Caleb relaxed. “I would have ripped them to shreds if they had.”
Renier sheathed his weapon. “I expected something like this. Centuries of warfare can’t be wiped out in a day. We should all be ready to fight at a moment’s notice.”
Aimee couldn’t loosen her hold on her blade so easily. Anna appeared at her side. “It’s okay. It’s only Caleb.” Aimee nodded and drifted back to the fire. “You would have fought them, wouldn’t you?”
Aimee sat down in the warm glow of the flames. “They would have killed Caleb. He might be strong and brave, but he couldn’t stand against all those Felsite. No one could.”
“I would have fought, too,” Turk added. “I wouldn’t stand by.”
Aimee shuddered. “This meeting could’ve been disaster. If we had fought now, both these armies would have been drawn into battle. We might have wiped each other out before the peace negotiations got started.”
Anna laughed, and Aimee’s head shot up to stare at her. “What’s so funny?”
Anna stopped laughing. “Nothing. I’m just nervous, the same as the rest of you. It seems so crazy that the first real chance of peace could end this way. I can’t imagine it.”
Aimee stared into the fire. “I can.”
Renier led Caleb to the fire and sat down next to him. “We’ll all have to be on our guard not to let this happen. I should have cautioned my men more carefully to expect you.”
“You did,” Carmen told him.
“I told them to expect the Lycaon Alpha,” Renier replied. “They must have expected something like the Ursidrean army showing up here, not a shadow creeping alone out of the dark.”
Caleb stood up. “Not alone.” He whistled over his shoulder toward the path, and Marissa appeared.
Aimee jumped up. “What are you doing here?”
Marissa sat down next to her. “The same thing you’re doing here. I couldn’t let all of you take part in this negotiation without seeing it for myself.”
“But I thought....” Aimee stammered.
Marissa didn’t smile. “I threw up once on the way here, but other than that, I held up pretty well. At least I didn’t slow Caleb down.”
“She ran very well,” Caleb said. “I told her to wait out there in the dark while I approached the camp.” He nudged Renier. “I expected something like this, too.”
“So what are we going to do, now that Caleb is here?” Chris asked. “How are we going to approach the Avitras?”
“I really don’t know,” Donen replied. “Aquilla is likely to cut my throat the instant he sees me. Maybe the Felsite and the Lycaon should go without us.”
“Aquilla hates the Felsite as much as he hates the Ursidreans,” Renier countered, “and I don’t want to face the Avitras alone. The only way to stop him launching an all-out attack is for all of us to approach him at the same time. He wouldn’t dare attack any of us with the others standing by.”
Anna spoke up. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot on the way here, and I think I have an idea.”
Donen pricked up his ears. “What’s that?”
“Instead of approaching Aquilla,” Anna replied, “we should approach Piwaka instead.”
“Who’s Piwaka?” Aimee asked.
“He’s the Captain of the Avitras Border Guard,” Anna replied. “He helped me free Menlo from Aquilla. I couldn’t have done it without Piwaka—and Penelope Ann.”
“Has anyone thought of contacting Penelope Ann?” Carmen asked. “Maybe she’s the one we should be working with instead of the men.”
“We’re here because we can work together in a way the Angondrans can’t,” Emily added. “Maybe Penelope Ann can get through to Aquilla.”
“If anybody can get through to Aquilla,” Anna replied, “you can bet Penelope Ann is doing everything she can to do it. But we can do more by approaching Piwaka. We should at least try it.”
Menlo spoke up for the first time. “I don’t like it. The Avitras are dangerous at the best of times. Going behind Aquilla’s back will only aggravate him more.”
“You’re still wary after your experience,” Anna told him.
“You bet I’m wary,” he shot back. “Anybody would be wary after what they did to me.”
“But you know as well as anybody that Piwaka is a reasonable man,” Anna pointed out. “He wants peace as much as we do, and he’s the one person who actually has some pull with Aquilla—except Penelope Ann, of course. If we can convince Piwaka, Aquilla’s bound to go along with us.”
