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I looked up to see Hawk had come to sit by my chair, his eyes on me for a moment to check in before being inexorably drawn down to our child.
“Where’s Jack?” I asked, not framing the words, future me having sorted that one out. I sounded weary, my voice all scratchy.
“Oh, y’know him…”
Hawk didn’t finish the sentence and neither did I, as apparently, we were both able to fill the gap. I looked out over the sunny field, watching the flowers sway as our child fed.
This is always what’s driven me forward, Brandon said. No gods, no magic, just this.
Our child, I said.
Our child, echoed the others.
22
Leifgart, I decided, was ugly.
We hid in a stand of trees, just beyond the outskirts of the place. It was a helluva lot bigger than the city I’d seen in my visions, as it seemed to have fallen victim to urban sprawl. The main city was safe behind the walls erected on the edges of the massive plateau under which the Great Black Wolf lived, but outside it, down the slopes and in the valley below, were huge amounts of little shacks and cottages.
“For the servants and the farmers,” Sylvan said as I studied the place. “Volken don’t farm or sell goods.”
He’d come back, finally, with Hawk following at a polite distance. His social mask was firmly re-situated, and the rest of us were done pressing him. There was time for recriminations when this was over.
“But they eat and use them.” I shook my head. “So, if the Volken don’t live in these houses, who does?”
“Various members of different races that they’ve brought back through conquests. Many have lived here for ten or more generations. They were brought to serve the Volken, and so they do, generation after generation.”
“Why don’t they try to escape?” I asked, looking about us. There didn’t seem to be any soldiers patrolling, any garrisons, or any sign of Volken presence around here.
“Because the Volken don’t treat them especially badly, but mostly because their people won’t accept them back. If they’re caught harbouring fugitives, the Volken ride in and take all the healthy young males for work and rape the women to produce yet more Tirian. Better that these ones act as tributes and stay put.”
“So how do we get past without them alerting the Volken?”
“We don’t,” he said, waving a hand over his neck, and that reddish-tinged crystal appeared. “We won’t have to. They’ll help us get in unnoticed.”
“Unarmed and unprepared.” Aaron had approached as we were standing there. “You want us to just waltz in there and retrieve my men, our men from those bastards, with the assistance of farmers and servants?”
“Not unarmed. I have a cache of supplies in one of the houses,” Sylvan said with a tilt of his head in the direction of the buildings beyond.
“And where d'you get them from?” Sylvan just smiled. “The caches. You’re the one who’s been raiding them.”
“Not all of them, but yes, I saw what was needed and secured it inside one of the houses.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Aaron snapped. “If you’ve foreseen all of this, you know what’s going to happen. How do we get in and out without getting caught?”
“Non-Volken are barely acknowledged, and if they are, it's to strike them for some imagined infraction. We go in as servants. No one would question them going into the city, or the cells below. We get in, free your people, and then go.”
“That’s not a plan. That’s a statement of fucking intent,” Aaron replied. “Where’s the maps, the escape routes? Do we stick together, or do we have rendezvous points? Are we going to scout first, assess the terrain, then plan our extraction?” He looked at the lot of us expectantly, obviously unhappy with what he saw around him. “So, what, we just trust that ‘the Great Wolf will provide’?”
“Nothing’s changed, Aaron,” I said, reaching out and putting a hand on his arm.
He hissed at that and jerked back, but for a moment, I caught the raging torrent of fear and obligation that threatened to sweep him away. I ignored the tense set of his shoulders and replaced my hand on his skin.
“We started this with tiny numbers and only a handful of weapons,” I said. “The tactical vehicles would be awesome right now, but not especially useful. We were never going to be able to storm the gates, there’s just not enough of us. I don’t know if anyone actually expects us to succeed. They kept most of the soldiers back at Sanctuary, to defend the place in case we fail, which probably tells you something. The odds are against us, we don’t have the right intel or the right weapons, but does anyone want to turn around? We could be back to the gate within a week, and then go home. I could take us into the city, away from Sanctuary, and it's unlikely that anything would happen to us personally. We could find a nice place, shack up, have that baby.” My voice broke on that, but I forged on. “Or we can do what we came for, to try our best to get the guys out.”
“We’re getting the guys out,” Jack said with a shake of his head. “I wanna say no, but that’s what we’re doing, that’s who we are now, aren’t we?”
“I’ve gotta go in. I have to try,” Finn said. “It’s what’s keeping me together, that chance. The chance to see my dads…” He blinked and then looked away. “I know this is a suicide mission.” His jaw worked for a moment as he thought about that. “It’s why I was pulling away, putting some distance between us. It’s the only way I could consider doing this, putting the pack to one side, but that didn’t work.” He laugh
