Chain of Shadows (Blood Skies, Book 6) (17 page)

Cross looked up at him.  Balding pate and aged eyes notwithstanding, Flint looked younger than when Cross had first met him.

They readied themselves in silence.  Cross saw Shiv approaching, dressed in a light brown cloak that would keep her shielded from the sun once it rose to its blinding glory. 

“
You know what your problem is?” Flint said in a jovial tone. 

“
I have too many?” Cross laughed. 

“
You try to understand women,” Flint smiled.  “They’re not too complicated.  Just remember the Golden Rule: You’re wrong.  That’s it.  Once you figure that out, the rest is easy.”

Flint smiled and walked over to Shiv.  She seemed alive and vibrant.  Her skin was dirty with desert grime and her eyes were heavy with fatigue, but even with all of that Cross hadn’t seen her so animated in days. 

“What are you so happy about?” he asked as she drew close and gave Flint a hug. 

“
I don’t know,” she said with a big smile.  “Just happy to be alive.”

Flint nodded, and smiled. 

Cross’s insides froze.  He remembered her lying there after the battle at the Black Gate, when they thought they’d lost her.  Looking at her now, it was hard to imagine that she was capable of yielding as much power as she was.  Ankharra probably knew as much as anyone about the Kindred, and even she seemed at a loss…and that lack of information worried him.

I’ll keep an eye on you, Kiddo,
he thought. 
I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you.

They had no mounts or working vehicles, so the thirty-three remaining survivors left the crash site on foot.  This stretch of desert, which Ankharra thought was called the Pale Sea, was barren, and nothing had attempted to do them any harm since that first attack by the Simar.  They saw signs of life, to be sure – small tan crabs moved between loose shards of stone, ebon snakes pushed in and out of the drift like they were swimming in an ocean, strange claws snapped up at insects and rodents and dragged them underground.  There were no fliers aside from the bugs, and nothing large moved on the surface, which for the most part was just miles of red-brown sand riddled with short dunes, clusters of broken rock and leaning pillars of black stone.  Trees to the southeast stood at the edge of what looked to be a broader region of broken hills, and a mountain range waited far to the south, past the small dot that was the railway station Creasy and the others had spied from afar.

It soon became difficult to see the horizon – the heat haze fell like a storm, blurring the edges of the land like they’d been submerged in water.  The distant pillars of stone seemed to float on a wavering sweat sea. 

Cross walked with Flint and Shiv.  It was stark in the desert, and the sun had burned away even the barest memory of darkness.  Smoke drifted in ebon patches like hordes of slow-moving bats.  The land was quiet and the wind strangely becalmed, allowing the stench of scorched metals and burning rock to settle thick in the air.

The sun was so bright it was difficult to move without taking things slow.  They traveled close to the stones when possible, using them for shade and taking plenty of rests.  They had a decent supply of water from the downed ship, but they were careful to pass it around sparingly.  Though desert survival was part of the training in the Southern Claw military most of those exercises were carried out in the Scorpion Desert, which despite being hot and unforgiving was nothing compared to this dry and brittle wasteland.  The atmosphere was utterly without moisture.  Cross’s sunglasses seemed to melt against his skin, and so much sweat was pasted to his face he vowed to shave the rest of the beard off the moment the opportunity presented itself.

There was little talking.  They needed to conserve their energy. 

Ankharra approached them at one point.  Her dark clothes almost seemed to smoke in the heat.  Her angular and beautiful face was slicked with sheen sweat, and the hems of her cloak were weighted with bronze chains so it wouldn’t shift in the wind. 

“What can we expect when we come to this place?” Cross asked her. 

There were other conversations going on, but most of them were in the distance, the only background noise aside from the stamp of feet on the dusty ground. 

“If they don’t try to kill us on sight or just turn us away,” she said, “we’ll probably have to prove ourselves to them.”

“
What, like some sort of macho contest, or something?” he asked.  “Are we talking trial by combat?”

“
No,” she said.  “You’ve read too many adventure stories.  We’ll need to prove something much more important.”

“
Like what?”

“
They’ll want to make sure we’re not evil spirits,” she said.

It wasn’t the answer he’d wanted. 

Hard pain thrummed up his shins, and Cross was reminded again that he was in his late forties, not a young man of twenty-six.  With his spirit he could have gone longer, had her help maintain his strength and keep him cool and energetic.  The artifact blade on his back afforded him no such luxury.  It healed him from time to time when it felt the need, but it had been strangely silent ever since the crash. 

He wondered if he should have been concerned by its reticence, and decided he already had enough to worry about. 

Two people collapsed from exhaustion, but a Company Medic, Charver, was able to help them out.  There were no new casualties, at least not yet. 

They kept their pace slow and even, rested on those rare occasions when they found shade – the few pillars and standing stones were spaced at great distances, and none of them were really large enough to provide shelter for more than a handful of people at a time – and drank plenty of fluids. 

Wiley and the survey team fared well; Cross would have thought them more susceptible to exhaustion, but the lank and glasses-wearing engineer seemed giddy at the prospect of mapping a new land, and while Cross didn’t think there was much to be excited about on those barren plains Wiley and his people furiously scribbled notes and broke out theodolites and surveying poles and stopped to take measurements as often as Ankharra would allow.

The pilgrimage took an extended rest around noon.  Their water supply was holding up, but it wouldn’t last forever, and if their interactions with the people at the railway station didn’t pan out they were going to be hard-pressed to replenish their supply.

