~ MACEL ~

He left at dawn’s first blush. Neither Bess nor Eilidh was awake to see him go. They slept on either side of the little camp, one an angel at peace and the other an old soldier torn by the wounds of war. Eilidh wore a metal daisy on a chain around her neck, smeared with blood. Macel took it with an apology. That was the proof that she was here, and she’d hardly miss it for just the one day.

Before he went, he stole a kiss from Bess, plucked from the soft skin of her cheek. Lost in dreams, she smiled, and he bade her goodbye.

The journey back was little more than a blur, and he ran it with blind abandon. There was no time to stop and think of the way, no time to dwell on sore legs; he had to trust in his instinct, and let it guide him, or else he’d take too long. Eilidh was already starting to run a fever. If a cut got infected, if she got sepsis before Macel could bring help to her, that would be her death.

Every step he took, his surroundings seemed equal parts familiar and strange. Animals scurrying on the ground fled before him, while birds of every feather took indignant flight when he came too near their nesting trees. Their caws were the soundtrack to his journey. The sun had been barely poking its head above the horizon when he left Bess, the lake barely tinged with pink. It was well beyond its apex when Plateau Watch came at last into view.

Eric Scobie was on sentry duty, sat in the little wooden tower at the corner of the yard. He wasn’t looking Macel’s way. His attention was locked on the arses of the stablegirls in their fitted jodhpurs, busy at work with the horses.

The only way to get to the tower was to climb the ladder inside, haphazardly made of planks nailed at ten-inch intervals. Macel managed to make his way down the narrow channel, climb up onto the duckboard bridge, and then get to the top of the ladder, and all the while Scobie hadn’t looked away from the girls. He suspected the women hadn’t agreed to star in Scobie’s private show. Scobie wasn’t the sort of man who actually spoke to women.

When he was only just behind Scobie, Macel spoke. “Lieutenant Bennett,” he said. “Where is she?”

Scobie turned, startled and red in the face. “What are you playing at, creeping up on me like that?”

“Where is Lieutenant Bennett?”

Scobie sighed. “Follow me.”

He led Macel down the ladder, abandoning the little tower and giving any nefarious actors who may have been skulking about free reign to do as they pleased without being spotted. Into the scullery they went. Delie was there, scrubbing dried mud off the floors where the sun illuminated it. She waved when she saw Macel. Scobie veered around her with a flushed face, his head cast down.

For some reason, Scobie sought out Sam Preston, busy sewing a button onto his uniform jacket.

“Macel,” he said with a cheerful smile, setting jacket and button down on a side table. “You missed breakfast. I had your share—I hope you don’t mind.” By the time Macel was done relaying the events of the previous day, Sam was no longer smiling. He went straight to Delie, and ignored her scowls as he told her everything Macel had told him. Delie practically pushed Macel into Lieutenant Bennett’s study then.

Bennett had taken for her study a small corner of the barracks. The room had a cramped, crooked aspect, carved as it was out of space not used for anything more important. One wall was given over entirely to bookshelves, four great oaken ones which ran from floor to ceiling and yet which had maybe a dozen books each. Another wall was bare, aside from one single rectangular window; a dead shrub in a terracotta pot was placed centrally on the sill.

Macel felt hemmed in. Lieutenant Bennett was sat behind her desk, with Sergeant Malleston flanking her. Behind him, Delie and Sam were cramped in the doorframe. Bennett didn’t look happy at the interruption, but she bade him speak.

When he was done, she glanced at Sergeant Malleston. “I hope this isn’t a joke,” she said. “I’m swamped enough as it is.” Which made perfect sense. After all, who else but an overworked commander would have her soldiers alternating between free time and pointless busywork day on day?

Macel frowned. “Why would I joke?”

“If you ever find yourself in a position of authority, Donea, you’ll learn not to assume that other people’s idea of common sense is the same as yours. There’s a certain breed of soldier whose entire self-worth hinges on ‘jokes’ like this.”

He pulled Eilidh’s daisy pendant from his breast pocket. “Is this proof enough? It’s her pendant.”

