And of course, when her own sister, Ravenwing had opened her face with her knife, thinking that Ghost Wind had been a willing accomplice.
She had not shown her emotions since then. Not during her “trial,” not when she spent the time living with Lila, not even when she was alone, trying to survive, but she could feel them down there, trying to reach the surface like an underground river pushing to reach daylight.
Grief, and the demon, FEAR.
Eli was kind. Axyl was “kind.” She was attracted to Eli; she had been attracted to Axyl.
The longer I sit and mull this over, the closer I am to losing it. I need to move.
Ghost Wind rose to her feet, and walked into the twilight to find her gear.
****
Eli returned to their camp an hour after sunset. Before he had taken off, he had driven a juniper wood limb into the ground on the opposite side of the road from where he had originally dropped Ghost Wind off and driven a rusty aluminum can onto the top end. It would have been very easy to miss the spot in the fading light.
Not that darkness bothered him much.
Pushing the Terror up the hill a ways, he pulled out the tarp and carefully covered his baby then moved uphill to where he hoped Ghost Wind was. He picked up a hint of woodsmoke, and after following his nose for a short while, saw a flicker of flame in the dark.
“Hello, Eli,” she said, not looking up from the stave she was carefully carving on. “Glad you didn’t spill that thing off an embankment in your current state.”
“I tend to metabolize alcohol very fast, even that paint remover Horace calls whiskey.”
“Another one of your mysterious talents?”
“Yep. Whatcha workin’ on?”
“I found this piece of dead vine maple, near that creek down the road. It looked about perfect to make a bow out of, since mine was… lost.”
“Lost?” Eli gently said. “I wouldn’t think anyone who can track like that would ever lose anything.”
She looked into the flame. She was trying to keep her face a mask, but he could see that she was upset.
“Broken,” she replied, “When I was banished, Shining Moon broke my bow over a boulder, cut the string in several places, snapped all my arrows and threw my war knife into a deep river. I was bound at the time.”
“Holy shit! He had a serious mad on at you.”
“She. She looked at our teacher, Jannelle as a mother. We all did. She had raised and trained us since we were eight years old, but Shining Moon really loved her and that love turned into hatred for me. No one stopped her. They might have just stepped aside if she had decided to kill me.” She paused. “No, that’s not right. Black Dog, one of the most senior scouts, actually stepped in when she started to make threats. He had known Jannelle even in the Beforetime, but he still kept the hot-heads off me.”
Eli saw the memory of that act of kindness made tears well up in her eyes.
“Ghost Wind, I will never share anything about this subject that you tell me. Maybe you need to let someone hear your side, even if it can’t change things. I’m a pretty good listener, and I can keep secrets when it’s important.”
She hesitated, looked at the fire, and seemed to come to a decision.
“I fell in love with a man. His name was Axyl and he was… gorgeous. He smelled… good. I was a foolish virgin girl and he played me like a fiddle.” Her voice went from soft to bitter. “He told me sweet lies and when I could sneak away, he set my body on fire with need for him. He… was good at that.”
Eli had never met the guy, but there was an Axyl with the Road Sharks. Could it be the same asshole?
“After three months,” she took a deep breath, “he began his campaign to meet with Jannelle. He told me he was part of a group of traders that had buyers of Beforetime tech up in Canada and they needed a direct route through Clan of the Hawk territory. The scouts of our people carry a lot of weight regarding who gets in to our… their territory and Jannelle’s word carried more weight than most.”
“They couldn’t go up to Canada on old I-5? On the west side of the Cascades?”
“He told me the Western Alliance put a huge tax on anyone bringing items through their lands. I had no idea if that was true or not, but surely this man I loved so much wouldn’t lie to me.” The tone of her voice could have melted lead.
“So, I’m guessing he wanted to meet with this Jannelle lady?”
She looked up at him, her expression so wretched he wanted to reach out to her but he sensed she needed to let this out without distraction, or it would never be told.
“I was so in love. I would have walked off a cliff for him if he’d asked me to. I organized a meeting between them on neutral ground and Jannelle, myself and my little sister Ravenwing went to meet him at the appointed place. Axyl was sitting on his fusion cycle, all smiles and Jannelle told us to wait on the hill above, then went down to parley with him. We watched them talk, and I could tell by her body language that Axyl’s charming gestures were not impressing her.”
“Then what happened?”
“I remember being angry with her. Wondering why she couldn’t see how wonderful he was. And then…”
He waited.
She took a deep shuddering breath, “And then, I saw him gesture up the hill at us, and Jannelle turned our way. As she turned, he pulled a tomahawk that must have been hidden under his jacket, raised up and drove it down in a powerful chop to my teacher’s neck where it joined the right shoulder. It bit deep, she was dead in sixty seconds.”
“Gaw’damn!” Eli said. “That’s horrible!”
“The horror didn’t stop there. As I stood there, frozen, he sauntered to his bike, got on and made kiss noises at me. Then he laughed like a maniac and drove off in cloud of dust.”
“Shit.”
