by Janean Worth
“That one ain’t got nothin’ of value. Look at her. She’s been out here a while. She probably ain’t got nothin’ but fleas. And beside, if she had Old Tech, we’d have seen her use it by now,” the other Enforcer replied.
Kara stayed silent, saying a quick prayer of thankfulness as she climbed back to her feet. The Old Tech that Otto had given to her was in her pocket. If they searched her, it would be easy to find.
All around them, the prone Enforcers and their horses and felled tracken began to awaken, staggering to their feet and stumbling around. Some of the men groaned, holding their heads. Several of the tracken yowled loudly as they came fully awake, signaling their distress at the situation.
With so many people and animals milling about such a small area, it was a scene of pure chaos.
“Looks like they took good care of Gabert’s horse,” a man said as he gathered up Gallant’s trailing reins. Once that was done, he moved to the horse’s side and began to paw through the saddlebags.
Kara winced when he crowed in triumph. He had found the other Old Tech she’d taken from the skyscraper.
“Well, look what we have here. The Sovereign will be happy with us tonight,” the man yelled, his loud voice overcoming the murmurs and groans that filled the meadow.
A guttural snarl split the air, sounding from the darkness, and a short dark shape knocked Kara to the ground as it rushed toward the Enforcer holding Gallant’s reins. She felt something sharp slice along her leg and she screamed in pain just as Gallant screamed in terror as the shape reached the man at his side.
“Mine!” the guttural voice hissed.
A horde of short, black shapes entered the group of Enforcers and milling horses, rushing from out of the darkness and into their midst. Shouts and screams arose as the group of Fidgets attacked both man and beast, claws and teeth slashing wildly.
The air was filled with the snarling of tracken as the beasts tried to fend off the attack, but they were severely outnumbered, and many of them were still confused from having the wiry devices removed or suffering the aftereffects of Mathew’s Old Tech.
Kara had little time to wonder how the group of intelligent Fidgets from the Narrow Road had managed to track them so far through the forest before Mathew found her in the melee and she was hauled to her feet by gentle hands.
He hurried her toward Gallant while Zandra and Razer leapt to their defense to keep the Fidgets away.
Gallant was rearing and stomping as he screamed shrilly. Again and again his pale hooves flashed in the darkness. When they drew near, she saw the Fidgets beneath his feet. Many of them were dead, but many more were darting in, aiming sharp claws at Gallant’s back legs between the strikes of his hooves. Kara shuddered at the sight of blood on the poor beast’s hocks.
The Enforcer who had found the Old Tech in Gallant’s saddlebags was on the ground, too. Kara turned her face away as they rushed by him. There was no helping him any longer. He had already become a meal for several Fidgets, who were still enjoying their feast.
Mathew hauled her close to Gallant, just as Zandra managed to route the last of the Fidgets who had been harassing the horse. Kara climbed into the saddle with Mathew close behind as soon as Gallant calmed enough to allow them to mount.
As she wheeled the horse to flee the nightmare scene, she heard one of the Enforcers shout.
“Retreat! To the Gate!” the man yelled.
The men left standing ran for the remaining horses as tracken continued to snarl in the darkness. A few Fidgets squealed as they met their end between a tracken’s powerful jaws or at the end of the barrel of an Enforcer’s gun.
Kara ignored the throbbing pain in her leg and urged Gallant forward with a slight squeeze of her legs, realizing that the Gate was their only salvation now.
Gallant needed no encouragement, seeming as eager as she was to leave the area. His swift strides quickly carried them away from the chaos behind them. With their short legs, the Fidgets could not match the animal for speed, and as long as Gallant kept running, they were momentarily safe.
Kara gave little thought to what would happen to them once they entered into GateWide. She was desperate to get them all away from the attacking Fidgets.
“Kill!” a hoarse shout sounded behind them in the darkness, and Kara shuddered as she recognized the garbled voice of the Fidget leader.
