CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

 

 

Dawn brought with it a cool mist that filled the Gully like a giant bowl of soup and melted up into the trees in swirls of white, reminiscent of ghosts. The forest wasn’t dense, small bushes and plenty of new saplings taking advantage of the sunshine to create a space that was all tangled shadows and tricks of the light. There was little true cover, if one was trying to avoid arrows or bullets, but with the right preparation, there were also plenty of places to hide.

Birds flitted about in the trees, screeching their opinions gleefully. A lizard crawled across damp leaves, suddenly alert and joyful as it found a snail wandering across its path, and with a few lazy chomps of its jaw, the snail was gone.

Sitting motionless inside a net of camouflage webbing, Aidan, Faith and Whisper peered down at the camp from their perch halfway up the hill – far closer than could really be called safe, but far enough, in the morning gloom and with the expertly designed mesh, that there was a one-thousand-to-one chance of them actually being spotted.

The camouflage gear was one of the vital purchases that Whisper had argued for, back when they’d been setting up their village. Many of the men had argued that it was a waste of money, their limited funds better spent on more fruit trees, or axes, or livestock. But Whisper had stood his ground, and there had been a dozen times since then that the whole tribe had been profoundly grateful that he had.

As they watched, a woman was led in chains from one of the long marquees in the centre of the camp, over to a collection of small tents clustered together beneath a gum tree. A tarpaulin had been set up as a makeshift gazebo, a place for the men to rest out of the sun and rain, and there were a couple of straw bales set out as seats. Apparently, the men were hungry enough to have realised they needed to cultivate a couple of acres of wheat, though from what Aidan had seen, they were extremely bad at making use of the straw left at the end of the threshing process.

Upon arriving at the tents, one of the men tossed two straw bales on top of each other, bent the woman over the top and unzipped himself. He started hammering into her with no other preliminaries, and when he was finished, a second man took over, while a third watched on, waiting his turn.

Aidan felt sick as he watched, cold rage bleeding into barely-restrained disgust. He made no attempt to hide his revulsion at what was happening – Dusk was down there in that camp, and at some point in time, she’d be subjected to the same sort of treatment. God help him, but he was going to enjoy killing any men who’d harmed her. But as ugly as it was, they needed to know what they were going to be up against, how the men interacted with each other, how they treated the women, what security measures were in place for all the various activities going on about the camp. They carefully counted the guards they could see, the number of horses visible, and made note of the number of men up and about, from pre-dawn through to full daylight. They meticulously observed the layout of the tents, possible access routes to various areas, and obstructions or weapons that could slow their progress.

“Let’s get back before it gets any lighter,” Faith said finally. The mist was beginning to burn off, and if they stayed here much longer, they would have trouble moving without being spotted, even with their disguise. In a coordinated shuffle, the three of them retreated slowly up the hill, taking fifteen minutes to move a hundred metres or so, and only then did they dare to emerge from beneath the camouflage mesh.

Another kilometre or so on, and they arrived at their own makeshift camp. About half of each tribe was here, having been brought by ute, along with a large collection of weapons, emergency food supplies, and various tools that would help them in their assault. Scouts were keeping a close eye on the surrounding forest, ready to take out Gully scouts if they got so much as a sniff of their camp. Meanwhile, the rest of their members were taking a painstaking trek north with the horses, while a skeleton crew had been left at each tribe’s village to take care of the livestock. Choosing who stayed and who went had been easy – some of the men had been injured badly enough that they wouldn’t be able to fight and, denied their prize and an outlet for their anger, they were more than willing to make themselves useful keeping an eye on things at home so that others could exact revenge in their place.

Back at the camp, Faith wasted no time in getting down to business. “The central marquee is where the chief lives,” she reported to the group gathered around them – about thirty men and women all eager to hear the first reports and start planning the attack. “The three long tents are for the women. From what we’ve seen, they use chains and handcuffs to keep the women restrained, so we’ll need someone to kill the guards and get the keys.”

“Our main attack should be from the north,” Aidan said, reviewing the layout of the camp in his mind. A new map was slowly being put together, spread out on a wide, flat rock, and he added a few landmarks to it now. Sticks, rocks and pieces of bark represented their various forces. “We can take out twenty of them with arrows before the fighting really starts, but then it’ll just be a case of bludgeoning our way through to the tents. Under cover of darkness, I could get a man over to the women’s marquees, but there are too many guards for one person to be able to free the women alone.”

“We should send ten or twelve men in from the western side,” Whisper said. “They’ll be camouflaged, so they should be able to get in close and thin out their numbers with a surprise attack.”

Faith nodded. “It won’t do much to free the women, but it’ll mean there are fewer slavers to fight later on.”

“They can work their way along the western and southern edge,” Aidan continued the idea. “They’ve set up the barricade on the south side, but they won’t be expecting an attack to come from within the bounds of the camp.”

“We’re going to need a dedicated force to attack the guards at the marquees and free the women,” Whisper said, circling back around to their original goal. “The sooner they’re free, the sooner they can help fight, and that would weigh the odds of the battle significantly in our favour. Getting out is going to be as hard as getting in, and it may be that we just have to stand and fight until the slavers are all dead.”

Faith raised an eyebrow at that. “Some of these women have been captives for a long time. You’ve seen them down there.” She waved her arm in the general direction of the Gully. “There’s no hint of defiance left in them. What makes you think they’re going to fight?”

Whisper grinned. “We’ve got our women on the inside. Stubborn, belligerent and all too used to speaking their minds. If anyone can start a war, they can.”

