by Bobby Adair
“Where did you get two hundred swords?” asked Tommy.
“Where and how is not important,” said Evan. “I have them. That is what is important. If Minister Beck is involved in this, I will tell you when the time comes. That is my final answer on that matter. Whether you accept that is up to you. If you do not, you need to accept another truth. If you ride or march out of those gates when General Blackthorn leads the army to the Ancient City, you will die. Every man, woman, and beast that leaves the city will die except for Blackthorn and his precious cavalry. You know who I am, and you know I am privy to many secrets that you are not. I will not tell you how I know these things beyond that explanation. If you choose not to believe me, know that what you forfeit is your life.”
“We risk our lives either way then?” said Tommy.
“No,” said Evan. “To stay and fight is to risk your life. To march out with the army is to accept death.”
Timmy rubbed his hands over his face.
Tommy wasn’t happy. He said, “I believe him.”
“I know,” said Timmy. “I guess I do, too. I wish we had a better choice, is all.”
“You do,” said Evan. “You may do nothing. Stay here, desert. You’ll be burned by Blackthorn when he returns or by his replacement while he is away. That is the sum of your choices.”
“I’d rather die with a sword in my hand,” said Tommy. “If you take us to see this cache of weapons, I’ll doubt you no more.”
Evan rose from his chair. “Let’s go. The place is not far from here.”
Chapter 43: Ella
When her children had awakened, Ella collected them and led them into the forest.
“Where are we going?” William asked.
“To get breakfast,” Ella replied. The remnants of the previous night’s rabbits hung in the air. Although she’d gone to sleep with a full stomach, Ella’s appetite had already returned. Days of meager portions had caught up with her.
“Bray’s not back yet?”
“Nope. He must still be in town getting supplies.”
She watched William’s reaction, but like her, he no longer seemed surprised. The Warden’s unreliable behavior had become the norm, like it or not.
“When will he be back, do you think?” William asked.
“I expected him yesterday evening. So, I’d say any time now.”
Melora furrowed her brow. “I’ve never talked to a Warden before,” she noted. “He’s nicer than I thought.”
“Don’t let him fool you. We need to be careful,” Ella warned. With Bray constantly in their presence, she hadn’t delved into much detail.
“What do you mean?”
Before Ella could elaborate, William piped up, “He stole our things. He took Zander.”
“Who’s Zander?”
Ella shook her head. She launched into her story, filling in the gaps that Melora hadn’t heard. When they were finished, Melora furrowed her brow.
“Are you sure we should travel with him?”
“I keep asking myself that. But he’s the best guide we have, for now,” Ella said.
“You said yourself that he’s unreliable.”
“He is. But he’s done a lot of things to help us, as well.”
“Why do you think he stays with you and William, with us?”
Not having spent any significant thought on the question from Bray’s perspective, Ella said, “I’m not sure.”
She chewed on the question while they kept walking. Surely, he’d become attached to William. That much was clear. Beyond that, she wasn’t certain. His lewd passes at her could easily be dismissed as typical Warden behavior.
He’d alluded to the fact that he needed to earn a living, and that he couldn’t stay with them forever. She expected him to leave at any time. The sight of a familiar berry bush distracted her. She bent down and studied it.
“Look at that.” She smiled.
She sifted through the branches, plucking one of the small, plum-colored fruits. She held up the berry, popping it into her mouth while her children looked on.
“They almost taste better than the ones in Brighton,” she said with a laugh. “Try one!”
Melora and William bent down to pick berries of their own. They popped fruits into their mouths, examining them before they ate them.
“Look at this one!” William cried, a squirt of juice dribbling down his chin.
“Here’s another one! Look how ripe it is!” Melora announced.
Before Ella knew it, they were scrambling for the ripest picks, pushing past each other as if it were a game. William collected berries in the palm of one hand, mashing them into his mouth as if he hadn’t eaten in days. Melora popped them in her mouth almost sooner than she could pick them. She shoved William aside, and he laughed. In no time, they’d eaten a large section of the berries on the tree. They stood back and stared at each other.
“Your hands, William,” Melora said.
William held up his hands, showing off the red stains from the gushy insides of the fruit. He smiled and cleaned them in the grass.
Ella laughed.
They were disrupted by crackling in the brush.
Melora was the first to jump. She hoisted her sword in the air, spinning and yelling a warning to the others. Ella readied herself, instructing William to stay behind them. Four demons appeared from a nearby patch of bramble, fighting their way through the forest. Their screeches grew louder as they got close. They were on a direct path for Ella, William, and Melora. There was nowhere to go.
The first creature was minus an arm. The remainder was a ragged stump. It looked like it’d been involved in a recent encounter, and had somehow gotten away. It shrieked, clawing the air with its remaining hand, running on spindly legs.
Ella took a step forward, protecting her children.
The beast swung its good arm at her, and she sliced the blade through the air, cleaving off its hand. The creature stared at its bloodied wrist, trying to decipher what had happened. She stabbed it in the chest.