All around her, mounted Enforcers raced toward the Gate. They paid her and Mathew no mind in their haste to enter the relative safety of the Gate again. Kara realized then that they had better make it to the Gate before the last Enforcer, or they’d surely be locked outside and left as a meal for the attacking Fidgets. Even now she could see the Gate starting to swing closed as the citizens realized what was happening outside the walls.
Zandra loped ahead with Razer at her side. Kara could just make out the patch of white on Zandra’s chest and Razer’s torn ear in the darkness as the faint light cast from the Gate’s entrance silhouetted the animals.
Heart hammering, Kara leaned low over Gallant’s neck, urging him on. He put on a burst of speed and in seconds they were thundering through the Gate and into what looked to be a whole battalion of Enforcers.
Kara gasped as Gallant came to a skidding halt, kicking up dust from the hard-packed dirt courtyard beneath his hooves.
The milling group of Enforcers moved to the side to let the other Enforcers enter the Gate, but several of them reached out to grasp Gallant’s reins, yanking them from Kara’s grasp.
“No,” Mathew whispered. “No, no, no! This isn’t how it was supposed to be.”
Bright lights from a myriad of smoking torches stabbed her eyes as Kara squinted around, looking for a route of escape.
There was none. They were well and truly captured.
Her bloody leg throbbed in time with her pounding heart as an Enforcer grabbed her tattered shirt and yanked her from Gallant’s saddle.
Chapter Nineteen
Mathew soon joined Kara where she lay prone in the dirt near Gallant’s hooves. An Enforcer sneered at them both, then viciously kicked Kara’s bloodied leg.
“Serves you right, you filthy Stray!”
For the first time in his life, Mathew felt blind anger overtake him. He leapt to his feet and rushed the Enforcer, launching his entire weight at the man’s midsection.
He managed to knock the man off of his feet and they both sprawled in the dust of the crowded courtyard. Mathew heard Zandra yowl in anger as the man punched Mathew in the side. Mathew got in one punch of his own, bloodying the man’s lip, before another Enforcer jerked him roughly to his feet and punched him again, driving the air from his lungs. He sagged to his knees, gagging, still in the Enforcer’s grasp, then was shoved to the ground again as several other Enforcers roughly searched him.
In moments, they’d found his father’s Old Tech, ripping it from his pocket in triumph.
Mathew wheezed out a moan, Otto’s warning ringing in his ears. You must take care that it does not fall into the hands of the Sovereign, because, in his hands, it would be capable of great evil.
And he hadn’t protected it. The Enforcers would take the Old Tech straight to the Sovereign, and he and Kara would go along with it.
Mathew moaned again at the thought of this failure.
At the sound of his meager protest, another Enforcer kicked him in the face, and Mathew’s face exploded with pain as he felt blood spurt from his split lip.
Kara tried to help, struggling to rise, but Zandra must have feared for her safety, because Mathew saw the tracken leap upon her and pin her to the ground with a snarl.
There was a high-pitched squeal near the Gate that drew everyone’s attention, and Mathew was able to twist his head just enough to see the commotion there. The mighty Gate was once again closed and the Enforcers gathered near it were using long pikes tipped with sharp blades to spear the Fidgets that had managed to enter. Laughing with glee, they speared the last one as the others around them, Enforcers and citizens a
like, cheered them on.
The last Fidget died screaming. And for the first time, Mathew felt a moment of pity for one of the mutated beasts. He wasn’t so sure that he wouldn’t scream too at the moment of his death. Which he was sure the Sovereign would order just as soon as the Enforcers had dragged him to meet the man.
Razer’s face loomed over him, and there were tears in her eyes. She quietly let them fall upon his injured face, then backed away to blend into the milling group of tracken that huddled off to the side. The beasts snarled every so often as they paced in agitation, and from his place upon the ground, Mathew honestly could not tell which beasts were still controlled with the Sovereign’s devices and which were not. They behaved no differently.
Good! He thought. At least some benefit had come from this night’s folly. Some of the tracken were freed from their agony.
