Veil of the Deserters

by Jeff Salyards

  I looked at him, and the uncertainty must have been stamped on my face.

  “Gods be cruel, but you are a naïve bastard.” He laughed and hauled his own harness down. “Get under the wagon, scribbler. And wear a leather bib. Plague me.”

  The land might have been slowly changing, but the translation gave only more of the same. Bawdy (and badly composed) poetry complete with erotic drawings in the marginalia (no translation needed there!) to ridiculous bestiaries full of manticores and long-limbed elephants, giant translucent bats, and something floating through the air that looked quite a bit like the boneless fringe fish.

  But few extended references to memory witches, cursed weapons, or anything else Braylar had assigned me to catalogue. At least, nothing that added significantly to the findings we had already cobbled together with my previous efforts and Henlester’s corroboration. Still, the infrequent allusions, even if brief, did seem to substantiate what we had gleaned already.

  Just as it had with Alespell, traffic on the road increased the further we traveled into Thurvacia and the Syldoon Empire, though more due to the draw of the capital city than any famous fair. Cairns and carts, larger lumbering wagons, a woman driving goats with one of her small unruly children riding a burly one at the rear, men on donkeys or leading them along, a great many on foot, and a few wealthy enough to own horses. With the inked nooses bared to the world now, all of the native Thurvacians moved off the road to let us pass. They had lived the land for thousands of years, doubtless back to the age when the Deserter Gods were known and revered by name and the slaves, fief workers, and fief lords alike were the same people, the same race. But now there was no question who the held power. Anyone seeing a noose (or at least a sizable party of them) bowed or cleared the way, deferential.

  And thankfully, no Hornmen or watchtowers in sight. They rode the roads in Anjuria and other kingdoms to the south, but fortunately they had no place in the north. In the Empire, with its standing army, there was no need for soldiers to patrol the routes, protecting (or preying) on travelers.

  The road itself changed as well. Traveling through Anjuria it was usually dirt, or mud after a hard rain, and sometimes in a few baronies, cobblestones or bricks, at least in the areas immediately surrounding some of the larger villages or towns. But mostly rutted dirt or wheel-sucking, hoof-swallowing mud that seemed designed to slow travel and break ankles. But once we crossed over into Thurvacia, it was a different thing altogether.

  Lord’s Highway was far beyond the few stone-paved roads in Anjuria—a work of major construction and planning, broad and well-maintained, obviously designed to move both armies and civilians quickly and efficiently from one location to another. Cambered to aid drainage to the ditches alongside, flanked by footpaths and in some cases additional bridleways, they appeared close to uniform. Braylar assured me that while there were lesser roads, the main highways connected every major city or outpost in every Syldoon province, and most roads eventually led to Sunwrack.

  Regardless of the terrain, whether rocky, broken by ravines or rivers, hilly, or mountainous, the roads were there, a triumph of surveying and engineering, a network unlike any other in the known world. Even in some of the marshlands to the east, I was told they were built on piled foundations or supported by stone piers.

  Passing through Thurvacia, with the land growing hillier and rockier, we crossed a number of steep ravines over sturdy bridges, and as we approached the third or fourth such ravine, I saw something else coming down from the higher hills to the west. It looked like another bridge at first, but as we got closer I could see that there was no traffic on it. Then I realized that it must have been an aqueduct of some sort, bringing water down from the highlands. I had only read about them before—while Anjuria was home to hundreds or thousands of windmills, especially near the Green Sea, aqueducts were another construction peculiar to the Syldoon Empire.

  I was sitting next to Braylar, watching the aqueduct further down in the valley as we crossed a bridge, and he must have seen the wonder on my face and smiled as if he had built the thing himself. “You will find that the further north we go, there are fewer large rivers and lakes and the land is more hilly and mountainous, so it is necessary to bring water from wher ever it is found. The Empire would not persist without the aqueducts. They enabled growth and sustained it on a scale never seen before.”

  “It’s large. Much larger than I imagined they might be, at least.”

