by Kara Timmins
“I might as well give you a hand finding firewood,” Malatic said. “The sooner we find the dry ones the faster we can get some warmth, right?” Malatic got up and trotted to close the gap Neasa had made between them.
Eloy unraveled his sleeping pelts and wrapped them around his shoulders. He found a notch in the stone wall facing the opening of the cave and tucked himself into it. The warmth of his body and the enclosure of the space warmed the cold prickle that felt tight on his skin.
Neasa and Malatic returned with armfuls of wood and handfuls of moss. Eloy settled in a little deeper into his crevice as he made a mental catalog. With the food they had collected in the previous days, there wouldn’t be a need for them to leave the cave for the rest of the night. The resources and shelter gave them the closest they would get to a reprieve.
Neasa dropped down to begin the process of starting the fire, but Malatic shooed her away.
“Rest,” Malatic said. “I’ve got this. Nothing I like more than making a fire.”
“Thanks, Mal.” She smiled before turning her back to him and going to Eloy, lowering herself against the wall at his left.
“It’s not far now,” Malatic said with his attention and hands on the makings of the flame. He tried to sound indifferent, but Eloy heard the melancholy.
“Do you remember the exact way to get there?” Goodwin asked from the back of the cave.
“I couldn’t draw you a map right this moment,” Malatic said. “But I remember the feel of it, the smell of it, and I know we’re getting close now.”
“And you don’t think he’s moved his camp since you’ve been there?” Neasa asked.
“The old camps we keep finding tell me he hasn’t,” Malatic said. “Don’t underestimate his arrogance, especially now that he has the upper hand in the fighting. No, I think he’s still in the same place. There are advantages to this camp that he wouldn’t easily be able to find somewhere else.”
Malatic finished making the fire, draping the four of them in its warm glow.
“Do you have any idea how much longer it’ll take?” Goodwin asked. “How many more days?”
“If I had to guess, I would say four or five.” Malatic stared into the fire and twisted his mouth around as if he were trying to keep words locked behind his furrowed lips.
Beneath the bravado and quips, Malatic had something serious and dark moving under the surface. Eloy had had his eye on it in the days of travel. But he had seen a warming in Malatic—especially when it came to Neasa—and Eloy’s apprehension waned, helped by what had happened with the fight with Anso’s men. Eloy watched for the shadow in Malatic and noted it happened whenever Anso took a place in their conversation. Eloy felt sure Malatic’s decision to defect from Anso hadn’t been as casual as he had made it seem. Malatic was afraid of Anso.
Eloy saw the shadow now, the hint of Malatic’s real opinions about the man.
“Everything okay?” Eloy asked.
“I never thought I would be coming back this way. Certainly not under these circumstances. When I did wonder if I would, I thought the only way would be if they dragged me back to be gutted and strung up. I was raised in a harsh place. A place with no warmth in the land or its people, but even all that wasn’t enough to forge me strong enough for the long term in Anso’s camp. All by design, I guess.”
“What do you mean?” Neasa asked.
“Well,” Malatic said, “no one is really meant to make it in the long term. I was a recruit. Like our fine Goodwin here. Which meant I wasn’t supposed to be alive for very long. I was essentially a meaty shield.”
Eloy thought about the fighters who charged the losing battle at the Bowl to gauge the strength of the outpost at the bridge and nodded. The bodies of Anso’s fighters piled up the same as the people from the Bowl.
Malatic looked at the cave floor and ran his fingers through the dirt. “From what I understand, according to Anso, he doesn’t have much use for aging recruits. Young men sign up in hopes for greatness, but their unmarked grave plot is already waiting for them. Anso only cares about the survival of those he keeps close, and I use the word cares very loosely. Those are the ones who get the rewards, and those fighters are the ones who are the most like him, the ones who come from the place he comes from or who come from families that give him resources.”
“How did you rise up, then?” Neasa asked without accusation.
“I paid attention,” Malatic said. “Once I figured out how to stay alive, I noticed how his ranking system worked. I didn’t try to shine. I stayed hidden in the average. And I lived longer. But Anso . . .” Malatic gulped and shook his head. “There’s something about that man. You can feel it. Something so wrong. And there are the stories . . . I realized going to Nicanor’s camp gave me the best odds for survival.”
Eloy and Neasa looked at each other in the firelight, the popping of the fire filled the quiet.
“Do you think we’re going to die?” Goodwin asked.
“Maybe,” Malatic answered.
Eloy cleared his throat. “If we’re getting close to Anso’s camp, I need to be sure we’re all here for the right reasons. I have to know we can rely on each other, no matter what. I’m here because if there’s a chance I can stop Anso, I have to try. For some reason, this is part of my path, and I’m going to walk it. Neasa?”
“The Seer called this battle between Nicanor and Anso an affliction. I believe it. I said I was with you in this before we left Valia. I’m not going to change my mind now.”
“Goodwin?” Eloy asked, looking to the young man now sitting next to Neasa.
