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After Earth Went Dark; Part II Chapter 10
Elliot was on pins and needles for the entire next day. As the hours wore on, he became increasingly anxious about the conversation with the small group from the night before. If they decided not to join, or worse to turn them in, Elliot didn't want to think about what might happen.
He tried to pass the time and occupy his mind by practicing. His thoughts were so distracted however that he continually missed throws. This only served to frustrate him which of course made it even more difficult to focus. Eventually he was forced to give it up for the time being, hoping that the heat of the moment during the performance would help to clear his mind.
It was maddening to see that Tyr, Ida, and Marcel could be so calm about the whole situation. Marcel was his usual flamboyant and humorous self, and Tyr seemed completely unbothered by the events of the night before. Elliot wished he had that kind of confidence. As it began to get dark, his unease grew. The time was drawing near. Deciding to try one last time to get some practice in before the show, he began to set up his targets once more.
"Marcel!" An urgent voice suddenly broke through the calm buzz that always lay over the camp. Elliot looked up to see Louis jogging into the ring. Louis was one of the young men that Marcel frequently trusted as a scout. Elliot subtly moved closer to hear what he had to report.
"Marcel!" Louis repeated, clearly winded as he came to a halt. "Men on motorcycles. Five of them. Rode into town about an hour ago. Rounded up a gang of the local soldiers and they're on their way here!"
An icy chill ran down Elliot's spine. "Carvers." He couldn't help but utter the word aloud, causing Marcel to glance in his direction. Tyr had materialized behind Marcel and held up a hand warning off hasty action.
"Do you know why?" Tyr asked, startling Marcel who obviously hadn't noticed his approach.
Louis shook his head. "No. I couldn't get close enough to hear. They're all armed though."
Marcel looked at Tyr and Elliot saw fear in his eyes. "We are not ready yet!" He said in a desperate whisper. "You said they would not attack us!"
"Calm down." Tyr answered quietly. "We don't know anything for sure. Have the troupe arm themselves but do it a few at a time. They are probably watching. Do you know how long we have?"
Louis looked over his shoulder as if expecting to see a gang of marauders charge around the corner at any minute. "Half an hour? Less?"
Tyr nodded. "We will try talking to them first."
"The men on the bikes don't seem like the talking type." Louis commented fearfully.
Marcel gave Tyr a dangerous scowl but then abruptly his face softened. "This was my decision in the end. I will talk to them."
Tyr placed a hand heavily on Marcel's shoulder. "I'll be with you."
Ida appeared from behind the wagon with her bow and quiver already on her back. "Sounds like fun. May I join?"
Despite himself, Marcel cracked a smile. "Ida, take small groups behind the wagon to arm themselves. We want as much surprise as we can muster. Hopefully they will not suspect us all to be armed and ready for them."
Ida winked at him before trotting gracefully away to do as asked.
"What can I do?" Elliot piped up.
Tyr turned and crouched in front of him. "You need to stay with the group this time. If things go badly you may have to fight, but I don't want you in the front."
"I can do it." Elliot insisted. "I'm not scared." He was of course, terrified, but he did not want Tyr to see that.
Giving a soft smile, Tyr put a hand to the side of Elliot's face. "But I am. I can't let you get hurt. Besides, the group needs experienced fighters with them."
Surprised by this show of attachment, Elliot shook his head to make absolutely certain he did not start to tear up. He was very touched by Tyr's sentiment. Every time Tyr showed that he cared it tended to catch Elliot off guard. It always felt misplaced, like a man like Tyr shouldn't care for someone like him. But, with a reluctant nod, he resolved to do his best to live up to Tyr's expectations.
Without another word, Elliot moved to the back of the wagon to begin sorting their stash of weapons for the troupe members who were gathering there. Jay appeared beside him, grabbing hold of a heavy woodcutting axe.
"So, this is it, huh?" Elliot was surprised by how little fear he heard from the older boy. For someone who was so badly injured in the last fight He would have expected Jay to be more than a little hesitant to rush into battle again. On the contrary though, he sounded a little bit excited.
