by Laura Taylor
Whisper grinned. “We’ve got our women on the inside. Stubborn, belligerent and all too used to speaking their minds. If anyone can start a war, they can.”
Aidan sent him a wry, sideways glare. “You’re referring to Dusk, I take it?” Most of the other women were willing to compromise, or at least to try and see the other side of an argument. But since the day she’d joined the tribe, Dusk had done nothing but stand her ground and force the rest of the world to give way. Flame, too, had shown a similar determination. And God, he admired them for it.
Whisper nodded, a knowing smirk on his lips. “We both know, without ever asking her opinion of it, that that little tempest of yours is going to start a revolution.”
Dusk lay on the floor of The Wolf’s tent, willing the air to keep flowing in and out of her lungs. Her entire body ached, bruised and battered from head to toe, and to keep herself grounded, she thought back to the time in the midst of the shut-down, when food supply chains had been cut off, but people hadn’t yet started growing their own. Desperation had made people reckless, and in the end, far more people had died at the hands of their fellow humans than from starvation. It had been one of the toughest periods to survive.
But she was still here, still clawing her way across the earth, still sucking air, with a royal ‘fuck you’ to anyone who thought they could stop her.
She tried to remember how many men had raped her. Was it four, or five? The number was important. That determined how many men she would kill before she left this hellhole. She may not manage to kill the ones who had done it, of course, but they were all cut from the same cloth, so a couple of substitutes would do just as well. She decided it was five, just to be on the safe side.
“Get that pile of rubbish out of here,” The Wolf commanded, and then she was lifted by her arms and dragged out of the tent. She could probably have managed to walk well enough, given a little time to recover, but after fighting them every step of the way, one of the guards had finally tired of her antics and punched her in the head. In general, they tried not to do any permanent damage – it reduced the value of the merchandise – but every now and then, they were willing to take a few risks to subdue the more stubborn ‘pretties’. For the moment, the world was still spinning, and it would be a few minutes more before she could work out which way was up.
A minute or two later, she was dumped unceremoniously on the ground in the women’s marquee and the shackles were once more secured around her wrists.
“Good God, girl,” Savage muttered from beside her. “Pass some water down, would you?”
Dusk struggled to sit up, managing to prop herself up on her knees while the woman at the end of the row filled a bowl with water from a bucket – the slavers were kind enough to leave a supply for drinking during the day – and passed it down the row. Savage dipped the end of her shirt in the bowl, then gently wiped the blood away from Dusk’s face.
“It is really worth it?” she asked, almost talking to herself as she dabbed at the tender wounds. “Getting the shit beaten out of you? And all for what? You end up back in the same place, just with more bruises.”
It was a bit of a turnaround from her attitude the night before, stopping Dusk from being drugged, for the express purpose that she be more able to fight back. But Dusk wasn’t going to scold her for her change of heart. Emotions ran wild in these places, and a decision to rebel in one minute could easily turn to meek capitulation the next. The human beast, both body and mind, had evolved to survive, and it was rather stubborn about doing so, regardless of the conscious mind’s opinion on such things.
“They can put me in chains,” Dusk told her, her voice hoarse. “They can beat me, rape me, they can make me a prisoner. But they can’t make me a slave.”
Savage peered down at her, cool speculation and reluctant admiration in her eyes. “Girl, you more crazy than I ever imagined.”
Mei-Lien curled her right leg up beneath her and extended her left leg, in order to repeat the series of stretches she’d just performed on her right side, at the same time as attempting to not kick anyone. It was a self-imposed regime she’d started last night, realising quickly that sitting down all day and not being allowed to move much could inhibit her ability to fight, when the time came. She’d cleaned the arrow wound on her leg as best she could, and she was glad to see that so far, it didn’t seem to be developing an infection.
The men of her tribe, and the women of Flame’s, would be coming to rescue them, she knew with absolute confidence. But what she didn’t know was how long it would take for them to get here. It was a long way on foot, a bit quicker by horseback, but from various conversations around the village, she knew that attacking the camp would be no small feat. So she was prepared to have to wait here for anything up to a week while the men sorted themselves out. And for that length of time, it was worth going through a few stretches and exercises – as much as her chains would allow it – to keep herself in shape.
She was gratified to see that three of the other women had joined in her routine in the last few minutes. She’d done the same thing last night, and they’d all just stared at her, a few baffled questions asked as to what the hell she was doing. She’d told them, but hadn’t made any particular petition for them to join in. But this morning, it seemed a few of them had decided it might be worth the effort.
Before she could get any further with her routine, however, the tent flap was forcibly pulled aside and three burly guards came in, carrying Flame. They dumped her on the ground and shackled her hands to the pole, then left without even checking if she was conscious.
