True Son (17 page)

Drigg had left the benches in the back of the hauler and had older and infirm people riding in the back, Challis and Mam included. He had also lowered the ceiling and put rails on top of the hauler, which gave him a place to strap down all his cargo. The hauler was quite an amazing display of versatility, as it was one of the few larger vehicles used for transportation in the colony. And Drigg had made the most of it.

“How far do you think we’ll be able to drive on this road?” Drigg asked.

“Until we cross the river and reach the fishing camp, where the road ends. Then we’ll have to travel on foot and head west along the coast.”

“West?” Drigg said.

“West.” Luckily Drigg didn’t press for any more details, because that was everything Taemon knew. He’d seen the place they needed to go, and he was sure he could find it, but after that, he had no idea what would happen. He didn’t know the exact number of people in his group — sickness and hunger had taken their toll in the months since the Fall — but he knew there were still thousands of people following him. They couldn’t very well hide from the army of the Republik.

Solovar rode up next to the hauler on his horse. “How much longer today?”

“We made almost ten miles yesterday,” Taemon said. “If we can do twelve miles today, we should be able to get across the river. We can camp by the fishing huts tonight.”

“All right, I’ll spread the word,” Solovar said, and started to turn his horse away.

“Wait,” Taemon called. “Any news about Yens?” He’d asked Solovar to search the crowd for him, but no one had seen him. In all the confusion of getting such a large group of people on the road, there were conflicting reports about the people who had gathered at the temple.

“Nothing yet, but I’ll keep looking.” Solovar led his horse back toward the people.

Taemon felt a pang of guilt. He should be walking with the people, not riding in the hauler with the infirm. They had agreed that he would ride so he could save his strength in case he had to use psi, but it was their third day on the road, and he just didn’t feel right about it anymore. “I think I’ll walk for a while,” he told Drigg.

Drigg stopped the hauler and turned to Taemon. “Are you sure?”

Taemon nodded and climbed out.

Drigg moved the truck along at a crawl, and Taemon walked beside it. It felt good to stretch his legs.

Amma jogged up to him a few minutes later. “I thought you were going to ride.”

Taemon shrugged. “Just felt like walking for a while. Where’s your family?”

Amma turned and pointed behind her. “My mam’s right there, near the front of the line. Da wants us there so he can find us easily.”

Taemon turned and saw Amma’s mother walking next to a small cart pulled by a mule. She waved at him, and he waved back. Amma’s father and her two brothers were on horseback, riding up and down the line of people, checking on everyone and helping people with problems.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Taemon said. “When I was looking for Gevri in Kanjai, I found him in a room filled with crates of books. I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that they’re from your library. I’m sure I can find the room again.”

Amma perked up at this news, but then her face fell and she sighed. “How likely are we to ever get to Kanjai again, though? I mean, if we need to rebuild Deliverance, that could take years, right? Somehow I doubt getting the books will be anyone’s priority.”

“Where’d you get the idea that we were going to rebuild?” Taemon asked.

“Isn’t that the plan?” Amma asked. “We can’t return to Deliverance as long as war rages between the Republik and the Nau. Besides, when Solovar rode by, he told us we were going to the fishing huts, so everyone assumes that’s where we’ll be settling, since there’s nothing past that except the ocean.”

Taemon smiled and bumped Amma with his shoulder. It threw her off balance a little.

“Hey, what was that for?”

“That was for you, Water Girl. I thought you’d like the ocean.”

“I love the ocean. But I’m wondering if I’ll ever see my home again.”

“I’m wondering, too,” Taemon admitted.

“But, hey, I guess it’s good we know where the books are. Maybe someday . . .”

“Cha,” Taemon said. “Maybe someday.”

They walked in silence for a little longer. Clouds passed over the sun and threw shadows across the road in front of them. “I’m really, really sorry about all this,” Taemon said.

“All what?” Amma asked.

