Alexandria (54 page)

“You known Lia your whole life?” Hargrove asks, breaking the lingering silence.

“We grew up together.”

“She’s awful sweet on you.”

“She’s not always sweet,” says Jack, with a hint of a smile.

“What was it like, your settlement?”

Even a few months ago, a question like that might have brought tears to his eyes. But now, for some inexplicable reason, he finds himself happy to reminisce.

“It was the best place I’ve been. We always had something going on. Days we’d fish… hunt… play games. Our parents taught us our letters and numbers. Nights we’d have big cookouts, everyone coming down to the bonfire to eat. Then we’d all, me and my friends, we’d all go out in the forest and play games and pretend like it was the old days.”

“You knew a bit about the old days, did you?”

“Yeah. A little.”

“Passed down to you?”

“I guess. We found some things buried, too. Things from back then.”

“And you knew how to tend fields?”

“We knew some. We built ditches for water. Planted a field out in a clearing.”

“It’s amazing how some carried on. They sound like they were good people, Jack. Wish I’d have met them.”

“Me too.”

They ramble on through the increasingly green landscape, learning each other’s stories and talking about the world around them. It puts their minds at ease from the task at hand, if only for a little while.

They curve north and follow along a winding freeway, lined with the angular heaps of old homes and towers of commerce. Far ahead, Jack sees the outline of the mountains that had been to his left during their long trip down the coast. At the horses’ feet are discarded provisions left behind by crisscrossing wanderers—spent furs and broken tools and old bones serrated with hatchet strikes.

Shortly before sundown, Jack spots them in the distance, at the fork of two rivers, the unmistakable pitch-black silhouettes of Sajiress and his tribe, their bare, rawboned bodies moving diligently against the backdrop of the honey red sky.

Taket watches the drifting sands, a granite man. His blood is foul, his nerves burn with phantom sensations, yet he stands acutely and watches the sand hover like mist over the desert rock.

The young men look off after him, trying read the land in a similar manner and finding themselves illiterate. The blood of their fallen brothers covers them like grotesque war paint, great smears of it about their limbs and faces, dried and dusty. Some of the youngest recruits stare listlessly, as if their hearts have let go, shocked as they are to have lost so much of their fleet, each with eyes wide like a spooked child’s, missing their warm beds at the Temple and the other safe comforts of home.

Taket turns an about-face and surveys the ruddy landscape to their rear, finding nothing but monotony on the darkening horizon. But he had seen it earlier—they all had—the dirty swell of distant riders following in their wake.

He mounts back up and turns the remainder of his men to the northwest, following the inconspicuous traces of some mounted caravan etched faintly on the amorphous sand. He spurs the wellborn Balazir and the others grapple with their ghastly mounts to rejoin him, their afflicted horses now trembling with patches of their hides scorched clean away, lurching across the desert twilight like an army of nightmares.

Sajiress paces toward them with his arms outstretched majestically, as if the entire valley were his kingdom alone. He looks at Jack with skeptical wonder, not quite trusting his own eyes, then calls back over his shoulder and trills out a mouthful of peculiar oddities that sets the small cavalry glancing askance at one another. Hargrove sidles up next to Jack and talks through the side of his mouth.

“You weren’t kidding—for all my days, I can’t place it.”

Jack dismounts and saunters over, his horse’s nostrils steaming in the moonlight. Sajiress grips him by the arms and turns him around, as if sizing up his price for market.

“Jack.”

“Sajiress.”

“Mari’don diwaa lah’ton?”

Jack looks at him and smiles. “It’s good to see you.”

“Tah tevra ota carisser?” asks Sajiress, bewildered by the slew of strangely armed horsemen muddling around the outskirts of his camp.

“Friends,” says Jack, placing his hand on his chest.

“Hello,” says Hargrove, raising his hand in salutation.

Sajiress offers back a stiff mimicry of the action and parts his lips to show a tarnished gray smile.

The tribe edges forward shyly and Jack steps into their midst, locking eyes with the men he fought with on that bleak, rain-drenched day that seems like forever ago. The swell of bodies carries him back to the heart of their camp, and Sajiress takes Hargrove’s arm and pulls him and the rest of his men along after.

A ring of thatched shanties, barely shoulder-high, encircles the glowing fire, and the split river whisks past them in a hushed flow to the east. Denit and the others tie the horses and unburden them while the tribesmen look on, captivated.

Sajiress calls out a slew of orders and a frenzy of activity follows as food and water and fur blankets are fetched. Hargrove listens in keenly, wearing the look of a confounded anthropologist. The straggling men are shepherded round the fire and given the closest seats by their new hosts.

A tanner from the outpost leans in and whispers to Hargrove.
“Where they from, Canada?”

Hargrove shakes his head tightly.

A side of venison is thrown on the fire and a bladderful of cool river water is brought from the muddy bank. The dirty, roadworn men accept the hospitality modestly, offering up awkward gratitudes to the half-naked smiling denizens. Jack stands off the to the side with Sajiress, gesticulating around at the horses, the men, the trail they’ve just ridden, playacting and fetching up objects to use as placeholders in the narrative he seeks to convey. Sajiress nods along pensively. Hargrove watches their little puppet show from across the fire, recording the encounter in his mind for future reference.

