by J. Thorn
“Know that neither path can promise safety or success, and death will most likely try to put its cold arm around your mother, father, brother or sister, but if you come with us, I will do all I can to ensure death does not carry them away. I will do my best.”
Jonah waited for a moment, listening to the murmur of agreement, looking around at the nods from both the council and many of the gathered clans.
“If you understand the risk and accept it, without judgment or blame when death arrives, be here at daybreak tomorrow. The Elk will be leaving Wytheville for Eliz. I will lead the clan. And you may come with us.”
There was a cry of his name from the crowd, and others joined in, then someone called a clan name, and another called for the Six Clans of Wytheville. Then, Jonah raised his hand.
“And let it also be known that I am not my father,” he said. The gathered people went quiet at this, waiting for a threat or demand, waiting for Judas to rear his head even in death. But Jonah had no such intention. He wanted allies through respect, not terror. “Where before you may have run the risk of losing an ear for coughing too close to Judas, I promise that I am much more approachable.”
This was met by laughter and applause, and Jonah could see Corrun, one of the elders, grinning at him and nodding. Jonah was glad to see that, and he hoped that he had not asked for too much when they had bargained.
“And I am done,” he said. “Go drink, make noise, and eat the supplies that you cannot take with you, or—better still—give them to those that have less than you. But be up with the sunrise and be ready to leave.”
Chapter 3
Jonah woke to the sound of the crow cawing not far from his tent. Sasha stirred beside him but didn’t wake up. He had lain awake for most of the night, thinking about the previous day and listening to the mumbles his wife made in her sleep. There was noise outside for most of the night, but not enough to stop her and his children from sleeping. But he couldn’t rest.
He wondered if asking for a place on the council of clans had been a wise move. It had seemed so at the time, and from the reaction of the Elk clan members it had been approved of by many—all except old Logan, who he had seen among the people standing in the field when he had spoken, frowning and shaking his head.
After he’d given his speech he’d almost sought out the old man but hadn’t. He’d needed something positive to lift his spirits and knew that he should do something else beyond spirited and encouraging words.
A campfire feast had been the answer. Hastily erected by Solomon and Declan, it had been fed the spoils of his trip to the council. Roasted wild boar was a rare treat, and it had worked to raise the spirits of his clan and of the other clans. He had thought it over for an hour before suggesting it, and he came to the conclusion that he had demanded too much from the council. This was his way of giving much of it back.
During the feast, shared with many of the other clans of Wytheville, Jonah had freed his new slaves and encouraged them to join in. He hadn’t expected to react emotionally to it, but found himself humbled and a little embarrassed at the joy on the faces of those given freedom and offered a place within the Elk clan.
But while he’d watched those gathered talk and laugh, his own thoughts had been elsewhere, with the members of the clan who had left to follow Gaston. Where were they right now? He knew from a scout’s report that they had left Wytheville already, no doubt leaving to avoid any further conflict with the Elk.
And to avoid being harassed, he thought. There were far too many smaller, troublesome groups—even smaller clans—who would grab at the chance to cause trouble, maybe even take advantage of a newly formed clan.
He worried about Roke and Seren, and he worried about the other young Elk who were now gone. Were they on the road, miles from Wytheville, heading toward the blighted lands in the south?
They should have been here with us, eating roast boar and drinking that nasty crap wine being passed around. It tasted foul to him, but many others appeared to be enjoying it, including old Logan.
Now why was he still with the clan? Seren was his little hunter and always fed the old man. Now he would have to depend on others.
Too old, Jonah thought. He’s too old to be heading off with a new clan. I just hope he can keep up.
Beside him, Sasha stirred, and Jonah forgot about the previous night when he noticed her eyes were open.
“I didn’t know you were awake,” he murmured.
She smiled. “Hard to sleep with you shuffling around.”
He sat up. “I’ll go and leave you three to sleep,” he said.
Sasha reached out and pulled his arm back down. “No need.”
He hauled himself from the rough bed anyway. “There’s a lot to do today,” he said. “I may as well get started.”
Sasha shrugged, knowing that he would not settle and that maybe he needed to be busy.
He left the three of them, noticing that Sasha was already snoring quietly by the time he’d dressed and pulled back the tent flap.
Outside the air was cool, and the light breeze sent shivers down his back. There weren’t many of his clan up at this time. The guards on the last watch stood at the entrance to the camp, and in the campfire clearing at the center of the Elk’s area, two of the younger warriors were clearing the campfire, trampling down the embers and picking out any bits of firewood that could be salvaged. But soon, maybe less than an hour away as the sun began its crawl away from the horizon, the place would be bustling with activity.
He left the camp and decided to walk the perimeter, nodding at the two guards as he passed them. He took a left, heading toward the more intact outer wall of the once-great building that provided some protection for the camp. He turned into the street, noting few people around, and stepped over the remains of a broken cart abandoned at the corner. There was a gap of a hundred yards along the broken roadway before other dwellings sprang up in the ruins, a polite and cautious distance kept by wanderers so that they wouldn’t annoy the large clan. He made his way along the street, stepping over cracks in the pavement and edging around thorns that poked up through the gaps.
