by Bobby Adair
“Careful,” Kirby told him. “Don’t move until I get this lit.”
Oliver heard the rattle of metal and the slosh of liquid in a small container. Something clicked a few times and lantern light splashed suddenly across a room so large the far wall nearly disappeared in shadow.
Kirby pointed at the floor. “We built it sideways across most of this cargo hold.” Nodding to one side of the space, she said, “Don’t go over there. The floor is rusty in spots close to the wall. It might give way.”
Oliver stepped in the opposite direction of the places Kirby pointed, and he looked the other way to see long racks of rifles on both sides, like the one Kirby carried strapped across her back. They each stood on the butt with the barrel pointing up. Bigger guns that looked like they weighed as much as Oliver leaned on one of the racks. Handguns were arrayed on shelves along a wall.
In the back of the room, stacked floor to ceiling, were hundreds of crates, carefully constructed and marked with faded black letters on weathered wood.
Kirby waved at the crates. “Our ammunition.”
“For the guns?” Oliver asked.
“More than you’ll ever need.”
Oliver’s eyes were back on the racks of weapons, and he examined them as he got close. “Three types of guns,” said Oliver, “but all the guns of each type look exactly alike.”
“Of course.” Kirby leaned over to look through the sideways door, checking that Jingo and Beck were still coming.
Getting close enough to stroke the smooth dark metal on one of the guns, Oliver said, “Your blacksmiths are amazing.”
“Blacksmiths?” Kirby asked, before catching herself. “We have a factory that manufactures these. We don’t have blacksmiths in the sense that you probably think.”
“Manufacture?” Oliver asked.
“A process,” said Jingo as he crouched to get through the sideways door, “where people work together using machines to make many identical pieces efficiently.”
“I don’t understand,” said Oliver.
“It’s not important that you do just yet,” said Jingo. “I’ve got some books in the Ancient City that’ll make it very easy for you to understand, if we ever get back there. If not, I can explain it later. Okay?”
Beck came in through the sideways door, his eyes lighting up when he saw the racks of guns. “It’s true.”
Kirby pointed out the crates of ammunition. “This is the last of what we have.”
“You brought that with you when you came fourteen years ago?” Jingo asked.
“Much more,” Kirby answered.
“You manufactured none of it here?” Jingo pressed.
Kirby shook her head. “We’d hoped to. As I said, we were all infected with the spore, but before we were forced into the army, each of us worked at other jobs. Among us were farmers, doctors, laborers, teachers, chemists, and metallurgists. We had enough knowledge and skill that we thought we could build everything we needed. Eventually.”
“Why did you bring so much with you, then?” Beck asked.
“We stole the ships,” said Kirby. “They had whatever came in them. Two belonged to our people. Three belonged to other cities that traded with us. Some were packed with food. One was empty; one was filled with ore. That one’s at the bottom of the bay now. This ship carried a load of weapons and ammunition.”
“Why didn’t you try to manufacture anything here?” asked Jingo. “Were you not able to find the raw materials?”
“That wasn’t it,” answered Kirby. “The spore-corrupted men started attacking almost immediately. By the time we’d been here a week, we were fighting hordes of them numbering in the hundreds, thinking we were killing all those in the area and that eventually there’d be none left.”
“But they kept coming,” said Jingo.
“How did you know that?” asked Kirby.
Jingo pointed south. “Before the fall, millions of people lived in the city south of here. Many hundreds of thousands of demons still live there, and all along the coast between the ocean and the mountains. From the tall building I lived in, I saw them heading north in bands of a few dozen or a few hundred. They used to band together and head west for Brighton. Around the time you say your people landed here, they started coming this way.”
“The attacks went on and on,” said Kirby. “They never slowed, as we’d expected. They only grew worse. We were in discussions about sailing our ships elsewhere, to find a safer place to build our new home, but the hurricane came.”
“A bad one,” said Jingo. “I remember it.”
“It sank the ore ship in the bay. It tossed these others up on shore, where they lay today, and stranded us here. After that, we had to build the towers that we lived in and the wall to defend ourselves.”
“And still, the demons came,” said Jingo.
Kirby nodded. “We grew what we could, but we didn’t have enough room inside the stockade. We planted crops outside, but we’d be lucky if we ever were able to harvest half of them. They got trampled by the attacking mobs or raided before the harvest. We didn’t bring any animals with us—no pigs, no goats, no cattle.”
“Cattle?” Oliver asked. They were beasts of myth that fed the Ancients all their meat and cheese and gave them all the milk they could drink.
“They were real to our people,” Kirby told him. “But the city I came from didn’t have any. We didn’t control enough pasture land to keep them. We had plenty of pastureland on the frontier, but raiding parties killed or stole our herds.” Looking back at Jingo and Beck, she said, “When we runaways understood the problem we faced, we rationed what food we’d brought with us. We hunted when we could. We gathered what we were able to find in the forest, but that was dangerous business. We built wooden boats to fish, but none of us were fisherman, and the few fish we caught were never worth the effort put in to catch them.”
