by Leslie Chase
He met my gaze, golden eyes full of pain and fear for me. Torran didn’t fear his own death but the idea that I might do something to antagonize Gurral scared the life out of him.
Rough hands grabbed my arms, pulling me back and out of his embrace. I clung to Torran with all my strength, ignoring the bruising-strong grip of my captors to get a few more seconds of his touch.
Certain I’d never hold him again, I tried to commit every detail to memory. The rough softness of his skin, the strange and alien texture of it that somehow felt more natural than anything else I’d ever touched. The scent of him, subtle and powerful and manly. His strong and handsome face, a hard mask over the gentle soul that loved me as I loved him.
The way he made me feel, more than anything: the perfect match between our hearts that made me half-believe that fate really had put us together.
Except, how could fate be so cruel? How could it let us find each other only to rip me from his arms so soon after?
I tried to speak again, but all I managed to force out past the lump in my throat was a wail of loss and pain. Torran winced at that, mouthed some word I couldn’t understand, and then the men holding me pulled me back hard and I stumbled away from my beloved.
The gunmen raised their weapons again, and I had to look away. This was more than I could bear to watch.
But Torran wasn’t defenseless, not yet. As I turned, he moved, his arm snapping out with a glitter of metal. I gasped — he’d taken advantage of our embrace to palm a knife, and now he threw it in a hard, flat arc that ended in the throat of one rifleman.
The crack of laser fire filled the air, but Torran was already rolling aside and he took the remaining gunman by surprise. The shot only clipped Torran’s arm as he bounced to his feet, charging with a roar.
Everything moved so slowly, as though we were trapped in honey. The gunman tried to adjust his aim, the rifle tracking Torran as he moved. Gurral had only just started to react, swinging his gun around. The prytheen holding me reached for their weapons and I threw myself back into them, tangling them up as best I could to buy Torran time to escape.
Escape wasn’t on his mind. I should have known better. My mate’s eyes were set on Gurral’s throat and his hands held knives. His long steps ate the distance, and Gurral leaped back, teetering on the cliff edge, his first shot going wide. I gulped. Torran might make it. A spark of hope burned in my heart as I watched.
And then the laser hit him in the back. His charge faltered just a step from his foe, giving Gurral another chance to fire. The sharp crack echoed across the hillside, and Torran spasmed as it burned into him at point blank range. He staggered, teetering on the edge of the cliff, fighting for balance.
Torran’s hand flicked out in a slash, long knife opening a fresh cut in Gurral’s face and sending him leaping away to safety, but even I could see that wasn’t a lethal wound. And then my beloved toppled forward, another laser blast snapping out at him as he fell into the river below.
I sobbed, covering my face with my hands. At least he’d gone out fighting, I told myself, but that didn’t comfort me. Torran would prefer that to giving up; I just wanted him alive and at my side.
I scarcely felt the uncaring hands of my captors lift me and carry me away.
20
Torran
My body burned as I tumbled off the ledge, and I flung an arm out in a final desperate attack. Not enough. Gurral ducked back, the blade biting into his cheek but missing anything vital, and then I was over the edge.
Below me, water crashed over rocks. The world tumbled around me and it felt like I had forever to fall. My anger left me, the pain faded as I spun, even the sorrow I felt at losing Lisa loosened its hold on my heart.
There was no time for that now. I’d done everything I could for her — and I’d failed.
That bitter thought filled my mind and heart as I struck the crashing waves and they flung me against the rocks. Impact.
Then darkness.
21
Lisa
Rough hands pulled me back against the rover, shoved me down beside Malcolm. His presence stopped me falling apart. It didn’t make things better but with my brother there to look after I couldn’t afford to fall apart.
Maybe he felt the same because he put his arm around my shoulders as though he could protect me from harm. The gesture helped a little, and I hugged him back.
We might die in the next minutes. No point in wasting them on grief, even if Torran’s death tore at my heart.
“Where are the other escaped humans?” Someone barked the question at me twice before the words meant anything to me. Briefly I considered snapping back at the prytheen warrior, letting my pain out in a litany of insults and curses. But I had to live. That was what Torran would want, he’d tried to buy me time to escape, to survive.
I wasn’t going to commit suicide by provoking this warrior. That didn’t mean I had to help him though. I shook my head, gritting my teeth and biting back the curses I wanted to spit at him.
Anger flashed in the warrior’s eyes and he repeated himself again, only for Carrington to interrupt him.
“The stasis tubes are in the rover,” he said quickly, his badly accented Galtrade sounding desperate. “The other humans are locked in there until we reach…”
He trailed off, vocabulary exhausted, but he’d said enough to pull the prytheen’s attention away from me and Malcolm. I breathed a sigh of relief, looking around at him. His red face was drenched with sweat and not just from the exertion of keeping up with his captors.
As the prytheen walked away, Carrington moved closer and crouched beside me. His eyes pleading, he spoke in English. “Don’t antagonize them, Lisa. Just — just cooperate, do as they say, and you’ll be fine. More than fine! We’ll be in charge. You’ve seen the prytheen, their Silver Band can’t organize anything. They need us.”
