Chapter 3

“Ada, hurry up.”

            She’s trailing too far behind him. She’d wanted to see the Marked Mountains and he’d reluctantly agreed to take her with him to gather ice. But now she’s delaying him. Irritation growing, he turns to look at her as she trots through the weeds. It’s true that the Bloodless Forest is much denser and clustered than the trees near the camp, but she’s behaving as if every branch and protruding tree bark is trying to grab her, a fear that is more than a little annoying and entirely too unbecoming for one of his people.

            “Ada,” he repeats, “I said for you to hurry up. Do not make me say it again.”

He snaps his fingers at her and she quickens her pace, ducking under branches and trying to keep her eyes from straying.             

            He wonders what they saw when they killed her mother. Did they at least have the decency to see the dusty, gray land as it really was while they shredded her body to bits? Or did they imagine something from one of those old picture books they hoarded? Or maybe something one of the ancient women showed them of earth? Did they make even death beautiful with those projections of theirs? 

            He realizes the difficulty of his indignation, the hypocrisy of it. He has killed before. Countless times. He is a soldier. He is at war. Death - your own and that of others - is an inevitability. But she had been a woman.

            Alexai has never killed a woman. He avoids them in battle, which is relatively easy since women are such a valued commodity for the cave - the ‘birthgivers’, each a little factory for replenishing their numbers as they die off from weakness, disease. From a scratch even. They are disgustingly fragile. There are a few women who are brave enough (stupid enough) to be soldiers but they are few and far between.

            He slipped up the day before when he grabbed that female soldier. He could have killed her, he knows, if it were down to her and him and only one could come out alive. He is not so soft as to think he’s incapable of it. But it’s not something he seeks and he doesn’t know why he grabbed her �" the only woman in the whole party �" and then froze. Perhaps it had been the colors streaking across the horizon suddenly. Perhaps it was the breathing of the ground under his feet, as if the planet was waking up, stretching its maw and yawning.

            Perhaps it was because he recognized her.

            He doesn’t want to. He’s tried to erase the encounter from his mind, but he knows those eyes, that hair. Even that smell.

            That’s why he grabbed her.

            That’s why he did not kill her.

And he knows what the others would say. The last thing he wants to be is soft. He has more insignias of the enemy sewn onto his jacket than any other man in the camp - more kills racked up than anyone else.

            It’s an unforgivable flaw of his. Outrageous, even. Those Ones are dispensable. Sick and frail, they come and go in a blink of an eye. The longest any one of them had ever lived, besides the ageless seers, was 70 years and then they wither up. What does it really matter if he had killed her?

            It’s their own fault anyway. It seems the universe is not without a sense of irony after all. The others had fought with the camp about the seers. Had decided to defy the rest of their people to protect ones who needed no protecting �" who needed to be controlled �" and run off to their cloistered caves and grown weak. And instead of admitting their mistake, they stay there and make potions and chemicals and try to weed out the sickness, the inherent inferiority stuck in their veins, like witches brewing up magic potions. At times, smoke rises up in thick black columns from valley of caves and those on the fringe of the camp stop and stare, watching with cool curiosity and derision. Derision especially now that their seers have apparently lost their power over the camp. Something to do with the lack of projecting ability of his own people, Ademar had said. In order to manipulate something, a remnant of it had to be there to begin with.

            This knowledge is comforting and salt on a wound at the same time.  

            Ada finally catches up to him. She reaches for his hand but pulls away at the last minute, remembering herself. He would have taken it if she wanted him to. But they walk on in silence. He wonders what the other ones would have done to Ada if she had been with her mother that day.    

            Everything’s their fault anyway. They started the first fight over the sick. They idolized the seers when all others saw the danger in their power. They wanted to leave the settlement for the caves. And then, in the end, they fired the first shot.             

            That’s what Suzerain Ademar had told him before his first battle, almost 200 years ago: Always remember, they fired the first shot. Ademar had whispered it with a quiet finality, voice flat and resigned. He never said anything any other way. He had been granted his position as suzerain because of it. Because every one of the camp could look at him to say things exactly as they were.

             Ada slips on the ice as soon as they begin to descend into the valley. He helps her up, ignoring her hiss of pain from the cold burn on her palm. She’s still staring at the cluster of mountains when she takes his hand.

            He pulls it away.

            “Do we get the ice from here?” she asks, seemingly unfazed by his rebuff.

            “No, it’s easier if we go further in. There’s ice on the mountain walls.”

She darts eagerly ahead of him. As she passes, he stretches his fingers apart to brush off the feel of her little hand against his.

           The Marked Mountains are colder than any other place on Hera 6, but he merely shrugs a bit deeper into his coat and digs his chin further into his collar. Ada, wearing one of those thick dresses and boer skin pants, chugs along easily.

