The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [146]
He willed his weaker left arm to hold steady, willed his heart to slow, his eyes to clear. The fear was in him, but he pushed it away, far enough that it did not cloud him.
He could hear the heather thrashing against Hare’s legs. Could see the wild hatred in the man’s eyes. A tremor went through him, but he tensed himself to still it, and then let his muscles go slack once more. Closer and closer he let Hare come, knowing that if his first shot missed, he might not live long enough for a second. He had been a fine shot once, and needed to be again. Closer, until he could see little glints of the risen sun on the buttons of Hare’s waistcoat, until he could bear it no more.
He held his breath, and squeezed the trigger, and the Bess roared in his hands. He shot Hare in the knee. It spun the man about and sent him crashing down into the heather, tall and straggly enough there to swallow him up completely.
Quire did not wait for him to rise, as he knew he would. He leaped to his feet, and began the ritual of reloading. His fingers shook, just slightly, as he fumbled the next cartridge out of his belt pouch. He heard movement, out there in the heather. He bit out the top of the paper packet, tapped just enough of the grey, grainy powder into the pan to prime it. He heard Hare rising. Held the gun erect, tipped powder down the barrel.
“Quire, you bastard,” he heard Hare cry at him.
Turned the cartridge about in his fingers, still less steady than he would have liked. Hare was running at him. He saw the dark shape, coming unsteadily now, hampered by his ruined knee. Got the ball into the gun’s mouth, pulled the ramrod up and out from its home. Punched it down Bess’ gullet. He looked up. Twenty yards, no more. Hare’s lips were pulled back in a snarl. Quire kept hold of the ramrod, shouldered the musket, shot Hare in the other leg.
They were so close that the smoke plumed out over Hare, and he fell forwards through it.
“You’re a hard man to kill, someone told me a while ago,” Quire said as he stepped back, out of reach of the hands clawing for him, “so I’ve given it a bit of thought, on the road down here.”
Hare was not done yet, though. Quire had misjudged the ferocious will and power of what was inside the man. Hare surged up once more, and part-staggered, part-rushed forward, throwing himself at Quire, who sprang away. Quire’s heel caught on a gnarled heather stem, and he fell back. He tried to roll at once, but the dense heather hampered him, and in less than a heartbeat’s span, there were hands like stone wrapped around his left ankle, pulling at him. The scabbard of the sabre caught about a half-buried stone as Hare dragged him nearer, and he used that to lever himself up so that he could hammer with the butt of the musket at the arms that held him.
He hit his own leg as much as any limb of Hare’s, and the pain was excruciating, but the hands did come away from his ankle, once a few of the fingers were battered and broken. Quire scrambled away, and got rather gingerly to his feet. He put more ground between him and Hare as the latter rose again, swaying and rocking on legs too crippled to do much more than hold him there. He managed to move them, even so, and though he fell, and had to struggle back on to his feet, he came stubbornly on at Quire.
Who reloaded the Brown Bess again. He was strangely at peace, now that there was nothing to do, nothing to think about, save the immediate and obvious necessity. That calmness lent a speed to his hands. The musket was ready to fire again in no more than twenty seconds, and he brought it smoothly up and had the luxury of another second or two to measure his breathing and take good aim. That second shot had missed the knee at which it was aimed by some little way. The third did not, blasting out the joint in an eruption