by J. Thorn
“I know, too.” Jonah stepped forward and pulled Sasha into his arms. “But consider the alternative. As much as I want him to learn how to fight, I don’t want to lose him on this battlefield before he has the proper training.”
“I think his strength and maturity surprises you.”
“Yes. On a daily basis.”
Sasha rocked up on to her tippy—toes and kissed Jonah quickly on the lips. “But, I agree. The last thing I want is him dying in this fight, sacrificing his life for no reason.”
Why were the Valk here? And other than self—preservation, what was the reason? Those questions sat like rancid lard in his stomach.
“Until we no longer need to guard the camps so heavily, and man the walls, it’s not safe for the young and the old.” He kissed her back and stepped away. “Anyway, I need to go. So much to do I’m forgetting half of it.”
“Maybe we made too many walls,” said Sasha as Jonah strode away along the street. He turned back and grinned.
“My wife. Always got an answer.”
Chapter 23
Ruk strode through the darkened forest with her head held high. Although most of the warriors around her crouched in the shadows and hid from even the moon. She thought about what it would take to beat back the invaders and bring Galax to the ground. Her army would need to be motivated and she had yet to decide if that would be with encouragement or fear, the latter being far more effective during her reign.
Her younger warriors would be looking for weakness and she would not show it. Ruk stood tall and smiled as she watched them move through the camp in darkness and without sound. Even the crickets stopped when the Valk arrived. Some gathered in tight groups and communicated with barely audible clicks and snaps, a communication shorthand they’d developed over time. Others tore at cold, dead flesh that had been left by the wolves. It wasn’t the warm, bloody meat of fallen soldiers but it would have to suffice.
Ruk could approach any of the warriors, and with a snap of her fingers, take the flesh from their mouths and consume it as her own. But tonight she had little interest in a show of power. In the darkness punctuated by slivers of moonlight she made her way through the brush and the trees, and up the slope, quietly to where she had been called.
After watching the invaders’ camp in the gulley below for a while, she had to agree with the scouts that had brought it to her attention. Whoever these people were, they were skilled at remaining concealed. Most travelers upon the surface were much easier to detect than they thought they were, but these had covered their tracks, not lit a fire, and had even hidden their sleeping positions. Some stood guard while others slept. They had hung pieces of armor and articles of clothing from the low—hanging branches, which made Ruk wonder why they hadn’t lit a fire to dry those. All that effort and yet her scouts had still found them. It was almost worth pitying.
“The girl is with them?” she asked.
“My queen, we’re unsure. There are at least three of them hidden well enough that we cannot tell whether they be man or woman,” said the scout, who was also hidden in the bushes nearby. “So, we sought your judgement before destroying them. There are signs of the...feral dog creatures about this area. I hope we have not misread the signs.”
Ruk reached to her belt and drew a long, curved, serrated knife. “You have not. I sense there may be one here who is of great interest to me, though it is not the female.”
She stood, silently watching the camp below for a while longer, then frowned. No, she would not blindly attack right now. If the female was indeed among them, they would need to be precise in their aggression. Ruk’s stomach rumbled and she considered a full—on attack simply to satiate her own hunger for warrior flesh.
She stood up straight once more and took a few paces toward the tunnel entrance. “Take them quietly and quickly. Kill all who resist, but capture those that you can and bring them to me in my chamber. If there are any females you will not harm them unless you wish your entire warband to be put to the blade. Understood?”
The scout nodded, but she could see the unease in his expression.
This attack would reveal her position and that could come with unintended consequences if another camp had been set up nearby as stealthily as this one had. Ruk could find herself in a war instead of an ambush and although she’d welcome the bloodshed, it could be problematic. If the clan leader’s girl and her filthy wolfbeast was in fact in the camp, it was possible that she’d lose them in the ensuing chaos.
The scout remained, possibly sensing the indecision of his leader.
“My queen?”
“Shut up.”
Ruk turned and scanned the trees on the near horizon. They stood within yards of the tunnel with ample night remaining in which to execute the attack. And if the girl happened to escape the fray, how far would she get before the Valk picked up her scent and retrieved her? Not long.
Maybe preparing to fight two enemies instead of one had dulled her intuition. Something made her pause. If the leader of the Elk could somehow unite those in Galax, her enemies would become one and yet her challenges would double. They had been able to live with Galax for this long, but with the invaders, it was impossible to predict what might happen next.
“Bring them to me,” she said.
Chapter 24
Loner drifted in and out, his senses dulled while the dream faded and then sharp once the odd sensation of feeling apart from his body took over. He was floating above the battlefield, drifting across the land from the height that a bird of prey would take before dropping down to strike a target, seemingly hundreds of feet high. And yet, close enough to smell the long forgotten dead as they still lay there.
For three nights running he’d had the same dream and he was beginning to wonder if it was an omen of some kind, but he’d shrugged it off. Such thoughts were not usual for him. He wasn’t a superstitious man, and he’d seen most of those strange beliefs that others kept turn to real, tangible, and quite normal things in his time.
