“You really have some nerve. I’m going over to Broughtonhaven to…”
“To what?” she interrupted. “To save us? To add another arrow to your quiver of things that you accomplished all by yourself. Even I’m not that naive. And you have the nerve to call my people cowards.” She laughed to herself, flipping her hair over the shoulder.
“I’m not afraid of anything, and I’ve proven that, which is more than any of you could say.”
“What about that fear of failure? What if your little toxin idea doesn’t work? Then you will have let down an entire province of people. But what’s sad is that letting down the province isn’t nearly as important to you than letting down yourself.” She paused and looked out at the other canoes that hovered over top of the slick, black plane of the midnight ocean. “I’d say I know you better than you think.”
Caleb rowed at an even pace, but there a was disgusting aftertaste in his mouth from what Shauna had said to him. Who did she think she was? If it weren’t for him, she’d still be wrapped in Wex’s deception or worse, she’d be dead. What did she know about him anyway? He didn’t look at her anymore for the rest of the ride, even though she was sitting across from him. He stared around her or pretended not to notice whenever she was looking at him.
Morning came and the canoes reached the shore several miles east of Hyiim in the southeast part of Broughtonhaven. Caleb commanded the Southern Sector Pioneers to build camps near the shore to rest for a few hours so that they could continue north into the province. Sarai did the same with the Northern Sector Pioneers.
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The afternoon was in full bloom as the Pioneers got up from their short rest. The waves washed against the sandy shore, and the sunlight sparkled on the glassy specks of sand on the beach. They had not come upon the canopy of the Spiritualist Region yet, since they were so far south, but there was still an eerie thickness in the air that surrounded them, something like the dread of doom mixing with the weak groans and snarls of the surfacing spirits that peeked through the spiritual plane at midday.
Sarai came to Caleb to tell him of her plans, leaving her bootprints in the sand as she hiked towards him. She wanted the Pioneers to have a maximum impact with their dispersions of the toxins.
“I figured that we’d start to the east if you wanted to head west,” said Sarai.
“Why can’t we mix the squads?” he asked.
Sarai shook her head and slapped her thigh, confused. “Why would we do that? That’s just more chaos as far as the orders and instructions.”
“I thought it might give us a chance to talk through some things.”
Her face dropped. “Are you serious? We are about to go to war, and you are thinking about your feelings for me!” She had to whisper to force herself to keep her voice down. “What are you thinking Pioneer Eaves? This is war, and you’d better start acting like it. A lot of people’s lives are at stake here.” Annoyed, she walked off and barked orders to her sector, tight black braid swaying as she trekked away.
Caleb dispensed the toxin evenly amongst the squads of people, and the Pioneers made sure that they each carried several of the leather-bound flasks. “Let’s head out, Uriel,” Caleb said. “Shauna?” He nodded, speaking her name softly and barely acknowledging her, but she didn’t mind. She smiled to herself and followed behind the two of them, carrying her flasks also, even though she didn’t think that the toxins were going to do anything.
Caleb ordered his squadrons to distribute the toxin up the western border of Broughtonhaven, and his squad of three entered Hyiim which was nearby. This city was not surrounded by the canopy like the central cities, so they did not have the cover of the brush to keep them protected. But being this far south also meant that they would not run into much opposition because of how the population of Spiritualists thinned out on the southern tip.
The sand on the beach was muddy, and sharp seashells jutted from the ground. The city of Hyiim was set on a high man-made hill, making the city guarded from ambushes. Caleb trudged his way up the sandy hillside with Uriel and Shauna following closely behind him. The sand alone would not have been able to support the weight of the city, but there were enormous stones underneath the sand which kept the city fortified. They could have taken the stairs to the top, but they did not want to alert any guards if any of them were around.
“What are we going to do when we get inside the city?” Shauna asked.
“I told you that we’re going pass out the toxin and get the Spiritualists to fight for themselves.”
