“That’s it,” Johnny said. “Everything’s been rationed, even all the food from Galen’s pack.”
Arturus looked at the two strips of hound jerky and the handful of devilwheat which lay in a small pile in front of him. In his canteen he had a few swallows of water.
And there’s nothing here to hunt.
Kelly came climbing down from the tower. “Galen’s right,” she said, casting a glance at Arturus’ father. “They’re thick out there. Shoulder to shoulder, like he said. We wouldn’t make it five feet. It’s like they can smell us or something.”
Arturus looked to Galen. The man sat cross-legged against one stone wall, leaning forward, his left elbow resting on one knee while his left hand supported his chin. He seemed to be deep in thought.
“Maybe we could make a rope,” Johnny suggested. “Tie it off on the tower and climb down to where they’re thinnest.”
She shook her head. “Go up and look yourself.”
Johnny pointed to his swollen leg. No one had bothered to splint it.
Kelly sat facing Johnny, putting a hand on his knee. “I couldn’t see the end of them.”
Johnny started crying.
“Oh Christ,” Avery said, “could you cut that shit out?”
Galen spoke, “All we’ve left to do is die, Avery. Our last task is to do that well. If Johnny needs to mourn before that happens, that is his business.”
Avery threw his canteen across the room.
Aaron stood up. “Cut that shit out. That’s an order.”
Avery leapt up to his feet, wincing with pain. He threw his devilwheat across the room. The grains scattered in the air and drifted down onto the stone floor. “Yeah? I’m done taking orders from you. You’re shit, Aaron. You’ve let Galen take us all this way and look where we are. Look where we are! Whatever weird ass funeral you guys want to have for yourselves . . .” Avery’s voice cracked.
He must have wanted to say more, but for some reason Avery stopped talking.
“I know,” Aaron said.
Avery bowed his head, putting up one hand to cover his eyes.
“I know,” Aaron repeated. “I wanted to make it home, too.”
Aaron bent down and picked up Avery’s canteen.
Johnny slid himself along the floor and started picking up the scattered devilwheat. “Let me help you get this back together.”
Avery managed a smile.
While they worked, Arturus walked over to his father. Galen was deep in thought. If he noticed Arturus’ approach, he showed no sign of it. Galen was disturbed, of that much Arturus was certain. Perhaps it was their coming deaths that bothered Galen, but Arturus suspected there was something more. He doubted that death alone would be enough to cause worry to pierce is father’s stoic veneer.
It’s me. He thinks he’s failed me.
Arturus knelt beside him. “Father, it’s okay. You don’t have to be sad. I’m not what everyone wanted me to be. I know that now. If I was, then the Furies would not have come to kill me. You’re only losing a son. You’re not losing all the hopes of all the damned.”
Galen looked up. His eyes were a torrent of thought, not just emotion. He was making a decision, or weighing some alternatives. Or something.
“Oh,” Arturus said. “There’s more to do?”
Galen nodded. “Dying well is no easy task, Son. You see how Avery is acting? Soon those feelings will be on your shoulders. In a few hours, or few days, it will sink in. If you can do this last thing, if you can die as the man you are, that is a truly great accomplishment.”
Arturus frowned. “But no one will know how we died. No one will care. What does it matter?”
“Because in those last moments before death, you will have to face yourself. As a person dies, their world shrinks in around them, getting smaller and smaller. Imagine two universes. First, the one where you behaved as you thought you should. The one where you consoled your friends and did not hurt them. The one where you made your last goodbyes and told Kelly you loved her. Then imagine a second universe. In that one, imagine that you yelled at Kelly and made her cry. Imagine that you threw your food around as Avery just did. Imagine that you told me you hated me. Now in that last moment, when your world has shrunk to a size so small as to only include yourself, and you find that you have only your own misery for company, in which universe would you rather find yourself?”
Arturus imagined these things. But he wasn’t worried about when his world would be at its smallest. He knew, just moments before his soul left his body, that there would be a time when his world shrank down to where he would just be aware of his father and himself. There were two possibilities for that time too. There was the Arturus who had died poorly, who would have to suffer his father’s disapproval. There was also the Arturus who had died well, who could bask in the knowledge that his father was proud of him. More than that, he knew his father’s pride would be justified because this last battle would be no easy thing to win.
