She fell without a sound. The sight of their matriarch falling sent a shock wave through the women, except instead of breaking them, it solidified them into something harder than grief. A terrible keening cry rose up from the canyon walls. Pure distilled rage. The women abandoned their cover, poured fire and arrows down into the confusion with renewed fury.
The soldiers broke. Voss, wounded in the arm, watching his command disintegrate under an enemy he couldn't see. Sounded the retreat. Fall back. His voice cracked across the canyon.
Fall back to the wagons. The cavalry retreated in disarray. Left their dead where they fell. Scrambled over the rockfall. dragging wildly behind them.
The dust began to settle. Shooting tapered into sporadic pops. Then silence. The canyon lay scarred. Smoke drifted in heavy acid sheets.
Bodies of horses and men littered the narrow pass. The ground had gone black with blood. It was a victory. Except propped against a boulder. Watching the smoke clear, Silas couldn't make it feel like one because Tamson was down.
because five soldiers lay wounded and captured in the center of camp. Terrified, expecting the torture stories they'd been told around campfires to finally come true. Kessa stood over them, knife in hand, face a mask of cold fury. We should kill them all, her voice flat, cut their throats, leave them for their friends to find. Several women nodded, gripping their skinning knives.
No, Silas pushed himself up, leaning heavy on a piece of driftwood he'd taken up as a crutch, arm bound tight against his chest, sling dark with fresh blood, he limped into the circle. No killing. Kessa spun on him. Look around you, Merrick. Look at Tamson.
She pointed toward where the old woman lay, breathing shallow and wet, a medicine woman working over her with a look on her face that said everything words couldn't. That came to kill us. They came to kill the babies. And you want mercy? I don't want mercy.
Silas swayed slightly. I want survival. He looked at the captured soldiers, young, terrified, one of them crying without shame. If you kill them, Silas said, voice gaining strength. Even as his body threatened to give out beneath him.
The army won't stop. They'll come back with a thousand men. They'll burn the mountains down to get to you. They'll say, "You're monsters who massacre prisoners."But they say that anyway.
A woman's voice bitter from the crowd, then make them liars. Silas turned to Kessa. Disarm them. Bind their wounds, then send them back. Send them back.
Kessa stared at him like he'd lost his mind entirely. Send them back with a message. His voice steadied. Tell them we could have killed them all. Tell them if they leave this canyon alone, we disappear.
Tell them the cost of coming back is too high. He gestured at the bodies scattered across the pass. Let the dead be the warning. Let the living be the message. Kessa stepped close to him.
The smelled of blood and gunpowder and something underneath that might have been grief finally cracking open. Does sparing them erase what they did? Her voice trembled with the weight of it. Does it bring back my husband? Does it save Tamson?
No. Silas met her eyes. It erases nothing. It fixes nothing. A pause heavy as the smoke still hanging over them.
But adding five more bodies to that pile won't bring anyone back either. It just makes the pile higher. It just makes the nightmare longer. He looked around at the women standing in the circle. "You are not them,"he said. "Don't become them."The silent stretch taught as a bowring, waiting to release. Finally, Kessa lowered her knife. "Take their boots,"she commanded. "Take their guns.
Take their horses,"she turned to Silas. "Let them walk back barefoot. Let them tell their colonel that the women of this canyon gave them their lives. The tension broke. Women moved in, stripping the soldiers of gear because there were no clean choices left in a place like this.
The there was only the necessary terrible balance of blood weighed against blood and the hope that mercy this once might weigh heavier. Tamson lived through that first night barely. Silas and Kessa sat on either side of her pallet as the sky began to lighten toward a soft bruised purple in the east. The camp had gone quiet, saved for the low chanting of the medicine woman working over wounds that would take weeks to close if they closed at all. Tamson's face had gone gray, skin like parchment.
She'd lost too much blood, and everyone in that hut knew it, even if nobody said the words out loud. She opened her eyes. Cloudy, but the sharp intelligence still flickered there like a candle refusing out of pure stubbornness to finish going out. Kessa, a whisper. I'm here.
Do not stay here, Tamson's voice, thin as thread. The canyon is poison now. The soldiers will return, but we'll fight them again, Kessa said, weeping openly. Now, no. Tamson's head moved slight but final.
No more fighting. Choose life, daughter. Not just mourning. You have mourned enough for 10 lifetimes. She turned her head, the effort visibly costing her something to find a place where the corn will grow.
Her gaze shifted but landed on Silas. Merrick, I'm here. His voice cracked around the words. Your debt is paid, her voice fading to something barely more than breath. You bled for the children.
You are released. Silas swallowed hard. felt tears pricking at eyes that had gone dry 3 years ago and never really recovered. Thank you, he managed. But a man must decide where his heart lives.
Tamson's voice impossibly found one more measure of strength. You can go back to your people or you can stand with your family. She squeezed Kessa's hand but choose well. She breathed. Her eyes closed.
Her chest rose once more. Hitched then settled and did not rise again. The silence that followed was absolute. Kessa bowed her head, shoulders shaking with sobs. She no longer had the strength to hold back.