Dangerous Women (45 page)

“You mean to cut them off at the white span, I assume. But what will you do? We can’t fight so many, Mother.”

“I’ll find a way.” That corpse meant freedom—
life—
for her daughters. She would not let it slip away, like smoke between the fingers. They entered the darkness, passing shades that had, just a short time before, been almost ready to wither them. Now the spirits drifted away, completely ambivalent toward the flesh that passed them.

Think, Silence. Something is very wrong here.
How had those men found the camp? The light? Had they heard her and William Ann talking? They’d claimed to have been chasing Chesterton for months. Shouldn’t she have heard of them before now? These men and women looked too crisp, too new to have been out in the Forests for months trailing killers.

It led to a conclusion she did not want to admit. One man had known she was hunting a bounty today and had seen how she was planning to track that bounty. One man had cause to see that bounty stolen from her.

Theopolis, I hope I’m wrong,
she thought.
Because if you’re behind this …

Silence and William Ann trudged through the guts of the Forest, a place where the gluttonous canopy above drank in all of the light, leaving the ground below barren. Shades patrolled these wooden halls like blind sentries. Red and his bounty hunters were of the forts. They would keep to the roadways; that was her advantage. The Forests were no friend to a Homesteader, no more than a familiar chasm was any less dangerous a drop.

But Silence was a sailor on this abyss. She could ride its winds better than any fort dweller. Perhaps it was time to make a storm.

What Homesteaders called the “white span” was a section of roadway lined by mushroom fields. It took about an hour through the Forests to reach the span, and Silence was feeling the price of a night without sleep by the time she arrived. She ignored the fatigue, tromping through the field of mushrooms, holding her jar of green light and giving an ill cast to trees and furrows in the land.

The roadway bent around through the Forests, then came back this way. If the men were heading toward Lastport or any of the other nearby forts, they would come this direction. “You continue on,” Silence said to William Ann. “It’s only another hour’s hike back to the waystop. Check on things there.”

“I’m not leaving you, Mother.”

“You promised to obey. Would you break your word?”

“And you promised to let me help you. Would you break yours?”

“I don’t need you for this,” Silence said. “And it will be dangerous.”

“What are you going to do?”

Silence stopped beside the roadway, then knelt, fishing in her pack. She came out with the small keg of gunpowder. William Ann went as white as the mushrooms.

“Mother!”

Silence untied her grandmother’s firestarter. She didn’t know for certain if it still worked. She’d never dared compress the two metal arms, which looked like tongs. Squeezing them together would grind the ends against one another, making sparks, and a spring at the joint would make them come back apart.

Silence looked up at her daughter, then held the firestarter up beside her head. William Ann stepped back, then glanced to the sides, toward nearby shades.

“Are things really that bad?” the girl whispered. “For us, I mean?”

Silence nodded.

“All right, then.”

Fool girl. Well, Silence wouldn’t send her away. The truth was, she probably
would
need help. She intended to get that corpse. Bodies were heavy, and there wasn’t any way she’d be able to cut off just the head. Not out in the Forests, with shades about.

She dug into her pack, pulling out her medical supplies. They were tied between two small boards, intended to be used as splints. It was not difficult to tie the two boards to either side of the firestarter. With her hand trowel, she dug a small hole in the roadway’s soft earth, about the size of the powder keg.

She then opened the plug to the keg and set it into the hole. She soaked her handkerchief in the lamp oil, stuck one end in the keg, then positioned the firestarter boards on the road with the end of the kerchief next to the spark-making heads. After covering the contraption with some leaves, she had a rudimentary trap. If someone stepped on the top board, that would press it down and grind out sparks to light the kerchief. Hopefully.

She couldn’t afford to light the fire herself. The shades would come first for the one who made the fire.

“What happens if they don’t step on it?” William Ann asked.

“Then we move it to another place on the road and try again,” Silence said.

“That could shed blood, you realize.”

