to Trapper and asked, ‘Why do you hunt dingoes?’

He chuckled, and asked in return, ‘Why do you hunt men?’

‘Justice,’ she bluntly replied.

‘That’s why I hunt rogue dingoes,’ he said, shrugging. ‘They kill innocent animals.’

‘But it’s in their nature to kill other animals. That’s how they survive,’ she argued.

‘It’s in some men’s nature to kill other men,’ he retorted. ‘You call it law to punish them for killing. I am the law for the dingoes.’

‘Animals don’t think like men. Men make choices. They don’t have to kill to live.’

Trapper stopped. ‘Watch,’ he instructed. He put his fingers to his lips and sounded a high-pitched whistle that echoed across the face of the closest hills. The others in the party ahead on the riverbank looked back to see what was happening, but when they realised that there was no matter for concern they turned and continued. ‘There.’ Trapper was pointing at a yellow shape moving between the mallee a hundred paces away, along the slope of the hill. He whistled again, a short burst, and the animal trotted down the slope, vanishing and reappearing between the bushes and rocks, until he emerged less than twenty paces from the river bank.

‘Your dingo,’ Swift said.

‘Ghost,’ he reminded her. ‘Here!’ he called to the dingo. Ghost’s ears straightened and his tail lifted, and he stared with liquid amber eyes at the two humans for several moments. Then his tail dropped and he turned and merged into the bush. ‘Tell me,’ said Trapper quietly, ‘that animals can’t think or make decisions.’

‘But he didn’t come to you,’ she noted with annoyance.

‘Because he chose not to. He assessed what was going on and decided my call wasn’t a need. He showed me that he was willing if there was a need by coming down from the hill, but he went back to what is more important to him after he assessed the situation. That’s looking at choices and making one. Animals can reason, Swift, some better than others. That’s exactly
like you or me.’ Trapper turned and continued after the party.

Swift paused, looking up the hillside but the dingo, Ghost, was invisible. She stared at Trapper’s back. The man was annoying her. She snorted her discontent and followed him, determined to be rid of the group, especially Trapper and Ella, as soon as practical.

Midafternoon, the party forded the river at a flat, shallow section and ascended a gentle slope into the bush until they came to a derelict log and thatch hut in a tiny clearing among a stand of pine trees. Trapper strode into the clearing, gave four short piercing whistles, and waited. Three men in khaki jerkins and coats and trousers came out of the bush with thundermakers, and the largest of the three grinned and heartily embraced Trapper. ‘Welcome to the bushmen’s home,’ Trackmarker announced to Swift and Ella, and he joined his dingo-hunting companions to greet the men in khaki.

Inside the bushmen’s hut, there were surprises. The broken furniture was enveloped by cobwebs and pigeons scattered when the men entered, wings clattering as they rocketed out of gaps in the shutters and over the men’s heads out of the doorway. The interior stank of bird shit and mould and Swift wondered how the three men lived in such squalor. Then a bushman lifted a trapdoor in the floorboards and the dingo hunters began descending into the earth. ‘Where does this go?’ Swift asked warily.

‘Warmth and good food,’ Trackmarker responded.

They descended a series of wooden steps into a narrow, low tunnel dimly lit by two lamps—one carried at the head of the party, the other at the rear. A warm golden glow flooded into the tunnel as the party reached a circular common chamber. The chamber had
a high-domed ceiling and a fire crackled at the centre, where two more bushmen were slowly turning a small kangaroo on a spit over the hearth. Smoke drifted up through a chimney hole in the dome.

As Ella and Swift entered, the men’s eyes turned to study them. ‘I’m Forester,’ a burly bushman announced to them, and pointed in turn to his companions. ‘Trapmaker, Beekeeper, Birdkeeper, Wallabyhunter, Fisher, Watcher, Treechopper. And you?’ His eyes focussed on Ella.

‘Ella,’ she told him and smiled.

‘Foreign name,’ he said dismissively and stared at Swift.

‘Swift,’ she said coldly.

Forester smiled behind his dark beard and said, ‘You’re welcome to food, rest and a place to sleep if you’re friends of the Dogskinners. Everyone make yourself comfortable. The ‘roo is almost done and we have stories to share.’

Swift assessed the company of men as she took a seat against the wall. Leaving Ella with them was not a good idea, she decided. She had to find somewhere to leave the girl safely so that she could return to the city and get on with her business, but the unplanned sojourn with the hunters and the bushmen was becoming increasingly more complex and frustrating.

The evening in the bushmen’s hideaway, however, turned out to be good for food and wine, and as frustrated as she was with her dilemma, Swift reached a point of satisfied exhaustion. The men talked about the hunting, the weather, the news of the local hill tribes and their disputes, while they drank and ate and sang snatches of ballads. The bushmen accepted Trapper’s explanation of why Swift and Ella were with them—that they’d strayed into the bush out of curiosity, only to become lost before they were set upon by a roaming
tribal band. ‘You’re lucky the Dogskinners came along when they did,’ Forester told Swift. ‘The old chief doesn’t have much control over his young men of late and they’re always hungry for trouble. Two girls like you would have made plenty of sport for them.’

‘We wondered what they were hunting for,’ the tall man named Treechopper added. ‘We watched them this morning before sunrise. They were sneaking along High Wattle Ridge.’

‘Weren’t far behind you,’ said Beekeeper to Trapper.