“Katrina? Katrina!” Mei-Lien frantically called her name – the name she’d had back in the old world, not her new one, which she’d refused to tell the slavers. “Is she awake?” she asked the other women, not able to reach that far down the row herself.
The woman beside Flame, a girl who was barely eighteen years old, carefully turned her over, checking first to see that she was breathing – “She’s alive,” she reported grimly – and then began checking over her injuries. Mei-Lien longed to do it herself, knowing that the inexperienced girl would miss vital clues that her own medical training would easily pick up, but she was grateful for the girl’s help nonetheless. “She’s got some bad bruises. They tried to strangle her, by the look of the marks on her neck. I don’t think anything’s broken, though.”
“What’s your name?” Mei-Lien asked her, an attempt to open the beginnings of an alliance with some of the women.
“Before I came here it was Thunder. Round here, they call me ‘Fetch’.” She grimaced in distaste.
A harsh intake of breath caught their attention, and everyone in the tent looked around to see Flame struggling to move. “Thunder it is,” she said, her voice hoarse, the words barely audible. “Shake their world, Thunder. With all your might.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“They’re bad men, aren’t they?” The question was far from innocent, for all its childlike simplicity. Mikey touched the purple bruise on Willow’s wrist gently.
“Yes, sweetie. These are bad men.”
“I miss Daddy,” Mikey told her, snuggling up to her side. She’d been gone for only an hour or so, taken to The Wolf’s tent early in the morning. From the looks of the place, someone had caused a riot in there, cushions and furniture strewn about, blood splattered on the tent walls, and Willow knew with a cold certainty that it was Flame who had caused the damage. The Wolf’s promise to teach her some manners would not have been an idle one, and Flame would not have capitulated easily.
The morning shift of guards had been brought in early, she’d learned by unobtrusive listening. The night shift were exhausted, and then an idle comment had told Willow that it was not one, but two women who had given the guards such a workout. Flame… and Dusk? Neither she nor Mist had been taken anywhere throughout the night, and as much as Mei-Lien had become a competent warrior, she couldn’t imagine her causing this much strife.
But the
n it had been Willow’s turn. For her children’s sake, she would submit, for the sake of remaining in a decent condition to look after them. Her own dignity and pride could be shelved until her children were safe. She stood patiently while the men stripped her and insulted her. She put up no protest while they slapped her face and ass, and then she knelt before The Wolf and obediently sucked on his cock until he grew bored of it and told one of the guards to try out her cunt. And then she lay on the floor, silent and unresponsive, and thought of Whisper, and of how much pleasure he was going to take in gutting this man.
“I miss Daddy, too,” she told Mikey, stroking his hair. But right at that moment, he seemed so very far away…
Willow met Mist’s gaze, across the tent. “Do you really think…?” She couldn’t finish the question. Hope seemed a faint and far off idea at the moment.
“Have Faith,” Mist told her, a cryptic comment that Willow nonetheless understood perfectly. “If we have Faith, all will be well.”
Of course. Faith would never leave her own women here to rot. But… “Do you think they will have Faith?” Willow couldn’t help asking. Though the two tribes were allies, there were also a lot of unresolved tensions between them. If Faith knew they were here, she’d come to help, but would Aidan think to ask her in the first place?
“The Clear River rushes into the ocean,” Mist replied. “And the South Wind guides it on its way. Everyone knows this, just as they know that spring follows winter.” Yes. They would come. Of course they would come.
“God, you two are idiots.” It was their favourite miserable bitch who was speaking, never one to miss an opportunity to take a swipe at them. “Faith is not going to save anyone. Believe whatever you like, we’re all doomed.”
But then another woman spoke up, by the name of Hammer. The name suited her – she looked like a tough, no-nonsense sort with short hair and multiple tattoos. “I don’t know what the fuck these two are talking about, but I’m damn sure they don’t expect God to leap out from behind a bush and save their asses.”
“You’re right,” Mist replied. “God did not stop western civilisation from ending, no matter how many people were praying for his help.”
Hammer nodded. “So, when this faith of yours comes to fruition… would you mind very much if I asked you to take me with you?”
Willow raised an eyebrow at the bold request. And from the reactions of a couple of the other women, a few of them were wishing they’d been the first to ask.
“Well, faith is an interesting thing,” Willow answered, keeping on the same cryptic tack. If any of the slavers did get wind of this, she needed to leave herself room for plausible deniability. “See, the more people join in, the bigger faith gets.”
In their sheltered camp, a group of twenty men and women were crowded around a three-dimensional map of the Gully that was gradually growing in complexity. Rocks and sticks representing tents and trees. A patch of leaves marked out the extensive vegetable garden at one end of the camp. And a handful of shelled peanuts marked the various positions the warriors of the Clear River Valley and the South Wind would take.
