Warchild: Pawn (The Warchild Series) (18 page)

“Right. The others might want it,
but I knew the chances were slim. Anyway, first,” he says, holding up an index
finger, “you have to understand that we’re survivors. Call us Republicons or lawbreakers,
whatever term you want to put on us, but labels only mean something to the
people that attach them. You see us as outlaws, we see ourselves as a group of
people who didn’t want to follow the establishment. Rules and laws and order
are made by man, Caroline. You’re supposed to behave a certain way because
somebody said so. A long time ago, there may have been a man that other people
admired because he was smart, or strong, or seemed like he had all the answers,
and then one day, he decided,
this is how things should be
. And people
listened because they looked up to him, and then it spread out from there.

“More leaders made more rules, and
more rules led to more disobedience, and look where that got us. The world
didn’t end. Structure did, most of it, anyway. All those laws weren’t a good
thing. Everybody felt too constricted, and when they started to come together
again to create new rules and form new governments, we could see the pattern
and where it would lead. So, people like me took to the forest and decided to
make our own way. My father and grandfather, all the way back. We’re not bad
people, we just think differently.”

I’m loopy now, barely able to
comprehend what he’s saying, but I can grasp enough to question what I’m
hearing. “But you kill people and steal from them. You’ve been attacking
villages for decades.”

“Unfortunately, that’s the innate
order of things. That’s nature, Caroline. That’s a mountain lion taking down a
deer. That’s a big fish eating a small fish. That’s the hawk preying on a field
mouse. It’s only wrong because someone long ago said it was wrong.”

“But it’s not right, either.”

“You were a part of the northernmost
village in the PRV territory. Each and every Republicon group knew about your
station. You’re fourteen, right? How many times were you attacked, that you can
remember?”

“Directly? None.”

“And you want to know why? Because
you were strong. You were well prepared. You were trained. You knew how to
fight. Even Crockett refused to come that far north. You weren’t the bottom of
the food chain.”

I nod. It makes sense. I still don’t
agree with his methods, but I understand. Maybe it’s the sour mash, but I can
grasp the meaning in his words.

My words, however, aren’t so clear. I’m
getting sleepier, dizzier, and they come out slurred and thick on my tongue. “That
doesn’t explain why you chose to follow me.”

“You were right when you said that
when the DAV came through that we wouldn’t have a home left. At first, I
thought that if we helped you get back to safety, that maybe your government
would
reward us, just like you promised, and we could disappear again with
provisions. Then—I don’t know what it was—maybe it was the strength I saw in
your heart, but for the first time in my life, I had this sense that you were
someone I could listen to. You’re a leader.”

His words drift through my spinning
mind, and the last thing I feel before I fall asleep is a tender, reassuring hand
stroking my hair.

CHAPTER ● TWENTY-THREE

I wake up the next morning, and my
head is throbbing. The last time I can remember having a headache this horrible
was when I fell out of a tree stand two years ago. With each beat of my heart,
pain shrieks through my skull, and for the first time ever, I’m happy that the
sun isn’t shining when I fully open my eyes.

I put my hand to my forehead, groan,
and then turn to the side and vomit onto the leaves. James is gone, and he’s
lucky he’s not close by, because if he were within reach, I would probably
punch him right in the nose for doing this to me. I forgot about Teresa, temporarily,
but this wasn’t worth it. Down the hillside and in the trough of the rolling
hills, the group packs up their gear for one last march to the capitol.

They’re lively but quiet. I wonder
if they’re still reeling from Teresa’s hanging yesterday or if they’re simply
ready for this to be over with, like when you shoot a deer miles from the
village, and you have to drag the heavy carcass all the way back. And when
you’re within sight, this
almost-there
relief envelops you.

When I stand, I grow dizzier than
I’ve ever been, and I vomit once more.

I can hardly hold my eyes open long
enough to find my water canteen. I rinse out my mouth, then I chug what
remains. My first thought is to get something in my stomach. The second is to
find Tom Barner, the healer, to see if he has any magical remedies that will
make this go away immediately. The third is to find James and
really
punch him.

Instead, I lean up against the tree
and try to control my breathing. That seems to help. If I’m supposed to be a
Kinder, if I’m supposed to be superhuman, why can’t it happen now? I think
about finding Finn to see if he has any suggestions, but the thought of moving
in this state keeps me right where I am.

I wait. I watch. I try not to empty
my stomach again. Twenty minutes pass, and I can no longer stand still and
wallow in the aftereffects. Food first, then Tom Barner.

I’ll hurt James later when I’m well
enough to swing my fist.

