by Kaelyn Ross
“Just because she chose to be a farmer, and not a Red Hand, does not make her weak,” Kestrel said in Tessa’s defense. “And I’m not weak.” She wished that were not so true at the moment. Just sitting up and talking had left her so exhausted that she wanted to lie back down. “I can carry as much as most men.”
“No, you cannot. But I don’t mean the strength of your arms. You are weak here and here,” Aiden said, tapping his chest, then the side of his head. “Instead of celebrating over your Kill, I saw you weep. Do you think one of those Stone Dogs up the ravine would have wept at cutting out your heart? Black Ears are even worse. They would have laughed as they chopped you to pieces, but only after they had their way with you for a few days—or months.”
Kestrel had no answer. She knew what Aiden said about Stone Dogs and Black Ears was true. She also knew he was judging her too harshly. He seemed to think that because he was the youngest Red Hand ever, and in turn the youngest ever warchief, that he could dole out wise criticism with the voice of an elder—no one doubted he would become a leader of the tribe one day, but so far, that day had not come.
As for the lion, she could admit that she had felt compassion for the beast, but was that so wrong, when it had fought for its life with all the strength and determination that she had? Her weeping had been her meager way to pay the creature the respect it had earned. Before she could figure out a way to explain what filled her heart, Aiden spoke up again.
“The day will come when your luck runs out, little sister, when no one is around to save you. When that day comes, one of our enemies will take your blood or your body. That’s when you will understand that it would’ve been better if I told the truth about how you really beat the lion.”
“If you think so,” Kestrel snapped, “then why not tell the Elders when we return?” If she were not so tired and hurt, she would have leaped across the fire and kicked her brother in the teeth. At least, that was what she wished she could do.
“If you really have honor enough to become Red Hand, then you will tell them yourself—but I know you won’t. As it stands, I can afford to let you fail on your own.”
Kestrel felt the sting of tears in her eyes. She blinked them away, and hoped it was not obvious. “I have honor and strength,” she said, just above a whisper.
“You don’t, Kes. Not even a little. But I don’t need to tell our people what they will learn soon enough.”
“What does that mean?”
He lifted a leather cord from the neck of his shirt. Four human teeth hung from it. His Kill had been a Black Ear, another living man, the most dangerous of prey. Aiden was the first in many generations to pit himself against such a Kill.
“Once you hang the bones of your Kill around your neck,” he said, “you’ll be counted as a Red Hand. And if there’s one thing all Red Hands are expected to do, it is to fight our enemies. When your first battle comes, and you begin weeping and shaking like you did over that lion, everyone will know you are not a true Red Hand, and never were—that’s if you even survive your first battle.” He looked at her, lips wrinkled in disgust, as if he did not care if she died or not. “On that day, you will remember this moment, and you’ll wish the lion had ended you.”
Does he really hate me so much? The answer, it seemed, was self-evident. “You’re wrong,” she whispered.
Aiden dismissed her protest with a wave of his hand. “You need food for strength,” he said, flinging half of a roasted rabbit into her lap. “Friends of those men I killed might come looking for us. If so, I don’t want to have to fight them off and carry you at the same time.”
Kestrel inhaled sharply. “There were others besides the seven you killed! Eight on the mountain, and another at the edge of the forest. I knocked him over.”
Aiden rolled his eyes. “I never saw them. The first likely ran for his life, and the second was probably a bush you mistook for a man.”
Kestrel ground her teeth together. “I saw him!”
“What did he look like?”
Kestrel shook her head uncertainly. “I … I don’t know. Everything was happening so fast.”
“Like I said, you ran into a bush.”
“No!” Kestrel shouted, meaning to tell about the dart the man at the edge of the forest had shot her with, but Aiden cut her off.
“Believe me, Kes, if there were any others around, I would have killed them. Now, eat.”
“But—”
“Eat!”
The last of her resistance crumbled, and Kestrel began nibbling at her food. The meat was tough and charred, and she was too annoyed with herself, and too miserable about all that Aiden had said, to feel hungry. She was not sure she could feel worse than she already did, until her brother spoke up again.
“A true Red Hand,” he said flatly, “never loses their weapon.”
With a flick of his wrist, he hurled her long hunting knife into the ground beside her hip. When she was sleeping, he must have gone back up the ravine to find it.
As she stared at the quivering hilt, it reminded her that she could not let him help her anymore. By binding her wounds and feeding her, he might have already done too much in the minds of the Elders. Just in case, she flung aside the charred bit of rabbit as if it were a hot ember.
Aiden laughed at her.
CHAPTER NINE
Since a Potential carried little more than the clothes on their back and a single weapon of choice, Kestrel had to make do with the tattered, soaking wet clothes she wore, which did nothing to help against the fever-chills that had come rushing back soon after she got to her feet and began preparing for their long march home.
Aiden suffered no such restrictions, and carried a knapsack full of supplies, a bow, and a quiver of arrows. After he ran a short knife across his scalp, jaw, and chin, she watched jealously as he changed into dry doeskin trousers and a dark green roughspun shirt. Kestrel had a few of those shirts at home, but they did her no good here.
