Liam stretched, jostling me from my worried review. “At least, this time, we’re fighting them.” He grinned, trying to make light even though his eyes were dark and worried. “All of us.”
“It still seems to me like they’re just waiting for us to attack them,” I said.
Kayleen sounded bitter. “And it’s better to let them pick us off one by one?”
It wasn’t. Besides, too many were spoiling for a fight now. The War Council’s decision was to try the same tactic that had worked at the end of the last war…a big, decisive battle. We were going to attempt to overwhelm them with numbers. On the surface, it should be easy. Except I was still convinced we were doing exactly what they wanted. But remembering the last advice we’d given, we’d chosen to cast our vote with the others, making it a unanimous decision.
“Well,” Kayleen said, “If we’re going to fight, then we had better eat.” I expected her to lead us down to the cave kitchen, but instead she produced a veritable feast from her backpack. Fresh bread, carrots, dried berries, and three strips of precious djuri jerky. “Remember when I planned that feast on Islandia? At least for this one, we’re all together.” She smiled a soft intimate smile that included both of us. “And, we’re home.”
I frowned, reaching for a carrot. “I miss West Home. I’d take Islandia—with no mercenaries—as home against being part of this damned war. If I ever catch whoever sent these people, they’re going to wish they hadn’t done it.”
Liam took a chunk of bread and meat, running a finger along the curve of Kayleen’s face. “I’m happy to eat your feast today.”
She nodded. “We should sleep too, while we can.”
The attack would begin at dawn. I would go with Tom and Paloma, the three of us forming the strategic part of the War Council, while Akashi and Ruth led the two main groups of attackers. Liam would be with his father. Kayleen would stay here, in the cave, listening to their nets and ours as best she could, and relaying information to those of us with precious earsets—Ruth, Akashi, me, Liam, and Stile.
This meal could be our last quiet one together. I didn’t have much appetite, but I was no longer eating just for me. I picked up a piece of bread, breaking it into small bite-sized chunks to follow the carrot. The baby in my stomach did a slow, lazy flip and I cupped it, stroking my belly. Such magic in a pain-shot time. I glanced at Kayleen. “What scares you the most?”
“Losing.”
I stared out over the hills. We’d set traps in them, but who knew if the mercenaries would walk into them? They’d never been willing to fight with us on the ground. Not once. All of our strategies felt more like hopes. How do you plan against an enemy with so much more technology and strength?
Liam answered my question about his fears. “I’m scared for you and the babies. I wish you weren’t in this at all.”
“We can’t help it,” Kayleen and I said together, grinning at each other. We often spoke the same sentences since we became a threesome. “Besides,” Kayleen added, “We want you safe, too.”
“I won’t be safe. But I’ll be successful.”
“Well, let’s hope so.” Kayleen’s blue eyes glowed. “Because I’m going to help you kill them for the babies.”
Liam grunted again, and said, “And for Gianna and Nava and Eric and everyone else.”
“And for Windy,” Kayleen added.
The bread in my mouth tasted like sawdust.
A crowd filled the cave’s mouth, largely shadows, the occasional shaft of light from hand-held flashlights, and a single flower of flickering light from the kitchen fire. We had staged over two hundred fighters in the Cave of Power, waiting to take the most dangerous way down near Artistos—the High Road. Even with two of our three frizzers, tools Jenna had given us years ago to go through Artistos’s nets undetected, it was a dangerous approach.
The air crackled with coiled energy and anticipation.
Young men and women wearing forest-colored clothes and light packs stood in groups. Children clung tightly to adults, and parents too old to fight watched, generally silent, offering words of love and hope to their offspring. Sky and Sasha, going down with Liam in the first wave, moved in and out of the kitchen firelight, preparing small packets of food for the fighters. Sasha still limped, but she had been stubborn.
The three of us stood a bit to the side, seeking privacy in these last few moments before Liam and I left. He bounced on the balls of his feet, looking out in the direction of Artistos. We had tried to sleep, succeeding only in sweating and tangling together, Kayleen and I both awkward and Liam shifting between stroking our hair or bellies and sitting up, staring. Now, his face was set, hard, and his jaw tight. He’d cut his hair short, and he looked older for it, and fiercer. Or maybe the fierceness was in his blue eyes. Someone flashed a bright light against Liam’s bronzed skin, so that for just a moment he looked like metal.
