by Glynn James
“No fucking way,” Jonah said. “Keep running.”
He leaped over fallen soldiers, Elk and Cygoa alike. Fire began to creep up into the late afternoon sky, and Jonah’s thoughts again went to Sasha, Keana, and Gideon. The boy had been given permission to climb the lookout in the trees and watch the battle of the causeway, but Jonah had no way of knowing if he had remained there after it ended. Best not to worry too much about the possibilities.
“Do you think Carlossa outflanked us?” Declan asked.
What the boy really wanted to know was if the Cygoa had destroyed the camp. If the smoke in the sky was any indication, it wasn’t promising.
“Whether he personally did or not, I do not know.” Jonah stopped for a moment to engage a lone Cygoa warrior. He drove his battle axe into the enemy’s neck, dropping the man in less than two seconds. “But I have no doubt the bastards are flooding the camp if this one is this far south into the woods already.”
Solomon spat at the Cygoa warrior Jonah had just killed. Declan sighed, pausing to get a better grip underneath the big man’s arm.
“They’re alive. And we’ll get to them.”
Jonah looked at Declan, impressed with the young man’s ability to read his mind.
“That we will.”
He pushed through what was left of some obstacles they had erected to keep the Cygoa at bay, in the unlikely event that they had successfully crossed the southern causeway. Elk warriors led Jonah through the tightest spaces, hacking away at brambles and dead branches meant to slow the Cygoa down. As he got his first look at the Elk camp, Jonah cringed.
As he had suspected, the tents on the outer edge had already burned to the ground. Cygoa warriors walked through the debris left behind, stabbing the injured survivors and dragging women and children away.
“I don’t need to be carried any longer,” Solomon said to Declan. “Set me the fuck down.”
Jonah looked from Solomon to the camp, trying to decide what to do next. The Elk had been outnumbered and outsmarted. And now the Cygoa moved through the camp and took prisoners almost at will. He scanned the area for Carlossa but did not see him. He also looked for Sasha but saw no sign of his family either.
“There’s not too many here. We can fight them. We have the men. We just need to wait for them to catch us up. A minute at most.”
Again, Jonah was impressed with Declan. Many young bucks would’ve rushed headlong into the fight on a surge of testosterone and bravado, but this one kept his passions in check. Declan favored logic. Even Jonah was having trouble not charging in ahead of the main host of his warriors, who were gathering in numbers behind them as he stood there.
“I agree.”
“There,” Solomon said, pointing at the south-east corner of the camp. “They’re gathering in the center of the camp. Looks like they have a few dozen folks. Most must have escaped.”
“A blessing,” said Jonah. “Now we finish this.”
Chapter 51
Jonah could feel the anger burning in his guts as he stepped into the clearing. Scores of clan warriors followed him through the camp, some of them stepping out of the tree line to aim bows, others following him, weapons ready, but not one of them would attack.
Lined across the clearing were twenty or more of the Elk and other clans’ women and children, all bound and gagged and pushed to their knees, and there among them, standing next to Sasha with a long blade in his hand was the enemy leader once more. Carlossa.
Jonah stepped forward and stood a dozen yards from the lined up captives.
“You made it, at last,” said Carlossa. “I was beginning to wonder if you would think your little scuffle on the south road was a victory, and you had forgotten that we number much greater.”
Jonah peered at Sasha, then to Keana, and then back to Carlossa. “I made the mistake of thinking you cared enough for your own people that you wouldn’t sacrifice five score of your own warriors just to kill us.”
Some of the smile left Carlossa’s face. “My warriors know that they may need to give their lives for the greater good of the Cygoa.”
“Good?” asked Jonah. “Good of the Cygoa. All I see are murderers who are intent on revenge for the deeds of some equally cruel men decades ago. There is no good in anything you do.”
“That depends on who you are,” said Carlossa. “If you were a child of the Cygoa, living in their new home at Wytheville, protected by hundreds of Cygoa warriors and left to live a prosperous life, you would think that those protecting you were good.”
Jonah shook his head. “You do no better than my ancestors did, and you call it revenge, yet few who lie dead were even alive when your people fled to the north.”
“Enough of my people remember, though,” said Carlossa. “Enough of those who have few memories of their families because your fathers murdered them. We do what we do because we will not have it repeated upon us. But maybe we can make you an offer and end this.”
“What offer? I think very little you could offer could be trusted.”
“The same offer I made to you on the causeway. You drop your weapon now, and die in place of these people, in place of all your people,” said Carlossa.
Jonah stared at the man, feeling the solid grip of his axe in his hand as he watched Carlossa lift the blade to Keana’s throat. He could charge now, but he knew it would be too late. He would not be able to save his daughter before the blade cut her. He stood with his feet apart, ready for the moment if it came, but he could not charge now.
