Planet Urth: The Savage Lands (Book 2) (9 page)

The momentum of my spear causes Tal to lurch backward.  His weapon falls and he staggers a moment, stunned before he frantically tries to dislodge the object from his neck.  I see it in a blur as I run
full speed toward Will, see his legs cave from beneath him then his body flop back.  I don’t stop, though, and immediately toss Will his club.  Oliver is on the ground unconscious and the girls are huddled together crying. But I cannot attend to any of them yet.  Will grips his club.

“Oliver, are you all right?” he calls to his brother.  But
Oliver does not answer.  “What’s happening?” he asks.

My shoulder is touching his and I do not take my eyes off
either Jay or Tal’s father.  “They were going to kill you and Oliver and do some sick things to June, Riley and me, weren’t you?” I address the men. 

Jay laughs cruelly.  “We still are,” he says.  “What makes you think you’re getting out of here?”

Tal’s father licks his lips and calls for Ross and two other men. 

“I wouldn’t bother,” I say in a voice so level and venomous it sounds foreign to my ears.  “No one is coming to help you.  I took care of them already.”

“Liar!” Jay shouts and spittle sprays from his thin lips.  “There’s no way a skinny little girl like you took down any of my boys.”

“Believe what you want.  Your boys aren’t coming.  They all look pretty much like Tal looks right about now.”

My words frenzy Tal’s father.  He moves to attack me while Jay attacks Will simultaneously.  From the corner of my eye, I see that Will avoids Jay’s advance and easily clubs him in the back of the head.  The blow sends him to the ground and renders him unmoving.  I dodge the old man’s strike as well. 

“Drop your sword
, old man,” Will advises Tal’s father when he is at my side once again.  The fight is now two against one. 

Then the old man does something unexpected.  He lowers his sword.  His eyes glaze for a moment and he places his free hand over his heart.  He pitches and staggers and positions himself over Oliver. 
His gaze shines with a sinister delight when he appears to reclaim awareness and no longer totters about.  He looms over Oliver and is about to drive the tip of his blade straight through the boy’s heart. 

“No!” I shout and heave my sword forward.  It drills through the old man’s torso and he drops his weapon.  Will descends on him and delivers a deadly final knock to his skull. 

I rush to Oliver and place two fingers to the base of his neck.  I feel a steady pulse.

“He’s alive,” I tell Will.  But Will is standing over the old man who has fallen to the dirt floor. 

“Are you okay?” I ask Oliver as his eyelids begin to flutter.

“Yeah, I think so,” he says shakily. 

I leave Oliver where he is.  June takes my place and helps him to his feet.  I get to the first man Will struck, Jay.  I repeat the process I performed on Oliver, only this time I do not detect a throbbing at the base of the man’s neck.  

“He’s dead,” I say to Will.   “Jay’s dead.”

Will drops his club and rakes both hands through his hair.  He is pacing and clearly distraught.  “I killed a human.  I can’t believe I killed a human being,” he mutters.  He sinks to his knees and looks as if he may be ill. 

I sheathe my sword and kneel.  I
cup Will’s perfect face in my hands and force him to look at me.  “That man you killed and the men I killed were no better than Urthmen.  They were monsters all the same.”

Will dips his
chin and leans into me, resting his head in the space between my neck and shoulder.  His arms grip me, embracing me tightly.  He begins to cry.  I hold him where he is. 

All of us have suffered.  We are drained emotionally and physically.  Life continues to take its toll on us with each day that passes.  I wonder how high the price will go, how much we will have to sacrifice before something gives.  These thoughts
, and so many others, tumble through my brain.  They are too much to handle.  So I release them and exist in the moment I am in.  I clutch Will snugly and feel our tears mingle.

Chapter 5

I lift my chin from where it is perched on Will’s head and see a boy running toward us with his blade in hand.  I release Will immediately and leap to my feet, recognition striking through my body like a bolt of lightning.  I scoop up my sword and ready myself.  The boy approaching was at the table when we first arrived in the dining hall.  He’d been quiet when I first met him.  Much has changed since then. 

He rushes at us, all the while releasing a guttural war cry.

“What did you do?” he demands.  His voice is hoarse and raw, laced with sadness and hate.  “You killed them!  You killed
all
my fathers!” he screams and swings his blade in my direction.

I block his swing easily
and thrust my sword as our blades collide, placing all of my weight behind it.  The boy pitches backward and totters for a moment.

“Drop it!” I warn him.  “I’m not going to hurt you.” 

The boy’s chest is heaving.  His cheeks are red and his eyes are wild.  I know he is hurting, but his pain is not my problem at the moment.  Especially since his father, one of the men my blade claimed, intended to kill Will and Oliver, and enslave June, Riley and myself. 

In my periphery, I see Will streak by.  He is behind the boy within seconds and grabs him in a bear hug.  The
boy’s weapon falls to the ground with a loud
clang
. 

“You killed him,” the boy cries and resembles a trapped mammal. 
“You killed them all!”  He flails and thrashes for a moment, but Will holds tight.

“You
r father and the others attacked us,” I say flatly once the boy is still.  “And I think you know that’s what they planned all along.  You knew what they were going to do.  I defended my family and me,” I add and hear how easily I include Will, Oliver and Riley in my family despite knowing them for a short while.

The boy’s head sags.  He knows I am right. 

“I’m going to let you go now,” Will tells him.  “But you need to be calm.  No one is going to hurt you, okay?”

The boy nods feebly before Will lowers his arms. 
I do not wish for more bloodshed.  All of us have witnessed enough.  I am relieved when, once freed, the boy rushes to where Tal’s body is slumped as opposed to attempting to engage me in battle again.  He cries and drapes his body across him, and a small corner of my heart clenches tightly.

