“It isn’t our responsibility.”
“Captain Yavi, please.” June couldn’t restrain the desperation in her tone. She felt like a doomsayer to be ignored on the side of the road and spared the odd halycite coin. “You must step in.”
“The military protects the interests of the public. It does not inform its civil process.”
“B-but there is no civil process if the results are being strong-armed by a small group!”
“Young lady, a ballot is the will of the citizenry, not the individuals therein. To these humble merchants and travelers, and indeed any participant of a ballot, any result that isn’t theirs is itself unfair. What do you want the Scoutrunners to do?”
“Ensure that the signatures come from each individual without duress.”
“Under your authority?”
“Under the authority of fair chances!”
“Spoken like a woman of God. Your Order’s moralities aren’t universal if the sole purveyors are its members’ mouths.”
“Without the Order your military would be protecting selfish hordes.” June immediately clasped her mouth. “I-I didn’t mean that! I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“…No. You mean well.” Yavi looked up at the dark heavens. The night looked deeper than usual. He could smell the burning detritus of a forest ablaze in the air. “I’ve a compromise.”
Meanwhile the clipboard was filling with scribbles of ink. It had made its rounds around the murmuring camp, and the last signer was just about to hand it back to the caravan owner. A gloved hand marked with the insignia of the Hawk intercepted.
Captain Yavi stepped atop the boulder and cleared his throat. The talking vanished. Eyes turned once more to the makeshift podium.
“We have noticed a vote with regards to route had been called without consulting your escorts,” he said. “If you would all be so gracious, let’s begin again with our names added this time.”
The uproar was instantaneous.
“Our cargo is at stake!”
“Our livelihoods are at the brink!”
“The vote is done! We’ve played your stupid game!”
“Tell me Captain, do you have shares in this company?”
“Yeah! Your job is protect us, not to involve yourselves in our business!”
Yavi raised a finger.
“Precisely,” he answered. “To all your questions. Your wares are at stake. Your livelihoods are at stake. But if we were to encounter trouble on the road, whose lives do you think are literally on the line first and foremost? Your protection is our business. And we are as much passenger as you are.”
The retreat was disgruntled, quiet, and full of empty frustrations. The vote was recast in the presence of the armed and uniformed Scoutrunners. June peered out with her senses, and noticed none of the forceful influences that waylaid the vote before. Relief fell upon her like a cool mist.
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Lisŗa bumped shoulders with her. The runner had just finished signing. June was glad of her presence.
“Thank you for letting me talk to your captain,” June said.
“Looks like these penny pinchers daren’t force a result with us around, huh?”
“Yes.”
“You realize, in a way, we’re doing the exact same thing by being here.” Lisŗa tapped the curved dagger holstered by her collar.
“I… no that cannot be…”
“Just a thought,” Lisŗa said. She began walking back to the Scoutrunner’s camp. “I haven’t the head for this sort of thing. And dinner is late.”
--
They were barely ahead of the fire. If it weren’t for the wetness of the forest, Jorge had no doubt they’d be overrun in the matter of minutes. Even so, he could feel the curtains of heat at his back as he continued to force a path ahead. And if he could feel it with his heightened strength…
He looked back once, and did not dare do it again. For if he did, his mind tore through his heart with an unconscious headcount; the curse of his talent with numbers. Only the youngest and strongest remained, save for Lyosha with his Wayfarer’s preternatural strength. That was what they were called. Jorge thought about what the thing said. Wayfarer. A fancy word for traveler. But a traveler goes. He was meant to stay and perform some kind of work. He was not privy to the end goal. Whatever it was, it demanded his survival.
It definitely couldn’t be the work of a hero. Jorge knew what raced through his mind during this whole ordeal. Leave. Just leave. He needn’t stay at all. He was strong enough to simply outrun the fire. He also knew that if he wasn’t making a road for the Bedazi, they would be consumed in hours.
He knew this and he was tempted to go. By his observation, even with his work the fire was slowly catching up. The spew from the volcano might eventually land ahead of them, and if they were to be surrounded by flame, only he and maybe Lyosha would survive. Through chill logic, he knew he had done more than enough for these people, far more than any spectator to this situation if they were in his shoes. Here, Jorge had nothing but his strength and his axe. And when he forced himself to look behind him once more, he saw stricken faces covered in sweat and grime.
Parents counseled children who had run dry of tears. They walked hunched over, arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, each the other’s support. Their strength was running out. Even Lyosha had become taciturn.
They walked and walked, silent save for the mountain’s roars, the crackling fires looming behind them, and the taps of his axe. Jorge couldn’t tell night from day anymore. And worse he was beginning to see hallucinations of his father.
“That strength of yours is worth nothing if you can’t use it,” Gustavo Faett’s specter said in a sergeant’s voice as he paced back and forth, phasing through the vines and shrubbery.
“I’m using it plenty good swinging this damn thing.”
“Strength isn’t used unless it’s for others, son! Only animals are self-serving!”
“There’s a limit to altruism.”
“Life is worth sacrificing for. I didn’t join the military because-”
“Yeah yeah.”
“And when I came back, I became an officer to protect our city! To protect you!”
“And it only took one methhead to end that crusade, didn’t it dad? Then you had to leave me with mom. Guess who she took it out on? You can hide a lot of aggression in a good cause, did you ever think of that, dad? I went home to a mother deriding my character because of my weight, putting me down after every meal. Joking that she lost one man to drugs and was about to lose another to cardiac arrest. Then I’d go to school with kids telling me you had it coming because you were a cop. So tell me, ghost, why should I keep using my strength to help people?”
“Because by and large, son, people are good. And anger that didn’t come from you isn’t anger worth harboring...”
They burst out of the forest onto a wide road. Panting and huffing, Jorge looked from left to right. He was dizzy as all hell. He realized he must have been working on autopilot; the last few hours were a forgettable blur. There he stood however, before a road. The fire couldn’t burn dry dirt. Slowly, carefully, he began to laugh.
“We did it!” He said. “We’re out! Hey Lyosha, we’re-”
Thirty or so people crawled out of the path he had made. He looked around in a panic.
“Lyosha? Lyosha!”
Another bout of flame erupted from the volcano. Lightning struck between the frictions of its particles. Thunder cracked.