“She was wearing that the day she disappeared,” said Delie from the doorway. “I told her it was pretty. I remember she told me all about it.”

Lieutenant Bennett sniffed. “And you’d be able to find her again?”

Macel nodded. “Absolutely.”

“Then we go.” She pointed at everybody in the room in turn. “Courtyard, now. Sergeant, fetch some aid material. Preston, a tent.”

They were waiting in the courtyard for a solid hour. Their numbers had been bolstered by Scobie and Wilding. The former, who’d been pulled off sentry duty, was fuming. “What’s the use in sending me up that tower if I don’t even get to have a proper look at all the girls?” he muttered. In his stead, Sulphur Strangward took a place atop the tower. The girls were safe from stares with Strangward on duty. His interest in men was just about the only thing anyone knew about Strangward aside from his putrid body odour. Indeed, on more than one occasion during their wait, Macel glanced up to see Strangward staring down at Scobie with a smirk on his face.

“Are we sure the Lieutenant’s coming?” Wilding wondered aloud, after they’d been stood in the full sun for fifteen minutes. Sergeant Malleston assured them that she was, though when another half hour had gone with no sign of her even he began to wonder. He went in to see what was keeping her.

Delie had been smiling all too broadly—circumstances given—for as long as they’d been out there. Now she started to laugh.

“What’s the joke?” asked Macel.

“I’m supposed to be deep-cleaning the scullery,” Delie explained. “Me and Issy Cutler got busted pilfering booze for some late-night drinking. I tried to tell Bennett it was for a girls’ talk, but she wouldn’t have it. I don’t think she had a normal upbringing. We’d stolen, she said, and that had to be punished. Manual labour’s the only true punishment of course. And Issy will have to do the lot.”

Delie always seemed to be on punishment duty for some transgression or other. “You’ve got to start following the rules,” said Macel. “I’d hate to see you get sent back down to the valley.”

“If you don’t want to share the drinks, you don’t have to,” said Delie.

“You mean you’ve still got them?”

“Of course.” Delie looked bemused. “You don’t think I’d just hand back the contraband, do you?” She gave Macel a mischievous wink and mimed drinking from the bottle. “Anyway, who are you to tell me to follow the rules? I’m not the one who took an impromptu camping trip to who knows where.”

By this point, Macel was beginning to grow impatient. Eilidh is hurt, he thought. We need to be on the way by now, not stood around waiting for the flowers to grow.

At last, Lieutenant Bennett appeared. “What is everybody hanging around for? Come on. Quickly now.”

We’re waiting for you, Lieutenant.

It was late afternoon when they finally got moving. No chance Macel would be able to find the obelisks in the dark, and they’d have to take it at a run to get there before the sun went down. Which meant Eilidh would have been slowly bleeding out for a full day before help arrived, at the least. He hoped Bess would have the sense to keep her hydrated.

With half a dozen more, the return journey was slow-going. Scobie and Wilding were carrying a stretcher between them, unwieldy even when folded away. Sam had drawn the short straw. He carried on his back the vast majority of the kit to put together a makeshift camp. This was useful stuff to have, as it happened. By nightfall they’d got at most twenty feet beyond Bartley’s tree.

“We rest here,” Bennett decreed. “Tent up, Preston.”

Macel went to help Sam with the job of setting up camp. Lieutenant Bennett, meanwhile, turned her gaze to Delie. “Find a clear space to send up a flare,” she said, “so Donnelly knows we’re okay.”

“Doesn’t a flare mean the opposite?” Delie’s jaw was set, Macel noted. She wasn’t in the mood for tasks she couldn’t see the point in.

Bennett bristled. “If I wanted impudence I would have asked for it. I didn’t, though, I asked for my instruction to be carried out.”

Delie folded her arms. “Even if it’s a fucking stupid instruction?”

“Watch your language,” Bennett screeched.

