Water & Storm Country (34 page)

Clang!

I block it with the edge of my own blade, and
shove him back. His body is swept away as a horse bashes into him,
not stopping until the Soaker’s been trampled and bruised under its
trod. I know that horse. With Gard atop him, a massive and
awe-inspiring warrior, Thunder rears up on his hind legs and kicks
another of the enemy in the head, sending him sprawling.

While I watch, captivated by the force of
nature that is Gard and Thunder, Passion turns sharply, reminding
me that we’re in a battle. Two Soakers approach from the side, as
if trying to surround us. Passion kicks at one and he grunts,
stumbling back. A
ziiip
ping sound creases the air as an
arrow lodges in his chest. He falls, spitting blood.

The other Soaker stops his attack and looks
around in confusion just before an arrow catches him in the gut. I
spur Passion forward, adding my sword near where the arrow entered,
finishing him off.

We wheel around and I see Siena, bow strung
with another arrow, having already moved on from helping me. A
Soaker attacks her, but ends up on the ground with an arrow through
his throat.

All of a sudden, the area around me is
relatively clear, the battle having spilled further down the shore,
as if carried on the wind, which has shifted, sending the rain
swirling in circles around us.

Without command from me, Passion runs back
toward the fray. I watch in horror as one Rider, then another, are
struck down by Soakers in quick succession. The men of the sea
don’t spare their horses, stabbing them through their bellies.

In fact, without looking very hard, I can
pick out twenty or thirty Rider bodies sprawled along the plains,
mounds of black and red. Littered amongst them are the dead bodies
of brown-clad Soakers, at least double the number of our dead. But
are we winning? To my left, more boats are landing on the shore,
carrying reinforcements.

The first familiar face I see is Remy’s, but
he’s no longer on his horse. For some reason he has dismounted and
is sword-fighting a Soaker. He blocks a strike and then kicks his
opponent back, where he stumbles over a dead horse carcass. The
animal looks familiar and I realize it’s Bolt, Remy’s horse, killed
in battle.

Everything about Remy, from his body language
to the torn expression on his face, cries rage. With two quick
steps he’s on the Soaker, stabbing him once, twice, and then more
times than is necessary to kill him. Again and again and again,
desecrating his body.

Finally he stops and looks up, tears in his
eyes. He sees me and his expression changes sharply. Is
it…concern?

Even as he raises his finger to point behind
me, I’m turning, trying to raise my sword, trying to be faster than
I know I’m capable of.

The Soaker sword cuts into my hip, all the
way to the bone, sending ripping, roaring shockwaves through my
body. “Arrrrrrrr!” I scream, frantically slashing out with my
blade, slicing the chest of the enemy who snuck up on me. The man
falls, his sword coated with blood—my blood.

Passion, as if sensing my pain, nays loudly,
a cry of angst. “I’m okay, girl,” I say, cringing as another bolt
of agony shoots from my hips to my toes. I stuff a hand in my
mouth, bite down hard, trying to distract myself from what I know
is a serious wound. “Go, Passion, go!” I scream through my
fingers.

For the first time since I met her, Passion
seems unsure of herself, moving forward first at a walk, one
hesitant step after another. When I manage to kick her gently in
the ribs with the foot on my uninjured side, however, she breaks
into a run.

On the beach, a large raft washes up. Then
another.

I forget the pain of my injury when I see
who’s on the rafts.

The Heater slaves have arrived.

I
refuse to meet my
father’s eyes as we cut through the rough waters, just behind the
rafts.

They’re all going to die, every last one of
them. Stolen from their homes, brought upon ships where they’re
treated like animals—no, less than animals—and now forced to fight
a war that has nothing to do with them.

Hatred burns for the one who raised me. What
will I do with it?

The rafts land before our boat, and the
children of fire country spill onto the shore. Beyond them, the
battle rages. Men scream with anger and pain. Swords ring out.
Bodies fall.

“Attack or I’ll kill you myself!” my father
screams at the Heaters. They look back, unsure and unarmed, but
then run toward the plains, toward sure death.

