Battle Cry (14 page)

“I am asking you, I’m begging you, to help us. There is a war within the city, they are attempting to overthrow the Governor now, to break the lineage of Barkley for once and for all. To instill a new government, one that is kinder to its people. One that is like the government here in Olympus.

“Won’t you help us? Won’t you come with us and fight?”

For a long moment she was certain that she had won the crowd. She had won the crowd, but the Council was not the crowd. The Arena had taught her that the crowd was the most important thing to win because the crowd could sway those in power, so when the crowd began cheering and stomping their feet, she turned to the Council with a smile filled with hope on her face.

That hope quickly died.

She knew before they even spoke that the Council was not going to approve of a war. It was written on all of their faces. The first council member stood and said, “I say no.” Reena gave the crowd a desperate stare and saw many shocked faces looking back at her. She whipped her head back to the next Council member who also stood and said no. Down the line they went, all of them saying no and then tapping their small hammers against the top of the barrier. When the last Council member had spoken, the crowd let out a long hushed sigh, and Reena burst into tears she could not control.

“Why can’t you hear reason?” Her cry was hoarse and filled with pain.

Calliope said, “It is not up solely to the Council. It is up to the people as well. It is also up to me, and the judge general.” She looked at her husband who looked back at her steadily. Calliope said, “I ask you — the people of Olympus — would you dare to travel to the city within the lands that these people come from in order to help them?”

A man stood up from the crowd and said, “I respect their courage. I respect their journey. But I cannot make that trip myself. I don’t know many who could, or even would. I’m not sure that we have enough soldiers to send on that long of a journey and yet still protect our borders here.”

Reena turned towards Calliope who said, “Your words are true and wise Sir. Please be seated.” Reena she said, “There are many cities here on this continent. I’m sure you don’t know that, but it is true. Most of us attempt to have peace among ourselves, but there are those cities that do not wish for peace, and riding in the outlands are rogues and marauders as well.

“I wish we did not need our military, but we do. And the man who has just spoken is correct. If we send our forces away to your lands, we will have no protection here. And an unprotected city is a city that will fall. Barkley taught us that and it is a lesson that we have never forgotten.”

Reena said, “Surely you cannot be serious. Surely you can spare at least some; you can spare some soldiers to help us, please.”

Calliope said, “I’m afraid not. We’ve got to guard our borders at this moment. We’re about to be engaged in a war all of our own as much as we don’t want that. Sending troops now would be foolish.”

“How do we know that they are not spies from one of the cities like Evergreen or Midway?” The man asking the question was old and stooped over but he was still possessed of a sharp intelligence, it showed in his face.

All eyes turned towards Reena. She knew she better answer fast or she was going to be in a lot more trouble than just trying to convince these people to go battle for her in her own lands. “I have no reason to lie. When I leave here I will cross the waters. I got here by crossing the waters. You may ask the pirate Myra; she picked us up on the other shore. Have any of you ever stepped foot on the sand of my lands?”

Nobody spoke until a young boy cried out, “If you put a toe on that sand over there you’ll die, everybody knows that!”

Deal asked, “Do I look like I’m dead to you?”

Conversation broke out among the people. Some of them were agreeing with the older man that Reena and her tribe were probably just spies sent from the nearby cities, where the cities wanted to wage war on Olympus, while others were desperate to hear of what it was like over there in what they still called the lost lands.

Reena’s head ached from it all. Her fatigue and the strain and the stress was proving too much to bear. At the end of the day she was still just a young girl, a young girl who was dealing with extraordinary circumstances. The circumstances were not anything she could possibly explain or even fathom, but she was being asked to do so.

“Shut up!” Her words cut through all the noise and silence fell immediately. Everyone looked at her, their mouths agape and their eyes wide. Apparently nobody here yelled, and she had to fight back the urge to giggle at the consternation that that action had caused. She did not giggle however, because things were far too serious for that. “I came here for your help. I came here to ask you to improve a situation for which you are in part responsible.

“Is that not justice? Is justice not served by helping to fix what you have broken? I don’t know how things work in Olympus, but I do know that in the woods, even among Outlaws, amongst those of us that are considered criminals, there is a code of honor.

“Our code status if you damage one man’s things that you must repair them. If you steal something, you are no longer welcome in a camp. If you do something that causes harm to another person or people, than you are responsible for undoing whatever did harm. You sent Barkley West and, which create our misery.

“I realize that it’s been centuries, and that none of you here are responsible for the decisions that were made that day, but neither are the people of my lands. It is not our fault that you sent a criminal, a killer to take over. It was not just Barkley either was it? There were others; that is why it was so easy for him to build such a violent empire. Because those who helped him build it were violent as well. They reveled in violence, and now we have to live with their legacy.

