“It’ll be done this afternoon,” Paco responds. “Smile, damn it! Get me something to toast with. No, wait. We’ll toast at the air base. Get everyone up and ready to move.”
I am surprised by the sudden instruction, scrambling to my feet and looking for the way back to my tent. I can hear the creak of Marie’s chair, and then the tent flap is thrown back. Marie emerges into the darkness. I attempt to rush farther around the back of the tent, to keep it between us, but I trip on one of the tent cords and fall flat on my face. In my surprise, I cry out.
I realize my mistake the moment the cry leaves my lips. I spring to my feet, turning as Marie rounds the side of the tent. She wears a distracted frown, which grows deeper upon seeing me. “Teado?”
I backpedal. Instinct sends me toward my borrowed tent, as if it is a safe place, but I know that I must run—that I must get out of this place and make it back to Commander Giado. They must be warned.
“Teado, are you all right, I . . .” I can see the moment Marie realizes that I have overheard her conversation with Paco. Her face drains of expression, then her lips are drawn tight. She snatches for her submachine gun, but it is no longer at her hip. In seconds I can see her Changing.
The temptation to Change is strong, almost overwhelming. I want to grapple with her, tear out her throat for this treachery, then do the same to Paco. She begins to move, Changing in midstride, leathery skin and talons ripping through her jacket as she drops to all fours and leaps toward me.
She hits the same tent cord I did, her attack faltering over itself as she stumbles and pulls most of the command tent down with her. I take the opportunity to turn and run.
I am no more graceful in the darkness. I catch the corner of a pallet of supplies with my shoulder, sending myself and dozens of black, hatbox-sized crates scattering to the ground. The sound is impossibly loud in my ears. Between that and Paco’s confused shouting as he tries to escape his collapsed tent, I am sure the camp will be fully awake within moments.
My hands scramble for some sort of purchase, and I grip something I know well. It is the handle of a grenade, fallen from the supply crates I have knocked over. I squeeze it tight and regain my feet, my head wrapping around some kind of plan. I am past my borrowed tent and almost to the rows of motorbikes by the time a proper alarm is sounded.
I shove a mechanic out of my way and snatch the best-looking bike of the group, praying it has a full tank of gas. It coughs to life after two kicks, and I rev the engine, spinning the back tire and spraying gravel as I turn around and point toward the camp.
Soldiers emerge sleepily from their tents, confused. Some of them clutch carbines or rifles, but none of them seems to know where to point. The only clear danger is Marie, who has untangled herself from the command tent and is now running toward me, fully Changed.
I pull the pin on the grenade and twist the throttle.
She is quick. I nearly lose control, dipping to one side as her snatching talons rake across my shoulder. I feel the sting of cold on an open wound, and then I am past her, practically flying for the slope that will lead me out of camp. I toss the grenade over my shoulder.
I lean on the throttle as hard as I can and focus, forcing my face to Change. I do not need a scaly, armored body or vicious claws. I only need better night vision, enough to keep me from killing myself as I power up the slope leading from the valley. I am at the crest within moments, and I am somewhat surprised to not hear the bark of gunfire behind me. There are only shouts and searchlights, and I hope that I have caught them unawares enough to make good my escape.
There is a terrible noise, blood rushing to my head and chest, and I am suddenly tumbling head over heels, landing on my back with my vision full of stars as I try to gasp for breath.
I Change almost by instinct, and not a moment too soon. At first I think that Marie has caught me, a flash of talons streaking toward my head. I twist on the ground, turning a shoulder beneath the strike, my own claws ripping upward and shredding a leathery stomach.
I recognize Javiero’s Changed form and redouble my efforts, scrambling to my feet. I have only grazed him, but it was enough to drive him on the defensive. I attack quickly, using my superior size to bear down on him, jaws snapping. We skid on the shifting rocks of the mountain trail, exchanging blows, until I am able to slap an open palm against the side of his head. He reels backward, stunned, and I know that I do not have the time to finish him off.