“I can get five women to the horse yard under cover of darkness,” Faith said, after considering the latest additions to the map. “We can use their own horses against them and stampede them into the camp.”
“Good plan,” Aidan agreed, carefully adding five more peanuts to the south side of the map. “They should wait until the fighting starts, or they’ll give the game away too soon. And from that distance, we won’t be able to give them any clear signal to move.”
“Excuse me,” a diffident voice interrupted the meeting. “A messenger has arrived, if you’d like an update?” Aidan sighed, but stood up nonetheless. “You keep going here. I won’t be long.” It was all but impossible to get any given task finished before they were interrupted, but on the other hand, the steady influx of information was going to allow them to plan this battle to the best possible advantage.
Over at the edge of the camp, a man was waiting to talk to him. Or rather, it looked like a large mass of grass and weeds was waiting for him. As he approached, the man pulled back the hood on his camouflage suit, one that was designed to render him completely invisible amongst overgrown clumps of grass.
“The latest estimate is one hundred and eighty men,” the man reported. “I don’t know how many women. We’ve seen at least six different individuals, not counting our own women, but we can only get eyes on them when they’re outside the marquees, and we’re too far away to know for sure who’s who. The chief is constantly surrounded by at least ten guards. From what we know so far, it looks like he’s arrogant, but also cautious. In a battle, he’ll expect his entourage to protect him, and by all appearances, they’d do so willingly. Killing him would cost us too many warriors.”
“But on the other hand,” Aidan pointed out, “not killing him may cost us even more. If he survives and manages to pull another tribe together, he’d come after us for revenge.”
The man shrugged. “That’s your call – yours and Faith’s. I’m just telling you what I’ve seen.”
“I appreciate it. We need to know more about the guards at the women’s tent, how many are on watch at any given time, when they change shifts, the works.”
“I’ve got three spies down in the paddock as we speak. Now that it’s daylight, they’ll have to stay there until dark, so we’re not going to get another report until tonight. The guards in the chief’s tent changed shift at 5 a.m.”
Aidan raised an eyebrow. “That’s earlier than I would have expected.”
“True. But maybe that’s the point. Pick a time that’s too early to be convenient for any attack. It means we’d have to attack them at four, when it’s still dark – which is as much of a hindrance for us as it is for them – or face guards fresh out of a good night’s sleep.”
Aidan nodded, not liking the news. But whether he liked it or not, they’d have to work with it. “I’ll let Faith know,” he said. “Good work.”
The man headed off for a meal and a well-earned rest. But Aidan’s work wasn’t done yet. By the time he’d finished hearing the spy’s report, two more messengers were lined up to talk to him.
“Update on the horses,” the first one reported. “They’re making good time, set off early this morning. All going well, they should be here before nightfall.”
That got his attention. “That means we could attack as early as tomorrow morning.”
The woman nodded, a vicious gleam in her eyes. “The sooner the better.”
The last messenger was one of the scouts keeping an eye on the territory. “What news?” Aidan asked him, eager to get back to Faith and Whisper at the planning meeting.
“A group of slavers just came down the main road into the camp. There were ten of them. They stayed on the road, didn’t cause any trouble, so we let them pass, but the camp’s headcount just went up by ten.”
“Good call,” Aidan told him. “Even if it means there are more of them to fight, we can’t risk giving ourselves away yet. Has your replacement headed out?”
“Yep. I briefed him while you were talking to the others. He’s heading east, keeping an eye on the road. God willing, the rest of the day might stay reasonably uneventful.”
“It’s not about knowing how to hold a sword,” one of the women in Dusk’s tent complained, their conversation being held in murmurs and whispers to keep the guards outside the tent from hearing. “We all survived the collapse. We’ve all killed people. We wouldn’t have survived this long without knowing how to fight. It’s about sheer numbers. There are more of them, far more than there are of us.”
“It’s not just numbers,” another woman argued. “Weapons and tactics also play a big part. When they came for us, they had machetes, and we had kitchen knives.”
“Which ends up in the same place,” the first woman said stubbornly. “They have bows and machetes, and right now, we only have our fists. We can’t fight them.”
But how was she to convince these women that escape, and victory, were both real and necessary goals?
“Can I just go out on a limb here, for a moment?” Savage asked, when there was a break in the conversation, and Dusk realised she was talking to her.
“What was that?” she asked, pulling herself out of her inner musings to pay attention to the question.
“You started this whole conversation about escape routes, and questions about guards, and how many men in the camp and all this other shit, but you know as well as I do that we’re both still chained to a pole with two hundred men standing outside the tent waiting to fuck us.” She fixed Dusk with a cold, steely glare. “So the only logical conclusion here is that you know something we don’t know, that gives you the right to believe that somehow, you’re going to be getting out of here.”
