by C Cato
Ray parked the buggy they’d used in a large cave system twenty miles north of the farm. Cole had been impressed with the small stable kept there and the two men that guarded and tended the station. They’d transitioned from car to horse and ridden the rest of the way in.
A young lanky boy came trotting from a large, single-level building. It had no windows, and the scent of hay and horse manure made him think of home. “Ray! You’re back!”
Ray dropped down from his horse and opened his arms, immediately folding the boy in a tight hug. “Hello, Garret. How were things while I was away?”
Cole smiled, but curiosity was making his mouth itch to speak.
“Donna, Tully, and Mica were arguing the whole time. I tried to get them to stop, but…” He raised his arms in an exaggerated shrug. “And we got two new ones.”
“Let me guess. Malik and Connie?”
The boy nodded vigorously, his shaggy black hair flopping in his face. Cole got dizzy just watching. “How’d you know?”
“They were the only other children within miles of Celene’s farm. All children are sent here when they arrive in the city. Probably didn’t even wait for their mothers to say bye before stuffing them in a wagon.” Ray handed his reigns to the boy, and Garret gathered the other himself. “Take care of the horses and start cleaning up the barn. We will be having a lot of guests arrive this evening, and we’ll need space for them.”
Cole pulled his bag off the saddle, and Garret led them away. Ray marched to a Victorian farmhouse that boasted brightly colored stained glass in all the front windows.
Since there was no way to hide the A’amoth that had traveled with them, they’d agreed to stay in the woods a few miles away until nightfall.
“You plannin’ to explain the kid?” asked Cole casually.
“Haven isn’t really built for children. Which is funny since that’s supposed to be the sole purpose of the damn city. When my service ended, I decided to come out here, but offered to take any orphaned children. Wanted to make sure they had a safe place to grow up. When the girls are old enough, the Valkyrie will come for them. Children from the city are very few and far between now. I think the last one born was fifteen years ago, a boy. The ones in my care now were all ripped away from their families out here somewhere.”
The door opened to the mouthwatering house-seller, fresh baked cookies. Cole closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.
“Ah. That would be Donna. She’s ten and loves to bake.” His gray eyes grew darker. “They’ll come for her soon. The Valkyrie consider eleven to be an appropriate age to begin training.
“How long has she been with you?” asked Cole, dropping his bag to the floor next to Ray’s.
“One of the kids will take it upstairs,” he said, waving to the bag before turning right.
Although the exterior appeared Victorian the interior reminded him of Celene’s place, with the brightly colored large pillows, and cloth coverings everywhere in the living room, but the minute he turned the corner into the dining the difference was plain. The dining room was massive, filled with a large dark wood table that could withstand a nuclear blast—and maybe had. It easily sat twenty people, at least. Some paintings of landscapes and seascapes made the room more cheerful.
In the kitchen, past the dining room, Ray greeted a young woman with a hug and a kiss, and she offered him a cookie. She was tall for a ten-year-old. Tall being relative. She was also pale like Ray. Half-breed, too?
“Donna, this is Cole. Cole, this is Donna.”
Cole waved, but the girl eyed him boldly up and down.
“Not bad, Ray. Probably the best one so far,” she said between bites of a cookie.
Cole tried for casual as he leaned against the door frame, but the burn in his face probably gave him away. Ray offered him a cookie and a smirk.
Donna lifted an eyebrow.
“Where are the others?” asked Ray.
“Upstairs, in the playroom with the new kids. They were brought in this morning by those bitches.”
“Ray, what are you teachin’ these kids?”
“I don’t know what you’re used to Cole, but children don’t stay children long in our time.”
“Do you think they’ll want to come down for dinner?”
She waggled her head. “Who knows. Our time?”
Ray ignored her question. “Could you go outside and help Garrett? We’re expecting guests, and they’ll be staying in the barn.”
She regarded him with a narrowed gaze before she bobbed her head and trotted outside.
Ray went to the dining room table and pulled out a seat to drop into heavily. “I had helped Connie and Malik’s families escape.”
Cole sat across from him, wishing there was more he could do for the man. His shoulders drooped and his eyes were bright.
Ray slammed his fist into the table. “Those women are destroying us. The worst part is they don’t even realize it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sure the A’amoth have already been digging into the reasons that women across the barrier don’t have trouble having kids, and why the Valkyrie who are all reported to be sterile don’t seem to have issues when they are Hunters. With the Valkyrie, though, it’s business as usual and every year, the birthrates have grown lower and less frequent. A girl hasn’t been born inside the city for twenty years.” Ray posted his elbows on the table, burying his face in his hands and his fingers in his hair.
“You can’t fix the world, Ray. Why do you try so hard?”
He parted his hands enough to gaze up at Cole. “To chase the demons away, I guess. If I help as many as I can, it makes it easier to believe someone would have done the same for me?”
“Adopted you?”
“Rescued me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I was thrown in a Hound unit as soon as I came to Haven. I was sixteen. We were good, too. Laughlin was our leader, and our Valkyrie was Delyn. Back then, we tracked down units of bandits, not just searched for the elusive Vault. Things weren’t too bad at first. Delyn died of fever when we were caught out one winter. I was eighteen.”