There was no time for reprieve. Another creature was right behind it.
Melora jumped into the fray. She swung her sword at the next creature, creasing its abdomen with a deep wound. It staggered backward and leaked blood.
Screaming erupted from the tree behind them. Ella kicked out a defensive boot long enough to look back, noting William had climbed the oak directly behind them. He was perched on a branch twenty feet off the ground, screaming at the creatures.
“Get away from them! I know you can hear me!” He waved his hands, barely keeping his balance.
William’s face was wild. Manic. He’d dropped his sword and pack at the bottom of the tree. Before Ella could shout a warning, her attention was ripped back to the scene on the ground.
“Mom! Look out!” Melora screamed.
Ella spun to see a creature directly in front of her. A large, mushroom-shaped growth covered half of its face. Strands of misplaced flesh protruded from its neck. It stared at her with its one good, bloodshot eye. It reached for her. She kicked the thing back and raised her sword. She cut off half of its fungal-covered face.
The thing collapsed in a hardly-human heap.
Melora was battling another—a monster with a body so covered in warts that its body had swollen to twice its size. She hacked away at it until she found its neck, slicing the thing open. It fell, writhing in its death throes.
A fifth, previously unseen creature plowed through the forest.
From the tree, William screamed at the thing. “They aren’t the ones you want! Leave them alone!”
The creature clacked its jaws in hunger. It kept coming until it was several feet from Ella.
“Get back! Get back, I told you!” William shrieked.
&nb
sp; The creature looked up at William, meeting his eyes. Its face registered confusion.
Ella speared it through the heart.
The demon crumpled.
**
“Get out of the tree, William!” Ella stuck her sword in the dirt. She peered up at him, raising her hands as if to catch him. “What are you doing?”
William had stopped screaming. He stared at the dead demons in disbelief, as if they might spring to life and converse with him. He stopped waving his hands. He clung to the branch above him, as if suddenly afraid he might fall.
“I said get down!” Ella yelled again.
She couldn’t help but picture William tumbling from the tree branch, breaking a leg. What would they do then? For a second, she considered climbing the tree and retrieving him, but thankfully, he obeyed her and descended, finding shaky handholds on the branches. She didn’t relax until his feet were on the ground.
“Why’d you go up there? Were you scared?” she asked.
“No.” He shook his head definitively. “I wasn’t scared.”
She watched him carefully, keeping a tight grip on her sword. William seemed to have relaxed, but she envisioned the manic boy in the tree, screaming at the demons. The image scared her almost as much as the beasts on the ground.
“You aren’t hurt, are you?” Melora asked him.
William walked away from them, studying the bodies. One of the creatures had fallen over the berry bush they’d been picking. The fruits were mangled and mixed with its blood. He furrowed his brow.
“You dropped your things,” Ella said, pointing to the discarded pack and sword at the base of the tree. “You’re going to need those, William.”
William strode over and reclaimed them. His expression turned to shame. “I’m sorry I climbed the tree. I’m sorry I left my things,” he said.
“That’s all right.”
“I guess I must’ve been scared,” he admitted.
Ella traded a look of concern with Melora when William wasn’t looking.
“It’s okay,” Melora said.
Before they could comfort him further, William put on his backpack, tucked his sword in his scabbard, and walked away.
Chapter 44: Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald moved with short, fearful steps as she approached General Blackthorn’s front entrance, a pair of thick wooden doors on big iron hinges. The hinges alone were worth a month’s wages to the day laborers, men who had no fields to tend and no products to sell.
Blue-shirted soldiers stood on each side of the door, bored, but seemingly itching for something to happen that would give them an excuse to unsheathe their swords and lop off some heads.
Fitz had seen their kind plenty of times when she worked nights in The House. Such men were uncaring and brutal. To them, she might as well have been a piece of furniture or a convenient pillow with the right-shaped curve. They didn’t seem to care for her any more or less. They did their business with busy hands and few words, leaving her without a thank you or the gift of a coin.
Fitz pushed her cloak open so that the men would be able to see the fine dress of a merchant’s wife she wore underneath. It was dyed in the deepest red, with cream-colored lace trim nearly as pale as her skin. She shuddered when Franklin had selected it for her. It was expensive enough that the dressmaker balked and argued. The dressmaker knew who Franklin was, and that he was there on Father Winthrop’s business. The dressmaker was obligated to provide the dress free of charge. It wasn’t until General Blackthorn’s name was mentioned that the dressmaker’s reluctance disappeared completely. Nobody wanted to be crossways with the General.
Fitz stopped in front of the two guards.
“Yes, ma’am?” one of them asked.
Yes, ma’am? Fitz bit back a laugh. If either of them recognized her for whom she was, she would have gotten a curse rather than a greeting. “I’m here to see General Blackthorn.”
“Who sent you?” the guard asked.
