Page 58 of The Death Wish

‘Charlie?’ he called.

Lalassu veered sharply left, and jumped, straight over a dilapidated cross-beam gate. Neither of them were in danger of falling off, but the sudden move made Silas’s neck crick, and Pitch squeal with surprise. Both of them slid an inch down the mare’s bare back as Lalassu launched herself skyward. She sailed over the low fence, jumping much higher than really needed.

Charlie was someway ahead, down where the landscape flattened out, and he could afford a canter through the barrenness of the sprawling fells. The fog did not seem to like the lower lay of this land, and reduced itself to a lighter mist, though the air remained damp enough to have Silas wiping at his face, and Pitch muttering about being uncomfortably wet, and not in a happy way.

They gained on the brown horse easily, where the lad rode with certainty, lying low, arms lifted high up his horse’s neck, hands coaxing, body utterly still despite the pace.

The fells rolled on endlessly, decorated only by rocks and boulders, thin grass and clinging moss, but with solid enough ground to not risk the horses’ fetlocks. The air forced itself into Silas’s lungs, giving him no option but to breathe deep. Scarlet was a guiding light ahead, hovering above Charlie now, apparently enjoying the pace as much as the horses appeared to.

After a time, a small lake spread out to their left, its surface changed to black by the encroaching evening. Silas did not enjoy where his mind went, upon seeing the water. He very much doubted Blood Lake would look so simple and surmountable. But he only had to tune in to the ceaseless whispering at the back of his mind, the voices of all those unhappy dead, to find his resolve once more.

‘Gods, I wish we could keep this up,’ Pitch spoke, breathless, but happily so. ‘Just carry on riding until we toppled off the edge of the world and no one could find us.’

He tilted his head, as though seeking to read Silas’s expression when an answer did not come straight away. ‘What do you think? Shall we sneak away when Charlie’s not watching?’ His laughter was fractious, his mirth utterly false. Silas kissed the hard line of his cheek, wishing their position practical enough to find his lips.

‘I am game if you are.’

Lalassu nickered, giving them scant warning of another impending jump. Smaller this time, a pile of gravelly rocks, and once more they were soaring, before a return to a canter across the lonely landscape. They managed another fifteen minutes or so of fast riding, before Charlie’s horse stumbled.

Lalassu’s mane whipped out, finding the brown horse before the gelding’s nose could touch the ground, pulling him up and out of a dangerous fall. So much so that the horse thrashed about with hooves lifted off the ground. Charlie cried out in alarm, and Lalassu adjusted their measure.

At a halt, safely grounded, the gelding’s sides heaved, and white foam flecked it’s mouth and chest. Scarlet patted at the horse’s muzzle, squeaking in their indecipherable language, but clearly consoling the animal.

Silas wriggled against Lalassu’s hold.

‘Hardly the place for that, my dear,’ Pitch declared.

Silas flicked a finger at his ear. ‘I’m concerned for Charlie and his mount.’

‘Of course you are,’ Pitch sighed.

But Lalassu did not release them.

‘I’ve pushed the poor thing too far, I’m not proud to say,’ Charlie jumped out of the saddle, running a hand down the sweat-soaked shoulder of his horse. ‘But we are so close. Look, you can see the outline of the hill we are headed for.’

He pointed, straight ahead, where there was indeed the shadow of a rise. Silas startled to hear Charlie cry out.

‘Bloody hell!’

Lalassu had fixed her attention on Charlie, and wrapped him her tail; lifting him off his feet.

‘Wait, wait. Let me unsaddle him,’ Charlie cried, fumbling at the girth in an effort to unsaddle the exhausted horse. Lalassu obliged, allowing the lad to remove the bridle too, leaving all in a heap on the ground, and the gelding, sweat-stained, but free.

With a squeal of trepidation, Charlie was drawn back towards the mare.

‘No, not with us. There’s no bloody room,’ Pitch declared.

And he was not truly wrong. Nevertheless, Lalassu lowered Charlie onto her rump, where he was very near to the dock of the mare’s tail. If not for the pale horse swaddling him, Charlie would have been in real danger of sliding straight off, but as it was, the lady’s horse settled them all in a precarious cocoon; one illuminated by Scarlet as they came to sit on Pitch’s shoulders, right beneath Silas’s chin.

‘A little duller, Scarlet, if you don’t mind,’ Silas said, squinting until the wisp did as he asked.

Lalassu set off at a brisk walk, neighing and receiving a return from the brown horse which began to graze upon tufts of grass between the rocky ground.

‘This is truly not the threesome I had in mind for us, Silas.’

‘Please don’t,’ Charlie sighed. ‘I’m being squeezed so tight, it really won’t take much for me to throw up.’

‘Please don’t.’ Silas repeated the lad’s words back to him. ‘How far do you suppose?’