Chapter 6 Snow Crowned Kings
SNOW CROWNED KINGS
MORNING CAME LOUD and early as daybreak filled the caverns with layers of color and chaos.
Baker was tugged through an ocean of bustling bodies as if this large collective organism were assembling around her.
It was a powerful feeling, ushered through the tunnels until hands landed her in green grass at the mountain’s base.
She was relieved to see Khalid, directing others who expertly donned gear and saddled horses. The movements were synchronized even in the heat of the rush as an expression of the collective ROSE.
When Khalid was done directing the others, she gestured to Baker and the ROSE closest to her brought her close. Khalid knelt down with a mask fixed on top of her head.
“Go wait in the woods over there,” she said, directing her to a nest of trees and bushes. “If I’m not back and you hear fighting nearby, follow the deer path back just beyond the river on the other side of those trees. It should take you to familiar land. Get back to Fort Kit. Far away as you can.”
The rest of the group donned their masks.
Baker slinked away, adrenalin racing as she pressed herself into the trees.
The silence that followed was infinitely more frightening than the clatter, and Baker was unable to wait alone.
The ROSE had seemed organized and calm, but the entire mountain was alive like a hive of bees that someone had kicked. She had to know what was happening.
She pursued their path, but they were fast and soon she found herself immersed in that deep silence she’d tried to escape. Even the birds were quiet now.
A sound drew her to the light breaking in from the clearing just a few trees to her left, and she crept close to an old oak by the forest’s edge. She could see the face of the mountain from where she’d come. Her small fingers clung to the large grooves in between the bark as she peered past it.
At the opposite end of the valley, Baker spotted a group waiting on their horses. They looked like seven statues, completely still and dressed all in gray. The ROSE had moved as if to circle around the edge of the clearing.
Baker hugged the tree as she waited for the ROSE to leap out behind them, to assail them ferociously like they’d done to the young Strike in the woods. Her mind ballooned with heated questions.
Was the group she saw now just a group of scouts? Was it only a matter of time before a larger force emerged behind them?
Baker’s eyes darted back toward the now quiet mountain. It looked empty, but she knew that was not the case. She hugged the tree as one of the seven gray riders dismounted.
Cloak trailing behind him, he walked alone toward the mountain. He stepped over the tall grasses, somehow elegant despite the uneven terrain.
Baker waited for a ROSE to walk out and meet him, perhaps to discuss the source of this mysterious conflict. The mountain remained silent, and the man continued walking.
She wondered if he planned to make the entire trek on his own if someone didn’t come see him, but he stopped in the center of the field. He looked strange standing there, so small in the wide expanse and the towering presence of the mountains and trees.
He extended his cloaked hands up like a conductor as if he were worshiping the mountain. Perhaps he was beaconing for the ROSE to come out?
Baker eased her grip on the bark. Maybe all of the rustling around had been a precaution and she’d misunderstood the gravity of it all.
The man threw his arms down as if pulling on a heavy curtain. She wondered if he was frustrated by it, appearing lonely and vulnerable out there on his own. No one came to meet him, or even give any indication they were there.
The air grew still, breezes that once pushed through the trees and fields settling to a stop. Nature seemed to be holding its breath.
Baker jolted as the ROSE tore back through the trees like a herd of quiet deer. They seemed light footed despite all of the heavy gear. One slid to a halt as it reached her, removing a glove and placing a sweaty hand on Baker’s cheek as the others ran past.
Baker knew it was Khalid and could barely see her eyes flickering back and forth as she panted under the mask.
She grabbed Baker’s wrist and yanked her out into the clearing.
In full view of both sides, they were now running toward a group of ROSE on their horses that had emerged near the mountain, leaping over the thick valley grasses.
Yanking her mask off, Khalid lifted Baker on to a horse and fastened her to the saddle with rope. Khalid’s fingers trembled, though her diction and the strength of her actions were smooth and strong.
“What’s happening?” the nearest of the ROSE asked as the others stood silently behind him.
“It’s Peter’s Strike,” Khalid said back and Baker was struck by the sudden shift in the ROSE’s expression.
