Forsada: Volume II in the New Eden series (29 page)

CHAPTER 24

A quarter mile of road lies between us and Darius’ army. On our right, the river snakes along the edge of a sharp cliff that rises into the gray morning. On our left, a meadow stretches a hundred yards and ends at a rock wall which soars up in a steep forest to the top of the ridge. Above us float thick clouds.

“It’s been a long morning, hasn’t it?” Garrett sounds exhausted. I’m sure he was up all night. I’d be surprised if anyone got much sleep.

Patrick says, “That it has. Time to get started, don’t you think?”

“We’re really just going to walk out there?”

“Yes, Garrett, we are,” I say, and I start off down the slope. He, Patrick, and Freda hurry after me. We fall into step together, but I slow my pace for Freda. Also, I’m not terribly eager to rush to my own death.

We walk a long, shallow slope along the road where the river narrows and the canyon constricts. Before us waits a wall of men. It’s toward this wall we walk, trying to look confident and calm, when the first snowflakes dot the ground before me. Tiny and thin, they fall here and there and disappear. A bad omen. But for which side?

As we stride into the empty space, a line of six men breaks from the wall and walks at us. Darius will hear what we have to say, then.

“He’s not there,” Patrick says.

“What?” Freda sounds concerned.

“Darius,” Patrick replies as we keep walking without pause. “I don’t see him. Garrett, look up at the ridge. Do you see anything?”

Patrick giving Garrett orders? This won’t go over well.

“Nothing… no, wait,” Garrett says. “It’s hard to see against the sky—it’s so bright, and the snow’s getting thicker—but… yes, there.”

“Don’t point,” Patrick says.

“On our left. Two people. From where they’re standing, they can see us and they can see the main square in Lower.”

“You’re sure?”

“He’s sure,” I say. That’s the same spot in which Garrett, Shack, and I stood when Darius and his army arrived. That’s where I stood when I thought I was watching my father die.

“Darius is in Lower, then,” Patrick says.

“Getting signals from those men?” Freda asks.

“Yes. When we get back, we’ll have to let someone know to watch them. What Darius sees, we can see.”

If we get back
, I don’t say.

It’s not long before we near the approaching six men. We slow and stop, keeping fifteen yards between us. They look mean. I don’t recognize them. Should I try to look mean? Like Forsada ready to turn them to dust? I’m sure I would look like a pouty girl, not like Forsada. So I try to look unimpressed. Bored.

Patrick speaks first. “Roger. Good to see you, friend.”

“Cut the bullshit, Patrick. We know what you are.”

“Right to it, then.” Patrick puts out his hands. “All right, then. We’ve come out here to try to avoid a fight.”

Roger sneers. “I can see why.” He nods at the ragtag army behind us up the slope. I’d feel confident if I were him, too.

“Don’t judge the strength of the fight in these people. You will underestimate them.”

“Patrick, don’t be a fool. We outnumber you three to one. At least. We want to finish this here. Today. All of us want to go home.”

Patrick says, “You can go home now. We don’t have to fight. We can give Tawtrukk back to—”

“The mutants?”

“The rightful owners.”

“You say pup, I say dog. And I see you brought two mutant dogs with you,” the Southshawan says, his gaze lingering momentarily on Garrett, then on me. He stares me in the eye for a few seconds, then looks me over once, head to toe to head again. He’s the one that’s a dog. No, I take that back. Dogs at least can be friends. This Southshawan disgusts me.

Freda breaks in. “We want only to bring Darius to justice,” she says, and for a moment I believe the complete authority in her voice. “Once authority is returned to its rightful place—the First Wife—we can begin trying to heal the rifts he’s created in the Southshawan people.”

“Oh, really? The rift he created?” This Roger dismisses Freda with a wave of his hand. I glance at his army, around at the woods. I see Garrett twitch beside me and know he’s watching the two men on the ridge. Was that dismissive wave actually some signal? I can’t tell.

