by Shade Owens
The moment Isaac had left, I’d heard the click, which meant I was locked in here until Rainer came to get me. They’d left a small loaf of bread on a three-legged stool at the foot of the bed. It wasn’t much, and the edges appeared dry and hard, but I’d eat it.
Would it be my last meal?
Sighing, I sat down on the bed, promising myself I wouldn’t lie down.
How am I getting out of this one? There’s no way out.
Staring at the gadget, I pressed the play button again. “Ace in place, over.”
Had she used this to gather new followers? Had she also promised them freedom? I thought of Sammy, who’d been dragged away by Rainer’s other son, and wondered if she too had fallen into Hawkins’s trap. I’d hated her at first as I’d hated Collins… But was it their fault for following such a monster?
I, too, had chased after Hawkins’s empty promise—and because of this chase, I was now sitting in isolation, away from the people I loved.
There was no way out of this one. I’d hit a wall. Dropping the radio onto the bed’s cotton sheets, I grabbed the loaf of bread and made my way to the hole in the wall. If I was going to die, I wanted to at least enjoy the bit of time I had left.
The crust was hard and stale, but once pulled apart, the interior was soft and spongy. It was room temperature and had a sour taste to it, but it felt good going down into my empty stomach. At the same time, I inhaled a breath of moist air and closed my eyes, appreciating all of my senses—the sweet and sour taste spreading across my tongue, the faint howling caused by the air traveling through the tunnel, the smell of home-cooked bread rising up into my nostrils, and the crust’s smooth texture against the tips of my fingers.
For a moment, everything was perfect—in my mind, I wasn’t captured, nor was I less than twenty-four hours away from being sentenced to death.
No… in my mind, I was simply me. I was alive, breathing, feeling.
Was this the calm before the storm? Was this my euphoria before death?
When I cracked my eyes open again, a small bird sat at the end of the window in the stone wall. Its feathers were of a gorgeous azure—almost turquoise—blue, and under its chin was a plum-colored patch that ran down to its neck.
A plum-throated cotinga, as Proxy had taught me. She’d also taught me that the males were blue, while the females were typically brown.
I stared at its vivid blue plumage, mesmerized by its beauty. Its chirp, a high-pitched squeal, reminded me more of a monkey than a bird. When it turned its head sideways, the bird focused its small yellow eye on me as if realizing I was watching it.
“Hey, buddy…” I whispered.
It expanded its wings for a second before pulling them back against its body.
A hello?
I smiled.
“You’re gorgeous,” I whispered, oddly comforted by the small creature.
It stood there for a while, turning its head from side to side as an array of sounds escaped the jungle’s forestry.
But something startled it, and it flew away so fast I didn’t have the time to say goodbye.
A shout? Screaming? What was that?
Turning my head sideways, I brought my ear up to the window, held my breath, and listened.
In the distance, women shouted at the tops of their lungs. It wasn’t the kind of screaming that erupted from the city when a fight broke out. This was something else… something far worse.
CHAPTER 3
Through the wooden door, heavy footsteps marched down the mountain’s cavern.
What was going on? I ran to it, pressed my ear against the grainy wood, and listened.
“What do you mean, an attack?” Rainer growled, her voice growing distant.
Where was she going? Was she leaving her lair?
Zsasz’s deep commanding voice followed close behind. I could tell it was Zsasz, but I couldn’t make out anything she was saying. She was talking faster than usual, which meant something was up. Zsasz was always a slow talker—so slow it was as if she enjoyed hearing herself speak.
Through the window, the shouting continued to louden until I found myself pulling at the door in a panic, the wood rattling against the stone frame.
What the hell was going on? Why weren’t they letting me out? Was the city on fire? Oh God… Would it enter Rainer’s lair? If so, would they leave me here to burn to death? Out of nowhere, a familiar whistling sound entered the tunnel window and bounced off every wall in the room.
Arrows.
Why were arrows being fired?
I blasted my fists at the door. “Let me out!”
The wooden door’s planks wiggled as I hit it, but the construction was too sturdy to break apart.
“What’s going on?” I shouted, pounding my fists against the door again.
Something clicked and I instinctively stepped away from the door.
Shit.
Did I piss someone off? Was Isaac coming in here to shut me up?
The door flung open and smashed against the inside of the damp, stone room.
Sammy.
She stood with her lips parted and shoulders bouncing up and down with every rapid breath.
“What’s going on?” I said, my heart now racing.
She frowned. “The city’s under attack.”
I darted for the doorway and stuck my head out. Where was everyone? Zsasz? Rainer? Isaac and his brother whose name I still didn’t know?
“They’re all out there,” Sammy said as if reading my mind. With the back of her wrist, she wiped her sweaty forehead, causing her eyebrow piercing to wiggle. Around her wrist was frayed rope wrapped several times.
“How’d you get out?” I stared at her wrists, which had assumedly only been tied minutes ago.
She looked as surprised as I felt. “Eliot let us go.”
“Who’s Eliot?” I asked.
“Rainer’s son,” she said.
The other brother.
Why had he helped them?
