Nevermor (60 page)

“Back to the
cabin, my girl,” he said, ushering her along.  “We have more to talk about.”

1

The Rifter and
his Pack traveled to the high mountain.  It was near dusk when they reached the
base and they journeyed on into the night, though none of them had much to
say.  This was a dire time – for the land and also amongst themselves as a
group – and they could all feel it.  It was as if they knew they were marching
off to death, but still they went.

They followed
their leader to the end.

The boys kept
their eyes open as they moved up the mountain pass, but there were no signs of
the pirates that had invited them here.  Even more suspicious than that, there
was no indication that anyone had come this way recently.  The trail wasn’t
worn through the snow, and the only thing that reached out to stab them was the
cold wind.

The Pack was
nearing the halfway mark on the way to the peak when they all collectively
began to have second thoughts.

“I knew it,”
Mech said, speaking out first.  “It’s a trick.”

“You did not
know
,”
his twin rebuked him.

“But why?” Sly
asked thoughtfully.  “It seems so pointless.  What could he hope to accomplish
by bringing us here?”

“Well I guess if
all else fails, we might freeze to death,” Finn said disgustedly.

“There has to be
a reason,” Toss said, trying to show support.  “What could he gain from calling
us away from where we were?  That’s the only reason he’d bring us here if it
was a trick – to draw us away.”

“True,” Nix
agreed.  “He was close enough to take Wren.  Why didn’t he just attack us back
at the camp?”

“Too many Tribals?”
Mach suggested.

“As if that
means anything to him,” Nix sneered.  “No, I think he had something else in
mind.”

“We’re back
where we started then,” Sly said.  “Why the mountain?  Especially since he
doesn’t appear to be here.”

Rifter heard
what they were saying, but he believed that his enemy was here.  He had no
proof, and his senses weren’t as clear as they’d been before, but he knew his
enemy was here.  He
knew
!

“He’s here,”
Rifter said, looking toward the mountaintop, desperate for a sign.  “I know
he’s here.”

“You know, or
you
think
?” Finn asked.

“Finn’s right,”
Nix said.  “You’ve been looking for him for days and you’ve found nothing.  He
was so close to us just today, and you didn’t know.”

Rifter didn’t
like the sound of that.  “Are you questioning me
again
?”

“Your senses
aren’t clear,” Nix argued, but his voice was calm.  “Your head isn’t either.”

“He’s here
somewhere!” Rifter shouted angrily, unwilling to be wrong.

The rest of them
stood by silently, seeing no need to dispute it, but Rifter was aware that they
all doubted him.  Why?  Had he led them astray that many times?  What had
changed?  He had half a mind to send them all away right then, but he was too
wounded to say anything at all.

They stopped
there to rest a moment and Sly took his scope, setting the lens so that he
could peer through the darkness.

“Wait a
minute…”  Sly stopped suddenly, and his loss for words made the others turn. 
“So that’s what Calico meant when she said ‘
flying vessel’
…  She wasn’t
talking about Rifter at all.”  He lowered the scope and offered it up.  “You’ll
want to look at this.”

Rifter took the
scope from him, putting it to his own eye.

“Look above the peak,”
Sly instructed him, but even after Rifter had directed his gaze there, all he
saw was the dark.

“I don’t see
anything.”

“You don’t see
that
?”
Sly asked, disbelieving.

Rifter scanned
the mountain peak for signs of activity.  He didn’t see whatever Sly saw –
nothing at all that looked like a disturbance had been made.

“All I see is
darkness.”

Sly stared at
him and the rest could practically hear the churn of the gears inside the boy’s
mind.

“You’ve been
made blind to it,” Sly said, understanding.  “That’s why you couldn’t find him
when you were searching.  That’s interesting…”

“What are you
talking about?” Rifter demanded with his usual irritation.

“Try harder,”
Sly said, forcing the scope back into his hands.  “Look past it.”

Rifter stared
into the sky again, unsure of what he was supposed to be looking at.  He
scanned the night, but still saw nothing except the dark, as before.  He was
just on the verge of lowering the scope and breaking the damn thing when he
noticed a large spot in the sky where there were no stars.  He stared at that,
trying to look into it as if it was a black hole, and then the truth was
revealed to him.

Then, he
wondered if he believed it himself.

He could see the
Desdemona there, floating in the sky, held up only by shadow just as if it was
riding on the ocean.

What?
  Rifter saw it,
but he didn’t understand.  How could it be?

It doesn’t
matter.

Rifter nearly
dropped the scope.  He wanted to take off directly to the ship, but Sly caught
his arm, holding him back.

“Please, Rifter,
let’s give it some thought.”

He’s there. 
He’s right there and he has Wren.  He’s waiting for me. 
Rifter’s heart
was speeding up, his thoughts pulsing with anger and hate.

“Rifter…”

He closed his
eyes and tried to push the darkness back down.  It was only for them, even
though he didn’t feel that he owed them any favors.

Just a bit
longer.  Just a bit.

“We’ll make
camp,” he said finally, sighing out his aggression.  He felt more at ease. 
“We’ll give it some thought.”

2

They camped
there on the side of the mountain, avoiding fire even though it was cold.  Each
of them had looked through the scope and seen the shadow of the ship looming
over the frozen crest, showing faintly in the moonlight.

Every boy had
the same question on his mind: how best to deal with getting to it, but the
paths of their thoughts kept coming back to the same place.

