Forsada: Volume II in the New Eden series (30 page)

“You’re forgetting Sam,” he says.

“You’re right. I am forgetting Sam.” Patrick’s friend. They mentioned him during that little charade yesterday when they kept saying I thought this all up. What was it they said I had planned for him?

“He took a small group over the ridge trail, hoping to free the prisoners.”

“Oh, right.” It seemed like a suicide mission then. I haven’t changed my opinion.

“You don’t sound convinced,” Garrett says, and with my arms wrapped tight around his chest, I can feel him laughing at me.

“What! Spill it, you skunk!”

“Patrick ran the prison camp, remember? Sam knows the guards. All the ones loyal to Darius will be at the battle.”

Brilliant. I can’t quite keep it all in my head, but I really came up with a smart plan. Draw out Darius’ army with the promise of destroying the people of Tawtrukk once and for all, then flank the army while arming a whole other group to come up and attack from behind once the battle’s underway.

No wonder we’re galloping so fast.

Glad I thought it up. “Patrick’s plan?” I ask.

“Mostly,” Garrett replies, and I can hear a little reluctance in his voice, some disappointment at the admission.

“Why isn’t he coming with us?”

“We thought it more important for him to manage the actual battle.”

“Okay.”

It won’t take long to get to the main square of Lower. I wonder if Darius’ scouts on the ridge saw us leave the battle, if they have any signal they can give Darius that we’re coming. I hope not. I hope he’s there, and I hope I can put my knife right through his heart.

I remember the crazed look of rage in Dane’s eyes as he drove an axehead into Baddock’s spine. At the time, it terrified me. Now I know what he was feeling, and I wonder if I’ll look as terrifying when my time comes to destroy Darius. I hope not.

As we fly along the river, the snow thickens. There’s little wind, and the flakes are fat and wet, piling up on the ground. There’s no telling how long it will last. Micktuk would know. He knew lots of things. The almanac man, too. He would know. I wonder if he’s also dead. He knew lots of things, too, but he didn’t have any books. Not like Micktuk.

I guess I’ll find out soon.

After fifteen minutes, we slow and ford the river at a wide, shallow bend. The horses step into the water and wade against the current. I lift my knees to keep my feet dry until we reach the other side, the horses snorting hot steam into the winter air as they grunt up the embankment.

Before us stretches a low-rolling field smooth and white, with the buildings of Lower a few hundred yards away down the gentle slope. In the gray morning, they look quiet and cold, breathing pale smoke from their brown chimneys into the falling snow.

It’s the first time I’ve seen Lower this close in months, and it’s so serene and unspoiled, like I saw it last winter. I just want to jump off this horse and run into town, run to my house, call for my mother and father. She’d be making candles, or soup, and my father would be sweating soot in the forge, clanging his hammer in time to some silly song in his head.

But I can’t do that, and they aren’t there.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Garrett asks.

“Yeah,” I agree. “What is?”

“Just an inch of snow can erase the passage of an entire army.”

I see what he means. It’s like nature has spread a bandage across the field, white and clean and hiding all the scars.

He says, “I know I sound silly, but it makes me feel hopeful, you know?”

I squeeze him a little to show him I agree, but it’s Freda who says, “Not silly at all. It’s a reminder.”

I wonder if she means a reminder from God. I bristle at the thought but try to keep my comments inside. I don’t know what her god would be reminding us of at this point. If he’s so into reminders, maybe he should have reminded Darius that war is bad.

“A reminder,” she repeats as if she’s heard my thoughts, “that even when people do awful things, the world keeps going. Winter comes, and the spring follows.”

So it wasn’t a God thing after all. I can stop bristling now… but I can’t, actually, because now I’m bristling at my own reaction. Can’t I hear something from Freda without painting it black with all her God stuff? I’ll work on that. It’s so easy to hate everything about Southshaw after what Darius has done that I forget there’s still good in some of them. Lots of good. Why can’t I remember that all the time and not just when Freda or Patrick hits me over the head with it?

“Look.” The Southshawan man points across the field. “Darius.”

My heart lurches, and I start breathing hard. Calm down, Lupay.

A dozen or more horses emerge from between the two nearest houses. I don’t know how he can tell Darius is among them. To me they’re just a bunch of men in heavy coats on dark horses. Difficult to distinguish.

Garrett says, “Which one?”

“On the far right.”

I can feel Garrett readying to spur our horse forward, but the other man puts up his hand.

“Don’t. It’d be suicide.”

“We’ve taken care of worse,” Garrett growls.

