When I have trouble finding the words to begin, Garrett calms me. “Tell us, Loop. Straight up.”
“Southshaw has an army. It’ll be here before the end of the day. Maybe sooner. I’ve seen it.”
“What?” Shack’s incredulous question turns into a tentative laugh, then a guffaw. “Aw, Loop, you had me going there for a minute.” He looks both relieved and unsure at the same time, glancing at the others to see if they’re laughing. They’re not.
“Loop,” Garrett says, very quiet and serious, staring hard into my eyes. The clear blue-gray of his own pull me in like a fish on a hook. “Are you all right?”
The fish is off the hook. He thinks I’m nuts. Doesn’t he trust me? Jerk. Anger pushes up from deep within, making my face hot. My mouth curls into a snarl. “Oh, really?” The words drip with poison and hang in front of him. “You think maybe I imagined a whole fricking army just over the hill? You think… what? What?”
“Loop! It’s just that—” Garrett stops and waves his hands at me in a nutty once-over, look-at-you gesture.
“What, how I’m dressed?”
His brother says, “He’s got a point, Loop.”
“Oh, I should have known you’d side with your brother.”
Shack sakes his head. “I mean, Loop, can you blame him? What are you wearing? Sure, you always dress like a boy, but… not in weird stuff like that. And, you’ve been gone a week. Maybe you got sun stroke, or the Rabies or something.”
“Oh!” I stomp my foot so hard that dust rises from the rug five feet away. “You—idiots! Both of you! What, now the Rabies changes people’s clothes?” They both stare at me. I hate that. I stomp again and put my hands on my hips. “Garrett. William. Do I look fricking crazy?”
I guess that was the wrong question. I probably do look pretty damn crazy right now. But calling Shack by his real name got their attention.
I keep going before they can answer that one. “Well, I’m not, okay? I’ll tell you all about it later, but right now we need to get everyone out of here. It’s an army, and Darius wants nothing but to kill every last Tawtrukker.”
I can tell they’re unconvinced. But I can’t stay here to die with them, and I can’t leave them here to die without me.
“Garrett. Listen. It’s a thousand men at least. Big men. Angry. We’ll all die here. They’ll—I don’t know what they’ll do, but they’re awful.”
Garrett is my only hope here. Shack thinks I’m joking. But Garrett’s slow voice and super calm tell me he doesn’t believe. “OK, Loop, we’ll go take a look. Shack will wake everyone up, get them ready to leave. You and me, we’ll go climb a tree and see what’s out there. Okay?”
“No.”
“Look, Loop, we can’t just—”
“No, damn it. We have to go. Now.”
Shack, who’s gone a little pale, turns to his brother. “Hey, Garrett, what harm could it do? I mean, to get everyone moving, I mean. So, like, what if it is a mistake?” I start to protest, but he ignores me and keeps talking. “If so, no problem, ha ha, we all come back and have a big laugh and make Lupay clean the fishing haul for the next week. Right?”
I glare at him. Jerk. Mistake? It’s no mistake.
“But,” Shack continues, his voice not much more than a whisper, “what if she’s telling the truth?”
I ease up on my glare. Mistake. I’ll show you mistake, you skunk.
Garrett, for the first time, turns to Harper. “Mister Jiroe, what do you think?”
Harper looks like he thinks I’m dead crazy, that he wants no part of this, that all he wanted to do today was gather his nets and go out on the water to pull home some fish. He gives a little shake of his head, his wide eyes not blinking, the lantern still dangling from his slack grasp.
Garrett gives me one more tentative frown. Then he turns back to Harper with a single, sure nod. “Go wake them. Wake them all. Now.”
Harper nods slowly, then seems to float from his depths back to consciousness. As he turns toward the bedrooms, Garrett says, “Loop, maybe you’re crazy, maybe you’re not, but—”
Harper has taken one step when a blazing crash lights the room like a lightning bolt. Glass shatters in shards like a hornet swarm. One slices my cheek just below my eye. Swearing and yelling fill the room, and I reach out to grab Shack’s arm to steady myself.
