“My sister is an angel, Major, and she probably didn’t have a fucking horse stomping in her head when you met her.” I heave in a huge breath of air and gust it out with puffed cheeks. “Too many spirits. Sorry.”
“Nicest thing you’ve said all morning,” he notes.
Shading my eyes from the fanatical lights, I inspect the selection of knives and select two, a bone hilt needle-point dagger and slightly curved, trailing point fillet knife that will do quite well for slashing. With both sheathed securely on my belt, I flee the hellish room and close my eyes while Cullan locks the door.
“What do you do with the slaves who don’t comply with their probation,” I ask, the question just now occurring to me.
“Some prove their willingness and worth quickly, Rimma. Others never do.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” I reply as I start back toward the stronghold’s main atrium. “Do you free them? Send them to the Colony?”
“We only allow the crippled and their families to choose the Colony,” he says, eyeing me.
“Afraid of another lecture?” I have the distinct impression he’s hesitant to answer me.
“You first,” he says.
“Me first what?”
“My original question. What was it like for you to kill those People?”
“I felt everything and nothing, Major. Exactly that, everything and nothing.” My hands on my hips, I face him. “Your turn.”
“We hang them.”
**
By night I’m Mikel’s, letting him fuck me as he wishes, going through the motions while I ponder the day finished and plan the one not yet begun. He kisses my neck and tongues my nipples as my mind wanders, counting bolts, plotting how I might convince him to give me a horse. I gasp and tremble, bent over on my hands and knees as I contemplate new leather trousers and a pair of boots, or study the knife he keeps handy on the bedside table. The man is probably right to be paranoid. I breathe a sigh of relief when he finally kisses my ass, satisfied, and crashes down beside me on the bed.
“Cullan thinks you’re dangerous,” Mikel says, stretching out on his back.
“I can’t imagine why. Captain Javlan’s had us traipsing through the countryside for weeks, guarding crops from crows.” At his washstand, I pour a glass of water and sit naked on the bed. Up here, the windows don’t open and by day’s end, the rooms swelter. “I shoot rabbits and herd runaway sheep.”
“War is ninety percent tedium, ten percent turmoil.”
“Spoken like a soldier.”
“One doesn’t become commander without proving his mettle on and off the field.” He arches an eyebrow at me. His reputation as an uncompromising man bears that out. Mikel is genial and amenable, the impish smile dazzling—until he’s crossed. He’ll order a hanging as easily and comfortably as he orders his food.
“Are we at war?” I ask, not quite vested in the characterization.
“Every day, Rimma. A war for survival, for the future of the human species. It’s a war we don’t dare lose. Each day counts another battle won.”
“Huh.”
“Our numbers grow too slowly. We need new blood, healthy children, a broader, more diverse population for breeding.”
“How charmingly put.” I lay beside him on my side, thankful for my flat stomach and the tisanes of rue, yarrow, and wild carrot seeds that keep it that way. I’ve no heart for children.
“My seed’s healthy,” he informs me. “I’m surprised you’re not pregnant by now.”
“That wasn’t part of our agreement,” I remind him, catching the spark of anger that flashes in his eyes and tightens the muscles of his jaw. “Sow your seed elsewhere, Mikel. Populate the Fortress with little commanders if that’s your desire. I’ve crops to protect from crows.”
**
In the lanes fringing the walls, mud bakes into hard summer ruts filled with blowing dust. Sewage in drainage ditches steams in a slow-moving sludge, clogs, and overruns its banks. Water spits from rusty pipes into a series of cisterns, trickling gradually downhill. Outside the walls, civilization’s future struggles for a toehold. Industriousness competing with drunkenness, hard work and generosity undermined by theft, everyone fucking and pushing out a slew of feral children at Mikel’s command. And everywhere the visible signs of sickness and death, the scourge of our ancestors still collecting its toll.
My detail could be worse, I suppose, sorting through this rabble, filling the gallows and graves on a daily basis instead of counting crows.
