Feril banged his fist on the front of the car. His eyes were wide and anxious. Canu punched the button that brought the car alive.
“Madness,” said Pari, tucking her knees beneath her on the seat. She sighed. “At least this thing still goes. But for how long?”
“She had a nice, long rest,” said Canu. “She should be feeling sprightly.”
“She?” Pari scrunched her face at him.
The car jerked forward, shedding branches camouflaging the roof.
“Easy on the bumps,” said Pari. “We carry fragile cargo.”
***
Several roads and trails converged on Xama, the plundered town whose ruins still smoldered when they passed through several days earlier. The main road, empty but for ruined carts and a stray donkey, led to Sinta, the other destroyed village several bends downriver, and then onward to Raacevo. In the other direction, it climbed a series of switchbacks, following the river through a rugged defile, over a pass to Maora. Igwa had already sent a band of riders up to block it.
Feril’s force waited out of sight on the goat track for their scouts to give the all clear. When the whistle came, they proceeded forward through what remained of the village. Hardly a structure remained standing. Carcasses of livestock, disemboweled, bones bared by jackals and vultures, littered the yards. Weeds infested eerily vacant fields.
The militia fighters hurried to the river and rushed across the causeway. They trotted up the road that led to the high pass and the bog that once held the xenolith that had brought Canu and his friends from Greymore, veering off into the high pastures.
Canu and Pari brought up the rear in the red car. The water had risen since they had last crossed – knee-deep or deeper in places. Its opacity made it difficult to place the edge of the causeway.
“Maybe we can leave the vehicle on this side?” said Pari.
“No,” said Canu, watching the causeway until it was entirely clear of stragglers. He stomped on the pedal. The wheels whinnied like an overworked horse as they surged towards the river. Pari grabbed onto her seat, cowering.
They splashed in nose-first. Water gushed beneath the doors. The car plowed across the causeway, fighting against the current. Its rear end shimmied.
“To the right!” said Pari. “It doglegs right.”
Canu spotted the curl of water that marked the drop-off just in time to jerk the wheel. The back wheel slipped over the edge. The front wheels slipped on the slick stone, but conjured just enough friction to grip and pull. The car emerged onto the sandy approach like an egg-bound sea turtle.
Their wounded passengers groaned.
“You damned fool!” said Pari. “We might have drowned.”
“Oh shush, it wasn’t that close,” said Canu.
“Next time, I’ll walk, thank you.”
***
Canu hid the car behind a dense thicket of thorns on the hillside overlooking the causeway. Feril and Igwa had led their forces above the fields and pastures and into the forest that clothed the heights. This position commanded a view down the river valley to the meander just beyond Sinta. Along the horizon, the white dome of the Alar’s Temple gleamed atop its denuded bluff.
Canu walked along the stone wall separating pasture from woodland. A windbreak of slender trees separated the sweeping pasture from the undulant beet fields lining the river. The grass was already growing long in the absence of livestock.
Feril’s fighters were already hard at work, splitting their labors mending and augmenting the already stout wall and setting up camp behind it. With an open and steeply pitched slope before it, the wall made a formidable strongpoint. The need not worry about Cuasar attacks from the rear. Nothing backed them but unbroken coniferous forest.
Canu came across the prisoner, Rabelmani, tethered to a tree with half a dozen militia fighters gathered around him. He wandered over to see what the commotion was about, but it seemed that the old man was merely telling stories of his travels.
“As a merchant mariner, I’ve been everywhere a man can go,” he said. “There’s no manner of man or woman I haven’t seen. And no empire greater than the Dominion of Cra.”
“Have you seen the southern ice?” said a young woman with a bloody chin.
“Of course, I’ve seen the southern ice,” said Rabelmani. “That’s where the sacred whale bone comes from. You might just as well call it the southern fire, because that land is both ice and fire, with mountains that smoke by day and glow by night.”
“What about the Eastern ocean?” said a squat young man. “How far beyond the straits have you gone?”