           This is the only place he really feels content, despite the hungrily nipping cold and wet air. The snow is soft and so white that even a drop of water stains it. The ground is veined with black aqueducts of water, sheeted by thin ice. The look of it has always fascinated him. He imagines it’s the only place that even the other ones do not bother to change the look of. No trick of light can ever replace that blinding snow and those black spiderweb arteries. He knows the Men live somewhere in the dark grottos near the fresh water, but he hardly thinks they’d have any issue with someone from the camp. Their anger is at the cavedwellers for taking their women �" the seers �" far into the caves.

            Though he never understood the grudge. If their wives wanted to leave, wanted to worshipped by a bunch of savages, let them be.

            Settling his large bag by a frosted sheet of near vertical rock, he gets to work. Ada watches him pull shards of ice from the sides of the rock, dumping them into the bag.

            “Can I try?”

            He glances at her bare hands. “No. You have no gloves. Your hands will burn.”

            “It’ll heal.”

            For a second, the ease in which she says it sends a spasm of something he thinks is anger down the base of his spine. He’s not sure why, though. She’s right. It will heal for them, quickly.

            “Healing or not, unnecessary pain is illogical,” he replies, voice tight, but she’s young and doesn’t notice it as the others would.

            “I can wear your gloves.”

            He’s stops in the middle of hitting his fist against a large block and sighs.

            “I’m going to have to learn to do it on my own soon anyway,” she says, voice more than a little manipulative. He wonders where she learned that trick. Was it from him?

            He pulls off his gloves with his teeth and passed them back to her without looking. When she steps up next to him, her little hands look ridiculous with such large things on them. She tries to curl her fist but has to tuck the extra fabric of the palm down before she can get any movement.

            She strikes her hand on the ice, hardly moving it. A few unprogressive moments pass before she huffs irritably.

            He tsks reprovingly at her. “Patience. Keep going.”

            She hits the block with both fists and hisses in pain.

            “Keep going.”

            A determined look, entirely too reminiscent of his brother, and she runs her whole body into the thing before he realizes what’s she’s doing. The ice block tumbles onto his feet and she goes sprawling into the snow.

            Before he can stop himself, he’s helping her up. She’s smiling, though, face dusted with little shavings of ice.

            “I did it.”

            He nods and pushes the ice into the bag, closes it, and hefts it up onto his shoulder with a smothered grunt.

            “I can help you carry it,” she volunteers and anchors herself under the bag. She’s not helping at all, but he keeps his mouth shut and trudges on, trusting her to keep up. The entire way back, she holds one corner of the bag up with her arm and shoulder.    

            When he gets back to camp, Ademar calls him into his tent. He drops off the water with the trench guarders and sends Ada back to his tent �" their tent �" with a warning to stay there until he’s done.

            The camp is busy. Efficient. He walks through the eating court and past the slaughtering pin towards the soft, recently sifted plot of land where they’d just buried Ada’s mother. The dirt looks darker there, right over where she lies, and Alex turns away and strides quickly towards the low handing tent near the base of the cliffs.

            He calls out a hello, pushing the flap of cloth aside after he’s invited in.

            Alexai is barely seated on the worn pillows on Ademar’s floor before the suzerain speaks. “We’re not going to send a force to the wall tomorrow.”

            Alexai sighs, mirroring the older man by crossing his legs. “Don’t you think it’s time for us to take some offensive stand?”

            “We have not brought a full-scale army against them in years.”

The waning lampfires in Ademar’s tent flicker, sending shadows sallying across the thick canvas. Alexai watches their dance for awhile.

            Ademar stands and pours himself some water from a small pitcher, continuing, “We will merely get caught against their wall, as always. We must continue on as we have been �" with smaller battles. All we have is the element of surprise. We cannot risk gathering a large army to march against them now. We also need to make sure we have heightened security when we go for water runs now that it’s evident that they’re not above petty abductions.”

            They hadn’t abducted Ada’s mother. Perhaps they had been trying to, just as they’d taken dozens of other camp members.

            Finally, Alexai merely says, “And what of the ones who did this to Ala? Are we to simply let this go without responding in kind?”

            “In kind?” Ademar asks. He runs a hand through the short hairs dotting his chin and takes a seat across from Alexai on the floor, smoothing the thin carpet beneath him with old, weathered hands. “We already have some plans for a small combat mission next week, despite the risk of those old women coming out. Aaron says there may be a weakness in the cave walls there - some way to get into the citadel. We were going to look into it. More of a reconnaissance mission than battle. Besides that, what would you have us do? Find one of their people and leave them dead on their doorstep? This is a war, Alexai, not a personal vendetta. We have to think practically. We’re already at a disadvantage.”

