Fearless (Nameless #3)(35)
Gryphon looked to the man at the far right of the phalanx. He was a monster of a man, with a tree-trunk neck resting on a mountain of body. A Wolf in a Kodiak body.
“How long has this group been together?” asked Gryphon.
“Nine months,” came the answer.
Gryphon swallowed. He and his brothers of the mess had been family. Some, like Zander, had been part of that family for almost two decades. These Wolves didn’t have a prayer.
“Are any of you family? Longtime friends?”
A few scattered raised hands dotted the forty. “Come forward,” said Gryphon. Various clusters of men worked their way to the front of the group. Gryphon could see some family resemblances. Brothers. Fathers. Uncles. Sons.
The way this group had been arranged made sense in a lot of ways. Putting the best fighters at the front, with the back line pushing them forward. Giving the right flank a giant of a man. Logically speaking, that was the wisest setup.
But when was war ever logical?
“Are these your sons?” Gryphon asked a man with a full, graying beard.
The man nodded. “Yes, sir. Justin is twenty. Isaac is sixteen.”
Gryphon arranged the sixteen-year-old boy to the left of his father and the twenty-year-old brother to the left of the sixteen-year-old. “Father protects youngest son. Youngest son protects the big brother he likely worships.”
Gryphon went about rearranging the whole troop into four lines, placing the closet kin together. Then he conducted a series of drills to test each new line. Instead of putting the strongest in the front, he placed the best shields there to protect the rest. In each line, he assigned a leader at the center to call orders. Instead of captains, he placed fathers, men who were used to being listened to, in command.
Once every line was occupied with a series of tasks, Gryphon stepped back to observe his men. None of them knew that the Ram would be marching in only a few short weeks. Many lives would be lost. Too many. He’d have to think of some way to keep them alive, some way to help them learn the phalanx well enough to defend themselves so they might have a sporting chance.
It would be so much easier to give up. What difference did it really make to him what happened after he was gone? Men die. The strong overtake the weak. It was the most ancient order of life. He was just one man walking to his own death. How could he make any sort of difference? Why should he try?
Laden appeared behind one of the lines of men. He walked slowly, but not without purpose, to Gryphon’s side. “I like what you’ve done. Clever, given our time constraints.”
“Commander?”
“Yes, son.”
“How do you know so much about the Ram?”
Commander Laden regarded him carefully, his lips pinched together on one side. The scar covering his face morphed into something dark and gruesome. “I learned the same way you did, Striker. One beating at a time.”
On the second day of their journey, Zo, Raca, Talon, Ikatou, and his two Kodiak companions traveled a game trail east through the hilly terrain. Pine and fir trees grew amongst quaking aspen whose leaves shivered in the wind. The whistling of the leaves grew and died with every gust. Zo caught herself unconsciously scraping at the skin around her thumb until it was raw and bleeding as she constantly scanned their surroundings.
The area wasn’t known as the Kodiak Hills simply because the clan made their home nearby. Giant brown bears roamed this region. Ikatou explained they were especially aggressive in the spring because they’d just come out of hibernation—some with new cubs to protect and feed.
Zo wasn’t the only one wary of these hills. Both Talon and Raca walked with bow in hand and arrows loosely nocked. But their caution was contradicted by the three Kodiaks’ lack of it. Ikatou and his men laughed and jeered at one another, growing louder and louder the farther east they traveled—much to Zo’s annoyance.
As the sun began to set, Ikatou led them off the game trail up the side of the mountain to a small wooden hut that sat in the middle of a steep slope. Zo clutched plants and tree roots to help pull her up the mountainside. The weight of her pack threatened to pull her backwards, forcing Zo at some points to lean forward, her stomach nearly pressed against the slope.
By the time they reached an old wooden structure, Zo’s breath came heavy and her heart threatened to jump from her chest.
“What is this place?” she panted. The cabin seemed to grow out from the side of the mountain, with only three of its four walls visible. The rundown structure boasted a door and only a few small windows. The wood was worn and some of the plaster between the logs deteriorating.
“Our resting place for the night,” Ikatou panted, pulling open the door to the cabin with a grunt. He held it for Zo and Raca, and let the other men follow him inside. Four squares of soft light filtered through the high windows. They did little to dispel the heavy shadows of the bare room.
“Let’s gather some wood and get a fire going.”
Zo hadn’t noticed the small stone fireplace built into one of the corners of the room until she knew to look for it. They dropped their packs and headed for the door. “Stay close to the cabin,” Talon said to Raca and Zo. They both nodded and joined the others to collect wood and kindling for a fire.
It wasn’t long before the five sat inside the cabin with warm cheeks and full bellies—thanks in part to the handiwork of Raca’s bow and a pair of rabbits who’d crossed its path.