Forsada: Volume II in the New Eden series (5 page)

CHAPTER 6

Gasping, we reach the overlook at the edge of the cliff. I doubt anyone’s ever hiked up here faster, or carrying more gear. And I doubt anyone’s ever been this thirsty. The sun feels more like August at noon than a June morning.

“Maybe we should have brought some water,” rasps Shack as he shrugs off the four saddlebags full of tools and weapons and cloth. He slumps, his hands on his knees. When he looks up at me from under his cascade of brown hair, he grins, sweat dripping from his nose..

“Water, we can get anywhere,” huffs Garrett, whose burden is half of Shack’s but still heavier than I expected he could carry this high, this fast.

The three of us gaze down at the river, blue and cold and swollen from the melt of a heavy winter. We’re a thousand feet above the valley floor where the river’s narrow canyon flattens and widens into a series of meadows and marsh before fading into the lake at a long, sweeping line of beach. It’s a view we’ve shared dozens of times when we’ve had nothing else to do. From here we look down on almost all of Lower—dozens of houses, my father’s forge, the commons hall, long boats tied to the dock, and the bridge that connects Lower with the road to Lodgeholm.

A clutter of twenty ant-like figures moves slowly along the river road toward the bridge. It’s the “negotiating party.” Everyone else lingers in the square or is out of sight. The smart ones would have gone home. If there were any smart ones.

Garrett points, and I raise my hand to shield my eyes from the sun. I follow the line his finger makes on the landscape, anticipating the route the negotiating party will travel. It won’t take them long, a few minutes at most, to reach the bridge.

“No, there,” he whispers.

I track across the bridge and south along the road, a mile or so to the point where it disappears around the sloping ridgeline. My eyes are good, but his are better. At first it’s just a blur of green and brown, blackened by the glare of the sun’s reflection on the adjacent lake. Then I see what he’s pointing at.

A single man on a horse, sauntering with a slow, sure gait. He’s only just come around the bend, and for several seconds we watch him progress as if he’s reluctant to move. Could it be? Could Darius be coming alone to negotiate, as Turner predicted? Where is the army? Surely he wouldn’t be that far ahead—

There are more. Three on horses, then three more, come around the ridge. They lead a narrow line of men, the beginning of a long army that snakes behind along the lake road. They must stretch a mile or more.

I’m so thirsty, but no amount of water could rinse the dryness from my throat.

In a few minutes, a hundred men have come round the bend. But they’re in no rush. I imagine the hundreds more following behind. Why don’t they just get it over with? I hate crouching here, waiting for the end of the world. Won’t they just hurry up?

A clatter of voices and murmur of boots churning the dirt into mud floats up from the valley, getting louder as the snake slithers its way toward the bridge. Turner and his small group wait there like stupid mice.

“Lupay,” Garrett whispers in my ear as he tugs my sleeve. “We should go. We can’t do any good here.”

I can’t look at him. I can’t look away from the valley. If this is the end of Tawtrukk, I need to watch it. I know Turner is wrong. But what if he isn’t?

“Lupay.”

Garrett’s voice buzzes around me like an annoying mosquito. I push his hand off my arm but keep watching as the snake lengthens.

Another mosquito buzzes in my other ear. “Garrett’s right, Loop. We can’t do any good here. C’mon.”

I focus my attention on ignoring them and look straight ahead, but already my imagination is showing me what I know will come next. The snake will strike, will eat the mice at the bridge, will swell with three hundred years of ravenous hatred and sweep into Lower to swallow all the other mice cowering in the square.

How can I be so thirsty and still produce tears? I bite my teeth together to make them stop, but they don’t.

“Loop.”

My voice trembles, but who cares? I speak just to shut them up. “I’m not going anywhere. If you want to go, then go. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

They shut up, but they don’t move. I feel their closeness, on either side of me. I’m glad they didn’t leave. This is bad enough with them. I can’t imagine it without them.

