Recruits (Keeper of the Water Book 2) (12 page)

“See, it’s nothing major I’m sure, just a bit of a fog when you try to remember certain details. It’s even worse than usual for you right now because you just shed a lot of years off your life at once,” Anne explains. “That’s why the Amazons don’t drink too much water and become
too
young. The farther back you go, the more you forget.”

“Will it ever come back? Or will it get worse?” I ask in a panic. There’s plenty about my life I wouldn’t mind forgetting, especially the part about being kidnapped when I was young or every interaction I had with my husband. But the thought of forgetting my children and the few precious years we spent together is enough to make me want to cry.

“You’ll remember more the older you get. It only gets
real
bad if you drink enough water to send you back to your early childhood. The only instance where memory loss
might
become permanent is if you’re turned so young that you have zero recollection of who you ever were. I’ve never seen that happen to an Amazon but I imagine someone would have to go all the way back to being a wee little baby.”

“I wonder if – ”

Anne holds up a hand to stop me from talking. At first, I worry that I’ve said too much, brought up too many uncomfortable topics. I’m about to apologize and promise to shut my mouth when I hear another voice. Anne immediately tenses and raises her sword. But it’s not another Amazon. The voice belongs to a man and he’s not alone.

And
the noise is coming closer.

I don’t see anyone but I have a limited view of the ground since I’m hidden within a tree thick with leaves. But once I pick up on the sound of voices, I have an uncanny ability to focus my hearing. I don’t miss a single word they speak even though I can tell they’re hundreds of feet away. My hearing is more acute now than when I used to go hunting on the plains for…

What animal
did
I hunt most on the plains?
I see what Anne means about the fogginess, which is more frustrating than I expected. I can remember what the animal smelled like – how the damp stench became more pungent as I snuck up on it – but I can’t recall what the beast looks like. For a second, I’m lost in thought and almost forget about the approaching danger. But then I glance at Anne, who remains poised and ready to attack.

“Where could that runt be?” a gruff voice asks. “I mean runner.”

Several men laugh. I think about the young soldier we killed and hid in the nearby brush, hope that these men don’t spend too much time looking for him. All it takes is a single mention of the kid to realize these men have an utter lack of respect for him. They probably wouldn’t be
too
upset if they found his body. That might be better for the Amazons as a whole but it somehow makes me feel worse about his death.

“Probably done got hisself lost,” another man says, causing more laughter. “That boy sure is good fer nothin’.”

The seconds tick by painfully slow. After what feels like forever, I’m certain the soldiers must’ve wandered off or changed paths to avoid our area. I no longer hear any voices. But before I breathe a sigh of relief, footsteps just below
crackle
through the dead leaves lying on the ground. I forget to breathe but
don’t
forget to raise my bow, ready to shoot at the first sign of danger to the Keeper.

Three men slowly saunter around our tree. I have a clear view of them for the first time, a clear
shot
that I consider taking just to be on the safe side. Anne apparently has the same idea. Her sword is raised and she sits perched on her branch, ready to leap down and pounce on the soldiers. But I grab her arm to stop her. Hiding one body is one thing; hacking apart three soldiers and spilling too much blood is something else.

The soldiers are big and husky, the exact opposite of the young man from earlier, even though they smell just as bad and look just as dumb. They wear similar gray uniforms containing patches of some sort of flag, a blue X lined with stars against a red background. I’ve never seen this flag. Even though it looks simple enough, there’s something sinister about it that makes me nervous. I sincerely hope they’ll just breeze right through and we’ll never see them again, though the swirling feeling in the pit of my stomach warns me of trouble to come.

“That damn fool must be lost ‘round here somewhere,” says one of the soldiers. “Unless he done been captured.”

“Naw, ain’t seen none of them Union boys ‘round these parts fer days,” another answers.

The soldiers slow down when they reach the spring. Although the water looks normal and no longer glows bright blue, the men still seem drawn to it. None of the three say a single word about the spring but still head straight for it. They kneel by the water and scoop out large handfuls, which they drink greedily. The water might not be ‘special’ anymore but you could never tell from how much they consume. It actually makes me angry to see the way the water slops all around.

