Chapter 33 #2
They climb the hill that cradles the ship and move deeper into the trees.
This area is lush. Ferns brush his legs as he walks, and when he sets a hand on a tree trunk to steady himself, it’s mossy and soft.
He was right to say they wouldn’t see the parked Talusar ship from above—-the trees are so dense here he can hardly see the moon.
“Look,” Elegy says, and Theren searches the trees for some sign of the Talusar, but Elegy just laughs a little and comes to stand behind him.
She’s close, and she puts a hand on his shoulder to steady herself as she points at the trees above them.
Under the bow of branches, there are spots of blue--white light.
Like fallen stars clinging to the leaves.
“Glowworms,” Elegy says softly. Though he can’t really see her face in the dark, he can feel the pulse of wonder beneath the stress and determination. And—-and he can feel her fingertips brushing his collarbone. He doesn’t know if she remembers she’s touching him.
For just a few seconds, they all stand and stare at the pinpricks of light, and Theren thinks that even though as a child, he only ever longed to go out—-into space, into the stars—-he keeps discovering little corners of this planet that surprise him with their beauty.
Maybe the Restorationists have a point. Maybe there’s something uniquely precious about Earth, something worth fighting to reclaim.
He glances at Elegy again, and wonders if she could be the one to do it, even if she doesn’t believe it.
They keep walking.
They walk the perimeter of the area Arias identified, a slow, arduous circle in the dark, like second hands ticking around a clock face.
If their ship is at six o’clock, they walk forward in time, past nine and noon and all the way to three before they encounter anything except trees, ferns, rocks, and streams.
Then Theren hears it: a voice. He stops, and the others stop with him, all three of them going still.
He hears the flutter of leaves, the rustle of animals, and the low, shapeless murmur of someone speaking quietly up ahead.
Theren draws his sword and gestures for the others to stay where they are.
He moves on soft, careful feet toward the sound.
The parked Talusar ship is just a shadow among shadows.
It’s perched in a clearing only large enough for it to launch, and no larger.
Trees loom over it, their branches offering camouflage; it must have been here for a while, for the branches it broke on its descent to have filled out again.
He sinks down, crouching among the ferns to see where the voice is coming from.
Whoever is guarding the ship—-and there are probably at least two of them, if they’re speaking to each other—-hasn’t lit a fire.
The ship is shut down, its engine silent and its navigation panel dark.
He could just charge in its direction and meet whatever comes, but he’s not a fool—-he may be good with a sword, but if there are three Talusar soldiers watching this ship, they’ll kill him easily.
He’s still considering his options when he gets a lucky break.
He hears the scrape of a match against striking paper, and in the flare of light it produces, he sees two people hunched over the flame.
Two Talusar soldiers, lighting the cigarettes they must have just rolled.
One of them has the young, gaunt face of a teenager—-the pilot, who can’t be older than fourteen.
The other is older than Theren, his head bald and his free hand balanced on the pommel of a sword.
Theren is more than capable of handling one soldier and one child, so he doesn’t hesitate.
He sprints toward the man and aims his blade low, beneath the protection of the febra armor.
There’s a flash of terror as the man sees him surging out of the dark.
Theren’s sword cuts easily through the soldier’s clothes and through his skin; he groans, and lashes out with instinct instead of finesse, battering Theren’s head with a fist. Theren drives his full weight into the man and they both fall to the ground.
This is what his body knows best: one person against another, strength against strength, the way it was in the Crucible.
Some opponents were smart, devious, but in the end, it’s difficult to beat someone who’s bigger than you are, and Theren is counting on that now.
He gets his hands around the soldier’s throat, faltering only briefly when a knee drives into his rib cage.
His hands slip down to the top of the armor, and he grabs it, lifts, and slams the man back down.
The soldier’s head snaps back, and Theren puts his hands, and then his arm, at the man’s throat again. He listens to the rattle of air as the soldier takes his last breath.
