Change of Chaos

by Jacinta Jade

  ‘Deson, I think you need to go clean up a little.’

  Siray nodded towards his hands, keeping her tone even and trying not to let him see the effect those red specks were having on her.

  His actions last night had, after all, helped her and the others to escape.

  Deson glanced down at his hands, frowning, and after a moment, his face cleared as he remembered what he had done mere spans before.

  ‘Right. Thanks.’

  Siray nodded. ‘And your face …’

  Deson grimaced and nodded back, standing and turning away as he tore off one of his short sleeves.

  Siray watched as Deson raised the torn sleeve to his face, the muscles in his shoulders flexing under his shirt as he worked the cloth vigorously over his hands and face, flecks of dried blood crumbling away from his skin.

  As the red flakes drifted to the ground, Siray remembered the swift and brutal attack Deson had made upon their enemy last night and, seeing the dried blood on him, knew that whomever it was he had faced in the shadows had not survived.

  She hoped that she, too, would be able to do what was necessary when the time came.

  As Deson finished cleaning up, Siray stood, her body complaining about the awkward way she must have slept. Looking around, she saw that Kovi was also awake, sitting just outside the thicket with his back to them.

  Making her way carefully past the sleeping bodies of Loce, Tamot, and Jorgi, Siray ducked her head beneath some branches as she exited the thicket and took a seat beside Kovi on the leaf-covered ground, wincing a little at the aches in her body as she got comfortable.

  ‘Long night, wasn’t it.’ Kovi didn’t look at her when he spoke.

  ‘Yes. I don’t think I actually fell asleep until first light,’ she said quietly.

  Kovi didn’t respond for a while, but when he did, his voice was low and flat. ‘It’s all gone. The camp, the trainers, the others … all that time spent training, and for what?’ Kovi’s voice grew hard. ‘So we could be beaten before we even had a chance to make a difference?’

  Siray felt the bitter truth of his words. ‘I know.’

  Yet instead of placating Kovi, her words seemed to encourage his agitation.

  ‘And while we’ve been training, our enemies have been growing stronger and spreading. How do we know that they haven’t destroyed all the other Resistance camps? How do we know that we aren’t the only ones left?’

  ‘We don’t.’ Deson’s voice came from just behind them.

  Siray turned her head slightly, watching as Deson emerged from the thicket to join them both on the ground. He had managed to get rid of most of the blood from his face and hands.

  ‘But we can’t give up,’ Deson said. ‘We have to believe that others made it out and that the Resistance still stands a chance.’

  Kovi snorted and looked at his feet.

  Siray said nothing, but Deson managed to catch her eye, and he appeared to speak his next words to her, specifically.

  ‘We can’t give up hope. We’ll be nothing without it.’

  Siray shrugged. ‘Hope doesn’t matter anymore. What matters now is taking action. Against them.’

  Deson frowned. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  Siray raised her brows, surprised at his lack of enthusiasm. ‘No—a bad idea would be to keep running and hiding, and hoping that someone else might help us.’ She shook her head. ‘What we need is intelligence about our enemy, and to start striking back.’

  Kovi’s head lifted, and his eyes brightened. ‘That’s right. We could find out who else survived the attack. Or who has been taken hostage.’

  Deson was shaking his head. ‘We’re significantly outnumbered, out skilled, and have no intelligence.’

  Siray touched his arm. ‘But we can use some of that to our advantage. Remember? Sergeant Bulmer always said that a small strike force can, at times, do far more damage than a larger one.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Tamot’s voice.

  Siray stood and peered past Deson and towards the thicket.

  Tamot, Loce, and Jorgi were awake and sitting there listening.

  ‘I don’t want to run anymore,’ Tamot continued. ‘I want to fight.’

  Beside him, Jorgi was nodding. ‘For all we know, we could be running from one threat to another. We need to know more.’

  Siray glanced down at Deson and raised one eyebrow, as if to say see?