I looked at him with all the contempt I could muster. “You sold us out, you got Torran killed and you’ll get the people in the valley enslaved — so you can be the chief slave?”
Carrington’s complexion reddened and he rocked back as though I’d slapped him. I wished I had. My palm itched to hit him, but I restrained myself. I had Malcolm to think of.
My brother had thoughts of his own on the matter though, lunging at Carrington with a sudden burst of violence. Carrington toppled backward into the mud as I grabbed Malcolm and held him back. Around us prytheen laughed.
“They’ll never respect you,” I said. “You’re a joke to them, you get that, right? The prytheen you’re so keen to serve won’t care when someone sticks a knife in your side one night. In fact whoever does it probably gets your job at the top of the heap. Maybe it’ll be me.”
A cold rage ran through me and I let it. Anything to fill the emptiness Torran had left, anything to distract from the howling void inside me now he was gone. Carrington tried to say something, met my gaze, and scrambled backward instead.
Getting to his feet, he glanced around and blushed brighter at the amusement of his prytheen allies.
“You’re upset,” he muttered, trying to salvage his dignity as he brushed himself off. “We’ll talk more when you’re feeling better.”
I bared my teeth at him, wishing I had a prytheen’s killing fangs. He seemed to get the message though, hurrying away.
“What are we going to do?” Malcolm asked when Carrington was out of earshot.
“I don’t know,” I said, deflating. My anger might feel good, but I didn’t dare turn it on the people who were really to blame. “For now we keep ourselves alive and look for a chance to get away again.”
“Don’t worry sis,” my little brother said, trying to sound brave. “I’ll look after you.”
My eyes filled with tears and I hugged him tight. The sincerity in his voice was heartbreaking.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” I whispered fiercely. “We’ll take care of each other, but if you get yourself hurt I will be so mad.”
The whirlwin
d of my emotions buffeted me between fear and rage and I didn’t know what else to say. Gripping each other in silence, we both shuddered and hid our tears. Each of us pretended not to notice the other’s terror.
Henry whined and nuzzled up to me, doing his best to cheer me up. It didn’t work, even he couldn’t lift the veil of sadness that had settled over my world. Absently petting the holo-puppy, I tried to keep my mind off my pain but there wasn’t much else to think about.
Eventually it occurred to me to wonder what we were waiting for. Gurral was in striking range of his target now, only hours away from the valley he wanted to conquer, but we were sitting still. The six prytheen kept a wary watch on the forest and I realized that there weren’t enough of them for an attack. This must be the advance guard, those who’d traveled fastest.
It was faintly amusing to realize that Carrington had been forced to run ahead with them, but also impressive that he’d managed. I didn’t like the man, but credit where it was due.
The sun dipped towards the mountains and the bright day faded into a cool evening. Around us the strange, beautiful but deadly sounds of Crashland’s wildlife filled the air and the prytheen watched for trouble.
Out of the darkness, the rest of Gurral’s troops arrived, dragging Carrington’s family with them. The boys panted, out of breath after the long march, but the prytheen seemed fresh. Gurral gathered his troops, leaving two of them to watch us humans as they talked tactics.
I glared at the boys, then turned to look out over the cliff. It wasn’t their fault that their father was a traitor, and I shouldn’t blame them. At the same time, I’d never seen one of them challenge him and I remembered the way they’d acted before the prytheen arrived. No, I didn’t have much sympathy for them.
They kept their distance anyway, talking with their father as the night’s chill set in. The glances they shot our way weren’t friendly, but I tried to ignore them. Above us Crashland’s smaller moon shot across the sky, gleaming bright against the darkness.
I don’t know how long it was before Gurral approached and gathered us humans to him.
“We continue on foot,” he said, slow and careful as though he spoke to idiots. “You will stay at the back of our group, watched by Ervas and Dessus. And if any of you try to leave, make a noise, try to attract the attention of the humans we attack, you will all pay the price.”
His gaze lingered on Malcolm and me when he said that, and the message was clear. The Carringtons looked at us too. If we tried anything, it wouldn’t just be the prytheen that tried to stop us. Human traitors would too.
“Sir?” Mr. Carrington said, not content with waiting for us to make an escape attempt. “If we get much closer with the comms, they’ll be able to reach the valley and warn them.”
Gurral’s grin widened as I glared at Carrington. I hadn’t thought of that but it was true. If the humans in the valley wore their comms Henry would connect to their signals as soon as they were in range, and that would have let me send a warning ahead.
Not now that Carrington had spoken up though. The prytheen put an end to the idea quickly.
“Give us the wristbands,” Gurral snapped. “All of them.”
The Carringtons complied without objecting. Malcolm and I took a moment longer but there was no way to fight this. Henry vanished as I unfastened my wristband, and his absence was another loss I hadn’t prepared for. It hurt a lot more than I’d expected.
Tarva gathered the wristbands up and tucked them into her belt. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I didn’t think she looked happy about the situation. Whatever her feelings, though, she didn’t argue with Gurral.
Carrington, on the other hand, looked almost smug as he clasped his hands behind his back. I regretted not hitting him when I’d had the chance.
