I look over at Marcus. He’s not in any task group. Our eyes meet and I think he’s thinking the same thing. He says, “When do I get to kill some Hunters?”
“The scouts are back tomorrow. The first raid will be tomorrow night.”
Afterward I hang back and ask Celia about Deborah. “Has she left the Council yet?”
Celia looks relieved as she answers. “She’s agreed to leave. It’s become impossible for her to get more information out without it being obvious that it’s coming from her. She should make it to us. I’ve sent someone to bring her here.”
* * *
That night I don’t sleep well. I don’t have nightmares but I wake and can’t get back to sleep. I wonder where Annalise is, hoping she’s safe. I thought I’d be with her tonight but she’s not due back until tomorrow. I feel sick thinking about her. She’s regained much of her health since being under Mercury’s spell. And she’s agile and great at running but if the Hunters find her group the truth is she doesn’t stand a chance. In the end I get up and start to walk through the forest. It’s still dark and Gabriel falls in beside me.
“I couldn’t sleep either,” he says.
“I need to burn off some energy,” I say. “Coming?”
“Of course.” And we set off running, fast.
It feels good, so good, to be running and free. Just free. A fine, misty rain begins to fall. It’s sharply cold on my cheeks as I run. It’s beautiful. I call to Gabriel that I’m going ahead.
I pick up my pace and go as hard and fast as I can, over a hill and down into a glade. There’s a clearing near a stream. It’s getting light now and I stop. I sit on the ground cross-legged and wait, listen. It feels good sitting here, taking in the smell of earth and trees, and watching the stream run silently by. It’s so calm and peaceful that it seems absurd that soon we’ll be fighting and I’ll have to kill again. The forest reminds me of the place where I woke after I killed the fast Hunter. I was in shock, and the Hunter was dead, but the forest was the same as ever, as beautiful and peaceful as ever. And maybe that is all we can hope for, that the forest will go on being beautiful.
I hear Gabriel’s footsteps after a while, then they stop and I start to smile: I know he’s trying to sneak up on me. I remain still, my hearing straining for the slightest noise. He’s either stopped completely or he’s improved a lot. But then I hear a rustle of leaves close behind and I turn as he rushes to me and then shouts and leaps on me. We mock fight, then roll apart but remain lying on the ground.
“You’d be dead if I was a Hunter,” he says.
I laugh; he knows that isn’t true. I say, “You were good. I only really heard you right at the end.”
“Damned with faint praise,” he says.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“It means you’d have killed me.”
“Well, yes. But I think you’d have surprised most Hunters. There are some good ones and some less good ones.” I shrug. “You just have to hope you get lucky and only get the less good ones.”
“I have no intention of finding out what I get, as I intend to shoot them from a great distance anyway.”
“Good plan.”
He shuffles closer to me and we sit looking down the gentle slope through the trees to the stream.
I say, “There’ll be plenty of shooting. And soon.”
“Yes, there’ll be plenty of that and worse, much worse. ‘I see wars, horrid wars, and the Tiber foaming with much blood.’”
* * *
“We attack tonight,” Celia says.
“Our target is a new training camp with ten recruits and two Hunters,” Nesbitt explains. He arrived back early in the morning and now we’re being briefed. “I’ve watched the camp for the last two days. The trainees are mostly young; six are German and four French. They all understand English. They’re all female. They are all pretty good with guns but hand to hand they’re hopeless. One of the Germans can send out a noise similar to Celia’s but it’s weak and won’t disable you. One of the French girls can become invisible. Again it’s a weak Gift and she can only hold it for a few seconds but it’s enough to disorient opponents, or cause you to miss her, or give her a chance to sneak up on you. The two Hunters are old hands: English, female, early thirties, excellent shots, excellent hand-to-hand fighting.”
Celia says, “The recruits will be dangerous if they get to their guns. And they usually sleep with them. We attack at first light: some will still be in bed; some will not be fully alert.”
“Which brings me to the location,” adds Nesbitt. “They’re in an old airfield; it’s open ground with a fence round it. They sleep inside, in one of the small hangars. They have two on guard at the gate on three-hour shifts, but the new recruits don’t see the point of it and don’t patrol the fence.”
“How far is it?” Gabriel asks.
“It’s in France, over five hours’ drive from here, but Marcus set up a cut for us to go through. It comes out half a mile from the airfield.”
Celia says, “It gets light at six a.m. Nesbitt and Nathan leave here at four a.m. to scout. The rest of us leave at five.”
“I’m not a scout,” I say.
“No, you’re not. Nesbitt is our best scout and very valuable he is too. So your job is to protect him, with your life if necessary.”
Nesbitt grins at me. “I know you’ll dive in front to take the bullet for me, mate.”
“I’ll push you out of the way into a cowpat.”
Nesbitt shrugs. “Whatever works.”
“I will lead the team,” says Celia. “We all go. We all learn. We work in pairs. The pairs may change in future; this is for tonight’s raid. It’s up to you to make sure you’ve got the equipment you need from the stores we have.”
