“But will they follow orders?”
“We’ll train them on the way.”
There was a moment of silence as both men stared at each other. Tre spoke first. “You’re right. Voss is gone. That constitutes an opening. But for what? You can’t take Star Valley and hold it with thirty people, and you know that. So level with me. Why now?”
Crow looked away for a moment as if to maintain his composure. When his eyes returned, they were as steely as ever. “Voss has my sister.”
Tre thought he had misunderstood. “He has your what?”
“He has my sister, Sara. He keeps her in his house.”
Tre stared. “So this is about your sister. That’s why we fought for this mine?”
“No. I wanted to attack the mine for all the reasons we discussed in the past. But the raid would put the hurts to Voss, provide us with food for the winter, and free my sister.”
Tre nodded. “Thank you. I’m in.”
They left the next morning. The rain had stopped by then, but a cold wind was trying to find its way in through the duster Tre was wearing. The band included Crow, Tre, Fade, Smoke, and Freak, plus a force of twenty-five recruits. That added up to thirty people, a ridiculously small army for the job at hand. But Crow believed that good intelligence plus the element of surprise and superior weaponry would be sufficient. Tre hoped he was correct.
The recruits were mounted on horses that had been captured along with the garbage mine, and all of them were unarmed. There were two reasons for that. First, the overseers’ best weapons had been given to Knife’s newly created security force because it was important to protect the mine.
But there was a second reason as well. Crow wanted to spend a few days with the newbies before giving them guns, especially in light of the fact that there were so many of them, a very sensible precaution to Tre’s way of thinking.
The training that Crow subjected the recruits to was invented on the spot but effective nevertheless. Individuals were dispatched to find a common everyday item, such as a hammer, and given six hours to not only accomplish it, but also catch up with the rest of the group. The exercise tested their resourcefulness, navigation skills, and level of commitment—because they could take their horse and run if they chose to, which Crow thought was preferable to harboring a person he couldn’t depend on.
Another exercise involved appointing a leader and sending a group of six people ahead to construct the camp that the entire group would stay in that night. After Crow caught up with them, he would wander through the encampment, pausing every once in a while to discuss the finer points of camouflage and defense.
There were other exercises too, including a hide-and-seek challenge that involved trying to hide from Smoke and Fade, a stick-fighting duel with Tre, and a series of archery competitions with Freak, all of which gave Crow ample opportunity to assess skills, force people to get acquainted, and forge a unified group.
They had been traveling in circles up until then, so by end of the fourth day the group was still on the west side of the Caribou Mountains. And, knowing that Voss could return to Star Valley at any time, Crow couldn’t afford to use any additional time. So without revealing where the cache of weapons was, he paid two recruits and let them go—one because she lacked sufficient skills and one because he couldn’t follow orders.
After they left, Fade followed one and Smoke followed the other to make sure that they didn’t circle back. And since neither one of them knew about the raid, there was no reason to worry about security.
Having purged the team, Crow led the group to the farm where roughly half of the special operations weapons cache was buried. The hiding spot was well away from the old house, the stand-alone garage, and the barn, all of which were magnets for people who happened to be passing through.
Once the cache was uncovered and the contents removed, the business of distributing weapons and equipment began. It was a process Crow showed very little interest in. Was he thinking about Star Valley? And his sister? Probably. But Crow was moody at the best of times, so there was no way to be certain.
Whatever the reason, Tre was left to supervise the process, rebury the arms that were left over, and divide the force into small groups for weapons training, tasks he had orders to accomplish by nightfall. Then, as the sun rose in the morning, they would ride. But to what? Victory? Or defeat? Tre hoped for the first but feared the second. He ordered the recruits in his group to field strip their weapons. Only one of them knew how. It was going to be a long afternoon.
Lora was working in the hot, steamy kitchen and had been for more than a week now. It was hard, sweaty work, but preferable to the hole. Even if Mr. Oliver was a drunken tyrant.
She was a dishwasher, the lowest position in the kitchen’s hierarchy. That meant she was subject to abuse from Mr. Oliver and the more senior slaves as well. Tongue-lashings were common, as were corporal punishments, which consisted of being struck with a variety of kitchen implements. The results were bruises on her back since she spent most of the day facing the sink.
Making a bad situation worse was the fact that Voss and Miss Silverton were down south fighting Lord Hashi. The meant Mr. Oliver could begin drinking earlier in the day, and the more he drank, the meaner he became. All the staff could do was keep their heads down and hope that he would pass out, something he did with a great deal of regularity.
Meanwhile, Lora was working to remove some burned meat from the inside of a large pot and thinking about what she always thought about, which was the need to escape—not just for her sake, but in order to warn the people in the Sanctuary and to do so before Voss could attack them. If she failed, the food lord would enslave or kill them.
But how? It would have been difficult back when she was a maid. Now, after being tagged as a troublemaker, she had even less freedom. She had a plan, though… or the beginnings of one. And it involved the horse-drawn dairy wagon that stopped by the house once a day.
The routine was always the same. Mr. Perkins would guide his horses up to the back door, get down from the wagon, and lower the tailgate. At that point Lora would be sent out to fetch the containers of fresh milk, cream, and butter.
Meanwhile Mr. Perkins would go inside, sit down, and have a cup of tea. That meant there was a period of time during which the wagon was unsupervised. Could Lora take the last load of dairy products into the kitchen, return outside, and slip under the wagon unobserved? And could she squeeze her body into the cargo box mounted under the wagon bed? There was seldom anything in it, so that wasn’t likely to be a problem.
No, the main threat was that she would be missed before Mr. Perkins returned to the wagon. If so, the kitchen staff would be ordered to search for her. But, Lora thought, that’s the chance you’ll have to take. The alternative is to let Voss take control of the Sanctuary.
So the question was when, not if, and Lora knew she would have to make a split-second decision when the right opportunity came along. The problem was that a long succession of days had passed without producing the kind of conditions she needed. So there she was, scrubbing the big pot, when she heard a thump followed by a chorus of laughter. “He’ll feel that when he wakes up,” somebody said.
Lora turned to look over her shoulder. A bottle was lying on its side and Mr. Oliver was facedown on the table. Based on previous experience, Lora knew he was likely to remain unconscious for an hour or so.
Her heart was beating faster as she turned back to her work. Mr. Oliver had passed out earlier than usual. Was this the chance she’d been waiting for? Maybe. If Mr. Oliver remained unconscious and Mr. Perkins arrived on time, no one would pay much attention to her.