by Amy Hopkins
She balanced carefully on the branch and unwound the rope from her waist. She flicked it once, sending the tail end to loop around the branch, and a moment later it was knotted securely. She ran the length through her hands, eyeing the distance to the ground before tying it around her waist.
Polly ran a short way along the branch and dove off gracefully. The rope tightened around her waist and halted her body with a jerk well above the dirt.
She swung a bit as she dangled from the rope and slashed at the surprised faces of two remnant below her. As her forward movement diminished, she twisted to make sure that when she swung back the other way she would still be facing forward. She lunged to give her swing some extra momentum.
This time a remnant darted into her path and stood in front of her with both feet planted solidly on the ground. Polly grinned and waved as the remnant flew back, courtesy of the feet she planted in its chest.
"Best not get in the way of a girl on a mission," she called, swinging back for one last pass.
Another remnant tried the same trick but Polly didn't kick this one away. Instead she wrapped her legs around its head, flicked her knife to release the rope, and hurled her body backward. Her hands touched the ground and her abdomen clenched as the remnant’s head smashed into the ground. Polly rolled to her feet and tossed away the last bit of rope that had clung to her body.
"I warned the last guy, but you lot never listen."
A hand touched her elbow and she flinched away, only just managing to hold onto the dagger she had been about to throw.
Danil stepped back with his hands in the air. "Sorry, didn't mean to startle you."
Polly grinned. "Who says you startled me?"
She flicked the dagger and Danil spun, only to find the remnant who had crept up behind him dead. Polly retrieved her dagger from its eye.
"Thanks," Danil said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Open the gates!” Bette called down. “We got incoming!”
“Good incoming or bad incoming?” Jarv called up.
“Yer openin’ the gate, ye mushroom-brained idiot. Whaddaya think?” Bette shook her head and started to walk away, but paused when she realized Jarv was still standing there.
“Are we opening the gate and running out with our weapons drawn?" he asked dubiously. “Or opening the gate and acting like we're not about to kill whatever walks through?”
Bette groaned. “I told ye…if a remnant is spotted, we yell ‘remnant,’ not ‘open the fuckin’ gates so they can eat our faces off.’ Clear?”
Jarv grinned and nodded, and Bette wondered if he hadn’t known exactly what she had meant all along.
“You a’right, Captain?” Sharne asked.
Bette started to answer, but a yawn cracked her jaw and smothered her words. Instead she nodded, then wiped her watering eyes. “Fuck me, I haven’t been this tired since…” She wracked her fuzzy mind but couldn’t think. “Fuck it. I’ve never been this tired!”
Sharne nodded sympathetically, waiting for the creak of moving gates to stop before she responded, “I feel you. The days have started to run into each other. I don’t even know how long Julianne and the others have been gone.”
Bette glanced at the watchtower wall. “A bit o’er a week. I don’t think I’ve had more than a few hours o’ shuteye in all that time.”
The hum of anxious chatter floated up to them. “I’d best go down and see ta this lot. Yer a’right ta man the wall?” Bette gripped the doorway and lowered a foot onto the ladder.
Sharne watched and worried. The soldiers on rotation had been working hard, but at least their shifts ended every now and then. Bette hadn’t left her duties at all, electing to sleep on a thin blanket on the watchtower floor for the few hours a day she wasn’t on active duty.
"How about I take the new lot for their welcoming tour?" Sharne suggested. "You stay up here and have a nap."
"Thanks fer the offer, but I don't plan on comin’ back when I'm done. I'm takin’ me arse home, shovin’ it inta a warm bed, and not comin’ back till I’ve caught up on me sleep. Unless we’re attacked." Bette shrugged. "In which case me plans will go ta hell in a handbasket."
"If you insist," Sharne said. Of course, she thought to herself, if you don't know we’re being attacked, it won't interrupt your beauty sleep, will it? She resolved to make sure her leader got the sleep she needed, no matter what.
Bette clambered down the ladder, almost missed the bottom rung but managing to catch herself before she fell arse-first in the mud.
