—hurt
—and anger
—and fear, too, but not as much as before.
His mouth opens and he screams, right at me, a cry of war.
I take a step back just before he charges, cheers rising up around me like sails on a summer wind.
Chapter Two
Sadie
The wind rushes over me and around me and through me, blasting my dark hair away from my face and behind me, flattening my black robe against my chest.
I lengthen my strides, the dark skin of my legs flashing from beneath my robe with each step. Muscles tight, heartbeat heavy, mind alive, I race across the storm country plains, determined to surprise my mother with the speed of my arrival back at camp after my morning training run.
Lonely dark-trunked leafless trees force me to change my direction from time to time, their bare scraggly branches creaking and swaying in the wind like dancing skeletons.
I can already see the circle of tents in the distance, smoke wafting in lazy curls from their midst, evidence of the morning cook fires. Although I left when it was still black out, the sky is mixed now, streaked with shards of red slicing between the ever-present dark clouds.
With the camp in sight, I call on every bit of strength I have left, what I’ve been saving for my final sprint. I go faster and faster and faster still, unable to stop a smile from bending my lips.
I close in on the tents, sweat pouring from my skin as excitement fills me.
That’s when I hear the scream.
Carried on the wind, the cry is ragged and throat-burning.
I stab one of my dark boots in the ground, skid to a stop, breathing heavy, swiveling my head around to locate the bearer of the yell. My breath catches when I see it: a ship, moving swiftly along the coast, the wind at its back filling its white wind-catchers, propelling it forward as it cuts through the waves.
A boisterous cheer rises up from the ship, and I exhale, forcing out a breath before sucking another one in. The Soakers are here!
Instinctively, my gaze draws away from the ship, following the coastline, easily picking out the other white triangles cutting into the base of the scarlet horizon. More ships—at least a dozen. The entire Soaker fleet.
I’ve got to warn the camp.
I take off, pushing my legs to fly, fly, fly, muttering encouragement under my breath. Before I reach the camp, however, a cry goes up from one of the lookouts, Hazard, a huge man with the blackest skin I’ve ever seen, even blacker than a cloudy, starless night. He yells once, a warning, and soon the camp is full of noise. Commands to rush to arms, to secure the children, to ready the horses, are spouted from the mouth of the war leader, who I can just make out between the tents.
His name is Gard, and if Hazard is huge, then he’s a giant, as tall and wide as the tents. He’s already on his horse, Thunder, which is the largest in the stables, the only one strong enough to bear the war leader’s weight. Gard and Thunder turn away as one to the south, where the other horses are tied.
I dart between the first two tents I come to, slip inside the camp, and narrowly avoid getting trampled by a dozen men and women warriors charging to follow Gard. The Riders. Trained from birth to be warriors, to defend my people from the Soakers, they ride the Escariot, the black horses that have served my people in peace and war for every generation since the Great Rock landed on earth.
Trained like me, by fire and the sword.
“Sadie!” I hear someone yell.
I turn to see my father beckoning to me, his face neutral but serious. Hesitating, my eyes flick to where the warriors are disappearing behind the tents, soon to emerge as Riders, their steeds snorting and stomping in preparation for war. All I want is to watch them go, to see my mother flash past on Shadow, her face full of the stoic confidence I’ve seen on the rare occasions she’s been called to arms.
Unbidden, my legs carry me toward my father, who graces me with a grim smile, his dark skin vibrant under the morning sunlight. His thin arms and legs look even thinner after seeing Hazard and Gard, not unlike the spindly, dark branches of the trees on the storm plains.
“Come inside,” he says.
“I want to watch,” I admit.
“I know,” he says. “Come inside.”
Of course he knows. He knows everything. But I follow him into our tent anyway.
Even when my father seals the flaps at the entrance, the thin-skinned walls do little to block out the rally cries of the Riders as they organize themselves.
When my father, the Man of Wisdom, turns to look at me, I say, “I’m almost sixteen, Father.”
“You’re not yet,” he says patiently, motioning for me to sit.
I ignore the offer. “I need to see this,” I say.
Father sighs, sits cross-legged, his bony knees protruding from the skirts of his thin white robe. “You do not need to see this.” Who am I to argue with the wisest man in the village?
“I’m not your little girl anymore,” I say, pleading now. I kneel in front of him, my hands clasped. “Just let me watch.”
He grimaces, as if in pain, and I wonder how I came from him. My mother makes sense. She’s strong, like me, like Gard, like the other Riders. But my father is so…weak. Not just physically either. I know he’s wise and all that, but I swear he’s scared of his own shadow sometimes.
“Please,” I say again.
He shakes his head. “It’s not your time,” he says.
“When will be my time?” I say, slumping back on my heels.
“Soon enough.”
Not soon enough for me. It’s not like I’m asking to fight, although Mother Earth knows I want to do that too. I want to see what the Riders do, for real, not some training exercise. I want to see my mother fight, to kill, to knock back the Soakers to their Earth-forsaken ships.
Many years have the Soakers threatened my people, for no other reason than they can. Their leader is hungry to conquer, to make slaves out of us, like he has with other peoples before us. Like snakes, their fleet of twelve ships patrols the waters just off the coast of storm country, attacking us from time to time, seemingly at the whims of the Soaker Admiral. We fight for our land and our lives.
We could leave, seek more peaceful lands free of the bloodthirsty Soakers, but my people can be a stubborn people, especially when it comes to our home. It’s been our home since the time of the Great Rock, back when we crawled from our hiding places like worms, finding a changed world. But for me, many generations later, it’s the only world I know. It’s like the lightning and thunder of the storms that so often rage across the plains have become a part of us, strengthening us. The storms call to us. We must stay to hear them.
We want but a small portion of storm country to live off of, but the Soakers want it all, never content with simply controlling the great waters and lands to the north and south of us. So we fight because we must.
I’ve got nothing else to say to the great Man of Wisdom sitting before me, so I don’t say anything, keep my head down, study the dirt beneath my fingernails.
The cries outside the tent die down, dwindling to a whisper as the clop of the horses’ hooves melt into the distance. The world goes silent, and all I can hear is my father’s breathing. My heart beats in my head. Weird.
I look up and his eyes are closed, his hands out, his forearms resting on his knees. Meditating. Like I’ve seen him do a million times before, his lips murmuring silent prayers. In other words, doing nothing. Nothing to help anyway. Meditating won’t stop the Soakers from killing the Riders, from barging into our camp and slaughtering us all like the frightened weaklings that we are, hiding in our tents.
Slowly, slowly, slowly, I rise and move toward the tent flaps, careful not to scuff my boots on the floor.
I creep past my father, and he’s behind me and my hand’s on the flap, and I’m about to open it, and then—
—his hand flashes out and grabs my ankle, his grip much—much—firmer than I expected, holding me in place, hurting me a little.