Without a watch, and my head stuffed in a rough cloth bag that smelled of dirt and potatoes, I found it impossible to keep track of time.
On through the darkness my captors rode, their beasts loping with the ease and skill of trained hounds, and sharp branches whipped at me from all sides. Part of my thoughts were fixated on trying to wiggle loose, but at the speed we were moving, I feared the fall more than the mysterious armored bandits that had grabbed me. One of them rode right in front of me, the rope around my arms and chest connected to him somehow, and the round metal centerpiece on his big shield had a nasty habit of swinging back to catch me in the chin. Riding this fast through the mid-September night chilled me to the bone, and I shivered in a hunch behind the shield in an attempt to avoid the wind. Still the hooves rumbled on across the forest floor in a steady rhythm, and just when I thought I’d happily throw myself off to avoid hypothermia, they slowed to a light trot.
Bawoo.
Another horn called from somewhere up ahead, and out of the midst of the unseen riders around me, another blatted back a reply.
Bawoo-bawoo.
Voices shouted in the distance, and a creaking sound echoed on both side of me, like giant hinges in a garden gate. Bridles clinked, and a few of the deer roared with high, elk-like bugles.
Our pace slowed, so I concentrated on my hands, and tried to pick at the knots with my sweaty fingers.
If I could get down, maybe I could slip my legs through, and use my teeth.
Something tickled my nose, and my stomach rumbled as a wall of delicious aroma slithered into the sack on my head.
Cooking meat, baking bread, and woodsmoke combined to make my mouth water, and food overtook my thoughts, a frustrating, intoxicating desire that I couldn’t shake. I’d never felt so hungry in all my life, and ravenous thirst came with the hunger in a vengeance.
Weight shifted off the saddle in front of me, and a few pairs of hands took hold of my arms, legs, and waist.
Too tired, cold, and hungry to fight, I let them set me on the ground, and did my best not to fall over, as a spate of dizziness rippled through my head.
Shoes ran from all directions, happy voices of men and women who called out, and strangely enough, the majority of the words were English now, as if the odd language of the riders had been nothing more than a hallucination.
“Aleph! Thank God, we were so worried. All the other sorties came back half an hour ago.” A woman laughed in relief not five feet from me, and similar conversations flowered to life all down the line of riders.
“How many were there?”
“We heard all the gunfire, is everyone alright?”
“Who’s that with the bag on her head?”
I fidgeted where I stood, unsure if they could see my fingernails tearing at the knots, an awkwardness creeping into my chest. Being in crowds had never been a favorite pastime of mine, as it only ever served to remind me how alone I was, but being blindfolded and disoriented made the sensation even worse.
We could be miles from the lake with how hard they rode. I wouldn’t even know where to go if I could get away.
Two sets of hands led me away from the whispers of the crowd, and short cut blades of grass swished under my feet. Some steps tripped me up, planks echoed with our footfalls, and a door closed behind me with a dull, wooden clunk.
They guided me down to a cold hard seat and loosened the itchy ropes around my wrists. Someone pulled the potato-scented bag off my head, and my eyes slammed shut at a sudden influx of golden light.
I sat in a small room of what appeared to be a log cabin, with plank floors, log walls, and exposed beams in the ceiling. A fire crackled to my right in a fireplace made from stones and mud, several candles burning in little tin lanterns around the room. Long curtains of some kind of off-white cloth covered the windows, but I could make out more lights outside, flickers of torches and fires, more voices laughing and calling to each other in the evening air. It was warmer here, but I couldn’t relish the heat for the three armored figures who stood across from me, two holding rifles, and one in the middle seated in a chair, a long cruciform sword across both metal-clad knees.
All three watched me for a few moments, and the middle one pointed a gauntleted finger at my stained uniform shirt. “Who are you?”
I swallowed, rubbed at my arms to get some of the feeling ack into my cold skin, and a dry catch in the back of my throat made me cough. “Hannah Brun. I . . . I’m from New Wilderness.”
He turned to one of the guards at his side and nodded at the door. The guard ducked out and returned a few moments later with a blue tin cup of water, which the man in the middle handed to me.
Barely had the water touched my lips, and I gulped it down, unable to stop myself, my arms shaking with primal need. Why was I so thirsty? I’d drank water throughout the day.
I couldn’t see their faces for the eerie masks on their helmets, but the one with the sword took my cup back and sent his guard out for another. “Why are you working for ELSAR?”
My eyes caught a black lump by his left boot, familiar nylon pockets and zippers that made my heart skip a beat.
They still have my pack.
“I’m not.” I rasped and drained the second cup as soon as the guard returned to place it in my hands.
