“Mag wants you to keep us safe,” I remind him. “Does it bother you?”
“Me? Nah, not a bit. I’d buy you myself.”
“Except you told Angel you want a good bow,” I remark.
“A crossbow is worth it. Besides, since you cut Greeb, I can’t manage it anyhow. Never knew a woman such as fool as you, Rimma.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Every woman knows she can’t fight with muscle,” he explains. “One crack in the face and you’re down.” He pops a fist into my cheek hard enough to send me stumbling, the heavy pack pulling me over. His hand snaps out to catch my arm and keep me from falling. “See now? I barely tapped ya.”
“I wasn’t ready,” I mutter, wrenching my arm away and rubbing my cheek. “And I don’t have a weapon.”
“Like that knife did you a lot of good last time.” He chuckles. “Almost got you cooked. Should thank Greeb for saving your life, that’s what.”
“I’d rather thank you,” I say, my voice soft. I step in front of him so he’s forced to stop. The same way I used to tease Max a hundred years ago, I gaze up into Rune’s dark eyes, lean toward him, my lips parted, chin raised. His smile quirks up, eyebrows raised with surprise. Then I punch him as hard as I can in the stomach.
“Ooof!” He backs up a step and laughs, hands on his hips, shaking his head as if I’m hopeless. “Should of kneed me in the stones, woman. I’d be rolling in the dirt, heaving my guts out.”
“I’ll remember that next time,” I bark at him, and then lower my voice so only Rune hears. “Better yet, I’ll have a knife.” I turn my back and march away, all the wiser.
Behind me, I hear Greeb’s laughter, followed by his growled threat, “Watch yourself with my dove, Rune. Would hate to have to kill ya.”
**
The bridge isn’t what I envisioned but a gentle arch over the water resting on solid pilings of gray stone. Above it, a spider’s web of steel beams crisscross into two towering peaks, swooping down gracefully in the center and at either end. From a distance, its beautiful, a relic from a distant past, and I wonder why a people capable of this marvel would be so careless as to break the world.
Almost as strange as the bridge are the few buildings here, a dozen giant blocks of steel and crumbling mortar, windows smashed, interiors cluttered, burned, moldering, or collapsed entirely. I’ve seen ruins of foundations, cellar pits, a stone wall half-tumbled against a stubborn wind, but nothing so ghostly as these empty corpses of an ancient world.
“The bridges are freelands,” Rune explains to me, drawing my attention back to the bridge. “Safe passage within a day’s walk granted to all the People, even mortal enemies.” He frowns briefly. “Other than the one by the Fortress, but no one who’s thinking straight goes up there anyway.”
“Fortress?” I ask.
“Up north,” he says, the information useless. “We’ll camp here and check who’s about, then cross it in the morning.”
With chores to do, I unsling my pack and find a grassy spot to stake my bleating charges. Every inch of my body aches, but not as much as the first day of endless marching.
“The bridge is magical, isn’t it,” Angel says, stealing up behind me.
“Tonight we go over it,” I whisper, my eyes on the elegant span. “We’ll be on the other side of the river with a clear path to Sanctuary. There might be an old road. We’ll manage as much distance as we can before dawn.”
“Rimma, no.” Angel grips my shoulder, yanking me around to face her. “They’ll kill us.”
“Only if we’re caught, Angel. We may not have another chance. This may be our only one.”
“I’ll tell Rune,” my sister threatens. “He’ll stop you.”
Shrugging her off, I step back, stunned by the fortitude in her voice despite how softly she speaks. My hands shake as they curl into fists, a blistering mix of fury and panic worming up my spine.
“Promise me, you won’t run,” she begs, her lower lip between her teeth, eyes wide with fear. Afraid of me, I think, more than of any consequences.
“You wouldn’t,” I dare her, wanting to strike her or shake her.
“I will, Rimma. They’ll kill us.”
“Angel, do you realize what will happen? Greeb. Greeb will happen.” My voice pleads desperately in my ears. “We have to try.”
“I won’t let you,” Angel hisses at me. “Greeb can have me.”