  Deson sighed and heaved himself to his feet. ‘Fine. We’ll go gather intelligence. But I don’t think we should take any specific action until we know more.’

  Siray was happy. ‘Agreed.’

  Kovi also stood. ‘So, what’s our first move?’

  Siray gazed up at the sky to check the sun’s position. ‘It’s still early in the day. I say we circle back and take a look at the camp.’

  Deson crossed his arms. ‘We need to have a backup plan in case anything goes wrong.’

  Kovi gestured to the thicket. ‘If we get split up, we can meet here again.’

  Deson shook his head. ‘If anyone picks up our tracks, they’ll follow them here. We need a new spot.’

  Siray scanned around but the nearby area but couldn’t see far from their current location. ‘I think we best pick a place as we head towards the camp. That also means that if anyone gets injured somehow, they won’t have as far to go to meet up with the rest of the group.’

  Deson grudgingly agreed to that, but Siray could see he still wasn’t completely pleased with the plan. She was just happy to be doing something. Because if she didn’t, there was a fire in her gut that just might override all reason.

  Having nothing to pack up, the group immediately started heading out in the direction they had come from the previous night, and Tamot, who had the best sense of direction, led the group.

  Keen to get moving, Siray frowned as she was forced to pause when she felt someone squeeze her hand.

  Deson turned her to face him. ‘Siray, please don’t rush into anything. I know we’ve had a big loss and that everyone, that you, want to do something, but that’s also why we need to be careful.’

  He spoke in a low voice so that the others couldn’t hear.

  Siray nodded, impatient to leave. ‘And we will be. But we need to know what’s happening so we can decide what to do next. Without any intel, we’ll be operating blind.’

  Deson returned her nod, and after releasing her hand, they both turned and followed after the others.

  ***

  Once they were all warmed up, the group broke into a run, to cover ground more quickly. Their plan was to get into a position from which they could see the camp and the surrounding area and then retreat to a safe position to discuss what they had seen.

  Tamot wisely led them on a route that circled back towards their target but that avoided the same trail they had used last night, just in case Deson was right and they were being tracked. Approaching the training camp from the side of Bluff Hill, which faced away from the main area of the site, the group cautiously made their way up the hill, moving as quietly as possible.

  Walking purposefully, Siray bypassed some of the others to take up second position in line behind Tamot, who was carefully scanning every tree, bush, and rock as he moved from one hiding place to another, leading them upwards.

  They would only be able to climb so high before the trees began to thin and they would lose cover, but hopefully it would be high enough to give them a good view of the camp below.

  Siray was moving out from behind a boulder and making for the tree Tamot had just arrived under when she heard someone stumble behind her and a loosed rock go bouncing away down the hill.

  The clatter sounded like thunder in Siray’s ears, and she turned stiffly to look at the culprit, already knowing who she would see.

  Jorgi stood there in the open, grimacing at each noise the still-travelling rock made, and he looked apologetically at her when it finally finished its noisy descent.

  Siray closed her eyes for a
moment, breathed deeply, then opened them and gestured for Jorgi to keep moving. Then she turned back to face up the hill again and stiffened once more.

  A couple of paces in front of her, Tamot had frozen, his muscles tensed.

  Siray quickly moved to join him under the tree, waited a heartbeat for Jorgi to reach her before also hauling him up after her, and gestured with her free hand to the others behind them that they should take cover.

  Extending her hand forwards, she touched Tamot’s arm.

  ‘What is it?’ she breathed.

  Tamot gave a small, slow shake of his head but shifted one hand to point in the direction of a clump of trees a little way ahead.

  Siray peered hard at the trees. They were dark with dense foliage—one of the types that actually thrived in full sun—and it appeared to be quite a thick group. But then Siray noticed that not only was it dark, it was dark in one specific place.

  And if she traced the outline of that dark section …

  The soldier moved.

  With a thought, Siray Changed and, sprinting from the cover of her tree, covered the space between her and the soldier so swiftly that he had only just emerged from his own position in the thickset trees before the impact of Siray’s powerful feline body slammed into him, causing him to fall backwards into those same shrubs, Siray’s body following him down.