  “Bah! This is nothing. If we ever have cause to visit the province of Urglovia, there you will see aqueducts of impressive size. They are famous for them, and some are so wide that boats can travel down them.”

  I stared at him, not sure if he was jesting or not. When he noticed, he said, “Truly. They are generally used for transport, and cross other bridges, ravines, or roads. The governor of the province, Munsellik, had a penchant for the dramatic, and he liked to sail a barge down the aqueduct, a floating manse. The aqueduct was broad enough for flatboats, but this barge was simply too much. Or the gods smote Munsellik for his vanity, as the arches gave way, the aqueduct collapsed, and down he and his entire gaudy party went, crashing to the bottom of the ravine below.

  “The next governor took the lesson to heart, and after rebuilding the aqueduct, restricted movement on them to lighter and more humble transport. But the larger ones persist, in Urglovia especially. And you can still see the flatboats traveling down them.”

  “That’s amazing.”

  “That is nothing. Manses might be forbidden, but in the heart of the province, they have aqueducts erected simply to serve as raised channels for sport skiffs to race on.”

  “But the water is precious, you said?”

  Braylar replied, “So it is. And the Syldoon heart delights in ostentatious display and use of things. You will never meet a people more practical or vain in equal measure.”

  I shook my head, trying to imagine the wealth, time, and labor it must have required to build such things. And this was just the first of many sights and sounds that would amaze and shock me in Thurvacia, heartland of the Syldoon Empire.

  After what felt like a tenmonth of journeying, we finally neared Sunwrack.

  Braylar told me to leave off translation and called me to the front of the wagon. Which was just as well—the iron-shod hooves and iron-rimmed wheels of our party made a terrible racket as we clacked, clomped, and clattered over the stone highway, which was hardly conducive to concentration. But those could almost be tuned out, drifting into a loud, but repetitive cacophony. However, the closer we got to the capital, the more other noises joined our own as we passed traffic heading away from the city, or those who stopped to let us pass—a donkey braying, a child crying, horses whinnying, and a hundred other intermittent and brief sounds that made it all but impossible to focus. I kept reading the same lines over and over with no comprehension to speak of, and my head was pounding.

  And the day was hot and dry as well—even with the front and rear flaps open, there was no breeze to speak of, so my tunic was sticking to my skin in every conceivable spot. I’d been in bathhouses where I sweated less.

  So I was all too happy to move to the front of the wagon. I threw my leg over the bench and was about to crawl over when I looked up and felt my breath catch.

  Sunwrack. In all its ancient, dirty, beautiful, and exotic splendor.

  “Oh do sit down, Arki. You look an ass straddling the bench like that.”

  I did as he commanded and perched there, stunned. Until a short time ago, Rivermost had been the largest town I’d ever been in for much of my life. And then we journeyed to Alespell, baronial seat and home to one of the grandest fairs in Anjuria, and I’d been almost overwhelmed with the size and variety of sights and sounds. It was hard to imagine a more impressive city.

  Clearly, I should have tried harder.

  Alespell was a fortified city, to be certain, its defenses stout enough to withstand almost any assault—the walls, covered as they were in snails and
plastered with gull droppings, were still impressive, tall and broken by towers every few hundred feet. But Sunwrack… its walls dwarfed those of Alespell, being at least fifty feet higher, maybe more, and there were so many massive towers they were impossible to count, each as large as most castle keeps, and flying a different banner at the top, incredibly varied in color and motif. While towers in Alespell typically had a silk standard on a pole on top to catch and snap in the breeze, these massive towers had the poles ringing the crown of the tower, with odd banners hanging down. The tops of the banners were embattled like the towers themselves, with the “merlons” of the banners being loops for the poles.

  Hewspear was riding to the right of us and saw me inspecting the banners. “Pike Tower, Leopard Tower, Griffin Tower, Serpent Tower. Pretty much every charge you can imagine: eagle, elk, moon, fox, bear, crane, otter, falcon—”

  “Goat, leopard, seastag, galley, stork, star wheel…” Vendurro offered, riding on the opposite side of the wagon with Mulldoos. “No dung tower though. Nor chicken come to think of it.”

