by D. C. Payson
When they arrived at the dilapidated crop house a few minutes later, Thezdan saw the streaks on her cheeks. Julia, almost ashamed in the face of his stoicism, looked away.
“You do not need to hide your sadness from me,” Thezdan said. “You express what we all feel. But harden your heart, Julia. In town, your emotions would give us away.”
She nodded, wiping her face with her sweater. “I understand. I’ll be fine.”
Thezdan walked through an old doorway, now just an empty space between the walls, and returned carrying a stack of folded garments.
“Put this on,” he said, passing one to Julia.
Julia unfolded a hooded shawl made from coarse, brown wool. On the back was a symbol of three overlapping rings. “All peasants wear this?”
“That’s right. Peasants and hunters both. The one thing in our favor is that it’s easier to blend in when so many wear the same thing.”
Julia opened the shawl and put it on. It hung from her slender frame like a set of drapes. She held out her arms, showing off the excess fabric. “Is this a problem?”
“I don’t think so. Not many people wear shawls that fit well. Young people usually wear ones they’ve inherited from dead family members, and the older generations wear ones they were given before the famines. So long as you play your part, we should be fine.”
After sliding on his own shawl, Thezdan walked around to the back of the house and emerged pulling a four-wheeled wooden wagon. It looked like an oversized version of a kid’s toy, with a long bar extending out front that connected to either side of the front axle. The wheels had deep dings and cracks from years of hard duty.
“Climb in,” he said.
Julia climbed over the side of the wagon and took a position up front. Thezdan placed his pack next to her then went back inside the crop house. He came back with two large stacks of tanned animal hides.
“What are those?” Julia asked.
“They’re feral borum hides, mostly,” said Thezdan, dropping them in the wagon bed. “They roam the western fields, and the Party allows designated hunters to take them. The guy I’m going to see in Breslin usually gives me better terms for these than for the smaller tira hides from the forest.”
“If you see a borum, will you point it out to me? I don’t think we have them back home.”
Thezdan moved into position inside the u-shaped bar. “Look! Here’s one now!”
Julia swiveled her head around but saw only empty meadow. She looked back at Thezdan. He smirked and pointed at himself.
Julia laughed. “So, you’re our beast of burden?”
“That I am!” he said, pushing hard against the bar to set the wagon in motion.
Julia leaned up against the stack of skins. She was torn between excitement and apprehension as she watched the landscape roll by. Thezdan guided the wagon back toward the main road and then east, away from the river. Listening to the soothing monotony of footsteps and clacking wheels, her eyes began to grow heavy.
“Thezdan? Is it safe for me to take a quick nap?”
“So long as you put your hood up, it’s fine. I’ll wake you when we get closer.”
Julia pulled the oversized hood up and over her head and adjusted her position against the skins. She closed her eyes and emptied her mind, repeating her mantra from before.
This road will lead me home.
The landscape had changed by the time Julia awoke. The open, swaying meadow was gone; instead, she saw rough farmland broken into alternating fields of long, stalky crops and low-lying vegetables. The plant rows were dotted with farmers hard at work, each wearing a brown tunic with the Party’s insignia embroidered in large format across the back. At the far edge of the fields were several long houses with mud-brick walls and thatched-grass roofs.
Julia peeked out from under her hood, trying to avoid focusing on anyone or anything for too long. The farmers seemed to ignore the wagon, though Julia caught one woman looking up from her work and, for a brief moment, their eyes met. In those eyes, framed by a drawn, gaunt face hollowed out by malnutrition, Julia saw desperation of a sort she’d never seen before. Startled, the woman immediately turned her gaze back to the ground and began furiously raking at her crop.
“Where are we?” Julia whispered to Thezdan.
Thezdan turned his head slightly, just enough to hide his face from the farmers. “These are the outskirts of Breslin. Try to ignore the farmers, for everyone’s sake.”
Julia watched an older man near the side of the road use a bony, kinked finger to scratch at the roots of a stalk. He seemed very frail.
