Ven's ear bud chirped, and he heard his wife's voice. "He's in my sights." He didn't respond. "He's coming up the avenue now," Tylie continued. "Four guards with him. He's not hiding anything."
Ven carefully climbed over a pile of rubble, which he thought he remembered was once a post office. He kept low, hoping the beams and piles of rock obscured him from the group he approached.
"Anything else?" Tylie's father Paul asked, also in Ven's ear bud "Are they carrying anything?"
"Nothing. His head's held high, his hands are in sight, and he isn't hesitating. I see a man who's come to talk, just like we asked," Tylie said. Ven heard a scrape. "We could end this, right now. All I have to do is twitch my finger."
"We asked him to talk. If we kill him we're no better than he is," Tylie's mother, Lynda, answered. Ven could have argued, but he couldn't give away his position. "Ven, position." Ven tapped on the mic twice. "Don't delay."
"He came to our province to talk, with nothing but what is essentially an honor guard. Besides, if he dies, whatever freak waiting to take control attacks and everything we've worked for is blown away," Paul said. "Tony, everything ready?"
"You better believe it," Tony, Tylie's brother, said. "We've got every gun in our possession aimed right at his freak face. He so much as licks his lips and we can turn him into dust."
Ven rolled his eyes. A moment later, he got to his position, and tapped the mic once. "Ven's ready," Lynda said. "All in readiness?"
A chorus of affirmations followed, except from Ven, who sat in a shadow under a still-standing wall and a portion of a ceiling, watching a large camp of men and women move quickly, many with their ears pressed against radios, waiting for their leader to begin the meeting with Paul and Lynda. Ven settled in. The people had tatters over their shoulders and across their hips, bolts of cloth and strips of leather. They held weapons big and small, and seemed willing to point them at themselves, each other, and anything else.
"All right, let him in," Ven heard Paul say, and Ven then heard a great deal of motion. He watched the camp before him slow down, crowding around their radios.
"I'm turning my gain up to full, Ven," Tony said, "but I won't have it on. Sister mine will give you the play-by-play."
"Joyl and his people are inside the main ground," Tylie said a few moments later. "He's strutting forward like he owns the place." A minute later her heard her again. "All right, they just entered the meeting space."
Ven heard nothing for a few seconds. "Joyl, thank you for agreeing to meet us here," Paul said.
"It speaks well to your leadership capabilities," Lynda said. "None of us will survive the winter if we're spending all of it fighting instead of trying to grow food. We want an end to the hostilities." There was a short pause. "We're willing to make amends."
"Amends," Ven heard, as if from a distance away. The voice jumped and fell spasmodically. "Amends for stealing? For killing?"
"We killed no one who did not break the barrier," Paul said, keeping his voice level. "We are willing to return the land we took, up to the riverbed. A great deal of space and much of it farmable."
Ven watched the camp in front of him pump their fists in the air. Such a gift was worth much.
"We will want something in return, of course," Paul said. "I'm sure there are many details we can quibble about. Do you agree?"
"Yes, yes. I love to quibble." Joyl's voice started, then stopped. "My favorite. But you know, I'm angry."
Ven heard his wife blow out a breath.
"Some of the people you killed...they were some of my favorites too!" Joyl said, his voice shifting. "All they were doing was a little exploring! Just having a look at things! It isn't fair, I tell you, to kill them in such cold blood."
"They brought weapons into our province, and resisting numerous commands to leave," Lynda said. "After the erratic actions of your group, we were not at liberty to take any chances. Many of your people--acting on your orders--have resulted in the destruction of land, supplies, and the loss of lives. If they were your favorite," Lynda said, and Ven heard the sharp tongue he'd grown up with, "you would not have sent them to die."
"That's my mom," Tylie said.
"They wanted to go!" Joyl said, as if the words absolved him of any guilt. "I wasn't about to stop them. I'm all about freedom, you see? Freedom to go where they want, take what they want, and kill who they want. In this, our burned-out land, can you really say they shouldn't be able to live a little? Enjoy whatever life they have left in a world with one foot in the planetary graveyard?"
Ven watched and heard the campground in front of him shout and cheer. "If that means a touch of theft here, a handful of rape there, who's to say they shouldn't do it? We're all just trying to get by. You do it your way, and we do it our way!"
They crowed, cheered, and shouted. Ven saw fights break out just because they could.
"We say they shouldn't," Paul said.
"I could kill him," Tylie said. "I could just kill him right now and this would all be over. He wouldn't even hear the bullet. He'd die, they'd attack us, and we'd prove we're the stronger province by gunning them down."
Ven tapped his mic twice, and he heard his wife sigh. "You all right Ven?" she asked. He tapped his mic once. "Be careful."
"And who exactly are you to tell us what to do?" Joyl shouted. "Why should we abide your rules?"
"We are the ones who had to endure your tiring madness just to stay alive," Paul said. "And we are the ones who find ourselves in the position to demand things of you, because we are the ones who are growing in size and population even faster than you are losing soldiers."
"Those don't seem like very good reasons," Joyl said, and Ven imagined him crossing his arms.
"When you rule over an empty land, perhaps then you will accept the truth," Lynda said. "Your words indicate you are not willing to come to an accord, whether or not we offer land in exchange."
Ven observed a number of arguments break out in Joyl's campground. To him there seemed to be two camps: those who wanted to do nothing more than slaughter and raid, and those who would rather have accepted an end to the hostilities.
"There was something you mentioned," Joyl said. "You wanted something in return?"
"Yes. See the map my son brings you," Paul said, and Ven heard a rustle. "The marked areas are our two provinces. The area marked in red would go to you, and the area in blue would go to us. A much smaller area, but on our side of the river and worth more to us than having to patrol the bigger area on your side of the river."
"Ahah, ahah. I see. Despite the area being smaller than what you give up, it is more...time efficient." Ven heard paper crumpling. "It all makes too much sense for you. You put weight on lives, so you want this more than me. I demand more."
Ven listened to Lynda suck in a breath. "What do you mean?"
"Supplies would be nice. Designs for mechanical implementation. Training, if need be. Things to help us get our farming operations off the ground." Ven saw the argument increase in volume in the camp. The sides were becoming a little clearer. A few guns went off into the air. "I want peace as much as you do!" Joyl said. "But we aren't prepared! A peace accord would doom us unless we have your guidance in such esoteric manners as working the land."
Ven rolled his eyes. He could almost hear his wife doing the same. "We'll have to meet with our advisers, but I foresee an agreement."
"Wonderful, wonderful," Joyl said. Ven watched the campground in front of him laugh at the idea.
"He's smiling," Tylie said to Ven. "I don't want him smiling. I want him lying face down in a gutter."
Ven said nothing, watching the campground with interest. A few people had gone into one of the structures, beckoning someone to exit with them.
"Is it settled, then?" Lynda asked. "Do you agree to the terms?"
"He's making a show of trying to decide," Tylie said. She and Ven both knew Joyl already had his decision in mind. "Now he's-"
Ven stopped listening. The man who had stepped out from one of the structures in front of him appeared to be none other than Joyl, their leader. Dressed in flamboyant rags, hair dyed random colors, piercings and chains hung from his face, thin legs poking out from underneath his tattered cloak. He spread his arms, coming toward the groups huddled around their radios, and they cheered.
"Joyl is at their camp," Ven said. Tylie, Paul, and Lynda heard him. "At least it looks like him. They're celebrating something. They've succeeded at something."
"It's clearly Joyl talking with mom and dad," Tylie said. "I'd know those skinny legs anywhere."
"If this isn't Joyl then somebody's doing a stellar job imitating him," Ven said. He watched for a moment. "I swear it's him. They're celebrating. Too much celebration for people who just agreed to a peace accord. They're cheering and shouting and waving weapons in the air. If they'd just been told a bomb had gone off in our camp I can't imagine them acting any differently."
"Do your people want peace, I wonder?" Lynda asked, interrupting the Joyl she and Paul were talking to. "If you go back to your camp and tell them what you agreed to, will they cheer?"
"Mom's got things under control," Tylie said.
The Joyl cleared his throat. "I suspect many of them will be upset to cease warring ways. Others will be pleased to settle down. I will have to talk to them and convince them it is the right decision. With your additional gifts, it shouldn't be difficult."
Ven watched the continued cheering from the second Joyl and the people around him, and he shook his head. "Lying right out his bony ass. They're practically throwing a party. Put the pressure on him, Lynda."
"You're so sure you can tell them how to think, what to do?" Paul's mother-in-law asked. "It seems to me they're an independent lot. Why would they listen to you now? Why would they obey you?"
"Mom just leaned forward."
"Are you even their leader?" Lynda asked, and Ven heard the commanding voice even through the ear bud "It seems to me there's no reason to make an agreement with you if the people you pretend to command are just going to keep raiding us anyway!"
The Joyl Ven could see stopped prancing for a moment, and ripped a radio out of another man's hand, holding it up to his ear with a furious expression.
"Don't you dare tell me I can't tell my people what to do!" the other Joyl said, and Tylie added he had jabbed his finger at her mother. "They'd bow at my feet if I told them to! They live for my commands! If I tell them not to do something, they do not do it!"
"Oh, she just leaned back," Tylie said. "I'd be ready to move, Ven."
"And how are we supposed to trust you when you say such things? How do we know you're even Joyl at all? We know for a fact there is another man in your campground right now who happens to look exactly like you!"
Ven huddled deeper into the shadow as weapons flew from holsters in Joyl's campground. The Joyl he could see started pointing in all directions, though the finger avoided Ven. Ven began working on the drubbing he would give Lynda when he got home.
"Mom, for God's sake," Tylie said. "Are you trying to get my husband killed?"
"How dare you say such a thing!" the Joyl meeting with Paul and Lynda screamed. "I am the only leader my people have ever and will ever know!"
Ven heard a flurry of cloaks and hardware, and then something exploded in his ear. More gunshots erupted, sounding farther away, and grunts and thuds came over his earpiece. He tapped on his mic in twos, hoping to get his wife's attention.
"He pulled out a gun," Tylie said. "I dropped him as soon as I saw it. His soldiers bit it soon after."
Ven watched the frenzy grow in front of him. Tylie's powerful shot echoed across the barren remains of the once-great city they huddled in. The other Joyl was shrieking, bellowing, going red and purple in the face. Ven heard noise over his earpiece and then winced away as something blared out. It calmed down. "Shit, sorry," Tony said, "forgot to turn the gain down. They're all dead, Ven. I'd get out of there if I were you."
