Chapter Eighteen
The horses tremble and rear back as the hollow blast echoes across the wide-open desert, and on the distant horizon, thousands of years worth of human ingenuity billow skyward in a widening plume of thick black smoke. Jack peels off to the side and shields his eyes against the sun. The explosion looks a tiny thing from so far away, but the boom that rolls through the strata resonates in their ribcages and brings them all to a quick halt.
Hargrove’s face is cryptic as he surveys the destruction. He canters ahead and stares off at the smoke, resting his hand on his hip casually. Slowly he wheels back around, as if he is about to address the men with a speech.
“Hup!” he shouts, and spurs his horse and tears off.
They race across the empty desert range, a ragged band of refugee cavalrymen with their makeshift armory. The men press upon Jack, fearing the explosion to be the work of the militant encampment whose fires they watched from the porch only a few hours earlier. Jack assures them that, for all of their wicked contrivances, he has never known the Nezra to possess such a power as this. After a time, Hargrove grows weary and quiets their speculations and confesses his own hand in the matter.
“I did it,” he says. “I blew the whole damn thing up.”
“So it weren’t the army?”
“No.”
A wave of relief and astonishment enlivens the haggard men and they cinch their heels and hasten their gait, crowding around Hargrove as he dispenses his secrets.
“That old fortress has been down in the earth there for almost three centuries. Built to withstand a nuclear bombardment.”
“And you burned it?” says Trevor.
“Cratered it. It was done for, anyway.”
“How’d you come across something like that?” asks Jason, a young man only a little older than Jack.
“My ancestors,” Hargrove says, and explains to them the mission his family line has been sworn to uphold.
A new sense of gravity overtakes their journey. They ride in long silence through the enormous day, where overhead the earthly atmosphere seems to have extended itself into pale blue infinity. They veer north at Hargrove’s behest, riding along the centerline of a steep dry gulch until they come to a collected pool of run-off. The thin bath tastes gritty and they drink down as much as their bellies will hold.
“You know the land,” Jack says to Hargrove.
“Been years, but I’ve been through here before. Used to make the same outings as Renning and Ethan.”
“Why did you stop?”
“Turned fifty. Took on the role of caretaker at the house.”
Another pang of regret rolls through Jack’s gut. “What are you going to do now that it’s gone?”
“Build another house. Live out my days in peace, if there’s any to be found.”
“Will people still go out on those trips? The human terrians?”
“Why? Interested?”
“I don’t know… maybe.” He thinks about the map in Hargrove’s kitchen, about the frontier of Unknown Fate, and a tingle of adventure stirs inside him.
“We’ve gone out less and less over the years. They used to send out big expeditions, every seven years, in all directions. I’ve read about them in the journals. Usually they made it back. Sometimes they didn’t. That had mostly ended by the time I came up as a boy. Most of the outings I went on were just simple upkeep. I played a matchmaker of sorts, putting one settlement in touch with another, each having something the other needed.”
“Thomas went along with you?”
“Side by side. I think he got a taste of the world and liked it. He was always spinning his wheels… but that was all so long ago it seems like another life. He set out on his own in the summer of fifty-eight.”
“Fifty-eight?”
“The year. Fifty-eight.”
“What year is it now?” asks Jack.
“Oh… if my math adds up, this would be late March of the year twenty-four ninety-nine. But that’s old-fashioned time keeping. We might as well start back at zero for all the good it does.”
Taket is only peripherally aware of the hands that roll him onto his back and apply the tourniquet to the shreds of flesh and slivers of bone that were once his left arm. The heat waves continue to boil over them, emanating from the molten crater that burns in the desert heat like an underground coal fire. The carnage spreads outward from the crater in an acrid black radius, full of dead and dying horses, dead and dying men, flaming and smoking like the hells of some medieval triptych. He screams as they cauterize the severed flesh of his arm with flaming shrapnel from the blast.
