Nancy and her crew sat around their fire in the midmorning sun when they saw the four men carrying Enoch back into the camp. The light activity from all the camp residents slowed as they turned to see Silus' emissary.
Like before, her four bearers lowered her sedan to the ground and she rose from the top to address those present. "Today is a glorious day for the Chosen of God. Today is the day when you take up your rightful place as a servant of the Lord to do the Lord's work in the world. Who among you have felt the divine call within your heart and will accompany us on our Holy path?"
Nancy looked around the camp to see who would go. Many still seemed to be discussing it within their groups. Then, just a couple started their walk toward Enoch and her carriers. As the first few made their way, others seemed to make up their minds and head down as well.
Beside her, Oak stood up. He looked down in the direction of Enoch, his face pursed tight in thought. Finally, he took a deep breath and forced it out his nose before sitting back down.
Tom put his hand on Oak's shoulder. They watched the rest of the camp.
In all, nearly thirty camp members made the choice to join Silus.
Enoch raised her hands to the sky and shouted, "God is great!" Then, looking at the rest of the camp, "I know in my heart that the rest of you will be moved to join us, if not now then soon. Until then, give your prayers to God and ask him for guidance."
To those gathered around her, she said, "Follow, and we will guide you to your new home, a home of Holiness and God." Then she sank back into her box.
Her bearers hefted the poles to their shoulders, turned the box around to face the path, and marched away.
The people who chose to join followed them until they all faded into the woods. Within a few minutes, even the sound of them was gone.
Nancy asked Oak, "Are you ok?"
He shrugged. "Yeah, I'm ok. It just sounded so good. I don't know, maybe too good. Besides, you guys would be useless without me."
Making Plans
The men from New Chicago and Wood Hill got their horses ready and cleaned up their camp. Their leaders gathered with Mike around a table in the middle of the village.
Seth the hunter had joined them. He pointed to a map to describe the situation. "This is Owl Hollow, where the Spotties have their camp. It's a valley with heavy forest around, but there's a clearing where they got their tents. They stay close to the bottom of the valley where the old road and the creek go through. They won't go up any further."
Boss Henry thought that sounded strange. "Why won't they go up any further?"
"Well," Seth explained, "that's haunted. This ridge to the north is called Dead Herd. I've only seen it from a distance, but the old cattle herd still stands there, just skeletons. On the other side, to the south, is Old House Hill. All that's there is the ruins of an old house, but everybody says it's haunted too. My guess is that the Spotties picked this valley knowing nobody would ever attack from either of those directions."
Both Boss Henry and Eric Pree, the leader from Wood Hill, rolled their eyes. Hauntings didn't make a lot of strategic sense, but if the Spotties believed it, then that was important to know.
"What's the story of this old road?" Eric asked, pointing to the road through Owl Hollow.
"Oh, that old thing," Seth said. "It mostly ain't there anymore. We can follow the road through town here," he pointed just outside the village, "and it will connect to part of the valley road. By the time we get to the woods, it is so overgrown with forest, it might as well not be there."
Mike added, "When we go, the fastest way to get to the woods is to take that road as far as we can. Then we'll need to follow whatever path we can find."
"Yep," said Seth. "On the other end of Owl Hollow, the road is more of a path, but it is still passable. If the Spotties know we're coming and they want to get away in a hurry they can run right out that way."
Boss Henry leaned in to look more closely at that part of the map. "When we attack, we need to get across their camp as fast as we can to cut off that escape route. That's going to need horses. Can we get at least some of the horses through the woods without tipping off the Spotties?"
"I don't think so," said Mike. "All the forest is really dense. Do you know a path, Seth?"
"Well, sort of," Seth answered. "It depends on how superstitious your men are. If you ride around and come up the west edge of Dead Herd, you can come down through an area where there aren't as many trees. You'll have to be careful to be quiet if we're going to do a sneak attack. Then it's just a matter of doing your horse thing at the same time everybody else attacks."
"I think my boys will be ok with a spooky hill. We can just get there and wait until we hear the first gun shots."
Eric put his thumbs in his belt buckle and leaned back a bit. "So, that's the plan then. We sneak up, kill all of them, and come back."
Mike hung his head and shook it side to side. "I guess so."
Boss Henry looked at him, raising one eyebrow. "You don't seem so confident in this."
Mike sighed. "I don't like having to kill anybody. Unfortunately, it's come to this; either us or them. Me and my men will go and do what we got to do, but I'm never going to be happy about it."
They all stood for a moment, vaguely looking at the map.
