Infidel Read online

  His own breathing was heavy in his nostrils as he lay on the dune’s crest, staring at the huge Horde camp ahead. He couldn’t understand why, but the sight of so many tents, filled with so many diseased Scabs, froze him.

  Two thoughts crashed through his mind. The first was that, Scab or not, these beings lived in tents and had homes. Whenever he’d imagined the Horde, he’d thought of axes and battle and fire-breathing beasts bearing down on the forests. Not this sleeping camp made from canvas tents.

  The second thought was that his mother, Rosa, was in there somewhere, maybe watching him now. And she was a Scab.

  Then a third realization dismissed all other thoughts. The Horde was expecting them. He, Johnis of Ramos, the Chosen, had delivered them into Horde hands.

  Michal s warning whispered through his heart. You’d better be prepared for far worse than anything you’ve dreamed.

  “Johnis!” Silvie tugged on his sleeve. “Run!” She’d come back up the hill for him.

  He tore down the dune with her, fully confused by panic. This wasn’t just him and a few chosen ones following the Roush into hell, was it? No, it was him leading five hundred against the Roush’s advice.

  He slid to a stop by his horse, unsure how to proceed. They were running from his mother? Leaving her?

  “Johnis!” Silvie slapped him upside his head. “Move, boy! You have to start using your head!”

  He threw his leg over the stallion and allowed it, more than urged it, to bolt up the hill behind the others, the last of whom were already cresting the dune.

  Silvie was beside him, bent low over her saddle. “Stay with me!” she said.

  She was ten times the fighter he was; they both knew that. For the first time true fear settled over him. The Guard didn’t frighten easily, and yet they seemed unnerved now.

  They flew up the dune and pulled up hard. The rest of the Third Fighting Group had halted halfway down the other side in a bunch. Johnis lifted his eyes and saw what they saw.

  The scabs wore black cloaks now, not the pale cloth that matched the desert sand, as though cut from the black sky behind them.

  Thousands upon thousands of mounted Horde lined the next dune, stretching half a mile each direction, cutting off their escape. Behind them more came from the night, filling their ranks ten, perhaps twenty deep.

  “Dear Elyon, help us,” Silvie whispered.

  Johnis’s mind scrambled for some kind of meaning, some thread of hope, some logical solution to this impossible sight. It was as if the image of the Dark One that had reached out to them from the books in his saddlebag had come alive, many times over, here in the desert night.

  “Take your sword out, Johnis!” Silvie snapped. “Keep your shield up. I know you don’t have that much experience fighting, so remember one thing: they are slower. Wait for them to draw back, and cut quickly under their exposed sides.”

  He stared at the line of Horde.

  “Johnis!” she whispered harshly. “Your sword!”

  He turned to yank it out and froze with his fingers on the handle. Behind them, on the dune they’d just vacated, stood another Horde army, silent and black against the dark sky.

  “Behind us!” Johnis cried. His voice echoed through the valley.

  Boris was the first to move, rearing his horse around and back up the hill toward Johnis and Silvie. “To the high ground!”

  Five hundred moved as one, scrambling to the crest beside them, swords drawn, horses stamping and snorting with the scent of Horde in their nostrils. The Third Fighting Group was sandwiched between two armies, each large enough to smother them with Scab flesh, never mind their swords.

  Boris spoke low and hoarse, keeping his command firm. “Hold until I give the word. Archers first.”

  The fighters passed the order down the line, stilling their horses, never removing an eye from the black riders.

  Johnis looked far right and left, but no escape route presented itself. No place to run.

  From behind came a single voice, so confident, so forceful, yet so conversational that Johnis wondered if the Horde commander who spoke was Teeleh himself.

  “Give us the one named Johnis, and the rest of you will live.”

  Johnis could hear the Scabs’ horses breathing. He wasn’t sure why Boris had commanded them to hold. Either way they were staring at death. Only he could save them.

  “Give me up,” he said, voice faint. Then louder, “I’ll go; take me!”