“Temple,” says Jack, holding a stone. He again sweeps his hand toward the men seated around the fire, then walks his fingers back to the stone. “To the Temple. To kill the man who stole your children.”

“Temple?
Tah cariss des…
sikelern…”

“Yes,” says Jack, “sikelern Temple.”

Sajiress stares at the men in a daze, and he begins to nod stoically. “Eyah, Jack… lah cariss diwaa.”

“Sajiress… they’re alive.” Jack nods toward a gallery of small children with dirty faces.
“Chur
…
Churth…”

“Eyah…” says Sajiress, creasing his brow.
“Cherreth.”

“Yes, they’re still alive. They’re at the Temple.”

“Alok
e’sahl?”

“Alok, yes. And Bo—”

“Bojin.”

“Yes,” Jack says with tempered hope.

A semicircle of tribesmen stands by a trussed-up stack of provisions and looks on. Sajiress addresses them briskly and a fire lights up in their eyes. He speaks succinctly in his native tongue and the bare-chested men listen raptly, looking back and forth between he and Jack with a growing sense of import.

Off in the shadowy orange of the fire, Hargrove unfolds a small parchment and adds a few lines to the history he is writing.

They eat and drink and exchange odd pleasantries with one another. Children are brought forward and introduced, and they look with great curiosity at the belts and packs of gear the men wear over their finely stitched attire. Jack makes his way around and greets all the faces he remembers and they welcome him in like family.

Hargrove splits away from the group and takes on with Sajiress. Soon they are engaged in a depth of conversation that suffers not a bit from their lack of fluency with one another—they jaw on like boyhood friends.

“What?”
says Denit to a small, huddled group.

“Uket,” says the wild-haired fellow seated across from him, taking a woman’s hand. “Uket.” He nods to Denit.

“Nyla. Mine is Nyla.”

“Nyla
. Tah eh d’ranna cherreth?” He lofts a grubby, naked child onto his knee and tilts his head eagerly. “Hanh?”

“One,” says Denit. “One boy. Named Aaron.”

The hairy one smiles and pulls more meat from the bone and passes it to Denit and Uket. Jack makes his way over and sits down next to Denit.

“Holding up?”

“Fine. Just getting to know Uket and… something, here.”

“Raji.”

“We should try to sleep soon.”

“They’re going with us?”

Jack nods.

“Can they fight?”

“Yes. Good, too.”

Hargrove hunkers down next to them. “I think I got it,” he says vigorously.
“They were abandoned as children
. Their parents left them… or were killed. Couldn’t figure out which. Look around—there’s none here older than Sajiress. No elders. They raised themselves up in the wild. Completely cut off. Lost everything. They’ve wandered all over from the sound of it. Probably seen more than I have. Astounding.”

“Do you think it’s…”

“Doubtful. Too long ago and too far away to be the Nezra.”

“Two of their own got stolen away by the Temple, though. I’ve met them”

“Their children? Really? Is that why they’re so eager to fight?”

“I think that’s part of it.”

“Listen, Jack… we’ll be there within a couple days. There’s no telling where that army is right now. With any luck, they’re dead—but I don’t count us a lucky bunch. They’re likely right on our heels. Marikez, if he’s coming, will be a day or two behind them. If we wait for him to catch up, we may get jumped and lose the one chance we have to get this done. We go it alone. Understand? I need you to draw that Temple for me. Every detail you remember. Everything that’s around it. Anything you think might be useful. I’ve got to start figuring a way to go about this without getting us all killed.”

“Do you think there is a way?”

“Always.”

They huddle by the firelight, long into the night, working out a course. Jack draws intently with the ink and stylus, shaping out the contours of the grounds and provinces, sketching in the topography and points of entry. Hargrove and Sajiress watch every line materialize.

At first light, they outfit themselves and prepare to set out. They double-up on the horses, hooking blades and sharpened gears and bundles of black-tipped arrows onto every buckle and strap available. Three of the stouter women ride along, well-proficient hunters, and nearly all of the men. The children cry and gasp as their parents take the first weary steps away from camp.

Sajiress sits on the back of the saddle behind Jack and they ride alongside Hargrove at the vanguard of the caravan, pushing north through the slender valley toward the bay that rests at the head of the river. The travel is cumbersome but they make do as best they can, taking breaks along the riverbank to drink and wet their heads.

They camp once more in the crook of the valley, somber and silent around the campfire, overcome with their new reality.

In the morning, they wake up and ride. The overloaded horses pick carefully through a series of old cities lining the river, trailing down the long corridors two by two. By the weakening light of evening they depart from the curvations of the river and emerge on the edge of the Pacific.

They unload their gear and lay out a quick camp. Hargrove tugs Jack’s sleeve and they wander off with Sajiress in search of higher ground. Hargrove carries a slender tubular case under his arm and they make a slow climb to the crest of a low mound, hashed over with cracked walls and linear grassways. The view to the west is stunning. The sun lay out on the surface of the ocean like an enormous glowing jackolantern, throwing into stark relief the flocks of birds that turn with supernatural precision over the slate of water. Hargrove grabs onto a ledge of concrete and pulls himself up, then opens his case and removes the telescope. He rests the barrel on an outcropping of rubble and peers off at the point of land extending from the bay. Through the polished eyepiece, he sees in the distance a wisp of light gray smoke trailing up from beyond the next hill.

“There she is.”

Chapter Nineteen