Battle Cry (13 page)

Lucas said, “I can’t argue that with you, Reena because it’s true. But right now we don’t get the luxury of feeling sorry for other people or for ourselves. Right now we have to fight for what is real and what is honest and that is the people who need our help. It is time to break the stranglehold of Barkley. We have to have their help, no matter how we get it, we have to take it with us.”

Reena looked away, not wanting to answer him. She picked at a small section of the windowsill before she managed to say, “There are people in the city I love. I don’t want to see them harmed, and I would do anything to save them, but I don’t know that I can use a parent’s pain and hope against them.”

Her own words startled her a little. Who did she love within the city? Her father, of course but who else? Praxis? Or Talon…

Sweet and kind Talon, he had always hidden small little treats in the woods just for her. She closed her eyes tightly remembering how delighted she’d always been to follow his little clues: bent reeds near the pond’s edge, a flower tucked behind the cow’s ear and many other things that would lead her eventually to either a slice of still warm bread wrapped in an old piece of cloth or a homemade candy rolled into a leaf to keep the bugs from biting it before she could get to it.

And what about the priestess, Nemia? Did she not love her to? She had never had a true friend before, at least not a friend that was a girl. In the woods girls her age were few and far between and most of them were already married, or dead. A few had even decided to leave the woods and go to the cities on their own, to make their way as a citizen or at least to try to. None of them had ever been seen again and Reena had no doubt that he might have gotten lucky and found a real life or at least a life that didn’t involve the taverns, but she was equally sure that many of those who had left of their own volition had found exactly that life and no other.

She and the priestess weren’t close but they had shared a lot already. She longed to see her again, to share secrets with her and it was not something she was used to. She was not used to missing things she had never had, like close friendship.

And then there was her father of course. Liam, the man who had always sheltered her and protected her and kept her safe. Had become an outlaw to protect her mother and protect his daughter as well, no matter what the cost. She had wondered where he was and she knew that that was a bad thing, a terrible thing. No matter how difficult what she was going through was, she should keep her father in mind and remember that he was going through worse things.

Praxis had insisted that he would help her father as much as he could, and she did not doubt that he would. And what about that? Was praxis just as bad in his own way as the Governor? Was praxis not really in his own way helping to hold her hostage by using her father against her?

What Lucas was suggesting was the same thing that everyone had done to her so far. The Governor, Praxis… All of them had kept her father from her and they had used her love for him as leverage to get her to do what they wanted her to do. It wasn’t fair and she was not going to do that to Calliope and the judge.

“Lucas, have you ever considered that Lauren likes you?” Those were not the words that she had intended to say, but somehow they were the words that came out of her mouth.”

Lucas flushed a bright brick red. Reena could only gawk at him, completely thunderstruck, as he began to stutter and shuffle his feet. He could not even get words out of his mouth; they stuck in his throat and when he did manage to get something past his lips it was a strangled series of guttural sounds.

Reena began to laugh wholeheartedly. She couldn’t help it; it was funny. She said, “You know she likes you and you like her too! By the gods, Lucas — you are shy!”

Lucas made a few more choking sounds in his throat and then he finally got out the words, “It’s not that I’m shy. I lost my wife and child and I never really wanted anyone else. It’s hard for me to tell her that I find her to be pretty and that I want to spend time with her because… Well because I haven’t done that in a long time. Stop laughing at me!”

Lauren had been standing in the doorway, unseen by either of them, and just then she stepped through that doorway and said, “Lucas, you don’t have to tell me that I’m pretty. You don’t have to tell me that you care about me, at least not yet. But now that I know you like me, I can say quite freely that I like you as well.”

Grown-ups. Lucas looked like he was about to faint on the floor and Lauren was standing there with her hands on her hip and a weird smile on her face like she just won some great big contest. Why were grown-ups so weird? Reena could not figure that one out and she wasn’t sure she wanted to either.

“I also tend to agree with Reena on this one Lucas. It’s not fair to use somebody’s missing child as a way to make them do what you want them to do. Even if Oak is their child it’s wrong. And if they discover that he is not — it would be even worse. Think if somebody brought a woman to you and said to you, this is your child all grown up and you put your love and energy into that child, into that woman, thinking that she was your own, how would you feel if you found out the she was not? You would feel betrayed and angry and you would seek revenge.”

Lucas protested, “But we never said that Oak was their child! They think he is because of the resemblance that Deal has with their son.”

“Everyone has a twin, or so they say.” Lauren dusted her hands off as if that were the end of the matter. “We have to find another way to convince them. We can’t use that. We won’t. It is not fair.”

Reena looked at Lauren and smiled. It was nice to know that she had an ally even if it was one she had not expected. To know that Lauren did like Lucas and that there may actually be something in their future together made her happy, but that happiness was not long lived.

If they did not succeed in their mission, they would have to return to their own lands empty-handed. And none of them would live very long once they stepped foot back into the woods.

**

The Council was meeting. Reena and her tribe were sitting on the first row of benches. All of them were nervous, Reena most especially. She was going to have to speak today and there were literally thousands of people behind her. None of these people knew about her land and they didn’t care. As far as they were concerned that small island, that continent as they called it, was empty — devoid of life.

But it wasn’t, and it wouldn’t be. Not if she could help it. Her fists curled and her pride rose up. She was the daughter of Liam. He had not raised her to be a coward and he had not raised her to stay silent in the face of injustice. He had raised her to fight back, and she had fought. She had bested people in the arena and perhaps the fights had not been fair and perhaps her wins had not even been by design but by accident, but nonetheless she had survived far worse things than this.

