“Thank you.” I examine the swell of purple that used to be his eye. “Once I’ve cleaned up, we should attend to your injury before infection sets in.”
He grimaced. “Later. If necessary. I can endure it.”
Stubborn man. We have a lot of those around.
“I have medicine to help you endure it.” Wearily, I hoist my pack. It’s desperately inadequate, but I might save a few lives. I pray I can save as many were lost in getting me here. “Perhaps in the morning. When there’s light.”
It feels as though the entire world has gone dark, and no sun will ever shine brightly again.
#
Excising Ephram’s damaged eye requires three men to hold him still, even after a shot of morphine. Once finished, I burn my soiled gloves and force him swallow antibiotics. Then I leave him to complain vociferously until the morphine and pain forced him to sleep.
His second-in-command, Luza, leads me to the edges of the town. Her dark hair hangs in ringlets to her mid-back. Tendrils escape, sticking to her temples in the humidity.
“We’re overrun by pirates,” she says, passing me the binoculars she’s clearly nicked off one of the invaders. They’re easily distinguishable from locals. Nearly all of them are men, dressed in jeans and T-shirts, not dissimilar to the students I attended class with at Royals University less than a month ago. But there’s a hardness to them, a swagger born of arrogance and pride in their successful invasion. They walked right into our home. Raped, killed, and took anything they wanted, by force. Destroyed our homes.
They think they’ve won.
I lower the binoculars and mutter in English, “We’re not done fighting yet, you bastards.”
Luza gives me an odd look. Right. People here associate English with the invaders.
“Most of our fighters have regrouped in the caves and fields surrounding the marshlands.” She gestures northward. “Old people, women and children remain in the city where it’s marginally safer, as long as they stay out of the invaders’ way. They’ve pressed the residents into service. That’s how they’re maintaining supply lines to the north.” Luza pointed. “They load the wagons with ammunition and supplies, then take the eastern road up to the Grasslands Bridge and continue up the western side of the river, using the ferry to avoid the wildfires. They’re so fast on those damned bikes. They’re faster than we are on horseback, even before accounting for the guns.”
“Where do they land the supplies?”
“Right in the middle of Oceanside Beach,” Luza answers grimly. “Run their shitty little boats right onto the shore, force our citizens to unload them and shoot anyone who resists.”
“So we need to strike in three places simultaneously,” I say, thinking out loud. “At the beach, at the bridge, and inside the city.”
If we could get guns to Tovian, and show him how to use them, could the Ansi shoot at their boats? Drive them away for a while, if not sink them?
It would help. My budding plan would stand a better chance of success. Turning the tide in this war is crucial. We need to buy time for Lorcan to heal, and Zosia to return from wherever she’s hiding—or rescued from being held captive, which is what I suspect is going on. She wouldn’t abandon her people. But if the Skía had her, they’d have flaunted it in one way or another by now, either by harming her publicly to humiliate us, or demanding ransom. Where could she have gone?
The castle is the only logical conclusion.
I can’t solve that problem right now.
Lorcan always taught me to use weakness as an advantage. Make the enemy believe it’s safe to attack, then counter it with everything you have. End the battle as fast as you can.
Tovian said his people wouldn’t fight.
He might not have left if you’d been honest about who you are.
But if I had been, he might not have brought me here at all. The chances I would have made it here alone are virtually nil. He saved my life, twice. A deal was a deal. I have no right to expect more of him.
There’s no time to dwell on that now.
“We don’t have enough people to strike that hard.” Luza shakes her head. “We’re a few thousand rebels against an endless supply of well-armed, violent men.”
“A few thousand trained fighters, perhaps,” I said. “But you have eyes and ears on every street in Oceanside” —what’s left of it— “and people in their homes. In their warehouses. Carrying their ammunition and weapons.”
If we’re lucky, their medical supplies, too. We need more than the paltry amount I was able to bring on my person. I’ve already gone through half of the antibiotics, using it on a woman with a bad leg injury and two men with gunshot wounds. Plus Ephram. It’s not like they’re a single course of treatment, and sepsis is a real danger, so I treated them with what I had.
“What do you propose?” Luza asks somberly.
“I need ideas.”