Mike finally broke the silence. "Any objection to being ready to ride out in fifteen minutes?"
They exchanged glances. There were no objections.
Each man turned away, headed to his place.
Lunch Interrupted
It had only been a couple of hours since Enoch led her procession from the camp. The overall mood in the camp seemed somber, with no one being particularly loud or energetic.
Juanita had brought out the cooking utensils and Oak built the lunch fire from the ashes of breakfast. Nancy and Tom were still out hunting for something to extend lunch.
Something moved.
Oak only noticed it in the corner of his eye, but it was there. Something in the woods. It was probably just Tom or Nancy, but he decided to look anyway.
They were concealed well. There were men moving along the line of the camp, just beyond the treeline. Not making a noise, they seemed to walk single file, following the edge of the camp.
"Juanita," he said, "I'm probably just being paranoid, but let's get our weapons."
She stopped pulling two pans apart and looked to where Oak looked. She saw the men moving through the woods. Her heart seemed to stop for a moment. They had never been attacked in the camp before.
She reached to the side of the tent and grabbed Oak's bow, quiver, and machete. She handed them over to him, trying not to make any sudden or large move that might get her noticed. Then she grabbed her own bow, quiver, and knife.
By now, it was obvious that others in the camp had noticed something. Many stood looking around at the woods bordering the camp. Their attention was soon drawn to something else.
A group of men in ragged clothes, like those of Enoch's servants, came into the camp from the eastern path. In groups of twos, the men carried crates. Four men carried a metal brazier, filled with glowing coals, and with rods of metal protruding. Behind them walked the only one among them without a hood.
His skin color showed that he was a spotted person. Beyond that, he was barely recognizable as a person at all. Both sides of his nose had been slit open from the nostril to bridge, the skin flopping to the side. Scars, as if from branding, covered his cheeks and forehead. The tatters of his ears flopped down the side of his head.
As the group stopped, the scarred one stepped onto one of the crates. He shouted out to the camp, "You have heard the Call of God and you have refused it. You have been marked by Him and must follow His Holy Command but have chosen to turn your back on Him. But worry not, my brothers. We are here to put you back on to the Path of Righteousness."
With those words, the men in the woods stepped out into the open. They were dressed in the same ragged skins and cloth. No more six or seven feet apart, they completely encircled the camp. They held clubs and weapons of rusty-looking metal.
More of the men entered the camp from the path. They ran past the scarred one and grabbed the nearest camp resident.
Juanita and Oak watched as the invaders grabbed several of the valley dwellers, overpowered them, and dragged them down to the scarred one. There, the scarred one pulled a glowing blade from the brazier and sliced the first one's nose open.
The scream echoed through the valley.
The scream was also the call to action: escape now or be tortured by Silus' people.
Juanita and Oak both turned toward the men nearest them and ran for the woods. The men grabbed at them, trying to prevent their escape.
Oak slammed his fist into the jaw of the attacker on his side. The attacker fell, landing on his back. Oak stomped on his head while running by.
Juanita stabbed her attacker and stumbled past him, only to be grabbed by another.
The second attacker dropped to the ground, bleeding from the neck wound left by Nancy's knife.
"Run!" Nancy hissed to Oak and Juanita.
Together, they ran into the woods, passing Tom who covered them with his bow.
About fifty feet in, they ducked and checked for pursuit. There was none, but they could still hear the chaos back at the camp.
Nancy did a quick visual check of her friends and then asked, "What happened?"
"They were men from that Silus guy," Juanita said. "They snuck in and had us surrounded before we knew anything. Then they came in and started attacking because we didn't join them."
Oak added, "They cut a guy's nose off. I think it was Jenkins; you know the one who liked marbles."
Tom caught up with them and knelt with the group.
Nancy asked, "Anybody else coming?"
Tom shook his head no. "I didn't see anybody. It looks like some of us got out and the creeps are just working on the ones they could catch."
"How many were there?"
"I couldn't tell," said Tom. "There were at least enough to be a threat."
"Yeah," said Juanita. "They had us completely surrounded and that was before the torture squad came in."
Nancy seemed to think of something. "Where's That Thing? Was she with you?"
Juanita and Oak looked at each other. In the moment, they forgot all about her. "Last I saw," said Oak, "she was still inside the tent."
"Damn it," Nancy spat. "Let's hope she knows how to hide and those bastards don't look too hard."
Tom leaned in, afraid to speak too loudly. "What do we do now?"
