by Chele Cooke
Her father had told her that cornered animals were dangerous, that their desperation made them deadly. When the Kahle hunters went out, they were quick to drop their prey without getting too close. Killing at a distance was easier and the two men before her knew it. They went for the difficult kill because desperation drove them forwards. They all knew they’d be dead if they stayed back.
Dhiren moved faster than the guards could keep track of. His fists and homemade knife did a better job than the copaq ever would have. He slashed and grappled with the ferocity of a cornered bear. Seeing it, Georgianna wasn’t surprised that it had taken a number of Adveni to bring him into the compound.
Edtroka was smarter. Using shots from the copaq to move the guards into a better position for him and Dhiren, he hit one guard in the knee and the other in the foot, crumpling them. His fighting was clean. No movement was wasted, and he drove the guard towards the gates with swipes that found their mark every time. Blood from his injuries splattered the ground with every step.
Alec pushed Georgianna in a wide berth around the fighting while Wrench watched their backs. They shouted orders to each other in a shorthand that she didn’t understand. She gasped with each movement their two comrades made against the guards. A punch to the side, a kick to the knee—she never knew how Dhiren managed to get behind the guard, but he found his target with a single movement. Dhiren buried his fist in the guard’s hair, holding his head back. The knife appeared and disappeared in a blur across his neck.
The guard’s body hit the floor before Dhiren had even straightened up.
Edtroka had the other guard by the throat, forcing him to his knees. For a fleeting moment Georgianna considered asking him to be merciful, but Alec’s tight grasp on her and Dhiren’s wicked grin made her hold her tongue. There was no mercy, not in this war. Maybe there never had been.
The crack echoed, even in the open. She felt like it was vibrating through her. She couldn’t move as Alec tried to drag her along the fence to the gates. Her legs wouldn’t move.
Dhiren hauled one of the guards up over his shoulder.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving a message,” was all he said.
They stripped every weapon they could find from the two guards while Georgianna leaned against the gate, trying to slow her breathing. It wasn’t working. Each time she tried, her breath caught in her throat and brought forth a sob. She wasn’t this person. She wasn’t a soldier. She could barely look at the two dead Adveni.
She’d seen bodies before, too many to count, but what she’d never seen was the pure, vicious glee that she’d seen on Dhiren’s face as he cut the guard’s throat. There was death all around her, following her, and she just kept running away.
As they closed the gates, Dhiren propped the guards up against them, leaning against each other, their heads pulled back at a grotesque angle. Alec laughed. Georgianna wanted to be sick.
“Come on,” Edtroka said quickly. “Stop messing about Dhiren. They’ll get your little message.”
Alec looped his arm around Georgianna’s waist again, pulling her off the fence.
“Come on, Gianna,” he murmured. “It’s over.”
She lifted her head and met his gentle gaze. She had no idea how he was still able to look so good and proper after laughing at Dhiren’s display. After he’d done what he had to Keiran, but she leaned against him just the same. While she wasn’t sure of everything he was, she knew he was strong and she could use some of that strength right now.
“No,” she answered, swallowing the bile in her throat. “This is nowhere near over. This is just the beginning.”
“We should be heading back to the city!” Alec insisted again.
“To what end?” Edtroka snapped back, barely looking over his shoulder.
Alec shifted his grip on Georgianna’s waist, holding her tighter against him.
“To help!”
“Every Adveni in range will be swarming down on Adlai if the others succeeded,” Edtroka said. “The best thing we can do is keep moving.”
They’d been heading north-east for two hours. The adrenaline that had been pumping through their bodies, keeping them going, had abated. They had slowed to a trudge across the open ground. Dhiren had handed the rifle over to Wrench, claiming that he wasn’t good with those “big-ass weapons”. He’d twirled his home-made knife in his hand until Edtroka became frustrated and handed him a proper one. To Alec he gave a copaq, which was grudgingly accepted. Georgianna remained the only one unarmed, though she didn’t mind. Her medics’ bag bumping against her hip was the only help she needed.
