by Guy Antibes
A Passcold. Sara had never really identified as one before. Yet she was a Passcold, every bit as much as her father. She straightened her back. She’d act as nobly as any other Royal—better than a Royal. Sara would lead Willa to the Kingdom of Parthy—the land of the dynasty of which she was a part.
The horse soon pulled the cart to the road and, just after sunrise, they faced their last day in Belonnia, or so Sara hoped.
~
The sentry halted them a few hundred yards from the encampment. There must have been a few thousand men from the sea of tents spreading out from a meadow to top a hill and beyond. A lazy stream, with the breaks in the ice, flowed on the other side. The guard yawned. Only a few soldiers milled about.
“What’s your business? Whores for the men?” He graced them with a lecherous grin.
“I should say not.” Sara said with the country accent she picked up in Vissing. “Got family in Dunst to get back to. Taking my aunt. Spent Winter’s Rise in Vissing. Her children live there.”
“Why didn’t she go herself?”
“She can’t speak. Dumb. I help her out. Please let us go through. We had to travel through the night and it’s cold.” Sara shivered.
“We’re nearly there, Jinsi!” Sara yelled in Willa’s ear. “Hard of hearing, too.” She gave the sentry a hearty grin she would never affect herself.
“I have to search your wagon. We’re looking for an injured woman.” His gaze lingered on Sara.
“Feel free. I think there’s an apple in the bag. Help yourself. Dunst is close by. I’m looking forward to some hot food.”
The guard shuffled around and looked in all of the bags and took his apple and a few more. “Go on. Tell Hek on the other side that the password is ‘river’.”
“Thank you, sir.” Sara gave him another broad smile and shook the reins.
“Stop!” the guard said.
Sara’s heart leapt to her throat. She fought off the urge to pull out her gun as the guard ambled up to her.
“I forgot—tattoos.”
Sara and Willa showed the man their wrists. Sara hoped that the relief she felt didn’t show too much.
“How long did you say you’d been gone?”
Sara began to sweat. “Six weeks. Had to help Jinsi’s daughter around the house. New baby. You like babies? I do.”
“No. Go on ahead. Report to the guard in the village. All of Dunst has been given a 9 on the end of their tattoo in order to get in or out for a few weeks now.”
“We will get ‘em fixed, sir. We will. Don’t you worry.”
“What’s your name? Perhaps I can visit you in the village when we ever get any leave.”
“Martta, sir.”
“Goodbye Martta.”
Sara nodded and shook the reins again. It took all of her willpower to keep from urging the cart faster. The few soldiers eyed the both of them as they traveled along the road. Sara smiled and noticed an apparatus. It looked like a metal bottle with a handle on it connected to a hose that ended in a long metal tube—that had to be the fire weapon.
She called out to Hek, who had ignored them while he talked to another, soldier. “The guard on the other side of camp told me to tell you that the password is river.”
He waved them on and turned back to the other soldier. Soon they were in the midst of the woods. Sara forced the horse ahead for a few hundred yards and pulled up. She wanted some time to calm down.
‘I don’t think we should go into the village, Sara.” Willa said. Her words served to settle her nerves. “If you’re up to it I can exist on the apples and the carrots left in the bag for a day’s food.”
Sara nodded and soon the woods thinned and Dunst appeared nestled in a vale. A road led along the top of a hill and seemed to curve back towards the west. Sara didn’t remember it on the map, but that’s the one she’d take to evade the village.
Just before she got to the crossroads, a pair of soldiers rode up from the direction of the camp. Their uniforms were more ornate than those of the guards. Officers. They looked young. “Stop in the name of the Emperor!” one of them said. They rode up on each side.
Willa made signs as if she couldn’t speak to Sara.
“Hek said a good-looking young woman and crone passed by. We’re here to inspect you.” The other officer laughed. They weren’t here on army business. The officer took Sara by the wrist and pulled her off of the seat and threw her to the ground. “Just off the road, on the other side of the bush will do. Delk, you can have the crone or have this one after I’m through.”
