Fallen Land: A Novel by Brown Taylor

Author:Brown, Taylor [Brown, Taylor]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781466893078
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2016-01-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Four days on wagon roads and horse trails. A cold wind, unrelenting, took the place of rain. Snow dusted their shoulders past dusk on two occasions, and they pushed harder and deeper into the nights, dropping down out of the mountains in darkness. They hardly stopped, hardly slept. Come morning the world would dawn white-haunted with mist, the trees emerging before them like shadows of what they were. Sound carried farther through the sparse wood at morning, eerily clear, and first light no longer afforded them solace or relief or anything save fear of exposure.

Come nightfall they feared what they couldn’t see. The crack of broken wood, the rustle of dead leaves gained weight and force, striking through Callum like a blade to the bone. It was like the fleshy hide that bound him was worn too thin, and the whole world had gone sharp-edged on him, sight and sound. On his bad side, he could hear only faint mufflings, too easily shaped or misshaped by his imagination into something sinister. He knew Swinney would know which ear had been blown bloody and unhearing, and so might the other men know and attack from that angle.

What kept them going was the nearing of the city, the army of bluecoats into which they might slip unmolested, their pursuers daunted. They crossed the state line and redoubled their pace. They rode day and night, stopping no more than an hour or two at a time. Just long enough for the horse to feed, for them to shovel crumbs into their mouths. The meat was gone, the hardtack nearly. Ava started taking turns at the reins while Callum slumped behind her, asleep.

Gradually they found themselves pushing ahead of the coming winter, the turning of season. It was different here. There were leaves yet unfallen on the trees, blood-colored and gold over green-brown fields that held grazing livestock like some kind of heaven. They thought of poaching a hog or cow but why stop—so near was refuge, the city of Atlanta. It had to be close. Better to push past hunger, hard-riding beyond regard for anything save the ribbed engine of flesh that carried them. This they maintained at all costs, feeding Reiver the best they could, whispering words of encouragement into his tall ears. There was good grass and shrubs for him, and even as they rode he would extend his neck and snatch hanging leaves and standing brush to eat. Callum loosened the cinch whenever he could to avoid sores, and he checked the horse’s hooves each day for thrush or cankers, for sand cracks or bruises or puncture wounds of any kind. Reiver would lift his feet for inspection, obedient as any soldier, before they rode on.

One night, they sat on the bank of a stream that crossed a meadow, staking Reiver to graze. Ava lay back against the earth, her hands folded across her belly.

“That story you told before—have you ever been?”

“To Atlanta?” He lay beside her, shoulder to shoulder, his hat against his chest, and looked up at the stars.

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