“Impressive road rash,” Eli said blandly, “you still up for this?”
She limped around the fusion cycle, feeling like ten miles of very bad road. “It’s not like there’s a choice, is there?”
“Actually, for someone who’s never ridden a bike before you’re doing pretty well. You just need to be a little more careful in these sharper turns until you and the bike become one.”
“I doubt I will live that long.” She wheeled on him “And if you say ‘never say never,’ I swear I’m going to punch you!”
He raised his hands in front of him, “Okay, time for a break. It’s just about sunrise, so you go to that tree there, and I will rustle us up a snack while you rest for a little bit.”
Eli walked both cycles off the road a space and rummaging through his saddle bags pulled out a waxed cotton sack. He walked over to where Ghost Wind sat, her hand over her eyes, head tilted back against the tree.
He handed her a stick of jerky, and uncapped his water bottle. He passed it to her and asked “So, how are you holding up?”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever been this sore and tired, even during my scout trial. You were right, I just need to sit and rest for a bit.” She leaned her head against him, and within a few seconds was snoring lightly. He caught the piece of jerky before it slipped from her fingers and she woke slightly to say, “Eli? Sorry… yelled at… you.” And she was gone again.
Eli smiled, and watched the sun rise over the eastern desert. He put his arm around her, but she didn’t wake. He sat and lived completely in that cool early morning moment, wishing the sun would take its time in rising.
****
Ghost Wind hadn’t wanted to awaken in the short two hours they were there, but she had snapped to consciousness with Eli’s light touch on her arm. Sunlight was in her eyes and she needed to stretch to get the blood flowing again.
Everything hurt, the results of being run down, clubbed, beaten and a fall from a third-story window. She’d been lucky on that, if she hadn’t landed on Shell’s overfed stomach, it would have probably been much worse. She limped slowly towards her ‘new’ fusion cycle, and climbed on.
“You sure you’re ready for this?” Eli asked her.
“Do I have a choice but to be ready? I know how to use the clutch and to shift now, and I’m pretty sure fear will keep me from falling asleep.”
“I dunno, for a cave woman, you’re picking this up pretty fast. You’ve had a few spills, but I can see when you ride, that you’re instinctively learning to lean and shift your weight correctly. I think you’re a natural!”
“I’m sure your flattery will carry me through,” she said, giving a slight smile to take any sting from the words. “I need to go now, though. I’ve memorized the route you showed me. Let’s hope the Road Sharks haven’t set up any new checkpoints along that way.”
“I’d find it unlikely they would. This little plan of theirs is taking most of their forces. They would almost have to pull people from check points and ambushes to pull it off, but be careful anyway.”
She started to give a sharp remark but remembered she had been caught flat footed when her awareness faltered earlier. She only nodded.
“Fare you well, Eli Five. I hope we see each other again.”
“I feel the same way, Miss. Let’s just say ‘via con Dios’ and leave it at that.”
****
The trip was not as hard as she feared it would be. As rough as she felt, after riding a while she realized Eli and not been ‘shining her on’ about her ability to ride the big machine. The farther she rode, the more she and the fusion cycle became one on the turns and twists. Great Spirit forbid she would admit it, she was feeling exhilarated with each lean and recover.
My teachers would be having a fit if they could see me now.
She resolved not to get too far in love with it though. Riding a vehicle down the center of a paved roadway, no matter how dilapidated, was hardly the stealthy Way of the Scout. Stealth, awareness and strategy had kept her alive this long and she didn’t want to lose those skills in pursuit of a new toy.
She was alert for choke points, but Eli had called it right. The only other beings she saw were winged or four legged. She learned about slowing down if even a hint of a deer was at the road, and once missed using her cycle as a hunting weapon by mere inches.
“Watch out you nitwit!” she yelled as she just missed grazing a buck. A person from the Beforetime would have been amazed at the number of animals about, but Ghost Wind found them a bit of a nuisance at that moment.