“As far East as the winds would take me,” said Rabelmani. “To the doldrums and their islands in their midst, peopled by races from lands even farther East, continents filled with those who have yet to know the dominion of Cra. Oh, but they will. All of them. One day they’ll beg for his Mercy. As will all of you. Some day.”
“We’ll leave the begging to you, old man,” said Canu. “You’ll find no beggars, here.”
“Not yet, perhaps,” said Rabelmani. “But some day you’ll seek Cra’s mercy willingly.”
“You’re not as traveled as you like to think,” said Canu. “Each one of us here has been places you’ve never been. Places you’ll never see in the days you have remaining.”
Rabelmani looked skeptical. “Oh? And what places might these be?”
“Ur,” said Canu, and he continued on his way, snatching only a glimpse of the puzzlement in Rabelmani’s eyes.
Canu found Vul building a shelter out of spruce boughs and lent him a hand, twining layer over layer to roof it, though Canu knew it would leak regardless in any significant rainstorm. But he wouldn’t have to worry about that. He had the car to sleep in, after all.
A party of Nalkies went galloping by on their ponies.
“Where are they off to, I wonder?” said Canu.
“Feril says they’re going after elk,” said Vul.
“Meat!” said Canu. “My stomach wishes them great success. I’d even pray for the Mercy of Cra if I thought it would help their hunt.”
“Care for some Nalki bread?” said Vul. “Someone gave me a few crusts, but honestly, I’d rather chew bark.”
“Have I ever said no to food?” said Canu. Vul handed over a few charred cylinders of the coarsely milled spelt that the Giep’o called bread.
He tucked them in his shirt and went back to the wall, continuing down its length to the forested gulch that truncated it. He exchanged greetings with the watch persons that Feril had posted every few dozen paces. Some tried to start up a chat but Canu wasn’t feeling very sociable.
Ara’s absence left him feeling antsy and hollow. He climbed up into a tree with sprawling boughs that hung out over the pasture, selecting one with a clear view out over the valley. He nibbled on some of the bread, breaking of crumbs as hard as pebbles and only slightly more digestible.
His eyes panned the landscape, passing over the river and to the forest and hills where Ara had been heading when they parted. He watched a hawk hover, and wished he could fly to Ara’s side, or at least see through its eyes where she was and how she was faring. He regretted not giving her a better sendoff.
Chapter 27: The Marsh Camp
A sentry perched high in a dead tree, in the abandoned nest of a fish eagle. He answered Ara’s whistle with a low, sustained rejoinder that gave her permission to proceed. Ara strode the last few steps through a green tunnel of over-arching tree fern, and the vast marshes opened up before her.
A walkway of split logs led across an open moat and through an expanse of half-submerged reeds. When Ara had last come through, a person could have easily hopped the moat’s channel and strolled through the reeds. Everything had changed with the onset of the rains.
The assembly camps sprawled like a squat, grey city on a denuded island rising from a sea of reeds. Rings of shacks and shanties separated by alleys crowded slopes augmented by dredge and fill, each circle billeting a separate P
rovincial militia.
Ara’s first impression of this wide bowl surrounded by hills was that it was a death trap, a killing field. The site had been chosen for its seclusion, not its defensibility, intended to serve as a temporary staging area for infiltrators, never a strongpoint.
As more and more troops accumulated, and the counteroffensive they were sent to initiate became postponed for reasons unstated, it became clear that the marshes themselves posed a threat to the fighters mired within their bounds.
Fell airs and gnats spawned disease. A diet heavy on roasted swamp tubers and light on meat caused led to deficiencies that caused glands to swell, bellies to bloat and skin to yellow.
Getting enough food to sustain a force of two thousand became ever more challenging. Little could be imported from Ur or Sesei through the brief and intermittent portals opened by the camp’s xenolith. The deer and buffalo had long been depleted or driven away. Even the fish and rodents and marsh fowl had become increasingly scarce. Many had resorted to eating worms and frogs.
