“Halt! Take a break, slaves.”

Allison fell to her knees at once. They’d been running at a steady jog all night long. Her legs and chest ached from the constant effort. Although she was one of the fastest girls in her class, she’d never ran this far before.

After she sucked in a few breaths, she found enough air and energy to look up at her captors. They were a group of angry looking men and women, constantly snapping at the other captives and each other like the farm dogs at home whenever there weren’t enough pork chop scraps to go around. She didn’t like that they called her a slave. She wasn’t a slave. She was almost twelve years old and had something to say about being ordered around by anybody.

The bad men and women drank from water canteens, but Allison and the other captives had to drink from the stream they’d stopped by. She knew Kellen would have warned her about getting germs from the water if he was there — Allison was too thirsty to care. She crawled on all fours over to the soft sand, ignoring the water soaking through the knees of her jeans, and slurped as fast as she could.

The water tasted good, even with a dozen people sticking their dirty hands in it to slurp it up. When she finished drinking, Allison splashed some on her hair, face and neck. It couldn’t have been much later than eight o’clock, but the plains were already hot and smoky.

She’d tried to come up with an answer all night long while they’d ran, but still didn’t know where she was or how she’d got there. One minute, she’d been in the field with Kellen, staring at that glowing rock. The next thing she knew, she was lying on her back in the dirt and it was night.

Before she’d done much more than sit up, she noticed the screaming. The sounds came from all around her as shadowed figures ran by, outlined in moonlight. The only thing she could think to do was run, so that’s what she did. Allison hadn’t gone farther than a dozen steps when they grabbed her — a man with a mohawk and white painted lines on his face.

Kicking him between the legs made him let her arm go. As soon as she turned around, however, a woman snatched her wrist. Allison tried to twist so she could bite or kick her, but the woman twisted her arm behind her back so hard Allison dropped to the ground. At the time, she’d thought it was broken and her wrist and elbow still ached hours later.

Next thing she knew, they tied her hands together with rough rawhide straps. Others emerged from the darkness with their own prisoners in tow. They tied another rope to her ankle and ran it to two other people — an old woman and a boy a couple years younger than her. The rest was a blur of running, stumbling in the tall grass, being yanked to her feet, and running some more.

They’d only gone a few hours when the old woman slowed, finally fell and couldn’t get up. Right before Allison’s eyes, the mohawk man ran a knife across the old woman’s throat then cut the rope off her ankle. Allison made sure she got right back up whenever she tripped after that and tried to help the boy whenever he fell, too.

Allison wasn’t scared. She reminded herself of this constantly throughout the night. She was worried about what would happen when the blisters inside her boots made it so she couldn’t walk, let alone run. More than that, she worried about Kellen. Was he okay? Had the light sucked him into the village too? He wasn’t in their group, so did that mean…

No, she wouldn’t think that. Wherever he was, Kellen was fine. Angry at herself for even thinking such a thing, Allison rubbed away the tears at the corner of her eyes and studied the other captives for the first time in the daylight.

There were eighteen in all, half a dozen younger than her, the rest older teenagers or adults of different ages. They all wore strange clothes — a mix of buckskin dresses or leggings, mostly. The rest had tan linen shirts, and pants that came about halfway down their shins. The majority were barefoot, although a few sported moccasins or leather sandals tied on with straps.

Stranger still were the complexions of some. Among the captives, about half had ordinary, tannish-red skin. All the guards looked this way, too. The other half of the prisoners, however, appeared frostbitten from head to toe — their skin was a blue-gray color that Allison had never seen anywhere. Everyone had dark brown or black hair, making her bedraggled blonde stick out like a sore thumb.

None of them looked like they had any idea where Idaho was. To confuse the matter, the few times anyone — the other captives or their guards — had spoken, they all used English. Their accents were nothing Allison had ever heard before, even among the seasonal workers that came to harvest potatoes and beets on the neighboring farms back home.

The guards wore the same short pants Allison saw on the prisoners, but instead of shirts, the men were bare chested or wore tan colored vests. The women wore vests too, or simple wraps around their chests that Allison’s mother certainly wouldn’t have found appropriate for women anywhere but the pool. They all had white paint on their exposed skin: lines, swirls and dots with no pattern to their placement she could make out,

Every captor carried an assortment of knives, tomahawks and bows that Allison would have expected to see in a Western. Nobody had a gun or a cell phone, which made the mystery of where they were all the more confusing. Even without her blonde hair, freckles and pale skin, Allison’s jeans and hoodie made it clear she didn’t belong.

Beside her, the boy tied to Allison leaned back from the stream and groaned. Over the last hour he’d slowed down and Allison felt she’d dragged him over the last couple miles.

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“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m scared,” he said in the same strange accent as the others.

“It’s going to be okay,” Allison said, as much to herself as the boy. “My brother knows I’m missing. He’s going to find us and rescue us, I know it.”

“Is he a great warrior?” the boy asked.

“Well…” Kellen wasn’t a chicken but nobody described him as a warrior, either. Let alone a great one. Still, Allison thought she could keep the boy’s spirits up. “Yes. What’s your name?”

“Kattoh,” the boy said.

“I’m Allison.” She held out a hand for the boy to shake. He stared down at it, confused and maybe even intimidated.

“I don’t have anything to give you,” he said, “The slavers don’t let us have anything.”

“I’m not — never mind,” Allison said, letting her hand fall. “Where are we?”

Kattoh gave her another strange look. “What do you mean? The Thunder Plains.”

