Bryce, page 5
part #2 of Anarock Shifters Series
Without looking up, McCain waved his hand at nothing. “You two can go. I might call you back if I need more information.”
He didn’t pay any further attention to Bryce and Alexa. She got up and stumbled off the carpet. When she and Bryce got to the door, she looked back to see Jamison, Susie, and upside-down Forsythia all watching her with varying degrees of interest. She turned on her heel and beat it out of there in a hurry.
Bryce matched her stride for stride. They strode down the lakeside without a word until they got near their tent. All over the encampment, these bizarre creatures moved in and out of their dwellings. They sat around campfires and talked and sang and laughed just like normal people.
Alexa couldn’t consider them normal people, though. They were monstrosities. They were fiends from Hell. They were ogres and devils bent on world destruction and now they set their sights on Anarock.
Alexa didn’t want to go back to that tent. She didn’t want to set foot in their camp, but she had to. She had to cooperate with them. She had to answer McCain’s hateful questions about the Prometheus Crest and Ogru-Kuche and….and all of it.
Bryce laid a hand on her arm. “Hold up, Alexa.”
She whirled around to confront him. “Are you happy now? Are you completely satisfied? Now there’s nothing stopping them from storming Anarock and doing exactly as they please. Jesus fucking Christ, we’ll probably have to fight alongside them to take our own city. This is a nightmare!”
She wheeled the other way to face the lake. Her hand flew to her head, but she couldn’t think straight. She had to come up with some way to stop them. She had to find a way to alert Victor to the danger.
“Just keep calm,” Bryce murmured. “It’s not over yet.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” she cried. “They can look right inside Ogru-Kuche. They can read the goddamned codes right off my dad’s whiteboard, for Christ’s sake, and you’re telling me it’s not over? That’s bullshit, Bryce, and you know it. It’s finished and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”
He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Will you pipe down? Everyone in camp can hear you.”
“What difference does it make? They all already know. For all we know, they’ve got telepaths that can read our minds. We don’t even have to cooperate.”
He hissed low into her ear. “They don’t know everything. We’re not done yet. They don’t know about the other house Crests. They don’t know Anarock has more than one Crest that could defend the city against them. Maybe we can make contact with them somehow without Boris seeing us.”
She froze and stared at him. “How?”
“How the fuck should I know?” he breathed. “All I know is we can’t give up yet. They may have beaten us this time, but we’ve got information they don’t have. Maybe NightRage can defeat them.”
Alexa frowned. “Not likely. The NightRage Crest will probably think like you. They’ll see this as an opportunity to overthrow the Prometheus Crest. The point is that no one in Anarock has any idea what’s going on. They don’t know what the Omega Battalion is capable of or even that it exists.”
He waved that away. “Maybe. I’m just saying we can’t give up yet. We can’t go along with this. We have to keep working to find a way out.”
“How are we supposed to do that? We can’t make a move against them.”
“Then we’ll just have to go along with them for the time being. It’s going to take a while for all these people to march to Anarock. Maybe some opportunity will come along and we’ll be able to warn them.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How do I know I can trust you? How do I know you’re not just going along with this so you can take over the Prometheus Crest yourself?”
He flinched. “Come on, Alexa. You know you can trust me. I’m the same Bryce I was before.”
She held up her hands. “I never trusted you before and I don’t see any reason to do it now. You want to destroy Anarock to get back at your brother and take his power. Why on Earth should I trust you?”
He shrugged and backed away. “Fine. Don’t trust me. What the fuck do I care? I know one thing, though. I’m the only person you’ve got right now. It’s you and me against all these powerful entities. If we don’t stick together, we’re sunk. Understand? We have to work together or neither of us will ever get out of here and we will wind up fighting against our own people. We can’t let that happen.”
She scrutinized him in the minutest detail. All her senses told her he was telling the truth. Maybe that interview with McCain changed his mind. Either way, he was right about one thing. He was her only friend. They had to work together to come up with some solution.
She puffed her breath through her lips. “All right. We’ll go along and see what we can do. I’m warning you, though. If you turn against Anarock again, I won’t hesitate to destroy you. Let’s be clear on that right now.”
He held up both hands. “Fine.” He whirled away and strode off down the lakeshore to their tent. He ducked into it and she lost sight of him.
She turned her back on the Battalion’s encampment and gazed across the lake. The smooth water reflected the sky falling into pale dusky colors. The glassy surface exactly reflected the palette above her head.