He keeps talking. “It seems to me that your husband is the one who created the rifts. The thirteenth Semper, bringing about the downfall of all remaining civilization. That was the prophecy, and we’re all fortunate that Darius remembered it from the old books. Hey,” he continues, getting conversational, “where is your husband anyway? I kind of expected him to be here after that act he put on the other day.”

I glance at Freda, admiring her calm and the way she doesn’t react. So they don’t know that Dane is dead. We can use this to our advantage if the Southshawans think their exiled leader is still alive. It’s another wedge to drive between them and Darius, another thing to make them question their righteousness.

“God has plans for both Dane and me that Darius has not foreseen, because Darius has misinterpreted God’s word.”

“Right. Says the seamstress.”

“Truth can be difficult to recognize.” Freda is so calm, so sure of herself. She stands between Patrick and Garrett, her hands folded before her and her posture straight, unbending. The snow, its flakes now big and heavy, forms a light layer of white on her hair and shoulders. Her face looks serene, and her voice doesn’t waver at all. “And Darius misremembers the prophecy and has misinterpreted that, also.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But she’s still talking. Which means we might have a ghost of a chance of avoiding a fight. Keep it up, Freda.

“Of course I know what I’m talking about. When Dane recaptured Southshaw from Baddock, with God’s will, we learned much of Darius’ sacrilegious acts and heretical beliefs. He had Baddock murder Semper Linkan. He misunderstood the prophecy.”

“You’re lying.”

Freda smiles at him in a piteous way, like my mother used to smile at me when I said something truly stupid. Like she thought I was cute but had much to learn. “The prophecy,” she continues, “was not that the thirteenth Semper will bring the downfall of civilization. It was that after thirteen generations, Southshawans could break down the Wall and return to the world, for the Radiation would be gone and the world would be healed. Not downfall. Liberation.”

“Darius is the one healing the world, by ridding it of these mutants!”

He yells the last few words and raises his axe above his head.

“Run!” yells Patrick, and Freda turns to run back toward the safety of our army.

I turn to go with her, but I stop when Patrick and Garrett stand their ground. What the hell? Okay, well I’ll stand my ground, too.

My whip finds my hand and unfurls above me as the six rush us and their army roars and runs up the slope.

“Get out of here, Lupay,” growls Garrett.

“No way, you cheater,” I reply, and the whip snaps out at the man running toward me, slashing across the arm he raises to ward off the lash. He cries out but keeps coming.

Another roar behind us makes it clear that the Tawtrukkers can’t wait to fight back. They’ll get here first, running downhill, but it will be too late for the three of us. The six Southshawans are strong, ruthless, and big.

Just before they fall upon us, another roar rises from the riverbed to our right. A group of ten men climbs up the bank and sprints toward us, only seconds away. Patrick and Garrett seem unconcerned about them, so they must be Patrick’s men. Clever.

This new force distracts our attackers just for an instant, and I crouch and leap upward as the big Southshawan arrives, driving my shoulder hard into his ribs. He didn’t expect that, and air leaves him with a deep grunt. I let his momentum carry him up and over me, pushing with my legs to help throw him. He flies over my head as I spin and throw him with all my strength bundled in a fierce roar of my own.

He doesn’t fly far, but he lands awkwardly and drops his axe in the dirt.

Garrett and Patrick are defending themselves, and I find the other man who’s picked me out for his attack. His eyes are angry and filled with fear, but he’s hanging back, unsure what to do. Well, I know what to do.

My whip cracks again, this time catching his ankle. I throw myself backwards, knocking him to the dirt. I don’t need to kill anyone. I only need to live long enough for the men from the river to arrive.

I turn to look at the man I threw, see him bending to retrieve his axe. I flip the whip to my left hand and snatch a blade from my shirt and flick it. It hisses through the air and bites into the Southshawan’s forearm just as he grabs the axe from the ground. He howls and drops the axe again, clawing at the blade that I’m sure has sliced tendons and muscles. He might never use those fingers again.