She was just passing through a stretch of backroad when her attention was caught by markings in the dust, and she realized that this was where, just twenty-four hours before she had run afoul of the Road Sharks.
“Spirits preserve me.” She shivered as she remembered the viciousness of her captors, and her determination to pay them back came back strong. She pulled over the fusion cycle and got off. She could read the story as plainly as she could read printed words. She could see each stagger as she had been struck repeatedly and even her own outline where she had finally fallen. She shivered again.
Remembering what she had been doing, she walked down the bank and found her steel water bottles. Retrieving them, she took a drink.
“Still cold. Now I just need to stay the same way.” She looked up the hill. Her gear was still up in her tight little shelter and contemplated if she should retrieve it. “No time. It’s fine where it is, and it would take too long to secure it to this thing.”
Ghost Wind headed north again.
“Train hard!” Kita barked at her flagging students. “You must be able to go beyond your tiredness when you defend yourselves and this village!”
The gakusei, the students, renewed their efforts to make the attacks and block with the heavy wooden swords. They knew their teacher was right and that someday, their lives might be saved by being able to go that extra few inches beyond what they believed they could. Eventually, their sensei, their teacher, said, “That’s enough for today. Tomorrow, archery again.”
The sweat-soaked gakusei bowed off the floor and went to sponge off with wet towels marked “Hilton.” They were used to practicing hard, but sensei Kita had pushed them this session, almost with desperation and their normal hour and a half had stretched on an extra hour. There would be many sore muscles in the morning.
As they began to file out, Kita’s demeanor softened, and she talked with a few of her students as she left. Kenji was one of the last to leave, and Kita stopped him for a moment.
“Kenji. You’re still falling for that high feint Roger keeps throwing at you. Are those ribs bruised enough that you might consider not falling for it anytime soon?” She smiled at him, but he knew she was serious.
“Sorry, Sensei,” the young man blushed, “he just comes at me so fast, I can’t seem to see the second attack coming!”
“It will come with time. For now, just keep practicing your cuts, and tomorrow, you can show him up on the archery range.” Kita escorted him to the door, and watched him as he went down the path to the main part of the village. He looked back and waved at her, and she smiled and gave a slight wave back.
“He’s a good kid. Glad he’s learning to defend himself.” A voice spoke from somewhere to Kita’s left. She whirled, inwardly cursing that all her weapons were in the dojo, and saw no one. She looked around carefully, and finally noticed the shape sitting just outside the edge of the doorway, sitting native style on the porch floor at the far end of the bench that sat there. A familiar face looked up at her.
“You! What are you doing here? Where is Eli?”
“Are your people any good with firearms?”
“Answer my question, young woman!”
The shape on the floor elongated into the shape of a human, and as she walked towards Kita, the sword master could see the younger woman was limping. As she stepped into the sunlight, Kita was shocked to see her face. Ghost Wind looked as if she had gone five rounds with a street brawler and come up short.
“My God, girl, what the hell happened to you?” she said, looking with fascinated horror at the bruises all over the Scout’s face.
“I tripped. As for Eli, he’s sneaking into New Hope to warn Horace and friends.”
“Warn them? Warn them about what?”
Ghost Wind looked at her. “That the Road Sharks are coming to take over New Hope. To warn them the Sharks have recruited an extra forty or so men to help with the siege and that the bastards have C-4 to blow down their walls, that’s what. But that’s not the question you should be asking.”
The two women looked at each other, locking gazes.
“What IS the question I should be asking?” Kita asked.
“The question,” a grim half smile appeared on Ghost Wind’s battered face, “is why am I here to talk to you.”
Kita waited without asking.
“All right,” the scout said, sitting on the bench, “the answer is I’m here to ask you and your students to help me to ambush all these independents who’ll be going to New Hope.”
Kita stepped back. “You must be joking! These people are trained for the defense of THIS village, I’m not about to take them all over the country side looking for trouble!”
“And what about your neighbors? From what I understand, you trade with Horace and his people on a fairly regular basis. You just going to leave them high and dry?”
