Nameless (Nameless #1)(7)
Pride always killed the Ram.
“Let me help you or I swear I’ll slit your sorry, little throat.” Zo regretted her words immediately. A true Nameless would never speak to a Ram like that, even if he was just a boy.
Her vision had adjusted enough to make out his shock. “You just threatened me.” A slow smile spread across his face, reaching his eyes and lifting his ears. He chuckled, but grabbed his side from the pain. “I like you, healer.” He rested his arm on her shoulder and let her carry most of his weight. “You’ve got nerve.”
It wasn’t until that moment that she noticed his size. Only thirteen but still as tall as she was, maybe even taller. His wiry muscles would undoubtedly expand with the years of training ahead of him. According to Commander Laden, boys his age had already been through a barbaric amount of training. Beatings. Systematic starvation. All to ensure their dominance on the battlefield as adults.
“We’re almost to the entrance. Then you need to let me walk out alone.”
Zo began to protest, but he cut her off.
“I already told you. I have to walk away from my own death or else they’ll send me back. The Ram have no place for weaklings.” He looked Zo right in the eyes, clearly defending his people’s action to let him suffer and die in this dark, underground hell.
I will never, ever, understand these animals.
They reached a large wooden door glowing with gold light around the hinges. There was no handle. Zo ducked out from under the boy’s arm to let him support his own weight. She took a step behind him and tugged at her shirt, sticky with his fresh blood.
“Don’t speak unless spoken to. Keep your head down. I’ll do the rest,” he said.
Zo studied the boy, trying to weigh his intentions. No one was nice for nothing.
The boy pounded three times on the door. The booming sound chased past them, likely taunting the dying men at the bottom of the cave. The latch lifted free followed by a draft of fresh air and the slow creak of rusted hinges.
A single lantern swung on a knotted walking stick. An elderly man with hollow eyes studied them with a vacant expression. His back had rounded from too many years of heavy labor, leathery skin hung from jutting bones. The poor Nameless man stood alone, left to guard the dying. His arm shook as he lifted the ram horn from his neck and offered it to the boy. “You must call them.” His corroded voice cracked and wheezed from lack of use.
The boy pressed the horn to his lips and blew. The sound of the Ram ricocheted throughout the cave, pulsing deep into Zo’s very bones. She hated that sound. Back home it was known as the Call of Death. It meant another raid. Another scramble to get those she loved to safety behind the inner walls of the city. It meant hunger. Women crying through the night over the loss of a son or husband. Fear.
Always fear.
Minutes passed before the small group of healers in white robes came to gurney the boy away. He might live if he didn’t have to endure anymore of these ridiculous customs. The boy would grow up and become the enemy he was meant to be.
“The Nameless girl stays with me,” he ordered.
“She’s been summoned by the Gate Master,” said one of the Ram healers.
Zo shook her head. “I want to find my—”
The boy used the little energy he had left to strike her with the back of his hand. The force of the blow sent Zo to her knees. “Quiet, Nameless,” he said, though his reluctant tone didn’t quite match the words.
Zo looked down and swallowed the blood pooling in her mouth. The aftertaste served as a useful distraction, buying her much needed time to temper her emotions. Her hands shook with the need to strike back. An urge to kill those who’d done so much to her and her family gnawed at her chest. It was a monster begging for release. But lashing out now wouldn’t save her sister or her cause. Sweet revenge would surely come, just not today.
As they walked the rest of the way out of the cave the boy mouthed the word, “sorry.” She fingered her swelling cheek and walked into the blinding light of day, into a place different from anything she’d ever known.
The thick scent of cherry and cedar smoke filled the room. The smell might have been relaxing were Gryphon not kneeling before the Horn—a ten-foot table shaped like the curve of a giant ram horn.
It took a lot to secure an audience with Chief Barnabas. Gryphon always hoped his first encounter with the clan chief would be due to some heroic act of valor. Instead, he found himself shrinking under the weight of the chief’s stare as Zander explained the Wolf sighting.
“Yes, sir. We’re sure it was a Wolf.” Zander stood proud, with chin raised.
“Just one?” Barnabas had deep vertical wrinkles protecting his small mouth from encroaching round cheeks. His patronizing smile sat uncomfortably on his face.
Wolves never traveled alone. Everyone knew that.
Zander shuffled his feet. “We only saw one, sir. The Wolf stopped and howled at us mid-retreat. Taunting us, in a way.”
“Shameful,” muttered a female advisor seated at Barnabas’ right. The men in Gryphon’s mess called her the Seer. She was said to have a supernatural gift that allowed her to see everything that happened within the Gate with her black, beady eyes. Gryphon thought it more likely that she simply had an army of informants working for her.
She leaned over to Barnabas and whispered, “Didn’t you say the Wolves sent troops to help defend the Kodiak too? Maybe the rumors are—”