Alexandria (23 page)

“I know.”

Jack decided before they even set out that he would not be taken alive. He looks in her eyes, and without a solitary word spoken the makings of a clear pact are established.

They force their worn bodies ahead, traversing the highland with a limping trot, each step sending jolts of pain up their sore legs. Jack counts out his arrows and starts to figure on which place to make their stand. Nothing around looks to give them even the remotest of advantages. All he can think to do is run, and they run with all their might.

As they near the edge of the high prominence, a wisp of smoke rises before them and Jack’s heart clenches, fearful at once that they’ve been boxed in from all sides.

Lia sees it too and grabs onto him.
“We’re trapped.”

He walks forward cautiously. “Let’s sneak up and take a look.”

They sink to the ground and shimmy through the weeds, then sit with their backs propped flat against a boulder that hangs above the drop-off. Broad lowland stretches out below, bordered all around by steepening foothills. Settled in the midst of another decayed villa is the bonfire of a roaming tribe.

“Who are they?”

Jack shakes his head. The dale is checkered with rectangles of twisted wreckage and cracked, slumping buildings. On the coastal side the tribe has erected a makeshift settlement, using one of the last fully standing walls as a rampart for their lean-to. Jack spots several dozen at first glance, some sheltering themselves under the long thatched canopy they’ve constructed, while others shift around the fire and shout inaudible calls to one another. They wear furs and skins of Neolithic disposition, their hair shaggy and dirt-coated, and a few of their children rollick naked and grubby around the unkempt boulevards.

Jack draws out their map and looks for any writings that denote the colony’s existence. Assuming they’re situated where he thinks they are, he sees no mention whatsoever.

“Wanderers, I think.”

“Maybe they can help us…”

He ponders this, watching their movements sharply. “I don’t know if they can help us, but we ought to at least warn them what’s coming.”

He takes an appraisal of the rocky outcropping they’re perched upon and calculates the gentlest way to reach the bottom. They run inland a stretch and trudge obliquely along the stone face of the descent, approaching the encampment from behind. Cowering behind spiny shrubs, they pick their way forward one station at a time, not wanting to reveal themselves.

The sight at close range gives them second thoughts. A row of spears with heads of chipped stone stands up against their lean-to, surrounded by a bevy of other sharpened objects. Pieces of honed metal lay scattered about, not the sort that have been fired and hammered, but looking more like wayward objects stropped against rocks or whatever else might thin their edges to a razor’s breadth. Several of the men have bows over their shoulders, with arrow tips coated in black pitch.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do this… maybe I was wrong.”

“We’re stuck,” he says matter-of-factly, “we don’t have a choice.” He hands her his bow, holding back only one small knife, so as to not seem a threat when he approaches. “Okay, wait here, and if anything happens, you run, understand?
Run.”

Lia nods, her eyes wide.

Jack hops down the last few boulders and takes slow steps toward the tribe. He avoids the shadows and walks right out in the open with his hands at his sides, trying to look as unthreatening as possible. A concrete hulk rises out of the ground slantways with warped metal bars protruding like rusted weeds. He climbs up and treads the concourse, glancing back one last time at Lia, who watches him anxiously from the bushes. A couple of the tribesmen have already noticed him approach and they narrow on him skeptically as if they’re not quite sure he’s real.

“Hello,” he calls. “You’re in danger.” All heads swivel toward him. Jack holds his empty palms out flat, then points up to the ridge he and Lia just descended. They are murmuring quietly to each other with looks of confusion and Jack can’t make out their words. “Do you understand?
Danger
. You have to run,” he says, pointing emphatically toward the ridge.

The women set about corralling the children and hustling them under the lean-to, while the men continue to stare pensively and whisper to one another. One of them points at Jack and makes furtive comments to his mates and their expressions darken.

“Kine tah denok,”
shouts an old woman.

Jack hitches back a step.

They draw their crude bows on him and pace forward brazenly. He holds his ground and tries to keep calm.

“Kine ton d’e’stranna sahl lah cherreth,” calls a stout man by the fire. He rises and takes up a hardwood pole with a curved metal blade strapped to the end, like some archaic sickle, and sweeps it through the air is if it needs priming. He wears fur around his waist and a necklace of bones drapes across his red-painted chest.

Jack figures him to be their leader. He stumbles backwards and tries to work out some sign to explain himself, pointing urgently to the ridge and waving his arms.

Lia cries out from the brambles, pitching back as two tribesmen rush toward her from the cover of a shelled-out building.

“Run!”
Jack screams, and he launches himself off the concrete outcropping just as an arrow whizzes by his head. He lands with a thud, pumping his legs frantically, and the tribesmen take up their arsenal of spears and blades and give chase. Lia clambers down and manages only a couple long strides before they latch onto her. She kicks out, growling at them, and they seize her flailing legs and pull her to the ground. Jack barrels straight ahead with his knife drawn, sorely missing his bow and arrow. The men pin Lia down and hold a curved metal disk to her throat, scalloped with razor-sharp teeth.

“Nadannak,” they shout.
“Nadannak!”

Jack skids to a halt and drops his knife, shrieking for them to stop. The men of the tribe engulf him and he feels many hands clasp onto his body and drag him back toward the lean-to.

“Liiaaa!”
he yells, and his brain electrifies with panic when she does not respond.

