The Forest at the Edge of the World

by Mercer, Trish

  Wiles continued to stare, almost apologetically, at the Guarders.

  The Guarders didn’t even blink at him.

  “So,” said the master sergeant, unsure of how to respond to the sergeant major’s unusual lack of enthusiasm for their success, “do we leave them here—guarded, of course—or do we lug them back to the fort? Shin’s still in the trees with Karna, sure they can find a few more volunteers for questioning. Wiles? Sir?”

  Wiles’s shoulders dropped and he rubbed his chest absent-mindedly. Without another word he turned and trudged back to the fort.

  ---

  Hours later, Captain Shin wondered again why the army proudly insisted that the buttons on their uniforms “glisten in the sun.” It was just a signal that said, “Come get me!”

  He paused at a trickling stream below a large cavern, took a handful of mud, and smeared it over the dried dirt that was flaking off of his buttons.

  Lieutenant Karna crouched next to him and recaked his silver menaces as well.

  Perrin envied him; the darker hue to his skin allowed Brillen to blend in better with his surroundings. Perrin was tempted for a moment to rub some of the mud over his own gravel-colored face, until he had another thought.

  He looked over at Karna’s jacket, smiled mischievously, and smeared mud over the yellow patches and white insignias on the shoulder and chest of his lieutenant. Conquering the forest was doable. You just had to become part of it.

  Karna raised his eyebrows in dismay at his jacket, but then he scooped a handful mud and eagerly slapped it on the captain’s shoulder. For good measure he rubbed it in to dull the golden shoulder braid. Smiling, he mouthed, “Tell wife sorry.”

  Captain Shin winced as he looked at his much more functional, yet filthy, jacket.

  His wife.

  He hadn’t considered her much since they entered the forest. His focus had been singular, his resolve unswerving. She didn’t need his concern. She’d lived alone for years, and probably hadn’t even noticed he was gone. Might not even realize until dinner time.

  As he started to creep up the shrub-filled hillside, trying to catch sight of the Guarder they’d been following, he felt a gnawing in his stomach, and it wasn’t just from hunger.

  Of course she would miss him. She was probably searching the fort right now, trying to find out where he went. It’d be ridiculous if she did, but Mahrree was the kind of woman who didn’t care what kind of behavior was expected. She’d do whatever struck her as right and logical.

  Perrin shook his head to clear it. He couldn’t afford to think of her right now. The best thing he could do was bring her home his filthy uniform, with him still alive inside it.

  Shin and Karna continued to crawl up the side of the crevice which produced such an awful stench—a mixture of sulfur and decay—that the two men wore constant scowls. But the forest really was traversable, Perrin considered, even if occasionally repulsive.

  Given enough time he could map all of its secrets.

  First, uphill was in, and downhill was out—usually. There were dips and valleys he discovered that flouted that rule, but he’d find them all.

  Second, he noticed that wherever there was danger—gaping chasms, sprays of hot water, stenches of sulfur—the trees didn’t grow. Instead, the ground was barren and white, making it easily identifiable. Contrary to everything he’d been taught, the trees were the safest parts of the forest.

  But convincing the soldiers to overcome their generations-old fear of the woods would be an immense hurdle. But not impossible.

  Perhaps this was why his grandfather had pulled him aside when he was twelve and gave him the lecture of, “Some rules are meant to be broken by the right men. Perrin, you will be one of those rare ‘right’ men . . .”

  The Guarder they tracked was now at the top of crevice, and the captain and lieutenant crept among the shrubs below it towards the west side. The Guarder, dressed completely in black, was obvious in the sunshine as he squatted between two white rocks and looked below him for signs of activity.

  Shin stopped and held out his hand to halt Karna. Even with their attempts to blend in, the scrubby brush and low rocks around them didn’t offer much cover.

  The Guarder saw someone, below and to the east on the other side of the crevice.

  Perrin squinted to see what he was watching. He saw another man in dark clothing climbing up to meet his companion.

  The first man gestured in the general direction of Shin and Karna. The second man nodded and turned to look in the officers’ direction.

  Perrin held his breath and hoped Brillen did the same.

  The second man broke into a run and raced up the side of the crevice.

  “Been spotted!” Shin whispered down to Karna, and he heard Karna quietly draw his sword. Perrin drew his too, but continued to crawl between the bushes towards the top of the cavern.

  “There!” he heard the man at the top of the cavern shout.

  The second man now reached the first and together they began to rush down the other side of the crevice towards Shin and Karna’s position.

  “Stay down, under that bush!” Perrin whispered to Brillen behind him.

  As the lieutenant scrambled, Perrin crawled quickly between more bushes and rolled away from the crevice.

  Within moments the two Guarders arrived at the spot where the captain had been. They stopped and looked frantically around.

  Shin leapt to his feet, swung his sword, and caught the first Guarder with the flat side of the blade. He didn’t want him dead; he wanted him for questioning.

  The man flailed as his footing shifted on the loose gravel below him and he fell backward. His companion caught his arm as the first man began to slip on the edge of the cavern.

  “No!” the first Guarder shouted as he lost his footing and began to slide into the crevice.