Out went the mug for a third time, and the man with the sword studied me from behind his iron mask, fingers drumming on the hilt of his elegant weapon. “Yet you would risk your life for them?”
I shook my head and shivered, goosebumps rising on my arms despite the nearby fire. How I wished I could at least get the woolen blanket that the stranger in yellow had given me. “No. F-For my friends, Chris and Jamie. They’re on the ship.”
Eyes blinked at me from behind narrow eye slits, the three fighters motionless.
“So, you’re a pirate then?” It came as a growl from the man with the sword, a low, dangerous murmur that made my already chilled blood run glacially cold. “That’s why you went looking for this object you carry?”
“No.” My teeth chattered, and I eyed a bunk in the furthest right corner of the room with longing, a thick fur coverlet on top that had to be as soft as silk. “I’m a r-ranger. We came from New W-Wilderness and got captured. I need to trade the box for their lives, or the pirates will s-sell my friends.”
Another long pause enveloped the room, and I couldn’t suppress my next shiver.
They might have been sold already. Where would ELSAR take them? Is there some kind of prison camp, or would they just kneel them down in the woods and . . .
The guard on the sword-bearing man’s left stepped out from the three and closed on my chair.
I winced, ready for a strike, a slap, some form of violence like what I’d experienced on the Harper’s Vengeance.
Instead, both hands went to pull the guard’s helmet free, and a slender face emerged with creamy skin and vibrant golden hair tied back in a neat bun. Two curious eyes gazed back at me, the irises ringed in a metallic gold that shone like stars. She was not much larger than myself in height, perhaps a few years older at most, yet beautiful in a way that even I couldn’t quite believe, and the woman’s face slipped into a sympathetic half smile.
“She’s telling the truth.”
The sword-bearer sighed, as if exasperated. “Amica mea, you can’t just—”
“Look at her, Adam.” The golden eyed woman strode to the bed, from which she stripped the fur coverlet. “You’d take pity on her if she had mold in her hair and blood between her teeth. Is she not a daughter of God, same as the rest?”
“The Lost Ones aren’t as deceptive as people, you know that.” Adam, the man with the sword, sheathed his blade in frustration. “She could be a spy. Anyone can take a shirt off a corpse.”
Pleasant softness cloaked my arms, the brown fur coverlet settled around my shoulders by the golden-haired woman.
I couldn’t help but sigh in relief at the dense embrace of the fur and tugged it close around my trembling limbs. “Thank you.”
At that, the woman smiled, in a gentle radiance that pushed the tension from my bones. “See? She’s not dangerous, pupillam oculi mei. Just lost.”
Finally, someone who understands.
“Only one way to be certain.” Standing, Adam turned to the third guard by the door, and nodded. “Aleph, if you would please?”
I recognized the leaf patterns on the armor now, the man by the door the same one who had elbowed me in the head.
Aleph slung his rifle over one steel shoulder and grumbled on his way out. “Gonna walk myself to death, going back and forth like this.”
Left alone, the other two faced me, and the man with the sword reached up to tug his own helmet off.
He had a square face, clean-shaven, with toffee-colored irises and sandy-brown hair. I guessed the man to be in his early thirties at most, and with how the woman sidled up to him, their eyes gleaming whenever they exchanged glances, left me with little doubt.
Ah, a couple. That explains why she gets to flout orders.
“If you mean us no harm, then answer me truthfully.” Adam fixed me with a grave stare, one hand resting on the hilt of his long sword. “Your companions; you say they were aboard the pirate ship?”
“Yes.” I sat up, hoping beyond hope that at last, I’d found people who weren’t total maniacs. “A boy and a girl, about my age, Chris and Jamie. Chris is tall, and Jamie has light blonde hair. Look, the ship might not be far, if we hurry, we might still be able to—”
His hand came up to signal for me to stop, and Adam cocked his head to one side. “We can’t let you can’t go back, Miss Brun. Even if you could reach the pirates, they’d be in no mood to negotiate now. There’s no point.”
Excuse me?
Something snapped in my brain, and my blood boiled with a surge of rage that I didn’t know I had.
I lunged to my feet and jabbed the air with my pointer finger. “No Point? No point? I was this close to saving them before you rode in a ruined everything. I had the box, we had a deal, but you just—”
“Hannah,” The golden-haired woman shook her head, and waved for me to calm down. “Listen, you don’t understa—”
“No, you don’t understand!” I shouted, fists balled at my side. “Those are my friends out there, they need me, and I’ll be damned if I let you keep me here while they—”
The door to the cabin swung open, and all the words stuck in my throat.
