Battle Cry (3 page)

“You told me because your father isn’t here and that’s who you normally talk to. Life is hard out here in the woods for our children. In some ways I’m glad my own child never had to roam them. I know that sounds harsh, but look at the way that you lived as a child, look at the way they still live. Think of Heidi’s children, and the other children here in the tribe. They don’t play as other children do: their games are not really games; they are preparation for situations which are actually going to happen one day during their lifetime.

“They play “hide from soldiers” and they make up ways to escape. They are born with a death sentence hanging over their head merely because of who their parents are, and never have a chance to learn the trade or to be educated or to see the city for themselves, at least not up close. And if it is ever something they see then they see it from the back of the death cart on their way to either the Arena or Pit.”

Reena said, “I would never have wanted to grow up any other way.”

“You are never given the choice.”

“Are you saying my father was wrong?” Her anger was showing and she knew it and she didn’t care either. Was Lucas actually saying that her father had had no right to bring her into the world?

“I’m saying that it isn’t fair to the children who are born out here. It hinders them, it keeps them from learning and growing and being anything other than an Outlaw.”

“Not all children who are born out here stay out here.”

Both Lucas and Reena turned their heads to see Lauren, the woman who had taken Heidi’s children in standing behind them. Her light brown leather pants still bore some bloodstains from the day of the battle. She should have scraped and cleaned those hides as much as possible, but the blood simply remained. She came closer and sat down on the ground, running a hand through her wavy reddish hair as she did so.

Reena noticed how Lucas stared so hard at Lauren, and she wondered if Lauren ever noticed how hard he stared at her. It was the same way that she stared at Praxis. Could Lucas want to kiss Lauren?

Lauren said, “I have heard of and even seen women who would give birth and then say the baby died. It is not an uncommon thing out here and nobody questions a mother’s right to bury her child in her own way. There are some women whose children do not die, but rather are given away.

“Although many on the small farms run a risk of starvation they always need children. They need them because without the children to help grow the farm’s crops and tend to the animals there would not be enough hands to keep the farm growing and going. Children eat less than other adults so they are more valuable. Farmers do not care where a child comes from and most men with a wife who has produced enough rarely notices if another babe enters the household unexpectedly or if they do, they pretend not to.”

Lucas asked, “What do you think is preferable to raising children out here?”

“I think anything is preferable to raising them out here. Here their death is assured and their innocence ignored. Most children of Outlaws are sentenced to the same death penalty as their parents if they are caught, but what crime do the children commit? What crime did you commit Reena to be put into the Arena?”

It was not a question Reena had ever been asked before. The answer was obvious—she was an Outlaw. She was an Outlaw by birth and by action. She said so and Lauren gave her a long steady look before saying, “Do you think that fair? When you are baby in your mother’s arms, a mere infant, could you turn your back on your own parents and walk yourself into the city and declare yourself a citizen? By city laws that would’ve been what you had to do.

“Do you know that by city laws a child of an outlaw may not be surrendered by the parents, it must surrender itself and it must do so before it is three days old. How can a three-day-old infant surrender itself to the city’s rule? How can a three-day-old child speak its own oath of loyalty to the city? It’s an archaic rule, it’s a law that was put in place to guarantee that no child of any Outlaw would ever find sympathy within the city.”

“I had never heard of that.” Reena picked up a small rock near her foot and turned it over and over in her hands. Tiny glints of pyrite showed in the thin sliver of moonlight that was coming from the ebony sky. A small wind blew through the trees, rattling the leaves and creating a small and mournful tune.

This was the place that she knew, this was home. The entire time she spent in the city she had longed to be back here. Now that she was here she was being forced to go back to the city and she didn’t want to go. Noonehad never asked her if she felt like she was being robbed of her rights when she was a child or whether she wanted to be the daughter of an Outlaw or if she wanted to be a child of the city.

What would she have done if someone had asked her that question? What would she have chosen?

The long sharp whistle brought them all to their feet. Lucas tilted his head to one side, listening intently and Lauren moved closer to a tree, putting her hand out to its trunk to feel if there were any vibrations running through it from the ground below. It was a way to tell if there was a large herd of animals racing towards them. In the woods the most common herd of animals racing towards someone was horses, generally horses that were mounted by soldiers.

