Aveline (20 page)

Arthur dismounted, once more caught in a
surreal state, this one brought on by shock. He walked through the
dead, unable to comprehend how one skinwalker had done all this,
and how a meadow of trained soldiers were unable to stop the
creature. At least these men had been warned; many of them were
clutching weapons in death. Blood soaked into the snow, frosting
the meadow in red sludge that clung to Arthur’s boots.

His eyes fell to the tent near the center of
the encampment that he shared with Warner. Barely able to breathe
through his tight chest, Arthur walked towards it, his stomach
twisting in anticipation of what he would find.

“Ah, Sayed,” he murmured when he drew
nearer. A trusted friend from youth, Sayed lay near Arthur’s tent,
as if his friend had thought to come to his defense when the
skinwalker attacked. “Ever the good soul.” He had been slashed
through and lay with his weapons in hand.

Arthur knelt and closed Sayed’s eyes,
thanking him quietly as he did so. He owed the dead man one life
debt and might have owed him two, had he been present for the
attack. Arthur could not repay him, but would visit his family upon
his return and offer up whatever service or payment he could.

Dread and sorrow were heavy in his stomach.
He rose and moved on, seeking the one face he was terrified of
finding.

No body lay outside his tent. Unlike the
other tents, which had not been touched, the skinwalker had slashed
through both sides of Arthur’s tent. Arthur peered into it.
Warner’s weapons and overcoat were inside, though the man himself
was not.

Arthur knelt by the footprints beside his
tent, trying to remain calm enough to make out what happened.
Judging by the size of the paw prints, the skinwalker had taken the
form of a great cat potentially larger than a horse. Warner’s boot
prints were beside the skinwalker’s; he had challenged the
creature, as Arthur knew he would.

Blood was on the ground, though it was
impossible for Arthur to guess whose it was. The paw prints turned
into the bare footprints of a man staggering away for several steps
before they transformed once more into those of a great cat.

Warner had somehow managed to stun the
creature no other man could stop. Proud, concerned, and distressed
by the idea he would find Warner’s body nearby, Arthur trailed the
paw prints towards the next tent, where the creature attacked other
members of the Shield. He turned away and retreated to his tent and
this time, followed Warner’s boot tracks. They went in the
direction of the corral before becoming jumbled among the prints of
others.

What had happened next? Arthur closed his
eyes and called upon his tracking skill to determine if Warner
survived. He steadied his breathing, which had grown erratic, and
focused on finding Warner.

Without a token to convey the direction his
target had gone, his tracking magic presented him with an image
instead. Warner had continued onward to the corral and then beyond,
moving southwest. Arthur’s ability could not tell him if Warner
escaped on a horse, but it did tell him the skinwalker eventually
left camp and headed southeast.

Warner was alive, or had been, when he left
camp, and the skinwalker had not seemed interested in following
him, or he would have taken a different course.

Arthur sighed, relieved. If any man could
withstand a monster, it was Warner. Wiping his face, Arthur began
walking again, searching for survivors among the dead. He circled
the camp, checked the forest edging it, then returned to his
horse.

From what he could see, only his tent was
attacked, and no horses or wagons or supply trunks were disturbed.
Why, then, had the creature sought out the army? And why had it
spared Arthur and Marshall after stalking them to the plains? Did
it seek someone or something here? It did not seem possible for
there to have been time for the creature to determine if who or
what he sought was present. He had entered camp on a rampage,
slaughtered everyone within minutes and left no survivors. Was this
carnage indiscriminate?

Marshall stood nearby, features pale and
mouth agape, while Arthur wracked his thoughts for an explanation
based on what little he knew of the mysterious skinwalker from his
dream.

He surveyed the decimated camp once more
before taking his horse’s reins. The urgency had faded, though his
emotions had not yet processed the savagery around him. He could
not stop thinking about what came next, of Warner and Tiana in the
hands of the skinwalker.

“What kind of animal did this?” Marshall
whispered, stricken.