Only twenty-three remain—those who had been guarding the perimeter of the decimated oasis. They behold the wreckage with devout superstition, eyeing the source of the explosion as if it might erupt again, fearing the dark forces responsible may not yet be satiated. Noxious fumes spew from the earth like the breath of some slumbering subterranean demon now awoken, full of mean venom and ancient fury.
The brave Sons of the Temple leave the dead where they lay and drag the wounded down by the parched riverbed and arrange them in neat lines to perform a quick and reckless triage. They are sick with the task, operating on some baser level with their thinking minds disengaged from the gruesomeness. Those that can still ride are given grisly treatments by trembling, blood-slippery hands and left to suffer, the rest are dispatched swiftly in the same manner applied to the lamed horses—a slick cut of the throat and on to the next.
Taket rises, holding his severed forearm against his chest, and looks around at the carnage. His men are covered in black char and red gore. The surviving horses have run scared, cutting a wide arc outward into the dry desert then doubling back to the bank upriver. Taket limps toward them, a hellish vision, and the horses start and skitter as he draws near. Only one seems fearless and calm—a tall, brown-speckled steed with an arrowshot scar on its hindquarters. Taket calls him forth and soothes him, then fastens his right hand on the pommel and hefts himself onto the saddle.
He rides through the bloody field of dead like some arcane horseman on a mission of soul collection. He surveys the limp and mangled bodies and pieces of bodies, then rides a wide swath around the blast radius, peering into the smoldering crater that runs straight down into the earth like a tunnel to the underworld. There is nothing to salvage. He makes his way back to the provisional camp along the river, where the wounded bellow in agony as crude and painful treatments are administered to their injuries.
“If you’re fit enough to stand, come with me. We need to tie down the horses.” He raises his remaining hand and points skyward. “When the sun is here, we leave. If you cannot make it, it is your choice whether we end your suffering or leave you to die.”
“Do you think this is all that’s left of it?” Lia asks, clicking her heel against the bundles. “Alexandria?”
“This is all. Nothing could have survived that blast.”
“You’re sure it was your dad?”
Nyla nods. “It’s funny… he talked about doing it a long time ago, he just didn’t have the heart. It wouldn’t have lasted another twenty years, the way things were going.”
“Aren’t you sad?”
“We’ll move on. We have everything we need right here.”
“What’s it for?”
“What do you mean?”
“Does it just teach people how to plant and build? We could already do that, and almost as good.”
“I’ll bet you could. No, it’s more than just planting and building. It’s… everything. It’s our history.”
“Not our history. Theirs.”
“Ours, too. Don’t you want to know what it used to be like? How they used to be, how they used to think?”
“I always used to… We used to sit around and talk about it all night.”
“What did you say?”
“That their world was like magic.”
The golden desert turns slowly to dusky lavender and they hasten their pace. They have been riding at an almost imperceptible incline, and by the dim-starred twilight they reach the brow of a sandy mound that sweeps down toward the village where Marikez resides, nestled in the bend of the shallow river. Points of torchlight flicker around the darkening settlement, shining out from the many flat-roofed tents that surround the outskirts. The tented abodes are walled with colorful cloth exteriors that billow softly in the cooling night, giving the whole settlement the mystique of some traveling gypsy caravan. Situated in the center is a more permanent structure of wood and stone, with sullen light creeping out from a wide-open doorway.
Vague forms shuffle between the tents, wearing flowing robes and banded head-dressings. Lia and Nyla float toward them on weary horses, laden with the bound platinum plates.
In the dusty yards, old women mill about the clotheslines, unpinning the day’s wash and folding everything away in woven baskets. They look up from their work with spooked faces and hiss out warnings to the others and scurry inside. In only a matter of moments, the alleyways between the tents are empty and the entire colony looks a ghost town.
“Are you sure they’re friendly?”
As the words part Lia’s lips, droves of armed men fan out through the outer quarters and take cover. She can see them in the shadows, their glinting arrows trained straight at them, following their slow advance down the sandy way.
They skirt past a few outlying shelters, flaps of red cloth snapping around them. Nyla stops in the center of a circular plaza and rides a slow circuit around.