The whistle from the century, and the expressions on the faces of both Lauren and Lucas told Reena everything she needed to know. Soldiers were coming and they were probably not very far off.

The soldiers were closer than they could have imagined, so close that they were on top of them before they really had time to get to the small spaces they had constructed to hide within. That had been Dax’s idea; he had suggested making small crypt-like places in the ground, burying them with tree branches and leaves so that to the passerby, they would appear as just another part of the forest floor.

Reena had had no idea until she was inside the thing with the horses thundering past, how terrifying it would be inside of them. It was small, constrictive and incredibly dark. There were other bodies jammed in with hers and she could smell sweat and fear. To make matters even worse she knew that the soldiers could barely see the road, what if they swerved off of it? Would the lid-like surfaces they had constructed to place over the top of the little hiding holes be able to withstand the weight of the horses and the soldiers that they carried?

Small streams of moonlight did occasionally filter through and the occasional drift of leaves or dirt fell through the cracks in the lids. It seemed to last an eternity. By the time the soldiers passed, Reena was a limp and shaking mess and she was not the only one.

They began to cry out slowly, one by one all of them helping out those who were still within, while still keeping an eye open for the soldiers to return.

“That worked like a charm.” Lucas seemed to be impressed by it, but Reena was less than impressed; she was still fairly terrified.

“I wouldn’t want to be in one for longer than a few minutes at a time,” Lucas said. “And then we should move, and move fast. Regarding us having to move as a group, we have to move silently and fast.”

All of them had escaped often from the soldiers’ notice. No one of them needed to be told to cling to to the shadows, to watch the road carefully for any signs of the soldiers and to stay concealed as much as possible. Sometimes the soldiers were wily, getting off their horses and creeping up on foot, but tonight they did not seem to be interested in doing that at all. The sound of the horses’ hooves beating against the roads could be heard for miles.

“They have never been out this late at night before,” Deal said in an almost silent whisper.

He was entirely correct about that. Usually when the soldiers were out at night it was in the earliest part of the evening, but the midnight hour had passed and they were still on the road, still searching. Nobody needed to point out that outlaws typically did manage to outmaneuver soldiers by employing a very simple and incredibly useful trick: they quite often traveled at night and hid during the day, while the soldiers were out and about in the forest.

This was something soldiers had never caught on to; how had they known this time?

During the night they would find themselves asking themselves that same question over and over again: how had they known? They made it back to their secondary camp, a quiet little place where they could all hide out. It was a place quite often used by the Outlaws and a sort of informal gathering place for all of the tribes. It was in flames.

They all stood there looking at it, uncertain and frightened. They had seen the flames from a distance but they had not been willing to believe that that was their camp, that the soldiers had been able to find it and to pinpoint exactly where it was, but they had.

“Someone has betrayed us,” Reena said, the words that she knew everybody was thinking. “The question now is just who?”

“It could be anybody, they have many Outlaws in custody,” Lauren said, who was holding Heidi’s two children close to her in a protective manner.

Dax said, “Don’t be a fool. We all know who’d be willing to betray us right now, and who would have a reason to hate us more than anybody else.”

All eyes went to the two children that Lauren was holding close. Reena asked, “Why would she do it?”

Lucas answered that with, “Heidi was always vindictive. We should never have taken her in, and once we did take her in and realize how she was, it was too late. She was married to one of our men, one of our best men and with child. While he was alive he managed to keep her in check as much as anyone could, but once he was gone all bets were off. Her hatred has no boundaries at this point and no place that she ever went with us is safe now.

“Was there any place that she did not know of?” Reena asked.

Lauren shook her head, “No. She traveled like all of us do. She went everywhere we went. We had no secrets from her. We never had any secrets from ourselves; you know that.”

Heidi’s little girl looked up at Lauren and asked, “Are we in trouble too?” Everyone gathered around, looking at the ground, ashamed of the thoughts that had been gathering in their minds. Reena had seen the hatred on more than one face and she was grateful to see it dissipating in the face of the little girl’s question.

