Arcadia by James Treadwell

Author:James Treadwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books

17

The one who grabbed him turns out to be Jody the horse-faced woman. She stops riding when she sees that Rory’s having trouble breathing, and pulls him off the horse onto his feet, and that’s when he sees it’s her. She wipes his snotty nose. As well as dangling and bouncing with his head upside down he’s been fighting back tears, so he’s coughing and bubbling. While he’s standing there trying to keep himself upright a few other women ride up and talk to Jody about whether they should tie him up.

“Please don’t,” he snivels.

“Eh?” Jody sticks her face close to his. She’s yelling. “What’s that?”

Rory starts crying properly.

“No need to get all Guantánamo,” someone else says. “He’s just a kid.”

“Just a kid, is he?” Jody sounds out of breath too, pumped up on the adrenaline of battle. “You.” She elbows him, almost knocking him off his feet. “Speak English, do you?”

“For God’s sake.” The other woman dismounts.

“Told us you didn’t speak English, didn’t they? Any more lies? Eh?”

In the abysm of his misery Rory remembers what Silvia told him to do. “I’m not with them,” he says, between sobs. “It was an accident.”

Jody snorts—pah!—but the other woman interrupts.

“What’s your name?” she says.

He tells her.

“So where’s home for you, Rory?”

A distant roar stops him answering. It’s Per, far behind, but shouting loud enough for them to hear even though they’ve ridden up out of the town.

“What are you doing to him?” Rory says.

“He’ll get what he deserves,” says someone else, still mounted.

“Leaving him for the man-eaters,” Jody says, with grim pleasure.

“Better than he deserves,” the mounted woman says. “If they take him before he dies of thirst at least he’ll die happy.”

“Bet they will too,” another woman says. “Big bastard like that.” Rory thinks he recognizes her accent and looks up to check. It’s Soph, the skinny black-haired one with the pockmarked cheeks, the one Per and Lino ambushed on the road. “Reckon we should have kept him for ourselves.” Kept comes out as kipt. “The fish get all the fun.”

“We’ll get him gagged soon, don’t you worry,” Jody says. “Won’t hear him no more after that.”

The one who dismounted looks at Rory closely. She’s the one he saw at the head of the charging Riders, standing in the stirrups and yelling. Now she’s calm she looks incapable of that sort of fury. “Is he your dad?” she says.

“No.”

“Were any of those people your family?”

He shakes his head.

“Not too many questions, Ellie.” Quistions: this is Soph again. “Better save them till everyone’s listening. This little bugger’s going to have a fair bit of explaining to do.”

“I want his arms tied at least,” Jody says. “Till we know what we’re dealing with.”

“Really?” The one called Ellie gives Jody a sarcastic look. “ ‘What we’re dealing with?’ ”

“You didn’t see what happened to Ace. And that other one turned himself into a bird and flew off.” Jody’s already unwrapping some twine from a pocket. “Turn round, you,” she says, prodding Rory with the toe of her boot.

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