But those moments would be short.
“Such a small thing to fight for,” Arturus mumbled.
Galen nodded. “Perhaps. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that it is all we have left to fight for. A doomed man and a man with a bright future, when they die, they both only lose the present. Do you understand?”
Arturus shook his head.
“For you, and for me, if we only had five minutes left—if our hourglass was nearly empty, those five minutes would be all of our lives. How is it any different when you are fighting for a future that might span millennia? Five minutes or a thousand years, for you, it’s all you have.”
Arturus nodded. “And then we do it all again.”
Galen smiled. “Think not of the next life, Son. Nothing you can do in the here and now will affect it. Finish this one first. Drink it in. Let it fill your thoughts. Let it be all that you are.”
It doesn’t matter if I go on, or if I don’t, or if there will always be a Turi or not.
“Do you think Rick will know it, when we’ve died? Do you think he’ll somehow feel it?”
“He knows already, Son. He’s known for a long time.”
Ellen had forgotten how beautiful Cris was. When she had seen him before, naked in the river room, he hadn’t been able to stand straight. Even then, she had been struck by his figure. And now, though the physique which had sent fingers of lust all across her body was hidden, she could feel his presence filling the room.
Graham had taken a few steps back.
Martin’s jaw hung open. “You,” he breathed.
Cris leaned against the wall of the doorway, a smile spreading across his face. “Ya’ll fuckers miss me?”
Molly ran to him. She encircled her arms around the infidel and clung to his side. Then she sneered at the hunters.
“Sorry,” El Cid said to Martin, “but for your own sakes, we have to find out what’s going on in the Carrion. You may think us your enemy, but at least know that we also fight the devils. Why stop your enemies from killing each other?”
Martin nodded. Strangely, Ellen felt that she had somehow missed the man, although what he was doing ordering Graham around escaped her.
“Alright,” Martin shouted. “Hunters, no shooting. If the Infidel Friend want to go play in the Carrion, we’re going to let them.”
Everything was quiet.
Slowly and carefully, the infidels began moving. Q and El Cid went first, their M-16s held steady as their small, even steps brought them past Cris and Molly. Ellen began to follow them, but Rick grabbed her, hands on her shoulders, and held her back.
“Let me go!” she shouted, struggling against his grip.
“You can’t,” Rick said.
“It’s my decision!” Ellen screamed. “Mine! I want to find him. I want to go help him. I don’t care if I die.”
Rick spun her around. He bent down and leveled his intense gaze at her. “But you will die. You won’t do Turi a damn bit of good if you go in there. And the infidels, well, the
y’re not looking for my son. They’re looking for Lucreas Crassus and Saint Wretch and all manner of terrible things. And they’re infidels, Ellen. That means they might find those wicked people. You and I, we don’t have what it takes to journey there and fight those things.”
Jessica, Eagan and Q passed through the doorway. El Cid handed her gun to Cris and walked back out. She brushed Rick aside and took Ellen’s hands.
“Rick isn’t quite right,” El Cid said. “He is good enough to come with us. He would help us in the Carrion. But you aren’t that good, yet. The Carrion isn’t like this part of Hell. Everyone has to know exactly what to do at all times. In there, all of our lives depend on our fellow soldiers. I realize you are willing to sacrifice your own life, and I laud that. But please ask yourself if you’re willing to sacrifice the lives of my soldiers, too.”
Ellen felt tears in her eyes.
I’m a fucking idiot. El Cid will never respect me if I cry.
But the tears were impossible to hold back. They filled her vision and then dribbled down her cheeks. She felt Rick’s warm arms surround her. She let herself get lost in that warmth. When she looked up she saw that El Cid had joined the others.
How come Molly gets to go with them?
The Harpsborough hunters kept their weapons trained on the infidels as the gate lowered.
“Hey, Cris,” Martin said.
Cris stepped up to the grate, his eyes focused on the hunter.
Martin lowered his weapon. “Fuck ‘em up in there.”
Cris smiled.
