Renegade (4 page)

As the sun begins to set, we reach a patch of woodland. We should now be in the general area where one of the rebel groups is based but there is no specific location on the map.

Faith and I wait for the others to catch up. When they do, Hart is holding a hand across his chest, trying not to cough. It is good to see there are no new blood marks on his clothes but he
needs medical help soon.

We huddle together surrounded by a copse of bushes but even with our warmer clothes, the evening air is biting as the light begins to disappear. I am wedged between Hart and Jela as we pass a
container of water around and I point to the far side of the woods.

‘The map says the rebels are in that direction. I have no idea what we’re looking for but if they were out in the open, the Kingsmen would have gone after them. I don’t know if
that means the rebels have moved on, or if they’re hiding.’

A burst of wind skims through the trees, the chill hurting my lungs as I pause for breath. ‘We’re all tired so we can either use our blankets to camp here for the night and try to
stay warm, or we can carry on through to the other side of the woods. There might be somewhere with a roof, or we could stumble across the people we’re looking for.’

The only consensus is that people do not want to go too far. Given the trek we have already made, plus the temperature, I don’t blame them. According to the map, there is nothing here
except for the woods, a river which we have followed and a village. That seems to be our best bet, so we wrap ourselves in blankets and edge through the trees together.

Although I am used to the woods at home, the nervousness of the others adds to my unease. The clouds are still low, the dipping sun and high moon offering little light through the trees. Every
squeak and crackle in the undergrowth sets a ripple of apprehension running through the group as I realise hardly anyone is used to the outdoors in the way I am.

Imrin reaches out to hold my hand and I let him, knowing it is for his benefit more than mine. Faith creeps ahead stealthily until we are within sight of the edge of the trees.

‘Stay here,’ I whisper to Imrin, releasing his hand. ‘Keep everyone as warm as you can. We’ll be right back.’ I see his eyebrows rise in confusion until Faith
appears by my side. ‘Her clothes are darker,’ I say, knowing that isn’t the true reason why I want her to be with me. The alternative is to tell him that I need someone who can
look after themselves as well as Faith can. Not only that, I need a respite from the way he fusses over me.

His eyes flicker sideways and, for a moment, I think he is going to insist upon coming. Instead he nods. ‘Once everyone is settled, I’ll scout around the area in case there’s
shelter.’

‘Good idea,’ I say, meaning it.

As he turns, Faith and I move past the tree line, to where a ridge overlooks the village. The mist has lifted slightly, allowing the moonlight to offer a small amount of illumination.

‘What can you see?’ I ask as we stand together. It is too gloomy for me to be sure of my own thoughts.

‘That looks like a church,’ Faith says, pointing towards some debris on the far side of a field. I squint through the murk and it is hard to tell if she is right. At the edge of the
village closest to us is what could be a large arched window frame but the only indication of a spire is a pointed piece of rubble in the distance.

She leans further forward. ‘Above the window, it looks like a cross. Do you reckon there’s anyone in there?’

It is more of an indentation with different coloured bricks but she is right.

‘I don’t know, probably not,’ I reply. ‘I can’t see any areas that haven’t been flattened. If it is a church, surely that would have been the first place the
Kingsmen checked if they came through here?’

Faith hums an agreement as we carefully slide down the bank, skimming along the edge of a hedge until we are near to the building. I don’t need to say anything as Faith nods and points to
the near side of the rubble as I head to the other. It is scary how we seem to be on the same wavelength.

I watch her crouch as she disappears into the darkness while I stare up at the cross. Any glass that was once in the window has gone but the cross embedded in the wall above it is unmistakeable.
Faith was right.

Quickly and quietly, I clamber over the piles of stone. At the peak, I stop to peer into the distance where there is nothing but rows of flattened houses. If anyone is hiding, they are doing a
very good job of it.

