rifles again, awkward and unsteady, as though each barrel were in fact a great twelve-foot lead pole.
Could they even fire those things if a parade of these monsters came stamping up the street?
He suppressed a sigh of anguish. The spell of optimism he’d felt before was now a distant memory.
The hissing firecracker-burst of gunshots came again, and he turned to the city in search of the source. Higgins and the boys didn’t seem perturbed. “What’s going on?” he said.
“First try-outs, as ordered,” Higgins said, puffing out his chest.
“We helped pick from the long list,” Mark/Danny said, giving Robert a fawning approval-seeking smile.
Robert’s heart skipped a beat. “What are you talking about?” he said.
The three looked at one another uneasily.
“Your orders, Mr Strong,” Higgins said with care. “The ones you asked to be relayed.”
“What orders?”
“About forming the militia.”
Higgins’s face fell slack when Robert surged forward and seized him by the lapels. Mark/Danny looked ready to faint, while the other lad had taken to once again scanning the streets.
“I want you to think very carefully about what you say next,” Robert breathed. “Who gave those orders on my behalf?”
The corner of Higgins’s mouth twitched as though he thought for a moment Robert’s outburst was a joke, or a test. But Robert had fixed him with a gaze honed over a long childhood of hard lessons in the far north, where you killed your dinner, and often had to kill again to keep it.
The gaze had been a gift from his father. Pa had been in the ground almost fifteen years, but now Robert heard his voice bubble up from the black ooze of distant memory. “It’s all in the eyes, boy. You kin hold a gun to some men’s heads and get nothing’ but gab for yer trouble. But you get your killer’s stare down pat, and you kin make a man do anythin’.”
It had been a long time since he’d used that stare, but some things you never forgot, especially things that had kept you alive.
Higgins stammered, “Your fiancée, Mr Strong.”
Robert dropped him in shock, and Higgins crumpled to the ground. In his haste, Robert hadn’t been aware of holding the man a foot off the ground.
Then he was hurtling down the stairs again. They shouted after him but he didn’t hear what they were saying, then he burst out onto the streets and kept running, bounding across the cobbles.
*
The firing squad was spread out along a thirty-yard stretch, each member facing a humanoid target made of sandbags, lashed twigs and spare rags. Holding small-calibre pistols that were dwarfed even by the women’s hands, they each took aim, their faces screwed up in concentration, and waited for the signal.
“Fire!” Sarah called, and a host of waspish explosions sounded in quick succession.
The targets leaped on their fixings, quivering and throwing off puffs of sand and showering splinters into the high grass.
Each member of the squad then carefully put on their safety catches, handed the gun to the next person, and then made their way to the back of the lines strung out behind them. In all, there must have been sixty or seventy people.
“Better,” Sarah said, a satisfied smile crossing her face as she stood with arms akimbo. She even managed to keep composed when Robert thundered into the clearing and gave a wordless cry that brought deathly silence down heavy over the congregation.
Despite a mounting medley of disbelief and fury, he had to admire her for that.
He didn’t stop his barrelling approach until he towered over a foot above her, staring straight down into her naked eyes. They hadn’t been able to find replacement glasses for her yet. She looked strange without them. Squinting to compensate, furrows had appeared in her peachy face, making her look more severe, waspish and older.
For a moment he was inarticulate, strangled by his outrage, then he growled low so nobody else could hear. “Have you lost your mind?”
He was using the same stare that had made Higgins a jabbering ruin. In truth, he wasn’t prepared for a fight. He expected her to crumple into a mass of nerves and apology.
That’s what I think of her, when all’s said and done. Nice to know I’m just as chauvinist as Pa underneath.
But she remained with her hands resting on her hips, maintaining her gaze. She didn’t even flinch. She didn’t answer, just waited for him to go on, for his mounting rage to spill over.
He could feel the stares of the others pressing hard into his shoulder,