Fearless

by Jennifer Jenkins

  Cheering from the crowd drew Zo out from her useless self-pity. Eva whistled her approval along with the rest. Her hair had grown a few inches since it was shaved inside Ram’s Gate. Today she wore a wreath of wildflowers like a crown on her head. Combined with her dark eyes and high cheekbones, she looked nothing like the girl who’d knifed a Ram scout on their journey here.

  The games lasted all day. Men sat in pairs on the ground, holding a small rope with their feet pressed against their opponent’s. The object was to pull the other man off the ground. There was spear throwing. Shot-putting. Sword fighting with blunted, wooden blades. Even a contest at the pond to see which man could hold his opponent under the water the longest.

  “I hope you don’t believe the talk,” said Eva, not taking her eyes from the games.

  Zo frowned. “Talk?”

  “About Gryphon. They’re just rumors. People are fools when they’re afraid. Whatever the Wolves believe, the Freemen are behind Gryph.”

  “Eva,” Zo said, frustrated now, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  Eva hesitated, clearly regretting bringing it up in the first place. “It started with the fire the day before you left. Every few days something else happens. Men gone missing. The damn on the river breaking. A day’s worth of newly crafted spears destroyed. Last night more than thirty men were up sick. Some think the food stores have been tampered with.”

  “And people believe Gryphon did all of these things?”

  Eva frowned. “Not everyone. But the problem is, no one can prove that it wasn’t him.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” said Zo.

  Could she really blame the Wolves for pointing their finger at Gryphon? He was the only Ram, aside from Joshua and Eva, in the camp. Laden’s words the night of the fire rang again in her ears.

  He has motive.

  Zo shook her head, ashamed she’d even entertained the idea. This was Gryphon.

  “Ridiculous,” she said again, mostly to herself.

  At Eva and Stone’s insistence, the wedding was a simple affair. Eva’s bleached wool dress kissed the floor, plain except for the green braided sash that sat above her rounded stomach. She’d traded her wildflower crown for one of wheat mixed with different textures and shades of leaves. The yellow wheat created something of a halo around her head.

  “The wheat is a Ram symbol for abundance,” Gryphon whispered to her.

  Zo almost made a remark that food was all the Ram ever thought about, but refrained. There was nothing funny about hunger. Living in the Valley with her parents as a child, Zo had seldom experienced the pains of hunger. But inside the Gate, hunger was a constant companion. Especially among the Nameless.

  Laden stood before Eva and Stone, facing the vast congregation of Allies who’d come to witness the event. The crowd quieted with expectation as Laden looked between the couple. Instead of launching into a long speech about the sacredness of the occasion, the Commander simply nodded to Stone and stepped back, as if to let the pair sort everything out on their own.

  At the unspoken cue, Stone stretched out his hands toward Eva, palms up. Eva smiled at him, tears gathering in her eyes. She reached out to him and placed her hands down on his forearms. He gripped her forearms in return, and together they stared at one another for several long moments.

  Zo drank in the adoration of Stone’s expression as he whispered words to his bride. Words not shouted for the crowd. Whatever he said, it belonged to Eva alone. Zo leaned forward, her breath catching at the sweetness of the sacred moment.

  The couple paused. More tears, but no words.

  Gryphon must have sensed Zo’s anticipation because he leaned down and with his breath tickling her ear said, “It is Ram custom for the bride not to accept his vow until she’s taken the time to consider his promises. A way to keep him in suspense.”

  A shiver of longing rushed up Zo’s spine as she and Gryphon locked eyes. One heartbeat. Two. She studied every inch of his face so close to hers. His thick black lashes and rich brown eyes. The masculine contours of his cheeks. The stubble along his jaw.

  “I love you,” she whispered, before she could stop herself.

  Simple truth, and right as calling summer grass green, but she hadn’t meant to speak the words aloud. A violent blush rushed to her cheeks and she had to look away. They sat close enough that, as she turned, her cheek brushed his and the usual smell of pine that clung to him made her shiver. When his breath caught at the connection, she sensed his longing mix with hers.

