“I can be armed again in two seconds,” I warned.
“Your speed is well-known to us, Deuce the Huntress.”
“How did you find me?” I was proud of how steady my voice sounded, as if he weren’t turning my world upside down with each moment we stood with the river flowing behind us in the moonlight.
“We followed your banner. It, too, is well-known.”
Momma Oaks would be pleased to hear it. Gavin had kept the pennant safe through summer and fall, until the Freaks recognized it and charged in rage … or avoided us, depending on their goals and allegiances. I had so many questions, but they wouldn’t coalesce in my brain. Conflicting emotions warred for dominance, leaving me dull.
“I thought your kind couldn’t swim,” I managed to say, as fear rushed in.
If these Freaks had found a way across the river, it couldn’t be long before the horde followed. Rosemere would be decimated. Sickness roiled in my stomach, churning the rich food I’d eaten moments before at Stone and Thimble’s table. I had to think of a way out of this mess, and there was nobody here to help, just my inadequate wits against endless weight.
“No,” he replied. “But we can build.”
That is not good news.
“Boats, you mean?”
He inclined his head. “They are not so fine as yours, but they suffice.”
Now I pictured them lashing logs together—as we had for the primitive town we built in the forest—constructing rafts that would carry them across the river. Please don’t let the horde have seen them. They don’t need any help to destroy us. Taking a deep breath, I reined my dread.
“Say your piece quickly.”
I can’t believe I’m not attacking this strange creature.
“I am Szarok. In your tongue this roughly means He Who Dreams.”
Astonishment stilled me for a few seconds. I’d never imagined that Freaks named their brats or that their language could translate with such elegance. Before this moment, I saw them only as monsters to be destroyed at all costs. Cold prickles crept up my spine as I considered how many of Szarok’s brethren I had slain.
“You speak it well,” I whispered.
He acknowledged the compliment with what I’d take for a smile in a human face. “I studied. I learned. This is the way of the young.”
“Why? Killing us is your favorite pastime.”
“No. This is all our forefathers know because they remember too much about the hate and pain of their creation. But the lastborn see farther. We have memories of kindness.”
“Kindness?” I asked.
“Will you take my hand, Huntress?”
I couldn’t credit how peculiar this seemed. If this was a trap, it was too bizarre for me to fathom. Maybe this creature knew it couldn’t defeat me in a fight, and it had some new trick in mind, some new ability I’d never seen, like venomous skin. Yet I heard Tegan whispering in my ear, as if she were standing here. She had become the new voice in my head, replacing Silk.
Trust has to begin somewhere. For peace to take hold, one person must first stop fighting.
I pushed out a shuddering breath. “Go ahead.”
Szarok’s hand was strong and warm. The claws prickled as he wrapped his fingers around my wrist. Impressions flickered through my mind; I had nothing to compare it to, but I saw a young Freak wounded and near death. A child in Otterburn tended it; she was too small to understand they were enemies. She saw only pain, not ugliness, and she healed the creature. And that beast fathered Szarok. I saw the connection in blood and bone, and I realized he could spin these memories in his mind, just as Dr. Wilson had predicted.
When he let me go, I reeled back, not in hurt but wonder. “What’s it like to be able to trace your path back so far?”
“Beautiful. And ugly. The world is always both.”
Those words resonated with me. “It is. Are the memories you carry from your forefathers always that sharp and clear? Can you call them at will?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s blessing and curse, I think, as you can see in the old ones. They cannot forget or forgive. They cannot move past the pain.”
I imagined the mad jumble of images the Freaks in the horde stored in their heads, marching all the way back to their human origins. No wonder they hated us. People never raged so hard as against the flaws they perceived in themselves. The feral Freaks weren’t smart enough to understand their instinctive antipathy, but I did. And it saddened me.
“You said your name means He Who Dreams. So tell me yours, Szarok.”
“I dream of peace … and a world where neither side judges the other by their skins.”
It sounded like a worthy goal, if an improbable one. “What did you have in mind?”
“An alliance.”
I gaped at him, as that was possibly the most startling statement in a night already fraught with more shocks than I could process. “You can’t be serious.”
“We’ve spent the last year keeping the horde in check, Huntress, arguing with them about the wisdom of their course.” He leaned forward, seeming skilled at reading my reactions. “You didn’t avoid them out of luck; my clan is why they stayed in Appleton so long, sending only a portion of their strength against you. But the old ones will listen no longer. Most have less than three years left, but before they die, they will wipe your kind from the territories. There’s no time for peace to flourish as it will. We must make it so.”
