Elmo pointed. “There. In the woods. Tailings piles.”
He might know. He supposedly ran away from some mines when he was thirteen. But we all lie about who we used to be.
One-Eye was right about the people. They were bothered.
Elmo suggested, “Let’s don’t let them know we’re here.”
We kept a rotating one-man watch.
THE MOON WAS full. I had the watch. Whittle would relieve me. Shifting moon shadows had me spooked. I squeaked like a little girl when Whittle got there.
“Gods damn! Do you have to sneak?”
“Yes.” Of course he did. The locals had sent four youths to the blockhouse come sunset.
I had eavesdropped and had learned two things. The boys were not alert and I could not understand a word they said.
I whispered, “Other than those kids coming out nothing’s… Shit!” The Taken was coming. I sprawled on my belly, bit my lip, wrestled my dread. All that pain and hatred passed directly overhead, fifty feet up, illuminated by the moon.
“Weird,” I breathed once it was gone. “I didn’t see a carpet, just a lot of flapping cloth.” Maybe scarlet cloth. Hard to tell colors by moonlight.
“No carpet,” Whittle agreed. Taken use flying carpets.
Petals of cloth whipping in a violent updraft, like leaping black flames, crowned the bailey in the moonlight.
The boys in the blockhouse wailed.
I whispered, “Think they know something they don’t like?”
Screaming came from the valley.
“Gots me a ’spicion.”
The night puked One-Eye, shaking. He said nothing. Not much needed saying. Something ugly was going on yonder.
The bailey produced what sounded like a god’s liquid fart, then violet and darker lightning. We missed some of the show because it was in indigos too dark to see.
“Something awful is happening,” I blurted.
Whittle chuckled. “Mought be blessed to spell him quiet.”
One-Eye tapped my lips. “Shut the fuck up.”
I bobbed my head. I was now inspired. My precious ass’s fine health could benefit from an extended silence.
Purple lightning pranced among the rooftops of the town skirting the motte. Something did something weird to something. There was a flash and a roar that left us too deaf to hear one another whine, “What the hell?”
Elmo arrived. Whittle used sign to explain the nothing we knew. Elmo grunted. He waited. We waited. Hearing returned. The boys in the blockhouse caterwauled. The night reeked of Taken rage and despair.
“OVERTURNED ANTHILL OVER there,” Zeb explained. There was just enough light to show it.
The kids from the blockhouse headed home at an uninspired pace.
There was no sign of the Taken.
Elmo looked rough. He had not gotten much sleep. “Damn! There’s a thousand people out there. Maybe even two thousand. And half of them got split tails. That’s gonna mean trouble.”
Few of our not-so-nice brothers had seen a woman lately. Though Elmo did not favor men he did own an abiding conviction of the innate wickedness of women. He knew all the ills of the world could be traced to the ear-whisperings of evil-minded females.
I sometimes remind him that his mother was probably a woman. He says that proves his point.
“WHAT’S THAT?” ZEB asked. “What the hell is that?”
‘That’ was the Taken blossoming atop the bailey.
I was right about the scarlet, only it was a deeper red still, like cardinal. Once the bloody petals settled I could not distinguish her from the other figures on the stronghold’s catwalk lookout.
The internal screams had been nominal before the bloom. Now they promised headaches.
A long column of mules began to emerge from the town around the artificial hill. They headed our way.
Elmo decided, “Time to go, troops!”
It was. Oh, it was.
The Taken blossomed again, took to the air. How did the mules endure her?
So. We had a Taken headed west on a road where the Company was strung out for miles, supposedly making a miracle escape.
“We need to warn them,” Elmo announced, like that was something only he would realize. “Move faster!” He set a ferocious pace. It was soon evident that the Company doctor could not keep up.
Elmo and I went back a long way. He did not let sentiment hamstring him. “You’re still moving faster than she is. Keep plugging.” Smug ass saw a teachable moment. Croaker would learn about pushing in where he was neither wanted nor needed.
I dawdled, alone, revisiting my arsenal of obscenities, till I felt the Taken gaining.
SNAPPER’S PATROL PICKED me up. Seven riders with eight horses. Timely. The strain of trying to keep the Taken out had exhausted me.
Her sad history kept leaking over. I had my time as a prisoner of the Lady to thank. That lovely horror had burrowed never healed channels into my mind. To the grand good fortune of the world she never found anything useful there.
I observed, “Elmo isn’t a complete dickhead.”
The nearest horseman snorted. Elmo was a sergeant. That made him a dick by definition.
Soon we ran into other Company people. They were not withdrawing. They were preparing hiding places.
The hell? What about the wagons and artillery and animals? Even if you hid up every other trace you would still have the reek of animals and unwashed men hanging in air that would not stir.
I asked. My companions shrugged. Nobody cared but me.
THE SHACK HAD become a clinic. My medicine wagon was cunningly hidden in the woods behind. I had patients waiting, and the lieutenant. He did not care that I was tired and hungry.
“I’m considering lopping off one of your feet so you can’t pull this shit. You pick.”
“There wasn’t anybody who couldn’t get along without me…” Dumbass Croaker, arguing with the boss.
“There are now. See me when you’re caught up.”
Little actually required my attention. Ticks were the big issue. That was an educational matter, really. The same for blisters, common because nobody had decent footwear anymore.
I wrapped up, washed up, went to see the lieutenant for my reaming.
He and his staff were watching limping men appear over the Rip, on the bridge. This Company flight was no precision manoeuvre.
He will let slide lesser things situationally. His recollection of them is eidetic, however. They ripen. They come back. He looked at me like he was reviewing every indiscretion of mine across the last two decades. “Are the Annals up to date?”
I am Company historian as well as lead physician.
“Up to the day before I went on patrol.”
“There’s a shitstorm coming. We’ll talk job obligation afterward.”
“I reckon. We are in a narrow passage. Whisper behind us and this new Taken on the road ahead.”
“Not a Taken, Croaker. But definitely new to us.”
“Sir?”
“The road.”
Oh, the laconic treatment! “What about it?”
“It runs two directions.”
“That’s kind of in the rules for roads.”
That crack brought in a crop of dark looks. Some folks do not appreciate Croaker the Annalist. He has a nasty habit of recording flaws and fuckups as well as triumphs. Plus, as he ages he speaks his mind more.
The lieutenant made a mark in the notebook of his mind. “This road could go back to before the Domination. You went east. We went west. We found a ruined fortress that was the nightmare of someone worse than the Dominator.”
So. Once he knew there was a secret bridge and hidden road he went to see where it started.
“The new Taken hails from there?”
“She does. Reminding you, she isn’t Taken. Yes. It’s only eight miles. It was uglier than that place in Juniper was. Bones everywhere, some of them human.”
I was not overwhelmed. Some of that had leaked across from the Taken. “There’s more?”