Chapter Text
Arthur held the earthy-smelling plant up to examine its dark green leaves. Burdock root.
Why did that stir a memory? Right, the O’Driscoll. The O'Driscoll had wanted to make something for treating the horses, way back when they’d first arrived in the South.
Of course Arthur’d only find the herb now that the O’Driscoll had gone missing. He shoved the root down into his bag. Well, if the O’Driscoll got back from whatever bender he was on, Arthur could give it to him. In the frankly more likely event that the boy’d run off—taking advantage of their new proximity to Saint Denis to lose himself in a city large enough to hide from O’Driscoll and Van der Linde alike—well, Arthur could always make his own horse medicine.
Arthur got back up on his horse and urged her on, breathing in the cool, clear air of the valley, mountains on all sides tumbling down to a pasture painted violet with spring blossoms.
Little Creek River was a hell of a long way from Shady Belle. Almost as far you could get on horseback. Maybe that was the point. He found himself longing more and more to return this way since they’d lost Sean and been forced to run with their tails between their legs to a rotting old carcass of a plantation manor. He’d finally made the trip up, starting out early this morning. He’d told himself it was for hunting, but really, he just needed to get somewhere where the air was cool and clear enough for him to think.
It was easier out here, not worrying about whatever schemes Dutch was cooking up with Angelo Bronte. To hear Dutch tell it, the entire elite of Saint Denis were either eating of their hands or ripe for the picking. Given how badly trying to play a couple of fading hick families like the Grays and the Braithwaites had gone, Arthur had his doubts. It was like he couldn't make sense of Dutch’s thinking anymore, and he was tired of puzzling over it, whether it was him or Dutch or the world to blame for the fact that things didn't seem to work out like they used to. He needed a break from worrying about Dutch's plans and Lemoyne Raiders and Night Folk and respectable citizens lurching out in front of him every time he tried to go faster than a controlled walk down a busy city street. He could ride as damn well fast as he wanted out here.
Hunting was good. Hunting made sense to him. The bow had come to feel more like an extension of his own arms these past few months, and he lost himself in the solitary ritual. A few hours later, his horse laden down with pelts and the carcass of a bull elk, the sun was starting to set. The last time he'd been out this way, he’d stumbled across an elevated cabin on stilts, secure and warm and good for bedding down during a downpour. He thought he’d check up on it now, and if no squatters had claimed it, maybe get a few hours of sleep before he headed back. He urged his horse on into a gallop.
There was a ranch at the end of the open meadow. He'd steered clear of it since he'd first peered through binoculars at it and realized it was an enemy gang hideout, a poorly disguised camp swarming with O’Driscolls. Too damn many of them for any reasonable man to take on alone, so Arthur had steered clear. No sense in stepping on a hornet's nest. He turned off the road and made his way silently through the trees cautiously, the lights from the farms just starting to come on, assuring him he was far enough back in the shadow of pine branches that there was no risk of any of them catching sight of him.
He was just clear of the ranch when the screaming started.
A drawn-out, shameless wail of pain that came unambiguously from the ranch. Some poor bastard, he thought. By the sound of it, they were putting the screws to him. Equally likely to be some unlucky traveler or one of Colm's own men, who'd failed to perform to Colm's satisfaction.
He rode on for a second, one hand on the reins and another wavering by his repeater. He slowed his horse, but refused to stop.
Another scream tore through the air, raw and desperate. He thought about some of the travelers he'd met around here in the past. Lonesome men, mostly. Hunters on their own solitary journeys. No rich men. A shepherd with a dog who seemed to favor this valley. Arthur hadn't seen him around today, had he?
“Goddammit,” he muttered, pulling his horse to a stop and getting down before he could think better of it. He was drawing his repeater out of the saddle. He had no plan in mind, and was quite certain he wasn’t going to march in to rescue someone from the O’Driscolls’ clutches. He couldn't afford to play white hat. Not this outnumbered and outgunned. But he needed to see. Maybe—hell, maybe he could shoot the poor bastard from a distance. Put him out of his misery.
“You stay here, girl,” he whispered, stroking her forehead. “Just be a minute.”
Arthur slung his gun over his shoulder and crept through the trees. The cries kept up in ragged bursts—stopping for a while, then, just when he got to selfishly hoping the problem had resolved itself, he'd hear another one that'd make him grit his teeth and creep on through the underbrush. He kept thinking there was something altogether too familiar about the voice, but he couldn’t place it. He’d heard a lot of screaming lately, and it all blended together in his head.
He crept around the back of the stables, taking care to stay out of sight. He got halfway down the length of the stable before the poor bastard howled again, but this time, his pleas resolved themselves into words.
“Please! No more!”
A high, scratchy voice, rubbed raw from what sounded days of begging, but easily recognizable despite its hoarseness. Kieran. Arthur froze in his steps, struggling to make sense of it. Kieran had run away. Hadn't he? The boy was in Saint Denis, surely. O'Driscolls grabbed him, of course—but how?
