The Godgame (The Godgame, Book 1) (9 page)

NOVA

ASH

“I’m sorry, kid. We’ll be back in a couple of days.”

“But I can help. I’ve been practicing shooting.”

“You’ll be safer here.”

“But I’m a good soldier.”

The soldier looked down at him and smiled. “I’m sure you are. Someone has to stay and guard the camp.”

“I wanna talk to the bearded officer.”

“Who?”

Ash realized he didn’t know the bearded officer’s name. “With the beard and the pistol.”

The soldier smiled again. “There are many men like that here.”

“He knows me. He put me on patrol. He—”

The soldier from his tent stepped away, was whisked into the crowd of grunting and coughing and marching navy, and was gone.

Ash grabbed his rifle, leaning against his cot, and stepped out into the cometshine. He watched the soldiers march by. For a moment, he considered joining them anyway, thrusting himself into the crowd and marching to whatever glorious mission they were attending, but then he thought of the camp empty and unguarded. Someone had to protect the camp.

He sat in the dirt miserably and watched the soldiers march until their numbers thinned and the last stragglers ran to catch up. He watched the dust settle. When the camp was quiet enough he could once more hear the birds chirping and calling out to each other, he stood, and decided to look for something to eat.

The camp was eerily empty, he discovered, as he moved between tents, walking among hundreds of empty, motionless cots. There was very little left behind. Most had taken what meager possessions they had with them on the march.

The captain’s tent, which he’d never been inside, was not much different; smaller, with a larger cot, but mostly empty. Beneath the captain’s cot, however, he discovered a small bundle wrapped in cloth the color of the dirt. The captain must have forgotten it. It contained a few dried biscuits, a plain but sharp-looking knife, and a tarnished medal embossed with a strange symbol: twin crescent moons each with one bulging eye and slivered grins facing each other.

These were things he might need to defend the camp, he decided. He strapped the knife to his belt. He pinned the medal to the front of his jacket. He stood and puffed his chest out experimentally. He grinned. He sat on the captain’s cot and ate the biscuits.

~

He set the rifle in the crook of his shoulder and aimed. He closed one eye and sighted down the barrel. He’d set three empty canteens he’d found lying around camp on a low-hanging branch and he aimed for the center one.

He pulled the trigger.

The rifle kicked, jolting his entire body. It made a sound like a large branch cracking in half, and the smell stung his nose and made his eyes water.

He lowered the rifle and blinked, his ears ringing. He looked at the three canteens sitting on the branch, undisturbed. Shooting was a lot harder than he’d thought it would be.

He hadn’t been practicing like he’d told the other soldiers, before they’d all left him alone, and so he’d come out here to make sure he could shoot like he thought he could shoot.

He lowered the rifle and began to load it again, just as he’d watched the other soldiers do, pouring the rust-colored powder down the barrel—not too much—then a few of the courser powder charge flakes, then sliding the bullet down, and packing it lightly with the rod. He knew to be careful. He knew to respect his rifle.

When he was done, he lifted the rifle again. He set it against his sore shoulder and aimed again.

He pulled the trigger.

Blinking through the smoke, he looked out at the canteens. He’d nicked one of them and knocked it from the branch.

“Yes!” he said, and decided that was enough shooting for the day.

~

“Brent? Pera?”

He approached the small hut built into the side of the hill. It was difficult to find. The branches from the trees hung over it, nearly obscuring it completely. The door was plain wood, the same color as the trunks of the trees. It was like a door into the underground, an entrance into the deep.

Ash walked up the door. He reached his hand out and tried to push it open. It wouldn’t budge, must have been locked from the inside. He rapped his knuckles on the course wood.

“Brent? You in there?”

“Nope.”

Ash jumped, whirled about.

Pera was standing in the clearing only a few feet away. “He’s not here.”

“Where is he?” Ash asked, his heart thudding in his chest.

Pera shrugged. She turned and darted by him and into the trees.

“Wait!”

Pera stopped and looked at him, leaning from a branch she’d grasped onto, her eyes bright.

“Where are you going?”

“Wanna see something?”

“Sure. What?”

“Come on,” Pera said, and slipped into the trees.

He ran after her.

They ran together, Ash stumbling to keep up with Pera’s light leaps and lithe movements. The trees passed around them, rushing, rustling.

Pera stopped suddenly, putting her hand out to signal Ash to a halt.

“What is it?” Ash asked.

“Hear that?”

A strange grinding sound was coming from the clearing ahead. It was a labored, sputtering machine sound.