  Karna leaped to his feet but stared in amazement at what happened next. So did Perrin, whose sword was raised to deliver another blow he had hoped would render the Guarder unconscious.

  The second man nodded once to his companion and then deliberately let him go. Without a sound the Guarder fell into the groaning cavern below him.

  While Shin and Karna stared in shock that the Guarder let his friend drop to his death, the man drew his jagged dagger and lunged towards the captain.

  Perrin dodged out of the way and slashed the Guarder’s arm with his sword as he passed.

  The Guarder spun around, furious to have been cut. Making a strange guttural noise, he charged at the captain. Shin sidestepped the Guarder who overshot his target, barely stopping himself at the edge of the crevice.

  Instinctively Perrin reached out to grab the man and caught his arm before he fell in.

  “What are you doing?!” Karna yelled. “Let him fall!”

  “I want answers!” Shin yelled back.

  The Guarder turned to Shin, delivered a frosty glare, and slashed at him with his dagger. Perrin released the man’s arm to avoid being cut, and the Guarder fell back purposely into the crevice where his companion had just vanished.

  “No!” Perrin cried, looking over the edge.

  There was nothing more to be seen but blackness.

  Karna rushed over. He shook his head as he stared down into the seemingly bottomless pit. “Why did they do that? They just . . . they just quit. I don’t get it, Captain!”

  “Neither do I, Brillen. So many questions to ask them—maybe that’s why. They don’t want to give any answers.”

  “So . . . so what’s the point of all of this? Why attack us if they’re just going to commit suicide? They had a good chance at killing one or both of us—”

  “Your confidence in me is overwhelming, Lieutenant,” interrupted the captain.

  “I’m sorry, sir, that’s not what I meant. It’s just that . . . I don’t get it!”

  “We’ve established that,” Perrin said impatiently. “I’ll tell you what’s happened: the two highest ranked officers of Edge are standing
miles away from the fort in unfamiliar territory staring into a crevice which no longer holds any danger for us! What we need to be doing, Lieutenant, is finding the rest of the Guarders and our men!”

  ---

  Mahrree spent the afternoon standing in the vacant land next to the main fort road. And she wasn’t alone. Dozens of people came and went, none approaching closer than Mahrree had, and all speculating as to what was happening. She watched the trees and tried to see her husband among the soldiers, but she didn’t dare approach the fort to interfere. There was a constant stream of horses and soldiers riding back and forth, with accompanying shouting, so obviously something was going on.

  “Looks like a full exercise to me,” decided a villager standing next to Mahrree.

  “As if you would know. This is more than just an exercise,” said a larger man in his fifties. “Right Miss Mahrree?” He’d known Mahrree since she was a child, when he and his wife moved next door to them. She’d always be Miss Mahrree.

  “I don’t know, Mr. Arky,” she confessed. “I haven’t seen the captain since all of this started.”

  He cleared his throat. “You haven’t? You mean, this might actually be the first Guarder attack in Edge in thirty years?”

  Everyone within hearing distance took a step closer for Mahrree’s response.

  She knew she had to make it a good one. What she said would travel throughout the village in less than an hour. Their perception of the situation was more real than anything they might be seeing.

  But all Mahrree could think to say was, “I really don’t know. As I said, I haven’t seen the captain for two days.”

  The news unsettled her as much as it did everyone else around her.

  She walked home, lonely and worried, when the sun finally set in the blood-red sky.

  As Mahrree blew out the candles that night she felt a bit light-headed with silly fear. In her hand she kept the metal rod Perrin gave her, but she slept in fits and starts.

  By morning she was so irritable her stomach couldn’t hold any food. She made it through the day but found herself napping on the sofa in the afternoon. She surprised herself by wishing her mother was around, but Hycymum was treating herself to a stay at Waves, a grueling wagon ride four days away. When someone undertook the extreme discomfort of travelling, it was a sign they thought they were aging and wanted to see the salty sea before they died. Now that Mahrree was married, Hycymum thought her time must be growing short and took the “old person” trip, even though she was only forty-eight.

  Mahrree was alone. That shouldn’t have bothered her, but it did.

  She couldn’t confide in any of the other teachers or even to Tabbit Densal that suddenly she was scared sick. It was so unlike her.

  ---

  Captain Shin was lost—really lost. It was so unlike him. The last several hours of the afternoon hadn’t been for nothing, though. They’d already chased another Guarder into the hands of waiting soldiers. That would be four men the captain would interrogate with his most pressing question, “What do you want?”

  The night before, he and the lieutenant had found their way to the edge of the forest between Edge and Moorland. They wolfed down some rations provided by ten soldiers who had been tracking their progress, and the captain and lieutenant even got a few hours of sleep while the soldiers took turns keeping watch. But Perrin’s rest was disturbed by dreams of his bride fighting off Guarders in their bedroom. Even with the unprecedented Guarder captures, Shin still felt he was losing the battle.

  Battle.

  It didn’t feel like a battle but an absurd game where only one side knew the rules and the other side tried vainly to figure out the players and the objective.