What kind of monster…? The worst kind—the
very worst kind.

But then I see something strange, something
that temporarily snaps me out of my anger. A girl, sword held high,
silver and red and streaked with lightning flashes, slashing at a
seaman, killing him. Her skin’s as brown as Jade’s, as brown as the
Heater children who are, even now, headed her way.

She sees them and her body seems to go stiff,
like all the grace and ability I just saw her use to fight the
Soaker has been sucked out of her.

Then she starts to run toward the children,
shouting something back over her shoulder.

Thud!

Our boat crashes onto shore, but I can’t take
my eyes off of what I’m seeing, because there’s more. Another
brown-skinned girl emerges from the battle, carrying a bow, running
like bloody hell, following the other. Then there’s a third, but
this one’s a guy, muscular and fast, but again, his skin is at
least three shades too light to be a Stormer. There’s something
deadly and animal-like about the fourth brown-skinned warrior that
emerges, his arms dark and painted.

The other officers are spilling out, already
moving up the sand, shouting orders at the bilge and the men
already, although no one’s listening because they’re too busy
fighting. My father pulls at my elbow. “Remember—you fight or she
dies,” he says.

I grit my teeth and climb out.

Drawing my sword, I run after him, toward the
fight, which has spilled onto the sand, right into the middle of
the children, who have huddled together, surrounded by death.

The four brown-skinned warriors—who I only
now realize are Heaters, like the children—surround the cluster of
bilge, facing outward, as if daring anyone to harm them.

A few Stormer riders eye them, but,
surprisingly, turn away and continue to fight only the Soakers.

The other officers have reached the edge of
the battle and seem uncertain of what to do about the cluster of
now-protected bilge. “Kill them!” my father shouts, and I’m not
sure whether he means the bilge, or the four Heater warriors
protecting them.

A few of the officers leap into action, Hobbs
included, attacking the two Heater girls. The girl with the bow
unleashes two arrows in short succession, cutting down two officers
as if they’re no more than common foot soldiers. Their
soaked-through blue uniforms won’t protect them now.

Another officer drops when the sword-carrying
Heater girl stabs him through the midsection.

Hobbs slashes at her, but she blocks his
attack, quickly countering with a flurry of strikes of her own. He
jumps back into a group of other officers who are sticking close
together, doing battle with a few dark Riders who have broken
through.

Riders fall. Officers fall. The world spins
around me, like we’re inside a barrel, rolling down a hill.

With the greater numbers, the officers
eventually get past the four Heater warriors, who are barely able
to protect themselves against the onslaught. The children break
from their cluster, running from their own masters, running for
their lives. A few of the older ones usher the younger ones ahead,
hanging back, grabbing at the fallen and bloody swords and knives
that litter the sand around them.

Hobbs leads the charge, urging the officers
toward them, stalking them like prey. Why would they kill the very
children who maintain the ships, the very slaves bought by my
father? Because he ordered them to. Because they blindly follow his
every command.

I have to do something.

I spring into action, running toward the
brown children and the blue officers, watching in horror as Hobbs
raises his blade over one of the kids. Without hesitation, he stabs
the boy, pushing him to the sand at the same time that he extracts
his sword.

“No!” one of the Heater warriors screams, the
girl with the sword. Her blade is moving impossibly fast, cutting
and slashing and leaving officers dead in her wake as she fights
through them. The other three redouble their efforts to get back in
front of the children.

But I’m closer—and no one is trying to stop
me—so I reach them first, just as one of the other officers
slaughters another child.

I act on a choice I only now realize I made a
long time ago. I stab him in the back.

He cries out and falls, drawing every other
officer’s attention, Hobbs included.

“You!” he roars. “Kill him!”

Three officers spring forward, and it’s all I
can do to deflect their heavy blows. Tripping, I fall back—

And it’s over, surely it’s over—

And I won’t see Jade, not ever again—

And then one of the officers falls, an arrow
through his ear, which is spouting blood.

A second one dies next to him, pierced by the
Heater girl’s sword. She made it through. She saved me.

