as you can see, I had this under control.”
“My cutter would of handled it.”
“Your cutter is a formidable weapon, Rampart Knife. And at full strength, pointed straight ahead of you instead of upwards… well, I have no doubt it would have done the job. But there are houses over there.” Ursala raised up her hand to point. “And the well too, unless I’m mistaken, with a crowd of people all round it. The drone was far too low for you to hit it without hitting anything else.”
“I never harmed anyone yet,” says Mardew.
Ursala smiled without no warmth in it. “And your record stands unsullied. I think you should thank this boy for stepping in when he did.”
Mardew hesitated, looking from Ursala to all the people that was standing around. I could see there was things he wanted to say but thought better of before they was spoke. I didn’t see no thanks in his eyes when he turned his face my way again. “You watch yourself,” he says to me at the other end of a long, hard stare. “And don’t you come by me.”
“You’re very welcome,” Ursala said.
Mardew walked away without another word. My mother grabbed me then and hugged me close. I seen Haijon over her shoulder, looking at me as if he was somewhat troubled by what had passed. But he give me a nod and he locked his thumbs in our secret sign.
I nodded back.
“You’re coming home,” Jemiu said to me. “And you’re staying home. You been a big enough idiot for one day.” And she dragged me away.
The last thing I seen as I went was Ursala picking the broke drone up off the ground and carrying it into her tent.
16
When Jemiu called me an idiot, she didn’t mean no harm by it. The plain truth is that there’s people who think before they do and people who do before they think. Most times, as you probably seen, I was the former kind. This time I was not, and I got a taste of what can come from that – enough to confirm me in my regular path.
But here I was again, in the bad place I already told you of. Brooding on what I’d lost, or thought I’d lost, and wistful of things I couldn’t have. It’s a curious thing, how a blessing or a curse can come to you without you knowing it. Looking back now, I see that Ursala’s friendship has meant more to me than almost anything in my life, but still it come at a time when I was least like to profit by it.
It didn’t come right away, neither. Jemiu was as good as her word and kept me to it at the mill, brewing stop-mix, racking the steeped wood to dry, squaring planks on the lathe, cleaning the blades of the three big saws, sweeping the mill floor, and on and on. I breathed more sawdust than air, in that time.
This was not laid on me as a chastisement. Far from it. Jemiu wanted to keep me from any bad effects springing from my recklessness, and she thought hiding me out of everyone’s sight was the best way of achieving that. I knowed, though, that out of sight was not the same as out of mind. Athen and Mull went into the village most days, and they told me that what happened on the day the three drones come was still much talked of.
Then Haijon paid me a visit, and he told me the rest of it, starting with what happened on the gather-ground, where the two other drones was brung down. Rampart Arrow took one of them clean, and Rampart Fire sent up a blaze to protect against the other.
“But it was too fast,” Haijon said. “It come down low even while she was firing. Come right under the fire and was there in the midst of everyone. Fer didn’t have time to launch a second bolt, and my ma was facing the wrong way. It might of killed the both of them, except that Ursala’s drudge was sat there on the gather-ground where she left it at the end of each day’s doctoring.
“The drudge had its legs folded under and it looked like it was asleep. But it unfolded right quick. Its gun spun round and tracked the drone, and then it sent off a volley. It wasn’t like the bolt gun. It was a whole lot of shots that kind of chased each other across