Free The Roving Party by Rohan Wilson

wattle and fern. At the treeline he stopped and looked back at Batman and the Dharugs who were cocking their heads in study, but they did not see Bill enter the bush with his knife drawn.
    He tracked through a shallow wooded gully at a trot andevery few yards he saw a stain or the scuffed earth of a heel print. Soon he snaked over a mossy scree that turned under his boots and the light was dim and misty. The clansfolk had split the crowns of every man fern in that glade for the edible shoot inside and the cut fronds hung like eyelids, brushing against his hat as he moved beneath. He stopped to look around, listening to the morning birds calling, turning his head to peer into the shadows. Nothing. He moved on.
    Before long he arrived at a stone outcrop rising from the floor of the rainforest in great broken knuckles and he saw the marks in the mildew on those stones and knew he was close. A gully fell away below the outcrop and Bill stood atop those stones gazing down the embankment. Halfway down lay the clansman on his side where he had tumbled to a stop. The stones underneath were stained with his gore. Bill removed his hat and stood considering the descent.
    Now the clansman turned his head to stare. Shot had flayed the skin from the forepart of his ribs and exposed the muscle and the pearly bone in parts. Above the wound he was ornamented in several places with scarring. Most of them were in the shape of halfmoons but along his shoulders he was scarred in neat rows and it was these scars that spoke of his clansmanship. Bill read those scars and saw that face and he understood: here was Taralta the lawman. The Vandemonian descended into that gully through the rank damp and he crouched beside Taralta. Even now mosquitoes covered the bare parts of him.Bill brushed them off but Taralta had spent all night exposed and the flesh where they had fed was swollen and his thigh was embedded with scattershot and bruised in every shade of midnight. Such was his pain Taralta seemed barely to comprehend where he was. Bill raised him off the rocks.
    They made a slow pace towards the campsite. The lawman was holding his wounds and leaning into Bill, smearing blood on Bill’s shirt as they hobbled along. A short way off a tigerwolf raised its head to observe them, its dog’s eyes unblinking. Taralta looked at the creature but then turned away quickly as if he was ashamed to be seen in such a state.
    Say now. What have you there? said Batman as they emerged into daylight.
    Bill dropped the lawman where he fell. Lost in his pain, Taralta moaned and gritted his teeth. They poured water over his wounds which set him twitching and hollering. From a short distance away the girl called to him, clutching her child. Taralta took some ragged breaths and the girl in her bindings tried to edge near him but she was hauled off by Black Bill and dumped beside a bark hut.
    They stood over Taralta in thought.
    Wont see morning, said John Batman.
    Gould was beside him. Well we have us one, he said. What of the others?
    That there is a very fine question, said Batman.
    All about that campsite roamed a plague of dogs like nothing they had ever put eyes on. Black Bill sucked on a gum leaf and studied the dusty swarm wheeling around, their diamond eyes coruscating in the firelight; each the same sort of wormridden thing built of bone, skin and bile. Some were engaged in licking blood off the bracken or the dirt and some nosed through the temma in the manner of pigs in a wallow, turning out the skins and the feather bundles lining the huts. The stink of them and their faeces was something utterly unholy. Bill removed the leaf from his bottom lip and turned to Batman.
    Forty-eight, he said. Thirty of which is bitches.
    Batman looked at him. A regular little herd, aint it.
    Bill watched him.
    They’ll make havoc with me sheep.
    No more needed to be said on the matter. Black Bill collected his weapon and he looped the strap across his shoulder and proceeded to