Si glyph [https://i.imgur.com/mHhTdaF.png]

Simon perched on the bunk opposite Patla. Cocooned in blankets and quilt, she slept peacefully, and looked less deathly than she had. The air in the little cabin was warm now the stove was lit. He loosened his coat and removed his gloves.

Under his feet, dark red stained the floorboards where she had lain. The smell of her blood hung metallic in the warm air, stronger than the background odours of leather and mammut. Apart from the bloodstain, the cabin was scrupulously clean and neat. The few copper cooking pans stacked beside the stove were battered, but shone in the firelight. Patla’s greasy leather coat hung on the end of the bunk bed together with her long whip. A childish portrait of a mammut and driver, executed in embroidery silks, hung on the wall.

A lump grew in Simon’s throat. Patla and Nadu had lived in this small space. Cooked and slept and argued and made up, every day of every summer of their life together. Chase had destroyed all that, and even if Patla survived, she would never be the same.

Simon’s own tragedy had come slowly. The lung sickness crept through Rane’s body over years and months until she lay wasted and wheezing, only her eyes alive in her thin face. Death came so slowly, her loss had been no sudden pain, only an emptiness.

But now, watching Patla, he knew what she had lost, and his heart hurt as if the knife in her chest had struck him too.

Patla stirred and blinked, as if remembering where she was and what had happened.

‘How do you feel?’ he asked.

‘Half dead,’ she said, and coughed. ‘But I’ll live, I guess.’

‘Can I get you anything?’

‘How are the mammut? Have you fed them?’

Simon frowned. The great animals remained in their harness, chained to the wagons, but they were restless and irritable with hunger. Only Sam dared approach them. ‘We gave them what hay was left.’

‘We must get to Athanor,’ she said.

‘It would only be a couple of days journey on foot, if the weather holds. If we make a litter, we can carry you.’

‘And leave my mammut? Besides, there’s ore to deliver. I never broke a contract yet and I’m not starting now.’

‘But can you drive?’

‘I’ll manage, if you help me.’ She sounded confident, but she was still very pale. According to Nana, the stab wound was deep and she’d lost a lot of blood. Patla freed a hand from her blankets and reached for Simon. ‘Nadu and I meant to retire next year, and now… The train and the mammut are all I have left. Promise me…’ She coughed. ‘That murdering bastard, Chase. Promise me he won’t get away with this.’

Simon took her hand. Her small brown fingers clutched the stumps of his, and he wished he could promise her justice. More likely, Chase would reach Athanor and disappear into the slums. If Nadu had been noble or wealthy, the story might be different, but he hadn’t been important to anyone except Patla and his family. His death would be forgotten like thousands of others.

House Oryche ought to care; it was their ore, and their contract with the drivers. They might at least offer a reward for information.

‘I swear, if there’s anything I can do to bring him to the punishment he deserves, then I shall.’

She squeezed his hand and the ghosts of his lost fingers squeezed back. Strange, that — he had never imagined missing fingers left ghosts that hurt and felt. Perhaps in time they would fade and leave him for good. He wasn’t sure it would be an improvement.

‘Get my mammut and the train to Athanor, and you can have what Oryche owe us for the trip,’ she said. ‘Two hundred forints.’

‘I can’t take your money.’

‘You’ll have earned it. And you’ll need it, I think…’ Her grip on his hand relaxed and her eyes drifted shut.

Simon tucked her hand under the blankets and left the cabin, treading softly.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

The lead mammut was a monster, an old matriarch weighing five tonnes or more, her humped shoulders four times Simon’s height above the ground. Her tusks curved before her, a great sweep of yellow ivory banded with steel rings. From high above, tiny black eyes regarded Simon with intense dislike. The feeling was mutual.

‘Move,’ he shouted, and tugged on the chain.

She uttered a deep rumble. From further back in the train came answering echoes as other mammut replied. Simon wondered if he dared hit her. The wagon drivers used long whips; he had seen them cracked over the mammut’s backs. If he tried it, he imagined the mammut would batter him into a thin paste.

‘Damn you,’ he muttered. ‘Stupid animal.’

She was too huge to threaten, and wise enough to know it. Nothing he could do would persuade the damned beast to move if she didn’t want to, which meant they’d have to wait for Patla to wake up, and hope she was strong enough to drive.

‘Kill it?’ Andra said. She gestured to the mammut’s belly. ‘Spear there, wait one day. Dead.’

Simon glared at her. ‘Not helpful, Andra.’

She shrugged. The mammut huffed warm breath.

‘I know what to do,’ Sam said.

