Ari Goes To War: (The Adventures of Ari #2)

by P. J. Sky

  “Sorry mate,” said Ari.

  Turning back, she picked up pace. She ran around the mangled form of the collapsed tower and began to sprint up the ridge. Her boots slipped in the soft, powdery dust. Digging her sticky hands into the red earth, she dragged herself up the ridge one handhold at a time. Looking back, she could see, all across the basin, followers being herded into circles as if to be put into pens. The lion was now tugging against a rope leash. She could see soldiers dragging from the stage the dark, diminutive form of the Bone Pointer. Tanks and trucks were taking up positions along the edges of the basin, their engines clattering, brown exhaust smoke churning from their pipes.

  Ari scrambled over the top of the ridge. She could see the still burning silos and the lines of discarded railway cars. A line of military vehicles had parked up between the cars. Soldiers moved between them, their guns raised, while others stood around with clipboards, making marks on paper. If Ari were to have guessed, there were as many soldiers here as there were in the basin. Below her, beside the tracks, she overheard a soldier say; “It’s a shame about the tower, but otherwise most of the equipment seems intact.” Then Ari heard footsteps close by.

  “Well, well, big fish.”

  Ari froze. She recognised the voice. She turned and saw a soldier with his gun raised, and there beside him, arms covered in snake tattoos, was Commander Krebs.

  The Commander flashed her that sideways grin. “You an’ I, we got some unfinished business.”

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  Ari shuddered. “Wha’ do ya want?

  Krebs placed his hands on his hips and chewed at his lip. “Ya see, I can’t help feelin’ a little disrespected by you, and that ain’t right. That’s the kind of thin’ that needs nippin’ in the bud, right before it starts to flower.”

  Other soldiers seemed to be scrambling up the ridge to join them on the small patch of flat ground at the top.

  “Now we in the Black Mulga have a code. Ya got a problem, ya fight it out.” Krebs looked around at his growing audience. “Because ya know, if ya ain’t prepared to raise ya hands an’ fight, ya ain’t really got a problem.”

  Krebs began to remove his black leather gloves, one finger at a time.

  “I don’t wanna fight ya,” said Ari.

  “Didn’t seem that way back in Freehaven. Seemed like you were real interested in stickin’ ya nose right up my business. An’ ya know the trouble with that? Do it too often an’ ya liable to get it cut off.”

  Krebs snapped his fingers as if to imitate a pair of bolt cutters.

  “Well, that was then,” said Ari. “Ya wanted the mine didn’t ya? So ya got what ya wanted.”

  Krebs held out his hand and pointed to her. “See, that’s the problem with landlubbers. Ya think it’s all about winnin’. Ya think if ya win, it’s over. But fightin’ a war ain’t nothin’ to do with winnin’ and everything to do with honour. Ya think anyone here thinks it’s worth dyin’ for a mine just because the mayor of Alice wants it back an’ kicking out coal? No one dies for any cause ‘cept their own. Future generations might just go an’ sing songs about me an’ how I took the mine. They might care about all a this, but that don’t mean shit in the here an’ now when someone walks into a man’s home an’ puts a knife to his throat.”

  Krebs clenched his fist. His hand shuddered. His cheeks were turning red. Down his forehead, beads of sweat caught the harsh sunlight and a single vein bulged.

  “I coulda shot you in the back but I didn’t, cause I got honour. An’ ya know, ya got the princess out the way. So now it’s you an’ me, one on one, right here, right now.”

  Ari shook her head. “Back in Freehaven ya didn’t say nothin’ about honour. It was just about takin’ what the other guy has, an’ now ya got what the other guy has.”

  The Commander’s face was really red now. He spread his feet and raised his fists. “Yeah, but then ya pissed me off.”

  Ari backed away. The circle of soldiers that had formed around them widened.

  Krebs took a step forwards. “So come on, get those fists up sailor.” He rolled his jaw, took one step forwards and jabbed his fist.

  Ari ducked out of the way and spun around him. “I don’t wanna fight ya, not like this.”