  “Though there is a Cock Tower, with its crowing charge resplendent for all the world to see,” Hewspear said, smiling all the while.

  “I could really go for some chicken right about now. Or quail. Even a fried egg or five would do fine. Anything hot and greasy, so long as it ain’t dung.”

  The smaller towers had normal crenellations, but the larger Towers that housed the Syldoon had fancifully carved merlons all along the embattlements, stylized representations of each Tower’s sigil.

  Mulldoos said, “Hard to believe we’re home, eh, Cap? Haven’t seen the rest of the Jackal bastards in, what, more than three years is it?” He actually sounded relieved, weary, and maybe a touch wistful. I would have thought someone else had spoken if I hadn’t seen his lips move.

  Braylar nodded, and for once, he looked almost at peace.

  The whole exchange was so out of the ordinary, I had no idea what to make of it, before recalling what Vendurro had told me—this place was home to these men, in a way that I would never fully understand.

  I was so amazed at the scale and immensity of Sunwrack and the countless number of great towers along its fortified walls, and our approach was on such level ground, that it wasn’t until we were within a few hundred yards that I realized what I assumed was a simple dry moat turned into something much different.

  First, it was at least over a bowshot wide. And it didn’t appear to be a dry moat, or even a ravine. It was a chasm. A huge gulf in the earth separating the city of Sunwrack from all the surrounding land. I thought there must have been a bridge of some kind, and there was. Of sorts. The busy Lord’s Highway led to a massive gatehouse on the edge of the chasm. But as the travelers heading toward the city were allowed through, and our group closed in on the first gatehouse, I could see that a lowered drawbridge served as the bridge proper, supported by a wide stone support column that disappeared into the darkness below, and on the other side of the platform, there was another rolling drawbridge and a second gatehouse on another huge stone column. This pattern continued, with four gatehouses spanning the chasm on their larger stone structure, for a total of six, as the final one that served as the entrance proper to the city was bigger than all the rest.

  As we rumbled across the stone landings and wooden drawbridges, I saw why all traffic seemed to drift to the center of the bridge. Even with railings on the outside, the chasm was so deep that I couldn’t see the bottom. I found myself craning to get a better look and glad that I wasn’t walking along the railing. We crossed some deep ravines on our way to Sunwrack, but nothing so broad as this, nor deep. The bottom, wherever it was, was lost in shadow.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “No,” Braylar replied, smiling. “You have not.”

  “Does this chasm go the entire way around the city?”

  “It does. There are four entrances to Sunwrack, of identical construction.”

  “Was this a natural formation of some kind? Is that why the city founders chose the site?”

  “Not being among their number, I could not say why the site was chosen. You are aware Sunwrack was not built a tenday ago, yes?”

  “Yes. Of course.” I stood slightly to look over the side of the next drawbridge. “But this… it’s an island in stone.”

  “That is because it is not a natural formation.”

  “I knew it!”

  “Then why did you ask?”

  I barely heard him, looking at the chasm as it stretched around the border of the city and disappeared, another staggered bridge barely visible around the bend. “If this was dug by men, it must have taken… how long? How long did this take?”

  Hewspear overheard me. “Twenty years,” he said. “It would have taken much longer had they been using ordinary workers, but slaves do not have the luxury of complaining when worked beyond exhaustion. Countless lives in the making.”

  I reminded myself never to complain about my lot in life again. “Not Syldoon, then?”

  He smiled. “No. Syldoon start out as slaves, but their lives are valuable and rarely thrown away, and certainly never in the construction of what amounted to a mass grave.”

  I tried to imagine blistered and brutalized men, digging out rock and dirt, hauling it out of the largest hole men had deigned to ever dig, deeper than any quarry, and broad, so very broad. Encircling a city that housed at least a quarter million residents, maybe more. And all for what? There were fortified cities in all lands, and none went to this extreme in creating such a defensible position. All those lives wasted. I wondered how many skeletons littered the unseen floor.

  “Was it one of your Emperors who did this? Created this?”