At the far end, I see that the demolished pointed section is definitely a spire. It is hard to tell exactly what happened, but it seems to have collapsed in on itself, leaving the tall
pyramid-shaped part jutting out from the large remains of what would have once been the rest of the tower. I stare up at a second cross on top of the roof and realise how little I know about the
war. Everything we have been taught has either come from our parents, who would have only seen it from a personal point of view, or from information fed to us by the King. I find it hard to imagine
what could have caused this type of destruction and why a village of this size would be targeted. Could an army have done this, or would it have been a bomb either dropped from above or triggered
under the village?

I am brought back to the present as Faith hisses my name, the sound amplified by the silence around us. I move around the spire until I see her standing at the edge of some rusted gates.
‘Did you find anything?’ I call.

‘Just this graveyard. I climbed as high as I could but there are fields and the woods in one direction and bricks in the other.’

The cemetery has long since been abandoned to weeds, with grass that is almost as tall as us poking through the metal fence.

‘We could come back during the day?’ Faith says. ‘Perhaps one or two of us at a time?’

I shake my head. ‘We’d be in the open too much. There’s no cover because everything is so flat.’

‘We’d be able to see from a distance if there were Kingsmen or anyone around.’

‘True, but they’d be able to see us too. Let’s stay together and try a few streets over.’

Faith doesn’t query me, following as I manoeuvre into a side street that is relatively clear of clutter. We keep carefully to the shadows, moving in single file. If anything, the buildings
are in a worse state the further we venture. At the other side of the village is a sign thanking people for driving carefully but there are no other indications of civilisation. Apart from the
semi-collapsed church, the rest of the area has been levelled.

‘You were right,’ I say. ‘We’ll have to come back tomorrow in case we’ve missed something. Perhaps we could come with Imrin or Pietra for a fresh set of
eyes?’

We turn to head back to the woods, my legs ready to give way.

I stifle a yawn as Faith asks the question I suspect she has wanted the answer to all day. ‘What was it like, killing the Kingsman?’

‘I didn’t have time to think about it,’ I reply, trying not to remember the bloodstains on the bottom of my blanket. ‘He was reaching for me and the knife was in my hand
and then his neck before I knew it.’

Faith’s voice sounds higher, cracking slightly as she replies. ‘Do you feel guilty?’

‘It was him or me . . . I’ve been telling myself I didn’t have a choice.’

For a few moments she doesn’t respond but then she replies through choked tears. ‘There was this man at the castle when we were escaping. I don’t even think he was a guard.
Imrin told us you were leading the Kingsmen in the opposite direction but we couldn’t get through the door at the medical bay quickly enough and this guy came out of nowhere. I’d
grabbed a sword from the ground as we were running and could barely lift it. He took me by surprise and the next thing I know, he was on the floor with blood everywhere.’

I reach out and take her freezing hand. ‘It’s not us that made this happen. We’d be back in our towns and villages with our parents, brothers and sisters if we hadn’t
been brought here to serve the King. We’re doing what we must to stay alive.’

For the first time, I realise that Faith’s bravado is fear. The only way she can deal with the terror inside her is by pretending she’s the strongest of us all. ‘It would be
nice to see my mum and dad again one day,’ she says. ‘I don’t have any brothers or sisters and never had many friends. It was just the three of us. After I was chosen, I thought
they’d at least get extra food with me gone.’

As she talks about her family, it makes me think of my mum in Martindale and my brother, Colt. The cobbled streets seem farther away than ever. Hopefully they got my warning message before we
escaped and are hiding somewhere in safety. I always knew that by escaping there was a chance they could be punished. This is the guilt I have to carry: that I might have chosen my own safety over
theirs.

We loop around the front of the church and help each other over the stile before heading along the line of hedges. The silence somehow seems worse now I know Faith is faking things as much as I
am. Neither of us is as strong or as confident as we pretend, so what does that say for the others?

The moon bursts through the clearing clouds as we cross the fields, suddenly illuminating our muddy surroundings and giving us an uninterrupted view towards the trees. It feels as if the
temperature has dropped by a degree or two as I pull my hat tighter over my ears. On the far side of the field is a second stile. Faith begins climbing first but slips, her muddy boots sliding from
the wood as I step forward to support her. Her entire weight crunches onto my good shoulder and I try not to wince in pain but she is already apologising.

