The Last Survivors (Book 6): The Last Conquest

by Bobby Adair

  Much of the wall had been in place since the times of the Ancients, but many of the stones had been replaced over time, when animals or time knocked the old stones loose. The top was smooth and flat. Normally, cavalry members and census takers guarded the Brighton gates, keeping strict notes on anyone who entered or left, reporting discrepancies to Blackthorn's blue shirts.

  It was strange to see no soldiers guarding the gates or towers now.

  "A wagon wheel," Fitz said, looking over at Ginger.

  "What do you mean?"

  Fitz gave a thin smile. "That's what my uncle told me once about Brighton, when I was young and he was trying to describe the township."

  "I'm not sure I understand?"

  Fitz explained, "Brighton is like a wagon wheel. The city center is the hub where most of the buildings and houses are. The farmer's fields fill the area where the spokes are, and the circle wall is the wheel's edge. Outside Brighton, it's like there's another, bigger wheel going around it, with fields maybe a mile wide between the wall and the forest. The south gate is the main entrance, as you know, with three other gates on the north, east, and west."

  "That makes it easy to understand," Ginger said with a nod.

  "I always thought so."

  Fitz smiled as they turned their attention to a slew of women, children, old men, and Academy members working on three enormous contraptions that closely resembled the pictures in Kreuz's book.

  "I still can't believe the plan is working," she told Ginger, who was standing next to her.

  "I know," Ginger agreed. "I've never seen anything like them. Do you think they'll work?"

  "Kreuz is confident they will," Fitz said. "So are the Scholars. They made a small one to test it out this morning before constructing the large ones."

  They watched as several women hefted boards from a nearby pile, tying ropes around them and securing the last pieces of one of the ancient contraptions. Kreuz was standing nearby, directing them as if he were an army captain, or a minister, delivering sacred orders. He pointed fingers and laid out directions. Farther along the wall, pushcarts full of spears were wheeled up close. Clusters of women and children were pushing more through the streets and up among the others.

  "It was a good idea to make spears instead of swords," Ginger told Fitz. "That will ensure that more people are armed."

  "We have swords, too," Fitz said, pointing to a few piles near the pushcarts. "But I think you're right."

  "It was a good idea to station people at the other gates," Ginger said.

  "I'm assuming Winthrop and his group will approach the front gate. It's the one they always leave from. But it's better to be safe. And the riders will give us a better indication of where they're arriving."

  Ginger smiled. "Winthrop will be surprised to see us. He'll probably be expecting Tenbrook and his soldiers."

  Fitz nodded. "That will work to our advantage."

  She watched as a line of women, children, and old men wheeled more pushcarts to the front gate. An excited cry drew her attention to the big machine they'd been close to finishing. The Scholars, Kreuz, and several women stepped back, appraising it with wonder.

  "Is it done?" Fitz asked, stepping toward them.

  Excited nods answered her question. Kreuz stuck a thumb in the air. Fitz and Ginger watched several Scholars heft stones from a pile near the wall, preparing.

  Another Scholar was already measuring his steps from the wall, looking between the machine and the uppermost stones. "This way," he directed, prompting several of the Scholars to help the women move the contraption. They rolled it on rickety wooden wheels until they had it in place.

  "Let's give it a try," Kreuz said, his eyes lit expectantly. "Why don't you go in the guard tower and let us know how it works?"

  "We'll be able to see everything from there," Ginger said with a nod.

  Fitz and Ginger walked to the nearest guard tower and began to climb. Fitz alternated her gaze between the ancient device, Kreuz and his men, and the women waiting above them. When she reached the top, she climbed into the small room with the two women that had been waving.

  "Lady Fitz," one of the women said, greeting her.

  The women watched her expectantly. Fitz nodded and took a position against a waist-high ledge that overlooked the wall and beyond. She surveyed the long field that extended past the gates and went several hundred yards before it disappeared into the thick, colorful trees that seemed to extend forever past Brighton. She kept her composure, even though she'd never been this high before. She remembered climbing trees inside the wall as a child, thinking that she might reach the heavens, but that was back in the days when she'd had hopes of someday having a husband and children, owning a house, and making the best of a life in Brighton. The luckiest residents got to travel into the wild and see other towns and villages. She'd hoped to be that fortunate, too. That was before her life had been confined to a sweaty bedchamber, before her dreams had been stomped to death by Mary, and by Winthrop.

