Renegade: Book Six in the Enhanced Series

by T. C. Edge

  He’s a good leader, and appears to be a good man despite his brutish exterior. There’s no unilateral decision making on his part, not unless a crisis unfolds and quick action is needed. He tends to the needs of his men, listens carefully to them, designs his decisions based upon the collective desires of those who he leads.

  I watch, and hope, unable to tear my eyes away. Only when Sophie passes by, the odd wheeze gurgling up her throat, are my eyes dragged down. It takes a moment for me to hear the slightly laboured rate of her breathing.

  I look at her in concern.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry,” she says brightly. “I didn’t sleep too well last night, as you can imagine. That’s all it is.”

  I have no response but to agree. She might be right, she might not. She might already be dead.

  “I hear there are some doctors among the refugees,” I say. “Best get yourself checked out anyway.”

  She brushes it off.

  “There are many more with bigger problems, Brie. A little cough is nothing to worry about.”

  “Sophie,” I say, firming my voice, “promise me you’ll get checked.”

  She begins to avoid the issue. I have no choice but to slip into her head and plant the order. It’s for her own good.

  Maddox, thankfully, appears in good health, however. His cheeks are a little red, but beyond that there’s nothing to suggest he’s suffered from the journey. I find that a minor miracle given how young he is.

  As she works her way inside, clinging to her tablet and ready to begin the final register of the people, I turn my eyes back up. Rhoth continues to speak with his men, the debate on-going. I assume it’s about their plans, but can’t be sure. They might also be discussing the completed journey, passing stories and tales of any heroics back and forward.

  That suspicion holds some water when I see one particular man take the stage, his face leathery and more wrinkled than the rest. He holds up his necklace of fangs and draws attention to its latest addition, the one I saw him surgically remove from the dead Shadow’s jaws.

  Given the reaction of the rest of the hunters, it truly must be one of the biggest Shadow fangs they’ve ever encountered. He smiles proudly and the men laugh. The sight of them doing so as the refugees trundle miserably into the mining facility is an image that I won’t forget in a while.

  As I watch, the sun seems to disappear. I wonder if Rhoth’s concerns about incoming cloud and rain might be on the money. Then I see that it is, in fact, not a bundle of clouds, but a human head that’s blocking out the light.

  Drum stands before me, a giant among the people, his enormous frame hiding the sun that shines around his edges and creates a corona around his dome. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, and his bulbous features to come into view.

  “We made it,” he says. There’s a simmering smile on his lips, one that wishes to grow into something more but refuses to given the morose expressions adorning everyone else’s faces. “You were great, Brie. Sorry if I was a bit grumpy out there.”

  “You don’t need to be sorry,” I say. Unlike him I’m unable to keep from grinning, albeit briefly. “I need to stop seeing you as the big kid from the academy. That’s not you anymore.”

  “As long as our relationship doesn’t change,” he says, with that hint of vulnerability and innocence that I’ve always found so endearing.

  “Never,” I whisper.

  He lets me hug him, but I’m sure to let go quickly enough. And as it always seems to with him these days, duty once more calls.

  “I have to get in,” he says. “They’re doing a count.” My eyes dart to Rhoth, and his follow. “You’re going with them, aren’t you?” he asks.

  “When they leave…yeah. I have to get back, Drum. You understand…”

  “I understand,” he cuts in quickly. “You have to make sure they’re safe…all of them. That’s just you, Brie. You’ve always been like that.”

  “Is that a bad thing?” I question softly.

  “It’s the best thing,” comes his reply. Then he stiffens once more, and sucks in a gulp of air. “Be safe out there.”

  “I will.”

  And before either of us can crack, he lumbers off on heavy legs, and my eyes lift again.

  Soon, everyone has passed, huddling into the warehouse as a cloud of dust kicks up behind them. It drifts off on the breeze, leaving me standing alone in the dirt, still watching the group of Fangs away at the entrance to this giant pit in the earth.

  Only now does Rhoth appear to notice me, cutting a lonely figure away from my people. I don’t move. I just stare, waiting and hoping. He says a final word to his men, and his lips draw shut, hiding his yellow teeth.

  He comes towards me.

  I await him as he looms, towering tall for a regular man. But this man is far from regular. He’s the most interesting man I’ve ever looked upon, every inch of his frame and face carrying some story, some fragment of his past.

  “You look lost, girl,” he grunts with his strange accent. “Why don’t you join your people?”

  “You know why.”

  “Ah, yes, of course I do. But my advice remains the same. Stay here, be safe. Why go back?”

  “You know why,” I repeat. A smile cracks on my dry lips. A little huff of laughter puffs up from my chest.

  Those yellow fangs reappear, some of them filed sharp.

  “I do,” he says. “It appears there’s no convincing you...”

  “None at all,” I say defiantly.

  A laugh gurgles from his throat. His scars rearrange themselves on his face as it twists into a hearty smile.

  “Well then, what are we waiting for?”

  “You mean?”

  “I mean…” he begins, turning to his men and raising his voice, “welcome to the Fangs! Now let’s get you home!”

  The men cheer, and Rhoth marches off.

  And with my heart pacing, and face carving into a smile, I follow right behind.