Chin up, Lisa, you’ll get another chance. It looks like we’ll be locked up together for the rest of our lives.
I doubted that would be long, somehow.
Satisfied with our obedience, Gurral stood and turned away without another word, stalking off in the direction of the valley. The rest of his forces fell in behind him, following into the gathering darkness. They moved with a silent, deadly grace that reminded me they were all warriors, killers. Not as skilled as Torran, perhaps, but deadlier than any human colonist on the planet.
The settlement in the valley was doomed and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
Dessus gestured impatiently and we gathered ourselves and set off after the prytheen. They vanished into the gloom and had to hurry to keep them in sight.
“They’re unstoppable,” Carrington said, nervous glee in his words. His voice a whisper, he marched beside me and I wondered — if I pushed hard, could I send him over the cliff and into the river below?
Not worth the risk, I decided with some regret. He was bigger and heavier than me, it probably wouldn’t work, and even if it did, the prytheen would probably throw me off after him. Torran wouldn’t want that. He’d want me to live.
“They are not,” I hissed back, limiting my response to words. “Even if they take the valley they’ll just run it into the ground like they did our farm.”
“That’s what they need us for,” he said, trying to explain himself. “We can keep the place running for them, we’ll be the real power, and they’ll kill anyone who threatens us. It’ll be hard at first, but you’ll see Lisa — we’ll end up running our own country.”
I glanced at him. It wasn’t easy to make out his face in the darkness but his desperation was plain to see. Carrington wasn’t just trying to justify himself to me: he needed to convince himself that he was doing something worthwhile.
You’re not going to have my help doing that, I thought, swallowing a bitter laugh. If your conscience is eating you, good. You deserve it.
“I bet that’s what every quisling tells himself,” I said. “And in the end, they all hang for it.”
Not true, unfortunately. Plenty of collaborators profited from their actions, but it made me feel better to pretend that his doom was inevitable. And the barb did its main job of making Carrington shut up for a moment. The last thing I wanted was to hear his voice.
Dessus shoved me in the back, staggering me.
“Less talk, both of you,” he growled.
That was fine by me. I stumbled into the darkness of the Crashland forest, following the nearest prytheen warrior and wondering how long it would take us to reach the valley. How long before the battle started and humans began to die.
Maybe, just maybe, if I found the right moment, I’d be able to raise an alarm. I didn’t know if that would make a difference, if they’d be able to defend themselves once they knew the danger they were in — but it was the only way I could think of to help.
It would mean my death, but what did that matter? At least I’d be together with Torran again.
22
Torran
The cold stones at my back were agony, the icy grip of the river pulled at me, and my muscles had no strength left. Heat and blood drained from me, my life ebbing away as I clung to a rock with all the grim strength I could muster.
But I would not die yet. Not now. Not when it would mean abandoning Lisa to her enemies.
Lisa. Just the thought of her name gave me strength and I pulled at the slippery rock, sharp edges cutting my palm like a knife. No matter. I couldn’t, wouldn’t, give up just because of a little pain.
But my fingers, slick with blood and water, slipped. The current tugged at me, almost took me, and I knew that if I let it carry me away, I’d never surface again. Crashland’s fish would feast on me, and that would be that.
I saw my khara waiting for me, clear as dawn and twice as beautiful. Crouching by the river, hand outstretched, urging me on. I would not fail her. With a roar of effort, I flung out my good hand and caught hold of another rough rock. It dug into my palm, searing pain overwhelming me, but I didn’t let it stop me.
Pain was nothing. Blood was nothing. All that mattere
d was getting to the shore. Getting to her.
Bright eyes watched me struggle, Lisa’s mouth formed words I couldn’t hear. I knew that she was just an image conjured by my blood-starved brain, a figment. Still she gave me the strength to carry on, to pull myself up onto the rocky shore and collapse in a panting heap.
“I’m coming Lisa,” I said aloud, mumbling the words. My eyes fluttered shut, and it would have been so easy to give in to my tiredness. To sleep and rest, to fall into a healing trance.
It would have meant my death. Here, amongst the hungry animals of Crashland, with no help coming for me, I’d be dead long before my body repaired itself.
Fumbling at my side, I found the laser wound where Gurral had shot me. Braced myself. Pressed a finger into the hole.
PAIN.
I sat up with a jerk, biting down on the scream that tried to escape my throat. The call of sleep was banished, at least for now, and I took an inventory of my condition.
Two laser blast wounds. One in the side, one in the back. Both missed all vital organs, but that was the only good news. The wounds bled freely, weakening me, and if I lived long enough, infection would set in.
And they hurt as badly as anything I’d felt in my life.
Then there were the injuries from the fall. I’d hit rocks on my way down to the river and been smashed into more as the water carried me away. Not something to complain about; if the current hadn’t taken me then Gurral and his men would certainly have finished me off.
But that left me covered in deep bruises and cuts. Maybe some minor broken bones. Every inch of me hurt and moving wasn’t easy. I pulled myself to my feet gingerly, testing. Yes, I could support my weight. I could even walk.
That’s something, I thought, looking up at the cliff that rose above the river with a resigned sigh. Whatever I did next, it would have to start with that climb.