Harper lies face down on the carpet, a flaming arrow sticking up from his back. His shattered lantern bleeds flaming oil across the honey colored floor.
Garrett kneels next to Harper to help him, but Harper’s dead. Shack leaps to the window, breaking away from my grip, and he peeks out past the curtain. My empty hand rises to my cheek and feels the slick wetness of blood.
Oh, God. No. Not yet. It couldn’t be.
Shack hisses at his brother. “Put out the fire, you fool! He’s dead.”
Garrett looks confused for a moment, then realizes he’s sitting next to a spreading blaze. He lifts the small carpet and throws it over the oozing oil, smothering the flames beneath his stomping feet.
“I don’t know,” Shack whispers. “Maybe thirty or forty.” He looks at me with cold respect. “Not a thousand, but enough.”
“I told you so.”
Another arrow, flame roaring at its head, rips through the broken window and thunks into the timbers around the stone chimney. Outside, four other thunks sound in a rapid announcement that soon the whole building will be a bonfire. I only hope they aren’t smart enough to have surrounded us first.
Garrett has gone pale. Where the arrow hit… it must have flown inches from his face, maybe less. We’re all in motion now. Without a word, we run to the two doors that lead to bedrooms. Garrett hurls himself into the open door from which the boys tumbled earlier. I race through the other, into a long hallway, followed closely by Shack. He yells at me that some of the people had already gone on to Lower Tawtrukk yesterday, so some of the rooms will be empty.
We yell and bang on the doors, fling them open, rush inside and pull bodies out of beds. They protest, start looking for clothing. We have no time to explain. “Run,” we yell at them. If we see shoes, we grab them and thrust them into sleepy hands. I feel bad for the mothers and little children. I know they won’t be able to outrun the Southshawans closing in on the burning building. I wonder, as we reach the end of the hallway and begin to sprint back, whether it wouldn’t have been more kind to let them sleep to their fiery deaths.
We scream at them, screech at them, pull and push them toward the exit and their only hope of living past dawn. “Fire,” we yell, and “Attack,” and other things I don’t even think are words. We reconnect with Garrett in the blaze of the big living room, which is half filled with billowing, slate-gray smoke. It clouds and flows across the ceiling, gathers in the corners, streams out the windows.
Garrett’s eyes are filled with tears, whether from the smoke or what we all know is about to happen, I can’t tell. Later, I may think it was the smoke, which sears my eyes as the heat of the fire sears my skin. But I will know my tears come from thinking about the final minutes of these people’s lives. Harper was the luckiest of them all.
Shack looks like he’s about to run back down the hall again. I grab his arm, tight like tongs on a metal rod fresh from the forge. His arm is slick with sooty sweat, and it’s hot and solid in my grasp. “No!” I shout. The fire roars with fury on two walls now and is grabbing for the ceiling. “We have to leave, now!”
Garrett nods fiercely. “Shack, time to go. We’ve done everything we can!”
Shack trembles, his whole body tense. “No, not everything.”
CHAPTER 3
Shack pushes between us, nearly knocking me over. When he reaches the door to the back porch, it opens inward as if it knew he were coming. For a moment, I almost believe he opened it with magic, with the raw rage that fills him. Then a thick silhouette eclipses the doorway, and Shack lunges into it with all his weight. They crash out onto the porch, and Garrett and I both grab at our knives. T
he throwing blade feels welcome and eager in my fingers.
That’s our only way out, and if there’s one devil there, there will be more. I give Garrett a reassuring glance. We’ve hunted together, even brawled together, but he’s never been in a fight like this.
He doesn’t need my reassurance, though. In his face is the same hatred, the same fury I saw a few days ago in Dane’s eyes when he brought that hatchet down on Baddock in his own church. I wouldn’t want to have to fight Garrett right now. For a moment I almost pity the stupid Southshaw devils outside.
No, I don’t.
Another roar from Shack outside, and Garrett and I charge through the doorway into the dawn. Shack has already downed three, and he has a bloodstained knife in each hand. Two Southshawans stand a bit back, warily watching. The fools had no plan when they attacked. They didn’t surround us. These are just the fastest, the first to reach the back of the building. The others will come round shortly.