Will closes his eyes and slowly shakes his head from side to side.
  I can imagine the thoughts racing through his mind.  The loss of his parents is so fresh in his mind, it is a wonder he has not fallen apart completely.  I move toward him and place a hand on his back.  But my hand slips away quickly when movement to my side demands my attention. 

I spin in time to see a haggard face staring back at me. 
Scraggly lengths of wiry gray hair frame a face creased and leathered by time and elements.  Watery eyes the color of soot squint at me then beyond me, to where the boy cries.  The haggard face is joined by several others who shuffle and stop beside her.  The women I saw earlier, the ones who carried trays of food and cleared the table after we ate, have returned.

“What happened here?” the one closest to me asks and p
oints with a gnarled finger toward the fallen bodies.  Her voice drips with what can only be described as glee. 

I glance at Will then back to the woman.  “They attacked the wrong people, I guess,” I say levelly.

A throaty cackle breaks out spontaneously but is stifled almost as quickly as it began.  Silence befalls the women.  I notice the one closest to me first touch her right hand to her forehead then her belly then to her left shoulder and right.  She then joins her hands so that her fingertips form a steeple and her palms are pressed together.  She turns her eyes skyward.

“Thank you, Lord,” she says.  “Thank you for freeing us.
”

Some of the women nod reverently
while others bow their heads.  I haven’t the slightest idea what is happening or why they are behaving so peculiarly.  I look at the old woman who gestured with her hands, puzzled.  I look to the sky and wonder what or to whom she spoke.

“Uh, my name is Avery, not Lord,”
I say politely.  “None of us is named Lord,” I add, mindful of the fact that she is old and likely mistook my name for another.

The old woman chuckles softly.  The sound rumbles from somewhere deep inside her chest.  It
is an odd, but not entirely unpleasant, sound.  “I know you are not the Lord,” she says.

Her words confuse me further.  I glance at Will.  He looks as
baffled as I am.  “Okay, then who are you talking to?”

“We are talking to God,” t
he old woman replies.  “We are thanking him for delivering us from the evil that has imprisoned us for years.”  She speaks with a quiet respect and peace that I have never heard another speak with.  I find myself wanting to learn more about God and how she helped them.

“Who’s God?” I ask and feel my brows knit.  “Does she live here too?  How did she deliver you from, wait, what did she deliver you from again?”

“Evil,” the old woman says.  Her tone remains somber and humble in spite of my questions.  “And God is not someone who lives in these walls.  He is our Creator.”  She turns her eyes to the sky again.  “He is up there in heaven watching over us always.”

I follow her gaze to the navy sky.  It is dotted with innumerable twinkling lights.  I have heard the sky referred to as ‘the heavens’ before and often wondered about exactly what that meant.  I’ve wondered who or what is responsible for the shimmering lights called stars and the ever-changing moon glowing overhead.  Perhaps this God person is.  I do not know.  And
while a part of me feels drawn inexplicably to the concept, now is not the time I expect to find answers. 

“Right,” I say to the old woman.  Her beady eyes hold me, and for a moment, a strange feeling stirs in my chest, an in
describable lightness that bubbles from my belly to my collarbones.  A broad smile splits the old woman’s face and a look of silent satisfaction shines in her stare.  “Someone needs to go and release the girls chained up in the cabin,” I say and do not break eye contact.

The old woman looks away first.  She turns to one of the women beside
her and with a sweep of her arm and a nod of her head, the other woman shuffles toward Tal’s father.  She searches his belt until she finds a ring of keys.  She removes it and lumbers toward the hut in which I found the girls.  Another of the women who disappeared into the kitchen in the first moments we entered the compound leaves the group and goes to the boy beside Tal.  She kneels in front of him and places a hand on his back.

“Oh my poor son,” she says.

The boy spins.  “My dad is your son?” he asks through sniffles.

A long pau
se stretches between them.  “No,” she answers thoughtfully.  “You are,” the woman adds in a shaky voice. 

The boy’s head jerks back.  Confusion carves his features.  “What?” he asks in a weak voice.  “That’s not, it’s not
, that’s not possible,” he stammers.

“Oh my child,” she says.  “They never told you.  I know.  But you are my son.”  The woman swipes tears that trickle down her cheeks.  “Those girls the men kept in the hut, they used to be us,” she says and gestures to the women with her.  “We were who they created life with until we became too unappealing,” she concludes and lowers her head
, saying the last word with such shame I feel my own cheeks warm. 

I rub my forehead and am horrified by what I am hearing. 

“How long have they been doing this?” I ask.

“For as long as I can remember,” the woman answers.
  “And it wasn’t just here,” she adds and limply sweeps her arm, gesturing to the surrounding structure.

Her words slither down my spine like a serpent.  The women before me have spent their lives serving men, cooking for them, cleaning for them, and
bearing children for them, all while enduring unspeakable abuses.  Before now, the idea of something so awful was inconceivable.  “All of you will come with us,” I say and see no other option.  They are old and slow, but I will not leave them behind to die.  “We are leaving tomorrow.  We are journeying out of the forest and into the world beyond to find more humans.”

Gasps echo among the women.  They exchange startled looks. 
I hear the word ‘no’ murmured more than once, along with the words ‘crazy’ and ‘death.’

“We aren’t going anywhere,” the woman with the long gray hair says. 
“There is nothing out there, only death.”  Her comments are met with keen nods of accord.

I feel my mouth open
, and for a moment I am speechless.  What the old woman has said, as well as the fervent agreement, does not make sense to me.  “Urthmen have been deep into the woods.  They stormed the area where the river meets the lake.  The forest thins here.  They will come here too.  It is only a matter of time,” I warn the women. 

But the woman with the long hair shakes her head.  “No, we will take our chances here,” she says adamantly.  “God will watch over us,” she adds and looks up at the sky.