The other’s behind him looked at one another, all removing their helmets in unison with a somber expression on their faces.
Their eyes shifted to Baker as one ROSE in the far back scrambled off into the woods.
“Don’t forget us.” Leaning forward, Khalid planted a soft and intentional kiss on Baker’s forehead.
Several muted remarks urged everyone’s attention back toward the mountains but Khalid’s eyes did not follow them.
Baker turned to see the sharp tops of the peaks blurring.
While the others watched in confusion, Khalid wrapped Baker’s hands around the saddle.
“Keep your head down,” she demanded, “hold on.”
Her eyes softened a final time and she held Baker’s face. She looked into her eyes and whispered as if there were no rush in the world, “though they take it to the slaughter, the lamb still speaks,” she breathed, “a voice is as fragile and powerful as life itself. It speaks for you too.”
Khalid stepped to the back of the horse, Baker searching her eyes desperately as she ached to call out the woman’s name, to say hello and goodbye all at once.
After a sharp clap, the horse bolted forward, Baker’s breath seizing up and her body locking into a panicked clutch as the animal launched into a full gallop down the field away from the mountains.
She saw Khalid watch her go as the horizon blurred behind her. Baker blinked hard as her breath tore raggedly out of her lungs. Her vision blurred only more. The mountains beyond the field became murky shapes. The definition of the peaks, snow, and great crevices melted together.
She was sick with the jostling of the horse. The rope that tied her in bit into her body with each powerful bound.
The mountains sank and seemed to implode. Their colors mixed and smeared. A wild crashing filled the air, and she saw the blurred mountains breaking down through the trees, snapping them like sticks. It was not her vision that made the world seem awry.
The world was awry. The mountains were melting.
Black waters of Madness burst through them, crashing through the rocks and dissolving them like acid through a thin fabric of reality.
The mountains succumbed, barreling down on them all, breaking over the hills and spilling over the trees with thunderous weight.
They swallowed everything with a roar that erupted across the sky.
Khalid watched Baker still as the torrent embraced her in a violent flash.
Baker felt her head soar with disbelief and horror.
The torrent burst into the valley like a swirling earthquake.
It was coming after her next, encroaching in a rush after her horse.
She held her breath in a panic, praying the animal would run faster.
The rush of gray, green, and brown water chased with a bellowing echo, swallowing everything in its wake.
The wave built and grew. The closer it got, the larger she realized it was.
With the bulk of a building several levels high, it barreled forward.
Baker was convinced that she would be swallowed.
A form suddenly raced past her in a flash, a rider moving in the opposite direction. The white horse he rode halted and reared, the man, dressed in black, slammed an extended hand with black tipped fingers out toward the wave.
The torrent of melted mountain broke against an invisible wall, splashing high into the sky with so much force that it cast a shadow across the valley with an ear splitting boom.
A blast of wind billowed over them, sending violent gusts over the valley, and skinning the trees in either direction, a sign that they were protected not just from the wave, but the forces of it.
As if in a tank, the melted mountains sloshed with gargantuan echoes against the horizon, casting massive, undulating shadows that hypnotized with the breadth of their movement.
The man closed his hand into a fist as his horse jostled restlessly under him.
The mountains solidified again and now something strange remained, a massive rectangular rock that seemed to stretch almost endlessly into the sky and fan out like a hand of its own.
A moment later, pebbles rained down around them, pattering like rain as Baker’s horse passed the Strike that had caused the mountains to melt and then the animal slowed against all reason until it stood among other horses that remained somehow just as calm.
“It looks like the ROSE delivered a gift,” someone remarked.
“He’s going to pay for that,” someone else said. “There could have been a potential Strike in that group. Who was their leader again?”
“Vladimir, Smith, Khalid, and Hilde,” a woman replied.
The first man cursed. “It’s not a good sign that Peter just appeared. It takes a lot more work to fix something like this than it takes to break it.”
“Yun,” the woman scolded.
“He was reckless. Breaking down the mountain? Peter is going to kill him.”