Cross’s eyes were heavy from exhaustion and heat.  Given the opportunity, he could have slept for days.
             

Flint and Shiv looked thoroughly miserable.  Flint and Cross took turns carrying Shiv on their backs for short stretches, as she was lithe and light for her age, but for the most part she insisted on walking.  A young corporal named Lancer, who was tall and lean but strong, also offered to help, and she rode on the young soldier’s back for a while and bothered him with questions about his time in the service.

“This is miserable,” Flint said.

“
Tell me about it,” Cross said.  “But at least we’re alive.”

They came within sight of the rail station near dusk, but they wouldn’t reach it before night fell.  The open plains were the only reason they could even see it, as it was still at least a dozen miles away, just a speck of curved buildings. 

The group camped out in the open as the sun went down.  There was a small cluster of stones they used to shield the main fire from the rising wind, but for the most part everyone was going to sleep under the naked sky.  The ground was slightly harder than what they’d grown accustomed to, riddled with patches of dry vegetation and cacti. 

Shooting stars fired overhead like flaming arrows.  Cross looked out across the darkening wastes and saw horned skulls and broken stones.  The pillars they’d seen were cracked and weathered and looked to have once been a part of some greater monolith.  He and the surveyors had examined the stones to try and analyze their markings, but they were so weathered and wind-blasted it was impossible to make out even the scantest details. 

Once again the air went from scorching to freezing.  Lack of cloud cover meant there was nothing to trap the earth’s heat, and by the time the sun had completely bled to a red haze on the horizon the wind had turned bone-chilling and raw and the air was as brittle as glass. 

“Fuck, it’s cold,” Flint moaned. 

He, Shiv and the soldiers Lancer and Krieg shared a fire; there were just over a dozen blazes, as many as they could light to thoroughly illuminate the area.  There was still some concern that burning so many campfires would attract predators, but Cross had pointed out that they were already well past that.  A group their size was impossible to hide – if something was looking for them, it was going to find them, and there was little they could do about it. 

“Do you ever
not
complain?” Cross asked Flint with a grin.  He tore open an MRE and chewed on the end, surprised to find it tasted like apples rather than shoe leather, which was more the norm. 

“
And watch your language,” Shiv told her father.  He gave her the
Don’t mess with me
look Cross had come to know so well.

“
Sir,” Lancer said.  He was a tall lad, with wild blonde hair and a lean face.  Krieg, who seemed to always be at his side, was a stocky red-headed man with a broad face and wide shoulders. 

“
I’m not a ‘Sir’,” Cross said.  “Just a merc.”

“
I know who you are, Sir,” Lancer repeated with a patient smile.  “I’m making soup, if any of you would care for some.”

“
That would be most welcome,” Flint said.  “Because these MREs taste like ass.”

“
Language,” Cross warned.

“
What kind of soup?” Shiv asked.

“
Minestrone,” Lancer smiled.

“
Out of a bag,” Krieg said with a shake of his head.  “This guy thinks he’s a chef.  All he’s doing is boiling water over a fire and dumping a bag into it.”

“
More than you can do,” Lancer said.

Cross smiled.  He missed this good-natured ribbing and light-hearted banter in the face of such dangerous circumstances.  The team used to do that, back before everything went to hell.

You destroyed them
. 

He shook the thought away.  There was no need to go there.  It wasn’t going to help anyone.

“Cross.”

Ankharra stood behind him, draped in her black cloak and looking like a shadow.  It was eerie how dark the desert sky became at night.  The moon shone yellow and cracked, like burnished gold. 

“Yeah?”

“
Do you have a minute?”

He didn’t like the notion of stepping away from the flames, but Cross nodded at the others and stood up, instantly feeling the touch of the chill wind.

“We’ll save some soup for you,” Shiv said.

“
She
will,” Flint said.

“
I love you, too,” Cross said, and he stepped away with Ankharra.

Smoke from the fires filled the air.  Cross spied a pair of bald hills to the southwest, backlit by the last rays of the dying sun. 

“The rail station is close,” Ankharra said.  They walked the perimeter of the camp, just at the outskirts of the illumination. 

“
It’s closer than I thought it was,” he said.

“
It’s still at least a two hour hike,” she said.  They passed a pair of sentries, one of many small groups working in shifts to keep them safe through the night.  “I was wondering if I could ask you a favor?”

Cross laughed quietly.  “Sure.  Not like I could refuse.”

“Of course you could,” she said, and she looked at him.  Her jade eyes were penetrating and deep.  “You’re not under contract here, and you don’t report to us.”

“
But me and my people
are
‘hitching a ride’, just like Wiley and his happy team of surveyors,” Cross said.  He stopped walking.  “You know I still consider myself part of the military.  I know no one else does…but I do.”

“
Then why did you leave?” she asked. 

Cross hesitated.  “It’s complicated.”

“Things usually are,” Ankharra said with her honey sweet accent, almost British, but not quite.  “And yet at the same time they’re not.  It’s all a matter of how you break things down.  Back home the Maloj are free, and who knows what kind of damage they’ve already done.  And while I don’t think you or I or anyone is capable of doing anything special to stop them on our own, I still feel compelled to get back as soon as we can so we can help.”

“
Yeah,” Cross said.  “I feel the same way.”

“
But until we get back, there’s nothing we can do,” she said.  “So it’s simple: we get home.  Doing that may be complicated, but our goal isn’t.”  She started walking again.  “I understand things get very complicated in Nezzek’duul.  My parents didn’t like to talk about this place, but I still got the impression that the direct approach is not always best here.”