Page 94 of Battle Mountain

Soledad had ridden abreast of his team several times since they’d left that morning, and he’d offered bottles of water from the cooler strapped to his ATV. He’d also given encouraging words to them. “This will turn out to be the most important thing you do in your lifetime,” and “This will be such a blow to the patriarchy that they may never recover from it,” and “What you’re doing this afternoon will be remembered forever,” and whatever else he thought would bolster their morale.

The third and very unstated reason he hung back was that if the operation went pear-shaped on the ranch grounds, he couldget the hell out of there in a hurry and save himself to fight another day.

—

An hour later,as the sun slipped behind the mountains to their left and muted the pale orange light that had fused through the forest, Nate and Geronimo scrambled their way through a tangled timber blowdown. They found themselves crawling over, under, and through a broken maelstrom of trunks, branches, and exposed pine tree root pans that looked like the outstretched palms of hands ordering, “Stop!” It was the isolated apex of a mountain microburst.

It was hard going, literally cutting southerly across the grain of the mountain terrain that sloped west to east. And they did so as quickly as they could, because they knew that once darkness enveloped the mountain in less than an hour they’d be blind.

After they’d traversed the blowdown and entered the standing forest on the other side, they entered a small mountain meadow that afforded a panoramic view of the mountainside ahead of them and the valley floor below. Nate paused for the first time since they’d left Orr back at the trailhead, and he stood there breathing hard to regain his calm. Geronimo very willingly took a break as well, and when he did, he leaned forward at the waist and placed his hands on his knees. His wide shoulders heaved with exertion.

From that vantage point, Nate could see the distant B-Lazy-U Ranch spread over an opening on the valley floor far below. Geronimo saw it, too, and nodded.

When he was once again breathing normally, Nate sat down and leaned his back against a thick tree trunk. He placed his hands in his lap and let the back of his head rest against the trunk. Then he closed his eyes.

Five long minutes passed. Geronimo spent the time glaring at Nate, then pacing near him. Finally, Geronimo said, “Nate, you need to wake the fuck up. We’re burning our daylight. Are you okay?”

Nate didn’t respond. His face was calm and his eyes remained shut.

Only when Geronimo squatted down and lightly cuffed Nate’s jaw did Nate open his eyes. For a few seconds, his eyes were strange and unfocused. Then they sharpened.

“We’re too low on the mountain,” Nate said. “At this altitude, we won’t intercept them until it’s too late. We’ve got to start climbing and stay on a bead to the southeast until we see a granite ridge. The way we’re going now would lead us beneath that ridge. We need to be above it.

“There are fourteen of them approaching the ridge. Four have broken off and are heading to a group of boulders closer to the ranch and below the ridge. Axel is behind all of them on an ATV.”

Geronimo was speechless. Then his eyes widened, and he stood and looked straight up into the air. The peregrine was a tiny dot in the darkening sky.

“My God,” Geronimo whispered. “You’re seeing the battlefield through the eyes of your falcon.”

Nate didn’t deny it. He rubbed his eyes, as if emerging from a trance, then rose again to his feet. He gestured to the southeastthrough the trees. “That way,” he said. “We need to keep up the pace. We’ve got to be above them by the time it gets dark.”

Geronimo said to Nate, “You’ve got to explain to me what just happened. That is an entire level beyondyarak.”

“What do you think I was doing all those months by myself in the canyon?” Nate asked.

B-Lazy-U Ranch Interlude

The New Centurion Banquet

The evening wascooling when Allison carried a large tray of cocktails down a gravel path to deliver to a group of Centurions and their wives, who lounged in lawn chairs on the manicured grass lawn of the B-Lazy-U. The gravel pathway was bordered with luminaria consisting of sand-weighted brown paper bags containing candles. It wasn’t yet dark enough toneedthe luminaria to see, yet she walked both carefully and briskly with the tray balanced on her right palm. She steadied it with her left hand.

When Allison reached the group of Centurions who’d made the order, she carefully dispensed the cocktails from the outside of the tray first to keep it all balanced. The secretary of defense snatched his double bourbon on the rocks eagerly and drained half of it. His wife sipped from the rim of a pink cosmopolitan.

“I’ll order another one now,” the man grunted while flashing a boxy smile. “Keep ’em coming.”

Then, under the tray and out of her view, Allison felt a small wad of cash get stuffed almost roughly into the top of her jeans. When she flinched, the secretary waggled his eyebrows at her.

“Floyd, don’t startle her,” the secretary’s wife admonished.

“Aw, she loves it,” he responded. “Who doesn’t like a little extra cash?”

At that moment, the lights flashed on above the empty stage at the top of the lawn. Background music—something very classical, martial, and ancient-sounding with piercing horns—thundered from massive speakers stationed at either side of the stage.

Allison delivered the last of the drinks, took several more orders, and glanced over her shoulder as she turned to go back to the lodge. A Centurion dressed in armor and a metal helmet adorned with a bright red comb on top strode to the microphone. He was flanked on both sides by two other uniformed Centurions carrying standards aloft.

“Greetings, Centurions,” the speaker announced. “As your Imperial Legate, I welcome all of you to the annual Centurions banquet and the hallowed initiation rite of our three newest members. But first, let us honor the memory of those honored members who have passed since we were last together…”

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