He pointed to a cluster of purple caps as meaty as an orange. "What are those for?"
"Mushrooms? You know, in some cultures, they're treated as food."
"But why not grow wheat or potatoes, like they do in Ankin Drog?"
"Because in Ankin Drog, they have access to an unusual resource known as 'sunlight.' You see that rain over there? And there? And every other direction you turn? I hope you enjoy it, because it almost never stops."
"That's why you have to bring in dirt from the castle. The rain washes yours out. But if it's too rainy for wheat, how do your trees grow?"
"Oh, trees find a way." She gave him a sly look. "With a little help from our wizards."
Joti peered at her, trying to tell if she was joking, but she walked on as briskly as ever, boots ringing on the boardwalk. Dozens of wooden buildings were laced between the trees. A handful had been built into the branches overhead. Weapons clanged from somewhere in the mist.
Shain brought him to a row of shacks, opening the door of the fourth.
"Your new home. Don't get too comfy, though. I expect we're the last ones back from the field. Be ready to start your training tomorrow." She shut the door on him, then poked her head back inside. "Oh, and don't go wandering around. The sentries are enthusiastic archers. And the river that brought us here doubles as a perfect corpse disposal system."
She closed the door again. The shack had a cot, a table, and a few hooks on the wall. Joti hung up his damp cloak and sat on the cot, releasing a plume of mold smell. Even with the door shut, he could hear the hiss of the rain on the roof and the river beneath the floor.
Listening to the whisper of water, he felt like he'd never been further from home.
~
A fist pounded on the door. Joti was already awake. Inside the shack, it was dark enough to believe it was still night, but when he opened the door, a dull, diffused light fought its way through the fog.
A squat bullfrog of a man looked Joti up and down. "Awake already. I like that. If it's light enough to see, it's light enough to work."
The man jogged down the boards and Joti followed into the confusion of piers and trees. If he hadn't had a guide, Joti would have been lost immediately. He didn't recognize any of it until the woods and boardwalks came to an end. Blank water spread before them, leading to the thunderous falls he and Shain had crossed over the day before. The squat man trundled across a low-slung bridge that led to a wide platform cantilevered over the edge of the waterfall.
A gusty wind tore at Joti's clothes. Mist boiled up from the base of the falls, condensing on his eyelashes and the hair on his arms. The pool churned a hundred feet below; past that, the ground angled swiftly downhill, vanishing into fog. Joti stepped back before vertigo claimed him.
He was the first to arrive. Over the next ten minutes, he was joined by twelve boys and eight girls, all of them no more than a year or two older or younger than himself. The others ran the spectrum of clans: the white hair of the Gru; a pale Artusker; the spindly limbs and narrow fangs of the Kran. Despite their young age, several bore scars on their faces. One girl was missing an eye. As they waited, the rain began to fall once more, soaking them.
Footsteps vibrated the bridge. An older man paced toward them, tall and strong, long gray hair swept back from his temples and brow. His cloak, like Shain's, was metallic, yet rather than shining, it seemed to deflect the eye. His gray shirt bore a blank white circle in its center. Four soldiers accompanied him.
The children fell back, allowing the adults through. The older man moved to the edge of the platform overhanging the falls. He regarded them with a tight jaw.
His voice was like a bear up on its haunches. "My name is Cog Loton. I am the chieftain of the No-Clan. Today, we are well met. After today, pray in every shrine you pass that you never have cause to see me until the day you finish your training.
"Today, you have a choice to make: to walk away, or to pledge your life to the No-Clan. Walk away, and you'll never see this place again. You'll owe us nothing; we'll hold no claim to you. You will be free to pursue whatever life you wish—although I would advise you to make better choices than the ones that led you here.
"If instead you choose to stay, the No-Clan will forge you into men and women stronger than dwarven steel. In exchange, you'll be bound to us for the next thirty years of your life."
