But when I opened my eyes I saw that the man named Socorro was standing five paces away, his gaze shifting from me to the man and back again. I braced for his shout, the moment when he would awaken the rest of the Drifters. But instead, he crouched, fished for the key peeking out of the tall man’s pocket and then came over to me. He lifted a hand, palm up. “I’m going to free you,” he whispered.
I felt none of the menace from him that I had from the other, but I still stared at his profile as he reached up to the first lock. “What do you expect in return?”
His brown eyes shifted to me in surprise, and then thought. “Nothing,” he whispered, moving to the next hand. And I believed him. There was a light within him, dim, like a lampshade covered in soot, but present nonetheless.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I don’t know,” he said, unlocking my other hand.
My arms fell beside me, numb. I took a step and stumbled, realizing that I was again trembling all over. Shock, I assessed distantly. Still, I forced myself to stumble over to the Jeep and look over the edge. Niero didn’t move. Was he dead? With a tentative hand I reached for his neck.
He was alive. “Niero,” I whispered, shaking his shoulder.
He moaned but didn’t open his eyes.
Socorro came up beside me. “We have to leave him. You must be away. Far away, when they wake. Me too.”
“No,” I said with a sigh, remembering how the two big men struggled to drag Niero between them. Socorro and I were far smaller, but there was no way I would leave Raniero behind. The Maker would have to find me another way out.
“Listen,” Socorro whispered urgently, eyes moving to the sleeping guards in the tower above us. “We will never get clear in time. Not with him.”
“You go back to your bed roll by the fire,” I urged him. “You’ve helped me enough. I’ll see to my friend myself.” I knew it was ridiculous, and I hoped he wouldn’t let me try such a silly plan. But I had to give him an out. I knew what he did — we’d likely die trying to escape with Niero between us. And I didn’t want this man’s death on my hands too. Not a … friend.
Socorro sighed and looked up at the top of the cave, then out to the river a moment. He straightened, resolution and resignation twisting within him. He moved to the Jeep’s back gate and opened it.
The click and creaks from the metal gate echoed about the whole cavern. Socorro and I froze like river reeds in deep Hoarfrost. I dared to scan the other Drifters, fearing the worst, but the only thing that seemed to move in camp were the small, dancing flames that remained in the fires, licking at the burned-out remains of logs that were mostly embers by now.
My eyes moved to trace the curving river, the beaches, disappearing into the depths of night. We had to get out of here. Fast. I pulled at Niero’s body, putting my foot against the gate for leverage. He easily weighed twice what I did. The Maker will make a way, I repeated to myself, trying desperately to ward off my own doubt.
Socorro leaned his shoulder into Niero’s other armpit, grabbed hold of his arm, and rolled his body across his shoulders. He was a slight man, not much heavier than I, and I could see him straining under Niero’s weight.
“No,” I whispered. “Let me help you.”
“You lead the way,” he said, ignoring my words.
“Where?” I whispered, already turning. “Where do we go?”
Behind us, a Drifter coughed and groaned. “Just go,” Socorro said, and I readily agreed. All I sensed in him was fear, likely caused by thinking what the other Drifters would do to us, should they catch us.
There’s a time for flight, and a time for fight, our trainer had told us. This was definitely time for flight. I supposed it didn’t matter which way we went. The most important thing was to be away.
We moved down the river’s edge, along with the current. I glanced back, to the cave fifty paces behind us, knowing that at any moment one of the Drifters would wake. See me gone. Cry out and wake others who were not totally lost to drunkeness.
But no torch appeared at the mouth of the cave. Was it possible this would work? A tiny surge of hope spread through me. Maker, have you made this way? But despite my prayer of hope, I found myself glancing back again, fearing — almost expecting — the worst. A hundred paces. Two hundred.
Miraculously, Socorro kept his footing over the rounded rocks, and we continued around the riverbend, the cavemouth now almost out of sight.
“Do you swim?” Socorro asked, between pants for air.
“I do.” Everyone in the Valley learned to swim as babes.
