There’s gotta be at least fifty buildings in all.
Maybe a hundred.
It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
“I’ve got to say,” Viola shouts, “it’s kind of smaller than I expected.”
But I don’t really hear her.
With the binos, I follow the river road back from it and I see what’s probably a roadblock with what might be a fortified fence running away from it and to either side.
“They’re getting ready,” I say. “They’re getting ready to fight.”
Viola looks at me, worried. “You think it’s big enough? You think we’re safe?”
“Depends on if the rumours of the army are true or not.”
I look behind us, by instinct, as if the army was just waiting there for us to move on. I look up the valley hill next to us. Could be a good view.
“Let’s find out,” I say.
We run back down the road a piece, looking for a good climbing spot, find one and make our way up. My legs feel light as I climb, my Noise clearer than it’s been in days. I’m sad for Ben, I’m sad for Cillian, I’m sad for Manchee, I’m sad for what’s happened to me and Viola.
But Ben was right.
There’s hope at the bottom of the biggest waterfall.
And maybe it don’t hurt so much after all.
We climb up thru the trees. The hill is steep above the river and we have to pull on vines and hang on to rocks to make our way up high enough to look back down the road, till the valley is stretching out beneath us.
I still have the binos and I look downriver and down the road and over the treetops. I keep having to wipe spray away.
I look.
“Can you see them?” Viola asks.
I look, the river getting smaller into the far distance, back and back and back.
“No,” I say.
I look.
And again.
And–
There.
Down in the deepest curve of the road in the deepest part of the valley, in farthest shadow against the rising sun, there they are.
A mass that’s gotta be the army, marching its way forward, so far away I can only tell it’s them at all cuz it looks like dark water flowing into a dry riverbed. It’s hard to get detail at this distance but I can’t see individual men and I don’t think I can see horses.
Just a mass, a mass pouring itself down the road.
“How big is it?” she asks. “How big has it grown?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Three hundred? Four? I don’t know. We’re too far to really–”
I stop.
“We’re too far to really tell.” I crack another smile. “Miles and miles.”
“We beat them,” Viola says, a smile coming, too. “We ran and they chased us and we beat them.”
“We’ll get to Haven and we’ll warn whoever’s in charge,” I say, talking faster, my Noise rising with excitement. “But they’ve got battle lines and the approach is real narrow and the army’s at least the rest of the day away, maybe even tonight, too, and I swear that can’t be a thousand men.”
I swear it.
(But.)
Viola’s smiling the tiredest, happiest smile I ever saw. She takes my hand again. “We beat them.”
But then the risks of hope rise again and my Noise greys a little. “Well, we ain’t there yet and we don’t know if Haven can–”
But she’s shaking her head. “Nuh-uh,” she says. “We beat them. You listen to me and you be happy, Todd Hewitt. We’ve spent all this time outrunning an army and guess what? We outran them.”
She looks at me, smiling, expecting something from me.
My Noise is buzzing and happy and warm and tired and relieved and a little bit worried still but I’m thinking that maybe she’s right, maybe we did win and maybe I should put my arms round her if it didn’t feel weird and I find that in the middle of it all I do actually agree with her.
“We beat them,” I say.
And then she does stick her arms round me and pulls tight, like we might fall down, and we just stand there on the wet hillside and breathe for a little bit.
She smells a little less like flowers but it’s okay.
And I look out and the falls are below us, charging away, and Haven glitters thru the sunlit spray and the sun is shining down the length of the river above the falls, lighting it up like a snake made of metal.
And I let my Noise bubble with little sparks of happy and my gaze flow back along the length of the river and–
No.
Every muscle in my body jolts.
“What?” Viola says, jumping back.
She whips her head round to where I’m looking.
“What?” she says again.
And then she sees.
“No,” she says. “No, it can’t be.”
Coming down the river is a boat.
Close enough to see without binos.
Close enough to see the rifle and the robe.
Close enough to see the scars and the righteous anger.
Rowing his way furiously towards us, coming like judgement itself.
Aaron.
“Has he seen us?” Viola asks, her voice pulled taut.
I point the binos. Aaron rears up in them, huge and terrifying. I press a few buttons to push him back. He’s not looking at us, just rowing like an engine to get the boat to the side of the river and the road.
His face is torn and horrible, clotted and bloody, the hole in his cheek, the new hole where his nose used to be, and still, underneath all that, a look feroshus and devouring, a look without mercy, a look that won’t stop, that won’t never, never stop.
War makes monsters of men, I hear Ben saying.
There’s a monster coming towards us.
“I don’t think he’s seen us,” I say. “Not yet.”
“Can we outrun him?”
“He’s got a gun,” I say, “and you can see all the way down that road to Haven.”
“Off the road then. Through the trees.”
“There ain’t that many twixt us and the road down. We’ll have to be fast.”
“I can be fast,” she says.
And we jump on down the hill, skidding down leaves and wet vines, using rocks as handholds best we can. The tree cover is light and we can still see down the river, see Aaron as he rows.
Which means he can see us if he looks in the right place.
“Hurry!” Viola says.
Down–
And down–
And sliding to the road–
And squelching in the mud at the roadside–