  Until recently, she never thought she'd get them back.

  In the middle of the field, cutting a path from Brighton's front gate to the forest, was a wide trail. The boots of Blackthorn's soldiers, travelers, and their guides stomped down the dirt regularly. Winthrop and his army would be using that path.

  She couldn't let them back in.

  Fitz looked down at the machine the Scholars had built. A growing cluster of women and children stood behind the contraption, finding places where they could watch. All eyes turned to Fitz. They were waiting for her direction. The Scholars had placed one of the large stones in the bucket.

  Fitz looked at Kreuz, who waved his hands. "Are you ready, or what?" he asked.

  Fitz looked away from him. Giving an exaggerated nod to the Scholars, she said, "Go ahead!"

  The Scholars and some women pulled back the long, wooden arm of the contraption. The ropes stretched. The bucket kissed the ground. Then, both arm and stone were flying forward, the arm stopping, the stone taking on its own life as it arced through the air and traced a path over the wall, traveling far away from the watching men and women.

  Fitz watched that stone whiz through the air. Suddenly, her dreams might be attached to it; she might as well be a little girl in a tree, pretending she could fly over the circle wall. And then the stone was smashing into the center of the dirt path three hundred yards away, spraying dirt and debris near the entrance to the forest, creating a divot the size of a man's head and rolling for another thirty yards into the woods.

  "If soldiers or demons were standing there, it would surely break their legs," Ginger said quietly to Fitz.

  The people on the ground watched the machine, awestruck.

  They looked from the sky to Fitz.

  They waited for her response.

  "It worked!" Fitz shouted, prompting a cheer from the crowd below. They smiled and hugged one another. The Scholars shook hands and patted each other on the back, watching each other and congratulating Kreuz.

  "Damn right, it did!" Kreuz yelled, unable to contain his smile.

  Chapter 58: Fitz

  With the catapult test complete, it was time to move on other things. Kreuz and the Scholar named Adam-John joined Fitz and Ginger in the tower at the main gate.

  Fitz thought Adam-John's name odd, but said nothing about it. Adam-John was a Scholar, and everyone in town thought the men who lived in the Academy were odd. More to the point, Adam-John had unexpectedly volunteered to ride out with Fitz's scouts on their third excursion in order to get an accurate estimate of the forces that were coming to crush Brighton. It was a brave thing to do, though bravery wasn't something Fitz expected from members of the Academy.

  Perhaps that was one more rumor with little or no truth beneath it.

  To Ginger, Fitz said, "Raise the red flag."

  Ginger leaned out of the tower and yelled, "Raise red!"

  In the next tower down the wall, a smaller one with enough room for only a few soldiers, an old ma
n who'd been a soldier in his youth, but who was now barely able to walk, raised a pole with a red flag flapping in the breeze.

  Fitz turned to look at a line of two thousand women standing in ragged rows, thirty yards inside the wall. All wore a strip of red cloth wrapped around one bicep. All were separated from one another by five or six feet, and they were all swinging their slings in response to the flag going up. Most of the reds were either very young or quite old.

  As Fitz watched, rocks arced up from the loosed slings. She turned and watched as they soared over the wall.

  Ginger, Kreuz, and Adam-John all turned to watch the fist-sized stones as they thumped the dirt, throwing up splashes of mud where the ground was still wet.

  To Fitz, every stone sounded like it hit with enough weight behind it to knock a man senseless, or maybe crack his skull.

  A long row of thin poles, each topped with a red flag, paralleled the wall about forty yards outside in the meadow. The rocks landed in the vicinity of the poles, some a little farther, some short.

  Fitz turned to Kreuz. "It's working just like your Scholars said it would."

  "They're not my Scholars," Kreuz corrected. "But I'll be happy to pass along the information."

