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“I’m looking at the numbers up there,” Little added. “The ones you got under Arlington. That’s a high number. And that ain’t talking about how we hear they have freaking rocket launchers, and got Uncannys working with them who can fry a man with a look. And some of them fly around like bats. Now, I like a good fight as much as the next, but we’ve already got our hands full. Maybe we study on this awhile, take a few months to train more men, get a better lay of the land. We can look at it again later on.”
“We strike, all three, tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow?” That not only brought Little out of his seat, but started a roll of those murmurs and mutters. “Listen, girlie—”
“Here is the light.” She drew her sword, and it flamed. “Here is the storm.” The air in the room trembled at her words. “You are not bound, and so you will choose. Fight or flight, courage or caution. You think this is the beginning? The beginning was long ago, long ago when men turned from magicks. When faith lost turned to hate and fear. When the dark crept over and through.”
“Okay now.” Little patted a hand at the whirling air. “Just bank that down.”
She stopped him with a look from gray eyes gone to smoke. “The shields are seven, and one is open. What poured through killed your mothers, your children, and still you doubt. They feed on your fear in feasts, and still you question courage. Look and see, look and see what comes if the next opens.”
She flung out a hand. Where the blackboard had been stood a window, and through it, madness.
Men striking down men in fields where crops lay dead and dying. Children huddled with the glassy eyes and distended bellies of the starving. A sky ripped with lightning, red and black.
And the crows, always the crows, screaming in triumph as the world burned and bled.
“I will strike the light against the dark, and I will cleave it until its blood runs black on the ground. I will burn the blood, bring a storm to whirl away the smoke.
“We will strike this blow, one, two, three, on the desert, by the sea, near the battle cries of the dead city. Before the dawn breaks, the standard of The One flies.”
As she felt the power ebb, she sheathed her sword.
“Okay then.” Eddie gave Fred’s hand a rub. “Arlington.”
Giving Eddie a nod of approval, Mick echoed him. “Arlington.”
Colin stepped up beside her. “Arlington.”
As others did the same, Little rubbed his jaw. “You punched my lights out once before. I guess you did it again. Arlington.”
PURPOSE
Necessity’s sharp pinch!
—William Shakespeare
CHAPTER SIX
With the plan in place, Fallon addressed the numbers again.
“We have ten from Mae, ten from Troy added to Thomas’s troops. Boris, Charlie add the rest to New Hope’s. We’ll need volunteers willing to relocate, to secure and hold those bases, to recruit from those locations, and train.”
“We have fifteen who’ve agreed to go to South Carolina,” Thomas told her.
“You’ll need that many more to start, and at least one with tech knowledge, two medicals.”
“Ray would go,” Rachel said. “We’ll miss him here, but he came to me, told me he’d like to go. He was born not far from there.”
“We can send a healer.” Troy folded her hands. “In that way, they’d have a witch as well. Mae, you have Benny.”
“Yeah. He’s hardly more than a kid, but he gets all that computer stuff and so on. He’d go.”
“Who would you put in charge, Thomas?”
“Mick.”
She started to object. In part of her mind he was still the goofy boy who’d flipped out of trees and run races through the woods. But he was more, she thought as she looked at him. Much more.
“Good. Mallick?”
“Forty. We have them, and the medicals, the technicians. We would need building supplies. There’s much disrepair.”
“We’ll work on it. Who will you put in charge?”
“Duncan. For the next six months, we estimate.”
She’d known it, already known. But she heard Katie’s quick sound of distress.
“It seems far.” Fallon went to her, took her hand as Hannah had taken the other. “But he can be with you just as quickly from there. Tonia can take you to see him, to see where he is. Both of you,” she added for Hannah.
“Is he ready, and willing?” Katie asked Mallick.
“He’s both. You can be proud of the son you made.”
“I am. I would—Hannah and I would like to go, see where he is, when we can.”
“We’ll make sure of it. We’ll need two hundred, minimum, for Arlington,” Fallon continued. “I’d like some from every base. Even green recruits, as we’ll have the training ground. Four medicals to begin, at least one of them a witch with healing experience and skills. Three techs.”
With the numbers satisfied, she turned back. Some still had doubts, she knew, but they’d fight. “Three a.m. for South Carolina and Arlington. One a.m. for Utah. We’ll take the dark to defeat the dark. What you need—troops, weapons, support—will be sent to you by nightfall. Thank you for what you’ve done, what you do, what you will do.”
Lana, who hadn’t spoken throughout, stood. “And please, come upstairs. There’s food and drink before you travel home again.”
Of course there is, Fallon thought, but touched Mallick’s arm. “A moment first?”
When he stepped outside, he took part of that moment to glance around. Smiled at the beehive.
He listened to the bees hum, smelled the green, the sweetness of flowers, herbs, the scents of food ripening in and above the ground, on branches.
He watched with easy amusement as a large woodpecker with its red crown pecked manically at a cake in a feeder.
“Suet,” Fallon told him. “Dad built the feeder, Mom makes the suet. The birds go nuts for it.”
“It’s not your farm, but still a strong place. And you’ve done well here.” He gestured toward the barracks. “I’d like to see your training grounds before I leave.”
“I’ll take you, and anyone who wants to see. We have strong, skilled soldiers. We’re ready for Arlington.”
“I have no doubt.”
“But you knew John Little had doubts.”
“Yes, as others would.” He turned back to her. “If you can’t alleviate doubts, or convince those who have them to follow you despite them, how can you lead?”
“Did I? Alleviate or convince? Enough for those who doubt to keep following me even when we bury our dead? Because we will bury dead after Arlington. And there are harder battles to come.”
“War is loss, girl.” He gripped her shoulder when she started to shake her head. “Not fighting this war means the loss of all. Lose sight of that, we’ve already lost. Lose faith in yourself, no one else will keep faith with you. You know this.”
“Knowing it at thirteen, fourteen when you trained me, when I picked up the sword and shield is almost a picture in a book, or words on a page. Using my sword, as I have, my powers, as I have, to spill blood, to take lives, is no small matter, Mallick.”
“War should never be a small matter.”
“I’ll use my sword, my powers, in this war. I’ll lead men to battle, and some to their deaths. And I will never, never consider a single death by my hand, a single death by my order, a tactic. If I don’t feel the weight of each life lost, what have we won? Who will we be at the end of it?”
The hand on her shoulder gentled. “You learned well. Accept the weight and fight on.”
“Why didn’t Duncan come?” She hadn’t meant to ask, but the words slipped out. “His mother misses him. And Hannah. Tonia, at least, sees him now and then.”
“He felt he’d better serve by staying behind, working with those we’ve chosen for the mission.”
“Like he feels he’d better serve by staying in Utah for six months?”
“Yes.”
“You agree?”
“Yes. Those under his training and his command trust and respect him. And what he learned in New Hope he takes with him to build there. The West is vast, and much of it empty. You’ll find uses for it. He’ll find them for you.”
“Then we’ll see what he can do in six months. Go, eat. I’ve kept you from my mother’s cooking long enough. I’ll take you to the barracks before you leave.”
“Will you eat?”
“Let them enjoy a little hospitality without The One hovering.”
She walked toward the hive. They’d built these here, another at the barracks. Enough, as Fred had four at the farm next door, and others had their own.
She thought of how her father had taught her to build the hives, how she’d learned from what pulsed inside her how to call the queen and the swarm.
She’d taught Mallick how to build a hive, called the swarm for him, taught him how to tend it, gather the honey, the propolis.
They’d need hives at the new bases. Did Duncan know how to build a hive, how to call the queen, how to tend and gather?
