Forsada: Volume II in the New Eden series Read online

  Ginger stares at me like one of the dolls her mother used to make, with unblinking, impossibly blue eyes.

  “No,” I say. And I feel like I’ve just woken up from an afternoon nap. Things are slowly becoming clear. “We don’t. Why would we?”

  “Loop, he—look, he knows what’s right.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” I say. “No one knows what’s right. There is nothing right. Everything’s wrong!”

  “Lupay—”

  “No. Listen, we’ve sat here long enough. We need to do something. I need to do something.”

  Garrett argues, “They haven’t killed anyone since they took over. You were wrong about that.”

  We’ve been watching Darius. Ginger is very clever at sneaking around and finding out things.

  I argue right back. “They haven’t killed anyone, that’s right. But everyone’s a prisoner. They’re making them work like slaves, Garrett. My mother is cooking for that army, making clothes for them. My father is fixing their tools, making nails for them, hammering arrowheads, for god’s sake. You think those are for hunting?”

  My blood has started getting hot like my skin. I look at Ginger, and she looks a little scared.

  “Loop—”

  “Maybe they haven’t killed anyone in a few days. But maybe today’s the day they start. Or tomorrow.”

  “That’s not what the letter said—”

  I march across the naked granite to get my pants and pull them on over my shorts, slip my feet into my boots. I unroll my shirt, which I’d tucked up into itself, and I pick up my backpack. Garrett opens his mouth to say something else but stops and frowns.

  Ginger asks, “So I shouldn’t go get Micktuk?”

  “No,” I reply. “You’re coming with us.”

  “But Loop,” Garrett pleads, and I can hear in his voice he knows he’s already lost, “what’s the plan?”

  “The plan?” I stand up in front of him and look up into his face. I know he’ll do what I ask him to. He always has, whether he agrees with it or not. “The plan is to go look. Okay? The plan is to go look.”

  “And then report back to Micktuk?”

  “Forget Micktuk. We’ll do what we need to once we see what’s there, okay?” I sling the backpack over my shoulder and start up the path into the trees, up and away from the river.

  “Ginger, come on!”

  She runs to catch up to me. I walk fast, and she has to jog every now and then to keep my pace.

  “Tell me where. Tell me about the wagon.”

  Shack and Garrett are suddenly right behind us.

  “Well, Trey and I were on the ridge in the woods right above that first corner in the road out of Lower,” Ginger says. “He saw the wagon come around the corner. I never did see it, but he said it was big, with a lot of stuff in the back.”

  “What about people? How many men were riding in it?”

  “Just the driver, I think,” she says.

  Garrett says, “That doesn’t sound right. Wagon full of supplies, no one guarding it?”

  “Oh,” Ginger says, “there were lots guarding it. But they were walking. A couple on horses, I think, or that’s what it sounded like Trey said. I don’t really know.”

  “By lots,” Shack says, and I can hear an eager edge to his words, “what do you mean? Exactly?”

  “I dunno. Lots.”

  “More than ten?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “More than six?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We ask her a dozen more questions, all with the same answer, as we charge through the forest. We’ve got time to get to a good spot, if they’re walking.

  “Loop,” says Garrett, “if you really want to do this, you’ll have to do it before they get to the Sikwaa turnoff.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Think about it. See, this is why I think we should get Micktuk. It all feels just too… un-thought-out.”

  “Like that ambush of the wagon that Ginger was in was so well planned,” I say. “But why not after the Sikwaa turnoff? There’s a way better ambush spot a half mile farther up.”

  “I know the place,” Shack offers. “It’s the best ambush spot anywhere on the road.”

  Garrett says, “Yeah, but if we wait until then, two things happen. First, they’ll be closer to their destination, which means we have less time before they don’t show up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, probably someone at that ugly fort in Dunn’s Meadow is expecting them, right? So if we ambush them early, it could be hours before they’re missed. The longer we wait, the sooner they’ll be missed.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Good point. But if we’re quick we can be in and out in no time. We’ll be long gone by the time anyone comes looking.”

