THE Start of the world by Martin Deakin. Chapter One

Mac stopped crawling up the hill’s steep flank and listened. He unsheathed his commando knife, gripping it tightly in his right hand. That would make climbing the final pull to the top slower but speed wasn’t the priority any more. Stealth was.

He could hear the hunters were on the far side of the rock slabs, perhaps that was all that was shielding him from their view. They’d been pursuing him since he left the woods, they’d made up the distance and now they were the closest they’d been all morning. If he put a foot wrong now, chose the wrong line through the rocks say, or slipped and made a noise, they’d all fall on him with knives and hatchets.

He stifled a shudder. He’d be lucky to wing one of them, let alone take one with him. He worked the duffel bag of pheasants and chickens he’d stolen around from his back to his chest where it kept his hands free and fought down an impulse to make a dash for it. “Slow down,” he told himself, forcing himself to slow his breathing. “Don’t panic. Keep moving. Steady and slow. You’ll get out of this.”

He could hear the blood pounding in his ears. It was eerily still and quiet. Normally, the pass he was making for funnelled strong, roaring winds through it. The silence will help me more than it helps them, he assured himself. He could hear them, slightly above him and to his right, to his east. He ascended foot by foot like a prowling cat through the thin mist that occasionally drifted across his route. The grass that separated the slabs felt damp under his palms.

The hunters were fairly well disciplined, not laughing and joking, but all the same they were chatting and he could tell there was no urgency in the voices. That meant they were unaware how close he was. Heart still pounding, he crawled up the incline until he reached the edge of the pass. He’d deliberately climbed up higher than the lip, fearing a trap and wanting a higher viewpoint if there was one. There was. Perhaps he’d underestimated the hunters. After all, their tracking had been good enough to capture and kill two of the other poachers Ricky had previously sent out.

They’d hidden one tracker behind a boulder. From his position Mac could just see a half a camouflage jacket clad back and shoulder, a hooded head and a pair of legs. The figure would have been invisible if Mac had crossed at the lip. There was a crossbow in their lap. There couldn’t be many of those left. Mac shuddered. That bolt would have been fired into his back if he’d carelessly crossed the ridge at the lip and descended directly from there. When the wind blew holes in the morning mist he scanned the surrounding hillside for other hidden hunters. In the end it was the gaze of the sniper he could see that gave it away. Sure enough, every so often they’d look across to his side of the valley and gesture with a shake of the head, a shrug or a thumbs-down. Mac couldn’t see the other lookout, but worked out which jumble of rocks they were hidden in. He felt reassured the sniper wasn’t using military hand signals.

Mac was now confident he had the upper hand. He was hidden, they were not and he had several options to pick from depending on how things developed. There were many hours of daylight left, the whole day if necessary. He wasn’t cold. He could take his time.

He waited, hidden in a dip amongst rocks. His legs lay on the grass and had become wet. His chest was on a flat rock, colder, but dry.

His thoughts returned to a familiar, vexing subject; how absolutely pointless these chicken raids were. His teeth gritted as he thought about the needless risk that he and the other men were forced to put up with. There was more than enough game in the woods surrounding the Manor House, not to mention escaped pigs and deer. He decided he’d try again to get things changed when he got back.

After a while he saw the sniper make a rolling gesture with their hands in the direction of the hidden sentry before getting up and scrambling back to where the larger group of hunters were hidden. To Mac’s surprise, the sniper left the crossbow on the ground and Mac could see it was a woman. As she climbed out of view, Mac quickly moved down into the open killing ground of the valley before crossing to the left, into the tangle of dips and hollows, boulders and heather above the second lookout’s position. He got far enough back to be out of sight of the first sentry’s field but could himself see her position clearly. He waited until the replacement climbed down. It was another woman. She took up the original position with the crossbow. This took, Mac estimated, between three and four minutes. Again he noted it had not been done as soldiers would have done it. They would have sent the replacement down first to relieve the first woman, not leave the position unoccupied. If they had done that of course, he wouldn’t have been able to manoeuvre himself above her half as easily. Once he was satisfied that she was settled in, Mac set about finding a position where he could look down on the second, previously hidden observer. Once he’d managed this he was able to observe her from above and to the rear. He could only see her upper half, wrapped in cold weather gear. As far as he could see, she had no crossbow or bow but Mac had to assume she had an assortment of knives. And of course, in half a second she could summon the other hunters if she spotted him. Unless the hunters gave up before last light or the lookout he was now above was switched as clumsily as the  first, Mac couldn’t get any closer to escaping down the valley. To his left, which the map inside his jacket old him was more or less due west, were a series of terraced cliffs which had always looked too steep to descend. He’d never considered them a viable escape route.

Although the sun was setting through the kitchen window there was still enough light to work by for the four women sat around the kitchen table. The empty rucksack was to one side. Two of the women were plucking and gutting the birds and teaching the youngest girl, Nicola how to do it.

Mac’s cuts and grazes were being dressed by Linda. Linda was somewhere between her early and mid-forties. She had let her mousy brown hair grow long and unruly. It reminded Mac of a documentary he’d seen about hillbilly Appalachian mountain women.

“Ooh that’s a nasty one love” she said as she lifted his shirt to reveal a large abrasion over his rib cage.