Cole winced at the dry tone. “Did you not love her?”
“Delyn? Not really. She fucked us for sure, but she didn’t grow an attachment to us like most of the other Valkyrie did to their units. I suspect she just enjoyed the novelty. She wasn’t cruel, though, so we didn’t mind. Unfortunately for us, our unit drew the notice of Jenna. She decided that instead of reassigning us, we were to be her harem.”
Ray’s gaze took on a faraway stare. “It’s not good to be chosen by Jenna. She doesn’t like men. At all.”
“Then why have a harem?”
“Tradition?” said Ray absently. “It’s something the Mother Superior has always done. Ceremonial. Symbolic of the struggle to repopulate the Earth.”
“So, what did she do with you if she didn’t want to sleep with you?”
“Torture. Two of the five in my unit died in the first two months of service. Protecting me. Trying to direct her attentions away from the naive kid. The third brother Hound in four months after that, leaving me and Laughlin to shoulder her perverse need to hurt. I’m still not sure how we both managed to survive the year.”
Cole wiped his hand down his face. “How have these women held power so long?”
“Military might. They have less numbers, but all the weapons.”
“Are you sayin’ the men in the city aren’t armed?”
Ray nodded. “Yes. It’s a capital crime for a man to wield a weapon in Haven. Any man found doing it outside the city was labeled a bandit, and Hunters and Hounds ruthlessly hunted down bandits. Public executions are a powerful deterrent.”
“But you think we’ll find help inside?”
“Yes. The Hounds. Maybe even some of their Hunters. I don’t know how many there are now, but they’d help if I asked.”
It would have to be enough, but Cole hated the unease that had settled in
his gut.
“Ray!” said a new high voice, and two little boys darted in, launching themselves at Ray, immediately lightening the mood. The larger of the two had warm brown skin, hair was long and braided into small plaits that swung as he hugged Ray’s neck. The smaller boy crawled into his lap. His shaggy blonde hair falling into his eyes.
“Hi there, Tully. Hi, Mica. This is my friend, Cole.”
“He’s tall,” said Tully, staring up at Cole with his mouth open.
Cole convulsed once and then let loose his laughter. Ray joined in, then kissed him on the cheek and put him down, his fat cheeks ablaze.
“I’m sure when you get older, you won’t think me so tall.”
“You talk funny,” said Mica from Ray’s lap.
Cole nodded and muted his grin. “I’m from a part of the world where this is how we all talked. It’s called an accent.” He’d never had to explain his southern lilt before.
“Okay,” said Mica, accepting that answer as truth.
To be a kid again.
Ray put Mica down. “Why don’t you take the new kids out to the barn to help Donna and Garret while Cole and I work on dinner. Tully, could you run our bags upstairs? Just put them in my room.”
His room? He was coming to like Ray, but his interest wasn’t any stronger than it was with Soren. Had he missed something?
“I don’t mind stayin’ in the barn with everyone else. Used to do it back home when I was a kid.”
The boys scurried away, and Ray’s face fell.
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry. I guess I… I mean what you said to Risa...”
“No, Ray, I’m sorry. You really weren’t supposed to hear that,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck as it heated exponentially. “I like you, but it’s not the same as what I feel for Keet or even Zaro.”
Cole stared hard at the floor, not wanting to meet Ray’s gaze.
“I understand,” he said, his voice small. “I guess I should apologize then.” His voice grew louder, but there was a tremor to the words. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I can set you up in Garret’s room, and he can share with Mica and Tully.”
“I don’t want to put anyone out,” Cole said, shuffling his feet. He wished the floor would open up and eat him.
“IputthebagsawayandI’mgoingtothebarnbye!” said Tully as he streaked by and out the front door, taking some of the uneasy tension with him.
Cole laughed, tentatively at first, but when Ray did, too. If it sounded a little forced, Cole wasn’t going to mention it.
“You’re good for them,” he said, happy for the change of subject.
“It’s better than what they would have gotten.”
Cole was almost afraid to ask. “What’s that?”
“The girls would have been kept in the Valkyrie main barracks until old enough to train. The boys—turned out on the streets to fend for themselves. So many don’t make it.”
“I can see why you need to try so hard, but you don’t have to make up for anythin’. What happened to you was horrible. The fact that you’ve come out the other side with a full head of marbles, just shows how strong you are.”
“Thank you. I think.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Cole
A’amoth began to arrive after the sun had fully set and only stars lit the way. Cole and Ray were waiting for them in the barn. The children sat in the loft to watch.
Cole paced, his mind a whirl of nightmarish images. Ray’s experience inside the city was hellish. He didn’t want to imagine what was happening inside those walls.
To Sonya.
Cole tried to contact her, but he couldn’t even reach Risa, and Sonya’s comm still wasn’t fully functional. Silence did not help his anxiety. He’d tried to once again straddle that line between cool profession soldier and fully invested and concerned lover but was having a hard time picking them apart. Pulling one to the surface over the other. They were bleeding together in his mind.