“We’re sent by Ryan Hargrove,” she calls out to the creeping shadows.
They sit still on their horses and wait, and for a long while no one moves.
Three figures advance through the deepening night—one striding up the middle, flanked by two armed men. He enters the round market and studies the two young women who’ve suddenly appeared from the desert. He takes another step forward, squinting against the darkness.
“Nyla?”
“Yes.”
She hops down and bounds toward him, leading her horse along. Lia sits quiet and watches. The man is swarthy and sun-darkened, with a long mane of coarse brown hair. Nyla runs into his arms and they embrace tightly.
“Hello, Marikez.”
“It has been years,” he says, stepping back and taking her in. “You were so little last I saw you.”
“It’s wonderful to see you. So much has changed here.”
“More of everything, all the time. How is your family? Your boy?”
“They’re fine,” says Nyla, wearing a strained smile on her face.
“What’s wrong? Is your father ill?”
“No. He’s… he’s fine. We’ve come to ask your help.”
“Of course. Anything.” Nyla’s worried silence speaks volumes and a deep crease furrows his brow. “What is it? What has happened?”
She turns and beckons Lia to join them. She rides over, leading the third horse along behind her.
“This is Lia.”
“Welcome,” he says. He takes her hand and helps her down from the horse, then turns to Nyla. “She’s your friend from the seaside?”
“No. She… we only just met.”
Marikez flashes a look of confusion and Lia raises her hand meekly and waves.
“We have something that needs to be kept safe. It’s very important.”
A slew of onlookers have gathered around the plaza, curious old faces and excited children. They eye the rectangular bundles lashed over the saddles.
“Perhaps we should talk elsewhere,” he says.
With the kindly grace of a gentleman, he takes the third lead from Lia’s hand and guides them through the quaint neighborhood of tents and shelters. Unknown spices float on the air and Lia swivels her head, drinking in the oddities hung from beams around the open-air dwellings—dried gourds and snakeskins, carven tools and utensils, child puppets with crisscross eyes and strange little wooden toys. The leery forms shuffle and stare as Lia and Nyla stroll past with their much-burdened horses in tow. They round a corner and head toward the center of the colony. Several of the children follow along at a distance, and on either side of the lane sit families around fire pits and old men who smoke pipes and watch them pass with casual disinterest. The homes grow sturdier as they approach the innermost, and oldest, part of the settlement. Wooden structures paling from the sun, with packed layers of mud and straw insulation.
“Don’t let me forget,” says Marikez, “I have something for your father.”
They pass the central stone building and come to a modest dwelling just beyond. Marikez hitches the horses in his small yard and two girls run up to greet him, throwing their arms around his stout legs. He hefts them in his arms and carries them to the side of his house where their mother sits idly, talking with the neighbors. Lia walks back out into the lane, flexing out her leg, and peers around the small community.
“When I was little, this is all that was here,” says Nyla.
“What happened?”
“They grew.”
Shouts issue from down the way where a group of young boys kick a leather ball around the dirt lane. Lia turns and looks and they stop in her gaze, struck by the two strange beauties standing in the middle of their usually boring neighborhood.
“Hi,” says Lia, smiling expectantly.
They freeze, then run off in a half-crazed fit.
Nyla laughs.
Marikez brings his family over and introduces them around, then takes his children to the curtained doorway of his small house and they slip inside. He returns a moment later, holding a small bundle.
“Come,” he says, moving to the fire. “Sit down.”
“Thank you,” says Nyla.
“Now, how is it that I can help you?”
“Something is happening up north along the coast. People are being slaughtered. I should let Lia tell it—she knows more.”
“Slaughtered?”
His face grows dire as Lia begins. When she tells the worst of it, he leans forward with his hands in his lap like a boy being lectured.
“Arana Nezra. You’ve never known of him before?”
“No. Most of our contacts were in the central valley. No one has heard of him.”
“He kills them if they come close,” says Lia. “Or even if they don’t.”
“They’ve been there… how long? Forty years?”
Lia nods. “But they’ve not been killers that long.”
