Forsada: Volume II in the New Eden series (16 page)

There’s no time for us to think. Three against five we can handle, especially these five overconfident oafs. In seconds I’ve felled one with a whip around the ankles, and Shack and Garrett are on the others. I don’t worry about them, especially not Shack. I worry about the mob. And Dane.

A sudden noise echoes across the entire valley. A horn blown loud, loud enough to be heard above the roar of two hundred charging men. It causes the mob to slow and stumble. Suddenly before them gallop two horses, each with a single rider. Together they ride directly across the path of the mob, then back again. Their arrival, along with the horn blast, confuses the mob so it stops dead and falls almost quiet, watching the riders in shock and fear.

The effect is far more dramatic than I expected.

I push back on the fear continuing to grow inside me. Dane isn’t up to this.

Everyone has stopped to stare at the riders sitting tall on their horses without saddles or weapons. Dane on a snow-white beauty we’d captured long ago, one hand gripping horse’s mane and the other pointing out over the mob. Freda elegant and tall on a sleek horse with a front the color of ash and the rear a splatter of white. Her fingers weave into the horse’s mane just as Garrett showed her.

Maybe it’s the white horse. Maybe it’s the horn blast, or the eerie silence in this burned-out meadow. Whatever it is, I’m as startled as the rest by Dane’s confidence and stature. I’ve only ever seen him close, in the forest or the caves, or that moment of animal rage in the Southshaw chapel. Until right now, I could not imagine him holding back an entire army just with his presence.

But there’s no time to watch. Shack has already killed one of the five apes, and he and Garrett quickly eliminate the others in their confusion. I don’t know how, and I don’t have time to care. I sprint to the prisoners and start slashing the cords around their wrists. The first is an older man, a retired carpenter I sort of recognize.

He yanks off his blindfold as I order, “Go to the twins” and point at Garrett. He stumbles forward, finds his legs, and runs to them. I glance at the Southshaw leader, who is thinking everything through. After an instant where our gazes hold each other, I can see he has decided not to stop me. But I speed from prisoner to prisoner anyway, only half hearing what Dane is saying behind me. He just needs to hold off the mob long enough for us to get across to the river where Tom waits with more horses.

“… following the wrong man! I am the rightful Semper, not Darius.”

Good, Dane, keep going.

Five prisoners. The leader near me and the other two keep glancing at me but mostly watch Dane. They look nervous but not fearful.

Three of these prisoners I don’t recognize at all. The fourth, sixth, and seventh. I don’t remember seeing them before, but they’re probably hill people like Susannah. I’d never met her before, either. The third, Shem Shiver, yanks his blindfold down when I cut his cords. He looks ashen and gaunt, weak. His scraggly half-beard is gray and white, and his eyes look dulled. He grabs my wrist for a moment that terrifies me—I don’t have time to fight him off—but then whispers, “Lupay, I’m so sorry. Thank you.”

He stumbles, uneven and off center, toward his sons. It’s not a drunken stumble, though. Something else, maybe an injury to his leg. But I can’t worry about that. I move on to number four.

“Darius not only lied to you, but he had the captain of the Scouts poison Semper Linkan. His own brother! He murdered my father, then made up this story so he could exile me. Did you never wonder why he rushed my Wifing instead of mourning his brother’s death? Breaking traditions? Acting strangely? Did you never wonder why he rushed my promotion to Semper?”

Fourth and fifth prisoners run to Shack and Garrett. Most are fit enough to make it to the forest. At least we’re giving them a chance. But we won’t be able to stop or go back for them if they can’t keep up. When the mob charges, they’re on their own just like we are.

“… thirteenth Semper. Who among you knows the old prophesies?”

Good, Dane, keep them rapt. I don’t dare look back until my job is done, but I can feel their confusion and uncertainty, and I can see it in the eyes of the three near us. The leader keeps looking at me with a curious mix of fear, respect, and doubt. I’m sure if Darius learns how he let me free these prisoners so easily, he will be in big trouble. The only reason he doesn’t fight me now is Dane’s speech. Keep talking, Dane.

“Darius believed in the prophesies. That alone should prove that he does not have the understanding of Truth required, or proper faith in God, to be a true Semper. He is the traitor!”

Number eight. I give one last glance at the leader, who makes no move to stop me, and I follow the final prisoner to the twins.

They’ve pointed each freed prisoner to the spot across the meadow where Tom waits. One by one they’ve run that way, and so far the mob hasn’t noticed, or hasn’t cared. Only one prisoner has failed to run toward the river—Shem stays with the twins, looking exhausted and bending over, his hand on his knee.

Shack gives me a strange look, one I can’t understand but which I know is filled with some sort of meaning. I don’t have time for that.

