by Damien Lake
Flames licked at night’s fabric from the rock pile Wyman had constructed. Caresse’s ability to weave elemental essence continued to squeeze blood from a stone…or heat, at least. It radiated warmth to the small gathering clustered under a jutting shelf that extended over the chasm.
He had prayed hard. Prayed in vain. Caresse, apologetic, kept steering them back to the chasm’s edge, saying there were no other paths out except ones that hugged the drop’s lip along natural fracture lines. The ways she claimed would be passable were, at times, nearly anything but.
Worst had been the last leg immediately before they halted. Again they followed a narrow ledge along the cliff face, made all the worse for the fact that this one slanted toward the void menacingly and the stone surface crumbled ominously underfoot. Flecks vanished silently into the lurking fog.
The path had grown crowded because a matching shelf above their heads descended with every step. Their dangerous path had become a natural corridor in the mountainside, except that the eastern wall missing. Soon enough, what Marik feared came to pass. The corridor had dead-ended. Before he could take out his panicked anger on Caresse, a city mage had knelt at yet another gap in the trail.
“I can see down there! Do you see? There is a second path under us.”
Wyman had edged closer to the hole. “Yes. Four feet across, eight feet down. Too wide to safely chimney-crawl our way down.”
Marik threw himself back against the wall after he had leaned forward to ask what Wyman meant by that remark. A windy gust had nearly pulled him off after the tumbling stone flecks.
His legs had trembled badly. He played no part in the solution as he kept firmly to his position. Their words only came to him on the vagaries of the inconsistent wind.
When he learned what they were cobbling together, he had nearly screamed in worse panic than before. Wyman ordered all the packs to be passed forward to him. There he tied the straps together until they resembled an absurd rope ladder, the parts that normally rested against a man’s back acting as the rungs.
Nothing offered itself as an anchor except a jagged crack running along the wall where the gap ended. Wyman made a loop from a strap, tied a thick knot and pushed it into the crack, then slid the strap down the increasingly narrow split until he reached the narrowest part. A hard tug on the strap proved that the knot was stuck fast within the crack.
One by one, the three city mages slowly worked their way down to the lower path. Wyman held fast to the straps to decrease the tension put on the knot. The stone was already cracked. Too much pull against it might cause it to fragment further.
Lynn went down next. Wyman looked Marik in the eye. Silent words were exchanged. Marik hated to seem weak in front of others, so, with his shakes hardly subsiding as he moved this time, he gripped Wyman’s left hand tightly. He knelt on his bad leg in order to lower his good foot down to the pack ladder.
The instant his full weight stood on the construct, he’d felt his center of gravity sway toward the chasm. Wyman’s grip was firm enough that Marik somehow held onto his sanity. Teeth gritted, his free hand sweating while it throttled the pack straps, he shifted his weight. He swung hard into the cliff wall. It jarred him badly and sent fiery lances racing through his ribs.
He found this the most horrible experience he could clearly remember. Reaching for the next lower pack with his foot made his head swim. It seemed he had to keep stretching into eternity until he held on with his fingernails before he finally found the next step. When he found it, and shifted his weight so he stood firmly on that foot, the pack curled around his boot, the ladder swaying out over the chasm once again. The whole time his back scraped painfully against the natural chimney’s sharp stone.
Marik kept his eyes closed throughout the ordeal. Feeling it was bad enough. The trial lasted for half a lifetime until, at last, his boot struck stone and hands held his back to steady him. It was a feat of willpower to unclench his hands.
Wyman waited until Marik stepped away before racing down the pack ladder. Caresse held the straps as best she could, but Wyman wanted to reach the bottom as quickly as possible to minimize the stress against the unreliable stone. In an eye blink, he cleared the last pack.
Caresse pulled the knot free and dropped the ladder into Wyman’s waiting hands. He passed it along their line until the city mages started separating them.