“For the rest of my life — however long that may be, I will remember this moment. I will remember the moment when I gathered up all my courage and I left my own homelands and I traveled far and wide and through much danger too, to ask for mercy from a people who have none. I came to seek help from a people so cowardly that they would unleash Barkley on the West and then sit back and sigh with relief because he has yet to return to their lands.

“But you’d best hear me now. The Governor, he is mad — madder than any before him. If he ever discovers that there is a land past this desert, he will come for you. And he will bring the entire city with him. Don’t be surprised if you see some of the faces here in the courtroom today asking for your help marching towards you later.

“Those who march against you will have no choice. Most of them will be innocents, forced into battle just as we are forced into the arena now. Just as we are forced to murder other human beings for the sake of the Governor’s entertainment and so that he can keep his rule. Remember that, remember that when he comes for you.” She slammed the sword back into the scabbard and added, “I have Arthur’s sword and I am taking it back with me. I am taking it back with me to fight the man who holds the sword that Barkley held the day he fought against your ruler Arthur.

“I am going to hope that I defeat him. Look at me I’m a girl, and those standing with me are what are called Outlaws in my lands. The criminals, the madman sits on the throne and all who would oppose him are either murdered of forced to flee for their lives, to spend their lives in hiding.

“Look at us. We are small in numbers and even in ages. Deal is not quite twelve and I’m sixteen but. We’re going to go and we’re going to fight the enemy myself because none of you will stand with us.”

Most the people in the room could not meet her eyes. Men actually blushed and looked at the floor and women looked at each other with expressions on their faces that Reena could not discern.

Her gathered tribe all stood, all of them knew there was no point in asking again, the die had been cast. If this was the way it was then this would be the way it would be. As they started to march out of the room, Calliope called out for Oak to wait.

She came off the bench and approached him, her slight figure hurrying down the aisle. She stopped in front of him and asked, “Won’t you stay? I understand there’s a chance that you are not my son, but there are ways to find out. There are many here in the city, learned men who have a test that they can use to tell if you are not. Won’t you at least give me some closure?”

Oak shook his head, “No I won’t. If you are my mother and I was stolen away from you then I’m terribly sorry. I don’t remember where I came from though, I only know that I was found wandering in the woods and I was taken in. The people who took me in and gave me a home were Outlaws; they were the same tribe that I travel with now and I will never turn my back on them.

“If this ever was my home it is not now. My home is back there, where people choose to have courage to fight. I know now that we made a mistake coming here. But we had to try, we had to try for the sake of the people over there. I am not going to stay here and leave the people that I love over there suffering. I’m sorry if that causes you to suffer because that is not my intention.”

Reena’s eyes filled with tears. She knew how hard that had to be. It would’ve been so tempting to stay, to declare himself the son of the ruler of this mighty city, and her husband who was an equally powerful person. Oak and Deal would’ve had the best life here, but instead they were deciding to go back, to risk death to fight side by side with her.

Gratitude welled up inside of her. She did not even know what to say to that, in the face of their overwhelming courage, all she could do was wonder how when the time came she would be brave enough to die in the company of heroes such as these.

It was not Myra that took them back to the shores of their own lands, it was a stubby man with one wooden leg and a strangely feathered hat perched on his head that guided them home.

The entire time that he took them there he insisted that they were insane, that they had to be joking. He kept repeating the same thing that they had heard in the Council room: the sand was poisonous and they would die as soon as they stepped foot on it.

He was a colorful little creature and even his name, Foghorn, was larger than he was that he was larger than life, so in a way it all made up for itself. He kept Reena laughing despite the seriousness of her situation and he told them tales even wilder than Myra’s.

He claimed to have sailed all the way around the entire continent on which Olympus rested. He said the earth was still round although there were places that the ocean became so wild and turbulent that a ship could not cross it. He said there were other continents, but that so far he had been afraid to stop in and see what was there.

On this day he was leaning against the rail watching Deal climb the rigging into the crow’s nest with admiring eyes. “That boy is a natural sea urchin.”

Impulsively Reena replied, “That’s funny because in the city they thought he was the grandson of Calliope.”

Foghorn said, “Did you know that Calliope’s father and father before him were pirates?”

“No, I did not.”

Foghorn said, “Maybe the boy gets it from us then.”

Reena turned to look at the salt-laden gray waves crashing against the bow of the ship. Sorrow had begun to set in and she was tired, more tired than she had ever been. Foghorn knew of her failed mission and also knew that she was dreading returning to her lands, even if he didn’t believe that she actually lived there.