“No. No, you haven’t.” The man’s voice sinks with a grim finality that makes Garrett relax.

So we wait and watch a moment. The dozen saunter into the pristine whiteness of the field, a bundle of blots oozing as one, leaving a dark trail of muddy hoofprints behind. They go without urgency, walking against the chilly breeze, out into the middle of the field.

Freda speaks first. “We should go talk to them.”

“Talk?” Garrett is strained. Like me, he longs to see Darius dead.

“We can’t fight. We’d be killed.”

“He might kill us anyway.”

“He might,” Freda agrees.

The man says, “We should wait until the battle is over, shouldn’t we?”

Freda says, “No. There’s no point. Darius knows this, too. Events are out of our hands. He might try to kill us, and if he does we can run away. But I don’t think he will.”

“Why not?” demands Garrett.

“Because he wants to gloat,” she says plainly, as if she were saying something as obvious as
because snow is white
.

We sit a moment more, and I’m about to tell Garrett to spur the horse on, out toward Darius, when he does it without prodding. The other horse catches up to us after a few steps. I hear him ask Freda quietly, “But why? What good will it do to go out there?”

Freda answers so we can all hear. “Because people like Darius must be confronted. They need to be reminded that their actions are wrong. If no one tells them, they have no reason to stop.”

I’m about to say that Darius wouldn’t stop no matter how many people told him he was wrong, but Garrett speaks up instead. “Plus, it’s hard to kill him from a hundred yards away.”

I grin into the back of Garrett’s coat and turn my face away from Freda so she can’t see me smiling. That’s my Garrett.

As we walk the horses slowly across the field leaving our own muddy trail, they wait. It takes only a minute or so, and finally Freda says, “Close enough.”

We stop, close enough to see their breath but far enough to get a good head start if we have to run.

CHAPTER 25

“Good morning, Freda,” Darius says. He doesn’t shout, but his voice carries across the open space with the force of authority.

“Call back our people, Darius.”

“
My
people. You must call me Semper, child. I will forgive you this once because of the traumas you’ve been through. Consider me… merciful.”

“I will not call you Semper,” she says, and even as my own blood boils and my fingers tighten around my whip, I am astonished at her calm confidence.

“Suit yourself. I was prepared to pardon you, but it appears you prefer exile among the heathens.”

At least he didn’t say mutants.

“Call them back. This battle is unnecessary and wrong.”

“This battle, as you call it, is the final step in cleansing the Earth so we may repopulate it. According to the prophecy. God took the first steps to cleanse the world by allowing man to destroy cities and technology and each other. But we did an imperfect job, and now it is up to us to finish what our ancestors began.”

“You’re wrong, Darius,” Freda says with the patience and condescension of a schoolteacher. “You’ve misinterpreted the prophecy.”

He barks out a laugh, his tight-trimmed beard, pointed nose, and squinty black eyes making him look very coyote-like. “And what would a little girl who makes pretty clothes know about God’s word?”

The men around him laugh along with him. And I want to strangle every one of them.

Before I can think, I blurt out, “She knows more about God than you’ll ever know, you bastard.”

“The mutant speaks!” The men all laugh again, and I can feel Garrett holding the horse tight, leaning back against me. Darius points at me and looks me right in the eye. “You’ll know plenty about God soon enough, mutant, when you meet Him face to face.”

One of his men says, “Semper, the signals.”

Darius looks up at the ridge and frowns. He says, “Send them forward.”

The man that spoke swings his arm around in a wide circle and points up the hill.

I don’t know what it all means, but it sounds like Darius had been holding some forces in reserve, and he’s sending them into the battle now. This is good because it means Patrick has been having success. But it’s bad because it means Darius is even stronger than we thought.

He looks back at Freda. “Enough. I am a busy man. Say hello to your husband for me. In the afterlife.” He turns his horse, and as he starts back toward the town he says, “Kill them now.”

Finally. A fight.

At that moment, a clamorous roar erupts from the town, and people start running from between the buildings into the field. Why would Darius keep his reinforcements so far from the battle? No fight for us then. Our only choice is to flee into the woods, try to get away before they can reach us.

But Garrett doesn’t spur our horse in flight. Instead, he whoops and shouts, “Hooray, Sam!”

Darius and his men look confused as they stop and stare at the flood of people spilling across the white snow. I squint into the brightness of the snowfall.

“Loop,” laughs Garrett, “come on. You really can’t see? It’s not that far.”

He’s right. It’s not that far. “I can see a lot of people, if that’s what you mean.”