“Let’s go,” I say as I run past them right behind the eighth prisoner, a twelve year old boy I know from a farm north along the lake. He runs fast.

I hear Shack say, “Go!” and a moment later Garrett is at my side.

The mob roars and I glance back. Dane’s speech didn’t win them over, but it lasted long enough. Dane and Freda gallop away from the mob, to the road and east toward Lower. A few arrows wobble through the air and fall nowhere near the fleeing pair. They’ll get away; there’s no way the mob can keep up, though they might try for a while.

Well done, Dane
.

The leader and his two captains, however, have changed their minds and now chase us. Shack is far behind, loping at half speed because he’s carrying Shem over his shoulder. Even as skinny as Shem looked, he’s still a big man like his boys, and Shack is struggling.

“Garrett!” I screech and grab at him as I stop and turn back.

Garrett stops with me, and I see his eyes go wide when he looks back. The three Southshawans are nearly on top of Shack.

“Shack, watch out!” Garrett yells it as he sets off on a sprint toward his brother.

I look back to see the prisoners. They will get away, except Shem. But I can’t ask the twins to leave their father behind. After everything he did to them, everything he did to their mother, all the years of hate and anger—even after all, that, I know Shack will never leave him behind.

Shack slows and puts his father down on the ground. Shem stumbles and rolls in the ashy dirt just as Garrett arrives. Shack yells, “Go! Take him,” at Garrett, and with one sharp look into my eyes, he turns to face the three Southshawans bearing down on him.

Garrett scoops Shem up and turns away from his brother to lope toward me. As he passes me, he gasps out, “Lupay, come on,” then keeps running.

I stand in this spot, my feet unable to move. Shack brandishes his knife, but the three Southshawans are real fighters, and I see I was right to be afraid of them. Unlike their oafish underlings, these three attack Shack at once, from different angles. He manages to get his blade into one of them, but it’s only seconds before an axe catches his leg and he falls to one knee.

“Lupay, come on!” Garrett yells from behind me, his voice distant.

Shack swipes with his knife one more time, but I can see even if I were beside him I’d be no help. The gray ashes around him are already stained black with too much blood.

He turns to look at me one last time, and his mouth forms one final, silent word before another axe comes down to finish him.

The remaining two Southshawans look at me now, and I want to kill them all. I can take them. I can avenge Shack’s murder.

“Lupay!” Garrett calls me from behind. “I need you!”

Shack lies in the dirt, and the two Southshawans come at me with hate in their eyes and blood on their axes. What am I thinking? I can’t beat them. Not without Shack. If he couldn’t, then—I turn and sprint away, following Garrett, trusting the memory of my last glance because I can’t see a thing with all these tears in my eyes.

CHAPTER 14

I don’t know why I came up here to the cottage where Shack and Garrett were born. I guess it’s the last place I was alone with Shack. It was the last place I felt happy with him. Before he saw Tom. Before he changed.

“Lupay, it’s not your fault.”

“Shut up and go away, Garrett. Or just shut up. Or just go away. I don’t care.”

I really don’t.

“I’ll shut up and stay here, then.”

“Whatever.”

I’d prefer he go away. Or maybe not. I don’t want anything. Except I want Shack back. I want him to walk through that door so I can yell at him. I’d say, “That was one stupid move, Chuchi.” And I’d hit him.

I’ve been all through this house, and they left nothing. There’s nothing I can hold on to, to keep his memory. Just his ghost.

Coming here didn’t help me remember Shack. It just makes his absence more intense.

I’ve been sitting on the floor in the corner, legs crossed, for maybe an hour. My butt hurts and my knees ache. I keep reimagining that night that their mother was taken away to safety. I wish someone would come and spirit us all to some safe place. I feel so tired, so ready to give up.

“Come on, Loop. Let’s go.” Garrett’s been blocking the door’s sunlight for a long time. “This place… I don’t like it here.”

“You don’t need to stay. Go on.” I can’t be with others right now. I don’t want to be with Dane and Freda, Micktuk and Tom. I don’t want to be with Garrett. He wouldn’t understand. No one understands.

The only thing that would make me feel better is to have Darius in front of me, on his knees, begging for his life. I would make him beg. And then I’d hang him by his wrists and cut the bottom of his feet so I could watch him die slowly as all the blood drains from him.

But that wouldn’t bring Shack back. It wouldn’t fix Tawtrukk. It wouldn’t make anything better. Not really.

“Look, Lupay.”

Won’t he just shut up?

“I know you had strong feelings for Shack.” He pauses. I don’t look at him, but his shadow stretches across the floor, long and thin. All sticks and angles as he shifts his weight off the doorframe and looks out into the afternoon sun.

“I know you loved him.”

Whatever. Just go away.