Elliot tried to offer a smile. "Maybe Tyr and Marcel can sort it out first."
Jay shrugged. "I don't think it's going to be very diplomatic."
Almost as soon as the last members of the troupe were armed, a cry of shock went up from somewhere. Elliot looked up to see that a small mob had rounded the corner about a hundred yards away and was making their way into the lot where the group was camped. There were at least forty of them. In the front were four men; one with a disheveled beard wearing what once may have been a military uniform, and three others that Elliot instantly recognized even from a distance. Their covered faces, studded clothing, and spiked helmets left no doubt that these were the Carvers Louis had mentioned. It concerned him however that there were only three. Louis claimed that five had rode into town.
"That is far enough!" Marcel yelled as the mob reached about fifty yards. Ida drew back her bow in warning, and Tyr unsheathed his twin axes. "What is the meaning of this? Bringing fighting men and weapons to a gathering of entertainers and travelers?"
Although the majority of the mob seemed uncoordinated and undisciplined, the three Carvers stood still as statues. The man in uniform stepped forward from the ranks and cleared his throat.
"I am Captain McCoy of the New State Militia." The man spoke with surprising clarity. "Your theater has nothing to fear from these soldiers unless you should choose to violate the conditions about to be given you."
Elliot's interest perked up and he saw Jay frown in thought. This obviously meant there was some kind of solution to be found without fighting.
"We will hear these conditions then." Marcel's confidence was inspiring.
"First," Captain McCoy continued. "You will take your troupe on your way from this town. You will be packed and gone by sunrise tomorrow. Failure to comply will result in martial action."
Elliot could have breathed a sigh of relief. It was an eviction, not a fight. Several of the group members relaxed visibly.
"Second, you will turn over to our custody the one named Tyr; who has committed crimes against the new Jacksonian Empire, loyal allies of the New State. He will be extradited and stand trial for his actions."
"What did he say?" Elliot breathed, his jaw going slack.
"That's unaccepta-..." Ida started to say, but Tyr put a hand firmly on her shoulder and silenced her with a serious look.
Marcel's eyes darted between the two of them for several seconds before leveling with Tyr in a purposeful gaze "Please allow us to discuss this a moment." He eventually called out toward the mob.
Captain McCoy nodded. "I'm sure you'll come to the right choice."
The group of three retreated back toward the wagon without a word. When they were far enough away to not be overheard easily, Ida spoke.
"We can't actually be considering that, right?" She looked back and forth from Marcel to Tyr. Not waiting any longer, Elliot emerged from behind the wagon to join the conversation.
"We can fight them. There's not that many." He insisted.
Tyr shook his head. "More will show up if we start a fight. A lot more. Even if we win it will be at great cost."
"You are planning to go with them." Marcel stated. It was not a question.
Tyr nodded. "It's the only play we have at the moment."
"No!" Elliot declared angrily. "You can't leave again!" Angry tears began to sting at his eyes. "I won't let you!"
Tyr looked to Marcel then to Ida. "A moment, please."
Respectfully, Ida and Marcel withdrew a few paces. Tyr knelt next to Elliot. "If I don't do this, people are going to die. Our people. What if it was Jay, or Marcel, or Ida?"
"But they're going to take you back there and kill you!" Elliot protested with a sob. "You can't leave me again!"
Tyr put strong arms around Elliot and hugged him tightly. "I have no plan to go anywhere with them." Tyr said quietly into Elliot's ear. "Do you trust me?"
The comforting strength of Tyr's contact with him invigorated Elliot. Eventually, reluctantly, he nodded, although he continued to cry.
"Good. Stick with Marcel and Ida, and I'll be back with you soon. I promise." Tyr squeezed him gently before standing back up.
Elliot took a deep breath, trying unsuccessfully to compose himself. Tears still flowed freely down his cheeks.
"You will be alright." Tyr told him, running a hand through his long hair. "Stay strong for me. I will come back for you."