Her soul ached to dive down deep into that lake and swim around in her dragon skin. She longed to fish and sniff and rummage in the black ooze where she could forget everything going on above her.
She couldn’t even do that anymore. She couldn’t shift even to relax herself. She wouldn’t go zooming through the clouds or diving on the airstreams. She and Bryce would never play tag or wrestle in mid-air—not until they found a way to break Susie’s spell. Those carefree days were over.
She didn’t even realize they were carefree until she lost them. She didn’t know how lucky and free and easy she was when she left Anarock. She thought her life was over when she held the world in her palm. She thought she lost everything when she lost Victor. The truth was she gained the whole world. She didn’t know it until now, now when she lost everything that she was.
She longed for those days now. How long ago they seemed when they were…. only yesterday. Only yesterday she flitted over the landscape with Bryce. He offered her the only solace she could find in this wasteland.
She glanced over her shoulder toward the tent. Alone among all the others, it perched dark and lonely at the water’s edge. All the others echoed with laughter and voices. They glowed with light from some mysterious source. In the whole camp, she had no one but Bryce. Maybe she had no one but him in all the world.
When had she enjoyed herself so much as the time they zipped and zoomed together through the air? She couldn’t remember ever abandoning herself to childish play and simple joy the way she did with him. Could it be she really did trust him in ways she didn’t understand?
She didn’t want to let her guard down with him. She didn’t want to trust someone who even entertained the notion of sacrificing Anarock for his own selfish ambitions. Still, her heart drew her back to that tent. Where else could she go?
She wandered in that direction. Everywhere she looked, through every doorway into which she glanced, she saw freaks and aliens and mutants of every description. They turned her stomach.
They might be the nicest people imaginable, but they repelled her. They wanted to destroy everything she held dear. They took her captive and made her a prisoner in her own skin. They turned her against her family and friends in the worst possible way. Who could understand that better than Bryce?
She stopped at the entrance and peered into the tent. He lay on his cot resting his head on his arms. He stared up at the ceiling the way he did before. What was he thinking about? He turned his eyes in her direction and he didn’t look away.
Just for a second, she saw him as a man. He wasn’t Victor. He wasn’t the same pretty boy she knew back in Anarock. He became something completely different in the last few days. His exile jaded him and hardened him. It made him a new man, a more complete man.
He saw into a part of her she didn’t want him or anybody seeing. Still, he saw. She couldn’t stop that now and she wouldn’t shrink away. He knew all about Victor throwing her over for some cooz.
Bryce still wanted her even knowing all that. He didn’t consider her Victor’s cast-off. At least, he implied that he wanted her. He insinuated that he wanted to take her off Victor’s hands. She couldn’t go near him. She wasn’t ready to bridge that gap, but it was nice to know the invitation was open if she decided to.
She crossed to another cot and sat down. She swiveled her legs onto it, stretched out, and gazed up at the white canvas. Whatever she might have been thinking when she left Anarock, she was here now. She was stuck here for the foreseeable future, so she might as well start working with that.
6
Bryce folded his cot and stacked it with a bunch of others next to the lake. All over the camp, the Omega Battalion packed up their stuff. Magic wielders of every variety roamed through the area vanishing the tents and equipment. The rest loaded their gear onto the monsters’ backs and mounted up on saddles or bareback.
Bryce helped out wherever he could, but he kept his eyes peeled. He observed these strange beings. He couldn’t quite put together all the varied species, subspecies, and non-species that made up their numbers.
No two were anything alike. Some appeared to be an amalgamation of multiple mutated aberrations, shifters, monsters, magicians, and general freaks. Nearly everyone he laid eyes on displayed some startling weirdness that made him do a double-take.
He learned in a few short hours that the ones who appeared most normal could change into the most frighteningly grotesque monstrosities in the blink of an eye. Either that or they harbored terrifying powers hidden under a benign exterior.
He also kept a close watch on Alexa. Come the morning, she behaved the same way he did. She went along with everything the Battalion did. She made herself useful and helped anyone who needed it. She got into conversations with this person or that and even helped make plans for their next campaign. No one would ever guess that she didn’t support the Battalion.
He knew her well enough to recognize the underlying questions plaguing her the same way they plagued him. He thought he knew her before, but he didn’t really. He didn’t know her for real until now. Now a twitch of muscle next to her eye revealed when something bothered her or scared her. No one else had to know, but he knew.