“No,” I snap at her. “I told you I’d protect you. I said I’d bear all the evils on my back, so one of us can be innocent, so one of us can believe in hope. You swore an oath to me, Angel. You swore to me.”
“Innocence and hope mean nothing if we’re dead, Rimma.” Angel’s gray eyes shift into the blue of the sky as she relents, her face softening. “I want peace, Sister. Peace.” Before she wanders away, she hugs me warmly, a sweet hum exhaling with her breath.
With a sigh of relief, I unload most of my burden from my pack, leaving only those items we’ll need for our escape. With the other women, I collect broken branches from beneath the trees for night-fires, and serve the evening meal. While we rinse bowls in the river, men build up Ram’s fire and break out drums, the evening’s wild dances begun. Women stomp and toss their heads, gyrating hips in the amber light as men howl. I tease Rune, sitting beside him on the dirt around the flames, leaning into him, ignoring Greeb’s surly stares. My last little gift to the Biter before I flee.
“Come with me,” Rune rises to his feet. He catches my hand and hoists me up. Across the fire, Greeb’s dark eyes narrow beneath the fall of black hair shadowing his face.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask, trying to withdraw my hand from his grip.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he replies, leading me to the edge of a copse of cottonwood as I dig in my heels. “Don’t worry,” he says with a smile. “I’m won’t fuck you, just kiss you.”
“But Greeb,” I say, my body stiffening.
“Greeb knows,” Rune whispers. He leans over me, my back to a dead tree. I smell his sour breath and sweat as he gently lifts my jaw. His eyes close, intent as his lips find my mouth, his tongue on my teeth, biting my lip. I stare at him, frozen, as his body presses me to the peeling bark. He slips a loop over my wrist and gives it a quick yank. Before I can protest, the rope whips behind the bole and he binds my other wrist, just as he lashed me to the pillar in Heaven.
**
At dawn, when Angel unties me from the tree, I snarl at her. She sighs, unrepentant for my miserable night, the bruises on my wrists, the bug bites over every inch of exposed flesh. I rise from the ground like a corpse, creaking and bent, hobbling and hollow-eyed, needing to piss. The River Walkers smirk and laugh. Even the descendants, the slaves, shake their heads and smile at their feet.
The morning fog eddies thick as soup along the river. The bridge hovers, cloud-gray and ethereal. It fades completely into the dense fog halfway across as if offering a path into a magical realm rather than another shore in a broken world. Shy says the sky and land changed when the world broke; dry lands wet, wet lands dry, fog one day, dust storms the next. Seas rising, waterfalls in deserts, lakes drying to baked clay. She says it’s still transforming and will demand hundreds of years to settle into something predictable. I don’t ask how she comes by her knowledge but accept her at her word.
The bridge is wide but broken with yawning gaps in the hard surface. From my vantage point at one end, through the sheer, wet curtain of gray, the crossing presents no challenges to walkers, only to the wide cartwheels. And that’s not my problem.
When we reach the cliff-wall of fog, there’s no drop into nothingness, the bridge materializes further with each step I endure. Through the holes, I hear water rushing against pilings in a faint hiss, but I catch only glimpses through the damp gloom. Slowly the broken world reveals itself, the same dry, strangled land on the other shore.
By day’s end, traveling upstream, we abandon the main river and trek due north, following a small branch of clear water, wide and shallow with sandy banks. I spend my days trudging, angry and morose, exhausted and aching, my mouth shut, ignoring Angel’s attempts at conversation, glowering at Rune every time he smiles and offers to kiss me as if nothing at all is wrong with everything.
Gradually the flat land rises, hills bubbling out of the wilderness, tufted with half-dead forest and scrappy underbrush, steep climbs with copses of white aspen, leaves quaking as they wave green-gloved hands. Evergreens soar above us with boughs draped in jade, tops barbed against a barely visible slit of sky. Beyond the freeland around the bridge, Ram forbids roaring night-fires and pounding drums. The solstice gathering at the North Tradepost should afford us some protection against raids, but he’s wary of unfamiliar packs. And I suppose Biters aren’t known for their restraint.
