“Thirteen,” Adahy interjected.
“And there's four of us. So—yeah. You have to put up with me.”
Edwin turned away without a word.
Elise drew closer to Adahy. He pressed his lips to her temple. “Keep away.”
She retreated, and Jim knew why Adahy had requested it.
The men would need room to fight.
Calia stepped beside Philip, and he gave her a grim smile. She would fight.
Being sick and female didn't get her off the hook.
Calia had heart. Jim admired that in a person. He watched as the first of the Fragment crested the hill.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Elise
Elise clamped her teeth together to keep them from chattering. She did not become ill often. Perhaps her partial immunity came from the little bit of Band blood she laid claim to.
Her view was partially blocked by Adahy's broad back but not enough to stop her from seeing the first of the Fragment make the top of the hill.
She stifled a whimper as memories rushed back.
Once Elise embraced panic and fear, her intellect would follow in a slide of defeat. She would cease to think, becoming like a cornered animal. And it had been proven over and over again she was no physical match for the men of the Fragment.
Instead, she straightened her shoulders and ignored the creeping illness that ate at the edges of her mind and her gnawing unease about the outcome of the inevitable altercation.
Elise would survive.
Adahy wasted a glance at her and nodded.
She knew he would fight to protect her—a novel concept from a man.
No matter what occurred, Elise would not forget the gesture. She had saved his life before, in battle. And now he was ready to sacrifice his for hers. It was that very thing that had carried weight in her decision to accompany Adahy Outside.
The Fragment filled the top of the hill in a mismatched unit of soldiering. None looked alike, and these were not the Fragment of her enslavement. Of course, that would have been nigh on impossible as most had been slaughtered in the siege from before. But Elise knew that the Fragment were a resilient group. Like rodents and scuttle bugs, they survived anything.
Even as she thought it, they began to spread out. As Adahy had said, there were thirteen, some as young as ten and nine, others aged in years of thirty or more.
All wore the expression typical of the Fragment: greed.
“Hand over the women, and we let you go,” the apparent leader stated. His legs were planted far apart, arms loose and ready for whatever would occur. The wind whistled in the open, high and sleek, reminding Elise of their hostile environment.
Elise closed her eyes against the cadence of speech she remembered so well. Being nomadic, each Fragment group had a slightly different rhythm to their way of speaking. This one did not sound like the Fragment she was familiar with.
It was Jim who seemed to understand his comment most readily. “Suck it. You're not taking the women.”
The leader's eyebrows shot up, and he threw his head back, laughing. “Suck it? Suck this,” he advised in a crude leer, grabbing his nethers in an unappealing, grimy fist.
He stroked himself, and Elise could not repress her shudder. Revolting cretin.
“Not on a bet,” Jim said, and the leader stepped forward.
“You a Fragment?” he asked in a near taunt, his eyes narrowing at Jim. “You're associating with them.” He flung his hand out to encompass the Band and grunted. “Join us in the spoils. Or stay with them and be outnumbered. Use your noggin.”
Jim narrowed his eyes. “I'm not like you.”
“Yeah, we noticed.” The leader put his fingers on the corners of his eyes, making jest of the exotic shape of Jim's eyes.
The group of Fragment laughed.
Philip took a short stick out of his rucksack, to which a hard metal sphere was affixed with jagged spikes.
Gravity took the ball down to his side. It swung with slow menace.
The leader of the Fragment followed the motion with his eyes.
Edwin's dagger lay naked in his hand. The stone embedded in the hilt was like a small, glittering boulder.
Elise knew it was for balance. A thread of memory flashed and was gone. She had seen one like it when she was very young, from before.
Jim had no weapons save his hands, which lay loose at his sides.
Calia had readied her sling, though Elise knew the female warrior's stone load was depleted.
Adahy nocked his arrow.
The Fragment came forward, two men cleaving to each other as they sighted in on a target and broke apart from the main group.
Adahy inched back to take better aim, and his arrow flew true, burying inside the thickest part of the leader's shoulder.
Instead of falling, the leader staggered and righted himself.
“That won't work, Red Man.”
Adahy's frown was fierce as he nocked a second arrow, swinging it to follow whatever Fragment drew nearest.
The leader tore his shirt asunder, and Elise gasped as she saw what lay beneath.
It was a vest of unknown material, deep blue with a slight sheen to it. The arrow tip was only partially embedded.
Elise backed up further. What matter of armor is this?
Vertigo assailed her, and she reached out, blindly smacking her palm on a tree. The bark bit against her thin mittens. Elise wrapped her arms around the tree and hung on, resting the side of her cheek against the deeply furrowed bark.
If Calia even felt half as bad as Elise, she would also be vulnerable to the Fragment.
Philip and Edwin looked at each other, and Adahy dropped the bow where he stood. Adahy wore a belt of sorts for his weaponry. He threw his wool cape aside, jerking the dual daggers out of their sheaths.
In the fading light, the metal from his tomahawk gleamed from his left hip.
Elise closed her eyes as the world spun around her. She knew she needed food and water. Right now, it was all she could do to stay upright.
She clung to the tree, opening her eyes as the sound of battle ensued. What she witnessed arrested her breath.