Each of Mikel’s four captains bears responsibility for one of the cardinal directions. Captain Javlan, a stiff-backed but competent leader with a pointed goatee and thinning hair, monitors territory to the east, heading into timbering country as far as the slopes of the divide. Roughly a hundred of us, divided in ten squads, wander nearby farms on foot in the hot sun or ride deeper into the forests for two or three days at a time.
His balding pate sunburned, and paunch rivaling his shoulders in girth, Sergeant Dex loathes me even more than I detest him. Charged with my entertainment and safety, he keeps a tight leash. At the same time, I’m Mikel’s current bedmate capable of squashing the sergeant like a fat fly with one misplaced word.
Foot up on a rock, Dex gathers us around him on the track near an old creek bed. “Amarion lost some goats last night,” he explains with a weighty nod for the stick-thin farmer. “We’re going to help him round them up along with anything else we find.”
The farmer, Amarion, a lanky man with an aquiline nose and braided beard tickling his belt, plods off to the shed with the squad in tow. The shed isn’t much different than Donnis’s sheepcote at the Colony or the homes outside the Fortress wall, grass and clay packing gaps between knotty timbers. The paddock’s fence is down near the rear, human footprints almost invisible among the stamps of cloven hooves.
For several hours, we follow the trail through grazing grassland and popping crickets, into waist high sage, a fragrant nuisance that claws our legs and hooks on sheaths. Dex wears his shirt on his broiled head as his arms turn scarlet. The herd follows steep-edged gulches and then ascends into hilly scrub, the grass sparse between jutting rock and twisted pines no more than twice my height. Scout creeps back toward us from the top of an outcropping, pressing palms down for silence and holding up eight fingers.
“Any cripples?” Dex asks when the man reaches us.
“Can’t say.” Scout shakes his head, thin, black braids swinging. “Chances are anyone on a raid is gonna be fit.”
“Don’t assume it,” I mutter. “You can’t always see the Touch.”
The men give me a brief glance and Scout nods his agreement. “One woman, maybe two, I think, can’t say.”
“Eight isn’t good odds,” Dex complains, adjusting his shirt-hat.
“Should be able to pick a few off from the ridge,” Scout suggests. “Might surrender with a few of their number down. And if they don’t…well, the odds are better.”
“That sounds like a lead-in for a lot of killing,” the sergeant mutters, “not for bringing them back alive. What’s the layout?”
“Down a ravine.” Scout scratches a crude map in the dirt. “Rock gives good cover on this side and swings around south a bit. Trees and boulders, a creek bed behind them. Not much cover north where it opens up.”
“Can we surround them?”
“Can’t say, Sarge. A hard call.”
“Ah, fuck,” Dex growls. “I need to see the blasted thing myself.” He hoists his bulk up the ridge with Scout and returns red-faced and beaded with sweat. His shirt-hat takes a swipe at his forehead before he pushes his arms into the sleeves. “Here’s the plan. You two head around south and get behind them in the trees as close as you can without giving yourselves away. Tae and Dagan, you go south too, but stay in the rock until we’re ready to ambush.” He points at two sandy-headed brothers and an older soldier with pocked cheeks. “You three, north along the ridge. Stay out of sight until we move, then close off their escape. The rest of us up there.” The sergeant eyes me. “Rimma, you and Rift take your shots from the ridge, but you’ll stay put if any fighting starts. The rest of us will do what needs done.”
“Stay put?” I echo. “I don’t think so.”
“I’ll give you back to Cullan for wall duty if you get tired of following my orders,” he says without a glance up. He has the good sense not to smile, though I can’t say that of all the men.
Barely thirteen with black curls twirling dizzily from his head, Rift breathes a heavy sigh, as if the sergeant just commanded us to lead the raid. “Yes, Sir. You can count on us.”
“Good lad.” Dex pats him on the shoulder. “Now off we go.”
When I don’t head out, the sergeant sighs. “Is there a problem?”
“Just a fat fly buzzing in my ear, Sergeant,” I reply dryly. “Let’s go.”