A terribly familiar numbing sensation began to take over Elliot. His ears were ringing as it felt like his past was playing out right in front of him. Jay was suddenly beside him, pulling him back behind the wagon. Tyr was talking with Marcel and Ida, but Elliot couldn't hear what was being said. From his position he could see Tyr remove his assortment of weaponry and pass it along to Ida; then begin the solitary march toward the mob of waiting men and the three fearsome Carvers.
"No..." Elliot sobbed quietly. Jay kept a firm but gentle hold of his wrist to prevent him from bolting, but Elliot felt almost too weak to move. Two men came forward and roughly forced Tyr down to his knees and put handcuffs on him. Elliot couldn't watch anymore as they began to lead Tyr away down the street. He shut his eyes tightly and collapsed onto the hard concrete, burying his face in his arms and weeping openly.
Elliot didn't know how long he lay there, alternating between near-silent crying and large shuddering sniffles. At some point he looked up and realized it had begun to get dark. Jay still sat close by, with his chin resting on his knees, keeping watch over Elliot. It was hard to tell for sure, but Elliot thought that he must have fallen asleep at some point since time seemed to have evaporated from underneath him.
Feeling suddenly foolish, Elliot rolled himself into a sitting position. "I'm... sorry..." He couldn't make eye contact with Jay.
Jay shook his head. "Nothing to be sorry for." He patted Elliot's knee firmly. "I feel bad for those Carvers."
Elliot shot him a confused look.
"They're in for a rude surprise when they figure out who they just kidnapped." Jay grinned wickedly.
To his own surprise, Elliot cracked a smile. Somehow Jay always had a way of piercing the gloom. "You're... right." He admitted around a sniffle. "Tyr can handle anything." He made the statement firmly and tried just as hard to believe it.
"Marcel wants to see you." Jay informed him. "I'll be back soon."
"Where are you going?" Elliot asked as Jay nimbly rose to his feet.
"I've got some things to take care of to get us ready." Jay didn't elaborate further, he slipped away quickly into the bustle of the camp.
"Ready for what...?" Elliot called, but Jay was already gone. With a soft grunt he pushed himself to his feet as well.
He found Marcel easily enough, engaged in serious conversation with Ida, Carlos, and Jim. They stopped talking when he approached.
"Ah, Elliot." Ida motioned him forward. "Are you alright?"
Elliot nodded. He still didn't entirely trust his voice.
"You will be glad to know that we have the beginnings of a plan in place." Marcel told him with a grin.
"A plan for what?" Elliot asked in confusion.
Marcel raised an eyebrow. "To get Tyr back of course, and to liberate the town."
Elliot looked incredulously between Marcel and Ida. "What do you mean? They're taking Tyr away." His voice cracked as the still-tender emotion threatened to overwhelm him.
"It's too late for them to move him tonight." Ida informed him. "Our scouts have said they're keeping him in the local police station. They've probably got holding cells there."
"But..." Elliot protested. "Tyr said it would take at least a week to safely take the town."
Marcel grinned devilishly. "That was before they invited the most dangerous one among us back to their headquarters."
Elliot's eyebrows shot up in disbelief. "He's their prisoner though."
Ida shook her head with a soft chuckle. "Tyr is nobody's prisoner. They've bitten off far more than they realize. They can't contain him. Now is the perfect time to strike."
The more he thought about it, the more Elliot wondered if she might be right. With all of the considerable skills Tyr had mastery over, why wouldn't jailbreaking be one of them?
"Ok." He eventually admitted. "What do we do?"
"So glad that you asked, darling." Marcel tossed his hair. "If everyone sticks to their duties, we'll have Tyr out of there in no time, and have a lot less baddies to worry about."
Tyr sat motionless in the dark of the cell. He was aware of each passing second, but the slow creep of time did not bother him. It was a feeling he was intimately familiar with and he almost welcomed its return. The guards had thrown him in there two hours, seventeen minutes, and forty-three seconds ago, and he had spent every moment of that time waiting patiently, silently.