“The kind we dare not meet,” Arthur replied.
He mounted his horse, eyes facing the direction Warner had gone.
“Mount up.”

Marshall faced him, astonished. “We cannot
leave the bodies without a proper burial. Some of these men were
almost our equals.”

“If we wish to survive, then we need to move
fast and not stop until we reach the friendly villages near the
city or the city itself.”

Marshall stared at him.

“Ghouls, unfriendly natives and whatever did
this stands between us and our destination. Do you really wish to
alert any or all of them to our presence by remaining or burning a
hundred bodies?” Arthur pressed. “We were both trained to lead.
Think like a leader.”

“You mean for me to think like a Hanover and
leave our contemporaries to be eaten by animals and their
belongings stolen by scavengers!”

“Very well. Then think like a Cruise. What
is the name of the last man to survive the wilderness alone?”

Marshall flushed. “Charles Cruise.”

Arthur waited for his rival to make a
decision. Marshall was not stupid; once his emotional outburst
passed, he would understand Arthur’s logic. In any other situation,
Arthur would not care to wait for Marshall to decide or bother
waiting for him at all. However, in the five hundred year history
of Lost Vegas, only one man had escaped the dangers outside the
city, and his group had started with fifty refugees. The odds of
surviving were better, if Arthur had at least one companion.

While his hands shook from suppressed
emotion, he mentally forced himself to look to the future and his
own life. His father would not have flinched at the sight of blood
and death, let alone paused to wish his fallen friend farewell.
Arthur was aware of this, just as he was aware there was no one to
judge him, unlike every action he undertook in the city. Marshall
was too preoccupied by the massacre, and any other witnesses to
Arthur’s failure to act in a manner similar to his father’s were
dead.

Aside from their lives being at risk, if he
did not return to the city, his sister would be in danger from the
same creature that destroyed his camp. He had already seen this in
a vision.

Arthur also had a secondary motive for
leaving quickly, one he dared not share. Warner was out there
somewhere in the forest, alone, and missing the gear he needed to
protect him against the elements. If they rode fast, they might
encounter him before he froze or worse, ran into one of the dangers
standing between them and the safety of the city.

Dazed, Marshall looked around the clearing,
his gaze resting on the tent bearing the lion crest. He strode to
it and crouched. Rooting through the pockets of a slain soldier, he
pulled something from the body, studied it, and pocketed it.

Arthur leaned over and grabbed the reins of
Marshall’s horse. He nudged his gelding forward, after Marshall,
pulling the second horse with him. If he looked too long at the
dead, his sense of honor would compromise his plan. Marshall was
right about the men deserving a proper pyre, but Arthur’s focus was
on preventing the loss of more life rather than grieving those who
were gone.

Arthur kept his eyes trained on either
Marshall or the corral to the southwest, tense and waiting for the
sense of otherworldly danger to return.

“Come, Marshall. You cannot help the dead
now. They are better off where they are, as spirits in the
sky.”

Marshall stood and then rubbed his face
hard, as if unable to wipe away the sight before him. “We need to
warn those friendly to us and the city. A beast this large must be
stopped before it hurts more people.”

Arthur neither cared about others being hurt
nor objected to Marshall’s reasoning. Traveling alone was a death
sentence; if they were together, they stood a greater chance at
making it home.

Marshall mounted his horse. Arthur wheeled
his towards the southwest and Warner and carefully made his way
across the meadow, not wishing to cause further harm to the bodies
of those he had known.

Pausing at the corral, each of them
harnessed two horses to take with them and then left the gate open,
so the others could run free.

Arthur darkened the torch as he moved into
the forest. From the direction of the buffalo herds, he heard the
familiar shrieks of the Ghouls. They were far enough not to concern
him for the moment. But what happened tomorrow night? Or the night
after? And if the Ghouls found Warner first?

One day at a time,
Arthur,
he lectured himself. Above all, he
had to maintain a clear head and judgment unimpeded by emotion, if
he were to see the two people he loved most again.