Pera brushed a branch aside with her hand and he could see a machine of some sort, a buggy, but smaller. He came forward for a better look. It was smaller than the buggy that had carried him from Fallowvane to the soldier’s camp and it was close-topped and didn’t have any place for people to sit. It was exuding a thick and acrid smoke that hung about the still clearing, fogging the air. It was about the size of the news carts that sometimes came along the road, spouting strange voiced recordings of things rarely understood.

But this cart wasn’t speaking. It was very old.

“It’s okay,” Pera said.

Together, they stepped into the clearing.

The cart was laboring, trundling very slowly. It appeared to be following a track of sorts, a circular path around the clearing.

“What’s it doing?” Ash asked.

Pera shrugged. “The forest is full of old things like that.”

Ash walked carefully up to inspect the track the buggy seemed to be circling over and over again. It was black and smooth and smelled burnt.

“It’s a road,” Ash said, turning to look at Pera. “Like the greatroad.”

“Yup,” she said. “A road-maker.”

Ash regarded the buggy, now staggering around the turn at the far corner. “It’s broken, or something.”

“I guess so,” Pera said. “Like a lot of things.”

“Huh.”

Ash unslung his rifle. He brought the barrel up, set the stock in his shoulder, and aimed.

“No,” Pera said, rushing forward. She put her hand on the barrel and brought it down to point uselessly at the ground. “Let it be.”

It was Ash’s turn to shrug. “Fine. Where’s Brent?”

“This way.” Pera darted into the trees once again.

~

“Here I am,” he heard Pera say, and pushed through the foliage in the direction of her voice.

Branches slapped his face and the exposed skin on his arms, but he wanted to catch her and she was fast.

“Brent went through the door.” Pera laughed. “He’s on the other side now.”

A jutting root caught his foot and Ash fell. Grunting, he picked himself up and pushed on.

“Here I am,” Pera said, Ash catching a pale flash of her dress just ahead. “I exist.”

“Pera, wait!” Ash stumbled. He was out of breath. “Where are you going?”

He came through a patch of bushes and between some trees. He could see Pera laughing and twirling in a patch of cometlight streaming through the trees. He ran forward, grabbed her, and they tumbled, laughing, into the dry leaves.

He rolled on top of her, holding her down by her wrists.

“Why do you see me?” she said.

He rolled off her, and she grabbed his hands and they spun. Ash laughed, he couldn’t help himself. Pera’s soft face glowed in the light.

They spun until they were off balance and tumbled down onto their backs, side by side. Their hands were clasped.

“I don’t hear the birds,” Pera said.

Something was in the sky, a distant, lazy shape, a white line of cloud.

What was it? It was moving slowly, too large to be a bird. His heart leapt. Could it be an aerial?

For a moment, total quiet enveloped the forest.

Something dropped fast. A deafening sound filled the air, a flash of heat, a white hot fire…

The world was reduced to a dull ringing in the ears.

Ash lost consciousness.

KYA

With Ash gone off to war, she was now the oldest.

Kya drew the branch she’d carved into a point with a knife she’d taken from her dad’s workshop and whipped it through the air. “Hyah!” she said, then slid her “sword” back into a loop in her breeches, and continued to skip down the mostly empty street, on her way to her dad’s shop.

At first, it had been nice being the oldest. Ash had never let her play with him and Brent, even though she was better at things than they were. She was now the one in charge, her sisters had to do what she said, but soon she’d discovered that being the oldest was a lot of work and responsibility. Now she missed her brother.

She had followed him once to the sand pit where he and Brent liked to play. Brandon’s Beach the adults called it, but it was really just an area of sand that had sifted up from the ground at the edge of Fallowvane, between the grasslands and the village itself. Was it still a beach if there was no water? Kya wasn’t sure, but Brent and her brother called it the sand pit and that seemed like a better name, so that’s what she called it too.

Ash and Brent had gathered some rocks together and had stacked them in wobbly columns at the center of the sand pit.

Kya hid in some tufts of grass and watched.

“Okay, we only get six bullets each so make them count,” Ash said to Brent as he divided the smaller stones they were going to throw at their stacked targets between himself and his friend.

“We might need more,” Brent said.

“No. That’s all we get. We have to survive,” Ash said.

Kya watched Ash and Brent climb to the top of the hill overlooking the sand pit, their ammunition cupped in the bottoms of their shirts, holding it there with their hands.

“Okay,” Ash said. “You ready? On the count of three. One—”

“Wait!” Kya called out, standing suddenly, revealing herself. “I wanna play too.”

Brent blinked at her, surprised.

Ash looked over and scowled, immediately angry. He lifted his hand holding one of the stones. “I should throw this at
you
,” he said.

Kya put her hands on her hips. “You’d probably miss.”

Ash took a step forward and lifted his rock-holding hand even higher. “Oh, yeah?”

Brent tugged on Ash’s sleeve. “Come on. Let her try. She’s not going to be any good, anyway.”

