Nevermor (43 page)

“Are you ready
for this?” he asked the younger boy.

“Yes,” Henry
agreed, nodding furiously.  “I’m ready to fight.”

Wren wasn’t sure
if she liked the sound of that, but she found that she couldn’t protest.  He’d
been training and hunting, and he had cast his lot in with the other boys.  He
made his own decisions now.

She directed her
gaze back toward Rifter, who had already forgotten them all, staring off
through the trees.  She wanted to speak to him but he seemed so far away in
that moment that she didn’t dare.

When he comes
around, Rifter gets a little different… 
Finn had said that to her, and
she could already see it.  Rifter was standing right there, and yet he was
miles away.  She didn’t like it – not at all.

Someone touched
her arm, drawing her out of her thoughts.

“Stay here and
keep underground,” Finn told her.  “Don’t come out for any reason.  It might be
a long time before we get back, but you’ll be fine.”

Perhaps it was
owing to the anger that was growing inside her, but she made a quick and
irrational decision.

“No, I want to
go,” she protested.  She wasn’t sure why, but she wanted to be involved this
time.  For all of their hunts that she had avoided, something told her that she
needed to know what was going on now.  She needed to see what this
Scourge
was all about.

“It might be too
dangerous,” Toss warned.

“We can’t leave
them here by themselves either,” Sly said.  “What if it’s only a trap to lure
us away?  We have to be careful.”

Nix sucked his
teeth loudly.  “This is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about,” he
said, shaking his head as he started off, but he didn’t comment further.

They all seemed
unsure, but finally it was Rifter’s voice that cleared the matter.  He hadn’t
gone so far away after all.

“No,” he said,
his voice coated in darkness.  “She needs to see it.  She comes with us.”

The sharpness in
his eyes was startling, as if he was no longer the same boy who had once smiled
at her.  Directly after he’d said it, Wren shivered and began to doubt her
resolve.  Did she really want to do this?  It was too late to back out now. 
She didn’t want to be that sort of fickle girl.

I need to see
it.  Yes.  I need to be there with him and understand this.

The trek might
not be safe, but if it was part of what she had to do to understand this world
and him, then she would agree.

They all
gathered their things, loading themselves with weapons – more than usual – as
if they were indeed going off to war.  Maybe they were.  Wren went to retrieve
Max and led him out, holding his hand tightly as if she might lose him.  She
didn’t want to take him into danger, not knowing what they might find, but she
could not leave him alone.

As they began to
walk in the direction of the smoke, Wren came to a terrible realization.  She
should have known it a long time ago, but she hadn’t wanted to believe it.  The
truth was clear to her now.  No matter which world she was in, there was no such
thing as a safe place.

1

As far as the
order of powers in Nevermor, the Tribals had very little to fear.  They were
hunters by nature, masters of the land within their own territories.  They
stayed away from the Rifter and his Pack, and they were far enough from the
coves that they had little trouble from the pirates.

The largest
tribe had a settlement beyond the mountains in a sacred place.  On the edge of
a cliff, it was well-protected with only one direction from which foes could attack,
and only a fool would try.

A few days
prior, a group of hunters had traversed from the main settlement and made their
camp on the edge of the swamp.  These hunters were the very same that Rifter
and the others had met on the day they’d slain the nightmare creature.  On this
day, the party was on their way back from scouting when they, too, saw the
smoke.  It was far too much – more than might ever be seen on a normal day from
the small fires that were lit throughout the camp.  It struck fear in their
hearts, but more than that,
worry
.

There was a girl
among them – one of the very few female warriors of the clan.  She was the one
that the Pack called
the painted huntress
, but her given name among her
own people was Calico.  She was the Great Bear’s daughter and only child.  As
such, she should have been a prize for the strongest warrior, but her spirit
would not allow her to be subdued.  She had chosen to fight, not be a wife, and
this was what she would continue to do until the end of her days.

When she had
seen the smoke, she was stirred with more anger and passion than the rest of
them.  They all had obligations to their people, but she felt in her heart that
hers was greater.  It was common for her to put this load upon herself.

She was strong,
and she had more zeal than so many others who had forgotten that there was more
to their existence than mere survival.

Fearing danger,
she rallied the others and urged them to hurry on, but even when they arrived
back at the cliffside camp, they could not stop what had already been done. 
They had not been expecting an attack, and yet their village was on fire.

Women screamed
as they tried to flee with their children, only to be thwarted by pirates, cut
down or abused.  Gunshots echoed across the canyon and over the plains beyond. 
It was not a completely one-sided battle, however.  Many of the invading
pirates fell by the spear or arrow.  The fighters among the Tribals were strong
and vicious – some of the fiercest in the land – but the pirates had one thing
on their side that the natives did not.

They had a
greater power – one of two that the world had to offer.

There was a
black figure in the midst of them who walked freely through the camp, observing
the chaos and despair that he had brought here.  All those who dared to stand
against him were cut into pieces, sliced into quarters.  Their blood fed the
soil.

When Calico laid
her eyes on him, there was no question of consequence.  She wanted to kill him,
and even though she knew that he would probably kill her instead, her rage
wouldn’t allow her to turn away.

It was with pure
ire rushing out of her mouth that she ran toward him.  She didn’t hear the
others calling for her to stop, begging her to wait.  The Scourge was out in
the open, unprotected, and she would not lose the opportunity.

