Red (7 page)

He hadn't considered the comparison. “I'm not sure there is a ‘there' that's not also ‘here.' Hard to explain and it's just a hunch, but both realities are actually very similar.”

“Hmm. Well if you ever figure out how to take others with you, promise to take me first.”

“I will.”

She sighed. “I know this isn't exactly the best time to bring this up, but do you remember the last thing I told you before you disappeared for fifteen years last night?”

“Remind me.”

“It was only twelve hours ago. I suggested that you become someone who could deal with the situation here. Now you've come back a general. It just makes me wonder.”

“Interesting thought.”

“You really have changed, Thomas. And I hate to break it to you, but I really think you've changed for the sake of this world, not that one.”

“Maybe.”

“We're running out of time. You've got to start figuring things out. Get past all this noncommittal ‘maybe' and ‘interesting thought' stuff. If you don't, we just may be toast.”

“Maybe.” He grinned and closed the folder. “But unless I can figure out how to survive as General Hunter there, I won't be around here to figure anything out. Like I said, if I die there, I think I die here.”

“And if you die here?” she asked. “What happens if the virus kills us all?”

He hadn't connected the dots in that way, and her suggestion alarmed him. But it only made sense that if he died here along with the rest, he would die in the forest.

“Let's just hope this black powder of yours works, sis.”

“Sis?”

“I've always called you that.”

She shrugged. “Sounds odd now.”

“I
am
odd, sis. I am very, very odd.” He sighed, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes. “Time to get back into the ring. I'm almost tempted to ask you to rub my shoulders down. Fourteenth round and I'm dead on my feet.”

“Not funny. You have everything you need?”

He tapped his head. “I've read the material a dozen times. Let's hope I can remember it. Let's hope I can find what I need.”

“Elyon's strength,” she said.

He cracked one eye and looked at her. “Elyon's strength.”

7

“WAKE UP.”

His cheek stung. A hand slapped it again several times.

Thomas pushed himself up. “I am awake! Give me a moment!”

Mikil stepped back.

Thomas's mind spun. After so long, transitions of his dreams felt surreal.

He looked at his second in command. Mikil. She could probably walk into any bar in New York and clear the place. She wore battle moccasins, a kind of boot with hardened-leather soles but cured squirrel hide around the ankles and halfway up the calf. A bone-handled knife was strapped to her lean, well-muscled leg. She wore thigh guards for battle and a short hardened-leather skirt that would stop most blows. Her torso was covered in the traditional leather armor, but her arms were free to swing and block. Her hair ordinarily fell to her shoulders, but she'd tied it back today for battle. She'd strapped a red feather to her left elbow, a gift from Jamous, who was courting her. A long scar ran from the dangling feather up to her shoulder, the work of a Scab moments before she'd sent him screaming into hell during the Winter Campaign.

Mikil's eyes had begun to turn gray. The report of skirmishes at the Natalga Gap had come during the night—she'd left the village without her customary swim in the lake. The Forest Guard Oath required all soldiers to bathe at least once every three days. Any longer and they would risk becoming like the Desert Dwellers themselves. The sickness affected not only the eyes and the skin, but the mind as well. The Guard had to either carry large amounts of water with them on campaigns or draw the battle lines close to home. It was the single greatest limiting factor a tactician could be handed.

Thomas had once been stranded for four days in the desert without a horse. He had two canteens, and he'd used one for a spit bath on the second day. But by the end of the third day, the onset of the disease was so painful that he could hardly walk. His skin had turned gray and flaked, and a foul odor seeped from his pores. He was still a day's walk from the nearest forest.

In a fit of panic he'd stripped naked, flung himself on the sand, and begged the blistering sun to burn the flesh from his bones. For the first time he knew what it meant to be a Desert Dweller. It was indeed hell on earth.

On the morning of the fourth day, he began to see the world differently. His craving for fresh water diminished. The sand felt better underfoot. He began to think that living life in this new gray skin might not be impossible after all. He wrote the thoughts off to hallucination and expected to die of thirst by day's end.