“Fine,” Ash said. “Come here, Kya.”

Kya jumped through the grass and came around the sand pit until she was standing with the boys. She was grinning from ear to ear.

“Okay,” Ash said. “You can have one of mine and one of Brent’s.” He dropped a single stone into her open palm.

“But you guys got more than that.”

“Sorry,” Ash said. “That’s all you get.”

Brent tapped her on the shoulder. “Here, you can have two of mine,” he said.

Kya looked at the three stones sitting in the bowl she’d created with her cupped hands. “Thanks.”

“Okay, get ready,” Ash said, dropping to his knees in the dirt. “When I say so, we pop up and take these guys out. Got it?”

“Got it,” Brent said.

Kya nodded.

“One… Two… Three…”

Ash and Brent leapt to their feet screaming, throwing their rocks wildly. Kya jumped up too, but didn’t throw her stones right away. Ash’s first throw flew far of its mark. Brent’s was closer, but thumped ineffectually into the sand inches from one of the three columns of rocks.

Ash threw two more rocks in rapid succession, the first just missing, the second taking the top off of the tower farthest to the right. “Yes!” he said.

Brent threw his rocks, missing with all of them, until he only had one left. He stopped, aimed carefully, and his last rock flew true, striking the same column Ash had struck. The column toppled over, collapsing to a pile of rubble.

Kya threw one of her three rocks, missing the center column by a mere inch.

Ash jumped up to the very crest of the hill so that he was higher than the others, bellowed and fired off the last of his rocks one after the other. “Blam! Blam! Blam!” One of the rocks nicked the side of the center column and ricocheted to the side, the other two missed.

From behind her brother, Kya threw her rocks.
One
, she counted in her head. It struck the column on the left, blasting it to pieces.
Two
, the second rock hit the center column at its base, making it rock first one way, then the other. The center column came down like a tree being cut, crunching into the sand with a satisfying, muffled thump.

Ash was staring at her. “You’re supposed to shoot right away. In a real battle, you have to shoot fast.”

“No you don’t,” Kya said.

Ash stepped forward. “Yes you do!”

“Alright, alright,” Brent said, holding his hands out between Kya and her brother.

“You messed me up,” Ash said to Kya. “Come on,” he motioned to Brent to follow him. “Let’s do it again.”

Kya began to follow her brother and Brent down the hill.

“Not you,” Ash said. “Just leave us alone, okay?”

Kya stopped on the hill, feeling the sand sifting down over her feet, getting into her shoes. She could feel her face getting hot. She wanted to scream at her brother, to go screaming to her dad about how unfair Ash was being, but she was so upset she couldn’t speak. She could feel the emotion rising up in her throat, so instead of confronting her brother and risk him and Brent seeing her cry, she turned and ran.

But that had all happened months ago. Now Ash was gone, and Brent was too. Her brother had been taken away on one of those stinky machine carts. She might never see her brother again and that was fine by her.

With her mom sick in bed and her dad busy at work, it was left to her to watch her two sisters. She’d stay in the house with them and play dolls, or go outside and they’d wander around Fallowvane, since school had been cancelled while the Committee met to decide what must be done to defend against the Talosians.

Let them come
, Kya thought, patting the “sword” strapped by her side. She wasn’t afraid. And as soon as she could, she’d get a real one. Her brother had always liked guns and rifles, but Kya preferred a good blade. Guns were for people scared of a real fight, who didn’t like to get close. She was braver and tougher than that.

She’d been in a fight once with this boy from school named Derek. She hated Derek. Mr. Gregory, their teacher, had been walking around the room to look at their projects they’d brought in, nodding approvingly to most and smiling. Derek had built some sort of stupid tower out of twigs he’d collected from the forest and when Mr. Gregory had asked what it was, he had stammered and said it was the Fallowvane Statue. “Then where’s the weathervane at the top?” Mr. Gregory had asked. And when Derek hadn’t been able to answer, Mr. Gregory had only shaken his head and made a mark in his notebook.

A hiss of snickers ran through the classroom. Several other kids in class had made the Fallowvane Statue too, but all of them had put the weathervane at the top.

When Mr. Gregory came to Kya’s sculpture, she practically jumped from her chair, a smile beaming across her face.

“What do we have here?” Mr. Gregory asked.

“It’s the Archon’s Pyramid,” Kya said.

Mr. Gregory brought a hand to his chin, stepping from side to side to see her sculpture from every angle.

She had used mostly scrap wood from her dad’s shop to assemble the basic structure, pounded together with nails and glue. Then she’d spent several hours painstakingly collecting stones of the same shapes and sizes from all over town and gluing them to the base. Then she’d used more stone to construct several leaning towers, just like in the picture of the Archon’s Pyramid in her history book. At the flattened top of the Ziggurat, she’d made the Garden of Mue out of sticks and dried leaves. Her project was so heavy she’d had to bring it into school on a wheeled platform her dad had made.

