by J. Thorn
Declan screamed, no longer worried about the alpha male or his pack. Maybe having his throat torn out by a wolf would be better than the slow suffering from what he now knew to be true.
Infection.
“Don’t give up.”
He turned, a whimper escaping from his lips.
“Who said that?” but the voice, he knew. It couldn’t be, but it had to be. Her voice was unmistakable.
“C’mon, Declan. Get up and start walking.”
He recognized the voice. It washed over him and he wanted to wrap himself in it like a blanket.
Seren?
“I can’t. My leg. It…”
“One step in front of the other. Follow me.”
Declan saw a figure move behind a tree. He thought he caught a glimpse of her hair cascading down over the bow slung over her shoulder. Of all the people he could see in the forest, it had to be her. She would be dead by now, he had thought many times.
“Now. We have to go now.”
He pulled himself to his feet and fell back into the tree, feeling as though he had stepped into a campfire. Declan shoved off and stumbled in Seren’s direction.
“Good. C’mon.”
Why wouldn’t she help him? he thought, and he wanted to call out, ask her to help him, but all that came out was a croak. And so he shambled along, falling into trees and then pushing himself off them. The sun seemed to be setting again but Declan had lost track of time. He couldn’t remember if dawn had already broken today, or whether the day had sped into night in the split second it took him to fall from the tree.
Ten yards ahead, he caught another glimpse of a moving figure. He turned and continued toward her.
“It’s another half mile. I know you can make it. Don’t give up.”
“What is it, Seren? Why won’t... Why not wait…for me?” He finally managed to say, but the words sounded strange, gravely, like a dying old man.
“There’s no time. Keep moving.”
He put his head down and gritted his teeth through the pain. He almost wished the doctors had removed his leg and cauterized it, somehow believing that would be less painful than his pus-filled stitches. Before she had arrived, he had been ready to give up, lie down and let the end come, but now he remembered. Ever since Joining the Elk, she had stayed in his mind. Even Jonah himself would not have urged Declan onward now, but the thought of showing weakness and failure in front of this girl... Why did that bother him?
The ground sloped downward and, for the first time since leaving Rocky Mount, Declan saw a man-made structure poking through the trees.
“I see it.”
“We’re close. Walk toward it. Follow me.”
The old-growth trees gave way to younger oaks. Declan fell and felt the consistent, smooth concrete surface underneath the layer of fallen leaves. He glanced up and saw a ruin, at least four stories tall but still smothered by the forest canopy overhead.
“Where is the door?”
“Go around to the right and you’ll see a staircase. You’ll have to climb up to the second floor. The stairs are broken, but it is not safe to stay on the ground level.”
Declan laughed. “I can’t climb a set of stairs.”
“You can,” she said. “And you will.”
He crawled on all fours, the pain in his leg turning his foot numb. Declan climbed over the threshold and saw a set of stairs to his left. He used both hands and the railing to pull his body up, one step at a time. Declan rested on the landing and his eyes drooped.
“Not yet. Don’t stop there.”
“Okay, Seren. Okay.”
He grabbed the railing again and continued, clawing his way up until he reached the gap where the stairs had collapsed. He looked up and groaned. The gap was only a few feet, but it seemed a mile to him now.
“You have to make it up.”
He cried out in pain as he pulled himself up onto his uninjured leg. He reached for the rail above, hoping it would hold. It did, and he pulled hard, struggling to haul himself upwards. He could feel the last of his strength finally giving way as he slumped onto the landing above, his legs still dangling in the air.
He crawled slowly forward until he reached the corner of the room where a dried up old mattress lay, and then rolled over onto his back and smiled. Seren leaned over, her angelic and yet strong features looking back at him.
Angelic? He frowned. Where had that come from? She was the annoyingly competent hunter, the archer with skill far beyond his own; she was a voice that Jonah listened to even when the leader had shrugged off advice from others. Why? Just a girl. But now her features came back to him.
“I did it. I made it.”
“Yes. I’m proud of you. You have worked hard. Sleep now.”
Declan did as Seren’s voice commanded. He let the ocean of darkness pull him into unconsciousness, but then, as he was about to fall into a deep sleep, he opened his eyes, wanting to check that she was really there.
The room was empty. The spot where she had stood, void.
She said she was proud of me, he thought. And then, as he looked at the empty room and the forest around him, he realized the foolishness of it all. Seren would never speak of him like that. She had barely noticed his existence. Proud? Worked hard? Those were not words that would come from her lips.
And she was not there. She had never been there, had she?
Then he thought. She is dead. Finally, he knew that she was. And she had come to help him this one time.
A ghost.
Chapter 62
Donast stood upwind from the bridge, a hundred yards higher up the slope, his remaining weapon, the axe, held firmly in his hand as he watched the bridge burn. It had to be done this way. It had to be more than just the collapsing of the bridge. This, he thought, was a statement to the Valk that had followed them from the river camp, biting at their heels the whole way.
It had to say this is where the line is drawn.
