All around me, the faint murmur of chat, of barbed languages and harsh chuckles, feels too relaxed. Like these warriors are people, too. People with interests… with friendships, with humour and joy.
I don’t like it. I don’t want to even think of them having names.
In my nightmare, they always have faces—but never names.
This time, the faces merge into just one.
A face chiselled from ice.
He stands over me, my own shotgun in his grip, and he cocks it over and over and over.
The empty shells rain down on me.
I’m begging, weeping, but I don’t quite hear the words mumbling out of me.
He aims the barrel at my face.
I scream—
But my scream is the blast of a shotgun.
TEN
Plastic water bottles slosh and jerk against the walls of the cart, a rocky fence threatening to topple and crush me.
The slick black rope is firm around my wrist. It unspools up to the metal hook on the edge of the cart.
I must’ve been dumped here sometime during my fever sleep, and it’s been long enough for the dirt of the forest floor to be left behind, and now the cart rattles like it’s going over a rutted road.
Every time I wake up enough for my eyes to open, Ihearthe unit around me, the clatter of other carts, the huff of a hairless steed pulling the weight, the odd murmur spoken softly in the dark.
I don’t see anything. The torches are out.
That means I don’t seehim.
The cold warrior could be right next me on the other side of the cart, matching the pace of the steed, or he could be gone, deeper into the unit, far away from me.
I wouldn’t know.
I only know that now, even in the fog of this sleep, this constant fucking fatigue that scrambles my mind, the pain is gone.
No ache, no dizziness, shooting sharp pains, no nothing.
Not even my back or shoulder hurts with the rocky quakes of the cart bumping over a weathered road.
It goes like that for so long, in and out, here and away, until my consciousness starts to stick around longer, then longer, then I’m awake, but utterly beat.
Darkness carries on, the cart keeps moving.
I swear I hear things, a slapping noise way up above, like something wet smacking together in the sky, but it’s gone as quickly as it came.
Then, finally, the cart starts to slow, a shout comes from ahead, which I guess is the general barking orders down at her unit of warriors, and chatter picks back up again.
Torches lift.
My eyes squint against the attack of the light.
As the glare softens, I see nothing above me. No branches bobbing against the lift of the icy breeze, no sturdy boughs or stubborn, dead leaves—because there are no trees.
