Rogue (24 page)

The blur turned course away from the bridge at the last moment and veered behind one of the larger buildings in the compound. The six soldiers turned and kept up their pursuit, until a gigantic bear silently leaped out at them behind the building.

Nine down, nine to go.

Their sergeant heard a commotion going on behind the big building that deeply troubled him, and then he heard something else make an odd buzzing sound as it swooped over the heads of his remaining soldiers. When he spotted it, he found even more reason to worry.

Something was falling out of the sky toward them—a ball-shaped object unlike anything he'd seen before—and then the ball exploded or expanded or opened up into something else, somehow turning itself into a large net made out of thin rope. It dropped down over the top of them and immediately tangled up their arms and legs, and the more they struggled against it, trying to free their weapons, the tighter the rope seemed to grip them. They could barely hold on to their rifles.

Then a girl stepped out from behind a nearby tree and walked toward them. A young girl, with long black hair, slight and very pretty, and as he continued to struggle against the netting, the sergeant thought,
The bald man warned me about a girl who could—

When she was about ten feet away from them, the girl stopped, braced herself, took in a deep breath, and opened her mouth wide.

And that was the last thing any of the soldiers remembered.

They dragged all the bodies into the largest of the buildings, which turned out to be a barracks lined with wooden bunk beds. Each of them took a set of armor off the soldier that seemed their closest physical match. Although they had the expected dimensions of human bodies, when they removed the soldiers' masks, they realized that these weren't men, exactly, but some kind of humanoid hybrids. No two of their faces looked alike. Each had obviously been crossed with some kind of wild animal—boar, jackal, ox, wolf, and to Nick's delight…

“Hey, I think this one's part lion,” he said.

“Good, so your field trip's complete,” said Elise. “Be sure to tell Teacher.”

“Whatever. I got dibs on lion dude's armor.”

Once they'd stripped the armor off, Ajay helped each of them fasten it on—boots, leg pieces, a vest, something like shoulder pads, arms and forearms, heavy gloves. It covered them nearly from head to toe.

“It appears to be made from some material akin to carbon fiber or a weapons-grade Kevlar, so that gives the lie to the idea that they're entirely without some access to high-caliber manufacturing.”

Ajay picked up one of the weapons.

“And these rifles don't appear to be all that different from a modern M-sixteen,” he said, looking down the barrel. “In fact, they may be an improvement.”

“Don't shoot your eye out, Junior,” said Jericho, taking the rifle from him, checking the magazine, and slinging the weapon over his shoulder.

“What about you, Ajay?” asked Will after they were all suited up.

“Oh, no, none of this gear is going to fit me,” said Ajay. “I'm far too small.”

“Too bad they didn't cross one of these dudes with a shrimp,” said Nick, then, after Elise punched him hard in the shoulder, “Sorry.”

“Nick,” said Jericho, “help me with the horses.”

He hurried off toward the stable and Nick followed.

Will looked down at the faces of the soldiers they'd unmasked, lying in a row. “Reminds me of the animal masks we found near the tunnels. In that trunk that belonged to the Knights.”

“Perhaps that's no coincidence,” said Ajay.

“Feels like a really long time ago, doesn't it?” asked Elise.

“A hundred years,” said Will. “Let's get out of here.”

When they walked outside, Will watched Elise as she took the lead, effortlessly slinging her rifle up to a ready position. He couldn't help thinking she looked completely at ease in that sleek black armor, her inner badass ever closer to finding its fullest expression. She must have felt him watching her, because she turned around and shot him a look.

What do we do with Ajay now?
she asked him.
If he's not wearing the armor, they'll spot him right away, but we can't leave him behind.

Of course not. He's coming with us. We'll figure it out.

If anything happens to him—

Nothing's going to happen to him. Or to any of us. I'm working on it.

So, no turning back.

That's right. Moment of truth.

Time to bust down a few doors, kick ass, and take some names.