  Krebs spun around. “Ain’t givin’ ya a choice.”

  A hand from the crowd lunged Ari forwards. Krebs hit her squarely in the gut. Ari collapsed on her knees and wheezed, a round pain in her gut. She reached for the blade at her ankle and realised it still lay on the stage.

  “Come on sailor, use those fists.”

  Ari raised her fists limply, and Krebs struck her squarely in the nose. Pain burst from the centre of her face and she felt warm liquid trickle down her chin. She licked her lips and tasted iron.

  Krebs turned to the soldiers. “Ya know ya makin’ this too easy.”

  Ari looked at her fists; grubby, oily, still stained brown with the dried blood of the Bone Pointer. She clenched them tightly, the knuckles whitening. Wheezing, she got to her feet and turned to face the Commander.

  The Commander spun around and grinned. “Now that’s better, come on, spread those legs, otherwise when I come at ya again ya gonna topple right over.”

  “Ya think I need any advice from you?”

  “All right then.” With his left hand, Krebs beckoned Ari closer.

  Ari jabbed forwards and struck the Commander’s chest. It was like striking a wall. Pain burst across her knuckles.

  “That’s the spirit,” said Krebs and struck her hard on the chin.

  Ari fell flat on her back. The Commander kicked red dust at her.

  Around her, the soldiers laughed. Ari’s jaw ached. She gritted her teeth, a red heat rising in her gut. In that moment she hated the Commander.

  “Come on sailor, get up, take another one.”

  Ari pulled herself to her feet.

  “Come on big fish, be a sport.”

  Ari clenched her fists, dug her heel into the dirt and charged the Commander.

  The Commander's eyes widened. One punch to the chest, another in the gut, and another on his chin.

  The Commander hit her squarely over the side of her head. Ari peeled away and staggered around the circle, her head spinning. The faces of the other soldiers blurred and little spots of light pinpricked her vision.

  “Ya gettin’ better, big fish. But ya gotta really work on that anger, work on that aggression. Ya gotta really want to win. Ya gotta feel that same injustice I feel.”

  Ari gasped and spat blood from her mouth. Her muscles tightened. She wheeled around and struck her fist like a hammer across the Commander’s jaw.

  The Commander staggered backwards, a little red blood escaping from his freshly split lip.

  Ari straightened and looked the Commander squarely in the eyes. “Ya know what,” she said. “I ain’t got no quarrel with you, an I’ve killed too many folk already. Maybe you could be one more, but I don’t want that. An’ I ain’t got nothin’ to prove to you, an’ I ain’t got nothin’ to learn from you, an’ I got better things to fight for than honour. So if ya gonna finish it, finish it, an’ I can return to the earth all the quicker. I ain’t got nothin’ better to do right now anyway.”

  The Commander grinned. He reached up with his fingers and wiped some of the red liquid from his bloody lip. He rolled his jaw and looked around at his men.

  Ari held her breath. The Commander’s eyes returned to hers.

  “Ya know kid, ya got spirit, an' ya saved the princess, an' ya did ‘ave that pretty paper that said I ain’t not supposed to touch ya. So maybe I’ll cut ya a break this time.”

  “Ya don’t need to do me no favours,” said Ari.

  The Commander nodded. “I know, so this ain’t no favour. Let’s call it a professional courtesy.”

  The Commander turned and started to walk away.

  Ari sighed. Her legs began to shiver and she could feel the strength draining from her body. More than anything right now, she wanted to collapse on
the ground and sleep for a month.

  The commander stopped and looked back.

  “If, right now, if I was bein’ nice, an’ I ain’t but if I was, an’ I asked ya if ya wanted anythin’, what would ya say?”

  Ari sucked at the corner of her lip. “All I wan’ right now is a ride back to Bo.”

  The Commander grinned. “That can be arranged.”

  Ari cast her eyes past the soldiers, down the ridge and into the basin towards the groups of herded followers. “An’ wha’ about them?”

