Siege
Chapter nine
A twinge of disappointment seized Ethan’s heart when he stepped off his makeshift bridge and onto the sand of the hill past the first ring of cacti.
Disappointment and deep mistrust. Because he knew Mara was well aware of the equipment he had, and she must have predicted he’d use the same method to get past her prickly pear moat.
He’d felt like a fool setting up the stepladder and bridge—or like she’d think him a fool, which was worse.
He’d spent the whole time wondering if she’d figured out an even more effective countermeasure that she was just waiting to unleash. And instead she’d left him entirely alone.
She had to be planning something.
Unless she was asleep. Maybe she was extra susceptible to alcohol, and his truce offering of mead had been an accidental Trojan horse. In which case honor would dictate—
Screw honor. If she wasn’t paying attention, that was her problem. It wasn’t like he was assaulting her.
So he implemented the next part of his plan, depositing his current burden on the rock Mara had leaned against earlier and then heading back across his bridge and down the stepladder for another load.
It took more trips than he’d needed to bring everything to the hill from the Jeep, and he almost lost his balance and tumbled into the cacti several times, but eventually all of his supplies, his tools, his cooler, sunshade, and camping equipment had been transferred from the lower level of the hill to this one.
“Can your remote-controlled gophers handle this?” he panted at last, dropping into the sand. His last task had been to untie the plank from the steplapper, hurry across its wobbly length, and then drag it up to set with the rest of his supplies.
He’d trapped himself inside her fortress. On purpose.
He was either a strategic genius, or he was gonna die within a week.
It had taken him most of the day to get this far, and Mara was still a no-show. Though she could be watching him invisibly. Maybe he should strip for her.
Fuck it. He was too tired to be sexy.
The sun was already low on the horizon, so he hastened to erect and stake down his compact pop-up tent, then chugged a protein shake and set out for more recon, using his drone video as a general guide.
It wasn’t a very good guide, as it turned out.
All of the paths he had previously mapped out as possible points of entry were now choked with fresh cactus growth.
Just thick enough to stymie his usual two-board entry and just high enough to block his stepladder bridge.
He had two more of the stepladders, besides the one he’d been forced to leave behind, but they weren’t tall enough anymore.
But about halfway around the hill, he spotted a possibility. A path that had been blocked, true, but that seemed to continue past the blockage for a good ways.
He just needed a taller ladder.
Was she watching him now? He had to assume so. And so he continued around the hill, considering the various blocked paths, pretending to analyze even the worst of them as if they were serious contenders, until the sun was low in the sky.
She didn’t appear even once.
He told himself he wasn’t disappointed. Which was a lie, but not a very big one, since he was mostly worried. What was she planning?
Ethan returned to his mound of supplies, considering them.
He’d left most of his gear down by the Jeep still—anything that wasn’t needed for survival or conquest—but he’d lugged all of his lumber and his fully charged cordless power tools along, and he had a single solar-powered lantern that had been sitting in the sun all day.
He sat on the rock, sketching and erasing by the light of the lantern until he was fairly certain he had a design that would work using minimal lumber and just one more ladder.
And then he tore that sketch out, turned the page in his sketchbook, and designed an entirely different design, one that he knew wouldn’t work.
One that he wasn’t going to bother building, crossing a cactus cluster not at all like the one he planned to cross.
He doodled a stick-figure woman at the top of the page, then placed the open sketchbook on the rock with a cold can of mead beside it and turned away to prepare or bed.
He tucked the torn-out sketch under the flat vinyl of his air mattress and started pumping it up.
Ten minutes later, there was the faintest rustling of sand from the direction of the rock.
Gotcha, he thought grimly.
How did the phrase go? Old age and treachery, yadda yadda, youth and skill. He might not be old, but he knew which side of the equation he belonged on. Mara had all the skill, all the power.
All he had was tenacity and sneakiness.
They would have to do.
After assembling the pieces of his new siege engine, he slept as well as could be expected on an air mattress that was neither long enough nor wide enough for his body, in a tent that he’d outgrown when he was twelve, and awoke the following morning to the glow of the morning sun through the vinyl of his tent.
The can of mead was gone, though his sketchbook was still there on the rock, pages riffling in the wind. He couldn’t help but grin at what Mara had left in exchange.
Confident swirling cursive writing next to the stick figure he’d drawn of her, reading, “Your princess is in another castle.” She’d also added surprisingly realistic prickly pear paddles to each of the stick figure’s hands.
Double gotcha. There was something charming about Mara knowing a meme reference like that. Or maybe she was a secret classic gamer, complete with a goddess-cave of vintage Nintendos and CRT screens to play them on.
He didn’t have time to speculate, though.
He couldn’t count on her waiting at his decoy crossing point for long, not once he started working, so he packed up everything double time and started lugging at top speed.