“I realized how much of that very thing I was in, when my darling little sister, Ravenwing, with tears and hatred in her eyes called me a traitor.” She paused again, looking into the fire. “Then she gave me this scar with the knife she carried.”
Eli, wincing, decided to keep quiet and let Ghost Wind talk.
“I woke up at my trial, covered in my own blood. No one had even bothered to cover the wound, and some of them were advocating executing me as a traitor. It was at that point I realized the depth of Axyl’s betrayal. Not only had he lied to me about everything for the opportunity to kill her, but he had left me holding the bag. If Black Dog hadn’t taken charge and told everyone I was to be banished, I’d probably be dead now. If it hadn’t been for Lila Whitefeather of the Yakama Nation taking me in, I’m sure I would be.”
They both sat silent for a while, lost in their own thoughts.
Eli broke the silence first. “Tomorrow, we’ll head up to our little hidden village, Yama No Matsu and I will introduce you to the people we’ve gathered up there. They’ve all come from different backgrounds, and I’m not gonna try to tell you that everyone there is perfect, but that diversity tends to make them more accepting.”
“Do you think they will accept me?”
“Yes. I wouldn’t take you up there only to be rejected. However, you are a strong-willed person, and we have a few very strong-willed folks up there already, so you’d better realize there’s probably gonna be some conflict. Kita is, for lack of a better word, ‘mayor’ of the place as well as being my sword teacher. She can be… how to put this gently…”
Ghost wind raised an eyebrow, and waited for Eli to continue.
“She can be a bit of a hell-bitch on wheels occasionally. I’d advise not takin’ her on too early, though I am sure you two will eventually clash, but you might want to put that off ’til you’re established. And if she busts your chops, try not to take it too personal and storm off. When she warms to people, she can be one of the most caring individuals you’ll ever meet. Sometimes concerned with others wellbeing to the detriment of her own.”
“And whatever she dishes out, I should just stand and take it?”
�
��Might be better, at first.”
“I can’t promise that.”
“Well,” he half laughed. “tomorrow should be interesting.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Drawing Away
****
“Do you want to tell me why you sent the half-wit on that mission, Axe?” Shell asked.
“Boss, no offense but,” Axyl looked at his employer, once again staring out the window towards the river, “I know the men a heck of a lot better than you do. I drink with ‘em, bullshit with ‘em and ride with ‘em.”
“A leader must keep a certain distance from his underlings, if he is to be respected, young man.”
“And that’s why you have a brilliant, handsome, and likable second-in-command. I can mingle with the troops and report back to you.”
“The half-wit?”
“Ah yes, Durpee. Our pal the Durpster may be an idiot, but he’s also one of them idiot…ah… saviors?”
“Savant?”
“Yes! Savant! Damn Beforetime word. Anyhow, Durp is a savant. He has a photographic memory. But he can also do one extra thing.” Axyl gestured towards the used copy paper and honed-down pencils on the large table. “Dupree can draw anything he remembers, and draw it incredibly well and in detail.”
Shell’s eyebrow raised. “I see. And you believe he may be able to draw the compound for us?”
“You know all those office supplies down on the first floor? There’s one of those empty books and a packet of unopened pencils that I promised him if he could do that very thing. Compared to all this used stuff and pencil stubs, that’s a treasure to him.”
They were interrupted by a knock at the heavy wood door and Porter stuck his head in. Shell’s face instantly darkened, and the man looked very distressed.
“Axe, I brung Durp like ya asked. Here he is.”
“Thanks, Porter. Now, make yourself scarce.” Porter was only too happy to comply.
“Durp! Howya doin’ buddy?” Axyl said, white teeth shining in a huge friendly smile. “You ready to earn that sketchbook?”
“I did what you told me Axe. I went up there and seen it all, but them people shot guns at us! I was scared.”
Axyl’s expression became tragically sympathetic, “I know, brother, and I am SO sorry about that. I had no idea those people up there were so mean! So, I guess you were probably too scared to remember what to draw, hunh?”
“I can draw it!” For a moment, the young man’s dull eyes flashed with fire.
“Whoa! Sorry, my friend, didn’t mean no offense. I’ve got some pencils here and a bunch of recycled paper for you to work on. So why don’t you sit down and show the boss here what you can do?”
Durpee’s eyes went greedy for a moment. “I’ma still gonna get that drawin’ book, ain’t I?”
“Depends on how good a job you do, Durp.”
“An’ the pencils?”
“Show me something good, brother, and they’re all yours.”
****
It took the boy almost two hours of furious sketching, and several of the half used pencils to get his images down on paper. He worked with a strange, almost trancelike intensity and Axyl set a sandwich by him when it appeared he was close to finishing.
As Durpee wolfed down the venison and homemade bread, Axyl and Shell began to sort through the stack of drawings, some twenty in all.
“My God, these are amazing!” Shell said, “They’re almost photographic!”
“Told you, boss,” Axyl said patting the boy on the shoulder, “we had no idea what a resource we have here in the ol’ Durpster. He’s gonna be very…”
Shell looked up at his second-in-command as Axyl’s words died away. The younger man was staring at one of the last few drawings, and his face had gone deathly pale.