‘So if you girls are from the city you can tell us the news from there,’ said Forester. ‘Is the king dead yet?’ The men chuckled.

Ella looked at Swift, but when she saw Swift shrug with disinterest at Forester’s good-natured inquiry she announced, ‘The king’s not dead, but one of the princes is.’ A murmur rippled around the fire and Swift gave Ella a fearful glare.

‘Which one?’ Treechopper asked.

‘Shortear,’ Ella told her audience. ‘He was murdered.’

‘Who by?’ Forester asked as he hacked a slice of kangaroo meat from the carcass.

Ella glanced at Swift who was watching her with a steely gaze and she looked at Trapper who was slowly shaking his head. ‘No one knows,’ she finally replied. ‘He got away.’

‘Which one was Shortear?’ Beekeeper asked.

‘Fourth one,’ Treechopper explained. ‘Spent all his time with whores and drunkards and cutthroats. Got what he deserved, I’d say.’

‘You seem to know a lot about royal matters,’ said Trapper.

‘He ought to,’ Birdkeeper intervened. ‘He worked as a king’s guard for ten years.’

Swift and Trapper both stared at Treechopper. ‘So why did you leave?’ Trapper asked.

‘I got sick of working for Kerwyn bastards with blood on their hands and no conscience,’ Treechopper replied. ‘I deserted.’

Forester patted him on the shoulder. ‘Right thing to do, my friend.’

‘We’ve got better things to talk about than politics,’ said Trackmarker, and the conversation shifted from the city events to plans for the coming change of season.

Swift relaxed with the change of topic, but she could not forgive Ella’s indiscretion and she stared at the girl sitting between Trackmarker and Fisher as the evening waned, wondering at her stupidity for not killing Ella just because she found her to be like her sister. Exhaustion and wine and a full stomach eventually soothed her mood and drove her to a pile of furs, and she slumped into them and promptly fell asleep.

She dreamed of her son, Runner. He ran through winding, narrow streets ahead of her, laughing at her clumsy, futile attempts to catch him as he skipped away each time she thought she could reach him. She had to catch him because he was in grave danger. Someone was coming to hurt him. He was going to die. Her son was going to die. She tried to call him back as he reached an opening into a main street, but her mouth was dry, her neck quivered with fear and her jaw hung slack. He was stepping out into the open and he was going to die.

Swift sat up, terrified, her heart racing. Sometimes she had dreams that seemed real. Sometimes her dreams became real, like when she dreamed that her friend, Flower Greenhill, was drowning in the harbour and two cycles later Flower’s body was found floating near the old docks. Since then, dreams of real people always scared her. She caught her breath.

The underground chamber was stiflingly warm. A soft red glow emanated from the dying hearth and the sounds of drunken sleeping men filled the close air, rough snoring and catching of breath in sleep. And she caught another sound—a soft, repeated cry—and when she turned her head she saw the shadows and crimson-hued flesh of two people locked in slow, rhythmic lovemaking. She watched the girl straddle Trackmarker, her back arching as her passion rose, and Trackmarker’s breathing grew deeper and faster. When the man groaned and Ella collapsed onto his chest, Swift sank back into her furs, angry because she saved the girl and never meant to bring her to a place like this. Lying awake, with the sounds of male sleep rattling around her, she made her decision. Ella would stay here. Swift couldn’t keep her, especially because she had to return to the city, and Ella was already attaching herself to the men with the best skill she had. When she was certain no one would notice her, she rose from her furs, crept out of the bushmen’s lair, and escaped into the cold night heading for Port of Joy.

She dug her fingers into the oozing mud, pulling at a hefty lump of concrete until the earth relinquished its grip with a squelching slurp to reveal a small hole. She thrust in her hand and pulled out a heavy black leather drawstring purse that clinked when she dropped it onto a dry slab of stone. With a wary glance around the ruined hut to ensure that she was alone, she opened the purse and extracted a handful of silver shillings before returning the purse to its muddy hideaway and replacing the concrete.

She emerged from the familiar farmhouse ruin cautiously, pausing under the derelict veranda out of the rain from where she watched a lone wood cart, driven by a hunch-shouldered man with raindrops dripping from
the brim of his sodden broad-brimmed hat, and pulled by a saggy-backed nag, travel along the road into the city’s south-eastern quarter. A skinny brindle dog trotted in the cart’s wake, looking as miserable as the owner’s horse. No one else was out in the dismal weather. Bracing for the chill of the rain, Swift headed onto the road.

By the time she was weaving through the Foundry Quarter alleys, the rain had stopped and the late-afternoon sun’s brittle rays occasionally broke through the grey cloud, but did not succeed in warming the damp earth. She walked briskly, avoiding eye contact with people who crossed her path, until she reached a narrow street corner where a dangling sign marked a run-down cobbler’s shop. She turned into the street and knocked at the chipped and faded white door of the third building. ‘Who is it?’ a voice asked.

‘Me,’ Swift whispered.

The lock moved and the door edged open. A dark-haired young woman’s face appeared in the gap, her figure backlit by a small hearth fire. ‘Swift?’ she asked.

Swift pushed inside and closed the door. ‘Sorry, Buttermilk, but I need to stay somewhere.’

‘Sure,’ Buttermilk said. ‘You’re always welcome.’

Swift smiled briefly and surveyed the small room, focussing on two internal doors. ‘Anyone else here?’

‘No. Honey’s working tonight.’