  “Unless they send someone out to meet the wagon.”

  Oh. Right.

  “Plus, let’s say we pull it off. The first thing they’ll do is try to figure out how. They’ll figure we were watching the road, right? So they’ll come looking for our lookout points. Lupay, they’re bound to find the Sikwaa turnoff.”

  Shack says, “That’s pretty well hidden. Even if you know where it is, it’s hard to find sometimes.”

  “But why give them any excuse to go looking where it is? Make them go looking where it isn’t.”

  Garrett says this just as we reach the split in the path. Without pausing, I turn right and head to the earlier point on the road. Garrett is right. If we’re going to do this, it has to be early on.

  I pick up the pace and break into a trot. The others follow. Poor Ginger. But it’s only for a few minutes. After a half mile, we reach the gully that will take us down to the road and the spot where I want to hit them. I veer off the ridge trail into the dry streambed, leaping from rock to rock as I descend through the trees.

  “Loop! Are you going where I think you’re going?” Shack sounds skeptical.

  “Yup.”

  “But—”

  I stop, not to talk it through but so Ginger can catch up to us. “I know. It’s not hidden. But the grass is tall there.”

  “The grass may be tall, but so am I. And so is Garrett.”

  I smile despite the danger I’m leading them both into. “Then stay here, out of danger,” I say. “If you’re scared.”

  Shack glares at me with an evil squint. The bruise on his cheek where his father hit him has turned into a greenish yellow blotch, and it makes him look scary.

  “Ginger,” I say as she hops down the rocks to stand next to Shack, “I’m going to have a special thing for you to do. But it’s dangerous. Are you okay with that?”

  “Sure.” I see in her the little girl I used to play with, with her dolls, in her frilled dress while I look down from the branches of the pine tree. Maybe this is a bad idea after all. Maybe we should go get Micktuk, tell him what’s happening. Maybe we should go back and get some of the Sikwaa or Lodgeholm men, go find Trey from his lookout point.

  “Lupay, I want to help.” The three year old girl in front of me looks thirteen again. Which is still way too young to have to do what I’m going to ask her to do. “Please. Think about the other night. Would I be here now if you had changed your mind at the last minute?”

  No. She’d be tortured and worse, on her way to being dumped dead in the woods for vultures and coyotes to pick apart.

  “So, if we turn back now, who might not be saved because of it?” Her voice is small and quiet, which makes it all the worse. She’s right. And Shack’s right. This is a bad place for an ambush.

  Without waiting for my answer, Ginger begins leaping down the rocks of the gully, hopping from one to the next like a jackrabbit. I start off after her and have a hard time catching up. Garrett comes after, and Shack lumbers along far behind but still with us.

  Ten minutes and we’re at the road. Three minutes of jogging down toward Lower, and we’re at the spot.

  The road is long and straight here, running between the river
on this side and a wide meadow on the other. In mid summer when the river is low like it is now, the meadow’s reed grass is dry as hay and reaches up to my chest. By August, it sometimes catches fire naturally.

  I look at Ginger. “Ginger—”

  “I know how to light a fire,” she says. “But I don’t have a flint.”

  I grin at her and retrieve a flint and one of my throwing blades from my pack. She snatches them from my hand and runs off into the meadow. She’s so small, even at thirteen, that she disappears completely. When the breeze kicks up, I can’t even see the disturbance where she runs.

  Shack is giving me his skeptical look. Which I know means he doesn’t have a clue what I’m planning. Silly boy.

  “Look, just follow my lead, okay Little John?”

  He cracks a wide smile and unclips his two big knives from their sheathes. “If only I had a quarterstaff,” he says. Then he looks around, unsure. He takes one uncertain step onto the road to cross over to the meadow, all the while looking at me.

  I shake my head. “Nope.”

  He looks around. After a few seconds, Garrett taps his brother on the shoulder and points to the river. He unclips his knives and walks that direction, then disappears down the steep embankment. Shack follows, also disappearing from view.