"Everybody in?" Jarv called from up ahead. "Closing the gates now!"
Bette regarded the sorry group of travelers. There were about fifteen in total, mostly old women huddled under thin shawls with small children clinging to their skirts or hiding behind their elders.
Bette crouched in front of a small girl who stood a little apart from the rest. She looked tired, and her eyes held the weight of what she had seen on the roads. Still, she stood tall and straight and looked Bette in the eye.
"Is this the safe place everyone has told us about?" the girl asked.
"It is, wee one." Bette offered her hand.
The girl didn't take it. "You talk funny," she said. "Does everyone here talk like you?"
"Abigail, hush." An older woman hurried over and tried to snatch the girl away. "I'm sorry for her rudeness. Please forgive her."
Bette sat back on her heels. "And what's rude about that? I do talk funny." She looked back at the girl. "There's another man here what talks like me, but he's out fightin’ the monsters."
The girl's face brightened. "He's killing remnant? He must be very brave."
From behind them Jarv barked a laugh. "Garrett's brave, but he's not as brave as our captain. He's not as smart as her, either. He is a lot hairier, though."
A couple of the children giggled and Bette stood. "Come on, ye lot. Ye all look ta be in need of a good feed and a place ta rest yer heads. I'll show ye where ya can get both."
Bette led the ragged band of travelers to the Hall. The doors were propped open, and the cavernous space was already twice as full as when the theatre troupe had used it as their temporary dwelling.
Harlon sat at a table by the door, a stack of papers before him and a pencil in hand. "Refugees?"
Bette nodded and turned to those following her. “I'll ask ye all ta give this man here yer names. A lot o’ people have been separated from family an’ friends, so we’re makin’ lists ta keep track o’ who’s safe."
A woman stepped forward, younger than the others, with a baby cradled in her arms. "You have a list of survivors?" she asked. "Please, is my husband's name on it?"
Others quickly stepped forward with inquiries about loved ones lost during their travels. Apparently the men from the village had gone first, hoping to find a safe place to lead their families, but they hadn't returned.
Those who had stayed behind and the women who were fit to fight had left next. Half had returned, telling terrible stories of red beasts and immense hordes of remnant.
Bette shouted them down. "Just give Harlon yer names fer now so we can move ye inside. The list o’ survivors we’ve found is on the far wall over there. Ye can get meals down the end o’ the hall, but I don't suppose I need ta direct ye ta that. Those o’ us in the town have been smellin’ that glorious meat all day." Bette’s stomach growled when she inhaled.
Harlan pointed to a woman and lifted his pencil. "Your name and village?"
Bette wandered away, leaving Harlan to sort out the clerical duties. It had been his idea to assemble the list of incoming refugees. Some had already left, hoping Muir had more space and was better able to cope with the influx of people running from the chaos. She knew the larger city would take anyone who asked, but they were already bursting at the edges.
Bette sucked in a deep breath, savoring the scent of roasted meat, hot gravy, and fresh bread. She wandered toward the table of food to look for Annie.
"Oh. Hello, Angela," Bette s
aid awkwardly.
"Angelica." The Arcadian woman's voice was brisk and Bette blushed. Still, the blonde woman smiled at her. "You look like you need a feed."
Bette shook her head. "This is for the refugees. I can get somethin’ ta eat back a’ the barracks."
Angelica clicked her tongue in a motherly fashion, which made Bette’s hackles rise. "We sent food over to the barracks two hours ago. It'll be cold by now, though I’d be surprised if your hungry soldiers left any."
Without waiting for Bette to answer, Angelica piled the plate high with food and thrust it into the captain's hands. "You can't protect the city if you're falling down tired and hungry. Eat this, then go get some sleep."
Bette looked at the plate hungrily and clapped her mouth shut, just in case she drooled on it. "Thank you, but I really do need to speak to Annie, and probably Francis too. Do you know where they are?"
