Water & Storm Country

by David Estes

  A shudder runs through my body, filled with disgust and shame and excitement.

  I’ve killed my first Soaker. For Mother, for Father, for Paw.

  For me.

  All those thoughts run through my head in an instant, but I have no time to ponder them, because another Soaker is upon me, his sword slicing through the air.

  Clang!

  I block it with the edge of my own blade, and shove him back. His body is swept away as a horse bashes into him, not stopping until the Soaker’s been trampled and bruised under its trod. I know that horse. With Gard atop him, a massive and awe-inspiring warrior, Thunder rears up on his hind legs and kicks another of the enemy in the head, sending him sprawling.

  While I watch, captivated by the force of nature that is Gard and Thunder, Passion turns sharply, reminding me that we’re in a battle. Two Soakers approach from the side, as if trying to surround us. Passion kicks at one and he grunts, stumbling back. A ziiipping sound creases the air as an arrow lodges in his chest. He falls, spitting blood.

  The other Soaker stops his attack and looks around in confusion just before an arrow catches him in the gut. I spur Passion forward, adding my sword near where the arrow entered, finishing him off.

  We wheel around and I see Siena, bow strung with another arrow, having already moved on from helping me. A Soaker attacks her, but ends up on the ground with an arrow through his throat.

  All of a sudden, the area around me is relatively clear, the battle having spilled further down the shore, as if carried on the wind, which has shifted, sending the rain swirling in circles around us.

  Without command from me, Passion runs back toward the fray. I watch in horror as one Rider, then another, are struck down by Soakers in quick succession. The men of the sea don’t spare their horses, stabbing them through their bellies.

  In fact, without looking very hard, I can pick out twenty or thirty Rider bodies sprawled along the plains, mounds of black and red. Littered amongst them are the dead bodies of brown-clad Soakers, at least double the number of our dead. But are we winning? To my left, more boats are landing on the shore, carrying reinforcements.

  The first familiar face I see is Remy’s, but he’s no longer on his horse. For some reason he has dismounted and is sword-fighting a Soaker. He blocks a strike and then kicks his opponent back, where he stumbles over a dead horse carcass. The animal looks familiar and I realize it’s Bolt, Remy’s horse, killed in battle.

  Everything about Remy, from his body language to the torn expression on his face, cries rage. With two quick steps he’s on the Soaker, stabbing him once, twice, and then more times than is necessary to kill him. Again and again and again, desecrating his body.

  Finally he stops and looks up, tears in his eyes. He sees me and his expression changes sharply. Is it…concern?

  Even as he raises his finger to point behind me, I’m turning, trying to raise my sword, trying to be faster than I know I’m capable of.

  The Soaker sword cuts into my hip, all the way to the bone, sending ripping, roaring shockwaves through my body. “Arrrrrrrr!” I scream, frantically slashing out with my blade, slicing the chest of the enemy who snuck up on me. The man falls, his sword coated with blood—my blood.

  Passion, as if sensing my pain, nays loudly, a cry of angst. “I’m okay, girl,” I say, cringing as another bolt of agony shoots from my hips to my toes. I stuff a hand in my mouth, bite down hard, trying to distract myself from what I know is a serious wound. “Go, Passion, go!” I scream through my fingers.

  For the first time since I met her, Passion seems unsure of herself, moving forward first at a walk, one hesitant step after another. When I manage to kick her gently in the ribs with the foot on my uninjured side, however, she breaks into a run.

  On the beach, a large raft washes up. Then another.

  I forget the pain of my injury when I see who’s on the rafts.

  The Heater slaves have arrived.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Huck

  I refuse to meet my father’s eyes as we cut through the rough waters, just behind the rafts.

  They’re all going to die, every last one of them. Stolen from their homes, brought upon ships where they’re treated like animals—no, less than animals—and now forced to fight a war that has nothing to do with them.

  Hatred burns for the one who raised me. What will I do with it?

  The rafts land before our boat, and the children of fire country spill onto the shore. Beyond them, the battle rages. Men scream with anger and pain. Swords ring out. Bodies fall.

  “Attack or I’ll kill you myself!” my father screams at the Heaters. They look back, unsure and unarmed, but then run toward the plains, toward sure death.

  What kind of monster…? The worst kind—the very worst kind.

  But then I see something strange, something that temporarily snaps me out of my anger. A girl, sword held high, silver and red and streaked with lightning flashes, slashing at a seaman, killing him. Her skin’s as brown as Jade’s, as brown as the Heater children who are, even now, headed her way.

  She sees them and her body seems to go stiff, like all the grace and ability I just saw her use to fight the Soaker has been sucked out of her.

  Then she starts to run toward the children, shouting something back over her shoulder.

  Thud!

  Our boat crashes onto shore, but I can’t take my eyes off of what I’m seeing, because there’s more. Another brown-skinned girl emerges from the battle, carrying a bow, running like bloody hell, following the other. Then there’s a third, but this one’s a guy, muscular and fast, but again, his skin is at least three shades too light to be a Stormer. There’s something deadly and animal-like about the fourth brown-skinned warrior that emerges, his arms dark and painted.