That explains so much. But Company D would never accept this. “I don’t think—”
But Szarok made an impatient gesture, one familiar to me from other angry men. In that instant, I saw him as a person, not a monster. “Do you think this is easy? We must join our hated enemies to slay our mothers and fathers. But this is the only path. They cannot stop killing, so we must make them.”
“Are you so sure I can be trusted?” I had murdered an awful lot of his people, after all.
“You kept to the terms of our agreement before.”
Just when I thought I couldn’t be more surprised, he produced another shock. “The emissary came from you? When we fought in the woods near Soldier’s Pond?”
“It was my suggestion to see if you were open to peace,” he admitted. “Many tribes met and discussed the best way to handle your war band. My clan has always been opposed to human extinction … and we didn’t want to make livestock of you, either, unlike some. After the slaughter at Appleton, I proposed many solutions but the old ones would hear none. And so the young split from the horde. Tonight, I offer you five hundred warriors willing to die because one of your people was kind. Can you say the same?”
I started to say I’d never met a gentle Freak, but then I realized I was looking at one. The pain he must feel at betraying his own people to make the world a better place … I understood it, because I was facing the same dilemma. Company D would see this alliance as perfidious, and they might hate me for it.
I hesitated, seeing the unmistakable benefit, but unsure if I could make it work. “I have less than two hundred men. Even if we join forces, it seems like a lost cause.”
“Other allies will come,” he said mysteriously.
“Who?”
“I will tell you nothing further until you agree to my terms. My men are camped on the far end of the isle. Meet them … and decide if, together, we can make the world better. That’s what the young Uroch want.”
“Uroch?” I repeated. “Who…?”
Szarok seemed to grasp what I was asking. “It means the ‘People’ and it applies to my clan, those willing to fight our kin to end this war.” He paused, as if weighing whether he should say more. “That’s why I’m willing to work with you. We can learn from one another.”
How astonishing. I marveled at the complexity I had never imagined—that Szarok’s tribe had a name. At that point, I suspected I must be dreaming—to hear him echo my own desires when I’d killed so many of his brethren. For peace to begin, someone must lay his weapons down. But that was a choice the Huntress could never make. My whole body trembled; the risks were so high and this could be the biggest—and last—mistake of my life.
“You could be leading me into a trap,” I said.
Szarok tilted his head in challenge. “And you could call down the whole village upon me. Yet you have not.”
When the enemy chooses to talk instead of fight, only a fool rejects the overture.
In my mind’s eye, I touched two fingers to my brow in a farewell salute to the merciless warrior they’d trained me to be, down below. I wasn’t a Huntress, not even close. I’d chart a new course from here, guided by the gentleness I’d learned from Tegan and Momma Oaks.
“I’ll go with you.”
“No!” To my astonishment, my brother, Rex, ran down the dock toward us, knife drawn. “I was waiting for you to gut this lying monster. Don’t trust it!”
“What are you doing here?” I asked softly.
Szarok stilled but he didn’t take hostile action. From what I could tell, he was leaving this complication in my hands. In the taut silence, broken only by the rush of the river behind us, I waited for Rex’s reply.
He burst out, “I had some ideas about how to handle the horde, and I came looking for you. When you went walking after dark, I followed, thinking I’d get to play the protective big brother for a change. And it’s a good thing too. I never dreamed you could be so gullible. When he delivers you to the horde, Company D will surrender. The war will be lost.”
Rex lunged then, and I threw myself between Szarok and my brother. He glared at me, knife upraised. “Get out of my way, Deuce. I vowed to kill every last one of these bastards for what they did to Ruth.”
I shook my head, desperate. “Don’t. Ruth wouldn’t want this. It’s wrong to blame him for what someone else did. You wouldn’t hold all men accountable for the crimes of one.”
Rex snarled, “But this isn’t a man. It’s a monster.”
Szarok said softly, “You hold a knife poised to strike your sister down, beloved of your mother and father. Who is the monster here?”
My brother stumbled back with a cry of horror, the blade falling from his fingers to clatter on the ground. I hugged him tight and he was shaking. Over and over, he whispered, “What, what have I become?”
For long moments I held him and Szarok was wise or kind enough to hold his peace. Eventually Rex stepped back, picked up his blade, and sheathed it. “I’m sorry. That was madness. But … I won’t let you do this thing alone.”
I glanced at Szarok in silent inquiry, and he responded, “If your brother can promise civilized behavior, I have no objection to two visitors in our camp.”
It went unspoken why; he had five hundred warriors on the Evergreen Isle, and if we proved aggressive, it would be easy to dispose of us. And any misbehavior on our part might result in death sweeping down on an unsuspecting Rosemere. On its own, that was more than enough to keep me in line, but I believed Szarok’s offer was sincere. He had not come lightly to the decision to fight his own people.