by Laura Taylor
Dusk headed back to the fire circle to collect more wood from where Mist and Torrent were cutting it up, and she passed Nicholas coming the other way, a long plank of wood balanced on his shoulder. “Morning,” he greeted her. “A tree came down on one of the latrines,” he said, indicating the plank on his shoulder. “The best we can do for now is prop it up again, but it’s going to have to be completely rebuilt.”
She gave him a wry grin. “Just when you think you’re making progress -”
Nicholas suddenly collapsed with a cry, the plank hitting the ground with a thunk.
“What…? Nicholas?” Dusk rushed to help him, turning him over and seeing…
“RAIDERS!” she yelled at the top of her lungs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Dusk thrust the plank aside and hauled Nicholas to his feet, supporting him as he clutched his right leg, an arrow now protruding from his thigh. Her cry was taken up all along the village, no one questioning the message for even a second, as they all unsheathed their weapons and took cover. “This way,” she said urgently, all but dragging Nicholas over to the nearest cabin. “In here…” She dumped him on a stool, then had her sword out, rushing back to the door. She peered out -
She let loose a string of curses, ignoring the fact that a retired priest was sitting just behind her. A dozen, two dozen… maybe forty slavers came rushing down the hill, all of them on horseback and armed with bows.
“Mikey! Take Julia inside!” she heard Willow shout.
Seeing a break in the attack, Dusk darted out the door, taking cover between the cabin and the wood shed. Over near the fire circle, she saw Sky, cowering beneath the wooden platform. “Sky! The gong!” she yelled. Beneath the thunder of hooves and the yells of the slavers, she wasn’t sure if Sky would hear her, but…
Yes, good girl. The younger woman slid out from beneath the platform. She glanced around and grabbed a garden chair to use as a makeshift shield, then picked up the mallet that sat beside the gong. She struck it hard, a deep, reverberating boom sounding that would echo all the way down the valley.
A horse was charging straight for Dusk, so she braced herself, lined up her strike… At the last possible moment, she leapt out of her hiding place, striking the horse hard on the leg as it thundered past. The horse didn’t even flinch, it just hit the ground with a bone-crunching thud as the leg gave out beneath it, muscle and tendon cut straight through to the bone. The man on her back was thrown off and slammed into a stone wall. He lay still, but Dusk wasn’t taking any chances. She rushed over and slammed her sword down through his neck, blood spraying in a gruesome geyser.
Further along the path, she saw Willow take a swing at a slaver coming at her with a machete. A second man grabbed her from behind. She slammed her head back, breaking his nose, and by then, Dusk was at her side, a simple stab through the chest taking care of the first man, while Willow punched the second one in the face, then severed half the flesh in his neck with her long knife. But they were a long way from out of trouble, Dusk realised grimly. There were four more men closing in on them, and they were rapidly running out of fighters on their own side to defend them. Sword held ready, Dusk braced herself, reminding herself that she’d survived worse odds than this in the past.
Further up the village, Torrent stood boldly in the middle of the path, facing off against a slaver on a horse. He dodged out of the way as the slaver tried to run him over, spinning around with impressive speed to stab the man in the leg. His knife was long enough that it went straight through and into the horse, who shied and tossed the man to the ground. Even though he was wounded, the man nevertheless struck out at him when he went to kill him, and he had to dodge out the way in a hurry. He applied his knife to the man’s legs instead, then, seeing a bow lying on the ground nearby, simply picked it up and shot the man with an arrow. Though he was a mere novice with the weapon, at less than two metres’ range, even he couldn’t miss, and the slaver died in a gurgle of blood and froth.
Down on the lower path, there was a melee gathering, shouts and curses flowing freely, and Torrent let out a curse of his own as he saw Dusk and Willow in the middle of the horde. He quickly took stock of the enemies in his immediate vicinity. He had to get over to the women to help them!
A wooden mallet suddenly struck him on the side of the head, and he knew nothing more.