Two figures stood in the door frame, backlit by a rising moon. They each wore long shirts that resembled some kind of pseudo-medieval tunic, stained various shades of forest green, with matching trousers tucked into brown leather boots. In the dim shadows of evening, I had to blink a few times to take in their facial features, and my mind almost couldn’t recognize them out of shock.
“Hannah?”
My anger melted, and I swayed on my feet, unsure if what I was seeing was real. “Jamie?”
Bleach-blonde hair streaked forward, and Jamie almost knocked me down, throwing her arms around me to squeeze so hard that I thought my ribs would crack. She laughed, though I could feel her tears on my neck, and I did my best to hug her back with all the energy I had left.
Scarcely had she let go, and another set of arms engulfed me, along with a broad chest like silk-covered steel, and I drank in the heady aroma of Chris’s skin through his tunic. He smelled like pine needles and woodsmoke, enough to make my tired brain fuzz over, and I buried my face into his shoulder to soak in his luxurious body heat. A tide of emotions overwhelmed me, and I sobbed in relief, feeling as though it had all been a bad dream.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this, Brun.” He chuckled, though Chris’s voice cracked at my name, and he held me close in a tender way that sent my frazzled thoughts over the moon.
That spider nest was so worth it.
The second Chris and I drifted apart, Jamie gripped me by my shoulders to look me over, taking in my ruined clothes, the bandages on my skin, and the burnt strands of hair. “You look like shit.”
“Good to see you too.” I giggled, suppressing my joyful tears long enough to shake my head at Jamie. “But you were . . . you guys were in the brig, how did you . . .”
“Peter let us go when you didn’t come back.” Chris watched me with those sky-blue eyes that stuck me to the floor, and I wanted to throw myself into his arms to stay there for a solid week. “He and Tarren snuck us off the ship, and we ended up running into these guys in the woods. We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
That stuck in my brain, and I hesitated, trying to process those words.
I did all that, and they just let them go? That doesn’t make any sense.
“I don’t understand.” I looked back and forth between my two friends, noting how well their bruises had healed, how Jamie no longer wore a sling on her arm. “They were waiting for me at the coal barge. They were there just like they said, why would they let you go without seeing if I came back?”
Jamie and Chris exchanged bewildered glances, and Jamie eyed me with concern. “They were only there because they were searching for us. Everyone thought you were dead. Where have you been all this time?”
“What do you mean?” My eyebrows shot up like arrows to the top of my forehead. “I saw you just this morning, on the ship, remember?”
No one moved, and everyone stared like I’d flashed them.
Chris opened and shut his mouth a few times, like he couldn’t find words to speak. “Hannah, you’ve been gone for three days.”
What?
I waited for the punchline to the joke, for someone to crack a smile to let me know it was all an elaborate prank, but none of them did.
My knees wobbled, and a rush went through my head, sapping me of my strength. Three days? How was that possible? No one could survive for three days without even remembering it. Just one day without water could cripple someone. If I had been gone for three whole days, why wasn’t I . . .
Thirsty? Starving? Exhausted?
How much water had I drank just sitting here? My stomach had yet to stop growling, and it hurt in the pit of my guts, each gurgle like a knife blade. Just standing upright drained me, as if I’d not slept in days, and I swayed on my feet.
“I . . .” I fought to keep my balance, the world spinning as if I were trying to stand up in a washing machine. “. . . I think I’m gonna throw up.”
Chris and Jamie eased me back into my chair, and my stomach rolled like ocean waves, both palms clammy with sweat. Jamie snatched a nearby pail from beside the fireplace, dumping the few logs in it onto the floor, and held it ready.
“You’re alright.” The golden-haired woman knelt in front of me and fished a small glass vial out of her belt pouch. “Take deep, slow breaths for me, in and out. Swallow this when you’re ready.”
Wary of the murky brown substance in the glass, I flicked my gaze to Jamie.
She hefted the metal pail and waved me on with an urgent hand. “It’s fine, I drank like three of them for my shoulder. Tastes like candy. Just do it, or make out with the bucket.”
Well, when you put it that way . . .
I squeezed my eyes shut and downed the contents of the skinny glass vessel with a shuddery gulp. It reminded me of orange and vanilla ice cream, sweet and tangy, but with a strange jittery sensation in my guts that calmed my nausea. The shaking stopped, my heart slowed, and it was as if someone had waved a magic wand over me to take all the tension away.
Whoa.
Her brilliant smile beamed in the firelight, and the golden-haired woman took the empty vial from me with a pat on my hand. “Lantern Rose nectar. We cultivate them in our gardens, both for medicine, and to keep the Firedrakes out of our corn. By the look of things, that one was well overdue.”
Breathing a long sigh at my stomach settling, I felt my face growing warm again. “Yeah, I guess so. Sorry for screaming at you.”