“This is horrible,” says Marikez. He fixes his eyes on Nyla. “What have you come to ask of me?”
“My father rode out this morning… for their Temple. With some of the men from my home. He wants to see if they can be stopped.”
“Yes?”
“And he would like your help.”
“I see.” Marikez sits back and stares up at the sky. “I have my people here to think about.”
“I understand. I understand if you can’t—”
“And if these killers are as bad as you say… then it is only a matter of time before they find your lovely home by the ocean, is it not?”
“Probably.”
“And they have already reached your father’s house?”
“Yes…”
“Then it may only be a matter of time before they find our lovely home. Your father has meant so much to us here. If he believes this man is a threat, then I believe it. Of course I will help you.”
“Thank you.”
“We’ll go house to house,” says Marikez, rising. “We’ll call them out. I can get you fifty men. And horses. Where is this Temple?”
“We have a map.”
“I can take you there,” says Lia.
“Good. Very good.” He unwraps the bundle in his lap and removes an intricately whittled pipe with a long, fine stem. “This is not the gift,” he says, taking out a little drawstring satchel. He opens it up and wafts the cherry-sweet tobacco under their noses. “This is. I’ll take it to him myself.”
“I don’t know how to ever thank you.”
“Come visit more often. We miss you.” He motions to the horses. “You said you have something for us to keep? What is it? Valuables?”
“It’s… kind of a long story.”
Nyla steps across the yard and unties the bundle from her horse, then crouches down and pulls back the cloth wrapping and removes one of the plates. She carries it back toward the crackling fire and hands it to Marikez. It looks glossy and wet in the firelight, full of tiny lettering barely readable to the naked eye. Marikez runs his fingers over the inscriptions, scrutinizing them with mystified eyes, then turns it over in his rough hands and peers at still more miniscule writings on the back.
“Is this your father’s work?”
“He didn’t make them. Preserved them, only. They were handed down…”
“From?”
“From before the fall.”
Marikez tugs at his beard, thinking. “These are very old, then.”
“Two hundred and seventy years, at least.”
“The American Civil War?” he reads. “This is what happened to everything?”
“No. That was six hundred years ago. It’s history.”
He examines the plate suspiciously. “This is your father’s secret? Lost words?”
“This is it.”
“The writings he gave us… the books he said he discovered… came from these?”
“Everything.”
Marikez laughs robustly, gleaming at the plate.
“Can you keep them safe?”
“Of course. I'd be honored. I have just the place. Come.”
They step into the narrow alleyway, vacant now as the neighborhood sleeps, and they unhitch their horses from the post. Marikez guides them to the stone building at the heart of the settlement, where an aged watchman reclines by the open door, half-asleep.
“Our sanctuary,” he tells them. “Victor, wake up.”
“Hmm…”
“I need your help. Quickly.”
He bids old Victor to rouse himself and call everyone out from their slumber for a midnight meeting at the sanctuary.
Lia and Nyla untether the rest of the bundles and start carrying them through the gloomy shelter, past rows of the settlement’s own carven tablets. Lia gazes up, taking them for tombstones at first glance, then seeing more closely that the chipped and smoothworn tablets each contain their own engraved history, written in the dark years by Marikez’s forefathers, telling the story of their own long struggle for survival in the aftermath. They pile everything in a pitch-black side chamber, then Marikez pulls the door shut and braces it.
“There. Night and day, they will be guarded.” He takes their elbows and ushers them to the front row of benches. “Please, sit down. I’m going out with Victor to gather everyone… when I come back, I’ll need your help,” he says, turning to Lia. “I need you to tell them everything you’ve told me. And I promise you… they will go.”
With that, he bustles out the door toward the plaza, leaving Lia and Nyla alone in the sanctuary. Lia looks down at her hands and rubs them, hoping this will be the last time she has to speak to an audience about the tragedy she endured.