Calliope called the Council to order. Immediately below the high bench that she sat on for more seats, also behind the tall wooden barrier. As soon as she called for the Council the door to the right in the room opened and they began to file in, men and women alike. So this was the Council; they all looked like ordinary human beings except that they all wore the same robes that Calliope and the judge wore. All of them had dour expressions on their face and all of them held small wooden hammers with black heads in their right hand as they walked onto the platform that held the bench and then took their seats.

Behind Reena, the crowd was restless; she could hear whispering and snatches of conversation. She could feel the looks directed at her, her face burned as she realized that every single person in the room was looking at her, and her tribe. Were they judging them? Of course. Were they finding them lacking? Probably.

She was clean and she was dressed in clothes that came with her across the desert. She had refused to wear the new clothes that they had asked her to wear to Council today because she wanted to be different, she wanted her difference to be seen. The clothes they had offered her were made of fine linen, sewn with silk threads, and dyed with beautiful colors. She did not want to wear those, not today.

Calliope began to speak. “We have before us today a tribe from what we call the lost lands. They come here to show us that not all is lost there as we had thought. There is the city there, one called Aretula. It is the city that was founded by Barkley.”

At the mention of his name, boos and hisses began to ring out. In the crowd someone cried out, “Anything that came from his hands must be spoiled!”

The entire Council banged their little hammers onto the surface of the barrier between them in the crowd. Instantly the crowd quieted. Calliope said, “We will hear them out and we will hear them fairly. We will not speak against them and we will not speak out as they speak. We will respect them and we will hear them. Reena, come forth.”

Reena stood uncomfortably, acutely aware of how many people were staring at her. Lucas whispered, “Think of  how many people were staring at you when you were in the Arena.” Instantly she felt better. He was right, the people in the Arena were howling for her blood, these people were simply here to listen to what she had to say. Courage filled her and she kept her head high as she approached, and nodded to Calliope and the others of the Council, and then turned her back on them.

She faced the people in the benches. She knew that what she had just done was against all of their traditions. She could see shock and drawn in breaths all around her. To prove her suspicions Calliope said, “It is customary to face us when one speaks Reena.”

Reena said, “I am sure it is. That is the tradition here, but I am not from here. I respect you and your traditions, but I am going to speak to the people that I am asking for help. You see where I come from it is the government, the ones who make the laws who would never suffer the weight of the decisions that they make. I don’t know how that works here, but I am going to speak to the citizens of Olympus because it is their help that I am seeking; it is them that will have to bear the weight of the decisions that are made here today.

“In my land there is a city as Calliope has told you. Yes it was founded by Barkley and his line still holds it. It is a city where blood is spilled daily, it is the city where justice does not prevail. The poor are starving and left without resource. Women have no rights, no rights at all. If it is decided that you should go to a tavern and be made to prostitute, that is what you do because you have no say in the matter.”

Many of the women in the crowd began to mutter angrily, their shock overwritten by their rage that such a thing be allowed to happen. Reena said, “In our lands there is twice a year an event called the culling.

“Children are taken from parents, wives are taken from husbands and sometimes husbands are taken from their farms, leaving their family to starve because without the men there, the women have no rights and they’re not allowed to farm alone. They have to either leave the farm to the family that the government decides to place there, or they have to beg charity from that family in the hopes of staying.

“Many children are left behind. Those who choose to become Outlaws, to protect their families and their loved ones from the Culling and the Arena and the death that happens daily, face death. Not only in the woods where things are so precarious, but by the hands of the soldiers who roam the woods looking for us. If you are deemed an outlaw and you bear a child, that child is an outlaw because of its birth. A child never has the chance; they are not allowed to be surrendered to the city because they have no voice with which to speak loyalty.”

There were more murmurs; people shifted angrily and their seats. She was reaching them and she knew it. She just had to figure out how to hold on and to keep them in her grasp long enough to ask for their help.

“I am an Outlaw. My father and mother could not stand to have my mother taken and placed in a tavern, so they fled to the woods. Even if I wanted to declare loyalty to the Governor I could not have, so when my father and I were captured by the soldiers during a Culling, we were taken to the city and placed in the death cart because outlaws are immediately sentenced to die in the Arena.”

She told him of her first fight, the accidental killing of the tiger and she told them of the long days of training. She told them of being knocked onto her face in the dirt by Hector and Kale, who were trying to save her life even as they beat her into a bloody pulp almost every single day. She told them of the night before her first fight how she had looked out the window and wondered if escape was possible. How she had been so afraid that she was going to die the next day, but more importantly that she was going to cost somebody else their own life.

When she was finished talking, she drew her sword from its scabbard and held it high above her head. “This is the sort of Arthur. It came to my lands, and I do believe in the gods and I do believe in fate. I do believe that this sword came into my hand for a reason and that reason was that so I could find my way here, to all of you.

“You all know what it is like to live in a city where peace and justice and rationality rain. I ask you to consider what it must be like for us to live in a city where none of those things exist.

“There are those among you who think that it is not your problem and I understand that. But it is the problem of Olympus. Olympus helped to create the city, when you sent Barkley West. He took that city and he made it his own, and now all of us to live in that land must suffer the consequences of your actions.