Or everything that was left. His power tools had vanished into the sand in the night, as had his lantern.
Not his food or water, though. She clearly didn’t want him to die. A small favor, indeed.
It didn’t take him long to set up his newest bridge—stepladder, plus a gangplank converted to a ladder extension with two-by-four steps, tied at the top to a second plank that angled down to the sand on the other side of the really fucking tall cholla Mara had transplanted or grown to block him.
He started dragging his gear up the ladder and sending it sliding down the makeshift ramp to the other side.
Ethan had just sent the last of his equipment sliding down the plank when the structure began to heave. He looked down in horror at the cholla, which was expanding as he watched, prickly stems curving around the edge of the ladder toward him.
Aiming at where his armor wasn’t.
He let out a shriek—he could be proud later, when the nastiest desert plant in existence wasn’t trying to stick him in the ass—and scrambled up and over the bridge, tumbling down the ramp to land awkwardly in his pile of gear. The makeshift bridge fell sideways just after he landed.
“Jesus fuck, woman!” he snarled when he could breathe again. “What do you have against academia?”
She appeared on top of the cholla. On top of it. Lounging like it was a comfy fainting couch instead of a bed of natural nails. “That was a very clever trick,” she said coolly. “Leaving false plans to distract me.”
“Not as clever as whatever the fuck you’re doing.”
She looked down at the cholla, ran a hand along its spines like she was petting a cat. “How is this clever?”
He shuddered. “It hurts just looking at you. Don’t you ever get stuck?”
“I am of their element,” she said, folding her arms and looking down at him over the edge of the cholla’s crown. “They will not wound me.”
“Well, isn’t that convenient.” Ethan glared down at his legs, which had a few cholla stems stuck atop his armor.
At least they’re not in my ass. He picked them off, tossing them to the side, and rolled to his feet.
With her here, he couldn’t afford to stop.
He stuffed a few protein shakes and cans of mead in his backpack, grabbed his single remaining ladder and an armload of planks, and made his way along the path.
The path which was getting narrower as he went, to the sound of Mara’s mocking laughter.
He bit out an oath when two prickly pears nearly met in front of him, tossed most of his equipment over the obstruction, and used two of his planks to carefully wedge his way through.
He ducked under a cholla whose stems were drooping closer and closer to the ground, using the stepladder as a shield.
A few minutes later, he sacrificed the stepladder to get over another wall of prickly pear, crawling low on the attached plank to avoid the arms of a saguaro that were stretching downward toward him.
When he landed on the other side, Mara had stopped laughing. He could hear her, though, just ahead of him, panting with exertion.
This is what it was like for Actaeon, he thought with a mix of fury and wonder. This is what it is like to be chased by the hounds of a goddess. To try to catch her.
He’d said all he wanted was tenure. He was doing this for research. Serious research that could be applied to agriculture, to environmental studies. Research that could make the world a better place.
Except as the madly blooming flowers of Mara’s garden finally came in sight, he didn’t think tenure or environment or human scientific advances.
He thought, Mara.
She was standing before the blooming cacti, arms outstretched, as if he were about to barrel his way through her to get to the plants.
Somewhere along the line, the cacti had stopped growing as he approached, but they were still a maze, a challenge, and as he lay down each board, his load became lighter, and his heart became lighter, because there she was, she was just past that cactus, and that one, and that one…
And then he was out of boards, but it didn’t matter, because he was past all the barriers, all the cacti but the ones he needed, the ones blooming like they were possessed by the rainbow, and Mara was staring at him with her bright green eyes.
“Stay away,” she said, but her voice was trembling with fatigue. Perhaps with surrender.
“I win,” he replied, striding forward, careful of where he stepped even as he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“You have not won.”
“But here I am.”
“And you have nothing. No tent, no shade—”
He was close to her now, close enough to reach out and touch her. He didn’t. “I have me. I have me, and my notebook, and my camera and kit, and enough mead and protein shakes and water to last me days. I have everything I need to do my job.”
He heaved a deep breath, turned to the side to walk around Mara, his eyes already fixed on a coronet of brilliant violet blossoms with petals like fireworks.
A barrel cactus, he catalogued vaguely, though his attention was still fully on the woman beside him, smooth mottled skin and white silk and flowing hair, and then she wasn’t beside him, she was before him again, eyes flashing.
“Not one more step,” she hissed in a voice like a sandstorm.
Ethan raised his eyebrows. “Or what?”
He took the step.
“No!” Her eyes flashed, and then the sand beneath him fell away, his vision crazily panning across the sky and the vista of flowers and bees and pollen as he stumbled and fell to the ground. His head landed hard, exploding barrel cactus flowers flashing across his vision, and the world went dark.