Tiana did not speak to Aveline again until a
full four and a half days after her meltdown. Time had never passed
so sluggishly for Aveline or been filled with such a lack of
activity, and she found herself eating constantly as a means of
staying occupied.

If the Hanover girl had it in her to be
spiteful or vengeful, Aveline would have chalked up her silence to
passive aggressive attempt to punish her for the mirror incident.
But Tiana was neither of those, and Aveline heard her cry too often
during the days of silence to assign malice to her actions.

Tiana was devastated, and nothing Aveline
said helped the distraught girl recover.

Aveline downed the last bite of a berry
filled pastry that had become her favorite since she discovered
them in the kitchens. She grimaced, about to remark aloud how
boredom would drive her into obesity or insanity by spring, when
Tiana spoke at last.

“I had a dream about you last night,” she
murmured.

Finally.
Aveline looked down from the ceiling she had been staring at.
Her back was to the wall beneath the window, which gave her the
ability to see most of the room, except for the depths of the
closet and bathroom. With her weapons cleaned, and her daily
exercises finished, she had been trying to determine how to spend
the unbearably long hours stretching between lunch and
dinner.

“A dream or one of your visions?” Aveline
asked warily. She dared not mention the mirror incident for fear of
driving Tiana to tears or back into her closet. She was anxious to
move on from the unexpectedly horrible attempt to help Tiana feel
more confident about herself.

“Some dreams I know to be dreams, and some
visions I am certain are of the future. But often, there is a
vision or dream too disconnected from what I know of the world for
me to determine which it is.” Tiana shrugged. Her eyes were on the
veil she was embroidering. She had not smiled since the mirror
incident, either, and had barely eaten. “I saw you but did not
understand the circumstances.”

“What happened?”

“You were outside the city with two men I
have never seen before. They were … are or will be … it can be
confusing.” Tiana sighed. “Friends. They are your friends.”

“What were we doing?” Aveline asked,
intrigued.

“You were agitated and worried. I think you
were looking for me.”

“You weren’t there?”

“Your necklace was dark.”

Aveline touched the timepiece dangling from
her neck. Tiana’s was bright, given their proximity.

“One of them was named Rocky,” Tiana added.
“You never spoke the other’s name.”

Aveline dropped the pendant, gazing at Tiana
in uneasy surprise. Witnessing the furniture lifting off the floor
at random times was less unnerving than Tiana’s even stranger
ability to glimpse the future.

Rocky’s alive.
At least, in this version of Tiana’s vision.
Aveline almost sighed at the revelation she did not end up causing
her friend’s death. Unwilling to discuss Rocky, who was trapped in
prison, pending Tiana’s murder, Aveline searched her mind for a
series of events that would allow Rocky and Tiana both to live.
When she came up with no such scenario, she focused again on Tiana.
“What else?”

“There was not much to it.”

“What about details? Was it light or dark?
Were we dressed for winter or spring?”

Tiana paused in her sewing, pensive. “It was
dark and cold but not winter. There was no snow on the ground but I
could see your breath.”

“Just three of us?”

“That I saw, yes.”

Aveline tapped her fingers against her
kneecap absently, thoughtful.

“I have seen this Rocky person before,”
Tiana said. “If you know him, then perhaps the other dreams are
real, too.”

“What other dreams?”

Tiana began embroidering once more. “I see
him when he visits. He has come here daily for the past four days.
Maybe he searches for you.”

“It’s not possible!” Aveline said with more
emotion than she intended.

Tiana tensed.

With effort, Aveline quieted her voice. “How
can you know this?”

“I know nothing with certainty. But if you
know he exists, and I have never seen him before, then is it not
possible he may be waiting for you where I see him?”

“It would be sheer madness, if so.”

“How are you so certain he has not come?”
Tiana asked, perplexed. “How can you doubt his presence here and
yet believe my ability to see fragments of the future?”