by Glynn James
“Isn’t that where you were supposed to take me?”
The scouts ignored his question, but he thought he heard one of them chuckle under his breath.
With the campfires behind them, Loner’s eyes adjusted to the natural light of the early morning hours. A purple-tinged glow came from the east. Loner saw shapes on the ground, realizing that they were warriors in their bedrolls. The scouts kept walking, deeper into the field. About fifty yards in the distance, Loner saw the trees on the northern border of the camp. There were no fires here, no structures, no soldiers. A pungent stench filled his nostrils and Loner gagged.
Latrines.
“Why are you taking me to your pits?”
“Do you think we’re going to have you shovel?”
Loner had not expected either of the scouts to reply. As he continued walking, the odor became so strong that his eyes watered. And yet, he couldn’t see the latrines. With the low moaning came Loner’s realization.
The scouts stopped on the rim of the pit with a fifty-foot diameter. A single rope ladder sat coiled on the top edge of the earthen walls. He looked down, seeing the whites of eyes as if they floated in the darkness. A dozen prisoners, maybe more.
Before Loner could protest, or plead his case to the scouts, the one on his right grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him over the edge. He fell for a split second in near total darkness before landing on his hip. Loner felt the sharp edge of a rock or root puncture the skin on his back as he rolled over to absorb the force of the fall. He tasted dirt and felt a cold, wet chill on the back of his neck. Loner gasped for breath, looking up at the scouts who turned and walked away from the pit.
“I must talk to Carlossa. You can’t leave me here.”
There was no response from above the pit and none from within. The eyes which had looked up at him only moments before had shut. The few prisoners who had stood to gaze up at the new arrival sat back down. Loner heard a wolf howl in the distance. He pushed his back against the cold dirt as the smell of feces and urine overwhelmed him. None of the prisoners spoke. None of them moved.
Loner looked up at the sky, which had turned from velvet black to deep navy. Dawn was coming, and he would have no choice but to wait for it.
***
Loner never saw or spoke to the other prisoners in the pit. He had fallen asleep for what only felt like a moment before being shaken awake. A Cygoa scout pulled him to his feet and wrapped a rope around his waist. By the time they had hauled him to the surface, the camp was already bustling with the frenetic energy of men preparing to go to war.
Loner turned to face the middle of the camp, and his heart thudded in his chest. What had been a relatively small outpost of scouts last night had turned into the holding pen of an entire battalion today. There were so many soldiers in the field that Loner struggled to count them. Carlossa had brought hundreds of warriors, possibly thousands.
Chapter 23
“There’s dozens of campfires down there,” said Seren. “So many.” She squinted and turned the cap of the telescope, focusing on one of the camps. Even with the device the range was too far to clearly see much, and the darkness didn’t help, but she could make out several figures around the campfire.
“Let me see,” Declan said. Seren passed him the telescope and Declan lifted it to his right eye.
“You need to close the other eye,” Seren said. “It makes it easier to see.”
Declan nodded, closed his eye, and looked through the telescope. “It’s weird. I can’t see much through it. How can you see all the way over there?”
“It just takes a bit of practice,” she said, taking the telescope back. “We need to get closer. See who it is.”
“Well it’s not the Elk,” Declan said. “Unless they managed to get the carts to drive themselves. This is too far west for them to have got this far already. Unless I’ve been ill for a lot longer than I thought.”
Seren looked through the scope again, trying to focus on one of the figures in the dim firelight, but it was no good; at more than three miles away, even the scope wasn’t that much help. “If it’s Cygoa, then we have a lot to worry about. There a lot of them down there.”
“And if it is, they are getting close to the clans, and they must have a reason to be out here in such numbers. How many campfires?”
Seren shook her head. “Hard to count them, it’s blurry. A couple of dozen, at least.”
“That’s a lot of campfires. And a lot of warriors, then.”
Seren sat back down on the ground next to where her gear was piled. “Look, I’m going to head into the ruins and see if I can get a better view. You should stay here.”
“You can’t go there alone. What if they capture you?” Declan said, frowning.
“If they spot me I can run. If you’re with me they would catch us. You still can’t go faster than a walk.”
Declan shook his head. “We have enough to know they are there.”
“But we don’t know who it is,” argued Seren. “And we don’t know how many. Jonah will need to know these things, and anyway, I’ll take Sorcha.”
Declan sighed. “Okay, but don’t go too far in, and then we have to get out of here.”
Seren stood up, grabbed her bow, and looked at her pack.
“Leave that stuff here,” Declan said. “I’ll watch it, and I can hide it nearby. You’ll move faster if you travel light.”
Seren nodded and headed into the thick grass, down the slope toward the edge of the ruined city. She noted some natural paths in the foliage and decided it would be easier to snake her way through those paths rather than disturb the tall grass. The last thing she wanted was to alert any watching guards when she wasn’t even near the ruins.