Finn is hunched over a campfire,
underneath a canvas canopy, and he’s poking at a roasting quail. The meat
glistens, and my mouth waters. It’s weird, though, how I’m famished but the
thought of eating makes me sick to my stomach. He greets me, and thankfully, it
distracts me from the bubbling roil in my gut. “Morning! We were getting
worried about you.”

I only nod, because I’m still
furious with him after yesterday. I’m glad that he was watching out for me and
that he exposed Teresa for what she was, and I appreciate the fact that I’m
alive, but I’m so,
so
angry with him for not consulting with me first. There
were better ways to handle it. We could’ve taken her away from camp and done
the same thing without making a spectacle of it. By doing what he did, he
undermined what little authority I thought I had over this group. And maybe he
was doing me a favor. Maybe he’d heard me say enough times that I didn’t want
to be in charge, and he was only trying to show the others that there were more
than one of us to revere.

Regardless of his motives, or the
resulting consequences, which he
said
last night had strengthened my
role as the woman in charge, we should’ve talked about it first.

I think he can tell I’m livid,
because he reaches over and rips a drumstick off the quail and hands it to me,
hesitantly, as if I’m going to lunge and rip his whole arm off. I grab it and
despite what my stomach is telling me, I take a nibble. Quail aren’t the
biggest birds, but their meat is delicious, and it only takes a couple of bites
to restore my appetite.

Finn watches me eat.

I say, “Stop staring at me,” around
a mouthful of quail.

“Sorry. Just wondering what happened
to you last night.”

“James happened. Or, actually, what
was in his flask happened. Something called sour mash.” The thought of it sends
my belly spinning, and I have to stop chewing.

“Not that. I meant after they cut
Teresa down. You know we had to do that. Where’d you go?”

“
Finn
. Not now.”

“She was going to kill you in your
sleep.”

“You should’ve talked to me first.”

“Oh, so now I need to ask for your
permission to save your life?”

I sling the bones onto the ground
and smear the grease on my pants. “I don’t want to talk about it.” I stand and
turn to walk away.

“Stop,” he says. “Stop running
away.”

I bend over him, pointing in his
face, then out toward the gathering citizens. “That’s what we’re
all
doing, Finn. We’re all running away. You’re running from home, and we’re
running toward our new one. We’re all running from something.”

“That’s not—I mean…you have to start
acting like the leader you are, Caroline. The last time we counted, there are
eight hundred and forty-two people here that are expecting you to lead them
somewhere safe—”

“There
is
nowhere safe! Nowhere!
And how am I supposed to be the leader when you’re doing things like yesterday,
huh? You made me look like a fool.”

“I did it for you, okay? Maybe I
didn’t do it the right way, but they needed to see that you’re wise enough to
make the right choices. They need to know that you’re going to make the
smartest decision, even when someone undermines your authority. Do you
understand that?”

He’s right, but I don’t want him to
be. I can’t shake the desire to prove him wrong. My hands, arms, and legs are
shaking. Temporarily, the anger has abated the sour mash sickness. I grind my
teeth together as I bend down and jam my finger into his chest. “We were fine.
Fine
.
They were listening to me. They were following me. I didn’t need your help. I
didn’t need to prove anything to them.”

He rolls his eyes and looks away. “Okay.
I was wrong.”

“Thank you.” And then I wonder why
he’s giving up so easily. “Wait, that’s it?”

“What else do you want me to say? You’re
right, I’m wrong, and you’re being too stubborn to listen to my side.”

It occurs to me that we’re
squabbling like a married couple, the way people used to do in my village—husbands
and wives nagging each other in the middle of The Center. Raised voices. Hands
tossed up in frustration. Curse words muttered in hushed tones.

I’d never had a close companion;
there had never been time for such fun, frivolous things like sneaking into the
woods late at night, touching our lips together under a full moon. The closest
I’d ever come was with Brandon. If this is what it’s supposed to be like, if
fighting means you care about someone, I’m not sure I’ll enjoy it.

I decide to give him a chance. If
fighting means you care, then compromise should mean the same thing, too. “Okay,
then tell me.”

Finn stands and crosses his arms. He
flattens his lips together and tilts his head to the side, stares at me.

“Well?”

He takes a deep breath. “I guess I
thought…you know…I thought since we’re the same that maybe we could be a team.”

“So that whole show yesterday, that
was for
you
?”

“No, it was for us.”

“How?”

“We’re…we’re different, Caroline,
and if the depth of that hasn’t hit you yet, when will it? We’re Kinders, for
God’s sake. No matter what happens, from here on out, whether the DAV trashes
your capitol—”

“
Our
capitol,” I remind him.

