Battle Cry (9 page)

Barkley had wanted to be immortalized and he had been. All across the world—in the lands that ended at the mouth of an impassable and enormous wasteland—everyone assumed he had stumbled along in the desert until he and all of his followers had died. He became the stuff of legends—the archenemy, the terrible and corrupted villain defeated by goodness and light.

Reena looked up at Damien, her forehead wrinkled as she understood exactly what had happened. So the whispers were true: Barkley had not been a wandering hero intent on saving his people—he had had no people other than the ones he had commanded. He had been a criminal, a killer bent on a course of hatred and revenge.

“The Arena in Aretula, he found the books there and he began to force people to fight in the Arena because…” she could not articulate what she wanted to say but Damien could.

“Because he had never gotten over being defeated. Every time he went into that Arena against someone he deemed a criminal and killed them, he forgot a little bit more of that defeat. He was using the blood of others to wipe the taste out of his mouth.”

“But how did he keep from killing off everyone long before the city grew?”

Damien grinned at her, “You are a smart girl. That was the secret that nobody wanted known. In those days there were nomads in the desert, not just a few puny tribes like there are now, but entire great tribes of us.

“Barkley, so the legend says, began to kidnap our peoples. He knew we were in the desert because many of the tribes made the grave and great mistake of helping him and his band to survive. We lost many of our numbers to him and his ambitions, to his blighted and bloody city. They added greatly to the numbers of his followers; some say we lost thousands of our people to him.

“Not all were taken Reena. Some chose the city over the desert; some chose to go and live on that land. They had heard stories of the richness of life there and wanted to see it for themselves. Even now nomads will wander into the city, but these days we are considered to be as unwelcome as Outlaws and if caught and noticed as a desert dweller those who do go to the city die at the gates. The ones lucky enough to get past the guards and into the walls eventually die a different kind of death.”

“Was Aretula the city that the people of Old York lived in before they moved on?” Reena asked, her elbows scraping along the rough table’s surface as she leaned closer to Damien’s side of the table, all of her attention focused on the story he was telling.

He shook his black head. “No, not at all. That city was always a place of haunts. Our ancestors called it the Lost City. It was said that when the Great War happened many cities fell, just crumbled but others were somehow …sent elsewhere. That the blast of the machines literally caused shifts in the earth’s surfaces and that some places slipped over the edges and were lost forever. Some were moved.

“The city that became Aretula was never in the desert, not in the beginning, nor was it on the other side of it. Either the desert was created by the war or the city was moved. Nobody will ever know for sure—there are some things only the gods know and should know. In either case, it is not a city that belongs where it is and one day it will fall because it must.”

Fear made her blood run cold. “What of the people within it?”

Damien said calmly, “That is for the gods to decide too. A city built on blood and sand cannot stand Reena. Eventually the blood will cause the very sand to shift, to weaken and crumble. Everyone knows that.”

Her throat closed. What good was it to overthrow the corrupt government of Aretula if it would just fall anyway? Why was she here, trying so hard to understand all these things if, in the end, they would not matter at all anyway?

Damien interpreted her expression correctly. “There are things which we cannot answer nor ask. There is a tale of the man who was called to lead his people out of a city filled with the same things that you see in the city that you are running away from, and may very well find in the city that you are running to.

“That man journeyed across the great desert, at least that’s what the legends say, to take his people to safety. He was faced with a great many trials and tribulations in order to do so.. I can’t say  why you’re here, the gods who decided your destiny are not here to answer for it. Perhaps you should pray, or ask for a vision.”

She could not keep the bitterness out of her voice. “I doubt that would do any good.”

“How would you know if you would not try?”

Reena hung her head, ashamed. “I think the gods have deserted me.”

“Or perhaps they’re only testing you.”

Reena did not bother pointing out that even if they were testing her or offensively deserted her: either way, she was alone in this.

The weary tribe rested for two days in the oasis. It did not surprise Reena that a few of the women were reluctant to leave; she had heard and seen some of them sneaking out at night to go to the tents of some of the nomads. It seemed that there were quite a few more male nomads than there were women. Children were scarce as well. There were only a few in the camp. When Reena asked about that Damien replied that there had been a boom of male children born and first of they had been glad about that because they had looked at it as a blessing, but then it became apparent that the women were surrounded by men who were too old to give them children or boys too young.

Two of the tribe’s women came to Reena the day that they were supposed to leave and made known their wish to stay. The nomads were gathered in a single line across from the tribe and Reena looked at Damien, asking, “How do I know if I leave them in your care they will be safe here?”

Damien replied, “You have my word. A nomad never lies.”

She had to take that and she did. She didn’t blame the women; they would have a hard life here in the oasis, but they would have an even harder time crossing the desert and in crossing it once again. Everyone had the right to choose and they were choosing. Or perhaps they were not, perhaps there they had brought them here.