  27

  Rhoth doesn’t so anything by half measures. Turning with his men, he begins the trek home immediately without informing Pearson of his departure.

  I spare a look back to the warehouse and the many husks of old buildings around it, and wonder if I should quickly rush back and tell them I’m leaving. The guttural voice of Rhoth makes it clear that he won’t be waiting for me if I do.

  “Come, girl, the morning is rushing. And we must rush too.”

  I have no choice but to follow quickly behind as they march off up the dusty bank, climbing from this sprawling depression in the earth. Within a few minutes, we’re reaching the top and I’m turning my eyes down once again, always seemingly pulled in two directions.

  Part of me wishes to stay, of course. The part that would like to stay with Drum, and make sure that Sophie is OK. The part that is afraid to go back through the Cursed Woods and face its perils once more. The part that is frightened, too, of what it might find if and when I return to the city.

  Will the plot have failed or succeeded? Will it have even begun? Will the western quarter have been drawn into war by now? Will the church of the Nameless have been discovered?

  I only left yesterday morning, barely twenty-four hours ago. And yet at times like this, things can change so quickly, and I could very well return to a different world to the one I left.

  That part of me that wishes to remain, however, is inelegantly quashed by the far more powerful urge to help. I suppose that I’m similar to the city in that regard, my mind ever changing and capricious. Days ago, I was considering the option of leaving this place for good, trekking away into the wilds and letting the tides of war flow without me as witness.

  Now, the fact that such a thought even crossed my mind staggers me. I’m done being the moral, proselytising girl that half of the soldiers must hate. I’m tired of trying to battle the inevitability of war and the simple fact that innocent people will always be caught in the crossfire. I’m fed up with myself, really, and wish only to mute
my raw emotional core and harden up.

  And I know that change has begun. I’ve become a killer now, a soldier. I’ve crossed that line and there’s no going back. I will hold my weapon tight and keep my finger to the trigger. And should someone stand in my way, I will drop them to the dirt without any hesitation.

  The journey back across the plains and low valleys beneath the mountains is simple enough. Just as it was this morning, we journey without impediment and at speed, our pace a fast walk or slow jog, whichever way you want to look at it. A unit of just over fifty hunters, plus one city-girl, moving at pace under the morning sun that continues to burn down from overhead.

  Rhoth, of course, remains wary that the weather will change. He looks to the skies and sniffs the air on a regular basis, mostly casting his narrow gaze towards the mountains and the shifting clouds that begin to settle and hover above them.

  His concerns turn out to be somewhat justified when, as midday approaches, a sweep of white mist begins to flow down from the peaks, drifting towards the Cursed Woods that start to loom in my vision and my mind.

  I zoom in with my Hawk-eyes and wonder again whether the conditions among the trees are ever favourable. Whether there’s some spell there that draws in the clouds and rain and mist, creating a perfect place for the beasts of the wild to hunt those foolish enough to pass through.

  I find myself asking Rhoth about them as we pass the cliffs where we spent the night.

  “How long has the war being going between the tribes?” I ask.

  “It’s always going,” he says. “There are lulls, times of peace, but never complete agreement between us. We all have our own ways of doing things. We will never agree to live in harmony.”

  “But right now, there’s some sort of peace, right? A lull, as you say?”

  “A lull, yes, but not peace. We have learned to stay in our own territory mostly. We keep to the western woods. The Beak-Skins stay here, in the woods around the mountains. Then there are the Roosters. They live higher up in the passes, living up in the great trees that grow there.”

  “And what about the Skullers? You said they move around a lot.”

  “They do. They come and go, searching for new trophies. If they come to my woods, they regret it,” he growls.

  “But do they? Come to your woods, I mean?”

  “Not for a while. After last time, I think they decided to leave us alone. We know our woods better than they do. It is not wise to go to places you don’t understand.”

  I happen to agree, having spent some time out here. The wilderness is more dangerous than I could ever have imagined. I thought it would be sparse, and largely lifeless. I never expected such an ecosystem to have developed, for a war to be raging in the trees and marshes beyond the city walls.

  And even further away, of course, more mysteries lie in wait. Talk of a larger world beyond here, stretching from coast to coast and overseas, was something I never really considered possible. Yet my eyes have been opened to the stubbornness of people, finding ways to survive, and even thrive, in such desperate conditions.

  And as I think of such things, I find myself turning to look upon the group of hunters and wonder just where they’re all from. Whether they were born here, or came here from afar, migrating from some distant land.

  Among them, I notice a young man I hadn’t realised was with us. A man Rhoth named as West when I first encountered him days ago, who came from the western lands of this great landmass with his brother, only for his sibling to die en route.

  Rhoth mentioned how he’d been only a boy when he found him and took him in, but mentioned little else. And seeing the young man now, his striking blue eyes shining from his deeply tanned face, I gravitate towards him, drawing his gaze.

  “West, right?” I ask.

  He stares at me and nods.

  “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

  He continues to stare.

  “Um…well, you came from west of here, didn’t you? How far away?”

  My question isn’t answered. Another voice grunts from behind me.