Lucas said gruffly, “No. You are not your mother and you are not responsible for her actions.”

A small wave of relief filled Reena. But it did not last long; there were many things that they would have to deal with and Heidi’s children were but a small part of that.

Deal said, “We have to find a safe place. There’s no way we can all sleep in those little holes and even if we could, there’s no guarantee that the soldiers would ride right over them and not look within them.”

He was only stating the truth, the truth that they had all already known and had had brought home to them while they were inside the small cavities waiting for the soldiers to pass them on the road. Nobody seemed to have any ideas though.

Reena asked, “Is it possible that some of us had hiding places that we did not share with the rest of you?”

Silence fell. The code of the woods was that nothing was secret and nothing was sacred. What one had, one shared. There were supposed to be no secret caches of food, nothing that one person would keep to themselves no matter their tribe or loner status. The only people who were exempt from knowing these things were the ones who had been Shunned or exiled.

Finally one of the men from the last camp that they had joined up with stepped forward. “Perhaps. But if there is it was never intentional. I think most of us have some hiding places that we know of, but we don’t always travel together and a lot of us travel alone instead of in groups. As did you and your father, Reena. It is possible, so let’s start with all the places that we all know of together. We need to have a meeting and discuss this not only calmly but quickly because if we do not we will be caught out here with nowhere to go.”

How had she become the leader? Reena wasn’t sure but it was obvious that she was. The whole thing was so bizarre, but it was her responsibility. She had somehow taken on that responsibility just as surely she had taken that sword that hung in a scabbard on her back, a scabbard that Lucas had carved for her from a long tree limb.

“My father and I were often alone, and I’m certain that we had places that we went but nobody knew about. They were only good for two people or three at the most and we can talk about them because I suppose we assumed everyone knew of the same places. The woods are only so large, but they can be sheltering. You’re right, let’s all discuss the places that we know of as tribes and then talk about the places that we know as loners. We might be able to find a place large enough to shelter us all that way.”

There were indeed several places that they all traveled to when they were traveling in smaller groups that they did not use when they traveled as a tribe. Some of the places Heidi had never seen; most of them were too small to hide more than a few people so the tribe had never traveled there. At the moment those places were their only option so they headed off towards one of them as the night continued to darken the skies.

It was a long trek; they had to avoid many of the known landmarks and go by less common ones. Heidi had always been a follower, never a tracker or a seeker, so it would have been possible that she would not have remembered the way or she would not have been able to describe the landmarks around certain camps well enough to give the soldiers details on where they were located. Be that as it may, none of them wanted to take that chance and travel the roads they typically did, so they stuck to crawling on their bellies over hills where the moonlight was the strongest and avoiding the small barely discernible paths in the woods where they would normally walk in order to get to where they were going.

It was the longest night of Reena’s entire life so far and she wondered if it would ever end, if she would ever be able to sleep. Her entire body ached; she was so exhausted that her eyes were gritty and her tongue was furred over. Her fingers spasmed occasionally and her knees and lower legs had cramps that would not ease up.

Three of the places they checked were either occupied with soldiers, aflame or filled in with a mound of dirt. Heidi had either heard them or seen them. It was a fact that every Outlaw knew there would come a day when they had to break off from the Tribe in order for the Tribe to survive; smaller groups were faster and easier to hide than large ones.

Lucas suggested that perhaps Heidi, who had not broken away since the birth of her children, had recalled those places as a young bride. However she had known of them, it did not matter, they were unable to be used and they were rapidly becoming more vulnerable with each passing moment.

When dawn broke the tribe was at the crest of a small hill. The cave beyond it was not visible; it was a small crack in a rock wall that rose high above the tree line. They all looked at it and then at each other. This was a sacred place, one that they only used when things were at their very worst.

It would fit the tribe inside its walls but going in there meant risking the wrath of the gods—they had to ask permission and offer some form of sacrifice. None ever dared enter without that.

The bones inside the cave were old, darkened by years and dust. The words written on the cave wall were in a language none of them spoke or read but the pictures on the wall spoke volumes.