  A few seconds later, Ginger emerges from the grass exactly where she entered. She walks up to me.

  “All set,” she says.

  “How did you know what I was thinking?”

  “You don’t remember the dolls?” Her blue eyes look like they fell straight out of the sky, they’re so clear.

  “You mean your dolls? The ones you played with all the time while I was climbing trees?”

  “Not when it rained,” she says.

  She waits for me to remember. Which I don’t.

  “When it rained, we stayed inside,” she says. “You wouldn’t play my regular doll games. But I didn’t want you to be unhappy, so I played your doll games.”

  “I didn’t have any doll games,” I say.

  “And you don’t remember Forsada?”

  “What are you talking about? Come on, they’ll probably be here any minute. If we haven’t missed them already.” This little rabbit is starting to get on my nerves.

  “Your mom. She told us about Forsada. You remember. You were like six. All that winter, you made my dolls fight off wild people from the west.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You really don’t remember?”

  What is there to remember? We played outside. She had her dolls, I had the trees. Forsada? I know I’ve heard that before, but I have no clue what she’s talking about.

  I reply, “Maybe you’re confused. The last few days have been really tough. You went through a really awful thing the other night.”

  “Ask your mom.”

  “I would, but I can’t really talk to her right now.”

  “Shh,” Ginger says. I listen, and we both look at each other with wide eyes. “Here they come.”

  “Ready?”

  “Yup.” Ginger runs down the road toward the sounds, but I jump down the riverbank and out of sight. Where the boys headed downstream to come up behind the wagon, I head upstream, but only a little bit. I need to be close enough for accurate throws. When I settle myself in, I wave downriver at the twins. They wave back, Shack showing me his biggest, foolishest grin. But this isn’t one of our summer pranks. It’s killing.

  Waiting in the ditch drives me crazy. The itchy grass pokes into my ankles, and the dust tickles my nose and makes me want to sneeze. I don’t dare poke my head up to see where that wagon is. It seems a long time before I hear what I’m expecting. A sudden “Hey there, stop!” rings out, closer than I expected.

  A bow twangs. Oops. Not what I expected. Stupid, Lupay, you should have thought this through.

  “Stop! Little girl! Come back!”

  I imagine the scene without watching it: Ginger stepping onto the road, then running away. The Southshawans shooting arrows at her. Their yelling means they didn’t hit her. Good. She should be running this way.

  Another bow twang, not as far off. But still no galloping hooves or running feet. I am desperate to get a look, but I can’t. They’d see me as clear as I’d see them.

  Suddenly, Ginger appears on the riverbank directly above me. She doesn’t look down at me, but she whispers, “There are two on horses, and four walking with the wagon. And one driver. That’s it.”

  Then she waits, looking down the road at where the wagon and the men with the bows must be. My heart is thumping against the silence and afternoon’s heat. What is going on up there?

  From down the river, Shack gives me an anxious look but keeps down. Easy, Little John. Wait. The whining creak of a slow rolling wagon grows as the seconds pass.

  Suddenly Ginger yells, “You’ll never get me!” and zips away, straight across the road.

  “Hey! Stop!” No bow twang this time, but heavy pounding of feet.

  The wagon grinds to a stop on the road above, somewhere between the twins and me. I look at them, and they’re tensed to spring at my signal. Next time, Lupay, maybe think about working out a signal beforehand. Now, however, the only signal I need is to scramble up the riverbank and start killing someone.

  I leap onto the road, and just as I’d hoped: the wagon is between me and the twins, and all the Southshawans are looking into the meadow where Ginger ran. Three of them have run out into the tall grass, chasing after her. They leap through it like cats hunting a mouse in the grass, only none of them has any idea where the mouse is. Not even I can see where she is, and I know where she’s set her traps.

  One of the men on horseback points and yells, “There! She’s over there!”

  The ones in the field look to him and then start converging on a point deeper into the tall grass.