“Why are we going north?” Wrench asked, quickening his step to catch up to Edtroka.
Wrench, unlike Alec, seemed almost impressed with Edtroka and the way he’d fought the guard at the compound. There was a curious smile on his lips, bordering on awe whenever he glanced at Dhiren ambling along beside them.
“What?”
“Well, Freeze is coming. Surely it would be better to go south?”
“They’d be expecting that.”
Wrench shrugged and returned to his silence.
Georgianna rested her temple against Alec’s shoulder. She was exhausted and her leg throbbed with every step. She wasn’t sure who she agreed with. A part of her wanted to go back to the city, to see if they could help, but there was another part of her, dragged down by pain and exhaustion, that just wanted to find a quiet place to sleep.
Rain began to spatter the ground around them. Drops hit their arms and dribbled down their necks. Even though the rain was warm in the setting sun, she shivered.
“What if they didn’t succeed?” she asked quietly. “What if they were captured?”
Edtroka glanced over his shoulder. A grimace marred his features as he looked at her, but it was replaced with cool indifference within moments.
“Then there is nothing we can do for them.”
“Wait a minute!” Alec said. “You’re saying we’re just leaving them there to be collared?”
Edtroka’s jaw tightened.
“Like my brother?” he added.
Edtroka turned quickly, grabbing Alec’s shirt.
“I just abandoned my entire family,” he hissed. “My people, my way of life. I left it all behind. If you want to go back so much, go. I’m not stopping you. But I will not throw my life away for another of your little rescue missions. I want to win a war, do you understand that?”
He shoved Alec away from him. Georgianna stumbled with Alec, clinging on for balance. She expected for him to argue and snap at the Adveni like he had done at practically every word out of Edtroka’s mouth. Alec had lost his entire family too, only, unlike Edtroka, it hadn’t been by choice. However, as Alec straightened up, he didn’t answer. He gritted his teeth, adjusted the strap of the rifle hanging over his shoulder and fell into step behind the others.
It was as she watched Edtroka, hearing everything he had left behind, that Georgianna realised they’d been fighting such a small battle up until now. Even when the Adveni first arrived, they had fought to protect themselves, not to cause the other side enough damage to make them retreat. Since then it had been nothing more than small acts of revenge. Edtroka and the Cahlven were looking at something much bigger. They were looking to wage a real war like the Veniche had never seen.
She supposed that Edtroka thought of the others as necessary casualties and she began to feel sick again.
“I need to stop,” she said, pressing her hand hard against her stomach.
“No, we can’t stop here.”
She could feel the churning, the lump in her throat that said it was coming. She’d managed to hold it back before, adrenaline fighting the battle for her. Not anymore.
“I’m going…”
She lurched forwards. Vomit splattered across the dusty earth. Hunched over and heaving, she slipped down onto her knees and braced herself as another surge of bile came forth.
Alec was the only one who didn�
��t jump back clear of the splatter. He came to her side, crouched next to her and rubbed between her shoulder blades.
“Gianna, it’s okay. Get it up.”
She closed her eyes, trying to catch her breath. The image of Vajra collapsing arose in her mind, a red hole between his eyebrows. She heard Ta-Dao’s screams as they ran, his legs broken and useless. She saw the face of the guard as Dhiren slit his throat. She heaved again.
When the contents of her stomach were emptied onto the ground, Georgianna slumped back onto her heels, breathing hard. Alec wrapped his arms around her shoulders, pulling her against him. Opening up her bag, she dug blindly and pulled out a canteen of water. She unscrewed the top and swilled her mouth out, spitting the acrid taste of bile onto the dirt. A few more mouthfuls and she felt a little better, a little more herself. Alec brushed the hair away from the back of her neck, letting the breeze brush her skin. Georgianna nodded gratefully to him.
Edtroka looked ever so slightly horrified as he stared at her. She let out a strangled laugh.
“What? You can handle death and fighting without a pause, but you can’t see a girl be sick?” she asked, sniffing as her nose threatened to start running.
