Being made administrator at Fort Amalveor was a significant and untimely advancement in my career.

Two weeks before I'd been a lowly clerk at the Library of Bosleake; not a large town, and not a prestigious institution. Not a position that allowed an employee's brightness to shine, and mine certainly hadn't.

The letter from the Polity inviting me to be considered for the recently vacated administrator position at the distant outpost of Fort Amalveor was an unlooked-for boon, which I'd put down to the urgency of the opening. It was a chance to leapfrog several stages of my career, and catapult myself directly into a senior position within the Polity hierarchy.

It was the opportunity of a lifetime. Or so I'd thought.

Now that I stood at the gates, feeling the rain spotting my cloak, smelling damp stone and mildew wafting off the frontier outpost fort in waves, listening as the dense forest around me hummed with insects, with the forlorn cries of unseen birds and animals, I was starting to have my doubts.

Fort Amalveor was less than thirty years old, established as part of the quickly aborted Modern Reclamation, and still occupied today for who-knows-what reason. The surrounding lands were barely mapped, and most of the maps that did exist were made by adventurers, whose cartography – unproven and unchecked – was as likely to be drunken conjecture as fact. The local plants and animals were undocumented, save for the notes of the previous chef, which I'd had to go to some lengths to track down in the Polity archive at North Hill on my wagon ride up, and I'd been given only the most meagre information on the other staff.

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As I stood outside the gates, daring myself to unlatch them, I heard a wet splashing sound from behind me. At first I thought it was some monster or wild animal creeping up on me, until I turned and spotted the wagon pulling away, iron-bound wheels sloshing through rain-filled furrows.

For a moment I pitied the driver, an old man making a long, cold journey back to civilization alone. Then the wagon passed out of earshot, and I had the good sense to pity myself instead.

My only way back had departed, and he at least knew he was heading back towards light and warmth. I was the one staying out here for at least six months, a period of time that seemed short and reasonable on a written contract, but which now seemed interminable.

Whatever my reservations, my course was set. I had no way back, but to go forward.

I reached up, unlatched the gate, and stepped through.