Dustfall, Book Two - The Parting of Ways

by J. Thorn

  The tall Cygoa, who Jonah presumed must be the leader, seemed to understand then that his attackers would just stand there, watching, penning him and his two remaining warriors in until the bowman had taken them all out, and he bellowed with rage. He pushed both of the remaining warriors away and rushed straight toward Jonah. He got half way across the clearing and fell forward, tripped as another arrow was loosed, taking him in the knee and knocking him to the ground.

  Jonah rushed forward in time to see the tall man’s face smash into the rocky floor at his feet, knocking him unconscious. He stepped forward, removed the man’s weapon, and placed his hand near to the man's mouth. He was still breathing.

  Should I just kill him anyway? Jonah wondered. This man is leader of this band, he thought, or if not leader then a commander of some sort. He would have knowledge that maybe they could use.

  Jonah heard shouts and bellows and looked up to see the last two Cygoa falling under the blows from multiple weapons as they too rushed forward. He stood up and found Solomon standing next to him. “Keep this one alive,” he said.

  Solomon nodded his approval. “He will tell us everything we want to know.”

  Jonah looked over at the children and saw several of his warrior band cutting their bonds and hugging them close as the children cried.

  All three alive, he thought. And apparently unharmed, if frightened. Then he glanced around the camp, which was much larger than he had expected. There were at least ten tents, camping equipment, and sacks of supplies stacked up in places.

  A massive haul of war spoils.

  “Strip this camp clean,” he shouted, his voice loud enough to grab the attention of all that that had followed him to fight the Cygoa. “We take everything, but do not squabble over the goods. We will share them out where they are needed, but the weapons and armor of our enemies are yours to take. Share them well and fair with your brothers.”

  A roar of approval came from the gathered warriors. Jonah turned back to Solomon and saw that Gunney had joined them at the center of the camp.

  “What of the dead?” asked Solomon.

  Jonah turned to face him. “Did we lose anyone?”

  Solomon grinned. “Not a single man,” he said. “We have a dozen with injuries, one quite deep, but nothing that cannot be stitched and cleaned by the apothecaries.”

  “We lost no one else this day,” said Gunney.

  Jonah looked around at the bodies of the Cygoa. Had they been a rival clan, and led by an honorable enemy, he would insist the bodies burned or buried. But these, he thought, were child stealers.

  “Take everything of worth and leave the dead stripped where they died,” Jonah shouted. “Child stealers deserve no honoring. Move swiftly, all. We need to be back at camp. Take everything that is worth taking, and leave the rest to the wolves.”

  Chapter 11

  By the time Jonah’s warriors plundered the Cygoa camp, the sun had dropped beneath the tree line, casting thin, golden rays over the dead bodies.

  Jonah instructed two men to tie the Cygoa leader’s wrists to a stout branch. They used their strongest hemp rope and pulled it so tight that it bit into the man’s skin, waking him with a moan and a grumble. Jonah squatted, his axe in his hand and his face close to the man’s.

  “I know you.”

  “Shut up,” said Jonah. “You will talk. To all of us. But right now you will listen.”

  The man’s right eye had swollen shut and his left rolled around in the socket until it locked on Jonah’s face. Dried blood plastered the man’s hair to his forehead and Jonah could smell the hunks of rotten flesh stuck in his beard. Jonah waited for the man to speak again but he did not. His one eye twitched, the gray iris as round as a full moon.

  “You raided our camp. You killed and then you stole our children. And for that you will die. How you die is yet to be determined.”

  “Elk?” the man asked, as if he hadn’t heard Jonah’s threat.

  “Why are you this far south?” Jonah asked.

  “Fuck off,” the Cygoa leader said. He spat a wad of thick blood into the dirt at Jonah’s feet.

  Solomon and Gunney approached and stood behind Jonah, weapons in hand.

  “Kill the ugly son of a bitch,” Gunney said.

  Solomon nodded.

  “Not until he tells me what I want to know. Not until we find out why the Cygoa clans of the north are this far south, this late in the season.”

  The man laughed and yanked his wrists as if to test the strength of the knots.