  “Never!” Boris screamed. “Never give in to the beasts!”

  “No, I have—”

  “Shut your hole, recruit!” Boris growled.

  “Then you will all die,” the commander of the Horde said. His understated tone left no doubt. A slaughter awaited them.

  The Horde commander spoke his order. “Take them.”

  The army on the far side surged over the hill and down into the valley like a thick tar that would surely swallow anything in its path.

  “Ready …” Boris said. “Ready …”

  Two hundred of the Guard raised drawn bows, aimed down.

  Johnis turned back, alarmed to see that the army behind them was spilling into the opposite valley. From two sides the enemy swarmed.

  When the first full line of Scabs reached the lowest point in the sand, Boris cried his order.

  “Now!”

  Arrows flew silently, barely seen in the darkness. And they found a mark, each one. The Horde army stalled in its rush as hundreds fell or reared back on wounded horses.

  Faster than Johnis could have imagined, the archers strung fresh arrows and shot into the black mass. Then they reversed their aim to the back side and sent shafts into the Scabs on the other side.

  For the briefest of moments, Johnis embraced a thin hope.

  But the Horde simply forced their horses over the dead and rushed up the dune toward the Guard.

  “I’ll go!” Johnis screamed. “Take me; I’ll go!”

  His voice was swallowed by a thousand roars as the two armies collided.

  Johnis discovered immediately why Boris had driven them to the top of the dune where they held high ground. Striking down on a slower foe gave them a distinct advantage. A snorting horse ridden by a warrior twice Johnis’s size clawed slowly up the sand toward him. The Horde’s arm jerked back, spear in hand, and Johnis went stiff.

  Silvie lunged between them, yelling with rage. She swung her sword into the Scab’s side and plunged past him as he crashed to the ground, dead.

  “Sword, Johnis!” she shrieked, swinging at two more Horde hard on the heels of the first.

  Johnis felt more than he heard the battle cry from his own throat. He let the reins fall, gripped his sword with both hands, and swung at one of the Scabs.

  Cutting into his first beast felt the same as cutting into a sack of grain, and he was surprised to see the Scab drop his mallet, grab his chest, and fall backward over his horse’s rump.

  “Stay on your horse!” Silvie shouted.

  Johnis dug his heels into his stallion’s flanks and swung again.

  They said any Guard worth his spice could take down ten Horde without breaking a sweat. It was the kind of fireside boast that children believed. But Johnis now saw that there was less boast and more fact in the matter.

  Fallen beasts clogged the hilltop within moments, making it difficult for the Horde to reach the high ground with their swords.

  “Back to the top!” Silvie yelled. “Back, Johnis!”

  She’d never fought a full-scale battle herself, Johnis knew, but shed been through enough training and possessed enough natural skill to best many a fighter.

  He grabbed the reins and clambered back up. But the moment he crested the dune, he met swarming Horde from the other side.

  High ground or not, there were too many. The Third Fighting Group began to fall among the dead Horde.

  Johnis closed his eyes and swung, screaming at the top of his lungs now. Thud! He snapped his eyes wide. This time his sword had bounced
off leather armor.

  The Scab he hit roared and bore down hard. A knife flashed past Johnis’s ear and silenced the warrior with deadly accuracy.

  “Don’t stop, Johnis!” Silvie cried. “Swing!”

  And he swung. Then again. And yet again.

  Still the Horde came. A large rock thrown from a sling bounced off his shoulder and spun into the night. His right arm went numb. He grabbed his sword with his left hand and thrust the unwieldy weapon as best he could, blocking blows more than doing any real damage.

  The desert valleys on either side were now filled with crowding Horde, like a lake of black oil on either side. All was lost. It was only a matter of how many Scabs they killed before every last fighter of the Third lay dead.

  Still, Johnis swung his sword by Silvie’s side.

  THOMAS HUNTER KNEW THAT HIS WORST FEARS HAD become real when they were still too for away to save them, knew that the report from the corporal who’d seen Johnis and Silvie dressing for battle and galloping out of the village in a near frenzy had come too late.

