Amara Bennett's Arc

Chapter 7 of 13

The camp was hers now, but Amara could not sleep. The old leader had fled into the cold, and he knew this ground better than anyone. He knew where they slept, where the walls were thin, where the food house stood. A man with nothing left would sell that to the regime for a warm meal. Amara pictured a raid in the dark, her people cut down in their beds. She rose before dawn and went to find Jin-Ho. He was already awake, sharpening a blade outside one of the weather-beaten hunting cabins. The scar over his left eye caught the gray light. He had ridden behind her once to kill her. Now he was the one man in camp she trusted with a real fear. "He's coming back," she said. "Not with a knife. With the regime behind him." Jin-Ho stopped the blade. "You can't know that." "I know him. He can't beat us alone, so he'll trade us. Our location for his life." She looked at the plump pig in its harness by the food store, at the near-empty crates, at the sturdy larder that held everything they had left. "If they hit us here, we lose the food and the people in one night." Jin-Ho set the blade down. "Then we don't wait here." That was the answer she needed. Amara had already found the place. Two days back, scouting for food, she had seen a glass greenhouse tucked behind a ridge, its wooden beams still sound, its rows still green under frost. It grew food. It had cover. The old leader had never used it, so he could not point to it on any map. She called the camp together at first light. "We move today," she said. "All of it. The pig, the crates, the larder stores. We leave nothing here for him to sell." A few men grumbled. Leaving felt like running. She cut them off. "He knows this spot. He does not know the next one. That's how we stay alive, and that's how we eat through winter." They worked all day. Amara set teams to load the crates and drive the pig. Jin-Ho took the rear guard, watching the tree line for riders. By dusk the camp was empty. They reached the greenhouse as the last light died. The glass held warmth inside. Green rows ran the length of it, enough to stretch their stores for weeks. Jin-Ho stood beside her at the door. "He'll find the old camp empty," he said. "He'll have nothing to sell." "For now," Amara said. She watched her people carry the last crates into the light. She had saved them from the betrayal raid. But moving meant they no longer hid where the regime expected. Sooner or later, a scout would find fresh tracks in the snow, and the whole camp would be exposed in one place. She had traded one danger for another.