Taemon threw his arms wide. “The books, the library, The Fall, the war, the Republik, the Nau. Everything!”

“So now the war is your fault?” Amma said. “As I recall, the war between the Republik and the Nau has been going on for decades. I’m pretty sure you didn’t start it.”

“No, but it’s because of me that we’re in the middle of it.”

Amma didn’t say anything at first. When Taemon turned to look at her, she was staring blankly at the road ahead. “You know what I think? I think we would have been in the middle of it no matter what.”

“Well, I’m going to find a way to get us out of it. Leaving Deliverance was just the first step,” Taemon said. He was glad Amma didn’t ask him what the next steps were. But maybe that was because she sensed that he didn’t actually know.

The afternoon wore on, and the refugees from Deliverance plodded onward. The hauler and the front of the line made it to the fishing huts just before dark, which was fortunate. It would take a couple more hours for everyone to pour in. There were only a few huts, which went to the elderly and the infirm, and everyone else camped outside. Being this close to the river was helpful. At least they had a fresh water supply.

Mam and Challis were fixing their bedrolls in the back of the hauler, and Taemon was helping Drigg set up the tent where the men would sleep. Da would be joining them later that evening. He was overseeing the people from Free Will.

When a horse came galloping up to him, Taemon thought it would be Da, but it was Amma’s da, followed by one of her brothers, also on horseback. Riding behind Rhody was a figure wrapped in a gray blanket.

Mr. Parvel reined in his horse and dismounted. “We have news. The army of the Republik has reached the city. They killed all the people who were gathered at the temple.”

Taemon took a quick breath. “How many?”

“We’re not sure,” Mr. Parvel said. “More than a hundred.”

Taemon closed his eyes. More than a hundred. He had tried to tell them. He had done everything he could. Hadn’t he? “Was Yens with them?”

Mr. Parvel didn’t answer at first, and Taemon feared the worst.

“He’s right here,” Mr. Parvel said, pulling Rhody’s passenger down from the horse.

The blanket slipped off one shoulder, revealing the rumpled and torn red silk tunic. Yens stood before Taemon, slumped and dazed.

Taemon fought the urge to hug his brother. Hugging would be foreign to Yens — and even if it wasn’t, they had never had that kind of relationship. But Skies, was he glad to see his brother alive — despite all their differences. “What happened?”

Yens slowly lifted his head, blinked, and stared at Taemon with an unfocused gaze. “It was horrible,” he whispered. “I didn’t . . . I couldn’t . . .”

“He told us that they killed everyone in the gathering place,” Mr. Parvel said with an iron-cold tone. “When he realized what was happening, he fell down and pretended to be dead. When the army left, he snuck away. We found him wandering in the woods, making a racket.”

Taemon couldn’t tell if Rhody and Mr. Parvel doubted Yens’s story or if they resented the fact that he out of everyone survived. After all, if it hadn’t been for Yens, those one hundred men, women, and children wouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Still, Yens was alive, and that was the first good news Taemon had heard in a long time. “Let me take him to Mam,” Taemon said. “Then we’ll talk.”

Taemon put one arm around Yens and led him to the hauler. “Look who’s here,” he said, hoping he sounded cheerful. He helped Yens into the hauler, where Mam and Challis embraced him — despite his flinching — and gave him food and water. Taemon walked back to Mr. Parvel and Rhody.

“You two doubt his story?”

“Unfortunately, I believe the killing part is true,” Mr. Parvel said. “But it’s hard to believe he just snuck away like that.”

“I think they sent him here,” Rhody said. “Maybe turned him loose on purpose to see if he would lead them right to us.”

Taemon frowned. “If that’s true, then he did lead them right to us.”

“Cha,” Rhody said.

“How many people know about this?” Taemon asked.

“No one else, at least not yet,” Mr. Parvel said. “We brought him straight to you. But there are plenty of people worried about those who stayed behind.”

Taemon nodded. “Did you see anything for yourself? The army? The . . . bodies?”