“Rainer told him to watch us and she took Isaac with her,” Sammy said. “You should’ve seen the armor she put on him, Brone. Something messed up is going on. The guy looked like a fuckin’ gladiator. Rainer, too. She put on a bunch of metal gear. A chest plate, shoulder plates, and even leg plates.”
“So what’s going on out there?” I asked.
Sammy shook her blond, fuzzy-haired head. “I have no idea. But whatever it is, people are dying. We have to go before Rainer comes back. Eliot showed me where Rainer keeps her weapons. Come on.”
She swung around and darted toward Rainer’s main room, where Hawkins had been left to lie in her own pool of blood. Before we reached it, I grabbed her by the rope around her wrist.
“Why’d he help us?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. He isn’t like his mom or brother. There’s something good in him, Brone, and I think he wants all of the slavery to end. So do me a favor… when you get yourself a bow, don’t kill him, okay?”
I nodded and followed her back to Rainer’s room, where Scorch and Dibs stood in front of a pile of weapons. Even Hawkins, who held her broken fingers in the air, stared hatefully at the pile as if trying to decide which one would slide through Rainer’s heart the easiest.
But what caught my attention more than the weapons was Rainer’s son who stood behind his mother’s throne, shamefully averting his gaze toward the ground.
At that moment, I didn’t see a man… I saw a boy. A frightened boy who never asked to be born into a life like this.
I walked toward him and he took a step back.
“Eliot?” I asked.
His eyes, large and black as the night sky, darted between me and the women behind me. It was like cornering a frightened animal.
I wanted to hate him… I truly did. I knew precisely what he’d been doing to helpless women… holding them down and raping them to bring new life into this world. But as I stared at his terrified eyes, I realized something: he, too, was a victim in
this.
His mother was basically forcing him to have intercourse because she wanted an army.
Was that why he looked so ashamed? Did he know what he was doing was wrong?
“I’m Brone,” I said, resting a flat palm over my chest.
He nodded quickly but didn’t say anything. Did he even speak English? Had Rainer held her sons captive, away from society, up until they were old enough to begin reproducing? Had he been held prisoner as well?
“I wanted to say thank you,” I said.
He nodded again, his dark beard brushing against his bare chest, and grunted. He then gripped the back of his mother’s throne, and that’s when I saw them—scars, hundreds of them. They ran across his fingers, over his wrists, up his forearms, and all over his chest.
They were small and white, and it made me wonder if he’d been disobedient as a child—if Rainer had used violence to mold him into the man she needed him to be.
I wanted to know more… to question him and understand what had happened, but there was no time. Behind me, the sound of metal scraping against metal filled the room as Scorch raised a massive battle-ax into the air. It was so heavy it didn’t stay up for more than two seconds before coming down hard, clanging against the stone floor.
“Watch it!” Sammy said.
Scorch winced and bared all of her surprisingly white teeth as if to say, Sorry!
“Do we even know who’s attacking out there?” Dibs said. “What if it’s some psycho tribe. Who should we be going after? The Northers, or the ones attacking?”
When Sammy reached down to pull a long spear from the pile, everything shifted, and a wooden bow appeared at the very bottom. But it wasn’t any bow…
All sound seemed to disappear around me as I slid my thumb along the smooth cherrywood and along its curves. The string, a forest green, was constructed out of some plant. I ran my finger over the engraved E in the wood.
“Eagle,” I breathed.
“What?” Dibs said. “What’s going on? Why aren’t any of you answering me?”
This was Eagle’s bow—the one she’d used to fight off the Northers during their attack on our Village. She’d died using this bow, and Flander had given it to me. When Zsasz and her goons had captured us, my bow had been kicked aside.
I thought it to be gone forever… One of the Northers must have collected all of our weapons that day.
The skin of my palm was fiery hot against the bow’s perfectly shaped grip and a sense of invincibility overcame me.
“How many arrows are there?” I asked, searching the pile.
“Um, two here,” Sammy said.
“Four here,” Scorch said.
Dibs held up a fistful of arrows. “There’s, like… a bunch here.”
Hawkins bent down and with her uninjured hand, grabbed two metal-head arrows that lay against the tips of her toes. She gave them to me, an unspoken exchange lingering between us.
It was as if she was sorry for what she’d done to me… as if, at this moment only, we were on the same team. I supposed we were since we had a common enemy. She stepped toward me, her swollen bloody face inches from mine. The split in her lip was wide enough for a coin to slip through.
I threw my old quiver over my shoulder, took the arrows, and threw them in.
Hawkins bent down again and aggressively tore a curved, black-handled sword from the pile. “Let’s take this bitch down.”
“Who?” Dibs asked. “Rainer? You guys still haven’t told me what the hell we’re doing.”
She was trembling like a small breed dog, her entire figure shaking from side to side. It was obvious she was terrified to fight, and it was even more obvious she wanted answers before charging headfirst into a bloodbath. “Whose side are we on? What if we’re being attacked by people worse than Rainer?”
I plucked at the string of my bow, the snapping sound relieving me instantly, and smiled up at Dibs. “We aren’t being attacked… We’re the ones attacking.”
CHAPTER 4
To the death.
I was ready.
