Infidel Read online

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Billos said, facing Thomas. “At least not love, as in we’re-to-be-married love.”

  Thomas studied him, perhaps wondering why Billos might try to hide the truth. It was that obvious, wasn’t it?

  “Keep it that way if you can,” Thomas said. “I need officers who have their wits and priorities on the mission, not on each other. Follow?”

  “Yes sir,” Billos said. He ignored a silent glance from Darsal and changed the subject. “What about Johnis and Silvie?” he asked.

  “Give them time to heal, lad. You two put your minds to the squads we’re forming. I want the lists of your twenty best by this afternoon. The next time we meet the Horde, I’ll need these young recruits doing more than filling trenches with resin and hiding in the bushes.”

  Billos left feeling more anxious than he’d been when he’d approached the supreme commander, “Something’s up, Darsal. I can smell it like a hint of smoke.”

  “You’re right.” She steamed, refusing to look at him. “Amazing you even notice.”

  “Why didn’t they come for us?”

  “Because some things are best done alone, Billos. There’s more than war and lost books to think about. But you’re too thickheaded to know anything about that, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t be silly,” he said.

  Darsal strode on, jaw clenched. And Billos knew then that Darsal really was in love with him.

  he Horde city. Thrall.

  Johnis stared through one of three gourds with ground-glass lenses that Jackov had taken from the armory. On the tall dune next to him, Silvie and Jackov lay on their bellies, breathing heavily and staring at the sprawling city through the other two.

  For as far as the telescope could see, baked mud mixed with straw formed square buildings topped with canvas roofs. He’d heard the other Horde cities described, but none of his imaginations matched what he saw now. It was said that Qurong, the leader of the Horde, lived in all of the cities, but looking at the vast spread of structures below, Johnis knew this had to be his primary dwelling place. Maybe this was where all the Scabs lived—the rest of the cities being nothing more than way stations leading here.

  “I thought they lived in tents,” Silvie said breathily. “These … It all looks so permanent.”

  “The Horde is here to stay,” Johnis said.

  “This wont work, Johnis. It’s massive! We’ll never find her.”

  His own sentiments were as hopeless. They were three Forest Dwellers crouched at the top of a sand dune far from home, gazing into an endless spread of houses that stood between them and the taller structures at the center of the city. They were aliens in a foreign land that resembled nothing even remotely similar to what they knew.

  A large gate with two square mortar towers marked the entrance to Thrall, but no barriers prevented coming or going from any other direction. Clearly, the Horde didn’t expect an attack. And no wonder; the Forest Guard wouldn’t stand a chance against such a massive enemy.

  The roads that cut through the city ran crooked, jagging in haphazardly toward the center, like fractured spokes making a feeble attempt at finding their way to the hub. A large palace that looked to be a half day’s walk away rose next to a dozen other larger buildings.

  His mother was there, slaving for the Dark Priest.

  “There are more people here than in all the forests combined,” Silvie said. “Ten times more.”

  Jackov had remained quiet, but Johnis demanded he speak now. “So what do you suggest we do now? You said you could get us to my mother.”

  “I said I could get you here, not inside. We have to find someone to help us.”

  “Please!” Silvie cried. “Why would anyone help us?”

  “Because we can be persuasive. All we need is the right clothing, and we can work our way inside.”

  “Easily said. You suggest we just kidnap the first Scab that happens by and tell them we wish to convert to Horde? ‘Give us some clothes and take us to your priest?’”

  “That’s one way.”

  Horses drew carts of straw and barrels down the roads. The Scabs ate desert wheat, Johnis knew that much. And they drank mostly wine made from the wheat. The barrels likely held either water, wine, or grain.

  “We need to get closer,” he said. “Jackov is right; we need the right clothing. Maybe then we can take over one of those carts and slip past the main gate.”

  “The main gate? Why not from the side?”