  The Third Fighting Group was headed for an ambush that would redden the sand with their blood.

  The roar of battle carried over the desert dunes. He caught a glimpse of William, one of his lieutenants, on his right, bent over his horse in a full sprint.

  “We’re too late!” William said.

  Suzan, another lieutenant, pulled ahead on the left, followed close by Mikil. Both rode loose, feet pulled up high like jockeys as he’d shown them from his memories of earth in another time.

  “Ride!” Thomas screamed.

  Behind him the Guard army of five thousand rode.

  Any other horses not trained and hardened for battle would have dropped long ago. And even these sweating beasts, bunched with muscle and sinew, tempted death.

  Dust boiled toward the sky in their wake. Thomas begged Elyon for more time. Just enough to save a few.

  The Guard pounded over a large dune and saw the battle in its entirety with a single glance. The Horde had their backs to them, thousands strong, fixed on the next valley. They themselves hadn’t yet been seen in darkness or heard over the battle din.

  Thomas stood tall in his saddle, still in full gallop, and pointed to either side, then straight ahead, with both hands.

  The army responded to the signal as if he’d pulled invisible strings that coordinated its movement. A thousand broke right; another thousand veered left; and the main force stormed ahead, right up the enemy’s backside.

  Clashing swords and cries of rage covered any sound of their approach. None in his army so much as breathed to betray their attack. Not a single horse slowed.

  They slammed into the Horde at full speed, plowing hundreds into the earth with the sheer momentum of their first contact. Their cries ripped through the air, five thousand throats as one, tearing into mounted Scabs.

  On either side a thousand swept wide, unseen.

  Thomas hacked his way forward, leaping over fallen horses and dying Horde. “To the heart!” he yelled. “Find them; take them out!”

  aptain Boris cradled a wounded right arm in his lap while swinging his sword like a sling with his free hand. Johnis was transfixed by the sight, knowing even as he stared that at any moment a Horde mallet could take off his own head.

  What did it matter? He deserved whatever fete awaited him on this dreadful hill.

  “Johnis, for the love of me, don’t just stand there!” Silvie cried.

  A stone came flying up the hill, and he deflected it with his sword, an almost lucky bang of stone on metal.

  The night air behind him suddenly swelled with shrill cries. Johnis spun around toward the desert. The Horde on the far dune was boiling in battle.

  They were fighting themselves?

  “The Guard!” Silvie yelled.

  Johnis saw them then, a thousand or two thousand Forest Guard cutting through the Horde army from behind.

  Shouts erupted from the right and the left, and he swiveled to see that two other groups were bearing down on the enemy from either side.

  Silvie froze for just a moment, then charged the Horde. “Take them from behind!”

  The Scab warriors had turned to the new enemy and bared their backs. Silvie tore into them, taking down one, then two, like straw puppets. Five spun back to defend their rear, but she retreated uphill before they could reach her.

  She wheeled back for another attack the moment they re-focused their attention on the much larger Guard threat on the flanks. The Horde had killed both her mother and her father, and she’d sworn to avenge their deaths. Tonight she was making good on that promise.

  Johnis joined her on this second attack, swinging his sword with his right arm, which was now regaining its feeling.

  “Johnis!”

  He jerked around and saw a horse cutting through scattering Scabs. And on that horse sat Thomas Hunter, supreme commander of the Forest Guard. Relief flooded him, immediately replaced by horror.

  He’d been the cause of this slaughter, and Thomas’s dark eyes spoke his disapproval with nail-pounding conviction.

  Johnis averted his eyes. On the hill behind he could see the outline of a lone horse—the commander who’d known his name. And beyond the commander lay the Horde camp, now hidden by the dune. And in that Horde camp, his mother.

  She had to be there.

  “Now, Johnis!” Thomas shouted, smacking a Scab in the forehead with the butt of his sword. The beast dropped on his seat and toppled unconscious. “Silvie, now! Follow me!”

  Thomas veered to the south, followed hard by Silvie and Johnis. They skirted the battle and ran back toward the open desert.