Thinking back to the lesson she’d learned while shopping for the dress, Fitz said, “I’m here at General Blackthorn’s request.”
The guards stiffened and looked at each other. Neither spoke, but some silent message passed between them. One of them stepped over and pulled the handle on one of the heavy doors. “Wait inside by the fire. One of the girls will take care of you.”
Fitz nodded and gave the guard a smile as she passed into a room with the largest, most ornate table she’d ever seen. The door closed behind her, making enough of a boom that she knew everyone in the house had to have been startled.
Opposite the pair of giant doors stood a great stone fireplace that looked as though it might have been carved from a single piece of stone. A mantle ran along the top at shoulder height. On it sat three boxes of the most interestingly decorative wood she’d ever seen. A large fire blazed inside the hearth.
From somewhere in the house, the smell of salted pork and baked bread caught her curiosity. Her stomach rumbled. She’d been nervous about her plan since the night before, unable to eat.
From a doorway that opened up to the right of the fireplace, an elderly woman came out, dressed in the plain, sack-shaped dress of a servant. “Yes, ma’am?”
Fitzgerald looked down her nose at the woman, establishing the social order just in case the clothing didn’t convey the message. “General Blackthorn requested that I come and see him.”
The woman looked puzzled and stuck for words. She glanced over her left shoulder toward a staircase, then back at Fitz. “The General is sleeping.”
It was late enough in the morning that Fitz hadn’t expected the General to be asleep. She didn’t know anyone else who slept that long. Well, except for the other girls in The House, who often slept all through the morning, but with a reason. Their customers preferred to come and relieve their frustrations at night.
“Ma’am?”
Fitz thought for a moment longer. “I smell breakfast cooking. Do you expect him to come down soon?”
“The General comes down when he pleases.”
Irritated, Fitz asked, “Does it usually please him to come down early?”
“I’m sorry. I’ve angered you.” The serving girl looked at the floor.
Fitz softened her expression. She felt terrible. Besides the fine clothes that she had the good fortune to be wearing, she wasn’t any better than this woman. They both occupied the lowest rungs of the Brighton social scale. Fitz walked over and put a hand on the servant’s shoulder, using her other hand to pull the woman’s chin up. “I’m not angry. I only wish to know whether I should stay and wait, or whether I should come back another time. Does the General usually come down for his morning meal early or late?”
The serving woman stepped back and looked Fitz up and down. “I’ve been cooking his meals since before you were born.” She looked back at the stairs. “For almost all of those years, the General was up before the sun. He’s got the heart of a horse. He never stopped moving. But now…”
“What?” Fitz asked.
“We all get old.” The serving woman looked at the floor again. “If we’re lucky.”
“Why don’t you go back to your work?” said Fitz. “I’ll wait here if that’s okay.”
Nodding, the serving woman pulled one of the chairs out from the table and waved for Fitz to sit. “Would you like me to bring you something? Food? Drink?”
As much as Fitz wanted a few bites of what smelled so good in the kitchen, it wouldn’t do to have a mouth full of bread and greasy pork when General Blackthorn came down the stairs, grouchy from having stayed in bed too long. “No. Thank you for offering.”
The maid nodded and went back to her work while Fitz waited.
Chapter 45: Ella
Ella scrunched her face as she looked at the dead demons. William had wa
lked over to a cluster of trees, quietly examining a bit of snow that clung to the bark. Convinced the demon attack was over, Ella turned to Melora.
“What do we do with the bodies?” Melora asked, her face ashen.
“Leave them,” Ella said simply.
“So close to camp? Won’t they draw others?”
“I’m not sure…”
“When I was staying with the settlers, they dragged the bodies into the woods to get them away from the house. Maybe we should do that,” Melora said.
“You’re probably right. Who knows when Bray will return?”
“Are you sure he’s coming back?”
“Yes,” Ella lied. The truth was, she wasn’t sure, but she’d prepared for what to do if he didn’t. Before bedding down, she’d made a mental note of the direction they were traveling. They’d continue to the Ancient City by themselves, if they had to.
She’d wait a few more hours. Then they’d leave. Her kids’ safety came first.
Melora took a few steps toward the closest creature, but Ella stopped her. “Wait a moment. I’m still leery about touching them. I don’t think anything will happen, but—”
“I’ll move them,” a voice called.
Ella spun in time to see William emerging from the tree he’d been hiding behind. He seemed to have recovered from whatever mood had possessed him during the battle. He walked toward her with a strangely composed gait.
“It won’t matter if I touch them. I’ve already got the sickness. Let me move them.”
Ella swallowed. “I don’t think you’ll be able to do it on your own. I’ll help.”
Ella and William grabbed one of the monsters and dragged it in the opposite direction. Its wart-covered arms flailed against the ground, as if it still possessed an ounce of fight, even though it was obviously dead. When they’d dragged away one, they came back for each of the others. William maintained his calm demeanor as they dragged the bodies over the forest floor, leaving a sticky trail of blood behind them.
