Storms of the Forest

by Dele Daniel

  In the area across from him was Sentana. Unlike him, she was alert, although her eyes were dull and lifeless. “Who’s there?” she said.

  “Sentana?” I said, hurrying toward her.

  “G-Genesis?” Her voice creaked, losing the emotionless tone it had possessed just a second ago.

  “I’m so sorry they’ve done this to you,” I said, my hands working quickly and efficiently to untie the makeshift gate that had been used to barricade her.

  “Genesis, if they catch you—”

  “Shh!” I said, seeing the king’s guard shifting in his sleep. I resumed in a lower voice, “We need your help. We’ll explain in a second. For now, we just need to get you out of here.”

  With a tug, the ties around the crude gate enclosure fell a loose. I cringed at the sound it made as Shiva helped me pull it open. Nasheeda had positioned herself near the doorway, keeping her eye on the other prisoner and looking out for Hawk guards as well.

  Sentana carefully stepped out of her personal prison, her movements somewhat stiff. “All right, let’s go!” I said.

  CHAPTER 21

  It had been a close call—almost too close for comfort—but we managed to make it back to the other girls waiting by the stream. After sneaking Sentana out, Shiva and Nasheeda both served as lookouts while Sentana and I packed some supplies—water, food, my crossbow and arrows, and knives. It had been a painstaking process to accomplish without waking anyone, but by the grace of the Eagle-Headed God, we had pulled it off. We then hurried to the stable to retrieve a few horses, another arduous task. But again, we made it, with Dolly, Max, and several others in tow.

  The guard who’d nearly caught us had still been unconscious, thanks to the harsh blow to the head Nasheeda had given him, and the others had fallen back to sleep, oblivious to the fact that we had snuck in and out right under their noses.

  Some guards they were.

  On the way back to the stream, we filled Sentana in on our plan, and she had agreed to help us with no questions asked.

  “Thank you,” I’d said, my eyes glossy as I failed to even put into words the full gratitude I felt toward her, in addition to the shame I felt over the way my brother had been treating her.

  Luckily, she had seemed to sense my unspoken thoughts. “No hard feelings,” she had said. “I know what’s going on with your brother right now has nothing to do with you. He’s young and impressionable. But deep down, hopefully he has your heart and will come to see the error in his ways. Enough of that for now, though. Let’s go save your friend.”

  When we’d made it back to the stream, it was clear that the other girls had been nervous wrecks waiting for our return.

  “Oh my gods! You made it!” several of them exclaimed at once.

  “Looks like you’ve got your own personal army here, Genesis,” Sentana commented. Before I could speak in their defense, letting her know that these girls were not my personal army but rather a group of young women who shared the same beliefs as I did, Sentana had turned to me, her demeanor all business. “Let’s hurry. The sooner we leave, the better. We’ll take a path off course, through the jungle. It’ll be harder for us to be detected that way, not to mention hard to be followed. Plus, it’ll get us near King’s Forest twice as fast, and hopefully, we’ll be able to sneak up on them without them having the slightest clue what hit them.”

  I listened, securing my knapsack to my back. I patted Max on the muzzle as I remembered something Jason had once told me a while ago. The memory of it spurred another plan to brew in my head, but I pushed it aside for the time being. While I wanted to remain a step ahead, I also knew that it was only practical to take one step at a time; taking too many steps at once just made it easier to trip and fall.

  “Is that all right? Genesis? Genesis?”

  I blinked, snapping out of my thoughts and realizing Sentana was staring at me again. I smiled and nodded. “Yes, that sounds perfect.” I turned to the other girls, Shiva in particular. “You see? I told you she’d be useful.”

  ***

  As we rode through the jungle on our horses, the air practically crackled with our nerves.

  Each step Dolly took, I thought only of Remington. Wondering where he was and how he was holding up.

  What the guards were doing to him . . .

  Gods, please let him still be alive.