Dying in battle was far better than being slaughtered like an animal at the hands of my nemesis.
It was a huge risk but one I was willing to take. The women behind me marched down Rainer’s narrow cavern, which resembled a rectangular hall cut out of the mountain. Their heavy weaponry clanged behind me and their footsteps clapped against the solid ground.
We were all petrified, but with the way they walked—heads held up proudly and unblinking gazes aimed at the mountain’s opening—they were as ready as I was to give this all they had.
Besides, what choice was there? We couldn’t sit around and wait for the battle to be over. What if the Northers won? What if Rainer returned to her lair to execute us all? At least this way, we stood a chance and we would be providing strength to our people from the inside.
It was our people, right?
For a split second, I questioned myself. But I knew Hawkins had planned for this precisely. She’d dragged me along, knowing all too well that my people would come looking for their leader.
It had to be them.
The moment I stepped out, my foot catching the wooden stairs, an arrow came spiraling down so fast I jumped back. It snapped against the mountain wall, inches away from my thigh. The arrowhead was constructed of stone and held to the shaft by a seaweed-like string.
The craftsmanship was all too familiar with its bright red feathers for fletching and the way the string was wrapped around over a dozen times.
This was Hammer’s work.
With my bow held firmly against my chest, I watched as another dozen arrows came raining from the sky. Women with shackles ran under the tents, while the armed Northers charged straight toward the city’s edges with swords held high and wooden shields floating above their heads.
“Why aren’t we moving?” Hawkins growled, nudging Scorch who then bumped into me.
I couldn’t even imagine how much hatred Hawkins harbored for Rainer. Most of her fingers were broken, her face had swollen to twice its size, her lip was split wide in half, and her right eye was hidden behind a huge blue lump for an eyebrow.
She hated Rainer so much that she was willing to set aside her pain to kill her.
And then I thought of Zsasz and stared at the crowd of charging Northers. If there was anyone I hated as much as Hawkins hated Rainer, it was Zsasz.
This was it… this was my chance to take her out. She’d be too preoccupied hunting her attackers to even see me coming.
One arrow—that was all it would take.
“Come on!” Hawkins shouted, her voice exploding down the cavern behind us.
“Wait!” I hissed. “Let the archers finish and then we’re going in.”
One by one, women dressed in thick, protective gear ran away from the cabins and out through the wooden gates.
“They’re everywhere!” one of them shouted, wild eyes searching the skies.
And we were—my people were surrounding the entire city. How had they pulled this off? How had they gathered enough numbers?
One of the Northers—no doubt a woman who’d once been a slave and brainwashed into becoming a mindless soldier—threw a pointed finger toward one of the cabins and shouted, “Stay inside!”
I couldn’t see who she was talking to, but I was certain it was a pregnant woman. Several of them had run back beneath the safety of their cabins. Quickly, the space around us emptied as the soldiers made their way out of the wooden gates.
Then, from the trees beside the mountain, near the Northers’ training grounds, came a dozen fire arrows whistling through the air. The flames twirled around the arrow shafts as they spun in the air, and one after another landed fiercely throughout the Northers’ base.
Several of them crashed straight into the ground, extinguishing almost instantly the moment their flames touched the grass’s morning dew. Others, however, penetrated the wooden gates and the colossal fence and landed pointing into the roofs of t
he cabins.
“Stay here!” I shouted, jumping out from the mountain’s sheltering rock.
Sammy touched my back, but she didn’t have the time to stop me. I ran in zigzag motions as more arrows rained down, one of them skimming my forearm—a hot, painful tingle equivalent to a poisonous bug bite.
When I reached the first cabin, I pressed my body flat against the exterior wall to protect my body beneath the overhanging roof. Arrows crashed around me, and one penetrated the side of the cabin. It snapped in half, but this didn’t stop the fire from eating through the wood.
I reached for the handle, a strange groove in the middle of a long, sanded panel, and burst the door open. Inside, three pregnant women squealed like frightened mice, their partially cupped fists held up by their faces. They sat beside each other on the small, cotton-sheeted bed, their thighs touching and their plump bodies pressed together.
“The cabin’s catching fire,” I said. “Come with me. I’ll keep you safe.”
They hesitated, likely trying to figure out whether I was lying or telling the truth.
I must have looked like a complete wreck to them… like one of those dolls with growing hair left in the hands of a two-year-old—dark, uneven patches on my head and a horror-movie-style scar running down my face.
“Do you want to burn to death?” I snapped, and the shortest woman on the left—the one with the largest and roundest belly—squealed again and shook her head. “Then come on. Let’s go.”
They helped each other get up and rushed to the entrance door. Overhead, flames had already begun to lick underneath the rooftop and were now spreading to the door frame. I ran out, keeping my body as close to the cabin as possible, and signaled them to follow me.
“See that woman over there?” I said, pointing to Sammy.
She stuck her head out of the mountain’s opening and turned it from side to side. Then, Hawkins’s face appeared, and she did the same, before retreating back into the mountain. It was like watching figures pop out of a whack-a-mole game.
“Stay along the mountain and run there,” I said. “Go, as fast as you can.”