Taking her
hatchets, one in each hand, she didn’t hesitate to attack – didn’t give him
time to focus on her – but he still managed to deflect her every attempt, even
with a blind eye.  She struck with all her power, but she could not hit him –
could not even graze the fringe of his coat.  There was only the clang of metal
against stone as he deflected her hatchets with his sword, one by one in rapid
succession.

Calico fought
with all that was in her.  She tried, but it was not enough.  Her opponent was
more than she could handle.

He kicked her in
the stomach and knocked her backward into the ground.  She rolled and pulled
herself back up, despite how her body was bruised, crouching low, but didn’t
rush in again before eyeing him carefully.  He watched her as well.

Deep in his
throat, he laughed.  Calico saw that he was amused.  By what?  Her youth?  The
fact that she was female?  She knew he could have killed her by now if he’d
only acted, but yet he continued to entertain her.

“Is that all
you’ve got?” he asked from behind his collar.  “Is that all the rage in your
little heart?  Surely you’ve got a bit more for me.  I
crave that
.”

He was taunting
her – she understood that – but she wouldn’t respond.  She hadn’t understood
all of his words, but she could read him by the look on his face.  He thought
all of this was funny.  He had killed her people and he thought it was a grand
joke!

Calico leapt at
him again, caring about nothing but slicing his flesh, cutting through his bone
and making him pay for what he had done.  She aimed at his head as well as the
full part of his body, but he was constantly beyond her reach.

She wasn’t quite
spent before he had grown tired of her.  The Scourge let his blade run along
her arm, drawing blood from a lengthy gash, and she dropped one of her weapons.

Calico backed
away, clenching her wound but not daring to look down to see how serious it
was.  Blood was oozing over her fingers, and that was all she needed to know. 
She would not take her eyes off of him, but it didn’t matter.  He was too fast
and too skilled for her.

His blade met
her remaining axe, chopping it cleanly in half, leaving her defenseless and
injured.  She staggered back, but it did her no good.  He was upon her before
she could run.

He pressed her
back against the side of a hut, wedging his arm against her throat.  He’d taken
her weapons away, but Calico would not accept defeat.  She reached for him,
clawing at his coat like a wild animal, trying to get to his face.

Calico was not
afraid of death, even if she was to see it in the next instant.  She would meet
her end with her head held high, and she would fight to her last breath.  That,
at least, was her intent.  Yet once he had pressed a bit harder against her
throat, her reaction was to grip his arm and try to pull it away, protecting
the path to her lungs above all else.

The Scourge
leaned in close to her, but she did not cease to stare boldly into his eyes,
even if she could feel his darkness on her skin.  She shivered beneath her anger,
but she would not let it get the best of her.

“You’re a wild
one,” he whispered to her, brushing his nose against the side of her face.  “I
like that in a woman.”

She struggled
against him but she could not slip out of his grip.  It was too tight, unnaturally
solid.

Calico was not a
fool.  She knew what her fate would be since she had stood against him.  None
of the others had tried to help her, and she did not look for them now.  They
had been caught up in battle or else were too afraid to interfere.  That had
been the problem with her people for too long.  They were afraid to fight.

Calico waited
for what he would do to her – whether cut out her eyes or rip into her gut –
but he stopped suddenly.

The Scourge
lifted up his head, his eye looking out across the land that he had attacked,
toward the trees in the distance as if he had completely forgotten about her.

His blue eye was
wide and fixed, and a smile began to rise up on his mouth.

“He’s coming,”
the man hissed, but of course the savage did not understand.  With a jolt she’d
not expected, he hit her in the side of the head with his fist, knocking her to
the ground.

2

The Rifter and
his clan moved hurriedly toward their destination, drawing closer to the
smoke.  This time, their own woman and child were in tow, which was a new
burden for them, but since Wren and her brothers were going to stay, they had
to learn to move with the group.  So far, they were doing well.  The little one
was quiet beside Wren, and she kept herself in line as they moved.

They were all a
long way from Rifter, even though he was just in front of them.  In his mind,
he had forgotten them all.  He had already projected himself beyond the trees
where the smoke was billowing, and he was standing in front of his enemy.

I should have
killed you the last time. 
But the truth was that he had never quite managed to
do any real damage to his rival.  They fought each other tooth and nail – had
been doing so for years – but they were too evenly matched.  Neither had been
able to kill the other, even though it had come down to that a few times.  They
would wound each other and break away to heal, and then it would start all over
again.  There was no end.

Rifter wanted
the man dead, but at the same time, he couldn’t deny how he enjoyed the wars
that they raged – as long as the Scourge left the rest of the world out of it. 
They could have fought on a daily basis and Rifter would have never tired of
it.  There was something about it that satisfied him – cleared his own
conscience and made him remember that nothing he did was wrong because he was
not the villain.

One day, I’ll
hold your heart in my hand and then everyone will know that this is my world,
not yours. 
That
thought made him smile to himself.

The closer they
got to the smoke, he felt the blackness even stronger, swirling around his
heart.  It clenched him – pinched tighter.  He wanted it
out
!  He wanted
to cut it from himself, and there was only one way to do that.

“He’s close,”
Rifter said suddenly, licking his lips as if he could taste his enemy’s blood. 
“He’s
close
!”

He couldn’t
overcome the degree of agitation and excitement he felt inside.  All the rest
of them seemed to disappear, and suddenly he and his rival were the only two
people in the world – they were the only two that mattered.