“Doesn’t matter,” Bellamy said without stopping. He motioned for Felix to follow him. “We’re going this way.”
Felix glanced over his shoulder. “What about the others? Where are we going?”
“Scouting mission. You coming?”
He hesitated for a second, then nodded. “Definitely.”
Bellamy scanned the ivy-covered fortress ahead, looming above them like a monster in the night. There was no one coming or going at the moment. He darted ahead from post to post, Felix doing the same a few yards away.
He took in as many details as he could. A wide, rocky courtyard with wheel ruts cut in the middle for a cart track. A low doorway cut into a solid wall, likely heavily guarded. Subtle gun turret points scattered along the top of the high wall in every direction, none of them manned right now, by the looks of it.
These people weren’t exactly on high alert. And why would they be? They’d wiped out their competition, practically scorched them from the face of the Earth, and taken all their weapons too.
Bellamy ran his hand down his carved bow, then darted ahead again, this time to the side of the building, if you could even call it that. This structure was impossibly vast, bigger than the three ships of the Colony combined. Bellamy felt his stomach sinking at the thought of a group of people populous enough to fill it. How could he possibly hope to bring a society like that to its knees?
But then he stopped, crouching in the tall, reedy grass, and listened the way he listened to the forest back home. He could hear a low buzz of sound from inside the fortress, but something deeper than his normal senses told him that this building wasn’t full at all.
This could be why they took our people, he realized with a cold chill. Maybe they raid in order to bolster their ranks. That would be a pretty piss-poor strategy. Kill your prisoners’ friends and family and then expect them to join you in happily marauding even more people?
The moon emerged from behind a curtain of clouds, and in the sudden glow, Bellamy could make out more about the structure of the building. What had looked like a solid, impregnable wall covered in climbing plants was actually perforated by small windows, their glass long-since blown out. That was a danger for anyone approaching, plenty of spots for rifles to poke through. But could it also be an opportunity?
He crept up to one of the windows and glanced through it. On the other side was some sort of indoor path or road. It may have been a hallway once upon a time, but now the moonlight was illuminating the pathway; the ceiling had caved in all the way around. Bellamy realized that the outer wall was just that: a protective wall, unconnected to the rest of the structure. Maybe if they could find some way to get beyond this wall, they could get their people back.
Felix sprinted ahead, pointing to the flash of light along the horizon to the right. Bellamy peered toward him and spotted it too: a wide river running alongside the building, a smaller lagoon spilling from it practically all the way to the walls themselves. The only thing between the rippling water and the building was a large, terraced, rectangular green field, somewhat less unkempt than the other surrounding spaces, along with a riverside “beach” so rocky that Bellamy suspected it was probably once used as a road.
He wanted to keep going, get a closer look, but the way there was jagged with dunes of debris; it would be hard to pick their way out if they ran into trouble. Felix was already racing away, though, no doubt thinking about Eric, held prisoner somewhere nearby. His back was turned and he was too far to hear a whistle of warning, so Bellamy followed, darting from dune to dune.
Then he spotted movement in the field ahead of them. He froze, watching as five figures emerged from the fortress, none of them a soldier with a shaved head. They were all women, most draped in rippling gray fabric. The one in the front was an older woman in white with long dark hair, her hands raised toward the hazy outline of the moon.
Shivers ran down Bellamy’s spine at the sight of them. There was something overly deliberate about the way they were walking, like the raiders during the attack, timing each step down to the precise measurement. And they were humming, making low, guttural noises, like bees emerging from a hive. Bellamy didn’t know what was going on here, but he didn’t like it.
The woman in front crouched down to touch the grass and the others followed suit, pressing their fingers to their mouths when they finished, then up to the sky.
“Great Earth,” the woman called out. “We have carried out Your wishes and will do so for the rest of our days. Now we humbly entreat You for a sign. Is this our home? Is this where we shall remain? Our stone, our hearth, our keep?”