War (The Four Horsemen, #2)(15)

I’ve been in a tight position more times than I’d like to admit. With the Muslim Brotherhood, with the Palestinian guard, with other raiders who caught me off guard. The key to getting out of these situations relatively unscathed was to have a convincing story and to follow Rule Two—stick to the truth.

“I make weapons,” I say quickly. Tamar had mentioned that the camp could use a weapons maker.

The soldier squints at me. “What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”

“I use the wood from trees in this area to make bows and arrows,” I say slowly, like this whole situation should be obvious.

“You expect me to believe you’re out here collecting some goddamn wood for weapons?”

To be fair, he has a point. I have no bag to collect branches, and my holstered dagger is hardly useful for chopping wood. I look like an escapee, not a worker.

“I cleared it with War.” The lie rushes out of me.

Immediate regret.

So much for sticking to the truth—I just threw that rule right out the window.

The soldier eyes me up and down, probably weighing the pros and cons of believing me versus not.

Finally, he comes to some sort of decision. “I don’t care who you cleared your activities with, if you want to live, you better get the fuck back to camp. Now.”

Giving the trees around me a final, parting look, I leave the brush, heading back to camp, an arrow trained on me the entire way there.

So much for escape.

There’s an order to this maze of a camp. It takes me the rest of the day to figure it out, but eventually I do.

The layout is broken into four quadrants. I live amongst the women and children in one of them. Another is cordoned off for the men and women who choose to live together. By far the biggest quadrant is the one dedicated to the men.

Then, of course, there’s War’s area.

All these quadrants of camp ring the clearing, which appears to be the heart of this place. And it’s a blackened heart at that.

Throughout the day, the drums pound intermittently, and I come to learn that these noises precede executions. Some are for petty theft, some are for captured deserters, one man was even sentenced to death for pissing into a comrade’s drink. Apparently that joke didn’t go over so well. And then there are some executions that have no stated cause. I guess it doesn’t really matter in the end; War wants us all dead, he’ll just keep enough of us alive to help him achieve that goal.

You’d think that the sheer quantity of executions would make for a somber atmosphere—and maybe it does affect people on a more private level—but everywhere I look, men and women are moving about, chatting and carrying clothes or weaving sleeping pallets and baskets, and on and on.

Everyone seems to have tasks to complete. I can’t figure out if they’ve been given these duties or if they simply volunteer to help out, but there are people to cook, people to clean, people to guard, people to care for the horses, people to dig out latrines, and a hundred other tasks that are needed to keep this camp running like a well-oiled machine—not that any machines run smoothly anymore, oiled or not. But whatever. My point still stands.

I take it all in.

It seems so hopelessly normal. I don’t know how War does it. How he manages to get people to work together after they’ve lost everything at the hands of his army.

But not everything is normal. After all, there’s no indication that religion exists here. Granted, I’ve only been at camp for a day, so maybe I just need to be patient. However, so far there have been no calls for prayer and no public sermons. I haven’t seen anything that indicates which god—if any—these people believe in. The only signs of religion that I have seen are the few religious items that people wear on themselves. Other than that, it’s as though God doesn’t exist.

Which is so very ironic, considering our circumstances.

Eventually, I return to my tent. No one visits me or gives me any duties to perform around camp, and I only leave when food or nature calls.

The thunderous sound of hoof beats eventually draws me back outside. By then the sun is sinking in the sky, the heat from the day gradually cooling. Around me, other women leave their tents, glancing towards the sound.

“They’re coming,” I hear one of them murmur.

Around me, most of the people make their way towards the clearing. Curiosity pulls me along with them. I’ve barely arrived when dozens of mounted men cut through camp, kicking up dust and mowing down the shrubs in their way. Riding at the front is War himself. He and the rest of the riders are all drenched in blood.

Back from another invasion.

I hadn’t realized there were more people to kill; the army seemed to do a good enough job of it yesterday. It makes sense though. Jerusalem is large, and then there are the nearby satellite communities. I guess even a supernatural force like the horseman needs more than a day to wipe us all out.

The war drums start up again, the beat of them stirring the blood in my veins.

War charges into the clearing as people scramble to get out of his way, and I swallow at the sight of the blood-red beast he rides. His horse has barely slowed when War swings himself off his mount.

Behind him, other riders gallop into the clearing, each one wearing a red tie on their upper arm.

“Who are those men?” I ask a woman next to me.

“Phobos riders,” she says, briefly tearing her gaze away from them. “They’re War’s best soldiers.”