“Good. If they come,” he grunted, staggering under Niero’s weight, “Jump into the river. It will carry you down and away from them faster than they can run. Go deep and swim to the other side. Because they do not swim.”
I nodded, even though he could not see me in the dark. “Will you dive in too?”
“No. I cannot. I do not swim.”
I took that in. He planned to help me while likely sacrificing himself. “Why come to my aid? What am I to you?”
“I … I couldn’t look away. Couldn’t stand aside and do nothing. Again.”
I faltered and he pulled to a stop, panting. I wished I could see his face. But I felt the pain in him.
“The Maker urged you to aid me,” I said.
Fear echoed through him and he glanced over his shoulder again. I caught a glimpse of his profile in the dark. “Shh,” he said, pulling me forward, as if he feared that our conversation would be overheard by the very shadows. And perhaps it was. “You must not say such things. I don’t know what it is like from where you came, but in the Desert, mentioning the Maker will get you killed.”
We walked for a few minutes in silence, other than for an occasional gasp or moan from me when my foot caught and wrenched my knee. “I wasn’t always a Drifter. Once I lived in a village, on the edge of the Desert. I think my father was a follower of the Way.” He said the last of it so lowly that I wondered if the sounds of the river were playing tricks on my ears. Was I so desperate to find a trusted friend here that I would hear anything I wished? I decided it was likely.
“I have to stop,” he said, “put him down.” I hurried to his side and helped him lower Niero to the rocks. Socorro straightened, his back audibly cracking.
My hands ran up Niero’s chest to his neck. His pulse was still strong, giving me hope again. And Socorro couldn’t go on carrying him forever. “Niero,” I whispered, shaking his shoulders. “Niero?”
But he didn’t move, still unconscious.
“If you’re caught again,” Socorro said, sitting on a rock beside us, “don’t talk of such things. The Drifters won’t like it. There was once a girl …” He faltered and then gave way to silence, apparently thinking it was best not to share.
But here in the wilds, I knew that knowledge was power. “What happened to her? Tell me.”
He hesitated and dipped his hand into the river for a drink, and I did the same. Then, “They took her to Zanzibar to trade, like they planned to do with you. But she wouldn’t keep quiet about the Way, the Maker. The Drifters burned her alive, as is decreed.”
His words stole my breath a moment. It was the same everywhere but the Valley, we’d been told. No warlord tolerated competition from anyone. Even the Maker. “But the Drifters … they live by no decree. They have no ruler. Why do they care?”
“Everyone is ruled by someone. For us, it’s the camp boss. And the boss both reveres and fears the Pacificans. They, above all, loathe talk of the Maker.”
I thought on that a moment.
“Socorro, you obviously do not belong here. Come with us.”
The offer was out before I’d thought it through. But wasn’t he an example of who we were to gather or send to the Valley? A man responding to the Maker’s call, his stirring? Even to the point of risking his life?
“I can’t,” he said, and I felt the regret deep within him. “I don’t know how to swim.”
I smiled. �
�I can teach you.”
“No. I’m too far behind.” He spoke not of swimming then, I knew, but of deeper subjects.
“It is never too late to begin on matters that matter.”
“We’d best continue on,” Socorro said after a moment. And together, we again managed to get Niero across his back and we walked along in silence, around the bend in the river and halfway around another. The clouds parted above us, and I saw stars — more stars in a wider space — than I’d ever seen before. In the Valley there were always clouds, or mist. Tiny breaks occurred at times, but never this sort of clearing. “Do you often see the stars here?”
“Most times, yes,” he grunted.
“As far as the stars feel from you, the Maker can feel the same.” He was listening to me. Intent on words my trainer had taught me, as the elders had taught him. “But even though he feels distant, he is right here.” I patted his forearm. “Right with you. As close as Niero is, across your back.”
“Even with a Drifter?” I heard the disbelief in his voice, as I felt the pang of loneliness, desperation within him.