After settling the pack on his shoulders and cinching the straps tight, he gave her a disinterested look. “Ready?”
“I should go on alone,” she answered. He might have helped her, but she did not need to let him keep doing so.
A malicious, teasing light came into his eyes. “A little late for that, isn’t it? After all, I already saved you. If I have to again, what difference does it make?”
Kestrel clenched her jaw to keep from screaming, “I don’t want your help!”
Again, as if reading her mind, he added, “If it makes you feel better, I promise I won’t help anymore … unless you ask.”
She had never been able to outmaneuver him, and she was too tired and too sick to try now. “Just go.”
He shrugged indifferently, and set out along a game trail running along the grassy bank of the stream. She could never hate Aiden, no matter what he did to her, no matter how little he thought of her, but right now, she very much disliked him.
Kestrel settled the waterlogged hide bundle under her arm, as Aiden moved away through the dripping brush. I could turn and go some other way, she told herself, but just the thought of climbing up to the ridgeline she had run along the day before made her legs flutter. She gusted a heavy sigh and, seeing no better choice, went after him.
Within a hundred strides, Kestrel knew this was going to be one of the hardest, longest days of her life. All the wobbliness that had been in her limbs the day before fell on her again, and soon her wounds grew hot to the touch, even through the bandages. She bowed her head, hoped the Ancestors’ blessings remained with her, and walked.
One step led to another, and another after that.
Hours passed.
The day grew bright and warm. The stream gurgling along beside the game trail became wider and wilder, until it tumbled over a drop and fell as a frothy veil to a wide, ferny glade surrounded by towering cedars a hundred feet below. A doe and her fawn drank at the edge of the water. At any other time, Kestrel would have counted it a charming place, but she was
having a hard time concentrating on anything, save the desire to sit down and rest.
When Aiden began wading across the stream, she gazed at him with bewilderment. “Home is to the south. Why are you going north?”
“You probably shouldn’t come with me,” he called over his shoulder. “Just take your Kill, and go to the River. The way you’re fumbling around, I’ll catch up soon enough.”
Kestrel found enough defiance left to meet his challenge—she had no doubt that’s what it was—and plunged into the stream after him.
He shook his head and moved on.
Before she climbed onto the opposite bank, she took a long drink, the cold water soothing her dry throat. She wanted to throw herself in and cool her fever, but that would have to wait.
They walked perhaps another mile, climbing up and over a low ridgeline draped in stands of fir and pine. Squirrels chittered back and forth to one another from high branches, while birds swooped and turned, catching insects in midflight.
When a grouse exploded from a bush in a flurry of beating wings, Aiden snatched an arrow from the quiver at his hip, nocked it to the bowstring, and drew. Just before the bird vanished behind cover farther down the slope, he let fly.
Kestrel watched with a magical sense of awe as grouse and arrow became one. She had often seen the same stunning skill from her brother during the village’s Seedtime festivals, after the howling white storms of winter had fled the land, and the ground grew warm enough to plant. Most of the villagers were fair hands with bows, but Aiden had been winning archery contests since he was twelve. He was at his most deadly, however, when holding a pair of long knives, whether they were wooden ones used in mock battles, or the two of steel he had used on the Stone Dogs the night before.
Aiden left her standing on the trail to retrieve the grouse, then returned a few minutes later with the bird hanging from his belt. They set off again.
Over the next hour, Kestrel became aware that her fever had faded a little, and her head was clearing. The gashes the lion had given her still throbbed, but she expected that. Even if the poultices Aiden had placed over the wounds stopped the flesh-rot before it began, the lion’s claws had done a nasty job, and the injuries would remain tender for a long time. Kestrel knew, as well as Aiden did, that she owed her life to him. She was grateful, but also suspicious. Even if others never seemed to notice, she was well aware that Aiden never gave something unless he stood to gain more in return. She wondered if this side journey might be leading her to his price.
Around midday, they came to an area where a long ago wildfire had cleared out the forest, providing a view of a wide valley, and beyond that, the scrubby foothills marched off to the east until they joined a dusty, summer-yellow plain.
The valley below them held another of the desolate cities that had not seen human inhabitants since the Red Fever crushed the world.
From their vantage point the leaning, cone-shaped buildings of the city resembled tired old men gathered around their own graves. Sadness touched her heart, but she promptly buried it before Aiden could see her feelings written across her face.
“What are we doing here?” Kestrel asked.
Aiden gave her a strange look. What she saw in his raised eyebrows, too-wide eyes, and slightly parted lips, was a startled uncertainty. She would not have been more surprised if he had fallen over dead at her feet. He spoke quietly, as if imparting a secret. “Have you ever wanted to explore the old cities?”
“No,” Kestrel said, aghast. “Everyone knows they are cursed with poisoned luck and dark spirits. More than that, the Elders have forbidden us to enter them. Who in their right mind would want to explore…?”
She trailed off, suddenly understanding his earlier expression. To Aiden, rules were not meant to be broken, and he viewed anyone who so much as bent the rules to be weak and unworthy. And yet, here he was, unable to resist the allure of breaking one such rule.