Rick walked up to the doors and closed them.
“So,” Graham said as he advanced on Massan, “you were going to get a ring for Kara, huh?”
Arturus woke to find himself sitting, his knees pulled up to his chest, his back pressed against the stone wall. Kelly was resting her head on his shoulder. Someone was talking. Arturus focused on their words.
“And you’re okay in there?” Johnny was asking.
“It doesn’t bother me,” Avery answered.
“But the corpses are right on the other side. You can see them through that crack. How could you have slept in there? I mean, you can hear them clawing at the walls for God’s sake.”
“They can’t get at me.”
Arturus left his eyes closed, but he imagined that Avery was crossing his arms. The thought of the hunter’s idiosyncratic pose brought a small smile to his face.
Everything was quiet. The walls creaked, and the air from the vestigial breathing of the hundreds of thousands of corpses outside combined to make a noise sort of like wind. The gate which Galen had fastened shut with shackles creaked gingerly, probably from the weight of the dead outside. Kelly’s breath was warm on his shoulder. Each exhalation left a bit of condensation on his neck.
This is not the way I would have chosen, but it is a way. It is better than many others.
He remembered Pyle. He remembered the man being flayed alive by the silverleg spiders. He remembered the man asking for mercy. Arturus hadn’t given him that.
Maybe I should have respected him more.
He found that, more than anything else, he wanted Rick to be happy. He hoped that Rick had found someone. Someone that would fill the hole Galen and Turi had left.
“So, when the first one of us dies,” Johnny said, interrupting Arturus’ thoughts, “should we eat them?”
Oh, hell.
Arturus opened his eyes and looked around. His father was still sitting cross-legged, his chin resting on his hand. Slowly, perhaps because of what Johnny said, Galen’s eyes focused on the hunters.
“That’s bullshit, man.” Avery crossed his arms. “That is absolute bullshit. Cannibalism ain’t right.”
“I want to hear you say that in three weeks when we’re starving to death,” Aaron said.
“I ain’t joking, man.” Avery was wide eyed. “That ain’t right.”
“Would you rather your friends starve?” Johnny asked.
“Hell, you’re going to starve to death anyway,” Avery shot back. “I’d rather do it without committing any great evil.”
Kelly was stirring on Arturus’ shoulder, but she hadn’t awakened fully yet.
“It can’t be evil,” Arturus said. “It doesn’t hurt anyone.”
“A thing doesn’t have to hurt someone to be wrong,” Avery answered.
“Quiet,” Galen said. “Turi is right. Unless someone is hurt by an action, it cannot be a wrong one.”
Avery sneered. “I know that ain’t right. Thinking angry things is wrong. It’s committing murder in your heart. It’s an affront to God.”
How could he . . . after what he’s done?
“Then God’s the one who’s hurt,” Galen said.
Arturus stood, waking Kelly.
“After what you’ve done,” Arturus said, “you’d argue about an affront to God? After what you did to Kelly?”
Avery spat. “What about what she did to me, Turi? You give a damn—”
“Quiet.” Galen’s soft voice silenced them.
Avery looked up at the ceiling angrily. Arturus wished Kelly was still sleeping. It seemed like sleep was going to be the last time that any of them got any peace.
Arturus sat back down and Kelly rested her head on his lap.
Not for me. I’ll have nightmares.
He could feel the nightmares coming. They were there, just waiting for him on the other side of consciousness.
Calista had given him a lock of hair to remember her by. It had made Kelly angry. How silly that all seemed now.
Avery was whispering something.
“What?” Johnny whispered back.
“I said you can eat me.”
“Jesus, Avery. You just said you didn’t want me to.”
“If I’m fucking dead, and you want to live longer—if you’re hungry, I want you to.”
“It’s cool man.”
“I’m fucking serious, Johnny. You eat me. I don’t want you to suffer. When I’m done with me, you can have me.”
Ellen was certain that they couldn’t tell the truth and hope to be spared by the Harpsborough hunters. They were going to have to lie, and Ellen could only hope it was going to be a good one.
“We deceived you,” Rick said.
Oh, no, Rick. Your stupid honor. We should have all gone through with the infidels.