“I’ll try to be gentle’ she said, probing with her thumbs for any cracked ribs. Mac grunted as she pressed.

“You’re lucky this time Mac,” she assured him. “There’s nothing broken but you’ll have a lot of bruising and tenderness around there for days. How did you do it again?”

“You know the cliff to the right of the route up the pass?” Mac winced as he spoke.

Linda’s eyes rose up diagonally as she visualised the place.

“Yeah, I know where you mean. Lots of big boulders at the bottom.”

“One of those boulders did that,” Mac said ruefully.” I’d almost climbed down to the bottom but I lost my handhold. As I was falling, I spun so I’d land on my front but I couldn’t hold on and scraped all the way down to the grass.”

Linda drew in her breath with a hiss, grimacing. “Ouch. Well it’s cleaned and dressed but do try to keep it clean, at least until it scabs over. We don’t…”

“Yeah, we don’t have any antibiotics left” finished Mac.

They both laughed together but stopped abruptly when the door banged open and a huge man stood in the doorway before walking inside, letting the door slam behind him.

“Oh, er, hi Ricky,” Julie said, ‘look what Mac brought back from his raid on the Danes.” She looked down at the table after speaking and made herself busy with the birds. Julie was about twenty-five. She could still be described as cuddly even though there was never enough to eat. She was usually chatty and full of advice and opinions, though like everyone else she kept quiet when Ricky was around. She’d been a hairdresser or beautician before.

Ricky looked at the haul dismissively.

“Hmm. Might feed half of us I suppose.”

Joan, an older woman, the only over-fifty in the group, got up and moved over to the sink. “We need another bucket of water Nicola. Nip to the well would you?” Nicola, at ten years old was by far the youngest survivor and still full of youthful innocence even after all they had been through. She took the bucket and left the room without speaking. Silence reigned and electric tension sang.

“Hey,” Mac objected. “I was spotted half way through and chased all the way to the pass or I’d have caught more.”

“Bah,” spat Ricky, “more excuses.”

Mac remained silent, knowing better than to look around the room for backing.

“Hey Linda,” Julie interjected, feeling the building tension, ‘when are you going to let me do your hair? It would look fabulous if I tidied it up and put in some…”

“What’s the point of that?” Ricky snarled. “Old cow. Nobody wants to bed her.”

The women shuffled uncomfortably in their seats, finding a sudden all-consuming interest in the table or the pheasants.

Mac decided to try talking to Ricky again, but this time tentatively, remembering the last pounding he’d had when he’d gone too far.

“Ricky” he began, hoping he’d put enough respect in his tone, respect he didn’t feel. “What are we going to do when we can’t steal enough food from the Danes? Perhaps we could get some live birds of our own.”

From the corner of his eye he noticed a stiffening in the women’s postures.

“I’m working on it alright?” Ricky snapped. The tone of finality was unmistakeable.

“I saw a herd of red deer while I was coming over the pass,” Mac continued. “And places pigs have been grubbing for roots. I saw a few of those today too.”

Ricky drew in a deep breath, filling out his great chest. Mac said nothing, just looking at him.

“Are you challenging me again? Looking at me like that? If you want to be leader, you know what to do.”

“I’m not challenging you Ricky and I wasn’t challenging you last time. I don’t want to be leader.” Mac spoke slowly, placatingly. “I don’t want another beating. But I don’t want to slowly die of starvation either.”

Mac took a deep breath and continued “I wish you’d listen to my ideas. We can’t survive if we carry on as we are.” He noticed, peripherally, all the women were frozen still, listening to every nuance. He also knew they were hoping, hoping against hope, that this time Mac would break through Ricky’s stubborn deafness.

Ricky’s short fuse blew. He stood up, looming over Mac. “I already know your ideas. You want to take one of my rifles and hunt for deer and wild pigs. Once you’ve got a gun, what’s to stop you shooting me and taking all my women and everything else?”

Spittle flecked his lips as he ranted. “I’ve told you No and I mean No.” He walked around the table, advancing on Mac in a couple of strides. Mac retreated, his hands up placatingly, speaking calmly, his back to the door. “We need you Ricky, shooting you would be suicide for all of us. We don’t have enough people as it is.”

But Ricky wasn’t listening. He pinned Mac’s throat to the door with one enormous hand. “If you keep this up there’ll be one less. I’ve warned you. Don’t push me. You’ve lost your reward now for bringing back those birds.”

“You send me out to risk my life stealing from next door and then you take away the reward you offered me?” Mac’s tightened voice had an incredulous tone.

“I’m the best poacher by miles” he continued. “Colin never comes back with anything.”

“And if he comes back empty handed he gets a good hiding and spends the night in the coal shed,” Ricky countered. “So if you don’t like it, you can…” He paused, reconsidering. “No, no. Alright, you can have Julie.”

“This morning you said I could have Ally,” Mac protested.

“Julie or Pam of the hand. Now get out, before…” Mac twisted away. He heard Ricky shouting after him. “We’re doing fine.”

Mac walked quickly away. He breathed out, relieved he’d narrowly scraped escaping a slapping in front of the women. All the same, he wouldn’t give Ricky any satisfaction by running.