Maybe the fever was influencing her, but all at once she felt closer to him than she ever had before. For the first time, she saw him as a real person, instead of a piece of walking iron. Seeing him that way, not necessarily fragile, but vulnerable, gave her an idea that never would have crossed her mind before—she had meant every word about the dangers that lurked in the old cities.
“I’ll go with you,” she said slowly, hoping she was not condemning herself to some gruesome end, “but only if you stop saying I’m not worthy to be a Red Hand.”
His brow furrowed in thought. Whatever was going on inside his head seemed disagreeable, but after a few seconds he nodded. “All right, I agree.”
His assurance did not sound very convincing, but she decided to take what she could get. “Let’s go.”
He studied her for a few moments, as if suspecting some trick, then began walking toward the city.
Kestrel went after him, but the closer they came to the outskirts, the less certain she was of the bargain she had made. Thinking again of how he always managed to come out ahead, she could not help but wonder if he had planned this all along.
CHAPTER TEN
Shaped like a huge teardrop, the narrowest point of the ancient city began high up the valley and swelled as it fell into the lower end a few miles away. Gray ribbons, edged with pale lines that magnified the sunlight, formed a gridwork throughout the city. Kestrel knew they were not ribbons at all, but ancient roadways that remained untouched by countless deep snowfalls and spring thaws.
Most such thoroughfares did not extend past the old cities, but when hunting two summers ago, Kestrel had ventured far south of her village. After climbing a high plateau, she had found a similar grid nestled amongst the sage flats. To her, it looked as if someone had thought to build a city on that spot, but had only managed to build the roads.
She had approached the outermost road with superstitious dread. After spending several minutes looking down at the roadway, she talked herself into to touching it, hesitantly at first, like a cat testing water with its paw, then pressing her palm flat against the surface. It had felt like glass, maybe polished stone, but slightly gritty. It had also been cool, despite the heat of the day. When she later told One-Ear Tom about her find, he warned her to stay away. And so she had … until last winter.
Telling herself that she was only hunting antelope, she returned to the plateau, its smooth crown swept by icy winds and covered in a few inches of snow—except where the roads lay. They were bare, and when she put her hand on one that time, it had been warm and dry. Suspecting some enchantment at work, she had fled.
Now Kestrel and Aiden followed a similar road into the old city. She tried not to think about the coolness of it beneath her feet, despite the beating sun.
They made their way deeper into what had once been home to innumerable people, those who had last walked in the flesh before the Red Fever had, according to One-Ear Tom’s more grisly stories, devoured their insides and left them spewing blood in their final moments. What drying bones there might have once been to mark their passing, had long since been dragged away by scavenging animals, or reduced to dust by countless long years.
“I don’t like it here,” Kestrel said, helpless to avoid speaking aloud her fears. Her eyes traced the evidence of the last wildfire that had swept through the area, probably back before her parents had begun their courtship. Besides old dead tree stumps hidden amongst the new growth, she saw where fingers of flame had shattered windows, and left behind sooty slashes up the sides of almost every nearby building. Rusted corpses of bizarre machines slumped along the roadsides, the wonders they had performed forgotten, and now serving no greater purpose than to provide shelter for rodents. It was hard to believe this city had ever been filled with light and life.
“There’s nothing to fear,” Aiden said, running his hand over the rusted hulk of a machine that, if the stories were true, might have once soared through the air, or raced at great speed over the land. Kestrel was never sure if those tales were reliable, because some even claimed that peopl
e had once traveled between the stars.
“I can feel them watching,” Kestrel said softly, recalling a recurring nightmare she used to have. In it, shapeless things ripped loose from the muddy ground after a rainstorm—much like the one the night before—and hounded her though a phantom forest cloaked in shadow and mist. No matter how far or fast she ran, those rotting things always caught her. What she remembered clearest about the dream was the way the malignant creatures would ogle her with dead white eyes as they snaked their dead fingers around her throat. Before she woke, their gaping mouths, puffing the reek of things lying putrid in the sun, would fall on her and begin to feed. The memory of their sightless stares and loathsome touch felt much the same as she did now: trapped and afraid.
Aiden favored her with a puzzled look. “Who can you feel?”
“The dead. They are everywhere … watching … waiting.”
Aiden paused. “You mean the Ancestors?”
“Who else?”
“They will not trouble us.”
“How do you know?”
“Because,” Aiden said, “no matter what anyone says, they were just people—like me and you.” He spoke as if he had some secret knowledge.
“Maybe they were people,” Kestrel allowed, “but now they’re dead.”
“Dead or alive, they will not trouble us.”
Kestrel was not so sure. “You know what One-Ear Tom says?”
“Remind me,” Aiden answered in a bored tone.
“‘The dead want only one thing from the living, and that’s to make them dead, too.’”
“If the Ancestors wanted to harm us, then why do we waste our time asking favors of them?”
Kestrel frowned at the raw slash on her palm, from which her blood sacrifice had run. Like it or not, Aiden had a point. If she had trusted the Ancestors enough to give such an offering, in return for ensuring that the lion continued pursuing her, how could she fear them?