The little group of fighters has naturally split into two groups, Celia in the middle. Gabriel, me, Nesbitt, and a young woman, a Half Blood, are standing together and looking at three White Witches. I can spot Greatorex straightaway. She’s the ex-Hunter, the deserter. She’s tall, with pale, freckled skin and hazel eyes, a broken nose. I guess she’s in her early twenties but she looks younger. She’s wearing similar combat gear to Celia. The other two Whites are also young. They’ve spent the whole meeting so far trying to look tough.
Nesbitt smiles at them. “Sorry, ladies, but you’ve missed your chance to be partnered with me. Better luck next time.”
The girls don’t even look like they’ve heard him.
He mutters but in a voice loud enough for them to hear, “Shit. You’d think we were the enemy.”
They begin to loosen up and almost smile until Nesbitt adds, “You’d better partner up quick; whoever’s left over goes with Marcus.”
The girls look around and laugh nervously.
Celia says, “Marcus will not be having a partner. I’ll brief him separately on what’s happening. Greatorex, you go with Claudia. Olivia with me. Gabriel with Sameen. And Nathan is with Nesbitt.”
I grumble quietly to Gabriel, “This better just be for tonight.”
Gabriel replies, “It’s a sensible plan to put Sameen with me. You’d terrify her and Nesbitt would confuse her totally.”
Sameen is the Half Blood: half Black, half fain. Her eyes are a strange brown and turquoise mix.
I say, “Yeah, it makes sense. But it is noticeable that we’re not exactly mixing—Whites and Blacks.”
“I think that’s sensible too for the first mission. We’ve not even had time to train together. We have to trust our partners.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not with Nesbitt.”
The Forager
That afternoon Annalise and a group of White Witches walk into camp, carrying heavy loads. Annalise looks tired. She’s supposed to help put up some tents and I ask her to leave her chores for a while but she insists on finishing all her work so I help her. O
ne of the other girls, Laura, looks terrified of me and jumps if I look at her. The other girl, Sarah, can’t stop asking me questions: “Do you have the same Gift as your father?” “Which are the other Blacks?” and “Is Marcus really in the camp?”
I’m relieved when Celia sees me and shouts, “Nathan, the others are training! You should be too!”
I find the other fighters and watch for a few minutes. Greatorex is giving instruction on basic self-defense. She’s good and the trainees aren’t complete beginners. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do so I sit and watch. Sameen is practicing with Gabriel, Olivia with Nesbitt, and Claudia with Greatorex.
They take a break and Gabriel comes over with Sameen. She says, “Hi!” and smiles and keeps glancing at Gabriel. I think she’s already got a crush on him.
Nesbitt is talking to Claudia and Olivia but they keep looking over and smiling at Gabriel too. Gabriel, it seems, has more chance than anyone of winning over White Witches: he just has to smile at them and they go weak at the knees.
Thankfully, Greatorex seems immune to his charms and is still business-like. After a few minutes she says, “Right, let’s partner up again. But change partners. Nathan can join in on this with Claudia.”
“No,” Celia says, striding quickly to us. “I’ll spar with Nathan.”
I say to her, “You sure? You’re looking a bit old and slow these days.”
“I want to see how much you’ve forgotten.”
I give her a smile. I’ve forgotten nothing.
* * *
Later, when it’s getting dark, Annalise finds me where I’ve set up my own little camp on the edge of the trees away from everyone. I don’t have a tent but I do have a small fire and a sheltered spot by a tree. Annalise and I sit together, a blanket wrapped round us both.
She asks me what happened at training. I say, “I trained.”
“I heard you beat up Celia. They had to pull you off her.”
I remember seeing Sarah standing with a group of White Witches after it was over. They’d been watching. No doubt Sarah has been gossiping.
I tell Annalise, “That’s not true.”
And it isn’t, though Nesbitt was making jokes about who would replace Celia when I’d killed her. But mainly I blanked them all out. I was concentrating. Celia landed one good kick. I landed about twenty, not that I was counting.
“Anyway, Annalise, that’s what we do. Celia can heal fine. She’s done worse to me many times. We used to practice fighting every day and she beat me up every day.” I reckon that’s seven hundred times minimum over two years, so there are six hundred and ninety-nine more of those due to Celia.
“I’m glad I didn’t see it.”
Annalise has never seen me fighting, which is good, I think. I take her hand and kiss it as gently as I can. I don’t want to talk about fighting when I’m with her. I say, “And how was your day?”
“Oh, OK.” She tries to smile at me and says, “I know Sarah and Laura were driving you mad but I think they’ll get used to you. It’s difficult for everyone in different ways. They’ve both lost family. Sarah’s parents were killed and Laura’s lost her sister . . .”
And again I think maybe now is the time for me to tell Annalise about Kieran. But already she’s talking about the things they did, sorting out stores and the shortage of food.
I ask her, “Are you OK with doing that? I thought you might want to be in with the healers.”
“Ha! I can’t even make a simple medicine. No, Celia is right to put me in Foraging and Stores. I’m good at organizing things, which is not a strength that a lot of the Witches around here have, and everything has to be made use of and accounted for. If all the rebels come here we’ll need more food and sanitation and tents. Boring but essential. And I can only see that more people will flee as the fighting escalates. That means more mouths to feed. There’ll be babies and children. We might need to set up schooling. It’s complicated.”