Aidan sent him a wry, sideways glare. “You’re referring to Dusk, I take it?” Most of the other women were willing to compromise, or at least to try and see the other side of an argument. But since the day she’d joined the tribe, Dusk had done nothing but stand her ground and force the rest of the world to give way. Flame, too, had shown a similar determination. And God, he admired them for it.

Whisper nodded, a knowing smirk on his lips. “We both know, without ever asking her opinion of it, that that little tempest of yours is going to start a revolution.”

 

 

Dusk lay on the floor of The Wolf’s tent, willing the air to keep flowing in and out of her lungs. Her entire body ached, bruised and battered from head to toe, and to keep herself grounded, she thought back to the time in the midst of the shut-down, when food supply chains had been cut off, but people hadn’t yet started growing their own. Desperation had made people reckless, and in the end, far more people had died at the hands of their fellow humans than from starvation. It had been one of the toughest periods to survive.

But she was still here, still clawing her way across the earth, still sucking air, with a royal ‘fuck you’ to anyone who thought they could stop her.

She tried to remember how many men had raped her. Was it four, or five? The number was important. That determined how many men she would kill before she left this hellhole. She may not manage to kill the ones who had done it, of course, but they were all cut from the same cloth, so a couple of substitutes would do just as well. She decided it was five, just to be on the safe side.

“Get that pile of rubbish out of here,” The Wolf commanded, and then she was lifted by her arms and dragged out of the tent. She could probably have managed to walk well enough, given a little time to recover, but after fighting them every step of the way, one of the guards had finally tired of her antics and punched her in the head. In general, they tried not to do any permanent damage – it reduced the value of the merchandise – but every now and then, they were willing to take a few risks to subdue the more stubborn ‘pretties’. For the moment, the world was still spinning, and it would be a few minutes more before she could work out which way was up.

A minute or two later, she was dumped unceremoniously on the ground in the women’s marquee and the shackles were once more secured around her wrists.

“Good God, girl,” Savage muttered from beside her. “Pass some water down, would you?”

Dusk struggled to sit up, managing to prop herself up on her knees while the woman at the end of the row filled a bowl with water from a bucket – the slavers were kind enough to leave a supply for drinking during the day – and passed it down the row. Savage dipped the end of her shirt in the bowl, then gently wiped the blood away from Dusk’s face.

“It is really worth it?” she asked, almost talking to herself as she dabbed at the tender wounds. “Getting the shit beaten out of you? And all for what? You end up back in the same place, just with more bruises.”

It was a bit of a turnaround from her attitude the night before, stopping Dusk from being drugged, for the express purpose that she be more able to fight back. But Dusk wasn’t going to scold her for her change of heart. Emotions ran wild in these places, and a decision to rebel in one minute could easily turn to meek capitulation the next. The human beast, both body and mind, had evolved to survive, and it was rather stubborn about doing so, regardless of the conscious mind’s opinion on such things.

“They can put me in chains,” Dusk told her, her voice hoarse. “They can beat me, rape me, they can make me a prisoner. But they can’t make me a slave.”

Savage peered down at her, cool speculation and reluctant admiration in her eyes. “Girl, you more crazy than I ever imagined.”

 

 

Mei-Lien curled her right leg up beneath her and extended her left leg, in order to repeat the series of stretches she’d just performed on her right side, at the same time as attempting to not kick anyone. It was a self-imposed regime she’d started last night, realising quickly that sitting down all day and not being allowed to move much could inhibit her ability to fight, when the time came. She’d cleaned the arrow wound on her leg as best she could, and she was glad to see that so far, it didn’t seem to be developing an infection.

The men of her tribe, and the women of Flame’s, would be coming to rescue them, she knew with absolute confidence. But what she didn’t know was how long it would take for them to get here. It was a long way on foot, a bit quicker by horseback, but from various conversations around the village, she knew that attacking the camp would be no small feat. So she was prepared to have to wait here for anything up to a week while the men sorted themselves out. And for that length of time, it was worth going through a few stretches and exercises – as much as her chains would allow it – to keep herself in shape.

She was gratified to see that three of the other women had joined in her routine in the last few minutes. She’d done the same thing last night, and they’d all just stared at her, a few baffled questions asked as to what the hell she was doing. She’d told them, but hadn’t made any particular petition for them to join in. But this morning, it seemed a few of them had decided it might be worth the effort.

Before she could get any further with her routine, however, the tent flap was forcibly pulled aside and three burly guards came in, carrying Flame. They dumped her on the ground and shackled her hands to the pole, then left without even checking if she was conscious.

“Katrina? Katrina!” Mei-Lien frantically called her name – the name she’d had back in the old world, not her new one, which she’d refused to tell the slavers. “Is she awake?” she asked the other women, not able to reach that far down the row herself.

The woman beside Flame, a girl who was barely eighteen years old, carefully turned her over, checking first to see that she was breathing – “She’s alive,” she reported grimly – and then began checking over her injuries. Mei-Lien longed to do it herself, knowing that the inexperienced girl would miss vital clues that her own medical training would easily pick up, but she was grateful for the girl’s help nonetheless. “She’s got some bad bruises. They tried to strangle her, by the look of the marks on her neck. I don’t think anything’s broken, though.”

“What’s your name?” Mei-Lien asked her, an attempt to open the beginnings of an alliance with some of the women.

“Before I came here it was Thunder. Round here, they call me ‘Fetch’.” She grimaced in distaste.

A harsh intake of breath caught their attention, and everyone in the tent looked around to see Flame struggling to move. “Thunder it is,” she said, her voice hoarse, the words barely audible. “Shake their world, Thunder. With all your might.”