Chapter Seven
“Why don’t you explain, Préyhen? You put together our little game.” Victor’s anger was apparent.
I glanced at Aidyn; she was just as silent as she always was. I gulped down the rising stomach acid and prepared one of my famous excuses. “You see, sir, we were going into the woods to spar with one another so we could be ready when, you know, it happens.” He wasn’t buying it so I continued. “Surely a veteran warrior such as yourself is safe, but we want to be ready when the nomadic tribes attack. We’ve heard they’ll be coming.”
“Vhy do you pretend zat I am as stupid as you?!” I cowered almost as much as if he were my mother; in all likelihood, my mother would soon find out what I’d been up to. “I am vell avare of vhy you are hiking about vith veapons.”
“You do?” I asked before catching my mistake. “I mean, surely you know all about the tribes!”
“Idiotic girl, ze tribes vouldn’t attack zis village. You are going to vight ze Catrions. Oken has told me everyzing.” He scolded. “Come vit me.”
I felt betrayed, but more confused than anything; I always thought Nellya had been my best friend next to Victor. The notion of her doing something like this didn’t make sense to me. Anger boiled in me but disbelief kept it from spilling over the sides of the pot. I didn’t know how Nellya had found out about Alaric’s plans; maybe Alaric had set me or maybe Nellya had caught him sneaking around and weaseled it from him, but telling snitching was something I’d never expected from her. Nellya wasn’t the type to rat out her peers when she unearthed their mischevious antics; she certainly had never told on me, since she typically preferred to partake in my naughtiness.
Victor, Aidyn, and I followed obediently, anticipating anything from a beating to the summoning of our parents to ground us until we were forty. It never occurred to us that our homes were in the opposite direction Mr. Dabahov was leading us; I was even preparing to accept whatever punishment cranky old Mr. Dabahov saw fit to give us.
Mr. Dabahov walked us a long way through the woods, and even past the walls of the village before he stopped. When he stoped, it was to lecture us but not on what we thought he would talk about.
“Ve are leaving the village and heading two miles North vhere I have found our means of reaching the coast.” He said. “You two vill ride vith my daughter.” He pointed at Aidyn and I. “Meanvhile, you vill ride with myself and ze rude boy.” He jabbed Victor in the chest with a gnarled left pointer finger.
Since I’d been expecting a beating and a call to my parents from a village elder, Mr. Dabahov’s orders were unforeseen. “Sir?”
“Vhat?” He snapped.
“Why are you doing this? We were expecting to get in trouble, not get help.” I didn’t bother masking my bewilderment.
“You vill still be in trouble if you get caught but in ze mean time, ve can make a sport out of killing zem.” He spun around and marched away in long strides.
I had to run to keep up with him. “Sir, why are you doing this?”
“Vhat business is it of yours? If you must know, I have many unresolved issues vit ze Catrions.” He didn’t look at me when he spoke; I was probably lucky to have gotten a response at all. “Now leave me alone before I do something drastic!”
I took the hint. Abandoning the cranky senior citizen, I fell in stride with Victor. “We lucked out, huh?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he burned holes in the air in front of him with his eyes; his hands were clenched on the hilts of his swords. He gripped the handles so tightly, his knuckles were white from the lack of circulation.
It was at that moment I wished I knew Aidyn better; she was the only other person I could talk to. The problem was she wasn’t a talkative person. All I really knew about her was from observations during school. She was exceptionally bright, getting full marks on every assignment, and she was always the first person to finish her work. Everything else I knew about her was information anyone could gather. She was sixteen years old with her red (or brown depending on the light) hair tied back in a ponytail and she had a healthy farmer’s tan on her Caucasian skin. Other than those things, I really didn’t know anything about her.
Walking the two miles to Mr. Dabahov’s destination was only a long journey because of the frustrated silence. During the trip, I felt I was to blame for some terrible wrong; that feeling only angered me because they couldn’t understand why I had to see the Catrions. It was a matter of proving my worth, as much to Alaric as to myself.
At eight a.m. the sun was visible above the treetops, but more importantly, Mr. Dabahov stopped his trek forward. At last, we’d arrived. There wasn’t much around except for a few crumbling three-story office buildings.
Behind one of them, Alaric paced back and forth. Nellya sat on the ground trying to rub the rust out of an archaic scattergun. Etched on the side of one of the gun’s two barrels was the ‘Meghan’ in delicate script.
At the sound of Mr. Dabahov’s keys jingling everytime he took a step, Nellya hopped up and hugged her father. “Hurray! We can finally get going!”
Mr. Dabahov smiled at his daughter, descended a ramp I’d not seen before he went down, and unlocked a pad-lock on a door at the bottom of the ramp.
Behind that metal garage-type door was a dark dank basement. Tentatively, we ventured to the edge of the moist darkness; the smell of a rotting raccoon from the recesses of the rat-infested cellar stung our noses. Only Mr. Dabahov was crazy enough to enter the cave. Moments later, a motor humming came from the darkness, preceeding a rugged solar-powered dune buggy coming up the ramp.
Alaric started to clinb into the front passenger seat but Mr. Dabahov shooed him away. “No, get away. Zis is Oken’s ride and I don’t trust horny males like youself vith my daughter.: Alaric looked like he’d been slapped.
“Oken, you can go ahead and leave. I’ll be a little behind but vill catch up. My dune buggy isn’t all ze way charged.”
