Hereafter

by C. K. Crigger

  Nate better not have gotten himself killed. Lily couldn’t help the pang the thought gave her. Not that she actually cared, but he had been friendlier to her than anyone, excepting only Jacob and Harrison. And technically, she supposed, what he was doing was wrong, going off on his own without telling the boss. Bannion’s orders were probably comparable to any commander’s, even though the clan seemed to cooperate with less stricture and a great deal more independence than say, the United States Army or the Border Patrol. And yet from what she could tell, duties of both those outfits appeared in his job description.

  Meanwhile, the argument between the saiclers and the O’Quinns escalated to the level that most parts were audible, the negotiators no longer attempting to mute themselves.

  “Give ‘blank blank’ up,” the tough looking saicler leader said, and Lily wasn’t sure if he was talking about clan territory or her. Bannion’s reply lent no more clarity. “Gather up these go-boys of yours and get back to your city,” he said. “There’s nothing for you here but cold death.”

  “We take what we want.” The saicler’s gesture, even at a distance, appeared threatening.

  “We’ll chase you back to Spokane like the whipped apes you are,” Bannion shot back, “and those we don’t kill we’ll leave to the Mags.”

  The saicler laughed. “Ha, you cow breeding, in-bred bumpkin. Loose all the arrows you like, they can’t hurt us. You have no weapon like ours.” There was a growl of sound from his forces, and a chant began. “Screenmaster, Screenmaster,” repeated over and over like speech generated by robots.

  What kind of world had this become? One in which neither side had appeasement in mind, that much was sure. Violence and death apparently were every day facts of no great importance. Strange and sad, Lily thought, that with a such diminished population, these people were so eager to kill each other off.

  The so-called Cross-up man, Barnes, kept his mouth shut, something of a surprise. She remembered his trial being quite the show, with him pleading his own case after firing one attorney after another. This silence struck her as suspicious and worrisome. What was the old murderer plotting? Or had he brainwashed these saiclers into mindless obedience, ready to do whatever he said?

  Yes. Probably so.

  In plain fact, her nerves were about to fail her when Nate finally appeared, slipping between piles of rubble to reach her side. The rising wind had muted sounds of his approach, but she heard him coming, anyway. The only thing that really surprised her was his ragged appearance.

  “What happened?” Taking in his bloody clothes and weary expression at a glance, she bit her lip. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine. Had a little trouble, is all.” He found his hat and clamped it on his head. “Bannion says to tell you he appreciates you staying put like I asked. Surprised him.”

  Lily scowled. So he stopped by his cousin’s position first, huh? “Really. And why is that?”

  “He hasn’t had much call to trust anyone but family. And sometimes you can’t trust them. Bannion knows it.”

  “Oh. You mean this world isn’t all Utopian? Imagine that. And is family the reason you look so…so devastated?” Something in the way he held himself, the tension in his face, the glitter in his dark eyes showed his foray into the woods had had repercussions beyond his expectations. Whatever he’d encountered out there had not been pleasant. She almost regretted her sarcasm—but not quite.

  If Nate meant to give a rebuttal he didn’t get the chance, because a sudden, swelling roar claimed their attention. The noise set the butterflies in Lily’s stomach fluttering.

  “Sounds like talking time is over.” Nate took out his whetstone and slid his knife blade over it, front and back, front and back. “Bannion kept it going longer than I expected. Guess my report put an end to his patience.”

  “What—” she began, even as he interrupted.

  “Our scouts. One dead, butchered, The other two cut up real bad. There’ll be no quarter given today, from them or from us. Soon as the fighting starts, get yourself out of the way. I won’t be able to look after you. ” He pointed with his blade toward the coulee where they’d left their horses in a side gully with Jacob. “Go keep the Felix kid company. He’ll be champing at the bit to get in on the fight, but unless they get past our lines, his job is fixed. You’ll probably need to remind him every now and then.”

  Lily shrugged. “Whatever you say. Not that I need anybody to look out for me. But Bannion seemed pretty hot on bringing me along on this party. What made him change his mind?”

