by Glynn James
Jonah smiled. “Most, I think. It seems the grumbles in Eliz hit everyone badly, and there is nowhere for most of them to go. They’ve been drifting in constantly, in small numbers, since then. I can’t feed them all with our supplies, but so far, we’ve found enough hunters among them that we’re just managing not to starve, as long as we keep moving, keep finding new patches of land to forage. Only the birds have returned—none of the other forest animals—so we’re all getting used to eating birds and berries. The last thing I need right now is another fight.”
The Nikkt leader nodded. “No, I come not to fight but to ask for aid, like all the rest, and offer what is left of my clan to work for food. We lost a lot of our supplies, and it seems the land is stripped of everything behind us.”
“Of course,” said Jonah. “You are welcome to join us, though I can only promise hard times. The number of folk is already beyond my ability, but we are managing to keep them from dying so far, and I will not turn you away if you’ll promise to keep your warriors in check. It seems, for the first time in forever, that the clans have to learn to share rather than just take for themselves. Not everyone is adjusting so well to that idea.”
The Nikkt leader stepped forward and offered his hand in greeting. “My name is Donast,” he said.
Jonah frowned. “You already know my name.”
Donast nodded. “Yes, but you asked for mine the last time we met. I figured the least I could do was level with you.”
Jonah nodded. “Come, there is food in the camp. Tonight, I hold a meeting of the clan leaders to try to figure out how we are going to survive this chaos. You should be there.”
Donast turned and waved for his clan to follow, and the huddle of survivors began to trudge forward as the line of warriors began to break up and head back to their camps.
“Quite an impressive sight,” said Donast. He nodded at the retreating warriors. All along the line there were assorted colors, different styles of clothing and armor.
“Yes,” said Jonah. “Though I can’t take all the praise for creating this weird peace. I’m not sure all of them want to be here, among the other clans, but they’re forced to be, for now. With so many Cygoa scout groups and warbands in the region it’s just not safe to be out there in small numbers anymore.”
Donast nodded, stumbling a little over a fallen tree as they walked. Jonah could see the man was close to exhaustion, and he was about to speak again when there was a cry from the forest ahead, coming from the main circle of carts. His hand went to his axe and he stopped walking, trying to listen . There, another cry, and someone shouting.
“Trouble?” asked Donast.
“Maybe,” said Jonah. “Go and find somewhere to camp.” Then he started running toward the noise along with two dozen other warriors.
Chapter 4
The bitter stench of melted plastic wafted beneath the odor of charred wood. Logan remembered it being much more plentiful in his youth. Scavengers would return from distant ruins with a variety of items crafted from the pliable yet strong substance. His grandfather had told him that the Old World had perfected the creation of the material and that they used it for everything. But over the years, what had been left behind was either looted or, as with Rocky Mount, burned away into twisted snarls that barely resembled their previous form. Some of the metal workers up north had tried melting plastic and reshaping it, but it was never as strong as the original item. That technology had disappeared into the Dustfall.
“I said where?”
Logan turned to face the scowl on Leta’s face. The old hag must have been talking to him while he stared through the trees and at the smoldering ruins where Jonah waited for the Nikkt. Logan would have given anything to be standing next to the Elk leader with a battle axe and war paint on his face. But those days were far behind. Now, he was reduced to cowering in the woods with women and cripples.
“Where what?”
“Where do we hide Corrun? Have you lost your hearing completely, old man?”
Sasha and Keana stood behind Leta, their arms folded and looking down at the cart where Corrun lay, wrapped in the few blankets left that hadn’t been chewed by insects or rodents. Corrun moaned, and his eyelids flickered, but if he was awake, he was not responsive.
“Am I his keeper? I don’t know. Put him where the Nikkt won’t find him. Or better yet, put a dagger through his heart and be done with it.”
“You will not,” Sasha said, stepping forward and looking from Logan to Leta.
“Aye. I would not,” Logan said while Leta leered at him with her broken-toothed smile.
“So then, where do we put’em?” Leta asked again.
Logan heard the scraping of metal on metal coming from the main avenue running through what was left of Rocky Mount, where Jonah awaited the arrival of the Nikkt. He shook his head and looked down at Corrun on the cart. The old man was crooked and withered like the burnt, dead maples in this forest.
“Over there,” he said, turning to point at a copse of pines fifty yards from where they stood. Carts already surrounded the clearing between the trees but no one had occupied the space yet. The carts were filled with chopped lumber. Not personal carts, he thought. So not guarded. “The needles might help to mask his reek.”
Leta grabbed one side of the cart and Keana grabbed the other. Sasha nodded, and the two began pulling Corrun’s cart over downed branches and through thorny brambles toward the pine trees.
“I’m too old to pull that.”
Sasha looked at the hunchbacked body of Leta pulling the cart and then back to Logan. He followed Sasha’s eyes and then smiled at her.
