by Geoff Rodkey
“An’ that’s him?” Guts asked, pointing toward the rising sun.
“Yes. But so is this.” She held up one of the rocks she’d gathered as ammunition for her sling. Then she pointed to a tree. “And so is that. And so am I, and so are you. Ka is everything.”
“What about the Fist?” I asked.
“What about it?”
“What is it? I mean, exactly?”
“It’s a ring that goes across all four fingers.” Kira raised her right fist and pointed at the base of each finger, just above the knuckle. “Made of gold, like the sun.”
“What’s it do? Why’s it so powerful?”
“It is the hand of Ka, sent to earth to be his instrument. It has all his power. To give life and to take it. To heal and to kill. To burn and to build.”
“And whoever has the Fist of Ka—they have these powers, too?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “For a thousand years, it was held by the Fire Kings. And with it, they ruled the world.”
“Not the whole world,” I said.
“Yes. The world. This world.” She swept her hand in a wide arc across the hillside and the valley below. “If my people had not lost the Fist, they would rule it still. And whoever finds the Fist will rule again.”
“Wot if they’re evil?” Guts asked.
“Then so will be the world,” Kira said.
I heard a noise like a pained sigh. I looked to my left, where it came from. Millicent was staring at the ground with her eyebrows crumpled together like she might cry.
Looking at her, I felt awful all over again.
“Are you all right?” I asked her.
“Fine.” She shook her head, and just like that, the sorrowful look was gone.
“Let’s get moving,” she said.
“We should eat first,” said Kira. “We’ll go faster with food in our stomachs.”
“We’ve hardly got any left,” said Millicent. “Be wiser to save it.”
Kira shook her head. “There’s food in the valley.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“The Flut live there. They’re farmers. They’ll have food. One way or another, we’ll eat.”
“What do you mean, ‘one way or another’?” I asked.
“We have money and weapons. One of them will get us food.”
I watched Kira hand out the last bit of our rations, thinking that she scared me a little, but I was glad she was on our side.
Guts finished his portion in seconds. As the rest of us nibbled slowly, trying to convince our stomachs it was an actual meal, he started fidgeting with his hook, unstrapping it from his stump and shaking out the cowl before he strapped it back on.
“Everything okay with Lucy?” I asked.
Kira gave me a curious look. “Who’s Lucy?”
“His hook,” I said.
“Nobody!” Guts barked, talking over me.
The girls both looked amused.
“You named your hook?” Millicent snorted.
“Didn’t!” Guts protested, turning red in the face. “He’s a liar!”
I might have covered for him if he hadn’t called me a liar. But after I’d just been branded a pig and a coward by Millicent, I wasn’t in the mood to take any more abuse. Especially when I didn’t deserve it.
“Come off it!” I said. “You named her—”
“Shut up!”
“—the day you got her!”
“Pack o’ lies!”
“‘Thunk aw’ll cawl ’er Luuucy,’” I said, imitating Guts’s voice in a way that made him sound even more deranged than he actually was.
Big mistake.
Guts leaped on me, which caught me so off guard I didn’t have time to get my hands up, and we toppled backward off the fallen tree I’d been sitting on.
He pinned my shoulders with his knees and started swinging. I managed to get both my hands on the wrist of his hook arm so he couldn’t stab me, but that left his good fist free, and he kept slugging me in the side of the head with it. I tried to twist away, but my legs were still up over the side of the fallen tree, and I couldn’t get any leverage to buck him off.
“Get off!”
“—you, ye—porsamora!”
Kira and Millicent were both on him, trying to pull him off me by his upper arms, when we heard a shout that froze us all in place.
“FOUND ’EM!”
I turned my head to the sound of the voice. On the crest of a nearby rock, about a hundred feet along the hilltop from us, was a beefy Rovian man with a shock of red hair and a rifle in his hand.
For an endless second, we stared at each other.
“OVER HERE!” he yelled. Then he started off the rock after us.
By the time we were up and running, answering shouts were echoing off the rocks.
FLUT
I tore down the hillside. It was so steep that moving fast was easy.
The hard part was staying on my feet.
Trees and branches and roots and holes zoomed by in a blur.
FASTER.
One wrong step, and I’d break an ankle.
That wouldn’t be the worst of it. If I fell, they’d catch me.
I could hear branches snapping behind me.
The others were up ahead. I couldn’t raise my eyes from the ground long enough to get a fix on them, but I knew Guts and Millicent had gotten a head start on me.
I caught a glimpse of Kira’s pack, bouncing on her shoulders.
That meant the noise behind me was a slaver.
FASTER—
I hit the side of a hole with my foot and nearly went down.
It hurt.
I tried to take shorter steps so I wasn’t landing so hard.
My shoulder caught the side of a tree.
That hurt more.
I could still hear the slaver. He was gaining on me.
The ground began to flatten out. We were almost to the bottom of the hill.
The trees grew thicker—and then, almost in an instant, they were gone.