  Nate tested the edge with his thumb, then slipped his freshly sharpened knife in the sheath and took up his other weapons. “I don’t think he was expecting quite this level of intent.”

  “No time to put me to the test, in other words.”

  “That’s about it.” He took her arm and turned her away from the sight of saicler archers nocking arrows. He gestured. “Over there. Go now.” Without waiting, he slithered through the narrow opening in the rubble, silent as a ghost.

  “Stay safe,” Lily whispered after him.

  The night her world ended replayed itself in Lily’s memory. Even without the dark and the rain this situation felt similar, helped by steadily increasing clouds and blustery wind. Add in the waiting and tension and it missed only the exhilaration she felt the first time around. The Mags had chased that feeling out of her. Now she got to meet yet another group of bloodthirsty freaks. This must be her lucky day.

  Backing out of the sheltering rubble, Lily glided soundlessly in the direction Nate had indicated, gathering shadows around her like a blanket as, yielding to the war chief’s wishes, she made her way along the gully to where Jacob had the warrior’s horses in care.

  From somewhere within the Ssaicler ranks, a drum, its tone deep and gut-wrenching, began a rhythmic pounding. The noise was damn scary, like the war drums depicted in that gladiator movie several years back, done up in Dolby sound. Before a curve in the gully cut out her line of sight, she turned for one last look.

  Saiclers had formed a line of men five across and four deep in the road in front of the Screenmaster’s wagon. He stood on the seat, his arms raised to the heavens and speaking gibberish in some kind of showy incantation. She didn’t believe it. Abracadabra bullpucky, that’s all it was.

  The whole scene became even more unreal as the baying of dogs rang out in conjunction with the drums.

  “Take no prisoners,” Screenmaster yowled from his perch, dropping the gobbledygook, but with his voice strangely amplified. “Use their women. Kill. Kill. Saiclers, you are invincible. I am with you.”

  Lily’s stomach churned and she fled.

  A couple hundred yards down the gully, where the curve muted the human sounds to near silence, she found Jacob sitting disconsolately on a downed log, his unstrung bow propped beside him. He was singing a tuneless little song in an attempt to soothe the picket line of horses in his charge. Perhaps thirty feet beyond Jacob, she saw an even younger warrior with another picket line, perhaps two dozen animals in all, which tallied with her estimate of clan warriors. A girl was helping him. All the horses but Nate’s two roans, and that included Bannion’s big war horse, Nog, skittered every time the drums made an extra thump. Lily sympathized.

  “Hi, Jake,” she said, stepping over the log to join him. “I’ve come to keep you company.”

  Jacob jumped to his feet. “Jesus, Lily, where’d you come from? You about scared the shit out of me.”

  “Sorry.” She checked her arm. Yeah. Living color. Good thing she dropped the now you see me now you don’t thing before showing up. “I should’ve yelled, let you know I was coming.”

  “But I was—” He shook his head. “Some fighter I am. Can’t see what’s right in front of me.”

  Poor Jacob. And yet, she didn’t think she’d say anything to disavow his words. Bad enough coping with the O’Quinn’s distrust because of what they already knew—or thought they knew, about her.

  “You’re dis
tracted,” she excused him. “Those drums…they make a pretty good scare tactic. Sure have the horses freaked out.”

  “Are we going to fight?” he asked, stroking a horse that showed signs of bolting, and blowing in its nostrils. He answered his own question. “Sure we are. O’Quinns don’t back down from anybody, even somebody with a Cross-up like Screenmaster.” He brightened. “But we’ve got you. Shouldn’t you be up with the patrollers, ready to go toe-to-toe with this guy?”

  She smiled. “Bannion doesn’t trust me, I’m afraid. He sent me back here to keep me out of mischief.”

  Jacob gaped at her. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope.”

  Lily cocked her head, listening as the regular thudding of the drums picked up a cadence implying urgency. They seemed louder, stronger, now, pounding like an out of whack heartbeat. Her ears hurt, but the pain multiplied at the first agonized scream. She jerked, drawing Jacob’s attention away from the horse.

