The Eleventh Plague Of Mobias

TWENTY-SEVEN

“Eggman told us they were mercenaries,” Knuckles said, looking down into his tea. “Ex-soldiers. I don’t know where he found them. He said they’d run the people at Fort Leonard off so they wouldn’t come back. That’s all. He said no one would get hurt.”

“What are you supposed to do for them?” Shadow asked.

“They want to expand west. Eggman said we’d be like a way station. Nothing more. They’d store fuel here, food. He didn’t tell us they were slavers, I swear.”

“When does it happen?”

“Tonight. Sundown. We’re supposed to meet them at the gates and then we all go together.”

“We have to talk to Eggman,” Rouge said. “Now.”

Knuckles looked up at her. “And say what? You don’t think Eggman and his friends know what these people are already?”

“Then we talk to everyone else. Espio, Pickle — we’ll have a vote.”

“You think if we have a vote and we actually win, they’ll just leave?”

We all sat there, still as statues as it sunk in. Slavers were no different from starving animals. Deny them Fort Leonard and they’d eat Settler’s Landing just as happily.

“Then what?” Rouge asked.

Knuckles turned to face the swirl of white outside. It was mounting steadily on the porch and bending the trees until their branches hung down miserably, nearly ready to snap.

“We did well this year, but you know the winters as well as I do, Rouge. We’ll lose at least ten people from the cold and lack of food alone. If we have to deal with Fort Leonard picking away at us too, we could be done for. Our home. All of us. Gone.”

“What are you saying? We let this happen? Knuckles —”

“I’m saying we don’t have a choice, Rouge.”

“We do,” Rouge said. “We have a choice about what we become, Knuckles. Maybe it’s the only thing we do have a choice about.”

“Do you want to be out there again? Us and not them? Is that what you want?”

“How many times have we come close to doing the right thing,” Rouge asked, “and then stopped because we were afraid? This. Sean and Mary Krychek —”

“Rouge.”

“— that girl of theirs, just nine years old?”

“We did the best we could for them.”

“We stood up for them for an hour before giving them an old blanket and a day’s worth of bread and sending them on their way! Because we were afraid!”

Rouge was red with anger and shame, leaning up out of her chair, her claws digging into the table. Knuckles had no answer for her.

The wind howled and the snow mixed with hail that sounded sharp and metallic, like fingers tapping on a tin roof.

“You remember that day we played Go Fish, Shadow?”

Everyone turned to Tails. His back was to us, caught in the half-gloom at the edge of the kitchen, looking out past the marble-topped counter to the storm outside. His twin tails swished uneasily behind him.

“Yeah,” Shadow said. “I do.”

“Everyone in Fort Leonard is just waking up,” Tails said, almost to himself, the words tumbling out. “They’re talking. Starting fires for breakfast. Wishing it wasn’t snowing. But then these people, us, will appear and some of them won’t live through the day. Some of them have maybe a few hours left until they’re gone, or their families are gone and they’re alone. And they have no idea it’s coming. They think it’s just another day.”