  The Commander shrugged. “I guess we’ll need workers for the mine, once we get that fire under control.”

  “Slaves, ya mean?”

  The Commander spat blood onto the ground and squinted at her. “Way I see it, it’s just bad luck sometimes for the fishes that gets caught in my net. But I made certain commitments, an’ we ain’t gonna make coal shipments to Alice without fishes to dig up the coal. We’ll be diggin’ the stuff up, but we won’t be settin’ the price.”

  “Who will be then?”

  The Commander grinned. “Why, the mayor of Alice of course.”

  Titus Corinth.

  The city, thought Ari, or the only one that matters; Alice. Everything always leads back to Alice.

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  As the great red sun began to eat into the horizon, the silhouettes of the tall, spindle-like towers emerged from the rolling dust clouds, each encrusted with blinking, coloured lights like precious jewels.

  The captain nodded. “There she be. The city they call Alice.” His right hand pulled on the burner while his left hand draped over the big, spoked wheel. The hard, orange glow of the burner illuminated the dark figures of Starla, Keshia and Liviana.

  Far below, against the setting sun, the dead straight lines of the railway tracks glinted like slender canals of molten lava and then were consumed by the rolling dust that moved in blue tongues across the barren flats. Visible, far off to their right, were the shattered remains of a drained dam and the dead course of a river long gone. The open land immediately around the city was reduced to a dead, flat talc.

  With the promise of the coming night, a chill now blew through the thin air and Keshia hugged her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. She’d never before laid eyes on Alice, so often known only as The City. Her eyes traced the jagged contours that flickered in the evening sun like molten gold.

  “And they’ll let me in?” asked Keshia. She took a sideways glance at the mysterious, tall figure in the blue robe.

  Starla nodded. Beneath her hood, her sapphire eyes glowed like water. “Something tells me they know we’re coming.”

  Keshia crossed her arms. Something continued to bother her. She and Ari had been sent on a mission to rescue someone who never should have been there in the first place. “What were you doing out here, anyway? I thought no one was supposed to ever leave the city.”

  “No one ever is,” replied Starla. “But I’m not anyone. And in reality, people leave the city all the time.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, the city has a lot of interests beyond its walls.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, its mines mostly, and other places too. The city likes to pretend it doesn’t need the world beyond its walls, but in reality it couldn’t survive without it. But I was trying something new. I wanted to help the people on the outside. I thought, if we can’t let people into the city from the outside, and we can’t knock down the wall, why not take the city to them? Why not feed and educate them and give them the same opportunities we have?”

  Keshia nodded. “So, like giving alms to the poor?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, in the convent, if people were really poor or hungry then the church would give them bread or water or even shelter. That’s… what they did with me.”

  A lump formed in Keshia’s throat and she thought of the friends from the convent she’d lost. She remembered how they’d laugh at the most stupid things and how the mother superior always took these things so seriously and that made it all the funnier.

  “You were poor?” asked Starla.

  “I was an orphan, ever since I can remember. None of the kids in the convent had parents. But they gave me alms and I took it and never thanked them for it.”

  Keshia swallowed. They were good people, she thought. I don’t know why, but I never really thought of that before. I saw myself as an outsider, and I resented the rules and the endless lessons. I only ever thought of getting away. And outside the walls of Bo, I pitied all those refugees that only thought of their lost way of life, instead of mourning their loss with them. Because, in the wake of the Black Mulga’s fire and destruction, something had been lost. In the wake of a warlord’s army, many thousands of ordinary lives were simply scattered in the wind. How could they not feel lost? How could they not look back? How could they limit the scope of their future to a life of thieving on the streets of Bo? And how could I not look back with them, to the fussing nuns and the hot meals and warm beds and the friendships. She remembered the faces of Jericho and Marie and her voice started to crack.

  “I feel more a part of them now than I ever did while I was there.”

  Starla placed a hand on Keshia’s shoulder.

  Keshia sniffed away a tear. “I never even said goodbye to them.”

  “Maybe you didn’t have to?”