  Longing and hesitation.

  Because I am a Wolf? Because he has a guilty conscience?

  It took every ounce of her will to turn back to the bride and groom on the dais. Gryphon put his arm around her back and dragged her closer to his side. “I will always love you, Zo,” he spoke into her hair. “No matter what the future brings.”

  “Gryphon?” she said, breathless. Again, the words spilled unbidden and unwanted from her mouth. “You didn’t start that fire, did you?”

  In one question, all of the heat of their exchange turned to ice. Gryphon startled, angling his body away from her, and she instantly wished she could call the words back. His jaw clenched along with his fists and his eyes focused intently on the couple on the dais.

  The crowd burst into applause and cheers. Zo glanced up to find Eva wrapped in Stone’s determined embrace as they kissed, unabashed by the audience. Stone lifted Eva into his arms, lips still locked with his new bride as he walked her off the platform.

  “No matter what you want to believe,” said Gryphon, “a part of you will always see the Ram in me as someone you can’t fully trust.”

  Zo batted away tears and Gryphon left her sitting alone on the bench, ashamed to admit he was right.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Gryphon sat up in his bed panting from the nightmare. His forehead dripped sweat. He looked around the dark tent, chest heaving to catch his breath. It took him a few moments to process that his dream really had been a dream. But when he closed his eyes again, he saw Zo’s body lying at an odd angle covered in her own blood, a spear pinning her stomach to the ground. Her lifeless eyes stared up at him, seeming to beg the question, “Why didn’t you stay?” and “I thought you loved me.”

  Gryphon suddenly couldn’t breathe. He yanked on his boots and stepped over Sani’s body—his little Raven guard dog—to push away the tent flap.

  “Where are you going?” Sani asked, still half-asleep. Joshua snored on the opposite side of the tent.

  “Just need some air,” Gryphon wheezed. “Go back to bed.”

  For once, Sani didn’t protest or make a comment about Gryphon’s safety being his concern. He simply nodded and let his head fall back down to the pillow.

  Gryphon set out at a jog through the sleeping camp, trying not to think about Zo doubting his character. Hiding from the reality that she was right to doubt him.

  He’d lied to her by not disclosing his plans to leave. His betrayal was every bit as cold as her mistrust. But pain was pain, whether a person deserved to feel it or not.

  He tried to draw air into his lungs, but his windpipe was still too constricted by his own panic to allow it. He passed through the training field and up into the foothills where he’d spent time with Zo. When he finally reached the top, he dropped to his hands and knees and gasped and sputtered on the little air he could draw in. An angry, guttural sound escaped his lips. So weak. He hated himself for feeling.

  He collapsed on the ground and felt his racing heartbeat against the rocky soil beneath him. Turning his head to one side, his cheek pressed against the dirt, Gryphon’s breathing relaxed and he finally managed to slip into that numb place he’d known well from a childhood filled with beatings and systematic starvation.

  He didn’t know how long he lay there, shirtless and cold in the foothills, before the startled cry of a man ripped him from his semi-conscious state.

  Pushing to his knees, Gr
yphon strained to listen. If he wasn’t mistaken, he thought the sound came from the slot canyon at the north entrance of the valley.

  Another shout. Maybe a hundred yards off. Definitely by the north entrance.

  Gryphon shot to his feet and sprinted in that direction, cursing all the while that he didn’t have any kind of weapon on him. He considered shouting to wake people from the camp below, but that would cost him the element of surprise, and he had no idea what enemy—if any—he’d face. He could only imagine it was the menace who started the fire and had been doing other damage to injure Gryphon’s reputation.

  Not again.

  Gryphon slowed the closer he got to the north entrance. From somewhere in the slot canyon, a man cried out in pain, the sound echoing softly off the stone walls, too faint to be heard by the sleeping camp below. Another man—who Gryphon assumed to be an Allied soldier—sprinted out of the slot canyon, pressing a horn to his lips to signal for help. But the horn only sputtered. The man unable to draw a full breath as he ran.

