Wastelands

by Jack Porter

  But that didn’t mean there weren’t other options.

  “You could get us to her,” I said. “Using your power.”

  “What, tiptoe through the sand walkers as if we’re not even there?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Well, I do. It is hard enough to cloak two people when we are not moving. Sure, I could keep myself hidden, and if with luck, I might be able to do as you say, if I did everything right. But the two of us? My power would slip and we would be seen before we could even get close!”

  Camille was right. I had to accept her word regarding her power’s limitations, and knew it would be foolish to risk trying to make our way under the cover of invisibility if she said it wouldn’t work.

  And there was something else she was right about also. If we could get to the butterfly girl, we could just as easily get to the wraith.

  Which suggested another option. “What if you were to sneak down there and slit the spellcaster’s throat?” I asked.

  “And complete your mission for you?” she asked with a sardonic tone to her voice.

  “Does it really matter whose mission it is?”

  “No, it does not,” she agreed with a sigh. “But I’ve seen spellcasters survive such attacks before. They harden their skin so no blade can penetrate, or it dissolves into nothing as you try to strike. The one you fought with the bandits withstood your own blade for a number of strikes before you unleashed your power. This one seems to be even stronger, and I don’t want to die out here in the Wastes.”

  “You were there?” I asked, and she knew what I meant.

  “I was there. I’d been following you for several days by that point.”

  I didn’t ask why she hadn’t joined in the fight. The answer was obvious. There was no benefit for her in doing so.

  Instead, I lapsed into silence and tried to think.

  There was only one possible option I could think of. But it still relied on Camille’s participation. “If the sand walkers and the spellcaster were not there, could you get her out of the cage?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s locked in. The wraith–spellcaster–must have the key. You are an assassin, and a thief. Could you get her out of the cage without the spellcaster’s key?”

  I sensed her nodding beside me. “I could. But what does that matter–”

  But I’d already started to move. “Stay here,” I said. “I’m going to try to draw them away. As soon as you see your chance, take it. Get her back to the others, and I’ll try to join you as soon as I can.”

  I didn’t give Camille the chance to object, even though I sensed she wanted to. Instead, I moved away from her touch, aware that as soon as we broke contact, I could be seen once again. I heard Camille give a quiet growl of frustration.

  If she chose, she could simply disappear, retracing her steps and reporting to Gamma and Ash that we’d failed. If she did that, there would be nothing I could do.

  But she’d said I was too tightly wound, and I took that to mean she wanted me to trust her.

  So I was.

  Against my better judgment, I left her with her part of the plan, and made my way as quietly and quickly as possible to the other side of the natural amphitheater, doing everything I could not to be seen or heard by the eerily silent crowd of sand walkers below.

  36

  Even as I positioned myself and readied myself to attack, I cursed my own foolish instincts. It seemed I was forever putting myself in danger for others. The woman and her child at the hospital were merely the first. Perhaps I could blame Gamma’s compulsion for my subsequent efforts, but this?

  This was truly insane. I was about to attack an army of hundreds, all by myself, all for the sake of rescuing someone I’d never met.

  Knowing my luck, even if I succeeded, I’d do something to offend her, and we would end up at odds just as I was with Lady Gamma and Camille.

  There was no real way I could blame Lady Gamma’s compulsion for this. She had told me to try to defeat the spellcaster if I could, or to at least report back on his activities. Rescuing strangers hadn’t come up, and doing so could likely put the rest of Gamma’s orders at risk.

  So this act of foolishness was on me, and me alone. As I grumbled to myself that this was a bad idea, trying to work up the courage to go through with it anyway, I couldn’t help but think back to the words that were seared into my brain.

  “You can save them. You can save all of them.”

  Was that what the words meant? Was my new life to be nothing more than a series of heroics, going from one rescue attempt to another until there was nobody left to rescue?

  While it seemed to fit, it also seemed highly unlikely. At the very least, it would be impossible to “save everyone,” because there would always be more people to save.

  But more than that, I got the distinct impression there was a single act that the words were talking about. One huge accomplishment that would let me save everyone at once.

  And, for some reason, I thought the words referred not to the people from this time, but to those I had left behind in the past.

  Either way, the only reason I was thinking about it then was to avoid thinking about what I meant to do. It was a form of procrastination, and every moment I wasted, the spellcaster below drained more of the butterfly girl’s vital energy.

  So I stopped. I pushed all my worries and fears to the side and hoped that Camille would do her part. Then I stood in full view on the lip of the natural basin and drew my sword. I swung the huge weapon around my head once to give it momentum, then shouted a wordless cry of challenge into the sky and launched into a twirling, energetic rendition of steps seven through nine.

  I could have plunged into the sand walkers and let my whirling blade carve a trail of death and destruction. I could have tried to stand in the middle, slaughtering foes by the dozen, trying to murder them all as Camille did her work. But that route spelled disaster, and one false step would be my last.

  And besides, slaughtering sand walkers was not my main goal.

  My goal was distraction. And staying alive.

