Acolytes (The Enclaves Book 1)

by Nel Franks

  The Raid

  Rosie, Late Spring, Year Three, Initiates

  I WAS SO ENGROSSED in my studies in the Birthers, I was often a bit surprised when the bi-weekly time for Perimeter Squad training came around. A few weeks later, the day had rolled round again. I pulled myself away from a text in the Healers’ Library, and slouched along the road, grumbling to myself about the interruption to my work. I got to the training ground, but no-one was there. I had the first flutterings of that anxiety I always feel when I think I’ve forgotten something that everyone else has remembered. But I told myself not to be silly and strode more briskly to the learning rooms. Yes, everyone was there, lined up in the main hall, in their patrol groups. I tried to sneak in on the end of mine, but the Squad sisters have the eyesight of eagles, and spotted me straight away. At a nod from the commander, my patrol sister came quickly and quietly back to me.

  ‘Nice of you to join us, Rosie,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve missed some important news. See me after.’

  She melted back to her place at the head of the patrol. I was supposed to feel chastened, I suppose, but truly, my studies were much more important that this bi-weekly charade of physicality. I made a note of her rudeness in my mental ledger of wrongs.

  The sister out the front, whom I couldn’t quite see, had a serious tone as she described what I took to be an increase in sightings of Outcasts or Expelled, I couldn’t tell which, along the Perimeter. It was the kind of thing we heard every few months, so I wasn’t impressed with my patrol sister for trying to scare me.

  As soon as the preliminaries were over, she pulled me aside.

  ‘Well, Rosie, what kept you?’

  ‘Nothing particular, sister. Just my rather important studies. I was deep in some research at the Library.’ I hoped the stress on ‘important’ was subtle enough that I wouldn’t get into trouble, but it would get the point into her narrow-focussed head.

  Her mouth gave an impatient twist, which I took to mean that my rationale was plausible, but she still didn’t like it.

  ‘What you missed was the intelligence that we think there’s a raid planned, by the Outcasts. It’ll probably come in the next week. Now will you take your training seriously enough to come on time?’

  I was surprised; I hadn’t heard even a whisper of a rumour about a raid. However, I didn’t like her sneering tone and took a moment to note it against her name in the ledger of wrongs that I kept in my head. Ever since the disastrous training patrol we had done last year, when one of the Outcast scouts had been killed and one captured, I had been more conscious that the threat was probably real. But nothing further had come of it. I’d even forgotten that they had taken one away to the Temple. What had become of her? I shook my head to get my thoughts back to the present.

  ‘But when exactly do they think a raid will happen? And how many will come?’

  I could hear the squeak in my voice, which surprised me. I knew the threat was being exaggerated, but I wished my body didn’t betray me by sounding like a frightened child.

  ‘The best information we have comes from one of the Trader expeditions. They saw a reconnaissance party in the outer areas of the Enclave, and they sent their own scouts to find out more. They were able to creep up on one of the Outcasts campfires. They think there’ll be an attack on the night of the full moon next week, but they couldn’t be sure of the numbers.’

  The full moon would be on Thirdday next week. That was only five days away. Five days! How would we be ready in time? My hands were sweaty, and I wiped them down the sides of my robe. The patrol sister gave me a disparaging grin, and pushed me towards a Healer, who was teaching other acolytes from the House of Healing how to dress make-believe wounds. As we worked, she told us more about the preparations for the attack. It was reassuring to learn that they had a routine they followed, whenever there was a raid.

  ‘You three girls will be with me in the House of Healing during the raid. You know we keep all the acolytes in the Core, because it’s you they’re after. But you’ll be safe with us; a raid has never got as far as the Core. The Perimeter Squad always stops them well before that.’

  In the next week we were to have extra training and service in the House of Healing each day. We would be learning to dress more types of wounds, some of us would be sent out to tend the sick women who were being sent home early to free up beds and, most disgusting of all, we had to learn how to give bed baths. Really, wasn’t there someone else who could do that for them, their close sisters or friends? Bathing a stranger was just too intimate. However, there would be particular emphasis on keeping exact notes of everything we had done for each patient, which I could appreciate was very necessary.