Allison didn’t really like school and especially not history or geography. She didn’t know of anywhere called the Thunder Plains, so she tried another angle.

“Okay, Kattoh, this is going to sound dumb, but what country are we in?”

“Country?” the boy seemed confused by the question. “These are Storm Tribe lands.”

“Yes but —”

“On your feet!”

It was the man with the mohawk. He strode through the prisoners and yanked them to their feet, ignoring all whimpers and groans. Allison glared at him as he approached, determined he wasn’t going to put another hand on her. As the man got closer, Kattoh jumped up.

“Hurry,” he urged. “You do not want to anger them!”

Allison shook her head. There were little kids and old people that needed a longer rest.

“Up, slave!” The mohawk man stood above her, snarling face contorted by the white symbols painted across his cheeks and around his eyes. She could tell at once he hadn’t forgotten she’d kicked him.

“These people need a longer break,” Allison said. “You can’t just —”

She yelped as he grabbed her by the hair and hauled her up. Allison lashed out with her legs, this time with no luck. The man held her at arm’s length, too far to even connect with his shin.

“Let me go!” she screamed, tears welling in her eyes from the sharp pain blooming on the top of her head. The man complied, throwing her down on the ground and reaching for a whip tied at his waste. Growling, Allison rushed him, ducking and spearing the man between the legs with the crown of her head. She went down on top of him, biting, scratching and kicking, while the man cursed and tried to free himself from beneath her.

Suddenly, Allison’s arms jerked to the right. She landed hard on her back. Gasping for air, she saw the same woman from the night before looming over her.

“Bested by the little witch again, Tapuk,” the woman laughed. “There will be nothing between your legs if she keeps smashing them.”

Laughter from both the prisoners and the slavers echoed around them. “I will cut every finger from your hand!” Tapuk yelled, face an ugly mask as he struggled to his feet. He drew a curved knife on his belt and advanced.

“Enough.”

Allison couldn’t see the man who had spoken, but his command made Tapuk pause, if only for a moment. With a snarl, he ignored the order and took another step toward Allison, who scrambled back in the grass.

A sudden flash of black light accompanied by a piercing scream struck Tapuk in the face. Allison gasped as the man fell beneath the weight of a large, black bird unlike any Allison had ever seen before. It’s ragged black feathers resembled a shredded garbage bag. Talons as long as Allison’s fingers dug into Tapuk’s chest. The man screamed in pain before the bird pushed itself off and rose in the air, hovering over the slaver with massive beating wings.

Someone whistled behind Allison. She turned to see another man holding out an arm. The bird returned to its master, giving Allison a better view of the creature. Its beak was wide like a duck’s and full of gnarled, criss-crossing fangs that stuck out from the top and bottom at random angles. Its head was bald like a vultures, with dead, gray skin except for two strands of black feather tufts that looked like horns curving back from a pair of hateful red eyes.

“When I tell you to leave my property alone, Tapuk, you will obey me.”

The bird’s master didn’t yell, but his voice carried above the breeze, the stream, and the rustling grass, commanding attention from everyone.

“Is this understood?”

“Y-yes, Ubira.” Tapuk replied in a pained voice, clutching at the deep cut across his brow. He shot Allison a look that would have killed, but said nothing more.

“You, girl.”

The woman hauled Allison to her feet by the bindings on her wrists and the bird master walked closer. Allison tried to hide her fear — and disgust. The bird, the man, or both smelled like roadkill. Not wanting to meet the unnatural red eyes of the hell vulture, Allison forced herself to look at the man, determined not to show him just how afraid she felt inside.

His yellow eyes were almost as bad as the bird’s. With his free arm, the man carried an obsidian-tipped spear like a staff. Standing in front of him, Allison guessed he was a couple inches taller than her dad’s six feet, if not quite as broad-shouldered but much, much more muscled. His head was bald and covered in black tattoos. A dark scarf covered his face below his long, crooked nose, but did not muffle his voice.

He wore a wide necklace of bones and spearheads that covered his tattooed chest like a breastplate. Below that, his tall black boots were tucked into red pants. The bird’s claws looked like they dug into his arm, but he didn’t seem bothered by the pain or the weight of the large vulture and his arm never wavered.

“Listen, everyone!” the man’s reptilian yellow eyes never moved from Allison, although he seemed to speak to all the captives. “For the recent additions to our happy family know this: you belong to me now. You don’t walk, sleep, talk, eat, or die unless I let you. Forget your old life. It is gone. You are a slave and you draw breath because I allow it. You will do as you are told or punishment will be taken from your flesh.”

Allison hadn’t thought she could hate anyone worse than Tapuk, but this man certainly proved her wrong. Her insides felt like ice, and she didn’t know if she forced herself to keep looking at his eyes or if he held her in some kind of trance.

“There are some among your number that have been with me for a time. Watch them, learn from them. Do as they advise if you want to awaken each dawn. For now, you will run when I say and you will not stop until I say. If you try to escape, you will not be killed. You will lose your eyes and you will still run. I am Ubira, Count of Spears. I have spoken.”

When he finished, he pointed his staff at Allison, the jagged obsidian point only inches from her face. “Consider yourself warned.”

As if to end the conversation, the vulture let out a long hiss and snapped its twisted fanged beak.

“On your feet slaves!” Another man yelled. “Start running!”

As she fell in line, blistered feet aching, Allison sent a silent prayer to whoever might listen that someone would find her in that strange land.

Where was Kellen?