‘No,’ Simon said. ‘Whatever you’re thinking of, stop right now. I’m not having you killed by some dumb animal after all the trouble we’ve gone through.’

‘But I do know what to do. And they’re not dumb, they’re really smart.’ Sam scowled. ‘I’ll show you.’

He ran off before Simon could stop him. ‘Damn that boy. Will he never learn?’

Andra looked at him quizzically.

‘That was a rhetorical question.’ He shook his head. She had no idea what he was talking about. ‘Sorry. Never mind.’

A minute later, Sam stomped down the steps from Patla’s cabin.

Simon couldn’t stop himself smiling — the boy wore Patla’s leather coat, and though she wasn’t a tall woman, he was rather shorter, so he cut a comical figure. He carried her whip too, the handle nearly as tall as he was. ‘What does he think he’s playing at?’

Sam strode toward them, approaching the mammut from behind. It flapped its ears and lifted its trunk in a tentative question mark.

Reaching Simon, Sam stopped. He shook out the whip, opened his mouth, and bellowed: ‘Hai! Hut, Geda, hut.’

The mammut eyed him.

‘Hut.’ Sam cracked the whip — not toward the mammut, but the great beast twitched at the sharp sound. It lifted its foreleg and took a step forward. ‘Hai! Hai! Hut, Geda.’

And with that, the lead mammut eased into its swinging, deceptively fast stride. Patla’s cabin lurched after it, and the whole train rippled into motion as each mammut picked up the pace.

Sam turned to Simon, beaming. ‘I told you I could do it!’

‘So you did.’ Simon swallowed. He felt oddly proud of his son, though mimicking a mammut driver was hardly something to aspire to. ‘That was clever. Well done.’

The wagon train rolled steadily eastward all that day. Patla drifted in and out of consciousness. Sam insisted on wearing her coat and carrying the whip, strutting about in his new role as mammut driver.

The next day dawned clear. From the driver’s perch on top of the cabin, Sam shouted and pointed to the rising sun. ‘Is that Athanor?’

Simon hung out of the window, shading his eyes with his hand. A single peak rose above the horizon, a dark cone broken off at the tip, outlined in gilt by the rising sun. Haze wreathed the summit. ‘Yes. That’s Athanor.’

They drove onward, and with every hour the mountain loomed larger, until they could make out the walls and towers wrapped around the slopes, and then the buildings climbing layer upon layer in number beyond counting.

Around them, the snow gave way to winter-bare fields, grazing cows and sheep, and clusters of low houses, while ahead, Athanor grew and grew to fill the horizon

‘There,’ Simon pointed through the window. ‘That’s the Westgate, and the Watch Tower of Phylaxes.’

Lorie squinted. ‘Where’s House Oryche? And the Arcanum?’

‘High on the crater wall, facing the sea. You can’t see them from this side.’

‘I can’t believe we’re finally here,’ Lorie said. ‘What will we do, when we get there?’

Simon took a slow breath. For so many years, he had avoided thinking of Athanor, for fear of the pain it would bring. He had locked away his past and and thought the hurt gone. But it wasn’t. All along, his heart had dreamed of the city, and ached, and hoped. ‘Don’t worry. There’s nothing to fear from Athanor. This is our home.’

A glyph [https://i.imgur.com/ZLENX3y.png]

Athanor: the Golden City, the Burning City of stories. Andra stared. She saw no gold, but burning — yes. Smoke hung about the mountain, drifting and gathering to hide parts from view. And the smell carried on the too-warm breeze told its own tale: the reek of countless humans, the salt tang of the sea, growing plants and metal and burning and things she could not name, and over all, the rotting-egg odour given off by some hot water pools in the north. A stench to be wary of, she had been told, for hunters who slept by those pools might never wake.

So vast and strange this city of humans. They must teem like maggots in a carcass. But somewhere amongst them was her sister, and the men who had taken her. She would find them quickly. Her sister’s scent was unmistakable — how hard could it be?

Yet, now she saw the city, she understood what Simon had tried to say, and she was glad not to face it alone. Even human company was better than none.

Simon and the others also gazed at the city. On their journey they had spoken of Athanor is if it was life itself, as if it would fulfil all their hopes and dreams, and yet now, facing the reality, they fell silent.

Humans were strange, she concluded. She still didn’t like them. Every word of their opaque language, every incomprehensible action, required her to stop and think, and that was uncomfortable. Nor did she entirely trust them. Stupid as they appeared, their motives ran beyond her understanding, and were therefore suspect.

Her hunt had drawn her far, to places few lasker had seen, but the end was in sight. She would enter the city, this Athanor of legend, and finish her hunt. Then she could leave humans and their places behind forever, and return home.