Cog Loton's pale, washed-out eyes tracked across the youths standing on the platform. An unsteady wind ruffled their cloaks. "Stay, and your training will last the first five years of your service. Some of you will soon discover you don't have the talent or the taste for battle. Instead of soldiering, you may serve your term in the stables, the forges, the kitchens, or procuring supplies for the Peak of Tears. Some of you will have the skill for fighting, but lack the endurance or temperament to roam alone in hostile lands. As warriors, you will serve as men-at-arms at Dolloc Castle."
"And some of you won't have a shred of talent at anything," a man called out. "You will become the teachers!"
Laughter rippled behind them. A red-bearded human male stood at the other end of the platform, looking very pleased with himself. The hair stood up on Joti's neck. He'd only seen humans twice before: mixed among the slaves of Ankin Drog, and hanging by their guts from the city walls.
He'd heard of them in dozens of Yatto stories, though. More than enough to know that when humans trespassed on orc lands, it tended to be the orcs who suffered.
Everyone knew this was true. Yet rather than bashing him into paste, the adults around him were laughing. Even Chief Loton grunted in amusement. With a frown, Joti turned back to the older man.
"Some of you," the chieftain continued, "will prove skilled in nearly every way we need, but lack the final sparks of foresight and judgment. As warriors and rangers, you will become wardens. The faithful companions.
"And a few of you—a very few—will be honed into warriors, rangers, and terrors. You will become Kun Duk Mak: the Marshals of the Many-Claimed Lands."
Joti's breath caught in his throat. The same stillness that took him enfolded on the others around him. It was the stillness of hunters who'd spotted a wyvern and weren't sure if they could bring it down—but who knew they had to try.
If the commander noticed their change in mood, he gave no sign. "Whatever rank you attain, whether servant or Marshal, no one from the other clans will know that you've spent your lives protecting theirs. They won't know of the raids averted. The wars put to bed before they could begin. The humans punished for treachery and scheming. The countless orcish lives saved. Those lives will be your legacy, but if you do your job right, the people you're protecting won't know you had any part of it. There will be no glory for you except among the others here who work within the same shadows as yourself.
"Wherever you wind up serving, the next five years will be the hardest of your life. That is intentional. For they will serve as the forging of the armor that will protect you through all the years that come after."
Cog Loton stopped to gaze at each of them in turn, the wind sweeping his gray hair into his pale, almost colorless eyes. "It's time to make your choice. This is the only time you'll get to make it. Whatever your decision, it cannot be undone after today. Who among you chooses to leave?"
There was no sound but the patter of the rain on the deck. Ashen-faced, an older boy lifted his hand. He was followed by a younger girl. Several seconds later, no one else had joined them.
Loton nodded to one of his escorts. The soldier moved among the children, collecting the boy and the girl and leading them away down the bridge to the settlement. As they departed, a figure in a hooded blue robe patched with white sigils moved to stand beside the chieftain.
"Those who remain will now make their vows." Loton's voice, earlier so much like a roaring bear, lowered to a growl of warning. "Do you swear to serve the No-Clan until the end of the strength of your arms and heart?"
A jumbled and chaotic chorus answered: "I do."
"Do
you swear to renounce all your ties to clan, tribe, and family, except what you find here?"
This time, the nineteen children spoke as one. "I do."
"And do you swear to obey your officers and your chieftains, to hold your ground no matter the odds, even if your lone sword stands against the full host of the Alliance?"
Joti shouted, "I do!"
Loton lifted his face to the cloud-suffocated skies. "Then let you be bound to your oath."
The blue-robed figure made a sideways gesture. Children grinned at each other. Joti's heart became light. He knew two things: that he had made the right decision. And that he would never betray the No-Clan.
With the swearing ceremony complete, they were brought back across the bridge to a tailor and a cobbler. There, each of them were sized for two sets of clothes: one white, to be worn around the Peak of Tears, and one gray-green, for wear outside the fortress of platforms. They were to receive a similar-colored traveling cloak greased to be waterproof, along with a pair of lightweight leather boots with strange notches and grooves around their edges.
By the time they finished, it was mid-morning and Joti's stomach was growling. The cobbler sent them to the platform outside.