  Stop, you fool. Blow the horn.

  Behind the Allied runner, silhouetted like a lithe demon, another man gave rapid pursuit, a spear held just above his shoulder and a shield strapped to his back.

  Ram.

  Before Gryphon had time to react, the Ram hitched up his front leg and launched the spear.

  Gryphon bolted from his place in the brush and sprinted toward the Ram. Below them, the anticipated cry of the Allied soldier sounded right before Gryphon opened his arms wide and lunged at the spear-thrower.

  Training took over thought. They landed hard. Hands clasped the sides of Gryphon’s head, ready to break his neck with a single movement. But Gryphon anticipated the attack and in quick succession, thrust his palm upward into the Ram’s nose, threw his arms out wide, braced the man’s shoulders, and drove his knee up into his groin.

  Only a cheap shot when life isn’t on the line.

  He grabbed a fistful of the Ram’s hair, unsheathed the dagger Ram liked to carry at their calf, and pressed the blade to the Ram’s neck.

  “How many are you?”

  The blade moved over the man’s bobbing Adam’s apple, but he didn’t say a word.

  A sharp whistle called out from the slot canyon. A distinct sound that brought back memories of Gryphon’s training.

  A whistle to check for status.

  One whistle response: use caution. Two whistles: All clear.

  Gryphon pressed his eyes together and whispered, “Forgive me,” before dragging his knife across the man’s throat, severing the windpipe.

  He lifted the man’s round shield from off the ground, and replied with two quick whistles.

  Movement caught Gryphon’s attention from the direction he had just traveled. Had an Allied soldier followed him from camp? Was it possible that the weak alert of the lookout had actually awoken someone?

  Torn between warning the Allied soldier coming up the hill and giving away his identity to the Ram behind him, Gryphon stood frozen for a moment, surprised that there really wasn’t a question that his primary goal was to protect the sorry fool who followed him from camp.

  He’d have to play this out.

  It was impossible to tell just how many men waited at the mouth of the slot canyon. Ram scouts usually traveled in pairs. But what if this wasn’t a traditional scouting party? What if Barnabas had dispatched a full mess unit?

  It might explain why Laden’s scouts had yet to report movement at the Gate. Multiple scenarios raced through Gryphon’s mind, his training so ingrained in him he barely hesitated before deciding on a course of action.

  The round shield blocked his bare chest, and he made sure to pretend like he watched his back as he made his way back to the slot canyon. Whoever waited for him at the top would never question that their man had survived the attack. Gryphon’s only chance depended now on Ram pride and the cover of night.

  Blood dripped down onto the handle of the knife. Gryphon wiped his hand along his bare stomach and gripped the knife again, rolling it over and over in his hand. This little blade and round shield seemed too insignificant to face an unknown threat. But for the sake of the stranger at his back, he had to convince the Ram he was their brother.

  As Gryphon moved closer to the slick-rock canyon entrance, a voice from within carried barely to his ears. “Two teams. Reconnaissance only. Stick to the perimeter of the valley and report in thirty, before the next watch.”

  The owner of the voice wasn’t visible, still protected by the walls of the slot canyon.

  Gryphon stood frozen, his shield and the cloak of night still hiding his identity. This was no scouting team. Those were the orders of a mess leader, which meant around twenty of the most lethal men in the region. And Gryphon was the only thing standing between them and Barnabas learning not only the location of the Allied Camp but their numbers.

  For Zo, Joshua, and Tess’s sake, he couldn’t let that happen.

  Two groups of men spilled from the slot canyon, each keeping to the outer rock wall. Gryphon ducked his head, holding up his shield-bearing arm to block his face as he darted into the canyon and took up position at the back of the smaller group.

  His hands shook, his breathing spastic and too loud as he peered over his shield to make certain his ruse had actually worked.

  No shouts of alarm. The Ram focused, as they were trained to do, on the potential threats ahead.