But he might never get a chance. The men hidden by the river have arrived. The armies are approaching.

“Time to go,” Garrett says as he grabs my arm. Together, we run back toward our own army.

“Nice plan,” I gasp as we sprint through the thickening snow. “Cheater!” The exhilaration of the fight, the crisp chill of the new winter, the pride in my friends all lift me as I run. It feels more like flying. I laugh as we run, relishing the freezing wet of the snowflakes hitting my face.

We only run fifty yards before our army reaches us going the other way. I can see the rage in their faces, the same rage I’ve felt for a long time. The embers of their burned houses glow in their eyes, but my excitement fades as they flow around and past us toward the fight.

So few. Armed only with clubs, hoes, axes, hunting knives. One carries a long pair of garden shears, another a tree saw. Only a couple hundred. As they stream by, I look to Garrett. My confidence, so high a moment ago, has disappeared.

“Garrett…”

“I know, Loop,” he says. For a moment, his face mirrors my distraught expression. Then it tightens into a repressed grin, and ultimately a smile. “Cheater, remember?”

“What’s the plan?” My confidence is returning. I wish he’d just come out with it. “And why didn’t you tell me!” Of course, this is no time for talk with a battle underway, but I want to know everything.

Garrett nods toward the battle, and as we walk he talks fast.

“When was the last time you saw Tom?”

I can’t remember. “A few days ago, maybe.”

“How many of Patrick’s guys do you see here?”

“Not enough.”

“Right. Not all the Subterran tunnels are blocked, it turns out.”

Tom. Patrick’s men. The ambush from the river. Another ambush. As we reach the rear of the mass of the Tawtrukk army, I ask, “Where and when?”

It’s hard to hear each other now that the battle has begun. The air is filled with sounds of clashing weapons, men yelling in rage and screaming in pain, feet stomping the earth and slipping in the wet snow. The Tawtrukkers right in front of us try to push forward, but the narrowness of the canyon constricts the fighting to only a hundred or so at a time. The fighting is only a dozen yards in front of us, but we can’t reach it through the thick mass of men.

“Soon, and…” Garrett stands on his tiptoes and peers over the seething, groaning battle. He points right down the middle and shouts, “There!”

So it’s on, then. I say, “Come on,” and grab his arm to pull him forward into the battle.

He pulls back, shakes his head. “No, sorry, you don’t get to fight here.”

“What are you talking about now? Forsada fights with her people! I fight here, with them.”

“No, you don’t.” His fingers wrap around my arm so tight I know they’ll leave a bruise. He pulls me to the right, toward the river. “Come on.”

Together we run as fast as we can. I see Freda standing by the river already, watching us and making sure she stays well behind the fighting line. I look around for Patrick but don’t see him. There’s no chance to ask Garrett as we’re using all our speed, all our breath to get to Freda. As we approach, she turns and scrambles out of sight down the riverbank.

In a few seconds we’ve reached the riverbank and scramble down at the same place. We hop from boulder to boulder across the river, which is shallow and fast after the long, hot, dry summer. On the other side is a Southshawan man, one of Patrick’s inner circle but whom I don’t know, holding reins to two horses.

Garrett steers me to one horse while the Southshawan helps Freda up onto the other. He hops up behind her, and I climb up behind Garrett. In an instant we’re galloping along the river, running the deer track that winds its way downstream, sometimes touching the river’s edge and sometimes following it into the forest and back, always back to the water.

The high riverbank that hid our ambushes now blocks my view of the battle as we pass it. We have to hope it’s going our way.

“So,” I say into Garrett’s ear, “what’s the plan?”

Garrett leans forward into the wind, and I have to lean tight against him to hear what he’s saying.

“Darius wasn’t there.”

“Yeah. So?”

“So we’re going to get him.”

“Ah. Good plan,” I say, “but it seems to be lacking in specifics.”