but fortress life would be better and easier if they understood the alternative.
The cart stopped at the gates, and the regulator took longer than necessary fussing with the locks, making people stamp and twitch and whisper with excitement. I pulled my gaze from Braeden’s whip-striped back and looked up at the structure that kept us safe.
The walls of the fortress stretched twenty feet in the air. Our buildings might rot and list, but no expense would be spared for this wall. Voyager parties traveled for days and lost members to the hybrids and the tribes, all to bring back wood to repair the wall. Sixteen feet up there was a platform that stretched around the perimeter. Guards patrolled it at all times. One was permanently stationed at the gates, bearing one of the few guns we still had from the Old World.
As the gates began to open, Priscilla gripped my arm, her hands trembling.
“Don’t be afraid,” she whispered. “We’re safe here.”
That was the point. That was what this drama was all about. As those gates swung open, there was a collective gasp. A few women who’d fought to the front now shrieked and pressed back into the crowd. Men snorted at their cowardice, but even they shrank as the gates swung open to reveal . . .
Nothing.
That’s what you saw at first. That’s what was so terrifying. The gates opened, and you looked out to see miles of barren, rock-strewn dirt, stretching in every direction.
The sun beat down, baking and cracking the earth. It was so bright that it took a moment for your eyes to adjust. Then you noticed the plain was not empty. Far to the left, there was a mountain, dark with trees and capped with snow. To the right rose a thin ribbon of smoke. You didn’t need to wonder what was at the base. Not a bonfire—no Outsider would be so foolish as to announce his presence with that much smoke. It was a camp, now burning. Torched.
Braeden told me once about coming across a burned camp, back when he was with the tribe. They’d seen the smoke and gone to it, holding back and sending scouts until they were sure the raiding party had left. Then they’d swooped in for the scraps the raiders hadn’t wanted, bits of fur or wood left unscorched. They’d ransacked the bodies, too, taking whatever they could from the corpses of those too proud or too foolish to flee when the raiders sounded their horn.
“We didn’t take the bodies,” Braeden had said. “Sometimes the elders argued about that. Other tribes took them. For meat.”
I remembered how disgusted I’d been. I remembered how angry Braeden got.
“You don’t understand what it’s like out there, Rayne. You do what you have to. I really don’t want to eat another person, but if it was that or starve . . .”
He was right, of course. Later I found out that, sometimes, in the long winter, when someone died in the fortress, their body wasn’t taken out to be burned. People did what they had to, and it was no different in here than it was out there.
There were piles of bones on the landscape, too. We sent out voyagers to scavenge those when one of the craftsmen needed material, but we didn’t bother storing any. The piles weren’t going anywhere, and space inside was already at a premium.
Off to the far left there was a body not yet reduced to bones. Carrion eaters attempted to remedy that, silently ripping flesh from the corpse. From the looks of the body, it had been a hybrid, I could no longer tell what kind. Maybe part bull or part bear or part cat. Those were common ones.
The hybrids were the end result of the overreaching ambition that began with the supernaturals. The minister taught us that supernaturals had convinced us to use their DNA, but Braeden’s family told him it had been the humans’ idea. They’d rounded up the supernaturals and taken that DNA. The scientists had started with careful, controlled studies, but then the wars for food and land broke out, and there wasn’t time for caution.
Eventually they decided there was no need to limit themselves to creating ultrapowerful werewolf soldiers or spell-casting assassins. If they could use the DNA of supernaturals, could they use animals, too? That was near the end of the Old World, when the situation was so dire that no one cared about limits. So they created hybrids. Then the Great Storms came and the Final War came, and when it ended, the hybrids and modified supernaturals broke out of captivity and fought back. It took only a few years for the first fortress to rise, shielding a small group of uninfected humans against that endless wasteland overrun with hybrids and roving bands of survivalists.
That’s where Braeden was born. Out there. When he was five, his parents had been killed by hybrids. He’d survived and been found by a tribe of wanderers. They’d taken him in—as a slave whose job was to roam from camp and attract any nearby hybrids so that his tribe could kill them for meat.
So Braeden knew the hybrids better than any fortress dweller. We were told they were just animals with humanoid features, but he said they could be as cunning as humans, setting traps and raiding camps. Some even had language. The point of the lie was to convince us they weren’t human so that we wouldn’t feel guilty when we slaughtered and ate them.
The hybrid rotting outside our gates hadn’t accidentally perished there. I’d heard the shot two days ago. It had ventured too close to the fortress, and a guard had killed it. The carcass would warn others away. To me, that proved the hybrids had some human intelligence.
When the gates opened, the regulators drove the cart through, then stopped just past the walls. By now, Braeden had recovered enough to walk on his own. Once he was out of the cart, the driver led the horses to the side, and two regulators flanked Braeden as the First stepped from the edge of the crowd and solemnly walked toward him. A young prefect followed.
The elderly First stopped in front of Braeden.
“Braeden Smith,” he said in his reedy voice. “You have been found to possess werewolf blood, which has been proven to manifest itself in the form of a physical transformation. For this, you must be cast from the fortress. However, in recognition of the fact that you have been an otherwise loyal and productive member of the community—and that this curse comes through no fault of your own—this is not a sentence of execution. We hope that you will find your place in the Outside. To that end, we will provide you with the tools necessary to do so.”
He motioned to the young prefect, who stepped forward and handed him a dagger, the metal flashing in the sunlight.
“A weapon for defense.”
He dropped it at Braeden’s feet. A small bow followed.
“A weapon for hunting.”
A filled skin and a bound package.
“Water and food.”
Another parcel.
“Clothing and shoes.”
Finally, a bag.
“And a pack with which to carry it. You are young and strong, Braeden Smith, and I trust that you will not perish in this harsh land. Go forth with our gifts. And do not return.”
Everyone waited for the inevitable final outcry from the convicted. Some attacked the First, and their exile turned into a speedy execution. Some raged and had to be forcibly dragged into the Outside. Most dropped to the First’s feet, wailing and begging, promising anything, should they be permitted to stay.
Braeden bent and picked up the shoes first. He put them on. Then he stuffed the food, the waterskin, and the rest of the clothing into the pack. He slung the bow over his shoulder. When he reached for the knife, the First tensed, but he could not recoil, could not show fear. Braeden picked up the knife, thrust it into the discarded sheath, fastened it to his belt, and hefted the pack. Then, without a glance at the First or the fortress, he began to walk into the Outside, bloody soot falling from his branded back in a trail behind him.
The gates closed as soon as the cart was brought back in. I left then, mumbling apologies to Priscilla as she told me again how brave, how terribly brave, I’d been. Before I could escape, her father clamped a hand on my shoulder and said I must come to dinner, soon, that the fortress needed more young women like me.
If only he knew.
I got away, then raced to the smithy. Braeden’s “father” wasn’t there. He hadn’t gone to the ceremony, more out of shame than because he couldn’t bear to watch his boy branded and cast out. I made my way through the stables, past the horses that were the fortress’s most valuable commodity. That’s what Mr. Smith had used to buy