Sergeant Malleston appeared on the scene. “Lieutenant, Rice makes a good point—though perhaps her wording could have been kinder. If we start shooting flares, Sergeant Donnelly is going to see it as a distress beacon. He’ll be obliged to send a squad out after us.”

Bennett shook her head. “There aren’t the men for it. Plateau Watch is barebones, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“If he can’t muster the men, he’ll ask for help. General Bradshaw has plenty of soldiers going spare. If they come after us, they’ll be the ones to fetch Cailie. Do you want Bradshaw to get the glory?”

Bennett pursed her lips. “The credit’s mine to take.”

“So don’t fire any flares,” said Sergeant Malleston.

Relieved of her task, Delie relaxed in the crook of an old tree trunk, curled up amidst the years of debris. She’d just opened her mouth—no doubt to take the piss out of Sam—when Sergeant Malleston pressed a potato peeler into her hand. “You’ll cook tonight, Rice.”

Sergeant Malleston had evidently never spent any time with Delie in the field. He would have known that she was a terrible cook. Food she prepared inevitably ended up in the grey area of technically-edible-but-nobody-would-choose-to-eat-this that was normally reserved for livestock feed. This evening wasn’t an exception. No plates were cleared.

The tent Sam had been charged with turned out to be unfit for purpose. Its canvas walls were thinning, and torn in parts, and it had just room for one person to sleep. Cloth awnings sewn onto the tent’s outer offered a token piece of shelter for two more. Bennett insisted on taking the interior of the tent for her own rest. The awnings were unoccupied. Sergeant Malleston could have pulled rank on the others to get himself a guaranteed dry bed, but pushed instead to draw lots. Nobody ever got around to actually doing the draw, so Sergeant Malleston slept with the rest of them, under the blanket of stars.

Delie had a knife in her breast pocket. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m the only woman here—the Lieutenant excluded,” she explained. “I don’t trust Scobie not to try something.”

“We can sleep in shifts if you like,” said Macel. “So there’s no risk of you putting a blade in Scobie’s throat.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“I don’t understand why we had to rush out when we did. We should have stayed at the Watch. Proper beds, and we’d have lost, what, an hour’s travelling time? Two?”

She had a point. It had taken them not much more than an hour to get this far, even at their meandering pace. Setting up the camp—and disassembling it come morning—would waste a similar amount of time. They’d have been quicker had they requisitioned some of Speke’s horses. If he’d heard that Bessily was waiting with Eilidh, he’d probably have saddled up the horses and ridden them here himself.

But then, they’d have been quicker if there were only a few of them. They were seven in all. Why did there have to be seven? One man and a stretcher would have been fine. Perhaps some bandages for Eilidh. The only reason there were seven of them was because Lieutenant Bennett had said so, and when Lieutenant Bennett said something it happened. Within the walls of Plateau Watch, she was the god. Address all prayers to her.

Macel didn’t sleep much. When he did, his dreams were of Eilidh’s bleeding body, of Bess all alone, of Bartley hanging in the tree. This last one was the worst, because when he woke up he could see that very tree. Night cast wicked shadows. The thick leaves blowing idly in the breeze could well be a spectral Bartley swinging where his body used to be. For the last five hours of night, Macel lay awake but not daring to open his eyes.

By first light, most of the others had woken up. Sam started a fire and cooked up the few bits of food they hadn’t eaten the previous evening, “before Bennett wakes up and makes Adela do it”. He needn’t have rushed. Bennett was still asleep when the food was cooked and eaten and the rest of the camp disassembled.

“What’s the hold up?” Scobie was kicking stones against a tree trunk.

“We can’t go without the Lieutenant,” said Sergeant Malleston.

“I say we leave her. We’d go quicker.”

“If you want a court martial, go for it,” said Malleston, “but if you want to keep your job and your liberty you have to wait for her.”

“Can’t somebody wake her up?” said Wilding.

Malleston sighed. “If the Lieutenant wakes up to find a man in her tent, you can bet she’ll kick off. It won’t be a pretty sight.”

Five heads turned in unison to Delie, who had been hanging back. “What?”