Shauna dug her hands into the sand to keep from sliding down the hill. “Can I not convince you that this won’t work?” she asked dryly. Caleb didn’t respond. “I didn’t think so,” she said.
After a few exhausting minutes of climbing, they had made it to the top, but not without consequence. Caleb’s hands were cut from the seashells, and the muscles in his back were tight from having to dig so hard into the ground to pull himself up. His eyes burned from the loosened particles of sand, and he could feel the granules of dirt grinding between his teeth.
Despite the agony, the city was beautifully designed with smooth roads and occasional stone sculptures of Screechers and other beasts from Broughtonhaven. Even the floor of Hyiim was covered with polished stone that had extravagant engravings of creatures and humans alike. Rounded, wooden buildings had been crafted on both sides of the road so that they would resist the force of the winds. The city was distinctly unique from any other town in the Spiritualist Region, especially since it was not under the siege of the surrounding canopy.
Caleb crept to the right side of the road where the edifices were neatly lined. Shauna and Uriel followed close behind. He could see large groups of Spiritualists being forced into manual labor by the cold-blooded Polarists.
One frail older man dragged his feet across the flat, stone surface. His muscles were deteriorating from his age, and his skin sagged loosely over his bones. His violet emblem sat awkwardly on his chest bone, but over the years, his chest had begun to droop. The emblem didn’t sit as firmly as it once had. He carried a thick sack of grain over his crumpled shoulders, and with each step his knees seemed to buckle more than before, wobbling.
Watching the old man stutter down the road made Caleb feel the weight of the sack of grain on his own shoulders, and Caleb gritted his teeth from the intensity of the Spiritualist's efforts. Behind the man, a Polarist guard stalked him. The Polarist was young, short, and frail himself, but something about abusing the old man excited the guard. The Polarist held his hand out and iced the ground in front of the Spiritualist.
The old man stepped forward, and his crusty boot slipped across the sheet of frozen liquid. The man yelped as his arm shot out in front of him to stop the fall, but the weighted grain banged his head against the stony street. He was barely moving, but Caleb could hear the man's moans waning sadly over the road.
The Polarist motioned to the other guards as he pointed to the injured Spiritualist. Then it came – the thing that had ripped at Gardiv's soul in the Materialist prison and the thing that had torn away at Caleb while he was imprisoned with Shauna. It was the laughing. The guard couldn't stop himself from laughing, and he buckled over as he cackled at the old man.
Caleb felt his heart pounding, ricocheting off his chest. His brow wrinkled as he eased his bow from over his shoulder. He dipped an arrow into the Naturalist Anaerobia and silently slid back the bowstring.
“What are you doing!” Shauna snapped in a whisper.
“Putting an end to this nonsense,” Caleb said as he clenched the encased toxin underneath his arm.
“You're going to get us killed!”
On Shauna's last word, the arrow rushed from Caleb's bow and struck the Polarist in the chest. His body jerked from the bolt, and he writhed in pain as the Anaerobia rushed through his system. He couldn’t scream, but small murmurs sputtered from his lips as he struggled to regain control over his faculties.
Polarists stomped out
from all directions to assist the fallen guard. Several investigated the roads. Dozens of other guards took cover while hoards more hollered to alarm the town.
“Here we go,” Caleb said with a confident wink at Shauna. He shoved himself off the wall of the building and ran out into plain sight. “Hey!” He flailed his arms in the air. The Polarists ran towards him. He released a Materialist shot that caused an explosion, killing a few of the guards.
The temperature dropped as the Polarists closed in on Caleb. He threw a canister of toxin high into the air, and he shot an arrow through it. The yellow toxin diffused through the atmosphere, drizzling onto the guards and the Spiritualists alike.
“Kill him!” yelled one of the Polarists.
A black-bearded man stood in front of the rest of the guards and raised both hands into the air. Ice emerged on the surface of the road and slithered to Caleb and the others. But the ice turned to water and fizzled out across the street, sparkling in the sunlight. The Polarists were confused. They looked at their hands, dazed. The Spiritualists did the same.