Silence didn’t reply. If the trap was triggered by a footfall, the shades wouldn’t see Silence as the one causing it. They’d come first for the one who triggered the trap. But if blood was drawn, they would enrage. Soon after, it wouldn’t matter who had caused it. All would be in danger.

“We have hours of darkness left,” Silence said. “Cover your glowpaste.”

William Ann nodded, hastily putting the cover on her jar. Silence inspected her trap again, then took William Ann by the shoulder and pulled her to the side of the roadway. The underbrush was thicker there, as the road tended to wind through breaks in the canopy. Men sought out places in the Forests where they could see the sky.

The men came along eventually. Silent, illuminated by a jar of glowpaste each. Fortfolk didn’t talk at night. They passed the trap, which Silence had placed on the narrowest section of roadway. She held her breath, watching the horses pass, step after step missing the lump that marked the board. William Ann covered her ears, hunkering down.

A hoof hit the trap. Nothing happened. Silence released an annoyed breath. What would she do if the firestarter was broken? Could she find another way to—

The explosion struck her, the wave of force shaking her body. Shades vanished in a blink, green eyes snapping open. Horses reared and whinnied, men yelling.

Silence shook off her stupefaction, grabbing William Ann by the shoulder and pulling her out of hiding. Her trap had worked better than she’d assumed; the burning rag had allowed the horse who had triggered the trap to take a few steps before the blast hit. No blood, just a lot of surprised horses and confused men. The little keg of gunpowder hadn’t done as much damage as she’d anticipated—the stories of what gunpowder could do were often as fanciful as stories of the Homeland—but the sound had been incredible.

Silence’s ears rang as she fought through the confused men, finding what she’d hoped to see. Chesterton’s corpse lay on the ground, dumped from his saddleback by a bucking horse and a frayed rope. She grabbed the corpse under the arms and William Ann took the legs. They moved sideways into the Forests.

“Idiots!” Red bellowed from amid the confusion. “Stop her! It—”

He cut off as shades swarmed the roadway, descending upon the men. Red had managed to keep his horse under control, but now he had to dance it back from the shades. Enraged, they had turned pure black, though the blast of light and fire had obviously left them dazed. They fluttered about, like moths around a flame. Green eyes. A small blessing. If those turned red …

One bounty hunter, standing on the road and spinning about, was struck. His back arched, black-veined tendrils crisscrossing his skin. He dropped to his knees, screaming as the flesh of his face shrank around his skull.

Silence turned away. William Ann watched the fallen man with a horrified expression.

“Slowly, child,” Silence said in what she hoped was a comforting voice. She hardly felt comforting. “Carefully. We can move away from them. William Ann. Look at me.”

The girl turned to look at her.

“Hold my eyes. Move. That’s right. Remember, the shades will go to the source of the fire first. They are confused, stunned. They can’t smell fire like they do blood, and they’ll look from it to the nearest sources of quick motion. Slowly, easily. Let the scrambling city men distract them.”

The two of them eased into the Forests with excruciating deliberateness. In the face of so much chaos, so much danger, their pace felt like a crawl. Red organized a resistance. Fire-crazed shades could be fought, destroyed, with silver. More and more would come, but if the men were clever and lucky, they’d be able to destroy those nearby and then move slowly away from the source of the fire. They could hide, survive. Maybe.

Unless one of them accidentally drew blood.

Silence and William Ann stepped through a field of mushrooms that glowed like the skulls of rats and broke silently beneath their feet. Luck was not completely with them, for as the shades shook off their disorientation from the explosion, a pair of them on the outskirts turned and struck out toward the fleeing women.

William Ann gasped. Silence deliberately set down Chesterton’s shoulders, then took out her knife. “Keep going,” she whispered. “Pull him away. Slowly, girl.
Slowly.
”

“I won’t leave you!”

“I will catch up,” Silence said. “You aren’t ready for this.”

She didn’t look to see if William Ann obeyed, for the shades—figures of jet black streaking across the white-knobbed ground—were upon her. Strength was meaningless against shades. They had no real substance. Only two things mattered: moving quickly and not letting yourself be frightened.