“These ones are relatively well off,” said Thezdan. “Life is tough for farmers. All of this harvest will be seized come the fall, and most will go to soldiers. Disease and starvation kill hundreds of farmers every year.”
Julia felt her chest tighten. She looked away, frustrated by her own powerlessness. She wanted to jump off the cart and rush over to help these people, but she knew that to do so was to invite catastrophe for everyone—including her.
“You can see Breslin ahead,” said Thezdan. “In my grandfather’s time, it was a trading hub for the western farmers and Rokkin. As we get into town, be careful not to stare at anyone or anything. You must play the role of the visiting hunter. Even the smallest thing may lead a suspicious villager to call the guards on us.”
“Okay,” said Julia. She slid down and let her gaze fall loosely but continuously on the wall of the wagon bed, doing her best to ignore the world around her. It was the only way she knew how to keep up the charade.
The telltale sound of wagon wheels against cobblestones announced their arrival in town. Unable to suppress her curiosity, Julia let her eyes wander again, taking in the buildings around them.
The town had a medieval European feel to it, the road bound on either side by two-story stone structures with tiled roofs. By the beautiful white and gray-blue stones that made up the buildings’ facades, it was clear that Breslin had been wealthy, once. Its trading past lingered in old merchant stalls that dotted the road and in the shop signs carved above doors. Decay had long since overtaken that splendor. The merchant stalls were rotting, and most of the buildings had open holes in their facades, boarded up windows, or leather tarps on their roofs.
A man emerged from one of the homes and swept the street behind them, the rasping of his broom the only sound Julia heard other than the cart wheels in this seemingly-abandoned town.
Thezdan steered the wagon into an open square. Julia could imagine this square as the bustling center of civic life in a prior era. Today, however, there was only a single person: a woman in a brown dress made from the same course fabric as the peasant tunics gathering water from a fountain in the middle. Like the farmers, she rarely looked up, and her quick movements and shuffle-steps showed a deep underlying skittishness.
A large, well-maintained barracks adorned with Party banners loomed over one side of the square, standing out like a sore thumb among the decrepit townhouses around it. On the opposite side was a single-story smithy that belched puffs of gray-black smoke from two chimneys on its roof.
Thezdan brought the wagon to rest in front of the smithy, then he jumped down and made his way to the back to collect his cargo.
“I have to go inside to drop off these skins,” he said quietly, without looking at Julia. “Remember to ignore everything and everyone in this town. Pretend they don’t exist. If you end up in trouble, knock on the door three times. Now, kick the side of the wagon if you understand.”
Julia tried to appear as though she were just shifting her weight as she tapped her foot against the wooden wall of the wagon bed. Thezdan knocked on the other side to acknowledge her gesture. Then he reached in, grabbed the skins, and headed toward the door. He knocked twice and stepped back.
A minute later, the door opened. The man in the doorway was perhaps thirty years old, a lean figure bursting with muscle. He had a ghastly collection of s
cars that ran up his arms and a cracked, soot-stained face. Julia couldn’t hear what Thezdan was saying, but she saw the man checking the square for signs of activity before nodding almost imperceptibly toward the interior of his house. Thezdan entered, and the door closed swiftly behind him.
Julia lowered her hood over her brow and tried to stare at nothing. If I can’t see them, they can’t see me.
Soon, she slipped into a daze. She might have fallen asleep again but for a gentle rapping against the wagon. She hadn’t heard any approaching footsteps, so it came as an unwelcome surprise.
“Hail to the Party, and fair day to you, hunter,” came an artificially feeble voice. “Might you have any rations to spare for your fellow citizen, a veteran?”
Julia turned her head to see a man standing beside the wagon. He was hunched over a cane, and he wore a patch over his right eye that partially covered a scar that ran all the way down to his mouth. As Julia’s gaze met his, he smiled a mostly-toothless grin.
“I don’t have any rations, I’m sorry,” she replied.