“But he was… he had…” Garrett is searching for words. “A reckless streak.”

Well, duh. But why did he say he knew I loved Shack?

“This morning, when we went out there…”

He keeps saying these short things, then stopping. That’s so not like Garrett. He always waits until he knows what to say, then says it all at once. But what is there to say when you watch your twin die as he rescues the father he hated?

Garrett turns and looks at me, but I keep watching his shadow. “He wasn’t right. Something had changed in him, something big. I don’t know what. I wish I did. It was like he had made up his mind that he wasn’t going to live through the day.”

This time, I know what Garrett means. The things Shack said this morning, his unreadable expressions. The way he just walked out into the meadow when Garrett and I were still trying to find our courage.

“Loop,” Garrett says as he comes into the room and kneels on the old, creaking wood before me, “what happened here? With you?”

His eyes are red, and his jaw flexes as he grinds his teeth together like he does when he’s upset.

He’s been tight like this before, stretched like a bowstring. When he gets like this, he takes it out by fighting with his brother. “What do you mean?” I can’t keep my nervous voice from shaking, so I sniff to pretend it’s sadness.

He stands and steps back but still faces me. He’s really worked up. If he were twenty years older and gray and messy, he’d look just like his father did in the square that morning he hit Shack. It was here, in this room, that Shem nearly killed his wife. Garrett’s eyes don’t leave mine as I stand slowly. He’s not drunk like Shem was, but he looks wild, like he’s got the Rabies. Maybe it’s this place. Maybe it makes Shivers crazy.

His voice is cold and smooth as he says, “Look, it’s okay. Whatever happened between you. It’s okay. I mean, he was head over heels for you, and I know you always liked him more than me. I’m okay with that.” He steps toward me, and the sunlight lances through the door and lights up his face. His hair is brushed back in a tangled mess and his cheek twitches. His hands clench and unclench in tight fists.

“Garrett,” I say, “you’re frightening me.”

“What? Why?” It’s almost like he didn’t understand my words.

“Garrett. Let’s go outside, okay?”

“Why? What’s wrong with in here? Why won’t you answer my question?”

I edge along the wall toward the door, but Garrett slides across the floor in a flash and blocks it. He’s nearly as big as his brother. Thinner, but just as tall, and now that I see him like this he looks strong. “You didn’t ask me any questions.”

“Yes I did,” he answers, the words full of hard edges. “What happened between you?”

I want to look for ways to get away, but I don’t dare look anywhere but at him. Both of them started acting strange when Dane and the others showed up. I can’t stand this. Won’t anyone come looking for me? Micktuk, Dane—where are you? Anyone.

“Nothing!” I scream it at him. “Nothing happened!”

He recoils a bit and relaxes, startled by my outburst.

“Hey, it’s okay. Whatever happened. But… I need to know.”

“What do you want me to say, Garrett? What do you want me to say?”

“Just tell me what happened.”

“Nothing happened.”

“He changed after that, Loop. He changed. That was yesterday, and he changed. Now he’s gone. What happened that made him change?”

“I don’t know,” I say, and I hope he can’t see through my lie. I don’t
really
know what made Shack change, but I don’t dare tell Garrett what Shack said about their mother’s disappearance. If Shack didn’t tell him all these years, then… well, he must have had a reason.

“Did he kiss you?”

“What? What the hell?” Where did that come from? His brother’s dead, and he wants to know… Now I’m mad. “No, he didn’t kiss me. And I didn’t kiss him. Is that what you’re worried about? Is that what you think happened? You think that we did something like that?”

I know Shack wanted that. I know he was in love with me. I’ve known it since we were little. But he was my hermano, my brother. They are both my brothers.

“I don’t know what you did. I only know that you both probably wished I wasn’t around. It’s okay, Loop. I get it. You liked each other. I was in the way.”

“No, Garrett. That’s not true.”

“I should have just left.”

“What? No!” He’s got it all wrong.

“Maybe if I’d left, Shack would still be alive.”

Suddenly he’s a different person. His shoulders sag and his head droops forward, his strange rage replaced by a deep sadness. His hair and eyes don’t look wild; they look pathetic.

“Don’t say that, Garrett. It’s not like that.”

“No? Tell me it isn’t.” He looks at me. “Look me in the eyes and tell me it isn’t like that.”

I step forward to him, put my hands out and grab his arms. I stare deep into his reddened eyes. “It’s not like that,” I say, trying to will him into believing me. “You and Shack… you’re my brothers.”

“Did he try to kiss you?”

“No.”

“He wanted to.”

“I guess I know that.”

“You guess?”

“Okay, yeah, whatever. But he would never. He didn’t.” Maybe now is the time to tell him about what really happened to his mother. Maybe Shack should have told him years ago. “Listen. Yesterday, when we came here, Shack and me. He had this weird memory. He said he hadn’t been here since you moved away, and he had this… this vision, or something. He went a little nuts.”

