Ice Country (24 page)

like the strange distortion of a nightmare
becoming real,

everything twists

and turns

and comes together

in one moment of clarity, as the curves
straighten and the blurs sharpen. And what I see is this:

Skye standing over a growing pile of bodies,
wiping her dripping knife on her hip;

Siena dodging a punch from a guy twice her
size, diving, rolling, snagging a satchel of arrows and a bow from
a fallen guard, stringing one, shooting the guard through the
neck;

Circ sword fighting another guard, taking a
blow to his off-shoulder, but swinging his own sword across his
opponent’s chest, striking him down;

Feve, moving as fast as Skye, running from
enemy to enemy, eliminating them with seemingly no more than his
bare hands and a short knife;

Wilde, using a long dagger to hold her own
against two medium-sized guards with swords, but getting pushed
back, back, back toward the palace, until—

—Buff charges from the side tackling the
guards, laying down a barrage of punches on one of their faces
while the other lies motionless, his own sword sticking from his
chest;

Abe getting hit in the leg by a wall guard’s
arrow, going down, Brock standing over him and screaming
obscenities at the foursome of guards that surround them, holding
them off until—

—he gets stabbed through the gut and his eyes
go white, and he falls, falls onto Abe, who’s injured but not dead,
a dead man covering a living one, but then—

—Hightower is there, swinging a huge club in
one hand and a battle axe in the other, chopping down guards like
small trees, throwing his axe down, rolling Brock off his brother,
picking Abe up and slinging him over his shoulder, arrows filling
the air like sleet, hitting him once, twice, thrice, shoulder,
chest, thigh, but he’s running, running like a raging bear, using
his club to knock away the guards in his path, another arrow, this
one in the arm with the club, which he’s forced to drop, reaching
the gate crank, kicking the guard who’s manning it, and finally,
finally, using one arm to spin the crank faster than anyone’s
probably ever cranked it.

The gate starts to open.

It slides higher and higher, rising up into
the hollowed out wall. We all hear it—and so do the guards, who
begin running toward it to make their last stand. The wall guards
abandon their posts and throw ropes over the wall, slide down them.
There are only a half-dozen left.

Skye yells, “To me!” and there’s no doubt
that she’s the leader of the fighting portion of our escape.

I start to run to her, but then I realize
that in my moment of clarity, there was one person missing. The
person I should’ve been looking for first, who, was I thinking
clearly, I would’ve sought out. My brother. Wes.

I stop and spin around, searching,
searching—frantically freezin’ searching—and not finding. The
others rush past me toward Skye, stampeding over any guards in
their path. Buff grabs my arm, tries to pull me. “We gotta go!” he
says.

“Wes,” I say. “Have you seen him?”

“What? Nay. He’s probably with the others…”
We both look to where the others are standing, Skye shouting quick
orders. He’s not there.

“C’mon!” Skye yells in our general
direction.

I push Buff toward them. I run the other
way.

I
hear a cry behind
me but I don’t look. The others are storming the gate, fighting
their way through. I should be with them, helping, not running
away, but I can’t leave him. I can’t.

I run through the courtyard, tossing aside
bodies of guards piled on bodies of guards, desperately trying to
find the man who clothed and fed Jolie and I when my father was
dead and my mother stricken with something worse than death. But
he’s not here. He’s not here.

Then, suddenly, Buff’s beside me, pulling at
bodies, searching alongside me. “Go!” I yell at him, right in his
face. “Go, you can’t be here!”

“I’m not freezin’ leaving,” he says, and I
know he won’t.

The sound of death burns near the gate, but
it seems miles away, the cold windless night becoming eerily calm
around us, like we’re in a normal place, doing normal things. But
my erratic heartbeat and ragged breaths tell me everything I need
to know about the desperateness of our situation.

We’re out of time. More than out. If we’re
going to escape, it has to be now.

“We have to go,” Buff says.

“I can’t leave him,” I say.

“We’ll come back for him.”

“When?!” I shout. “He’s already got my
sister. I can’t let him take Wes too.”

And Buff nods grimly because he knows. He
knows I can’t. He was just saying what he had to as my friend.