"I can't move an inch right now," Ven said. "They know they're being watched, and furious. If I so much as put a toe out of line it gets blasted off. Thanks, Lynda."
"I had to press him," the woman said in response. "I had to make him want to convince his people to agree."
"You're welcome, by the way. He was aiming for you," Tylie said. Ven heard the sound of her climbing down from her high perch.
"Tony, start directing people. We're going to need a strong defense. Ven, you're sure there's another Joyl in their camp?" Paul said.
"Certainly not for very long," Ven said. "They're getting ready for war. I see more weapons being loaded right now than I think we have available. I'm very glad you chose to do all of this. Tylie, just in case, I love you."
"Bullshit. You're getting back safely," his wife answered. Ven watched the extra Joyl empty round after round into the air, screaming at the top of his lungs. "Tony, get my husband home!"
"His comm's off, honey," Lynda said. "And anyway, we need Ven there to tell us their attack plan. Ven, what can you tell us?"
The group in front of Ven grew, filling up the center area of the campground. The Joyl was making a speech, full of shouts and invectives and promises of torture, of murder. He was shaking, shivering, trembling with anger and the power of the words he said. After a few minutes, the group separated into two. One mobilized south toward the river and Ven's home, the other--a much smaller group, only about a half-dozen, including the second Joyl--began marching east.
"They know. They know. Shit, they know." Ven said, watching the eastward group disappear in the surrounding rubble. "Almost all of them are heading south, armed to the teeth and beyond. A group less than ten are going east."
"They might not know," Paul said. "They might just be going over there to make sure there isn't anything we want."
"They're too direct for that," Ven said. He tried to count the bigger group but got lost after fifty. "They know there's something there and they're going to get it."
The comms were silent for a minute, followed by Ven's father-in-law releasing an explosive curse. "All of this was supposed to be about keeping Joyl and the rest of those madmen away from it!" he said. "Ven, I'm ordering you to follow them and make sure they don't find it. No matter what you do, stop them."
"Understood," Ven said. "I'm not going anywhere for a few more minutes, but I'll be able to move out soon."
"He can't do that!" Tylie said. "If they find him now, they won't even stop to break his fingers, they'll just riddle him with bullets!" She puffed, probably running back to the encampment they called home. "Ven, you need to get back here!"
"If Joyl's madmen get hold of it, this has all been for nothing!" Lynda said. "As much as I want Ven to get home safe, this is bigger than him! This is bigger than all of us!"
She said nothing, but Ven heard Tylie's furious thoughts. A lifetime of knowing his wife made it so he could know almost to a word what she was thinking. "Tylie, it's okay. I know what I'm getting into. I'll be back before breakfast."
Still hearing nothing from his wife, Ven found he had a chance to relocate. He scrambled over the loose bricks of the pile next to him, heading east after the smaller group.
"I love you, Ven," Tylie said a few minutes later. Ven tapped his mic once.
When Tylie entered the inner area of their encampment, she wasn't surprised to find it a swarm of bodies. She pushed forward, scoped rifle slung over her shoulder, until she reached her parents.
"We'll need you in your normal spot," Paul said. Tylie's father, haggard and younger than he looked, barely gave her a moment. "If Ven's right, we're going to have the fight of our life on our hands here."
"How many are there supposed to be?" Tylie asked.
"If reports are right, at least a hundred."
"A hundred men and women who want nothing more than to put bullets in us," Lynda said, coming up behind Paul with a few rifles. She put them on the bench in front of her and began disassembling them. "They have more weapons than us and aren't afraid to waste them." She glanced up at Tylie. "He'll be fine."
"He'd better be," Tylie said, leaving the tent and hunting down her brother. She passed through the circular meeting space and witnessed a few people drag Joyl's body away. She thought about stopping them to give it a kick, but then Tony got her attention.
"They're coming direct from the north," he said. They, and almost a dozen more people, stood inside one of their tents with a rudimentary map on the table in the center. Tony moved his finger down, indicating the path he believed the attackers would take. "It's hard to say they'll do anything other than dash themselves against our walls, but we need to be ready."
"They have more weapons than they do able bodies," one of the soldiers said. "They're going to bring everything they have against us and might not stop until one of us is destroyed." He shot a glance at Tylie, who returned it. "Hope you have more bullets for them."
"Plenty," Tylie said.
"There's something else." Tony snapped his fingers to get their attention. "An additional wrinkle. Joyl's people are erratic, crazed, and aggressive, but they aren't dumb. They know someone was watching them during the meeting. They don't know it was only one person, but they might be aware of the fact Ven won't be able to sneak home with them beating down our gates. If we want to keep Ven alive, we have to send them running home with their tails between their legs. We can't just push them away and create a standoff outside the walls."
"Meaning?" Tylie asked.
"We give as good as we get," Tony said. "Bullet for bullet, return to sender. Make them wish their wild leader had never come near us." Tylie smiled. "Whatever it takes."
"How long?" someone asked Tony. He said nothing for a moment.
"Less than an hour. The river's low right now so that won't stop them." His eyes scanned over the map, and he grabbed a stubby pencil. Drawing a few paths from the north toward the area marked as theirs, he began to separate the defensive groups. "They'll have explosives. Don't let anyone get too close. If they're as wild as Ven made them sound, we'll have the advantage if we stick to a defensive game plan. Keep behind cover and let them have it."
A few minutes later Tony left the tent, and Tylie grabbed his arm, spinning him around. "What if Ven comes back during the attack?" she said. "What if he finds himself in the middle of those brutes?"
"Then we hope he finds somewhere to hide until we get them to leave," Tony said. "But you know he isn't going to be back that soon. He has his own job to do. Don't tell me you don't know how important it is Joyl's people don't get it."
Tylie stared at the dirt under her brother's feet. "I won't leave him out there to die, but if what mom and dad say is true, he's likely to keep us alive more than the other way around."
Ven, tailing the group headed east, was now sure the Joyl he followed was the real one. The man spat wild sayings, dancing through the dusty destruction, berated and beat the soldiers traveling with him without a moment between.
They reached the river, past where it twisted to a north-south flow, and splashed through it. Ven waited until they were over the hill beyond the riverbank before following, aware how much noise he could make. The river's low level made it easy to cross but no less noisy.
He caught up in only a few minutes as the group stopped at the crumbling stone walls of the army base and passing through a hole large enough to admit all of them. He was creeping closer when Tylie contacted him.
"Ven, you there?" she said. He turned the volume down on his ear bud and tapped the mic once. "It isn't going to be easy for you to get back. The attack could be going on for a while...can you relay your position?"
He tapped twice, pressing himself against the wall of the army base. He peered around the corned and saw the Joyl's group entering one of the buildings. "As soon as you can," Tylie said.
"I'm at the army base now," he said, keeping his voice low despite the fact his quarries had all moved on. "They're going directly for it." He clenched his fist. "Good luck."
"You too," his wife said, and then fell silent.
Ven went forward, keeping an eye out for any movement. The army base was big, the buildings still half-standing and full of sharp shadows and deep holes. One of them contained something Ven knew Joyl must not control.
If they saw him they would, and could, open fire. He was in an area they controlled, despite the best efforts of Paul and Lynda. A few hours ago he would have been moving even quieter, knowing if they caught him they would call it an act of war. Such times were past now, and all they would do is fill him with holes.
The army base began with a blown-out hallway, the ground littered with rubble and dust. Smashed fluorescent light tubes lay on the ground or hung from what scant ceiling remained.
A few skeletons leaned against walls on stretched out in hallway intersections, staying where they had died.
Ven stepped over them as he had stepped over the rest, his whole life. the Joyl's group was talking, trading words as they banged through one of the rooms connected to the hallway ahead of him.
"It will be around here somewhere, I'm sure of it!" he heard the Joyl said, as he listened outside the doorway. "I wrote it down myself! Not weeks ago! It can't have faded away yet."
"Boss, can't we just find it ourselves?"
"No, you idiot! We spent hours looking for it last time, and I don't want to waste any more time! I want every one of them blown off the map! I want them turned into dust! I want them so very dead we forget they ever existed! Now keep looking!"
Ven looked around the corner of the doorway, not sure what to expect. He found the Joyl, and his soldiers, looking in cabinets, cupboards, and on the walls and ceilings. "Boss," one of them said, pointing at the floor. "Is this it?"
The Joyl jumped forward, shoving the man out of the way. "Yes, yes! Silo six, row eighteen, crate eleven. Out of my way!"
Ven's heart leapt into his throat when he heard the Joyl's voice closing fast. He dashed away from the doorway, trying to keep his footsteps quiet, and found a hole torn in the wall of the next room, scrambling through it. Just a few moments later he heard footsteps in the hallway. He removed his hand from his sidearm and placed it over his pounding heart.
Once the group's footsteps faded, he poked his head out and found the hall empty. He tracked them through the building to a door leading outside. Waiting on the other side of the door was one of the Joyl's men.
He and Ven glanced at each other for a moment, then jumped. Ven got the first hit off, cracking the other man in the jaw, but it felt like hitting a stone wall and Ven's opponent responded with a kick to Ven's ribs. Ven staggered a step back while his opponent turned, facing east. "H-"
Ven tackled him from behind, cutting his shout short and knocking him onto his stomach. Ven straddled him and pounded on the back of his head with his closed fist until the man lay silent. Scavenging frayed wires from a decaying wall, Ven tied his wrists to a pipe sticking out of the ground, and then bound his ankles for good measure before removing his weapons. The man's pistol was in disrepair and seemed likely to go off in Ven's face, but he kept a sharp flip-knife, sticking it in his pocket. He pointed himself in the direction the man had begun to shout and crept away.
"Here they come," Tylie heard. She watched her brother lower binoculars half a mile away, through her rifle's magnified scope. She followed the direction he was looking to see a score of men and women crossing the river, dirty water splashing high. "Tylie, you're up."
"You don't want to wait for them to make the first shot?" Tylie switched the safety off on her gun. "Just for culpability's sake?"
"Oh yeah? Who's going to come get us if we don't?"
"Good." Tylie centered a man's chest in her scope and fired, the loud crack filling the air. The shot blew the man backwards, opening his chest and throwing him across the riverbed. "One down." Tylie watched the rest of them find quick defenses, alerted to her general position thanks to the direction of her shot. She picked off a straggler. "This is easy so far," she said once the ringing in her ears died down.
"More coming down," Tony said. Tylie zoomed out and witnessed double the number of the first wave descending the north bank. "Don't waste bullets."
