Avenger: Book Eight in the Enhanced Series

by T. C. Edge

  We talk in quiet tones that no one else can hear, West still keen to maintain his status as a mute. Each time someone stirs under a nearby tree, or looks set to wander by, his jaw clamps shut and he drops his eyes.

  “Why don’t you want anyone to hear you speak?” I ask him softly.

  He surveys the village before answering.

  “I don’t like questions,” he whispers. “Questions need answers. If I don’t speak, no one asks me anything. Except Rhoth.”

  “And me,” I say. “Why did you choose to speak to me today?”

  He shrugs.

  “You’re an outsider,” he informs me with no bitter edge to his words. “And you’re a girl.”

  “So what about the girls in your village? Do you speak with them?”

  He shifts his head left and right.

  “There’s no one special?”

  “No one.”

  I lift my arm and lay it over his shoulder.

  “Well I’m glad you spoke with me,” I say. “It makes me feel special.”

  I kiss his cheek, and his skin turns ruddy with a hot blush.

  He glances his eyes at me and then sends them off away across the village.

  Sitting alongside him, I realise that my watch was smashed during the fight. When I check it, it says that it’s only a little past midnight. On closer inspection I see that the dials are no longer working.

  West watches me, then lifts his eyes briefly to the stars.

  “It’s about 4 AM,” he says.

  “You can tell from the sky?”

  He nods.

  “My brother and me would navigate by the sun and moon and stars when we came here. It’s what people in the outerlands do. Not many have watches like you.”

  “Maybe you could teach me sometime?”

  He smiles like a child, innocent.

  I eventually fall asleep alongside the boy from far away, both of us fading away into the blackness under the canopy of night. The mountain air is cool and refreshing, the ambient sounds of the wind and wilds peaceful. I drift off with the thought that used to always pervade my dreams: that living here up in the hills, away from the smog and sounds of the city, wouldn’t be such a bad thing at all.

  When morning comes, it takes a little while for my mind to wake as the village comes alive. My eyes creak and the forms of the Fangs lift themselves from the floor. West stirs beside me, remembers where he is, and quickly launches to his feet and paces off to check on Rhoth. I follow shortly after to find my brother still at rest.

  “He’ll be sleeping for a little while longer,” I’m told by a healer. “We gave him quite a strong tonic.”

  In the back of my mind, there’s a lurking urgency, calling for our quick return to the city. But it’s beaten back by the tranquillity here, the beauty, the deep need in my bones to purge myself of the stifling smells of the city for a time, to detox and clear my system.

  Instead, I wander. West and I continue to bond, travelling a little higher up the mountain passes, accompanied by Kervan who sets about deepening my knowledge of this place. I try my best to keep my mind from the bigger threats within it, but the old Rooster seems intent on bringing it up on regular occasions.

  When we reach a higher platform, the air chilling my bones, another startling view across the wider plains is presented. I look out and, despite a desire to deny it, look as far as I can across the western lands, searching for the camps set at the base of the distant mountains.

  The air today is clearer, the morning crisp, giving me a better view of what I saw the day before. And, like my brother, I note the movement of bodies, ants crawling through the woods. Hundreds of them. Thousands. A threat we cannot ignore. A threat that my grandfather foretold.

  West looks at me as I stare, my eyes wide and unblinking, my body still as stone. When I finally withdraw, he remarks in wonder when I tell him just how far I can see. To him, the mountain range in the distance is a thin line on the horizon, the woods at its base a blur of green, the plains a featureless splash of colour and little more.

  Yet still, what he can see down the mountain passes, and through the scruffy woods, and over the nearest of the plains, draws some memory to his mind. He looks back in time, to when he was a little boy, crossing raging rivers with his brother, evading dangers, hunting for food.

  I marvel at how they made it this far. How could two boys of such an age live through the wilds for so many weeks and months? Then I recall again that his brother didn’t make it. That somewhere not too far from here, towards the western edge of the forest, a Shadow tore him from his little brother’s arms, and left the child alone.

  Alone, with no one and nothing. Until Rhoth found him.

  And musing on it all, I think again of the treachery of my grandfather. These boys trekked thousands of miles through perilous lands to come here, just like so many others have before. People would see the High Tower, the beacon of hope, high above the trees as they grew close. They’d feel the pull of safety as they reached the gates, wondering just what lay beyond, what treasures and wonderful things might be hidden within.

  They’d see soldiers come, and watch the gates open, and smile and hug and thank their gods that they managed to make it. And then it would all change.

  The soldiers would take them to experience new types of torture, to have their minds explored and examined until all value was found. Hope would turn to ash, and their minds would be pulled apart in ways they could never imagine. Then, when their use was spent, they’d be culled, terminated, tossed into the fire and forgotten.

  That is the fate that so many have shared.

  But now, when they come, there’s no High Tower to be seen above the trees. No beacon to invite them forward. Those who come to spy on the city will know that it is weak. They will pass the information back to their allies, gathering in the west, and a brewing need for revenge will swell among the masses.

  And perhaps, in the end, it’s a vengeance they deserve.

