Chapter 14
The morning had the kind of warmth that made a person forget how hard the winter had been.
Grace worked behind the new cultivator with dirt up to her wrists, breaking clods the mules had turned loose, and looked out over rows that hadn't existed a week ago.
The second walking plow from Cal's farm had made the difference — not everything they needed, but enough that the Hollow was finally getting ahead of the season instead of chasing it.
Somebody walked a row behind the plow team, guiding the mules with an easy hand.
Two of the Bennett children carried buckets of seed potatoes between the rows, arguing good-naturedly over whose turn it was to drop them.
Further down, Carol Hendricks and another woman worked breaking clods by hand, laughing about something Grace couldn't hear from this distance.
Russ walked past leading one of the mules toward the next strip of ground.
"Don't say it," Grace said.
"Say what?"
"That we're ahead."
Russ looked out over the field. "Wasn't going to."
"Good."
"I was going to say we're less behind."
Grace laughed despite herself and went back to work.
Luke was working a row nearby with Billy Jean dropping seed a few feet ahead of him, and Grace noticed — not for the first time this morning — how often Luke's row seemed to end up right beside hers.
"Luke."
"What?"
"Your row's over here." Grace nodded toward the strip clearly marked two down from where he stood.
Billy Jean smiled without looking up from her work.
"I know where my row is," Luke said.
"Could've fooled me."
He went back to his own strip, ears a little red, and Billy Jean laughed low enough that only Grace caught it. It was a good morning for that kind of teasing — easy, warm, nothing behind it but a boy and a girl figuring out how to be around each other while the Hollow pretended not to notice.
Rebecca came by during the water break, moving easier than she had even a few days ago, color in her face that no longer looked borrowed.
"How's the patient count?" Grace asked.
"Quiet, for once. Infected splinter this morning. A cough that's been hanging on too long for my taste. Somebody wanting me to look at a knee that's been bothering him since before the EMP." Rebecca accepted a cup of water gratefully. "Half my job is telling people they're going to live."
"What's the other half?"
"Telling them to stop doing whatever caused it."
"You're going to stay busy here."
Rebecca smiled, and it reached all the way into her eyes now in a way it hadn't the first week. Somebody called across the yard — "Doctor?" — and Rebecca turned toward the voice automatically, without thinking about it, the way a person turns toward their own name.
That mattered more than Grace said out loud.
Grace and Russ walked the fields a while longer, talking through what came next — which strips needed turning before the week was out, how much seed they had left to put in the ground, when Russ figured he'd need to take the mules back to Cal's for the second half of their arrangement.
Walter had a lame chicken to look at and a fence needing mending on the far side. Luke had watch duty that afternoon with one of the older men. Life had started acquiring the shape it used to have, piece by piece, the way it hadn't since before the EMP.
Grace thought of David, briefly, looking out over rows that hadn't existed the last time he'd stood in this field. He'd be pleased. She let the thought sit a moment and went back to work.
The hoofbeats reached her before the shouting did.
Somebody near the barricade called out first, and the whole field seemed to go quiet at once, every head turning toward the road. A horse was coming hard from the south, faster than anybody rode toward the Hollow under ordinary circumstances, the rider low over its neck.
The gate stopped him before he could ride through unchallenged, and Grace was already moving toward the sound by the time a runner reached her, breathless, face telling her before his words did that this wasn't a broken plow or a sick animal.
"Grace!"
"What?"
"Man from Harlan's." He caught his breath enough to finish it. "They're under attack."
Grace dropped what she was carrying and headed for the gate.
The rider was young, maybe mid-twenties, blood on one sleeve and down the front of his shirt, his horse wet through the chest and neck despite the mild day, sides heaving.
"You hit?" Grace asked, reaching him.
He looked down at the blood like he'd forgotten it was there. "Not mine."
Good. She waited while he caught enough breath to talk.
Men had come in armed, hitting the south side of the settlement. Harlan's people were holding but getting pushed back toward the buildings. How many attackers, Grace asked. He didn't know for certain. Eight. Maybe ten.
Rebecca had come up close enough to hear that number, drawn by the blood and the commotion, and Grace watched her go pale.
"Ravagers?" Rebecca asked.
The messenger didn't recognize the word.