He thought he wanted her before, too. All these years when he saw her throwing herself at Victor and getting nothing but used in return, he thought he wanted her. That was nothing compared to now. He wished he could put his arms around her and comfort her. He wished he could do something to make this easier. He didn’t care so much about the danger and hardship to himself, but he felt for her.
By noon, the monsters lumbered down the water’s edge and into the trees. A messy convoy of people, creatures, and random horrors moved at a slow, easy pace toward the east.
Bryce and Alexa fell in line. Different people shuffled to the front. Others fell back or drifted around. No matter how many stops the Battalion made or how many times the leadership appeared to change, Bryce and Alexa stayed side by side all day.
Bryce would have been nervous if she migrated anywhere else, but she didn’t. She stuck close to him. They didn’t speak much beyond the occasional logistical negotiation.
“Do you have any water left?”
“Not much, but you can have it. How much food do we have?”
“It’s getting hot. Make sure you keep to the shade.”
“Watch out for that elephant thing. I don’t think he can see very well.”
“Do you feel like stopping here for a little while?
“I’m not tired. Are you?”
He sensed her softening toward him in these seemingly innocuous communications. He could express his concern for her and she accepted it and returned it to him. As the day wore on, he settled into a deeper sense of security that they were in this together.
The thought comforted him more than he ever thought possible. He wasn’t alone after all and he couldn’t ask for a better companion in a dangerous situation. He knew her strength and her fighting ability even if she couldn’t use her dragon powers. He never had to question whether she would be able to hold her own if the shit hit the fan.
Toward dusk, Bryce and Alexa’s part of the caravan meandered to the shores of a different lake. Bryce didn’t know exactly where they were and he didn’t really care. They were somewhere between Attakapas Island and New Orleans. He didn’t need to know any more detail than that. As long as the Omega Battalion wasn’t within striking distance of Anarock, he could relax somewhat and think. As long as they were still a fair distance away, he had time to figure out what to do.
Somebody materialized the tents again. This was the second night he spent with this Battalion and he started to get used to the way they did things. Their sorcerers could magic up equipment, food, medicines—anything anybody needed. People went from tent to tent asking everyone if they had everything they needed and supplying it.
One of the normal-looking youngsters stopped by Bryce and Alexa’s tent. Bryce didn’t know his name. “Do you have everything you need?”
“We’re running low on food,” Alexa told him.
“What would you like?” the guy asked.
Alexa cracked a grin. “How about a nice hot pot of ratatouille with a side of fried okra and butter beans?”
The kid nodded, but he didn’t smile. “I would, but McCain doesn’t approve of the Battalion eating rich food on the march. I can give you some dried fish and pemmican. That’s what everyone else is eating.”
Alexa’s eyes popped. “Are you saying McCain doesn’t allow anyone to eat real food? Is that all anybody is allowed to eat?”
The boy nodded again. The longer Bryce spent around these people, the more he noticed a glazed expression in their eyes—the ones that had eyes, that is. They seemed to stare at something behind your head without ever really looking at anyone.
The guy entered and approached the one table in the place. Bryce and Alexa never used it, but some other magic wielder seemed to think they needed it.
The kid held his hand a few inches above the surface. “I’ll give you some of that and if you really need something else, me or one of the other magic-users will get it for you. This will keep you going. It’s the most nutritious and lightweight. That’s what McCain says.”
A ball of light appeared under his palm. In a minute, it swelled to a starburst that exploded outward and disappeared. In its place, a package sat on the tabletop. Brown paper and hemp twine tied the whole thing together. It looked real enough.
He dropped his arm to his side and faced Alexa, although he never really looked at her. “There you go. Have a good evening.” He walked away. In a minute, Bryce heard his footsteps squishing through wet grass outside.
Alexa slumped on her cot and turned away. “Great. That’s just fucking priceless.”
Bryce grabbed the package and took it back to his own cot. He set it in his lap and yanked the twine. “At least we’ve got food. What do you want?”
He flipped the package over and unfolded the paper. He found, as the kid said, about ten catfish fillets blackened with spices and dried to the consistency of stiff boards. Another parcel of brown paper gave off a faint meaty, fruity aroma.
He picked up a dried fish and snapped off a corner. The spices tingled on his tongue, but it took the fish a long time to soften even when he chewed it.