  For the last several hours he and Karna had been tracking another lone Guarder, but Perrin had lost sight of him. Maybe he was as disoriented as the two officers. The trees were so thick Perrin glimpsed the sun above him only occasionally. Yesterday, when he was quite sure he had his bearings, he noticed that the moss here grew on only one side of rocks and trees—the northern side.

  Forest secret number three. Until he could be sure of his location again, he navigated by tiny green growth.

  Had this been happening twenty years ago, after the forest fire that decimated most of the hillside and eliminated the presence of Guarders for several years, he would’ve easily seen how to get out. But the pines that grew to replace the fallen timber competed for every available inch. Making their way through the trees was not only disorienting but painful. Perrin and Karna had scrapes over their hands and faces, and more than once the useless ribbons and decorations on their uniforms snagged the protruding needles.

  Several times the captain stopped to listen to the forest around him. Sometimes it was intensely still, not even the birds calling. Other times it was so noisy it sounded as if the entire ground below him was making ready to open up. But usually Perrin heard nothing that would help him. He’d look to Karna for ideas, but the lieutenant would just shrug.

  The Guarders were out there; Perrin was sure of it. He could feel them but not see them. His only comfort was hoping they were as frustrated as he was, lost in the pines.

  ---

  By evening Mahrree forced herself to eat something and felt a bit better. Perrin had been gone for two full nights and days now, and she couldn’t just sit and pine for him. She thought about walking into the village but felt so alone without him. Then she considered walking up to the fort and asking what was happening, but she was strangely embarrassed by that.

  As she went to bed early that night she wished she had let Perrin get that puppy he had seen last week, just to have something else in the house. She lay in bed awake for hours, wondering where he was.

  ---

  Somewhere near Moorland. That was Shin and Karna’s best guess. They camped—or attempted to—in the forest approaching the small village, and hoped their dozen soldiers were on duty. All day they’d been on the tail of a Guarder who, Shin was fairly confident, hadn’t seen them. But they could never quite catch up to him. He knew the forest better than they did, but it seemed just barely. By the time the sun started to go down, the Guarder in the distance was looking around nervously, and Perrin felt a little more confident when he realized the man was lost, too.

  When it grew dark, the officers lost sight of the Guarder again, and Perrin knew their chances of finding him in the night were nil.

  And their chances of finding their way out of the forest, even less.

  It was going to be another long, uncomfortable night lying in the dirt trying to rest. He tried not to think about his hunger since their rations ran out a midday meal.

  He tried not think that he’d led his lieutenant to the middle of the unknown, and that he wasn’t sure where they were going in the morning.

  And he especially tried not to think that his new wife of just two and a half moons was going to bed alone, for the third time.

  Chapter 18 ~ “Then they did the strangest thing . . .”

  The surgeon jogged over to the knot of soldiers at the edge of the forest. “Well, what kind of trouble have we gotten ourselves into now?” He was already opening his travel pack in eagerness to initiate it.

  None of the men had seen the surly doctor looking happy about anything before. Then again, besides the two injured soldiers the first night of the raid, nothing beyond a few cuts had yet occurred at the fort, and a man with more than thirty years of army service needed to be useful. The surgeon’s eyes glowed in anticipation as he yanked off the sleeve of the wounded corporal.

  “Seems it’s just a nick in the arm, Surgeon,” said the master sergeant. “From that last Guarder they’ve tied up.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.” The gray-haired man sighed in disappointment as he examined the gash. “Not very deep . . . suppose I don’t need to stitch it, then.”

  The corporal closed his eyes in relief that his head wasn’t about to meet a wooden plank to render him unconscious for the procedure.
>
  “Still,” the surgeon cocked his head, “it could stand a thorough cleaning. Decades ago Guarders attempted to poison the knife blades.” A grim smile crept across his face. “We don’t want infection setting in now, do we?”

  The corporal looked at the master sergeant in pleading, but he could only shrug in apology.

  “This will do the trick,” the surgeon announced as he opened a bottle from his pack containing clear liquid.

  The corporal’s shoulders sagged as he saw it was only water.

  But it wasn’t.

  “Yee-OW! What is THAT?!” the corporal cried as he yanked his arm away.

  “My own brew,” the surgeon’s grim smile developed a baleful quality as he gripped the young man’s wrist again. “Burns away any infection. You’ll be arm wrestling again in no time.”

  “Gonna burn off my whole arm!”

  “Nonsense. Besides, this wrap I’m applying will make sure your arm doesn’t fall off.”

  “That could happen?”

  “Strange things do,” the surgeon said without a hint of humor.

  The master sergeant shook his head in assurance at the corporal, but the young soldier didn’t know who to believe.

  “There,” the surgeon said as he tied the wrap. “You’ll be good as new in a few days.” He sounded disappointed. Then he turned to the master sergeant. “A word?”

  The master sergeant nodded and the two men walked a little distance into the vacant field.

  “I’m also here to inform you, sergeant, that you are now in command of the fort.” The surgeon was never one to beat around a bush. He’d plow right over it.

  “What?!”

  “The captain and the lieutenant are still in the forest, correct?”

  “Yes, but Wiles—”

  “—who is third in command has been relieved of duty.”

  “Why did you do that?” the sergeant exclaimed.