He noticed a group of people huddled on the opposite side of the road. They were a lot closer together than others and had no shelter as such, only the overhanging arch of the entrance to the remains of the building opposite. As he got closer, still sticking to his side of the street, he took a better look. Old people. Maybe not as old as Logan, but they were not young. The half dozen carts pulled up on the pavement suggested they were traders, peddlers of wares. As he passed opposite them, his hand still brushing the head of the axe that swung at his hip, even though he felt little threat from the group, one of them stood and took a few steps across the road, toward him.
Jonah stopped, turned, and cocked his head to one side. It was a woman, and she looked nervous.
“You are the new leader,” she said, her voice wavering. “The new leader of the Elk clan? Aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Jonah replied. “What do you want, old mother?”
The woman looked down at her feet, and Jonah could feel the nervous tension even from twenty feet away.
“You are allowing people to join the Elk,” she said. “Ten clans, I heard.”
“Three,” Jonah said, smiling, “but yes, I have.” He wondered where this was going. The woman was no tribal, he knew. If she belonged to a clan she wouldn’t be out in the streets overnight. But most peddlers weren’t clan members; they were often alone or in small groups such as this, scrambling to survive by trading whatever crap they managed to find or catch.
“What of those who walk alone?” she asked.
Jonah frowned. “What do you mean?”
The woman glanced at the two men that sat on the pavement behind her. “Would you allow others to join your clan?”
It was a question that Jonah had never expected, and he stood there in the street, frowning at the woman, unsure of the correct answer. He had allowed three clans to join his, an
d that was a thing unheard of. Most times a clan could merge when a larger clan’s leader married one of its daughters, and the smaller clan would be swallowed up, but there had been no such thing with the Bluestone.
“If you can accept clans to join yours, then what of myself and my...companions?”
“You’re peddlers,” Jonah said, unsure of his point even as he spoke the words.
“Yes,” the woman replied. “But that is the only way I can survive alone.”
“What good would it do me to allow you into the Elk?” Jonah said. “You are not young, and you probably couldn’t fight. I’d be adding another mouth to feed.”
“I scavenge and find treasures in the ruins,” the woman said.
“So do many of my hunters,” said Jonah. “Even children can scavenge.”
“I see,” said the woman. “I am sorry.” She turned back to the roadside and went to return to her two companions.
Jonah started down the road again, but only made it ten yards before he stopped. Had he really just brushed her off like that? When he thought of people in his own clan, like Logan, who did little for the survival of clan as a whole, and mostly lived off the goodwill of others, he wondered if he had any reason not to let these people join.
He turned back. “Old mother,” he called.
The woman looked up.
“Be at the entrance to the Elk camp in one hour,” he said. “And bring your friends with you.”
Her eyes went wide and she stammered to say something, but no words came.
“I promise nothing,” Jonah said. “But you can travel with my clan to Eliz, and if you and your friends happen to prove of use to my people then I see no reason why you cannot stay with us.”
Chapter 4
“Which way are we headed?” Gunney asked.
Jonah looked at the man and noticed that the previous night’s festivities had not dulled the man’s drive. His eyes appeared glazed but not bloodshot, and Jonah suspected it was probably due more to the blowing ragweed of the season than it was the rot-gut wine passed around the fires the previous night.
“Following the same trails the Elk have always followed,” he said to Gunney.
“Ain’t never been to Eliz. We usually don’t get all the way to the city.”
Jonah smiled and nodded to a copse of trees near the rear of the outer wall. People stirred and voices carried. Jonah was not sure who he could trust yet, but he would have to confide in those closest to him. Gunney followed. Jonah squatted and used a stick to draw in the dirt.
“We’re here. Wytheville. Near where the old highways of seventy-seven and eighty-one used to cross.”
“So we’re following eighty-one. That’s the east to west crossing, right?”
“Yes,” said Jonah, “but we’re not taking it because it takes a northeast path through the mountains. Not only would it take us too long but we’d be picked at by any number of nomadic raiders along the route. We’ll have to take the lesser traveled path.”
“Which is?” Gunney asked.
“Route one fifty-eight.” Jonah drew a line across the dirt. “We’ll have to head south on seventy-seven until we reach it and then hope that the signs are still there.”
“The road signs.”
“No,” said Jonah. “Those disappeared a long time ago. The Elk have left our own signs over the years, but recently those have been disappearing too. Without my father and Nera…”
“But we still have Logan.”
“We do. But there is something aching him, and I can’t quite figure it out. I’m not sure if we can count on him. And he’s getting old. He could misinterpret the signs and lead us on another trail.”
Gunney looked at the crude map drawn in the dirt and then winked at Jonah. “We’ll get there. Plenty of folks have walked the route often enough.”
“I’m not so much worried about the road as I am those hiding in its shadows. This stretch here. That part of seventy-seven is littered with old cars.” Jonah drew a line in the map from Wytheville to the intersection of 158.
