Horde (Razorland #3)(59)

But the minute I went off to tend other business, Morrow did. I heard him sharing the story as I had in my various speeches, only with considerably more eloquence. Heat flooded my cheeks, and I pretended they weren’t talking about me. Now and then, Kelley threw me an incredulous look as if he was thinking, Really? That girl? Morrow was a teller of tales, though, so there was no imagining what embellishments he might be adding. Good thing he was so skilled with his blade or I might stab him.

“Your face is on fire,” Fade said, smiling. “Just think, John Kelley will be able to say he met you just as it was all beginning.”

“What was?” I raised a brow.

“Your plan to save the world.”

I’d never put it in those precise terms, but I did want to improve things. Some people—like Tegan—were smart and could learn anything; they could make life better in all sorts of ways, but I had only one talent, just the one. It would be wrong not to use it as best I could.

I hunched my shoulders, feeling silly. “I don’t know if it can be saved. Things are pretty well broken. But maybe I can dig in and defend a corner of it.”

“That’s more than anyone else has tried to do.” Carefully, Fade wrapped an arm around my shoulder and I leaned into him.

His quiet support meant so much. Most of the others just wanted to kill Freaks. They didn’t have any faith that this served a greater purpose. Truth be told, I didn’t, either. I had learned a hard lesson. Just because I wanted something, it didn’t mean I could instantly achieve it, and this goal might be beyond my reach. I’d also realized what I should’ve known already—that anything worth doing took hard work. There was no wand like in Morrow’s stories, where problems went up in purple smoke.

So I’d keep on, even if it seemed fruitless, on the faint hope the world would be a safer place someday. I didn’t ever want to go through that fear again, as I stood beside the tunnel mouth, peering into darkness, and wondering if I’d ever see Momma Oaks and Edmund again.

“We can’t winter here,” I said softly. “Even if we haven’t made definite progress before the first snowfall, we still have to return to Soldier’s Pond.”

The idea horrified me, but I wouldn’t let the men starve or freeze over my pride. I’d bear all the jokes and the smug looks from Colonel Park, who thought I was a stupid girl with overly ambitious dreams. Maybe I should just take John Kelley’s arrival as proof that our efforts out here mattered. It was a big world with few travelers, yet he’d noticed us; we had changed the way the Freaks in the area behaved.

That was something.

“We have a few more weeks of autumn left. Something might happen,” Fade answered.

As it turned out, he was right. John Kelley had been eating our food and training our scouts for four days when the impossible occurred. Only, since it did, that meant it wasn’t impossible, just unlikely. I was standing beside the smoldering fire in the field past the forest, tending the bodies of the last beasts we’d slain, when a lone Freak loped toward me. I wasn’t frightened. I had my weapons and a few men nearby, including the trapper, John Kelley. Earlier, he had been much impressed by our efficiency in dispatching our enemies, and he’d expressed curiosity about how we handled the bodies.

There were five of us: Morrow, Fade, John Kelley, Tegan, and me. Tully and Spence were guarding the camp while the scouts kept an eye on our perimeter. Briefly, I wondered if this was a trap, but if so, it was an odd one. As it drew closer, the Freak slowed, something I had never witnessed before. The beast came toward us at a walk, head lowered as if in respect. The claws stayed at its sides.

“Well, what in the world do you make of this?” Kelley asked softly.

I shook my head. The counterman in Otterburn had said the Freaks had sent an envoy to make them the offer to submit, but they couldn’t be dumb enough to ask us to surrender when we were winning the War of the Trees. It was a small campaign, to be sure, but we had killed an impressive number of monsters in the last two months.

“Not fight,” the Freak called through a mouthful of fangs. “Talk.”

It had an odd voice, as if someone had mutilated its tongue, then strangled it; but it was unquestionably speaking, not echoing us, as none of us had yet said a word to the thing. Fade had his knives in hand already, and I admit, my fingers were twitching. I didn’t know how I felt about this development, but it couldn’t be easy, facing us beside the smoky corpse-fire of its own kin. That required a special kind of bravery … or stupidity. Possibly both.

I motioned the others to back up. “All right.”

“Not happening,” Fade answered.

His knuckles whitened on his blades; it seemed to require all of his self-control not to slay the monster straightaway. So I let it go and he remained at my side. The others backed off, but shock and amazement dominated their expressions.


Morrow whispered, “It seems the chap in Otterburn was speaking the truth after all.”

Tegan drew in a sharp breath, her eyes wide. “I never dreamed…”

The Freak stopped eight paces away. At this distance, I could see its eyes—and they were different, even more than the ones I’d killed outside Salvation. Savage intellect glimmered as it studied me in turn. I wondered whether it had learned our language from its captives. My heart was pounding like mad. Though I’d killed hundreds of these monsters, I’d never conversed with one. I didn’t know anyone who had. Beside me, Fade made a sound deep in his throat, full of rage and pain. Quietly I offered my hand to ground him and he took it.