“Everywhere. In the Desert, the Plains, Zanzibar, even beyond the Wall.”
A movement in the dark to my right made me pause and I pulled him to a stop. But all was still, except for the rush of the water beside us. I felt him glance back in the direction of the cave, knowing he only wished to get farther away. We’d just begun moving again when everything came into motion at once — dark forms, shadows all around us.
I almost cried out as hands grabbed me, but my fear was immediately swallowed in a sea of victory and relief, and sweet, delicious surprise as they folded me into their arms.
My humming armband told me exactly who they were.
CHAPTER
15
They were my friends, along with others. I listed them as they neared me, finding relief with each name. Ronan, Vidar, Bellona, Tressa, Killian.
Ronan took Niero from Socorro and carried him to a wooden raft on a quieter part of the river. The rest of us clambered aboard in quick succession. Vidar bent to untie the raft, but I reached toward my new Drifter friend in panic.
“Wait! Wait! We can’t leave Socorro! They’ll kill him.”
Vidar turned to him. “Come with us, friend. We will get you to safety.”
Socorro hesitated.
“Is it not best to face the fear of the unknown,” I asked, “than to face a known death?”
“Company’s coming,” Vidar said, “and Socorro’s about the last we can fit on the raft.”
We could see several torches bobbing their way down the beach toward us, and I could make out five or six silhouettes of men beneath them.
“C’mon, Socorro!” I said sharply. “What’s your alternative? They’ll kill you, if they find you came to my aid. The Maker urged you to help me, now let me help you. Please!”
The Drifters were close enough for us to hear them shouting, even over the rush of the river. Soon they’d be close enough to shoot.
“We have to go,” Ronan said, reaching down to untie the raft. “Make your decision, man.”
At the last second, our rescuer stepped on to the raft, tilting it a bit, but I breathed a sigh of relief. Bellona and Vidar began moving quickly — Paddling? Using poles? It was impossible to see in the dark — but I knew we were getting farther into the river and farther down. Deeper into safety. Swiftly leaving those who pursued us behind.
“Ronan …” I said.
“I’m here,” he said. He reached out and pulled me into his arms, and a wave of confidence and hope washed through me. “What happened to Niero?”
“He was shot. Hours ago. When we were captured.” I hated the hopelessness in my voice. “He’s lost a great deal of blood.”
My new friend edged near, trying to get out of the way for those maneuvering the raft and bumping me by accident. I yelped and he immediately apologized, even as Ronan growled a “watch it.”
“It’s all right! It’s all right!” I said, feeling like I had to ease Ronan down like a fierce guard dog. He was terribly edgy, perhaps because we’d been so recently reunited. I knew he’d be blaming himself, that I was taken. That he hadn’t been there to protect me. “Ronan, Socorro helped me. Several times.”
“I’m grateful,” Ronan said, his voice tight.
“As am I,” I said, reaching out to squeeze Socorro’s forearm as he hunkered down on all fours. I could feel the tight pull of panic within him, probably as much from the fear of drowning as the What have I done? question that had to be roiling through his mind.
I understood his terror, even if I blessed every inch of water between me and the Drifter scum. Sometimes, when you didn’t know better, you settled for filth, thinking it was the best you could hope for. “There’s so much more ahead, Socorro. It will be better for you. Trust me. You’ll see. We’ll show you.”
He said nothing, and I could only imagine what he was thinking by exploring more of what he felt. Lost. He’d just left everything he’d known, for me. For us. It made me determined to help find sanctuary. Peace. Maybe even a bit of joy, something the Drifters seemed desperately far from.
From the other side, Ronan secretly slipped his hand into mine, his touch nothing but pure, brotherly. But he’d not forgotten joy, at least tonight. It seemed to fill him from head to toe, our reunion. And aside from his anxiety over keeping me from more harm, his relief mirrored mine.
We reached the far bank, hitting rocks that caused us to spin, and then hitting against them again, nearly toppling us all into the water. Vidar and Bellona jumped off, each shouting orders at the other. Ronan stepped off when it was knee-deep and helped them shove us to safety, firmly against the bank.
