Free Outpost by Ann Aguirre Page B

fast they came, misshapen skulls, yellowed skin, and bloody lesions. Their eyes swam in their heads as they ran, taking in the feast we represented.
    Shots rang out atop the panicked growers’ screams. They huddled in the wagons, covering the seeds with their bodies, as if that was what the Freaks had come to steal. But these creatures were eaters of meat; they did not forage for food from forest plants. They ate game when they could find nothing bigger or better, and they seemed to view humanity as their natural enemy.
    There are too many , I thought, even as they fell, holes blown in skulls and torsos. The weapons were fearsome at a distance, but too many of them had charged, and soon they would be upon us. I hoped the other guards could fight at close range as well as they could shoot.
    As for Fade and me, we fell in back-to-back, as we had ever done, and something sweeter than fear sang in my veins. I had my blades in my hand, and my partner at my back; therefore, I feared nothing, not even death.
    They hit us like a wave from that great water I had seen, falling away from the rocky land. I wheeled into the fight with a laugh that made the other guards shiver a little. Strike, parry, thrust. This was the reason I had been born—to fight these predators and drive them away from my people. I wasn’t a child. I was a Huntress.
    Their blood spattered as I slew them, stinking of rot. It was a mushroomy smell, one that stayed on skin and clothes through several scrubbings. I had almost forgotten that over those months behind the wall. Beside me, Fade spiked his knife into a Freak’s throat, and before it had fallen, another was on him, snapping with its bloody teeth. Gobbets of meat hung from its mouth, a taste granted from a guard who had not been so skilled with a blade as he was his rifle. I wouldn’t think about that, not now. Longshot used Old Girl like a club, swinging free enough to cave in the skull of any Freak that drew too near the wagons. Stalker needed this fight, I thought. His rage manifested in every slash of his blades, and the Freaks went down before him in great piles.
    But I couldn’t watch anyone else for long. It required all my concentration to keep myself from being overrun—and by the time the last Freak fell, my arms burned from the unaccustomed motion. Despite my best efforts, Salvation had made me soft—and that, in turn, filled me with outrage. I had to train more. Fight more.
    Breathing hard, I took a moment to survey the scene. So many corpses. Two growers had panicked and tried to flee; they lay dead some distance from the wagons, ripped to shreds. Four guards had been lost. From the grave, heavy expressions of those around me, this was not typical of the start of planting season.
    “Leave them,” Longshot said quietly. “If we don’t get these seeds in the ground, then they died for naught.”
    It was a grim procession that continued on toward the fields, and I wondered what greater woe the season had in store. If I had known then, perhaps I would have chosen my course differently.
    Or not.
    I was, after all, born to be a Huntress.

 
    Unnatural
    The surviving growers rallied enough to go about their business, at least, but they did it with a mournful air. It seemed to me that seeds planted with bloody fingers should yield a bitter fruit, but I didn’t express my reservations. It was probably nonsense that would make everyone laugh.
    But they hadn’t chuckled at my fighting.
    A few guards asked about my training as we watched over the field. Frank, the one I’d beaten to earn my place, seemed particularly interested. “Is it hard to learn to use knives like that?”
    “It takes time,” I answered.
    “Is it dangerous?”
    “You don’t train with live blades when you’re starting out.”
    “Would you mind showing me some moves sometime?”
    “Not if you don’t mind learning from a girl.” Other men laughed at this.
    But Frank shrugged.
    He fell quiet then, and I waited