Clanless (26 page)

Gryphon inched forward, careful with his steps. Joshua shadowed him so closely he trod on the heel of Gryphon’s boot. One glance at the boy was all the scolding he needed. A few more steps and the foliage divided enough to offer a decent view of the camp.

What Gryphon saw made him flex his hands around a nearby branch.

Joshua gasped and then covered his mouth with both hands as Gryphon pushed his head down to duck beneath thicker foliage.

One of the men in the camp turned his head in their direction, but after a few moments seemed to give up on the notion that he’d heard anything.

Gryphon raised his head enough to survey the camp, practically shaking with the need to launch his spear into Zander’s gut. All of his mess brothers gathered around a fire. Their once clean-shaven faces now bore weeks of growth. Zander sharpened the metal tip of his spear while others mumbled conversation too quiet for Gryphon to hear. Just seeing their round shields and their familiar faces made Gryphon want to waltz into the camp and put an arm around his brothers and at the same time break every one of their necks. When you belonged to a mess, you put your life in your brothers’ hands almost every single day. Those bonds ran deep. Maybe even deeper than blood. And even if they hadn’t liked it, they had all betrayed him on Barnabas’s order.

Ajax sat apart from the rest of his mess brothers. He held his head in his hands with elbows resting heavily on knees. Was he thinking about his young family? Sara, his wife, must be frantic with the task of keeping their new baby safe from the Seer. Ajax’s baby was born with a deformity of the lip. Zo said she could help him with surgery, but a baby born outside of perfection in the Gate was not given such opportunities at life.

Gryphon wished he could talk to Ajax. Comfort him. Thank him for not killing Zo like he’d been ordered. He’d proven himself a true friend. More loyal to Gryphon than even his own clan.

Zander was a different case.

“Are they still after you?” Joshua’s whisper barely reached even Gryphon’s ears.

Gryphon nodded but put a fist to the ground. Now wasn’t the time for talking.

“The Nameless tracks lead south,” said Lincoln—one of Gryphon’s mess brothers—as he entered the clearing from the other direction. Lincoln was known for his knowledge of the region as the mess unit’s navigator. “But there is another set of tracks that leads north. Smaller in number. Probably a Clanless group.”

Gryphon held his breath, shaken by how close they had come to being discovered.

Zander nodded. “For now we follow the Nameless. Gryphon and his little flock of Raven will head in that direction. They’ll have decided on a place to meet up with the rest of the Birds.”

What would happen if Zander and the rest of his mess followed the Nameless tracks all the way to the Allied Camp? His brothers were strong, but one mess unit couldn’t withstand the might of the entire Allied resistance. They were walking to their deaths. His fear for their wellbeing mingled with his hatred. Strange that love and hate could be felt at the same time for the same people. He’d felt that for Zo when he first learned of her betrayal in sending bottles downriver to his enemies. He felt it for his father every day of his life.

Regardless of his confused emotions, Gryphon couldn’t let them reach the Allies. If they weren’t spotted, they’d learn Commander Laden’s location and would surely deliver that information to Barnabas.

He couldn’t let that happen.

Gryphon grimaced and gave the signal for them to leave. There was no sense in fighting them with Joshua present. Zo was their first priority now. He would have to decide what to do about his brothers later. For now, he needed to get as far away from them as possible.

The only time Boar released Zo’s hand was to drink from his water skin or point orders to his band of men. And as soon as he finished, he greedily took it again, like she was his oxygen, the only thing keeping him alive. Whether out of perverse affection or fear that she’d escape, she didn’t know. Even though his touch made her ill, Zo always accepted his hand. She’d save her rebellion. Bottle it up and strike when opportunity provided a real chance for escape.

The same eight men surrounded her and Boar as they trekked north, leaving a contingent of men to walk at the tail of the group, Ikatou and his Kodiak friends among them.

Boar practically hissed if any of the men so much as looked at Zo. A viper protecting its prey. She might have felt safe with the man if he weren’t carefully leading her to her death.

They approached a small river crossing; a high plank of timber ran from bank to bank above the water. “The wood is only strong enough for one,” Boar explained to Zo in a voice one might use with a small child.

Zo fought the urge to roll her eyes. A few of Boar’s men walked ahead over the makeshift bridge. When it was Zo’s turn, Boar released his grip on her hand. “I’ll carry your satchel.” He held out his hand for Zo’s medical kit.

“I can manage,” said Zo.

Boar’s lips pressed into a firm line and his nostrils flared, reminding Zo exactly how dangerous the man could be. She didn’t want his grubby hands touching something that belonged to her mother, but instinct insisted she hand it over before his fiery temper flared.

“Fine.” She lifted the leather strap off her shoulder and reluctantly gave him her most prized physical possession. Wiping the sweat of his touch off on her pants, she stepped onto the plank.

“Hold the other end steady,” shouted Boar. His men fell over themselves to obey, one even going so far as to climb down the steep bank and brace the board in ankle-deep water.

Zo stretched her arms out wide for balance and walked toward the center of the plank, the river rushing beneath her.

A dangerous idea came to her as she reached the deepest part of the river. She looked down at the water then back at Boar and the rest of the men crowded behind him, waiting for their turn to cross.

Boar waved her onward as he paced the riverbank. “Just keep going. You’re nearly there.” The breeze coming off the water made his dark hair fly around his grizzled face.