Angelica looked at her carefully and sighed. “I'm not going to convince you to sit and eat, am I? Very well, take that plate over to Francis' house. You should find them both there."
"Much obliged," Bette mumbled through a mouthful.
She continued to stuff the food in as she carefully picked her way past the press of bodies, bags, and blankets strewn across the floor of the Hall. By the time she made it to Francis's house, her plate was empty and she had licked it clean. With her free hand, she knocked loudly on the door.
Annie pulled it open, glanced at the plate, and shook her head. "Let me guess…you didn't even take a minute to sit down and let that digest?"
"It's digested a’right," Bette said, letting out an enormous belch. "Though if ye’ve got some more bread, I wouldna say no."
Annie sighed and took the plate from Bette. Although she was a stickler for good manners, she knew Bette had been working herself into the ground. Annie admired such ethics, and to be honest, would have gotten the young woman any damned thing she’d asked for.
"Was that a new lot of incomers I heard?" Annie called from the kitchen as she piled the plate high with bread, cold meat, and cheese.
"It was," Bette said. "It looks like the dregs of a village—the few that were left after their men went looking for somewhere safe to go."
Francis shook his head sadly. "We really need to get the word out. I can't stand the idea of these people wandering aimlessly and desperate to find somewhere safe."
"That's what Julianne is doing," Bette reminded him. She gaped at the plate Annie brought out and fell silent as she piled a roll high with meat and cheese.
"I'm just glad we had that circus group visit,” Annie said. "We wouldn't have been able to feed this horde if they hadn't taught us how to do it."
Bette hadn't paid much attention to the logistics of feeding and housing large numbers of unexpected guests, but some of the Druids from Madam Seher's troop had set up productive gardens and shown them how to take care of a large number of people.
“They might have taught us how ta feed a bunch of people, but it didn’t do shite for helpin’ us deal wi’ their losses,” Bette said with a hint of bitterness in her voice. “The ones comin’ in are mostly abandoned, or they’ve lost their loved ones. How do ye ease that kind of pain?”
“Not just the pain,” Francis said quietly. “Their fear. These people…they remind me what Tahn was like while the Dawn was still around.”
Bette frowned and took another bite of her roll. “Whrem thm…” She swallowed and tried again. “When the Dawn’s spell was broken and Julianne freed yer people ye fought back.”
Francis and Annie nodded. “We did. It gave us a purpose, and allowed us to heal a little,” Annie said. “But these are monsters you’re talking about. Remnant beasts, and creatures from another world. We can’t send old women and babies out to fend them off with pitchforks.”
The angry flash in her eyes made Bette wonder if Annie, lacking any other weapon, would have been able to fend off an entire remnant horde with a frying pan.
“Ye don’t need ta stand on the ground ta fight,” Bette pointed out. “I might just be able to come up with somethin’...if ye don’t mind, Francis?”
Francis heaved a deep sigh of resignation. He knew that whatever Bette said, he really didn't have a veto in whatever she planned. He just hoped that whatever it was wouldn't leave him with too much of a mess to clean up.
CHAPTER NINE
Bette didn't have to wait long to put her plan into action. Francis nudged her awake just a few hours later with news of an impending remnant attack. Bette bolted off his spare bed and sped to the watchtower.
Minutes later she’d brushed off Sharne’s plea to head back for more sleep and started putting her plan into action.
"Put that barrel o’ spears there," she told Mack. "The other one can go at the other end o’ the wall. Did Lewis bring the slingshots like I asked?"
Mack nodded, trying to hide his smile. So far none of the soldiers knew exactly what Bette was up to, just that it involved the refugees and a good old-fashioned dust-up with the remnant. "Who would have guessed that every kid in this village had a half-dozen slingshots to their name?"
Bette shrugged. "It's no sleepy farm village. Tahn is full of fighters—fighters these kids look up ta. Ye don't think they spend every minute practicing wi’ the blunt sticks they call spears and trying ta hunt rabbits wi’ those slingshots? When they're out there it's not rabbits they’re huntin’. They pretend they’re remnant and yell battle cries before they attack."