Darius curses. “Come on,” he says as he kicks his horse forward and gallops wide around the approaching crowd. His men follow on his heels, kicking up snow and mud as they go.

“It’s us, Loop,” Garrett says.

The people running at us. They’re Tawtrukkers, the ones who have been prisoners, Darius’ slaves for six months. They run uneven, some stumbling on hidden gopher holes or their own exhausted feet, some carrying weapons.

Freda gasps. She slides off her horse and walks right at the middle of the throng, snow caking on her boots.

“Sam,” Garrett says. He points at a smaller group in the middle of the crowd. To me they’re still a kind of a blur, but it’s clear they’re better fed, stronger, bigger, and more confident than the released prisoners. They number a half dozen or so, all together, and I try to pick out Sam—

But one figure stands out clearly—a roundish, short, dark, wobbly man. “Micktuk!” I cry. He raises a hand and waves as if he’s heard me, but they’re too far away. “Go, you dope,” I say, poking Garrett in the ribs.

We ride forward, and as the distance between us disappears, I see what caught Freda’s eye. Dane is there, among Sam’s Southshawans and striding beside Micktuk.

Freda, ahead of us, starts jogging, and Dane breaks ahead of the group. They meet between us and hug tight. I am happy for them. But Micktuk. I want to ask him how they survived the fire, how they met up with Sam—

The horse veers suddenly to the left.

“Where are you going? I want to see Micktuk! Garrett!”

He says nothing but kicks the horse into a trot toward the town.

Within seconds we’re surrounded by hundreds of Tawtrukkers. Many say something as we weave through them, past them. I smile at some, touch the upstretched hands of others. But there’s one ahead that Garrett is aiming for, and I recognize him the moment I see his long stride, the little hitch in his left leg from his hip injury, the bald, hatless head gathering snowflakes in the gray morning.

Before Garrett even stops the horse, I slide off its side and run to my father, leaping into his arms so hard that I almost knock him to the ground. His chest shakes with a deep laugh, but it’s fragile. Not the strong, solid, Smith laugh I remember. He seems smaller, more frail. But he hugs me tight, and there’s still power in his slender arms.

After a few seconds, he releases me and pushes me back but keeps his big hands on my shoulders. He looks me up and down.

“You’ve grown. Taller. Stronger. And…”

He swallows, clamps his jaw shut, takes a deep breath. Does he see something bad in me? He stares into my eyes, then touches his hand to my cheek. “Older.”

I know he doesn’t mean just six months older. I know what he means. He’s grown older, too. His dark eyebrows have grayed, and new wrinkles that have nothing to do with laughter crease his eyes. I wonder what he sees in me. Does he see all the killing? Does he see the cruelty and rage and hatred that sometimes fills me up so much I want to scream?

“You’re so beautiful, Lupay. I’ve heard things about what you’ve done. And I’m proud. You’re not the girl who left in the spring to wander in the woods for a few days. I could see it when you returned, when all this started…”

His voice trails away, and his eyes stare into the distance, but he recovers after a second or two.

“It will be over soon,” he says with a weak smile.

Over soon. “Oh frick,” I say as I step back. Did I just say frick in front of my father? “Oh. Sorry.”

He smiles. “Don’t worry. You can use any words you like around me now. You’re all grown up.”

Grown up or not, I’ve left the day’s work undone. “Darius,” I say, and the blackness covers my insides again as I think about him and his men riding away. “I can’t let him get away. I’m sorry, Papi, but we can talk when this is really all over.” I return to the horse and say to Garrett, “We have to go.”

He doesn’t move. He just points above the town where smoke rises in the distance. “What’s that?”

“Is he burning the town?”

“No,” my father says. “Too far away. That smoke is over the lake.” He looks around, feeling the air. “Not enough wind to push smoke over the lake like that.”

“Boats?”

“Whatever it is,” I say, “we have to go. C’mon, Garrett!”

I climb onto the horse, and we weave our way through the last of the released prisoners. The slow ones lag behind, some struggling just to walk, but they move with the same determination of freedom and revenge. Once past them, we speed through the empty town. Whatever small number of men Darius kept here didn’t put up much of a struggle. We reach the far edge of town in a few minutes.

Three long boats far from shore are unfurling big, white sails in the snowfall, oars pushing hard against the gray-green water of the lake. The other six boats and the wooden dock they’re tied to are ablaze, hurling white smoke angrily into the sky.