            “That is not what I meant.” Though, if he’s honest with himself, he doesn’t really know what he means. Fortunately, Ademar doesn’t press him. Alexai continues, “And what do we plan to do with this weakness of theirs, if there is one?”

            “We could get to the women, or to their medical facilities. Either way, we could get inside and fight. Hopefully take them by surprise so that we could do some damage. Also, we need to find out what power their seers have over us now.” A pause. “The soldiers going in know this.”

            “We should try to discover what lies behind their ability as well. Is that not what we are really after?”

            “Their ability to project? Of course. We’re pretty certain that the answer is somewhere in one of their labs. Some synthetic agent they use to keep the power going for them. Of course. Why do you ask?”

            Alexai rises gracefully, straightens his jacket, and turns to leave, “Merely curious. Seems at times that we forget what all this is about.”

            A curious hum. Alexai waits for some response beyond that but none seem forthcoming. Before he can start to feel uncomfortable standing there, waiting, he turns and ducks out of the tent.

The gray, rock mountains and hills rise up behind the camp, blocking them from the Land of Flames. He turns his head and looks at the Ebon Forest in the distance, blocking them from the valley leading to the caves. The sky’s dull and filled with smoke-sodden clouds. It gives the horrible feeling of being enclosed on all sides, trapped. Nothing new though.

           The idea of a synthetic agent as the base for the others’ power is fool’s hope. This power had once belonged to all of them before the divide. Just because his people had lost the ability, did not mean the others must have lost it at some point as well.

            They’ve retained it. For some reason, the planet has deemed them worthy of holding on to this even as it strips his own people of it. And while he should think of the healing and long life as an equal trade, he does not.

            He looks up the sky once more.    

            The suzerain’s place is near the back of the camp. It’s next to the small plot of land that makes up the cemetery, near The Devouring Pyre where bodies of honorable soldiers are burned. The air always tastes a bit of copper and ash, bitten through in the sunslayed winters with the cold of colorless snow. Alexai knows the enemy must have a cemetery that’s much larger. There are rumors about the area behind the caves, about how there’s an enormous valley filled with graves, all piled on top of each other. About how their dead are thrown into holes with no coffins, no burial rites. Alexai would feel sorry for them in this small thing, but he knows they probably just project something more pleasant to look at anyway- his camp’s burial grounds may be small, but it is what it is and no amount of mental concentration can change the truth of that. The ones of the camp can’t make things beautiful for themselves - he doesn’t really even know what the word means. Can’t picture the thing that it represents. Can’t imagine it because he has never seen it.

            He doesn’t understand how you can miss something you’ve never had, never seen, never touched, but he does. They all do �" it’s as if something has been ripped from the depths of their bones and they feel the hollow thud of where it used to be with every step they take.

            Alexai hurries quickly past the Lady’s tent, trying not to catch her attention. Like always, though, she somehow knows he’s there. She steps out as his shadow crosses over her doorway and stares at him. She doesn’t say anything, but her strange gaze stops him for a moment. He gazes back. She’s an older woman, nearing 800 by last count, and in the lines around her eyes, around her mouth, there are secrets and untold stories that no one can get from her. No one even knows her real name anymore.

           She’s also the only one of them who has had a child without express permission. It happened hundreds of years ago, before Alexai was even born, and no one knows who the father was. Or where the baby had disappeared to. While her actions were frowned upon, no one made any move to take the boy from her - it was her child, her right, even if it did go against camp consensus - so despite their disapproval, the camp was startled when she came back to her tent one day with no child and no inclination to tell what happened to him. Most think she murdered the boy. Some others think she had given him to his father - one of cave.

          Yes, that’s something no one wished to say out loud, but everyone agreed must be the truth. There was no father amongst the camp. So that only left the people from the caves. Their enemies. Their blighted, diseased brothers.

            Needless to say, no one ever offered to marry her, even when opportunity arose to be bonded. And no one wished to keep company with someone touched by one of the others, so for centuries she kept to herself, hardly bothering anyone.

            Except Alexai.  

            He tells himself that it’s only because he’s one of the few who visits Ademar alone. He just happens to be the only solitary figure to cross her path and so he’s the sole recipient of her attentions. She stares at him often. Once she even tried to touch him.

            He’s not frightened of her. At least not in any physical sense. But as she stares and stares, her eyes knowing and even a touch inviting, Alexai feels an inward shudder and walks away as fast as he can without giving in and running. When he reaches the more clustered tents, he passes by the people cooking some wild game over a large fire, ignoring their curious looks. He knows they wonder what he speaks so often to the suzerain about. He knows the truth would be disappointing, so he holds his head high and strides by with as much purpose as he can feign in his step.

            When he gets back to his tent, Ada shows him her arm. 

Author's Note

Should I connect this to the chapter before? Is there too much internal narrative/exposition going on? Any other comments?