"I thought you wanted us to give them everything we've got."
"Not you."
"Glad to know I'm special," Tylie said, watching the enemy forces creep forward across the blasted no-man's land in front of the walls. Behind the walls, peering over them, or through small gaps, dozens of soldiers were ready to loose fire at anything getting too close.
The first wave of enemy soldiers began firing at the walls and gates, their bullets pinging off without effect. Tony's soldiers returned fire with greater efficiency, bringing down a few of the attackers. Tylie continued sweeping over the battlefield, and found a bulky man carrying a large device. She shot him in the neck.
When he went down, three people immediately rushed to pick up the device he'd been carrying, and then one of them pointed in her direction. They ran, sprinted, toward the base of the bell tower she was using as her perch.
"Tony!" she said as she tried to aim at any of the runners. They weaved in and out of cover, changing direction and speed. "I think I'm in trouble!"
"We see them, but they're too far away! Tylie get out of there, it could be a bomb!"
Rising from her prone position, she switched off her rifle and shouldered it, racing to the ladder to take her down. Hand by hand she lowered herself, jumping the last several feet and rushing toward the staircase she used to get to ground level. She heard shouts below her and readied her rifle, bringing it to a firing position in seconds.
She closed her ears, blew out a breath, and fired at the first motion she saw.
The bullet took one of the runners in the thigh, spraying blood from his femoral artery. He screamed and the others left him, dragging the device into the center of the bare-bones bell tower. One of them spotted her and fired with his pistol, but the bullets went wild, clipping the stone around her. She fired again, taking him in the eye. The last one toyed with the device, and after a few seconds he ran the way he'd come, leaving his two companions for dead. Tylie ran down the stairs.
She neared the device and saw wires and capsules lining it. A timer in the front read twenty seconds and dropping.
She left the bleeding man to ponder his actions as she sprinted out from under the bell tower, trying not to think about how much time she had before the bomb blew.
A crack split the air and thrust her forward, baking her back and sending her rolling across the old civilization. She came to rest aware she'd broken bones, but her primary worry was the bell tower's alarming lean. Lying on her back, she watched it wobble upside down, then begin to fall.
Picking herself up, caring nothing for her injuries, she put on all the speed she had left. She dared not even turn her head to glance behind her, knowing the bell tower was falling, and knowing she had little time and less energy to outrun it.
Seconds later a great rush of air and music-less sound overpowered everything, covering her vision with motion, breaking the ground away from her feet and sending her bouncing across the air. Dust, dirt, and stones rained around her; she covered her skull and prayed for safety.
A minute later she brought her head up to see it had fallen about forty-five degrees away from the base to her left, in no danger of crushing her but close enough to send a wave of debris raining around her.
Picking herself up, she discovered the broken bones were part of her foot, something in her shoulder, and perhaps a rib. She limped toward the sound of gunshots, rifle held in her good arm.
The sound of the bell tower smashing into the ground reached Ven, but he had no time to consider it. The Joyl's crew, now down a man and apparently uncaring, had descended a set of stairs around a circular hole built into the ground. Their voices echoed up: the Joyl's rapidly warping pitch ran circles around the more natural voices of the men with him.
When Ven reached the stairs he crept down them, letting his weight shift from one foot to the other, careful to avoid making alarming noises. The gritty sunshine faded as he descended, and deep underground shadows grew, turning him into nothing but a set of ears.
The staircase ran circular, around the outside of the hole Ven recognized as a missile silo, thankfully empty--likely it was occupied up until what Lynda poetically referred to as "the day of cleansing," and what everyone else called the apocalypse. It had many levels, and doubtless they had been deep enough to house people who had time to get to safety before the bombs fell. Now their children, or grandchildren, or even great-grandchildren hunkered in one of the many provinces eking out an existence from the dead soil.
Ven crept up to the group, which had stopped. Joyl was messing with the handle, grumbling and swearing under his breath. Ven heard keys jingling, and it was full minutes until the man finally found the correct one to unlock the door. "Gahtdang. Why did Loyl ever lock that? All right, get looking. I don't remember exactly where it is, but it's in here somewhere. Shouldn't be too difficult, even for you idiots. You!"
"Sir?" Ven heard one of the men with him say.
"Stand guard. Can't be too careful, you know!" There was a pause. "Who are you?"
"Ivan, sir."
"Keep an eye out, Ivan. Good man."
"Sir? Can I have one of the flashlights?"
"What are you, stupid? Anybody coming down the stairs will know exactly where you are! No, idiot, you'll use your ears and listen. Those steps were probably rusty before the bombs fell, it should be simple to hear."
"Yes sir."
"And don't make too much noise!"
"Yes sir."
"WHAT DID I JUST SAY?"
Ven grinned to himself as the soldier said nothing, and Ven stomped away. The man trying to peer through the darkness was little more than thirty feet away, around the path attached to the wall. Ven hunkered down and made a cautious step, letting himself rock forward. The action produced no noise.
Gaining a little bit of speed, Ven closed the distance over a matter of minutes. His eyes adjusted, but there was only so much light to work with. Ivan, the guard, was nothing more than a shadow of a different color, standing beside a square aperture. Inside, flashlights roved, throwing the odd beam of light onto Ivan.
Before long Ven crouched less than a foot behind Ivan. The walkway near them had a small break, a gap in the railing leading to a drop of unknown distance, but leading to nothing but a nasty end.
Ven rose at a snail's pace, until he stood upright directly behind the fidgeting man. In a smooth motion he locked his right arm around the man's throat, snapping it closed and then dragging the man until he could sense the yawning drop. "Make one sound and I let you fall," Ven whispered in his ear, still squeezing his breath away. "Just one little sound."
A voice came from the door behind him, asking something of another, and Ven listened as he squeezed his arms, until the guard stopped his minor struggles. Ven brought the unconscious man back onto the walkway and crept to the other side of the door, laying him against the wall. Taking the man's place, he counted who was left. The Joyl and four others, down from six.
He listened to the five of them stumble around the room, apparently opening drawers and searching through other containers. He imagined his wife, Tony, and the other soldiers fighting against the attackers and wishing they would hurry up and find what they were looking for.
Ten minutes later he heard a shout. "Boss!"
A moment later he heard the Joyl. "Finally!" There was a grunt. "This is the end of them! They'll pay for my brother's death if it's the last thing I do!"
"Ven?" Tony asked through the ear bud, shots coming through as well. The sound started Ven and sending his heart racing. "Can you give an update?"
Trying not to even let his thoughts make noise, Ven double tapped on the mic three times. He must have been able to get the urgency through, because Tony didn't respond. Ven let a breath seep out.
"Back topside!" the Joyl said. "And then we join up with the main force!" The group moved back to the door where Ven stood, and the Joyl looked Ven up and down. Ven didn't move a muscle. "Everything all right out here Ivan?"
"Yes, sir," Ven said, attempting to replicate Ivan's tone. The Joyl made a motion with his head and the group moved toward the staircase to bring them back to the surface. The dim light allowed Ven to see the thing the Joyl carried was about as big as a loaf of bread, a mechanical device.
The Joyl led the way and Ven fell in at the back of the group. The other four were between them, and when the one in the back passed the gap in the railing Ven had used to coerce Ivan, Ven jumped forward.
"Watch out, there's-" he began to say, talking as normally as he could. He shoved the person through the gap, sending him tumbling into the darkness. The man shouted, crying out as he fell, but said nothing of value. The Joyl and the rest of the group turned as Ven pretended to reach out futilely, hoping to scope the fallen person to safety.
"What happened?" the Joyl shouted, stomping toward Ven, making the entire metal staircase rattle and shake.
"There's a gap in the railing," Ven said. "I tried to point it out but he fell right through!"
"Serves him right!" the Joyl said. "He has to keep his eyes open! Come Ivan, we're off to destroy our enemies."
The man stepped away, pushing through the remaining soldiers, and resumed climbing the stairs. Ven glanced through the gap in the railing and wondered if the man had lived. He took a deep breath and followed the madman trying to destroy him, his life, and his wife.
Slipping through one of the smaller entrances away from the battle, Tylie attracted no small amount of attention. Three people--farmers or other civilians hiding inside the walls for safety--ran to assist her. When they tried to take her to the doctors tending battle wounds she pushed them away and limped to the front walls, dragging her rifle's stock through the dirt.
"Tylie!" Tony said when he saw her. Bullets flew over their heads and pinged off the cobbled-together sheets of metal they called their walls. "Thank God you're okay!" He inspected her. "You aren't okay."
"I'm-" she grimaced as she slapped his hand away, sending a web of pain shooting through her shoulder. "I'm fine. I can still shoot."
"Not with that, you aren't," Tony said, taking her rifle before she could protest. "This thing would flatten you. How many broken bones do you have, five?" He scrounged a pistol and held it out for her. She returned a disgusted look. "Anything more powerful and you'll be in too much pain to help. Did you even get painkillers?"
"We don't have enough painkillers for everybody, you know that," Tylie said. She took the pistol with her right hand, inspecting it. "People need it more than me."
"You can barely stand."
"I'm fine!"
Tony tilted his head, then nodded. "If mom or dad find out, they'll probably send me out there alone."
"Where are they?" Tylie asked. Tony pointed along the wall, and Tylie spotted their adoptive parents releasing competing streams of bullets at anything they could see. "I don't think they have a leg to stand on."
"Speaking of," Tony said, pointing at her injured foot. Tylie scoffed and pushed past him, trying not to limp too much.
She climbed the barricades behind the walls and found a gap, helping shift a wounded soldier out of the way. Poking her pistol through, she used her left arm as much as she could to stabilize, and fired off a shot. The bullet went wild, landing nowhere near where she was trying to aim. She sighed and tried again.
The light grew stronger, and Ven knew he was running out of time. He readied his pistol. He looked for more opportunities to off his foes before the light exposed him, but found none. The staircase ended with a beam of smoky light, and when the Joyl and his soldiers climbed into it they began to squint.
When the man in front of him hit the light, Ven pushed past him and squeezed a shot at the next man, striking him in the middle of his back and sending the others into wild motions, looking for the attacker. Ven spun and smashed the one he'd pushed back in the temple with his pistol's butt. He spun and pointed the pistol at the Joyl, who hadn't found it necessary to do more then turn around.
After a moment the Joyl pointed a finger. "You aren't Ivan."
"And you aren't Joyl," Ven said, and realized he could have chosen wiser words.