The third officer turns to run, but is cut
off by the shadowy Heater. His two curved daggers make short work
of him.

I struggle to my feet, holding my sword at
the ready, expecting them to kill me next. Save me and then kill
me.

A scream tears through the rain.

We all turn to see Hobbs standing over a
Heater boy, who’s fallen to the sand, surrounded by the dead bodies
of the brave children who fought with him.

Hobbs killed them. He killed them all. And
he’s about to kill this boy too.

This boy who is…

My eyes widen when his face comes into view:
skinny and scared and then screaming and angry; he’s the boy I
fought on the day I became a man, in a time that now feels so long
ago. The boy who beat me, who shamed me.

The boy whose life I must save now.

Hobbs raises his sword and there’s no time,
although the two Heater girls are already running toward him, one
with a sword and one with a bow and an empty satchel.

I pull a knife from my belt, trying to
remember everything Cain taught me about knife-throwing—eyes on
your target, shoulder and elbow and wrist in line, throw hard but
not too hard—and heave it past the running Heaters, toward
Hobbs.

The moment the knife leaves my hand,
everything seems to speed up. Hobbs’ sword falls so fast, so
deadly, but it’s not in his hand when it does. It’s gravity, only
gravity, and the earth’s pull takes him, too, a moment later, my
knife embedded in the back of his skull.

The Heater girls pull the boy out from under
Hobbs, one of them clutching him as tightly as if he’s her son,
while the other—the bigger, stronger one—stands over them, daring
anyone else to attack.

She nods at me. I nod back.

The boy just stares, his face soaked with
tears.

I turn away and almost run right into the two
Heater men, whose weapons are raised.

This might be suicide, might be the dumbest
thing I’ve ever done, but I drop my own sword in the sand, broad
side down.

“I’m not your enemy,” I say.

“We know,” the taller, unmarked one says, his
words round and long.

The one with the dark markings speaks, his
voice coming out warmer and clearer than I expected. “We’re looking
for a Heater girl. Thirteen years old. She’d resemble those two.”
He motions to the two that are protecting the bilge rat boy.

For the first time, my eyes really take them
in, every detail, every feature. The curve of their noses. The
shape of their brown eyes. The texture of their hair. They appear
more like sisters than tribemates. And Jade would look right at
home next to them.

I gasp, nodding. “I know her,” I say. “She’s
back on the ship.”

“Let’s go,” the shadow-eyed one says.

With a ragged shout and clangor, a group of
Soakers pour down the beach toward us. At their head is my
father.

When Skye and Siena and Feve and Circ rush
down the beach, I want to go with them, to help save their
kinsfolk, but I can’t, because at the same moment I see Remy and
Buff and Dazz, fighting in a circle, surrounded by at least ten
Soakers.

I urge Passion in their direction, watching
as Dazz clubs one enemy in the skull, knocking him out. But another
Soaker manages to slip through and stab him in the shoulder. His
grip relaxes and his club falls away. “Ahhh!” Buff yells, coming to
his friend’s rescue, slashing with his short-knife. He discards one
opponent, but is then knocked back into Remy, who’s facing the
other way, facing an onslaught of enemy strikes.

Passion slams into the back of two of the
Soakers, their bones audibly cracking as they fall beneath us. Two
others fall by my sword. With Passion and I added to the mix, and
with the element of surprise on our side, we gain the upper hand,
cutting each and every one of them down.

On the ground, Dazz groans, alive but in
significant pain. “Where’s Skye?” he asks when I look down at
him.

“On the beach,” I say.

“Help her,” he pleads.

“Are you—”

“I’m fine. Just go.”

I hesitate, but then Remy says, “We’ll
protect him.”

I nod and turn Passion toward where I last
saw the Heaters.

The four of them are in a line, directly in
the path of a group of running Soakers, a blue-clad officer at
their front. Even as I gallop toward them, Gard and Thunder come in
from the side, leading a group of at least a dozen Riders who have
managed, like me, to remain atop their steeds.