  “What’s the matter, Lily? You just turned dead white.”

  “Can’t you hear it? The fighting has begun.” Her last words were loud in the comparative silence as the drums reached a crescendo then quit. Screams and fierce yelling picked up, carried toward them on the gusting wind. Dogs barked, and over them Lily fancied she heard Bannion’s strong voice, muted by distance, shouting orders. She knew Screenmaster, Phil Barnes, remained unharmed, although surely he was the O’Quinns prime target. His exhortation to “Kill, kill,” came loud and clear.

  Jacob heard them now. He stared toward the sounds of battle, his expression fierce. The other boy, although farther away, turned toward them, watching Jacob’s reaction with alarm. The girl had grabbed onto his arm.

  A kind of guilt sneaked into Lily’s mind. She should be up there with the fighters, doing what she could to kill that murderous dwarf since she stood a better chance than any of them. It would come that. She knew it like she knew her own name. The much respected Bannion O’Quinn wasn’t using his resources efficiently, she thought snidely. Besides, she hated waiting.

  And she had to pee.

  With the cessation of the drums, the horses quieted, standing with ears pricked toward the fighting. Jacob climbed onto the log, as if the couple of added feet of height would give him a clearer picture of events.

  “Rory, Fanta.” Clearly excited, he yelled and waved his arms, drawing his fellow horseholder’s attention. “The fighting has started.”

  Rory disengaged Fanta’s hand and waved acknowledgment.

  “Shouldn’t you keep your voice down?” Lily snagged him by the pant leg as he started to slide from the log. “If the saiclers have scouts out, they’ll try to come through us to get behind the clan. You don’t want to draw their attention.”

  Struck by their isolation, she felt an itch along her spine. A kind of dread of things to come, as if she were psychic and could see into the future. The hair on her arms rose in dread.

  Jacob stirred. “I ain’t scared of them.”

  For a moment Lily debated telling him how Nate had found their own scouts tortured and butchered in the woods, then decided bad news came better from one of his own. “I am. And you ought to be,” she said. “If they’re any kind of fighters at all, they’ve got people out here looking for the right opening.”

  Fanta, a girl whose Indian heritage showed in her skin and eyes and straight black hair, ran over to join them in time to catch Lily’s words. “How do you know?”

  “That’s what I’d do. Wouldn’t you?”

  Jake thought about it. “Yes.”

  “Yes,” Fanta echoed.

  “Look at the sky,” Lily said, another idea occurring to her.

  Fanta’s head raised and she scanned the patch of blue overhead. “What am I looking for?”

  “Birds.” Lily heard Jacob suck in a breath.

  “There aren’t any,” the girl said.

  Jacob slipped his bow from his shoulder and strung it. “That’s the point, Fanta. You haven’t finished training yet, but you’ll find one of the boss’s first lessons is to watch the birds. They always tell him if the woods are safe.”

  “Or not,” Lily added. She might not care for Bannion, but she couldn’t fault his powers of observation.

  “Yeah. Or not, and these woods are too damn quiet.” He went through a ritual of checking his quiver full of arrows, loosening the knife at his hip, and touching the one in his boot. “I’m gonna go talk to Rory. Maybe I’ll look around in the woods a little. You here to watch our backs, Lily?”

  Their situation might be dire, but amusement bubbled in her. “That wasn’t my mission, Jake, but now I’m here, I might as well.” There being no place safer, what difference did it make? What other choice had she?

  Lily had thought Jacob would convince Rory to go into the woods with him, but after a short discussion he scaled the side of the gully by himself, leaving the other boy to take charge of the horses. Jake was good, Lily noted. One moment he was there, outlined against the horizon. The next he was gone. He faded into the background nearly as well as she with her cloaking abilities.

  Inappropriate laughter bubbled up again, leaving her wondering if she was a little touched in the head. Except…cloaking abilities reminded her all too strongly of Klingons or Romulons or some such out of the Star Trek movies. She doubted these people would get the joke. Maybe Nate. Nah, she told herself. Not even him.