I am half Changed back to human by the time I reach the motorbike. It restarts with a kick, emitting one painful squeal before obeying my turn of the throttle. I careen down the hill blindly, unable to know how closely I am being chased because the valley behind me is still hidden by their Smiling Tom.
I ride with complete disregard for my own life. The trails are narrow and treacherous, and only superhuman luck keeps me from crashing into a boulder or soaring off an embankment into a rocky gorge. I am forced to slow as I round corners and work my way down scree slopes, and at every moment I expect to see the headlights of motorbikes coming up behind me, to feel the dull slap of bullets spinning me off my own motorbike.
I descend from the foothills and make it out on the plain, and it is not until then that I am able to see my pursuers. A line of lights fill the foothills behind me, and I can hear the growl of engines.
I kill my light, risking the darkness, and slow down to navigate the broken ground of the plain. A half a mile later I stop and turn off the engine, hunkering down in one of the many crags crisscrossing the scrubland. Behind me I see that the traitors have stopped just past the foothills, not far from where I killed my light. I can see figures sweeping the hillsides. Soon the engines have been shut off, and a waiting game begins as handheld torches sweep the plain with their flickering beams.
It is not long before I hear a voice calling from farther up in the mountains. It is unintelligible to me, but the putter of motorbike engines fills the night within minutes, and the lights gather and recede back up toward their hideout.
The search, it seems, is called off.
I wonder if it is luck, or fate, or something else. Paco’s organized defection seems to have some kind of deadline. I try to think of some way I can disrupt it, and I wish that I had grabbed a whole box of grenades on my way out. It is too late now, and I am forced to hide until long after I see or hear no sign of the enemy.
The first fringe of sunlight appears on the eastern horizon before I pull myself and my stolen motorbike out of the crag and back onto the plain. It takes some effort to get the bike going, but I am soon heading north.
The motorbike allows me to travel much faster than I have on foot, but it still feels like a crawl as I navigate the broken landscape of the Bavares. I am imminently conscious of being so exposed out here, knowing a passing enemy plane will spot me easily in the daylight. I push the worry away. I won’t lead an enemy back to my platoon—after all, the enemy is already on their way!
I check behind me every so often, looking for any sign of pursuit. It seems that Paco’s men have decided to ignore me, probably content on radioing the enemy, to let their infantry and their Changers deal with me.
My eyes scan the horizon as often as I keep them on the ground ahead of me, and I am knocked from my motorbike from time to time by an unseen rock or shrub. I consider Changing, but know that it will slow my progress even further. I become more bruised and beaten with each fall. I become conscious of my new clothes, shredded from my brief, Changed fight with Javiero, and the chill wind blowing through them as I ride. My eyes pinch against the dust and the wind, and against my own exhaustion.
Every physical worry is relegated to a mere whisper in the back of my head as I spot a dust cloud to my east. It rises quickly, drawing closer, producing a panic in my chest that is impossible to control.
The cloud is coming on hard from the direction of the old enemy air base. I stop on a slight rise long enough to squint toward it, trying to make out some of the movement. I think that I see moto
rbikes and jeeps. They bounce across the terrain, straight toward my platoon’s hidden canyon.
This must be the enemy strike force tasked to eradicate Gift Horse—the price paid by Paco and Marie and the rest of the traitors to secure their amnesty.
The next fall undoes me. The front tire of my motorbike catches in a rut and bends, rendering the bike unusable. I lose precious minutes attempting to bend it back, and then give up and continue on foot.
I estimate that I am three miles from my platoon. I begin to run, forcing my ragged body across the plains, watching helplessly as the dust cloud grows larger. On my motorbike I might have beaten them to the canyon and given my friends fair warning to stand and fight—or even Bellara the chance to use her illusions to cover our withdrawal deeper into the mountains.
It’s easy to see that the enemy will reach the canyon before me. I hope against hope that my earlier fears—that my platoon will have stripped the captured cargo plane and changed locations—have come true, and that the enemy’s search for them will be fruitless.
I whisper that, if they are still there, they have a proper guard set up, and will mount a defense.