Two days in, we end our trek while the sun still burns white hot over my head. “We’re laying low for the night,” Rune tells me. “Nearing the waste, and Ram’s keen on waiting ‘til the scouts get back.”
“Are there other Bite…People here?
“Could be,” he replies, eyeing me and taking my string of goats, the four I have left. “Could be Fortress, and that’s just as bad.”
“Who are
they
?” I ask again, but he’s leading the goats back toward the trees.
Not until twilight’s shadows choke the light from the forest, do I find another chance to inquire. I’m one of five doves in Rune’s watch, and I know he’s tempted to bind me to a tree, if only to serve as a warning to others. “You don’t need to,” I whisper, shaking my head earnestly.
“You’re the most faithless woman I know.” He regards me with a suspicious grin.
“I won’t run. No trouble tonight,” I assure him with a smile, my hand on his arm.
“You do, and I’m giving Greeb a little time with you,” he threatens me. “Lots he can do and leave you a dove.”
“I know,” I say, worried that he just might, my stomach queasy at the thought. “I’ll obey.”
With a nod, Rune kisses me, his hand creeping to my breast, all the other doves watching in our little circle under the boughs. I shut my eyes so I don’t glimpse Angel blinking at me in confusion. This is how women fight, isn’t it? This is what Rune taught me. Lure them in and strike.
“Who is the Fortress?” I ask him, when he’s done pawing at me. His eyes shine wild bright, his breath heavy. He wants to fuck me. I smell it on his skin. But he won’t; he can’t or Greeb will kill him, so he drops back to the dead needles, head resting on his arms.
“Forerunners, they call themselves,” he says. “Live in a shitting big fortress up north on top of a shitting big hill. Think it’s their burden to lead us all back to civilization. They got laws about their slaves and about killing…everything I guess.”
“Laws are…helpful,” I assert, though I’m no longer convinced of their infallibility. In Heaven, God’s laws organized us, gave us rules to live by. Told us what was acceptable and what wasn’t, molded our thoughts and behavior, herded us like sheep. When I look back now, I vibrate with anger that we never questioned their rightness, but I’m not blind to their benefits.
“Their laws don’t have room for People with magic,” Rune explains. “Don’t have a place for Mag, or Glory, or Shy, or Mercy, none of us with something not right about our bodies or heads. Even newborn babies of their own people, Rimma. You missing a toe, you don’t belong. They put you out.”
“Put you out?” I ask. “The babies?”
“Poison you or toss you out their walls, banish you.”
“How do you know? You don’t know that.”
“Sure I do.” He turns his head to me in the growing darkness. “Sometimes instead of poisoning their children, families leave. They join the packs or the Colony.”
“The
Colony
? What the fuck is the Colony?”
Rune scrambles to a crouch, hissing at us for quiet. An owl’s hoot ghosts through the night. We’re petrified into stones, scarcely breathing. He squats, holding up a hand, barely visible. I’m tempted to shout, but it could be other Biters. Then again, at least it wouldn’t be Greeb. Rune slinks toward me, his arm snaking around me, a hand swiftly clamping over my mouth. I feel the prick of his knife at the hollow of my throat. He knows me so well, I scarcely feel angry.
The clop of horses’ hooves on the old road, snorting breath, creaking saddles and muffled voices sound thunderous as they rumble through the trees. I catch the blink of torch light between the tall boles as riders pass, heading in the same direction as we. A dozen of them maybe, to our hundreds. I wonder that the Biters don’t run out and kill them, steal their horses and weapons, that much richer with loot for trade. We sit for what feels an eternity, the flickering lights long gone, sounds of the land returning to nighttime murmurs. The knife eases on my throat; Rune’s hand sliding from my face to the inside of my blouse, holding me against him.
“I thought you might shout,” he says.
“What’s the Colony?” I ask, ignoring his fingers as I obtain my answers.
“The place where the Touched go when no one else wants them.” He chuckles at his humor and pinches my nipple.
“Who were those riders?”
“Fortress probably.” He shrugs as his hand slides down over my trousers. “Too many horses to be otherwise.”
“What are they doing here? Where are they going?”
“Shit, Rimma. I don’t know. Go ask them.”