  Johnis slid back and walked toward their horses in the valley behind. “Because the carts are faster and natural. And the barrels could provide a way in.”

  It took them half an hour to work their way to a large outcropping of rock just outside the outskirts that Jackov insisted they use for cover. From here they could smell the awful sulfuric stench of a million Scabs. The city was nothing more than an open sewer.

  They tied the horses off, shoved enough hay under their muzzles to keep them fed, and climbed one of the rocks for a better view.

  Streams of tan-clad merchants angled their carts through the gates several hundred paces ofF, perhaps back from the desert wheat fields Johnis had heard about. From here they could still mount the horses and flee the city faster than any ambush could take them. Once they stepped into the city, however, an escape wouldn’t be so easy.

  “We wait for dark, Johnis,” Silvie said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Not maybe, not bulldog. Snakes, remember. We slip in and slip out.”

  “At night the streets will be deserted,” Jackov said. “1 say the more people on the streets, the better.”

  “We don’t have the clothing! Even if we did, they’d see our smooth hands and feet. And we smell to them, right? They’ll smell us coming, even at night.”

  “What do you suggest?” Johnis asked. “Caking our faces with mud and rolling in horse droppings?”

  She looked at him, and he knew immediately he’d struck upon something.

  A giggle drifted on the air from their left. Johnis froze. He and Silvie jerked their heads and saw that Jackov already had his lens out, searching the nearby dunes against which the city butted.

  Four Horde suddenly ran across the sand directly in front of them, three chasing one.

  Children.

  The sight of young sapling Scabs was so startling that Silvie actually gasped. And when the girl being chased pulled up at the sound, Jackov and Johnis forgot to duck. For a dreadful moment, their eyes locked. Hers were small and gray, and he knew that she was a girl by her brushed hair, which was completely different from the dreadlocks worn by the other three children.

  All four stared up at the rocks, silenced by what must have been a very strange sight to them: three tanned humans with smooth skin peering over the rocks, an unlikely sight for four Scabs with scaly white skin.

  The three boys turned and scrambled across the sand toward the city, “Run! Shataiki! Run!”

  But the girl did not run. She stared at them with large, puppy eyes, hands by her sides, one holding a straw doll. Johnis wasn’t sure whether to think of her as a beast or a human.

  Her tunic hung straight down to sandaled feet, the thongs of which were softened with some kind of cloth so they wouldn’t bite into the diseased skin between her toes.

  “Hello,” she said.

  Johnis ducked down, confused by the utter humanity this child seemed to possess. She couldn’t be a day over ten years of age. Her voice was soft and sweet, like a delicate chime.

  Hello, she’d said.

  “Hello,” Jackov said.

  Johnis tried to hush him with a shhh, but he knew it made no sense. It wasn’t as if they could pretend not to have been discovered.

  “What’s your name?” Jackov asked.

  “Karas,” the girl said. “What’s your name?”

  “Jackov.”

  “What are you doing up there?”

  Johnis lifted his head up and looked down on the girl. His anxiety eased, replace
d by the mystery that this odd encounter brought.

  “We’re looking for someone to help us,” Jackov said. The boys were already out of sight. With any luck their cries of seeing Shataiki would be met by dismissals.

  “I can help you,” the little girl named Karas said.

  Her offer caught them flat-footed.

  “You’re not frightened by us?” Silvie asked.

  “Yes.” But she didn’t run.

  Jackov dropped to the sand and walked around the rock toward the girl, who seemed rooted to the desert floor. Johnis and Silvie followed quickly, stepping out into the open ten feet from her. The road leading into the city is still far enough away to avoid any scrutiny, Johnis thought, but ive can’t risk even a casual glance that might raise an alarm.

  He backed behind one of the boulders. “Can you step over here?”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because we don’t want to be seen.”

  “Why?”

  He exchanged a glance with Silvie, who rescued him. “Because we’re afraid they won’t like us. You can see we’re … our skin has problems. Do we smell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s why. We won’t hurt you; we just need some help. Promise.”