A group of straying Horde found him and mistook him for one of their own. He drank their stale water and donned a hooded cloak and demanded a horse. He could still remember the woman who'd given him hers as if he'd met her yesterday.

“Are you married?” she asked him.

Thomas stood there, scalp burning under the hood, and stared at the Desert Dweller, taken aback by her question. If he said yes, she might ask who was his wife, which might cause problems.

“No.”

She stepped up to him and searched his face. Her eyes were a dull gray, nearly white. Her cheeks were ashen.

She drew back her hood and exposed her bleached hair. In that moment Thomas knew that this woman was propositioning him. But more, he knew that she was beautiful. He wasn't sure if the sun had gotten to him or if the disease was eating his mind, but he found her attractive. Fascinating, at the very least. No, more than that. Attractive. And no odor. In fact, he was sure that if he were somehow miraculously changed back into the Thomas with clear skin and green eyes, she would think that
his
skin stank.

The sudden attraction caught him wholly off guard. The Forest People followed the way of the Great Romance, vowing not to forget the love Elyon had lavished upon them in the colored forest. The Scabs did not. Until this moment he'd never considered what a man's attraction to a female Scab felt like.

The woman reached a hand to his cheek and touched it. “I am Chelise.”

He was immobilized with indecision.

“Would you like to come with me, Roland?” He'd given her the fictitious name knowing that his own was well known.

“I would, yes. But I first must complete my mission, and for that I need a horse.”

“Is that so? What is your mission?” She smiled seductively. “Are you a fierce warrior off to assassinate the murderer of men?”

“As a matter of fact, I am an assassin.” He thought it might earn him respect, but she acted as if meeting assassins in the desert was a common thing. “Who is this murderer of men?”

Her eyes darkened and he knew that he'd asked the wrong question.

“If you're an assassin, you would know, wouldn't you? There's only one man any assassin has taken an oath to kill.”

“Yes, of course, but do
you
really know the business of an assassin?” he said, mentally scrambling for a way out. “If you are so eager to bear my children, perhaps you should know with whom you would make your home. So tell me, whom have we assassins sworn to kill?”

He could tell immediately that she liked his answer.

“Thomas of Hunter,” she said. “He is the murderer of men and women and children, and he is the one that my father, the great Qurong, has commanded his assassins to kill.”

The daughter of Qurong! He was speaking to Desert royalty. He dipped his head in a show of submission.

She laughed. “Don't be silly. As you can see, I don't wear my position on my sleeve.”

The way her eyes had darkened when she spoke his name alarmed Thomas. He knew he was as despicable in the eyes of the Desert Dwellers as they were to him. But to discuss such a thing around the campfire after routing the enemy was one thing; to hear it coming from the lips of such a stunning enemy was quite another.

“Come with me, Roland,” Chelise said. “I'll give you more to do than run around making hopeless assassination attempts. Everyone knows that Hunter is far too swift with his sword to yield to this senseless strategy of my father's. Martyn, our bright new general, will have a place for you.”

It was the first time he'd heard the new general's name.

“I beg to differ, but I am the one assassin who can find the murderer of men and kill him at will.”

“Is that so? You're that intelligent, are you? And are you bright enough to read what no man can read?”

She was mocking him by suggesting that he couldn't read?

“Of course I can read.”

She arched an eyebrow. “The Books of Histories?”

Thomas blinked at the reference. She was speaking about the ancient books? How was that possible?

“You have them?” he asked.

Chelise turned away. “No. But I've seen a few in my time. It would take a wise man to read that gibberish.”

“Give me a horse. Let me finish my mission, then I will return,” he said.

“I'll give you a horse,” she said, replacing her hood. “But don't bother returning to me. If killing another man is more important to you than serving a princess, I've misjudged you.” She ordered a man nearby to give him a horse and then walked away.

