Everwinter: The Forerunner Archives (8 page)

The slave trader.

The fat man is standing next to another man who seems to be calling the shots, brandishing a shooting iron. I shudder in revulsion. The man in charge is holding a cone shaped object I've seen used at the docks before. An
amp
, they call it.

"YOUR HOUSE IS SURROUNDED, DEACON QUINN. SURRENDER PEACEFULLY, AND THIS WON'T HAVE TO COME TO VIOLENCE. ALL WE WANT IS YOUR DAUGHTER."

Father grits his teeth. I can almost hear them grinding. "Blaine," he says. 

The name registers
instantly in my mind. Blaine is said to be my Father's 'Third', under Thomas Whiskeyjack, though no such position actually exists. He’s rumored to be a zealous man, fervent to the point of extremism. But that’s about all I'd heard about him. Blaine is hard looking, with a square jaw, black hair peppered with gray and equally graying stubble. One of his eyes is nearly squeezed shut by a bulbous tumor growing over it.

"YOU HAVE ONE MINUTE TO COMPLY," he announces over the amp.

I watch my Father turn to Altair, a desperate look on his face. "I'll need less than that," Altair states coldly, gesturing for us to follow him through the house. As we move, a servant arrives with something I'd only seen once before in my life until today: a shooting iron. The servant hands the weapon to my Father.

"Thank you, Asha,"
Father says, giving the iron a quick once over.

"What in
bloody ashes is that?" I ask, Father’s own immortal words echoing in my mind:
The ways of the Forerunners are the ways of death...

Father
just shrugs sheepishly at his own hypocrisy. "Sometimes rules must be broken for the greater good," he replies.

I shake my head as we stop at the end of the main hall. Altair urges us to keep back from the window even as he approaches it. He unlatches it and lets it swing wide. Instantly, there's a hue
and cry from outside. Altair's hands move in a blur and the cries are silenced. "Come on," he says, leaping through the opening, landing in the yard. I push Traylor through first then quickly follow. We're in the east garden. On the ground are two men I recognize as former Deacons, both lying face up in pools of their own blood. Altair reaches down to them, pulling a pair of sharp, silvery objects from each of their throats.

Throwing stars.

The weapons of an Assassin!

Just who had my
Father fallen in with here?

There are no other men
around, but shouts are beginning to issue from nearby. The garden is thick, all sculpted shrubs, flowering trees, and vines, shrouding our presence for the moment.

"Come with us!" I hear Traylor plead, turning to see him standing at the open window, looking up at our
Father still inside. "Please!"

"You know I can't, Traylor,"
Father argues. "Now go, we don't have time to–" Father breaks off and raises his shooting iron, aiming at a man who has just appeared between two hedges. He pulls the trigger and the roar is deafening in our proximity. The unwary man drops, clutching the gaping hole now frothing blood from his chest. "GO!" Father orders. "I'll hold them off!" 

Altair grabs Traylor and me by the shoulders and quickly marches
us away from the house and into the thick of the garden, coming to the east wall moments later. Altair boosts Traylor over the stone edifice into the woods on the other side. I follow, wondering how Altair will follow us without someone to boost him. As I clamber over the wall's apex, I hazard a last look at my Father: he's leaning out the window, firing shots at a group of six men advancing toward him. The men are firing back with their own irons. I realize then that it’s hopeless.

My
Father is going to die.

I can't let it be in vain.

I let myself drop into the woods next to Traylor, safe. 

Ten seconds later, Altair is with us, seeming to have crawled up the eight foot wall like a spider and leaping to the ground.

Without a word, we turn our backs on Krakelyn and disappear into the forest.

9.

One Week Later.

"Oh! Thank. The. Gods!" I raise my arms to the heavens triumphantly. "I never thought I'd see the open sky again!"

The sun hits my face full on and I bask in its glow. We'd been traveling under the dense canopy of the Sentinel Forest for the past seven days, and the shade was getting to me.
 

It's dep
ressing being in the dark for too long.

A wide, flat road extends through yellowing grasslands below us, s
naking a course that follows a meandering river next to it. On the horizon, a wall of snow capped, blunted spires extends as far as the eye can see. Mountains.
Real
mountains. I'd never seen anything bigger than a hill previously.

"Is that the Spine of the World?" I ask with excitement, turning to Altair. The man simply nods, saying nothing. "You
know, could try showing some enthusiasm once in a while," I say, but Altair ignores me, slipping his pack off his shoulder. 

"We break here for lunch," he says, "then
we make our way to the road."

"Cool!" Traylor bellows with glee. He's nearly forgotten how much he misses
Father already, and now this whole thing seems a very fine adventure to him.

"We must use caution while on the road," Altair continues, biting into a sandwich previously prepared by one of our servants. The last of our rations. "We will be more easily spotted, but it is the most direct course."
 

I sigh.
We've been almost incessantly on the move this past week, and now the monotony is getting to me. At first, I found Traylor's adventuresome attitude somewhat infectious. I mean, we're on a quest just like in a story! But I've
never
read a story quite as boring as this one. Once we were well away from Krakelyn and our pursuers, the days became an endless parade of marching through endless tracts of the Sentinel Forest, the brush often so thick it was a wonder Altair knew where he was going. We'd stop only briefly for meals, and sleep only when Altair said so. Also briefly.

I'm exhausted.

Altair urges us to our feet ten minutes later. I look down to see I've only taken two bites of my sandwich, too tired to take any more. My stomach rumbles angrily and I quickly take two more, packing the rest away. I've lost my appetite anyway.

There's still a long way to go.