“No shit,” Graham spat. “Hux, give me my damn gun back.”
Huxley turned to Martin. Martin had a lot on his mind, of that Ellen was certain. He’d lost a good amount of weight since she’d first met him by the Fore. He seemed sadder, somehow. Maybe it was the fact that he was sober. Or it could just have been that he was in charge now, and that his responsibilities were weighing on him.
Martin nodded, and Huxley gave Graham his rifle. Ellen felt more than a little relieved when the hunter slung it behind his back.
Graham returned his attention to them. “Now I think we’re all going to take a little walk to—”
“Molly was in the boat when you stopped us,” Rick interrupted. “We took her to Tucumcari so she could meet with an Infidel Friend and beg them to help Cris. We did this because she thinks she loves the man.”
Graham’s mouth formed a sneer. “You aided an exile. You lied to me. To me? You—”
“Then we traveled with the Infidel Friend on our way back,” Rick continued over Graham’s hateful words. “We deliberately lay silent as they discussed how they would negotiate for the key. Then, when negotiating did not work for them, we did not warn you that they were coming to steal it. At every step that we could have stopped them, we chose not to.”
“I should shoot you—”
“But we’ve killed no one. We’ve stolen nothing. We haven’t hurt a soul. We haven’t endangered Harpsborough or her people.”
“The hell you haven’t!” Graham spat. “You led those infidels here. They could have attacked the village. You had no way to know if they would or wouldn’t. You didn’t see the showdown in Harpsbor
ough when they came. We could have been the next Hellespont. You sick fucks. Get in line. Men, we’re taking them to the Fore.”
“Funny, that,” Martin said loudly. “I think that going forward, before you give orders, you are going to ask me, first.”
Graham’s eyes were wide with incredulity. “You deny they broke the laws of Harpsborough?”
“I ain’t denying shit . . . ‘cept you.”
Graham’s sneer faded into an angry grimace. His brow furrowed. His hands were visibly trembling. Ellen had always remembered him being unpleasant, but there was something worse in Graham now.
What in Hell could have made him so angry?
He certainly wasn’t angry at Rick or her or Massan.
Molly. Molly humiliated him, and now she’s gone, and he blames us for it.
“I’m the collector. The Head Enforcer,” Graham’s voice was slow, and he seemed like he was just barely able to contain his anger. “I speak for the Fore.”
Martin leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms. “Great. What taxes do Massan and Rick owe? What stash have they not claimed?”
Graham’s eyes were stuck on Martin, but he didn’t say anything.
“Because the way I see it, when Rick left, the Harpsborough people went through and stripped the Hungerleaf Grove down so badly that those trees nearly died. Hell, for all I know, they did die. So if you want to speak for the Fore, maybe you could give an apology. Maybe you could let Rick know how we’re going to make it up to him?”
“They’re criminals,” Graham insisted.
“We’ll let the Fore decide that,” Martin said. “In the meantime, I can’t spare the manpower. We’ve got to fill in that barrier. Hunters, collectors, Graham, you’re all with me.”
Graham’s hand went to his rifle, but then fell to his side. “You can’t seriously just let them go.”
“Oh I can,” Martin said. “I can because I know Rick is a good man. Because I know that he’s not going to run.” Martin walked up to Graham, and as he did so, his voice got louder. “Because I know that if we saw things from his perspective, that we might understand why he did what he did. And I know he’ll gladly tell the Fore about everything he’s done. I know that we’ve robbed him and that Constance’s people tried to mug him.” Martin was shouting now. “But you wanna know why? You wanna really know why I’m giving this order? Because there’s a God damned breach in the Carrion barrier, Graham! A God damned breach. Because on the other side of that hole is the biggest fucking army I’ve ever seen. I had to fight that Kyle-thing. I don’t know if I could beat another one.” Martin’s face was red with fury. He was only inches away from Graham’s cringing visage. “Because Rick is the most experienced builder we have. He’s the one that fucking showed us how to repair the Carrion barriers to begin with. And I need his God damned help. Is that clear, soldier?”
March till Death (Hellsong Book 3) Page 13