All who moved toward the men of the Band wore the strange armor, which could not be pierced with any form of weapon.
Philip howled in frustration and swung the chained sphere, bringing it in a crushing blow against the nearest Fragment's temple.
The sound was terrible, like an overripe cantaloupe splitting. Elise groaned, covering the ear not smashed against the rough tree bark. Her eyes widened as brain matter and bits of scalp clung to the heavy spiked ball.
Philip planted an agile foot against the man's torso and tore the weapon backward. It dislodged with a sucking pop as the Fragment crumpled to the ground.
Blood spread like a pool of crimson ink, rivulets running away from the corpse.
Edwin walked through the slow-moving waters of death and found the forehead of another Fragment with his short blade. A strike of torn meat filled the air, and another body met the ground.
Calia twirled her arm, kicking her wrist in a swivel from the elbow—as Elise might have done, were she not clinging to consciousness by a thread.
Mouth dry, Elise watched the impossible as Jim the Traveler stood tall and lithe, perfectly centered. His knees were slightly bent with hands hanging loosely by his hips.
Two Fragment came at the same time, and he appeared to hug them as they reached for him. Then their bodies flew behind him, and he turned, racing to where they landed. One was already off the ground and Jim was ready, swinging a leg up in a graceful arc that circled and struck the Fragment in the temple. He convulsed and fell where he'd stood.
“Jim!” Elise screamed, and she glanced over his shoulder.
He interpreted her eye motion, and his hands waited for the assault from behind. The Fragment landed. Jim rotated his hips and took the weight of the Fragment from his back. Using his own momentum, he tossed the Fragment over his shoulder. He fell
into the other Fragment, who had just stood up from the last throw.
Elise's vision narrowed as she counted the bodies.
Four down. No—five.
Then instinct—or a sense she was unaware of—alerted her to danger.
She let go of the tree and dropped to the ground and felt a breeze from arms that just missed purchase.
Elise crawled away.
She used her elbows to maneuver across the snow-encrusted ground. Her feverish body heat melted the ice as she moved and the dampness bled through the cloth at her elbows, chilling her.
Her vision narrowed to a darkened tunnel.
A hand grabbed her ankle, and a memory like a lit fuse began at the uninvited touch.
Elise opened her mouth to scream as she was flipped over.
A male of the Fragment looked down at her, his expression victorious.
And in that moment, a deep rage welled up inside Elise. For every wound imposed upon her body, her psyche screamed out for justice.
Elise used the last of her energy and kicked out. She was not yet held down, and that assisted her mightily.
Her foot hit the male square in the crotch, and he gave a sickening shout of agony.
It was cut short as the tip of a triangular weapon sunk into the top of his skull.
Eyes bulged in his evil face, and his body began to shake.
A low grunt sounded and the body was shoved away. It landed with a resounding thud next to her own.
Adahy stood proud and tall above her, his tomahawk dripping blood upon the once-pristine snow.
He sank down on his haunches and lifted her off the ice. The sounds of battle dwindled to an eery silence.
Adahy put his cheek against hers.
“Adahy heal.”
A breath of profound relief slid out of Elise, and she quieted, sleep sweeping in where consciousness had been before.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jim
Jim didn't live in a time when defense skills were coveted or honed. But his mother had been traditionally Chinese.
He had never been more thankful for his heritage than in this lonely stretch of open meadow where criminals as desperate as anyone he'd ever encountered fought hard to kill him.
He was literally fighting for his life.
Jim had always considered himself to be a pacifist. His mother had insisted he learn and understand the basic fundamentals of Kung Fu.
His martial-arts practice had been a source of problems in school. In an attempt to deflect the criticism that he was pursuing self-defense in an evolving pacifist society, Jim threw himself into the sciences. He'd only been partially successful. Bullies loved to bait him, and popular kids didn't want anything to do with a geek hothead they couldn't quantify.
It had been a lonely upbringing. All the work and tradition felt empty to Jim.
But Jim had actualized his manhood in an unlikely place and time. Here, in what would be the modern Pennsylvania of his world, when faced with a life-or-death situation, his body had answered all the questions for him.
Jim—or whatever made up his intellect—had been alarmingly absent. The enemy had come with weapons and armor-proof vests that were not of this world, and his body had moved with an unconscious grace in response.
Jim's eyes found the three men of the Fragment he'd killed.
Two had throat wounds that crushed their esophagi. He fought to feel something—anything.
Guilt.
Remorse.
Shame.
But all Jim could rouse was a sense of reluctant justice. And on the heels of that, he felt relief.
Glad to be alive.
His eyes met those of the other men. Their faces wore expressions Jim assumed matched his own.
Edwin nodded. “It was them or us.” His eyes went to Calia, who was leaning against Philip, shivering uncontrollably. “Or our females.”
Jim was thinking the “females” were looking a little worse for wear.
“How much longer until we get to Massachusetts?” he asked again.
Philip wrapped his arms around Calia and moved carefully between the dead of the Fragment. He'd sheathed and latched the flail. It hung to his side in a partial leather holder.
Bad ass. Yup, no doubt about it.