Either way when they left the oasis they left two people short. They had lost five people total of the desert in her numbers had rapidly diminished. That worried Reena more than she wanted to say, but she had to say it because Lucas had a conversation with her about it later that afternoon as he walked beside her. His take on the situation was they didn’t matter how many they had; what mattered was that at least several of them made it to the city and rally troops there.

It was at that moment that Deal chose to interrupt with, “Did any of us stop to consider that perhaps the nomads might’ve had a map that would get us there?”

Reena actually stopped walking. How stupid of her! The nomads knew where everything was in the desert! They had to idea where the cities were! Chagrined and angry at herself for not even considering the possibility, she turned her head to look behind her, considering whether or not a half a day’s walk they had made was worth remaking, but before she could even contemplate the decision, Lucas said, “They don’t. I did ask.”

Reena turned to face him. “How do they get around without maps?”

“This is their land, they don’t need maps any more than we need maps in the woods.”

“I suppose that makes sense.” It did make sense and now she was feeling incredibly foolish all over again.

Lauren asked, “What do you suppose Olympus looks like? Do you think it’s just like Aretula?”

Reena had no answer to that. She had only ever seen one city and she wasn’t sure if cities look differently from one another. Nobody knew and as the day wore on they amused themselves by speaking of what they thought they might find there in the city.

They had taken Damien’s advice and put on far more clothes then they would’ve ever believed necessary. They were also traveling during the day because Damien had said that the section of desert that they were going through now was beset by such terrible cold at night that to travel through it would be to get lost. He had said that the wind would push them back and forth, and would in the end defeat them far more than the sun could.

The nomads had horses, stubby sure-footed little things that had two small humps on their back. Damien said they were not really horses, but similar but only lived in the desert as far as he knew. He had also said that he could spare a few but not enough for everyone in the tribe to ride, so they had not taken him up on the offer.

At that moment Reena was wishing that they had though; the two days of rest and good food had improved morale among the tribe in an almost amazing way. It also made her very well aware of just how many aches and pains that she had, and right now her feet were killing her.

She was also very worried because she could see the landscape changing as Damien had told them it would. The poison lands to her right, she could see the start of them just as Damien had said she would. She didn’t want to look at them but she couldn’t help it because they were oddly beautiful.

Sand drifted and eddied swirling against the giant glass sculptures. Damien said that once upon a time that glass had actually been sand. He said that weapons created to kill had turned the sand into the twisted shapes that rose above the desert floor. The shapes were every color ever seen, many of the same color set the nomads wore and used in their daily lives: reds, greens and yellows, and even orange. Strange-looking birds perched on some of those huge glass creations. Sand sifted across the equally slick surface of what had to have been ground at one time.

The sun hit the glass and refracted off, causing their eyes to water and burn. Damien had told them not to look at the things, to keep their heads turned away lest they grow fascinated and forget which way they were walking.

Is this where the man who had had the sword had gotten lost? He had said he had turned the soldiers into art, that he was a killer in his homeland. Had he become drawn into that deadly landscape because they had called to something in his shriveled and evil soul? Reena pondered that as she resolutely turned her eyes away, and walked steadily onward.

The cries of the birds within the wasteland were horrible to hear. They sent shivers up and down her spine and the spine of everyone else walking with her. She saw quite a few people making the sign that preceded prayer and she knew that they were praying to their gods and goddesses in the hopes of getting through this desert alive.

They would camp tonight, and they would wait out the sifting sands that would hit them tomorrow. Damien had told them that the place that they would be at when they stopped if they walked steadily until sundown was home to a small series of cliffs that had occurred when the sand had rubbed against a giant rock face for so many years. It had been worn away into a natural sort of cave. He had said that the people often stopped there, hanging coverings over the walls of the rocks in order to keep the sand from bothering them as they slept.

He had also warned them that they should stay there all day because their bodies were not used to the desert and its heat. Unlike the bodies that belonged to him and his tribe, they were used to moving about in much cooler climates. Now that they were past the first section of the desert, the night temperatures could be murderous. Later they would be able to travel again at night and sleep during the day and thus conserve their energy and water.

As she walked, Reena found herself wondering what kind of life the nomads really lived. They seemed happy, content. They had plenty of food, even if what they ate was so strange and completely different from anything she ever had before. They had the luxury of being able to be free from the laws of both cities, but yet they were not hunted as Outlaws. It seemed like they had an idyllic life, despite its hardship, and she found herself wishing that she could share in that life, that she could know what it was like to live in a place where nobody would hunt you, where people laughed and sang and danced and never worried about whether or not the scent of their cooking fire would attract the attention of soldiers.

What would it be like if they brought back people from the other city? Would they come across the nomads and kill them because they were strange and different? She had never wondered that before, and she wondered if Damien had considered that possibility.