“I don’t even know you, girl. I certainly don’t know if I can trust you, and certainly I don’t want to trust you with the lives of my people!”
“Eli told me you would say that.” The younger woman looked down the hill, across the small village, “I told him I needed a note because you would never trust an outsider, hopefully you can recognize his scrawling.” She handed Kita and note written on the back of an old piece of junk mail.
She read;
Kita, please listen to what Ghost Wind has to tell you. I know you’re not going to like the idea of visiting the rest of the world, but there is a time to stay hidden, and a time to come out of your safe place to ensure your future. Have Ghost Wind place your people along the MAIN ROUTE up from Bend and she can help them be invisible. If New Hope is going to have a chance, the indies Axe Man has recruited have to be whittled down considerably, and yours are the only fighters available. We can’t hide in the mountains forever. If New Hope falls, it makes it that much easier for the Sharks to come looking for us. TRUST HER! - Eli
Kita didn’t want to trust this strange young girl. Not because she didn’t believe her, but because she didn’t want to believe her.
“Come inside. I will fix you some soup, and speak with my students.”
****
They were all looking at her a little apprehensively. Ghost Wind wiped the last of her stew from her lips with the back of her hand and noted that Kita’s student warriors were all ages, from a man in his late fifties to sixteen year-old Kenji. She guessed their apprehension was probably reasonable, as she stood there, looking beat to hell in a big old wool coat, Beforetime shoes and not much else.
Had she been able to get into their heads, she would have known that all of those considerations would have paled next to the wolf-like expression of her eyes.
“I understand some of you have actual experience fighting your enemies, and I’m hoping that you can recognize the need to do it again. Would those people please stand over there?” She pointed to a spot on the other end of the dojo porch and a middle aged woman, a young man and the older man moved. “I want all of you to know, that it is a certainty, that if you come with me you will wind up killing men. If you come with me, and you find you can’t, the likelihood is high instead that you will killed instead. This is serious.”
“Who are we killing, and why?” a young red haired girl asked.
“Good. Direct and to the point,” Ghost Wind said. “The who are a bunch of part-time Road Sharks who are going to reinforce the Shark regulars in overrunning and taking over New Hope. The why is so that the slime bags fail in the attempt, as well as culling the population of said slime bags for everyone’s benefit.”
The girl nodded. “Works for me.”
“You must be mad!” A thirty-something man chimed in. “We’re going to go down there and murder these men… out of the blue? With no provocation?”
Everyone looked at him as if he had just gone insane.
“All right, they’re a pretty awful bunch, but we can’t just stoop to their level and commit murder. Sensei says her arts are to be used for defense.” He took a deep breath and stepped off the porch. “I have NO intention of going down there and participating in this, especially under the order of some young ragamuffin girl!”
“What’s your name?” Ghost Wind asked.
“Tam.” he said suspiciously. “Why?”
“Tam, thank you for letting me know where you stand ahead of time. Does anyone else feel strongly the same way Tam does?”
“This is not a dojo test,” Kita said. “This is deadly serious, so be honest.”
A smallish woman in the back stepped off of the porch and stood next to Tam, but she was unable to raise her eyes to meet those of her sensei. A couple of the students wavered, but stayed where they were.
Kita stood. “All right, Kenji and Arianna, you will stay here also.”
Both Kenji and the red headed girl looked at her in astonishment.
“No arguments!” Kita shouted, “It will be a cold day in hell before I take sixteen-year-olds into a war zone to fight seasoned killers. You two, Tam and Rosie will be the home defense. If this goes wrong, you four will arm the villagers and organize a defense with the people here. If our enemies find this place you will be the ones who must stop them. Do you understand?” They nodded.
“The rest of you, meet us at the armory in ten minutes.”
****
“Here is how this will go down, warriors,” Kita told her assembled students as she passed out the odd mixture of deer rifles and assault weapons contained in the armory. “Ghost Wind here will help us conceal ourselves at this point on old 97. Eli seems to be very confident that is the route our prey will take and we are going to catch them in the mother of all ambushes.”