“Where there’s cars, there’s trouble,” said Gunney.
“Marauders. Heathens. Thieves. Whatever you want to call them, they prey on clans coming through. We may have to fight.”
“Not today,” Gunney said, standing up and pulling the brim of his hat down over his forehead. “Today, we leave Wytheville with triple our numbers, our bellies full, and with a surplus of firewood. Today is a great day.”
Jonah smiled and stood, tossing the stick into the weeds. “Let them all know this is the last call. We leave this morning.”
Gunney ran off, waving back at Jonah. He waited for Gunney to turn the corner before heading back to his tent. But before Jonah returned to help Sasha pack their cart, he needed a few minutes alone.
Jonah found an abandoned cart with weeds reaching through the rusted body toward the cool autumn morning. A seat remained, the springs supporting a few hunks of hardened foam. Jonah sat down and put his hands on the wheel while trying to imagine what it must have been like to ride in a cart instead of pulling one. He wondered what it would have been like to see the trees fly by at speeds unattainable on foot.
“What are you doing?”
Jonah jumped and looked over his shoulder to see Leta standing amongst the weeds several yards from the cart. She had a sack strapped to her back which pulled her shoulders forward and forced her to crane her neck up to look him in the eye.
“Dreaming.”
“About what?”
“Autos? Isn’t that what they called cars?”
“I don’t know. I’m old, but I’m not that old.”
Jonah conceded that to Leta, despite her thin gray hair and wrinkled skin.
“I think they moved faster than horses.”
“They did,” said Leta. “Many times faster.”
“I have to remain positive. Optimistic.”
“You do,” she said. “You are now leading several clans instead of one.”
“But you know the truth that they do not. Not even my Right Hands will accept it.”
“Violent death?” Leta asked.
“Only if we’re lucky. Most will die from starvation, exposure. The Walk is not easy. It often kills…”
Leta gave Jonah a gap-toothed smile as his sentence trailed off. “The weak and the elderly. That is what you were going to say.”
Jonah shook his head. “The children. It takes them as often as it does the old. The old folks are our past, but the children are the future.”
Leta took a step closer until Jonah could smell the dried piss and body odor stuck to her rags. “You cannot go home. You cannot stay here.”
Jonah wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. The sounds of their imminent departure began to draw his attention away from the old woman.
“I know.”
“Then do what you know you must do.”
“And damn the consequences,” Jonah said.
“Yes,” said Leta. “It is what leaders must do for the benefit of the clan. If you lose people then that is the way. You want to try being clanless and worry about life and death.”
Jonah watched her turn and walk the same steps Gunney had minutes earlier. The camp came to life, even those who had overindulged in the festivities. He climbed out of the cart and kicked it with the toe of his boot. Brown rust cascaded down on his foot and a hunk of sheet metal dropped from the cart’s frame into the weeds. Jonah walked back toward his tent where Gunney, Declan and Solomon stood with their axes on their hips and packs on their backs.
“Tis a beautiful morning,” Solomon said.
“Aye,” said Gunney, his eyes fixed on Jonah’s.
“Is it time?” Declan asked.
Jonah nodded. He looked around and saw Sasha and the children strapping down their cart. “This will be the longest trip of your life. Drudgery beyond belief,” he said.
“Sounds wonderful,” Solomon said to Jonah. “Couldn’t think of a better crew to die for
.”
“Okay,” said Jonah. “Send out the signal. It’s time to leave Wytheville.”
Chapter 5
From high above the road, among the rocks and the overgrown bushes, The Brother watched the large gathering of Walking Ones as they left their stony, foul-smelling ruins. The pack was not far, just a short distance through the trees along the slope and down into the valley, but the pack were resting, their bellies still full after the feast a few nights before.
He wanted to hunt this larger Walking One pack, just as The Leader had wanted to, but it would have to be at the right time. They travelled too closely together, and many carried their long claws. Some even carried the Flying Claws that had caused the failed attack that gave him the leadership of the pack. He, The Brother, would not be so careless.
There would be times along the Walking One path that some would be away from their pack, and that would be the time that he would strike, or if the whim took him, he would lead his folk away from the large clan and hunt those less protected. But for now they would prowl and wait for the foolish ones among the large pack.
Even with this, he thought, you will have to be cautious. When they sense too much danger they will be fearful and not leave their pack. But that was fine. He could deal with that as well. There were new Walking Ones coming into the valley, fleeing the cold sweeping in from the north. He sensed them and thought that they would be easier prey, maybe. They would not know these lands like these Walking Ones did.
And there were the ones who waited at the side of the Walking One path. These smaller packs. They puzzled him. His kind, the Children of the Moon, did not hunt each other very often. If another pack came too close it would usually sense the other and head away, taking a different direction and heading for a safer place to hunt unless they were moving into their territory. Long gone were the days when The Children of the Moon had to worry about sharing territory with their own kind. But the Walking Ones were different. The small packs that waited at the road and hid themselves were waiting just to attack the larger pack. Foolish, he thought. Very foolish.