Chapter Text
They don't take much; there isn't much to take. John has the satchel he'd brought with him from the ship, swollen with what little food he'd been able to gather on a pass through James' kitchen. James has a satchel of his own - clothes, a few books, some tools. They have the horses.
(John had hesitated, delayed in taking his saddle as James passed it to him in the barn. James had laughed - low, quick, humorless. "You've practically bought the fucking thing twice over, at the rates he charges you," he'd said, and John had half wanted to protest - Mister Anderton had always seemed a fair, though admittedly shrewd, businessman, who to John's knowledge had never done anything but right by either of them - but then he'd thought of the blade at his throat, the bitter realization that in spite of the armies he commanded, the position he'd certainly earned, his knowledge could still be lacking. He'd taken the saddle, and the horse as well, and hadn't let himself feel guilty for either of them.)
And - they have each other. He has the firm line of James' shoulders in front of him, the dark shape he makes perched atop his horse. John follows, silent and unquestioning, lets James go first, lets him cut the path away from the house, in the opposite direction from town, toward the mountains. John glances over his shoulder, just once, as they crest the first of the foothills - the house is shuttered and still, just as he'd found it. Just as his men will find it, when they eventually come looking, and he's trying not to think of that, of his crew, of the Walrus, but.
He'd left the captain's log on the heavy table; he'd intended to spend some time working on it while he was with James, fill in the details of their last raid that he simply hadn't found the time to record yet. But it didn't matter now. Perhaps DeGroot will finish it off, though he would prefer Billy, but - whoever. It's not his business any more. It's not his decision.
He's expecting the pang in his chest that comes along with that particular thought - though perhaps he isn't expecting it to come quite as strongly as it does.
"Come on," James says, though - his voice fainter than John likes it, and when he turns, he finds James has pulled ahead of him, twisted around in his saddle to look back. "We've got to hurry if we're to make the next village by nightfall."
"Coming," John says, and spurs his horse onward.