The fighters assembled at the camps were drawn mainly from the remnants of over-run, outmaneuvered defense militias from provinces that had ceased to exist in the wake of the Venep’o invasion. Most had no home to which they could return. She couldn’t help thinking of the militias crowded on the island like herds of cattle in a stockyard awaiting slaughter.
Ara wound her way over a barrier of crossed tree trunks, still attached to their uprooted stumps. Gnats with legs banded black and white buzzed at her face, landed in her hair and bit her scalp. She crossed the moat on the familiar walkway to a pair of peat brick bunkers with sod roofs and vertical fighting slots.
Ara nodded to the sentries in the flanking bunkers. Sober–faced, they let her pass without challenge, though their eyes belied excitement, as if they expected her to bear some momentous news. She continued across to the island, passing through a morass of fetid pools, not yet inundated by the rising waters.
A man stood watching her from atop one of a pair of earthen observation platforms that bracketed a crude gate constructed of heavy timbers. It took Ara a moment to realize that this was Ingar himself, and she quailed a bit, unprepared to confront him so soon. Did he know she was coming, or was it his habit to stand and watch over the marshes all day like a sea captain’s widow? What tact should she take? Her mind scrambled for words.
Ingar looked startled. “Where are the others? Did you come back alone?” He was extremely tall, as was common among the plainsmen of Bohangor, with sallow skin and an auburn tinge to his dark hair and beard.
“Delayed,” said Ara. “Have you not heard from them?”
“Nothing,” said Ingar. “Ubabaor says that two portals now have been sealed or destroyed.”
The news brought Ara relief and an opportunity. She could now set the narrative without having to worry about anyone contradicting her tale.
“So where are the others?” said Ingar. “What happened out there?”
“The peace initiative … it failed,” said Ara. “We are to proceed with the original protocol.” She bit her lip and watched as waves of incredulity swept across Ingar’s face.
“An offensive? You’ve got to be joking.”
“No joke,” said Ara. “The Venep’o betrayed us. They attacked us in Ur.”
Ingar stared, stunned.
“Let me … let me gather the lieutenants. Do you carry any messages from Baren himself?”
“He had no means to prepare documents,” said Ara. “I am his message.”
“You’ve spent time in Ur before, haven’t you?” said Ingar, scratching his beard.
Ara nodded. “When I was training to be a Traveler. Why?”
“Just curious, they would send you back,” said Ingar. “Considering your language skills and experience with the Urep’o.”
“I can’t account for Baren’s decisions,” said Ara. “I did what I was told.”
***
Ara sat at the big square table in the Commander’s block house. Back in her militia days she had been one of Baren’s servants and remembered when the table’s rough-hewn timbers were still golden and redolent with resin. Now the wood had grayed and the splinters were polished by wear and pried by nervous fingernails.
The floor was mounded for drainage at the center of the room and covered with mats woven from the same marsh grass that formed its walls. Rolled parchments accumulated from Cadre headquarters stuffed a rack of cubbyholes by a window whose curtains failed to deter the gnats from coming in to feed.
Ingar had assembled every cadre officer in the camp, all familiar faces except for a new lieutenant recently arrived from Ubabaor – a sharp-faced woman named Drialeun. Ara chose to keep her lies simple and close to the truth.
“Sesei has not heard from Baren because the stone was destroyed,” said Ara.
“We know,” said Drialeun. “Two stones have been lost. As well as Comrade Eghazi, our principal negotiator.”
“Who would do such a deed?” said Ingar. “I can’t believe it would have been the Venep’o. Did you see any signs of a counterforce when you were in Ur?”
“It’s not … clear,” said Ara. “We became separated from those we were to escort. They were slaughtered by the time we found them.”
“This force must still be in Ur,” said Drialeun. “Because both stones in Sesei are intact.”
“Or Gi,” said Megar, the lieutenant in charge of the assembly areas’ defenses.
“I assure you, Commander Baren will get to the bottom of it,” said Ara. “He is in Ur, investigating, as we speak.”
“Any indication what Province these traitors derive from?” said Ingar. “Was it Suul or Cracao perchance?”