“I can wait,” Delk said, glancing at Willa.
The first officer began to unbutton his jacket. Sara looked up and down the road, frantic about what the man was about to do. She backed away.
“You’re a big one, but you can’t outrun me.”
Sara couldn’t. She had on too many clothes. She put her hand in her pocket and yanked back the hammer of the gun. She pulled it out just as the man had his arms behind him pulling off the sleeves to his jacket and put the gun right to his stomach and fired. The recoil pushed her back a few steps, but the ball had done massive damage. She heard the report of Willa’s gun and the other man fell, clutching his face.
The officer writhed on the ground grabbing his chest. Sara gulped and pulled out her other gun and fired into his head. She fell to the ground and covered her face, fighting for breath.
“We have to move quickly!” Willa said. “Both the village and camp would have heard the sounds of the guns.”
Sara rose in a daze. She shook her head, and then dragged both men into the woods and drove the cart further in. Willa rolled up their belongings in blankets while Sara tried to cover up the blood on the ground with dirt. She felt filthy and hated herself for killing the officer, but what could she do? He would have found their weapons and they would be exposed.
Sara couldn’t keep from sobbing as she unhitched the horse that they’d now use as a pack animal. They mounted the officers’ horses and took off down the road that led above the village. Sara tried to put aside the horrible experience as much as she could and slowed up.
“We’ll proceed just on the other side so we aren’t silhouetted from the sky,” she said. “We’ll have soldiers after us soon enough.”
They couldn’t go very fast on the side of the hills, but they proceeded quickly and by the time Sara led them past where the village lay, a thin stand of trees provided some cover. She looked back, at least a few miles away, riders burst out of the woods where they had come from, heading towards the village.
“Quickly, it’s time to flee!” Sara said.
“I agree.” Willa, who led the carthorse, took off ahead of Sara. The road turned back towards the village. They rode across open ground and plunged into the woods at the foot of the Eastern Mountains. Further west, they came to the trail. It was much steeper than Sara had anticipated.
They spent the rest of the day staying ahead of their pursuers, stopping only occasionally to rest their horses and have an apple or a carrot. They filled up their water bottles at a spring and proceeded up the trail that dwindled down to barely a track.
Sara looked down the side of the hill and saw six or seven men riding up towards them.
“They’re heading our way,” she told Willa. “We have to make it to Parthy by nightfall.”
Willa looked to the sky and Sara followed her gaze. Clouds were gathering. Sara didn’t know if rain or snow would benefit them or not. She urged her horse on. Had the men already spotted them? She didn’t know.
As they ascended into the mountains, the snows came. Sara and Willa broke out blankets and tied the ends around their necks to keep their layers of clothes dry as they traveled. The trail became slick and muddy as the snow began to increase.
The horses were beginning to flag. “We’ll have to walk them for awhile.” Sara dismounted and checked her gun. The soldiers’ swords remained on their horses, so they would have weapons, but against six seasoned soldiers?
They barely stopped in time before they came across a small camp of Belonnian soldiers that guarded the pass. Sara could hardly make out their tents through the blizzard. It seemed that all of the soldiers had taken refuge from the storm. Sara put her finger to her lips as they walked through the middle of the clearing. She noticed another of the tanks and the hose. Parthy and Doctor Hedge needed to examine one of those. Sara gave her reins to Willa and urged her on. She crept to the side of the tent and picked up the apparatus. It weighed quite a bit, but that meant it was full of whatever made the fire. She hustled further on and caught up with Willa on the other side of the camp. No one challenged them, as Sara looked like a white ghost, barely visible, covered with snow as she was. She looked at the handle on the tank and it looked like a plunger. She pushed and could tell that it was pushing air into the tank. Perhaps it sprayed a flammable mixture out. She kept pumping until she couldn’t anymore and secured the handle.