“There used to be a statue,” Foghorn said. Right at the mouth of the harbor of Olympus there was a statue many many centuries ago. Now the way I heard it was that the statue that did not originally belong there. It belonged to another country, but during the Great War a country that was fighting with that country snatched the statue up and took it to their own harbor and planted there sort of as a gesture of contempt.

They called that statue the Lady of Liberty. She had a torch in one hand and it was raised up high.

“They used to say that the lady stood for justice, but not just justice: justice for people who no longer had a home because their homes had been taken away from them due to tyranny. It was a shame when she went down into the sea but we all knew it had to happen eventually. She was old and the pedestal she stood on had crumbled. They used to try to fix it but eventually the sea took it out from under her feet and she went into the sea. I have been looking for her ever since, just to see her again as silly as that sounds.”.”

“I don’t imagine a giant statue would be hard to find,” Reena said. She wasn’t sure what the point of this conversation was, but really with Foghorn, there might not have been any point at all. He didn’t seem to need a reason to talk.

“You might be surprised how hard it is to find things out here in these waters.” Foghorn gave off one of his wheezy chuckles and then pointed towards the bow of the boat. “If you look now you’ll see the Leviathan.”

Reena looked and her heart stopped. Her fingers clutched the railing even after she began to pedal backwards and her response seemed to amuse Foghorn because he gave another one of those wheezy laughs. Reena could not help but notice that he stood a good distance back from the rail himself though.

“Leviathan sure is a beauty isn’t she?”

Reena had to admit that the giant, monstrous creature riding the waves below them was beautiful in its own way. It was terrifyingly long, longer even than the ship on which they were sailing, and she had a clip of terror in her heart. What if it decided to simply knock them over?

Unable to keep that question to herself she asked, “Could that thing, the Leviathan, I mean, knock the boat upside down and into the water?”

Foghorn laughed  and said, with a shrug a little more nonchalant than Reena would have liked. “I suppose it is possible. I mean they have been known to do it but so far I have been lucky and have never been capsized.”

That hardly reassured Reena, in fact it just made things worse. The giant black and white creature rose from the ocean, water shooting out of the top of its stubby want head. Its mouth opened and she screamed, she could not help it. It had many rows of teeth, huge and crooked and she fell backwards onto the deck, her fingers scrabbling for a grip on the hardwood.

Foghorn said, “It only eats people by accident.”

Reena glared at him from where she lay on the rough wooden boards. “That is not comforting.”

“Really? I would’ve thought you would’ve found it so.” Just then he was doused by a huge wave of seawater coming from the blowhole on top of the creature’s head. Some of the water hit Reena as well and she choked with disgust and flipped over on her belly trying to crawl away as fast as possible when it occurred to her that if that thing simply hit the ship there’d be nowhere to go anyway. She didn’t even know how to swim.

By the time she made it to the mast and crawled up it. The entire crew and Deal laughed at her clinging desperately to the mast. Most the tribe thankfully was downstairs suffering from seasickness again, so she was spared their laughter.

“This is not funny!” She managed to straighten her clothes and give everyone watching her a long look that meant business.

Foghorn said, “Look at it this way Missy, if you live to tell this tale it will be a whale of a tale.”

Reena had no idea why that was so funny, but the entire crew was howling laughter. She had to admit she was going to be almost sorry when she had to leave the ship and its strange captain.

**

She did have to leave the ship however; they all did. Foghorn did not want to put them out on the sand, but he had no choice although he waited to see if they would all die as soon as their feet hit the ground. When they didn’t he gave them a cheery wave and shouted, “Maybe one day I’ll get land legs, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

They watched the boat sailing away, all of them staring after it. The trip to Olympus was over. It had not gone as they planned and now they were heading back to their homeland no better than they had been in the first place.

They began the long and arduous trek toward the oasis, none of them speaking. It was Dax who finally broke the silence by saying, “Reena, I have a question for you.”

Reena asked, “What is it?”

He stared into the distance, at the shifting sands and the ever-present sky. The unpleasant birds circled overhead and the sun was already beating down on them so hotly that they knew they wouldn’t be able to travel much further that day.

“Until you went to Olympus, could you have believed that such a place existed?”

Reena said, “Of course not. How could I have imagined that it would have, I mean we’re told that we are the only place on earth left.

Dax replied, “That is my whole point. That is what we are told. Have you ever wondered why?”

Lucas said, “Because that is what everybody believes.”

Lauren replied, “Or maybe not. Maybe Barkley deliberately made it seem as if we were the only place left on the planet so that nobody would go wandering.”

Reena said, “That makes more sense. Do you know what Foghorn told me? He told me that there are many continents and that he has not yet had the bravery to stop at any of them, but he has seen people there. He also said that not long ago he saw a ship on the water that didn’t come from Olympus’ continent. He said it didn’t belong to any of the neighboring towns and cities on that continent either; it came from a continent far to the east. He wanted to see who was on the ship but the tide wasn’t right, and they were sailing in opposite directions so you never got to.”