Caleb dipped his arrow into the blood canister which had been unaffected by the toxin, and he charged it with the Materialist Anaerobia. The blasts were smaller than normal because of the toxin. Another explosion erupted and then several more in succession. Caleb sidestepped across the road, boots tapping against the stones as he methodically pulled arrows from his quiver, lighting up the city with flares from his explosions.
Polarist guards ran in all directions to escape the city. Some stayed back, believing that the power of their emblems would reactivate. They were wrong. Many of them died from the blasts, and the few who remained fell to their knees begging for Caleb's mercy. Those panicked few survived. The other bolder ones did not.
The streets were empty except for a the frazzled guards and the awe-struck Spiritualists. Smoke from the blasts fumed above the roads, and the once polished stone that lined the streets was shattered in various locations.
“What were you thinking!” Shauna said through her teeth as she spun Caleb around by grabbing his shoulder.
He stumbled from the force of her pull. Half smiling he said, “Taking care of the Polarists. They just can’t come here and do what they want, and until someone shows them that, they’ll never learn.”
“Except now they’re going know that we are coming for them. You think that the guards who got away aren’t going to go back and tell the others what happened here?”
“What’s there to say? That they got pushed back by one man? No soldier would ever admit that.”
“A wise one would,” Uriel interjected. “You just gave away our cover.”
“We have this,” Caleb said holding up the toxin to both of them. “Everyone in the mainland trusts in their emblem. I know it, and so do you. Now round up the Spiritualists who are still left, and let them know what what we’re planning.”
Shauna folded her arms and rolled her eyes. Her golden sari flapped softly in the breeze. Motioning quickly with her head to Uriel, they both rummaged through the city, gathering the few Spiritualists who remained.
Caleb stood in the center of the town with about a dozen Polarist guards. Each of them sat on their knees with their hands behind their heads. Uriel and Shauna met them in the center with the twenty or so Spiritualists whom they had found. The Spiritualists were covered with dirt and grime, and their eyes faded in and out of blackness as the Hellstate threatened to take over them. However, the toxin was still in the air, so their powers were neutralized. They too sat down in the street, but they were seated behind Caleb.
Pacing back and forth in front of the Polarist men and women, Caleb shook his head while he grasped his bow that was slung over his shoulder. “Countless Spiritualists have either died or gone mad because of you. Countless! Look at their faces.” He leaned in towards the guards and pointed backwards towards the Spiritualists. “This is what you’ve you done,” he hissed.
“W-we’re sor…”
“Sorry doesn’t end the pain!” Caleb interrupted. “Sorry doesn’t stop the insanity.”
“We were just following orders,” a woman said to him. She kept her brown eyes forward, trying not to look at him, trembling.
“Orders to kill?” Caleb snatched off his bow and pointed at the woman’s head as he stepped closer to her. “And what now? What if someone were to say, ‘Caleb, this woman deserves to die.’ Then what?”
The woman clenched her eyes shut, pink lips tight and spread over her face in pain. She begged for her life with her hands still locked behind her head. “Please don’t kill me. Please...I don’t wanna’ die.”
The bow string creaked as Caleb increased the tension. “I’m sure that’s what the Spiritualists cried to you. Look at that him,” Caleb said as he tossed his head towards the Spiritualist old man who was still on the ground writhing in pain from the fall.
“That wasn’t m-me,” the woman sobbed. She buckled over, and her curly black hair fell over her face.
Another male guard, seated near the back of the others, sprang to his feet. “If you’re so much better than us, then why are you threatening the woman? You could be helping the man yourself.”
An arrow zipped past the man’s chest, and he staggered over, falling onto a few of the other guards, realizing that he could have been killed. The Polarists whom he fell on didn’t dare to move because of their fear of Caleb.
“Any more protests?” Caleb asked. “Next time, I’ll be sure not to miss.”