Outside Whisper’s lodge, Mei-Lien fought a tall man with a scar down his face. He was strong, but she was fast, dodging his obvious blows, causing small but significant wounds each time she struck. If she had to kill the man slowly, with a thousand cuts, then so be it. Cause him enough pain, and he’d make a mistake, and then she could -
An arrow struck her in the leg, and Mei-Lien cried out in pain, but refused to give up. She merely shifted her weight onto her other leg, and -
Something heavy hit her in the head from behind, and her knees hit the ground, her head spinning. “Get her wrists,” she heard one of them say, before she was struck over the head again. She felt the vague sensation of being lifted, but couldn’t quite work out why. A thud sounded, then her nose was full of the smell of horse. She forced her eyes open, finding that she couldn’t move her hands, and saw two men emerging from Torrent’s cabin. Mikey was beating his tiny fists against one of the men’s backs, while Julia simply cried, absolutely silent as tears slid down her face, the poor girl probably desperately confused about whether she was allowed to make noise or not.
“Let me go, you bad man!” Mikey yelled at the top of his lungs. “You bad man!”
The last section of log was nearly off the road, and Whisper clucked his tongue at the mare as she gamely surged forward. “Come on, Sweet Pea,” Whisper encouraged her, Aidan and Stormbreaker behind the log making sure it stayed steady. “Walk up. Come on, girl.”
Finally, the log was clear of the road, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. “All right, let’s get her unhitched, then we can head back to the village,” Aidan said, already undoing the knots around the log.
An odd, ringing sound echoed out of the valley, and Whisper stopped in the middle of rubbing the mare’s nose, tilting his head to listen…
“Do you hear that?” Stormbreaker asked, and Whisper quickly shushed him. The sound was faint, oddly familiar…
“The village,” he blurted, as the sound suddenly clicked into place. “The gong! Everybody, back to the village!”
Trying to stay low behind her garden chair – fuck, would a chair stop an arrow? She had no idea... – Sky beat the gong again and again. The men were only ten minutes away on foot. Half that, if they ran. Could they last that long until backup arrived?
The ground was littered with bodies, some dead, some unconscious, but Sky didn’t dare try and help any of them. Had the men heard the gong yet? How far would the sound travel? She hit it again, throwing all her strength into it.
Surely they would have heard by now? She’d seen a handful of men come running up from the paddocks where they’d been working, thuds and yells sounding as they attacked the slavers. Should she go and help with the fight? She hit the gong again. She’d seen Flame fighting three men at once, but she’d lost sight of her now. Maybe she should -
An arrow whistled through the air towards her, and Sky turned to see a man on horseback leering at her, not ten metres away. The arrow sliced cleanly through her chest, and the mallet hit the ground with a thud. Sky’s body followed a moment later.
Aidan saw the dead body at the top of the path leading down into the village, and skidded to a halt. He darted off behind a boulder, desperate to go and see what hell had just unleashed itself upon his tribe, but at the same time, a deeply ingrained sense of self-preservation stopped him from rushing headlong into a situation that would only get him killed.
The men behind him all followed suit, darting off the road and into cover, and he scanned the forest and trees around him.
The village itself was now quiet, and that was the most worrying of all. If they were still under attack
, he would be able to hear screams and fighting. And if they had won the battle, there would be curses, thuds, shouted instructions. But if everyone was silent…
The gong was eerily quiet now as well, having faded out only thirty seconds after they’d heard it, and he felt sick as he wondered why the alarm had been cut short.
Whisper skirted around through the scrub and checked the body. “Fuck,” he heard him curse. “It’s River. Poor bastard...” He peered down the path into the village, then rose to his feet, keeping his body low, and waved the rest of them forward.
They went cautiously, dead bodies and dead horses littering the way, though Aidan felt only a marginal relief that not all the bodies belonged to their tribe. Gully slavers, he ascertained easily, from the tattoo on the men’s wrists. With not just bows, but horses now as well? The slavers had been busy.
