I looked up. The moment hung, the universe waiting.
I twisted, hard left, and the rifle glanced off my skull. I grabbed the barrel with both hands and yanked, pulling the soldier toward me. He overbalanced. I slammed my forehead into his nose, felt the crunch and the hot spray of blood. He howled and staggered back, but I kept hold of the rifle. The other two yelled—one fired, missing wide, the shot ricocheting off stone and showering us with bits of old tomb.
I used the rifle like a staff, jabbing the butt into the gut of the man to my right. He folded, and I brought my knee up, hard, catching him in the throat. The cartilage gave a wet pop. He fell, hands clawing at his own neck.
The last soldier was younger, with barely a beard. He rushed me, bayonet out, point aimed low. I sidestepped, caught the blade with the meat of my left hand. It cut deep, but I barely felt it. I grabbed his wrist, twisted. The bone snapped with a dry, greenstick sound. He screamed. I let go, and he fell back, clutching his arm.
The lead man tried to rally, lifting his own rifle, but I moved first. I swung the captured musket by the barrel and caught him full across the temple. His eyes went blank, and he pitched forward, face-first into the mud.
Silence. My heart hammered. My hands dripped blood—not just theirs, but mine, too, the old wound at the wrist opened up and running red down to the fingers. I stared at it, at the way it mixed with the blue-green of the shamrock tattoo, and thought, for a moment, that it looked almost beautiful.
Then I turned. The others were still kneeling. Maeve’s face was white as paper. Nora looked at me like I was the devil himself. Catherine stared straight through me.
I dropped the rifle. My hands shook. I wiped them on my jeans, but the blood just spread, darkening the fabric.
Catherine stood, slow. She stepped around the bodies, skirt lifted clear of the mud. She kept her distance.
“Catherine,” I said, reaching for her.
She flinched. Not much, but enough to see. I let my hand drop.
Declan rose, leaning on Maeve. He looked at the bodies, then at me, and gave a single, slow nod.
We didn’t bury the English. There was no time. I just rolled them off the path, facedown, so they wouldn’t be recognized from the road. I took the least bloody coat, tossed it to Declan, and checked the packs for ammo. There was a packet of hardtack, a flask of gin, and three rounds. I left the rest.
We walked on, nobody talking. The world seemed smaller, the shadows crowding close even in the sun.
I wanted to reach for Catherine, to pull her in, to tell her the story of how I’d done worse, how I’d survived worse, for her. But she walked with her head high and her gaze on the horizon, and I knew she would never see me the same again.
I didn’t blame her.
I just kept moving, hand pressed to the blood at my wrist, the pain a comfort. It reminded me I was still here. For now.
We stopped before full dark. The wind was up again, chasing clouds over the moon, lighting the clearing with a fitful, sickly white. We found a spot half-ringed by boulders, the remains of a cottage smashed to rubble by cannon. I let Catherine and the girls have the dry side, nearest the ring of old birch. Maeve set the pack down hard, then started fussing with the bread and the blanket, not looking at me. Nora gathered sticks from the brush, breaking them into kindling with snaps too loud for comfort.
I hung back, checking for movement, for the sound of more Redcoats or worse. But the night was still, except for the crackle of Nora’s fire and the occasional groan from Declan as he sat to check his leg. I felt the adrenaline drop out of me all at once, leaving my skin cold and my teeth loose in my jaw. When Ifinally joined them, I sat on the farthest rock, separate, hands bleeding slow into my lap.
The girls huddled around the beginnings of a flame, Nora working the flint like it owed her a favor. Maeve tore bread into hunks, eyes fixed on the moon. Catherine watched the fire, shoulders hunched, hair falling forward to hide her face. She was ten feet from me, but it could have been a mile.
Declan prodded at his bandage, then bit down on a stick while he poured a splash of gin over the wound. He hissed, then laughed, a low, bitter sound. “Burns like hell,” he said.
No one replied. The fire caught, finally, and shadows leapt up to circle the clearing. I stared at the flames, trying to keep my brain blank, but the memories flooded in anyway—the pop of the soldier’s windpipe, the way the rifle butt felt in my hands, the blank terror in the boy’s face when I broke his arm. I’d done worse in my time, but not in front of Catherine. Never before.
“Eat,” Maeve said, shoving a hunk of bread at her sister. Nora took it without a word.
I was about to say something, maybe an apology, maybe just a joke to break the silence, when Maeve shot me a look sharp enough to cut air. She stood, paced to where I sat, and stared down, hands on her hips.
“You want to tell us what that was?” she said, voice flat.
I met her gaze. “What do you think it was?”
She shook her head, disgust curling her lip. “It wasn’t you, O’Toole. I’ve seen you fight. You never looked… like that.”
I shrugged. “There’s no clean way to do it. Not anymore.”
She snorted. “You dragged us from our home with fairy tales of futures we can’t even imagine. You said you’d keep us safe, but you just make more danger. For all of us.”
Nora piped up, voice tight. “We could have run. We didn’t have to kill.”