Garrett taps my shoulder and points into the distance, south. A gray tower of smoke rises from behind the ridge where Lodgeholm used to be. The tower of smoke stands motionless, slender and white and piled high straight up. At its very top in the empty blue of the sky, high winds leap over the mountain tops and sweep the smoke across the lake. I feel like it’s looking back at me with a silent challenge.
You let this happen
, it says.
You could have come straight back instead of lingering in Southshaw an extra day. You could have warned everyone, gotten them to leave.

“No,” I whisper. But it is my fault. It’s all my fault. Some of those people could be alive if I’d been stronger.

Garrett’s hand rests on my arm again in reply to my whisper, but I won’t tell him my thoughts. Not yet. I can’t admit to him, or to Shack, that I slept in a warm, comfortable bed, that I ate a feast at Southshaw’s head table, that I wore a clownish, frilly dress and joked with Dane… all while Darius drove his army, with only the death of my friends on his mind. How could I be such a selfish child?

I hear my own whisper echoed back to me. “No.”

Shack is looking at the bridge. More mice have gathered on our side to wait for the snake. And the snake is gathering for its strike. Darius has stopped fifty yards from the bridge, his army spreading out behind him as it arrives. Every man that comes around the ridge hammers despair deeper into my heart.

We don’t wait long. A small group of the mice scurries across the bridge. I count five, but Garrett squints and says, “Four. Turner, two I can’t really see, and…” his voice trails, his mouth closes, and he stares down into the valley but seems not to see.

“Garrett.”

“No, I can’t—I can’t see the fourth, either.”

He’s lying. “Bullshit,” I hiss. It’s sweet that he wants to protect me, but he doesn’t know how far beyond protection I am. All my barriers, all my shields, have been destroyed. I can’t be hurt any more than I’ve already been. And I can only blame myself.

I squint at the four Tawtrukk men walking toward Darius across the meadow on the other side of the bridge. They walk, Turner in front and the other three side-by-side behind him. My father is the fourth man. When I see his long stride, the little hitch in his left leg from his hip injury, the bald, hatless head shining in the morning sun, I feel… proud.

I know what’s going to happen, and I can’t watch but can’t look away. Still, as I watch him walk behind Turner, the emotions churn inside me, emotions I don’t fully understand. I hate him for his stupid rules. I hate him for giving in, for following Turner. But my heart also swells with respect, and pride at his courage and his conviction. He’s going to die out there in a few minutes. And then, probably, everyone else will die, too. But he’s facing it straight on, without fear, according to what he thinks is right.

Darius appears to be facing his army, his back to the four Tawtrukk men. As they arrive, he turns to them, and the five men on horseback slip off their horses and come to his side. The two sides talk for a moment, and a moment turns into a minute. I would expect more gesturing from both sides, but they stand motionless.

Garrett peers down at them with his hands shielding his eyes from the sun. “Oh god,” he suddenly whispers.

Quick as rattlers, the five men behind Darius leap forward and bring hatchets down upon the four Tawtrukk men. My father flings his arms up to protect himself, but it’s useless. In two seconds, all four lie on the ground. Three are motionless and one writhes in pain, a red puddle spreading out from his head. As another stroke of the axe stills him, the sound of the sudden attack finally reaches us. It’s a chilling cry of hatred and death.

I will never, in my whole life, forget that sound. I will also never forget the image of my father flinging his arms up. I try not to imagine that moment for him, how it must have sounded in that instant, how he knew death was upon him and how the axe glinted against the blue sky before it came down on his forehead and crushed his skull.

I try not to imagine it. I try.

A roar goes up from the army, and hundreds of men run toward the bridge. The mice on the other side scatter away, but I know they’re doomed. They can’t run fast enough, and even if they could, there’s nowhere to run. Had they left when I told them, some would survive.

I look south to the tower of smoke, still standing in judgment over me as we watch the battle between us. I can’t stay here  anymore.

“Let’s go.” I stand. My legs want to wobble, but I won’t give them that satisfaction, or give Garrett and Shack any reason to pity me.