After tying the tank to the back harness of the cart horse, they continued up the hill. The going became nearly impossible. They slipped down at times and the horses began to balk. Willa looked drained of all energy.
“If we can’t proceed they can’t either,” Sara said. “We might as well wait out the storm here.”
Willa looked around. “There looks to be a bit of a flat section above those rocks.” She led Sara to a spot would afford them a view of the trail below. They spread a blanket across a few branches to give them a roof of sorts and tied the horses up after removing the fire weapon. Sara found some grasses poking up from the snow to give each horse and fed them each an apple. Now all the women had to eat were carrots. She hoped they could just wait out the storm. Sara took the time to examine the nozzle. She didn’t see a spark-wheel or any other device to get the fire going so she grabbed the paper that remained in a rolled up blanket, but the snow sopped everything they possessed. To use the weapon she needed fire.
She squeezed the second handle that was between the long tube and the hose and let a little of what was a spray of reddish fluid on the ground. She conjured up a tiny flame and moved it with her finger to the tiny pool. It flashed, consuming most of the fuel leaving a lingering flame that lasted for a minute or so. Where percussive powder exploded, this flashed. The liquid might be better than a weapon if used properly. Better lamps? Could the flash energy be harnessed? If vaporized, would it weaken the flame, but make it bright enough for a steady light? Perhaps brighter than an oil lamp? She chided herself, now wasn’t the time to think like a scientist. Sara let a little more of the liquid out, ready to ignite the weapon and pumped the tank as much as she could.
The snow continued to fall and covered their tracks. All sounds were muffled, but the first sounds of pursuit were the tinkling of harnesses and weapons. She hunched down and gave a gun to Willa. Sara didn’t know if it would work in these conditions.
She pulled out her knives and set them beside her, and then she buckled on one of the swords. Meldey had only taught her the rudiments of throwing knives and she could at least throw a knife better than she could a rock and with the shoes she wore, sword fighting would be a chancy thing.
A voice came through the relentless white of the blizzard and then a few more. The tinkling increased and she heard cursing and the snorting of balking horses. The men were ordered to dismount. She couldn’t hear footsteps, but Sara had no idea how far down the trail they were.
She could see shadows in the snow, with brief flashes of their red uniforms. The soldiers had no idea that Sara had stopped until they were just even with them on the mountain and then they noticed the women.
“You there! We’re here to take you back for the murder of two officers of the Emperor’s forces.” The voice made Sara jerk. She fought down her nerves and prepared to light the fire weapon.
“They tried to rape us,” Sara heard Willa grunt out a ‘you.’ She waved Willa to silence behind her and continued, “We had to defend ourselves. Let us go on to Parth. We won’t go back to Belonnia.”
“Your crimes go far beyond the two soldiers, if you came from Okalla.”
Sara had forgotten to use the country voice and had spoken in her perfect Okallan accent. If they knew where they came from, then they knew enough. “I won’t go back.”
A soldier advanced with his sword in his hand. “Come quietly and you won’t get hurt.”
“I’ll be executed if I go with you. I don’t want to hurt you, so I advise you to leave,” Sara said. The soldiers all laughed.
The speaker came closer and realized that Sara held a sword. “The woman’s armed!” He laughed at her.
“Of course she’s armed. You saw the two officers. Be careful,” said a voice on the other side of the curtain of snow.
Sara wouldn’t wait for the soldier to come closer. She attacked, cutting him on his arm. He raised his sword and Sara parried the blow without feeling the shock. Meldey’s conditioning had worked. She lunged and the soldier pushed her blade aside leaving his chest unprotected so Sara thrust her knife into his chest.
“Rush her!” the soldier said as he crumpled to the ground.
Sara ran back and conjured up a flame that floated in the air. She put the tip of the long wand into the fire.
When she stood, a man yelled, seeing the flame sizzling from the tip. “She’s got a flame thrower!”