  30

  When Kervan, West and I return to the village, I find my brother mysteriously absent from his patch. It takes a few questions for a few villagers before his whereabouts is ascertained.

  It’s a child who delivers the verdict. His finger lifts, higher and higher, until it points to the uppermost point of the village.

  “There,” he says. “He went up there.”

  Leaving West and Kervan on the ground, I scale the hundred-metre ladder to the lookout platform, thinking it foolish as I go that Zander made the climb with his left shoulder in such a state. I grumble louder with each ascending rung, until I reach the summit and find my brother in silent thought.

  He stands, statuesque and still, his eyes set on the very same corner of the earth I myself have so recently examined. Yet there’s some look in his eye, beyond the blank stare, that suggests he’s seeing something I didn’t.

  My voice is tense when I ask: “What’s the matter.”

  He barely seemed to notice me appear. My words spring him from his reverie, his eyes blinking and un-glazing. He turns to me, and his eyes are hooded.

  “Movement,” he says. “I see movement.”

  I instinctively swing my eyes over to the far west, but don’t zoom in.

  “Yeah, I saw some too. They’re moving in the trees.”

  “No,” comes his sharp reply. “They’re moving from the trees.”

  Now I do zoom in. It was perhaps only an hour or so ago that I was further up the mountain with Kervan and West, gazing out towards the faraway range. Now, when I stare forward, I see something that I didn’t before.

  My brother is right. They’re heading east, stepping from the woods and onto the plains. Leaving the dark greens of the woods and onto the lighter tones of the expansive grasslands, their numbers are more clearly visible.

  It’s a force unlike any I’ve ever seen. They spread forth like the snow of an avalanche down a mountainside, thousands of tiny black dots merging to form a shadow that extends from the bas
e of the mountains. I pull back in horror and find my brother staring right at me.

  “One of their spies must have alerted them to the ceasefire,” he says. “They must realise this is the best time to attack…”

  “How long will they take to cover that distance?”

  “A few days at least. Those mountains are over a hundred miles away as the crow flies. If they have supplies, it could be a week or more. The terrain looks mostly clear, but they’ll need to zigzag along the easiest routes. It will give us time to prepare.”

  I heave a breath into my lungs at the absolute disgust of what I’m about to say.

  “So, Cromwell was right,” I say. “We’re going to have to work together on this?”

  “It looks that way,” he offers. “Now come on, we need to feed back to the others.”

  We descend the ladder as quickly and safely as we can, my brother struggling a little with his injured shoulder and needing to take the occasional break on the way down. Up here, they have no access to the healing lotions available in town, and their herbal alternatives clearly aren’t going to be sufficient.

  Eventually, he plants feet on firm ground again, and we waste no time in informing the others of our plans to return to the city. Rhoth, weakened by his injuries, doesn’t seem in any fit state to go anywhere quite yet, so it looks like it’s just my brother and me from here on out.

  We leave them as brothers and sisters, as kin. I hug Rhoth tenderly, avoiding his most sensitive wounds, and drag West into a long embrace as well. His hands hover around my back without pressing down, as though he’s never been this close to a girl. Then I kiss his cheek again, and it flares red once more.

  “Stay safe now,” I say to him. “I hope I’ll see you soon.”

  With the Fangs nearby, I know he won’t answer. Then his jaw slips open, and despite their presence, he whispers: “You too.”

  We leave Rhoth with a promise that we’ll repay him for all his help. It seems a hollow promise, and one we don’t linger on given the weight of grief in the air. I suspect, however, that his war with the Bear-Skins ended last night. And that even if there are many more of them out there, the loss of Bjorn will have brought a swift resolution to their conflict.

  “They’re marching,” Zander tells him before we set off out the gate and down the hill. “They’ll cross the plains and reach your woods within days. If you can, I suggest you move your tribe further to the east for now. And if you wish it, we will give you sanctuary in the city.”

  “No Fang will ever step foot in your city,” he bites. “Not while I draw breath. We will defend our lands if we need to. I have no mind to flee.”

  “But, you’ll be overrun.”

  “The people coming here are not coming for us, boy. They come for you.”

  Zander looks like he’s choosing his words carefully.

  “That’s…naïve, Rhoth,” he says. “They might consider you a threat. And if they do, you’ll all be killed.”

  “You worry about your own people. Let me worry about mine.”

  His draws the conversation to a close and turns away. As Zander and I leave, he mutters something about Rhoth’s stubbornness getting his entire tribe killed, and marches off through the gate.

  The journey back down the hillside is easier than the climb. We pass the site of the previous night’s battle and see the remains of the charred bodies and pyres, most of them still smouldering and issuing little columns of smoke. A little later, we reach the clearing, and take a short break, filling our bellies with water from the mountain spring.

  The trees get thicker as we go, and the air turns foul. Before too long we’re back in the mire, the mist thickening and that familiar note of burning prickling at my skin. We cover all patches of flesh, don our gas masks, and move on as the hours of the afternoon quickly pass by.