  The other officers are spilling out, already moving up the sand, shouting orders at the bilge and the men already, although no one’s listening because they’re too busy fighting. My father pulls at my elbow. “Remember—you fight or she dies,” he says.

  I grit my teeth and climb out.

  Drawing my sword, I run after him, toward the fight, which has spilled onto the sand, right into the middle of the children, who have huddled together, surrounded by death.

  The four brown-skinned warriors—who I only now realize are Heaters, like the children—surround the cluster of bilge, facing outward, as if daring anyone to harm them.

  A few Stormer riders eye them, but, surprisingly, turn away and continue to fight only the Soakers.

  The other officers have reached the edge of the battle and seem uncertain of what to do about the cluster of now-protected bilge. “Kill them!” my father shouts, and I’m not sure whether he means the bilge, or the four Heater warriors protecting them.

  A few of the officers leap into action, Hobbs included, attacking the two Heater girls. The girl with the bow unleashes two arrows in short succession, cutting down two officers as if they’re no more than common foot soldiers. Their soaked-through blue uniforms won’t protect them now.

  Another officer drops when the sword-carrying Heater girl stabs him through the midsection.

  Hobbs slashes at her, but she blocks his attack, quickly countering with a flurry of strikes of her own. He jumps back into a group of other officers who are sticking close together, doing battle with a few dark Riders who have broken through.

  Riders fall. Officers fall. The world spins around me, like we’re inside a barrel, rolling down a hill.

  With the greater numbers, the officers eventually get past the four Heater warriors, who are barely able to protect themselves against the onslaught. The children break from their cluster, running from their own masters, running for their lives. A few of the older ones usher the younger ones ahead, hanging back, grabbing at the fallen and bloody swords and knives that litter the sand around them.

  Hobbs leads the charge, urging the officers toward them, stalking them like prey. Why would they kill the very children
who maintain the ships, the very slaves bought by my father? Because he ordered them to. Because they blindly follow his every command.

  I have to do something.

  I spring into action, running toward the brown children and the blue officers, watching in horror as Hobbs raises his blade over one of the kids. Without hesitation, he stabs the boy, pushing him to the sand at the same time that he extracts his sword.

  “No!” one of the Heater warriors screams, the girl with the sword. Her blade is moving impossibly fast, cutting and slashing and leaving officers dead in her wake as she fights through them. The other three redouble their efforts to get back in front of the children.

  But I’m closer—and no one is trying to stop me—so I reach them first, just as one of the other officers slaughters another child.

  I act on a choice I only now realize I made a long time ago. I stab him in the back.

  He cries out and falls, drawing every other officer’s attention, Hobbs included.

  “You!” he roars. “Kill him!”

  Three officers spring forward, and it’s all I can do to deflect their heavy blows. Tripping, I fall back—

  And it’s over, surely it’s over—

  And I won’t see Jade, not ever again—

  And then one of the officers falls, an arrow through his ear, which is spouting blood.

  A second one dies next to him, pierced by the Heater girl’s sword. She made it through. She saved me.

  The third officer turns to run, but is cut off by the shadowy Heater. His two curved daggers make short work of him.

  I struggle to my feet, holding my sword at the ready, expecting them to kill me next. Save me and then kill me.

  A scream tears through the rain.

  We all turn to see Hobbs standing over a Heater boy, who’s fallen to the sand, surrounded by the dead bodies of the brave children who fought with him.

  Hobbs killed them. He killed them all. And he’s about to kill this boy too.

  This boy who is…

  My eyes widen when his face comes into view: skinny and scared and then screaming and angry; he’s the boy I fought on the day I became a man, in a time that now feels so long ago. The boy who beat me, who shamed me.

  The boy whose life I must save now.

  Hobbs raises his sword and there’s no time, although the two Heater girls are already running toward him, one with a sword and one with a bow and an empty satchel.

  I pull a knife from my belt, trying to remember everything Cain taught me about knife-throwing—eyes on your target, shoulder and elbow and wrist in line, throw hard but not too hard—and heave it past the running Heaters, toward Hobbs.

  The moment the knife leaves my hand, everything seems to speed up. Hobbs’ sword falls so fast, so deadly, but it’s not in his hand when it does. It’s gravity, only gravity, and the earth’s pull takes him, too, a moment later, my knife embedded in the back of his skull.

  The Heater girls pull the boy out from under Hobbs, one of them clutching him as tightly as if he’s her son, while the other—the bigger, stronger one—stands over them, daring anyone else to attack.

  She nods at me. I nod back.

  The boy just stares, his face soaked with tears.

  I turn away and almost run right into the two Heater men, whose weapons are raised.

  This might be suicide, might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, but I drop my own sword in the sand, broad side down.

  “I’m not your enemy,” I say.

  “We know,” the taller, unmarked one says, his words round and long.

  The one with the dark markings speaks, his voice coming out warmer and clearer than I expected. “We’re looking for a Heater girl. Thirteen years old. She’d resemble those two.” He motions to the two that are protecting the bilge rat boy.

  For the first time, my eyes really take them in, every detail, every feature. The curve of their noses. The shape of their brown eyes. The texture of their hair. They appear more like sisters than tribemates. And Jade would look right at home next to them.