His own Guard had nearly killed him at the edge of the forest. He bathed in the lake on the eve of the fourth day. Normally the cleansing of the disease felt soothing, but at this advanced stage of the disease, the pain was nearly unbearable. Entering the water had been not unlike pulling his skin off. It was no wonder the Scabs feared the lakes.

But the pain was only momentary, and when he emerged from the water, his skin was restored. Rachelle had finally and passionately kissed him on the mouth, now rid of its awful odor. The village had celebrated the return of its hero with more than its usual nightly celebration.

But the memory of that terrible condition with which the Horde lived every day never left him. And neither did the image of the woman from the desert. The only thing that separated her from Mikil was a bucket of Elyon's water.

Regardless of what he might want to think about the Desert Dwellers, one thing was indisputable: They had rejected the ways of Elyon. They were the enemy, and it wasn't their rotting flesh that Thomas hated as much as their treacherous, deceitful hearts. For the sake of Elyon, he and the Forest Guard had taken an oath to wipe the Horde from the earth or die in their attempt to do so.

“Did it work?” Mikil asked.

“Did what work?” His head throbbed. “The dreaming? Yes, yes it worked.”

“But no way to bring down the cliff, I take it.”

Hoofs pounded around the corner. William and Suzan rode on sweating mounts. The cliff?

The cliff! Black powder.

William pulled up and dropped to the ground. “Thomas! Our lines are breaking! I've brought two thousand from the rear and another two thousand will arrive in the night, but they're too many! It's a slaughter out there!”

“I have it!” Thomas cried.

“You have what?”

“Black powder. I know how to make black powder. In fact, I know a dozen ways to make it.”

Suzan dismounted. All three looked at him, at a loss.

“Thomas ordered me to hit him on the head so that he could dream,” Mikil said. “Evidently he has the ability to learn things from his dreams.”

William blinked. “You do? What could you possibly learn that—”

“I've learned how to make black powder,” Thomas said, marching past them. He turned back. “If we can make black powder, we have a chance, but we have to hurry.”

“You plan to defeat the whores by sprinkling powder on them?” William demanded. “Have you gone mad?” His designation of the Hordes as whores had become commonplace among the Forest Guard.

“He plans to use the powder to break the cliff off,” Mikil said. “Isn't that right, Thomas?”

“Essentially, yes. Black powder is an explosive, a fire that burns very fast and expands.” He demonstrated with his hands. “If we could pack black powder into the crack at the top of the cliff and ignite it, the entire cliff might break off.”

William was stupefied.

“You actually know how to make this black powder now?” Mikil asked.

“Yes.”

“How?”

He recited the information from his memory. “Black powder is composed of three basic ingredients in roughly the following proportions: 15 percent charcoal, 10 percent sulfur, and 75 percent saltpeter. That's it. All we have to do is find these three ingredients, prepare them in tightly packed pouches, lower them—”

“What is sulfur?” Suzan asked.

“What is saltpeter?” Mikil asked.

“This is the most absurd thing I've ever heard anyone without scales for flesh utter!” William said.

Thomas began to lose his patience. “Did I say it would be easy? We're being slaughtered down there! You can't build such a devastating device without a bit of work. Charcoal we have, right? We burn it. A few fast riders can retrieve an ample supply and have it here by midnight. Sulfur is the sixteenth most common element occurring in the Earth's crust. And I do believe this is the same Earth's crust. Never mind that; just know that sulfur is found in caves with pyrite. Never mind that as well. The caves at the north end of the Gap. We'll need to break off the cones, heat them in a large fire, and pray that sulfur flows from the pores. Much like the metal ore.”

An excitement was starting to show in Mikil's eyes, but William was frowning. “Even with the reinforcements we're badly outnumbered.”

“What about the salt?” Mikil asked.

Thomas ignored William. “Saltpeter.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “It's a white, translucent mineral composed of potassium nitrate.”