Sorcha trotted ahead of her as they made their way down the hill, finally reaching the trickling stream at the bottom. There was a bridge a hundred yards away that took the blacktop road into the city, but Seren decided that was too much of a risk. Better to sneak in through the field and the woods at the edge of the ruins than walk down the road.
She jumped the stream, and Sorcha followed her. Across the stream there was a short slope thick with brambles, but there was a gap of two feet under most of it, and she managed to crawl most of the way before pushing aside the remaining branches. A blacktop road encircled the clearing ahead, and a few rusted shells of old carts sat in a line along it. A set of metal frames and a plastic slide sat in the center of the clearing. The ancient playground had been unused for centuries and was now overgrown with ivy and brambles.
Seren crossed the road quickly and took cover behind one of the carts, sneaking into the playground and making her way to the other side. She passed the broken frame of an old bicycle, lying on the ground, and a discarded doll that was half-melted, it’s hair blackened by whatever fire had consumed it. The plastic eyes poking out of the deformed face made Seren shudder. The thing looked creepy as hell. She tried to ignore it and headed across the blacktop road on the other side.
There was a row of ruined buildings along the north side of the clearing, many with large open windows leading into crumbling foyers. Shop fronts, she thought, similar to many of the ones in Galax, but these were stripped clean of every piece of wood or furniture, leaving just broken bricks and crumbling masonry.
This city has been picked clean, she thought as she headed into the nearest building. Little was left of the interior, and it was easy to navigate her way through to the back room and out of the exit at the back of the building.
Behind the row of shops was a much larger blacktop road, this one more intact—less cracked and overgrown with weeds. Seren looked both ways along the road and spotted a tall building farther north that she hoped would overlook the camp. She marked a route across the blacktop that would include cover from several abandoned vehicles, and then crouched low, moving as quickly and quietly as she could across the road. At any moment she expected to hear someone shout from a building, but there was no noise.
S
orcha was becoming agitated and started scratching the floor.
“It’s ok,” Seren whispered, rubbing the wolf across her back. “We won’t go much farther, just up ahead.”
Sorcha sniffed in reply.
They reached the taller building and darted into the darkness inside, crouching by the front door for a few seconds to listen. No noise. No movement. Seren nodded at Sorcha.
The building was mostly intact, including the stairs that led all the way up to the top floor. A few times Seren stumbled, knocking some rubble or a pile of rubbish, making noise that she could ill afford. She cringed each time, listening, waiting, expecting to be discovered, but either the people in the camp hadn’t posted a watch or Seren was overestimating how close they were. No one came, and no voices called out in alarm.
Eventually she reached the third floor, as high as the stairs would go, and she made her way through two rooms, avoiding the rubble this time. She found herself at the side of the building, looking out over a large open space covered by the strangers’ camp. She took out the telescope and began to scan the camp, and it took only two seconds to recognize the garb of most of the warriors down there.
Cygoa. Hundreds of them.
“We need to get the hell out of here,” she whispered to Sorcha.
Chapter 24
The smell of death was strong now. It was a deep, thick scent that The Brother could almost taste on his tongue, but unlike the others in the pack, he was keeping his urges under control. The rest of the kin were almost in a frenzy behind him, weaving in and out of each other and snapping at limbs and fur. The ancient Walking One nests up ahead were in ruins, long forgotten and unattended, unused, but he could sense there were many Walking Ones in the place, even if they weren’t close by.
What had made the kills? He did wonder. It was quite possible that Walking Ones had left them and fled at the sound of his kin approaching. That did happen sometimes, but not as often as he wished. More likely the thing that had made the kill would still be there and would need to be dealt with. But this was not a worry for him now. The pack was the strongest it had ever been, and with the young hidden carefully not far away, the mass could descend upon the place. Little that he could think of would be able to withstand it, except maybe a large Walking Ones camp. They were near this place, through the ruins for many paces, but not close enough to be a threat.
With a loud bark, he rushed across the open ground towards the remains of the Walking One nest that the scent was coming from, and the pack followed closely. The entrance to the nest was not wide, and they had to push their way through in pairs, but he was the first to enter the ruin and find the kills.
There were half a dozen of them, scattered across the ground in the center of the ruin, all of them young deer, and all so fresh that he could sense they would still be warm. As the pack leapt into the clearing, falling upon the food, The Brother stopped next to one of the kills. He was about to taste it himself when he sniffed. It was a parting thought, and his senses had been so cloyed with the smell of the meat that he had not noticed the presence of anything else. He looked around, wary, a slight prickle of fear stirring under his skin. Something was not as it should be.
There—a movement to the right, but high up, on the higher ground above them, something was up there and out of reach, hiding.
The Brother took a step back toward the entrance and sharpened his senses, blocking out the smell of the kills, widening his view.
