Thursday, September 26
The Warring Lands
Phaeduin was a serious old alpin who never took off his armor. He was just at the cusp of the age when anthrals begin, rapidly, to wither and die. He wore his age in how white and thin his fur and hair had gotten, and he wore his wisdom in his eyes as he looked around at them. Indirk liked the old man. He wasn’t overly serious. He rode his horse at the rear of their number because he thought he was protecting them. It was sweet.
Indirk also liked Meryl, who was Phaeduin’s only child, a dusky alpin with sleek umber fur and fluffy tufts of ashy hair on their head, a long fuzzy tail like a banner constantly swinging around behind them. They liked to tease, taking their horse constantly back and forth from the head of the line to chat with Amo and to the rear of the line to chat with their dad. Indirk had no doubt that in a less serious situation, Meryl would make mischief; they seemed the type to play pranks or steal small unimportant things for fun.
Nymir was a somewhat young littorn who acted twice as old as death, grumping and harrumphing beneath a ruddy, half-realized beard that darkened his face. Nymir hated Meryl; he rode sullenly in the middle of their number and glared at the swinging of Meyrl’s ashy tail every time they passed. Indirk hated Nymir. It all balanced out that way.
After a week of riding through the Warring Lands, so far they’d succeeded in avoiding the Nor Sator League’s soldiers. This was thanks to good intel, mostly. Outside of the Rhyqir Valley were great swaths of wetlands, bogs, and moors, chilly muddy earth that limited the roads available to cavalry loaded with gear or infantry laden by armor and weapons. Eyes ever on maps and reports, Amo had led them on a slogging trek through the untraveled wilds, crossing ancient roads always well ahead of advancing troops or through the chaotic trail left by troops that had recently passed by.
At one point, their number rode up to a burning wagon surrounded by bodies garbed in the red of Cradsoun’s military. It was a small drop of carnage in mud churned by horses and armored boots. The wagon had evidently been emptied in a hurry, infantrymen grabbing weapons and fleeing an ambush. The bodies were those unlucky enough to die in the attempt.
At the sight, Meyrl jumped off their horse and ran over to investigate, ignoring Phaeduin’s shouts to come back. Meryl ran with their tail high to keep it out of the mud but apparently not caring much about getting their hooves dirty, and crouched to look at the bodies. “Wow! What a shot!”
From horseback, Indirk looked over Meryl’s shoulder and spotted the black wooden arrow embedded in the vulnerable neck of a Cradsoun soldier. Indirk smiled and said, “Rangers from the Laines,” with pride in her voice. “Bet you the survivors have nightmares about them for a long while.”
Amo took the pause as an opportunity to circle back. “Phaeduin, come here.” They had their maps open in their lap, riding carefully. “There’s supposed to be a caravanner outpost just down this road, so why’s Cradsoun carting around loads out here?”
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Still watching his child with disapproval, Phaeduin muttered, “The front must have moved since we got that intel. We go further north, I’m sure we find the camp. The infantry wouldn’t want to cart their own supplies very far.”
The Nor Sator League had an entire population of caravanners specialized in moving weapons and supplies through the warring lands, mostly people from Gray Watch. They were the ancestral rivals of the rangers of the Laines, with the rangers always trying to isolate, destroy, or raid the caravans while the caravanners constantly moved their camps and routes and laid out traps. It was a cat-and-mouse game that had spanned the whole of the Warring Lands for almost a millennium.
“Okay, that’ll be our way in.” Amo put away their maps, looked the wagon over, and said, “Let’s put out this fire and get this thing rolling again. Tonight, we enter that camp as caravanners.”
“Ew.” Indirk grumbled. “That’s gonna be work.”
Phaeduin lifted his voice toward his child. “Hey, hey! Put that down!” Meryl had picked up a body to drag it out of the road, beginning to protest that obviously the bodies needed to be hidden only to be overruled by their father, “If you get any blood in your fur it’ll look suspicious. Let one of our bald-handed friends move them.”
Indirk, Amo, and several other furless anthrals all looked at their hands. Amo said, “Never thought of myself as bald-handed before.”
* * *
At sunset, Nymir and Phaeduin were arguing while they tried to get a crooked wheel back on its axle. Meryl, true to Indirk’s suspicions, had hopped up in the cart to make it heavier when nobody was looking, and was chuckling at the added difficulty they were forcing their father to endure. The group had tied their horses off in a circle. Amo crouched with their maps on their lap, muttering and muttering.
“Look what I found in the cart.” Indirk dropped a heavy box in the mud.
“Hey!” Amo flinched away from the splash, then checked to make sure no mud had gotten on their maps. “I’m trying to keep track of things, you know.”
“Nobody’s coming down this road this time of day. And even if they did, we could pass for waylaid caravanners. We’re all excellent liars.” Indirk crouched and pulled the wooden lid off the box. “Behold! They left beer!”
Amo grimaced. “Indirk.”
“I’m gonna see if I can get Meryl drunk.”
“Indirk!”
She laughed. “Back home there’s this tavern I like that was going to have a big party tonight. But it’s tonight, and I’m here instead, so the least I can do is have a little to drink to remember the place by.”
Closing their map, Amo plucked the lid from Indirk’s hands and put it back on the box. “Just who are you trying to fuck with?”
“Meryl,” Indirk said. “Or Phaeduin.”
Amo narrowed their eyes.
Indirk grinned. “Or you.”
Edner came riding past the cart, an alpin with a skinny white tail wrapped twice around his own waist, which was something alpin did when nervous. “Hey! Riders coming. Not RVA. It’s Nor Sator.”
“Hide your guns.” Amo stood fast. “I’ll do the talking.”
While everyone stood and turned serious, Indirk pouted at the crate of beer in front of her. Then, looking off into the dark past the road, she watched an animal drag away one of the dead Cradsoun soldiers. It was a spindly creature with a long, undulating body and dozens of pairs of stick-thin legs, mandibles half as large as the rest of its body wrapped like great arms around the corpse. It froze when Indirk saw it, caught her gaze and stared back at her with compound eyes that gleamed in the moonlight. Then torchlight shone on its face and it hurriedly backed into the dark with the body. It drew the body down into the mud, disappearing into the muck like a fish into water.