“Can’t believe how good this water tastes,” one of the soldiers says. “Ain’t never had nothin’ so cold like this before.”

The men stood up, the fronts of their uniforms darkened with dampness. I expect them to move along but one suddenly stops and tilts his head back slightly, slowly turning in a circle. Could he have heard something? My bowstring is pulled back with an arrow aimed straight for his heart but I force myself not to shoot. I didn’t hear an Amazon make a single noise so there’s no way he could’ve.

At least I hope not…

“It’s
real
quiet ‘round here,” the soldier says, continuing to look around. “
Too
quiet. That seem strange to ya’ll?”

The soldier stares up at the Keeper’s tree as if he senses something there. I can’t see the Keeper or Cassie from my vantage point but figure the soldiers can’t either since they don’t make a move. Still, I almost expect a hail of weapons to rain down upon them the moment they make
any
sort of gesture in the Keeper’s direction.

“Reckon it’s time to get on outta here. We can’t waste all morning lookin’ for that runt,” another soldier says. “Maybe a bear ate him.”

The soldiers share another laugh before heading back in the direction where they came. I feel relief when the men put some distance between themselves and the Keeper, not to mention that they don’t give my tree a second glance as they stroll by. I’m so startled when a loud noise suddenly crashes through my tree that I nearly fall off the branch.

Anne’s head snaps toward the noise and we both see a small rock smash against the tree trunk between us. The noise sounds like a crack of thunder to me but when we look back toward the soldiers, they don’t seem to have heard.

Until the
second
rock hits. I glance away from the soldiers just long enough to see a
third
rock soaring at us from the direction of one of the other trees. I’m not sure who’s hiding within that tree but I’m fairly certain a member of the Queen Clan is behind this, probably at the behest of Cassie. But I don’t have time to ponder this before I have to focus on the soldiers.

“Did you hear that?” one of them asks a split second before the third rock crashes through the leaves. “Hey, who’s up there?”

“That you, Wallace?” the second soldier calls out. “Ain’t too smart to be foolin’ with people holdin’ guns.”

To prove that point, the soldiers all take aim toward my tree. Anne and I remain frozen in place, especially when we see that their aim isn’t directly at us. Still, I know bad things can happen whenever a gun is fired; plenty of branches surround us could ricochet a bullet toward Anne or me. Speaking of Anne, I’m surprised she hasn’t already leaped down to fight them though I expect her to jump into action at any moment. I remain poised and ready to follow my mentor into whatever dangerous situation follows.

“Could be Union snipers,” says one of the soldiers before calling out louder. “Come on down or we start shootin’.”

My pulse races but my hands remain steady. I’m not as nervous as I should be. In fact, the better word to describe how I feel is excited –
empowered
– though I know it’s crazy to feel this way.

“Stay here,” Anne whispers to me. “I’ll try to get rid of them.”

“But I could – ”

Anne is gone before I tell her I want to help. She leaps from the tree, dropping perfectly between dozens of criss-crossing tree branches. A fall from such a height would kill most people – or at best shatter a few legs – but Anne lands so quietly behind the soldiers that they don’t even turn around. She holds her sword at the ready and I wonder if she’s going to slice them apart before they know she’s there.

Anne clears her throat and the soldiers are so startled that one of them pulls the trigger. The bullet pings off a branch a few feet from my head and causes several leaves to flutter down around the men. The other two soldiers spin around and aim their guns at Anne. I could kill one of them with an arrow but the other would still have time to get a shot off. But Anne stands her ground and even smiles at the men, who thankfully remain calm enough so they don’t shoot.

“There doesn’t need to be a problem here as long as the three of you move along,” Anne says.

I’m not sure holding her sword up is the smartest decision since the soldiers keep their guns raised in response. For that matter, threatening the three men probably isn’t the best way to resolve this situation either. Still, I doubt
any
man could convince her to drop her weapon. Even from way up in the tree, I see the confused expressions on each of the men’s faces. They look just as shocked as the young soldier had been to have a mere woman speak to them so firmly.

“Who you talkin’ to like that?” one of the soldiers asks.