Fighters lined up to take additional packets from Hunter. Small packets of poisons made by Paloma, some for the water, some for the air. Larger bundles of dried trip-vine thorns and fresh sticker-vine, harvested in the last day or two and kept damp in a barrel of stream water until an hour or so ago. Fremont’s wild things, fighting with us instead of against us. Liam left our side to take one, then returned.
A bird-whistle came from above us. Our signal. Liam turned to Kayleen and leaned in over her swollen waist, kissing her fiercely. After they separated, he took the ladder, leading the group out of the cave. I leaned in to Kayleen and kissed her full on the lips, something I almost never did in public. I stroked her cheek, looking into her deep green eyes.
She returned my gaze, steady, but her voice shook as she said, “Good luck.”
I swallowed. “Stay safe.”
I waited for everyone else before I left, stopping halfway up the ladder to take one more long look at Kayleen. She stood in the kitchen, firelight bathing her face as she watched me go, her hands folded quietly on the shadowed shelf of her belly. Her job would be as hard as ours.
Outside, the silence of early morning filled the air so that every step we took seemed loud enough for Artistos to hear. Destiny shone above us, a small white disc in the sky, the only moon visible. By dawn, when we went in, we would have Hope and Summer as well for a few hours before Destiny set. A three-moon moment, portending luck.
I stayed with the attacking force, and thus with Liam, until they reached the High Road. There, Liam waved at me, a dark movement against a dark time of day. Then he was gone. I watched as two hundred fighters passed me, Sky and Sasha among them, all of them solemn and intent on silence. I closed my eyes, wishing them safe. Sky, Sasha, and Liam would break away to go with Akashi, and Stile would take the rest.
I turned uphill and went on, alone, up the road that they went down, loping as quickly as I could manage, staying near the trees at the side of the road. At the top of the Old Road, Tom and Sugar Wheat met me, Stripes at their side. “All’s well so far?” he asked.
“The crew from the cave are on their way. They looked good, ready.” They would meet others who had been working their way toward town all day.
Tom dismounted and held out his hands, boosting me high enough onto the mounting strap that I only needed to slide a foot into one more loop before I swung my right leg over the high back of Stripes’s saddle. We rode with only the small wedge of moon and stars visible from the deep, steep trail for light, letting the hebras pick their footing. Halfway down the Old Road, we cut right, threading through dense underbrush, trusting the hebras to keep us safe. Tom had put me in front, and except for the occasional snort from Sugar Wheat or the scrape of a cloven hoof against a stone, I might have been riding alone through the darkening woods.
Tom called out from behind. “Go right. The path will look straight up.”
I turned Stripes up a tiny side trail and grabbed for the thick hair on top of her neck as she seemed to actually pull vertical for a few strides, her haunches gathering and her head low as she strained to do what I need
ed. Shortly, it got better, or at least became only nearly straight up. Trees brushed my legs on either side, and I ducked under low-hanging branches. Once, Stripes jumped as something small and furry raced between her legs.
Twenty minutes after we left the Old Road, we broke free of the trees just below the ridgeline. From here, we could see more than from View Bend, could look down onto View Bend and the High Road, in fact. My sharper eyes would be useful here.
“Hello,” Paloma called from above me. I turned to see her and her hebra, Sand, resolve as movement from a chaos of dawn-grayed tent-trees, redberry bushes, vine maple, and tall grasses escaped from the plains to find brief purchase on the stony ground. Long shadows cast darkness across about half of the open place, the rest visible now in the first early crack of light. In a few moments, the first sunshine would fall upon us and the battle would begin.
I dismounted and clutched Paloma to me, my heart sinking at how thin her shoulders seemed to have become. “How is Kayleen?” she whispered into my ear.
“She’s as well as possible.”