“Unfortunately, the Urep’o became involved before we could get to the scene,” said Ara, wiping her sweaty palms on her breeches. “The only casualties we saw were Venep’o.”
“Diplomats?” said Drialeun.
“Crasacs,” said Ara.
“Crasacs in Ur? Preposterous,” said Ingar.
“But it’s true,” said Ara.
“I see how it might be possible,” said Drialeun. “The Venep’o were opposed by forces in Sesei before they crossed. The battle could have extended across the portal.”
“So you see, it has failed,” said Ara. “The initiative, it has failed.”
“Why do you say that?” said Ingar, squinting.
“Two stones lost,” said Ara. “How many can we spare?”
Ingar and Drialeun looked at each other.
“Apparently, at least another,” said Drialeun. “We have a new negotiator, crossing this time at an unannounced location, escorted from Sesei. They are confident the third attempt to transfer a xenolith will be successful.”
“Our partners are proving extraordinarily resilient with us,” said Ingar.
“Partners?” said Ara.
“The Venep’o,” said Ingar. A servant came in and touched Ingar’s arm. A pair of captains stood at the door, bearing an urgent message. Ingar excused himself and went to see his visitors.
Megar caught Ara’s wandering eye. “Sounds like you’ve had a bit of excitement, yes?” he said, cheerily. “Not what you bargained for when Baren promoted you, eh?”
“I’m fine with it,” said Ara. “But I’m surprised there isn’t more excitement here, with the Mercomar going down and all.”
“Oh, that?” Megar chuckled. “This morning when the blinking stopped it we had a devil of a time holding the militias at bay. Doesn’t take much to get them worked up these days. An elk sighting. A bear thrashing about. We’re all sick of these marshes. We just lost a whole company of skirmishers from the outer perimeter. Everyone assumes they deserted.”
“It was quite a scene this morning,” said Drialeun. “Captains were storming the armories, mustering their fighters. Took a lot of effort to get everyone calmed down. I pity the Venep’o if they ever show their faces here. These kids are itching for battle.”
“But what about
the Protocol?” Ara said, lowering her voice another notch. “What if the First Cadre responds to the Mercomar and we’re not there to meet them? Shouldn’t we send at least a small force to probe?”
“Protocol?” said Drialeun. “That Protocol has long expired. I’m certain the First Cadre knows this as well, if anything is left of them. Word is, they’ve all gone native.”
“The heliograph is probably just undergoing maintenance or down for repairs,” said Megar. “Unless … you know something different.”
“Didn’t the protocol say that the signal was to be eight flashes of eight?” said Drialeun.
“What we saw this morning was not even close,” said Megar.
“And yet … the militias reacted,” said Ara, as Ingar’s servants came in to light candles as twilight fell over the marshes. Couriers accumulated outside in a queue, carrying the evening’s muster reports.
Ingar came back to the table. “That’s all for now Ara. These men will be escorting you. You’re to be confined to quarters until you hear otherwise.”
“But why?” said Ara.
Ingar shrugged. “Nothing personal. Just precautionary.”
“Of … course,” said Ara, fearful that too vigorous a protest might tar her.
Chapter 28: Sneaking Off
For the second night in a row, Miles slept alone in the cook shack. This time he lay on the floor, spooned against hearth stones that retained their warmth, though the embers they embraced had long lost their glow. He awoke not to drumbeats and curtains of rain this time, but to the raucous clank of what he presumed to be alien birdsong. What he would give to hear robins and warblers again.
He patted Tom’s rifle, making sure it remained at his side and tried to fall back asleep, pulling up on a sheet as stiff and heavy as canvas to cover his shoulders. It smelled of dust.
The dawn chorus grew more cacophonous. He gave up and sat up against the hearth, watching the weeds on the hillside swirl and sway in the grey light.
Miles’ anxieties had ramped far down from where they had been on the day of Tom’s shooting. It was a good thing, too. That was not a condition he could sustain for long and keep his health. Now he had the luxury of entertain worries beyond saving his skin again. Things like how to find his way home.