The man's face twisted and warped, changing from mild surprise to limitless anger. His eyebrows pressed down on his eyes, his mouth pulled apart to reveal sharp, pointed teeth, and his hands curled into white fists. "Shoot him dead! Kill him!"
Before the words were out of his mouth Ven fired on the remaining soldier, hitting him in the center of the chest and knocking him to the ground, and the Joyl realized he was out of fodder.
"Perhaps we can discuss this like gentlemen," he said, before diving behind a rock, avoiding another bullet. Ven gave the man groaning on the ground another blow to the head, knocking him out, before returning to the Joyl.
"Who was it meeting with Paul and Lynda?" Ven asked. "A double?"
"My brother, you simpleton! My only brother!" the Joyl said from behind the rock. Ven heard him draw a weapon. "And you killed him in cold blood!"
"Actually, it was my wife who killed him, and it was because he was drawing a weapon at a peace accord. Who's the real Joyl?"
"Neither of us are! He was Loyl, I am Goyl! Together, we are Joyl, and we rule with an iron fist!"
"Only one of you now," Ven said. "Give up the bomb."
"Never!" Goyl appeared from the behind the rock and fired a dart from a crossbow, missing Ven by a mile and giving him a chance to fire back. The bullet dug a scar in the rock and disappeared. Ven heard the crossbow cycle and found his own cover, a jagged piece of wall buried in the dirt. Goyl saw him moving and kicked up clouds of dust, running in the direction of the Ven's province.
Ven jumped up and followed, arms pumping and feet slapping the ground. He replaced his pistol, knowing the odds were in Goyl's favor if Ven shot at him. He concentrated on running, watching the eastern walls of the province grow from a smudge in the distance.
When Tylie finally hit one of the attackers she jumped, ecstatic, only to remember the numerous broken bones and wounds she had. She landed and groaned, then ducked, hearing bullets whiz over her head and bounce off the metal wall in front of her.
One of the soldiers to her right fell, crying out and clasping a hand over a wound in her stomach. Tylie rushed to her side, pulling a string of bandages from a pouch at her belt and hurrying them around her stomach, hoping to stop the bleeding. Before she could finish, something detonated against the wall.
A moment later she landed on the ground, her bad shoulder dominating all other sensations. She looked and felt surprised to see her arm still attached as shards of metal and body parts rained around her. She rolled over and tried to crawl away as more people rushed forward toward what she assumed was a hole in the wall to keep marauders from streaming through. She reached a table and used her right arm to haul herself to her feet. When she turned around she found a dozen people firing everywhere from a tear in the wall, narrow at the bottom but much wider at the top.
Fire and smoke blazed and covered her vision in the gap, and her pains spoke up. She had to brace herself on the table to keep from falling back to the ground, and looking at her hands spread on its surface she realized she'd lost the pistol. Her hands felt empty. Shots, shouts rang out and buried her, boots pounding on the ground seemed to shake her. The smell of blood and gunpowder roiled her stomach. The air felt like it was made of iron strands, and if she had the strength to run her hand through it she would hear a discordant gliss.
Arms grabbed her and she threw herself away from the pain, until her mind broke through the haze and realized the person was a doctor trying to bring her to one of the medical tents. In a moment she was on the ground with her back against a wood post, two people assessing her injuries. She swallowed and wiped her face with her good hand and found blood smeared on her palm and fingers. She sat and listened to people die inside and outside the medical tent.
It could have been hours, or maybe it was only minutes, but she heard a voice come through her earpiece, shattering her mindless mental wandering. The voice was a comforting one, though the words and tone it used brought her mind back.
"Who said that?" she asked.
"Tylie! Joyl is coming toward the walls with the bomb! I need you to shoot him down! We're on the east field, about half a mile away!"
She heard the words, and on their own she knew what each of them meant, but the sentences made no sense. She made a confused sound as she listened to panting coming through her earpiece, a sound she responded to in a strange way, body becoming hot and heart rate increasing.
"Tylie, can you hear me?" the person asked again. "I need you to shoot Joyl!"
"Ven!" Tylie said, feeling a shock spread through her. "Where are you?"
"East of the walls, about a half-mile away. Hurry, he's getting closer and if he sets that bomb off none of us are surviving the winter!"
Tylie looked around the dark medical tent. Clouds of smoke billowed across the opening, and as she got closer to the exit a wall of echoing gunshots threatened to push her back inside. Almost her entire body felt numb; the rest of it hurt. She found a gun, not her rifle but something she could use anyway, lying on the ground. She picked it up and checked the bullets inside. There were less than half a dozen; she headed east, limping, ribs hurting, shoulder waking up and once again making her left arm dead and useless.
Close enough, Ven leapt, hitting Goyl in the back and sending him sprawling. The bomb bounced on the ground and tumbled over, coming to rest in the dirt as Ven pushed himself up. Goyl was only on his knees when Ven reached him, and he dealt the multicolored madman another blow, knocking him down. He took a step back, trying to force air back into his lungs. Goyl lay on his back, chest rising and falling like a cat's.
Ven went to the bomb and picked it up, turning around to find Goyl on his feet and with his crossbow aimed at him. Ven put the bomb in front of his chest, hoping it would dissuade an attempt at a shot.
"Put it on the ground, you simpleton!" Goyl said, crossbow wavering. "Or this bolt goes out the back of your skull!"
"We both know if I let you have this, I'm as good as dead anyway," Ven said. The bomb was too big to carry with one hand, or he would have tried to free his pistol. "Detonating this will doom hundreds of people to hunger by the end of the year."
"True. Very true. So very true." Goyl adjusted his grip and took a step forward. "And if you don't drop it, and I kill you, I'll tell you something else that will happen. When the winter sets in, and your stupid, idiotic, murderous people begin to go hungry, I will graciously allow the women and children--save the bitch Lynda, of course--to stay with my people, since we have enough food and technology to support them. It will be a hard few months, but more people will survive than if they stay inside your walls.
Goyl's face twisted. "Except, one cold night, I will take a few soldiers to wherever your wife is sleeping, thinking of her dead husband, and have them hold her down. I will rape her-" he drew in a huge breath- "until she dies! I will dig new holes in her until the only thing left in one piece is her fragile skull, and then I will crush it under my boots until it's nothing more than dust to scatter over your grave!"
Ven started walking forward. "So be it!" Goyl shouted, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, because he hadn't loaded it. He scrambled in his pockets, trying to pull out a dart, but Ven threw the bomb away and dove forward, knocking Goyl over again. He kicked the crossbow away and waded in, pushing away the man's flailing limps, kicking and punching, aware he wouldn't feel exertion for for a few minutes, Goyl's twisted words still inside his head. He shot his fist forward again and again, bouncing Goyl's head on the ground. He kicked his stomach and ribs, hoping they'd break, hoping he'd spit up whatever garbage he'd eaten, hoping his nipple would burst and eject the ichor running in his veins.
After a few minutes Ven stumbled backward, coughing on his own adrenaline. A bloody pulp replaced Goyl. Ven went back to the bomb and found it difficult to rise.
Something struck his back and he fell into the dust. "You think that was a beating?!" Goyl said. "My brother and I did so much worse to each other before we even hit our teens! I told you what would happen if you didn't drop it, and now look!"
Ven saw Goyl pull a blade from a hidden sheath. "You're at my mercy! I have no mercy for you!"
The man wailed as he charged, swinging the long, misshapen blade through the air in all directions. Ven dragged his pistol out and took aim, unable to do anything before Goyl reached him. The blade dragged across the back of his hand and sent a line of Ven's blood into the air as his gun dropped to his feet. He lunged backward as Goyl advanced, madness replacing any other possible emotion on his bloody, bent, bruised face. The blade whistled past Ven's nose.
Had she the option, Tylie would have detached her arm to cut the pain off. She reached the east side of the enclosed stronghold, found a pair of binoculars, and held them up to her eyes with the rifle leaning against the metal patchwork wall. There was no one around; she heard only the distant pop of guns firing.
She scanned the east field, where they grew a great deal of their food when it was warm enough. The river surrounded it on two sides, and they could cast their eyes over it from the walls should danger threaten.
"Ven, where are you? I don't see you." Tylie swept her zoomed-in vision across the field, seeing nothing. Ven didn't respond. "How far are you from-" She found the two men, dancing in the dirt, the Joyl waving a blade and Ven jumping away, over and over. She let the binoculars drop to the ground and picked up her rifle, balancing it on the top of the wall. She found them again, in the scope. "Ven, if you can hear me, try to give me some space to hit him. You're too close."
While Ven didn't fully understand the words, he knew what Tylie was asking. He dove backwards, hitting the ground and sending a bolt of pain into his back. He heard a crack and Goyl staggered, blood shooting from his knee. The man screamed, a long sound Ven thought would never end, and when it did Goyl got back to his feet, dragging his foot toward Ven. There was another crack and Ven saw a cloud of dust spring between Goyl's feet.
Goyl dove forward, blade extended, and Ven rolled out of the way. The madman's weapon plunged into the dirt, and as Ven rolled he felt something hard in one of his pockets. He patted it and remembered the flip-knife he'd taken from one of Goyl's soldiers. As Goyl pulled his weapon from the earth on one knee, he took it out and extended it. Goyl laughed.
"Yes, I'm at your mercy now!" He stood, snarling when he put weight on his torn knee. "I suppose that's your little bitch taking potshots at me, isn't it?"
"Your hear that, Tylie? He just called you a bitch."
"He's about to call me a lot more."
Another crack, and Goyl flew backwards, blade spinning away. He landed and cried out, body stretching and compressing as he screamed. "Right in the stomach," Tylie said. "Finish the job."
Ven walked up to the man and found his face contorted, glaring at him with his teeth gritted and low whines leaking through. Ven knelt and grabbed the clumps of the man's multicolored hair. He took a few deep breaths.
When he was done, Goyl lay still.
"You didn't kill him," Tylie said.
"Paul and Lynda are going to lock him away for a long time," Ven said. "In fact, I have a certain deep, dark hole in mind that might just work perfectly. The bomb's in our control." He slung Goyl over his shoulder and took a moment to himself. "Hopefully when his soldiers see we've captured him, they'll give up." He started walking.
"They're crazy just like he is."
"Guess you'd better start shooting them, then."
"I would, except they blew up my tower. I've got more broken bones than whole ones by now. Ahh." Ven heard a sound like a bundle of clothes dropped on the ground. "Need to take a break. How long until you get here?"
Ven shifted Goyl's unconscious form and looked up at the wall as he put one foot in front of the other. "Probably about ten minutes."