Slowly they trickle in, wearing long undershirts with dark-ringed eyes and hair astray, none too happy about being pulled from their warm beds. Their moods continue to spiral as the dreadful news is delivered. Many seem disbelieving of Lia’s telling, but after Nyla bears testament and Marikez speaks to the debt they owe her father, they break away and fall into quiet deliberation.
In the morning, Marikez makes good on his promise, with forty-seven men and women saddling their horses and nearly clearing out their small stable entirely. They ride down the centerline of the settlement and congregate in the plaza, with bows and broadswords slung over the robes they wear, making them appear at once monastic and militant.
Lia circles around the edge of the plaza, past clusters of worried settlers, and finds Nyla standing with the contingent that will guard the sanctuary.
“I think we’re leaving…”
“Take care of yourself, Lia. When this is all over… you and Jack are welcome to come live with us on the coast. There’s always room for more.”
“Thank you,” she says, swallowing hard. “I’d like that.”
“Tell Denit I expect him back in one piece.”
“I will.”
“Tell him I love him.”
“I will.”
They turn their horses and parade through the settlement, past the early wooden buildings and finally through the leaning hovels at the outskirts. The citizenry follows them to the outer bounds, then stops and watches them disappear into the desert heat waves.
By sundown they pass the still-burning wreckage of the oasis. Light ash bristles across the sand like new fallen snow, collecting daintily on the bodies of the dead. Lia rides along the edge of the river with Marikez and two of his men, surveying the line of bloody indentions and stiffening carcasses spread along the bank, where already the buzzards have picked clean the eye sockets and started into the tougher meat. Lia’s skin ripples, looking into the dead faces and recognizing all of them.
“They saw to their wounded and left the rest to die.” Marikez looks across the scene of carnage, taking shallow breaths of the rancid air. “Hargrove rode out this way. And these Nezra followed his trail.”
Hargrove leads them through the unspoiled desert for many days. He talks all along the way, pointing off to faraway vistas and telling of the people and settlements he has encountered throughout his life. Most of the men have heard it before, but Jack rides in lockstep during the long journey and absorbs every word.
“Good farming people up north of here,” he calls, motioning off toward the tip of the broad green valley that engulfs the horizon. “I’ll bet they’re seeing the highest yields they’ve had in decades. Centuries. In fifty years, mark my word, this land up here will be booming.”
“Have you gone to the east?” asks Jack.
“Oh, to a point.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Centuries of draught. Hard living out that way. We never made it past the continental divide, though. Might be better further out.”
“Lia and I met people from the east. They hated it.”
“I don’t blame them.”
“What’s the worst you saw of it?”
“The worst?” Hargrove cocks his head and gives Jack a queer look. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“I want to know what it’s like, that’s all. These people… they were running from something out that way.”
“Ah. Well, I don’t know if this relates, but… probably the worst of it happened, oh, about twenty-five, thirty years ago or so. We were looking for settlements, looking for a place to make contact and set up new lines. Mostly what we found was misery. People that would just as soon kill us as accept our help. We nearly turned back, and I wish we had. We weren’t far off from land we once knew had been fertile, so we pushed a bit farther to see what we’d find. Not long after, we thought we’d found what we were looking for—a nice, well-built settlement. Looked like they had done well for themselves. We saw the buildings from far off—log cabins, cobblestone streets. They’d sectioned off land for crops. As we rode in closer, though, we saw the crops were untended. Overgrown, rotting on the vine. Some of our group held back, in case they turned violent on us we wouldn’t all be lost. Me and several others set out in the morning to approach them, see if they were friendly or not. We expected to be met as we rode in, but no one came. We kept riding, and soon entered the town. The streets were as well-laid as they looked from far away, but they were empty. Weeds had just started up through the cracks. We called out to a few cabins—no one came. We circled around and knocked on their doors. No one answered. I’d seen smaller camps abandoned, lots of them, but never a place like this. People don’t just up and leave a place like this. We chanced entry of one of the little cabins and found it empty, too. Door to door we went, searching for any sign of life and coming up short every time. As we got toward the far end of this town… it hit us. We could smell it in the air. It was coming from a long shelter they’d built, stone chimney with a shingled roof—must have been build by hard-working, intelligent people. By the time we reached the doors leading in, we could barely hold our stomachs down the stench was so strong. The doors were locked from the inside. We forced them open and what we saw I will never forget for the rest of my days—there they all were, the whole lot of them, the entire town, stiff as boards, sitting on rows of wooden benches, facing away from us. I crossed my arm over my mouth and nose and ventured inside. They were in the early stages. We must have just missed them. Dead. All of them. Men, women, children. Dressed nice, canting over in their seats. Don’t know how they did it, poison or some such thing, but it was clear it was by their own hand.”