Before I can tell her she has nothing to say sorry for, our eyes lock in a moment of terror as a male voice screams in agony from the trees high above.

The aches and pains from a day of walking evaporate as I hurl myself over the stile and barrel up the bank. I can hear secondary follow-up whimpers echoing around the outer
forest but it is hard to tell who the noises are coming from. Getting down was easy but the slope is more mud than grass and for every half-a-dozen steps I take forward, I slide at least half that
amount down again. Faith has no such worries, clambering on all fours up the incline as if she has been doing it all of her life. When she reaches the top, she lies flat on her belly and stretches
down until I am close enough for her to haul upwards. I have no idea how someone so small can be so strong but her grip is solid and she isn’t even out of breath as I finally fall over the
top of the verge, collapsing face-first in the mud.

My feet slide along the first few steps until we cross the threshold of the trees where a blanket of leaves provides solid footing. Still the cries bounce around the woods, soft moans of pain
that I can feel as much as hear. There is a smattering of rucksacks and clothes where we left everyone but they’ve all gone. Panic is building in my stomach – they are all my
responsibility.

We follow the moans deeper into the woods, looking for a trail of blood or anything else that might give us a clue about what has happened.

As we reach an area where the trees are thicker, the sounds intensify. I round the corner of tightly packed bracken into a small clearing and realise too late that if there is some sort of trap,
I have dashed straight into it. The plants are dense and I take a few moments to adjust to the lack of light. A female voice says my name, setting off a succession of people who sound relieved that
I am there. Shapes gradually drift into focus, with Imrin crouched on the ground looking towards me, asking what he should do. I struggle to catch my breath as I approach, turning to take in the
scene.

There is a semi-circle of people standing around, all looking at me. Frank is next to Imrin flat on his back, his leg a mangle of blood, material and flesh stuck in the vicious jaws of a
spring-loaded animal trap.

The first time I ever saw one was in the woods outside Martindale with Opie. We had spent months trying to create our own snares and traps from pieces of rope and various wooden crates that we
chopped up and rigged to capture squirrels inside. Anything we caught would be a supplement to our meagre rations but we weren’t very good. Weeks passed with us catching nothing until Opie
clumsily pounded through the trees one day in the way he always does. Underneath his arm was a thick metal semicircle, which he said he’d discovered at the back of one of his father’s
friend’s houses.

It wasn’t huge but when he dropped it on the floor it left an indent in the grass, before he showed me how it worked. There was a catch on the side that he pressed down and then we
wrenched the thick triangular teeth apart together until it was lying flat. He wanted to leave it out overnight to try to catch something we could eat, but I couldn’t let him. I eventually
taught myself how to tie a knot properly, allowing us to set better traps, but there is a big difference between that and the cruel sharpened claws which have sliced through Frank’s leg.

‘I gave him something to bite on,’ Imrin says as I notice that Frank has a thick twig in between his teeth.

‘Why?’

Imrin’s voice wavers in panic. ‘We were looking for somewhere to sleep. It was sheltered here but it’s so dark. I saw the trap just before he stepped in it. He was screaming
and I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t get the trap open.’

I take another quick glance around the semi-circle and realise that no one has a clue. Partly because of where and how I grew up, the outdoors almost comes naturally to me but none of the others
seems to have those instincts. Most people grow up in cities.

With as much authority as I can manage, I tell everyone except for Imrin and Faith to stand back. Crouching on the ground, I can see Frank’s jaw straining against the wood, the muffled
cries of pain cutting like a knife through me.

I brought us here.

I run my fingers along the rusted edges of the trap until I find the concealed button underneath and then count to three before telling Imrin and Faith to pull as hard as they can. Slowly they
yank the jaws apart before I tug Frank’s leg out and place it carefully on the floor. I can’t help but brush my fingers across his flesh, making him cry out again. It feels like the
remnants of a boiled egg: wet and squishy, unnaturally soft.