The man’s smile disappeared. “I know you have rations!” he growled, banging his cane against the cart. “I watched you and your fellow hunter come in here with those stacks of skins. You think I don’t know what those are worth? You don’t think you should have to share with your brother citizen?”
“I-I’m sorry!” Julia said. “Honestly, I don’t have anything!”
The man clenched his jaw, his brow contorted with anger. Suddenly, he raised his cane to strike. Julia shrieked and lurched away, her tunic slipping lower on her frame. Peeking back at the man, Julia could see that his expression had shifted from anger to frightened bewilderment. She followed his eyes down, and soon knew what had him so transfixed. Her necklace had been revealed, and it radiated a brilliant, blue light.
Julia covered her necklace with her hand, but it was too late. The man dropped his cane and began running. Julia’s mind raced. Should she go get Thezdan, or just hope that the man would disappear down an alley?
She watched the beggar run over to the barracks. He banged on the door, turning every now and again to make sure she was still there. When the door finally opened, the beggar gestured furiously in her direction then stepped aside to make way for a trio of armed guards. They carried long staves with curved blades at the end, and their metal armor glimmered in the sunlight. The leader of the pack had a polished helmet that hid his face, but his quick, purposeful strides laid bare his fervor.
The moment she saw the guards, Julia knew she had waited too long. She jumped down from the wagon and banged on the door three times. Looking over her shoulder, she saw that they were closing in quickly. She banged again.
“Where are you, Thezdan!” she whisper-shouted. “Open up!”
“Halt, hunter!” shouted the guard captain.
Julia ignored him and started banging frantically against the door. Just as the guards were coming around the side of the wagon, the door to the smithy swung open. Thezdan loomed large in the doorway, the other man standing only a few feet behind him.
“Hail, Revolutionaries,” Thezdan called. “We are here to deliver skins to Citizen Vonn.”
“Hold for inspection,” the guard captain commanded, his tone brimming with bad intent. “We have reports that your companion has something around her neck that we should investigate. She will come with us.”
Julia looked up at Thezdan and shook her head with a rapid but contained motion.
“I’m afraid we have to leave,” Thezdan replied. “On Party orders we are to deliver plough blades to some farms in the Western Territories, and, as you are well aware, we will need to finish the trip before dark.”
The guard captain ignored Thezdan. He reached out toward Julia and made a ‘come’ motion with his hand. “To me, hunter.”
Suddenly the man behind Thezdan lurched forward and grabbed Thezdan’s arms. “These hunters are enemies of the Revolution!”
“Arrest them!” cried the captain as the other guards readied their weapons.
“You fool,” Thezdan growled. He turned his wrists and thrust his body backward, pushing the man holding him to the ground. Pulling his tunic up as he spun, he drew his sword and in a single motion sent it flying toward the guard captain. It whizzed by Julia’s ear and passed clear through the captain’s throat, blood spurting from the entry wound.
Stunned, the other guards watched the captain crumple to the ground.
Thezdan lunged toward the nearer of the two. The guard tried to push him away with the shaft of his polearm, but Thezdan ripped the weapon from his hands and delivered a forceful kick that sent him sprawling to the ground. Thezdan then spun around and slashed at the neck of the other guard, catching it flush. Julia turned away in naked horror as his severed head fell and then rolled several feet away.
Thezdan turned toward the guard on the ground, who spotted him coming as he struggled to get up.
“Please! Ple—” the guard whimpered.
Thezdan drove the polearm’s blade into the guard’s midsection. The guard briefly screamed in agony, then his eyes stilled.
Thezdan walked back to the house and found the smith scrambling to his feet. He grabbed him by the throat. “You betrayed me.”
The smith sobbed meekly, his face showing the terror of a man facing his own death.
Thezdan let go. “I will show you mercy, but not because you deserve it. A worse fate awaits you in the manacles of the Party. So run, and understand how my Clan has lived; or stay and suffer.”
The man slumped to the ground. Thezdan came out of the house and grabbed Julia’s shoulder. “We have to go. Now.”