“I get that,” Garrett mumbles. He slips his hands into his pants pockets and glances around at the emptiness of the old, abandoned room.

“He told me some things from… from that night your mother disappeared.”

Garrett perks up again, but he looks wary, distrustful.

“He didn’t talk about angels, did he?”

“Well, yes.”

“Oh.” He looks suddenly angry. He goes to the door and looks out into the late afternoon, the sun redding his face and making him squint.

After a moment, he looks down at his feet. “I’m sorry,” he says slowly. “He’s always had these weird dreams about that night.”

I want to tell him I don’t think it was dreams. I think it was memories. But right now he’s unpredictable.

“Garrett, let’s go back to the others. This place gives me the creeps.”

“Okay.” He doesn’t move. He just stares up at the blinding sun, his thoughts somewhere in the past.

I wait a minute, then another.

“Okay?” He doesn’t reply. “We can go?”

He nods, silent, and steps out into the fading afternoon.

We walk the ten minutes back to Micktuk’s cabin in silence. I wish there was some way I could comfort him. As much as I adored Shack, he was closer with Garrett. They went through things together they never told me about. I wish Shack were walking with us so they could just beat each other up and make everything normal again.

But they can’t. And maybe that’s what Garrett needs more than my comfort.

As we approach Micktuk’s cabin, the afternoon light is fading and exhaustion fills every bit of me. My head is pounding, and the muscles in my back feel like a bear’s been gnawing them all day. I’m about to pull the door open when Garrett stops me with a hand on my arm.

“Loop, why did he leave us?”

I think a moment, but an answer doesn’t come. “He didn’t leave, Garrett.”

“He did, Loop. You saw him before. He knew what was going to happen today, and he let it.”

I don’t want to believe that, and I’ve been avoiding that thought all day. I don’t want to think it now, either. “He saved your father,” I say, but my voice is shaky and small.

“He didn’t give a shit about our father.”

“He gave enough of a shit to die saving him.”

“Shack didn’t have to die. And he didn’t have to save Shem.”

“Then why did you carry Shem off when you could have gone back to help Shack instead?” Another question I’ve been avoiding all day.

“That was a mistake.” He looks away. So he’s mad at himself, then. And this is why. “If any of us should have died today, it was Shem.” It’s hard to argue with that. “I never even looked back, Loop. I never even looked back.”

“Consider yourself lucky.” The image of Shack looking back at me as he fell to the ground fights its way into my mind, and I hold back tears by biting down hard on my tongue.

“But I should have left that bastard in the dirt and helped my brother!”

As he yells, the door to Micktuk’s cabin swings open with a creak of old boards. Shem Shiver is startled to see us there, but it’s clear he heard Garrett’s last statement. And it’s clear that Garrett doesn’t care.

Shem looks even more gaunt and haggard than this morning, his eyes red and sunken, the twilight shadows graying his face the color of his old half-beard. His jaw quivers as he glares from Garrett to me and back. In his hand is an empty bucket. He raises his other arm and brushes Garrett out of the way, mumbling something about water, and limps away.

I don’t know how to feel, what to think. I figured Shack would be here forever. Part of me still thinks that when we go inside, he’ll be sitting there with one of Micktuk’s books, and when he sees us he’ll grin wide and tell us he fooled us, that we should be ashamed for thinking he was gone, that nothing will ever happen to us. We’ll always be together.

I want to think of him that way. Not kneeling on the dirt in defeat.

Garrett catches the door before it closes, and he slips into the dim room. I follow, trying not to look around for Shack.

But all the others are there. The room is quiet. Sad. They look up when we enter, and the only one to move is Freda. She stands up from where she’s kneading dough, wipes her hands on her shirt, and comes straight to me. She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t say she feels bad, or she’s sorry, or anything. She just looks me in the eye, and then draws me to her in a tight hug.

It surprises me, but I let her. It’s nice that she cares, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. Maybe it makes her feel better. Which I guess is okay. I won’t ever feel better, no matter how many hugs I get from anyone. Not even watching Garrett kill Darius would make me feel better. Never. Nothing. But let them all try to heal me, if it will help them.

Freda steps back. She looks deeply sad. But she didn’t know Shack. She only saw the crazy, weird Shack. She didn’t know the strong, noble, heroic Shack. What could I possibly say to her that would do any good?

Micktuk watches for a moment, then destroys the silence which lies heavy over all of us. “Hey, you all done real good. You saved seven folk. They’d all be dead now, you know.”

Part of me wants to yell that I’d give them all back to have Shack. And I would. And I hate myself for thinking that. To trade seven lives for—