We were on the valley floor. Open land in every direction.
RUN FASTER.
The soil was loose and spongy now, mixed with the dry stubble of dead plants—at every step, my foot either sank into the ground or got spiked on a sharp stalk.
FASTER.
Gravity wasn’t pulling me along anymore. I had to pump my legs hard to keep them churning over the soft ground.
My lungs started to burn.
My thigh muscles were getting shaky.
I couldn’t hear the slaver behind me anymore. But I knew he was still there.
RUN FASTER.
A quarter mile ahead was a line of tall plants rising to the height of a man’s head. They grew in what looked like a perfectly straight row.
Tall and straight and evenly spaced.
Nature hadn’t grown them that way.
And nature hadn’t made the soil under my feet this loose.
We were running over cropland.
Crops meant people.
I saw the first of them without realizing what I was looking at. Up ahead to the right, at the edge of the plantings, was a single crooked spire that rose thirty feet straight into the air.
At first, I thought it was the skinny trunk of a dead tree.
But there was a clump of something on top of it.
The clump was moving, shinnying down the spire.
It wasn’t a tree. It was a lookout post. The moving clump was the lookout, climbing down from a Y-shaped joint at the top.
He vanished into the tall plantings.
They’d know we were coming.
I hoped they were friendly.
But they couldn’t be any worse than the slavers chasing us.
FASTER.
Guts and Millicent were tiring. I was gaining on them. Just a few feet behind.
Was the slaver gaining on me?
I didn’t know. And I didn’t dare to look back.
Kira was twenty yards ahead
, outrunning us even with the pack on her shoulders.
She looked back as she ran—first over her left shoulder, then her right.
When she looked the second time, her face showed alarm.
I turned my head in the direction she’d looked. A man was running toward us on a diagonal, about two hundred yards away. He was in Continental clothes, but he must have been a Moku, because he was much darker-skinned than the big redhead.
He was carrying a rifle.
The redhead must be behind us.
There was a third man somewhere. Maybe a fourth. They’d all have rifles.
RUN FASTER.
My lungs were on fire, and my legs felt limp. But there was nothing to do except keep going.
They weren’t firing at us. Why? We were easy targets.
Because they needed us alive.
They needed me alive. For the map. The others…
FASTER.
I didn’t have much left in me.
Neither did Millicent. I was dead even with her.
I made sure I didn’t pull ahead. After everything that had happened, I was going to stick by her no matter what.
The tall plants were close now—close enough that I could see there wasn’t just a line of them but a whole field, row upon row stretching back into the distance.
The rows were just wide enough to run between. Kira reached them first and disappeared.
Then Guts.
Then me and Millicent. We ran down adjoining rows, our arms slapping the long, yellow-tinged leaves as we went.
The ground was even softer now, and the damp soil sucked at my feet.
I heard noise behind me. The slaver was crashing through the plants behind us.
Up ahead, Kira made a sharp left turn and vanished.
A moment later, Millicent and I reached the spot where she’d turned. A three-foot-wide path lay crosswise to the direction we’d been running. We followed Kira down the path.
Kira stopped short.
As we reached her, we saw why she’d stopped—and we did, too.
Half a dozen Flut warriors—I’d spent enough time around the Natives in Pella to recognize the tribe by their long, thin faces—were blocking the path in front of us.
They were shirtless, dressed only in Native breeches. The first two were crouched on one knee, aiming rifles at us.
Behind the riflemen, the other four all had long wooden spears raised over their shoulders.
The spearheads were pointed at our chests.
The lead spear carrier yelled something at us. He was speaking Cartager—I recognized the slippery sound of the words, even though I didn’t know what they meant.
Kira answered, her voice rising in a question. She was asking for help.
The leader answered. His tone was hostile.
The answer was no.
I could hear the redheaded slaver crashing through the plants behind us.
Millicent spoke up, in urgent, plaintive Cartager.
Kira turned to stare at her with a look of surprise.
Millicent had just finished speaking when the crashing noise behind us suddenly stopped.
We all turned to see the redheaded slaver standing in the pathway, panting and sweaty, his rifle in his hands.
He was gaping at the Flut, dumbfounded.
I heard a Flut yell something that sounded like, “Hio!”
“DUCK!” screamed Millicent and Kira together.
We all hit the ground as the Flut rifles roared over our heads. When I looked up, the plants were still rustling from where the slaver had dived back into cover.
The Flut leader issued a quick series of orders. The two riflemen and the other spear carriers vanished into the plants. A moment later, I heard a faint rustling off to my left as they headed for the spot where the slaver had taken cover.
The path was empty now except for us and the leader. He gestured toward us: come with me.
Then he turned and started down the path at a run.
We followed him.
THE FLUT LEADER kept up a fast pace, his back muscles rippling under his long black hair as he ran down a series of pathways through the tall crops. None of us spoke—it took all our energy just to keep him in sight.
Twice, gunfire rang out in the field behind us. Whatever Millicent had said, it must have worked, because the Flut were fighting our battle for us.