“Loop,” Garrett starts, but I stop him.

I stare straight into his eyes. “I’m good. Don’t worry.”

He grabs my shoulders and stares deep into my eyes, but I know there’s nothing to see there. The only thing I feel right now is a cold, black rage, at the bottom of my soul. It’s too deep to show in my eyes.

“We need to go,” I say. “We need to try to warn Upper. We can still get there in—where’s Shack?”

He’s gone, and I never saw him go.

“He said he needed to go do something. He wouldn’t say what, and I couldn’t stop him. Loop, you must—”

“Leave it, okay?” I don’t yell, but it has the same effect on him as if I did. “My father’s dead. I get it. My mother’s going to be dead soon, too. I get it.”

I busy myself with picking up my pack and pretending to adjust the straps on my shoulder, tie some loose ends that aren’t really loose.

“I hesitated once, and everyone in Lodgeholm burned up because of it. I won’t do that again.”

“Not everyone,” comes a voice from behind, and I glance at the two men who have silently been watching behind us.

The other steps forward. I’ve already forgotten his name from the Council.

“I knew your father, Lupay, and I promise I’ll do whatever you ask me to do if it will get revenge for that cowardly attack.” I can see he means it. And I’ll hold him to his promise. Our eyes hold each other for a long moment, the pains of the last few hours shared between us. I don’t know what he lost at Lodgeholm—wife, mother, children, dog, whatever—but our pain is beyond individual losses. We’ve both lost more than things, more than people we love. It’s deeper than that, something that connects us even though we didn’t know each other before today’s sunrise.

The jumbled sounds of yelling, metal clanging, cows howling, all sorts of noises drift up to us on the warm, morning wind. I turn my back on the slaughter below, pick up two of Shack’s abandoned satchels, and force one foot to step forward, away from the cliff. It’s unnatural. Difficult. But I force another step, then another, and within seconds I’m rushing along the ridge trail, west through the trees.

Garrett trots up behind and drops into rhythm with my steps. “Loop, where are we going?”

I can’t get any words out. I concentrate on the pebbles, sticks, dirt passing beneath my feet.

“Upper?”

He shouldn’t have to ask, should he? Where else would we be going?

We walk in silence for a couple of minutes, the two from Lodgeholm trudging along behind us.

“Think we’ll get there in time?”

How I wish Garrett would shut up and just let me walk. I step up my pace and try to hide how hard I’m breathing.

“To warn them, I mean.”

That’s it. I stop short, spin, and grab his sleeve as he stumbles past. He’s heavy, but I steady him and haul his bulk back to stand in front of me. He’s a head taller, and I glare up into his face. I curl my fingers so tight into the fabric of his sleeve that I might tear it apart. I struggle to stop trembling, try to calm myself before speaking. He’s startled, and a little scared. Good.

I’m breathing hard, not just from the fast hike or heavy pack.

“Will you…” I begin, but I can’t bring myself to say “shut up.”

“Will I what?”

Clueless boy.

“Will you please…” I try again, through clenched teeth, but I still can’t tell him to shut up. If it were Shack in front of me, I’d have punched him in the chest and shouted it at him. But Garrett. More fragile. Innocent. Clueless.

A shout from behind startles us both. “Hey!”

We turn to look at the two Lodgeholm men. One of them points down at the river. We all look and see a single rider on a horse galloping up the road, heading toward Upper. I can’t see who it is, but he’s pursued by two others, Southshaw men. They’re hundreds of yards behind, and falling farther back. We can see a good portion of the ravine where the road winds alongside the river. It dips and dodges in and out of view behind outcroppings and trees, but we can see the rider, head down and speeding along. After a quarter mile, the Southshaw men stop and turn, heading back to the valley.

I feel a terrible urge to look back at the valley of Lower, but I fight it. I don’t think I could stand the sight of burning houses, blood soaking the dirt, bodies strewn across the meadow. I won’t even glance that way, no matter how much I need to.