Arrows were embedded in the sides of the cabins and as they crept down the path, the entire village looked like a bomb had hit it.
A moan off to his right got Aidan’s attention, and he darted over, finding Tom lying on the ground, dazed, but doing his best to staunch the flow of blood from a nasty leg wound. Whisper was there a moment later. “Heat a poker,” he told another man. “We’re going to have to cauterize this.” Mei-Lien would have been horrified, he thought with black humour.
Further down, Aidan eased around a corner and came face to face with Jamal, who leapt out in front of him brandishing a machete. He pulled up hard when he saw who was there, Aidan darting away and raising his own weapon in the split second before he realised who it was. Then he saw the arrow embedded in Jamal’s shoulder.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered, giving the wound a brief examination. “Go over to Whisper. He’ll have to figure out a way to remove it.”
“Did they…? Who…? What happened? Did they...?” Jamal tried to ask, but Aidan could only shake his head.
“I don’t know. Go take care of yourself. We’ll deal with the rest.”
Jamal staggered away, while Aidan continued the grim task of accounting for the dead. There were more survivors than he’d expected, thankfully, but as he worked his way through the village, one detail stood out like a sore thumb: all the bodies were men. Some were slavers, some from their own tribe, but none of the women were here. Which could only mean one thing: the slavers had taken them.
Aidan had to stop for a moment as the news sunk in. He swayed on his feet and gripped the side of a cabin to stay standing up. God, what horrors awaited them in that pit of hell?
His vision cleared, and he forced himself to focus on the next body along the path. One thing at a time, he counselled himself. Concentrate. It was Torrent lying there, bleeding from a head wound, but a quick examination revealed he was still breathing.
“Torrent?” Aidan shook him gently, praying he wasn’t hurt too badly. “Come on, Torrent. Wake up.”
Suddenly, the man did so, jerking upright, panic in his eyes. He flailed his arms, trying to fight Aidan off.
“Easy, it’s me. It’s me!”
“Aidan?!”
“Yeah. Are you okay? You’re bleeding.”
Torrent put a hand to the wound on his head, looking around at the mess that was strewn all over the village. “Mei-Lien?” he asked, desperation in his voice. “Dusk? And the children! Did they… they took them?”
“Yeah.”
“We have to help them… Shit, help me up.”
Torrent rolled over and struggled to his feet, Aidan helping to support him. He was no sooner upright than he doubled over and vomited, clutching his head in pain.
Once he’d finished, Aidan led him to a stone wall and helped him sit down. “Take a minute,” he told him. “You’ve probably got a serious concussion. Just take a few deep breaths and get your bearings.”
“Aidan!” Stormbreaker was over at the fire circle, crouched over a body. Another one of their own, from the look on his face, and Aidan hurried over, feeling like there was a block of ice in his chest.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake…” He hunkered down, head in his hands. It was suddenly hard to breathe. It was Sky, an arrow shot cleanly through her chest. “Mother-fucking son-of-a-bitch. Do you know where Dave is? He’ll need to be told.”
“Haven’t seen him yet,” Stormbreaker told him. “Mario was heading down to the paddocks to check for more wounded. He could be down there. If he survived…”
Aidan was going to have to get a roll-call going, to make sure they accounted for everyone. He stood up, but before he could take a single step towards his cabin to fetch a pen and paper, he spotted another body, a pair of legs sticking out from behind the wood pile. Bloody hell, would this never end? He vaulted over the pile and looked down…
It was Hawk, his dreadlocks splayed like a halo around him, and Aidan felt a stab of grief, more poignant than the weight already sitting heavy on his heart. He’d been one of the finest men in the tribe, intelligent, compassionate, resourceful. And unlike many of the others, there was no hope that he could be alive. His throat was slit from ear to ear. It looked like he’d come to defend Sky. It had cost him his life.
“We should have been here,” Stormbreaker said, his voice rough. “You were right. We shouldn’t have left the village.”