Lucas said, “Foghorn is something of a teller of tall tales.”

Deal retorted, “That is true but he is also a hell of a sailor. He actually has been everywhere he says he’s been. Inside his cabin there are stones and shells from all over the place. Not just that continent, but all of them. The only reason he’s never stopped at our continent is because everybody knows that it’s dead, that the nuclear warheads destroyed it completely and that it’s never been able to grow back.”

Curious Reena asked, “What is a nuclear warhead?”

Deal said, “I don’t really know. I just hear people talking about them. It was some kind of weapon that the old ones had in the Great War. It’s what destroyed the earth. That and something that had to do with hydrogen. They had magicians back then who could make things that would blow up entire cities, leave the buildings, but just wipe out the people.”

Lucas said, “You should not have climb so high up into the rigging and up on the mast Deal. The sun has baked your brain. Otherwise why would you be so willing to believe such tall tales.”

“Because they are true!” Deal shot him a filthy look. “It seems like my whole life I’ve been listening to the same stories and nobody ever told me to question them, but the minute we started questioning them, we found out that none of them were true. I mean think about it: a few months ago would you ever have believed that Barkley was anything besides a hero? Of course not, because that’s what you were always told.

“If it can be true that Barkley crossed the desert and created the city of Aretula, then why can’t it be true that the city was destroyed by people just as cruel and vicious? That only makes sense.”

Oaks said, “The boy has a point.”

Everyone fell silent. Nobody had spoken to Oak about his decision to stay with the tribe despite it being obvious that he could stay in Olympus and have a good life there. Reena knew she should say something to him, tell him that his valor was appreciated and that she knew how hard his decision was, but she didn’t know how to say it. She was fairly certain that nobody did.

“I saw a Leviathan.” Reena blushed when everyone turned to look at her. “It’s true! It was huge, bigger than the boat even. I thought I was going to die.”

Deal said, “I saw it too. I also saw her trying to run away from it. She landed right on her bottom in the middle of the boat deck.”

The tribe all began to laugh, the laughter easing the tension. It was a good thing that the tension was eased because they had a long way to go and they all knew it.

**

They made it back to the oasis safely and soundly and Damien met them there at the outer ring. He guided them inside without asking questions for which Reena was grateful. It was only after a huge and very welcome communal dinner that he took her to one side and began to ask her questions.

Reena was slightly angry with them as she asked, “Did you know about the water? Did you know about the sea?”

Damien chuckled. “Of course I did. I’ve seen it many times. It’s vast and huge and slightly frightening, it’s also entirely undrinkable, which is slightly ironic isn’t it? Surrounded by water but nothing to drink.”

Reena said, “I’m glad you find it amusing. What would’ve happened if no ships had come along?”

Damien waved a hand. “Oh, ships always come along. How was Olympus?”

She studied his face. “Have you ever been?”

“No, I see no reason to go. This is my homeland. This is my people’s land. We were here long before Barkley, long before your homeland and long before your city. My people were here before the city was even built the first time, did you know that?”

Reena said, “No. I didn’t.”

Damien said, “It’s true. This land, the sand and dust in this oasis — it runs through my veins. It’s where I belong. I would never leave here.”

Reena looked down at the ground below her. “I used to feel the same way about the woods and I think in a way it is still home, will always be home, but now that I’ve left it, I’m wondering… Is that really my home? I suppose I am being disloyal.”

Damien said, “No — not at all. You are not being at all disloyal. You have every right to wonder where your home is.”

“My home is supposed to be where I grew up.”

Damien said. “You might be surprised where you come from Reena. Just because you live in a place does not mean that that is where you started out.”

Reena said, “would you believe that they actually thought Oak was the child that the ruler of Olympus had had stolen from her a long time ago?” Damien did not look surprised by that news.

The women who had stayed with the nomads all seemed to be in good health and to be happy. Reena was happy for them, and in the short time since she had left them with the nomads they had blossomed. She had never realized before how tired most of the women who were Outlaws were. The strain of always being on the run, always being afraid took its toll and now they were relaxed enough to enjoy their lives in a way that they never would’ve been able to in the woods.

Later that night she ran into one of the women dipping water from the oasis well and she asked, “Are you truly happy here? I mean the oasis is beautiful, but outside there is nothing but sand and wind.”

The woman to whom she was speaking tilted the pitcher that she was fetching water in towards Reena’s mouth and gave her a long cold drink. “Outside of any place that is home there is usually nothing more than desolation. I would rather be surrounded by desolation and live free and some small amount of beauty than live in beauty that is never really free.”