There was more than one up there, sitting in the darkness. Were they hiding? Or were they intending to be there? He could sense no fear.
A noise quieter than the feasting of the pack tested the very edge of his hearing. Footfalls, and not those of animals but of Walking Ones, behind them near the entrance. He growled a low, deep growl that should have caught the attention of the rest of the pack, but they were too busy eating to notice. Irritated, he spun round, looking at the entrance, noticing for the first time that it was the only way into the ruin. All around them, apart from that small gap, were high walls. He felt a sharp spasm of panic as something solid moved to fill the gap. A large object with bright markings from old times glared back at him, blocking the only exit from the ruins. His mind raced to catch up, to process what was happening, but the smell of the food stifled him.
More movement from above. The Brother glanced upwards and saw that many Walking One figures now stood on the higher ground, but none of them carried sharp weapons to cut his kin. They were not moving, merely holding some sort of long stick to their mouths and looking down upon his kin.
Then came the sound. It was very low at first, but grew with intensity. The Brother’s mind could not comprehend such a thing and it held him, fascinated and paralyzed, while he listened. He had heard nothing like it before, a sound that carried on the wind, low and deep as it hummed from wall to wall. He noticed others of his kin had stopped eating and were listening too, all mesmerized by the alien sound.
He could feel them coming now. All around them. They had been there all along, disguised by what manner he could not find, but they were there, and more were coming, closing in on all sides.
Chapter 25
“That’s the signal,” whispered Gideon. The boy crouched next to Jonah in the bushes, not far from the building they had chosen. His eyes were wide, and Jonah imagined he must be excited and fearful at the same time. “It’s worked,” continued the boy. “They have them.”
Jonah nodded and started toward the ruin at a run, still crouched low. It had seemed that the wolves would never come, even though they had been spotted on the outskirts of the ruins for three nights running. The trap had been set every night, and Jonah was tired of waiting. He had begun to think that it was a foolish idea. This night, he had decided, would be the last time they laid the trap. They would need to think of something else. There could be no more wasting of good catches. Deer were rare enough to find in the forest, now that the migration had been halted by the breach, and though some of the creatures of the forest seemed to have found their way back somehow, many had not. The forest, which would normally be teeming with prey, was sparse. He could waste the food no longer.
But, much to his surprise, the plan seemed to finally have worked. Now the wolves were in the trap, and it was time to act. It was fifty yards across the blacktop, which took him just seconds to cross. Next to the only entrance was the wooden door they had found in a building a few blocks away. It had a strange stickman symbol high up in the center that Jonah couldn’t fathom, but it was a solid door and would do the job, so they had carried it back and placed it there, ready, not too close to the entrance that a wolf might notice the smell of men as they hurried into the ruin and the trap. Jonah presumed all of the wooden ones had been torn from their hinges over the centuries and used as firewood. This one, however, was covered in strange layer of smooth material that he knew made it difficult to burn.
Jonah grabbed one side of it, while Solomon grabbed the other. “Watch the gap,” Jonah whispered as they lifted.
Gideon had his knife in one hand and a hammer in the other. He crouched near the entrance but didn’t move through it.
“Stay well back,” Jonah said, and he and Solomon moved the door over to the gap and let it drop into place. For a moment, he saw movement through the gap, dark fur and sharp, peering eyes, but none of the wolves came rushing toward them as the only exit was blocked.
“Stay here,” Jonah said to Solomon. He turned to Gideon. “You too.”
“But—” Gideon was about to protest, but Jonah raised his hand and the boy fell silent.
“I want this exit secured so that even if just one of them wants to try to escape, it can’t. This job is as important as any other, Gideon.” He turned and jogged off, turning the corner and leaving the two men to lean against the door.
There were many other warriors about, and Jonah knew his son would be safer there. He didn’t want him climbing up to the second floor where Ghafir and his folk were, where the warriors
with bows stood ready. He knew his son was growing, almost a man, but the fear of losing him was too great for Jonah to allow the boy to be put at risk—at least this time.
There will come a day when you can no longer shelter the lad, and you must let him become a man, but not this day, and not yet. There was plenty of time for that.
Jonah scaled the outside of the building where an area of masonry had partially collapsed, leaving a multitude of flat sections of brick to climb on. When he reached the top, he climbed through a glassless window frame and stepped out onto the wooden floorboards.
Only half of the upper floor was still intact; the rest of the floorboards had long collapsed into the room below. On one side of the room, Ghafir’s people gathered with their pipes, playing a tune that Jonah had never heard before. It was a haunting noise, and Jonah shuddered as he thought of the Cygoa these people had killed. They had played so their would-be murderers had become entranced and confused, and then sprang into action and killed over a dozen Cygoa warriors before they came to their senses, or so Ghafir had explained. But now that Jonah heard the sound, he found it odd but not entrancing in any way. If anything, it gave him the shivers.