  Without waiting any longer, I lift one of my two knives to my ear and let it fly. It buries itself with a satisfactory thunk into the wagon driver’s neck. Nice of him to crane it out like that and give me a big, easy target. One down.

  At the same time, Shack and Garrett sprint up from behind the wagon and leap at the riders. The Southshawans spin in confusion, their horses spooked by the sudden whooping and running. Shack springs into the air and tackles one man off his horse and lands on him with a thud. Garrett grabs the other rider’s leg and drags him off. They scuffle in the dirt, but I can’t help them. There’s one more, and he’s coming at me, yelling. With a big axe.

  A bright flare of flames bursts up in the meadow, but this axe man doesn’t notice. He looks familiar—a giant of a man entirely bald. He lumbers at me like a walking bear, and I realize I have seen him before. He’s the one I first saw, the drunken one the others threw in the lake as I was returning from Southshaw.

  He lifts his axe as he runs at me, ignoring everything else. Oh crap, he’s big and fast, and I only have this little knife. I turn, and I run. Straight up the road. He’s fast, but I’m a lot quicker, and I put good distance between us in just a few seconds. When I look back, I see he’s stopped. He stares at me and considers coming after me again, then he looks back at what’s happened around him.

  The three men in the field are now surrounded by three walls of flame. They try to run back toward the road, but the flames roll across the dry grass and swallow them in a fury of heat and screaming. The fire runs so fast I can’t see how even Ginger could escape.

  Back near the wagon, Shack stands over one dead man, and Garrett ducks a punch and rams his knife deep into the other’s belly.

  The giant bear-man watches all this in confusion. With a roar, he starts running back to the wagon.

  In seconds, I’m only a few yards behind him. I stop sudden, lift my knife to my ear, and aim for the center of his back. The knife zips through the air and sticks between his shoulder blades. His legs falter, and he falls face-first onto the road.

  In a moment, he’s rising to his knees again, but Shack is there with his own knife and finis
hes it.

  I run to him, and together we return to Garrett and the wagon.

  The heat from the raging fire in the field is incredible, and gray smoke rises into the blue morning, climbing above the treetops and floating on the air downriver. Toward Lower.

  Garrett says, “We have to get out of here. They’ll see the smoke.”

  Shack points at the wagon. “We can’t take that. Do we just leave it?”

  “Let’s load what we can on the four horses. And, yeah, leave the wagon.” With that, Garrett and Shack hop up into the back of the wagon, which is piled high with sacks and tools and who knows what else. I hadn’t noticed before. I was a little busy.

  I still can’t see Ginger.

  “Loop, gather the horses.”

  I peer out across the meadow, which is either ablaze or already blackened nothingness, and I still don’t see her. It burned so fast. So fast.

  Oh, God, please no. I didn’t save her the other night just for her to burn to death. No.

  I step to the edge of the road to try to see better, but the smoke is thick and burns my eyes.

  “Loop! Get the horses!” Garrett yells at me. Screw him. I need to find Ginger. “Please!”

  I don’t even look his way. The horses haven’t run away yet. They’ll stay another few minutes while I look.

  Maybe she ran up the valley, along the road. The flames burned down the valley, mostly, pushed by the afternoon breeze. Not much burned up that way. I take a few steps in that direction and think about running a ways, when a voice behind stops me.

  “I’ll get these two. You get the others, okay, Lupay?”

  I spin to see Ginger holding the reins of the two unyoked horses. They look a little scared but otherwise calm beside her. Next to her, they look huge. Her face is blackened, and her knees are bloody, but otherwise she looks just fine.

  “Thank God!” Relief washes over me, and I can’t hold back a wide smile. Why should I? I rush to her and pat her shoulder. She turns the horses and leads them to the rear of the wagon, and I set to unhitching the two that drew the wagon.

  As the boys tie as much as they can to the horses, Ginger asks, “Why can’t we just take the whole thing?”

  I bring the other two horses around the back. “The tracks would lead them right to us. Plus, there’s no road up to Sikwaa that can handle a wagon. Those were blocked off years ago because of… well, you know.”