“That’s good.” We held each other, waiting. When light touched the rocks above us directly, I let her go, keeping my silence. I led Stripes toward Sand. Akashi had picked this spot for us. It appeared well-chosen: steep drops and dense forest cover would make it tough for people to find us, and the pile of rocks jumbled at the top would be cover from above if a skimmer came. The sun painted bright orange bottoms on wispy morning clouds, and the tall shadows of Stripes’s legs looked like knives.
As soon as the three hebras were tied out to graze on the sparse grass, we gathered close near the rocks, looking down. Artistos did, in fact, lie easily visible below us. From this angle, we saw the fields and the hebra barn first, the cliffs down to the Grass Plains falling to the left. The town itself spread away from us, an uneven rectangle of buildings and streets leading to Commons Park, and beyond, to the Lace River.
“I hope everyone is ready,” I said.
Tom pulled Paloma into a sideways embrace, looking down at her tenderly. “I’m sure they are,” he whispered. She leaned into him, bending her head down. Her hair had become fully gray in the weeks we’d been home. She had come here ahead of us at her own request, wanting quiet. A healer, she had concocted poisons to kill. The stress of it showed in dark circles smudging her hollowed cheeks and a slumped forward tilt to her slender shoulders.
Still, when she looked up at Tom, a light glow filled her features. During the summer of our trip around Little Lace Lake, all of these relationships had been under the surface—at least me and Liam, and Tom and Paloma. Only my little brother and wild Alicia had come together then.
The three of us waited.
We had decided not to communicate via earset until the fighting started, hoping for surprise. I pictured Kayleen lying down on a blanket in the cave. She’d be near the front, for clear access to the data she needed. Hunter would be beside her, helping her as I would if I were with her. Or at least as well as an original human could help an altered. Liam would be nearing the town, creeping up on it, using his frizzer in hopes of avoiding an early alarm, following a least-surveillance path Kayleen had mapped out for him the day before. Ruth and her group should be below us and to our right.
All told, over a thousand people filled the forest, and five hundred more waited just over the ridge, ready to join the battle. Fifteen hundred against less than fifty, and we worried about whether or not we would have enough.
The whole world seemed to hold its breath, waiting. Even the baby inside me slept, or waited.
46
ATTACK
I perched on a rock two meters above Paloma and Tom, savoring a moment alone after the frenetic pace of preparation. What did I want? For everyone to live. There were already so many holes in our company. I didn’t even want the Star Mercenaries to die. Making them go away would be enough. As if I could hope for such a simple, positive outcome. Even though I’d learned better, it was part of me to hope. Today, hope felt like a curse.
Artistos slept on, unawares. Sunshine painted the flecks of silica in the rock below me with bright colors. It glinted off the top of the Dawnforce, slid partway down her squat, silver sides, and then separated individual roof tiles on the hebra barn. If only I could be down there, creeping up on the invaders.
I wasn’t doing anything. Yet. A fluttering heel-kick to the inside of my belly reminded me why. I folded my stomach, and thus the baby, in my arms, hoping it felt me hold it. Would I even be able to birth it? And into what?
But it wasn’t my job to worry, regardless of the fact the baby’s very presence made me more afraid of any bad outcome.
My job was to watch.
What to watch for? A puff of smoke? Movement among the trees? The Lace Forest slept below us, the town streets empty.
The first sign of life was Ruth, loud and amazed and proud, in my right ear. A whisper. “We killed one.” Because everyone used the same earset frequency, we would all hear. She and her team of two hundred fifty should be flowing down through the Lace Forest. Were they already in town? “The one we saw must have been a guard. It’s deserted here.”
Kayleen, her voice loud and firm in my ear. Commanding. “Stay slow. Don’t set off the perimeters.” But one down, and we hadn’t lost anyone yet. That I knew of.
Maybe this would work.
Below me, Artistos looked as if it slept.
Kayleen, lower this time. “They know you’re there.” Silence. “They’re chattering.”
Was Liam all right? I held my silence, dropping down next to Tom and Paloma. “Be careful jumping with that baby,” Paloma cautioned.
“It’s started?” Tom asked.
“Yes. Ruth says she killed one.”