Less than two seconds was what it took him to assess almost every possible action and reaction in his situation; but he had been there for two hours, playing countless games of internal chess to predict each and every move. Instead of thinking three steps ahead, Tyr was now thinking dozens if not hundreds of steps in advance of the inevitable action he knew he would have to take. It was in moments like this that he became almost more like a computer than a man, whittling down options and potential outcomes to find the most favorable.
The cell was old and uncared for, and the guards had foolishly left him with his heavy combat boots. They had searched him so poorly that Tyr knew he could have easily smuggled in a weapon. Choosing to leave his blades behind had been a calculated risk. The troupe needed all the weapons they could get their hands on, and if the militia had decided to be more thorough in their search, it would have been just one less for anyone to use. Not to mention, if they had found a weapon on him, they might have kept a closer eye on him. As it was, they allowed him to sit, nearly forgotten, in his corner of the small jail.
The only variable that concerned Tyr were these `Carvers' that Elliot had talked about. There were indeed five of them, he had encountered two more when his captors had taken him in. These two were now stationed with him in the police station, while the other three had disappeared with Captain McCoy. He had yet to hear any of them speak a single word or make any noise at all apart from their breathing. Their faces were obscured by helmets and masks made of light-colored leather. Tyr suspected that he knew exactly what type of leather it was. Most men were predictable. Given a circumstance or situation, they would almost always react in a certain pattern of behaviors that was, to their mind, logical. Tyr disliked men that were genuinely mad. Madness was unpredictable. Madness was illogical. And he had begun to suspect a certain type of madness from these silent butchers.
This made for a much more complicated calculation, but Tyr had run the numbers repeatedly and followed up with every scenario imaginable. Even the minds of madmen had a finite number of responses to stimuli. All that was left now was to wait. Tyr knew that his moment would come, and he was content to sit quietly until then.
At nearly the three-hour mark since his incarceration, that moment came. Tyr heard commotion outside and eventually the sound of a gunshot. The men in the police station flinched and jumped from their positions. Pandemonium erupted as they scrambled to grab weapons. Tyr allowed a number of them to make their exit before he made his move. Four men remained in the police station as well as the two Carvers. As one of the militia men rushed past, Tyr snaked his arm through the bars and caught the man around the neck, yanking him in close and twisting his head violently until it snapped, and the man went limp. Tyr relieved the man of the heavy cudgel he was carrying before letting him slump to the floor.
Before the others in the room could react to their comrade's death, Tyr jumped and kicked both feet into the rusting metal latch of the door. His heavy boots connected, and the weakened metal cracked. The door burst open, knocking another of the men to the ground. Tyr rolled and flipped easily up to his feet, throwing the cudgel at the guard that had blocked off the door to his cell. The man dropped like a stone and Tyr picked up the hunting knife he had been brandishing. He kicked the guard that had been sent sprawling by the door in the temple and he immediately stopped moving.
Whirling away from a swing with a baseball bat, Tyr lodged the hunting knife in the last militia-man's throat before turning to face the two Carvers. The silent men stood staring at him, with weapons in hand. None of them made a move at first, but suddenly with a wild inhuman snarl, one of the Carvers charged at Tyr.
Anticipating the swing, Tyr leaned away and aimed a rib-shattering punch at the man's abdomen. To Tyr's shock, he felt the Carver's hand intercept his fist with a speed that he had not anticipated. The next feeling was the sharp bite of the man's jagged weapon into the flesh of his upper arm.
Elliot shifted back and forth as he watched Marcel and Jim enter the intersection where the police station stood. It was a quiet night, and a little over a dozen of the militia men were milling around outside the station, making conversation near several fires in metal barrels.
Noticing his discomfort, Ida placed a hand on his shoulder. "Patience." She told him encouragingly.
It was hard to tell from his position, but Elliot thought he could see Carlos in his hiding place across the square. Elliot bit his lip. Marcel's plan seemed solid, but now all he could do was hope.
