Rising - Patrick Sean Lee (big screen ebook reader txt) 📗

confusion—we could be anywhere, moving in any direction. I’ve never seen this ravine before. I’m thinking we’re totally lost.

Gerstam is massaging his gimpy leg, looking at me. Waiting to hear what my plan for our destruction is, I suppose. No, we’re not going to try going back to his new toy. No, Gerstam, we’re definitely not. With the rain, the clouds, and the general quiet—that makes me nervous—I’m thinking it would be best simply to hunker down, rest, and wait for the sun to reappear. At least then we’ll know for certain which way north is. I think the refugees from Black were a mile or so south of where we crashed. That’s about how far from the hole in the wall the path lay.

If we can locate the path, we go south. I’m guessing that path is swarming with troops looking for us. This isn’t good.

“Try to get some sleep, Gerstam. I’ll figure out how to get us out of this mess you got us into.”

Gerstam just smiles at me.

 

TEN

 

 I awaken in a curl, on my side, my right arm beneath my head, the other laying atop Gerstam’s head. He must have nestled it onto my waist sometime during the night, and I feel a wetness. I think he drools in his sleep. I smell an earthy dampness, the familiar calling card of last night’s drizzly storm, but the sky outside our little sheltering hideaway is bright blue, and I see no evidence of Heliceres scouring the area. That is good.

I carefully lift Gerstam’s head and lay it gently onto the dust, roll onto my hands and knees, and crawl from beneath the overhang to see if I can get our bearings; to scan this place we’ve found ourselves in. Clear. And quiet. Not even the sound of birds. Hugging the slick side of the boulder, I ease my way to the gently rising back of it, scanning panoramically for any subtle movement, my ears focused for any sound. Something has to be happening out there beyond the ravine walls, I just don’t know what.

How far from Black did we get? Surely it must be a greater distance than I thought yesterday, otherwise I would have heard the sound of explosions as Black was being obliterated. If in fact it was. The sheer numbers of gunships we saw on the strange everywhere-screen before Gerstam crashed us spelled invasion.

Where are we? What is our next move? Judging from the sun far off to the left I’d say north is behind me. I think the path, then, is somewhere in front of me. We go that way. I have to discover who survived. Maybe everyone who escaped did survive. Where in that crowd of refugees will Sant, Faerborn, and my family be? They are alive, I know it. Sant, at least, is too clever to let himself or anyone with him be caught.

I must rouse Gerstam, and then set off.

“Wake up, Gerstam. Time to go,” I say, nudging his shoulder when I return. He blinks several times, yawns, and then rubs his sooty face.

“Where are we going?” he manages to reply in the midst of another yawn.

“Back toward the Helicere, but we’ll circle east of it—wherever the ship is—until we find the road.”

“That’s dumb. If we don’t know where it is, how can we circle east of it?”

So damned logic-driven.

“We’ll have to guess. Now, get up.”

“What’s the big hurry? I think we should get back up into the forest and find some breakfast. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving,” he says as we leave the security of the boulder and head south. Dead center of the ravine bottom. He is limping worse than ever. He is right, though, in that we have to get back into the forest. We’re sitting ducks if a gunship suddenly flashes into view.

“Do you think you can follow me up the side over here?” I say, ignoring his statement about eating. I’m hungry, too, but right now that’s the least of my concerns.

“Yes. What do I look like, an invalid?”

Yes, Gerstam, you do as a matter of fact.

 

He is so slow, and I think he has a nose for danger. The crashed Helicere—I am veering west, but he keeps drifting east in hopes of running onto it. I suspect it is crawling with Polit forces, fanning out in all directions looking for us. Every hundred yards or so I have to backtrack to where he lags behind and get him going in the right direction again. My direction, not his. He has the hardest time navigating over the thick growth, around it, through it, but we make progress.

“In your collection,” I say casually half an hour into our journey, “do you have any geography books?”

“Yep. Two. No, three, but one of them is all torn up. The best one…the one with the best pictures.”

“What do you know about where we are? There must have been landmarks of some kind in that torn up book that show the road and the ravine we were in. Something you saw that can help us.”

He stops suddenly, gazing at the trees around us, and the blue sky above. I can see the gears in his head spinning, and hear them whirring. He rubs his leg absently. After a moment or two of slowly turning in circles, he responds.

“Not much idea where we are right now. I do remember the layout of the land, though, now that you mention it. The path—if it’s the one I’m thinking of—and the ravine you found. Yes. Actually the mouth of the ravine is quite close to the road. When I looked at the book, though, I gave the two only a passing glance. You know?”