Anne sighs. “Are men always just
looking
for a fight? I’m sure this war will kill you soon enough; you may as well enjoy your life until then.”

“You gonna
help
us enjoy it?”

Anne shakes her head and chuckles. “Are you three
really
so foolish that you don’t know a threat when you hear one?”

“
You
threatenin’ us?” asks one of the soldiers, causing all three to laugh. “We supposed to be afraid of a little woman and that there little sword?”

“This is your last warning. I’m trying to resolve this peacefully,” Anne says loud enough for the Amazons to hear. “We already killed your runner; the three of you don’t have to die, too.”

But the soldiers don’t listen and begin to fan out as they descend upon Anne, guns raised. If they wanted her dead, I’m sure they would’ve fired already. It’s obvious they want something
else
from her as they get closer and closer. They have no idea the trouble they’ve made for themselves but I do.

Anne doesn’t disappoint. Despite her lightning fast reaction, I see every movement she makes. The soldiers don’t, at least not until the closest man’s head is separated from his body, his stump of a neck spraying the other two with blood before his body drops to the ground. Anne proceeds to the second soldier, whose face will be forever frozen in shocked horror; no sooner does he react to his friend being decapitated when he suffers the same bloody fate.

A gun blast erupts from the second headless body, his finger twitching in death. The bullet slams harmlessly into the ground. I see the final soldier squeezing his trigger so I instinctively fire an arrow, which strikes him in the chest just as Anne swings her sword toward his neck, too.

I’ve butchered many an animal in my lifetime – huge beasts weighing ten times as much as a man – but have never laid my eyes upon such a gruesome scene. Within seconds, the ground is stained a hue as bright as Anne’s fiery hair. If I had any question about the lengths to which the Amazons will go to protect the water, then Anne has answered them with three well-placed slices.

Once the area is clear of soldiers – at least living, intact soldiers – I climb down from the tree, as do several other Amazons. Anne casually wipes the blood off her sword using the uniform of the nearest dead soldier. When she sees me, she grabs the arrow lodged in the headless soldier’s chest and yanks it out. She wipes the blood away from the arrowhead before tossing it back to me.

“No need to waste supplies,” she says. “Nice shooting by the way. Poor bloke was killed two different ways at the same time.”

I hold the arrow for an extra long moment, staring at the weapon I just used to kill my first ever human.
That
didn’t take long. I
feel
like this should be more upsetting to me but it’s not. I
am
an Amazon.

“You let them fire off
two
shots,” Cassie says as she leaps to the ground. Her face is skewed in rage and at first I think she’s staring directly at me. But she’s looking beyond me at my mentor. “Do you
know
how far those sounds echoed? You single-handedly gave away our position to the rest of their Army. And look at the way you hacked them apart – we’ll never be able to hide this mess and take to the trees again. Looks like you’ll get your fight after all.”

Anne’s face burns bright red. She doesn’t strike me as the type to be embarrassed easily and I soon realize she isn’t. She’s irate and walks right by me. Cassie’s eyes go wide as Anne storms in her direction. Only one other member of the Queen Clan has climbed down but when she tries to rush in front of Anne, she slips on blood. The Keeper watches Anne the entire time. I can’t believe my mentor would attack the most senior Amazon, who backs away in fear even though she
should
be stronger than Anne.

But Anne rushes by Cassie, another target in sight. She finally stops in front of a tree, but it’s not just
any
tree.

“I
know
you’re still up there, I’ve been watching from the moment I jumped down,” she yells up toward the leaves. “You can’t hide forever. Get down here
now
!”

The other Amazons watching from ground level look on with confusion. I’m the only one who understands why she’s so enraged with whoever is hiding in that tree, where several rocks where hurled in our direction. I don’t know why one of the Amazons would do this to us. But I’m sure if Anne explained to Cassie what happened, then the leader of the Queen Clan would have someone
else
to blame.

But then I see the woman who jumps out of the tree and lands in front of Anne. Her twin blades are more than ready to battle Anne’s sword and I wonder if I need to raise my bow in preparation to defend my mentor.

Catherine the Great snarls at the former pirate.