  Sentana, who was in the front of the group leading, kept glancing back at me, trying to offer reassuring smiles because she obviously could see how stressed I was.

  Between my incessant worrying about Remington, I had to admire Sentana’s strength. She’d been unfairly locked up and mistreated, yet here she was, refusing to let it slow her down. I guess we had a lot in common that way.

  Now, if only I could acquire her unbreakable spirit right now, because I felt so close to crumbling to pieces.

  I looked to my side, where Max trotted alongside Dolly. My breath hitched, an almost unbearable grief coming over me. Sometimes Jason’s death felt like eons ago, and sometimes it felt like only hours ago.

  If I lost Remington too . . .

  I couldn’t even allow myself to think of such a thing at this point.

  My stomach twisted in a painful and nervous knot before I even knew what was wrong. It took several agonizingly long seconds for me to realize that we had all come to a stop, for Sentana had halted in front of us, sitting perched upon her horse as still as a statue. She held up her hand up, motioning for us to freeze if we hadn’t already gotten the memo.

  We were just at the edge of the forest, still hidden by the shadowy trees, but able to see beyond them as well.

  I’d been right. The king’s guards were on horseback too and, consequently, hadn’t reached their destination yet. We had caught up to them much sooner than I had even anticipated. And now, they were right there, out in the open, resting by a fire they had kindled.

  My eyes quickly spanned the premises until I spotted him. A short distance away, Remington was bound and gagged, as was Adey. The guards had them tied to one another, back to back.

  My heart stuttered at the sight of them. So many thoughts raced through my mind, attempting to figure out the best course of action. Whatever we were going to do, we needed to do it immediately so that we could catch the guards by surprise.

  As if on instinctually following this train of thought, my arms reached backward for my knapsack, ready to retrieve my bow and arrows. But as if sensing what I was about to do, Sentana looked back at me and shook her head. Wordlessly, she pointed to the far left and then to the far right.

  It wasn’t until then that I noticed there were more guards than I’d initially noticed. While several of them were gathered around the campfire they had built for the night, others were dispersed about, no doubt stationed as lookouts.

  I suppressed a shudder, realizing how terribly wrong things could have gone if Sentana hadn’t been there to point them out to me. I would have blindly raged forward, shooting my arrows solely at the guards by the campfire, completely oblivious to the lookouts. And when we all would have been captured. Or killed.

  I nodded appreciatively at Sentana and then quietly slid down from Dolly. My feet made the barest thud when they hit the ground, causing us to all freeze again, praying that I hadn’t been overheard. None of the royal guards so much as batted an eye.

  Once sure we were still undetected, I quickly reviewed the plan going through my head, attempting to make sure it was foolproof. I needed to share it with the girls but would have to do it one by one, for speaking loud enough for them all to hear at once would be too risky. So I approached them each individually, muttering rapidly and then moving on to the next.

  I then climbed back on Dolly and nodded to the girls, giving the signal that it was time to spring into action.

  Silently, we got in our places. I retrieved my bow and arrow, readied it, and kept my eyes trained on the guards settled around the fire. Sentana and Shiva moved toward the guards on the left while Nasheeda and a few oth
ers moved toward the guards on the right.

  I glanced around and held my hand into the air, quickly locking eyes with each of them to make sure they could see me, which they indicated by raising their hands in turn.

  I held up one finger. Then two. And lastly three.

  At three, we all revealed ourselves, charging forward.

  It all happened so quickly that the guards didn’t know what hit them. At lightning speed, I sent arrows to the guards around the fire. The other girls, armed with knives and clubs, swiftly and silently took care of the others.

  The guards hardly even had a chance to scream.

  Just mere seconds later, it was all over. Remington and Adey stared, shocked.

  I hopped off my horse and frantically ran to them, stopping in front of Remington. I stooped down to him, shaking with adrenaline. “Are you all right? Are you all right?” I asked repeatedly, my hands working to untie the ropes bounding him while Shiva helped to release Adey.