  Karas appeared to consider Silvie’s promise, then walked toward them. She looked at the road and stopped when the rock blocked a direct view.

  “Are all girls like you so brave?” Silvie asked, offering a smile.

  “No. Are you going to fix your skin?”

  “Yes,” Johnis said. “That’s what we need help with. We need to get to the Dark Priest’s home. Or maybe to the temple so we can find help. But we’re afraid that if people see us like this, they’d throw us out. No one can know we have this … this problem.”

  “You mean ‘disease,’” she said. “I may be small, but I’m not that stupid. You’re Forest Dwellers, and you have the skin disease. You want to fix your disease? Then you should stay away from the water. Everyone knows that the forest water can kill you.”

  Johnis blinked. She reminded him so much of his sister, Kiella, in her manner of speaking that for a moment he wondered if he was dreaming and this was Kiella, but with the skin disease.

  He’d been part-Horde once, so he knew how confusing the transition was. But watching this young, articulate girl, he knew that the Guard’s assumption that Scabs were less intelligent because of the disease was wrong. It affected their perception of moral truth, perhaps, but not their intellect.

  “Will you take us to the priest?” Jackov asked.

  “Yes, I can.”

  Silvie shot Jackov a questioning look. “No, wait, that’s not what we want. What he means is, can you get us clothes so that we can sneak in without the whole city throwing mud at us?”

  “I can, but if you want to see my father, I can take you. Is that what you want?”

  “Your father?”

  “The priest. He’s the one you need to see, right?”

  Johnis felt his pulse surge. “Your father is the Dark Priest?”

  “Of course.”

  She said it so matter-of-factly that Johnis wondered if she understood their meaning. “You mean the priest who leads the— you know, the religion of the Horde.”

  “The priest who insists we all worship Teeleh, the brass snake, yes … that priest. The only priest.”

  “You only have one priest for the whole city, then?”

  “One priest,” she said. “If you want, I can take you now.”

  This girl might know his mother, Johnis realized. They had struck a gold mine. But if they didn’t proceed with caution, that very mine could collapse around them.

  “Yes, that would be good,” Jackov said. “Take us directly to your father,”

  “Are you mad?” Silvie blurted. Then, for the girl’s benefit: “I can’t be seen like this. We have to have head coverings—robes that make us look ar least somewhat normal.”

  “What about your mother?” Johnis asked. “Is she also a priest?”

  “I don’t have a mother. She was killed when I was a little girl. The servant takes care of me now.”

  “What servant?”

  Karas studied him with her big gray eyes. “Why do you ask so many questions?”

  “I just want to know, so I don’t make a fool of myself in the city.”

  “I think you’re lying,” she said. “I think you have some trick up your sleeve.”

  “Don’t be absurd! Look at me.” He lifted his arm for her to see. “I’m diseased, what do you expect from me? Of course I’m nervous; we all are. What do you expect? For all we know, you’re the one playing the trick,”

  He noticed now that her skin was covered in a white powdery substance that seemed to put off a flowery odor. He’d never heard that the Horde tried to disguise the cracking of their skin.

  “Really? Do I look like the kind of little girl who would play a trick on you?”

  He thought about that and answered together with Silvie. “No.”

  “Then believe me when I say can get you in without a commotion. Of course, I’ll get you clothing, I’m not crazy. We’ll go in on a cart, and you’ll look like some peasants from the wheat farms who want to worship Teeleh.”

  “Perfect!” Jackov said. “We can’t go wrong with that.”

  They had indeed stumbled on a gold mine, but the purpose of their journey wasn’t to visit the priest. It was to find his mother. They couldn’t follow the girl to the priest or let her know that they didn’t want to meet him.

  “We cant endanger you like this,” Johnis said, casting a quick side-glance at Silvie. “If someone knew that you hid us, you could get into trouble. Maybe we shouldn’t go straight to the priest. What about his servant? Maybe she could help us?”

