World War IV: Alliances- Book 0 (11 page)

The bearded faces kept their eyes on the ground. Dean walked down the line, sizing each of them up until he found the officer bars on one of the men. He lifted the commander’s chin, the beard thick with dirt and grime. “You’re Russian?”

The man yanked his face away from Dean’s hand and spit on the ground, slurring a thick, drunken-like Slavic tongue at him. While Dean’s Russian was rusty, he recognized a few words to affirm the answer to his question. And while his studies had told him little about the Russian culture, he knew two things of them to be true. They loved to drink, and they were stubborn as mules. Dean pointed to one of his lieutenants then to the Russian commander. “Untie him.”

The lieutenant remained frozen. “Sir, I don’t—”

“Now!” Dean’s voice shattered the frozen air and echoed down the river and through the trees. The lieutenant quickly complied, and the Russian commander pushed himself to his feet. Dean removed his pistol, sword, and heavy jacket and then raised his fists.

The Russian smiled then reciprocated, his bear-sized paws slowly swinging back and forth as Dean circled him. The Russian made a few quick jabs but hit nothing but air. Dean’s men started a low chant, which grew louder as the dance continued. Eventually, even the Russian captives echoed their own support, egging their commander on.

Dean took a quick step inside and brought his right fist under the Russian’s jaw, sending his head up with a pop, followed by a quick left strike to the Russian’s body. The big man stumbled backward, disoriented for only a moment, then recovered and connected with a hard right to Dean’s face. The blow bloodied Dean’s lip and he spat on the ground, staining the dirty snow a light pink.

Dean’s fists ached, the cold freezing them stiff so they felt like pieces of steel and concrete. He gritted his teeth and moved in again for another combo, ducking from a haymaker the Russian threw in desperation. He pummeled the Russian’s body until he heard the snap of a rib that caused the Russian to double over in pain.

With the Russian bent over, Dean finished the commander off with a quick, thunderous strike to the chin that cracked the air like the breaking of ice. The Russian hit the ground, his mouth drooling blood and his body spasming from pain. Dean’s chest heaved up and down from the exertion, and his lieutenant quickly came to his aid, but Dean waved him off. “I’m fine.”

Dean picked the Russian up by the collar and slammed him against a tree for support. Blood trickled down his chin, and his cheeks had reddened from both the cold and the fight. “Who sent you?”

The Russian wheezed when he drew in breath, and his face strained with effort. “My commander sent me. To find you. Governor.”

“You know who I am?”

The Russian nodded. “I’m here to kill you. Just like my people killed your brother.” The smile the Russian forced only lasted as long as it took for Dean to bring his fist into the front of the Russian’s teeth.

Even after the Russian fell to the ground, Dean didn’t relinquish his strikes. He brought his fist down like a hammer. Bone crunched, and blood splattered underneath the force of his blows until the life had run out of the Russian and bled out onto the snow.

Dean’s hand shook, and his knuckles were bloody and raw. The faces of his men had turned pale, and his lieutenant jumped when he called his name. “Take into custody the one man who wants to live most, then kill the rest.” Dean stomped to his horse. “War is upon us.”

***

The parents of the boy Kemena worked on waited nervously in the corner of the room. The boy was no older than six, his hair thick, dark, and curly, complemented with a pale, freckled complexion. He looked as her younger brother did when he was a child.

Kemena pressed the back of her hand against the boy’s forehead. He was so hot she thought he’d burst into flames. She muddled a mixture of herbs and placed a damp rag on his forehead to help cool him down. Once the herbs had been ground into a fine dust, she stirred them into water and lifted the boy’s head to have him drink. He barely opened his mouth and was only able to take a few sips before he had to lie back down.

The mother rushed to Kemena, who was still holding the cup of medicine in her hand. “Is he going to be all right?” The mother’s eyes were stressed, weary from nights of praying, hoping that the doctor would be able to come save her child.

Kemena placed the glass with her remedy in the mother’s hands. “Have him finish the rest of that. It’ll help keep the fever down.” She reached back into her bag and pulled out a small glass vial of powder. “Give a pinch of this to him every hour until it’s gone. If he’s still sick once he’s finished it, bring him into town. I won’t be able to do anything else for him here.”

The mother cried, clutching the medicine in her hands, then wrapped her arms around Kemena. “Thank you. Thank you so much for coming.”

Kemena gently patted the woman’s back. “You’re welcome. Once the fever breaks, he should be fine.” The woman’s husband came and peeled his wife off her and shook her hand as well. Before she left, she looked back at the child lying in the bed, hoping he’d pull through. But she knew better than anyone else the odds of a sick child.

The carriage driver waited for her outside, and she loaded the rest of her supplies in the back then found her own seat. Normally when she came into the smaller towns, she was flooded by requests of citizens rushing up to her, but the escort of soldiers that Dean had ordered to be with her at all times since his brother’s death seemed to intimidate the crowd.

While Kemena had studied and learned from an actual physician, the truth of the matter was they just didn’t have the necessary medicines and equipment to save everyone. It was a hard fact to swallow, especially after reading old textbooks from schools before the Great War.

There had been entire organizations dedicated to healing, helping. Now, it was all Kemena could do to keep fevers down and stitch up wounds from war or fighting amongst the local drunks. She looked down at her long, slender hands. Hands that were so sure of themselves and what they could accomplish, yet limited with the resources at her disposal.