  I held Remington’s face in my hands, and he placed his hands over mine. “G-Genesis? How?”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. Are you hurt? Can you walk?” Remington stood. “Yes, I’m fine.”

  Remembering he wasn’t the only Hawk member who’d been taken, I looked over his shoulder to Adey. “You okay?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Did the Chief send you guys?”

  “Of course not,” Shiva said. “He doesn’t know we’re gone, and we’d like to keep it that way. So let’s get out of here.”

  I looked up at her and then at the other girls, noting the varying degrees of fear on their faces. For a moment, I couldn’t understand what they were so afraid of. We had eliminated the guards perfectly and everything had gone without a hitch. But then it abruptly dawned on me that none of them had probably outright killed anyone before.

  I remembered all too well the first time I’d taken a human life. Even though it was in self-defense, back when I’d been waiting for Remington and Zane to resurface from the pub, the experience had been so jarring that I’d thought I would spend the rest of my life vomiting at the mere memory of it. But shortly thereafter, I’d been forced to kill again, and it had been easier. Still disturbing, but easier nonetheless.

  These poor girls, though—a significant chunk of their innocence had just been stripped away when they helped kill these guards in order to save Remington and Zane. While I knew they probably needed some words of comfort, I also knew that time was ticking away from us, and the closer we got to morning, the closer we were to being found out.

  Hence, there was no time for them to sort out their feelings about what they’d just done. We had to keep moving.

  “We can’t leave yet,” I declared, ignoring their scandalized looks. “Genesis, what are you talking about?” Shiva said.

  I took a deep breath, thinking about Jason again, or what he’d once told me more accurately. The plan had been brewing in my mind all along, but now, it was time for me to finally announce it.

  “Listen,” I said, “we can end this whole mess once and for all. Jason—Prince Jason—he told me about how things really work in the royal court. You see, King Henry has an advisor who’s really the one in charge. The king allegedly doesn’t do anything without him. This guy, the advisor, he’s the brain behind everything King Henry does.”

  “So how does that help us?” Nasheeda asked, her eyes narrowing with suspicion.

  “Well,” I said, “if we kidnap him, the king will notice immediately and send his whole army in retaliation.”

  “I’m sorry, but how is that a good thing?” Shiva asked.

  “We can use him as leverage. Just think about it! If we have the king’s advisor, we can use him to lure the army into Zagada.” I paused, hoping they understood the significance of this. Zagada was the most dangerous jungle in the kingdom. To this day, there were Arnazuri who wouldn’t dare step foot inside of it.

  Nasheeda shifted on her feet, looking uncertain. “I don’t know . . .”

  “Nobody in the kingdom knows their way around that jungle like an Arnazuri hunter,” Remington said quietly, locking eyes with me.

  “So you want to get a bunch of Arnazuri hunters to fight off the entire royal army in Zagada, by yourselves?” Shiva said, incredulous. “I’m sorry, but that’s just crazy! Even if the king’s guards don’t know their way around the jungle, there still must be at least five thousand of them, if not more! Even if every Arnazuri hunter and every Hawk member, including women, tried to fight, we’d be no match for the royal army! There’s what—maybe two hundred of us tops? Genesis, come on, get real—”

  “Shh!” Sentana said as Shiva’s voice reached a rather feverish pitch.

  A hush fell over our group. I stared at the ground, my ears growing warm as I waited for someone else to voice an opinion.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Remington take several steps toward me, his expression stern. He shook his head and my heart plummeted.

  Not even he was on my side with this? Did they all think I was being stupid?

  “It’s a crazy plan,” Remington said, and then paused. “But it may be our only real chance at freedom. If we aren’t willing to fight for our freedom by any means necessary, then what’s the point of what we’re doing? We can fight and win, or we can fight and lose. The most important thing is that we fight, right? That we at least try. If we don’t try, nothing is ever going to change.”