Being right was cold comfort. The rest of the women would now be in the hands of the slavers. Dusk would be enduring their filthy hands on her body. He felt his stomach roll at the thought of all the foul things they could be doing to her. She’d fight them, he knew, and the thought brought him no comfort. If she fought, there was a good chance they would simply kill her…
And as well as Dusk, there were also Mikey and Julia. He didn’t dare to think about what they would do to the children.
“Get the utes out,” Aidan told Stormbreaker, barely recognising his own voice as the words came out on a wave of pure, undiluted rage. “I am sick to death of this vermin. It’s time we cleaned out the nest.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
A flurry of curses speared out of the tray of the ute, causing Aidan to ease his foot off the accelerator a fraction. He glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw the tray-load of men hanging on for dear life, and a part of him wanted to slow down and apologise. These men had had his back and saved his life more times than he could count.
But another part of him wanted to reach the Tribe of the South Wind now, if not ten minutes ago, and this damned old road that led to their camp hadn’t seen any serious maintenance in years. Potholes gaped large enough to swallow a small car. Heavy rains had eroded the edges, leaving deep gullies with scarcely enough space to ease the ute along the middle. And the recent storm had brought down more branches that made their journey even rougher.
It had taken them hours to even get this far. After treating the wounded, they’d had to go through the full cycle of tasks to get the utes ready – reattaching the wheels, filling the tanks with fuel, and after a few failed attempts at getting the older one to start, they’d eventually had to jump-start it from the more reliable vehicle. This was probably the last trip it would ever make. Stormbreaker had forced Aidan to slow down and think about supplies – food, water, weapons – when all he’d wanted to do was hit the road, and the necessary preparations had gone at what seemed like an excruciatingly slow pace.
The road smoothed out a little, and Aidan put his foot down again. In the passenger seat, Whisper clung to the handle above the door, but said nothing, his lips pressed into a thin, firm line, deep creases showing around his eyes. His rage was a living, breathing beast behind his eyes, and Aidan had a fairly good idea of what he would be thinking, the slow deaths and brutal revenge to be carried out against their enemies.
They hit a pothole and the whole car shuddered. “Jesus Christ, you drive like a drunk wombat!” he heard someone shout. A low hanging branch was coming up, and he yelled “Get down!” out the window, relieved to see that everyone did. He watched via the rear-view mirror, the branch scraping the top of the cab, but not knocking anyone out of the tray.
They rounded a last corner – never having been here before, Aidan wasn’t entirely sure how far from the main road the camp was – and he was suddenly slamming his foot on the brake, a dozen female warriors armed with bows lined up across the road in front of him.
The men let loose another volley of swearing as they were all flung forward, the ute sliding a short way and stirring up a wave of dust as it came to a reluctant stop. The second ute behind them was travelling more slowly, and stopped with far more grace.
The wheels had barely stopped moving when Aidan was out of the cab, marching towards the waiting women. “I need to speak to Faith,” he demanded, ignoring the arrows aimed at him.
“We established clear rules about how visits were to be handled,” Faith called out sharply, strolling out from behind a stand of trees. “And if you think we’re going to merely forgive the liberties taken, you’re...” She stopped in her tracks, looking the men up and down. Several more had jumped out of the ute behind him, and Aidan knew they were all a mess, covered in dirt and blood, some of them with torn clothes or bandages wrapped around their limbs. “You’ve been raided,” Faith said, shock in her voice as her sharp accusations were instantly forgotten.
“They took our women,” Aidan said, without preamble. “Your women. You spoke of clearing out the Gully, of planning a battle that could wipe them out for good.”
Faith looked him up and down slowly, and he could see the cogs turning in her head. “They’ve just raided your village and taken your most valuable possessions from you. And I don’t think they’re stupid enough to believe they killed all of you. So, you’ll forgive me if I’m stating the obvious when I say they’re going to be expecting us.”