Ash and Cinder

11| Wind Witch

Anushka has her hair tied back in a close approximation to a bun. Her army coat is tight around my shoulders, hiding the burn and doing a flimsy job of disguising me as one of them. The grey sweatpants are a dead giveaway in my opinion, but it's not like I have anything else. We look suitably haggard and distraught, enough to get us past the front gate and into the Infirm Tent, where Anushka swears Elle will be.

Yeah, that's our plan, waltz right in. What could go wrong?

Everyone else has crept off to their positions and Maverick perches on the tip of a boulder, eyes squinted, waiting for the right moment.

We're so close. If it were up to me, I'd be bursting over that ridge and tearing the assholes down there apart getting to Elle.

"If it were up to you, you'd be dead," Mav says, his voice vague like he's far away in his head.

"Good thing you're here, then," I say, only slightly sarcastic.

"Good thing," he repeats in that same distant tone. I bite the inside of my cheek and try to focus my nervous energy on the plan.

In through the gate.

Straight to the Infirm Tent.

If anyone starts trouble, Maverick will redirect them. We get Elle, we get out. And then... then we... something.

"Then we're free," Mav says.

Free. I don't know if I can hold that concept in my head. But I glance at Mav, and he's staring back at me with the clarity back in his eyes, and I think; if there's one person I'd trust to get us through to the other side, it's him. A small smile crosses his face.

Hopping off the boulder, he dusts my shoulder. "Everyone's ready, it's time."

Men and women in olive drab quick march between rows upon rows of tan tents. The ridge slopes downwards, and the camp is set in the flat middle of the bowl, taking up every square inch available. The tents are set up in rows encircling one that has been blocked off by loops of razor wire.

We near the outskirts of the camp. An army soldier who appears to be standing guard stares at us. Her hawkish eyes roam lazily over Anushka, then stall on me, then snap to Mav, who reaches out a hand to shake. She narrows her eyes at him, and he touches her shoulder briefly instead and says something in Russian that makes her glaze over. She lets us pass with a half-hearted salute.

The camp is busy with noise. The air buzzes with voices and steady footfalls, and clinking and scraping, and the crackling of multiple fires scattered haphazardly outside of this tent and that one. Grizzled, dirty faces mark every corner. Any person not marching or standing guard is slouched over, hands in their pockets or elbows on knees, and they all have the exact same world-weary expression carved into the dirt-caked lines of their mouths and eyes. Nobody looks up long enough to register us.

We're almost to the tent Anushka pointed out. Almost, but someone stops us. A gruff, mustached, grey-haired man steps into our path. He stands with rigid posture, glaring at us as if we are worms. My skin crawls as he peers at me from pale, steely eyes, and barks something in Russian.

Anushka replies in clipped, stiff words. The man narrows his eyes. Then, a glimmer. A hint of Maverick as he passes in front of the soldier and murmurs a command in his ear. Confusion crosses the soldier's face, replaced at once by passiveness. He nods and steps to the side, speaking something.

"Da, Leytenánt." Anushka lowers her chin to hide the flicker of panic on her face. She nudges me past him and we're on our way, trudging down the path of clumpy, over-turned clay. We take a sharp corner to detour away from a particularly large cluster of scruffy soldiers, and I glimpse of movement behind us, that must be Maverick.