“I can’t see anything,” Paloma whispered, standing on tiptoes, craning her neck.
“Over by the River Walk.” Tom hissed, pointing.
Squinting, movement resolved into two tiny, barely distinct figures. The strongs, or at least some strongs (whether the ones I had met or not), racing down the neat, even path that ran by the river, fast for all their bulk. I spoke into the earset. “Two fighters headed in from the industrial area. They’re running. Watch out!”
A steady, slightly maniacal laugh. Ruth. “Maybe we spooked them.”
Maybe you’re too sure of yourself. But then, Ruth and her band were good hunters. “Maybe. They’re coming toward you. Watch yourself.”
No laugh this time. “I will.”
Liam. He’d be separating from Akashi, skirting town as long as he could, heading for the water system. There had been no particular defenses on our water plant in the past, but Kayleen had told me it was masked from her. Liam would get close, then wait until the battle was more fully joined, hoping to be ignored. He carried poison from Paloma, something meant to kill anyone who drank it.
Paloma squeezed my hand. I glanced at her—fear filled her eyes, and hope. Or maybe the two combined, which Akashi called prayer.
The silence leaked into forever. I filled it with a breaking whisper. “Akashi and his group should be directly between us and the town.” He and two hundred fighters took the closest approach to the ship and the camp surrounding it. I couldn’t yet see them.
Paloma fidgeted, her hand up to keep the sun out of her eyes. “Do you see Stile?”
Trees obscured much of the view. Sunshine glinted from something, a brief flash, nothing more.
If they knew we were there, they weren’t doing anything about it yet. Surely they knew. So why so quiet?
A bright green seed-bird flew out across the open ground only a few meters from us, sat, and cocked its head, regarding Paloma with its small brown eyes. A few of the feathers on its tail were ragged, and one dragged at the bird’s feet. A touch of wind brushed my right cheek, a shadow streaked across the ground, and the small bird was caught in the talons of a large day-hunting canopy owl. It didn’t even have time to cry out. The owl streaked into the forest with its prize. Surely a b
ad sign, unless by some miracle, we were the owl. Paloma and I shared a nervous glance and Tom shook his head. “It’s nothing. It must be nothing.”
Waiting sucked.
Kayleen, in my ear, her voice lightly touched by the craziness that had taken her before. “The alarms! By roamers’ field.” A high whine hit my ears, and it took a moment to be sure it was from Artistos and not the earset. I stood, craning my neck like Paloma, trying to see. “Stile!” Kayleen called. Anguish broke from her voice into my ear. “Stile! No!” A plaintive, “Anyone?”
And I knew in that moment what we had done to her.
Joseph had been linked to Steven and Therese when they died in the rock fall. It had taken him months to recover.
“Kayleen!” I screamed.
Paloma grabbed my arm, her eyes begging for information. I put a palm softly over her mouth, took a deep breath and reached for more control. Tom came behind her, circling her with his long arms, his round face and round eyes radiating concern.
I had no time for them, only for her. “Kayleen, stay above it. Go out if you have to.”
“He’s dead. They’re all dead.”
Just hours ago, they’d been in the cave with us, getting ready, laughing and joking with their loved ones.
Silence. I breathed into it, questing for a different path to focus her down. “Find Akashi, Kayleen.” Akashi could hear us. He’d know what was happening. Not that he could help much from wherever he was. But was he okay? “Akashi,” I whispered.
He answered. “Take care of Kayleen. We’ll take care of ourselves.”
“Kayleen,” I whispered, picturing her alone with only old Hunter beside her. Hunter was wise and strong, but this was not his job, not something he knew. “Kayleen. What’s happening with the others?”
“I…I …they’re all dead.”
“Everyone?” I demanded of her. “Or just Stile and his group?”
“S…Stile. Stile died.”
“So save the others. Pay attention to them.” Joseph had shunned the nets entirely for months after the quake, as if the blame for the rock fall had been his. A side effect of hearing our parents’ dying screams and being unable to do anything to help them. “Kayleen, stick to just the earset for now, be as blind as I am.”
Reading the Wind (Silver Ship) Page 36