The glow from the flames lit up the area for a mile around, casting dancing shadows along the tree line where Donast stood. His warriors stood with him, watching as the bridge first took light then seemed to be engulfed in seconds. He had never seen such a fire, not even when they had burned buildings. The wood had only had a couple of weeks to dry, but the process must have been accelerated by the heat of the day. A hundred feet high, the flames seemed to climb, bright clawing tentacles of light against the night sky.
“Are we sure there is no other way to cross?” he asked the warrior nearest to him.
The warrior shook his head. “Our scouts have ranged in both directions for thirty miles before the clan arrived here, before this, and we found none.”
“Good,” said Donast.
We have stopped them, for now, he thought. Stopped the plague that would have taken us all. He hadn’t known if the Valk would have gone any further, crossing the bridge and following them into the forest.
Well they can’t now, he thought. The risk had been too much, and now he had told the Valk what they risked if they were to go further.
But it still left him, and his clan, in new territory. There would be no trek north from Eliz this year, no journey back to their homeland south of the Bleaklands. Their fields would remain untouched for at least this year, unless they could somehow find a trail through the mountains.
No. That was a foolish plan. For now, they were stuck with the forest, and bound to follow the trail of those from Wytheville, if those clans would allow them.
“Will we leave now?” asked the warrior.
“No,” said Donast. “Not tonight. We have the breach between us and them, and we need supplies. There is the camp the Elk left in the clearing, we can use that.”
“There is no game in the forests,” said the warrior.
Donast nodded. “I know. We should forage, and take down the birds from the trees, if we must. Whatever we must do, we will do. My people are too tired to run one more day. Also, we must send out scouts at first light. We n
eed to find the trail of the Elk, so that we can follow and catch up with them. If they accepted all the refugees from Eliz, then they will accept us, too.”
He decided to head back to the clearing. There was no more for him here but the flames of the bridge, and he would hear that collapse, soon enough, now that it was fully engulfed. A shame, he thought as he turned his back and started to leave. All that work to build a way across the breach and we have had to destroy it to survive.
“My lord,” called the warrior.
Donast stopped and turned back.
“Look,” said the man, pointing at the fire.
He frowned, wondering what the warrior was fretting about. It seemed that all his warriors had turned into nervous idiots over the last few days. The trek and the constant harrowing by the Valk had made them all weak, and he was about to scold the man when he saw the glow of figures moving toward the great fire.
They were barely visible at first, until they moved forward and the bright glare of the fire uncovered the vast line of figures. They moved as one, a straight line across the barren ground the other side of the breach. Hundreds of them, armored with the same metal armor and the same weapons. The line stretched in both directions for a hundred yards, and their numbers were deeper than he could make out. They moved forward but did not go near the breach or the fire, stopping twenty feet from the depths and the heat.
And they watched him.
How could there be so many? he wondered. There had to be a thousand Valk warriors. He was speechless for a moment, staring at the vast legion of pale figures.
“Change of plan,” said Donast. “Tell everyone to pack once more. And send out scouts to find the trail of the Elk. We need to know where they went. We leave now.”
Chapter 63
Seren crouched in the bushes, keeping low into the shadow of the huge pine tree behind her. She slowly brushed aside some of the thick foliage, creating a gap no bigger than her hand to peer through. The forest was still utterly silent and even the birds failed to break it. She had traveled east the whole morning, following the road at a distance, always keeping it far enough away that she could see anyone passing by but staying deep in the woods away from prying eyes. After she’d reached the crossroads it had been easier, but still the lack of movement of any kind unnerved her.
The Cygoa were days behind, that much she knew. Three times, in the days that had passed, she had been forced to slow her pace and circumnavigate a patrol, and two of those times she had been detected but had managed to evade capture. They were frighteningly efficient and aware of everything around them, she had learned. The crossroads had terrified her. The ground was open for a hundred yards, and to avoid it would have meant traveling for miles, something she couldn’t afford, and the two minutes that it took her and Sorcha to run across the uneven ground had felt like an age.
But no one had been watching—when she crossed, at least. No one had followed her that she was aware of. There were no longer signs of groups heading east or west—nothing until she came to the clearing. Sorcha smelled death a mile away and groaned her displeasure as they drew closer to the source. There was one body, dead in the bottom of the recess and leaning against a tree, obviously savaged in some way, but Seren was in no hurry to go down there and look closer, even though the knowledge of their fate could be an advantage to her. She couldn’t face what was there.
She let the branches of the bush go and backed away.
“We’ll go around,” she whispered to Sorcha, who sat under the tree. Seren knew the wolf’s senses were far more sensitive than her own, and she did not need to go and look to already have decided what was there and what had happened. The wolves had been this way.
If only you could talk, Seren thought. The things you could tell me that I will never know.
They both backed away from the ridge and headed south for a short distance, keeping away from the recess by a few hundred yards as they made their way through the thickening brush. Seren missed the snow, even with its freezing touch. Everything in the forest was so much easier to make out when it was covered with a thick blanket of white. Everything seemed so much more stark and clear, even if most of it was hidden or obscured.