We keep looking while someone dies at the
gates.

But we’ve looked everywhere—there’s nowhere
else to look. Every body’s been turned, examined. Nothing. No Wes.
It’s like he disappeared.

We look around us helplessly, trying to find
somewhere we’ve forgotten to look.

That’s when we hear it. A groan. Amidst the
cacophony of battle noises, it’s faint, and I think I mighta
imagined it until I see Buff’s head tilt to one side. He hears it
too.

“Hurry,” I say.

We fan out, listening intently, moving toward
where we think it might be. We close in on the opposite sides of a
pillar near the palace entrance, which is full of shadows.

“Uhhhh,” the voice says.

I run toward the sound, circle the pillar,
find him, find Wes, back against the stone, clutching his
blood-soaked side, streams of red running between his fingers and
down his leg, more blood than I’ve ever seen.

“Nay,” I say.

“I’m dying,” Wes says.

“Nay,” I say.

“Leave me.”

“Nay.”

Buff grabs his feet and I pick him up under
his arms and he screams louder than I’ve ever heard him scream,
even louder than when we were kids and I pegged him with an iceball
and he fell offa a wall and broke his leg. And he screamed plenny
loud then.

But we have no choice. No choice. We leave
him, he dies. We take him, there’s a chance. Slim, yah, but a
chance nonetheless.

We run sort of sideways, sort of front ways,
Buff on one side, me on the other, my brother airborne between us.
In front of us is carnage.

Bodies are strewn every which way, but by the
looks of it, we’ve won the night. Several weaponless guards are
staggering and stumbling away from the gates, holding bloody arms
or putting pressure on blood-spouting stomach wounds. Skye’s waving
to us to hurry the chill up, or the scorch up, or however they say
it in fire country.

We run, hobble, stumble across the flat area
outside the castle walls, reaching the White District a minute
later. We duck behind a tall, snow-covered wall to catch our
breaths and assess our injuries.

Although I’m sure everyone contributed to the
fight, it’s clear that Hightower, despite being stuck with more
arrows than a shooting range target, did more than his fair share.
He’s down on one knee, panting heavily and loudly, soaked in blood
that’s surely equal parts his own and his enemies’. Abe’s standing
over him, a broken arrow sticking from his leg. “Can you walk,
Tower? Can you?”

He grunts and pushes to his feet. I think
every single one of us just stares. He’s a sight to behold, what
with half a dozen arrows sticking from him and more slash and cut
wounds than the rest of us combined, he looks like the magnificent
warrior that he is. The hero that he is.

“Is yer brother alright?” Skye says, looking
right at me.

“He’s not good,” I say. “We need to get help
fast. Hightower’ll need it too.”

“Circ too,” she says, motioning to where
Siena and Feve are holding Circ up, his arms draped over their
shoulders, hobbling on one leg.

“My people say the cold helps heal,” Feve
says.

“And what do you know about it?” I say
sharply.

“I know of healing,” is all Feve replies. He
leaves Circ to Siena and bends to grab a handful of snow. “Pack
this in your brother’s wound,” he says. “It might help with the
bleeding.”

I don’t know if I can trust him, but I’ll try
anything that might help Wes, so I only watch as Buff grabs the
snow and pats it on Wes’s stomach.

“We gotta get to the Red District,” I say.
“There are healers there who know how to be discrete.”

“We can’t,” Skye says. “This ain’t our
country. We hafta git back to the desert.”

“Trust me,” I say. “Healers first. Desert
after. We’ll go together.”

Wilde steps forward, a wicked gash running
from her ear to her chin. “He’s right, Skye. We all need help.”

Skye’s fierce brown eyes are uncertain for a
moment, but then she nods, says, “Move out!”

Before we charge through the White District,
I look back, wondering if, at any moment, a horde of guards will
pour from the gate, descending upon us like a swarm of demons.

Instead, I see only one man, high atop the
wall. He holds a child in his arms.

With a slow, drawn out motion, he slides his
thumb across his throat.

And it’s hard to see, because it’s dark and
snowflakes are falling, but I know…

I know.

