Jeremy Swift stopped in the shade of a squat elm to take a break from his hand-drawn wagon. Dusting his calloused palms together, the sun scorched man appraised the simple conveyance with pressed lips. Burdensome, that, with its loose wheels and a load of salted bear meat weighing about eight stone and a quarter.

Not much of a haul. Mopping sweat from his brow with his shirtsleeve, he pondered the Croatan Indians behind him on the mainland. Across the Sound east of the island, the natives were turning out less and less food for trade with each passing month. Of course, that didn't surprise Swift. Didn't surprise any one of the hundred-fifty-so colonists on the island; because for eight-score honest English planters, they sure as hell weren't turning out much food themselves. 

Roanoke needed rain. The mainland needed rain. Francis Drake needed to drift by and take the whole damned lot back home — same as he did with the last eight-score honest English planters when they gave up on the first Raleigh Colony.

Goddamned Raleigh.

What kind o' man leaves a hundred-fifty souls to take over a colony that already failed, even after finding nothin' of the fifteen original men? Take your womenfolk and children right there, mates! Just follow the bleached bones!

Same kind of man who later turned about and called the Roanoke colonists prim and spoiled for asking for more provisions. A fair request, by God, given the conditions of this bloody forsaken island.

Swift narrowed his eyes against the early afternoon sun as a flock of gulls took wing over the horizon. From the birds and the sun, he figured himself a good halfway back to the colony. The ache in the narrow of his back — which was turning more into a feeling of a hot knife blade with each passing season — told him he was already done for the day.

Swift snatched his water skin from atop the pile of bear meat and took a deep draught. Not of water, mind. The Indians he'd met at the shoreline had been kind enough to fill it with their medicine, and the burn that it delivered to his throat also helped to dull the throbbing in his back.

He sighed, stowing the water skin back in the blasted cart. “Back to it.” Swift took hold of the wagon's pair of handles. “Let's get this done, ye warp-wheeled heap o' shite.”

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Digging in his heels to pull, the man paused when a figure caught his eye down the trail. Something small, bobbing toward him and rustling the small branches that had grown across the path.

I'll be damned . . . 

“Oy! That li'l Tom Archard I see?” he called out. “The devil ya doin' all the way out here, boy?”

Swift narrowed his aging eyes again. They'd been giving him nearly as much grief as his back lately, but with a proper squint, he could see the right of his guess. It was indeed Tom Archard, a boy about thirteen years.

Young Tom was a planter's son and one of the nine children who came to the island three years ago with the rest of the colonists. The boy stopped a few paces ahead of Swift and stared silently at the man and his burden.

"Mercy, what's wrong with ya, boy?" Swift cocked his head and stepped out from between the wagon's handles.

Out from the shade, the sun beat across his neck like a strapping. Sweat immediately formed on his brow and seeped from every pore.

Swift sighed. He was starting to feel like eight stone and a quarter of salted bear meat.

“What's got ya, lad? I asked a . . .”

Lurching backward, Swift felt something course wrap around his neck and pull tight. Swift kicked his feet, but it only served to break his balance and he found himself falling to the ground to land on his knees. His vision blurred, darkness seeped in like ink poured into his old, failing eyes.

He tried to call out to the boy, tried to tell him to run and get help, but the rope at his neck tightened and all words choked at the source.

Swift's strength waned with each futile attempt at breath. His will soon followed. Even his arms gave up the fight and fell dully to his side as young Tom stepped closer to him.

No! Run! Get your pa!

But the boy wasn't running. He was walking closer still. And the boy was smiling. Swift caught a flash of something in the boys hand. Both hands. A cup? And?

A knife? That's it boy! Cut this bastard down and save ol' Swift!

Through the haze of waning consciousness, Swift felt the warmth and stubble of a cheek pressing against the side of his head. Hot breath issued out from the unseen mouth of the strangler.

His rough words followed. “Do it, son.”

The boy leaned forward, flashing the blade in the sun as he raised it high. Swift jerked hopelessly as the point drove into his throat, just below the rope that choked him. The cut was slow and unsteady, like the apprehensive work of an amateur surgeon. Swift felt every stroke as it worked across his neck.

But all he could see was Tom Archard. And the boy's eyes weren't those of an unpracticed killer. They were heartless, focused on watching the metal goblet fill with Swift's blood.

He died there, staring into the eyes of a young boy monster. The wretched pain in his back followed him to the very end.