I raise my knife to my ear and fling it with a crisp twitch of my wrist. It zips through the air and slices deep into the throat of one of the two Southshawans. That’s the last I’ll see of that knife, but I don’t mind. Not at all.
Garrett’s throw is off the mark, but it cuts hard into the other Southshawan’s shoulder before falling to the grass. It’s enough to drop him to his knees in pain, though, and Shack leaps upon him like a hungry wolf.
Behind us, people are emerging onto the porch. Seven, eight, nine. One of the young mothers runs barefoot, her baby bundled in her arms. Four men, three women, and a pair of children with red hair. Tate? Marcy? They have a chance, if we can hold off the others for just a few minutes.
Another young man stumbles through the door followed by a thunderous, smoky crash and a chorus of screams. Inside, trapped Tawtrukkers are burning to death, and there’s nothing I can do to help them. All I can do is avenge them. All I can do is vow to cut Darius’ heart out and pull it from his chest while it’s still beating. Each scream from inside that hellish blaze feels like that’s what he’s doing to me.
Garrett points at the far end of the building. Two more Southshawans gallop like unsteady mules around the corner, puffing and out of breath. We’re down the steps in an instant, now with five more angry but unarmed men, and we start in their direction.
Shack stands over his fallen prey, and I wonder why his chin and neck and shirt are soaked in blood. He looks crazed. If I don’t turn him away from the fight, he’ll take them all on and will get killed. There are too many. Garrett and I share a glance of silent understanding. He leads the others at a full run toward the Southshawans, while I plant myself in front of Shack.
I scream at him over the fire’s din. “Shack!” I point at the young mother, the other two women, and the children. “Take them! They need you! Bring them to Lower!”
He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t argue. He doesn’t even glance at the fight that’s taking place behind me. He whips his bloodstained shirt off over his head and wipes away the gore from his chin and neck, and within seconds he’s scooped up the two little red-headed kids and set off at a trot away up the hill, into the woods. Sunlight streams over the roof of the building, glimmering on his sweat-slicked, muscled back.
The others follow as fast as they can. I see they all still carry the shoes I thrust into their hands, but none stops to put them on. Like Shack, they run barefoot into the woods. I watch until they’ve all reached the trees, only thirty or forty yards away but a seeming eternity until they’re safe.
Beside me, the building crashes again, one wall caving in. Mercifully, there are no more screams.
As I turn to see what Garrett’s team is doing, a hand grasps my elbow. Garrett’s voice fills my ear. “Time to go, Loop.” He yanks, and I lurch forward with him, and the six of us sprint to the point in the trees where Shack disappeared.
As the fire’s wrath diminishes behind us, I realize what’s been troubling me as we’ve run.
“Garrett,” I say, “not enough!”
“What?”
“Not enough! People. With you. Wasn’t there another?”
Garrett’s expression goes stone gray as we disappear into the thicker trees and the blaze becomes a memory. I let him stay silent as we keep running and catch up to the others. They’ve paused for a short rest. Shack stands watching for our approach. As we near, I can tell he’s also counted heads and come up one short.
To their credit, not one of the rescued, not even the children, whines or cries. I wonder at their courage. There will be a time for grief later. Now, we need to get to Lower. We can’t allow the same thing to happen there.
I half expect the twins to embrace, but they don’t. They don’t even look at each other. Shack stares into the distance behind us, where the smoke plume would be if we could see it through the trees. Garrett stares at the ground between them. They appear to be talking to each other, but I know they’re talking at me.
“Darren was his name. Darren Block.”
“Good man.”
“Terrible fisherman.”
“He’d have gotten better.”
“He’d have had to.”
“Tristan.”
“His son.”
“Two days old.”
“We saw him, just six minutes after he was born.”
“Fuzzy black hair.”
“Big lungs.”
“Big lungs.”
“Karen’s lungs.”
“Girl could belt out a song.”
“But she couldn’t carry a tune.”
“Sweet.”
“Good cook.”
“Best blackberry pies in Tawtrukk.”