Kofa and Balin had arrived with six male A’amoth, including one of Lirra’s suitors Bim. The children lasted a whole five minutes before they were all rushing down the ladder to get closer to the A’amoth and fire off a thousand questions.
It took the edge off.
None of the pale men showed offense. They all smiled down at the children and answered questions patiently. Cole stood near Kofa and Balin, cornered by a small girl with wild brown ringlets. She shoved her thumb in her mouth between questions. Kofa was impressive in blue-colored, layered short robes and wide black leather belt, even more so when he knelt down on both knees to be closer to the girl’s eye level. The distance he didn’t cover by going to the ground, he made up when he picked her up and placed her on his hip.
This was the hope for a continued civilization. These gentle and brilliant people. Cole swallowed hard as Kofa leaned in to allow Connie to whisper in his ear and then he returned the favor before passing her over to Balin, who tossed her in the air with a high-pitched squeal.
Children sat comfortably with the A’amoth who had taken up more relaxed positions on hay bales while Cole let them in on the immediate plans.
“Now that you’re all here, we need proper intel on what’s going on in the city, but we’re too far to get a report from Risa. Ray and I are going to go in and make contact and form a plan of attack and then we’ll come back here.”
“My sister is pushing our people hard. They should be arriving tomorrow or the next day.”
Cole frowned. They had just arrived. How were the others so close behind? “So fast?”
Balin flashed a flirty smile. . “We are very fast when we need to be, and Zaro has some of the best vehicles around.”
“Let’s hope it’s soon enough.”
Kofa nodded emphatically and cuddled the drowsy girl in his arms closer.
The children hovered around the A’amoth as they made their way to the house and Cole helped Ray saddle up the horses.
Cole tugged on the plain brown tunic he wore. It was tight across the back of his shoulders and itchy, but Ray had assured him it’s what was common with farmers. “Explain to me again why you get the fancy black leather clothes, and I’m in this itchy crap?”
“A, this is a Hound uniform. B, because no matter what I dress you in, you’re going to stick out. We just need to get in and get to our destination as quickly as possible before your freakish size brings too much attention.”
“Have you seen the A’amoth in there? I’m tiny compared to them!”
“They’d stick out, too. It’s why they’re staying here. Would you like to rethink the plan?”
Cole wanted to roll his eyes, a very Risa thing to do. “Why do you have to be so damn short?”
Ray chuckled. “What matters is everyone is short. Everyone, but you. Which makes us normal and you a giant.”
When they crested the ridge that sloped down into the valley and he saw Haven for the first time, his jaw dropped. It wasn’t what he’d been expecting. He’d driven by the building a time or two in his day before taking up with Ian, but without the sprawling houses and businesses that used to live in its shadows, it was just so much more impressive. The outside was lit with torchlight, but large spotlights came from the center of the complex.
“Torches?”
“Keeps wild animals at bay. Wild dogs are pretty common in this area, and they’re vicious.”
“Were you goin’ to warn me about them?”
Ray shrugged. “Eh. I figured you’re a soldier. You can handle yourself.”
“You’re a bit of an asshole, Ray.”
“Aw, shucks,” he said, before urging his horse forward with a click of his tongue, leaving Cole to chuckle in his wake.
The roads leading up the city passage were almost empty, but the guards appeared alert. She snapped to attention as soon as they approached. “State your business.”
The Valkyrie was dressed in a white uniform different than the ones from the wilderness. A crisp double
-breasted jacket trimmed in black was worn over matching tight pants and black boots. Not a hair was out of place.
“I think I need to stop underestimating these women,” said Cole.
“A healthy strategy,” replied Ray, his attention on the guard.
She had a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other, and her eyes bored into Cole with laser focus.
“I’m a retired Hound. Wanted to bring my friend here to meet some old friends. He’s thinking of joining up.”
“Farmer?” she asked Cole.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She tilted her head. “State your name.”
“Cole.”
“And you, dog,” she said with a sneer.
“Ray,” he said without flinching.
She jotted down their names and waved them through.
“Is that normal? The insults?”
“For the Hounds? Yes.”
“Why?” Cole guided his horse around a drunk who staggered into the road. There were many people out, but he did see a flash of white as Valkyrie patrolled through the park they skirted.
“Men and women don’t mix here. When they need sperm to impregnate the fertile women, there is a sperm bank for donations. In the city, men and women are segregated. Women are immediately put into a higher class than men. It’s different for Hunters and their Hounds. Must be. They are assigned to be together in the wilderness for months at a time with only each other to rely on.”
“What were you sent out for, besides us?”
“While I was a Hound, there were still bands of men that roamed the countryside. We were sent to eliminate them, when we weren’t looking for you. The council considered it a waste of resources. We also found Valkyrie that had run away. Back then I couldn’t help them, and I felt like I died inside every time we retrieved one.”
“I’m sorry. That must have been hard.”
“Harder for them. Valkyrie that ran away always go to the auction block, except the ones that had babies. Most don’t survive their term of servitude.”
Fresh heat suffused his body, and he clenched his hands on the reins. “You’re telling me they would sell the women to the highest bidder?”