She had determined long ago that she was born in the wrong time period, and the old doctor that trained her agreed. He fed her desires with stories from his teacher, who’d worked in the world of medicine just before the fighting that changed the face of civilization began.

Hardly a night went by that she didn’t dream of the world before the bombs were dropped. In those vivid dreams, she saved countless lives, cured diseases, operated on disabled men and women, and made them walk again.

The carriage dipped in a pothole, knocking the daydream from her vision. Here in this world, she had to keep both feet in reality. Early in her career, she had made the mistake of promising more than she could give. That’s why she refused to answer the mother’s question. Her desire to save someone didn’t necessarily correlate with success, no matter how bad she wanted it to come true.

The ride back was slow. A downpour of rain had caused a few of the roads to flood, forcing them onto back roads, which took twice as long. Each village, town, or camp that she passed, Kemena watched the faces look at her carriage. They knew who she was, who her husband was. Even though Dean had been chosen in an election, as was his brother Jason, they treated her family more like a monarchy than public officials.

War had been carved out in her husband’s family tree. Fred Mars, the eldest brother, along with his father and uncles, catapulted the Mars name into legend during the battle with the Chinese in the Island Wars years ago. While Dean didn’t join the fighting until he was slightly older, she could still hear the faint glaze of horror when he spoke about it, which wasn’t often. She’d determined long ago that the Mars men came with a powerful silence about them, especially the older ones. Jason, the youngest, was the only loud one among them, and even he bit his tongue on talks of war.

A chilly breeze blew through the carriage, and Kemena pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders. With everything that her husband and his brothers had been through, all of the fighting, death, and pain, she wasn’t sure if any of them could escape another war with their souls still intact. She’d seen enough of the battles during the war with the clansmen to know what it did to a man’s mind. Little by little, it twisted and exploited all of the good things you held dear and pure in your life until the only memories you saw were trails of death.

Kemena had seen enough death in her lifetime. She looked down to her belly and clutched her stomach protectively, where she knew a seed of life had begun to sprout.
This will give him something to hold onto, something good. For both of us.

Chapter 9

Fists thrust into the air, and sea-worn faces flushed red hot with anger, shouting curses and war-riddled threats into the mangled structure that served as the port authority’s office. Lance sat in the back, his arms crossed and half of his body and face covered in darkness from the flickering candles, watching and listening to the Aussies squabble about their next move. It had been like this for over three hours, and every second wasted arguing was one more the Chinese had to move closer. Lance knew that the captain’s words would do little against the cannons of the Chinese. And the man who was loudest with his words just so happened to be the one with the least experience in war.

“All we have to go on is the words of a few dozen men. We don’t know what they saw, and it would be foolish to wage war where hundreds of thousands could die because of the false accusations of a few.” Cameron Davies was a merchant who’d made a fortune in selling cattle to the Brazilians. He stood out amongst the other sailors in the room with his new clothes and well-manicured head of hair he kept slick and stiff with oils and balms. His hands were too soft for a man who’d made a living at sea. “We should reach out to the Chinese, send word before we waste millions in gold, food, and materials for what could be no more than a figment of the imagination.”

The room’s divide widened between jeers and encouragement. Lance shifted uncomfortably in the back, Canice standing close by as she put a hand on his shoulder. He remained seated until he could take it no longer and jumped from his seat. “Have you not seen the holes in Danny’s ship, Cameron? Or the lack of vessels that returned?”

“I don’t doubt that you encountered troubles, Captain Mars, but there is no clear evidence that the ships that attacked you were Chinese military. Chinese, yes, but they could be pirates.”

“Pirates don’t have strategic maps outlining their fleets, nor do they have the type of numbers that me and my crew witnessed.” The crowd parted as Lance made his way to the front of the room, where Cameron and a few other privileged sailors sat at the high table.

Cameron brushed Lance’s words off as if they were a fly buzzing around his meal. “The sea can play tricks on your mind, Captain. Especially at night.”

“And one could argue that your greed has twisted yours.” Lance’s words flew back at Cameron with the foreboding sense of a volcano spewing ash before an eruption. The floor rattled with stomps, and the walls echoed the same split of dissent that had grown in the room.

Cameron stiffened in his chair then leaned forward, his eyes drilling into Lance. “Do not forget where you are, Captain Mars. While your word and your name carry a heavy weight in your own country, you are neither a soldier, nor a political ambassador. You are nothing more than a merchant with a ship. You are here out of the thoughtfulness of this committee. Don’t take that for granted.”

Lance raised his voice, cutting through the clamor of the room and silencing everyone. “I am here because of what I have done, and what me and my crew have sacrificed!” The words rumbled like thunder, and the space between Lance and the rest of the men in the room grew. “You think that you have the choice to sit and decide whether to go to war, but that decision has already been made. The Chinese have turned their sights on your land once again, and this time they have the resources to take it.” Lance felt the heat coming off him, his eyes still locked on Cameron. “You sit there like a puppet master, pulling the strings of those you’ve paid off, but I will not stand here and do nothing and let your follies turn into the blood of my men being spilt!”

Before Cameron answered, the winding din of the harbor alarms wailed, and the silent stillness in the room erupted into a frenzied escape out the front doors, men squeezing through the cramped space all at once. Lance found Canice right by the edge of the dock, watching the horizon and the entrance of the harbor, but the moment she heard the faint echo of cannons, she was the first to the
Sani
, the crew flying into action.