“This isn’t what I expected,” Goodwin said, “but it’s what I signed up for. I trust you. This is the right thing to do.” Goodwin held his chin up as he looked at Eloy.
Then the three looked at Malatic.
His face was set, hardened, and cold. “I don’t have much of an imagination, but I don’t need one to know what’ll happen if Anso is free to do as he wants. I’ve always been the surviving kind, but I’d rather risk it and take him on now than sit back and live to see what happens if no one does. I told you I would see you through to the end of this, and I’ll be true to my word.” Malatic chanced a quick look at Neasa, and his face softened.
Eloy slumped down against the rocks. “There it is, then.”
“Not quite,” Malatic said. “If we’re in this together, we need to really do this. Everything out in the open. I want to know what a Seer has to do with this, and I want to know about that.” He pointed at the outline of the stone under Eloy’s shirt.
Eloy touched the stone and sighed. “You’re right.”
He started by telling them about Amicus and his gift and the promise. Eloy shared what had happened at the Bowl. He finished his story with his meeting with the Seer. He spoke until the snowy world outside the cave turned a deep blue of evening. He shared it all.
32
After Eloy told his story, their conversation dissolved into the common pleasantries of a day winding down. Neasa excused herself to the back of the cave. Malatic made a place somewhere between her and the cave entrance, and Goodwin curled up not far away from him. Eloy stayed in the nook of the rock. Despite the warmth and the added security of the cave, Eloy found it difficult to fall asleep, so he volunteered to be the first one to stay up on watch. Malatic saying they were close to Anso’s camp was a confirmation of the feeling that had been growing in Eloy. He had noticed the physical signs that they were getting closer. The cluttered camps were becoming more frequent, and the passing murmur of common travelers had become nonexistent.
The stone was still hanging on the outside of his shirt from when he had shown Goodwin and Malatic. Eloy brought it up to his mouth and thought about Amicus. Was Amicus watching somehow? Did he know the outcome of the foolish quest to take on Anso? Eloy found himself trying to will his guardian into one of his sleeping compa
nions. He hoped with everything he had that one of them would sit up and talk to him in that deep assured voice that he hadn’t heard since the salt flats. But no one sat up, and Amicus’s voice didn’t come. And then Eloy felt guilty for wishing it.
Instead, Eloy imagined what Amicus would say to him. He played the sound of it in his mind, telling him that he was still on the right path, even though it felt as if he were further and further away from the place he was trying to find every day. The voice told him that he was doing the right thing, that Eloy was doing what needed to be done. The voice also said that he was responsible for the people sleeping around him.
I’ll do everything I can for them, Eloy imagined he would say.
The faces of Francena and Corwin flashed in his mind, and he knew he was just as responsible for their lives as well, even if they were so far away that it made his chest ache. If he didn’t find a way to get rid of the threat of Anso and his fighters on the land, everyone would be at risk. Everyone would be in his path. Just like Roch had been. But there would be no place to run to.
Eloy let the other three sleep through the night by keeping a watchful eye while roaming through his thoughts. Something told him they would need the rest in the days to come.
Neasa was the first to rise, as she always was, at the first sign of morning light. She sat close to him in the nook of the rock. “That was generous.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Eloy said. “Figured there was no use in waking someone else up if I was just going to just lie there.”
“Mmm,” Neasa hummed. “Sure. We’ll go with that, then. Can I get you something to eat?”
“I could eat,” Eloy said, stretching.
Neasa pulled a few lumps of saved meat and berries from inside a rolled-up waxy leaf and handed half of the contents to Eloy.
“What were you thinking about that kept you awake?” Neasa burst a small red berry between her teeth with a soft crack.
“Anso.”
“We’re close,” Neasa said.
“Malatic seems to think so. There’s something about this area. I agree with him.”
Neasa finished her small meal and rolled the empty leaf back up to put in her bag. “I feel it too. None of the background noise. It’s like walking the path from the fork that went to Nicanor’s camp, only much more noticeable.”
“I thought the same thing.”
“I’ve been doing some thinking myself lately,” she said.
“About?” Eloy asked.
“A plan to get into Anso’s camp,” Neasa said. “Unless you came up with something last night, we still don’t have any real idea what we’re going to do when we get there, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay, but what if we use something that we’ve already used before that worked and take advantage of the one thing we have that Anso doesn’t know about. We’ll use the tute.”
“The dead tute?”
“Anso doesn’t know he’s dead. Nicanor told the whole tent to keep quiet about the tute’s execution, so no one but the people who were there would know he isn’t on his way here.”
“A spy for Anso could have been in that inner circle and gotten word to him,” Eloy said.
“Maybe, but I doubt it. Why would Anso need the tute if he had a spy? More than anything, I think we would’ve seen some more action or signs of battle movement if Anso knew. I don’t think that information ever left that tent. We would’ve heard about it while leaving Nicanor’s camp. I don’t think you realize how big of a deal it is to kill a tute. If word had gotten out, we would’ve heard about it.”