“Or which will it be?” said Carlossa. “The daughter or the wife? Both, of course, if you do not surrender you axe. Every single Elk—every man, woman, and child of your clan alliance—dies today. Or you drop your axe and let me kill you.”
“You would just kill them all anyway. You said as much yourself. Even if I give up my axe and die,” said Jonah. He needed to bide his time, needed to draw Carlossa away from his daughter and wife. How he would rescue them, he had no clue, but for now just to stop them from being killed would be enough.
“You are wrong,” said Carlossa. “You think I would give my word, in front of my own men, and then go back on it? No, if you drop your weapon and submit to being killed now, the rest of your people will be allowed to live if a new leader will agree to become a servant of the Cygoa.”
Jonah could feel more than see the mass of warriors gathering around the clearing. Behind, him his own warriors—the Elk and the other clans—and across the clearing, behind Carlossa, the Cygoa gathered. The forest was alive with the noise of movement, though the cries of fighting had stopped. Everything seemed to be waiting for this scene to play out.
“All you have to do is drop the axe and give yourself up,” said Carlossa. “Your people will be allowed to live if they become servants of the Cygoa.”
Jonah stared the man in the face. They will never be your servants, he thought. They will never remain your slaves. But if for just one moment I manage to stop him from killing Keana, by giving myself up...
Jonah dropped his axe and stepped forward. “So be it.”
Carlossa smiled and took the blade away from Keana’s throat but then returned it. “You folk are so amusing to play with. You fall for it every time.” Around the clearing, several of the Cygoa laughed. “So gullible. So easy to trick.”
Chapter 52
Seren collapsed against the tree stump and breathed heavily, her lungs protesting with every intake of the cool air in the woods. Around her, there was chaos. People from the camp hurried away in the dozens, heading for the deeper woods to the south or to the ruins in the east, and few stopped to even glance at her as they went. The Cygoa had attacked from the north, rather than the southern causeway, and the Elk’s defense was broken, that much she now knew. The horn in the distance, resounding with the distinct tone of Donast’s horn, sent three sharp calls and then a gap, and then three more sharps calls. It told her all she needed to know.
There was a sniff from next to her, and she glanc
ed to see Sorcha crouching nearby. She looked behind the wolf and saw that the younger pups were nowhere to be seen. The she wolf had hidden them somewhere hours ago, and Seren was relieved that they would be safe from the blades of the Cygoa. If all else should fall apart, at least Sorcha would be able to fly to them and take them far away into the wilderness where they would not be harmed.
Seren crept through the woods, keeping mostly to the heavy undergrowth and the bushes and staying away from the groups of fleeing folk. Where were Keana and Sasha? Where was Gideon? They should be with those fleeing, but she had not seen them. As she saw the first signs of the camp up ahead, she passed three bodies lying in the dirt, but none of the faces were familiar to her. Some poor clan folk whom the Cygoa had caught before they could escape, she thought. That answered at least one question—how far had the Cygoa reached? All this way, through the camp and out the other side. They could be around her now, moving between the trees and killing everyone they found.
But she heard no movement, and Sorcha, still at her side, showed no sign of unease. So long as she stayed quiet and stayed hidden, she could sneak around and hope to eventually find her friends.
She reached the edge of the camp and frowned. The forest had fallen silent. All sounds of movement and fighting had almost ceased, all but a few distant cries from those wounded and dying. Something had changed, but what? She sat in a bush by the edge of the wall that surrounded the camp and listened. There were voices coming from somewhere, distant but not miles away, maybe from within the camp itself.
Seren crawled along on her belly and slid underneath the metal barrier attached to the outside of one of the carts. Once she was beyond the barrier she found herself between a group of short tents. No one moved between the tents, so she crept forward and took cover next to a stack of crates that were piled high. As she peeked around a corner and saw a group of people standing in a clearing, something to her right drew her attention from them. It was a body, lying on its side next to one of the tents, covered in blood.
She sighed. Some poor soul who had been caught, she thought, but then she saw that the body had no head and shuddered. A few feet away she spotted the missing head, and her heart lurched at the sight of the face that stared blankly back at her. It was Logan. The old man that she had known for most of her life and visited often for a talk. Here he was, killed by the Cygoa. She felt tears prickling her eyes and stifled a cry, pushing back the pain and sending it deep down into her gut, where it grew tendrils and turned red.
They had taken too much. Killed too many. And they kept on taking and taking. They would kill everyone, wouldn’t they?
“So be it,” she heard from the voices across the clearing, and the sound of that voice broke her from her thoughts of Logan. She looked up and peered through the gathering warriors—all of them Cygoa on her side of the clearing. Through a gap in the line she could see a tall man. Across from him, maybe ten feet away, she saw Jonah, and behind him, the gathered forces of the clans. He held out his axe and then dropped it to the ground. The tall Cygoa leader held a knife high and then placed it at the throat of a young woman kneeling on the floor, bound and gagged.