  “No one’s supposed to see her,” she said. “She’s being punished now.”

  “She is?” It had to be his mother! “How …”

  Johnis felt urgency storm up inside him, but Silvie squeezed his arm and addressed the girl before he could condemn them by blurting something incriminating.

  “If you could just get us the clothing, I think we could manage. We would be so thankful for just that.”

  The little girl kept her eyes on Johnis. “What do you care about the servant? She’ll likely be killed, you know. My father is a very powerful man who can squash those who cross the ways ofTeeleh.” Her voice trembled slightly.

  Again Silvie pressed her fingers into Johniss arm to keep him silent. He felt his face flush. They didn’t have time to wait!

  “You say that like you’ve been squashed a few times yourself,”

  Silvie said, and by the girl’s sudden stillness, Johnis knew immediately that a chord had been struck.

  For a long time none of them moved.

  “You’ve done well,” Jackov said. “Bring us robes and tell us how to get to the temple, and we ll be fine. But you can’t breathe a word. Can you do that for us?”

  “Of course.”

  Without another word the girl turned on her heels, ran with a flapping of her sandals around the boulder, and was gone.

  Their fate was now in the hands of a nine-year-old Horde girl who would undoubtedly be severely punished for helping them if caught. Johnis had no sense of her loyalty to the Dark Priest, but he hoped that if she suspected any foul play on their part, she would be smart enough to betray them, if only to protect herself.

  But, as promised, Karas returned half an hour later, hauling three large, tan robes and a bowl of some white paste she called morst. If they covered their skin with it, they might pass as Horde.

  Twenty minutes later, having donned the robes and spread the morst on their exposed flesh, Johnis, Silvie, and Jackov followed little Karas into the Horde city.

  ohnis walked through the main gate beside the little girl, sure that all eyes were on him. He kept his stare low, on the rear wheel of a cart they’d fallen in behind. Jackov and Silvie followed, silent and undoubtedly as nervous. If he wasn’t
careful, his sweat would wash off the morst paste and show his true colors.

  In more ways than one, this was worse than the Black Forest. For starters, they weren’t following the orders of the Roush. They had nothing like the books to strike fear in the enemy. They had no leverage, no plan, no power, no advantage of any kind. Even their secrecy was subject to the whim of this girl who led them.

  He felt a hand take his and squeeze. Karas was looking up at him with her round eyes. “Be brave,” she said quietly. “You’re only doing what you have to, like the rest of us.”

  What did she mean by that?

  “I like you, Johnis. I’m sorry about all of this.”

  She knew his name? Heat flashed through his face. Could it be a trap? Not if he was reading her right, but, until this point, they’d had an escape route. Now they were at the city’s mercy.

  “Some of these carts go straight to the Thrall temple, where my father lives. Be careful; he can be wicked. His servant, the woman, is in the cell below the serpent’s chamber. I won’t come with you because you either don’t trust me or you want to protect me; I don’t know which. But if you ride the cart, you’ll reach the temple—some call it the Thrall—in less than an hour.”

  Why was she telling him about the woman? Did she know they’d come for Rosa? And if she did, was she sending them to their deaths? Johnis didn’t know how to respond to this barrage of admissions on the girls part.

  Karas continued. “You can’t miss the temple. It’s the pointed building with a serpent on the roof. My house is the one with red mortar next to it. It’s the most beautiful house in the city, according to my father.” She released his hand after another squeeze, then hurried forward.

  “You there!” Karas called.

  The driver of a cart loaded with four large barrels looked lazily back.

  “Take these peasants to the Thrall for worship.” She patted the cart’s flat planks.

  This young girl wasn’t like any he had ever met! Certainly nothing like any Scab he could have imagined. He’d never seriously considered the idea of Horde children—had hardly been aware they existed, much less considered them human. Karas was unquestionably as human as any forest child.