Free Forsada: Volume II in the New Eden series by Peter J Dudley

let’s all go get killed in Upper, let’s walk into the trap just like Marshall Turner and get our heads chopped off. At least then we’d be doing something! We’d be somewhere !” Yelling hurts. Everything hurts. “You know what I mean. Only two things could happen in Upper. We die, or we get captured. My father already knew that when he followed Turner out across the bridge.”
    “Your father did what was right.”
    “My father did what was stupid!” I couldn’t have hit him harder if I’d whaled him in the stomach with a forge hammer. Ever since the twins left their own father, Papi has been the best they’ve had.
    I feel ruined. I’m sorry, Papi. I don’t mean to disrespect the dead or to talk bad of you. I know you did what you think was right, but you knew you were walking to your death. I wonder, in those final seconds, did you think about me? Did you regret following your principles when you saw those axes? Principles are important, but they’re no good when you’re dead. And I don’t intend to be dead any time soon.
    “Your father was an honorable man,” Garrett says low and slow.
    “Honorable and stu—mistaken. My father was a smart man who did a stupid thing. He was everything to me. He believed in something so much that he was willing to die for it.”
    “That’s honor.”
    “That’s stupid. Dying for what you believe in always sounds a lot better in the council room than it does when the axe is falling on your head. But if that’s what you want, you go right ahead. Go to Upper. Die with the rest. It’s your life.”
    I worry to hell that he’ll do it.
    “Maybe you see honor in dying, Garrett, but I don’t. There’s only dying in dying. You want my plan? You want to know my plan? Not dying, that’s my plan. You think we can’t do anything in Sikwaa? I got news for you, mihito. You really can’t do anything when you’re dead.”
    Shack hasn’t moved. Garrett sways a little, still but unsteady like a tall tree in a strong wind. He doesn’t grind his jaw. He doesn’t clench his fists. He’s not working anything out. He’s just there, exhausted and destroyed. Just like me.
    Slowly, his voice rises to us. “If everyone else is dead, though, Loop… well, what’s the point in living knowing you didn’t even try to help?” He sounds sad, quiet. Defeated.
    And he’s right. We don’t have any good choices. Darius wins. No matter what, Darius wins. We go help Upper and die, or we hide out and live, but for what?
    “Oh, pshaw!” Another voice, raspy and breathless, breaks our little circle. “Who said we ain’t gonna help?”
    From the woods comes a heavy man, no taller than I am but round like a barrel and waddling like his knees are tied together. His short arms stick out from his sides and wave back and forth as he walks fast between us. Micktuk.
    I’ve only seen him a couple of times, from a distance, when he’s come into Lower with his two mules to get six months outfitting. Twice a year he shows up in town, his deep brown bald head covered by a handmade, straw hat. I’ve never heard him speak before, but his voice seems more childlike and raw than I imagined. I thought it would be slow and deep like a swollen river, but it’s sharp and clickety and full of hitches and gaps.
    He drops himself like a fence post directly in the middle of the three of us, and he turns slowly while he talks.
    “You all just shet up now and listen to Micktuk. Ain’t no one goin’ to Upper. Ain’t no sense. Girlie here knows it. Hell, you both knows it, too.”
    I just don’t know how to react to this strange man. Everyone says he’s a bit crazy. Everyone but my dad. My dad just says he’s haunted by demons from his past. Funny thing to say about someone living in Sikwaa. Shack and Garrett bristle. They’re scared of Micktuk, but they don’t know any more about him than I do.
    “And don’t be brawlin’ with each other. Save the hittin’ for them Southshawans.”
    Sounds good to