Marik clenched his eyes shut all over to avoid witnessing what he felt certain would be the wizardess’ death plunge. She nimbly dropped to her knees at the chimney’s ledge, spun to face the opposite direction, then lowered her body into the gap. Wyman coached until she hung by her hands, her legs in his encircling arms.
An easy drop of three feet followed. She fell through his arms until she landed. Wyman controlled her momentum as best he could, which ended with them both pressed hard against the cliff. They untangled their bodies, unseemly comments unspoken, though an excited flush colored her cheeks when Marik dared view the world. He doubted it was from Wyman’s close contact as much as her thrill with the adventurous moment.
Onward they had plodded until the new path branched into a cliff-side clearing as large as the overlook had been. The shelf above would ward off the rain if it finally chose to abandon the heavens and race toward the ground. All in all, it had been the sort of day Marik truly despised.
What they needed was to find an actual path leading back to Galemar. When they had originally journeyed to the overlook, they had only traveled a short distance into the Stoneseams. There could only be a single line of mountains separating them. The thought of traversing the entire range to reach Tullainia made him shudder…but if they were continually forced to follow the single way out of one hellhole to reach the next, they could very well be forced into the neighboring kingdom.
He had never before appreciated how hostile a mountain range could be. His only experiences were with the pass through which the Taurs had stampeded the previous winter. And the time on the lower slopes of the Cliffsdains where he’d become a roasted carcass thanks to a certain hedge-wizard.
Come to think of it, all his experiences with mountains could be categorized as distinctly negative. Small wonder the third time proved as bad. The legendary trouble-triplets. Clichés never became clichés because they were baseless. Truth persists.
An animal trail had brought them to the first overlook. One so ancient it had become as lasting as the mountains through which it wound, a well-known path knowledge of which had passed from the locals to army maps. If a curly-horned goat had ever trod through these inner reaches, it had left no evidence to prove it.
The Stoneseams had always struck Marik as forbidding when he’d had opportunity to gaze upon the sheer walls rising from the forests. He’d never known the half of it. What would they do if the next time they ran into a dead end there was no handy hole to drop down through? They could be trapped with no way out…
Considering the problem, he realized the only other ingress into the mountains he knew of was that same pass the Taurs had poured through. If they could reach that, then they could…get killed. It was still held by the Arronaths. Could they possibly slip into the pass and down without running into enemy forces?
He doubted it. What then? If they found no way back to Galemar before they reached the pass, should they try to slip across it, slink into the mountains on the other side while praying that sooner or later they would?
The mountains near the Rovasii were so sheer they were impossible to scale. Were there any paths down before they reached that far south? He remembered none.
From the temporary army outpost on the Southern Road following the initial invasion, he and half the Ninth Squad had run nonstop to the Rovasii in a single day. He could have run past a dozen mountain paths without noticing them since they were hardly skirting the Stoneseams’ base at the time. Most of the way they could only see the peaks rising in the distance.
But how far would they have to travel south through the Stoneseams on limited r
ations? Could they count on finding a trail down to Galemar? If not before the forest, could there possibly be any still further south that emptied into the Rovasii?
He shuddered. The wind had picked up, yet it had nothing to do with the chill he felt. Thoughts of reentering those bewitched trees after being fortunate enough to escape with a whole skin the last time made his flesh crawl.
Perhaps that dark forest was responsible for Colbey’s…illness. The scout, he remembered, had suddenly grown worse after they entered the forbidden trees. His sadistic attack on the Arronath they had captured, his odd behavior later…and he’d mentioned to Sloan that he had grown up in Surrill. Since Colbey had lived his childhood in a town on the Rovasii’s very borders, could that not have allowed whatever malice ruled the trees to seep into his mind?
The poison that had destroyed such a capable man... Colbey had been suffering a personality deterioration all through the previous year. He had never spoken of it, yet the changes could be marked to the time of his return from scouting alone in Tullainia. Did he pass through the forest during that journey? If the Rovasii were at the root of Colbey’s ailment, then reentering it with the Ninth must have triggered whatever confusion had ensnared his senses.
