Authors: Galaxy Craze
I knew we would be outnumbered, but my faith lay
in the general’s tactics. He was sending partisan troops up ahead to ambush the New Guard’s first line of defense, hoping to significantly weaken their forces before the battle at Newcastle.
As we rode out of the tunnel underpass, nearing the town of Baddoch, we saw a band of horsemen in the road. I pulled tightly on Caligula’s reins as the army slowed down behind me.
“What’s going on?” I asked
Eoghan, who had pulled up beside me.
“I don’t know, but be prepared to fight.” He peered out into the darkness. All that was visible in the road ahead were the yellow flames from the horsemen’s lanterns.
“Weapons ready,” the general called, and the air filled with the sounds of guns readying for fire, swords being unsheathed, and bows being nocked with arrows. I held my sword steady.
My strength
was in riding, but faced with a roadblock of men on horseback, I wasn’t sure what tactic to take. Should the troops be charging at them? Or did we take a more peaceful approach?
Eoghan rode slowly on my left, his gun at the ready. “I’ve got you,” he said, turning to me.
“I’ve got you too,” I said, though I was worried.
As we approached the large group on horseback, I mentally prepared myself
for the worst. “One first shot, one offensive move, and we charge,” the general said in a low voice.
“Stay back,” Eoghan said, and I held down Caligula’s reins to let Eoghan and the general ride ahead toward the lights.
“Who’s there?” the general called out, a hint of worry fraying the edges of his words.
“We came to join the Resistance troops,” a figure said. I peered into the darkness and
thought I made out a bearded man on a dark horse.
“You’re here to join the Resistance?” the general repeated. “Are you armed?”
“We gathered what we could,” the man said. “A few of us have guns. Mostly, we have bludgeons welded from metal and some lead pipes.”
I rode to the front and took in the group of new recruits. “We are grateful for anything. Please, come join us.”
A loud cheer went out
from the troops as the new recruits marched forward, swelling our ranks. I pulled Caligula around, looking for Polly. I wanted to see the expression on her face. With the addition of the new volunteers the army had nearly doubled in size.
She was caught in the middle of the swirl of people. Caligula parted them easily, and I pulled her forward with me, reaching over to hug her and feeling once
again how small she was. Her ribs protruded through her shirt. I had the awful image of a sevil flying straight through to hit her, and wished I had some kind of armor for her.
George rode up next to her. “Look at all this, Dad,” she said, a proud grin on her face. He smiled back weakly, clearly worried about having both Polly and me in combat.
“Quiet, please,” the general announced. A hush
fell over the troops. “Those of you without weapons or horses,” he continued, “can join the partisans, whose job is to distract and divide the enemy however they can. Your weapons will be anything you can come by—ropes, rocks, stolen sevils—but most of all, your brains. We appreciate every last one of you, but it is a dangerous role, and I want you to know the risks before you decide to join us. Unlike
Hollister, we don’t force anyone into our army.”
Another cheer went through the crowd as every last man and woman in the group came to join us.
As we moved south, the same thing happened in every town and village we approached. The old army post of Blackburn yielded a crowd of hundreds, maybe a thousand, all gathered
on horseback and armed with guns. In the village of Clavern, most were too
young or too old to fight, but they stood by the side of the road, handing us packets of food and canteens of water and cheering us on our way. New recruits gathered in the town centers, at the resting posts at the forks in the road, at crossways and under bridges, in clusters of two or four or twenty. And the numbers began to add up.
On the third morning, the metal arches of the Tyne bridge—a
feat of engineering that had survived the Seventeen Days against all odds—were visible in the soft gray light. We had arrived at Newcastle. I looked back over my shoulder at the faces of the men and women, set with determination and united by a single cause, and wondered if we were marching to our deaths.
Once our scouts had surveyed the surrounding landscape and the roads that led into town
toward Hollister’s army, General Wallace announced that we would split into four groups. We would surround the city on all sides and attack at once, at the sounding of the horn. “Swords out and guns loaded,” he said. “Now move quickly—surprise is our greatest advantage!”