Nancy shook her head. "I don't know. I don't have enough information about what's going on. I want to save everybody, but if we're totally outnumbered we'll probably be lucky to save ourselves."
Juanita suggested, "We could try to sneak back and have a look. Try not to be seen or do anything until we know what's going on."
Nancy thought about it for a moment. "Yeah, that's probably the best idea. That's what I'll do. You guys don't have to come if you don't want to."
Tom smiled. "Where else would we go?"
As quietly as they could, the four moved back to the edge of camp where they had escaped just minutes before. The men they killed still sat where they fell. The cordon of attackers was gone.
Instead, Silus' men stood guard over nearly twenty of the camp residents near the crates. All the prisoners wore chains around their wrists. Fifteen of the prisoners stood on one side of the scarred one. Those prisoners showed signs of struggle with bruises and contusions around their heads. Some seemed to nurse damaged arms or favored hurt legs.
It was the other prisoners, on the other side of the scarred one, that looked different. Their faces showed signs of great trauma. Reddened with blood and blisters from burns, contorted with beatings, mangled by their captors. Three lay on the ground, motionless. The other two writhed in agony.
Oak crawled away from the edge of the camp quickly and quietly. Then, as noiselessly as he could, he wretched into the brush behind a tree.
Over in a tent, the tent Nancy had placed That Thing in, something moved.
That Thing had hidden under a sleeping bag when all the commotion started. Her short life taught her to go unnoticed when there was trouble, so she did so without thinking. The attackers hadn't noticed her at all.
She huddled under the covers through the screams. They reminded her of something, some lost memory from her earliest childhood. Each scream hit a little harder and dug a little deeper.
She made up her mind and crawled from her hiding place. Ducking her head to get out, she stepped out of the tent and into the afternoon sun. She saw it now. It was all true.
The Plainos had always made her life miserable because of her spots. But she had seen them be horrible to each other as well. Now she was with people just like her, people who promised a new, safe life. But that wasn't true. People with spots and people without spots were just people and they were all cruel. There was no escape in this life. She would never be free from them for as long as she lived.
Nearby sat the board where she helped Juanita prepare food. The pots were where Juanita left them. Next to the pots were the cooking utensils, including the big knife.
That Thing stepped up to the board and wrapped her hand around the handle of the knife.
Nancy watched, not realizing at first.
She saw That Thing pick up the knife. "Good girl," Nancy thought, "She's getting ready to defend herself."
The thought melted when she realized that the girl held the knife the wrong way for fighting. It was completely the wrong way.
That Thing crumpled to the ground, the knife under her ribs. Her torso spasmed once in a soft cough, and that was it.
Nancy's entire body seized with tension. This person she saved was just unsaved. Another innocent person dead just because they were born with spotted skin. It wasn't Plainos this time, but those bastards at the bottom of the hill.
Nancy rose up to a crouch and knocked an arrow. There was no plan in her head, only anger and frustration.
Tom stared at her in disbelief. If she loosed that arrow, it would give away their position and they would be overrun.
She let it fly.
The scarred man, holding his hot iron, staggered back as the arrow went through his chest.
The other attackers looked around to see where it came from.
Tom whispered to Nancy, "Let's get out of here!"
That is when the gunshot rang out.
With the echo in the valley, it was impossible to hear where it came from. It was soon joined by more.
People in the valley, both the attackers and their captives fell, either hit or looking for cover.
To the right of their position, Nancy heard horses running, breaking through the brush. About a dozen of them, each carrying a Plaino wielding a machete or something. They rode through the remains of the camp toward the people down in the valley floor.
From the western side of the valley, more Plainos emerged from the woods. Some had firearms and the others had makeshift weapons, mostly tools. They yelled their excited war cries and ran toward their enemies.
Nancy turned to Tom. "Good idea."
Getting Away
Less worried about stealth now that there was a full battle, the four ran back into the woods and as far uphill as they could without leaving the protection of the trees. Once near the top, they chose to turn east without discussing it; it just seemed to be the thing to do.
This went on for nearly half an hour, long after the sounds of the battle went away. They ran to get away not only from the danger, but from the thoughts, memories, emotions.
Exhaustion caught up to them and they chose to rest. They dropped down behind a clump of bushes, lying in the grass.
After a few moments, Juanita asked, "What do you think happened"
"If the Plainos showed up with guns and horses, they probably killed everybody," Nancy said. "That's what they do."
"I don't understand how the Plainos knew where our camp was," Tom said.