A mile further on from the grisly scene, Sorcha sniffed at the ground and whined. Seren stopped and quickly jogged over to where the wolf stopped, then crouched and patted the ground. She saw the disturbance in the grass, the broken twigs, but saw no sign of what could have caused it, but then she lifted her hand and saw the stain of dried blood.
Someone had left the scene before them, and they were injured. A survivor, she thought. But how long ago? The blood was dried, yet the damp of the forest had prevented it from turning to dust and vanishing for good. She looked around, hoping for some sign of where the person or thing had gone, but could see no further sign until she stood up to move on. There, among the bushes ahead, almost hidden by the shadow of another large pine tree, was a muddy patch that had been disturbed.
Paw prints. The same as those Sorcha left behind, yet these were bigger. An adult wolf, or more than one. Looking around at the ground she hadn’t seen them all at first, but the longer she looked, the more signs came to her. Disturbed leaves, broken twigs, trodden weeds and grass. Not just one wolf had passed this way, but many. The markings were maybe two or three days old.
“Looks like we’ll be finding somewhere to hide up tonight,” she said. Sorcha gave her usual sniff in reply.
It was another hour before Sorcha discovered a fresher trail of blood. The forest gave way to a stretch of road that had long ago been disconnected from the main road, and as the pair stepped out onto thin stretch of hard ground, Sorcha whined again. This time the disturbance was more recent. As Seren followed the trail along the road she noticed something hidden in the forest to the north, where the road led. Large gray shadows loomed through the trees, veiling much of the forest beyond them.
Some ruins, she thought. Maybe the remains of a village that had been lost to the forest. “Come on,” she said, and she made her way along the road, keeping to the edge where the trees could provide cover.
There were several buildings hidden along the way, clustered together on either side of the broken road. Some of the buildings were little more than knee high walls, marking where larger buildings had once stood, and most of the interior of these were filled with collapsed rubble and broken roof tiles, but the last building, the one furthest along the road, separated by a hundred yards of open rocky ground, was taller. Two high floors still clung to a skeleton of cracked and broken masonry, but much of the front of the building had collapsed.
Seren moved to the side of the building, following Sorcha as she trailed the line of blood that Seren could barely make out, and there they crouched as Seren peered upwards to the collapsing wooden floors. The blood led directly to a set of broken stairs that no wolf would be able to climb, but the gaps were short enough that Seren could cross if she decided to risk it.
Someone had gone up there to escape the wolves. But what if it was a Cygoa up there? And what if they were still alive? If they were barely injured, she could be in trouble. It was risky.
Coughing broke the silence. From the first floor, she thought. Definitely the first floor. Whoever was up there sounded sick, weak. The cough had no strength to it. Do we leave them? Carry on and hope that it was someone who would do no good, cause trouble? But what if it was one of her kin, or another clan member?
She had to find out. There was no question of it. If it was someone she could help, then she could maybe find out where the clans were. She edged forward and began to slowly and cautiously climb the stairs, every step taken carefully so as not to make a sound, but it was inevitable that she would make some, and each time the wooden supports creaked, she stopped and cringed. Some sections of the stairs had broken away and fallen to the ground below, and she had to pull herself up, but eventually she ended up lying on her stomach at the top of the stairs, a few feet from the entrance to the r
oom beyond. She stood slowly and edged toward the gap, peering around the doorway.
On the far side of the room was a prone, huddled figure. A knife lay a few feet away, along with the rough remains of a satchel and an empty water flask. The air was thick with the smell of fresh blood.
She drew her weapon and edged forward, stepping quietly through the room until she could reach out and snatch up the knife. Then she took a few steps back and peered at the body. There was little movement there, but there was some. The person was lying still, but Seren could see the gentle rise of breathing.
“Hello?” she called, quietly.
The figure moved, tried to roll over, but then fell back to the ground.
“Who are you?” Seren asked, stepping forward, weapon held tightly in one hand, axe gripped in the other. Whoever this person was, if they tried anything she would not hesitate. “Are you injured?” she asked, knowing it was a stupid question.
The figure moved again, once more trying to turn over, and this time he was successful. The prone man rolled over onto his side and Seren found herself staring into the pale semblance of someone she thought she recognized. Who was he? She knew him, of course, but from where? Where had she seen that face?
“S…” the man tried to speak but coughed again. “You...dead...back...haunt me...”
Seren frowned, and wondered how this young man had come to be out here alone, far from his clan, but she still didn’t lower the handgun that Artemis had spent hours teaching her to use.
“Declan?”
***
An hour later, Declan was sat up, looking a little less pale than before. Half a skin of water and two days’ worth of rations had perked him up a little. But the wound on his leg… Well, Seren could do little to help him with that but give him one of the tiny yellow pills that Dr. Henson had given her. The doctor had said they should only be used infrequently, to help the healing of bad sickness or wounds that had gone unaided and begun to fester, and that she should be sparing with them. But there were fifty of them in the bottle, and the wound on Declan’s leg was bad enough that she could see the signs of fever in his face.