Until Dawn

by Laura Taylor

  The man inspecting the horse stepped back, but he said nothing, taking another long look at Aidan. Beside him, Aidan could feel Whisper’s patience wearing thin, and prayed that he’d last another few minutes. “Fine,” the slaver said eventually. “I’ll accept that trade.” He turned to the men waiting down the road. “Bring the two brats over here,” he shouted. Turning back to Aidan, he gave him a disinterested shrug. “We’ve got some fine breeding stock, and dragging the pair of them all the way back to camp was going to be a nightmare anyway. I’d say we’re getting the better end of the deal here.” It was pride, rather than practicality, that was driving his words. If they hadn’t wanted to march back to their camp with two young children, they wouldn’t have bought them.

  One of the men started bringing the children over, but the blonde woman was making a fuss again. Then the woman beside her started acting up, yanking on the end of her rope, and a couple of slaps proved ineffective at calming them down. Aidan forced himself to stay still, keeping up the pretence that there was nothing more interesting about the whole process than buffering their tribe’s population a little. “Rather tedious, aren’t they?” he said, turning to Whisper, grabbing the first thing to say that popped into his head that wasn’t going to get them into strife. The purpose of the remark was to get Whisper’s attention and ground him a little, to stop him losing patience with the whole process and just cutting the slaver’s head off.

  “Fuck! Come back here!” The blonde woman had got loose, her hands still tied, but she’d got the rope out of the slaver’s hands and was making a run for it… but she was heading up the road, towards them! The crazy bitch was going to foul up their entire plan!

  “Get them under control,” the leader ordered, marching back down the road. “Come here, you little shit…” He made a grab for the running woman, but she dodged, then swung back around, managing to head-butt the man instead.

  “Help us!” she screamed at Aidan.

  “Oh, fucking hell,” he muttered, pulling his machete out. The ruse was well and truly over now.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “Hide!” Aidan heard Whisper yell, and he realised he was well behind in the sudden change of plans by now. Whisper already had his weapon out, moving down the road towards the slavers, and with that sharp command, Mikey grabbed Julia’s hand and the pair of them rushed off into the scrub, much to the slaver’s astonishment. Two seconds later, the leader’s head was rolling across the road in a wet spray of red, and every other man present took that as their cue to unsheathe his own weapon.

  The battle was short and bloody, and by some stroke of luck, the slavers decided that the women didn’t pose much of a threat, focusing instead on Aidan’s men as they came barrelling down the road towards them. Two minutes later, it was over, but as Aidan looked around at the gory aftermath, he cursed with every foul word he knew. Luck was the only thing that was going to save them now. If the Gully slavers kept to themselves for the next twelve hours, all was well and good. But if one of their scouts happened upon this gruesome scene, it would be as clear as day that someone had been watching their camp and was plotting schemes against them.

  “Mikey? Julia?” Whisper’s voice cracked as he called their names. Aidan had lost track of the pair after they’d run off into the scrub, forced to focus his attention on trying to stay alive. But just as a wave of true panic was about to hit, there was a rustling from the bushes, and Mikey rushed out, making a beeline for Whisper.

  “Daddy!”

  Whisper dropped to his knees, catching the boy as he threw himself into his arms. “Mikey! Thank God. Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

  “You fucking assholes.” The loud objection came from the woman who had caused so much trouble, standing nearby with her hands still bound. She bore a number of bruises – presumably old ones – but no fresh injuries. “You were just going to leave us there? You were, weren’t you? You just came for the kids, fuck the rest of us -”

  “You fucking stupid bitch!” Whisper set Mikey down and stormed towards the woman, temper well and truly lost. “You start a fucking fight to the death when you’re standing right next to a bloody five-year-old? You’ve got your head so far up your ass you couldn’t even wait two minutes for them to get out of the way?” He pulled back his arm, and Aidan moved quicker than he ever had before in his life, throwing himself between Whisper and the woman and managing to get a grip on Whisper’s arm before he could throw the punch. With Whisper’s skills, it was entirely likely that one hit would be enough to kill the woman, and though they hadn’t intended to free them, now that they had, it was senseless to start killing potential allies.

  “Speaking of heads up your asses, you didn’t think it would be worth buying the rest of us?” the woman yelled, trying to duck around Aidan to get to Whisper.

  “Enough! Enough!” Aidan yelled, forcing them apart. “Whisper! Go walk it off. And you,” he said, addressing the woman. “You shut the fuck up, or I’ll cut your tongue out.”

  Shocked at such a threat from someone she’d assumed would be an ally, the woman did just that.

  Whisper stalked back over to Mikey, waiting tremulously at the roadside. “Where’s Julia?” Whisper asked him, managing to get a handle on his anger for the boy’s benefit. Mikey ran off into the scrub again, returning a moment later, tugging a stunned and reluctant Julia along behind him. Her face was as white as a sheet, her expression stunned and terrified, and Aidan feared that this time, the trauma was going to leave a lasting impression on the girl.