“No. We couldn’t get that close.” Mr. Parvel looked away.

“We saw the wall where they broke into the city,” Rhody said. “We saw their tracks.”

“What is the army doing now?”

“There are lights in some of the houses of the city,” Rhody said, a hard look on his face. “Plenty of hollering and laughing. They’re whooping it up.”

“We think they’ll stay the night there,” added Mr. Parvel. “Tomorrow they’ll be on our tails, for sure.”

“We’ll have to leave at first light,” Taemon said. “We’ll have to move fast.”

Rhody looked at him like he was klonkers. “Where can we go from here?”

“We’re turning west tomorrow,” Taemon said with as much confidence as he could manage.

“West? Into the mountains?” Rhody asked.

“That’s right.”

Mr. Parvel rubbed the stubble on his cheeks. “I hate to say this, Taemon, but we’re in the worst possible place we could be. We’ve gone as far south as we can go, right up to the ocean. If we go east, that takes us closer to the city. We can’t go north, because that takes us back to the colony, where they’ll surely find us.”

“Which is why we’re going west,” Taemon said.

“We can only go a few miles,” Rhody said. “Then our backs are up against the mountain. You’re not planning to go over the mountain, are you? Because we won’t make it. It’s much too steep here, and we’re not climbers. Well, me and Abson are, but nobody else.”

Taemon didn’t have an answer for that.

“He’s right, Taemon,” Mr. Parvel said. “We’ll never get this mob across that mountain range. This far west, there are no passes. No secret tunnels. Nothing but sheer, rocky cliffs that stretch out into the ocean.”

That sounded exactly like the place he’d seen, the place the Heart of the Earth had shown him. “Yes, that’s where we’re going.”

A look of panic swept over Rhody’s face. “Then you’re backing us into a corner,” he whispered.

“It sure seems that way to me,” Mr. Parvel added.

“I know what it seems,” Taemon said. “But this is the only way it will work out. You need to trust me on this.”

Mr. Parvel and Rhody exchanged grim looks.

“Well, at least no one can sneak up on us from behind,” Mr. Parvel said. “We’re just going to have to plant ourselves in our little corner and fight like the blazes.”

“More like go out in a blaze of glory,” Rhody muttered.

“This is the only way it will work, believe me,” Taemon repeated, but Rhody just shook his head and walked away.

Mr. Parvel followed.

Taemon returned to help with the tent, but Drigg had already finished assembling it.

Another horse galloped up, and this time it
was
Da. Taemon helped him take care of the horse, and the two of them went to see how Yens was doing. As Taemon sat in the back of the hauler with Challis, Mam, Da, and Yens, he realized that for the first time in two years, his family was all together.

If I have to go out in a blaze of glory
, thought Taemon,
this is what I would choose for my last night
.

The army of the Republik was enjoying a raucous night of celebrating in the Nathanites’ abandoned houses, but Gevri didn’t feel like celebrating. What he’d seen at the temple had left him feeling hollow. He walked slowly, his hand reaching out for Jix now and then.

What did you expect?
he asked himself.
Tea and samkins? It’s a war. There will be casualties
. Still, he hadn’t expected anything like that, not at all. He’d expected a noble clash of warrior against warrior, a battle of wits and strength and endurance. Those people never fought back at all. Most of them didn’t even lift their heads from prayer.

“They made a choice,” his father had said. “They chose to die.”

Gevri just couldn’t believe that. And even if it was true, did that make it right to kill them in such a dishonorable way?

Jix butted her head against Gevri’s leg.

“What is it?” Gevri looked up and saw that he’d led his archons into a dead-end street, a place that looked like it had once been a nice neighborhood but had fallen into shambles. From a distance, he heard whoops, crashes, and bursts of wild laughter. The other units were having fun. The general
had
given them free run of whatever they could find, but Gevri didn’t want his young soldiers mixing with the older men and women who were entertaining themselves by ransacking houses.