Alexa curled her lip at him. “You’re not actually gonna eat that stuff, are you?”
“I’m hungry and we’ve got another long day of hiking tomorrow. I suggest you eat something, too. This fish isn’t too bad and the pemmican smells pretty good.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Pemmican?”
“It’s rendered fat and meat mixed with berries or some other dried fruit. Sometimes it even has pollen or seeds mixed in.”
She smacked her lips. “I’m not eating that.”
“You better. You’re going to get hungry and I need you strong and functional so we can get the hell out of here when the time comes. I won’t let you languish just because you didn’t get ratatouille and fried okra.”
She kicked up her legs and stretched out on her cot. She laced her fingers under her head and trained her gaze upward. “I’m going to have to get a whole lot hungrier before I eat that. How do you know so much about pemmican, anyway?”
“We ate it in the hunting camp. We made tons of it and cached it around the Quag to eat in case we didn’t have any luck hunting. It’s the perfect traveling food because it never spoils. It lasts forever and gives you good energy.
She grunted and shut her eyes. Bryce smiled at her even though she couldn’t see him. She hadn’t been out of Anarock long enough to appreciate something like pemmican. Her stomach would motivate her pretty soon.
He took out one more fish and wrapped up the package. He set it next to his cot and swiveled around to stretch out with his meal when Jamison stuck his head through their door flap. “McCain wants you two.”
Alexa’s eyes snapped open. “What does he want us for?”
“I have no idea. He just sent me to get you.”
Bryce laid aside his fish and swung up to his feet. He and Alexa fell in shoulder to shoulder leaving the tent. This was developing into a pattern.
Jamison led them along the water, but this time, he didn’t take them to any tent. He turned off and plunged into the densest undergrowth. Bryce lowered his head and went into wilderness mode. He spent enough time in the Quag with his father and brothers and the other hunting parties. He only hoped Alexa could keep up.
She didn’t disappoint him. The first few times he checked on her, she kept close to his heels. After a while, he didn’t bother to look back at her.
Jamison burst out onto a narrow neck of solid ground in the middle of trackless Quag. The promontory jutted into the lake a good distance from the Battalion’s camp. McCain, Boris, Susie, and a bunch of the others from yesterday gathered there.
He didn’t pay any further attention to Bryce and Alexa. She got up and stumbled off the carpet. When she and Bryce got to the door, she looked back to see Jamison, Susie, and upside-down Forsythia all watching her with varying degrees of interest. She turned on her heel and beat it out of there in a hurry.
Bryce matched her stride for stride. They strode down the lakeside without a word until they got near their tent. All over the encampment, these bizarre creatures moved in and out of their dwellings. They sat around campfires and talked and sang and laughed just like normal people.
Alexa couldn’t consider them normal people, though. They were monstrosities. They were fiends from Hell. They were ogres and devils bent on world destruction and now they set their sights on Anarock.
Alexa didn’t want to go back to that tent. She didn’t want to set foot in their camp, but she had to. She had to cooperate with them. She had to answer McCain’s hateful questions about the Prometheus Crest and Ogru-Kuche and….and all of it.
Bryce laid a hand on her arm. “Hold up, Alexa.”
She whirled around to confront him. “Are you happy now? Are you completely satisfied? Now there’s nothing stopping them from storming Anarock and doing exactly as they please. Jesus fucking Christ, we’ll probably have to fight alongside them to take our own city. This is a nightmare!”
She wheeled the other way to face the lake. Her hand flew to her head, but she couldn’t think straight. She had to come up with some way to stop them. She had to find a way to alert Victor to the danger.
“Just keep calm,” Bryce murmured. “It’s not over yet.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” she cried. “They can look right inside Ogru-Kuche. They can read the goddamned codes right off my dad’s whiteboard, for Christ’s sake, and you’re telling me it’s not over? That’s bullshit, Bryce, and you know it. It’s finished and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”
He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Will you pipe down? Everyone in camp can hear you.”
“What difference does it make? They all already know. For all we know, they’ve got telepaths that can read our minds. We don’t even have to cooperate.”
He hissed low into her ear. “They don’t know everything. We’re not done yet. They don’t know about the other house Crests. They don’t know Anarock has more than one Crest that could defend the city against them. Maybe we can make contact with them somehow without Boris seeing us.”
She froze and stared at him. “How?”