Julia stood in despondent silence, frozen. She had never in her life witnessed killing; here, she had just seen three men die. Viciously. She watched Thezdan run over to the corpse of the guard captain and yank the sword from his throat, fresh blood dripping from the blade. A wave of nausea washed over her.
“Now!” Thezdan repeated.
Julia stared at him blankly, frozen in fear.
“WE HAVE TO GO!”
She could hear the distant cries of panicked villagers, and from the corner of her eye, she caught sight of one of the guard’s dangerous pole weapons lying on the ground. It had been meant for her. The nipping cold from her necklace made her snap to. She ran to Thezdan’s side.
Thezdan reached into the wagon bed and grabbed his pack. He quickly removed his Party tunic and jammed it into a side pocket. He stuck out a hand toward Julia. “Your tunic will slow you down. Take it off! Quickly!”
Julia pulled her shawl over her head and passed it to Thezdan. He hurriedly stuffed it into the other side pocket then slung the pack over his shoulder. “Can you run?” he asked.
Julia nodded tensely.
“Follow me! Run as fast as you can!”
They sprinted through the square together, the clip-clop of their sandals reverberating off the walls of the stone buildings. Julia looked over at the barracks from which the guards had emerged earlier, finding no signs of activity. Then suddenly, from atop the building, a horn blared a dreadful, deep roar. She turned to locate the source of the sound, but Thezdan grabbed her by the sweater and yanked her forward. “DO YOU WANT TO DIE HERE?”
Julia was startled, but the yank refocused her. Getting away was the only thing that mattered. With Thezdan leading, the two ran back through the town, retracing their earlier route. Just as they turned the final corner, the dirt road leading back toward the forest coming into view, Julia heard an ominous rumbling sound.
Thezdan grabbed her arm. Extending her stride, Julia allowed him to pull her faster than she herself was capable of running. Even at that pace, however, the rumbling gained on them. Thezdan kept checking over his shoulder, growing more desperate with each stride. Then it appeared: an iron chariot pulled by two hairy, yak-like creatures covered in leather armor, each with a set of massive horns extending forward like a pair of knight’s lances.
The driver wore the armor of a guard captain, and at his side he swung a ball and chain with rhythmic menace.
“Run!” Thezdan cried, letting go of Julia.
As Julia sprinted toward the dirt road, Thezdan turned and grabbed hold of one of the old rotted merchant stalls. Unbowed by the charging chariot, he engaged all his strength and pulled the stall from its anchors, heaving it to the ground.
Julia ignored the crashing sounds and kept running. At the end of the paved road, she stole a glance behind and saw Thezdan running toward her. The chariot had stopped and was now backing away from the barrier. Thezdan shook his head and waved her on.
“Go!” he yelled. “We’re not safe!”
Catching up with her, he grabbed her hand again and pulled her forward along the dirt road. The air shook with another loud crashing sound as the chariot smashed through the barricade.
Julia shrieked but didn’t break stride. “What are those things?”
“Black borum! Quickly! This way!”
Thezdan pulled Julia off the road and down one of the many crop rows. The stringy plants were not tall enough or dense enough to make hiding among them an option. Thezdan didn’t stop, and it took only a moment for Julia to realize that they were heading toward the long houses at the edge of the field.
Thezdan checked over his shoulder again, his eyes widening. The chariot was cutting a swath through the plants straight toward them. “Hurry!” he yelled.
Julia fought to get more out of her legs. Her chest burned, but she would not give up now; she focused on the house in front of her and ran. The chariot was so close she could feel the vibration of the earth as the two borum beat their way forward.
No sooner had they cleared the edge of the house than Thezdan took hold of Julia’s arm and hurled her to the side. She flew through the air and rolled as she hit the ground, stunned but unharmed. She looked back in time to see Thezdan diving away from the borum and charioteer, the ball of the charioteer’s weapon barely missing him as it crashed through the mud walls and into a wooden column of the longhouse.