Shades
were
dangerous, but so long as you had silver, you could fight. Many a man died because he ran, drawing even more shades, rather than standing his ground.

Silence swung at the shades as they reached her.
You want my daughter, hellbound?
she thought with a snarl.
You should have tried for the city men instead
.

She swept her knife through the first shade, as Grandmother had taught.
Never creep back and cower before shades. You’re Forescout blood. You claim the Forests. You are their creature as much as any other. As am I …

Her knife passed through the shade with a slight tugging feeling, creating a shower of bright white sparks that sprayed out of the shade. The shade pulled back, its black tendrils writhing about one another.

Silence spun on the other. The pitch sky let her see only the thing’s eyes, a horrid green, as it reached for her. She lunged.

Its spectral hands were upon her, the icy cold of its fingers gripping her arm below the elbow. She could feel it. Shade fingers had substance; they could grab you, hold you back. Only silver warded them away. Only with silver could you fight.

She rammed her arm in farther. Sparks shot out its back, spraying like a bucket of wash water. Silence gasped at the horrid, icy pain. Her knife slipped from fingers she could no longer feel. She lurched forward, falling to her knees as the second shade fell backward, then began spinning about in a mad spiral. The first one flopped on the ground like a dying fish, trying to rise, but its top half fell over.

The cold of her arm was so
bitter
. She stared at the wounded arm, watching the flesh of her hand wither upon itself, pulling in toward the bone.

She heard weeping.

You stand there, Silence.
Grandmother’s voice. Memories of the first time she’d killed a shade.
You do as I say. No tears! Forescouts don’t cry. Forescouts DON’T CRY.

She had learned to hate her that day. Ten years old, with her little knife, shivering and weeping in the night as her grandmother had enclosed her and a drifting shade in a ring of silver dust.

Grandmother had run around the perimeter, enraging it with motion. While Silence was trapped in there. With death.

The only way to learn is to do, Silence. And you’ll learn, one way or another!

“Mother!” William Ann said.

Silence blinked, coming out of the memory as her daughter dumped silver dust on the exposed arm. The withering stopped as William Ann, choking against her thick tears, dumped the entire pouch of emergency silver over the hand. The metal reversed the withering, and the skin turned pink again, the blackness melting away in sparks of white.

Too much,
Silence thought. William Ann had used all of the silver dust in her haste, far more than one wound needed. It was difficult to summon any anger, for feeling flooded back into her hand and the icy cold retreated.

“Mother?” William Ann asked. “I left you, as you said. But he was so heavy, I didn’t get far. I came back for you. I’m sorry. I came back for you!”

“Thank you,” Silence said, breathing in. “You did well.” She reached up and took her daughter by the shoulder, then used the once-withered hand to search in the grass for Grandmother’s knife. When she brought it up, the blade was blackened in several places but still good.

Back on the road, the city men had made a circle and were holding off the shades with silver-tipped spears. The horses had all fled or been consumed. Silence fished on the ground, coming up with a small handful of silver dust. The rest had been expended in the healing. Too much.

No use worrying about that now,
she thought, stuffing the handful of dust in her pocket. “Come,” she said, hauling herself to her feet. “I’m sorry I never taught you to fight them.”

“Yes you did,” William Ann said, wiping her tears. “You’ve told me all about it.”

Told. Never shown.
Shadows, Grandmother. I know I disappoint you, but I won’t do it to her. I can’t. But I am a good mother. I
will
protect them.

The two left the mushrooms, taking up their grisly prize again and tromping through the Forests. They passed more darkened shades floating toward the fight. All of those sparks would draw them. The city men were dead. Too much attention, too much struggle. They’d have a thousand shades upon them before the hour was out.

Silence and William Ann moved slowly. Though the cold had mostly retreated from Silence’s hand, there was a lingering … something. A deep shiver. A limb touched by the shades wouldn’t feel right for months.

That was far better than what could have happened. Without William Ann’s quick thinking, Silence could have become a cripple. Once the withering settled in—that took a little time, though it varied—it was irreversible.