"I love you, Ven." Ven tapped the mic once.
Ven carefully climbed over a pile of rubble, which he thought he remembered was once a post office. He kept low, hoping the beams and piles of rock obscured him from the group he approached.
"Anything else?" Tylie's father Paul asked, also in Ven's ear bud "Are they carrying anything?"
"Nothing. His head's held high, his hands are in sight, and he isn't hesitating. I see a man who's come to talk, just like we asked," Tylie said. Ven heard a scrape. "We could end this, right now. All I have to do is twitch my finger."
"We asked him to talk. If we kill him we're no better than he is," Tylie's mother, Lynda, answered. Ven could have argued, but he couldn't give away his position. "Ven, position." Ven tapped on the mic twice. "Don't delay."
"He came to our province to talk, with nothing but what is essentially an honor guard. Besides, if he dies, whatever freak waiting to take control attacks and everything we've worked for is blown away," Paul said. "Tony, everything ready?"
"You better believe it," Tony, Tylie's brother, said. "We've got every gun in our possession aimed right at his freak face. He so much as licks his lips and we can turn him into dust."
Ven rolled his eyes. A moment later, he got to his position, and tapped the mic once. "Ven's ready," Lynda said. "All in readiness?"
A chorus of affirmations followed, except from Ven, who sat in a shadow under a still-standing wall and a portion of a ceiling, watching a large camp of men and women move quickly, many with their ears pressed against radios, waiting for their leader to begin the meeting with Paul and Lynda. Ven settled in. The people had tatters over their shoulders and across their hips, bolts of cloth and strips of leather. They held weapons big and small, and seemed willing to point them at themselves, each other, and anything else.
"All right, let him in," Ven heard Paul say, and Ven then heard a great deal of motion. He watched the camp before him slow down, crowding around their radios.
"I'm turning my gain up to full, Ven," Tony said, "but I won't have it on. Sister mine will give you the play-by-play."
"Joyl and his people are inside the main ground," Tylie said a few moments later. "He's strutting forward like he owns the place." A minute later her heard her again. "All right, they just entered the meeting space."
Ven heard nothing for a few seconds. "Joyl, thank you for agreeing to meet us here," Paul said.
"It speaks well to your leadership capabilities," Lynda said. "None of us will survive the winter if we're spending all of it fighting instead of trying to grow food. We want an end to the hostilities." There was a short pause. "We're willing to make amends."
"Amends," Ven heard, as if from a distance away. The voice jumped and fell spasmodically. "Amends for stealing? For killing?"
"We killed no one who did not break the barrier," Paul said, keeping his voice level. "We are willing to return the land we took, up to the riverbed. A great deal of space and much of it farmable."
Ven watched the camp in front of him pump their fists in the air. Such a gift was worth much.
"We will want something in return, of course," Paul said. "I'm sure there are many details we can quibble about. Do you agree?"
"Yes, yes. I love to quibble." Joyl's voice started, then stopped. "My favorite. But you know, I'm angry."
Ven heard his wife blow out a breath.
"Some of the people you killed...they were some of my favorites too!" Joyl said, his voice shifting. "All they were doing was a little exploring! Just having a look at things! It isn't fair, I tell you, to kill them in such cold blood."
"They brought weapons into our province, and resisting numerous commands to leave," Lynda said. "After the erratic actions of your group, we were not at liberty to take any chances. Many of your people--acting on your orders--have resulted in the destruction of land, supplies, and the loss of lives. If they were your favorite," Lynda said, and Ven heard the sharp tongue he'd grown up with, "you would not have sent them to die."
"That's my mom," Tylie said.
"They wanted to go!" Joyl said, as if the words absolved him of any guilt. "I wasn't about to stop them. I'm all about freedom, you see? Freedom to go where they want, take what they want, and kill who they want. In this, our burned-out land, can you really say they shouldn't be able to live a little? Enjoy whatever life they have left in a world with one foot in the planetary graveyard?"
Ven watched and heard the campground in front of him shout and cheer. "If that means a touch of theft here, a handful of rape there, who's to say they shouldn't do it? We're all just trying to get by. You do it your way, and we do it our way!"
They crowed, cheered, and shouted. Ven saw fights break out just because they could.
"We say they shouldn't," Paul said.
"I could kill him," Tylie said. "I could just kill him right now and this would all be over. He wouldn't even hear the bullet. He'd die, they'd attack us, and we'd prove we're the stronger province by gunning them down."
Ven tapped his mic twice, and he heard his wife sigh. "You all right Ven?" she asked. He tapped his mic once. "Be careful."
"And who exactly are you to tell us what to do?" Joyl shouted. "Why should we abide your rules?"
"We are the ones who had to endure your tiring madness just to stay alive," Paul said. "And we are the ones who find ourselves in the position to demand things of you, because we are the ones who are growing in size and population even faster than you are losing soldiers."
"Those don't seem like very good reasons," Joyl said, and Ven imagined him crossing his arms.
"When you rule over an empty land, perhaps then you will accept the truth," Lynda said. "Your words indicate you are not willing to come to an accord, whether or not we offer land in exchange."
Ven observed a number of arguments break out in Joyl's campground. To him there seemed to be two camps: those who wanted to do nothing more than slaughter and raid, and those who would rather have accepted an end to the hostilities.
"There was something you mentioned," Joyl said. "You wanted something in return?"
"Yes. See the map my son brings you," Paul said, and Ven heard a rustle. "The marked areas are our two provinces. The area marked in red would go to you, and the area in blue would go to us. A much smaller area, but on our side of the river and worth more to us than having to patrol the bigger area on your side of the river."
"Ahah, ahah. I see. Despite the area being smaller than what you give up, it is more...time efficient." Ven heard paper crumpling. "It all makes too much sense for you. You put weight on lives, so you want this more than me. I demand more."
Ven listened to Lynda suck in a breath. "What do you mean?"
"Supplies would be nice. Designs for mechanical implementation. Training, if need be. Things to help us get our farming operations off the ground." Ven saw the argument increase in volume in the camp. The sides were becoming a little clearer. A few guns went off into the air. "I want peace as much as you do!" Joyl said. "But we aren't prepared! A peace accord would doom us unless we have your guidance in such esoteric manners as working the land."
Ven rolled his eyes. He could almost hear his wife doing the same. "We'll have to meet with our advisers, but I foresee an agreement."
"Wonderful, wonderful," Joyl said. Ven watched the campground in front of him laugh at the idea.
"He's smiling," Tylie said to Ven. "I don't want him smiling. I want him lying face down in a gutter."
Ven said nothing, watching the campground with interest. A few people had gone into one of the structures, beckoning someone to exit with them.
"Is it settled, then?" Lynda asked. "Do you agree to the terms?"
"He's making a show of trying to decide," Tylie said. She and Ven both knew Joyl already had his decision in mind. "Now he's-"
Ven stopped listening. The man who had stepped out from one of the structures in front of him appeared to be none other than Joyl, their leader. Dressed in flamboyant rags, hair dyed random colors, piercings and chains hung from his face, thin legs poking out from underneath his tattered cloak. He spread his arms, coming toward the groups huddled around their radios, and they cheered.
"Joyl is at their camp," Ven said. Tylie, Paul, and Lynda heard him. "At least it looks like him. They're celebrating something. They've succeeded at something."
"It's clearly Joyl talking with mom and dad," Tylie said. "I'd know those skinny legs anywhere."
"If this isn't Joyl then somebody's doing a stellar job imitating him," Ven said. He watched for a moment. "I swear it's him. They're celebrating. Too much celebration for people who just agreed to a peace accord. They're cheering and shouting and waving weapons in the air. If they'd just been told a bomb had gone off in our camp I can't imagine them acting any differently."
"Do your people want peace, I wonder?" Lynda asked, interrupting the Joyl she and Paul were talking to. "If you go back to your camp and tell them what you agreed to, will they cheer?"
"Mom's got things under control," Tylie said.
The Joyl cleared his throat. "I suspect many of them will be upset to cease warring ways. Others will be pleased to settle down. I will have to talk to them and convince them it is the right decision. With your additional gifts, it shouldn't be difficult."
Ven watched the continued cheering from the second Joyl and the people around him, and he shook his head. "Lying right out his bony ass. They're practically throwing a party. Put the pressure on him, Lynda."
"You're so sure you can tell them how to think, what to do?" Paul's mother-in-law asked. "It seems to me they're an independent lot. Why would they listen to you now? Why would they obey you?"
"Mom just leaned forward."
"Are you even their leader?" Lynda asked, and Ven heard the commanding voice even through the ear bud "It seems to me there's no reason to make an agreement with you if the people you pretend to command are just going to keep raiding us anyway!"
The Joyl Ven could see stopped prancing for a moment, and ripped a radio out of another man's hand, holding it up to his ear with a furious expression.
"Don't you dare tell me I can't tell my people what to do!" the other Joyl said, and Tylie added he had jabbed his finger at her mother. "They'd bow at my feet if I told them to! They live for my commands! If I tell them not to do something, they do not do it!"
"Oh, she just leaned back," Tylie said. "I'd be ready to move, Ven."
"And how are we supposed to trust you when you say such things? How do we know you're even Joyl at all? We know for a fact there is another man in your campground right now who happens to look exactly like you!"
Ven huddled deeper into the shadow as weapons flew from holsters in Joyl's campground. The Joyl he could see started pointing in all directions, though the finger avoided Ven. Ven began working on the drubbing he would give Lynda when he got home.
"Mom, for God's sake," Tylie said. "Are you trying to get my husband killed?"
"How dare you say such a thing!" the Joyl meeting with Paul and Lynda screamed. "I am the only leader my people have ever and will ever know!"
Ven heard a flurry of cloaks and hardware, and then something exploded in his ear. More gunshots erupted, sounding farther away, and grunts and thuds came over his earpiece. He tapped on his mic in twos, hoping to get his wife's attention.
"He pulled out a gun," Tylie said. "I dropped him as soon as I saw it. His soldiers bit it soon after."
Ven watched the frenzy grow in front of him. Tylie's powerful shot echoed across the barren remains of the once-great city they huddled in. The other Joyl was shrieking, bellowing, going red and purple in the face. Ven heard noise over his earpiece and then winced away as something blared out. It calmed down. "Shit, sorry," Tony said, "forgot to turn the gain down. They're all dead, Ven. I'd get out of there if I were you."
"I can't move an inch right now," Ven said. "They know they're being watched, and furious. If I so much as put a toe out of line it gets blasted off. Thanks, Lynda."