  “Pick him up,” Jonah said to Gunney and Solomon.

  They walked around Jonah as he stood. Solomon grabbed one end of the bough while Gunney grabbed the other. They lifted the thin, mangy Cygoa leader to his feet. He stumbled, trying to find his balance under the extra weight sitting upon his shoulders.

  “Walk.”

  The man continued to laugh, occasionally coughing and spitting more blood.

  “Make him walk.”

  Gunney smiled at Jonah. He took a step back and drove a meaty fist into the prisoner’s stomach. The man groaned and pitched forward but Solomon held on to the branch to keep him from doubling over. Gunney circled behind the Cygoa leader and yanked his head back by his hair. Jonah looked into the man’s face, his mouth opening and closing without sound. The man’s evil eye seemed to lose a bit of its arrogance. It appeared less defiant.

  “I will call our warriors to the trail and we’ll move out. I want this man up front. Make sure he walks. If he doesn’t, drag the bastard by his hair. He will return to camp and answer our questions.”

  “I’ll die first,” the man said, wincing from the punch to his gut.

  “You’ll die when I say so,” said Jonah.

  The Elk warriors and the men from the other clans had already begun to gather. Some comforted the children, some watched the spectacle unfolding, and others traded their booty with each other.

  “Let’s go.”

  Jonah turned and picked up the trail at the base of the hill. His warriors had trampled everything on their approach to the camp but he could still see the path. Jonah stepped over a fallen tree and took several more steps before turning around. Solomon and Gunney had each end of the Cygoa leader’s restraint and the rest of the warriors clumped behind him.

  As Jonah retraced their steps through the forest and back to his camp, he heard an occasional grunt and torrent of profanity. The Cygoa leader dragged his feet and Solomon or Gunney hit him, and the man stumbled forward. Jonah lit a torch, no longer concerned about an ambush. At least not on that night. When they reached the camp, Jonah was surprised to see that nearly everyone was still awake. Few had gone to bed. No doubt worried about the outcome of the raid, he thought.

  Corrun was the first to greet Jonah. “You’ve returned,” the old man said.

  Jonah nodded. “I have someone I want you to talk to.”

  Jonah stepped aside and Corrun’s eyes fell upon the Cygoa leader, dragged by Solomon and Gunney. He gasped and took a step backward.

  Jonah grabbed Corrun’s arm. “You will want to hear what this man says.”

  Solomon and Gunney dropped the man to the ground. He lay on his back and Gunney kicked him in the ribs.

  “Sit him up,” Jonah said.

  Two Elk warriors carried a sharp boulder over and dropped it at Jonah’s feet. Solomon and Gunney yanked the bough up until the boulder sat between the captive’s shoulder blades, forcing him up at an angle. He moaned again and his chest hitched as the boulder’s edges cut into his back.

  “Why are the Cygoa so far south at this time of the year?” Jonah asked.

  “Fuck you.”

  Gunney punched the man in the face, spraying his blood from a broken nose. Jonah lowered his torch and saw the man’s eye twitch in the socket. The warriors continued to flow back into their camp, carrying booty and war stories to their tents. Several did not, circling around Jonah and the interrogation. Jonah dropped his voice so only the captive and those surrou
nding him could hear what he was about to say.

  “These men will rip open your stomach and pull your guts out into the dirt. Then we will leave you for the wolves. If you answer my questions I promise you a swift end. You will die either way. The manner in which is up to you.”

  “You’re fucking Elk scum. I said fuck you.”

  “The man will not talk,” Corrun said, wringing his hands as sweat beaded on his forehead.

  “Let me try.”

  Jonah looked over his shoulder to see who spoke the words. The voice sounded frail, old and feminine.

  Leta?

  “Let me ask him a question,” she said.

  Solomon and Gunney laughed, but Jonah held up his hand to them.

  “You say he will die anyway,” she said, interrupting Jonah. “Let me talk to him.”

  The Cygoa leader had kept his head down since he last spoke and Jonah wondered if he was even conscious. Jonah looked at Corrun, then Solomon and then Gunney.

  Nothing to lose , he thought. They don’t seem too opposed to the idea.