I keep my eyes on the white of the road as we descend the grassy embankment, realizing for the first time that I'm now as far from home as I've ever been. Jude's been further; he's been all the way to the southern cities on ore runs to the markets. Not for the first time, my thoughts fall to Jude and how much I could use his help right now. Not just as a guide, but as a source of comfort. Altair, stalking the grass ahead of me like a predator, is about as comforting as a butter knife in shark infested waters. And Traylor, my brother, lumping along close behind me, well, we've never really been that close. 

It's the age gap, I think.

"What do you think are the chances Jude cut and run south?" I ask, inching a little closer to Altair. "I mean, when I told him to go into hiding, he was pretty damn terrified the Deacons would find him." I pause, considering. "Maybe he was so scared that he skipped town altogether before the Final Judgment even happened. Maybe he headed east. I mean, nobody in Krakelyn's heard anything about him. And like my Father said, there's no reason for him to stay in hiding now that everyone's–"

"Shut up!" Altair silences me with a quick hand gesture. I'm taken aback by his rudeness. I come up to where he's crouched low in the grass, peering dead ahead.

"What is it?" I whisper as low as I can.

"SHHH!" Altair returns with an even ruder gesture.

"Yeah, Juno, shut up!" Traylor smirks just behind me. I want to elbow him but don't.

Altair
guides his right hand up before him, nudging a few blades of the tall, wiry grass aside, opening a surprisingly adequate hole through which to spy. I see the road, but that's all I can see. I wait patiently for a full minute to go by, and still Altair hasn't moved. He's just staring forward. I fidget uncomfortably, lightly clearing my throat.

I can't take it anymore.
 

"What are we
–" I start to whisper, but am cut off as Altair deftly slips two fingers around my lips, actually pinching them shut. I'm so taken aback that I can do nothing but scowl at the man. The funny thing is, Jude used to do this same thing to me when he’d want me to shut up. For us, though, it was a romantic thing. With Altair, it's just plain weird. He lets me go and puts the same fingers to his own lips, indicating silence. I'm about to make a rude gesture at him when I hear it coming:

C
la-clop cla-clop cla-clop...

Ten seconds later,
my breath is frozen as a large cloaked figure ambles by on a massive black destrier. The man coughs heavily as he passes, seemingly oblivious. I see red cracked sores on an emaciated hand as the man brings a kerchief up to his mouth. He appears to have the wasting disease. 

Rot, some
people call it.

His horse, similarly, has lumpy tumors all over its body, but they seem not to hinder the creature. The man gets a few good paces away from us and, surprisingly, Altair urges me forward. I inch up directly beside him.

"Watch the horse's ears," he says calmly.

Mystified, I do. Altair reaches to the ground and picks up a small
, thin twig, dried out and fossilized. I keep watching the horse as it continues to wander away.

Altair snaps the twig.

Nearly instantaneously, the horse's ears twitch in the direction of the sound. The man coughs loudly and turns his head slightly in our direction. Then he turns back after a time and continues on his way, never slowing his mount. We watch him until he's no more than a speck on the horizon.

"Come on," Altair finally says, ushering us onto the road proper. It feels good to have solid, hard packed earth beneath my sandaled toes again. We start walking immediately.

"Do you know who that was?" I ask Altair, trying to make my footsteps as light as possible. Altair's feet seem to make no sound at all.

Altair
looks back at me and nods. "He’s a tracker,” he says. “Likely in the employ of the Children of Mutanity. Only a tracker watches his horse's ears like that."

I nod, eyes wide. "You almost gave us away, you know."

Altair shakes his head. "He already knew we were nearby."

I hear Traylor ga
sp from behind me. "How?" he asks in astonishment.

Altair shrugs, still movin
g purposefully down the road. "The same way
I
knew he was." He says no more.

"Um, that doesn't explain anything," I interject, but Altair remains silent. We continue on this way for a time, the mountains slowl
y growing larger on the horizon like the bottom jaw of a saw-toothed fish. "How long 'til we reach the canyon?" I ask, simply trying to fill the void with idle talk.

"Another day," Altair says, adding nothing more.

"Ugh," I complain, but carry on nonetheless. "You know," I continue, "you cut me off earlier before answering my question."

Altair sighs audibly in front of me. "What question?" he asks.
 

"Do you think Jude could have cut and run south before the Final Judgment? I only ask 'cause you see
m to be in the know about a lot of stuff."

"I don't
know," Altair states simply, and I get the feeling that he is being honest.

"I just wish I could've at least
looked
for him more before leaving Krakelyn. I feel like I've abandoned him, you know?" 

I love you, Juno
Quinn
...

Jude's last words to me
echo in my mind. 

And I never said it back.

At the time, I hadn't known what to say.

Altair and Traylor say nothing.
 

The rest of the day's walk I spend in reflective silence. I'm sure Altair would have liked to do the same, but Traylor keeps him busy with incessant question asking. Stupid stuff, mostly. I get the feeling Altair doesn't mind though. He even smiles when Traylor makes a joke. It looks good on him, almost making up for the horrible, puss filled rash on his face.
I helped put that rash there
, I have to remind myself, the memory of the cursed Box on the beach flashing through my head.

When it becomes clear to him that we're more than
just a little fatigued, Altair calls a halt. It's the middle of the night, technically, but again, the sun doesn't ever set in Eversummer. He leads us off the road at a small, babbling brook, adamant that we walk directly through the water so as to not leave a trail as we go. By the time we reach a small copse of trees a few hundred feet inland, my feet are drenched. I hang up my sandals on a nearby bush and collapse into the small pile of leaves beneath it, falling asleep instantly.