This picture showed a great city in flames. Nobody knew who had drawn the pictures or how long they had been there, only that they had been there since Reena had been born. Liam said that the drawings were older even then his grandfather, and his grandfather before him. Whoever had painted those pictures on the walls of the caves had been a skilled artist, using materials that no one had ever seen before or since.

Nobody knew if the paint used to create pictures had come from the world before the Great War or if it was something created afterward. Whatever it was had real staying power because it remained to this day.

“Maybe we should separate and try some of the smaller caves.” Deal was nervous. He kept scanning the area around him and his thin chest rose and fell rapidly.

“There isn’t time. The soldiers are riding hard and we can’t go any further right now.” Reena was not alone in her exhaustion; many of them were stumbling and staggering. One woman had begun to cry silent tears of misery a little while before and Reena had seen her sagging toward the earth when they finally did stop. “Besides, nobody would risk that wrath—not even Heidi. Telling the secret of this cave is akin to bringing down the greatest curse right on your own head. She would not do that and even if she did there is no sign that the soldiers have been here yet. We have to risk it.”

That was the simplest truth. They had no choice. There was no other shelter to be found. Lucas had said that the tribe had never used the cave and so Heidi would not have seen it and to divulge its whereabouts, even in conversation, was to risk punishment from the gods, so there was a chance she had no way to point the soldiers to it. It was a risk they had to take, and they did.

They entered the cave wearily and some of the men rolled a stone in front of the slit that was the doorway. A fire was lit because the smoke would drift out of a large hole in the back of the cave and disperse without being seen. None of them knew about the natural filters that the cave provided; they assumed it was just magic, and they were grateful for it.

They had not eaten on the long march; there had been no time, but they had all made small kills and gathered a few things along the way as they had learned to do over the years.

Deal had a rabbit, Lucas a brace of birds. Reena had a pocket full of herbs and ground roots weighing down her simple pack. They offered the rabbit’s fur to the cave and dusted some of the herbs across the floor and added more to the fire before they began cooking the meal.

After their hunger was satisfied, everyone just picked a spot and rolled into whatever they had to sleep in or on. Reena was asleep before her head even hit the small fur she had been given, but when she awoke the next morning, that picture was the very first thing she saw: the city with flames all around it and a long column of people marching out of it, marching toward…

She frowned and leaned closer. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at the picture more intently than she ever had before. As a child the picture had always been a source of amusement, a way to while away the time while waiting for her father to return from hunting for something to look at in the cold nights. Maybe there was more to this pictures and she had thought before. Now that she knew that Barkley was not in fact a hero, maybe she should look at the painting from a  new angle. She frowned, trying to make that make sense. There was something there, what was it?.

The people leaving the city were marching into the desert. The very desert that everybody said was impassable. Yet Barkley had crossed the desert, and if the old man who had possessed the sword that she now held was to be believed, there was a another city past that desert, one even greater and larger than Aretula.

Reena knew that since she had grown up in the woods she hadn’t heard all the same legends that people in the city had heard. Having been to the city, having heard a lot of the legends, having seen the museum in the books, and having had so many people tell her there was another city, she began to wonder about it, to even believe it. But even the people who spoke of it in the city said it was a fable, a myth. If it had existed, there was no way to know if it still did. There was only one city in the world, and it was the one from which she had just fled. It was the one what she had declared war upon.

There was a thought in the back of her head that had not yet formed, and she could not quite make it all come together into a cohesive thought, or plan. Lucas stared out of his sleeping and stood, stretching his giant frame all over. He smacked his lips a few times and scratched under his armpits, a habit that she had long since begun to equate with men. Why did they all do that? It was really gross!

Lucas joined her and asked, “Have you never seen this before?”

Reena replied, “Yes, many times. But there’s something about it… Something that I’ve never noticed before. Look at the people, they are leaving the city and fleeing into the desert.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So the city they are leaving is Aretula.”

Lucas frowned and leaned closer to the wall of the cave. She was right; the city had changed quite a lot in the centuries that had passed, but there were still notable landmarks. Nobody had ever been able to say what happened to the original citizens or the city, where they had gone or why. The legend said that Barkley had found the city deserted, without life. If there had been people there in the city and they had left the city to go to the desert, was it possible that they had indeed traveled beyond the desert to a city on the other side?