  “Go on,” Jonah said to Leta.

  She bent down low and slid a thin blade from beneath her rags. Leta lifted the man’s head with a smile and put the tip of her knife into the corner of his left eye. He gasped and turned his head but she reached out with her left hand and grabbed him by the hair. “Why are you here, Cygoa filth?”

  The man grumbled.

  Leta’s hand moved and her wrist flicked back and forth. Before the Cygoa leader could even scream, his good eyeball lay in the dirt next to Jonah’s boot. Corrun stumbled backward and the Cygoa leader whimpered, each cry rising in intensity until he let out an icy, high-pitched scream.

  “The wolves are more merciful than me,” Leta said. “I’ll slowly cut you apart piece by piece. Why. Are. You. Here?”

  “We—we,” the leader stammered through the pain. “We’re scouts. The rest are coming. They’ll be here soon, and they’ll kill you all.”

  “Why?” Leta asked.

  “Revenge, you stupid old bitch. We come to take back the lands that were ours.”

  Leta wiped the blade on the man’s filthy shirt. She slid the knife back beneath her rags and smiled at Jonah. He shook his head back and forth, his eyes wide.

  “I told you,” Leta said. “I scavenge and dig, and find treasures in the ruins.”

  Chapter 12

  Gaston smiled. With concrete under his feet and the unknown, expansive sky above, he felt the pleasure of his nomadic lifestyle. Years on the road brought a comfort the clans would never understand. He tried not to think about what would happen when they reached White Citadel. At that point, the pilgrimage would be over, and that thought cast a shadow of doubt on his light mood.

  The shorter days and colder nights did not bother Gaston. Years spent traversing the far north had hardened him to the brutal grip of winter, and in a way, he looked forward to it. In the northern territories, autumn gave up quickly and allowed the barren season to blow across the water and through the ruins. It would only take weeks before everything would be covered in a cleansing white snow.

  As he walked in silence, Gaston gazed at the low hills and noticed how the leaves held on to the branches a little longer here, as if winter granted them a temporary stay. He hadn’t bothered to talk to the rest in the caravan. The time for persuasion had passed. Soon they would be approaching White Citadel and there would be no turning back. A crow flew overhead and Gaston watched it fly toward the midday sun, which clung to the low clouds. His mind drifted and a single name entered his head.

  Jonah.

  Was the man dead yet? Gaston could not be sure. He believed Gerth to be the menacing force he appeared to be, and yet Jonah had a power that Gaston could not quite identify. He knew sending Gerth for Jonah would result in a death, and the demise of either would work in his favor. But there was a guilt there, too. He didn’t wish Jonah dead but felt it necessary.

  Also, there was the worry that Jonah would discover who had sent Gerth. If the man was captured and interrogated, Jonah would find out that Gaston was involved. What would follow after that? He didn’t know. For Jonah to send someone looking for Gaston at White Citadel would be for the leader to either admit that it was safe to do so, or to sacrifice a man just to take Gaston out.

  Gerth would die. Gaston knew. Even if he got close to Jonah. Gaston had seen, close up, how Jonah had defeated the leader of the Bluestone. It had been swift and deadly, and he had almost thought that Jonah wasn’t even concentrating at the time, his mind elsewhere.

  You were lucky he chose not to fight in the end, Gaston thought.

  A child ran alongside Gaston, and he looked down into the girl’s dirt-encrusted face and gave her a shallow, forced smile.

  Seren.

  He had not seen that girl for days at a time. She would appear in camp with a string full of squirrels or rabbits, handing it to the old women to gut and roast on the fire, and then she’d be gone again. The last time she left the camp, Gaston watched her move through the trees and he wondered if she didn’t belong there permanently. The girl stepped through the woods with the grace of a deer, and she clearly seemed more comfortable alone than with the caravan. Although he had no way of knowing for sure, Gaston assumed she spent her days alone with the bow, sharpening her accuracy and distance.

  “How far?”

  The question shook Gaston from his thoughts. He shivered when he realized it was Seren who asked and that she now walked on his right, keeping pace.

  “It’s only midday. Shouldn’t you be hunting?”