“How far from the wall do you think we were when we crashed?” I ask him.

“Not far. Half a mile at most. Didn’t you see it in the holo-image? The long, dark line?”

“I was kind of busy looking at all the gunships ripping around and shooting at us,” I say.

We can't be too far from the mouth of the ravine. The terrain has softened, and is almost flat once again. If we make our way west and south, we should meet the road. Maybe run across some of the lucky ones who escaped Black, and perhaps one or two of them will know which way Sant went. Anyway, toward the road.

“Stay with me, Gerstam. How’s your leg?”

“It’s okay. Where are we going?”

“This way,” I answer, pointing to our right.

 

                                    ***

We’ve been scratching our way through thick underbrush for an hour, but thankfully the trees all round us finally have a familiar look about them, like I’ve seen their brothers and sisters many times in the past. Thick, broad-leafed, mast-straight trunks with white bark. Branches that, unlike many of their kin far behind us, begin ten or more feet off the ground. The road is near, I know it. I keep my ears open for any sounds. It’s just so odd, though, that I haven’t seen or heard the distinctive whirring of a Helicere’s engines. Seen none of their shadows darkening the sun-spattered branches like specters from the underworld come to scare us out of our wits. It’s eerily quiet except for Gerstam’s occasional grunt or groan.

What is Polit up to?

We go on. I’m already tired, and my stomach is growling, but Gerstam does his best not to fall too far behind. Mostly without complaining. We haven't stopped to scavenge for berries, or raid a beehive. I imagine he he is ready to start eating leaves.

“Alana!” The barely above a whisper voice—it’s Sant’s, off to our right twenty of so feet in front of us. Music! I raise myself up as high as I can, push the leaves of the bush in front of me aside, and look.

“Sant? Is that you?” I call out. He makes no reply, but I hear leaves rustling madly, see flittering images of a body darting in a jagged line toward us. I want to cry for joy! Right behind him there is a sudden eruption of beautiful noise—the wonderful clomp, clomp of Faerborn’s elephantine feet. And now a mass of furry body rumbling straight forward, crushing every green thing in his path.

“FAERBORN HERE!” he roars!

Oh Faerborn, please shut up! If any troops are near…

Sant reaches me first, a graceful plains animal compared to Faerborn, the clumsy Sasturn-like herbivore chasing him out of his feeding territory. Sant says nothing as he clears the last bush, and in that instant before we meet, I can’t help but marvel at his appearance—as though he’s just awakened from a wonderful night’s sleep, all fresh and clean, so unlike how I must look. I throw my arms around his neck and kiss him with a fury. I am crying.

“What happened!” he says, pulling my face away from his, peering down into my tear-filled eyes. “You left to warn your people, and then...I thought, I thought…I don’t know what I thought! That you were captured, or dead—or something. Where've you been?”

“Oh Sant, I am so glad to see you! I was thinking the same things about you! How many—where is my family? How many of my people are with you? Have you seen any of Polit’s forces? I don’t know what we’re going to do! This is not how I imagined returning to my home and my people…” I ramble on and on with a dozen more incoherent questions and blurts, and finally end it all with my cheek buried in his muscular chest, blubbering away like a dying echo.

“Wait. Slow down, Alana. I don’t know how many poured through that hole in the wall. A lot, I think, but I was busy…”

“Faerborn busy, too!” my giant cuts in. He is towering over Sant, and perched on his shoulders is Jeren. Oh, thank the gods!

“My parents! My sisters! Where are they?” I ask.

“Parents here,” Faerborn says with a grin. “Faerborn keep safe.”

“Where…”

“We’re right here, Alana!” I hear Mondra call out in her strong velvety voice.

I let go of Sant and look around the massive body of Faerborn to see her in the lead, running toward me over the path Faerborn just made, the rest of my family behind her. Mondra’s prison-white shift is now dotted with smudges of mud, and ripped at one side. Her long black hair is in snarls, but she otherwise looks and carries herself like a queen in exile.

“Finally!” she blurts, throwing herself into my embrace. This moment is too sweet, as precarious as it is. As I hug my sister, I sense eyes watching us, but that can’t really be. The rebels are all together—if Polit forces were watching, now would be the perfect time to rid their land of us. For the moment at least, there is no ambush.

The reunion, wonderful as it is, goes on in a nervous peace and subdued rejoicing far too long once Jeren and Tereka arrive. Mother is supporting Father, wide awake now, but holding one hand over his midsection. Everyone in our little group sits at last. It’s time to take inventory of the wounds suffered, attend to them if we can, and then get moving again. Much as I hate the thought of it, whoever else is out there from Black, they’re