“He’s on the middle boat,” Garrett says. He doesn’t bother pointing. His words fall on the snow with frustration and bitterness. “Hey, go!” he yells at the horse, and we launch south along the lake so quickly I nearly fall off.

I understand. I feel his anger, his frustration. Ten times worse. That man out there on the boat, he is responsible for all the bad that’s happened to us in the last six months. He’s responsible for Shack’s death, for the burning of Upper and the destruction of Sikwaa, and so much more. And now he’s getting away, back to his own home and his friends.

As we gallop the road south along the edge of the lake, toward Lodgeholm and Emerald Bay and Southshaw, I watch the boats picking up speed on the open lake. Trees block my view, but now and then I see a man standing in the middle boat, looking our way, watching us. Our horse snorts with her effort, and even at full gallop it seems the boats are outpacing us.

“Garrett,” I say, loud in his ear so he can hear me over the wind and his rage. “Garrett! Stop!”

After a few seconds, he lets the horse slow to a walk. But we don’t stop.

“We can’t catch him,” I say as gently as I can.

“I know.”

We let the horse walk slowly along the road for a few minutes as we sit in silence. I don’t know what he’s thinking about. Maybe Shack. Maybe his father. I don’t know. But I can feel the tension in his body unravel as the snow falls around us in the silent morning.

We round the point and see the hulking shape of Lodgeholm, now covered with a white sheet of snow. Blackened, charred beams rise out of the whiteness, and two big, stone chimneys stand at either end, pointing like accusing fingers skyward.

The horse stops, and we sit just looking. I hold my arms wrapped around Garrett’s chest, warming him and feeling his warmth in the cold morning.

Darius got away. We won’t get to kill him. But there’s been enough killing. It feels over. He’s gone, and he won’t ever come back. I press my cheek into Garrett’s back and hug him tight.

“Look,” Garrett says.

I raise my head and rest my chin on his shoulder, looking up the hill at the Lift Poles that mark the first part of the ridge trail to Sikwaa. Where we ran when we escaped the Lodgeholm inferno.

At first, I see nothing. Then, slowly, I pick out movement among the trees, almost like some of the trees are moving. But no, that’s stupid. It’s people. A lot of people.

I tense and reach my hand around behind me to make sure my whip is still there. Garrett presses the horse forward at a slow walk, toward the approaching people.

“Subterrans,” he says. “Lots of them.”

“What?” I look again. He’s right. It’s hard to see from half a mile away, but the faces are pure white, and the clothing is dark gray. Not the rich blue and pink I remember from their underground city, but dark gray, almost the color of the lake.

“And… others,” he says.

As we get closer, more and more people emerge from the forest. Dozens. Scores. A hundred or more. Maybe twenty of them are clearly Subterrans, but the rest are… Southshawan? Eighty or more Southshawans coming out of our woods, at Lodgeholm, with twenty Subterrans. Of all the things I didn’t expect to see today, this might be the most unlikely.

The last two figures emerge from the woods, and even from this distance I recognize them at once. One is dressed in Tawtrukk clothes: Tom. The other wears a long, gold-colored robe that flows behind him, open and exposing a deep, sky-blue outfit underneath. Fobrasse.

What the…

Tom waves. The rest of the people stop for Fobrasse, who waits for us to reach him.

I recognize a few of the Southshawans from the one night I stayed there, that extra night that made me too late to save Lodgeholm. Judith and Gregory stand out at the front as we approach. Judith looks worn out, a thousand years old. Gregory is not much better, but he was old already and they’ve come a long way. Both look only a little more gray than the snow around them.

As we arrive, Judith says, “Lupay. I am so happy to see you.” Her voice is dry and thin, like exposed grass after a long, hot summer. Her eyes look like she wants to cry but has no tears to do it with.

“I—” What do I say? That I’m happy to see her, too? I don’t think that’s true. I was happy to see Dane, but his mother… no. “I’m a little surprised to see you, Judith.”

Garrett twists to try to look at me. “That seems a little rude, Loop.”

“Do not worry,” Judith says, and she gives a little smile that seems genuine. “I know Lupay is not one for idle pleasantries, and I imagine that’s the kindest thing she could possibly say to me. She’s a girl of truth.”

Judith makes it hard not to respect her. Oh what the hell. The war is over, right? I should try to act like it.

“Let me try again,” I say. “Welcome to Tawtrukk, Judith. Gregory, you are welcome, too.”

“Better,” says Garrett with a smile. “I’ve heard about you both,” he continues to Judith. “My name is Garrett Shiver. You and those who come with you are welcome here.”