“Not necessarily,” Menlo countered. “If Aquilla wants to dig in his heels, nothing will move him. Renier is right. We should all be prepared to fight.”
Anna shook her head. “I say we at least try to convince Piwaka. He controls the Guard, so he’s the real power behind the Avitras.”
“Piwaka’s an old man,” Menlo told her. “He won’t be around forever, and when he goes, we’ll have no one to deal with but Aquilla. If we’re going to negotiate for peace with the Avitras, we have to approach Aquilla head on and not sneak around behind his back.”
“I understand both your points of view,” Renier remarked. “Both have merits, and we still have no idea what we’ll find when we get to Avitras territory. We might find only Aquilla. Piwaka could have resigned as Captain of the Guard. Or we might find Piwaka alone on the border without Aquilla, in which case we would still have to explain our mission to him.”
“Don’t forget,” Emily added, “Piwaka is the one who let me cross the border to visit Anna, even though I had an Ursidrean and two Lycaon with me at the time. Aquilla would never have done that.”
Renier stood up. “We’ll all get a good night’s sleep tonight. In the morning, we’ll move to the Avitras border. Once we get there, we’ll have a better idea how to proceed. Maybe an opportunity will present itself that we can’t see from here.”
Chapter 4
The sun beat down on the plain. The Felsite column snaked over the sun-baked earth, and the Ursidrean column followed. Aimee and the other Lycaon rode on the Ursidrean battle machines with Donen and his entourage. They wound their way south toward the Eastern Divide separating Avitras and Ursidrean territory. Aimee shielded her eyes from the sun and sighed.
“Are you okay?” Emily asked.
“I’m fine,” Aimee replied. “I would have preferred to run.”
“In this heat?” Emily asked. “You’re crazy.”
“At least I wouldn’t be sitting still under this sun,” Aimee replied. “The wind keeps you cool. I’m just worried about Marissa. She shouldn’t be out in this heat.”
“I’m all right,” Marissa replied from the other side of the vehicle. “I’m glad I don’t have to run. I think I spent my last ounce of energy getting here last night.”
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Aimee told her. “You should have stayed home.”
“And miss these negotiations? No way,” Marissa replied. “Carmen and Aria and I were the first human women on this planet, and I’ll be there at the end if it’s the last thing I do.”
Aria spoke up from her place next to Donen. “I wonder if we’ll see Penelope Ann before this is all done.”
“I’m sure we will,” Anna chimed in. “She’s as much a part of this as any of us. Where Aquilla will be, she will be.”
The sun quashed further conversation, and most of the party dozed or at least kept their eyes closed. They hadn’t even reached the base of the Divide before the sun set and brought welcome relief from the relentless glare.
Aimee hopped to the ground. Emily sat up. “Where are you going?”
Aimee nodded toward the slope. “I’m going to run up. I’ll see you at the top.”
“But how will you find your way?” Emily asked.
“I’ll find it.” Aimee tightened her boot laces. “What about you, Chris? Do you want to come along and stretch your legs?”
Chris shot her a grin. “Don’t mind if I do. I
can’t stand sitting still. Come on, Turk. Let’s race ‘em.”
Turk leapt to the ground and nodded up to Caleb. “We’ll see you up there.”
Caleb laughed, and in an instant, the sound dwindled to nothing behind them. Aimee led the way, and the wind stripped the torpor and tension from her mind. Treetops whipped past overhead, and her feet barely touched the ground.
A few minutes later, Chris inched up next to her. Aimee put on a fresh burst of speed. Chris matched her, and Turk dropped back to let them race up the mountain. The track jutted up steep escarpments to peaks high above, but Aimee pumped her legs harder and inhaled the crisp mountain air. She flew over the ground with Chris at her side.
The track narrowed until it forced them to run single file. Aimee didn’t stop until she broke through the escarpment and ran out onto a pinnacle of rock. She looked back down the mountain to the column far below.
