Chapter 74: Heavensward

Three weeks ago, the caravan set off from Allensward with high hopes and expectations. Six carriages, a mounted escort of a dozen archers, with Harvey and I along for the ride. Now, as we crested the final hill on the long road North, only four carriages remained, one destroyed as a gambit to turn a battle, and the other having lost its wheels, forcing us to burn it and leave only ashes behind. Two drivers died in battle, whilst a third was sent off with a spare horse to bring an urgent report to higher ups in the Dead Hand, as well as open up a seat for Harvey to take; he insisted on driving the first carriage, keeping an eye on the front after all that had happened to waylay us so far. The horses did worst of all, with only five of the initial eighteen having lived to tell the tale; the archers didn’t count, since they were summoned beings and not truly dead, assuming my understanding of Thief of Souls was correct. All in all, our convoy was quite a sorry sight as we arrived, at long last, at the first major milestone of our supposedly three month journey.

I stuck my head out from the side of the carriage as our path levelled off, not wanting to miss a single moment of our final approach. The name wasn’t an exaggeration, I realised, as I looked to the West and craned my neck as far as it would go, only to still fail to reach the top of a vast mountain range. It ran as far as the eye could see and vanished into the clouds above, forming the de facto border of the human continent. Whether there was anything beyond it was a matter of speculation, but nothing I’d read indicated any certainty on the topic, because its sheer height made exploration impossible without flight capabilities. That was easier said than done in an era where the horse carriage was the cutting edge of transport, and if any of those rare individuals capable of magical flight or teleportation had done so, then their escapades had been kept entirely hidden from the public eye. It was truly a wonder of the natural world, comparable to the Himalayas back on Earth.

The man-made wonder next to it didn’t fail to impress either, despite being overshadowed (both literally and metaphorically) by its taller neighbour. Officially known as The Triumph of Humanity Against the Ravening Hordes, but which everyone simply called The Wall, it didn’t quite stretch up to the cloud bank. Even so, whilst the exact dimensions were lost to me, a bit of basic trigonometry told me that it was at least fifty feet tall for the regular sections, whilst the guard towers that appeared periodically along it were nearly twice that height, putting the Great Wall of China to shame. Then again, perhaps that was simply a matter of necessity, as the Emperors, when ordering that to be built, only had to worry about armies on horseback, whereas Frontier saw semi-regular assaults from monsters, dragons, and even stranger skybound entities such as The Living Storm. At the Northwest corner of the continent, nature and artifice met, forming the city of Heaven’s Reach.

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At the base of it all, in those sections still situated on flat land and therefore closest to our present location, the city didn’t look out of the ordinary. There was an outer wall that barely rose above head height, suitable for keeping out vagrants and wild animals, patrolled by bored looking guardsmen who often stopped on their routes to take a sip of rotgut or to hit the tobacco pipe. The districts immediately inside the walls were likewise thoroughly mediaeval, featuring red bricked houses packed together into long terraces, low ceilings, and the teeming throngs of humanity that packed every street, visible even from a distance as they went about the daily business of survival. As the city crept steadily North, all of this changed. What had been flatland steady steepened, the gradient of roads rising steadily until, in the final stretch to reach the top of the Wall, climbing handles were affixed into place for hardy travellers to haul themselves up on, while buckets and makeshift elevators rose and fell to facilitate the transport of goods.

“I want to push people off of the edge,” Pumpkin declared, pointing a paw majestically towards the slope as he rose to stand nearly upright on my head.

“Settle down there, Scar,” I chuckled, scratching the devious feline behind the ears.

Admittedly, I could see the joy in such a thing, akin to letting the intrusive thoughts win when standing next to the train tracks. I thought it unlikely he’d get the opportunity, barring a strange twist of events, but I couldn’t entirely rule it out after the absurdity we’d already faced getting to this point. That was a consideration for the future, in any event; our immediate concern was something I was very much familiar with and had hoped never to deal with again: traffic. Heaven’s Reach was the terminus, after all, the final frontier for humanity as a whole, and for trade in particular. As we descended to join the main road into the city, our caravan merged with dozens, no, hundreds of others, carrying everything from fresh recruits to foodstuffs, uniforms and more. We’d never gone particularly fast to begin with, as the main points of excitement along the trip had happened while we were stationary, but now we slowed down to a crawl, barely faster than walking speed.

There was only one main gate leading into the city, and everyone needed to wait their turn to enter. It didn’t matter if you were the poorest peasant or a scion of the noble houses, everyone (theoretically) went through the same process and inspection. Idly, I wondered how Harvey was going to get us through, because I’d put too much time into this journey now to be stopped by something as mundane as customs and immigration.