“How the fuck should I know?” he breathed. “All I know is we can’t give up yet. They may have beaten us this time, but we’ve got information they don’t have. Maybe NightRage can defeat them.”
Alexa frowned. “Not likely. The NightRage Crest will probably think like you. They’ll see this as an opportunity to overthrow the Prometheus Crest. The point is that no one in Anarock has any idea what’s going on. They don’t know what the Omega Battalion is capable of or even that it exists.”
He waved that away. “Maybe. I’m just saying we can’t give up yet. We can’t go along with this. We have to keep working to find a way out.”
“How are we supposed to do that? We can’t make a move against them.”
“Then we’ll just have to go along with them for the time being. It’s going to take a while for all these people to march to Anarock. Maybe some opportunity will come along and we’ll be able to warn them.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How do I know I can trust you? How do I know you’re not just going along with this so you can take over the Prometheus Crest yourself?”
He flinched. “Come on, Alexa. You know you can trust me. I’m the same Bryce I was before.”
She held up her hands. “I never trusted you before and I don’t see any reason to do it now. You want to destroy Anarock to get back at your brother and take his power. Why on Earth should I trust you?”
He shrugged and backed away. “Fine. Don’t trust me. What the fuck do I care? I know one thing, though. I’m the only person you’ve got right now. It’s you and me against all these powerful entities. If we don’t stick together, we’re sunk. Understand? We have to work together or neither of us will ever get out of here and we will wind up fighting against our own people. We can’t let that happen.”
She scrutinized him in the minutest detail. All her senses told her he was telling the truth. Maybe that interview with McCain changed his mind. Either way, he was right about one thing. He was her only friend. They had to work together to come up with some solution.
She puffed her breath through her lips. “All right. We’ll go along and see what we can do. I’m warning you, though. If you turn against Anarock again, I won’t hesitate to destroy you. Let’s be clear on that right now.”
He held up both hands. “Fine.” He whirled away and strode off down the lakeshore to their tent. He ducked into it and she lost sight of him.
She turned her back on the Battalion’s encampment and gazed across the lake. The smooth water reflected the sky falling into pale dusky colors. The glassy surface exactly reflected the palette above her head.
Her soul ached to dive down deep into that lake and swim around in her dragon skin. She longed to fish and sniff and rummage in the black ooze where she could forget everything going on above her.
She couldn’t even do that anymore. She couldn’t shift even to relax herself. She wouldn’t go zooming through the clouds or diving on the airstreams. She and Bryce would never play tag or wrestle in mid-air—not until they found a way to break Susie’s spell. Those carefree days were over.
She didn’t even realize they were carefree until she lost them. She didn’t know how lucky and free and easy she was when she left Anarock. She thought her life was over when she held the world in her palm. She thought she lost everything when she lost Victor. The truth was she gained the whole world. She didn’t know it until now, now when she lost everything that she was.
She longed for those days now. How long ago they seemed when they were…. only yesterday. Only yesterday she flitted over the landscape with Bryce. He offered her the only solace she could find in this wasteland.
She glanced over her shoulder toward the tent. Alone among all the others, it perched dark and lonely at the water’s edge. All the others echoed with laughter and voices. They glowed with light from some mysterious source. In the whole camp, she had no one but Bryce. Maybe she had no one but him in all the world.
When had she enjoyed herself so much as the time they zipped and zoomed together through the air? She couldn’t remember ever abandoning herself to childish play and simple joy the way she did with him. Could it be she really did trust him in ways she didn’t understand?
She didn’t want to let her guard down with him. She didn’t want to trust someone who even entertained the notion of sacrificing Anarock for his own selfish ambitions. Still, her heart drew her back to that tent. Where else could she go?
She wandered in that direction. Everywhere she looked, through every doorway into which she glanced, she saw freaks and aliens and mutants of every description. They turned her stomach.
They might be the nicest people imaginable, but they repelled her. They wanted to destroy everything she held dear. They took her captive and made her a prisoner in her own skin. They turned her against her family and friends in the worst possible way. Who could understand that better than Bryce?
She stopped at the entrance and peered into the tent. He lay on his cot resting his head on his arms. He stared up at the ceiling the way he did before. What was he thinking about? He turned his eyes in her direction and he didn’t look away.