  "It will not be a surprise to them," Adam-John interrupted. "The solution was tested and proven many times by the ancestors of the Ancients."

  "Thank you," Ginger told Adam-John, in a tone that was clearly an order to stop talking. Ginger didn't like Adam-John.

  Fitz said, "Raise the blue."

  Ginger turned to the far tower and shouted, "Raise blue!"

  Another flag went up.

  Fitz looked at the rows and rows of women with blue armbands, maybe four thousand of them, the younger, stronger women, at least those that weren't busy elsewhere in Brighton with more urgent matters, guarding other parts of the wall, or building weapons. The blue-banded women were in rows similar to the reds, but behind them. They spun their slings in circles and the chords thrummed in the air. More fist-sized rocks started to fly.

  Fitz and the others in the tower watched the stones rise high in arcs over the wall, much higher than the red stones flew.

  With satisfying, heavy thumps, the rocks rained down outside the wall in the area of poles topped with blue flags, another fifty or sixty yards past the row of red-flagged poles.

  "When the demons pass the blue poles," Kreuz explained, "we raise the blue flag. When they pass the red poles, we raise the red flags."

  "It works as you said," Ginger admitted, looking at Kreuz, ignoring Adam-John.

  "We'll not waste our energy flinging stones into the ground," Fitz concluded with a smile. "And we'll not waste what stones we have."

  Ginger confidently told Fitz, "We have more stones than we'll ever need."

  "Not true," Adam-John countered, earning him a glare from Ginger.

  "Please excuse him," Kreuz begged. "The men of the Academy don't like to waste their words on manners."

  Fitz knew that to be true for most of the ones she'd encountered. Focusing on Adam-John, she asked, "Why do you say that?"

  "I estimate that we have forty thousand stones."

  Fitz said, "That is a great deal, of stones, is it not?"

  "It is," said Adam John. "The women you have scouring the ground for stones and breaking larger stones in the ruined buildings have all but stopped. They should redouble their efforts. If you had eighty or a hundred thousand stones, that would be better."

  "Tell me why that is more important than the other tasks?" asked Fitz.

  Adam-John glanced at Kreuz. "The slings may be our most effective defense."

  Fitz shared a look with Ginger to let her know that her patience was going to wear thin. "We already know that. Every woman, man, and child in Brighton now carries one. It was the simplest weapon to build that we have in our arsenal. You just witnessed the hail of stones we're able to put in the air, and this is not even all of our women. We may have the power to massacre any army that comes to our gates."

  "We'll kill them before they even touch our walls," Ginger reinforced.

  "That may be so," said Adam-John, "but we don't know how many rocks we'll need in order to kill all the demons. More rocks than demons, I can assure you of that. Many rocks will miss. Many won't even kill or injure when they strike."

  Fitz realized immediately that Adam-John was right. She turned to Ginger. "We cannot have too many rocks. Allocate as many women as we can afford. Pile the rocks where the formations will line up when the battle begins." She looked across the rows and rows of women and then turned to Kreuz and Adam-John. "We should have poles on this side of the wall too, each topped with a red or blue flag, so the women know where to line up. When the battle starts, we can't expect them to make the judgment of their distance to the wall."

  "Yes, ma'am," said Kreuz.

  "Put the Scholars to work on that," ordered Fitz, "unless they're inventing some other weapon to save us all."

  With a subservient nod, Kreuz said, "The poles will be up before sundown."

  Fitz put her attention back on Adam-John. "I've heard from my scouts what they witnessed. Now tell me what you saw when you rode out with them."

  Adam-John started to speak, stopped himself, and then started again. "I realize I owe you an apology. I was speaking to you of things you cannot understand. Kreuz told me you don't have your numbers."

  "That was true," Fitz told him. "It is losing its truth with each passing day. One of the merchant's wives is teaching me, and while I don't claim to have a Scholar's knowledge of mathematics, counting and simple addition are such easy things to learn that I cannot help but hate the men of Brighton who chose to use ignorance as one of their tools to subjugate." Fitz realized anger was rising in her voice.

