Heroes and Villains Read Online Free PDF Page B

cursorily searching the shed, but she guessed the Barbarian was still inside it for, if they had found him, her uncle would have been sure to mention it. She knew where the keys were kept. A horse moved in odorous confinement. Hay rustled. A finger of moonlight rested on the lacquered side of a lorry. She listened but could hear nobody breathing. She spoke into the darkness.
    ‘I’ve brought you some food.’
    Nothing stirred.
    ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I won’t give you away.’
    She stepped inside the shed. As she knew would happen, the Barbarian put his hand on her mouth and twisted her arms up behind her. She felt the innumerable rings he wore grind into her face and she immediately bit his fingers as hard as she could. He tightened his hold. He put his mouth against her ear.
    ‘Get me out of here and I’ll do you no harm but if you shout, I’ll strangle you.’
    His right hand dropped from her mouth to her throat; she coughed and spat.
    ‘It’s quite unnecessary to strangle me,’ she whispered angrily. ‘Are you hurt?’
    ‘I fainted,’ he said as if this had surprised and affronted him. He slurred his words together and his voice had the rough edges of a man accustomed to speaking in the open air but she understood him quite well. She gave him the food and he ate it. She could not see him at all.
    ‘Will you rape me and sew a cat up inside me?’ she inquired, remembering her nurse’s warning.
    ‘There are no cats to be had,’ he pointed out in as reasonable a voice as she could desire. Then he resumed such an absolute silence that she told him the thing that was on her mind, as if it would explain and justify her unexpected presence beside him.
    ‘My father’s dead.’
    ‘So’s mine. When did yours die?’
    ‘Last month.’
    ‘Mine died this time ten years ago. He was murdered.’
    ‘So was mine.’
    ‘It’s the same everywhere you look, it’s red in tooth and claw. Do you want to come with me?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said immediately. If she had allowed herself to think, she would never have said this.
    ‘Can you drive these things?’
    ‘Oh, yes.’
    ‘Then you can crash a lorry through the gate, can’t you. That will be impressive.’
    ‘I suppose so,’ she said for there was nothing but custom to keep her in the village and nothing she wanted to take away with her; not a single one of all those things she had once possessively marked with her name now seemed to belong to her. She had wanted to rescue him but found she was accepting his offer to rescue her. A movement indicated his presence; she felt his hand smear some greasy thing on her face, some of his warpaint.
    ‘I’ve made my mark on you,’ he said. ‘Now you’re my hostage.’
    ‘Not at all!’ she exclaimed. ‘I –’
    ‘Open the door wide. Come on.’
    In the moonlight, she was surprised by the angel of death. She was not prepared for this spectre; talking to him, she had altogether forgotten what he would look like. She scrambled from the cabin of the lorry and dashed back into the depths of the shed, looking for a place to hide from him, but he caught her easily, scooped her up and carried her bodily to the lorry, depositing her in the cab. She kicked and scratched but even now did not cry out to wake the village.
    ‘No second thoughts, my ducks,’ he said. ‘You’ve done it.’
    He was laughing and seemed very excited, as though it would have been boring and easy for him had she been too compliant. Danger was perhaps his element. He planted her hands on the steering wheel for her.
    ‘Drive,’ he suggested.
    Moonlight flooded the shed and bleached the strange colours from his face but for the black that ringed his eyes, and moonlight also changed some blood on his face from red to black. The sleeping village lay under the moon; the Soldiers with their glass faces stood by the gate, glass faces even more unnatural than paint and not half so mysterious. She loved nobody in this place but beyond it lay