I am sick in the pit of my stomach as the cloud continues to grow. I estimate they have forty men. Then sixty. Then eighty. I am assaulted by fear for my friends. I think of Giado, hopeless and angry; of Aleta’s optimism over her miserable coffee, and Selvie’s work on our endlessly breaking motorbikes. I think of Bellara and her illusions, and I hope that at the end she will save herself.
But I know Bellara will be unable to abandon her brother, even if she could bring herself to leave the others.
Despite my best efforts, my body begins to slow. My limbs are heavy, my muscles weak. I Change, dropping to all fours, loping through the brush. The Change gives me some extra strength, but I can feel my weakness even here from within my sorcery. It is not enough, and despair takes me.
Even if I reach my friends at the same time as the enemy, I will make little difference. A Changer can take out a squad, even a whole platoon with the proper amount of surprise and planning. But they’ll see me coming, and I will be even weaker than I am now.
I consider just giving up, lying down in a ditch until night falls, and then making my way into the mountains. I can return to Bava and tell the tale of these traitors.
Or I can simply disappear, letting myself go far from the guns and bombs and sorcery, where I can die on my own terms. It is a sobering thought, a tempting one, but some hidden strength keeps me moving. If I am to die, I will die with my friends.
I stop for a rest and hazard a sweep of the Bavares, only to spot another cloud to my southeast. I assume it is the traitors, heading to the old enemy air base in order to finalize their amnesty. They form a long convoy of motorbikes that stretches for a mile or more across the plains, and I silently curse them.
I bark a laugh, the laugh of a desperate man, realizing I am caught between two enemy convoys and the unforgiving mountains. In a brief moment I am overcome with a feeling that everything will be all right. I am weightless, worriless. Distantly, I realize that it is an adrenaline-fueled acceptance of death.
I am not sure how long I stand, facing the sun, eyes unfocused, before the sudden shock of an explosion nearly knocks me off my feet.
I am startled back to reality, my ears full of noise. Screams echo off the mountains, and there is the immediate, demanding bark of small arms fire. The enemy convoy, almost two miles away and nearly into the foothills, has erupted into chaos.
I stand dumbfounded for several moments as I try to make sense of it all. An explosion rips apart an enemy jeep, sending bodies flying. Another erupts nearby, knocking one man off his motorcycle. I begin to move again, forcing myself forward at a limping run.
The enemy convoy falls apart, fanning across the plain as men abandon motorcycles and jeeps. I imagine myself among them, and can practically hear the conflicting orders as they try to make something of the chaos. Men fall as if suddenly pushed over by a stiff wind, and as I grow closer I can see the tiny, erupting geysers of sand from bullets hitting the ground.
I realize that my platoon is fighting back. Selvie probably has our machine gun up in the entrance to the valley, while Aleta hides in the mountains with her rifle. Bellara has them all hidden with her sorcery. I cannot determine the source of the explosions.
I laugh again, and this time I can hear the joyful hysteria in the sound. Traitorous bastards notwithstanding, my friends will not go down without a fight. They have the best Smiling Tom left in Bava, and the grittiest guerillas in the whole Bavares.
The enemy is fighting an invisible foe, but their numbers begin to quickly show. They knew we have a Smiling Tom, and they have brought their own wizards. I see two Changers emerge from the ruins of a jeep, their bodies gnarled, skin stained with grit and ash, but otherwise unharmed. They charge into the foothills, ignoring lines of machine gun and carbine fire.
The enemy infantry follows them, moving with trained precision, running forward under covering fire and sweeping the mountainside with bullets.
The first hint that something has gone wrong is that I can suddenly hear the sound of a single-engine plane overhead. I look around for the source, wondering if the enemy has brought fighter support, only to see Benny suddenly pop into existence above the enemy forces. I watch as Rodrigo hurls a grenade out of the cockpit and track its movement down to the ground, where it explodes among a squad of enemy infantry.