  Steps seven through nine brought me to the edge of the gathering. Combined with the way I was swinging my sword, it was flashy and threatening, as obvious an attack as I could make. Those in my way responded as I knew they would, by spinning to face me, their own weapons drawn, if they had any beyond teeth and claws.

  I could have cut through them as if they were water, striking toward the spellcaster with everything I had.

  Instead, I dispatched the two nearest sand walkers with a single slash of my sword, then used steps twenty-seven and eight to dance my way back up to the lip where the ground was flat. Once there, I raised my sword high in the air as if victory was already mine.

  “Come on!” I bellowed. “You ugly, poor excuses for monsters, come and get me!”

  It was obvious bait, but they fell for it anyway. As one, hundreds of sand walkers surged toward me, their fanged and feral faces twisted into expressions of rage.

  As the first of them approached—a large, bipedal monster that seemed to be more bear than man with a jagged metal club gripped in its hand, my dance of death began in earnest.

  I lightened my feet to increase my pace and to make use of the jutting boulders, adding a dimension of height to my dance, and raining down death from above.

  The bear-thing was the first to fall, his chest ripped open by the tip of my blade, but he wasn’t the last.

  I danced and spun, whirling my blade as I had done before, at one with the steps and yet keeping an eye on the activities below. I was death incarnate, a twirling blade of destruction, and corpses piled up at my feet with every hack and slash that I made.

  And still they kept coming. The sheer number of sand walkers that were willing to face me and my blade was staggering. They learned very quickly not to stand too close together, for it hampered their movements and allowed me to kill many with one strike. Instead, they spread
out around me, giving themselves space as they bottled me in.

  Or so they thought. I lightened my feet even more, leaping high from one boulder and sailing over their heads to land on the peak of another. Those sand walkers who were too slow to turn never knew their mistake, but even that didn’t teach the rest of them caution.

  If I’d wanted to, I could have led them on a merry chase through the desert, spinning and turning all the while, a living woodchipper ripping them apart piece by piece.

  But I had to watch what was happening in the amphitheater. Had to be sure I was giving Camille the distraction she needed. And, while the sand walkers were willing, the wraith had maintained his place.

  He continued to work his spell, drawing other sand walkers from miles around, while at the same time siphoning the butterfly’s energy.

  “Fuck,” I said. I snarled in irritation and lashed out, catching three of the desert spawn by surprise with a wider than normal arc of my spin. Then I hurled my sixty-pound blade with all of my strength toward the top of the tallest boulder in sight, but didn’t let it go.

  I found myself sailing high into the air, to touch down lightly on the top of the boulder.

  Somehow, I’d managed to hurl not just my sword, but myself as well, twenty feet into the air.

  I must have known I could do it, or I would never have tried.

  For the moment, I was safe. Even though the sand walkers were already trying to scramble up the sides of the boulder, I had bought myself a few seconds of peace.

  Standing on the boulder, I screamed out a second wordless challenge. This time, I aimed my sword into the sky and unleashed my chi magic lightning not through my fingers, but through the weapon.

  Lightning tore a jagged arc into the sky, sounding like sausages sizzling in the pan, but ten thousand times louder. With a roar of anger at the waste of my chi, I swung my sword, doing my best to hurl the lightning straight at the wraith.

  My aim was good, but the strength of my lightning petered out. Instead of reaching the magic spellcaster at full strength, my jagged shards of white luminous power only caressed him gently.

  Yet it got his attention. It lit him and his dark magic up like a Christmas tree.

  As abruptly as if I’d cut it off with a knife, the wraith stopped his chanting, and the dark magic swirling about him faded into nothing. For a moment, he remained as he had been, legs folded beneath him in the Lotus position. Then, with slow, prodigious strength of a gorilla king in the prime of his life, he climbed to his feet and reached for his staff.

  It had worked! The connection between him and the butterfly girl had been severed. Now, all I had to do was give Camille time to work.

  He looked at me, and even though he still wore his cowl and was a couple of hundred paces away, I could sense his malice.

  “You dare?” he began, then changed his mind about making verbal threats. Instead, he started striding toward me, gathering a cloud of black magic around him.

  “Oh, shit,” I managed.

  37

  My first instinct was to run. To get out of there and leave the sand walkers and their master behind. But I had to give Camille time to get the butterfly woman to safety. And, just to top things off, the tendrils of Lady Gamma’s compulsion were starting to make themselves known.

  The proximity of the spellcaster set them jangling with excitement. I could almost feel the compulsion egging me to stand and fight.

  Even by now, I was only beginning to understand all the things the Rogan Ward of this time had been able to do. Mastery of the Steps of Divinity and expertise with my oversized sword were just the beginning. The lightening trick that enabled me to scale this boulder without even trying–and which let me scoot along the sand at much faster speeds than I should have been capable of–was another. I could use my chi gift to power my AC lens, to unleash a blast of uncontrolled energy, and to send sparks of lightning from my fingertips like a van de graaff generator.