To Marik, this notion seemed to have merit. After all, roots were what forests were all about.
Fat drops of nighttime tar began pelting the path outside their overhang when rain finally assaulted the Stoneseams. Entwined around his worries concerning how slippery the stone would be next morning, one thought repeated endlessly in his head. They had better find a trail down to Galemar before it came to a choice of heading into the Rovasii or attempting to cross the entire range to reach Tullainia.
* * * * *
For the first time in…well, years, Dietrik stared in awe. The scene that arrested his attention was neither a natural wonder, a monumental achievement by mankind nor evidence of a divine hand at work. What left him utterly flabbergasted was—
“Your advice is noted, mercenary leader! For the last time, I care little for the slipshod ways you free-swords go about the business of warfare. The Galemaran Forces Rules and Regulations Charter was crafted by men well-learned in the arts of battle! Their knowledge is based on the boundless expertise garnered by both them and their predecessors. We will commit no action which the charter strictly forbids.”
Torrance’s jaw clenched tighter. Dietrik nursed a spark of sympathy for the commander, whose temper finally looked to be cracking a tad after the long days enduring these fools.
“Your rigid adherence to your standards is admirable, major. Yet by holding back all scouting patrols, you reduce our sphere of awareness from ‘partial’ to exactly zero. It is easily possible that the Arro—”
“Soldiers engaged in ranged observation, ‘scouts’ as they are commonly known,” Tybalt’s officer quoted with venom, “shall, at all times, be equipped accordingly for the successful accomplishment of their duties and personal safety! Had I brought with me a copy of the charter, I would gladly produce it for you to read. Or have a literate soldier read it to you, at any rate. The list of equipment necessary for a scout to carry out his mission comprises forty-two items. It is no surprise to us that this mercenary general proceeded in flagrant disregard for proper procedure, but now that this force is being run by genuine officers, matters will follow all guidelines as laid down by the charter!”
“You can’t leash the scouts on the basis of a single item!” Torrance snapped.
“A collapsible Captain’s Glass is a primary piece of equipment for army scouts,” came the terse answer. “Not only is it vital to the scout for performing his mission, but it is also key to his safety, allowing him time to avoid enemy units while maintaining his stealth.”
“Crimson Kings scouts are capable of utilizing their eyes. If you refuse to ‘endanger’ your soldiers, then I will order out the men under my command.”
“You will do nothing of the sort! Under your band’s agreement with the crown, you are merely an element of the Galemaran army. We give the orders, not you, and I will not permit you grandstanding mercenaries to bungle the task and attract attention! It is high time you people learned what discipline is. So until the consignment of Captain’s Glasses we requisitioned arrives, none of your so called ‘scouts’ will move a single inch until they are absolutely compliant with charter gear, charter methods and charter regulations!”
Torrance retaliated with a red-faced comment that Dietrik missed since the howling wind increased its ferocity. It forced him sideways two steps until he adjusted his weight, leaning into the wind. The storm had ceased its merciless rainfall. For the moment. After two days of furious deluge, he expected this was only a light breather while the tempest collected its strength for the next bought.
Aside to his left he could see half the band’s lieutenants waiting in the trees. Many trunks were broken from the rampaging boulders, tilted sideways against their brothers in haphazard lean-tos. The men were grim, each an identical portrait in gray. Gray light. Gray water dripping in gemstone ropes around them. Gray faces. Gray prospects. Were he not so familiar with Fraser from his time as their unit’s sergeant, Dietrik would have been unable to pick him from the lot.
The commander exited the small tent a moment later. Fury twisted his normally impassive features. Torrance was a long master at dealing with nobles who viewed mercenaries as mobile walls designed to make an enemy expend their arrow stock, yet Tybalt had carefully selected the officers he hoped would take charge of the western efforts. Dietrik possessed no doubts that these three men also carried carte blanche approval from the knight-marshal to run the best band in the kingdom through a meat grinder if at all possible.