She recognized the clothing the captive was wearing, and the long, tousled hair. It was Keana, and this man—this Cygoa—was about to kill her.
This cannot happen, she thought. They have taken too much. They can’t be allowed to take anything else. This has to stop now.
“Stay,” she whispered to Sorcha, and then she stood up. Breathing slowly, she tried to calm herself. If she rushed, she would be noticed and stopped, but if she was calm...
Seren began to stride through the tents toward the clearing. She sped up her pace, heading straight through the lines of Cygoa warriors who stood with their backs to her, moving quickly enough that they barely noticed her pass, or she hoped they would not recognize that she was not one of them until it was too late. None of them flinched or tried to stop her. They were all too intent on listening to the conversation in the clearing.
“You folk are so amusing to play with. You fall for it every time,” she heard the Cygoa leader say as he lifted the blade to Keana’s throat.
Seren saw the expression on Jonah’s face. It was one of utter loss and hopelessness. But she looked back to the Cygoa leader and continued to walk through the crowd. Still the Cygoa did not notice her.
“So gullible. So easy to trick,” said the tall man. He smiled as he pushed the blade against Keana’s neck.
“No, we’re not.” Seren spoke aloud as she stepped past the final line of warriors and closed the last few steps toward the leader. She raised her hand.
The tall leader turned to her, confused for a moment, and the blade moved away from Keana’s neck. Carlossa frowned as Seren raised her hand toward him. He saw what she had in her hand but did not recognize the danger. He smiled, and she was sure he was about to speak.
Then the gun blew his face off.
With a loud bang, Carlossa’s head exploded like a ripe melon under a hammer, sending lumps of brain, bone, and flesh in all directions. The body still stood for a moment before gravity pulled it to the floor, but the blade fell from his dead hands.
Seren turned and saw a hundred or more Cygoa staring at her, shocked, surprised, unable to comprehend what they had just seen. Those faces of killers all together, standing still and unable to move. Such easy targets. It was all she needed. The gun went up again as though it was not her holding it, as though it had a life and mind of its own, and it began to fire. With one shot after the next, the anger within her came out. Blast after blast struck the Cygoa, killing a warrior with every bullet. She had not fired the gun live many times before, but she had a good eye for aiming, and her time training with Abernathy had proven that she was a good shot, and now that accuracy born from her years carefully aiming a bow was unleashed upon the Cygoa with the deadly power of a gun.
And they fled, some of them dying as they ran, breaking apart any form of organization as the will of the Cygoa broke and turned into a rout, and still Seren fired, even then beginning to walk, following those that turned to run, firing again and again, until at last the gun stopped firing, every squeeze of the trigger answered by a quiet click, click, click.
It was only then that Seren collapsed to the ground and let the tears come, but she was only alone for a few seconds before warm fur was leaning against her and Sorcha was licking her face.
Chapter 53
The night brought the inevitable chill, and with it came the wailing of dying men. Gaston had intentionally waited for the fighting to cease, not because he was a coward but because he had no intention of being a part of it.
On Carlossa’s command, he’d kept the coven on a rocky outcrop. Although they stood quite a distance from the battle, their vantage point allowed the priests to watch the fighting unfold—first the skirmish on the one causeway, followed by the invasion over the other.
Horns had blown, and the Cygoa had begun burning the Elk camp, and that was when Gaston had decided it was time to move through the carnage to find Jonah. It was quite possible that the man had already been killed by the invading forces. They made their way across the causeway, much slower than the warriors had done minutes before, then passed the demolished defenses before heading into the camp. Gaston frowned, as in the distance a noise that he had not heard before—some form of loud banging—began to erupt from farther into the camp.
“What is that?” Gaston asked.
“Our warriors are running.”
Gaston looked to his right and into the face of one of the priests. The man stood next to what was left of a tent, bitter-smelling coals still glowing at the bottom. Dead Elk and Cygoa covered the ground. So many warriors ran back and forth that it was impossible to determine who was running where and why.
“We need to talk to someone,” Gaston said. “Has anyone located Carlossa?”
The other priests nearby shook their heads, and Gaston sighed. He looked toward the causeway and
around the Elk camp. Gaston had heard it several times—like localized thunder that echoed through the valley. Morlan had not shared any information with him regarding the Cygoa battle tactics, and Carlossa was too arrogant to mention it, as the commander in charge.
“The sounds. What of them?”
The members of the coven shook their heads again, unsure of what Gaston wanted of them.
Several men ran toward him, and he turned to face them, his eyes sharp and tight. Two Cygoa warriors fled to his left, never even glancing at Gaston as their pursuers came around a burning hut and pulled up in front of him.
Scouts , Gaston thought.
“What is this? What is happening? What were those noises?”
Loner pulled up, and Frantic put his hands on his knees, sucking wind. “Fucking war.”
Gaston rolled his eyes. “Where is Carlossa?”