A World Within Page 13

  By the time Marissa and the men of their company arrived on the scene, Meineke and the cherubs stood down on the ground, surveying their handiwork. She and the others stopped running when they realized what had happened, lowering their weapons, surprised to see the task already performed so efficiently. Louie and Meineke simply smiled at her, each of them with one arm around the shoulder of the other as though they were the best of pals.

  “Oy, did you fellows come to clean up the little mess we made?” Louie asked sheepishly.

  The men eyed their work, chuckling amongst themselves as they sheathed their blades. Marissa simply smiled and said, “Well done, friends.” Then her manner took on a more serious tone as she spotted the smoke beyond the tree line coming from villages up the coast a few miles away.

  “That may be other metamen conducting raids on the fishing villages,” she said. “We certainly cannot afford to wage an all out assault in order to get by them to the Ardath pass. We’ll have to backtrack and seek shipping across the Waron as Louie suggested before.”

  Louie perked up. “And I know just the place, too.”

  “Of course, Gennedy!” Mickey finished.

  Marissa nodded. “I agree. It’s not ideal, but we have no choice.”

  The group left the cyborgs on the road among the trees, hoping it would be some time before Hannibal, their leader, came looking for them. When he came he would have thousands more cyborgs with him.

  The cherubs retrieved their spent arrows from the victims, wiped them clean, then replaced them in their quivers. Arrows were precious commodities and they needed every one they could get for the journey ahead.