Sara stepped out of the protection of the rock and squeezed the handle at the end of the wand. An arc of brilliant yellow exited the end. She pointed it at the men, who were caught between their horses and Sara’s shelter. The liquid immediately burned them even though the snow stopped the fire from spreading. Sara ran with the tank and painted each man with the weapon as they tried to flee. Two burning men cried out and ran back down the way they had come, slipping and sliding down the hill and off the path crashing into trees below.
The others wailed, burning up where they fell. Their cries were awful. The image of Meldey’s wrapped body appeared in her mind and then the two officers who had intentions on raping her caused her to continue her deadly spraying. Sara couldn’t stop, even though the men cried out for mercy. She couldn’t let these men pursue her. She couldn’t leave them mid-mountain to die slowly, either, so she kept laying on the fire until stream began to diminish. All of the men had stopped yelling as the fires continued to burn despite the snow.
Willa stood at her side, looking bewildered and shocked at the carnage. “Why did you continue to spray them?”
Sara dropped the canister and knelt on the ground, covering her face. “I couldn’t stop. I feel horrible, but I couldn’t stop. They had to be destroyed and I couldn’t leave them to a slower death. They would have killed us, Willa. They would.” She gave over to tears and cried. Her mind filled with images of the dead friends and dying enemies until she noticed the numbness in her knees and that brought her out of her state. Sara hadn’t even noticed the blanket Willa put around her.
She rose. “We will lay them out and cover them. We can show them some respect in death.” Sara felt as if she rose from a tub of cold water. She shook her head to clear her shocked mind. Willa put snow on the wounds of the few horses that were splashed with the fire.
“Horrible stuff. It’s like boiling oil cast from a city wall on invaders,” Willa said.
“Except it’s portable. A soldier can carry one of these and go anywhere,” Sara said. She struggled to keep her mind in focus after the encounter. “I don’t think I’m doing so well.” She put her hand to her head as she fainted and fell to the earth.
Sara woke shivering. From the edge of the blanket canopy she could see the sky. Clouds quickly moved across a bright full moon that looked so close she could reach up and grab it. She smelled tea and sat up.
&n
bsp; “Willa?”
“The soldiers carried enough kit to last them a week on the trail. You need a hot drink and I wanted to eat something more inviting than a carrot.” Willa shivered. “You were out, so I couldn’t have you use your parlor trick to get a fire going. I had to take the flame from a burning man to start one” She made a face and brought over a steaming tin cup.
“What happened?” Sara put her hand to calm down her pounding head.
“I’d say you were overcome with our little battle. What do they call it? Battle madness or something? I have to admit I was a little light on my feet after looking at the bodies. Don’t worry, I’ve laid them in a row and covered them with their blankets. I’d imagine there will be more soldiers up here soon, so after you properly wake up, we should get going.”
“You probably should have put me over a horse.”
Willa shook her head. “I tried. You’re too heavy for little old me.” She smiled in the moonlight and took a drink from her own steaming cup. “I’ll get some horses ready, but you’ll have to check my work.”
“I will.” She took a sip and then gulped her tea down. The hot liquid energized her. She helped herself to another cup. “I think I’m better.” She rose and took a few steps. “I am, indeed. I’ll take care of the horses, if you clean up the camp.”
They would take an extra horse each. She picked the best ones and found that Willa had already packed their bags. They worked in silence. Sara gathered up their knives. Willa had left them where Sara had laid them out. She wiped the knives off and put them in their sheaths. She checked the guns and replaced the cartridges, even though the ones in the guns appeared dry.
Willa, still shivering, needed Sara’s help to mount. Sara looked back at the little battleground and shivered herself as they rode up the mountain and away from Belonnia.
~~~
Chapter Seventeen
Over the Pass
The snow had crusted enough so that the horses didn’t slide as much. Sara and Willa wrapped themselves in two blankets each, as they used moonlight to climb the mountain.