“You have to stop!” Shauna demanded.
Caleb turned to face Shauna and the Spiritualists, and he could see the terror in their faces. Little children nestled their faces into their mothers' arms to hide away from Caleb’s wrath. He wiped his nose, and he hung his bow back over his shoulder. “Help the man up,” he said to Uriel.
“A-are you going to kill us?” the Polarist woman asked.
“Haven’t decided.” Caleb flicked his hand upwards, beckoning to the Spiritualists for them to rise to their feet.
The sound of rustling boots and sliding sand filled the streets as the Spiritualists stood to their feet. Their spirits had been crushed by the Polarists, and their expressions were lifeless. Men, women, and children trembled as they peered at Caleb, half cowering from their uncertainty of what he was going to do them.
“This toxin,” Caleb started as he tossed the canister lightly into the air to direct everyone’s attention to him, “will be the thing that gives your people the power and the strength to oppose these insurgents!” His eyes cut through to the Polarists, and he reset his gaze back onto the Spiritualists. “These savages have kidnapped, murdered, and enslaved your people for months. If we do nothing about it, this tyranny will go on for years!”
The wind pushed Caleb’s hair across his face, and the sun hid behind the clouds above. Caleb continued pacing. His scar throbbed, and he gripped it tightly as he scrunched his face together with a grimace. His anger surged deeply within him. “Citizens of Broughtonhaven, in seven weeks, we will be meeting in the northern city of Irez in the Slither.”
“We can’t defeat the Polarists,” a lady complained. She was decades older than Caleb, and her hair only dropped as low as her ears.
“That is why we’ll use this toxin. With this, no one will be able to use their emblems, and we will push the Polarists out of the Broughtonhaven.”
The Spiritualists murmured to themselves.
“Some of us are too young or too old to fight,” the woman complained again. Her lip trembled, and she held a young child in her arms.
“Then those of you who do not fight will keep the Polarists imprisoned here. I will leave you with some of the toxin. Make sure that they get fed and that they taken care of.”
“S-so you’re not going to kill us?” the Polarist woman asked in a fearful relief.
Caleb turned to her, but he didn’t say a word. His eyes seemed to tell her that he wasn’t far from taking them all out.
Shauna mobilized the Spiritu
alists who could fight, and she organized the ones who would not be traveling to Irez. After they were all deployed to their respective positions, she pulled Caleb aside off from the center of the city.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked him sternly.
“I’m doing things the way that they should be done.”
“By telling the Polarists what we’re planning? You’ve already let some get away. What if they were to talk to Raylen?” She grabbed his elbow and turned him to face her.
“Let them. We have enough strength to battle the Polarists now. I thought that you of all people would appreciate that.” He looked at her hand and snatched his arm away. “Move out!” He commanded to the people, once the Polarists were imprisoned.
Caleb and his team connected with the western towns as was the plan. In the cities, he addressed the Spiritualists while vanquishing the Polarists from the towns and meeting little opposition along the way.
After several weeks, his team and hundreds of Spiritualists arrived at the Slither, only one or two miles away from Irez. He waited for the eastern Pioneers to end their campaign at the assigned rally. Caleb hoped that Sarai had been as successful in the east as he had been in the west. Their delayed arrival told him the contrary.
CHAPTER 16
THE SIEGE
The canopy hung overhead, and the snarling spiritual activity in the region was more intense than Caleb had ever experienced. Even though the morning sun peeked underneath the canopy, the atmosphere felt dark. Screechers shouted out in the distance, and the wails and moans of the spirits filled the air with a sickening eeriness that made Caleb’s core tremble.
The Spiritualist soldiers had followed Caleb to the Slither of Broughtonhaven. He could see dread in their eyes. Their doubtful auras warned him of the their inner chaos. Most of their eyes were black from the Hellstate. The threat of crazed insanity was near to them, but they battled against being oppressed by the Polarists.
Infused (Book 2 of The Pioneers Saga) Page 27