Mack frowned. "Yelling at a rabbit doesn't seem like the best way to get it to sit still. Don't the rabbits run off?"
Bette shrugged again. "I said the kids wanted ta be fighters. I never said they were smart."
Mack chuckled. "I see your point. We really aren't the town we used to be, are we?"
"No, yer not. We are not. And right now that's exactly what these refugees need ta see." Bette stomped down the narrow walkway that topped the wall that protected Tahn. The incoming remnant horde was a small one—only about forty strong—which under normal circumstances wasn’t really a challenge for her now-seasoned fighters.
For this fight, however, those soldiers had been told to hold back, make their kills slowly, and not wipe the bastard remnant out all in one hit. Bette smiled to herself. If she could pull off her plan, she had no doubt that the timid, quiet refugees would wake up tomorrow feeling brave and in control of their new situation, no matter how unpleasant it was.
"Incoming!" Sharne yelled. The afternoon light was just bright enough to pick up movement at the edge of the trees. Bette raced back along the walkway and through the watchtower and slid down the ladder, a boot and a hand on each railing.
She ran to the Hall and flung the door open, eliciting startled looks and a few squeals from the people inside.
"I want every single one o’ ye ta follow me," she yelled. "I don't care if yer old. I don't care if yer young.” She looked at a woman carrying an infant. "That one can probably stay," she added.
The wee child was struggling to find its thumb. Bette didn't know much about babies, but she didn't think it was big enough to hold a spear.
The refugees stared back at her dubiously and none of them made a move to follow her.
Bette scowled; She would drag them over there if she had to. "Come on, stop yer lollygagging. Ye’ve got work ta do, and I damn well expect ye ta do it." Eyes dropped to the floor in shame and one by one the refugees shuffled forward.
Compassion touched Bette's heart. Some of them were so old that she wasn't sure they'd be able to even climb the ladder. She should have thought this through better, but it was too damned late now.
Bette led them over to the watchtower and hustled them upstairs.
"Are you going to dangle us over the side like bait?" an old woman snapped.
"If ye give me cheek like that I will," Bette snapped right back.
"I don't know what you expect us to do up there," another woman said. "If you want us to fight, you might as well just send us out to die. Non
e of us could stand up to those beasts."
"Yeah, we know there's a horde on its way. If we thought we could fight them, we'd have done that back in our village." The man that spoke had joints swollen with arthritis and was missing most of his teeth.
Bette just rolled her eyes. “Get yer arses up the ladder and ye'll see."
One by one the refugees climbed the ladder. Bette noticed a familiar face as a young girl climbed past her.
Big eyes turned to the rearick. "Are you really going to feed us to the remnant?" asked the girl Bette had spoken to earlier that day.
"Ha!" Bette said. "Ye ain’t big enough ta make a snack fer one."
"Maybe, but I'd punch it in the face before it got a chance to eat me." Somberly, the girl turned her head away and continued to climb.
Bette smiled. She knew right in that instant that her plan would work well.
“Open the gates!" The cry went up and the gates creaked open just wide enough for Bette’s team of fighters to slip through. Their numbers had swollen to a dozen on the ground, which left five on the wall to fight with projectiles. Today those five had been tasked with something else.
"I want every single person here who wasn't born in Tahn ta pick up a weapon," Bette called. “No need ta be timid. They’re all for chuckin’, so ye don’t have ta face the bastards down there up close.”
The refugees were still shuffling along the boardwalk and trying not to trip over each other.
"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Mack asked her.
Bette nodded. "Help them all find a weapon that suits. I want every damn one of them ta take out a remnant before this night is through."
"That...might not be possible," Mack said. "There are more refugees than there are remnant out there."
Bette shrugged. "It'll have to do."
Mack supervised the refugees as each picked a weapon. Most of the older people chose spears or large rocks. As she had expected, the children were excited to take slingshots. Bette sought out the little girl who had spoken to her on the ladder.