  “Retreat!” Thomas screamed. “To the desert!”

  “Retreat!” voices cried, carrying the order through the battlefield. “To the desert!”

  Johnis glanced back at the dune on which the Third Fighting Group had taken its stand for him. The number of fallen bodies dressed in familiar Guard uniforms was too high to count.

  He lost his head at the sight and pulled back on the reins. The emotions that rolled through his chest numbed him. Terror and fear and pain—the raw physical pain of death.

  He couldn’t leave them!

  Silvie reared back just ahead. “Johnis! There’s nothing you can do! Run! For the sake of Elyon, run!”

  So he ran. But he didn’t run with any forethought or direction. He let bitter regret wash over his chest and silent tears run down his cheeks.

  Silvie was yelling something else at him, but he couldn’t make out her words any longer. Ahead lay sandy dunes and night, and he wanted to vanish there where no one could find him.

  Johnis wasn’t sure how long his horse galloped, but when he finally pulled up, all was silent. He fell off his horse, lay facedown in the sand, and wept.

  Thomas and Silvie were the first to reach him. And when Silvie helped him to his feet, he saw the Guard army was following behind, headed straight toward them, an army of accusers.

  “It’s okay, Johnis,” Silvie whispered, brushing the sand from his face. “I know you want to die, but you have to live. If for nothing else, then for me.”

  He glanced at Thomas, but the supreme commander wouldn’t return the courtesy. And Johnis wouldn’t have either, had he just pulled a treasonous rat from the jaws of death.

  “Get back to the forest,” Thomas said, then turned toward his army.

  Johnis mounted with some difficulty and let his horse head into the night. Silvie followed in silence.

  They walked like that for an hour, not speaking a word, keeping the main army well to the rear so that Johnis wouldn’t have to answer to their angry stares just yet.

  “How many?” Johnis finally asked.

  Silvie didn’t respond immediately. “How many what?”

  “How many did I kill?”

  Again she hesitated. “Horde or Guard?”

  He swallowed. “Guard.”

  “I don’t know. Over a hundred. Where did you put the Boo
ks of History?”

  “In the saddlebag.”

  “You don’t have a saddlebag,” she said.

  “Of course I …” He caught the words in his throat. Both bags were missing! They’d been cut or torn off during the battle!

  “Dear Elyon, help me,” he whimpered. “I’ve lost the books.”

  MARTYN THE TRAITOR, AS THEY LIKED TO CALL HIM, SAT atop his horse and let conflicting emotions pass through him. He’d once held a high rank among the Forest Guard.

  A Forest Dweller. Forest Guard. He still wasn’t quite sure how he’d lost his faith in the battle for the forests, only that he’d woken one day and known that it was all wrong. The fight was useless.

  More important, he’d lost his belief that there was any reason to fight for a truth that no longer compelled him. Who, after all, was this Elyon who’d hidden himself from them all for so many years? And who said that clean skin was better than scabbed skin?

  From there it was only a matter of time before his curiosity had led him to the desert. So Martyn knew what it was like to turn from Guard to Horde. He knew any man could be led down this path.

  He knew that one day every last forest-dwelling fool would be led down the very same path he’d walked.

  The thought of Thomas and his wife, Rachelie, tugged at his heart from time to time, if only in respect for their loyalty to a dying cause. In reality, there was no man alive that Martyn respected more than Thomas Hunter, but this made the man no less his enemy.

  And now Martyn had found Thomas’s underbelly. A new recruit named Johnis, who was more idealistic than Thomas himself.

  Back in the tent, Qurong would be storming about the beating they’d taken tonight. Not that Martyn blamed him, but how could he explain the complexities of the matter to a mind as simple as Qurong’s? Given a little training, the leader would soon outthink them all, but for the time he was—what was it Thomas had said?—all brawn, no brain.

  The bodies below him were already nearly picked over. Looting was a pointless habit of the Horde, but he didn’t see any reason to stop the scavengers after such a firm defeat.