I know who they mean. Karen Sharper. Karen Sharper, a year younger than I am, from Upper Tawtrukk. She’s pretty. Stunning, actually. Fuzzy black hair. She got pregnant a few months ago, maybe a year, had to have a quick wedding so the baby could be born properly…
“Terrific pies.”
“They really loved each other.”
“So young.”
“He loved her more than anything.”
“More than anything.”
Now I can’t keep the tears back. I didn’t recognize Darren minutes ago, when he came through the door. I didn’t recognize Karen’s voice among the screams as the blazing house crashed down upon her and her baby. But I understand why Darren isn’t with us now, and why we are not being followed. I don’t need to hear any more. He stayed behind with nothing left to lose. I wonder how many he killed before they overcame him.
Garrett and Shack don’t seem very interested in saying any more.
I walk a little way away, turn to the south. I just want to hide my tears. I see only blurry tree trunks, and I wonder how I could ever have not hated Dane, even for a second. The past week flits through my mind, and I pound down the memories like stakes into the ground. The first time I saw him, cowering in the stones by the lake. When he called me a mutant. When he carried me from the well, and when I carried him from the ancient house. When he burst into happiness recognizing me in Subterra, and when the four of us lay together in the sunny grass after our escape. When he crashed the hatchet down on Baddock’s back.
All these images flow through me with the tears. It’s so…
A soft hand wraps itself around my own. With my other sleeve, I swipe quickly at my face, and my hand comes away grimy, wet, and pink. When I look up, I expect to see Garrett, but it’s the young mother with the baby. For a moment I think it’s Karen Sharper, but no, it’s a girl I don’t know.
“He says it’s time to go.”
She cradles the tiny baby in one slender arm. She wears a long, thin nightshirt that hangs so loose she might be only bones underneath. Her face is soot-streaked and freckled with orange dots, and her green eyes lock mine without emotion, all framed by a tangle of hair the color of torn bundles of redwood bark. I expect to see smoldering anger, but a thin smile lights her eyes for a moment. She’s still holding my hand, her gentle fingers softly entwined with mine. I
offer a brisk nod and squeeze her hand for reassurance, though I’m not sure whether it’s her reassurance or my own. The warmth of her, and the quiet motionlessness of the infant in her arms, raise determination within me once more.
I move off, toward the spot where Garrett and Shack quietly debate away from the others, but the girl does not let go of my hand. Instead, she follows like a horse on a short lead. When we reach the twins, I glance at the baby just to make sure it’s alive, sick with relief when it stares back at me with shocking green eyes and a tiny thumb crammed into its mouth. I grin despite myself, and he responds with a momentary grin of his own behind his fisted fingers. It’s gone as quickly as it came, as if the mere act of smiling startled him. For a moment he looks like he’ll burst into screaming, but he rediscovers his thumb and sucks himself to peace again.
“… lake road is fastest.”
Garrett responds to his brother, “But it’s also where the army is.”
They’re discussing which way to take to get to Lower. I don’t know how long they’ve been arguing, but I hate it. Shack always takes whatever side his brother doesn’t, just to argue. Then they make me decide.
“Lupay, Garrett says—”
“Shut up,” I say, cutting Shack off. “I don’t know what you think, and I don’t care.” They can take their petty rivalry and hang themselves with it. “The only thing that matters is we get to Lower now. We take the fastest route. The lake road.” Now I’m thinking out loud because I want it to be the right decision. “The army can’t have gotten far from their camp, and they’re miles behind. It’ll take all day for them to get to Lower, maybe longer.”
“I don’t—”
“Shack, shut up. You make up your mind and then try to figure out reasons that make you right. Me, I look at the reasons and then make up my mind. Now be quiet and let me work this out.” Maybe too harsh, but he just scowls and shrugs. He knows me well. “The forty at Lodgeholm were some sort of advance party. They didn’t expect much of a fight. So they won’t be in a rush, at least not until news gets back to Darius.”
It has to be this way. Darius couldn’t possibly have moved his army very far. It’s only just dawn anyway.
Forsada: Volume II in the New Eden series Page 2