As we made our way onto the sandy shore, two boys emerged from the woods, each carrying lanterns. They smiled shyly at me and my eyes went wide with surprise. The shepherd boys. The same boys that saw me arrive with the Drifters. “How did you find them? How did … Did those two tell you where we were?”
Ronan helped me to walk toward them, his arm around my waist, partially lifting me. “Hoodites. They found us while we were in hiding. We barely avoided the Drifters by throwing them off our trail but we only became more lost. They found us and led us to you.”
“How’d you get the bikes across?”
“A sort of ferry, much like this one. They don’t keep them around, for obvious reasons. The Drifters loathe water, and the Hoodites prefer to feed that fear rather than give them the tools to conquer it.”
I glanced back over his shoulder to the other side of the river, remembering the deeper dark I’d left behind. I shuddered, and he shifted me in his arms even as I lamented losing one of the bikes. How were we to move on? Three of us squeezed onto one? There’d be no way.
“How bad is it?” Ronan asked, bringing me back to the present.
“What?”
“Niero’s wound. You said he lost a lot of blood. But how bad is the wound? Did the bullet pass through?”
“I don’t know. One of them said something about it going clean through. But I never got a chance to examine him.” Now that we were with them again, I was suffering a new sort of worry. Even if he recovered, how was Niero going to keep up with the rest of us? Ride on a dirt bike at all? Ride anything? This kind of injury put a person flat-out for weeks, months. He might never recover fully.
In the olden days, my parents told me, there were doctors who operated. Opened up and fixed broken bones, stitched up ligaments, tendons. Had medicines for pain, others for healing. But we’d long since lost the skill — and the supplies — to do such things. In our village, there was one woman of three decades and four years who’d slipped on the ice and broken both her legs. She never walked again, relying on her husband and children to bring her food, to carry her to the outhouse, to dress her. How had she escaped after the night the Sheolites came and murdered my parents? Had her family carried her away? To where?
The memory made me nauseated.
&nbs
p; “The Maker will show us the way, Dri,” Ronan said, as if reading my spinning mind. “Rest in this — we are together again. Safe for the moment.”
Killian and Vidar carried Niero between them, and I thought about Ronan’s words as we slowly made our way along the trail away from the river, through the trees, the fragrance of pine both making me miss home and yet allowing me to take the first full breaths I think I’d taken since we left. But my heart grew heavy, the more I thought about moving on without Niero among us.
The sun was rising. At first glimpse, up at the cliffs that surrounded us, I thought I might be hallucinating, giving in to the pain. For above me were a hundred or more rock formations, standing like giant, silent men watching us pass. The Hoodites. Appearing as they’d been described to us. As the sun rose, the soil that formed them turned color, from the pink of a girl’s blush to an iron-enriched red.
Our child guides stopped as the sun crested the horizon and dropped to their knees, bending with arms outstretched until their faces touched the earth. “Praise to you, Maker,” they said in unison. “Praise to you, who rules the day and night. Praise to you who will guide our steps. Amen.”
Then they rose and continued on, leaving us in mute awe. Ronan smiled at them and then at me. Because we’d never seen anyone but Raniero and the elders worship and pray without concern, out in the open. We, the Ailith, had been raised to meditate in the morning and at night, but we did so in secret, away from anyone who might see us.
I found myself peering about, fearing they’d been seen, even though we were miles from the Drifters and likely anyone else. To be found praying to the Maker — or any god at all — was a subversive act, punishable by immediate death. And here, we Ailith — chosen followers of the One — were shown how it was done by two shepherd boys.
Vidar cast me a wide, toothy smile. “I’m likin’ this new land. This is land a man can breathe in.”
I huffed a laugh.
Ronan smiled again at me but then did a doubletake, grabbing hold of my chin and gently moving my head in one direction and then another, all grim intent now. With the light of day, my bruises had obviously been discovered. “What’d they do to you, Dri?” he growled.
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