Just for a second, she saw him as a man. He wasn’t Victor. He wasn’t the same pretty boy she knew back in Anarock. He became something completely different in the last few days. His exile jaded him and hardened him. It made him a new man, a more complete man.
He saw into a part of her she didn’t want him or anybody seeing. Still, he saw. She couldn’t stop that now and she wouldn’t shrink away. He knew all about Victor throwing her over for some cooz.
Bryce still wanted her even knowing all that. He didn’t consider her Victor’s cast-off. At least, he implied that he wanted her. He insinuated that he wanted to take her off Victor’s hands. She couldn’t go near him. She wasn’t ready to bridge that gap, but it was nice to know the invitation was open if she decided to.
She crossed to another cot and sat down. She swiveled her legs onto it, stretched out, and gazed up at the white canvas. Whatever she might have been thinking when she left Anarock, she was here now. She was stuck here for the foreseeable future, so she might as well start working with that.
6
Bryce folded his cot and stacked it with a bunch of others next to the lake. All over the camp, the Omega Battalion packed up their stuff. Magic wielders of every variety roamed through the area vanishing the tents and equipment. The rest loaded their gear onto the monsters’ backs and mounted up on saddles or bareback.
Bryce helped out wherever he could, but he kept his eyes peeled. He observed these strange beings. He couldn’t quite put together all the varied species, subspecies, and non-species that made up their numbers.
No two were anything alike. Some appeared to be an amalgamation of multiple mutated aberrations, shifters, monsters, magicians, and general freaks. Nearly everyone he laid eyes on displayed some startling weirdness that made him do a double-take.
He learned in a few short hours that the ones who appeared most normal could change into the most frighteningly grotesque monstrosities in the blink of an eye. Either that or they harbored terrifying powers hidden under a benign exterior.
He also kept a close watch on Alexa. Come the morning, she behaved the same way he did. She went along with everything the Battalion did. She made herself useful and helped anyone who needed it. She got into conversations with this person or that and even helped make plans for their next campaign. No one would ever guess that she didn’t support the Battalion.
He knew her well enough to recognize the underlying questions plaguing her the same way they plagued him. He thought he knew her before, but he didn’t really. He didn’t know her for real until now. Now a twitch of muscle next to her eye revealed when something bothered her or scared her. No one else had to know, but he knew.
He thought he wanted her before, too. All these years when he saw her throwing herself at Victor and getting nothing but used in return, he thought he wanted her. That was nothing compared to now. He wished he could put his arms around her and comfort her. He wished he could do something to make this easier. He didn’t care so much about the danger and hardship to himself, but he felt for her.
By noon, the monsters lumbered down the water’s edge and into the trees. A messy convoy of people, creatures, and random horrors moved at a slow, easy pace toward the east.
Bryce and Alexa fell in line. Different people shuffled to the front. Others fell back or drifted around. No matter how many stops the Battalion made or how many times the leadership appeared to change, Bryce and Alexa stayed side by side all day.
Bryce would have been nervous if she migrated anywhere else, but she didn’t. She stuck close to him. They didn’t speak much beyond the occasional logistical negotiation.
“Do you have any water left?”
“Not much, but you can have it. How much food do we have?”
“It’s getting hot. Make sure you keep to the shade.”
“Watch out for that elephant thing. I don’t think he can see very well.”
“Do you feel like stopping here for a little while?
“I’m not tired. Are you?”
He sensed her softening toward him in these seemingly innocuous communications. He could express his concern for her and she accepted it and returned it to him. As the day wore on, he settled into a deeper sense of security that they were in this together.
The thought comforted him more than he ever thought possible. He wasn’t alone after all and he couldn’t ask for a better companion in a dangerous situation. He knew her strength and her fighting ability even if she couldn’t use her dragon powers. He never had to question whether she would be able to hold her own if the shit hit the fan.
Toward dusk, Bryce and Alexa’s part of the caravan meandered to the shores of a different lake. Bryce didn’t know exactly where they were and he didn’t really care. They were somewhere between Attakapas Island and New Orleans. He didn’t need to know any more detail than that. As long as the Omega Battalion wasn’t within striking distance of Anarock, he could relax somewhat and think. As long as they were still a fair distance away, he had time to figure out what to do.
Somebody materialized the tents again. This was the second night he spent with this Battalion and he started to get used to the way they did things. Their sorcerers could magic up equipment, food, medicines—anything anybody needed. People went from tent to tent asking everyone if they had everything they needed and supplying it.
