Water & Storm Country (2 page)

I look around, seeing a couple of the guys I
practice with, Jobe and Ben, looking almost as scared as I feel,
afraid they’re about to be asked into the circle with me to prove
their manhood in front of an audience. “Who?” I say, my voice
quivering around the single word.

“We don’t want to give you more than you can
handle for your first real fight,” Hobbs says, walking a lazy
circle around me. Meaning…
what?

“You’ll fight one of the bilge rats,” he
says, the edge of his lip turning up.

“What?” I say, more sharply than I intended.
What the hell is going on? “But I can’t possibly…”

“You can and you will,” my father interjects.
“Remember what I taught you, Son.”

I frown, remembering his lessons well. The
bilge rats are nothing more than swine, less than human, here to
serve us and be trodden under our feet. Nary better than animals,
they are. When, as a child, I asked him where the bilge come from,
he said, “From nowhere,” like they just popped out of the ground or
were fished from the ocean or dropped from the sky. He wouldn’t say
any more than that and I knew better than to ask.

I nod. If this is what I must do to become a
man, I’ll do it.

“Bring him in!” Hobbs hollers and I sense
movement on the port side of the ship. The crowd parts and a
skinny, brown boy stumbles toward me, being half-dragged and mostly
pushed by a strong man I recognize as one of the oarsmen. The bilge
rat’s eyes are wide and scared, darting around him, like at any
moment someone might hit him. I’ve seen the boy before but have
never spoken to him. Usually he’s on his knees, scrubbing the
decks, his head hanging in defeat and resignation.

Less than human.

The big oarsman shoves him forward and he
trips, nearly falling into me, but I catch his arm firmly, hold him
up. He stares at the sword in my other hand, his jaw tight. For a
moment I look at him—really look at him—like I never have before.
For this one time, he’s not just an animal, not just an object to
be ignored, like my father always taught me. He looks so human, his
skin browner than mine, aye, but not so different than me after
all.

He jerks away from my grip and a piece of his
dirty, tattered shirt comes away in my fist. I stare at it for a
moment and then let it drop to my feet. Hobbs hands the boy an old
sword, even shorter than mine and blunt and rusty around the edges.
Unblinking, the boy takes it, swallowing a heavy wad of spittle
that slides down his throat in a visible lump.

How can I fight someone like him?

I have to.

But how? He’s so weak-looking, so scared…

I have no choice.

“Fight,” Hobbs says, backing away, smiling
bigger than ever.

I raise my sword, which has fallen loosely to
my side. The bilge rat continues looking at his rusty blade, as if
it’s a snake, but then suddenly grips it tightly, his brown
knuckles turning white. He lifts his chin and our eyes meet, and I
see…

—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.

T
he 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.

“Nice try,” he says, and I almost smile.

When I start to backtrack he releases me.
Dramatically, I throw myself to the ground and curl up on a
blanket, sighing heavily.

“There’s nothing to watch anyway,” he says in
The Voice. Not his normal, everyday speaking voice, but the one
that sounds deeper and more solid, like it comes from a place low
within his gut, almost like it’s spoken by someone else who lives
inside of him. A man greater than himself, full of power,
barrel-chested and well-muscled—like Gard, a warrior.

The Voice.

When people hear The Voice, they listen.

Even I do. Well, usually. Because The Voice
is never wrong.

I set my elbow on the ground and prop my head
on the heel of my hand. “Why not?” I ask, suddenly interested in
everything
my father has to say—because he’s not my father
anymore. He’s the Man of Wisdom.

Maybe the meditation wasn’t him doing nothing
after all.

His cheeks bulge, as if the words are right
there, trying to force their way out. But when he blows out, it’s
just air, nothing more. Then he says, “Listen.”

I cock my head, train my ear in the air, hear
only the silence of a camp in hiding.

Silence.

Silence.

And then—

—the chatter of horses’ hooves across the
plains, getting louder, approaching a rumble, then becoming the
distant growl of thunder.

“Now you can go,” Father says in his normal
voice, but I’m already on my feet, bursting from the tent opening,
running for the edge of the camp while other Stormers are emerging
from hiding.

I charge out of the camp and onto the plains,
my footsteps drowned out by the grumble of the horses galloping
toward me. Gard’s in the front, leading, and he flies past me like
I’m not even there. Another few Riders pass in similar fashion
before I see her.

My mother, astride Shadow, her skin and robe
so dark she almost looks like she’s a part of her horse, a strange
human-animal creature, fast and dangerous and ready.

She stops in front of me, perfectly balanced,
her sword in her left hand.

“What happened?” I say.

She motions with her sword behind her, where,
with the sun shimmering across the water, the white ships are
sailing off into the distance, barely visible now.

“They’re gone,” I murmur.

S
till screaming his
head off, the bilge rat’s sword flies past my head, whistling in my
ear as I duck out of the way.