  I hated to feel so sentimental, but tears started to form in my eyes. It felt good to know that, like always, I could count of him being on my team. I halfway wanted to rush over and hug him just to say thank you. But I controlled myself and instead met his gaze. “Thank you,” I said. “I’m actually going to need a big favor from you.”

  “Anything,” he said, his eyes boring into mine.

  “Will you go back to Black Forest and get the Hawks ready?”

  A flash of uncertainty went across his face. “What if Prince doesn’t agree to it, though?”

  I turned to face him directly. “Deep down, I know my brother still respects you, no matter what his outward actions suggest. You know him better than Leni does, and he’s known you far longer than he’s known Leni. So I’m counting on you to do whatever you have to do to get through to him.”

  Remington pursed his mouth into a tight line but said nothing.

  “I believe in you,” I reiterated, “and I know you’re capable of finding a way around Prince.” I tried to smile although my cheeks felt wobbly. “It’s just Prince, Remington. Remember that.”

  With a heavy sigh, he finally nodded his head. “Okay, Genesis. Okay.” He paused, staring at me as if he wanted to say something else but couldn’t find the words.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Shiva said, “but if we’re going to go through with this . . . plan, we should probably get a move on.”

  I nodded. “She’s right,” I said to Remington. “Go. Go round up the Hawks as quickly as you can and let them know what’s going on.”

  “I’m on it,” he said, and then beckoned Adey to come with him. He started to leave but then looked back at me once more, appearing to have something to say again.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He ran his hand across the top of his head and closed his eyes for a second, a line of concern creasing his brow. He moved toward me, stopping mere inches away. There was a sharp gleam in his eyes as he looked at me, like what he had to say was of the utmost importance. “Whatever you do, Genesis,” he said, “you must promise that you’ll come back to me. Alive.”

  I nodded my head. “I will. I promise.”

  Without warning, he scooped me into a tight embrace, which I didn’t hesitate to return. I squeezed my arms around his muscular back just as tightly as he squeezed me. And then it was over almost as quickly as it started. Remington released me and then took off with Adey in his wake, leaving me behind with the girls and with the dead guards littering the ground.

  I looked toward my new group—my new team. “The k
ing’s advisor’s name is Tonabi. According to Jason, he meditates every morning at six o’clock near the Royal Trail. That’s where we need to go. That’s where we’ll kidnap him.”

  The girls all gave me curt nods before mounting their horses, ready to carry out the next mission.

  CHAPTER 22

  Once again, Sentana proved why she was worth having around on a mission like this. “Okay, I’ll take the lead again,” she’d said. “I know which way we can go to stay hidden and undetected again. There’s a side route that may take us a little longer, but it will be much safer.”

  “Will we be able to get in, though?” Nasheeda had asked. “Isn’t the gate to the city closed at this hour?”

  “Yes, which is another reason why we’ll need to take this alternate side route,” Sentana had explained. “Trust me, it’s the best way to go.”

  After she’d managed to successfully lead us to rescuing Remington and Adey, we all had no choice but to trust Sentana and it was something we were all willing to do at this point anyway. If anyone could help us get to where we needed to be undetected, it was her. So we quietly set off on the side route, following her lead.

  My mind briefly wandered, hoping that Remington and Adey would make it back to the Hawk hideout without any trouble. Most importantly, I hoped my brother and Leni—and Leni’s mother too, for that matter—wouldn’t be too much of an obstacle if they found out what was going on. I just had to trust in the fact that Remington was smart, convincing, and efficient.

  Despite Prince being declared the new Arnazuri chief, Remington had always been the default leader of the Hawk movement, so certainly some still had to feel loyal to him regardless of Prince’s new role and title.

  And if Remington couldn’t get Prince onboard, he would just have to sneak behind his back, which shouldn’t be too hard. After all, Remington was just as good at sneaking around as I was.

  My worries slowly subsided as we got closer to our destination. My mind shifted to strategy, focusing exclusively on the task ahead of us.