They stopped to rest in a clearing not five kilometres away from the wedge-shaped prominence. But even from this distance the level of destruction was breathtaking. The left flank of the mound was completely gone, blown outward like a door smashed off its hinges. Blocks of limestone the size of apartment complexes were strewn about in wild abandon, the bare rock standing out amidst the overgrown brush.
Teams of reconstruction workers in white sealant suits swarmed over the ruins, their figures tiny compared to the enormous troughs of freshly overturned earth and flattened trees that radiated out from the mound. Using the workmen as a point of reference Ven estimated that these troughs were easily more than a hundred meters wide and a quarter of that deep, divided into two sections that ran parallel to each other, the depressions interrupted by evenly spaced intervals of untouched jungle.
Not troughs, Ven realized with a jolt. Tracks.
She wasn’t as good at cutting for sign as their tracker Greymoss was, but the pattern was unmistakeable. The only real difficulty lay in reconciling the ridiculous scale of the depressions with the tread of a biped. Ancestors above, it had walked right through the hills like they were clods of dirt.
“They said our people set off the magazine inside the fortress,” Beans said in a shaky voice, “It was in the papers. Now I know for myself that that was a pack of lies. I don’t care how much powder they stored in there, it couldn’t have done all this.”
“Then what did?” Cooly grunted.
“Something else was at work here, something…more.”
“Come off it, Baow,” the big man kidded him, “Don’t tell me you’ve suddenly become a blasted religionist like Leming.”
“I don’t know anything about religion,” Beans replied, “But I do know about explosives.”
Beans had been an army sapper before joining the pathfinders. Before that he had worked in the Gunnery Department before being kicked out for undisclosed reasons that probably had something to do with his general lack of hygiene. Despite the noxious cloud of body odour that clung to him wherever he went, Beans was unquestionably their expert when it came to demolitions. Leming blinked at them all through his spectacles, looking immensely self-satisfied.
“There we have it,” the scholar preened, “Once again pure belief forges a path to the incontestable truth. All skeptics be damned! The Divine Engines exists, and we shall reclaim it!”
Deschane made no comment, but looked lost in his own thoughts. Pretty Boy saw the navigator wasn’t in the mood for discussions, and began rattling out orders:
“Alright girlies, that’s enough chattering. The skipper wants us settling down here for the night, so you knows the drill. I want pickets set at two hundred meters to the front and sides, with constant roving patrols moving between em, four-hour intervals. Tonight we all sleep with loaded rifles. Even though it’s still south of the Foss and behind our front lines, make no mistake: this here is Amit country. If you want proof, just take a look at that mess over yonder.”
Pretty Boy nodded in the direction of Mound 13. They threw down their bedrolls and settled in for the night, the fallen fortress serving as a grim reminder of how close they were to the fighting.
At dawn tomorrow they would reach Shogun Creek and the enemy. Until then there was nothing to do but wait and talk. And talk and talk and talk…
By the light of the campfire they sat round and held their nightly shit-shooting session. Ven lay on her side and listened with her eyes shut as their words swirled around her. Some said that the Amits in the north were mutants that had gorged on too many men and grown into giants. Another said that the Divine Engine was a sign of the end times, and that humanity would be judged as the ancestor-gods had once been. Judged, and found wanting. Leming called the man a goddamned Schismatic and threatened to write to chaplains at his home mound. Cooly and Tooms ignored the rest and traded dirty jokes that kept them chuckling well into the night.
“I’m scairt, Cooly,” Tooms whispered suddenly.
“Bah! You always say that. That’s what makes a little feller like you so brave.”
“This isn’t like any of the other missions,” Tooms confided in him, “If things go wrong, who can we turn to?”
“I’ll always be there. C’mere you…”
Ven pretended not to hear the rest of it. There was precious little comfort to be found in the world without her intruding on theirs.
Meanwhile, Pretty Boy went off to where he thought nobody could hear him and hummed an old lullaby to comfort himself:
"Lonely stars once fell,
In the days of old
When the lands were dim
And the seas were cold
From the ancient cradle
From across the gloam
They came a-wand’ring, far from their home
I’ll dream the while, and hold you close
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Through the ages of night untold
Bright day shall never wake to find us apart
And I’ll keep you, close to my heart"
“You old softie,” Ven snickered under her breath. She turned over and snuggled into her bedroll. As she did, her ear pressed against the ground and she heard a deep vibration below, as of countless feet drumming against the earth. With each passing moment the tremors only grew in strength.
Ven sat up in a trice, groping in the dimness for her weapon. She found the shaggy Greymoss already crouched and ready, one palm feeling the shuddering earth while he leaned on the butt of his musket.
“Crewman, report,” Deschane strode over to the tracker with a pistol in both hands.
“Lots of em. Coming up from behind us, fo-shurr-aye,” Greymoss intoned after a moment’s deliberation, “Dey ain’t human.”
“To arms! Patrols, get back in here!” Pretty Boy hollered, kicking people out of their bedrolls, “Up, you devils, and form a square.”
They could all feel the shuddering now, welling up through the soles of their boots. The pathfinders stood back-to-back, slotting their bayonets onto their lugs as they strained their eyes, staring into the walls of darkness all around them. Deschane holstered his pistols and unslung his pack.
“Requisitioned these electric lamps from the mines before I left Shakka,” the navigator said, going through his belongings, “Treat them with care. They’re quite delicate.”
The navigator started handing out boxy apparatuses with crystal lenses. With a flick of a switch on the carrying handle a cone of soft orange incandescence shot forth from the lenses, illuminating the area up to fifteen strides away. Deschane only had enough to equip half the platoon, but it was enough to give them a sizable radius of visibility.