Edtroka, to his credit, awkwardly averted his gaze.
“We should keep moving,” Dhiren announced.
“Will you give her a minute?” Alec demanded.
Georgianna shook her head.
“No, no, I’m alright.”
Alec helped her to her feet and took the bag from her shoulder, slinging it over his own. He pulled her close again and, avoiding the vomit, they continued walking.
Another half hour and Larinahl Forest loomed in front of them. In the heat, when they used to camp in Adlai, hunters would make the trek to Larinahl to hunt the long-coat bears. She didn’t know the last time she had been this far north. Most of the plants she used for medicine could be collected from Keiluck, a much shorter walk south of Adlai.
However, as they came closer, Edtroka veered west and led them outside the tree line.
“We’re not going through?” Wrench asked. “There’s better cover in there. If anyone was following, they’d never find us.”
“Uh-huh,” Edtroka answered, distracted.
Dhiren and Alec shared a glance but said nothing.
“Edtroka…” Georgianna called. Still, he didn’t turn around. “Hey, Tsev!”
The use of his rank caught his attention, though also made the others look around. He looked at her, surprised at the interruption.
“What are we doing?” she asked. “Wrench already said that cover is better in the forest. We have two good hunters…”
“Three,” Dhiren interjected.
“We have three good hunters, who know this forest. We can go in.”
Edtroka glanced around at the others and back to the forest. He scratched his cheek and nodded, as if it were already obvious.
“Oh, we are,” he said. “I just need to find the right place.”
“There’s a right place to enter a forest?” Alec mumbled under his breath. She considered scolding him, but the bemusement in his voice held her back. It wasn’t annoyance, like every other time he spoke to Edtroka, so she smiled at him instead.
“Apparently so. Did Maarqyn not teach you that?”
But the scowl on his face held little anger.
After forty minutes of traipsing along the edge of the forest, their mocking and amusement at Edtroka’s insistence had long since faded away. Even Dhiren, who had seemed giddy at freedom, trudged behind them, huffing occasionally.
“Aha!”
Edtroka launched himself forwards and slapped the tree in front of them. He turned, with his hand on the bark, looking gleeful.
“It’s a tree,” Alec muttered. “Congratulations. Not like we haven’t passed a hundred already.”
Dhiren, however, nodded towards it.
“It’s marked, look.”
Sure enough, beneath Edtroka’s hand, a mark had been carved into the bark on the trunk. Taking a couple of steps forwards, she was able to see the mark properly. It was a crude drawing of Edtroka’s Nsiloq.
“Why did you mark the tree?” she asked.
“So I know where I’m going,” he answered her and surged forwards into the forest.
Sunlight played amongst the leaves, chasing them through the gaps until it dappled across the ground. The trees were tall, their branches fighting for sunlight. Dhiren jumped a couple of times, but his fingertips could barely brush the bottom branches. Alone, there would be no way to get up them to safety. The bark was smooth and tough, not good for climbing.
“Did you tell the others this route?” Wrench asked.
“No, but we’re not staying.”
“We’re not?”
“No. Just got to… Ah, found it!”
Edtroka pointed up and Georgianna realised that, unlike her, Edtroka had not been staring up into the trees out of interest. He’d been searching them.
Up above them, in a particularly tall hyliha tree, half a dozen large sacks hung from branches. Alec was the first to start laughing, surprised at how much planning Edtroka had put into this. Then they were all chuckling as Edtroka helped Dhiren climb up into the branches.
“Took me almost two years to get all this out here,” Edtroka admitted, watching Dhiren crawl along the branch.
Once each of the packs had been lowered, they sat against the tree trunks and opened them. Edtroka had thought of everything. There were enough weapons to keep a dozen Adveni happily armed—weapons they recognised and even some they didn’t. Three of the bundles were filled with clothes, for both hot and cold weather. There were some smaller bundles which Edtroka told them were tents, small but effective. One pack, the largest, was filled with Adveni packet food.
