Burn(5)

He heard first one, then another car door open. Open but not close, the engine still running. The risk of another peek was staggeringly high, but how could he not? He held his breath, slunk down the tree until he was almost lying flat, then slowly, slowly, slowly, peered around the lower trunk.

The first gunshot took out the side flap of his hat and the middle of his left ear. The bullet reached him before the sound did and for a dizzying few seconds, he had trouble linking cause and effect, thinking he’d merely been stung by an out-of-season bee. The second gunshot tore away a fistful of tree terrifyingly close to his face. He dodged behind the trunk again as the shots kept coming, striking the trees around him, a shower of splinters raining across his body.

His ear hurt now, and when he touched it, his hand came away with an amount of blood that made him focus. He had no gun himself. There had been reasons, good ones, why he was only armed with knives and blades, plus it had been thought the level of counter-aggression he might face was too low to need his own gun.

Too late to complain, he supposed.

The firing stopped, and for a moment, the only sounds were the engine again and one angry, distant crow expressing its displeasure at being woken.

“There’s no way out of this, Malcolm,” a man’s voice called from the road.

Malcolm. One of the names he had been given to use from a list of a dozen, to cycle through should they be needed. It was a very early one, which probably meant something about who these men were, but he didn’t know what that was.

“Throw down your weapons,” the man continued. “Believe it or not, Malcolm, we want you out of this alive.”

“You shot me in the ear,” he called back.

“Throw down your weapons,” the man said again.

“I don’t have a gun.”

“Now that, I don’t believe.”

“Then we have a problem.”

“Not we, Malcolm,” the man said. “I don’t have any problem at all.”

Malcolm—he embraced the name for the moment—pulled his bag onto his chest, hoping it contained a surprise or two, knowing it didn’t. He heard a branch snap over to his right, almost certainly another man coming around to flank him. Another man with another gun.

The bag held nothing he didn’t expect. The only thing different about it from two minutes ago was the bloody handprint he’d added to the cloth.

“This cannot be,” he whispered. “This cannot be the end, so soon after the start.” He looked up into the rising gray of the morning. He put his hand back to his throbbing ear and whispered again, a plea, a prayer, a wish: “Mitera Thea, protect me.”

He held his breath and listened again. The walker to his right had either stopped or gotten better at disguising his steps. The man on the road was quiet now, was perhaps advancing, too.

There was a new sound. One the men wouldn’t have heard yet. But Malcolm did, because he had been listening for it.

“I surrender,” he called out.

A pause. “You do?” the man on the road said.

“If you give me a moment,” Malcolm said, “I’ll lay down my weapons and step away from them. No one needs to get hurt.”

“I agree with you, Malcolm,” the man said, “but how do I know you’ll keep your word?”

“I can only guess you know where I come from? What I Believe?”

“We have an idea, yes.”

“Then you know I cannot, will not lie to you. Even though you shot me, I’ll still surrender to you.” He turned his head so his voice would carry back better to the first man. “It’s a matter of principle.”

Malcolm could almost hear the man thinking.

The second man, clearly sensing the same thing, shouted, “It’s a trick!” to the first man, his voice contemptuous. “You know what these people are like. They’re fanatics. And the intel says—”

“Yes, I know what these people are like,” the first man said. “Which is why I know what they mean by that word. Principle.”

“As if there aren’t ways around principles,” said the second. “As if you and I don’t know how every principle and its opposite can be justified.”

“Are you philosophers?” Malcolm asked, genuinely curious.

For answer, a bullet struck the tree trunk above his head. “Philosophical question,” said the second man. “Was that a warning or was that a miss?”

“The philosophical part would be wondering if those were the same thing.”

“They’re not.”

“And there you are,” Malcolm said. “Your philosophy.”

“Will you shut up, Godwin?” the first man snapped.

Godwin shut up.

“I’m going to count to ten, Malcolm,” the first man said. “At ten, you’d better be standing where both of us can see you with your hands up. Understood?”

Malcolm closed his eyes and whispered a prayer of thanks, before saying, “Understood.”

“I mean it. One false move, and the philosophical questions will end. And that is a matter of my principle. Now . . . One.”

Malcolm breathed, pulling his senses away from his throbbing ear.

“Two.”

He exhaled through his mouth, watched the enormous cloud of steam that erupted from it.