“And it wasn’t enough?” asked Beck.
“We starved every winter,” said Kirby. She held up a thin arm as proof. “You’ve seen the bodies of my people outside on the ground. You see how thin we all are. If the spore hadn’t finished us, starvation would have, eventually.”
“The spore?” Jingo asked. “How’s that?”
“You know what happens when a man or woman is corrupted by the spore,” Kirby told him. “At first, we are normal. Over time we develop the discolored spots on our skin, and then the lumps. Some go crazy, but many don’t. Eventually, though, we all lose our minds.”
“If you truly believed that,” said Jingo, “none of you would have come here.”
“We hoped,” answered Kirby. “Who doesn’t?”
“What did you do with the people here who lost their minds?” asked Beck.
“We turned the worst of them out into the forest,” said Kirby. “But it wasn’t enough. For every one we turned out, another ten stayed who hadn’t gone crazy, but had lost their capacity to make good choices. Eventually, so many of us were halfway down the road to insanity that we were no longer able to defend ourselves. In the last battle, some of the insane people inside the stockade decided to put a torch to it, and that was it. The demon horde breached the walls, and you see the result. The dead cover the ground.”
“How do you know you were the only one to survive?” asked Jingo.
“I don’t,” Kirby admitted. “Maybe some others escaped into the forest. If they did, none have come back.”
“If you’d used these guns,” Beck asked, rubbing his chin and coming to conclusions, “do you think you could have beaten the demons?”
Kirby laughed in a dark, mean way that was her habit. “We did use the guns. That’s why there are so many dead demons out there.”
“But,” Beck pointed at the racks of weapons, “why are the guns here now?”
“I collected them,” said Kirby, as though it were the most obvious thing she’d said all day.
“Why?” asked Beck. “You can’t use more than one or two, correct?”
“Where I come from,” said Kirby, “whenever a battle is won, the winner scavenges and keeps the spoils, especially the guns. They’re too valuable to leave out to rust. I brought all of these here, cleaned off the blood, and put them on the racks, as you see here.”
Chapter 32: Fitz
Fitz scanned across the faces of the women of the New House, all sitting in high-backed chairs around Fitzgerald in the meeting room, watching her. Those who couldn’t find seats were hovering in anxious rows behind the rest. Several servants and a few young boys, novices leftover from the clergy, mingled, whispering, waiting for whatever she had to say. Ginger had sent word to the Academy again, but none of the men had responded. Fitz wasn’t surprised.
Projecting her voice, Fitz stood and said, “I have news.”
The room grew silent. A few of the young novices peered around the women’s shoulders as they waited. Fitz relayed what she’d heard from Tara and Loren, speaking of the death of Blackthorn, Winthrop’s army, and their intention to break down the circle wall.
“How far away is Winthrop’s army?” one of the Strong Women asked.
“As few as two days, as many as four,” Fitz answered. “They come at their own pace, which our scouts say changes according to Winthrop’s whim.”
“How many men does Winthrop have?”
“A few thousand, at least,” Fitz answered. She explained what the number meant to the people in the room, most of who didn’t have their numbers.
The women looked around at each other as a rumor turned into a realization. A few clutched their hands. “What happened to the rest of them?”
“We’re not sure,” Fitz admitted. “It’s possible they’re behind Winthrop, somewhere. I’ve sent the riders back out to find more information.”
“So you haven’t seen the rest of the army?”
“No,” Fitz admitted.
“The rest of our relatives are dead!” a woman put together, a sob escaping her lips.
Several people in the room started talking at once. A few women broke down and cried, gripping their friends and consoling one another as they mourned relatives they never thought they’d see again.
“My uncle taught me my numbers,” one woman explained to her friend. “If the rest are dead, that’s almost all of them!”
“By the gods!” the woman shrieked. “My husband and sons are out there!”
Fitz let the women cry for a few minutes. She knew they needed time. When they were finished, she put her palms on the table, the way she’d seen the leaders do, speaking loudly enough to quiet the lingering conversations in the room. “We don’t know for sure that they’re dead. But what we do know is that Winthrop is out there. We’ve all seen the way Winthrop acted before he rode out on the horse. We saw the way he acted in the Sanctuary, looking around at the ceiling, listening to the words of ghosts. And now, that insanity has spread into the minds of his followers. We can’t let them in.”
The young novices looked over their shoulders nervously, as if someone might smash through the door and carry them to the nearest pyre.
“We’ll be burned for what we’ve done!” one woman said, unable to contain her fright. “Our men will punish us when they get back!”
“No, they won’t,” Fitz said, holding up her hands to try and preserve the calm. “You people have stood by me. We’ve done what we had to do to Tenbrook and his men in order to stay alive, and we can do whatever we have to do to survive again.”
“It’s one thing to seduce a few hundred soldiers,” one of the women broke in. “But how will we convince the rest of the men—our men—not to burn us?”