“Sorry for the interrogation.” Seeming embarrassed of his earlier gruffness, Adam’s stoic expression melted into a sheepish grin from across the room. “But we couldn’t take chances. We’ve had run-ins with the soldiers in the past, none of them pleasant.”
Sitting up straight, I winced at all the eyes on me and looked around. “So . . . where are we?”
“Come see for yourself.” The golden-haired woman headed for the door behind Adam, her hand slid into his as if they were going out for a regular evening stroll. “We have some food set out for the returning fighters near the church. Once you’ve eaten, I’ll see about a bath, so you can go straight to bed afterward.”
Yes please.
I climbed back to my feet, and Chris took my arm to steady me, Jamie holding the door. With the fur coverlet still wrapped around my shoulders, I stumbled to the cabin doorway to peek out.
Dozens upon dozens of square one-story cabins surrounded the area in neat rows, interspersed with gardens and flower beds in a patchwork quilt of green. Torches sputtered in wrought iron fastenings by doorways and along footpaths, with stones laid across the mud, the lush grass trimmed short. Intricate designs adorned the doors, corner posts, and roof eaves, every building a work of art. Etched into the wood grain, I saw deer, wild boar, and eagles, along with winged lizards that breathed fire, and familiar creatures with white eyes, or metallic legs. Each rooftop had been covered in thin squares of split oak, not a shingle out of place, and the gardens too were an OCD dream with plentiful corn, beans, and various pumpkins in weed-free blocks. Luminescent flowers ringed every patch of crop, gorgeous orange and yellow roses that gave off heady sweet aromas, and miniature trenches filled with water bore fluorescent white lilies that seemed to move on their own. High overhead, tiny bat-winged animals traded little bursts of flame in the sky, and a long wall about a quarter-mile distant ringed the entire hamlet, cut with perfect crenelations in the ramparts. Fireflies swirled right past me in a magical cloud of staccato jade light, and in all my life, I’d never seen a place so beautiful.
“You okay?” Chris squeezed the hand I had fastened to his arm, and I drew a shaky breath at the warmth of his touch.
“Yeah. This is . . . this is amazing.”
I clung to him without caring how obvious my intentions were, and we walked down the little flagstone road behind Jamie and the others, drinking in the sights.
People strode to and fro, laughing and talking in pairs or huddles, their happy faces lit up by the dim ambience of the night. Like the woman from the cabin, they all had cream-colored skin, with shimmering golden hair and matching eyes, the only thing varying being their facial features, height, and voice. The men wore their hair in short ponytails or cut close to their scalp, many with beards, and bore similar clothing to what I’d seen thus far. The women however varied in attire from trousers to dresses, fine sweeping garments of dyed linen that could have been spun in a custom shop in downtown Louisville. They walked with proud, confident strides, their golden hair so long that it reached their waists, often woven into complex braids that dazzled me.
Carla would have killed to have hair that long.
As we passed by, they watched me with curiosity in their gazes, and more than one smile or waved, a strange reversal of the suspicious attitudes I’d first encountered in New Wilderness. In fact, they didn’t seem at all bothered by their surroundings, or the cries of the various mutants that rang out in the distant hills. Even the armored guards patrolled with relaxed ease along the elegant battlements, not staring out into the night with tight-lipped anxiety like our own forces did. No tension coated the air, no weight of looming dread, and they didn’t hide their lights or pull shut their curtains in fear. Here, it seemed, civilization was not only alive, but thriving, pushing back against the barbaric shadows of the night with pure, unabashed triumph.
A crowd appeared as we rounded a bend, and high above them rose a sharp white steeple against the night sky, crowned with a gold-painted cross. White clapboard siding covered the quaint chapel, all the little streets and roads leading to it, as if the village had been constructed around it from the ground up. It would have fit in with any rural community across middle America, had it not been for the handprints.
Side-by-side, they lined every board, every window, golden hands painted on the wood with little squiggles underneath. The closer I got, the more I realized the squiggles were names, hundreds of names written in swirling yellow letters that shone in the light of nearby torches.
Zayin.
Deborah.
Ehud.
In the grass around the church, close to a hundred or more people were spread out around a long, winding chain of rugs laden with food, seated on blankets or cushions, with torches and candles lighting the entire feast. Empty suits of armor lay on the ground behind their owners, all of whom hunched over their plates with their tunic collars loosened in the cool breeze, and the golden-haired woman stopped to help Adam take his suit off.
“You can sit with us.” She grinned, and turned so Adam could work on unlacing her steel cuirass. “I’m Eve by the way, and this is my husband, Adam. Welcome to Ark River.”