Torrance stormed toward the trees in imitation of the skies above. Dietrik watched. The lieutenants huddled around the commander. Curt words passed, followed by the dispersal of the squad leaders. They shuffled disconsolately away, vanishing like breaths on the wind within the fragmented Citadel’s labyrinth. Only Torrance remained, arms crossed, glaring angrily into the wreckage.
Dietrik hesitated. Less from doubt than from conflicting desires. He had paused initially to hear what the army major would say to Torrance, to see how the man would treat the commander. There had existed the possibility that after the days of sweat and toil in the aftermath, the officers might have gained a better appreciation for the necessity of taking the Arronath threat more seriously than they appeared to have done so far.
Except their bias still ruled their attitudes. A soldier was a soldier and a merc was a merc. Men could change their natures the same way water could flow uphill. Mixing these antipathetical species of men had never been a good idea from the start.
The major’s attack on Torrance either stemmed from his aversion to mercenaries, or his utopian view of the military world. Or both. Chaps have never been restricted to a single delusion at a time. That was the strongest reason you left your old division in the first place, isn’t that right old boy? Common sense is, after all, not that common. The boots are worn more from excessive polishing rather than road miles.
He had meant to march into that tent and speak his mind. Direct confrontation might startle them so badly their brains would start moving.
Torrance, standing alone in a windstorm. It seemed an uncomfortable omen. Should he speak to the commander instead? Or should he finally tell these self-important bastards they deserved to rot in the abyss?
Dietrik swiveled his gaze between tent and man, man and tent. The breeze increased. It dove down his collar, chilling his skin as it wrested inside his clothing like a pair of pups. A raindrop large enough to burst in a translucent rose blossom plastered his hair to his brow.
In the end, he sidled out of the shadows in Torrance’s direction. After all, a merc was a merc. It probably would not go well but he understood Torrance. And Torrance understood him.
“Life is full of sugars and spices as an officer subordinate, I see.”
Torrance jerked his head a
round sharply. “You had better produce a compelling reason why you are not working the flesh from your fingertips, Dietrik. You’ve already crossed too many lines, both with me and especially with the majors.”
“I learned, many years ago, that officers are much like martyrs. They are never happy unless they are suffering, and letting the world know it.”
“I’ve always allowed band members leeway,” Torrance said, unfolding his one good arm to face Dietrik fully. “Only a fool wastes his efforts on doomed attempts to make mercenaries tow the line without any slack whatsoever. But I have never hesitated to eject men from the band either, if it proved necessary in the end. Over the past days, your attitude has caused increased friction between myself and the majors than likely would have arisen on its own.”
Dietrik pursed his lips in mock worry, his eyebrows raised theatrically. “So it would have been sunshine and roses but for my foibles, is that it?”
“I am hardly so dense as to have expected better, Dietrik.” His expression hardened. “Nor am I mystified why you are to be found here rather than with your squad. I will not allow you to confront the majors again. If you attempt to do so, you will be drummed from the payroll lists and your Crimson Tag stripped away.”
A laugh escaped Dietrik. “What a tragedy, commander! Being forced to miss fighting in a war under officers who want us dead, and against enemies who crawled out from the old gulf sailors’ tall tales of my youth!”
“Has this been your intent from the start, then? Men are free to quit the band at any time, yet under the muster call sent by the crown, it would then be considered desertion. If you have turned trouble-brewer solely to escape this war, then I will refrain from expelling you on the single reason that keeping you in the ranks would be the greater punishment.”
“My future with the band…” Dietrik mused in thoughtful contemplation. “I left army life because the daily routines never failed to get me hacked off. I’m not so certain about a Crimson Kings lifestyle any longer either. But what will never change is the value I place upon true comrades.”