You took the words right out of my—

Will realized that Ajay was looking back and forth between them again, eyes wide open, like someone watching a tennis match.

“How long have you known how to do this?” he asked.

“Do what?” asked Elise; then she looked over at Will, alarmed.
Is it
that
obvious?

“You know what I mean,” said Ajay. “And there's no point in lying to me. Do you realize how many indicators I can spot from just the observation of facial muscles alone when someone's not telling me the truth? Forty-five! How long?”

Elise flicked another glance at Will, looking for guidance. He didn't see any reason to hide it at this point.

“Quite a while now,” said Will. “Since last spring.”

“Really? How fascinating. I'm astonished you've kept it a secret from me as long as you have. Do you suppose this is another side effect of our genetic birthday bequest?”

“Yes,” said Will. “Definitely.”

“Yes, of course it is,” said Ajay, almost to himself. “Then it should work for me as well. Doesn't that stand to reason? Can you teach me how?”

Will didn't answer. Now he looked to Elise for her thoughts about it.

“It takes a lot of practice,” she said.

“I'm nothing at this point if not the definition of a quick study,” said Ajay. “Please try, Elise. If nothing else, who knows, it's a skill that may come in handy for us somewhere along the line.”

Will agreed and nodded his consent to Elise, where all of Ajay's attention remained fixed.

He wants to try with the pretty girl first,
Will sent to Elise.
Big surprise.

Elise looked away, appearing slightly flustered. Will immediately second-guessed his choice of words. Should he not have said
pretty
? He'd just blurted it out without even thinking about it, since it was obviously such a ridiculous understatement.

“Let's give it a try, Ajay,” she said. “And given the state of your brain, I'm thinking it shouldn't be too hard for you.”

“Okay, ready when you are,” he said.

She directed a thought toward Ajay. He closed his eyes and scrunched up his face, making more effort than he would on a twentieth push-up.

“Don't try so hard,” said Will.

“Quite right,” said Ajay.

He tried, with just as much effort, to relax. Will watched Elise direct another thought at him, and waited. Ajay shook his head.

“I'm still not picking up a doggone thing,” said Ajay, opening his eyes.

“Don't worry about it,” said Elise. “This is new to you. It might take a little while.”

“But that's just terribly disappointing—”

“Go easy on yourself, pal,” said Will. “It's like learning another language, that's all.”

“If I can master French in three days, I should be able to pick up this.”

“And you'll pick it up fast,” said Will, “but we'll have to practice on the way.”

Jericho and Nick returned from the stables, leading four fully geared fresh horses.

“Choose your ride,” said Jericho.

“Oh, dear, I'm afraid I'm not much of a horseman,” said Ajay, backing away from the massive beasts.

“You're riding with me,” said Jericho.

“Which one do you want?” Will asked Elise.

She looked them over, then turned to the stable. Will saw her concentrate long enough to send another thought somewhere. Then she put two fingers in her mouth and whistled sharply.

The horse that had nearly trampled Brooke came running out of the stable and trotted right up to Elise, bowing its head and stamping its foot in front of her. A beautiful brute of an animal, gleaming black, with a long shaggy mane and tail and wild, intelligent eyes.

“This one,” she said, patting the blaze on its forehead. “We already talked about it.”

Ajay leaned in and whispered to her, “It works with
horses,
too?”

“I found this in the main building,” said Jericho, holding up a rolled parchment. “Take a look.”

“Hey, I almost forgot,” said Nick. “I gotta go get the drone.”

Nick tied the horses to a rail outside the barracks and ran back toward the grove.

Jericho rolled open the parchment. It was a map, on crisp, thick paper, hand drawn in a variety of colored inks. He set it down on the porch while the others examined it. None of the writing was in any form they recognized as language, but a number of significant geographical features were easy to identify.

“The lake,” said Will, pointing to a broad blue swatch across the lower middle of the map. “The river. The bridge. So we're here.”