  A swipe of one set of claws across his face, and it was over.

  Siray stayed crouched there in the foliage a moment longer to see if she could scent any more lookouts hiding nearby. Smelling none, she Changed back and then waved Tamot and the others across to her position.

  They moved quickly but carefully up into the cover the soldier had been hiding in, Siray using the moment before they joined her to wipe her bloodied hand against her pants.

  Kovi didn’t hesitate in coming right up to her. ‘Why’d you kill him? We could have used him!’ He waved a hand angrily at the dead soldier, whose mauled face now gazed lifelessly up at the sky.

  Siray eyed Kovi calmly. ‘He was a risk, and we don’t know how many of them are about. We also don’t know what form he might have adopted had I not taken him out. Any kind of lasting fight up here, and every Faction soldier in the area would have been able to pinpoint our location.’

  Strangely, Siray didn’t feel much different than before she’d killed the soldier.

  No, not true. She did feel a bit different. More … in control.

  Deson came forwards. ‘Taking a hostage wasn’t part of the plan, Kovi. Let’s stick to what we discussed.’

  Siray saw Deson give her a once-over, as if to ensure she wasn’t harmed, before he turned away from them both and disappeared deeper into the trees, moving further up the hill.

  Sighing in an agitated way, Kovi tailed Deson.

  Loce, Jorgi, and Tamot, who had watched the brief exchange silently, followed them up.

  As he passed her, Tamot said, ‘Good thing you acted so quickly. I should have done something.’

  Siray shook her head. ‘Your form is a yeibon—not much it could do up here on this kind of ground. But you spotted the lookout, that’s the main thing.’ She walked with him further into the trees, pushed through the branches, and then immediately crouched when she emerged on the other side.

  The others were all already lying low and intent on what lay before them. Now about halfway up the hill, they had emerged onto a short plateau and could see the camp below, which was a hive of activity.

  Sentries had been spaced around the perimeter of the large site, and Siray could see movement in the surrounding forest that suggested that they also had soldiers patrolling farther out.

  She watched as a sentry stationed near the stream that flowed into the camp raised his bow and shot down a kitespray that had been about to fly over some of the structures.

  Deson sighed, and Siray knew that he’d just realised a flyover was out of the question. The soldiers were obviously under orders to shoot any creature that approached on sight.

  Then Siray saw something that made her lean forwards intently. On the farthest side of the camp, she could just make out a line of figures walking with their hands all behind their backs.

  But it was the pattern of Faction soldiers guarding them that confirmed her suspicions.

  ‘Hostages,’ she said to the others, pointing.

  ‘You’re right,’ Loce said. ‘I think … I think I can actually see Trainer Dirl down there.’

  Siray looked hard, but either her eyesight wasn’t as good or she wasn’t looking in the right place. It didn’t matter.

  The Faction had Resistance hostages.

  And she and the others had to rescue them.

  Siray beheld the faces of her friends, who were all still intently watching the line of hostages being marched across the destroyed camp. Well, almost all of them.

  Deson shifted closer to her and spoke in a low voice. ‘We can’t go down there, Siray. The area is too well guarded.’

  She looked away from him and at the line of hostages once more. ‘I don’t intend on going in there right now, Deson,’ she said before looking back at him.

  Deson frowned. ‘Then …’

  ‘We should do what Kovi suggested,’ she said lightly.

  Kovi turned, his eyebrows raised. ‘Take one of them hostage?’

  Siray nodded. ‘You said it yourself—what better way to get intel?’

  Deson shook his head. ‘It’s a big risk.’

  ‘And hanging around up here or trying to infiltrate the camp, without further information, isn’t?’

  Tamot weighed in. ‘I like it. We grab one of them, haul them away somewhere quiet, and get them to talk.

  Jorgi, who had been quietly watching one particular group of sentries, turned to the group. ‘I know just how to do it.’

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