  Gaia and Tomma and I walked home from training that evening feeling very sombre.

  ‘What did your patrol do, Tomma?’ I asked. I knew I would feel better if I knew everything about the preparations.

  ‘Oh, we did bandages and salve. We First Aiders do the triage when the casualties first arrive at Healing. Then they’ll get sent inside to you, Rosie.’

  She grinned at my look of distaste. Her time in the First Aiders this year had made her seem very blasé about injuries. I wished I could convey self-assurance with the same nonchalance.

  ‘And you, Gaia? What have they got you doing?’

  Gaia smiled and squeezed my hand.

  ‘The Foresters are preparing some wooden wedges. I must have cut twenty tonight, but we need hundreds apparently, for the palisade. They are going to put it up this week. It’s an amazing process: you know that trench around the outside of the Core, the one that runs between the houses and the orchards? There are holes all the way around in the bottom of it, they showed us tonight. The transport crew is bringing in hundreds of logs, those sharpened ones that are stacked behind the big animal barn. They drop the blunt ends in the holes, and we wedge them in, from the inside. With everyone possible working on it, they can put a palisade around the whole of the Core in just two days.’

  She seemed proud to be involved in such a tangible defence. I wished I was doing something before the event which was so clean. I dreaded waiting for the wounds to arrive.

  For the next three days we worked hard. All our regular study and work was suspended, and the entire Enclave laboured to get ready. Nobody was angry about it, nobody seemed scared. They just got on with the job. I heard one of the younger Healers say she had never been through a raid, since she had been robed. An elder sister took her to the ward manager’s office for some more detailed updating. For us acolytes, however, the preparations were our training. We just had to do what we were told. On the last day the ward manager gathered the Healing Acolytes together for a final briefing.

  ‘Now girls, we’re going to have two practice runs today. One is what to do if the Outcasts get into the Core ... It won’t happen,’ she said, irritated, as one of the girls gasped. ‘But, just in case, we have to rehearse the drill for you all hiding in the cellar. And the other one, is what to do when the first of the casualties get here. I know you’ve all be practicing bandaging wounds, but it can get a bit crazy if lots come in all at once. You need to be prepared.’

  We would be working in small teams, two acolytes or other helpers to each trained Healer. All we had to do was what our Healer told us to do. We were assigned to our teams, and a rehearsal was held. Five volunteers from the community had been painted up with red dye and had tags attached to show what injuries they had sustained. They were delivered to us by members of the First Aiders; I saw Tomma struggling with the end of a stretcher on which lay a very large woman, roaring in acted pain. Using all of our team, plus the two stretcher-bearers, we slid her onto a hospital bed. Tomma rolled her eyes at me as she reported the assessed injuies, and then left with her partner.

  My teammates and I carefully followed all the directions of our Healer, Mistress Anya. The tag said the woman had a broken leg, so we had to splint it, which took extra bandages as her calf was as big around as a leg of pork, and the
n we washed and bandaged her head wound, and took her temperature several times and recorded it in the case notes. I offered to take notes while the others did the bandaging, because I knew I’d be better at it than any of the others, but Sister Anya said I had to participate in all stages. She’s in my mental ledger now too.

  After all the teams had successfully ‘treated’ their stage victims, we regrouped in the ward. The manager seemed pleased with our work and only pointed out two or three procedural issues that we needed to keep in mind.

  Then she took us to learn the escape route to the hospital cellars. The stairs were hidden in a maze of smaller and smaller corridors, with the stair entrances tucked behind false walls, filing cabinets and storage cupboards. After several verbal rehearsals of the routes, we were sent to the outermost doors of the House of Healing. On the sound of a bell, we had to run as fast as we could to the cellar. The manager would be timing us.

  The two other girls on my team and I were giggling as we wandered out to the doors. I jumped out of my skin as a very large bell rang behind us. The elder sister wielding the bell looked smug as we screamed.