He put his finger down on a representation of the garrison and traced the path of the road along the bridge.

“If we follow this to the other side, it hooks up with that main road, here,” he said. “According to this, like you saw earlier, Coach, it runs all the way to the mountains.”

Will pointed to a series of wavy thin lines, well to the north and west, a symbol he recognized as the topographical representation of a mountain range's elevations.

“What's this?” asked Elise.

She pointed to the end of the road at a rectangular cluster of six joined hexagons, outlined in black and filled in with red, tucked into the shelter of the mountains.

“I'm guessing that's the Citadel,” said Will.

“Where that army is headed,” said Jericho.

“And that's where we'll find Dave?” asked Ajay.

“I think so,” said Will.

Nick came running back into camp, holding Ajay's drone in one hand.

“Dude, sorry, it took a serious beat-down when it crashed into the trees,” he said, handing it over.

They gathered around Ajay as he set the device on the ground and his busy, efficient hands attended to it. Two of the drone's struts were bent, and one of the rotors was hanging by a wire.

“The bad news is she'll never fly again,” said Ajay. “The good news is it appears that the camera survived the crash unscathed.”

He removed the camera from its housing and attached it by cable to a six-inch viewing tablet that he pulled from his pack. Holding it up so they all could see it, Ajay flipped a switch and the tablet's screen flickered to life.

“I programmed it to snap a fresh photograph every ten seconds.”

He scrolled through the pictures as they all watched; overhead views of the golden plain they'd just traversed, then the stand of eucalyptus trees, the garrison, the bridge. Many fleeting glimpses of the army on the road below followed, although not much detail appeared through the rising clouds of dust because of the overhead angle. But the impressive scale and size of the procession was plain enough to see, and occasionally the top of a rolling siege weapon or the head of some colossal beast poked up above the mist.

After passing across the road, images of a rolling green countryside appeared, sparsely forested, dotted with occasional buildings, mostly farms or small villages.

Jericho picked up the map at that point, and cross-referenced the photos to chart the flight of the drone over the land depicted on the parchment. He traced its path from the highway as the pictures continued, and it drew closer to the hexagons of the Citadel. There the landscape turned gradually more barren as it approached, the green hills giving way to a parched and pitted plain, where the outskirts of a massive temporary encampment began to appear in the pictures.

“Oh my Lord,” whispered Ajay.

The army they'd seen on the march was apparently on its way to join an even more massive force that had already gathered there. Judging by the photos, this encampment appeared to go on for a number of square miles outside the front walls of the Citadel, images of which now appeared on the screen for the first time. Segregated regiments of every breed of monster they could imagine covered the field, including a battalion of snake-men they saw clearly in the center of one frame.

“Boy, are those snake-dudes gonna be bummed when they get home,” said Nick.

“What this suggests,” said Ajay, leaning back as he took it all in, “is that there must be a great number of similar encampments to the one we destroyed throughout the Never-Was.”

“That's right,” said Jericho.

“Each one stocked with a different kind of monster,” said Elise.

“One more frightful than the next,” said Ajay. “I predict that my nightmares are now going to have nightmares.”

“How big is their entire force?” asked Will. “The size of this whole army, can you estimate it?”

“I would have to say…in the hundreds of thousands,” said Ajay, staring at the photo. “Conservatively.”

Will turned his focus to the walls of the Citadel. They were built or carved from some dark granite, all long lines and sharp angles, and it looked as if the whole structure had thrust itself forward out of the hard black bare mountains behind it. From this overhead angle, it was difficult to determine exactly how tall the ramparts forming its perimeter stood, but judging from the relative size of objects on the ground below, they appeared to be as tall as a skyscraper.

“Remind you of anything?” asked Will.

“The wall,” said Ajay, his eyes locked on the picture, soaking in every detail. “The one underground, around Cahokia. The craftsmanship is unmistakable.”