He heard Kara’s gasp and turned his head to see her being hauled to her feet and dragged away.
There were tears in her eyes, too, as she looked at him.
Mathew felt a wave of defeat rush over him at the sight of her tears. They’d lost. They’d tried to do the right thing, but they’d failed. And, what was worse, he had also failed to protect her from the very fate that they now faced: torture and death at the hands of the Sovereign.
And, after their death, the Sovereign would be made even more powerful by the Old Tech that they’d taken from Mathew. The Old Tech that his father had gone to great lengths to hide. The Old Tech that Mathew had practically delivered right into the man’s hands.
The journey through the streets of GateWide to the House was miserable. From every house doorway and cottage window, people came to peer at them as the Enforcers dragged them through the streets.
No one said a single word in their defense. Mathew wondered if the people watching the spectacle were just too afraid of the Sovereign’s wrath to speak up, or if they truly just didn’t want to help two Strays. He wondered if they thought that Strays like he and Kara were disgusting and that they deserved whatever they got, just as he had once thought, when he hadn’t been a Stray himself.
Only one person made a sound as they passed by. One man smiled at him, a vicious grin full of malice, and began to clap slowly as the Enforcers dragged him down the road. Mathew recognized the merchant that’d he’d stolen from on the day that his mother had died.
Mathew hung his head in shame. Perhaps he did deserve this fate after all. Perhaps, inside, he’d always been a Stray, even before his mother had died? He hadn’t thought that stealing was wrong at all. He’d enjoyed taking whatever caught his eye, with no thought for the consequences. How could he ever have been so wrong?
He didn’t struggle at all as an Enforcer jerked hard at his arm, urging him to walk faster.
He had no struggle left in him.
“Truchen, take the tracken and Gabert’s horse back to the stables and have Hedert see to their wounds. The man’s good with the animals, and the Sovereign won’t want to see any of his prized pets damaged in any way. Tell Hedert to make sure the tracken are cleaned up good before they’re brought back to the House,” one of the Enforcers told another who led Gallant along with a hand on the horse’s reins.
Mathew recognized the man leading Gallant. He was one of the Enforcers who had been there when Gabert had threatened Kara’s life in the forest.
To Mathew’s surprise, he saw the man glance carefully at Kara, and then quickly away again. And Mathew saw something flicker in the man’s gaze. Compassion.
Mathew quickly looked down at the dirt under his feet, scared that one of the others would see the surprise upon his face.
“Yes, sir,” Truchen said.
“I’ll take these two to meet the Sovereign,” the other said. He glanced at Kara, then back at Truchen. “And, if this one is who I think it is, then the Sovereign will want a certain someone to witness the meeting. Like that scrawny female Stray left behind when Maude Taylor was put to death. After all, if I’m right, Maude was the one who helped this one escape the Gate.”
Mathew heard Kara gasp softly.
The Enforcer heard too and he laughed. “So, it is you that Maude helped escape your Stray’s fate. Know that she died for her actions against the Sovereign that day.”
Kara turned her face aside, but Mathew saw the anguish in her gaze before it was hidden and he felt righteous anger churn in his gut again.
“I’ll fetch her and meet you there shortly, sir,” Truchen answered.
He cast a look at Mathew before separating from the group, then lead Gallant away, the large group of tracken following along behind.
Zandra alone hesitated at the rear of the group of tracken, casting an anxious glance back, but Mathew quickly caught her eye and shook his head slightly at her, hoping that she’d know what he meant.
She did. Zandra hung her head and slowly trotted along behind the group of other animals as Truchen led them to the stables.
Mathew gratefully watched her go. There was no need for her to die this day too. Perhaps she and Razer would survive until they were able to escape the wall. Maybe they’d be able to live free beyond GateWide some day soon.
He hung his head once more. Wishing heartily that his father’s Old Tech was still in his possession, feeling the sting of failure deep in the pit of his stomach.