It’s King Goff and he’s—he’s got—

He’s got Jolie.

And I don’t know if his death decree is meant
for me or for her.

~~~

We run, walk, limp, hobble, and carry each
other to the Red District.

It took every last bit of my self-control not
to run back to the palace, to demand that Goff hand over my sister,
to fight him and the rest of his guards, all of whom will be awake
and called into action.

But if he hasn’t hurt Jolie yet, it’s
unlikely he’ll hurt her now. He told me himself that he needs her,
that she’s some special trade item, whatever that means. And Wes is
in trouble
now
, so he has to be my top priority. But even as
Buff and I struggle along, carrying him, watching him fight in and
out of consciousness, babbling like our drug-plugged mother,
Jolie’s all over my thoughts. She’s calling to me, asking me
why—
WHY?
—why did you leave me behind when you were so close
to finding me? I thought you loved me?

It’s all I can do to whisper, “I’m sorry,”
and push onwards.

Although it’s the middle of the night when we
reach the Red District, there’re lights on everywhere, music
playing, men laughing. A man crashes through a swinging door,
landing face first in a pile of snow. “And stay out, you drunk!” a
gruff voice calls after him.

A door to our left creaks open and there’s
Lola, looking as provocative as ever, something thin and silky tied
up top and around her waist. “By the Mountain Heart,” she murmurs
when she’s sees us leaving bloody footprints in the snow. She
slinks back inside, slamming the door behind her.

Skye glances at me and I shrug. Just another
normal night in this place.

“Turn here,” I say as we approach a cross
road.

Around the bend we stop at the second
building on the right. There’s no sign, no placard, not even
something spray-painted on the wall to describe what’s here. You
either know it, or you don’t. Thankfully, after Wes demanded that I
never come home again looking like I’d been through a war, I found
this place. They’ve stitched and bandaged me (and Buff too) up more
times than I can count even with both shoes off and my toes warming
in front of the fire.

“Here,” I say.

“Here?” Skye says.

I nod. She shrugs and pushes the metal door
open, holding it for me and Buff.

We carry Wes inside.

It smells like ’quiddy and burnt ice powder
inside, but it’s not an underground drug and booze house. The
alcohol’s for sterilizing wounds and the burnt ice powder is a
natural anesthetic, although I wouldn’t recommend using it for that
purpose very often. As my mother has shown time and time again,
it’s more addictive than a woman’s smile.

Maddy, the rough-edged woman who runs the
joint, is sitting at the desk when we barge in. “Good Heart!” she
exclaims. “Dazz?”

“Mads,” I say with a nod. “Wes needs urgent
medical care. So do some of the others.” I wave a hand back at the
ragtag group behind me. Her eyes widen. “All of us need treatment
for one injury or another.”

“We’re all full up,” she says, frowning, her
eyes jumping between Skye and Feve, who are standing next to
me.

“Mads,” I say, not even attempting to keep
the desperation out of my voice. “Please.”

“I don’t even know where these—these strange
people come from,” she says, her eyes narrowing on Feve’s markings,
which curl out from beneath his skins and around his neck.

“Fire country,” I say. “They come from fire
country, and they need your help. I need your help.”

Every line in her face crinkles. “You got
silver?” she asks.

“Nay,” I say, and I see her frown deepen. “I
mean, not on us. But you know I’m good for it.”

“Ain’t got no silver, ain’t get no service,”
she says crossing her arms.

My arms are burning from carrying Wes and all
I want to do is collapse right here on her floor, refuse to move,
force her to help us, but then Abe hobbles up next to me and says,
“I got plenny of silver and yer icin’ gonna help us or so help me
Mountain Heart, I will make the rest of yer days a livin’ chill,
Woman!”

Well, Mads pretty much jumps into gear after
that, yelling for all her healers to come to the front immediately
and stop helping the drunks with bruised knees and even more
bruised egos. At least ten women come out, all wearing
less-than-clean aprons—which I expect at one time were as white as
snow, but which are now a yellowish-reddish-brown—about one per
each one of us, although those of us with minor injuries refuse
treatment until Wes and Hightower and Circ and Abe are taken care
of.