“Fire only on command,” Deschane said, voice as steady as a rock. They stood there uncertainly, guessing at every shadow as they awaited the onrushing host. How had so many Amits forded the river and slipped past the army’s flank without detection?
Lights bobbed into view, curving round the flanks of the hills in a snaking line of torches that revealed a troop of cavalry, their hornblowers leapfrogging along at a leisurely pace. The pathfinders put up their guns, Tooms giving a nervous chuckle as the tension left them.
A rider at the vanguard of the force kicked her spurs into her mount’s thorax and came towards the pathfinders at a gallop. She wore a hat with one side of its brim folded up at a rakish slant with a yellow flirtybird feather sticking out of its band. Draped over one of her shoulders was the leathery hide of a monitor drake, fanged maw scraping against the front plate of her steel cuirass.
“You there, footslogger! What are you lot doing so far in the rear?” she barked at Tooms, subjecting him to a barrage of rapid-fire questions, “Are you deserters? Who’s in charge here?”
“That would be me,” Dechane stepped out of the square, “Navigator Deschane, 9th Battalion, 3rd Pathfinders. And whom do I have the honour of addressing?”
The woman swept her feathered hat off her head and unclasped her gasmask, allowing her luxurious black hair to cascade over her honey-nut brown shoulders. A Sinestran, Ven thought. Well, that explained the attitude. Sinestra was another one of core mounds whose inhabitants considered themselves the original members of the Fleet.
The officer looked down her flat nose at Deschane, rich dark eyebrows coming together in a thoughtful frown.
“I know that name,” she said haughtily, “You wouldn’t happen to be the same Sollem Deschane from Mound 13, would you?”
“That depends,” Deschane likewise removed his mask as courtesy demanded, “Who’s asking?
“Captain Caitliff of the one and only Drakenguard Regiment,” she replied. Caitliff nursed a shotgun in her arms as one would an infant in its sling, and as she talked the captain let the triple barrels point vaguely in his direction, her carelessness irritating Ven to no end, “Once again, are you the same Deschane from the papers?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, sir,” Caitliff corrected him, “Our ranks may be equivalent, but I’ve been given seniority here. You seem to have a habit of running headfirst into trouble, Sollem,” she continued, using his first name in an insolent display of familiarity, “Or is that just a trait common to all pathfinders?”
“Who sez we’re in trouble?” Pretty Boy sneered.
“And what is this creature supposed to be?” Caitliff said, looking Doyd up and down.
“The creature in question is Serjeant-Major Irasmus Doyd,” Deschane said evenly.
“Hmph,” Caitliff sniffed, profoundly unimpressed. The cavalrywoman waved her hat in the air and the troop came to a halt with much jingling and creaking of their saddles.
“We received Colonel Leelan's mayday message and his pleas for cavalry support,” she informed them, “Congratulations! We’ve come to your rescue. Apparently, some of your people got torn up in an ambush. Leelan’s convinced that the horde is headed his way. There’s been some wild talk about him running into a new subspecies, some kind of Amit bogeyman that lives in these woods. Naturally, it’s invisible to everyone but himself,” she paused to look back at her troop, who all broke out in shouts of derisive laughter.
“What about the rest of the Expeditionary Force?” Ven asked her.
“General Soulk pulled everyone back over the river and ordered them to circle their wagons. The entire army is now officially on the defensive.”
Caitliff wrinkled her nose at that last bit, as if the word ‘defensive’ was an affront to her fine sensibilities.
“That’s the first I’ve heard of it,” Deschane lied, “All I know is that we’ve been brought up to serve as stretcher bearers.”
“Oh, is that what you’re doing all the way back here, Sollem?” Caitliff said with a mean glint in her eye, “I rather thought it had something to do with the fighting up ahead.”
“Are you suggesting that I cut and ran?” Deschane said quietly. Ven could see his jaw muscles bulging as he ground his molars in frustration.
“Call it what you like. I’m sure the press will put a good spin on things come the weekly issue of the Victory Liner,” Caitliff jibed, “But I doubt even they can salvage this shitshow. Your regiment bolted so fast that they’ve left the artillery on the right completely exposed.”
Ven now understood why the captain was so resentful. Not only did she have to clean up after the mess left by Colonel Leelan, but there was also a very high chance that her troop of a hundred riders was all that stood between a horde and the Fleet’s newly exposed flank. Like many others in the Expeditionary Fleet who distrusted government propaganda, Caitliff held Deschane personally responsible for the death of Rear Admiral Prota’s command. To see him here at the site of another potential catastrophe was no doubt cause for some anxiety on her part.
“I’m sure the colonel had his reasons for pulling back,” Deschane said guardedly, “As for me, I’m still headed for Shogun Creek just like you seem to be. We have orders to evacuate the wounded.”
“Don’t bother. By now there’ll be nothing left of your people to carry home. Leelan left them all behind for the Amits to pick their bones clean.”
There were angry mutterings from the pathfinders at that, some cursing the colonel for his cowardice while others whispered dire threats against the captain under their breaths.
“Stow all that backtalk,” Harmer said, shutting them up with a glare, “I won’t tolerate mutineers.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Deschane finally said, unable to look Captain Caitliff in the eye. Every one of the pathfinders felt the shame of it too; it was the height of martial dishonour to leave the bodies of one’s comrades to the Amits when there was even the slightest chance of retrieving them.
“As am I,” Caitliff said, “It’s a sorry business all around. Stay out of my way, Sollem. And don’t you fret: if the bogeyman does decide to swing this way, I’ll protect you.”
She tugged at the reigns attached to her mount’s antennae and bounded away, her Drakenguard galloping after her.
“Three cheers for the fugging cavalry,” Pretty Boy called after them, “Hip hip, hooray.”