  “Julia? Come here, baby girl,” Whisper crooned to her, opening his arms. She came and stood in front of him, but kept her arms clenched tightly around herself. Her lip trembled, and a single tear slid down her face, though she didn’t utter a sound. “It’s okay, you’re allowed to cry,” Whisper told her, cradling her against him, then picking her up. “You can cry now. It’s okay.” A moment later, she did just that, and Whisper carried her a short way off, taking a seat on a large rock to cradle her while she let her fear and pain out.

  “He’s Willow’s husband, isn’t he?” the woman asked, her tone disparaging. “Not quite what I was expecting.”

  “I would not make an issue with Whisper if I were you,” Aidan told her coldly. Nonetheless, he pulled out a knife and cut her bonds for her, then waved the other women over so he could do the same for them.

  “You were just going to leave us here,” the woman snarled at him. “You’re filth, just like the rest of them!”

  He looked her dead in the eye. “On what basis,” he asked, “am I obligated to risk my life to save yours? I don’t know you. You’re not a member of my tribe. And aside from that, you just put the lives of our children at risk, and if any harm had come to them, not even I could have stopped Whisper from killing you. So I would count your blessings and stop bitching about things you have no right to be expecting of anyone.”

  “Willow said you were coming to save them. I told her I’d help her escape in whatever way I could, if I could come with her, and she swore black and blue that your lot were honourable men!”

  Aidan wished Nicholas was here. Usually, Whisper was the temperate voice of reason in these situations, but with him ready to rip this woman to shreds, Nicholas would have been a great second choice for someone to get everyone to keep their heads together.

  “Look, I know you were in a bad situation,” Aidan said, aiming for diplomacy. “And your anger is perfectly justified. But can you also see things from our perspective? We can’t save the whole world. There are too many of them, and not enough of us. We were just trying to save our own families. Under the circumstances, it’s the best we could hope to do.”

  The woman looked him over shrewdly. “You’re going to attack the Gully, aren’t you?”

  Admitting to it wouldn’t really change anything at this point, even if this woman proved not to be an ally in the end. “We are.”

  “Then I’ll fight with you,” she declared. “Those women down
there are not my family. There aren’t many that I could even call friends. But what those animals are doing is wrong, and I will put my life on the line to prove that your standards are not high enough.”

  How the hell did she manage to be so admirable and so damn infuriating at the same time? “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Hammer.” She lifted her chin and stared him in the eye.

  “I’m Thunder,” one of the women behind her said. “And this is Frida, and Cassandra.”

  “Aidan the Ferocious,” he introduced himself, feeling he’d earned the name today, and would do so again tomorrow. “And are you inclined to fight alongside your… acquaintance?”

  “I am,” Thunder said, to be quickly echoed by the other two.

  “Fine. Then make yourselves useful and gather up what weapons or food these men had on them, then we’ll head back to our camp.”

  Mikey was dozing against Aidan’s shoulder by the time they got back to their makeshift camp, and it was hardly a surprise that he was exhausted. Julia hadn’t said a word after her wails had finally died out and her tears dried up, and all manner of coaxing from Whisper had yet to elicit any answer from her at all. But both he and Whisper would be needed to finish planning this god-forsaken battle, so he was going to have to find someone else to watch the children for a while. In Willow’s absence, either Dusk or Mei-Lien would have been his usual choices, or Nicholas, who was back minding the village, or Hawk, who was now dead…

  Faith had her head down over the map of the camp, along with half a dozen other men and women, and it seemed she hadn’t noticed their return yet. And to be fair, there were enough people coming and going that that wasn’t an unreasonable omission.

  “Faith!” he called, and she looked up sharply.

  “You got them?” she asked, jumping up when she saw Mikey in his arms… and then she stopped as she caught sight of the four women with them. “I thought you said you were going to trade peacefully,” she said, looking pointedly at the fresh blood on their clothes.

  “Plans changed,” Aidan told her with a scowl, not prepared to deal with a prolonged discussion right now. His own wife was still trapped in that hell-hole, and they had a battle to finish preparing for, when the entire world seemed bent on forcing him to do absolutely anything else. On top of all that, he now had to worry about Julia developing some sort of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Even if they’d had a decent therapist, he wasn’t sure what the future would have looked like for her, and unfortunately, no one in either of their tribes had any real qualifications in psychology. As with so many things in this fucked-up world, they were just going to have to do their best and hope it turned out okay. “Can you please get someone to look after that,” he said rudely, pointing to the four women. “I need to get Mikey some food and find somewhere safe for him to rest.” It was as much a distraction for himself as it was an attempt to keep Mikey calm, and he desperately needed a little time out to get his head together.

  “Over this way,” Faith said. “I’m Faith. The facilities are a little basic, but we have food and weapons, and in this day and age, that’s more than most people could hope for.”

  “You’re Faith?” Aidan heard Hammer ask, as he walked away. “Oh, God, that’s clever! I knew they had some secret plan, I just couldn’t figure out what it was!”

  Aidan didn’t bother wondering what they were talking about. He’d find out soon enough, or if he didn’t, then it wasn’t important enough to worry about anyway. Faith, being the keen tactician that she was, would immediately begin extracting what information the women knew about the camp, and add it to their plans. And at dawn tomorrow, they would crack open the gates of hell and let fury pour over the Gully.