“And she’s gotta earn her stay with the Elk.”
“She’s one of us now,” said Sasha. “She’s got nothing left to prove to me. Or to my husband.”
Logan shook his head. He knew she was right, but that wasn’t going to stop him from being the old, ornery crank the clan had expected him to be. He raised a bony finger into the air and began to preach to Sasha about the olden times when a shrill cry came from the pines.
Sasha bolted toward the trees where she could see Leta and Keana’s garments fluttering like the wings of dying birds. Flashes of metal and colorful feathers erupted around Corrun’s cart. Logan was one step behind Sasha as she ran straight toward the commotion. She stumbled to one side, giving Logan a clear view of what was happening beneath the pine tree canopy.
Cygoa .
He pushed Sasha aside and ran faster than he had in decades. Logan pulled a short dagger from beneath his cloak. He felt his muscles tighten and his mouth went dry. And as if the years had never passed, Logan recited the words his father had taught him, an incantation of sorts for men about to face death.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Nobody could remember the origin of those words, and the younger warriors had never been taught them. Logan wasn’t sure whether they had kept him alive through all his battles or if it had been his skills as a warrior. Either way, he was not about to test those theories right now.
Leta pushed Keana behind her and the old woman waved a short blade at the two men approaching them. A third Cygoa warrior stood over the cart, his back to Logan and Sasha. Logan heard Sasha’s heavy breathing a half-step behind him. He would not let the chief’s wife lead him into battle.
“Step back,” he said, the words coming out as a rough bark over heavy gasps.
The two men standing before Leta and Keana turned their heads to face Logan, but the man next to Corrun’s cart did not. Logan reached him first, and as he was about to strike the Cygoa warrior in the back of the head, the man turned.
Blood streamed down his face, matting his beard and turning his cloak a deep, dark red. He smiled at Logan, the man’s teeth shining brilliantly through his blood-splattered face. The Cygoa’s blade was wet with Corrun’s blood.
Without another word, Logan lung
ed at the man standing above Corrun. The warrior’s eyes widened, and he stumbled to one side, not expecting such an aggressive move from such an old man. Before he could block the parry, Logan had buried the blade of the knife in the man’s rib cage. He stumbled backward and then collapsed to the ground, his head slamming off the wheel of the cart. There was movement around them, and cries as the people hiding in the camp realized that enemies were among them, but no one was close enough to help.
Sasha jumped past Logan and swung her fist at the man closest to Keana. Leta stabbed at the air between her and the other man.
Logan could tell these men were not full-fledged Cygoa warriors. They were scouts, and he knew enough about the enemy to know that they never risked their most skilled fighters on scouting missions. Nevertheless, they were not to be taken lightly.
Sasha was now on the back of one man, her fingers clawing into his eye sockets. Keana and Leta sat on top of the other man. Leta stabbed him repeatedly in the throat. The fight happened so quickly that Logan struggled to process what he was seeing. One moment he was running ahead of Sasha toward the cart, and now only one Cygoa warrior stood, albeit with the chief’s enraged wife on his back.
“Stop!”
Leta and Keana stood over the body of the man they had just killed. Sasha fell from the back of the other warrior who was now on his knees, his hands covering his eyes as blood ran through his fingers. Leta walked over and thrust her knife into the kneeling man’s neck, opening an artery. Blood spurted into the air, pulsing in time with the man’s fading heartbeat. He fell face-first into the dirt.
“Dammit, woman! I wanted to know where they came from.”
Logan took a step toward the man Leta had stabbed when he stumbled. He felt a tightness at his ankle as he rolled over, expecting to see a tree root that had reached up and grabbed him. Instead, it was the right hand of the man lying beneath the wheel of the cart, the man who had murdered Corrun.
He kicked at the hand but not before the Cygoa scout’s other arm came up, the blade of his knife opening a six-inch slash on Logan’s calf. Logan cried out and kicked with his uninjured leg. He closed his eyes, and a split second later he felt the pressure on his ankle release. When he opened them again, Leta stood beside the cart, her knife now lodged in the man’s neck.
“Don’t need your help,” Logan said, pushing the words through the pain blossoming in his leg. Warm blood began to pool in his boot.
Leta opened her mouth to reply but Sasha shook her head at the old woman.
“You charged them,” Sasha said. “Surprised the men enough to give us a chance. You saved us all. Now, let’s get your leg bandaged.”
Leta grumbled but Sasha gave her a hard stare. Keana watched the entire exchange but said nothing.
“Old warriors don’t think. They act on instinct.” Logan sat up and looked past Sasha and into the heart of the ancient forest. “Let’s hope that scouting party was only a triad.”
Chapter 5
He opened one eye to see a single beam of light piercing the deepest part of the breach. He looked down at the scuffed toes of his black leather boots, dangling at least a hundred feet above the floor of the chasm below. When he looked up, he saw an almost endless upward stretch of broken rock and earth, the ground torn apart.