And then the buzz of insects, and the calling of distant birds, and the rustle of small animals in the brush.
He’s fine. That’s what he tells himself as he looks up to see the terrified eyes of the child soldier, the pilot taken from his family at the tender age of twelve and fed elixir like a drug. The boy is frozen, too scared to attack Theren even though that’s what he was trained to do.
“Run,” Theren says roughly.
The boy runs, stumbling over his feet as he sprints into the woods.
Theren’s fine. He unfastens the dead soldier’s febra armor and undoes the buckles holding his blade to his hip. Elegy and Arias come out of the trees to help him with the body, and Elegy’s long, thin fingers cover his as she presses him gently away. His hands are shaking.
“Let us handle it,” she says, and he sits, the undergrowth itching at his legs.
The sun hasn’t risen yet, but there’s a line of light over the horizon, like it’s considering it.
Theren is wearing febra armor. He’s worn it before only once, when Ranos agreed to indulge Theren’s curiosity.
Theren always wanted to know what febra felt like to the Fevered, or if he could hear it, its energy field a frequency that Cedrae ears couldn’t detect.
It didn’t disappoint—-when he put it on, he could feel it humming, like a gong that’s just been struck.
It hums now, this other man’s febra armor, even though it’s not made for someone of Theren’s size and build. It chafes in places, digs in others.
They’re waiting for the kidnappers to arrive with Julia Martin.
Parekh and Arias are in the trees. Parekh took a length of wire out of her pack and started walking through the woods with it, setting up a trip wire that will surround the camp.
When fighting Talusar soldiers, she said, when he gave her a confused look, even the second it takes them to recover from stumbling can be crucial for us.
The task Elegy assigned her was to identify Julia Martin and take her away from the fighting as quickly as possible.
Arias, meanwhile, pinpointed the direction the Talusar will be coming from, and then found a hiding place along that path. His job is to wait for the group to pass him, and then attack them from behind once they run into Parekh’s wire.
Elegy is with Theren. Well, not with him—-they stand six feet apart, each of them looking in a different direction.
Not back--to--back, exactly, but close enough to it.
Her spear is in her hands, and even though they’ve been standing there for the better part of an hour, she still looks ready. Not too stiff, not too relaxed.
He couldn’t help but stare at her, once the haze of killing the soldier had passed.
For someone who’s been refusing to have authority of any kind, she took it up so effortlessly.
Assessed the entire clearing in one glance, ordered the trip wire, assigned each of them a position.
Her tone was authoritative but not commanding.
This was the person she was before she met Theren. Before she lost everything.
Theren sees movement in the trees, and forces himself to stay still. Elegy meets his eyes, and holds his gaze as she calls out, “Hey! Come and get us, assholes!”
For a second he gapes at her, uncomprehending.
Why would she want to alert them to enemies in their campsite a second before she had to?
But as the soldiers charge toward them, their febra armor glinting in the pale dawn light, he understands the logic: if they run toward Theren and Elegy, they’ll all trip on the wire at the same time.
Sure enough, the wire sends them all sprawling.
It would be funny if adrenaline wasn’t stampeding through Theren’s body.
He sees Arias attack; he sees Parekh running into the trees to find Julia Martin; he counts fallen Talusar soldiers—-six of them recovering their balance.
He breaks into a run and stabs one of them right in the back.
It reminds him of walking the dark hallways of House Vidar the night he escaped with Elegy, the way he had to kill the guards before they even became aware of him, just to ensure a clear path to the exit.
He hated it then, and he hates it now. But Elegy’s presence has a way of bringing clarity to things. She needs him to kill these soldiers, so he will.
This time, he will.
Without hesitating, he turns to attack another one.
This soldier’s reflexes are better than he anticipated.
He lurches away from Theren just in time to save his neck.
But he’s also lost his footing. Theren pursues him, feinting to misdirect him and then ducking low to stab beneath his armor.
The blade slides right into the man’s belly.
Theren feels hot blood on his hand, and yanks the weapon free.