  I gasp, nodding. “I know her,” I say. “She’s back on the ship.”

  “Let’s go,” the shadow-eyed one says.

  With a ragged shout and clangor, a group of Soakers pour down the beach toward us. At their head is my father.

  Sadie

  When Skye and Siena and Feve and Circ rush down the beach, I want to go with them, to help save their kinsfolk, but I can’t, because at the same moment I see Remy and Buff and Dazz, fighting in a circle, surrounded by at least ten Soakers.

  I urge Passion in their direction, watching as Dazz clubs one enemy in the skull, knocking him out. But another Soaker manages to slip through and stab him in the shoulder. His grip relaxes and his club falls away. “Ahhh!” Buff yells, coming to his friend’s rescue, slashing with his short-knife. He discards one opponent, but is then knocked back into Remy, who’s facing the other way, facing an onslaught of enemy strikes.

  Passion slams into the back of two of the Soakers, their bones audibly cracking as they fall beneath us. Two others fall by my sword. With Passion and I added to the mix, and with the element of surprise on our side, we gain the upper hand, cutting each and every one of them down.

  On the ground, Dazz groans, alive but in significant pain. “Where’s Skye?” he asks when I look down at him.

  “On the beach,” I say.

  “Help her,” he pleads.

  “Are you—”

  “I’m fine. Just go.”

  I hesitate, but then Remy says, “We’ll protect him.”

  I nod and turn Passion toward where I last saw the Heaters.

  The four of them are in a line, directly in the path of a group of running Soakers, a blue-clad officer at their front. Even as I gallop toward them, Gard and Thunder come in from the side, leading a group of at least a dozen Riders who have managed, like me, to remain atop their steeds.

  They collide with the Soakers, bodies and swords flying everywhere.

  The Soaker officer, a big man with a long sword, steps away from the pack of bodies. His hat is different than the other officers, longer and arched at the top. I know who he is: the admiral. Admiral Jones, the leader of the Soakers. He gestures at Gard, who stabs a Soaker and then dismounts, patting Thunder on the rear. Obediently, Thunder runs up the beach, toward and then past me, making for the safety of the plains.

  Another Soaker officer attacks Gard, but he tosses him aside like a child and steps forward, sword in hand.

  That’s when I see him slinking away from the crowd.

  A boy.

  A boy wearing a blue officer’s uniform.

  The Evil hisses in my ear.

  Huck

  Lightning crashes, splitting the sky in half. Thunder booms, crashing through my ears. Men die, as insignificant as fleas compared to the power of the storm.

  My father’s forgotten about me in the midst of the battle, and now he faces off against the war leader of the Stormers. I’ve only ever seen him from far away, from safe on the ships. He’s so much bigger this close. They call him Gard. Fighting him is what my father has always wanted. It’s also my chance.

  Slightly back from the fray, I feel numb. None of this matters to me—not when she could be dying in the rain. Dying by my very hand. Not when a reunion with her sisters is possible.

  I turn and run back for the boats, grab the side and push as hard as I can.

  I’m going back to her.

  “Stop right there,” a voice says from behind.

  Sadie

  He doesn’t turn right away, so I say it again. “Stop.” My voice is calm, when in my head I hear only killkillkillkill.

  This time he turns, white-faced and rain-slick. He raises his empty hands.

  I raise my sword.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  “Lieutenant Jones,” he says.

  Jones! It can’t be. This boy can’t be the admiral’s son, can he? But even as I raise my sword I know that he i
s.

  killkillkillkill

  “Please,” he says. “My father’s a bad man.”

  “Yes,” I say. “You all are.”

  Passion takes two steps forward; I’m close enough to slash him.

  Yesss, ssslasssh him, the Evil says.

  “No…no,” he says, but there’s not much strength in his voice. Only…sadness. For what? For who? “I didn’t want any of this to happen. I never knew…”

  There’s a roar behind us and I glance back. Gard’s unleashing a barrage of heavy blows on the admiral, forcing him back. Soon, Gard will finish him. So if I finish off Lieutenant Jones, the Soakers—or what’s left of them—will be leaderless.

  I turn back to the boy, who hasn’t moved. “You’re saying you’ve done nothing wrong?” I ask, angling my sword beneath his chin.

  No more quessstionsss!

  Am I controlling the Evil, or is it controlling me? I still can’t figure it out. I grip the sword tighter and fight off the urge to shove it through the boy’s neck.

  “I—I…” He can’t get the words out. I expected him to flat out lie, but instead he seems to be taking the question rather seriously. Swords ring out. Men grunt and groan and yell. “I hurt her. The Heater girl, Jade. I hurt her because he said he would kill her if I didn’t. And I killed a man for her. And I saved that Heater boy from Hobbs. I killed him too. I had to. And I—”

  “Stop,” I say, cutting him off. I have no idea what he’s rambling on about, but it sounds honest, like he’s ashamed of some things and proud of others, but all in all it doesn’t sound too good. Killing people, hurting people, saving people. A lot of stuff about Heaters. “Do you deserve to die?” Why am I asking him? Why am I delaying what I know I have to do?