"I have an idea," Nancy said. "I think it was the people who chased That Thing the other night. We sent one back with a message saying to leave us alone. I don't think they liked that."
Juanita sighed. "They don't seem to like anything."
Tom chimed in, "That's one thing that Enoch chick got right. The Plainos are real pissed about the Storm wrecking all their stuff. All they ever do is try to rebuild all that. I don't know why."
Oak sat up. 'I'm glad I didn't go with them, but now I wonder what happened to the ones that did go."
"It's probably best to not think about it," Nancy told him. "We have enough stuff to think about. Like where we go next and how any spotted person we meet could be an enemy now."
Oak laid back down.
They rested for another half hour before they heard motion in the woods.
They took up their weapons and rolled into crouching positions.
The sound moved closer toward them, faint footsteps as though someone tried to move quietly.
The sound grew closer until it was coming around the bushes.
"Oh, it's you," Nancy said.
The sound had come from a group of spotted people, former residents of Owl Hollow. They included Herman, his wife Mary, their teenaged son Herman Junior, Carlos, and Pedro. Nancy knew them to all be hardworking, as well as good hunters. Like her, they just wanted to live in peace somewhere. Pedro always worried her a little because he liked pranks too much.
The newcomers crouched down to join the four. "Have you seen anybody else?" Herman whispered.
Nancy shook her head. "You guys are the first since we got out. How about you?"
"No, we were out gathering food when everything started," said Mary. "Then we ran into Carlos and Pedro and they told us what happened. Did you see it? Was it really that bad?"
Tom nodded. "Oh yeah, it was really bad." He turned to Carlos and Pedro. "When did you guys get out? Was it before or after the Plaino attack?"
Carlos looked puzzled. "Those were Plainos? I thought they were those Silus people."
Juanita clarified. "The first ones, the ones in rags, those were the Silus people. They had just won their attack when the Plainos showed up with guns and horses. We were hoping you could tell us how that turned out."
"Sorry, no," said Carlos.
"So," asked Herman, "Do you guys have a plan for what to do next?" He raised his eyebrows hopefully.
Nancy shook her head again. "Not really. We were just focused on staying alive. We've got to come up with something."
"I vote against returning to Owl Hollow," said Mary. "Even if the fighting is over and all the bad guys are gone, that's just not going to be a happy place. Besides, now everybody knows where it is."
"Agreed," said Nancy. Now that she could plan with people, her mind came back into its usual focus. "North and northeast of here, we run into open grasslands. I'd rather stay in the woods. It's better hunting and better hiding. If we go straight west we run into Plaino farmland and a couple of villages. South would lead us to some woods, but we have to cross the road that Silus' people used. I do not want to run into them."
"I may know a place, if we can get there," Carlos offered. "My uncle Manuel, God rest his soul, told me that there is a dense forest to the southwest. It is at the south end of some mountains, so it is too hilly for farming. The Plainos can't use it, so it's just wild. If we could get to that, we could hide all we want."
"That would be good," Tom said, "if we could get there. We still have the immediate problem of getting away from this spot."
"How far away is this place?" Nancy asked. Everybody had seen the tops of the mountains on the western horizon, but they seemed really far away.
"That would be the problem,' Carlos answered. "It would probably take us a week or two, maybe a little more."
Nancy nodded while she thought. She still needed a short term plan, but once the immediate danger was done, the long term could take focus. Plainos did like farmland, so land too rough to plow would be excellent. Just the thought of it reignited the fire in her heart.
"Ok," she said, "I think I might be coming up with a plan. It's just an idea, so everybody give me your thoughts. First, I like your idea, Carlos. That can be our long term plan. If we survive the next couple of days, we'll figure out a way to get to that forest."
Carlos smiled and everyone nodded their approval of this part of the plan.
"Then," Nancy continued, "we have to deal with our short term situation. With everybody dead or captured in the valley, I expect the Plainos will go back to their homes and Silus' bastards will head back to wherever they came from. We need to give them time to do that. That's why I recommend that we stay here tonight. Then, in the morning, we head south, being very quiet and keeping an eye out for trouble. If we see or hear anything, we hunker down and wait it out. I want to avoid any actual conflict."
"Sounds good to me," Tom chirped. "I could use more rest. This day has been exhausting."
Herman Junior held up a back. "I got some berries and bread, if anybody's hungry."
"I have venison jerky," added Oak.
They camped, without fire, that night behind the bushes. During the night, three more of their former neighbors joined them.
With the dawn, they stretched the cold stiffness from their joints and started their stealthy trek southward.