Брайан Макклеллан - War Cry

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 motorbikes 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.