“Why?”
“I don’t begin to understand. Haunts me to this day. No writing. No explanation. Nothing. These good people had just decided to end it, just like that. If I had to guess, I’d say someone there talked them all into it. Things like that have been known to happen.”
“But… how?”
“The mind is a workable thing, Jack. It can be fashioned like clay by the right hands. I think you understand that.”
He thinks back to his lessons, where his wits were first embezzled by traders in the fortunes of Fire, and he sees the Temple for what it truly is—not only a thief of children, but a thief of minds. He remembers Quinlan’s vacant stare—a mere shadow of himself, held hostage for some mystic ransom.
He looks into Hargrove’s craggy face as they ride, and for the first time since he was stolen from his village years ago, he sees something worth aspiring to, a model of what he would like to become—a daring explorer, riding out into the uncharted territories with centuries of know-how at his fingertips.
“You known Lia your whole life?” Hargrove asks, breaking the lingering silence.
“We grew up together.”
“She’s awful sweet on you.”
“She’s not always sweet,” says Jack, with a hint of a smile.
“What was it like, your settlement?”
Even a few months ago, a question like that might have brought tears to his eyes. But now, for some inexplicable reason, he finds himself happy to reminisce.
“It was the best place I’ve been. We always had something going on. Days we’d fish… hunt… play games. Our parents taught us our letters and numbers. Nights we’d have big cookouts, everyone coming down to the bonfire to eat. Then we’d all, me and my friends, we’d all go out in the forest and play games and pretend like it was the old days.”
“You knew a bit about the old days, did you?”
“Yeah. A little.”
“Passed down to you?”
“I guess. We found some things buried, too. Things from back then.”
“And you knew how to tend fields?”
“We knew some. We built ditches for water. Planted a field out in a clearing.”
“It’s amazing how some carried on. They sound like they were good people, Jack. Wish I’d have met them.”
“Me too.”
They ramble on through the increasingly green landscape, learning each other’s stories and talking about the world around them. It puts their minds at ease from the task at hand, if only for a little while.
They curve north and follow along a winding freeway, lined with the angular heaps of old homes and towers of commerce. Far ahead, Jack sees the outline of the mountains that had been to his left during their long trip down the coast. At the horses’ feet are discarded provisions left behind by crisscrossing wanderers—spent furs and broken tools and old bones serrated with hatchet strikes.
Shortly before sundown, Jack spots them in the distance, at the fork of two rivers, the unmistakable pitch-black silhouettes of Sajiress and his tribe, their bare, rawboned bodies moving diligently against the backdrop of the honey red sky.
Taket watches the drifting sands, a granite man. His blood is foul, his nerves burn with phantom sensations, yet he stands acutely and watches the sand hover like mist over the desert rock.
The young men look off after him, trying read the land in a similar manner and finding themselves illiterate. The blood of their fallen brothers covers them like grotesque war paint, great smears of it about their limbs and faces, dried and dusty. Some of the youngest recruits stare listlessly, as if their hearts have let go, shocked as they are to have lost so much of their fleet, each with eyes wide like a spooked child’s, missing their warm beds at the Temple and the other safe comforts of home.
Taket turns an about-face and surveys the ruddy landscape to their rear, finding nothing but monotony on the darkening horizon. But he had seen it earlier—they all had—the dirty swell of distant riders following in their wake.