  The fates seem willing to give us a free run today, our passage back through the woods going without incident. It’s a good thing too, distracted and weakened as we are. We reach the edge of the woods as the sky turns, the clouds gathering, heavy and grey and ready to spit rain.

  Across the short clearing, the old town comes into view, and the wreckage of the church in its centre. I’d all but forgotten about it with everything that’s gone on.

  We venture on as quickly as possible, and find the old headquarters of the Nameless little more than a steaming pile of beams and wood and blackened stone. I step into the rubble, and among the debris see burnt forms of men, consumed by fire within the main hall, their bodies little more than black skeletons now.

  I look away. Zander doesn’t.

  “Bjorn must have locked the doors. He burned them alive.”

  Alfred. The technicians who stayed here. They were non-combatants in our war, purveyors of information and nothing more. But here, in the wilds, they got caught up in another. Killed by Bjorn as he hunted Rhoth down.

  We don’t linger there. Zander takes a final look at the place where he’s spent so much of his life, and leads me back towards our car, still parked a little way down the dusty old road.

  We step in just as the rain comes down. It taps on the metal roof, a strangely peaceful sound, soon joined by that of the gently rumbling engine, and the grinding of tires over pebbles and damp earth.

  We return the way we came, the sheet of precipitation from above growing thicker, more violent, the closer we loom towards the grand gate and towering walls of the city. I see through the mist and rain and fix my eyes to the battlements, still being worked into place as the outer perimeter of Haven is bolstered and reinforced.

  I imagine, as we drive, that I’m someone from far away. That I’ve come here seeking peace and freedom and safety. I imagine how intimidating it must be to look upon this place for the first time, even after travelling through such dangerous lands. I imagine that I’d look at the walls and think that nothing could ever get through them, that as soon as I pass the threshold I’ll be free from harm forever.

  Yet, the truth of what lies within is just as harsh and cruel as what lies beyond. It’s a dressed-up cruelty, a cruelty that wears a smart suit and smells nice and has well trimmed hair and a clean-shaven face. It’s a cruelty that smiles at you and invites you in with a warm, friendly tone. It’s a cruelty that lies to your face, pretending to be something it isn’t, before shedding its mask and revealing its true self when it’s too late for you to flee.

  It’s the worst kind of cruelty. A cruelty that masquerades as something else. Within the wilds, what you see is what you get. There’s no lie or deceit, no pretence at all. People like Bjorn show themselves for what they are and act accordingly. They don’t profess to be anything different.

  But here, within this great city, the levels of deceit run deep. Simple people come here hoping for a simple life, but all they’re met with is torture and death.

  I look upon the place as we approach, and wonder whether it deserves to stay standing at all. I wonder if the entire place should be razed to the ground, and all those living within forced to start their lives anew without all of the social structures and castes and pressures city living brings.

  I wonder if it wouldn’t benefit us all. Whether the perpetual development of our society is nothing more than a slow death. Whether we wouldn’t be better of living off the land, farming, tending to our basic needs and little more.

  Such places exist. Many of them, in fact. Seeing the village of the Roosters, up away in the beautiful hills, has presented me a vision of what this world could, and should, be. We have been cursed by our own inventiveness, by this relentless pursuit for change and evolution. Yet all it has done is dull our joy, our happiness, cloud the tenets of life that really, truly matter.

  Love, friendship, loyalty, generosity, kindness. Basic fundamentals that have been skewed and misshapen, muddied by the scrap for power and control that has seen the strong rise and the weak fall, trampled beneath their boots.

  My grandfather, and the doctrines of his people, call for nothing but
control. Their understanding of the human spirit, and the vital emotions that give it life, is too limited to truly grasp the horror of what they’ve been doing.

  Now, it seems, the world is fighting back. The masses from afar are gathering to finish the job that we have started. They will come to seek vengeance on the city that has caused such pain. They will march and fight and seek to redress the balance, set the world back into its natural order.

  And, when I really think about it, I wonder if that isn’t the best thing for us all…

  31

  The main street leading to where the High Tower stood is always busy. But today, as Zander and I cruise in during the early evening, the rain now subsiding, it’s busier than ever.

  Hovering around, dirty and tired and being arranged by our soldiers, I set my eyes upon the hundreds of men, women, and children from the mines. The car grinds to a halt and we step out, and immediately I search frantically for the grand form of Drum within the mess.

  Usually, he’s so easy to spot. When standing around children or even regular adults, he’s an imposing figure, liable to snatch up your attention like a madman shouting doomsday prophesies in the street. But here, with our population of Brutes swelling by the day, he isn’t quite so conspicuous.

  I do, however, see the form of Magnus nearby. I rush on over and quickly deliver a barrage of questions like a chattering machinegun.

  “Did they all get back safe? Did anyone get killed? Did the Stalkers leave them at the gates? When did they return?”

  His big palms open wide to calm me.

  “Wow,” he says. “Um, OK. Well, yes all are safe and accounted for according to reports. The, erm, the Stalkers did indeed leave them at the gates as I believe Lady Orlando requested, and never stepped foot in the city. And…the people returned a little earlier this afternoon, perhaps a couple of hours ago. All is well, Brie.”