For a reason that he couldn’t figure out, the scene that he floated over wasn’t fresh, wasn’t something that had just happened a few days before, but something ancient. The bodies on the battlefield were only visible as piles of bones and rags covered with creeping plants and half submerged in the dirt, the signs of decades, even centuries passing. This view of the battlefield was from a set of eyes that would view them a hundred years from now.
It certainly wouldn’t be his eyes watching them.
The dream view drifted over the camp that had long since been forgotten and collapsed into dust and ruin. The only signs left of the massive encampment that had been built were the odd pole sticking up from the ground. Then he was swooping once more, darting toward the ground and catching a mouse that the owner of the eyes from which he saw had spotted but he had not.
The dream dulled once more and he felt more than heard movement around him, but his mind struggled to break free of the dream. He was locked into those eyes somehow, and he didn’t want to return to the real world, to his human world. For a moment the dream came back, and he was soaring once more, high above the forest heading to somewhere, anywhere. Then the ruins of a city came into view in the far distance, and there was a figure somewhere in the ruins, watching him. How did he know that? He didn’t know, and he thought maybe the creature whose eyes he was borrowing didn’t know, but he sensed the watcher, sensed them closer and closer, a rush of air, a spark of panic from somewhere. Not his own thoughts, a flash as something sped through the sky toward him.
What was that? A shaft of darkness, thin and speeding quicker than he was. Pain.
He snapped from the dream and sat up, nearly banging his head on the thick, low branch of the tree he had hidden himself under. His mind spun, trying to collect his memories leading up to the now. They had camped. They had hidden among the brush, covering themselves, hiding away so they would not be detected by anyone.
But now there was movement around him, brushing pas
t the bushes and the low branches and grass that was his cover, yet, the movement had gone beyond where he lay and further into the bushes. There was a gurgled cry, then another.
An ambush, he thought. They had been found.
He reached slowly for his spear and his bow, pulling them close, silently, even as more cries could be heard around him. He threw his pack over his shoulder and inched out from under the tree, away from where the rest of the group had camped. Still in a crouch, he pushed through high grass and bushes, quietly. There was no movement where he was. They had gone past him, whoever they were, and now they were killing the others. There was nothing he could do. He had sensed how many of them there were by the noise.
And it wasn’t like you really cared for any of the others, except maybe...
A quick flutter of movement nearby as a figure crawled from the grass, almost colliding with him. He quickly drew his knife and was about to strike, when he saw that it was the crazy man, Frantic, a friend if you could call him that. Probably the only one he had.
Loner put a finger to his lips, and was relieved when the shadow nodded at him.
For a hundred yards they crawled through the grass and the bushes, slowly, carefully. There was no sign of movement around them. There were shouts from the camp, back there in the bushes, and screams of pain. Weapons clashed.
Good, he thought. They were fighting back, even though he knew it was hopeless. It was the Valk, he thought, and he could smell them now, that fetid, rank smell of moss and old rot. Where there were a few, there would be many.
“Now,” he said, as he began to rise. Frantic also rose, standing up from the tall grass, glancing back to the slaughter behind them “We run for—”
A brush of air, then a chunk and a wet sound as Frantic staggered back. Loner went to reach out, to steady the man, but he saw the arrowhead protruding from the man’s mouth, the shaft of the arrow shot straight through the back of his neck. Frantic fell to one knee, gasping for air that wouldn’t come.
He had taken a shine to the little man, appreciating his sarcastic wit and rapier for a tongue. They’d met each other under violent circumstances, and as it seemed, they would part in that way as well. Loner watched as Frantic thrashed, kicking at leaves one final time before his legs spasmed and he lay motionless in the dirt. Would they eat him? He had no way of knowing what the Valk would do with the man who stood less than half of a true warrior. Would his flesh be their fuel or was it tainted with an inherent weakness based on Frantic’s diminished frame?
Loner turned, ready to run, to get away as fast and as far as he could. He would run all night if he needed to, but he turned to see half a dozen dark figures in the trees behind him, and others slowly emerging all around.
“Run and die,” said a deep voice from somewhere. “Stay and do not.”
He had no words for them, but this meaning was clear. Loner stood, slowly opening his arms in submission.
“The mistress would meet you,” said the same voice. “And so you will come. You will not keep your weapons. Your possessions are now hers. This you understand?”
Loner nodded.
“Good you do not speak. Let it be that way from now. To speak in the presence of the mistress unless she bids you to do so, or to look at her, is to be devoured a little at a time. To look down and say nothing. It is her choice then. This you understand?”
Loner nodded once more.
“Then you go with us, into the under,” said the voice. “And you had better hope that you have the words that the mistress is looking for.”
Chapter 25
“This is a strange place,” said Leta, as she scanned the flat, grassy expanse around them.
Unlike many of the folk from the clan, she hadn’t found the time to make her way up to the trading post inside the bunker entrance, and this was her first view of the base itself, at least close up. She had seen the outer fence at a distance, from the top of one of the buildings she had been scavenging, a week or so before Jonah’s declaration. The message had rippled through the clans like hot gossip, the edict that the old and the young were to join the people in the bunker.