Not by accident, Eoghan was in the same group as Polly and me. We descended the hill outside the city quickly,
and when we
reached the top, Eoghan passed me a pair of binoculars. I could see Hollister’s soldiers, mostly still asleep, some beginning to stir the fires and prepare breakfast. They were unarmed, their horses still tethered. Caligula moved uneasily beneath me, and I knew she had sensed that battle was near. “Shhh,” I whispered, stroking her neck to calm her down.
And then the horn sounded. It was time
to go.
I took a deep breath, loosening the reins and grasping the pommel of my sword tight in my hand. Eoghan nodded and we rushed forward as one. I felt suddenly like I was part of something much bigger than myself, swept along by a fierce tide. I saw shock—and fear—on our enemies’ faces as they hurried to find their weapons before our wave of troops crashed over their camp.
A few of them found
their rifles and started firing. A bullet cut through the air, missing my head by millimeters and almost clipping my ear. I ducked low, close to Caligula’s mane. Her hooves were a blur. As our troops collided with theirs, everything was chaos.
Caligula and I moved like one being. After our long journey to Scotland with me riding bareback, she was so attuned to my small movements and shifts in
weight that all I had to do was think something and she seemed to sense it.
She knew when to spin around and when to stay still, leaving me free to focus on the sword in my right hand.
I slashed and parried, always aware of Eoghan on my left and Polly on my right. Eoghan was an incredible shot. He was stealing the weapons of most soldiers he killed, accumulating quite a collection of sevils and
pistols.
I looked over toward the tents, where Hollister’s army was still in chaos. Most of the warhorses were still tied up—the men must not have had time to saddle them with all their complicated armor and spiked gear. I wanted to release them. It would destroy Hollister’s cavalry, and these horses deserved to live like Caligula, free of pain.
Caligula seemed reluctant to move toward them,
but she did as I wanted, edging toward the side of the wall where they were lined up. I leaned over and pulled up stake after stake, yanking them out of the earth like tough roots. The horses roared and ran in every direction. One of them, pure white with angry red eyes, turned around to face a soldier carrying a harness toward him and trampled the soldier to death.
Just then one of the soldiers
charged toward me, gun in hand. He raised the barrel to aim it directly at my forehead. I grabbed my sword, but I knew I would already be dead by the time I charged him; he was just too close.
Everything happened at once. He fired the gun as Caligula charged forward, rearing up to stab at him with her hooves. She moved faster than I’d ever seen and knocked him backward as the shot rang out somewhere
behind my head. He lay in a crumpled heap on the ground, but it looked like he was still breathing. I jumped back on Caligula and spun away, back toward the battle, unable to bring myself to finish him off.
My eyes zeroed in on Polly. She seemed so small and defenseless atop her tall russet mare. Where was Eoghan? I watched her lean over, helping someone who had been knocked to the ground, leaving
herself utterly defenseless. I realized it was George. He’d been hurt. I rushed Caligula toward her, sword outstretched.
But another rider was charging toward Polly too. He came up behind Polly, aiming his sevil with perfect precision at the back of her head.
“Polly!” I screamed, but she didn’t hear me. I charged forward, swinging at enemies right and left, trying to forge a path through the
thick of the battle. All I could think about was getting to Polly.
Just in time, I slid in front of her and blocked the rider’s attack. He kept slashing at me, but I parried every hit, fueled by a fierce protectiveness, until one of my blows struck him so hard that he fell backward off his horse.
I looked over at Polly. She was pulling her father up into the saddle, completely oblivious to what
had just happened. Even in the midst of everything, I felt a pang of sadness and envy. I wished I could have done the same for my father when he had lain bleeding on the ground.
It was midday when the New Guard retreated, fleeing down the roads toward London. The Resistance forces had suffered some injuries but very few deaths. Exhausted but exhilarated, we set out for London to fight the next
battle.
We rode slowly, taking the winding and narrow roads through the woods to avoid the interstate. At each village, groups of people waved at us, cheering us along. Word of our victory had already spread. Everywhere we went, people offered us food, blankets, buckets of horse feed.
