A pang hits my gut and I let out a little sound of sorrow.
No time for wallowing in self-pity, I tell myself as I straighten. Time to work. Organize. Protect.
I stride down the path to Sylrya, the sounds of the distant battle occasionally floating to me.Shit, we are indeed short on time.
I bang on Lora—and her partner Susie’s—door. It swings open, Lora holding a sword to her side.
“Fuck, Fern! I thought you must be dead by now!” She hugs me tightly. “Noah was so pissed. Thought they pulled your name on purpose.”
I shrug. The thought had crossed my mind too, but I think it was simply rotten luck.
Or was it? Since I metthem?
“How did you escape?” she asks, tugging me inside.
I see Henry, Wyatt, and Sam at her kitchen table, looking over a map.
“Long story, I’ll have to regale you all later. Tell me of the battle.” I quickly give Susie a hug and I cross to the table and sit, leaning over the map.
Susie throws a log in their woodstove and puts the kettle on top of it, starting tea for me without asking. I frown, not wanting to give her more work, but some tea sounds wonderful.
Lora stands, using a dagger to point. “Noah led his contingent on a raid of a rich chime’s manor here.” She gestures outside of Noah’s town, to the west, near the Greensville base.
“The bats retaliated hard, a full coordinated military response, attacking his homestead the next night. They killed indiscriminately.” Her face is sorrowful and I know there are details she’s not sharing right now, in front of Susie.
“What was the chime name?” I ask, trying to put things together.
Lora blinks at me, “Shit...Kambin? Something like that.”
Kambon. The ones that contacted Arch.
“Anyway,” Lora continues, “Several settlement militias rose up and joined the Bell’s. That only made the goyles angrier. Their response was brutal, and they have been battling in this direction. We got word that the Gamal wayhouse has been destroyed. They are edging in to Sylrya quickly.”
She rubs her face as Henry curses.
“But why?” he asks.
I sigh. “To get to our contingent of Rebels. They want to take us out too.”
A thought hits me. “Or worse... they want to take out the dam.”
Lora pales. “Woodbridge Dam? Why? That would...”
“Take out several settlements and one town, three wayhouses downstream from the dam. And the destruction of infrastructure would enable them to charge Noah, and us, with treachery.”
Henry swears again. “The penalty is public execution.”
“Broadcasting the execution of several Bell’s Rebels leaders might be the death knell for the resistance,” Lora breathes.
“Exactly,” I mutter. Susie presses a glass of my beer into my hand. I drain it. “When are they expected to get here?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“We need to get everyone else out.Now.” I command.
THE NEXT TWENTY FOURhours are a blur.
Hugs, written messages, borrowed carts, babies strapped to backs of the strongest of the men that weren’t Rebels.Which isn’t many.More hugs as they get on the road headed northeast before sunup.