The sun shone on the mountain peak, but the mountain cast the column into shadow. The Ursidrean machines carried lights powered by their engines, and the long line of fireflies threaded across the plain to the foot of the Divide.
Chris chuckled at her side. “Did you see the looks on their faces when you said you were going to run up the mountain? It was priceless.”
“I don’t know how they can sit there, hour after hour,” Aimee replied. “I wish I’d run the whole way, but I didn’t want to offend Donen after he offered to let us ride with him.”
“They won’t be here for hours,” Turk remarked. “Where should we camp?”
Aimee gazed down the other side of the mountain. Vast forests stretched as far as the eye could see. “The Avitras are around down there somewhere. We probably shouldn’t approach their border if we can help it.”
“We already have,” Turk replied. “The top of these mountains is the border between the Avitras and the Ursidreans. As soon as they detect us here, they’ll send out their Guards to confront us.”
“We better stay here, then.” Chris looked around. “There’s nothing to build a shelter or a fire. Maybe we should wait for the others down in the trees.”
Aimee sat down on the rock. “It’s a warm night. I’m going to stay here and watch until they come.”
“Let’s stay up here,” Turk agreed. “It could be dawn by the time they come.”
Sure enough, the stream of lights took all night to wind through the defiles and up the steep Divide. The first streaks of dawn lightened the sky when Renier stepped of his palanquin and looked around. “Where should we camp?”
Aimee stretched her stiff legs. “That’s what we were wondering. There’s nowhere to camp up here—nowhere big enough for all of us, anyway.”
Menlo strode up from the Ursidrean column and pointed down the Divide. “There’s a flat place farther down that might work. It’s rock, but it’s sheltered from the wind and close enough to the forest to build a fire.”
He led the way to an expanse of rock set between two mountain peaks. Renier nodded. “This will do. We can collect firewood from those trees, and I can hear water running down in the forest.”
Aimee listened. “Those trees and that water are on the Avitras side of the border. What if the Avitras consider our camping here an intrusion on their territory?”
Renier frowned. “You’re right. We can’t start our negotiation that way.”
“What’s the alternative?” Anna asked. “There’s nowhere else to camp.”
Aimee kept her voice low. “There are plenty of places to camp. There just aren’t any other places to camp for this many people.”
Turk stepped forward. “Aimee’s right. We shouldn’t have all these soldiers and warriors so close to the border. It looks dangerous because it is.”
Donen threw back his shoulders. “Right. Faruk, order the Ursidrean troops to fall back to the forest below the escarpment. They’ll find plenty of firewood and water down there, and they’ll be out of the wind.”
Renier gave a shrill whistle. “My people will fall back with you. The Alphas and their mates, and Faruk and Menlo, Anna and Emily and Aimee, will all stay up here to keep an eye on the border in case any Avitras show up and start asking questions.”
He waved his arm to his men, but before anyone could move, a gust of wind burst through the trees. Aimee barely had time to glance in that direction when an enormous band of Avitras soared out of the trees. Their wings spread behind them in bright colored fans that reflected the rising sun and blinded everyone. They rose over the assembled armies and landed in a line stretching from one end of the rock to the other.
Faruk and Menlo whirled around with their phase reciprocators pointed at the Avitras. A murmur rippled through the Ursidrean ranks, and the siege guns crackled to life. Renier’s hand flew to his blade, but he stopped himself from drawing it. His men didn’t show the same restraint, though. They rushed toward the Avitras with every sinew tensed and ready to fight.
One Avitras darted forward to confront them. He looked younger than the others and slighter built, but his eyes blazed with fury and he swung his double-bladed staff at his aggressors. “What are you doing, amassing for attack inside our border? This is an act of war, and I will respond in kind.”
Menlo bellowed back at him. “We aren’t inside your border, Aquilla. We’re west of the Divide and well within Ursidrean territory. You know that.”
Aquilla bared his teeth at the burly Ursidrean. “You! I should have known you were behind this. I never should have let you leave my territory alive. I won’t make the same mistake again, and the Ursidreans will regret the day they provoked me.”