A harsh laugh cut through the confused churn of thoughts. “Hear that? 'Please.' He may be a traitor, but he asks nicely.”
Arthur resumed his slow, silent creep along the fence to the end of the farmhouse, where he could look around the edge and see into the yard.
“I told you, I can't tell you anything. I ain’t seen them.”
“You saw them when you led them to us at Six Point, didn't ya?”
“I-I didn’t do that, I swear. I ran off from the O'Driscolls, I admit it. But I been living on my own since. I ain’t even laid eyes on those bastards-”
“That ain't what we've heard. Thick as thieves with the Van der Lindes, to hear anyone who's seen you tell it. Said you even shot Conor to save one of them, back at Six Point."
"Th-that wasn't me."
"Th-th-th-that wasn't me," a high-pitched voice trilled in a crude mockery of Kieran's stutter.
Arthur hazarded a glance around the peeling edge of the stables.
God, but there were a lot of them. At least ten O'Driscolls stood in a loose semicircle around the stable yard, their backs thankfully turned his way. Between two of them, he spied a man on his knees in the center of the circle. His back was to Arthur, but there was something in the scraggly black hair and the posture, the way his shoulders hunched so far over it was a wonder he didn't pitch himself flat on his face. Arthur didn't need to see more to know that it was Kieran. His jacket was gone, though he still seemed to be wearing the same white shirt, now unrecognizable under muck and blood. His long, gangly arms were crossed behind his back, tied together at the wrists. He seemed to have given up struggling for the moment, just bowed his head as his breath came in ragged gasps.
Goddammit. Kieran. His trigger finger tightened on his gun. Arthur felt his heart clench. Damn fool. He wasn't entirely sure if he meant the thought at Kieran or himself.
"Let's see if another bath will loosen that tongue.”
A couple men came forward, caught Kieran up by his bound arms, and dragged him off-balance. Kieran seemed to know what was happening, or maybe the resistance was just automatic, because he began to kick his legs out as the men seized him by the arms and hauled him up. It was a futile struggle, as thin and weakened as he was.
“Y-you don’t gotta—”
Kieran was thrown against the trough, cloudy grey water splashing back and forth as his shoulder crumpled against the side. Kieran turned himself on his back, gangly legs kicking out at his attackers. It had to be some kind of instinctive response. He had to know it wasn’t going to do him any good, but he still tried. One of the bigger men grabbed him by the hair—Kieran let out a whimper like a kicked dog—and hauled him back to his knees. His head was forced down into the water, up to his shoulders, so that all Arthur could see was his shoulder thrashing in the water, bound hands jerking helplessly and feet scrabbling in the dirt.
Goddammit. Arthur counted the men around him. Ten men, all armed, some looking amused by the show, but all sober enough. And peeking beyond them, the farmhouse was lit up, revealing the shadows of more men through the windows. He could even see a few louche-looking men standing in the loft of the barn, peering down at the proceedings with vague interest. There was no way Arthur was going to be able to take them all on. Not on his own. Not without getting himself, and Kieran too, probably, killed in the process.
He weighed his options. They didn’t look good. He’d barely escaped with his life from the O’Driscolls just a few months earlier; he’d been in far worse shape then, but the numbers were stacked even higher against him now, and he was much farther from home. How had Kieran even gotten dragged this far from Shady Belle?
The big man lifted him up by the hair and Kieran came up gasping noisily, splashing like a fish.
"Give him another dunk, Jules."
Before Kieran could even get a proper breath, his head was shoved back under the water again.
This time, Jules held him under for longer. Arthur weighed his choices. There was a very real chance that if he went in shooting now, he'd be dead in under a minute. He began rifling through his satchel, looking for something he could use. Jules continued to hold him under, and Kieran’s thrashing shoulders began to still and his legs stopped sliding over the ground. Arthur thought for a moment that maybe this would be it, that an overzealous torturer would kill Kieran then and there.
No. Jules seemed to knew what he was doing, and he wasn’t going to let Kieran get away that easy. He dragged Kieran out of the trough by the hair and shoved him backwards on the ground. Kieran curled on his side and began to cough up lungfuls of dirty water on the ground. There was a peal of laughter through the knot of O'Driscolls.
“I think we need to warm him up after that,” said an Irish voice.
“Well, get on up here and help, Seamus.”
He saw one of the standing men raise something in his his hand—long, metallic, the tip glowing bright orange against the lengthening shadows. Kieran, who had been distracted with coughing, raised his eyes and saw it, his face transforming as he tried, and failed, to scramble away from it.
“Don’t—please—!” His voice was swallowed in another fit of coughing.
They pushed him down on the ground, one holding his shoulders and the other his legs, and another man pulling open his shirt. Kieran was jerking and his eyes were wide, like a panicked horse caught in a fire. The hot poker came down on his chest, and even through the screaming, Arthur thought he heard the sizzle of skin as the hot poker was traced across his chest in one slow diagonal line from his, and then another, both meeting at his navel.