“We have to let them in,” another woman argued, looking around. “They’ll kill us if we don’t.”
“We don’t have to let them in if they mean us harm, or if they mean to break the circle wall,” Fitz said firmly. “We’ll fight back, if we have to.”
The women continued talking amongst themselves. Some argued. A few of the servants exchanged wide-eyed expressions that revealed their worst fears had come true.
One of the Strong Women leaned over a few women sitting at the table, speaking loudly. “We have the numbers. And we have the circle wall. It has protected us for three hundred years from hordes of demons. It will protect us from men too drunk on the glory of killing to think straight,” she said.
“But how will we defend it?” One of the servants held up her hands in exasperation. “The army has weapons. We have almost none. We outnumber them, but the people left in Brighton are women, children, and the elderly, not soldiers.”
Fitz raised her voice again. “We’re in a better position than we were last week, or last year. We have enough food to sustain ourselves. We have a wall to protect us from the army and the demons. We can outlast an attack until we figure out how to resolve this.”
Several of the Strong Women and the women from The House of Barren Women nodded, reinforcing Fitz’s statement.
A woman with dark hair asked, “Why would they break down the wall and let in the demons? I don’t understand.”
“They mean to punish us for what we’ve done, like I said,” a woman reiterated.
“We’re not sure what their intentions are,” Fitz said. “But whatever the case, we can’t let him come here and change things back to the way they were.”
“If we let them in, we might be able to avoid a burning,” one woman said, drying quiet tears on her face.
Hearing the words made Fitz angry. Looking around at the ladies from The House of Barren Women, she recalled the bruises on their arms, or the times they’d lain on their backs, pleasuring men for the good of Brighton. Then she considered the women in the homes of Brighton who had taken similar abuse, or worse yet, the children. “Is that what you want, to let them in and have Winthrop throw your children on the pyre? To have a man you don’t love share your bed and be treated like a farm animal? To be beaten when the crops fail, or when dinner isn’t ready before sundown?”
Silence.
“Mark my words, if they come through those walls, all of us in this room will pay. He won’t keep any of us alive. He’ll keep the rest of the sheepish women for chores and pleasure, but we will burn! His men will do what they want with us. We need to do whatever we have to do to protect ourselves. We need to defend the circle wall.”
With her pronouncement made, Fitz stared around the room, waiting for an argument. The fear in the room was a tangible aura, hanging above them, but no one disputed what she said. Everyone knew she was right.
“We can’t let them kill us.” Ginger stood up straight and moved closer to Fitz. “We need to work together.”
“Hopefully we’ll hear back from the riders again soon. In the meantime, we need to be prepared for whatever is coming our way,” Fitz said. “We need a plan. And when we have one, we need to relay it to the townspeople.”
Chapter 33: Bray
After following the army for most of the previous day, Bray camped out in the forest, foregoing his fire so he didn’t attract the soldiers or the demons. He resumed his watch the next morning, sticking close to the thick trunks of the trees, moving stealthily, until he saw a few men relieving themselves in a copse of trees that preceded a clearing. Past them was a large gap of open land, where the sun shone brightly on a maze of crumbled ruins and rocks, through which the army was already forging. Bray knew the area well. Those ruins had been worn down with paths that started with the Ancients, continued with the animals, and had been taken up by travelers over the years as they went to and from the Ancient City.
More often than not, demons roamed there, too.
The army could afford to lose a
few men, but Bray wasn’t about to risk his own ass.
He hiked through a tangle of briars and snagging vines, slicing through them with his sword as he went deeper into the forest, but still close enough to hear the chants. He stiffened as he almost stepped on the body of a dead demon, its arm cut off at the elbow, its stomach slashed. Its mouth formed a bloodied frame around its cracked, stained teeth. It looked like the injured thing had lived long enough to flee the army and make a final resting place under the weeds.
Another twenty feet later, he discovered another dead demon.
He couldn’t understand how an army of raggedy men and women was slaughtering so many.
“Luck, that’s all,” he tried to convince himself, but he couldn’t dispel the feeling of uneasiness that crept into his stomach.
Bray kept moving. Deep in the distance, he heard the chanting of the army rising and falling as they progressed through the small buildings. None of those buildings were as impressive as those in the Ancient City, but they were a frequent stop for metal scavengers who didn’t know better than to avoid the demons. They’re definitely headed in the direction of Brighton, he thought. He didn’t care where they were going, as long as he was able to keep track of them and take William. After that, he’d head somewhere that wasn’t likely to be swollen with deranged, suicidal men.
Maybe they’ll all die from eating demon meat.
Bray laughed under his breath as he hung on that thought, knocking his way through the thicket and tangled bushes. Everyone knew better than to consume the foul, twisted things.
The exertion of a cold, hard hike was taking its toll on him. Or maybe it was his injuries. Bray hadn’t had a decent night’s rest since he’d started following William. He’d been sleeping only when he knew the boy was bedded down, and waking before William was likely to rise. His fear had been that he’d lose him to the wild, or to the demons.