"I had to press him," the woman said in response. "I had to make him want to convince his people to agree."
"You're welcome, by the way. He was aiming for you," Tylie said. Ven heard the sound of her climbing down from her high perch.
"Tony, start directing people. We're going to need a strong defense. Ven, you're sure there's another Joyl in their camp?" Paul said.
"Certainly not for very long," Ven said. "They're getting ready for war. I see more weapons being loaded right now than I think we have available. I'm very glad you chose to do all of this. Tylie, just in case, I love you."
"Bullshit. You're getting back safely," his wife answered. Ven watched the extra Joyl empty round after round into the air, screaming at the top of his lungs. "Tony, get my husband home!"
"His comm's off, honey," Lynda said. "And anyway, we need Ven there to tell us their attack plan. Ven, what can you tell us?"
The group in front of Ven grew, filling up the center area of the campground. The Joyl was making a speech, full of shouts and invectives and promises of torture, of murder. He was shaking, shivering, trembling with anger and the power of the words he said. After a few minutes, the group separated into two. One mobilized south toward the river and Ven's home, the other--a much smaller group, only about a half-dozen, including the second Joyl--began marching east.
"They know. They know. Shit, they know." Ven said, watching the eastward group disappear in the surrounding rubble. "Almost all of them are heading south, armed to the teeth and beyond. A group less than ten are going east."
"They might not know," Paul said. "They might just be going over there to make sure there isn't anything we want."
"They're too direct for that," Ven said. He tried to count the bigger group but got lost after fifty. "They know there's something there and they're going to get it."
The comms were silent for a minute, followed by Ven's father-in-law releasing an explosive curse. "All of this was supposed to be about keeping Joyl and the rest of those madmen away from it!" he said. "Ven, I'm ordering you to follow them and make sure they don't find it. No matter what you do, stop them."
"Understood," Ven said. "I'm not going anywhere for a few more minutes, but I'll be able to move out soon."
"He can't do that!" Tylie said. "If they find him now, they won't even stop to break his fingers, they'll just riddle him with bullets!" She puffed, probably running back to the encampment they called home. "Ven, you need to get back here!"
"If Joyl's madmen get hold of it, this has all been for nothing!" Lynda said. "As much as I want Ven to get home safe, this is bigger than him! This is bigger than all of us!"
She said nothing, but Ven heard Tylie's furious thoughts. A lifetime of knowing his wife made it so he could know almost to a word what she was thinking. "Tylie, it's okay. I know what I'm getting into. I'll be back before breakfast."
Still hearing nothing from his wife, Ven found he had a chance to relocate. He scrambled over the loose bricks of the pile next to him, heading east after the smaller group.
"I love you, Ven," Tylie said a few minutes later. Ven tapped his mic once.
When Tylie entered the inner area of their encampment, she wasn't surprised to find it a swarm of bodies. She pushed forward, scoped rifle slung over her shoulder, until she reached her parents.
"We'll need you in your normal spot," Paul said. Tylie's father, haggard and younger than he looked, barely gave her a moment. "If Ven's right, we're going to have the fight of our life on our hands here."
"How many are there supposed to be?" Tylie asked.
"If reports are right, at least a hundred."
"A hundred men and women who want nothing more than to put bullets in us," Lynda said, coming up behind Paul with a few rifles. She put them on the bench in front of her and began disassembling them. "They have more weapons than us and aren't afraid to waste them." She glanced up at Tylie. "He'll be fine."
"He'd better be," Tylie said, leaving the tent and hunting down her brother. She passed through the circular meeting space and witnessed a few people drag Joyl's body away. She thought about stopping them to give it a kick, but then Tony got her attention.
"They're coming direct from the north," he said. They, and almost a dozen more people, stood inside one of their tents with a rudimentary map on the table in the center. Tony moved his finger down, indicating the path he believed the attackers would take. "It's hard to say they'll do anything other than dash themselves against our walls, but we need to be ready."
"They have more weapons than they do able bodies," one of the soldiers said. "They're going to bring everything they have against us and might not stop until one of us is destroyed." He shot a glance at Tylie, who returned it. "Hope you have more bullets for them."
"Plenty," Tylie said.
"There's something else." Tony snapped his fingers to get their attention. "An additional wrinkle. Joyl's people are erratic, crazed, and aggressive, but they aren't dumb. They know someone was watching them during the meeting. They don't know it was only one person, but they might be aware of the fact Ven won't be able to sneak home with them beating down our gates. If we want to keep Ven alive, we have to send them running home with their tails between their legs. We can't just push them away and create a standoff outside the walls."
"Meaning?" Tylie asked.
"We give as good as we get," Tony said. "Bullet for bullet, return to sender. Make them wish their wild leader had never come near us." Tylie smiled. "Whatever it takes."
"How long?" someone asked Tony. He said nothing for a moment.
"Less than an hour. The river's low right now so that won't stop them." His eyes scanned over the map, and he grabbed a stubby pencil. Drawing a few paths from the north toward the area marked as theirs, he began to separate the defensive groups. "They'll have explosives. Don't let anyone get too close. If they're as wild as Ven made them sound, we'll have the advantage if we stick to a defensive game plan. Keep behind cover and let them have it."
A few minutes later Tony left the tent, and Tylie grabbed his arm, spinning him around. "What if Ven comes back during the attack?" she said. "What if he finds himself in the middle of those brutes?"
"Then we hope he finds somewhere to hide until we get them to leave," Tony said. "But you know he isn't going to be back that soon. He has his own job to do. Don't tell me you don't know how important it is Joyl's people don't get it."
Tylie stared at the dirt under her brother's feet. "I won't leave him out there to die, but if what mom and dad say is true, he's likely to keep us alive more than the other way around."
Ven, tailing the group headed east, was now sure the Joyl he followed was the real one. The man spat wild sayings, dancing through the dusty destruction, berated and beat the soldiers traveling with him without a moment between.
They reached the river, past where it twisted to a north-south flow, and splashed through it. Ven waited until they were over the hill beyond the riverbank before following, aware how much noise he could make. The river's low level made it easy to cross but no less noisy.
He caught up in only a few minutes as the group stopped at the crumbling stone walls of the army base and passing through a hole large enough to admit all of them. He was creeping closer when Tylie contacted him.
"Ven, you there?" she said. He turned the volume down on his ear bud and tapped the mic once. "It isn't going to be easy for you to get back. The attack could be going on for a while...can you relay your position?"
He tapped twice, pressing himself against the wall of the army base. He peered around the corned and saw the Joyl's group entering one of the buildings. "As soon as you can," Tylie said.
"I'm at the army base now," he said, keeping his voice low despite the fact his quarries had all moved on. "They're going directly for it." He clenched his fist. "Good luck."
"You too," his wife said, and then fell silent.
Ven went forward, keeping an eye out for any movement. The army base was big, the buildings still half-standing and full of sharp shadows and deep holes. One of them contained something Ven knew Joyl must not control.
If they saw him they would, and could, open fire. He was in an area they controlled, despite the best efforts of Paul and Lynda. A few hours ago he would have been moving even quieter, knowing if they caught him they would call it an act of war. Such times were past now, and all they would do is fill him with holes.
The army base began with a blown-out hallway, the ground littered with rubble and dust. Smashed fluorescent light tubes lay on the ground or hung from what scant ceiling remained.
A few skeletons leaned against walls on stretched out in hallway intersections, staying where they had died.
Ven stepped over them as he had stepped over the rest, his whole life. the Joyl's group was talking, trading words as they banged through one of the rooms connected to the hallway ahead of him.
"It will be around here somewhere, I'm sure of it!" he heard the Joyl said, as he listened outside the doorway. "I wrote it down myself! Not weeks ago! It can't have faded away yet."
"Boss, can't we just find it ourselves?"
"No, you idiot! We spent hours looking for it last time, and I don't want to waste any more time! I want every one of them blown off the map! I want them turned into dust! I want them so very dead we forget they ever existed! Now keep looking!"
Ven looked around the corner of the doorway, not sure what to expect. He found the Joyl, and his soldiers, looking in cabinets, cupboards, and on the walls and ceilings. "Boss," one of them said, pointing at the floor. "Is this it?"
The Joyl jumped forward, shoving the man out of the way. "Yes, yes! Silo six, row eighteen, crate eleven. Out of my way!"
Ven's heart leapt into his throat when he heard the Joyl's voice closing fast. He dashed away from the doorway, trying to keep his footsteps quiet, and found a hole torn in the wall of the next room, scrambling through it. Just a few moments later he heard footsteps in the hallway. He removed his hand from his sidearm and placed it over his pounding heart.
Once the group's footsteps faded, he poked his head out and found the hall empty. He tracked them through the building to a door leading outside. Waiting on the other side of the door was one of the Joyl's men.
He and Ven glanced at each other for a moment, then jumped. Ven got the first hit off, cracking the other man in the jaw, but it felt like hitting a stone wall and Ven's opponent responded with a kick to Ven's ribs. Ven staggered a step back while his opponent turned, facing east. "H-"
Ven tackled him from behind, cutting his shout short and knocking him onto his stomach. Ven straddled him and pounded on the back of his head with his closed fist until the man lay silent. Scavenging frayed wires from a decaying wall, Ven tied his wrists to a pipe sticking out of the ground, and then bound his ankles for good measure before removing his weapons. The man's pistol was in disrepair and seemed likely to go off in Ven's face, but he kept a sharp flip-knife, sticking it in his pocket. He pointed himself in the direction the man had begun to shout and crept away.
"Here they come," Tylie heard. She watched her brother lower binoculars half a mile away, through her rifle's magnified scope. She followed the direction he was looking to see a score of men and women crossing the river, dirty water splashing high. "Tylie, you're up."
"You don't want to wait for them to make the first shot?" Tylie switched the safety off on her gun. "Just for culpability's sake?"
"Oh yeah? Who's going to come get us if we don't?"
"Good." Tylie centered a man's chest in her scope and fired, the loud crack filling the air. The shot blew the man backwards, opening his chest and throwing him across the riverbed. "One down." Tylie watched the rest of them find quick defenses, alerted to her general position thanks to the direction of her shot. She picked off a straggler. "This is easy so far," she said once the ringing in her ears died down.
"More coming down," Tony said. Tylie zoomed out and witnessed double the number of the first wave descending the north bank. "Don't waste bullets."
"I thought you wanted us to give them everything we've got."
"Not you."