We emerged onto open land. Still running, the leader took us down a worn path over a wide plain of low grass, dotted with the occasional shade tree. After half a mile or so, we reached a shallow, six-foot-wide stream.
The Flut leader splashed across the calf deep water, then crouched at the far bank to drink with his hands from the stream. The four of us did the same, grateful for the chance to catch our breath and drink. Kira pulled the two empty water skins from her rucksack. She handed one to me, and we both filled them.
A minute later, the Flut set off again, this time at a brisk walk. As we followed him along another path through an open meadow, I fell into step behind Millicent.
“What did you say to him back there?” I asked.
“Nothing special. He didn’t seem to care for Crazy Knife Girl much. I don’t think their tribes get along.”
“Where’s he leading us?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. For all I know, he’s going to kill us all.”
“Seriously?”
“I said I don’t know. Quit asking stupid questions.”
She was still angry. That much was obvious.
“Millicent, I really am sorry—”
“And stop apologizing! It’s pathetic.”
After that, I fell to the back of the group and tried not to collapse in a heap. I was exhausted and starving, and all of a sudden, the whole thing seemed pointless.
Men with guns are chasing me. For what? The map to a treasure that’s probably nonsense anyway. All that stuff Kira said about the Fist—power to heal and kill, burn and build, blah blah blah—seems awfully hard to swallow.
And if it does exist, I’ve got no business going near it.
I don’t want that kind of power.
I just want a sandwich.
And some jelly bread.
Starving…
And the only people I care about have turned on me.
Millicent’s furious.
Worse than that—she’s in love with someone else.
Why I ever thought she and I…
I’m a fool.
And Guts attacked me! My ear’s so swollen from his fist I can feel it throb without even touching it.
They’re the whole reason I’m here.
I could’ve gone down to the Barkers. I would’ve been safe there.
But I came here. I didn’t want to let them down.
And they turned on me.
And Kira…She doesn’t care a thing for me. All I am to her is the map.
She’d probably kill me as quick as Pembroke’s men if it got her what she wanted.
I don’t even want the stupid map.
I’d trade the whole thing for a sandwich.
I’d give it away if I could. It’s nothing but trouble.
I don’t want any more trouble.
I just want a sandwich.
And some jelly bread…
I was half asleep on my feet, dreaming about jelly bread, when we came upon the sheep. There was a flock of a hundred or more, tended by a few shirtless young boys with long sticks.
The boys gawked at us as we passed.
“It’s not polite to stare,” Millicent told one of them.
When she spoke, he flinched in surprise and skittered backward. But he didn’t stop staring.
We left the little shepherds and their flock behind and started up a wide, easy hill. At the top of it, we came upon a village of a few dozen thatched huts, bustling with people.
The Flut warrior led us through the settlement, past women who gossiped with each other as they ground corn in giant bowls; stone-eyed men who
smoked long clay pipes and whittled blocks of wood with Continental-made knives; and packs of noisy, happy kids who darted among the huts, trailed by barking dogs so skinny you could count their ribs.
As we went by, everyone stopped to stare at us, and not in a friendly way. A couple of the men made a point of reaching their hands out to rest on the rifles they had lying nearby.
In the center of the village, a ring of huts circled a small commons with a fire pit in the middle of it. The Flut warrior motioned for us to wait in the commons, spoke a few sentences of Cartager to the girls, then disappeared into a hut that was twice the size of the others.
“Let me do the talking,” Millicent said to Kira.
Kira’s lip curled in a snarl. “You know nothing of these people.”
“I’ve seen enough to know they’re not keen on you.”
Kira shrugged. “Flut and Okalu are not allies. My people used to rule these lands.”
“And this bunch doesn’t seem to have forgotten it.”
Just then, an older man—broad-shouldered but paunchy, his face wrinkled and his long hair more gray than black—stepped out of the big hut. He was followed by the warrior who’d led us to the village and a third, much younger Flut.
When the three Flut approached, Millicent stepped forward. So did Kira.
They both bowed deep to the elder Flut. Guts and I did the same.
The elder spoke a few sentences in Cartager.
Millicent and Kira both tried to answer at once.
He raised a hand to silence them. Then he looked past the girls to me and Guts, addressing us directly.
Millicent said something in Cartager. The Flut elder ignored her, looking me in the eye as he spoke again.
I didn’t understand a word.
Millicent turned her head to look back at us. “They only want to talk to men,” she said. She was careful to keep the annoyance out of her voice, but she rolled her eyes—which, since her head was turned away from them, the Flut couldn’t see.
“Do they speak Rovian?” I asked.
“Of course not. They barely speak Cartager.”
“I talk Cartager,” Guts offered.
“Only swear words,” I said.
“Stuff it!” Guts growled at me.
“If you want this to go well, you’ll let me do the talking,” said Millicent firmly.
The Flut were starting to look impatient. The elder addressed me and Guts again.