Arthur was fighting some primal instinct to stop and help. But self-preservation was a powerful instinct too. If it had been Dutch or Hosea there, or Mary, he supposed that would have done it for him. He would have thrown himself into the fray, and damn the consequences. But Kieran.... Kieran was barely a Van Der Linde. And he was certainly doomed.
And he had to think of the others. He had to ensure the gang’s location stayed secret and safe from the O’Driscolls. It occurred to him that he could put a bullet into Kieran’s head, and run for his life before the O’Driscolls could catch up with him. It’d almost be a kindness to Kieran, the way things were going. He at least deserved a mercy killing, after holding out for them this long. And it'd be keeping the rest of the gang safe. He whispered an apology to Kieran as he drew his gun.
“I don’t know!” Kieran wailed. "I ain't seen them!"
He paused. Was he seriously contemplating killing the boy who’d saved his life?
“Oh come on, enough theatrics. Let’s get on with it,” a big man with graying hair said, pushing his way toward the front of the circle.
“Stand down, Tom,” Jules said.
“No. Colm’s getting here tonight, and I got better shit to do than watch you dick around until then. Now, this is what we did in the war when we wanted a man to talk—” He snatched the hot poker from his partner’s hand. “Hold that little shit down.”
Kieran moaned as he was spread on his back, one hand hold his head down by his hair.
“If you ain’t seen 'em,” Tommy said, grunting as he knelt down over Kieran, grabbing a fistful of hair in his hand and holding his head still, so he couldn’t jerk away. “Those eyes evidently ain’t doing you much good, so how about we have them out-”
“No! No—please! Not that! Wait!”
And there was something in the way Kieran said it, the way Kieran's voice cracked, Arthur knew they had him. The same as he had known Bill had had Kieran as soon as he came at him with those gelding tongs. That should have made it easier to do what he needed to do.
Arthur drew his gun before Kieran could spill the location. He could see Kieran’s face lit up from the orange glow of the poker, eyes squeezed shut. Arthur raised his revolver and aimed it at Kieran’s head.
Pulling a trigger was the most natural thing in the world to Arthur.
He didn’t pull the trigger.
Without thinking or planning, moved by instinct and nothing else, he reached into his bag, felt his hand close around a familiar dry, chalky cylinder. He pulled the stick of dynamite out, and lit the fuse with his lighter. It spit sparks for a second, and then he threw it as far as he could in the direction of the barn, spinning and arcing through the air.
“All right!” Kieran said. “Wait! Don’t, I’ll-” The dynamite exploded.
The sudden conflagration of crates and supplies caught Tom off guard, sending him stumbling backwards, hot poker tumbling out of his grasp. Arthur took aim and shot him in the head. He aimed at Jules next, and shot him too. He caught a glimpse of Kieran looking up from the ground, frozen and uncomprehending. Arthur took it in in an instant, then was focusing on lining up his shot at Seamus who fell belching blood and landing half on top of Kieran. That seemed to startle Kieran into movement, sending him scrambling backwards, legs bicycling away from the dead men around him. His eyes darting rabbit-eyed up at Arthur from a face suddenly covered in blood. Arthur only had time to hope it was the dead man's blood before the yard exploded into chaos.
Arthur threw himself at a pile of crates, feeling the hot whir of a bullet pass by his ear as he slid into cover. He unloaded his repeater at the men closest to him. He took his time aiming at one of the men in the barn loft, and even managed to take one down. But far more men were swarming out of the barn and farmhouse. Arthur blocked it all out for a moment, and focused on the pale faces in the barn loft, holding sniper rifles. He picked two of them off, and then spun around to kill a man who’d been raising a rifle from behind him. and Arthur allowed himself a brief moment of hope, that maybe he could keep this spot fortified until he picked off enough of them-
He felt an explosion that seemed to be right beside him, a sudden surge of heat and splinters of wood peppering his side like buckshot that knocked him off his feet and knocked the repeater out of his hand. Arthur reached for his revolver on his good side, but it was too late. Someone tackled him, he hit the ground hard enough that all the air was knocked out of him, and he felt another man, or maybe the same man, grinding his knees into Arthur's ribs. He tasted dirt and dried horse piss as he struggled. For a moment, the hand in his hair loosened, and Arthur was able to raise his face just enough to see another body not far from him. It was Kieran, still sprawled across the ground, two different O’Driscolls seizing him by the shoulders and pulling him away. Kieran’s eyes were locked on Arthur, wide and astonished, mouthing something he couldn't make out. He tried to make it out, but another fist in the back of Arthur’s head broke his eye contact and forced his face down in the mud.
That O'Driscoll boy was the death of me, he thought, then stars exploded behind his eyes and darkness took him.