The tribesmen stop suddenly and look curiously toward the ridge. The wind ripples around them, snapping their hides and rags about, and when it swoops in at just the right angle they can hear the nearby baying of wolfmongrels and the increasing rumble of pounding hooves.

Feiyan and his two searchers thunder across the highland with the mongrels sprinting lithely alongside them. They sent the call and rode ahead, allowing for the other detachments to find the trail and catch up on their own, after Feiyan and his crew have cinched the hunt.

The wolfmongrels dart straightaway for an angled shelf and the horsemen follow suit, clicking briskly down into the valley. They see the smoke and reckon it belongs to the runaways—there is no one else in sight. Tight smiles play at their lips as they close in on their target. They ride single file, with Feiyan in the lead, and as they reach the halfway point of their descent a flaming arrow screams out of the ruins and lodges into the left haunch of the forward steed. It bucks wildly and throws Feiyan to the ground, then slams into the wall of the escarpment as the flames scorch its hide. In a mad frenzy it loses its footing and plunges down the rocky drop-off and breaks itself to pieces.

The rearward horses stomp crazily down the ledge as more arrows fly and the riders fight to hang on. Feiyan draws his bow, searching for the source of the attacks, and sees only grown-over storefronts and piles of rubbish. He hunkers down behind a bank of foliage and waits for another flurry to come, and soon it does. A fiery arrow flies into the bristly shrub he hides behind and it lights up quick and furious, drawing him into the open. He doubles over and makes a crouching sprint for the cover of the ruins.

Jarrik struggles to regain control. He snaps the reins and his horse rears back on its hind legs then blasts forward, riding toward the source of the flaming volleys.

Cullen, the last member of their team, bolts down the ramp and gallops toward the commotion. A slick shot pierces his horse through the side of the head and they both keel to the ground, the rider’s leg pinned under the threshing hulk of his mount. He works himself free and scrambles along the ground, seeking refuge behind a nearby structure with his machete drawn. Two tribesmen emerge from the shallow hidden nooks and try to collar him. He swipes out with the blade, slicing one of them across the torso just as the other spears him through. He gurgles blood and cants over, dead before he touches the ground. One of the mongrels dives forward and clamps down on the spear-carrier’s leg, gnawing and thrashing its head. They plunge the spear into its neck and cast it away.

Jarrik guides his horse through a cluttered alleyway and comes up behind the tribe’s nest. Several archers slink behind the stone wall, with another holding a torch around to light up the pitch before they fire. Jarrik shoots one of them at distance then canters back for cover. The tribesmen surge forward in a rush, levying a hail of arrowfire at Jarrik and his mount. He lobs off a couple more shots but they overtake him in an instant, skewering him through the neck. Melted tar runs down his chest and the flames encase his head. He slumps over and his horse sets off, bucking and threshing as its hide lights up with bright, demonic fire. Horse and rider go caterwauling across the ruins, smoldering and screaming, both spiked through with a dozen burning quills, looking like some bleak harbinger of doomsday come to warn of the apocalypse several centuries too late.

Feiyan wanders through the side streets, holding fast to the rubble, and when he reaches a forked intersection he realizes despairingly that he is surrounded. A menagerie of filthy tribesmen with ropy, knotted hair marches toward him from all directions, their spears thrust out, their eyes steeped in icy hatred and their sadistic grins reeking of utter and profound bloodlust.

Jack and Lia fight nasty flashbacks as they huddle in the crawlspace with their ankles and wrists bound up, spears leveled on them starkly. The women and children of the tribe sit across the dim space, holding on to each other, regarding the young trespassers with suspicion. The riot outside ceases. Footsteps and scraping sounds approach the holdout. Jack doesn’t know whether to feel relief or terror when it is the tribe’s leader that appears at the misshapen doorway, and not the Nezra.

“E’stranna maan,”
he says.

Jack is lifted to his feet and carried into the alleyway. The tribesmen stand in a semicircle around Feiyan, several others keep him pinned to the ground with his arms and legs drawn out. They march Jack straight to his prone, struggling form.

“Jack…”
he moans. “What’s happening?”

Jack says nothing.

“Tah eh kine tondessa?” the leader asks, his voice a throaty growl.
“Kine?”
he repeats, and gestures back and forth between Jack and Feiyan.

The tribesmen watch Jack expectantly. He is not certain what they want from him, but he gets the notion that he’d better do something quick. He lowers his head and works his jaw around for a moment, then lifts his face and spits on Feiyan. This elicits a reaction and the men chatter vigorously in their unknown tongue.

“Enah kine?
Mah sikelern des maan, des e’stranna?” The leader hovers the spear over Feiyan’s head then nods to Jack’s captors and they release him.
“Tah
sikelern e’stranna…”

“Jack? Jack, what is this?”
Feiyan croaks.

“Sikelern.”
The leader places the spear in Jack’s hands.

“I think he wants me to kill you, Feiyan.”

“He’s crazy, Jack. Don’t do this.”

Feiyan pleads with such pathetic helplessness that Jack ruminates briefly on the nobility of killing an unarmed man held to the ground—and then he thinks on Lia, and his lost family, and the home that he will never see again, and he raises the spear above his head and plunges it down into the center of Feiyan’s chest. Everyone steps back and watches the warrior quake on the ground, the spear shaft trembling in the air as he spasms. When he is still and dead they rush forward and kick his corpse and run him through with a broad assortment of sharp instruments.