“Ok Papa, I’ll go. I remember the route you showed me so I’ll be fine.” Nellya answered, plopping down in the driver’s seat; the bulky shocks didn’t budge under her weight.
Aidyn and I placed our things around the back passenger seat and got in. Aidyn took the cramped backseat and I sat in the front. The sat belt was a complicated blue nylon harness, but by the time Nellya sped off, I’d figured out how to fasten it, even if improperly. Terrified of bouncing out of the open vehicle if Nellya hit a bump, I clung to the roll cage with my tail.
Nellya let out a whoop of joy when the dune buggy made it outside the city limits. Aidyn and I exchanged a brief look of shock before gawking at our deranged driver. Thankfully, Nellya offered an explanation.
“I’m excited to finally be going after the Catrions! After everything father has aid about them, I can’t wait to kill one!”
Needless to say, Aidyn and I didn’t share her enthusiasm. To tell the truth, we didn’t have much of a response to her exuberance.
Sensing our loss for words, Nellya attempted to break the ice. “Préyhen, I know why you’re coming, or at least I think I do, but why are you coming Aidyn?”
She shrugged. “Impulse, really.” Her response was shorter than Nellya liked; Nellya had to struggle to keep a conversation going.
“So you don’t have any grudges against the Catrions?” Oken asked.
“Nope,”
“None at all?”
“Nope,”
Nellya gave up the hope of a conversation with Aidyn. Instead, she and I spent the next few hours talking about random interests. We were fortunate to be friends and have topics to discuss because otherwise the day would have been spent in thoughtful silence.
Around noon, Nellya inadvertently drove through a tribal camp. I’d noticed all the tents and sleeping bags but it never occurred to me what they could mean, at least not until a feral streaker charged at our dune buggy.
The woman had a rusted bowie knife in her hand and webs of blood in her mad eyes. Nellya screamed and tried to evade the attack but the woman had years of her experience under her missing belt; she managed to catch one of the bars of the roll cage. Despite the rocky ground shredding the flesh on the lower half of her body, she clung to the vehicle and attempted to climb in. Aidyn cringed to the left side of the seat, away from the ravaging lunatic.
The woman’s bowie knife slashed at Aidyn. Her first swing sliced a cash in Aidyn’s sleeve as she fumbled for a way to defend herself.
My tail wasn’t going to let the second swing come.
Without thinking, I flipped a scimitar over and conked the woman on the head with the sheathed blade. She fell backwards but held firmly on to the dune buggy. My tail flicked the scabbard into Aidyn’s lap and pinned the woman’s blade against the fiberglass roll cage. With a shrill cry of fury the woman jerked free and lunged at Aidyn again, who was by this time on the floor behind Nellya’s chair. The woman would’ve been able to drive the oxidized steel blade into Aidyn’s thigh had my tail not whipped around, nicking a lock of Nellya’s hair off the top of her head, and wedged my blade into the attacker’s knuckles so hard that the fiberglass she held on to bent. The crazed female fell off the dune buggy, tore her back open on the rear tire, and hit the ground hard. Four grimy, gory inch-long digits thumped the stiff leather of the backseat.
“Thanks,” Aidyn muttered, helping me sheath the sword. She found an old sock in her bag, grabbed the fingers with it, and dropped the fingers and sock outside the vehicle. I, on the other hand, wasn’t so calm; I’d just removed someone’s fingers.
Mr. Dabahov caught up with us at sunset. Alaric was pale-faced and Victor was nursing a cut arm. Mr. Dabahov asked Nellya if she met any of the tribes, so I had a hunch where the gash on Victor’s bicep had come from. I tried talking to him about it but he continued to ignore me.
The next day wasn’t as eventful as the first. Nellya followed close behind Mr. Dabahov the whole day. If the dune buggy’s seats had been more comfortable or at least cushioned, I would’ve slept the whole way.
On the fourth day, we saw the first true signs of civilization. We were entering the outskirts of one of the largest reestablighed settlements in North America. This was the port city we would catch a ship in. It was thousands of times bigger than our quaint little village, and it showed.
Doing my best to ignore the queer looks that came my way, I was captivated by it all. Crossing the street was a woman in her early twenties wearing fishnet stockings, a blouse tied in the front, and visible through the thin material of her blouse and the deep opening left in the front of her top was a black lace bra. Sitting on a second floor balcony was a clean topless man. As we rolled past, a woman in a purple bathrobe came out onto the balcony, making advances towards the shirtless man; the balcony was attached to an apartment complex that had been turned into a brothel.
On the street corner laid an unshaven man clinging to an empty green bottle despite his vast collection of glass bottles like it. Another man, this one awake, sat across the intersection sucking up the smoke his magical straw created. We came close enough to one fellow to find out that he hadn’t had a bath in weeks.
The deeper we went into the city, the more frightening it all became. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I glimpsed someone being shanked in a back alley. Wishing we could pick up the pace, I felt around for my father’s sword with my tail. To not only my dismay but Aidyn’s also, Mr. Dabahov booked four rooms at the cheapest place he could find residence; a shanty college dormitory that had long since housed the scholarly type.
Aidyn and I were roommates for the night, as were Victor and Alaric. Mr. Dabahov granted Nellya her own place and Mr. Dabahov took a room for himself.
I didn’t like the place because downstairs in the lobby, were directions to the nearest pub as well as a list of available “employees”. A sign read that the provided services varied depending on what the customer paid and that prices weren’t fixed. Also, the locks on the doors didn’t seem to function as they should have. It was going to be a long night.
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