“Damn.”
The single word rattled inside his head, and he bit his tongue to prevent his brain from sending another shockwave through his cranial cavity.
Rav opened the other eye and looked from left to right. His body seemed to float mid-air, as if dangled by a hand of the gods, a token swinging over darkness. It wasn’t until he saw the splintered end of the branch that his brain compiled the observations and put them into the most logical context—his body had not smashed against the rocks at the bottom of the breach. By some unlikely miracle, he had fallen onto a tree limb that itself had lodged in the side of the chasm and now dangled him precariously above the darkened bottom.
He moved an arm and the branch slid. His breath caught in his lungs as his body dipped six inches and then bobbed up and down as the branch flexed.
Stuck down the damn hole . Stuck far enough down the hole that the sun barely touches this place.
Rav closed his eyes. He could see the Cygoa warriors rushing the bridge. Briar and the hunters had returned and fired countless arrows at the enemy. He caught his breath as he remembered staggering from the bridge, one arm wrapped around Gunney, who had been injured in the fight.
Gunney.
His eyes shot open, scanning the tight walls of the breach for any sign of the man. Rav knew that the chances his friend would have been spared by a tree branch as well seemed slimmer than a basket of apples coming through the pass in February.
Piles of bodies lay in the darkness below. Rav caught glimpses of bloodied steel and cracked shields, most of which appeared to be Cygoa war garb. At least he’d taken dozens, possibly hundreds, of those bastards down with him.
The branch shifted again, this time sending a plume of dust and rocks bouncing off the walls toward the bottom of the breach. Rav decided that he at least wanted another drink if gravity was about to smash him into the rocks below.
He turned and tried to look over his left shoulder when pain as sharp as a polished saber shot through his neck.
“Broke my damn collarbone,” Rav said with a croak. “Again.”
He glanced to his right and saw a V shaped crevice in the wall, and the uppermost part was big enough to climb into. Then what? He licked his lips and chuckled as much as his broken ribs would allow.
“One fucked-up step at a time.”
He turned his upper body to the right and his boot scraped against a protrusion on the wall of the breach. Rav reached up and grabbed a dangling root and swung his entire body around so that his stomach was pressed against the verticality rather than his back. His left arm and shoulder screamed, and Rav felt his vision sway. The branch that had broken his fall had also broken his bones.
The V-opening in the rock was only three feet away, but it may as well have been three miles. He scanned the rock face but saw no other protrusion or crevasse that would fit a toe or his fingers. No way to reach the V without jumping.
The branch snapped without warning, and Rav felt his shirt tear where the bark had been caught. He fell, and his body rotated a quarter turn before a boulder drove the air from his lungs. Rav rolled to his right, the momentum of the fall causing his chin to smack against the hard surface. He tasted the dry, chalky dust of limestone and his eyes burned. He had fallen again, but not to the bottom of the chasm. It appeared as though his descent would not be as rapid—or as deadly—as the Cygoa warriors that preceded him.
The pain in his left side intensified in a slow, burning crescendo as the recent collision with the rock aggravated the hairline fractures weakening his collarbone and ribs. Stars danced in front of his face, and Rav thought he might pass out. He chuckled, thinking it would be the first time that had ever happened without his flask.
Instead, he grimaced and rolled onto his back, keeping the left side of his body slightly elevated. The blue sky ran like the line of a cracked mirror at least two hundred feet above, and the darkness below smelled like wet earth and decomposition. To his right was the sheer face of the breach and to his left was the open, black void that threatened to pull him below.
Before he could attempt to move again, Rav detected a faint echo coming from the bottom of the breach. The thought of dying men trying to claw their way through the mangled corpses forced a shiver down his spine and sent a secondary wave of electric pain through his left shoulder blade. The reverberations sounded like marbles dropped on a stone floor and he was quick to attribute that to the rocks falling into the chasm like a slow rain. But when Rav heard them hissing, he knew there was more down there than rocks and dead soldiers.
They moved through the darkness without torches, like creatures accustomed to maneuvering through the bowels of the Earth. Rav rolled onto his right side a
nd shimmied as far back into the crevice as he could, hoping it would conceal his presence from the Valk now creeping along the bottom of the breach.
Dozens came through, their pale skin glowing like the mysterious sea creatures the Coast Dwellers used to bring him as a toll. They paused and scampered over the bodies like rats, turning and picking at bodies.
He looked to what he believed to be the south, and now that his eyes had adjusted, saw that the Valk had not simply appeared at the bottom of the breach. They had been thrown into it. He saw a round, ragged opening on one wall of the breach and another on the opposite side. The tunnel that had been split open by the grumble was thirty or forty feet above the bottom of the chasm and at almost the same height as his hiding place. While the Valk continued to move through the bodies, others appeared on one side of the broken tunnel.