An annoyed-looking man waited for them, his arms and gut testing the give of his laced-up shirt. "My name's Almak. I'm recruit boss around here. You won't like me. But best keep it to yourself, because we're about to spend a stinking heap of time together." He looked them up and down, the left side of his mouth tightening. "Where did they find you lot? Don't see nothing but fat and gristle. You look like the scraps my mom wouldn't even throw in the bottom of the stew pot."
He closed his eyes, as if too pained to take in the sight of them. "On the subject, I suppose you ain't been fed yet, have you? Then here's your first task: rustle up some grub."
Almak brought them to a stretch of boardwalk near the northeast corner of the fort where there were few buildings and even fewer people. Trees disappeared up into the clouds, their trunks smooth-barked and slick with mist.
Almak smacked his knuckles against one. "These are eggfruit trees. Those of you who can guess what number comes after two will guess they're so-called because they grow eggfruit. The taste ain't anything special, but they're enough to keep a man alive." He gave them a long and skeptical look. "Out in the wilds, the Marshals don't have nothing to depend on but themselves. Time for you to learn to do the same. You want to eat? Go and get it. You got five minutes."
They stared at him, hesitant. Then the girl with the missing eye bounded forward, flinging herself into the branches like a squirrel chased by a dog. Everyone scattered. Joti broke for the closest tree, found it swarmed by three others, and ran to one further down the platform. He jumped to reach its lower branches. He heaved himself up, eyes locking on a pair of pale oval fruit another ten feet up.
"Move with the quickness now!" Almak yelled up at them. "Too slow, and somebody else is apt to eat your breakfast for you!"
Joti reached up and plucked the two fruit loose. They were squishy, the smooth skins barely holding in the gooey pulp. He pocketed them, spotted another pair on the next branch over, and maneuvered around the trunk toward them. He snatched them up and moved on, eventually collecting three more.
"Time!" Almak hollered. "If you're not down in sixty seconds, then I eat whatever you found."
Joti hurried down the branches. Back on the ground, he discovered his left pocket was full of slippery gunk. He'd squashed two of the fruit while climbing. He punched his fangs into the skin of an unbroken eggfruit and sucked out the juice. It had a creamy texture and a blandly sweet flavor. The others who'd made it down dug into their meals.
Almak gazed up into the branches, where an older boy named Tull was thrashing through the leaves. As Joti finished his third fruit, tossing the skin off the platform and into the shallow river surrounding them, Tull dropped to the boards with a rattle.
"You're late." Almak held out his hand. "What've you brought me?"
"That's not fair." Tull got out his fruit, but didn't hand them over. "You didn't tell us we'd only have a minute to climb back down."
"If you bump into a wyvern down in the foothills, d'you think it'll give you a minute's warning before it stings? If you're caught unawares by a gang of human raiders, will they give you a minute's head start before the arrows start flying?" Almak took the fruit from the boy and squeezed them into his mouth, wiping juice from his chin. "If you ever want to be a ranger, you learn to feed yourself. Can't do that much, and you'll never leave these peaks."
Joti lobbed a fourth rind into the waters. Almak swiveled his way, scowling. "What in the bottomless hells d'you think you're doing?"
Joti wiped his hand on his breeches. "You expect us to feed ourselves, but not to clean up after ourselves?"
"All you're doing is throwing away good mushroom food." He gave Joti a lazy swat on the head. "This mountain doesn't want us here. Every day it sends its rains to wash away the dirt. Anything that can become dirt goes in the dungers."
He pointed them to a wide wooden bin near the end of the platform. It was roofed over, but gaps near the top allowed you to toss refuse inside. Joti expected it to smell foul, but it mostly smelled musty.
Inspired by the impromptu tour of the fort's compost system, Almak took the opportunity to show them around the rest of the Peak of Tears: the practice grounds and armory; the housing for the soldiers and older students; the lookouts and battlements up in the trees.
The one-eyed girl, Kata, frowned up at the fortifications. "Has anyone ever attacked this place?"