The Scourge’s
prediction through Fang had been correct.  No matter how many Rifter had
brought with him, this fight was going to come down to the two of them – the
Rifter and the Scourge.  It came back to what they had known – to words they
had heard so many times before.

As it had begun,
so would it end.

Rifter was too
quiet, smoldering within himself.  The rest of them knew that he would do something
irrational if they didn’t call him back, but in this case, there wasn’t much
else they could do.  Rifter was the only one who could handle this.  There was
no other plan.

“It seems that
the Scourge kept his promise,” Sly said finally.  “There’s only one way to
approach this.  He wants you alone, Rifter.”

“Best to go in
the night when he can’t see you coming,” Nix advised.  “You can handle a few
pirates without us.  Fight him or not, get the girl and bring her here.  We’ll
wait.  If you want to go back after that to deal with him, that’s your
business.”

“It can’t be
that simple,” Finn complained.  “It doesn’t make sense.  A flying ship?  This
can’t be all there is to his plan.”

“Maybe not, but
we’ll just have to be ready in case of anything,” Nix told him.

“Is that good
enough?”

“It has to be.”

Through all of
that, Rifter was quiet.  They were right, but he had already known.  There was
no need to discuss it further, for hesitating would not delay the inevitable.

He had to go
there alone.

With tight lips,
he looked at them, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak.  There was no need
for instruction.  Whether he lived or died was not up to the rest of them.

Rifter did not
tell them goodbye.  He didn’t wait for them to wish him good luck.  He shot up
into the air, pressing through the dark toward the ship – toward his fate.

3

The Pack watched
their leader transcend into the sky, recognizing that this was Rifter’s fight
now.  They were not the same as he was, and there was nothing they could do. 
Rifter’s sworn brothers knew this, but there was one among them that could not
quite swallow it down.

At the end of it
all, he was still Wren’s brother
first
.

“So this is it
then?” Henry asked them.  “He goes alone and we can’t do anything?”

“Rifter is the
only one who can stand against him,” Sly said as if reciting it from a rule
book.

“Sometimes it
happens this way,” Finn said, “and we just have to wait for him to do what he
has to do.”

“Has the Scourge
ever taken a hostage before?” Henry pressed.  “You said yourselves that it was
different this time – that it didn’t
feel right
this time.”

“And what do you
suggest we do?” Nix wanted to know.  “We can’t fly.  We’re fully grounded.”

Henry didn’t
know what to say to that, only sure that it wasn’t good enough.

“He has Wren,”
he said weakly.  He was giving up, feeling like a helpless child.  He hadn’t
felt that way in a long time.  “I’m responsible for her.”

“There’s nothing
you can do,” Nix continued to insist.  The others didn’t try to reassure him,
lost in their own thoughts and concerns, perhaps.  Henry wanted to give them
all a rough shake.

“At least tell
me that he can save her,” Henry entreated.  He tried to keep his voice strong,
but he knew he was pleading with them.  “Say that he can do what needs to be
done and come back with my sister alive.”

He looked
desperately at every one of them, trying to catch their eyes.  None of them
said a word.  For the first time, they felt something in their leader that they
never had before.

Doubt.

1

The ship was
riding on a cloud of darkness, the hands of a hundred shadows holding it up in
the sky.  This was something new – a fresh twist on an old story.  Rifter felt
that he was impressed by the effort.  How had the Scourge managed it?

Maybe I should
be impressed that he hasn’t quite run out of ideas for me. 
He shook those
thoughts away.  He had to keep focused.

Rifter was
surprised that the deck was empty, even though he had seen the pirates hanging
by their necks from the side of the vessel, but he hadn’t expected that there
would be no one on board.  Why had the Scourge done this to them?  Did he need
a reason?  Perhaps his crew had been more trouble than they were worth and he’d
decided he didn’t need them anymore.  It didn’t matter much to Rifter.  He
would likely have killed them himself if they’d still been alive to oppose him
now.

He drew his
sword upon landing, knowing what sort of reception he was sure to get, but none
came out to meet him.  He stepped carefully, looking for trouble as the old
ship creaked and groaned, but there was no one.  He was alone.  Could this have
been a trick as the others had said?

No.  He’s here. 
He’s close.

He lifted his
eyes toward the ship’s wheel on the upper level, and there he saw a figure in
white.  She was lashed to the mast, her gown billowing and her expression
listless.

“Wren…”

He didn’t
realize that he had said her name out loud until she turned to him.  Her eyes
locked on his, but she didn’t call out.  If it was to keep his presence a
secret, it didn’t matter.  A dark figure emerged from beyond the shaft, and
Rifter felt his blood boil.

A thousand
alarms went off inside his head, but he tried to keep himself restrained.  The
sky began to swirl above them, the clouds meshing together like a spiral of
smoke above the mountain.  Everything had built up to this moment.  After so
long, he knew that today was the day.

How many times
have I thought that before?
  He couldn’t remember.

He tried to
pretend that Wren’s presence had no effect on him, but inside, his heart was beating
with quick pulses of worry.  He knew he shouldn’t have cared about her now –
she shouldn’t have been the reason he’d come here – but he couldn’t quite make
himself stop.

If anything
happens to her…

“I’m glad you
made it,” the Scourge said to him, starting down the steps to meet Rifter on
the lower deck.

“Yeah, I’m
here,” Rifter responded, pacing casually.  “I never refuse an invitation.  But
I’ll admit: I was disappointed when I heard you’d taken the girl.  I thought
we’d already talked about this.  We decided it was better if there wasn’t a
woman between us.”