Edtroka pulled out a pale leather pouch from the food pack and handed it to Georgianna like it was her birthday. She smiled in confusion. Why would he have hidden something for her?
“Open it,” he said, once he realised she’d just been staring at it.
Georgianna untied the leather straps. It unrolled down her legs and her mouth dropped open. Inside, a complete Adveni medical kit was fitted into the leather. Each item had its place, each place was neatly labelled. She had bought Adveni medicine before but it was expensive. This one pouch held more medicine than she could have afforded in her lifetime.
“I would ask if you like it but, actually, I think a better question is whether you can stitch me up?”
He grinned at her and Georgianna nodded. She pulled out one of the vials and held it up into a shaft of sunlight.
“With this stuff… I can stitch you up and it won’t even hurt!”
Edtroka patted her knee.
“Good. Well, let’s get going then. We don’t have much time.”
Edtroka had hidden another tsentyl in amongst the stash of supplies. Extracting his own, he laid them in his lap and tapped into both, one with each hand. Georgianna tried to watch, but as Alec was cleaning debris out of the wound on her leg at the time, she was too distracted to see what he was up to. The moment she realised that Edtroka was copying things into the new device was when he laid the old tsentyl on the ground and smashed his heel into it as hard as he could.
“Come on, yours next,” he said, holding out his hand towards her.
“I’m sorry?”
“Tsentyls can be tracked,” he explained. “It’s the same as the signal on a cinystalq collar. Why do you think I never put one on you?”
“Because you’re nice?”
Alec snorted, but quickly busied himself with the dressing he was placing on her leg.
“I didn’t want you tracked if I could help it. Cracking a tsentyl signal is hard work, but no doubt the Volsonnae will be doing so now, especially after all the footage of us fleeing.”
Georgianna sighed and leaned back against the tree trunk, staring up into the branches.
“So there’s no hope of them not knowing you were involved
?” she asked.
He shook his head and waved his hand for the tsentyl. He didn’t seem all that upset about it, but she couldn’t imagine the thoughts that were going through his head. His family would know that he was a traitor. No longer would it be just the suspicions his sister, Ehnisque, had about him.
Handing over the tsentyl, Edtroka swiped it open and dropped it onto the ground. He didn’t even click through the notifications before destroying it under his heel.
“So, why do you have a new one if it can be tracked?” Wrench asked.
“Because I need the contact. I kept this device secret. It was confiscated from a prisoner.”
“Classy,” Dhiren chuckled. Edtroka’s grin was sarcastic and he rolled his eyes.
“Well, it cannot be connected to me, but I can still send out a message if needed. Not to mention that it has the map to where we’re going.”
Alec pulled her boot back up her calf and patted her gently on the knee before taking a seat next to Wrench. He collected up one of the packets of food they’d opened and sniffed it tentatively before digging his fingers in, using them to spoon it into his mouth.
“You’ve had all this planned for a long time, haven’t you?”
When Edtroka took a seat, he did so close to her, his hip pressed against hers. Alec chewed his food in thoughtful silence, his gaze drifting across them more than once.
“From the moment I contacted them. I knew that if I ever needed an out, I needed to be prepared.”
“How long did you say this stuff’s been out here?” Alec asked. His gaze turned suspicious as he looked down at the packet in his hand.
“I changed out the food every couple of months, but the rest, about two years.”
“It’s a lot of stuff just for you.”
Edtroka shrugged, but didn’t answer.
“Come on,” Dhiren announced as silence threatened to swallow them. “We should get moving, right?”
They loaded themselves up with the supplies. The heavier bundles of weapons were divided first, with clothes, food and a selection of other items shoved on top. Georgianna frowned and gritted her teeth when she was given decidedly less than everyone else, but she didn’t voice her annoyance. Alec helped her adjust the sack across her shoulders, fastening the rope over her chest before tying it to a metal hoop at the bottom of the sack. It pulled painfully on her shoulder, and he looked thoughtful at her grimace, but said nothing.