Chapter Twenty
Kara didn’t struggle as two muscular Enforcers hauled her along between them, each gripping one of her arms tightly just above the elbow. There was nowhere to run even if she managed to wriggle free of their tight hold anyway. The packed dirt street that led to the House was lined with cottages and people. There wasn’t a doorway or path that was not crowded with onlookers, and she had no doubt that those same people would block her way should she attempt to flee.
The dry, night air around them was cloying and heavy with smoke from the flaming torches that lit nearly every doorway and the other torches that were carried by the Enforcers to light their way. Where there were no torches, oil lamps were held aloft in the hands of the citizens of GateWide in order to get a better view of them as they passed.
And under the smoke, Kara could catch long forgotten scents that she associated with GateWide. She hadn’t really remembered what it smelled like inside the wall until she was in the streets again. A mélange of boiled cabbage, honeysuckle, fresh baked bread, manure and sweaty, unwashed bodies blended together to form a scent that she found oddly comforting. A scent that reminded her of the home she had once shared with her mother, and of the woman herself. And Maude.
She kept her head down, her hair falling forward to cloak her features, hiding her anguish from the Enforcers as her tears splattered the dry ground at her feet and were immediately soaked up by the dust. For the years that she’d lived in the forest, she had often wondered about Maude’s fate, hoping that the woman’s aid in her escape had not been discovered. It had, apparently, been a false hope.
She longed to ask the Enforcers how many days it had taken the Sovereign to find out what Maude had done, but she kept her mouth shut, fearing that any inquiry would result in answers that she did not want to hear. Had Maude been able to live a year after Kara had gone? Or had the Sovereign discovered her secret in a matter of days? How long had Maude been able to hide the truth, and go on protecting her own children before the Sovereign had put her to death? It seemed that, out of all of Maude’s seven children, only one had survived being a Stray. And, if the Enforcer could be believed, that girl was to be brought to the House now, to witness Kara’s fate.
If Kara hadn’t seen how different the tracken were after they were freed from the Sovereign’s control, she knew that she might hate them for what they’d done to her life. If one of the beasts hadn’t killed her mother in a fit of blind rage, then Kara thought that she would, most likely, still be living in the tiny cottage that’d she’d once shared with her mother, and her mother would still be alive. If not for a tracken…
But, no, it was the Sovereign who had ultimat
ely caused her mother’s death. It was he who had forced her mother to work in the House, and he who had enslaved the tracken, burdening them with pain so great that they were half mad with it. The tracken had probably not even realized what it had done when it had killed her mother. But the same could not be said of the Sovereign.
Kara had no doubt that he knew exactly what he was doing when he forced the Strays to do his bidding, enslaved the tracken, and required that others, usually poor widows, work in his House and serve him. And soon, the Sovereign would know her fate too.
She wondered idly if she would meet the same fate as her mother, only not by accident this time, but by order of the Sovereign. When she was brought before him, would he order a tracken to murder her? The thought made her cringe, both in terror at the thought of those sharp teeth tearing at her flesh and at the knowledge that, if the tracken did know what it was forced to do while under the Sovereign’s control, the burden of guilt it would carry for her death would only cause it more pain. Maybe the Sovereign planned to make Maude’s child kill Kara so that she would always remember what happened if she ever dared to defy him?
Her morbid thoughts were interrupted by the rough voice of an Enforcer as he leaned over her head and whispered to his fellow soldier, “Never believed the talk about the Sovereign’s Far-Seeing Old Tech until today. Thought it was just a rumor. But he knew that these Strays were in the forest. He knew they was coming back to GateWide.”
“Be quiet, you fool,” his companion hissed. “The Sovereign cannot abide a talebearer. If he hears that you’ve spoken of his Far-Seeing device, or its results, you know what will happen.”
The other Enforcer immediately fell silent, and Kara wondered what they both knew would happen. What did the Sovereign do to talebearers, she wondered. Was it worse than what he did to Strays who fled GateWide, rather than face time in the House?