  As night closed in, the last of the evening’s glow faded out and the chorus of frogs and crickets started up. Inside the dank tent, Mei-Lien lay down on the rough dirt and tried to get comfortable. How long would it take to get from the Clear River Valley to here? This was their second night here. Surely Aidan had had plenty of time to cover the distance by now?

  Was Torrent alive, she wondered, before she could stop herself. She’d seen him get hit during the raid, and seen him fall. But perhaps he was alive, just injured?

  Yes, that had to be it. She felt a stabbing pain in her chest at the thought of never seeing him again. He had such a funny, charming way of talking to the cows as he brought them in for milking each morning, almost singing as he told each of them she was a good girl, as he politely asked them to stand in the stall and apologised for the cold water as he cleaned their udders. He had to survive to take care of the cows, if nothing else, Mei-Lien told herself, prepared to go along with her own delusions just this once. They would never stand to be milked so placidly with anyone else.

  She sighed and looked around the grimy walls of the tent. Would the attack come at dawn? Or would it take longer? She glanced over in Flame’s direction, not able to see the woman, but nonetheless she had a vivid image in her mind of what she looked like, bruised and bleeding, and she wondered if Flame would last another day. She refused to give in, and sooner or later, the men were going to end up killing her.

  Dawn it would be, she decided – not because she felt any certainty that Aidan would be here in time, but because they no longer had any other option.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Thin shards of light trickled down into the forest as dawn crept closer. Above their heads, the stars winked out slowly, one by one. The chorus of frogs was beginning to fade out as the creatures sought out cool spots to while away the day, and in the trees overhead, birds began preening and fidgeting, getting ready for their first songs.

  Lined up beside Aidan were three dozen courageous men and women, all willing to give their lives today to free their friends and comrades from this pit of hell. Their faces were painted black with charcoal – coals they’d had to bring with them, as they hadn’t dared light a fire since they’d arrived. They wore makeshift armour crafted from thin sheets of scrap metal, much the same as that worn by some of the slavers. Four of the men had rifles, each of them possessing just two bullets – the grand total that remained after their altercation with the Eden tribe. They would use them to kill eight of the slavers, then simply discard the weapons, joining the rest of them fighting with swords and machetes.

  A light-footed scout made his way over to Aidan, all but invisible against the backdrop of inky trees. “The women are at the stockyards,” he murmured, voice low. “Ten grassy knolls on the western paddock. They’re ready to go on your signal.”

  Aidan nodded to the man, then turned to glance up the other end of the row. He gave Faith a deliberate nod.

  Throughout the camp, a few slavers were up and about – a handful of guards, a few men retiring from the night shift, and a few more who just seemed to be early risers.

  He heard the slow creak of twenty bows being drawn and gripped the handle of his machete. He’d been in this same situation dozens of times, senses straining against the darkness, reflexes on a hair trigger as he waited for the fight to begin, knowing each and every time that it could be his last.

  Faith gave the signal, and twenty arrows were loosed into the camp. The nearest men went down with barely a whimper. But those further away were harder to hit, kill shots against moving targets in the dark a near impossibility, and Aidan braced himself…

  “RAIDERS!”

  A second volley of arrows followed the first, more targets taken down, and then the camp came to life, men slithering out of their tents, clumsy and awkward.

  “Go!” Aidan commanded his men, not wanting to lose the opportunity. They swarmed out of the trees, slightly to the west of the women, giving them the chance to loose a third wave of arrows, and if luck was with them, a fourth, without the risk of shooting their own side. Aidan’s warriors went for the tents, not even waiting for the slavers inside to emerge, but instead stabbing straight through the fabric, slicing holes to see the prizes inside, ending lives before they’
d even climbed out of their sleeping rolls.

  “Raiders! Raiders!” The frantic cry was taken up across the camp, and as they’d expected, a handful of guards, large and well-armed, came rushing out of the chief’s tent in the centre of the camp. There would be another half a dozen still inside, protecting the chief, but that tent wasn’t the one Aidan was interested in. The women’s marquees were on the near side of the chief’s tent, and he took off in that direction, Whisper at his side, both of them fighting in a coordinated pattern that guarded each other’s backs as they slew their enemies with almost mathematical precision.

  A small cluster of tents on the far western edge of the camp was still and silent. These men had chosen the spot as a quiet one, many of them of a more introverted nature that disliked the noise and busyness of the main camp. Faint shouts drifted over to them, but, locked in dreams and used to blocking out the noise of the other men, they ignored it…

  “Raiders! Raiders! We’re under attack!” A young man in a blind panic came rushing over and promptly tripped over one of the tent ropes, all but invisible in the darkness. His weight crashing into the tent was more effective in getting the men’s attention than his cries had been, and a moment later, the sound of zippers being opened split the morning peace. Men staggered out of the tents, armed and alert, if rather confused. “What the hell?”

  “We’re under attack!” the messenger bawled, and it was only then that the men looked over at the main camp.