  Keshia shrugged. “Doesn’t make it right though. It doesn’t make any of it right.”

  “I know,” said Starla. “There’s so much wrong in this place. So much to make right.”

  Keshia remembered the mother superior waving her finger when she’d caught her out of bed after hours, or when she’d eaten before saying grace. And now, for the first time since leaving the convent, she actually missed her.

  Keshia watched as the towers grew until they consumed the horizon, reaching out from the dust like a sea of porcupine spikes that flickered like stars.

  “Have you changed your mind?” asked Keshia. “About giving alms to the outside?”

  Starla shook her head. “Not at all. Ending up at the mine had nothing to do with the mission. That still stands, we can still help people.”

  The dust clouds parted and the great wall came into view, a vast and ancient rampart, bristling with guard towers, that formed an endless ring around the city. Seen from the outside, the city had the appearance of a place that could no longer grow outwards so instead grew upwards in an attempt to escape its earthly bounds.

  “And what about the wall?” asked Keshia. “Do you think it could ever come down?”

  Starla was surprisingly quick to answer. “I hope so, yes.”

  Keshia’s eyes widened. “When?”

  “When the time is right. You see, I’ve come to realise that it’s about managing expectations. Do it too fast and a lot of things could go wrong.”

  “Like the Black Mulga?”

  “Perhaps, but the city has been doing this for years, twisting the outside to its own needs. And it twists the inside too. It… won’t be easy for you, you know.”

  Keshia nodded. “I guess you knew Ari pretty well.”

  The corner of Starla’s lip twisted upwards. “I did, once, I think, as well as anyone can know her.”

  “You think she’ll come to the city?”

  “I think so, yes, one day. When she’s ready.”

  “What about me?” asked Liviana. The freckled, white-haired girl moved to Starla’s side. There was something strange about this girl; since leaving the mine, she seemed almost scared to speak, as if something troubled her deeply. “You won’t let him throw me out again, will you?”

  “Well,” said Starla, “there will have to be some exceptions made. I’ll speak with my father, he’s not the same as he was.”

  “Why do I find that hard to believe?”

  Starla sighed. “Liviana, you’ll have to trust me.”

  “You know,” said Liviana, “I’m sorry about the Morning Star too. It was
that place…”

  “I know,” said Starla.

  Keshia looked at Liviana. “Were you in the Bone Pointer’s trance too?”

  “Umm… you know,” said Liviana, “I think I’ve always been in a trance. I’ve never really been, well, me. Perhaps I can have a chance now…” Liviana looped her arm around Starla’s. “Starla, I want to change. I don’t care anymore what anyone else thinks. In the city, we’ll all look out for each other, right?”

  “We can try,” said Starla.

  “All three of us,” said Liviana. She rested her eyes on Keshia. “We’re sisters now.”

  Keshia grinned.

  “And Starla,” said Liviana, “you actually have a sister now. I mean, a real one.”

  Starla nodded. “Yes, somewhere.” She looked at Keshia. “And I really do hope that someday she comes back to us.”

  And so Keshia and Starla and Liviana, and the captain perhaps, looked out from the deck of the balloon towards the vast city of shimmering towers and whatever adventures awaited them in their new lives on the inside of the city walls. And Keshia wondered about Ari, her friend from the streets of Bo. Ari was tough, Ari was resourceful, Ari could do anything, unless she needed someone to pick her up when she fell down, or drive a truck for her, or free her from a lion’s cage, or, well, just someone to talk nicely to people for her, because she wasn’t very good at that either.

  Briefly, Keshia looked back, towards the vast, red wasteland and the world she’d now leave behind, as it disappeared into the growing night and out of her life.

  Ari, I hope you’re okay out there, and I hope you know what you’re doing. You know, I don’t think I ever saw you happy. Perhaps you can find your way back to us? You have family here; three sisters, and one real one at that. I never had a real sister, or a real anything. Starla’s awful lucky to have a sister like you. So travel safe, and know that we’ll be waiting, on the other side of the wall.

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