“Yes,
ours
, you know what I
mean. No matter what happens, this is not going away. We can just drink a bunch
of sour mash and pray that we’ll wake up normal. It’s you and me now. Us. We’re
the only two. The DAV and the PRV can fight all they want, but in the end, we
may be the last people standing.”

He’s scared. I can tell by the look
in his eyes. It’s a massive weight on our shoulders, being who we are, without
any idea why. Were we chosen on purpose? Was it random chance?

Are we lucky or cursed?

Whatever the case, I get what he’s
saying. We should lead together. It makes sense.

“Okay. We’ll do it together,” I say
quietly as I move closer and pull him in for a hug. He smells like damp earth,
sweat, and grubby clothing tainted with firewood smoke. I’m beginning to
associate that with the smell of comfort. I kiss his cheek and whisper in his
ear, “But next time, we should talk about it before you decide to execute
someone.”

I watch him grin as he touches the
spot where I kissed his cheek. He chuckles, nods, and nothing else needs to be
said. I take his hand, clutching it tightly, and then I let his fingers slip
out of mine. “Are you okay running point? We can be at the valley by nightfall
if you push hard enough.”

I ask this, instead of ordering,
because it’s my first attempt at leading together.

“Yeah.”

“Good. Let’s get everybody moving,
and I’ll join you later.”

“What’re you going to do?”

“I need to find Tom Barner and then
punch James in his stupid face.”

***

By my calculation, which is to say a
complete guess, we can’t be that many miles away from Warrenville. We’re down
here, low in a valley that’s opened up into what used to be farmland, according
to the ones with us who aren’t from too far away. The same ones who tell me
about what used to be grown here, like tobacco and something called a bell
pepper, insist that the capitol is due south, over that last small mountain
that’s standing in our path.

We were further away than I thought
when we left this morning, and it’s been a grueling day. Tom Barner laughed
when I told him what happened with the sour mash, and all day long he’s been
making me eat sprigs of some green plant. He keeps saying it’ll work, but I’ve
yet to see any improvement.

Still, we should make it to the top
of what the people call Black Rash Mountain before dusk, which is named after
Carter Rash when he set a fire three miles wide way back when. From there, it’s
a quick jaunt down the southern side and, we hope, right into the Center of
Warrenville, if they have one.

The stragglers we’ve picked up, who live
closest to the capitol, don’t have much to say about it, other than the fact
that it’s big, it’s peaceful, and the capitol coffers are stocked to the
rafters with supplies. But, you only have access to them if you have money, and
the merchants they trade with pay too little and charge too much.

So, they tell me that they mostly stick
to themselves and only go into the city when they absolutely need something
like medicine or flour to get them through the winter.

And up until that morning, I’d
refused to send anyone into the capitol to warn the leaders of the approaching
army. It would’ve been smart to do it two or three days ago, but I was
terrified of losing another life. Keep everyone close so they could live to see
another day seemed like the wisest decision at the time. Now I’m not so sure. I
thought that with the slow slog of the DAV army, we would get back in plenty of
time to warn them. Surely the capitol citizens would be able to hold off the
quick-moving vanguard if it were only made up of five hundred soldiers. Right?

I’m rethinking this and trying to
decide whether or not it was a poor decision. Regardless, it’s too late, and
the three men we sent ahead should already be there. I’ll take the blame for
the late warning and pray that it’ll be tempered by the fact that I’ve managed
to save close to a thousand lives over the past week. How long they’ll live is
another issue, and in a few short miles, it won’t be my problem any more.

Hallelujah.

Just give me a bed and a bath for
one night; I’ll take whatever comes after.

Rain pelts my face, but I don’t mind
so much. I daydream about washing my hair while I walk point with Finn, trailing
my hand across the top of the waist-high weeds in the deep green field. We’re
pushing hard, and the others are so encouraged that they’re managing to keep
up. If an army intent on enslaving us wasn’t close behind, it would be a nice
place to relax and bed down for the evening, but we can’t risk another delay.

We step across a stream and scare
two rabbits. A hawk dives into the lush green to our left. He emerges in a
flurry of wings, a mouse dangling from his claws.

I point to it, showing Finn, and he
says, “I hope that’s not an omen.”

I don’t have time to agree with him
before a familiar sound ripples through the valley. It’s distant. Faint. Fighting
against the breeze, buried in the woods at our rear.

We hear drums.

It’s the war rhythm.

Boom, boom, ba-boom. Boom, boom,
ba-boom.

Finn inhales deeply. He screams,
“Run!”