One of the normal-looking youngsters stopped by Bryce and Alexa’s tent. Bryce didn’t know his name. “Do you have everything you need?”
“We’re running low on food,” Alexa told him.
“What would you like?” the guy asked.
Alexa cracked a grin. “How about a nice hot pot of ratatouille with a side of fried okra and butter beans?”
The kid nodded, but he didn’t smile. “I would, but McCain doesn’t approve of the Battalion eating rich food on the march. I can give you some dried fish and pemmican. That’s what everyone else is eating.”
Alexa’s eyes popped. “Are you saying McCain doesn’t allow anyone to eat real food? Is that all anybody is allowed to eat?”
The boy nodded again. The longer Bryce spent around these people, the more he noticed a glazed expression in their eyes—the ones that had eyes, that is. They seemed to stare at something behind your head without ever really looking at anyone.
The guy entered and approached the one table in the place. Bryce and Alexa never used it, but some other magic wielder seemed to think they needed it.
The kid held his hand a few inches above the surface. “I’ll give you some of that and if you really need something else, me or one of the other magic-users will get it for you. This will keep you going. It’s the most nutritious and lightweight. That’s what McCain says.”
A ball of light appeared under his palm. In a minute, it swelled to a starburst that exploded outward and disappeared. In its place, a package sat on the tabletop. Brown paper and hemp twine tied the whole thing together. It looked real enough.
He dropped his arm to his side and faced Alexa, although he never really looked at her. “There you go. Have a good evening.” He walked away. In a minute, Bryce heard his footsteps squishing through wet grass outside.
Alexa slumped on her cot and turned away. “Great. That’s just fucking priceless.”
Bryce grabbed the package and took it back to his own cot. He set it in his lap and yanked the twine. “At least we’ve got food. What do you want?”
He flipped the package over and unfolded the paper. He found, as the kid said, about ten catfish fillets blackened with spices and dried to the consistency of stiff boards. Another parcel of brown paper gave off a faint meaty, fruity aroma.
He picked up a dried fish and snapped off a corner. The spices tingled on his tongue, but it took the fish a long time to soften even when he chewed it.
Alexa curled her lip at him. “You’re not actually gonna eat that stuff, are you?”
“I’m hungry and we’ve got another long day of hiking tomorrow. I suggest you eat something, too. This fish isn’t too bad and the pemmican smells pretty good.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Pemmican?”
“It’s rendered fat and meat mixed with berries or some other dried fruit. Sometimes it even has pollen or seeds mixed in.”
She smacked her lips. “I’m not eating that.”
“You better. You’re going to get hungry and I need you strong and functional so we can get the hell out of here when the time comes. I won’t let you languish just because you didn’t get ratatouille and fried okra.”
She kicked up her legs and stretched out on her cot. She laced her fingers under her head and trained her gaze upward. “I’m going to have to get a whole lot hungrier before I eat that. How do you know so much about pemmican, anyway?”
“We ate it in the hunting camp. We made tons of it and cached it around the Quag to eat in case we didn’t have any luck hunting. It’s the perfect traveling food because it never spoils. It lasts forever and gives you good energy.
She grunted and shut her eyes. Bryce smiled at her even though she couldn’t see him. She hadn’t been out of Anarock long enough to appreciate something like pemmican. Her stomach would motivate her pretty soon.
He took out one more fish and wrapped up the package. He set it next to his cot and swiveled around to stretch out with his meal when Jamison stuck his head through their door flap. “McCain wants you two.”
Alexa’s eyes snapped open. “What does he want us for?”
“I have no idea. He just sent me to get you.”
Bryce laid aside his fish and swung up to his feet. He and Alexa fell in shoulder to shoulder leaving the tent. This was developing into a pattern.
Jamison led them along the water, but this time, he didn’t take them to any tent. He turned off and plunged into the densest undergrowth. Bryce lowered his head and went into wilderness mode. He spent enough time in the Quag with his father and brothers and the other hunting parties. He only hoped Alexa could keep up.
She didn’t disappoint him. The first few times he checked on her, she kept close to his heels. After a while, he didn’t bother to look back at her.
Jamison burst out onto a narrow neck of solid ground in the middle of trackless Quag. The promontory jutted into the lake a good distance from the Battalion’s camp. McCain, Boris, Susie, and a bunch of the others from yesterday gathered there.