Menlo drew his lips back from his teeth in a snarl, but Donen laid his hand on Menlo’s arm. “Don’t waste your breath. It won’t do any good.”
Anna stepped forward. “What about me, Aquilla? Will you kill me, too, for crossing your border?”
Aquilla rounded on her. “You’re the one who let that....that creature loose when I had him prisoner. You’re dead to me already.”
Carmen stepped forward. “What about me, Aquilla? Do you remember me? I came to visit you and Penelope Ann when we first landed on this planet. Am I dead to you, too?”
Aquilla ran his eye down the battle line. “Did the Felsite come to invade my territory, too?”
“No one came to invade your territory,” Carmen replied. “We came to discuss peace with you.”
He glared at her. “Peace—between the Avitras and....who? The Ursidreans? The Felsite? Don’t make me choke.”
Emily joined her friends in front of the two armies. “Where’s Piwaka? Does he feel the same way you do?”
Aquilla frowned. “What does Piwaka have to do with this?”
A taller, thicker-set Avitras moved to Aquilla’s side. “I’m right here. If you have anything to say to me, say it now.”
Chris took Aimee by the hand, and they and Aria walked forward. The seven women formed their own line blocking the three armies from each other.
“We came to talk peace with you,” Carmen told him. “All of us have made our homes on Angondra, but we’ve remained close friends, even though we belong to different factions. The Angondran factions could accomplish the same thing. You’re one people, even though you have different ways of living and different adaptations to your habitats. You could live in peace with each other and respect each other, instead of slaughtering each other in these senseless wars and threatening your entire race.”
“None of the factions has enough warriors to guard the borders anymore,” Emily added. “When we came to live here, all the factions were desperate for females to rebuild their populations after the plague. Another war would devastate your population and you would never recover. Make peace now, and work together to make Angondra thrive.”
Aquilla didn’t slacken his stance in the slightest, but Aimee noticed a sparkle in Piwaka’s eyes. Their arguments made sense to him. He was listening. He noticed her watching him, and his eyes gravitated to her face. Her
heart fluttered, and she looked away.
Aquilla pointed at a spot behind them. “Avitras territory extends to the edge of that rock. You’re all trespassing on my territory. I have the sovereign right to slaughter all of you right here and now.”
Emily sighed. Chris turned to her friends and spoke in an undertone. “Obviously there’s some misunderstanding about the border.”
“No wonder they’ve had so many wars,” Aimee added.
“If only Penelope Ann was here,” Carmen exclaimed. “She could smooth this over.”
Piwaka interrupted their conversation. “She is here.”
The women spun around and found him staring at them with curious intensity. Then he turned toward the treeline and made a clicking noise with his tongue. A tall woman with long blonde hair stepped out of the trees and approached the line.
Carmen gasped. “Penelope Ann!” Marissa started forward, but Chris held her back. “Not yet.”
Penelope Ann took her place at Aquilla’s side. “It’s good to see you all again.”
“We’ve come to negotiate peace between all the factions,” Marissa told her. “Help us, Penelope Ann. Help us bring peace to Angondra.”
Penelope Ann regarded them with cool detachment. The sight of her made Aimee shiver. “How can you negotiate peace at the same time you’re invading our territory?”
The women glanced at each other. Their plans couldn’t end like this. Donen rounded on his troops and waved his arm in the air. “Fall back! Faruk, take the troops down past the escarpment. Take the cannon and the transporters all the way down to the plain so the Avitras can see them from the Divide. Let no doubt remain in anyone’s mind that we’re on our own side of the border.”
Renier joined him giving orders to his men. “Take everyone back and camp next to the Ursidreans. Don’t leave even one person behind but me and Carmen.”
His lieutenant said something Aimee didn’t catch, but Renier cut him off. “Do as I say. No questions.”
Donen bellowed to his troops. “Fall back!”
The clash of metal and the pounding of feet crossed the rock and dropped down the track the way they came. In a moment, only Donen, Renier, Turk, and Caleb remained of the two armies. The seven women faced the Avitras.
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