Blood covered Philip head to toe in a fine spatter pattern. Edwin and Adahy appeared similarly stained, but Calia not so much. Of course, she had the slingshot of stones, so distance had kept her clean. The guys had gotten up close and personal.
Two of the Fragment had eyes that never closed, looking into the eternal sky. Their lives had ended with stones embedded in their skulls—that had done the job.
“Four days.”
Jim blinked. “No. Not buying that. We're—how many miles from there?”
“We use bridges,” Adahy said, and the others looked at him expectantly.
Could he be talking about the folding Pathways—the small inter-dimensional Pathways?
Calia looked frightened. “I do not wish to use the bridges. The myths say each time they are used, they sicken the host.”
Yeah, that was the Pathway.
Jim dug into the pocket of his pants and withdrew the last of his “magic pills,” as he liked to call them. Actually, they were renal inhibitors. It meant his kidneys would actually do the job they were meant to do as he traveled the Pathway.
The Band wouldn't need them. Whatever damage they sustained would—in theory—be repairable. But for Jim, they were essential. Traveling the Pathway was a little like putting his organ through a meat grinder and expecting to live to the next month. If he didn't have that genetic component in his blood, then he was screwed.
He wasn't taking the chance.
“What have you?” Philip asked, practically holding Calia up. Jim saw Adahy clutch Elise closer.
“Are these bridges partially invisible?” Jim asked, avoiding the question of renal stability for the moment.
Edwin palmed his chin. “Yes.”
“They allow you to travel great distances quickly?”
Edwin and Philip nodded.
“They are tunnels of endless falling through ice and fire,” Edwin said.
“Evil spirits rule there, in the tunnels of fire,” Adahy said in his strange, mixed language.
“So, the trip takes four days because you're planning to use a Pathway?”
Edwin's brows came together. “I do not know that word. The people of my clan call it a bridge.” His throat slits flared as though the thought of using that mode of travel caused anxiety.
It should.
Jim checked out Adahy and Elise. He wasn't sure they had enough of that rare blood to qualify for a safe trip. Their kidneys might take a hit—a permanent one.
Jim held up one of his two pills. He worded the next sentence carefully. “After I consume one of these, they will negate the affect of the travel through… the bridge.”
He sighed, thrusting his fingers through his hair then realizing too late they were full of other people's blood. Disgusting. He let his dominant hand fall and held the one pill in his semi-clean fingers.
Adahy scoffed, “Man is not meant to travel the evil road.”
He was right. But there was no way they'd survive another two weeks of hard travel in the dead of winter with Fragment popping up whenever they felt like it.
And if the women had smallpox, their chances would go from slim to none.
They had to make the Pathway.
There was really no other choice.
“I don't know if Adahy and Elise can go that way.”
“Give one of those to them,” Philip replied quickly, eyeing the pills.
Jim shook his head. “Yeah, you want to be the one who chooses who gets one and who doesn't. And the chicks are sick. Anyone can see that.”
The men looked at a weary Calia and a semi-conscious Elise.
Then they scanned their environment. The light had fled, twilight settling in with barbs of deep shadows. Like burrs, the ni
ght took hold, and the borders of forests bled into the mountains of Pennsylvania.
Jim shivered from the cold—and from the wild animals, whose eyes glowed as they waited impatiently for the living to vacate the area so they could consume the dead.
*
Jim had just about given up hope. They had traveled for a day. All the food and much of the water had gone to the women. The men of the Band trudged on, though their cheekbones began to show even more prominently, and their muscles beneath the tunics and capes of leather were striated in painful ridges against their skin.
They needed food, and fast.
It was the dead of winter, and the nearest Pathway intersect was still half a day's walk away.
Jim didn't honestly know if they'd make it.
Adahy and Philip carried the women against their backs, stopping only to remove snowshoes and strap them against rucksacks that now listed to one side.
Deep forest took over from the last of the midwestern meadows. The stands of trees had become more frequent, the meadows narrower. Suddenly, Jim realized there hadn't been a meadow for ten miles. They were in foothills. He wracked his brain for geography but came up blank. Not really an area of interest. Jim gave an internal snort.
He shot a look at Edwin, licking parched lips. It was so strange to be thirsty when he was cold, but he was. Jim might as well be in a desert for all the water available.
“What say you?” Edwin snapped.
Jim gave a rough exhalation. Philip and Adahy were amicable enough. Especially considering everybody was hungry enough to eat a rhino's ass if it presented itself. But Edwin? Kind of a prick.
“We need some food and shelter. We can't go on.” Jim thought his words made some sense. Maybe these dudes could just do the Gestapo march, but he was dizzy with hunger, and his tongue felt like he'd been licking sandpaper.
Edwin laughed derisively. “You delay us with your needs.”
Elise raised her head off Adahy's back. “He is not Band.”
Edwin gave her a considering look. “Truly. Yet, he does not contribute.” He lifted his shoulders in a dismissive shrug.
“This isn't about contribution, you horse's ass—it's about survival and the girls. You're so hung up on your sister marrying your buddy. Newsflash—corpses don't get married.”
savage 06 - the savage dream Page 9