  “Ms. Turnbow?” Fanta, who had taken over Jacob’s horse-holding duties, had followed Jacob’s lead and strung her bow, too, leaving it propped against the log. “What should we do if the saiclers try to get the horses.”

  “Stop them,” Lily said, thinking, why ask me? The girl’s hands were already shaking and her smooth young face pinched. No need to add to her distress.

  “What if we’re outnumbered?” Fanta persisted.

  “We’ll still try to stop them. You don’t want to run away, do you?”

  Fanta pulled at her upper lip. “No.”

  Lily tuned the girl out, listening with all her might to the clash of battle. That night at the lake, the fight had been noisy, gunshots, men shouting, the boat and airplane engines roaring across the water. This was different; quieter, but just as deadly. The ‘whing’ of steel swords, screams of agony, dogs howling. A weird music, like glass singing, came to her.

  “Do you hear that?” the girl asked.

  “I hear it.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Fanta’s hand crept into hers, tightening as for a brief moment all noise ceased. Then a huge bestial roar seemed to shake the trees.

  “Shit.” Lily didn’t need to see what was happening to know. The O’Quinns had been overrun. There was no other explanation.

  Down at the far end of the gully, with his back to them, Rory nocked an arrow, took aim, released. The arrow’s flight took it into the brush nearest the off horse. A dog’s yipe answered and one of the saicler’s big pit bulls staggered into the open before collapsing. Smelling blood and worried by the dog, the horses started snorting, crowhopping, and fighting their ties.

  From within the far woods, a quick yodel rang out.

  “That’s Jacob,” Fanta gasped, numbing Lily’s hand with the strength of her squeeze. “His family does that. Did that. It means…”

  Lily swallowed. Did? “What does it mean?”

  “He’s killed an enemy.”

  There was fierce pride in Fanta’s voice, a pride Lily could echo. “Go, Jake,” she said. But the three of them had more to do than let Jacob protect them. Or stand and wait for the saicler war party to search them out. Do that and the O’Quinns might be left with no resources. And Jacob had left her in charge, hadn’t he?

  He had.

  “Untie these horses, Fanta,” she said, pulling away from the girl’s clinging hand. “And mount up.”

  “The boss…” the girl began, but Lily cut her off.

  “The boss isn’t here. I am and I’m giving the orders. Mount up.�
�� Her head turned toward the crossroad, listening. “Hurry. I can hear them, coming this way. We have help them.”

  The girl gaped, then, as the portent of Lily’s words hit, did as she was told, choosing the roan mare for her mount. Lily didn’t care. She groped for the stirrup on the nearest saddled horse and swung her leg over, only then discovering it was Nog flouncing under her unaccustomed weight.

  “Settle down,” she told the animal, reining it in. “Fanta, take the horses and join Rory. It’s more open at that end. We have more room to maneuver there.” Nog shook his head as she gathered the reins. He sensed her tension, maybe smelled blood. The horse reared as one of the O’Quinn’s, or maybe the Bell’s, Karelian Bear dogs shot into the clearing, running so fast his white belly skimmed the ground. Lily barely kept her seat.

  Finding the horses, the black-and-white dog darted in between them, yipping as though giving orders. Since the effect on the horses was calming, Lily thought maybe he had.

  The girl wasn’t moving fast enough. “Hustle!” Lily snapped, pulling a long mullein stalk from the ground as she rode past it and slashing out at the horses with the dry, flowered end. They broke into a lope, the dog running behind. Birds swooped and called, risen from their perches in the woods beyond the horses where they’d hidden. Jacob, she felt sure, was not the cause of their alarm.

  Eyes swiveling side to side, trying to see everything at once, she was aware when, from her right, a swarm of birds fluttered into the sky and shot off to the north.

  “Oh, crap,” she breathed. They’d been flanked. And Jacob, in taking the fight to the saiclers, very likely was cut off from the three of them.

  She joined the two kids holding the strings of excited horses barely in check. Hoping her façade appeared calm, she grinned at Rory. “You were hoping for a little action, weren’t you?”