Free The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall Page A

another through my mouth. For a second I lay there, stunned, my cheek sunk in the wet ground and the blond grass swaying indistinctly across my field of vision. Then everything slowly came back into focus. An inch from my eye a spider was belaying down one of the stems on a pale rope. Its legs pedalled precisely on the descent.
    I drew a shallow breath and as I did so my collarbone and back protested. All the air had been knocked out of me on impact, but my lungs had been strangely airless even before I hit the ground. I fought with my diaphragm to let oxygen pass, trying to stem the panic of being winded. I couldn’t find and use my arms so I pushed against the ground with my chest, trying to raise myself. But I could not move. I was like a landed fish.
    As I made an effort to get up again I heard a voice, not far away. ‘Keep her down. Lock on tight.’ I felt the pressure on my back increase. I stopped moving, and tried to say something, but it came out as nothing more than a cough. There was the gory taste of peat in my mouth and blood that ran from inside my nose. I lay still and looked into the moor grass. After a moment my lungs began to calm and fill, but my heart was hammering. In front of me the spider reached the base of the stem, cut itself free, and disappeared into the undergrowth.
    ‘Check the duffel,’ another voice said, closer to me this time. Curling my fingers I felt the warm skin of a hand that had both of mine pinned together behind my back, midway up my spine. There was the sound of ratching and zipping, nails scrabbling quickly between the nylon folds of my bag. I heard the soft brush of clothing as it was brought out of the rucksack, the thump of my canister as it was dropped on the ground. Then there was a pause. ‘She’s got a bastard gun. Look.’ The grip tightened on my wrists. A hand was placed on the back of my head and my face was pushed further into the damp earth. ‘Shit. Good girl, eh?’ I heard the last contents of the rucksack being turned out, the boxes of bullets being unwrapped from a bundle of T-shirts. Then the casings were rattled against the cardboard edges. ‘No. Bad girl. Ready to get her up?’
    The voices were women’s. I could not tell how many were present, they were muffled and low, but I could hear that they were efficient. ‘Yes. In a minute. Lynn, go and secure the ridge.’ There was the sound of someone running. Then the hand on my head tightened into a fist. It took hold of a clump of my hair and lifted my face out of the wet earth. ‘Anyone else with you?’ The voice was louder now that my ear was out of the mud, and it was precise, leaving a small pause between each word. I moved my tongue against the roof of my mouth and my gums and spat out a mouthful of dirt. The inside of my cheek was stinging, and I knew I’d bitten it in several places. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I walked here alone. From Rith.’
    There was another pause. ‘When was this?’ ‘Today,’ I replied. There was a snort. The voice next to me had remained level, but now a note of annoyance entered it. ‘Almost forty miles? No, you didn’t.’ I realised the inaccuracy of what I had said, and corrected myself. ‘There was a man who gave me a lift part of the way. He said he worked at the reservoir. I got out at Rosgill.’ Another pause. My head was lowered back down. No more questions were asked.
    For a long time it was quiet. Then a dry whistle sounded across the fell. I could hear my possessions being shaken one by one and stuffed back into the bag. I was still being held down but the grip on my scalp had relaxed. The hand lay flat there, and at one point I thought I felt fingers combing gently through my hair. Then I felt another set of hands patting me down, reaching underneath me, pressing my hips and ribs, my ankles. Pain started to arrive properly in my mouth, my knee, and along my collarbone. I tried to cast the shock and discomfort away and get a clear reading of the situation.