It didn’t sit well in her stomach, but little did these days. There was, she thought, something unnatural about spending your life underground, and the only other example of such people were the very horrors that surrounded the clan’s defenses at night, moving like prowling animals in the forest, watching them for a weakness. Leta didn’t want to live like the Valk but she also didn’t want to die by their hand.
She shook her head and tried to shrug off the feeling. Seren and Jonah had spent a significant amount of time with these people, and if those two judged them sound then who was she to argue? The young girl had earned the respect of many of the clan leaders after witnessing her courageous actions in battle against the Cygoa. In addition to the young, who now idolized Seren, many of the older folk saw her as a hope for the future, even if the girl was too young to fulfill those dreams. And there was Jonah, the supposed weak son of a brutal war leader turned into a man whose bravery and sharp intellect had saved the clans from decimation so far. If both of them thought this was a good idea, then it must be.
But she couldn’t help but look around at the huge expanse of unused land and think about how the Galaxians had utterly wasted it. The clans were not allowed to build or grow anything inside the fence, and yet there had to have been enough space to house every one of them a thousand times over.
She wondered what the land had been used for in the old times. The strange, perfectly flat roads that led endlessly in all directions, the markings on them suggesting they might guide someone or something along a predestined path through the wild grasses. None of it made sense. And even as an old crone, the ways of those lost times would make her pause and wonder with the curiosity of a child. What little she knew of those times would pass with her generation, and then there would truly be nothing left of those people except cracked and weathered pavement.
Other, more pressing questions came to Leta. Why was the gate and the road to the bunker guarded so heavily, the warriors dressed in intimidating armor that looked like something out of one of the old magazines? Nobody would answer that question for her so she had to hope Jonah was asking it of himself as well.
“It will be fine,” said Keana, who walked next to her and spoke as if reading her mind. “Dad says this is for the best. It will be safer for us in there.”
Leta thought there was a hint of doubt in her voice. “Yes, child. But he’s not the one going to live in a burrow.”
“It’s not a burrow. Well, not really. Seren says it’s like the inside of a building in there and you wouldn’t know you were underground except for there being no windows and all that.”
“Maybe.” No windows? No sun? Isn’t that how the wretched Valk lived?
“You worry too much, Leta.”
“Says the little miss,” grinning to show she wasn’t mocking the girl too much.
Keana squinted and shook her head. “Very funny. I’m not that bad.”
“No. You’re not. I was just teasing you.” Leta sighed and wiped the sweat from her brow. “This all seems a little strange to me. They didn’t want anyone in their little hideout until now, and now they’ve changed their minds and we’re all heading under there to live with them.”
“It’s not forever.” Keana had missed the point, as children often do when talking with adults. “Dad says just a few weeks, maybe a month or two, and that he will be able to move against the Valk if we’re safe. Maybe get rid of them for good.”
“I suppose.”
The two shuffled along in the queue that seemed to stretch into the horizon, slowly crawling its way toward the distant buildings. It had been an hour since they joined the line near the gates, and Leta guessed it would be at least another before they reached their destination, the gray building.
“I just wish I’d seen Seren before we had to go in there. Haven’t seen her for a few days now.”
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Leta frowned. It was true. The wolf girl hadn’t been around the camp like she had been. She knew that Seren had managed to find a place somewhere on this flat ground for the wolves, a place that the bunker folk were happy to give to her. Seren had spent a lot of time there, but she had been returning to the camp in the evenings. As Leta thought about it, Seren hadn’t been at the campfire for a few days.
“Maybe she’s already there. She is rather friendly with these folk.”
Keana nodded, a thin smile on her lips. “Maybe. She kept going on about something called a greenhouse. I don’t know what one of those is.”
Leta shook her head. “Can’t help you there, my dear. I’d imagine it’d be colored green for some reason. Can’t imagine why else they’d call it that.”
“Maybe Gid is with her? Haven’t seen my brother for a few days either.”
“I’m sure they are both up to the same mischief somewhere.”
This forced a wider smile on the girl’s face, and that in turn made Leta smile. Kids always seemed to find trouble even when you took great pains to hide it from them.
The line seemed to speed up for a while, and soon Leta found herself approaching the steps leading up to the entrance. It was odd seeing so many people disappear into a building that, although quite large, wasn’t big enough to hold all of them. She’d never really been in a structure like that, like some magical bag that you could put anything in and it still wouldn’t fill up.
Under our feet, she thought. They live under the ground, and for all we know, their rooms are under this very spot, levels and levels of them, maybe. Like a rabbit warren. Just how far underground do their tunnels go?
Leta wasn’t keen on tunnels. Many years before, when she and her husband had travelled the land before they settled to help build the fortress in Wytheville, they had come across one of the old-world stations with its strange metal tracks and huge carts all lined up and attached to each other. They had ventured into the massive building, with its arched ceiling that had collapsed into at least half of the structure. The metal tracks had led into dark tunnels that took one to who—knows—where. They may have led to the bottom of the world for all she knew. Her husband had wanted to venture into one, and they did for a few hundred yards until something large scuttled out from a hole in the wall and hissed at them. It had been a rat, of course, but a large one nearly the size of a small dog, but it had been enough to send the pair of them fleeing out to the daylight.