“We, you know, vet them pretty good.”
“Another couple of hours out there, Patrick would’ve died the day we found him.” Duncan worried at the germ of a thought. “Hannah told me, and she’d know. Rachel had to operate on him, and he had internal injuries on top of it. It’s why I had a hard time believing the girl—Fallon—at first.”
“True believer.” Will nodded. “He wouldn’t be the only one. We’ve seen the type before.”
“They’re half-crazy most of the time,” Eddie pointed out. “We’d notice half-crazy.”
“I’d like to think so.” Will rubbed his hands over his face. “I don’t know which to hope it is. Either way, we’re going to have to take more precautions.”
“We’ve already got magickal shields up, but we can add to them.” They’d work on that, Duncan thought. “If somebody working with the PWs is already inside the shield, we have to figure out how they’re getting information out.”
“Probably not a magickal. Yeah, they work with them now and then,” Eddie continued, “but mostly they don’t. They hate their ever-fucking guts. Sorry, Duncan.”
“I hate theirs back, so we’re good. Not that hard to get intel out, is it? You volunteer for a hunting party, a scavenger detail, or scouting. Or one of the farms. You leave a message at some checkpoint.”
“They have communications, too. We could have somebody with a radio, transmitting information. Let’s start there,” Will decided. “Add to the shields, start checking for transmissions, and I hate to say it, but take a closer look at anybody who’s come in and stayed in the last six months. One of the slaves—maybe more than one—could’ve been brainwashed, indoctrinated.”
He walked to the window, stared out. “If Fallon hadn’t warned us … I’d’ve led us into a massacre.”
“You don’t take that on,” Eddie began, and with considerable heat.
“I took the job, I take it on. Now I’m going to bury the son of a bitch I thought we’d broken down enough to give us information on how to free slaves and prisoners.”
“He did give it. I’m with Eddie on this, Will. He screwed with all of us. We believed him because he told us the truth. Most of it. I’ll help you bury him.”
“No, thanks, but Pinney and I will take care of it. It’ll help Pinney. He was sitting on Patrick. Just a precaution until we got back. Fell asleep—no reason not to. Nobody figured the fucker for suicidal. Woke up, went back to check the cell. Patrick’s hanging by his bed-sheet. Still warm, Pinney said. He cut him down, tried to bring him back. Still warm, but gone.”
“That’s not on Pinney, either.”
“No, Eddie, it’s not on him, or anybody. Patrick made his choice, took his side. Just get this stuff locked up. You don’t need to do a full inventory tonight. Just lock up, go home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Will? I know it’s a problem, thinking about how we almost got ambushed, and how that came to be. But we all got home. We did what we set out to do, and we all got home. You shouldn’t forget that.”
“I won’t.”
Eddie sighed again when Will went out. “I’m sure as shit glad I never had to be in charge. It carries a lot of weight. You’re a soldier, that’s hard enough, but it’s a lot harder to be the one giving all the orders. So let’s be good soldiers and follow orders. We’ll lock up, go home. I want to tell Fred about Lana’s girl.”
As they stowed the rest for future inventory, Eddie elbow-poked Duncan. “Really pretty girl, huh?”
“Yeah, she was okay.”
“Okay my ass. That girl is smoking.”
“Jesus, Eddie, you’re old enough to be her father.”
Maybe it shocked a little to realize that was pure truth, but Eddie let it roll.
“Doesn’t mean I don’t have eyes. Smoking,” he repeated. “You’re not old enough to be her daddy, and you’ve got eyes.”
“I’ve sort of got a girl.”
“Yeah.” Eddie locked up, pocketed the keys, waited for Duncan to add a protective layer. “Which one is it this week?”
On a quick laugh, Duncan shrugged. He’d moved on Cassie, drifted to Fawn, and now …
“Plenty to be serious about without getting serious about a girl.”
“I hear that—at your age.”
“And okay, she was hot. I don’t know about smoking, but she hits the hot-o-meter.”
“Got her daddy’s eyes,” Eddie added. “It sure meant a lot to me to see them in Max’s girl. Get some sleep, dude, you earned it.”
“You, too.”
When he did sleep, finally slept hours later, Duncan dreamed of the girl with gray eyes, the girl on a white horse with silver wings. A girl who walked through a place so bright with light it hurt the eyes. And who took a sword, a shield from the fire that lit it like a thousand suns.
When she lifted them, she was the sun.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Fallon fought Mallick and his ghost warriors. She took some illusionary hits—and they hurt. As her training time compressed, he decreed she would fight with pain.
She wouldn’t bleed, but she would feel.
So when the sword of one of the ghosts laid a shallow groove on her left shoulder, she felt the hot flash of metal slicing flesh.
She fought on.
The first few times she’d fought with pain, the shock of a strike or slash had panicked her mind. And killed her. So she came to understand quickly why Mallick pushed for the progression.
A wound not only shocked, but weakened. He pushed her to train her mind and her body to fight through both.
Sweat ran down her face, and her right leg strained for balance against the pierce of Mallick’s sword. But she defeated two of the four opponents, and battled brutally against Mallick and the remaining ghost.
She sensed her endurance flagging—the adrenaline would only carry her so far, so long. To end it, she hurled a fireball at the last ghost, dropped into a roll, then swept her sword at Mallick’s legs.
When he dropped, she impaled him. And then she dropped down beside him.
“Everything hurts.”
His breath in tatters, he nodded. “Yes.”
Frowning, she looked over at him. His face, sweaty as her own, was considerably pale under the damp.
“You’re fighting with pain, too? Why? I’m the one in training.”
“When your sword strikes an opponent, they feel. So with this progress, I feel.”
She rose, went to the well, pumped water into the ladle.
“Drink. There’s no need for you to fight with pain, or to fight at all. Just use ghosts. And that way you can observe and evaluate.”
Eyeing her over the ladle, he drank. “I’m able to fight, and fight with pain.”
She had learned—and this had been an easy lesson—that her teacher had considerable pride.
“ ‘Able’ is one thing, and you’re plenty able. It’s that you don’t need to. In fact, if you watched instead of fighting, you’d be able to evaluate my skills, and my weaknesses, better.”
He sipped again. “Are you protecting the old man, girl?”
“The old man drilled a hole in my right thigh.” To prove her point, she rubbed at the throb. “I’m just being practical. We’ve gone up against each other day after day, so we know each other’s techniques, rhythms, weak spots. Sure, there’re some changeups, but mostly, if you feint left, I know to guard my right from a back sweep. And you lift your right shoulder, just a little, when you’re going to go for the impale.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah.” Because she did ache and throb, Fallon dropped down again, lay flat on her back to watch puffy white clouds meander over the blue. “Odds are I won’t fight many enemies I can read as well as you.”
“Next we’ll fight left-handed.”
Her interest piqued, she propped up on an elbow. “Left-handed.”
“There may come a time, and that will, as you said, change things up. But not today. Hand-to-hand, four opponents, no weapons.”