He mounts back up and turns the remainder of his men to the northwest, following the inconspicuous traces of some mounted caravan etched faintly on the amorphous sand. He spurs the wellborn Balazir and the others grapple with their ghastly mounts to rejoin him, their afflicted horses now trembling with patches of their hides scorched clean away, lurching across the desert twilight like an army of nightmares.
Sajiress paces toward them with his arms outstretched majestically, as if the entire valley were his kingdom alone. He looks at Jack with skeptical wonder, not quite trusting his own eyes, then calls back over his shoulder and trills out a mouthful of peculiar oddities that sets the small cavalry glancing askance at one another. Hargrove sidles up next to Jack and talks through the side of his mouth.
“You weren’t kidding—for all my days, I can’t place it.”
Jack dismounts and saunters over, his horse’s nostrils steaming in the moonlight. Sajiress grips him by the arms and turns him around, as if sizing up his price for market.
“Jack.”
“Sajiress.”
“Mari’don diwaa lah’ton?”
Jack looks at him and smiles. “It’s good to see you.”
“Tah tevra ota carisser?” asks Sajiress, bewildered by the slew of strangely armed horsemen muddling around the outskirts of his camp.
“Friends,” says Jack, placing his hand on his chest.
“Hello,” says Hargrove, raising his hand in salutation.
Sajiress offers back a stiff mimicry of the action and parts his lips to show a tarnished gray smile.
The tribe edges forward shyly and Jack steps into their midst, locking eyes with the men he fought with on that bleak, rain-drenched day that seems like forever ago. The swell of bodies carries him back to the heart of their camp, and Sajiress takes Hargrove’s arm and pulls him and the rest of his men along after.
A ring of thatched shanties, barely shoulder-high, encircles the glowing fire, and the split river whisks past them in a hushed flow to the east. Denit and the others tie the horses and unburden them while the tribesmen look on, captivated.
Sajiress calls out a slew of orders and a frenzy of activity follows as food and water and fur blankets are fetched. Hargrove listens in keenly, wearing the look of a confounded anthropologist. The straggling men are shepherded round the fire and given the closest seats by their new hosts.
A tanner from the outpost leans in and whispers to Hargrove. “Where they from, Canada?”
Hargrove shakes his head tightly.
A side of venison is thrown on the fire and a bladderful of cool river water is brought from the muddy bank. The dirty, roadworn men accept the hospitality modestly, offering up awkward gratitudes to the half-naked smiling denizens. Jack stands off the to the side with Sajiress, gesticulating around at the horses, the men, the trail they’ve just ridden, playacting and fetching up objects to use as placeholders in the narrative he seeks to convey. Sajiress nods along pensively. Hargrove watches their little puppet show from across the fire, recording the encounter in his mind for future reference.
“Temple,” says Jack, holding a stone. He again sweeps his hand toward the men seated around the fire, then walks his fingers back to the stone. “To the Temple. To kill the man who stole your children.”
“Temple? Tah cariss des… sikelern…”
“Yes,” says Jack, “sikelern Temple.”
Sajiress stares at the men in a daze, and he begins to nod stoically. “Eyah, Jack… lah cariss diwaa.”
“Sajiress… they’re alive.” Jack nods toward a gallery of small children with dirty faces. “Chur… Churth…”
“Eyah…” says Sajiress, creasing his brow. “Cherreth.”
“Yes, they’re still alive. They’re at the Temple.”
“Alok e’sahl?”
“Alok, yes. And Bo—”
“Bojin.”
“Yes,” Jack says with tempered hope.
A semicircle of tribesmen stands by a trussed-up stack of provisions and looks on. Sajiress addresses them briskly and a fire lights up in their eyes. He speaks succinctly in his native tongue and the bare-chested men listen raptly, looking back and forth between he and Jack with a growing sense of import.
Off in the shadowy orange of the fire, Hargrove unfolds a small parchment and adds a few lines to the history he is writing.
They eat and drink and exchange odd pleasantries with one another. Children are brought forward and introduced, and they look with great curiosity at the belts and packs of gear the men wear over their finely stitched attire. Jack makes his way around and greets all the faces he remembers and they welcome him in like family.