  Gryphon left a good ten feet between himself and the last man, and after only following for a few feet, carefully retreated backward into the narrow slot canyon. He sprinted into the depths of the suffocating, five-foot wide slot canyon, jumping over the body of what appeared to be a Wolf soldier before reaching a thin gap that required him to turn sideways to squeeze through the towering, pinched walls of slick rock. These narrow walls that had once triggered his fear of tight spaces now might be his salvation.

  He took a giant breath, and praying for some kind of miracle, yelled at the top of his lungs. “Ram!” He shouted the warning over and over again, hoping the fool walking up the hill after him might hear and sprint back to warn the Allies.

  He prayed he could hold the mess unit off long enough for others to come.

  The pounding of boots over stone echoed along the walls of the slot canyon. Gryphon peered over the shield through the two-foot-wide gap, crouched into a battle stance and gripping the small knife now tacky with Ram blood.

  The tight canyon was so dark, Gryphon barely saw the first Ram rush toward the gap with spear held high above his head.

  Gryphon hefted his shield upward to block the Ram’s spear as it shot through the narrow gap. Thrusting his knife up and under the shield, Gryphon’s blade sliced through flesh all the way to the hilt. The Ram cried out in pain. His spear clattered to the ground near Gryphon’s feet.

  Blindly reaching for the spear on the ground, Gryphon heard the gravelly sound of the Ram he’d stuck sliding down the rock, trapped by his brothers at his back, stone on each side, and Gryphon’s shield in front.

  Another spear lodged into Gryphon’s shield. The mess hoisted a man—probably their Striker, up and over their dying brother, but Gryphon anticipated the attack and jabbed his newly acquired spear up at the elevated man now struggling to reach him.

  Another kill. Another addition to the fast-forming wall of bodies.

  With the way blocked by the dying, the Ram pulled their wounded brothers from the crevasse. Gryphon doubled his grip on the spear. Sweat rolled into his eyes and he blinked it away.

  Silence. Heart pounding in his ears.

  Armor scraped stone. A Ram soldier spidered up the wall above Gryphon, high enough that a jab from Gryphon’s spear wouldn’t reach him.

  Gryphon could have thrown his spear, but couldn’t risk losing his best weapon for survival.

  Another Ram soldier slid through the gap on ground level, but also stayed just out of Gryphon’s reach. The man above had made it through the gap at
least twelve feet above his head. Gryphon held his shield aloft, while at the same time driving the spear through the gap toward the man at ground level, but he was still too far out of his reach.

  Too many threats to Gryphon’s one shield and spear.

  Where are the Allies?

  Another man shimmied through the pinched rock, using the shoulders of his brother on the ground as a stepping-stone.

  Gryphon didn’t have time. He’d have to take one of them out and expose himself to the others.

  The decision was made for him when the highest climber pushed off the rock and fell through the air with spear cocked, ready to strike.

  Gryphon crouched into a ball, raised the shield overhead and braced for impact.

  It came like a boulder from the sky. The Ram connected with his shield and rolled to stand behind him. Gryphon thrust his spear upward and caught him in the thigh. Behind them two more Ram scurried through the narrow gap. Gryphon turned and threw his only knife into the gap, turning back to block the attack of the man behind him before even seeing his knife connect with its target.

  Fire sliced his side from rib to navel as he spun out of reach from a blade. Trusting his strength more than his eyes, he tackled the man, earning him another gash—this time in the shoulder—as they went down together.

  Gryphon hit his head against stone in the fall, but managed to roll on top of the Ram.

  New shouts echoed off stone. Cries of pain. Cries of those inflicting pain.

  The Allies. Finally!

  Gryphon pinned down the Ram’s arms as he sat on his chest, but the Ram wrapped his legs around Gryphon’s torso and pulled him onto his back. The impact forced the air from Gryphon’s lungs.

  Movement caught his eye—a small figure climbing the rock high above. A child? His vision spun as he struggled with the man on top of him. The battle sounds swelled and died inside his head—heartbeats alternating between awake and unconscious.

  Awake. The Ram searching the ground for a weapon.

  Darkness.