“Good point,” Eloy said. “What do you have in mind?”
“We don’t have the tute to take us in like we did with Nicanor,” Neasa said, “but we can try to give the impression that we are with him when we try for Anso’s tent. We now know things about the tute that aren’t common knowledge. If we go in saying that we’ve been instructed by the tute to go ahead of him—say he is taking some extra time indulging in some of the more bodily enjoyments—to get things ready for him and let Anso know he would be on his way within a few days, we might get the same allowances we did before. Not many would know of the tute’s real character, and us going in with that detail may be enough.”
“If we’re assuming this wrong, we may be in some trouble. But it is definitely better than anything I’ve been able to come up with so far. We know for a fact that Anso is waiting for the tute, and he’s probably pretty impatient about it.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Neasa said. “If we get close and see something or think of something that might be better or safer, we’ll do that.”
Malatic rolled over to face them. “You know some of us like to sleep past sunrise.”
“Sorry to disturb you, oh great one,” Neasa said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Malatic said, his words weak as sleep took him again.
Neasa and Eloy stayed up looking out at the trees. Without realizing he was doing it, Eloy slipped into sleep of his own.
33
Goodwin, Malatic, and Neasa were up and moving around the cave by the time Eloy woke. Neasa and Malatic huddled over the low-burning fire at the entrance, tendrils of meat-rich smoke curling around their huddled forms. Goodwin sat waiting just outside the cave.
“You’re up,” Neasa said, looking over her shoulder at Eloy in his nook.
“I am.” Eloy’s voice crackled in his throat. “What’re you making?”
“Fish,” Malatic said. “There’s a stream not far.”
Eloy felt his mouth fill with saliva. He pulled himself out of the crevice, his joints protesting the movement with dull aches. He moved out of the cave and sat on the other side of the mouth from Goodwin. “Did Neasa tell you about the idea she had?”
“No.” Malatic looked at Neasa and waited for her to speak.
She told them about her idea to use the tute to get access to the camp.
“That might work,” Malatic said. “I’m sure Anso is eagerly waiting for the tute to come with the information. It’s something. Someone might bring us right to the correct tent just like someone did with you two with Nicanor. If enough of our people were stupid enough to let you walk in like you were on an evening stroll, there’s a good chance some of theirs will be too. Then again, if you’d been caught before you got to Nicanor, you would’ve been imprisoned and executed with some level of dignity. That won’t be the case with Anso.”
“I know all about Nicanor’s dignity,” Eloy said in a low voice.
Malatic gave him a knowing nod. “I think the plan could work. The camp is tucked away in a cutout of a mountain. It is mostly surrounded by a tall, rough rock face. We have to go in through the front, and if something goes wrong, there’s no way to get out through the back. It’s set up much like Nicanor’s camp—new recruits at the front and higher-ups in the back. Anso’s tent isn’t different from the ones around it, so you wouldn’t be able to point it out. He moves it regularly, so we’ll have to get the information about where it is from someone else. Stay close and behind me when we get there. I’ll give anyone looking the impression that I’m your superior and hope that things haven’t changed so much that my actions will give us away.”
Eloy looked at Neasa. “Sounds like we’re agreed on the plan.”
They ate their meal, secured their bags, and walked out of the cave with a quiet determination.
The four spent the day walking in a line, Malatic at the front and Eloy at the back, with more caution than they had before.
On the second day, they crested an incline and saw a snowcapped peak. The mountain was still far away, the long stretch of undulating hills and tapering trees between them gave a sense of distance. Even here, it looked commanding, like a white-topped giant leering over them.
“That’s it,” Malatic said. “That’s the mountain that Anso’s camp is
next to. Hidden in the folds of its skirt, if you will.”
“Let’s stay here for the night,” Eloy said. “That way, we have a better view to keep an eye out.”
“I’m not going to argue with that.” Goodwin slumped down to the ground.
Malatic made quick work of finding wood for a fire. As the dark of night took over, more spots of camps glowed in the terrain below them. The dots of light were the final confirmation that they were already deep inside dangerous territory.
Malatic sat on a rock not far from the others, who were around the fire, with his arm resting on a bent knee and a squinted look of assessment.
“Is there a problem?” Eloy asked.
“Maybe,” Malatic said. “Maybe not. There aren’t as many people down there as I remember. This place used to light up at night, and we should be able to see the glow of the main camp from here.”
“Maybe most of the fighters already moved out?” Eloy asked. “Maybe we’re too late.”
“I don’t know,” Malatic said. “I doubt it. Something just feels . . . off. It sounds off too.”
Eloy turned his head with his ear facing the valley below. He could hear hollers and raucous laughter in the distance, but none seemed different than the ones they heard in the distance before.
“What do you hear?” Eloy finally asked.
“Not much,” Malatic said. “That’s the problem. It is too quiet.”
It seemed loud enough to Eloy, and he wondered what it must have sounded like the last time Malatic was part of Anso’s camp.