Feve’s eyes pierce my gaze, unflinching. “Each straight marking is for someone I’ve saved,” he says, pausing to look back at his exposed forearm, which has a straight arrow sketched into it.
I admire the simple beauty of the drawing, which is so lifelike, almost as if you could pluck it from off his skin, string it, and shoot it high in the air, piercing the gray-shrouded sky. Around the arrow are numerous curved markings: a crescent moon, softly glowing; a metal chain; a coiled snake. There are other curved markings too, ones that don’t take on any particular form, like they were drawn hastily, in random designs. They disappear under his shirt and reappear on his neck, arcing behind his back. He must have hundreds of curved markings for every straight one.
“And what do the curved markings represent?” I ask, unable to wrest my eyes from the graceful shapes.
“Each curved marking is for someone I’ve killed.”
~~~
We aren’t waiting for them to come to us. For once, we’ll take the fight to the Soakers, to show them that the tribes of the earth will not allow their evil to go unpunished.
The scouts are back and have located the Soaker fleet, anchored just off the coast a few hours ride south of us. Fatefully close.
I’m thankful the six foreigners will ride with us today. Although they’re a strange mixture of jokes, ferocity, and unabashed confidence, I can tell each one of them is a fighter in their own right. Better with us then against us.
Each will sit behind a Rider, at least until the battle begins. Then they’ll be free to drop down, to run away if they choose. I suspect they’ll fight to the bloody end.
They’re untied and standing in a group under close guard. Gard has allowed them to choose their weapons, although they’ll be held by their assigned riding partner until we reach the battle. Only then will they be handed over.
Siena, as requested, has already received her bow, which she’s been flexing and playing with from the moment she grasped it. It’s clear she knows how to use it. She’ll get the arrows from me later. Skye selected a sword, almost as long as the one chosen by Circ. There’s no doubt in my mind that she can handle it every bit as well, too. Feve grunted at two medium-length curved daggers that remind me of the graceful but deadly strokes of the kill-counter markings on his skin. Buff chose two short straight-daggers, polished to a shine, although he didn’t seem too sure of the selection. Dazz was the only one who insisted he’d be fine without a weapon, and it wasn’t until he saw the spiked clubs wielded by some of the larger Riders that he agreed to carry something.
Before I mount Passion, I stand in front of her, touching her white butterfly. “We will see this through together,” I whisper. She whinnies softly. “Your strength will be my strength, and mine yours.” I feel her hot breath on my face, see the understanding in her eyes. She’s no ordinary steed. We were destined to be together, each one half of a storm country Rider. Apart—nothing. Together—invincible.
Although I sense the dark presence nearby, the Evil has not accosted me since the prison tent, when it urged me to kill Dazz, to take my revenge for my mother’s death. I ignore it. Will it disappear if I pretend it’s not there? Is it real or imagined? Am I going crazy with unresolved grief?
I leap atop Passion’s back, relishing the light feeling in my chest I always get before a ride. Earlier I introduced Passion to Siena, who will ride behind me. I was worried that Passion’s pride wouldn’t allow her to accept a second passenger, but she took to Siena right away, so quickly I felt a prick of jealousy after all I had to go through to win her affections.
Together, we trot over to Siena and I offer her a hand, pulling her up behind me. Clutching her bow with one hand, she clamps her other arm around my stomach, squeezing tightly, like Passion might toss her off at any moment. But Passion remains calm, occasionally stamping her feet in impatience. She’s ready to run. Like me, ready for her first battle.
“Are you ready?” I ask Siena. Gard pulls Feve onto his steed, while two other Riders take Buff and Dazz.
“I don’t know,” she says, and I appreciate her honesty.
I nod, look back.
“Fightin’ don’t come naturally to me like it does Skye,” she says.
Although she might believe it to be the truth, I don’t.
A Rider trots past us with Circ hanging onto her like he’s in the middle of a fierce storm and she’s a tree. Behind me, Siena laughs. “It’s nice to see him doing something he ain’t good at. I never thought I’d see the day.”
For some reason, her light comment slows my racing heart and evens out my breathing. Remy and his horse sidle up alongside us, Skye sitting behind him. She’s not hanging on, just cracking her knuckles and laughing. Remy appears rather uncomfortable with the whole arrangement. “Back home they’d think we were wooloo,” Skye says. “It’s like sittin’ on a sand dune that keeps shiftin’ and bouncin’ between my legs.”
“Only you could make riding a horse sound so…interesting,” Dazz says nearby. Somehow he’s managed to twist himself around, facing the wrong way. The Rider who received the unfortunate assignment of riding with him is struggling to get him turned back to the front.
Maybe bringing them along wasn’t such a great idea after all. But then I see Feve’s dark expression, full of intensity and focus, and I know we’d be fools not to accept their help.
My attention turns back to Remy when he kicks my leg. “Be safe,” he says, before urging his horse forward.
Siena whispers in my ear. “I see.”
When Gard digs his heels into Thunder, starting him into a gallop, Passion springs forward automatically, not requiring any urging from me. On either side, the Stormers cheer us on, waving black squares of cloth.
Today every single Rider will ride.
Today we stop waiting for the Soakers to come to us.
Today we go to war.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Huck
She didn’t. She couldn’t. Why would she leave me?
I don’t want to believe my father, but I have to, because I remember now. I remember everything. Whatever wall I’d constructed in my mind has been knocked down; not pulled apart brick by brick, but destroyed in one powerful moment, like a thunderous wave leveled it.
The fights, her screams as he abused her, the days and days and days of silence that followed, as if by not speaking of the past we could wipe it clean.
My mother: changing. She became less and less willing to do my father’s bidding, almost relishing the beatings like a badge of honor, as if her version of the medallions on my father’s uniform were bruises and scratches and scars.
That night. She didn’t ask me to meet her at the railing to watch the sunset…no. That’s what I wanted to believe, because that’s what we always did. The sunsets were the one time my mother looked happy, her sad eyes sparkling with hope, as if the red sun could reach out over the Deep Blue and take hold of her, carrying her away to a better place, to a better man. Maybe it could. Maybe it did.
Her last words to me were, “Huck, Mama needs to watch this sunset on her own. Just tonight. Just this one night. It’s for the best—for both of us. I love you, my son.”
But I couldn’t stay away, perhaps because deep down in my child’s heart I knew.
I knew, and I tried to save her.
Like she tried to save me from seeing it.
Suddenly it all makes sense. Why my father would seek a bride for me from abroad. Someone obedient. Someone moldable. Someone as unlike my mother as possible. He never wanted a wife—only a slave, another bilge rat to do his every bidding.
I’m proud to say my mother was no one’s slave. My mother loved me.
Tears spill down my cheeks as I watch the sunrise. I reach a trembling hand out and catch a ray of warmth on my palm, and I can’t help but to smile through the tears. Because I feel her, my mother’s touch, her hand on mine, carried by the sunshine. She found that place after all.