Almak hooted at this. "Our whole reason for being is to stick our nose where other people don't want it. Every ten or twenty years, that makes somebody mad enough to cross the falls and do their best to stomp us out."
"They ever done it?"
"During the Time of Black Skulls, the No-Clan allied with the Red Riders. Thought it was the only way to overthrow the Har Empire, or at least get them to quit murdering so many Alliance children. Well, our alliance put a stop to that, all right—but only because the Empire flew a wing of dragons up to the Peak of Tears and burned us out. Hardly one in ten No-Clan made it out of the fires."
Kata tipped back her head, giving him a quizzical look. "But that was the only time?"
"In the last four hundred years since the records were destroyed."
"So we've only been conquered once! We must be tough!"
"Sneaky and hard to get to, at the least. Such things make for better protection than any shield."
He showed them where to gather in the unlikely event they were besieged, then brought them around to the platforms edging the falls at the entrance to the fort. There, a woman waited in a forest-colored cloak. Her limbs were so wiry that, at a distance, Joti mistook her for a human like the red-bearded man, but her dark green skin and light green hair were unmistakably orcish. Joti hadn't known enough jungle folk to say for sure, but he thought her slight build was Krannish.
"That's Nod," Almak said. "Master scout. Be honored, for this is the first time she's taught pups in five years. When she speaks, you listen."
He gave Nod a wave. She watched him, then shifted her eyes to the nineteen children, staring at them for ten full seconds.
"I'm sorry," said a pale, strong-looking boy named Faddak. His nose and chin had the aristocratic look of the Artuskers. "Is there something on my face?"
"Still your mouth." Nod's words were as quiet as an arrow in flight. "This is your land now. Learn it. Or die upon it."
She turned, cloak whirling, and took them to a wooden staircase that switchbacked down the falls on the opposite side from the dirt bins being hauled up from below. Several of the damp treads were loose, and the rough branches that made up the railings wobbled under Joti's grip.
A quarter of the way down, Faddak gave a disgusted look at the uneven boards. "Why hew your steps from wood? Doesn't the No-Clan have any good masons?"
Kata glowered at him. "So they can bash i
t apart if the enemy comes for them, you fool."
Nod said nothing. They reached the pool, the falls beating down behind them. Nod led them down a trail cut into the bare rock. As they descended, she pointed out numerous plants. Joti had barely seen any of them before, and Nod often didn't do more than name them. When one of the others asked a question, Nod would stare at the plant for a few seconds, as if recalling a bad memory, then summarize it in a single word: poisonous, or edible, or pretty.
She brought them all the way down to Dolloc Castle, then turned about and marched them back to the Peak of Tears. The remainder of the afternoon was filled with unarmed combat lessons from a young man named Borz. Joti tried to pay attention, but it was basic stuff he'd learned early on as a Half Soldier.
When scrapping and wrestling wrapped up, Almak sent them back into the trees for more eggfruit, then gave them each a small portion of fresh trout and broth-soaked mushrooms. The mushrooms and meat were more of a snack than a meal, however, and even with the eggfruit, after the long day, Joti was barely filled.
Wrapped in the clouds, night came on fast. As older trainees lit torches along the walkways and platforms, Almak led the new recruits to their bunkhouse. It was functional and plain: two rows of cots, a dresser at the foot of each bed, a wooden bowl and spoon. It had no ornamentation whatsoever, yet compared to the recent memory of the musty, sweaty confines of the slave tunnels, it felt as grand as Dame Fere's personal quarters.
He moved to a bunk near the door. Seating himself, he found Faddak standing over him.
The tall Artusker cocked his head. "What do you suppose you're doing?"
"Sitting."
"Did I tell you that you could sit on my bunk?"
"I don't see a name." Joti bent over and sniffed the sheets. "Doesn't smell as bad as you do, either."
A few of the other recruits chuckled. Faddak's fair skin dappled with dark spots. He darted forward, grabbing Joti under the armpit and pinching hard into the nerves and veins there. Joti yelled in pain. Faddak swung him from the bunk and tripped him to the ground.
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