  ‘Go!’ she yelled. ‘The Outcasts are coming!’

  She was so convincing in her urgency that we began to run with real fear. I worried that I’d forgotten the confusing route, but at most of the turns, someone remembered the way. We had to back up twice when we overshot the hidden door. Finally, we plunged down the steep narrow stairs, panting and slipping. Just as we got to the last two steps, the manager slammed closed the heavy iron-banded door to the cellars, and said in a voice that echoed up the stairwell,

  ‘Dead! You three are dead. Or captured. You took too long. The Outcasts will have taken you into captivity.’

  She glared at us with the most terrifying expression. The girl next to me sank down on the step and began to weep. Even though I was scared witless by my supposed fate, I resolved I would not cry. I would go back and review the route, every turning, every hidden access point, until I could run it in my sleep.

  THE NEXT DAY WAS THE day of the full moon. Everyone hung around their posts, anxiously checking their equipment and supplies. In the early morning, the patrols of older sisters, armed with pikes, knives, slingshots and swords, had moved out of the Core, walking quietly and purposefully towards their areas outside the great orchards and vegetable gardens. Our food resources were important and had to be defended. The Outcasts would try to take supplies as well as acolytes back to their camps.

  Most of the morning passed without incident in the hospital. We heard messages, more rumour than fact, as various runners were sent back: there was fighting out near the dry creek bed where we had first encountered Outcast scouts a year ago; a band of Outcasts had managed to infiltrate the crop fields down towards the Gate. They had been stopped by the Perimeter Squad in that area. They hadn’t been stopped but had disappeared. They hadn’t just disappeared; they had snuck away to strike even closer to the Core. As the day wore on, each new rumour or reported message seemed closer and more fearsome. My stomach was so tight I could not swallow the soup that was served at lunch time.

  When I was reviewing the methods for setting a broken leg for the tenth time, because I couldn’t bear to look at the paintings of burns wounds anymore, the doors to the wards banged open. A team of stretcher bearers staggered in, struggling with their load, and nearly dropping with exhaustion.

  ‘Outside the orchard, we’ve run all the way,’ one of the women gasped, as she and her partner heaved the unconscious fighter up onto the examination bench. Mistress Anya gestured for me to start cutting the patient’s clothing away from the nasty gash on her shoulder. As I pulled the top away from her chest, I gulped. She had multiple wounds down her chest. It seemed her opponent had stabbed her several times as she fell. Or perhaps the stabs had happened one after the other in the fight, until she fell. Suddenly the reality of fighting hand to hand hit me.

  The doors bashed open again, and I had a glimpse of Tomma’s white face as she and her partner rushed another injured woman into the treatment area. Tomma ran past me on the way out, grunting as she went,

  ‘Casualties, lots of them. The fighting’s getting closer. Don’t know if we’re winning.’

  My legs felt wobbly, and I had to clutch the side of the treatment table. Were we going to be overrun? Would we be captured? We had used worst-case scenarios to give ourselves horror-thrills—were they about to happen?

  ‘Rosie!’ the team leader’s voice was sharp, ‘pick up that vial of antiseptic and pour it into this wound. Come on, do it now. I need you. This woman needs you.’

  She glanced at me over the top of the unconscious woman. I swallowed hard and reached out my hand to the bottle. On second thoughts, I picked it up with two hands, to steady the shaking which would have slopped it onto the floor.

  I had poured half the required amount when the doors pushed open again, and all the acolytes who had been working outside came rushing through. Behind them I could hear the frantic ringing of the handbells that signalled the imminent arrival of the Outcasts. I stared up at the Healer, my hand frozen in mid-pour.

  ‘Go,’ she rasped. ‘Go! I’ll deal with this.’

  I ran behind Tomma as she sprinted past me, heading for the complicated route to the cellar.

  ‘Oh Goddess, Tomma, where’s Gaia?’

  ‘Don’t know. Run faster.’