I’m beginning to realize that fighting is a lot simpler.
We’re silent for a while and then Annalise says, “I haven’t seen Marcus yet but everyone is talking about him being here.”
“The camp gossip seems to be in full swing.”
“Sorry, I’m beginning to sound like Sarah, aren’t I?”
I kiss her and say, “Definitely not.”
Marcus watched me fight but left straight afterward. I say, “He’s not exactly sociable. He likes to be alone.”
I look into the trees, where I met him hours ago, when I was looking for a place to make my camp. He told me he was going to stay away from everyone. “There’s too much staring for my liking.”
Now I say, “I think it’s a good thing he keeps away from people.”
“You haven’t told me what happened when you went to meet him. I didn’t think you’d be gone for so long. I thought you’d maybe talk for a few minutes.”
“Same here.”
“So what did you do for a whole week?”
“You really are beginning to sound like Sarah,” I tease her. “He’s my father, Annalise. I just spent time with him. It was good, for both of us, I think. He’s not what I expected.”
“No? But he sounds dangerous. He attacked Gus? Caroline, one of the healers, told me he cut Gus’s ear off.”
Before I can reply she continues, “You are so different from him. He’s so much a Black Witch, so violent.”
“He can be violent,” I say. “Violent and impulsive. Everyone knows that, including Gus. Anyone who annoys him is stupid. But that doesn’t mean people won’t be stupid. Marcus won’t change. But at least he’s on our side.”
“Tell that to Gus.”
I think I’m best avoiding Gus for a while. I don’t tell Annalise that Marcus attacked Gus because Gus attacked me. And I’m not sure how different my father and I are.
I say, “So I think that’s enough gossip for one evening.”
“Well, there is one more piece of gossip I have to tell you about.” And now she’s grinning. “Guess?”
I shrug.
“All the girls have crushes on Gabriel.”
“Ah, nooooo!” I pull the blanket over our heads and hold her to me, saying, “Please, no more.”
She laughs but carries on. “It’s his hair. They were talking about it for hours; how he tucks it behind his ears, how it falls forward, how it curls. They also like his eyes and his lips and his nose, his shoulders and his legs. But mainly it’s his hair.”
“Do they know they’re wasting their time?”
“Wasting their time because he’s only interested in boys? Or only interested in one boy?” And she points her finger at my chest.
I remember kissing him, holding his hair. But I say, “He’s my friend, Annalise.”
“I know,” she says, and kisses me gently on the lips.
And I kiss her more.
Later she falls asleep in my arms but I stay awake, just holding her and feeling her warmth against me.
I know I’ll have to leave soon. And in a few hours I’ll be fighting and it’ll be bad and here I am now holding Annalise. All of it feels unreal.
She stirs and asks, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s fine.”
“You’re gripping me so tightly I can hardly breathe.”
“I didn’t mean to wake you but I’ve got to go soon. I’m not supposed to talk about it but . . . I’ll be back later.”
Now she grips me tightly, wrapping her legs round mine. After a while she says, “When we were in the Red Gourd in Basle, you said . . . something.”
I reply in a whisper, “And I remember you said something too.” I pull the blanket over our heads so it’s totally dark. I want to be brave and say it before she does. My lips are close to her ear, brushing it as I whisper, “Annalise, I lo–”
“T
ime to go, partner!” Nesbitt flings the blanket back. “Oh, sorry to interrupt, mate. Thought you were asleep.”
The First Attack
Nesbitt leads me to the cut, which is a short walk into the trees, two minutes from where Annalise is in bed. Annalise and I said a quick good-bye. She looked worried about me, which was sort of nice and sort of not. I told her I’d be OK but really I haven’t got a clue what’ll happen. All I know is that Marcus is on our side and that has to be better than not.
I’ve thought about using my Gift and being in animal form for the fighting but I know that isn’t right. That’s for a different sort of combat. This is more tactical, human stuff, all the stuff that Celia has trained me in. I asked Marcus about it and he said the same thing. After the week with him I know I can control that part of myself, my Gift, and I can transform as quickly as Marcus can, but it’s not a Gift for war.
At the cut Nesbitt says, “Seems your dad’s checking up on you.” And he nods over to the far trees. Marcus stands, half hidden, and he holds his hand up in a gesture of “good luck” or “see you soon” or something. I hold my hand up too.
I grab Nesbitt’s wrist and he slides his hand through the cut and we’re on our way. I manage to stay standing at the other side; bent over, but standing. Nesbitt is on his feet in a second and sets off at a swift jog. Well, it’s swift for him.
I follow a few steps behind. It’s dark and still, and even though I can’t see as well as him I can sense the path, and following Nesbitt is easy. I’ve only just started to warm up when we get to the airfield. It’s in darkness and I can make out little more than the pale shape of three hangars side by side, a hundred meters away. We follow the fence along until the hangars are aligned to our right. Nesbitt stops and produces some cutters from his jacket and sets to on the fence. My job is to hold the fence so it doesn’t rattle or shake. When he’s got a gap big enough to get through he indicates to me to wait while he has a scout around. I nod.