“Wow,” Mr. Gregory said. “Impressive, Kya, but why did you choose to build the Archon’s Pyramid in Talos?”

Kya shrugged, still smiling. “I think it’s cool.”

“Talos is a very dangerous place,” her teacher said. “Why not build the shipyard of Farrenhold, or the statues on Isla Roccus, or Ago’s Station, where the trolley stops before it continues its journey across the ocean?”

Kya said what her dad had said when he’d seen her building her project. “What has more history than the Archon’s Pyramid?”

A scowl creased Mr. Gregory’s face and he fell silent. He nodded, made a mark in his notebook, and moved on to the next project.

Kya took her seat and gazed proudly at her project. Her dad had also said not to tell her mom about it. He’d said her mom wouldn’t like that she was doing something from Talos. Then he’d winked at her and she’d winked back.

Something hit her in the shoulder, a piece of balled-up paper. “Mutt,” someone said, and when she turned in her seat, Derek was grinning at her.

Kya felt her face growing hot. Her parents had both told her to ignore bullies and to not be offended by that word, but she couldn’t help it. Her mom said she’d come to Nova and Fallowvane because it was a place where people of many different geneses and beliefs lived together and worked together as equals, but Kya knew a lot of people in town talked quietly about her mom and dad’s relationship, and most did
not
approve. Her mom was brean and her dad was davon, from different geneses, which made her a crossbreed.

“Mutt,” Derek said again. “Another stupid project from the stinky mutt.”

Kya whirled in her chair. “Shut up, Derek!”

“Oh, no! I made the mutt angry! What’s the mutt gonna do now?”

Kya tried to ignore Derek, but she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.

Derek began to make barking sounds. “Woof. Woof-woof.”

Kya jumped to her feet, her chair falling backward, clattering to the floor. She stomped over to Derek’s table and, using both arms, smashed his stupid tower of sticks with one wide sweep of her fists. It burst into pieces, twigs crusted with glue scattered over the table and floor.

Derek stood, his eyes dark and angry. “Mutt,” he almost whispered. Then, nearly a scream, “You mutt!”

Derek was much taller than she and when he stood she had to look up to see his face. He kicked at her, throwing his leg up as hard as he could.

Kya blocked Derek’s kicks with her arms, the way her dad had taught her. Derek’s reach was long, so she couldn’t get close enough to punch him if he kept kicking at her, so she waited, taking the impacts on her arms.

Somewhere in the background, very far away, she could hear kids shouting and cheering; she could hear Mr. Gregory yelling for them to stop.

“Mutt,” Derek said again and came at her.

They rolled on the floor and she was punching him any way she could as fast as she could and he was hitting her back. Then she was being lifted up and away and Mr. Gregory’s face was right up close to her and he was screaming something at her, but she couldn’t understand him through the blood pounding in her temples.

She’d been a little bruised up that day, including a cut beneath her eye, but Derek had come away from their fight with a black eye and a bloody lip. When she’d talked to some of the other kids later, the general consensus had been that she’d won the fight.

Kya stopped in front of her dad’s shop. It didn’t look open. The door was closed and her dad never kept the door closed when he was working. She looked up and down the empty street. Where was everybody? She stepped up, grasped the doorknob and turned it. The door swung inward and she stepped inside.

~

“Dad?” Kya closed the door behind her. “Are you here?”

Her dad’s head jerked up from his work—sanding the legs of a small table—startled, as if caught doing something he shouldn’t. “Kya? What are you doing here?”

Kya kicked a sliver of wood that happened to be lying in her path and came forward to sit on the floor where her dad crouched in the sawdust. Her dad had flecks of wood in his beard. “Nothing,” she said. “Terry and Alex are with Bethany right now.”

Her dad gave a strained smile. “Oh, okay.” He returned to his work, smoothing the table legs he’d carved into swooping feet.

Bethany was an older girl who sometimes watched some of the kids in town. The only time Kya had any time to herself these days was when her sisters were with Bethany. She usually hung out with her friend Michael, but when she’d knocked on the door of his house, Michael’s parents had both come to the door to tell her Michael couldn’t come out today.

“Aren’t you gonna go out and play?” her dad asked her.

“Nah, there’s nothing to do.”

Her dad nodded. “How’s your mom?”

“She’s okay. Sleeping.”

Her dad froze for a moment, giving her an intense look, but didn’t say anything.

Kya absentmindedly wrote her name in the sawdust on the floor with her finger, then wiped it away quickly with the palm of her hand.