I am less than a mile away now, and I watch as the enemy turns their carbines and submachine guns on Rodrigo. Benny suddenly dips and spins, then tries to climb to get out of range of the enemy.
I am close enough now to hear the cough of the engine, and then a long, mechanical whine. Benny belches a single cloud of black smoke, then slowly arcs to one side and begins to descend in a barely controlled fall. I push myself harder, faster, my eyes wide as I watch the continued trace of enemy gunfire follow Rodrigo toward the ground.
The mouth of our canyon appears next, coming into sudden clarity where there was once a mountainside, and I realize that something has happened to Bellara to make her illusions fail. I think of the Changers I saw rushing ahead and swallow a sob. I am sprinting now, gathering every last reserve of strength in a last-ditch effort to reach my friends before they are wiped out.
I reach the blackened earth and ruined trail of destruction that marks where Benny went down. A moment of indecision halts me as I watch enemy soldiers take and hold the mouth of the canyon up ahead, then I head the opposite direction to follow the charred ground and burning shrubs to what remains of Benny.
The old fighter is riddled with bullets, landing gear sheared off by the harsh terrain. Smoke pours from her engine compartment, flames licking at the propeller. Rodrigo sits still in the cockpit, slumped over the stick. I ignore the heat and the smoke, blinking tears from my eyes as I shear the metal side off the cockpit with my talons and then carefully drag Rodrigo from the wreck. His chest and legs are covered with blood, and a single cough is all that tells me he is still alive.
I carry him far from the danger of the wreckage and lay him on his side, then force myself to abandon him, resuming my trip toward the canyon. I say a word for Benny and her broken hulk, and I weep for Rodrigo as I run, knowing he will be dead by the time I can return.
I reach the edge of the small battlefield where a jeep lies on its side, destroyed by one of Rodrigo’s grenades and upended by enemy soldiers to use for cover. A medic attends to a trio of wounded behind the cover.
In my pain and fury I kill all four of them. I make it quick, messy. My talons are slick with gore as I stalk up the slope, falling upon every enemy soldier that I see. Most are already wounded, or hiding until they are certain that their allies have secured the mountainside up ahead. A distant part of me remembers a time when they told us to spare the enemy wounded, but that was so long ago I barely remember it.
The sound of gunfire has all but abated. I can hear shouting, and w
onder absently if it is a demand for surrender, or commands being issued to flush the rest of the canyon. I can still see enemy soldiers moving around in the mouth of the canyon so I know they have won.
I sob silently as I kill, wishing that someone would turn around and raise the alarm, that a hail of gunfire would overwhelm me, putting an end to the entirety of my little platoon of guerrillas. But the enemy is too focused on the canyon, and those that notice me only do so just before my claws slash at their chests and my teeth can open their throats.
I can taste nothing but the salty iron of blood and my own, all-too-human bile. I begin to ignore the enemy wounded. Some of them try to shout a warning to their comrades as they see me pass, but the enemy’s blood is still up, and the occasional carbine shot tells me that there is still something going on in the canyon.
Four soldiers hunker just outside the canyon. One sees me, raising the alarm. I sprint across the open, rocky ground between us. A carbine blast hits me point-blank in the cheek, spinning me around. The side of my face goes numb and I lash out, catching a handful of cloth and flesh and tearing blindly. The bark of carbines and pistols makes my head spin, and I silence them with four well-placed swipes and continue on into the canyon.
My ears ring, and everything I hear seems to come to me from within a dream. I stand upright, my big, Changed shoulders hunched, and limp into the mouth of the canyon. I glance up to Bellara’s little cave up above the scree and see the sun playing across it. I think that it must be very warm and comforting in that spot.
Bodies lie scattered all over, and the canyon walls are nicked and chipped by gunfire. More of the bodies belong to them than they do to us. I immediately spot the corpses of my friends.
Garcia lies behind our machine gun, both man and gun mangled by a grenade. He’s an old man, who used to take pride in his looks and wax poetic over sandwiches with ingredients I have never seen in my lifetime. Now his cracked, handsome face is barely recognizable.