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Raine was standing with Fin on the windswept hillside looking down on North Tarn. It was smaller than the Warren, wilder, more exposed. The long low grey-stone farmhouse and barn stood in a broad valley of grass and reeds, with a few stunted trees bent over in the prevailing wind. Below the house the valley dropped suddenly in rocky waterfalls where the trees grew taller and fish darted in dark pools.
Raine’s gaze roamed across the bleak dawn-lit terrain.
“I haven’t been back here since the last time I came over with the maintenance crew. It seems smaller now everyone is trying to sort their equipment at once. Overcrowded compared to the Warren.”
This place would have to conceal them while their food stores lasted, at least until Burton’s deadly hunt for them was called off. If it was called off. Raine’s focus moved to their small herd of longhorns grazing the tough grass.
“It’s going to be hard for the animals. We’ll have to take them down-valley each day to find enough forage. I just hope we don’t have to move on again from here. Exhausting for everyone, mentally and physically––and the only place left to run after this is the Ice Islands.”
Raine looked to Fin for advice. He relied on the elderly medic for her years of experience on the frontline. She simply shook her head, honest enough to admit there were no instant fixes to the precarious situation they were dealing with right now. She turned to walk with him back to the makeshift office lodged in one of the outbuildings.
“Raine, so far at least, it looks like the decoy worked. The attack force should have followed Luc’s tracker like you planned, which means they are only hunting for us in the city. All you can do is to stay focused on keeping up morale and reinstating the forest patrols, before too many Outlander holdings get attacked by bandits.”
She was right of course. Raine was only too aware that he was responsible for all the rangers who had relocated here, as well as the four who had fled to the capital.
Too many new crises competing for priority.
He had to think through the immediate demands of maintaining security now their base was in a more remote part of the wilderness and his patrols were spread thin across the western forest. Reports were already coming in, detailing an increase in bandit raids on Outland farmers. The Tarn was still in chaos after moving everything here...
Inside the farmhouse, the place was jostling with rangers trying to set up their equipment in the restricted space. Raine paced back to his desk, his lean body yearning for action, frustrated by the cramped conditions that allowed no more than two steps in any direction before running into the piles of gear they had evacuated from the Warren. They still had not found anywhere in the Tarn outbuildings to store it and most of it was stacked against walls or wedged between chairs. Raine’s impatience with constantly having to navigate around it was already getting hard to control.
His thoughts were turning to memories of Jac more often than he wanted to admit, knowing that any distraction could compromise his ability to protect his people here. But discipline didn’t stop him being haunted by those green eyes and the trust he had seen in them, a painful reminder that he was no longer at her side and she had no time to learn to defend herself ...
Why the hell did I think it would be safer for her in the city? It’s probably even more dangerous there, with half the security forces still hunting for fugitives from the Warren... Chaos, even years of training don’t always keep my rangers alive.
Even with all their skill and camouflage they had lost friends to phos-grenades and automatic fire. In spite of six years’ experience in command Raine knew that being forced into the role at nineteen had left him over-protective of his team and he was well aware that it was not always the best strategy. He had to avoid inflicting the same disadvantage onto Bel and Kit by pushing them to take over from him before they were ready.
Evie limped in, her boots squelching and her coveralls wet and muddy. Grazed fingers gripped a heavy screwdriver.
“Hey, people. I need help getting the hydro started down in the river. The cover plate rusted in and jammed solid. Has anyone seen Bel?”
Raine edged through the crowd and steered her back outside, supporting her diminutive figure with one arm as she limped across the rough marshy ground.
“Bel is checking the horses. I’ll come with you.” He held back from adding that the animals were fractious without their usual handler. Everyone had noticed the effect of Luc’s absence.
They reached the concealed hydro plant in the stream. Raine stopped and looked Evie up and down as she awkwardly adjusted her balance.
“How’s the leg?”
“Stiff and slow, but you did a good job fixing it considering we were stuck out there in the forest at the time.”
“Maybe you can find something a bit easier to work on for a few days while it heals.”
“Greg always managed to sort the jammed bits when we worked together on stuff like this.” Evie might have been speaking to herself as much as to Raine.
“You miss him don’t you?” He spoke softly, knowing she was talking about more than engineering problems.
“I think he was distracted by what happened to me with those horrible enforcers and he wasn’t focusing properly. I felt it when we were trapped inside that room and I wondered if it was the same when he was outside, when...”
She looked up at him, waiting for answers.
“Yes. I wasn’t all that close when Greg was killed, but Fin said she noticed that when the sergeant started threatening you, Greg was too disturbed and angry about it to focus properly. Not much, just enough to make a difference. It happens to everyone sometimes. Usually you get away with it. A few times, someone doesn’t. This was one of them.”
“I should have...”
“Evie, it’s not your fault. Everyone’s mind-training is their own responsibility. Friends can try to help but they’re limited in how much they can actually change things.”
“I just keep thinking about what I could’ve done...”
“Hey, Evie. Don’t carry Greg’s death with you. Remember the good things about him when he was alive. Help Bel get through this. It happened on her watch and she’s taking it hard.”
“I know. I’ll try not to get caught up in my own stuff.”
“People are going to find it tough living here. It’s a harsher environment than the Warren. They need resilient people like you. And you still have Luc to deal with at some point.”
Evie looked away. “I’m trying not to think about him for a while. I can understand how he got into that situation and then couldn’t figure how to get out of it. It’s all the lies that make it hard to think about the future, knowing how easily he’s able to deceive me.”
“If he survives long enough to get back here, it will be different. He won’t need to avoid deep communication now, so he won’t be able to deceive anyone.”
Evie was staring at the ground.
“Can it ever be the same again with someone who lied to you for so long?”
“That one is for you to work out.”