"What do they look like? How are they behaving?" Grace asked him.
Organized, he said. Rifles. Moving together rather than scattered. No demands for food, no attempt at trade first. They'd come shooting from the start.
Rebecca's jaw tightened. "Sounds like them."
Grace didn't need certainty to know what came next. Harlan was five miles away and people were being shot at right now.
Nobody asked who was in charge. People simply looked at Grace, the way they had since David rode east, and Grace made the decision because somebody had to and she was standing there.
"We're going." Then, before anybody could assume more than she meant: "We don't empty the Hollow."
She picked her group fast — herself, Russ, two of the steadier armed men from the outer households, and Luke.
Russ's eyes cut to Luke before he said anything, a question Grace understood without needing it spoken.
"I'm going," Luke said.
"I know," Grace said, and that answered it better than an argument would have.
Billy Jean had come close enough to hear, and something shifted in her face — not fear exactly, or not only fear. Luke looked at her.
"Come back," Billy Jean said.
"I will."
Grace heard it and didn't add anything of her own to it. Some promises weren't hers to make.
She sorted the rest of it fast. Walter stayed, along with enough armed adults to hold the barricade properly. Billy Jean stayed. Ben and Matthew stayed. Rebecca stayed, though she didn't accept it easily.
"If they're being shot—"
"They're being shot right now," Grace said. "We have to stop that first."
"Then I'll come behind you."
"No."
Grace didn't soften it. They didn't know if the road stayed secure the whole five miles, and Rebecca alive at the Hollow was worth more to everybody than Rebecca riding into a gunfight she couldn't affect until the shooting stopped.
Rebecca hated it. She understood it anyway, and turned toward gathering what she could without being asked twice — bandages, clean cloth, whatever Karen's stores could spare.
"Send for me the second it's safe," Rebecca said.
"We will."
They moved fast without turning it into chaos.
Horses came out of the barn and off the picket line, tack thrown on quick and checked once rather than twice.
Russ mounted his own gelding. Grace took the horse she rode to Harlan's most often, steady enough for a hard pace over ground she knew.
Luke swung up onto one of the Hollow's dependable saddle horses.
The two men Grace had chosen — Danny Webb and one of the older Bennett cousins, both steady hands who'd stood watch enough times that Grace trusted their judgment under pressure — checked their own rifles without being told twice.
"Five of us," Danny said, more observation than complaint.
"Five is what we've got to spare," Grace said. "Hollow needs defending too."
Everybody carried a rifle. Grace checked her own ammunition once, a habit rather than a doubt.
The messenger's horse stood blown, sides heaving, in no shape to run five miles back at any real pace. He stayed behind rather than slow them down, having given Grace everything she needed — the direction, the numbers, the shape of what waited.
Grace already knew the road. She didn't need him to lead.
They rode hard but not flat out, a strong trot breaking into canter where the ground allowed it, five miles being too far to burn a horse out in the first mile.
The country rolled past familiar in a way that felt strange today — the same fields Grace had ridden past a dozen times carrying nothing heavier than a warning or a trade proposal, now carrying something that felt entirely different.
Danny and the Bennett cousin rode a length back, quiet, faces set the way faces set when a person understood exactly what they were riding toward.
Russ rode near her. Luke came behind, close enough that Grace kept glancing back more than she meant to. He looked younger on horseback today, or maybe he simply looked exactly his age for once instead of the age everybody had needed him to be since David left.
He caught her looking. "I'm fine."
"Didn't ask."
"You were going to."
Grace faced forward and let that be the end of it.
They slowed as they closed the distance, enough to listen. At first nothing. Then, carried on the wind from the south, gunfire — distant, scattered shots at first, then a burst of several together.
"They're at it," Russ said.
Grace's stomach tightened into something hard and cold, and everything about the morning's easy warmth fell away behind her.
The direct road led toward Harlan's main approach, and Grace knew without needing to say it that the fighting was likely concentrated there.
"Don't ride straight into it," Russ said.
"I know." Grace had ridden to Harlan's enough times to know the country around it as well as the road itself. "There's another way in. Old field road, runs along the fence line west of the settlement."
"Wagon road?"
"Barely."
"Good enough."
They turned off the main road, Luke following without question, the gunfire growing louder with every minute closer.