“What is it, Axyl? I don’t like that look on your face.”
“Look at this, Darwin! For fuck’s sake, look!”
Shell moved to the younger man’s side and looked at the drawing that had turned Axyl’s face pale. It portrayed in very tight detail a young woman, dressed in rustic clothing and moccasins, carrying a rifle. The drawing showed her running down a road, and Durpee had captured her athleticism perfectly, with a subtlety that he didn’t possess in his own life. The young woman’s face in the drawing was a clear as daylight, and showed a terrible scar on the left side.
“Hmmmm. Someone of your acquaintance?” Shell asked.
Axyl looked at his employer with a haunted expression. “Boss, you sent me north to deal with the leader of the of those hill people bush ninjas, remember?”
“I could hardly forget. They kept interfering with our slaving up that way, ’til it got to the point we could hardly do business up there. They’d sneak into our camps, free our slaves, destroy our equipment.”
“Yeah, they were being a grade-A pain in our asses.”
“As I recall, I had you seduce one of the females up there and you managed to get close enough to their leader to get the deed done and eliminate her.”
“Boss,” Axyl said shakily, pointing at the drawing, “this is the one. This is the one I tricked. She’s the one I seduced,and now she’s down here!”
“Hmmm. Interesting.”
“Interesting? Boss, she’s can only be down this way for one reason. She wants to find me!”
“The ladies just can’t get enough, can they, Axyl?” Shell smirked.
“Okay, you’re not gettin’ me here, so let me spell it out,” Axyl said, his voice tight. “If she’s down here lookin’ for me, it’s so she can come up on me in the dark some night and cut my throat before I even know she’s there. She’s good, boss. During our little love meetings, I usually never knew when she showed up until she stepped out of the bushes, or dropped out of a tree. Her type start their training as little kids, and by the time they get to be her age, they’re damn dangerous!”
“You seriously think one girl can cause us trouble? You think she can challenge the Road Sharks? Come on…”
“Look, man, our troops here ain’t exactly elite forces. These scouts of the Clan of the Hawk…”
“Clan of the Hawk? How melodramatic.”
“These scouts of the Clan of the Hawk can move as silent as them ninjas in the old vids. I’m gonna have to sleep with one eye open while she’s anywhere in the vicinity.”
Shell leafed through the stack to the last drawing in the pile. “Oh, this is interesting.”
Axyl moved to look at the drawing in Shell’s hands. It showed the same woman again, but this time she stood facing and apparently arguing with a tall dark skinned man wearing a long duster.
“Eli,” Axyl said. “She’s knows Eli.”
Shell looked at his subordinate. “That might mean she knows where that son of a bitch lives.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Mountain Folk
****
The ride up into the mountains was cold. The late February day was sunny, but the farther into the Cascades they went, the more snow was along the single rutted path that ran before them.
Though it followed a Beforetime road, the path through the snow had obviously been worn by passing vehicles, not plowed. It was bumpy and rutted and a few times Ghost Wind’s heart went to her throat each time Eli slewed the bike around in a particularly slushy part.
Even though he had reduced speed, the cold on her cheeks was brisk, but Ghost Wind wasn’t afraid of cold. She spent most of the ride looking at this new country of pines and sagebrush. Most homes along the highway, showed signs of being broken into along with years of neglect. The houses had been beautiful and had probably cost much of the “God of the Beforetime,” but now, nature was slowly starting its reclamation.
Eli slowed the Terror to a stop, and to Ghost Wind’s surprise, began to let it slowly roll backwards. She looked behind them and saw that he was unerringly keeping the bike in the track they had just ridden up.
“Hold still, please,” he said, “This isn’t as easy as it looks.”
“Okay,” he said, “this is where it always gets a little tricky, but it’s a good workout. You’ve shown you’re quite good at obscuring tracks, so if you’d help me out with that, I’d appreciate it.”
“Aren’t you going to need for me to help you push, like earlier on the way up?” Following Eli’s gaze, she saw the barest trace of a trail off the side of the road.
“Not this time.” He gave her his toothy grin reached under the frame near the front and the back. With a grunt, he lifted the fusion cycle into the air and began to shuffle down the faint path with it.
Ghost Wind began to think there would be no end of amazing things she would witness. She had helped push the Terror through a snowdrift on the way up, and was surprised at how heavy it had been. She was strong, but the motorcycle weighed at least six hundred pounds. If Eli hadn’t been pushing also, she probably wouldn’t have succeeded in moving it by herself.
Now, he was carrying an object that she was sure three men couldn’t easily get off the ground, and though he was straining, he seemed nowhere near the limit of his endurance. She stared at his back for a moment, then began to attend to her job of obliterating the trail into the forest. After a short distance the main road disappeared behind the trees and she turned to find Eli covering the Terror with his homemade camouflage tarp. He had carefully positioned the bike in a brush patch, and even with the leaves gone, the tarp made it almost invisible.
“How can you possibly carry that much weight?” she asked, taking her bedroll and haversack from him. “You’re barely breathing hard! You hardly broke a sweat but you didn’t even unload our gear from the bike.”
The Road Sharks Page 8