They finally struck camp that night near the rocks that Damien told them about. They still had the hides of the deer that they had killed at the beginning of their journey, and how long ago that seemed now! They hung them as best they could tying them into the crevices and using larger rocks to hold them down. The hides flapped about, but they were all happy to know that the caves kept he majority of the sand and wind out.

With so many of them huddled into the cave, they were a lot less likely to freeze to death. All it took was one of the men stepping outside to relieve himself to know just how fast and severely the temperatures could and did drop out there. He came back nearly frozen and shaking. They built a fire as well and ate a satisfying meal before going to sleep.

For Reena, sleep did not come easily; it was filled with terrible dreams. She was back in the Arena, fighting for her life, but this time she did not win. She was riding in the death cart and the driver was a skeleton, his bony hands kept reaching into the cart and pulling out long chunks of her hair, tearing it away from her scalp. The Governor swooped down on her from above, holding the sword much like the one she had herself, and she knew that there was no way to best him.

She awoke from that last dream shaking and sobbing silently. She pressed her hands to her mouth to make sure that no sounds escaped from her and she lay there staring at the fire. Could she really best the Governor? She doubted it, just as she was beginning to wonder if there was anybody in the other city who could either. And even if they could, would bringing people from that city honestly help the situation at all? What if they were worse over there in the other city? What if Olympus was even more spoiled rotten than Aretula?

There was, no time to answer those questions. What was done was done; it was time to simply act. She would do her best to see to it that the Governor was overthrown because his reign was cruel and unjust, and it always had been.

The city was being helmed by a madman, and his madness was affecting everybody. And everything. It had to be stopped; lying there she realized that what the governor was was the poison from a spider that lived in the woods. That particular spider would bite and then move on. For a day or two, everything would seem fine and then long red streaks would appear near the bite mark and the streaks would run all the way up the arm or leg or belly until they reached the heart and then the victim of the spider would die.

The Governor was that spider and like that spider, the only way to cure its bite was to cut open the victim and pull the poison out. The only way to stop that spider from taking more victims was to kill it.

**

Days passed. They kept track of them because they would need to know how many days they walked between the oasis and the city. The answer was thirteen. They had been in the desert over a month already and Reena could not help but wonder and worry about her father and Talon and all the others that she was responsible for who were back in the city. Were they still alive? Was all this futile? By the time she returned to the city would changes have been wrought? Would the Governor have forgotten about her by the time she returned?

Finally, they saw it. Or rather, they saw the beginning of a new land. They looked at it and then they looked at each other with utter dismay. The nomads had not told them about this and they had no idea of what to do about it.

Where the desert ended there was nothing but water. Vast and reeking with the scent of salt. They all walked to the edge of it, the sand crumbling wetly below their feet and falling into the blue-green waves that lapped the shore.

Deal knelt down and took a handful of water up to present to his mouth. He immediately made a face and spit it out. “It is as salty as it smells.”

Lucas swore angrily. “The damn nomads lied to us! They said the city was here!”

Lauren added, “Perhaps we got lost.”

Reena said, “There is no way that we can make it back to the oasis without supplies. We knew that when we started out. If we are lost then we are truly lost. Because there is no…”

All of the angry conversations that had risen from the tribe members cut off as abruptly as if somebody had severed a cord with a sharp blade. None of them could believe their eyes. Deal actually rubbed his grimy fist into his eyes, blinked twice and looked again. “It is not possible,” he breathed.

“Yet there it is.” Dax was staring at the island floating towards them with as much wonder and bemusement as the rest of them, but there was a smile on his face, a smile that said he had an inkling of what was happening. “I don’t imagine it will be here before sunset.”

Reena asked, “Do you know what it is?”

Dax replied, “I think, I think it is the way to Olympus.”

“It looks like..like…”

“They used to call it a ship,” Dax said. “I heard about them, many years ago. They say that people used to ride about on them and that they could cross waters even larger than these.”

Reena could not imagine that there could be any waters greater than those. “How do we get them to notice us?” Her voice was highest and all around her the others were staring at the oncoming ship with the same expression that was on her own face. They were lost in wonder and awe. Nothing could’ve prepared them for this.

Deal said, “I guess we just wait.”

Wait they did. But they did not wait long. A low mournful sound came from the ship, and even from a distance they could see the people crowded along its rails. The ship ground to a halt and a long section of what looked like wood was lowered. The tribe looked at each other, frightened and none of them really knowing what to do. As leader, Reena knew she should make a decision, but she was afraid the decision she made might be the wrong one. If she headed towards the ship they might be shot down as enemies before they ever had a chance to speak.

An idea galvanized her and she walked towards the ship holding the sword high over her head. “I seek a ride to Olympus! My tribe and I have business there!”