Hargrove splits away from the group and takes on with Sajiress. Soon they are engaged in a depth of conversation that suffers not a bit from their lack of fluency with one another—they jaw on like boyhood friends.
“What?” says Denit to a small, huddled group.
“Uket,” says the wild-haired fellow seated across from him, taking a woman’s hand. “Uket.” He nods to Denit.
“Nyla. Mine is Nyla.”
“Nyla. Tah eh d’ranna cherreth?” He lofts a grubby, naked child onto his knee and tilts his head eagerly. “Hanh?”
“One,” says Denit. “One boy. Named Aaron.”
The hairy one smiles and pulls more meat from the bone and passes it to Denit and Uket. Jack makes his way over and sits down next to Denit.
“Holding up?”
“Fine. Just getting to know Uket and… something, here.”
“Raji.”
“We should try to sleep soon.”
“They’re going with us?”
Jack nods.
“Can they fight?”
“Yes. Good, too.”
Hargrove hunkers down next to them. “I think I got it,” he says vigorously. “They were abandoned as children. Their parents left them… or were killed. Couldn’t figure out which. Look around—there’s none here older than Sajiress. No elders. They raised themselves up in the wild. Completely cut off. Lost everything. They’ve wandered all over from the sound of it. Probably seen more than I have. Astounding.”
“Do you think it’s…”
“Doubtful. Too long ago and too far away to be the Nezra.”
“Two of their own got stolen away by the Temple, though. I’ve met them”
“Their children? Really? Is that why they’re so eager to fight?”
“I think that’s part of it.”
“Listen, Jack… we’ll be there within a couple days. There’s no telling where that army is right now. With any luck, they’re dead—but I don’t count us a lucky bunch. They’re likely right on our heels. Marikez, if he’s coming, will be a day or two behind them. If we wait for him to catch up, we may get jumped and lose the one chance we have to get this done. We go it alone. Understand? I need you to draw that Temple for me. Every detail you remember. Everything that’s around it. Anything you think might be useful. I’ve got to start figuring a way to go about this without getting us all killed.”
“Do you think there is a way?”
“Always.”
They huddle by the firelight, long into the night, working out a course. Jack draws intently with the ink and stylus, shaping out the contours of the grounds and provinces, sketching in the topography and points of entry. Hargrove and Sajiress watch every line materialize.
At first light, they outfit themselves and prepare to set out. They double-up on the horses, hooking blades and sharpened gears and bundles of black-tipped arrows onto every buckle and strap available. Three of the stouter women ride along, well-proficient hunters, and nearly all of the men. The children cry and gasp as their parents take the first weary steps away from camp.
Sajiress sits on the back of the saddle behind Jack and they ride alongside Hargrove at the vanguard of the caravan, pushing north through the slender valley toward the bay that rests at the head of the river. The travel is cumbersome but they make do as best they can, taking breaks along the riverbank to drink and wet their heads.
They camp once more in the crook of the valley, somber and silent around the campfire, overcome with their new reality.
In the morning, they wake up and ride. The overloaded horses pick carefully through a series of old cities lining the river, trailing down the long corridors two by two. By the weakening light of evening they depart from the curvations of the river and emerge on the edge of the Pacific.
They unload their gear and lay out a quick camp. Hargrove tugs Jack’s sleeve and they wander off with Sajiress in search of higher ground. Hargrove carries a slender tubular case under his arm and they make a slow climb to the crest of a low mound, hashed over with cracked walls and linear grassways. The view to the west is stunning. The sun lay out on the surface of the ocean like an enormous glowing jackolantern, throwing into stark relief the flocks of birds that turn with supernatural precision over the slate of water. Hargrove grabs onto a ledge of concrete and pulls himself up, then opens his case and removes the telescope. He rests the barrel on an outcropping of rubble and peers off at the point of land extending from the bay. Through the polished eyepiece, he sees in the distance a wisp of light gray smoke trailing up from beyond the next hill.
“There she is.”