  “He doesn’t talk much,” says one of the hunters. “You won’t get anything out of him.”

  “Why not?” I ask, my eyes passing between West and his spokesman.

  West’s eyes turn back ahead. The man behind offers an explanation.

  “Trauma,” he says. “The kid saw things as a boy…it took away his tongue.”

  I don’t know if he’s being literal or not. It could well be that West lost his tongue in some accident. Or it could simply be that he’s gone mute from some terrible experience.

  “Does anyone know where he’s from?”

  “The boss,” says the man. “He only speaks to the boss. He saved him, you see. He’s like his father.”

  A passing memory flows across West’s eyes. A memory of his childhood, of the day he was found and saved by Rhoth, alone in the wilderness, mourning the loss of his older brother.

  I look at those big blue eyes, and feel that natural urge in me once more to search his mind. I don’t need him to speak. My powers grant me the ability to sidestep such issues.

  Flooded with a growing curiosity, I smile at West and try to draw something onto his lips too. They curl up a touch and he makes eye contact once again. And as he does, I glide inside with an ease that I didn’t think likely out here among the fog, appearing in the depths of his memories and glancing through the history of his life.

  I search quickly as Zander taught me to do, seeking his most traumatic memory. I expect to witness the death of his brother.

  I don’t.

  I witness something much worse.

  I see him as a little boy, clutched in his mother’s arms. They’re in a hut of some kind, a simple structure, and dressed only sparsely. It seems hot. It feels hot. The flap to the hut opens up, and bright light pours in, surrounding the silhouette of a man.

  His eyes are wild. His face is stricken. His voice clatters with an order.

  “We have to go!” he calls. “Now…we have to go!”

  Now I hear more sounds.

  Screaming.

  Burning.

  The rattle of gunfire from rusty weapons.

  The mother stands to her feet, taking West’s hand. She scoops up a bundle, an old sack, and swings it onto her back.

  The man stays in the doorway and snatches his own gun from inside. He snatches another, and I see it passed to another child, older than West, barely a teenager.

  It must be his brother.

  Father and young son aim the weapons out as the mother creeps away behind them, her hand clutched tight around West’s little fingers. From the boy’s eyes, the sight of a village comes into view, somewhere near the coastline on a bed of parched earth.

  The heat is intense, the sun burning from above. It’s added to by the swirling flames that now roll from the many huts, the clear sky filling with a thick blanket of black and grey smoke.

  The mother runs now, West alongside, as the gunfire continues. I see men swarming into the village, dressed as warriors, metal armour shielding them from the heat and glinting under the light. They pour forward, firing wantonly, killing without mercy, stripping the place bare.

  Among them, I think I see a flash of fast movement. Someone surges through the camp like lightning, drawing a cloud of dust in his wake. A Dasher. Can it be a Dasher?

  My eyes turn elsewhere, something else that staggers me. As the fire rages from the top of a hut, I see a man approach. He reaches out with his hands, and the fire seems to swirl and change shape, drawn towards his palms.

  Then, in a sudden flurry, his hands swing at another shack, yet to be set alight. Until now.

  The fire seems to be bend to his will. It gallops from the burning hut and straight towards the next, his hands directing its path. West, watching things unfold as his mother drags him along, blinks in astonishment at it all.

  And in my mind, I do the same.

  I’ve never seen anything like
it. I’ve never known of anything like it…

  West’s eyes are dragged back again as his father and brother retreat behind, protecting them, guns pointing but not firing. They don’t want to draw attention.

  I see where they’re headed now: dry tundra, littered with rocky canyons and pockets of bush. It seems a world away from anything I’ve seen. The colours of orange and brown and red dust are so different from the greys and greens that dominate these lands.

  Their hut is on the edge of the village. They work themselves away but they’re spotted. Two men come at them, riding an old dirtbike, which buzzes like a giant wasp as it surges over the dirt.

  The father has no choice but to fire. His gun crackles in his hands, but the bullets merely deflect off the armour of the men.

  The man behind the driver lifts an automatic pistol. Its barrel bursts and bullets come pouring.

  West’s brother is shoved to the side as his father steps in front of him, turning his back on the incoming men to protect his son. The rounds cut straight into his body, filling him with lead, killing him immediately.

  West sees it all.

  He screams out so loud it feels like his throat might split. I feel the terrible pain in him as his brother screams too, staring at his father’s dead body and roaring as he fires at the speeding bike.

  His shots are wild, spraying everywhere. One catches the front of the bike, bursting its tyre. It flips forward, tossing the men through the air as they come tumbling down in a heavy heap of metal and red dust.

  West breaks his mother’s grip.

  He rushes to his dead father and drops to his knees. Cries still gurgle up through his raw windpipe. His eyes are barely able to see anymore for the tears that fill them.

  He picks up his father’s weapon, so heavy in his little arms. Through blurred vision he aims at the two men, some of their armour broken free by their fall and exposing weaker points on their flesh.

  His pulls the trigger and the rifle comes to life, the kickback far too powerful for the young boy to handle.

  He can’t control it as his finger tightens on the trigger. The gun explodes with bullets and he falls backwards, still shooting and unable to see as his eyes blink hard to dislodge his tears.