"Hello there, friends!" Marcel called out to the guards at the fenced-in entrance to the police station. "We are here to bargain for the life of the prisoner that you took from us."
The guards at the entrance pushed off from their positions, but most of the men ignored Marcel and Jim completely.
Marcel did not wait for them to approach however. He put two fingers to his lips and let out a piercing whistle.
A sharp whinny broke through the night, followed by a thunderous clattering. Elliot watched Maple and Timber careen around the corner, pulling the wagon behind them which listed dangerously as they barreled down the road at top speed.
With barely enough time to react, the guards tried to draw their weapons but were too late. In their fright, the two horses rode them down in a flurry of hooves and wheels before being ground to a halt right in front of the entrance to the fenced in station.
The men outside the station reacted slowly, only just beginning to notice that they were blocked in. Louis sprang from the seat of the wagon where he had wheeled the horses in, and slashed their reigns allowing Timber and Maple to dash off into the night.
"Now!" Ida yelled, drawing back her bow and releasing an arrow down towards the men now caged inside the police station. Jim discharged his revolver at the trapped men, and Carlos's group rose up from the rooftops on the other side of the square, showering arrows and thrown weapons down on the guards inside the fence.
Panic ensued inside the fence as more men began to pour out of the police station. The entrance soon became congested with men trying to force their way through the barricade. Some tried to crawl underneath the wagon, but as they did more members of the troupe rushed up behind Marcel and Jim equipped with their own weapons to keep these men at bay.
"Focus on the ones with firearms!" Ida ordered as more shots rang out.
Elliot saw a man loading a shotgun down below where he was perched with Ida. It was a similar weapon to the one that Mr. Davis had carried, and he fueled his anger by imagining that it was the very same gun that was lifted off of his fallen neighbor all those months ago. He could almost feel Tyr's hand gripping his own in the moment when he pulled the knife across the deer's throat, ending its life. With a shout of anger, he hurled one of his knives knowing full well that it would strike its target.
The man loading the gun suddenly went ridged with shock as the knife buried itself in his chest. Elliot had been aiming for the throat as he had seen Tyr do countless times before, but this was just as effective. The guard dropped his gun in shock, looking down at the hilt of the blade that protruded from him. It was difficult to discern over the din of combat, but Elliot felt for sure that he heard that particular militia man's gasp of surprise as he toppled forward and died.
Elliot had hurt men before, but this was significant. He remembered feeling far more remorse for the deer that he had slain only days before. As he saw his first confirmed kill fall to the ground, the adrenaline of battle that continued to erupt around him dulled the impact to a numbed ache in his chest while he continued to launch his knives at the men that had abducted Tyr.
Carlos' group as well as Ida's trainees rained death down on the confined militia men. Several of them tried to climb over the fence, but were quickly cut down with arrows, blades, or gunshots. It was a hollow pity that Elliot felt for these men; trapped in their own stronghold and slain one at a time. He could almost feel the pulse of the deer's will to live coursing through its arteries as he had when Tyr held his hand purposefully over its throat. This was just as deliberate. Just as methodical. And he told himself, just as necessary.
It was to Elliot's surprise that he found himself out of knives to throw. He had not imagined that he had used all of them, and yet there he was, without a weapon, staring down at the carnage below. More than thirty men lay dead in the makeshift prison that the wagon had created. The fires in the barrels still burned bright as if nothing had happened.
Suddenly the night felt almost obscenely quiet. Elliot's heart was racing, waiting for the next target to present itself. Even though he was out of projectiles, he was fully prepared in that moment to launch himself into combat once more, should the need arise.
The door to the police station flew abruptly open once more, banging against the outer wall with a violence that startled all around. A tall and familiar figure hobbled clear of the doorway and Elliot sucked in his breath.
Not a soul pursued the stumbling figure out of the police station. He was almost hard to recognize though all the blood; but as the weakened man practically tripped his way out of the door and clung to the fence for support, Elliot knew with a certainty that it was Tyr.