  “I haven’t seen much the past few days,” she said. “It’s as if the creatures are frightened and remaining hidden. Or something else.”

  Gaston turned his head and raised his eyebrows. “Something else? Are we being followed?”

  “No. Nothing like that. I’ve circled back around several times, and I haven’t seen anyone else.”

  He nodded. Gaston had not sensed anything odd but he knew the girl had sensitivities to things that he did not. He believed it was that ability that shaped her into a powerful hunter and archer at such a young age.

  “So what, then?” he asked.

  Seren said nothing. She turned her face upward and let the sun’s rays caress her face.

  “How is your brother?”

  “Roke is Roke.”

  “And that means…”

  “Whatever you think it means.”

  Gaston grabbed Seren by the elbow and pulled her closer as they walked. “What is wrong with you?”

  She shook off his grasp and sighed. “What is that?”

  Gaston looked where Seren pointed and saw a flash buried in the rolling hills. He let his eyes wash over the trees and they began to focus. Tucked within the gold and red hues of the autumn leaves sat a man-made structure. Gaston knew it was such because the straight lines and reflective glass betrayed its position in the forest.

  “A ruin.”

  “Duh,” said Seren. “What kind of ruin?”

  Each step on the old highway brought another slight detail. Gaston saw a row of rectangles spanning the width of the ruin. Two smokestacks rose above it, one shorter and ragged like a cracked tooth.

  “An ancient factory,” he said. “Hundreds are scattered across the northern lands. Those ones have long since been plundered and many now crumble in upon themselves. They are not safe, for many reasons.”

  “I can scout it.”

  “No, Seren. You stay with me, now. We get closer to White Citadel every day, and I need you with us.”

  She rolled her eyes at Gaston as they both kept pace with the caravan. “What do you make of the silence?” she asked.

  Gaston listened and waited. He thought of the lone crow. “Odd.”

  “It’s more than odd,” Seren said. “It’s unnatural.”

  As they closed the distance to the ruin, more of the factory revealed itself. The main building stood four stories high, not including the smokestacks. Several ot
her structures sat around it in various stages of decay. Trees obscured parts of each building as the forest worked to reclaim its territory. They walked in silence for another hour until Gaston could see the exit ramp and the crumbling roadway that he knew would lead them to the old industrial complex mentioned in his book. Seren kept pace but her steps became uneven, sloppy. Before they reached the off ramp, Gaston stopped and turned to face her.

  “Do you still want to camp here? We have several more hours of daylight. We could—”

  “Can you feel it?” she asked.

  “What?” Gaston asked, although he knew what she meant.

  “Death,” she said, her expression blank and emotionless.

  “You’re exaggerating—exhausted with a wandering mind. Although the ruins in the north can be dangerous, we’re in a less-populated region. I see no harm in setting up camp here.”

  Seren looked up into his eyes, and she tried to speak but the words would not come. She turned back to visually tag her brother. Roke’s shaggy hair stood out and she identified him before turning back to Gaston.

  “Are you okay?” Gaston asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Let’s go, then.”

  Gaston nodded and led the clan off the highway toward the ruin, and yet he could not determine if he had felt it as well or if the girl had spooked him. The old factory’s windows stared down at him with dead eyes, and he shivered.

  Chapter 13

  Other figures moved around Seren in the darkness as she made her way into the interior of the factory. She trod lightly, making her way through the debris scattered across the cracked concrete floor. Rusty old cans, sheet metal, broken pipes, and the skeletal remains of machinery cast shadows over the already dim enclosures. The place hadn’t been touched for a very long time.

  He was wrong, Seren thought. About the place already being picked clean. He was wrong. And this made her frown, puzzled. The factory was what? Less than five days’ travel from Wytheville? No more than seventy miles, and no one had scavenged the buildings? That would be almost impossible. The hunters and scavengers of her own clan ranged for ten, sometimes twelve miles from the forest village every day and returned in the evening. Some travelled even farther, heading out in groups to range far into the woods, gone for several days. And there were many more searchers in Wytheville than in her clan. To think that no one had travelled for a few days, along open roads with easy camping, was crazy.