  Hewspear shook his head, coins jangling in the long braids of his beard. “No. This predated the Syldoon by a few centuries at least.”

  I saw something move on the rock wall on the other side of the chasm. At first, I thought it was my eyes playing tricks on me, too tired from scanning ancient documents. But as I shaded them and looked more closely, I saw there were several somethings. They scuttled down the rock face. And they were big.

  Braylar was watching me and laughed. “Bull crabs.”

  I kept my eyes on them, the dark speckled chitin of their bodies nearly blending in with the stone. They had ten legs, the front two ending in large claws. And while it was difficult to tell from that distance, the bull crabs appeared to be bigger than large shields.

  “Those things…” I started.

  “Could kill you with one crunch,” he finished. “They are vicious, but thankfully only fast in short bursts.”

  We passed through a gatetower, and I noticed the soldiers bearing those curious shields I knew were Syldoonian but had only seen before in illuminated manuscripts, as Braylar’s company had adopted the round shields commonly seen in Anjuria. These shields had an embattled top to simulate the square crenellations of a tower, or in this case, Tower, and then tapered to a point at the bottom rather than the oval shape frequently seen elsewhere. They were all a deep green, with the repeated charge of white ram’s heads strewn across them.

  As we continued onto the next section of bridge, I looked at Hewspear and Mulldoos and Vendurro—it was obvious this chasm and its peculiarities were such a familiar sight they didn’t even think twice about it. I asked Mulldoos, “And how would you assail Sunwrack if you had to?”

  “Eh? What’s that, scribbler?”

  “Every time you and Hewspear enter a city, you like to debate how you would take it if you had to. Sunwrack seems about as impregnable a place as I can imagine. So, if you had to lay siege here, how would you do it?”

  Mulldoos looked ready to say something snide or belittling, but then stopped himself. “I never gave it much thought, in truth. You, Hew?”

  Hewspear shook his head again. “Strangely, no. We’ve entered this city hundreds of times, and we never stopped to consider it.”

  “Seems kind of disloyal, do
n’t it?”

  “Perhaps. But our young friend does have a point. Sunwrack is unassailable.”

  “You say that about every plaguing city we come into.” He stroked his invisible beard and adopted passable Hewspear inflections, “‘These fortifications are utterly impregnable.’ Tighter than a priest’s bunghole they are. Every plaguing time.”

  Hewspear laughed. “So, my siege-minded friend, how would you bring Sunwrack to ruin if you had the command? What would be your brilliant plan then?”

  “Sunwrack’s a tough nut, to be certain. Toughest I ever seen. No question.” He pointed at the top of one of the huge towers. “Those trebuchets up there got range on engines any attacker might be dumb enough to line up on the other side of the Trench, on account of height.”

  “True.”

  “And once the bridges are pulled, no possible way to assault the walls.”

  “True as well. You are making my case for me,” Hewspear said.

  “Shut it, you old wrinkled prick.”

  “Wrinkled, aye, but wizened with wisdom.”

  Vendurro looked up at the red walls and slate great towers. “No way to assault it. How about starve them out?”

  Mulldoos shook his head immediately. “This a plaguing city, you lippy pup. They got stores of food to last for years. No army could stay in the field long enough to outlast them.”

  Vendurro replied, “No frontal assault maybe, but what if a small group climbed down the trench in the dark of night, up the other side, managed to gain the wall? Open a gate from inside.”

  Mulldoos glared at the younger man. “And what if the besieging army had a platoon of horses with pretty wings and they could fly overhead, dropping fiery horseshit from the air.” He pointed at the large gatehouse on the wall we were approaching. “That savvy group of mountain climbers would need to survive the bottom of the trench. Rats as big as weasels down there, feeding on the sewage. Bull crabs bigger than dogs feeding on them. Some say much worse lurking in the dark, feasting on both. So you’re telling me a group survives the climb down in the pitch of night, fights through the nasty critters roaming the trench bottom, and somehow makes it back up the other side, with nobody sighting them and filling them with shafts. That what you’re saying?”