"Glad to know I'm special," Tylie said, watching the enemy forces creep forward across the blasted no-man's land in front of the walls. Behind the walls, peering over them, or through small gaps, dozens of soldiers were ready to loose fire at anything getting too close.
The first wave of enemy soldiers began firing at the walls and gates, their bullets pinging off without effect. Tony's soldiers returned fire with greater efficiency, bringing down a few of the attackers. Tylie continued sweeping over the battlefield, and found a bulky man carrying a large device. She shot him in the neck.
When he went down, three people immediately rushed to pick up the device he'd been carrying, and then one of them pointed in her direction. They ran, sprinted, toward the base of the bell tower she was using as her perch.
"Tony!" she said as she tried to aim at any of the runners. They weaved in and out of cover, changing direction and speed. "I think I'm in trouble!"
"We see them, but they're too far away! Tylie get out of there, it could be a bomb!"
Rising from her prone position, she switched off her rifle and shouldered it, racing to the ladder to take her down. Hand by hand she lowered herself, jumping the last several feet and rushing toward the staircase she used to get to ground level. She heard shouts below her and readied her rifle, bringing it to a firing position in seconds.
She closed her ears, blew out a breath, and fired at the first motion she saw.
The bullet took one of the runners in the thigh, spraying blood from his femoral artery. He screamed and the others left him, dragging the device into the center of the bare-bones bell tower. One of them spotted her and fired with his pistol, but the bullets went wild, clipping the stone around her. She fired again, taking him in the eye. The last one toyed with the device, and after a few seconds he ran the way he'd come, leaving his two companions for dead. Tylie ran down the stairs.
She neared the device and saw wires and capsules lining it. A timer in the front read twenty seconds and dropping.
She left the bleeding man to ponder his actions as she sprinted out from under the bell tower, trying not to think about how much time she had before the bomb blew.
A crack split the air and thrust her forward, baking her back and sending her rolling across the old civilization. She came to rest aware she'd broken bones, but her primary worry was the bell tower's alarming lean. Lying on her back, she watched it wobble upside down, then begin to fall.
Picking herself up, caring nothing for her injuries, she put on all the speed she had left. She dared not even turn her head to glance behind her, knowing the bell tower was falling, and knowing she had little time and less energy to outrun it.
Seconds later a great rush of air and music-less sound overpowered everything, covering her vision with motion, breaking the ground away from her feet and sending her bouncing across the air. Dust, dirt, and stones rained around her; she covered her skull and prayed for safety.
A minute later she brought her head up to see it had fallen about forty-five degrees away from the base to her left, in no danger of crushing her but close enough to send a wave of debris raining around her.
Picking herself up, she discovered the broken bones were part of her foot, something in her shoulder, and perhaps a rib. She limped toward the sound of gunshots, rifle held in her good arm.
The sound of the bell tower smashing into the ground reached Ven, but he had no time to consider it. The Joyl's crew, now down a man and apparently uncaring, had descended a set of stairs around a circular hole built into the ground. Their voices echoed up: the Joyl's rapidly warping pitch ran circles around the more natural voices of the men with him.
When Ven reached the stairs he crept down them, letting his weight shift from one foot to the other, careful to avoid making alarming noises. The gritty sunshine faded as he descended, and deep underground shadows grew, turning him into nothing but a set of ears.
The staircase ran circular, around the outside of the hole Ven recognized as a missile silo, thankfully empty--likely it was occupied up until what Lynda poetically referred to as "the day of cleansing," and what everyone else called the apocalypse. It had many levels, and doubtless they had been deep enough to house people who had time to get to safety before the bombs fell. Now their children, or grandchildren, or even great-grandchildren hunkered in one of the many provinces eking out an existence from the dead soil.
Ven crept up to the group, which had stopped. Joyl was messing with the handle, grumbling and swearing under his breath. Ven heard keys jingling, and it was full minutes until the man finally found the correct one to unlock the door. "Gahtdang. Why did Loyl ever lock that? All right, get looking. I don't remember exactly where it is, but it's in here somewhere. Shouldn't be too difficult, even for you idiots. You!"
"Sir?" Ven heard one of the men with him say.
"Stand guard. Can't be too careful, you know!" There was a pause. "Who are you?"
"Ivan, sir."
"Keep an eye out, Ivan. Good man."
"Sir? Can I have one of the flashlights?"
"What are you, stupid? Anybody coming down the stairs will know exactly where you are! No, idiot, you'll use your ears and listen. Those steps were probably rusty before the bombs fell, it should be simple to hear."
"Yes sir."
"And don't make too much noise!"
"Yes sir."
"WHAT DID I JUST SAY?"
Ven grinned to himself as the soldier said nothing, and Ven stomped away. The man trying to peer through the darkness was little more than thirty feet away, around the path attached to the wall. Ven hunkered down and made a cautious step, letting himself rock forward. The action produced no noise.
Gaining a little bit of speed, Ven closed the distance over a matter of minutes. His eyes adjusted, but there was only so much light to work with. Ivan, the guard, was nothing more than a shadow of a different color, standing beside a square aperture. Inside, flashlights roved, throwing the odd beam of light onto Ivan.
Before long Ven crouched less than a foot behind Ivan. The walkway near them had a small break, a gap in the railing leading to a drop of unknown distance, but leading to nothing but a nasty end.
Ven rose at a snail's pace, until he stood upright directly behind the fidgeting man. In a smooth motion he locked his right arm around the man's throat, snapping it closed and then dragging the man until he could sense the yawning drop. "Make one sound and I let you fall," Ven whispered in his ear, still squeezing his breath away. "Just one little sound."
A voice came from the door behind him, asking something of another, and Ven listened as he squeezed his arms, until the guard stopped his minor struggles. Ven brought the unconscious man back onto the walkway and crept to the other side of the door, laying him against the wall. Taking the man's place, he counted who was left. The Joyl and four others, down from six.
He listened to the five of them stumble around the room, apparently opening drawers and searching through other containers. He imagined his wife, Tony, and the other soldiers fighting against the attackers and wishing they would hurry up and find what they were looking for.
Ten minutes later he heard a shout. "Boss!"
A moment later he heard the Joyl. "Finally!" There was a grunt. "This is the end of them! They'll pay for my brother's death if it's the last thing I do!"
"Ven?" Tony asked through the ear bud, shots coming through as well. The sound started Ven and sending his heart racing. "Can you give an update?"
Trying not to even let his thoughts make noise, Ven double tapped on the mic three times. He must have been able to get the urgency through, because Tony didn't respond. Ven let a breath seep out.
"Back topside!" the Joyl said. "And then we join up with the main force!" The group moved back to the door where Ven stood, and the Joyl looked Ven up and down. Ven didn't move a muscle. "Everything all right out here Ivan?"
"Yes, sir," Ven said, attempting to replicate Ivan's tone. The Joyl made a motion with his head and the group moved toward the staircase to bring them back to the surface. The dim light allowed Ven to see the thing the Joyl carried was about as big as a loaf of bread, a mechanical device.
The Joyl led the way and Ven fell in at the back of the group. The other four were between them, and when the one in the back passed the gap in the railing Ven had used to coerce Ivan, Ven jumped forward.
"Watch out, there's-" he began to say, talking as normally as he could. He shoved the person through the gap, sending him tumbling into the darkness. The man shouted, crying out as he fell, but said nothing of value. The Joyl and the rest of the group turned as Ven pretended to reach out futilely, hoping to scope the fallen person to safety.
"What happened?" the Joyl shouted, stomping toward Ven, making the entire metal staircase rattle and shake.
"There's a gap in the railing," Ven said. "I tried to point it out but he fell right through!"
"Serves him right!" the Joyl said. "He has to keep his eyes open! Come Ivan, we're off to destroy our enemies."
The man stepped away, pushing through the remaining soldiers, and resumed climbing the stairs. Ven glanced through the gap in the railing and wondered if the man had lived. He took a deep breath and followed the madman trying to destroy him, his life, and his wife.
Slipping through one of the smaller entrances away from the battle, Tylie attracted no small amount of attention. Three people--farmers or other civilians hiding inside the walls for safety--ran to assist her. When they tried to take her to the doctors tending battle wounds she pushed them away and limped to the front walls, dragging her rifle's stock through the dirt.
"Tylie!" Tony said when he saw her. Bullets flew over their heads and pinged off the cobbled-together sheets of metal they called their walls. "Thank God you're okay!" He inspected her. "You aren't okay."
"I'm-" she grimaced as she slapped his hand away, sending a web of pain shooting through her shoulder. "I'm fine. I can still shoot."
"Not with that, you aren't," Tony said, taking her rifle before she could protest. "This thing would flatten you. How many broken bones do you have, five?" He scrounged a pistol and held it out for her. She returned a disgusted look. "Anything more powerful and you'll be in too much pain to help. Did you even get painkillers?"
"We don't have enough painkillers for everybody, you know that," Tylie said. She took the pistol with her right hand, inspecting it. "People need it more than me."
"You can barely stand."
"I'm fine!"
Tony tilted his head, then nodded. "If mom or dad find out, they'll probably send me out there alone."
"Where are they?" Tylie asked. Tony pointed along the wall, and Tylie spotted their adoptive parents releasing competing streams of bullets at anything they could see. "I don't think they have a leg to stand on."
"Speaking of," Tony said, pointing at her injured foot. Tylie scoffed and pushed past him, trying not to limp too much.
She climbed the barricades behind the walls and found a gap, helping shift a wounded soldier out of the way. Poking her pistol through, she used her left arm as much as she could to stabilize, and fired off a shot. The bullet went wild, landing nowhere near where she was trying to aim. She sighed and tried again.
The light grew stronger, and Ven knew he was running out of time. He readied his pistol. He looked for more opportunities to off his foes before the light exposed him, but found none. The staircase ended with a beam of smoky light, and when the Joyl and his soldiers climbed into it they began to squint.
When the man in front of him hit the light, Ven pushed past him and squeezed a shot at the next man, striking him in the middle of his back and sending the others into wild motions, looking for the attacker. Ven spun and smashed the one he'd pushed back in the temple with his pistol's butt. He spun and pointed the pistol at the Joyl, who hadn't found it necessary to do more then turn around.
After a moment the Joyl pointed a finger. "You aren't Ivan."
"And you aren't Joyl," Ven said, and realized he could have chosen wiser words.
The man's face twisted and warped, changing from mild surprise to limitless anger. His eyebrows pressed down on his eyes, his mouth pulled apart to reveal sharp, pointed teeth, and his hands curled into white fists. "Shoot him dead! Kill him!"