  To a simple soldier from six hundred odd years in the past, this was all impressive enough. But I knew without any doubt that it was just the tip of the iceberg. I didn’t know what the other Rogan Ward had been able to do, but I was really looking forward to finding out.

  Which meant I needed to survive a little bit longer.

  So instead of turning tail and running off into the desert, I waited as long as I could while the wraith drew nearer. I kicked one of the sand walkers in the face as it made it close to the top of my boulder and swung my sword once to discourage a handful of others.

  Then, I once more sought my point of balance and focused my chi.

  This time, the bolt of power I unleashed was straight and true, a lance of energy that reminded me not of Emperor Palpatine so much but more of Goku.

  A spear of power lanced from the tip of my sword and scored a direct it on the wraith. It was powerful enough to blow him off his feet and send him sprawling in the dirt.

  As the tang of ozone assaulted my senses, I felt a moment of triumph. I thought I had done it. I thought that that this single blast was enough. It was like I had packed the strength of the sun into a beam of light and hurled it at something made of flesh and bone.

  I knew that if someone had done the same to me, I would have been in for a bad day indeed.

  But the spellcaster seemed to be made of much sterner stuff.

  As my cry of joy died in my throat, the wraith climbed back to his feet with a wisp of smoke rising from his chest.

  “You are strong,” he said, his voice just as deep and grating as before. “I will enjoy turning your strength into my own.”

  Ignoring his sand walkers as if they weren’t there, he raised his staff in the air and conjured dark magic, sending it toward me just as I had sent my chi energy to him.

  I knew at that moment that I was outmatched. I’d given it my best shot and used much of my chi in the process. If I had a power bar floating above my head, it would have been well into the orange, and perhaps in the red.

  All I could do was try to keep breathing and give Camille as much time as I could.

  The spellcaster’s attack was slower than mine, and I had just enough time to turn and launch myself from my boulder. I touched down on the head of one of the larger sand walkers and pushed off again. This time, I cleared the rabble completely, landing lightly on the ground.

  “Come get me, if you can!” I yelled.

  With that, I headed off at a run, aiming purposely away from where I felt the wagons, Gamma, and Ash would be, and heading roughly perpendicular, out into the Wastes.

  With most of the spellcaster’s rebel army on my tail, and the wraith among them, I did what I had considered doing before.

  I couldn’t disappear from view as Camille could do, but that didn’t mean I was helpless. With my feet lightened, I could outpace even the four-footed sand walkers, and I could turn and strike whenever I wished.

  I left a trail of corpses through the desert that stretched several miles. By the time they gave up and either vanished back into the dunes or simply changed direction to hunt out the others, I had whittled large portions of the makeshift army away.

  I glimpsed the spellcaster a couple of times but made a point to stay away from his power.

  When at last I looked back and saw no evidence of being followed, I paused, breathing deeply, and leaned on the handle of my blade for a moment of rest.

  I had done it. I’d done more than survive. I had stolen much of the spellcaster’s strength and left it bleeding on the dirt.

  It was a thought that gave me considerable comfort even as the sweat and grime stuck to the back of my neck and worked its way down my spine.

  Just to be sure they were gone, I powered up my AC lens and adjusted it so I could see into the distance again. At first, I couldn’t make out any more than sand, rocks, and the occasional prickly plant.

  Then I saw them. A much smaller army, making their way through the desert, back to where they had come from.

  I would ha
ve liked to see the spellcaster’s face when he realized it was all a distraction, and that his butterfly woman was gone.

  38

  It had been a wearying, exhausting sort of day, and it wasn’t over. I didn’t know if the lack of the butterfly woman as a power source would prevent the spellcaster from calling still more sand walkers to his cause or not. But Gamma and Ash, and in fact all of us, were still a target.

  I was as sure as I could be that regardless of whether he would first gather more sand walkers, he would go after Gamma and the others.

  Which meant I had to return to them as fast as I could and hope that Camille had managed to abscond with the butterfly girl.

  But first, I had to take a moment to recover. My bones were beginning to ache, and while I had water with me, I hadn’t brought along any food. My hands were beginning to shake through exhaustion.

  Meditating in the wastelands was risky, but I had little choice. So I picked spot where I could sit with my back to a boulder and trusted my sense of self-preservation to kick in should anything dangerous approach. Then I closed my eyes and opened myself to the energy that infused the air, the stone at my back, the very ground upon which I sat, and packed it into my core.

  Once again, I had no real sense of how long it took before I was fully recharged. It felt like just a few seconds, yet when I breathed deeply, feeling strong and energized once again, and opened my eyes, I saw that the shadows had lengthened considerably.

  I stood and looked around at the desert landscape. Camille was right about my hunting skills. Next to her, I had none to speak of. But if she thought I would be lost in this desert without her to guide me back to the wagons, then she was mistaken.

  I had a general sense of which way I’d come and could guess by the position of the sun where Gamma and the others might be.

  My AC lens worked at a distance, but I’d traveled far beyond even its impressive range. But the blood oath that bound me had its uses.