Reena was having the same thoughts. She asked, “Is it possible that two different cities simply sort of… switched places? Is it possible that the people from one city crossed the desert to go into this one and the people from this city came across the desert to live in the other one?”

Lucas shook his head, “I’m not saying it is impossible, I just don’t understand why they would do that.”

Lauren, who had awoken and come up behind them said, “Maybe it was the centuries between. Maybe they lived elsewhere and forgot about the cities until they found them again. Maybe it wasn’t as simple as the people from the city just walking out into the desert and found another one and vice versa.”

It did make sense. Although they had always assumed that the city was one from long before the Great War and it was, but which city was painted in the picture was something they had never wondered about. If this was indeed Aretula and its citizens had walked away, fled, and one of them had even managed to paint this picture inside the walls of this cave…was it possible that the descendants of that painter, of the people leaving the city, were alive somewhere?

If so, where were they?

And could they help them now?

Would they help them now?

Reena said, “I think if we’re ever going to be strong enough to overthrow the Governor we’re going to have to find out the answer to these questions.”

Lucas said, “Reena, you must be joking. Even if that had happened, there is no way that we could cross the entire desert on the chance that there might be somebody on the other side who would be willing to help us. If there is a city over there, they have likely forgotten about Barkley years ago. Do you know how many centuries it has been since they came to this side of the desert and created the city here? Do you have any idea of how many people there would even care that there was a city on the side or that it was at war with itself?”

Stubbornly she replied, “We have to try. There has got to be a way for us to do this. It isn’t enough for us to gather just the other Outlaws. There was a reason that they sent me after this sword, and I don’t think it has anything at all to do with just gathering up the rest of you.”

Lauren said, “Are you saying you have been sent on a quest?”

Silence fell. Quests were holy, arranged by the gods themselves, along with the fates. To be sent on a quest was something from the legends—while many young men, and even women, went off in search of things or hoping to find something, that was not the same as a god-decreed quest. A god-decreed quest was not something one could say no to.

“I don’t know if that is it exactly. I just know that I was sent out here to get this sword and now I have come to this cave and …this all sounds really ridiculous.” Her heart sank. At the mention of there being a quest involved, most of them had perked right up but now they were drooping again. She saw Lucas frown, and then he spoke in his deep and mellifluous voice.

“Yes,” he said. “This is a quest and we are all a part of it. You should consider yourselves blessed by the gods!”

What was he doing? Was he nuts? He couldn’t say things like that! He was not done though because he continued. “The gods have seen fit to guide Reena to us and to the cave that tells us the direction we are to go in.”

Dax said, “Wait, didn’t you tell us that a priestess of Isis was one of the ones who helped Reena to escape?”

Reena said, “Yes. Why?”

“Because perhaps they did know that you were going to find these paintings.” Dax looked around at the other people gathered around them. “We all know that Isis was the most powerful goddess of them all. All the other goddesses looked up to her and wanted to have some part of her power. We all know the stories of the gods and goddesses, how many goddesses attempted to either trick Isis into giving up her power or attempted to murder her in order to take her powers? It was said that Isis alone had the power of seeing into the future. It was said that she alone had the power to make it three sisters change their minds: those who spin, shape and cut the string that is our lives.”

Reena said, “Yes, she was a priestess and I met her in the death cart. We were both being carried off into the Arena to die. And then I had to fight for her life a second time.”

“There is all the proof any of us need that this is indeed a quest,” Lucas said firmly. “If you would turn your backs on something the gods put in your path, speak now!”

He was using the quest as a reason to keep them united. Reena stared at him in utter awe. No wonder he was a good leader, he could use anything he had to without fear of reprisal. He was determined not to lose his Tribe and if that meant going to war he would. If it meant traveling across the desert he would do that too.

Reena knew she would never speak of the thoughts she had. What if this was not a quest but all coincidence? What if all of this was just happenstance and she got everyone with her killed?

It was too late for those questions now.

Lauren said, “We have small children with us. We can’t possibly go trekking into the desert, we would all die. We don’t have enough in way of supplies to make it here within the woods in the woods. We all know that the desert gives nothing and takes everything.”