As the squad splits, I climb the low ridge with Dex, Scout, and Rift, crossbow crooked in my arms. At the top of the slope, rocks jut from the sand like battlements. The other side pitches sharply into a narrow, flat-bottomed ravine opening to the north. A score of goats shuffle and bleat behind a barrier of uprooted sage where the walls curve at the south end. Eight Biters are breaking camp, too distant for a sure shot.
The sergeant wags a hand at us to slink farther north along the ridge. From my vantage point, I catch glimpses of our squad circling the ravine at the southern rim. Scout was right, none of the Biters seems the least bit impaired, but there’s no fire pit. Two Biters, one a woman, yank aside dead sage, freeing the goats. Another woman in a faded red skirt slowly stands, scanning the terrain; she’s the only one without a flat-bow on her back or weapon in her belt. The hair on the nape on my neck bristles; I know she’s Touched, but not how.
“We’re fucked,” I whisper to Rift. “I’m going.”
“We’re supposed to stay here,” the boy argues, his brow furrowed like an old man.
“I need a better shot.” I rise to a crouch. “You stay here.”
“But…but…Sergeant Dex…Rimma, we’re supposed to stay together.”
“That’s true,” I concede, “but then you’ll have to come with me and that’s disobeying an order.” I creep along behind the boulders as the Biters start toward the ravine’s outlet, our men on the southern rim becoming rapidly useless. At the sound of footsteps on loose rock, I glance behind me to find Rift, his bow nocked, his face scrunched up with worry, Sergeant Dex gesturing furiously in the distance, mouthing silent curses.
“Stay on the ridge,” I tell Rift. “When I break, cover me. Start loosing those arrows, fast as you can.”
“What if I miss?” Rift whispers.
“Doesn’t matter as long as they don’t get off a steady shot.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Kill the one that’s Touched.”
“How do you know?” He sounds skeptical.
“I was a Biter…one of the People. Ready?”
Rising from the rock crenellations, I scramble down the slope without hope of stealth, my feet sliding over loose sand and stone. My destination lies fifteen paces ahead, a hip-high bank of boulders. The Biters look up, briefly stunned, and then Rift rears behind me, shouting, his arrows flying wildly. I hear Dex screaming orders as Biters scramble to nock arrows and find cover. My skin feels hot, though not yet burning, the woman staring at me narrow-eyed, all her concentration focused on stopping me. Any moment, I’ll burst into flames. I won’t reach the boulders on time; I know it. Wide open, I slide to my ass and aim, breathe and pull the trigger. The bolt hisses from the stock, knocking the woman back to the dirt.
My feet under me, I scrabble down to the boulders, breathing like a bellows, heart hammering. Quarrels slam into the dirt and ricochet off rocks. Tae screams, staggering backwards, an arrow in his chest. Dex is bellowing for surrender, yelling for the squad to hold, but I barely hear him over the Biters’ howling and the shouts of our men. Another Biter lands face first in the dust. Rift is shrieking in pain behind me. I cock and load my bow, heft it to my shoulder and aim. My head lurches forward at the blow, vision swimming, my bolt cracking into stone. Blurry-eyed, I look up at the sun and see Dex staring down at me, crimson-skinned and mad as the devil himself.
2
4
~Angel~
Fully clothed in her leathers and boots, my sister reclines beside me in our bed…my bed, I suppose, since she belongs to Mikel once the sun sets. I think she’s dying. Not physically…in that way she’s as enchanting as ever, but her light feels dim to me, her glow fading like Heaven’s old filaments. Once they flickered, they never reclaimed their brightness.
The People captured in her raid refused to assimilate into the Fortress, their hatred and defiance unquenchable. Today, Mikel will hang the last of them in the plaza, a man and woman, stripped and dangling after months of captivity. And so, what was gained? The cobbler, Tae, and a young boy, Rift, both dead. Eight of the People dead.
Though woven of iron, her veil of righteousness wears thin as cobwebs. As she watched those People rebel against their slavery, exert their will against their conquerors, deny the Fortress’s assertion that we saved them, was she seeing herself in a role reversed? What will it require to shake her loose, to rip her free of her blinders, and will there be any Rimma left for me?