  Adam-John stepped back, cowed by Fitz's tone.

  "He only mentions it," said Kreuz, "because he needs to explain what is coming, and wants to do so in a way that you understand."

  "I appreciate the effort," Fitz told them in a diplomatic tone, "but do understand, I comprehend much more than either of you believe."

  "My wife has always been the brains in my household," said Kreuz, in an effort to allay Fitz's anger. "Though I've never spoken of it in public, she manages the affairs of our business and has made us rich." Then with a bit of disappointment, he said, "And she's raised my daughters to be every bit as strong-willed as she. They all read. They all have their numbers. I may never marry them off." Kreuz sighed. "But that was in the old Brighton. Now, under your rule, I can admit that freely." Kreuz pinned his intense gaze directly into Fitz's eyes. "Believe me when I tell you, I do not harbor illusions that men are smarter than women. We are stronger. That goes without saying."

  "Would you like to test your strength against me?" Ginger asked with a hand on the hilt of her sword.

  Kreuz looked up at Ginger's hard face.

  She stood half a head taller than him, and she was getting very comfortable with the sword she carried.

  Kreuz shook his head. "Perhaps I need to rethink many beliefs." He turned back to Fitz. "Please know, I support you fully in what you're doing in Brighton. If anything I or any of the Scholars say offends you," he glanced harshly back at Adam-John, "please, accept our apology. It is not my intent, and it is not the intention of the Scholars to do so."

  "Thank you," said Fitz, as she turned away from Kreuz to look again at Adam-John. "Is that true, what he says? Do you intend to offend, or not?"

  Adam-John raised his chin in defiance. "If I speak the truth, will you put me on the pyre? Will you burn me for being a man?"

  Ginger grasped the hilt of her sword again, ready to skewer Adam-John. She was out of patience.

  Fitz restrained Ginger before saying to Adam-John, "I know every feeble old man and young man still lucky enough to be in Brighton has been afraid for his life since we took Tenbrook's. All of you believe that what happened was a revolution of women. Some of you even pray for the day when Blackthorn's army returns and sets Brigh
ton right again. Those are all thoughts for the ignorant among you. It underscores how stupid and arrogant most of you are." With her eyes, Fitz dared Adam-John to refute her.

  He kept his lips pressed firmly closed.

  "Brighton was a sick place," Fitz went on. "You did not see it because you're a man, and not just any man, but a privileged man of the Academy, a beneficiary of a society that stood on the backs of the meek. Your system brutalized them, starved them, and burned them on the pyre. This was a revolution of the meek. It has nothing to do with gender. I will not burn you for speaking the truth."

  Adam-John, still raising his chin, said, "Kreuz told you already that we in the Academy don't waste our thoughts and breath on pleasantries for the sake of courtesy alone. We speak truth to one another and set feelings aside."

  "Perhaps all of you in the Academy are wrong," said Fitz. "Pleasantries are not a waste, they are a form of respect, a kindness between people."

  "As I said," argued Adam-John, "a waste. But the true matter that I feared to speak is that I am your intellectual superior, as is every man in the Academy. You women should turn governance of Brighton over to those intelligent and educated enough to understand it. The truth you fail to see in my ill-mannered words is that I do not respect you. You are a woman."

  Leaning toward Fitz, speaking loudly enough for Adam-John to hear, Kreuz muttered, "He's smarter than me, but compared to my wife, he's an idiot."

  Ignoring Kreuz, Fitz said, "Lucky for you, I will not burn you for the lies you believe, and I will not burn you for your ignorance. The Academy will not govern Brighton. However, Kreuz will represent the Academy on the New Council. If you want more than that, I'll warn you now, do not take up arms against the new government. I'll show you no mercy."

  "Our disrespect will not translate into violence," Adam-John said as he topped his arrogance with condescension. "The men of the Academy are thinkers, not fighters."

  "You better be fighters when the demon army arrives," Ginger told him. "Every soul in Brighton who can lift a weapon will fight, even you Academy pansies."

  Chapter 59: Fitz