Zo wasn’t the strongest swimmer, and the chance of her plan actually working was slim at best. But a slim chance was better than any other option available to her. If she didn’t escape these men before they reached Ram territory she was as good as dead anyway.

She took a teetering step forward and flailed her arms, pretending to try and save her balance.

Boar shouted something in panic and lunged after her onto plank, but didn’t make it two steps before Zo hit the water. The water came over her head, so cold that she bit through her tongue. Her body cartwheeled in the strong current. Rocks jabbed her on all sides. When her feet finally found purchase on the muddy floor, she pushed off and was rewarded with a breath of air before the river pulled her back down. Her back connected with a large rock and the spinning cycle of chaos ensued once more before she managed another breath, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy her burning lungs.

I don’t want to die,
she thought as she spun through the rapid-moving water.
I don’t want to die!

As if in response to her mental plea, someone grabbed her arm and then her waist. Together Zo and the man holding her pushed off the ground for air. “Swim to the side!” came the strangled voice of Boar, her rescuer.

Zo closed her eyes, kicked her legs, and allowed herself to be grateful to leave the river, even at the hands of her enemy.

The current was less violent near the bank. Zo’s feet found purchase on the rocky floor. She reached to accept the hand of one of Boar’s men, who yanked her from what could have been a watery grave.

Panting and soaked to the bone, Zo collapsed onto the ground with her cheek pressed into the dirt. The Clanless pulled Boar out of the water next. His hair and clothes hung from his trim frame like matted fur on a wet dog. A long cut stretched across his forehead like a misplaced frown. Blood gushed down his face and into his eyes like red tears. Every muscle in his shoulders and arms flexed as he stomped toward Zo.

He fell before he reached her.

A few of his men rushed to his side. Another thrust Zo’s medical satchel at her and ordered, “Help him.”

Zo’s icy hands hugged her mother’s satchel to her chest. “No,” she said, scrambling backward. She bumped into the chest of another of Boar’s men. She looked over at Boar sprawled out on the ground then down at the satchel in her arms. A clear memory of her mother sprang to the forefront of her mind.

Zo was young, maybe eight or nine years old. Her family had a few sheep that they used for wool and milk. Zo remembered them well because it was her job to care for them. They followed her around whenever she entered their pen. If she turned left, they turned left. If she ran, they ran. It was one of her favorite forms of entertainment.

Until they were slaughtered in a raid.

One of the men who committed the crime was injured and Zo’s mother called for him to be brought to her healing tent. Zo cried and cried over the loss of her sheep and when she learned what her mother had done, she stormed into her mother’s healing tent and yelled, “Don’t heal him, Mama! He killed my sheep.”

Zo would never forget the disappointment she saw on her mother’s face that day.

“I am not this man’s executioner, Zo,” she said. “I am a healer. If I do nothing I am as guilty as he is.”

Even as a child, Zo didn’t have her mother’s humanity. Her incomprehensible ability to love and forgive. Besides, this wasn’t about revenge over sheep, it was about self-preservation. Boar’s injury might be the key to her escape.

Zo fought a niggling voice in her head that wouldn’t be dismissed. “
Heal him.
” It was absurd and utterly foolish, but as those two words gently penetrated her consciousness, a blanket of warmth spread over her body.
“Heal him.”
It was her mother’s voice. She’d forgotten just how soothing it could be. Deep and smooth and achingly beautiful. Zo clasped her hands and pressed them to her chest. Remembering brought so much pain, but strangely, comfort too.

Zo raised her head to the heavens, wiped at a tear, and sighed.
This is for you, Mother.

“Step away from him,” she ordered. The men parted to give her space. “Someone build a fire. I need boiling water. And you might as well set up camp. We’re done traveling for the day.”

Zo tuned out the clamor of men at work around her and gave Boar her full attention. Placing clean linen from her satchel on his forehead, she leaned over him to apply pressure and said, “I going to try to help you. But something inside me is broken and I have no love for you.” Blood soaked the cloth. She pressed harder. “It will be difficult.”

She knew her words likely didn’t make much sense to Boar. He closed his eyes at her touch and said, “I’m still taking you to the Ram.”

Zo used her free hand to rummage through her kit. “I know.”

Gryphon divided his time between watching their backs and answering Joshua’s endless questions about his time spent in the Nest. Several times he had to remind the boy to keep his voice down. This was especially true when Gryphon told Joshua about Sani.

“What?” He practically shouted, earning him a stern look from Gryphon.

He pressed both hands over his own mouth, his cheeks reddening in chagrin. “Sorry,” he whispered. “But you’re telling me a kid my age thinks he’s responsible for protecting you?”

Gryphon nodded, and then scanned the woods once more. They were too quiet for his liking, but then that might have been Joshua’s fault. “He calls himself my
‘Atiin
and claims that until he saves my life, he is honor bound to guard me.”

“Guard you?” Joshua shook his head like the idea was ridiculous, and then paused to add, “Is he bigger than me?” His chest inflated and he stood up tall, as if to remind Gryphon how much he’d grown over the past year.

“He’s actually pretty small. But he’s fast and really good with a bow. He also sounds and acts much older than he looks. Quiet. Dignified. A chief’s son.” Gryphon shrugged.