Before the words were out of his mouth Ven fired on the remaining soldier, hitting him in the center of the chest and knocking him to the ground, and the Joyl realized he was out of fodder.
"Perhaps we can discuss this like gentlemen," he said, before diving behind a rock, avoiding another bullet. Ven gave the man groaning on the ground another blow to the head, knocking him out, before returning to the Joyl.
"Who was it meeting with Paul and Lynda?" Ven asked. "A double?"
"My brother, you simpleton! My only brother!" the Joyl said from behind the rock. Ven heard him draw a weapon. "And you killed him in cold blood!"
"Actually, it was my wife who killed him, and it was because he was drawing a weapon at a peace accord. Who's the real Joyl?"
"Neither of us are! He was Loyl, I am Goyl! Together, we are Joyl, and we rule with an iron fist!"
"Only one of you now," Ven said. "Give up the bomb."
"Never!" Goyl appeared from the behind the rock and fired a dart from a crossbow, missing Ven by a mile and giving him a chance to fire back. The bullet dug a scar in the rock and disappeared. Ven heard the crossbow cycle and found his own cover, a jagged piece of wall buried in the dirt. Goyl saw him moving and kicked up clouds of dust, running in the direction of the Ven's province.
Ven jumped up and followed, arms pumping and feet slapping the ground. He replaced his pistol, knowing the odds were in Goyl's favor if Ven shot at him. He concentrated on running, watching the eastern walls of the province grow from a smudge in the distance.
When Tylie finally hit one of the attackers she jumped, ecstatic, only to remember the numerous broken bones and wounds she had. She landed and groaned, then ducked, hearing bullets whiz over her head and bounce off the metal wall in front of her.
One of the soldiers to her right fell, crying out and clasping a hand over a wound in her stomach. Tylie rushed to her side, pulling a string of bandages from a pouch at her belt and hurrying them around her stomach, hoping to stop the bleeding. Before she could finish, something detonated against the wall.
A moment later she landed on the ground, her bad shoulder dominating all other sensations. She looked and felt surprised to see her arm still attached as shards of metal and body parts rained around her. She rolled over and tried to crawl away as more people rushed forward toward what she assumed was a hole in the wall to keep marauders from streaming through. She reached a table and used her right arm to haul herself to her feet. When she turned around she found a dozen people firing everywhere from a tear in the wall, narrow at the bottom but much wider at the top.
Fire and smoke blazed and covered her vision in the gap, and her pains spoke up. She had to brace herself on the table to keep from falling back to the ground, and looking at her hands spread on its surface she realized she'd lost the pistol. Her hands felt empty. Shots, shouts rang out and buried her, boots pounding on the ground seemed to shake her. The smell of blood and gunpowder roiled her stomach. The air felt like it was made of iron strands, and if she had the strength to run her hand through it she would hear a discordant gliss.
Arms grabbed her and she threw herself away from the pain, until her mind broke through the haze and realized the person was a doctor trying to bring her to one of the medical tents. In a moment she was on the ground with her back against a wood post, two people assessing her injuries. She swallowed and wiped her face with her good hand and found blood smeared on her palm and fingers. She sat and listened to people die inside and outside the medical tent.
It could have been hours, or maybe it was only minutes, but she heard a voice come through her earpiece, shattering her mindless mental wandering. The voice was a comforting one, though the words and tone it used brought her mind back.
"Who said that?" she asked.
"Tylie! Joyl is coming toward the walls with the bomb! I need you to shoot him down! We're on the east field, about half a mile away!"
She heard the words, and on their own she knew what each of them meant, but the sentences made no sense. She made a confused sound as she listened to panting coming through her earpiece, a sound she responded to in a strange way, body becoming hot and heart rate increasing.
"Tylie, can you hear me?" the person asked again. "I need you to shoot Joyl!"
"Ven!" Tylie said, feeling a shock spread through her. "Where are you?"
"East of the walls, about a half-mile away. Hurry, he's getting closer and if he sets that bomb off none of us are surviving the winter!"
Tylie looked around the dark medical tent. Clouds of smoke billowed across the opening, and as she got closer to the exit a wall of echoing gunshots threatened to push her back inside. Almost her entire body felt numb; the rest of it hurt. She found a gun, not her rifle but something she could use anyway, lying on the ground. She picked it up and checked the bullets inside. There were less than half a dozen; she headed east, limping, ribs hurting, shoulder waking up and once again making her left arm dead and useless.
Close enough, Ven leapt, hitting Goyl in the back and sending him sprawling. The bomb bounced on the ground and tumbled over, coming to rest in the dirt as Ven pushed himself up. Goyl was only on his knees when Ven reached him, and he dealt the multicolored madman another blow, knocking him down. He took a step back, trying to force air back into his lungs. Goyl lay on his back, chest rising and falling like a cat's.
Ven went to the bomb and picked it up, turning around to find Goyl on his feet and with his crossbow aimed at him. Ven put the bomb in front of his chest, hoping it would dissuade an attempt at a shot.
"Put it on the ground, you simpleton!" Goyl said, crossbow wavering. "Or this bolt goes out the back of your skull!"
"We both know if I let you have this, I'm as good as dead anyway," Ven said. The bomb was too big to carry with one hand, or he would have tried to free his pistol. "Detonating this will doom hundreds of people to hunger by the end of the year."
"True. Very true. So very true." Goyl adjusted his grip and took a step forward. "And if you don't drop it, and I kill you, I'll tell you something else that will happen. When the winter sets in, and your stupid, idiotic, murderous people begin to go hungry, I will graciously allow the women and children--save the bitch Lynda, of course--to stay with my people, since we have enough food and technology to support them. It will be a hard few months, but more people will survive than if they stay inside your walls.
Goyl's face twisted. "Except, one cold night, I will take a few soldiers to wherever your wife is sleeping, thinking of her dead husband, and have them hold her down. I will rape her-" he drew in a huge breath- "until she dies! I will dig new holes in her until the only thing left in one piece is her fragile skull, and then I will crush it under my boots until it's nothing more than dust to scatter over your grave!"
Ven started walking forward. "So be it!" Goyl shouted, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, because he hadn't loaded it. He scrambled in his pockets, trying to pull out a dart, but Ven threw the bomb away and dove forward, knocking Goyl over again. He kicked the crossbow away and waded in, pushing away the man's flailing limps, kicking and punching, aware he wouldn't feel exertion for for a few minutes, Goyl's twisted words still inside his head. He shot his fist forward again and again, bouncing Goyl's head on the ground. He kicked his stomach and ribs, hoping they'd break, hoping he'd spit up whatever garbage he'd eaten, hoping his nipple would burst and eject the ichor running in his veins.
After a few minutes Ven stumbled backward, coughing on his own adrenaline. A bloody pulp replaced Goyl. Ven went back to the bomb and found it difficult to rise.
Something struck his back and he fell into the dust. "You think that was a beating?!" Goyl said. "My brother and I did so much worse to each other before we even hit our teens! I told you what would happen if you didn't drop it, and now look!"
Ven saw Goyl pull a blade from a hidden sheath. "You're at my mercy! I have no mercy for you!"
The man wailed as he charged, swinging the long, misshapen blade through the air in all directions. Ven dragged his pistol out and took aim, unable to do anything before Goyl reached him. The blade dragged across the back of his hand and sent a line of Ven's blood into the air as his gun dropped to his feet. He lunged backward as Goyl advanced, madness replacing any other possible emotion on his bloody, bent, bruised face. The blade whistled past Ven's nose.
Had she the option, Tylie would have detached her arm to cut the pain off. She reached the east side of the enclosed stronghold, found a pair of binoculars, and held them up to her eyes with the rifle leaning against the metal patchwork wall. There was no one around; she heard only the distant pop of guns firing.
She scanned the east field, where they grew a great deal of their food when it was warm enough. The river surrounded it on two sides, and they could cast their eyes over it from the walls should danger threaten.
"Ven, where are you? I don't see you." Tylie swept her zoomed-in vision across the field, seeing nothing. Ven didn't respond. "How far are you from-" She found the two men, dancing in the dirt, the Joyl waving a blade and Ven jumping away, over and over. She let the binoculars drop to the ground and picked up her rifle, balancing it on the top of the wall. She found them again, in the scope. "Ven, if you can hear me, try to give me some space to hit him. You're too close."
While Ven didn't fully understand the words, he knew what Tylie was asking. He dove backwards, hitting the ground and sending a bolt of pain into his back. He heard a crack and Goyl staggered, blood shooting from his knee. The man screamed, a long sound Ven thought would never end, and when it did Goyl got back to his feet, dragging his foot toward Ven. There was another crack and Ven saw a cloud of dust spring between Goyl's feet.
Goyl dove forward, blade extended, and Ven rolled out of the way. The madman's weapon plunged into the dirt, and as Ven rolled he felt something hard in one of his pockets. He patted it and remembered the flip-knife he'd taken from one of Goyl's soldiers. As Goyl pulled his weapon from the earth on one knee, he took it out and extended it. Goyl laughed.
"Yes, I'm at your mercy now!" He stood, snarling when he put weight on his torn knee. "I suppose that's your little bitch taking potshots at me, isn't it?"
"Your hear that, Tylie? He just called you a bitch."
"He's about to call me a lot more."
Another crack, and Goyl flew backwards, blade spinning away. He landed and cried out, body stretching and compressing as he screamed. "Right in the stomach," Tylie said. "Finish the job."
Ven walked up to the man and found his face contorted, glaring at him with his teeth gritted and low whines leaking through. Ven knelt and grabbed the clumps of the man's multicolored hair. He took a few deep breaths.
When he was done, Goyl lay still.
"You didn't kill him," Tylie said.
"Paul and Lynda are going to lock him away for a long time," Ven said. "In fact, I have a certain deep, dark hole in mind that might just work perfectly. The bomb's in our control." He slung Goyl over his shoulder and took a moment to himself. "Hopefully when his soldiers see we've captured him, they'll give up." He started walking.
"They're crazy just like he is."
"Guess you'd better start shooting them, then."
"I would, except they blew up my tower. I've got more broken bones than whole ones by now. Ahh." Ven heard a sound like a bundle of clothes dropped on the ground. "Need to take a break. How long until you get here?"
Ven shifted Goyl's unconscious form and looked up at the wall as he put one foot in front of the other. "Probably about ten minutes."
"I love you, Ven." Ven tapped the mic once.