We sat on the lawn outside the inn of a small town, surrounded by a buzz of excitement, while the innkeeper
passed around cups of water and cold ale. Though I wanted to join in the celebrations, a heaviness anchored me to the ground. I couldn’t shake the image of two nooses being placed around the heads of my brother and sister. Today was Wednesday. In a few days’ time they would be dead, and Cornelius Hollister would crown himself king.
I felt a tap on my shoulder. A young girl of about five or
six
stood in front of me. She was barefoot and wore a dirty white sundress.
“Princess Eliza?” She curtsied, holding up the sides of her dress as she bowed her head. Her blonde hair was so fine the sun shone through it. “This is for you,” she said, pulling a small navy blue box from her pocket and holding it out.
I managed a weak smile. “Thank you.”
With another curtsy, she walked away, disappearing
into the crowd.
I stared down at the small box, curling my fingers around it. My curiosity got the better of me and I opened it. It was a locket, and I gasped as the gold caught the light. It looked identical to the one I had worn for most of my life. My fingers were trembling as I undid the latch, not daring to hope what I would find inside.
A tear pricked my eye and slid down my cheek. I knew
this photograph all too well. The long dark hair, the melancholy pale blue eyes. It was my mother.
I looked up after the girl, to ask where she had gotten this, but she was gone. It was impossible—a miracle, really—to think my locket had been traded by the Collectors only to find its way to the Scottish countryside, and back to me.
How?
But as I clasped the locket around my neck, tucking it safely
under my shirt, I began to feel the faint stirrings of hope. If
my mother’s photograph could find its way to me against all odds, then maybe my family could find its way home.
We rode through the day and into the night, joined by more and more volunteers from all over Scotland. Word of the upcoming execution and our recent victory had spread rapidly. By the time we reached the outskirts of London
on Friday night, we had gained hundreds, even thousands, of men and women. We had finally formed a real army.
When we rounded a bend in the foothills, I looked back at the line of riders behind me, so long it disappeared in the distance. For the first time I believed we might have a fighting chance.
THE NIGHT WAS PITCH BLACK, THE MOON COVERED IN HEAVY
clouds that threatened rain. A strong wind blew in from the north, blistering and cold. Far off in the distance over the Northern Hills, streaks of fire lit up the sky, vanishing as they fell. We rode down narrow country lanes through the woods until the general led us to a deserted street of burned and abandoned houses. Loose electrical
wires, harmless now, whipped in the gusts of wind. We dismounted, leading our horses through the doorway of what looked like a brick house.
On the entrance wall, a row of coat hooks, each labeled with a child’s name, hung over a row of wooden cubbies. I realized we were in an abandoned schoolhouse. The toilets
were low and small, the blackboards covered in dust, and rows of small desks and chairs
lay broken and toppled. Behind the school was a walled-in garden where the partisan and ground troops had set up sleeping and medical tents for the soldiers.
A white tent stood out among the others, where Clara was tending the wounded. The worst was one man who had been impaled by a sevil. He lay in the tent, gritting his teeth as Clara extracted the bloody rod from his abdomen.
We gathered
in the main tent, where mugs of hot water mixed with a few tea leaves were being passed around. General Wallace sat beside the radio. The excitement that had fueled us earlier had turned to exhaustion, and I dreaded what I would hear. A new voice came through the airwaves, a voice I immediately recognized as Cornelius Hollister’s.
“Our recent losses at the Battle of Newcastle will not defeat
us. The execution of the last remaining Windsors will be held as planned on Sunday morning, followed by my immediate coronation as king of England.”
A fearful silence fell over the troops at the words. Even his voice sounded evil; low and menacing.
General Wallace quickly shut off the radio. “Do not let him scare you. We won the Battle of Newcastle and tomorrow we will do the same. We will march
into London together and storm the Tower. But for now we must get some rest.”
The soldiers retreated to the sleeping area, where they took off their boots and checked their rifles, hiding them beneath their bedding. I lay down beside Polly on a tarp, resting my head on her shoulder. It was a cold night, but the tent stayed warm from the body heat and the fires still burning around camp. Soon
the soldiers lay still, breathing heavily in the night.