  She was panting, and I noticed blood smeared on her forearm as she swung around a storage cupboard and shouldered open the small door. We tumbled down the stairs, barging through the heavy door at the bottom, regardless of who may have been behind it. Several more girls came pouring behind us, all of them wild-eyed and shaking. Some were calling out for their special sisters and friends, until a calm authoritative voice said firmly,

  ‘Be quiet, everyone. We don’t want to be heard by the Outcasts, do we? Come over here and sign off on the list so we know who is still to come.’

  It was Gaia, steady and helping as always. I started to cry as I stumbled towards her. I fell on her, sobbing with relief. She hugged me hard, with both arms, then Tomma behind me, and they sat me down on a barrel of water. She smiled and turned to the girls flocking towards the list. In a low composed voice she said,

  ‘Just line up, we’ve got plenty of time now we’re here. Don’t push, Samna, you’ll find out very soon if Alla is here.’

  A soft cry came from the dark at the back of the cellar.

  ‘I am here! Samna, I’m here!’

  There was a disturbance in the gloom as Samna pushed out of the line and fell over girls sitting on the floor, trying to get back to her friend.

  A group of Apprentices came through the line of acolytes, patting shoulders as they went.

  ‘Well done, Gaia. Do you want some help now?’

  Gaia nodded, and for a moment, I thought I saw tears in her eyes. But it wasn’t likely, was it, that Gaia would be overwhelmed by anything?

  The next hours passed very slowly. We couldn’t hear anything from the House of Healing above us. We all fretted with anxiety, and sometimes one or other of the flightier girls would decide she had to go up the stairs and see what was happening. But the older acolytes always restrained them and helped to calm them down. Their reassurances helped all of us, I think.

  Nothing marked the length of time passing. The oil lamps, only two of them for the whole cellar, burned unceasingly. I fell to contemplating how much oil a lamp held and the burning rate of different types of wicks, trying to work out how much time would have passed if a lamp burned out. I was going to ask Tomma and Gaia, but Gaia was absorbed in meditation, and Tomma had fallen asleep, curled up on a mat on the floor. They were both ignoring me, so I turned back to the lamp.

  I must have fallen into some kind of trance, watching the flame, because I was startled when the door of the cellar suddenly opened without any warning. Everyone froze – who was coming for us? Outcasts? Or sisters?

  There was a piercing scream from one of the gir
ls at the back.

  ‘Sister Lathley! Sister Lathley! Oh, you’re alive!’

  The room was an instant cacophony, as everyone jumped up calling and crying, and ran towards the door. I was jostled and pushed around by the crowd but for once I didn’t mind.

  Sister Lathley stood on the bottom step of the stairs, pushed back there by the urgent mob.

  ‘Girls, girls! Calm down. Calm down or someone will get hurt. Pass me the list please, and as I call your name, you can come out. The sisters at the top of the stairs will tell you what to do next.’

  The clipboard with the list of acolytes’ names was passed overhead until it reached her, and she began to call out names. Gaia and Tomma and I were called quite early in the Initiates, our names together as always, and we made our shaky way to the top of the stairs. A line of sisters directed us back via the tortuous path to the hospital ward. When we arrived, it was strangely quiet and orderly, not the scene of carnage I had been imagining. The ward manager was nowhere in sight, but a haggard elder sister told us to make our way to the Temple.

  Outside it was full dark, a strange surprise as it had been daylight when we had rushed into the cellar.

  ‘Oh, I was so scared in there,’ I said as we made our way along the road towards the great dim bulk of the Temple. ‘Weren’t you? We had such a terrible experience; it was awful, wasn’t it?’

  Gaia looked at me, a long measuring stare that somehow made me feel I was making an unnecessary fuss. I decided I wouldn’t speak to her the rest of the way. Bitch! the voice in my head spat. I noted her in my ledger of wrongs.

  In the Temple, the Council of Chief Mistresses was gathered in a row before the Shrine. The Most Elder Sister was there, shining in her white robes, and I counted all the heads of Houses in the Council. So, no quick promotions for ambitious junior Mistresses then. When I said as much to Tomma, she gave me a look of disgust, but I still believe I was right to think about it; someone has to, it’s just pragmatic.