It took a bit of cajoling, but eventually Delie agreed to be the one to wake the Lieutenant, only on the condition that somebody else take responsibility for the idea. That somebody else was Sergeant Malleston, as he had rank and couldn’t just be belittled with impunity.

In the end, though, she didn’t need the security. Only a few seconds after she entered the Lieutenant’s tent, she emerged again, with Bennett just behind her.

“Apologies,” she said with shame on her face. “I overslept.”

As soon as the tattered tent was dismantled and stuffed into Sam’s pack, they set off again. To begin with, Macel could scarcely get his bearings. He was stopping every five minutes to work out whether or not he recognised some piece of terrain or another. Eventually, thankfully, he got his groove, and they started to make decent time.

Not as fast as if he was on his own, but at least they were consistently moving.

Morning had become afternoon, and the early clouds had given way to a hot sun, when he led them into the cavern through which the obelisks were reached. “Why were you out this far, anyway?” asked Bennett.

“It was my day off,” Macel replied, curtly. “I can go where I want to on my day off.”

She asked him another question, but he didn’t know what. He wasn’t listening. His only concern was finding Bess—and the creeping agony of every muscle in his body that had decided it didn’t want to go any further. It was so tempting to stop and have a sit down. But he kept going, kept walking while he weighed up the pros and cons of stopping to rest, and by the time he’d made his decision, they were nearly there anyway.

He thought they were nearly there, at least. This pass seemed to have doubled in length since he’d run through it yesterday.

At last, with his legs burning angrily, he saw the light at the end of the tunnel. A green bush was growing just outside the cave, Macel remembered. It was poking its nose inside. The contrast between the darkness and the bright sun outside made the bush seem almost white.

“Bess,” he yelled, before they were free of the thrall of the cavern. “Bess, we’re here.”

No reply.

He called out her name, louder than before. As loud as he could. “Bess, it’s Macel. I’ve brought help for Eilidh.” The echo of the words bounced off the cave walls. It didn’t draw a response from outside. No worry. She wasn’t exactly close to the cave’s entrance. Macel had left them in the midst of the obelisks. Bess probably just couldn’t hear him.

“Are we close?” asked Delie.

“Just around the corner,” said Macel.

Emerging out of that cave was like stepping into a different world. There were few landmarks that they could see from the other side—a huge mountain range on the horizon line, but that was it. This was the shore of an unknown bay, and titan constructs of jet-black stone from unknown forebears.

The reactions of the others were expected. “You didn’t say there was a henge,” said Sam.

“It’s not a henge. It’s just some stones.”

“Just some stones? Macel, none of this should be here.” Delie pointed towards the stones. “Does this look like a natural formation? This isn’t the sort of thing you find on unexplored worlds.”

“Enough with the chatter,” Bennett interrupted. “Where is Cailie?”

“There,” said Macel, pointing. “Under that tree.” Bess had done a good job of making her camp blend in with the surroundings. Knowing where it was, Macel didn’t have any trouble finding it, but it would be difficult for the uninformed observer to spot. He ran towards it, and the others ran after him.

Eilidh was there, bundled up just as she was when he’d left him. She looked so peaceful, at least if you ignored the blood and the wounds. On the ground beside her, folded neatly, was a scrap of paper. That hadn’t been there before. Macel picked it up and slipped it into his pocket. If Bennett saw it, she’d want it given to her. It was probably a note from Bess.

Because Bess wasn’t here. The camp had been left neatly, and Eilidh untouched, so there probably hadn’t been any wild animals come this way. Bess had just disappeared. All of her things, her clothes and her flask, were gone. The note aside, it was like she’d never been here at all.

Behind him, he heard Bennett giving orders. “Stretcher out. Load her up.”

He stood back to let Scobie and Wilding do as was bid. Delie leaned in to whisper in his ear. “I thought you were with Bess.”

“I was.”

“So where is she?”

Bennett and Sergeant Malleston were occupied watching as Eilidh was loaded onto the stretcher, so Macel took the folded paper from his pocket and opened it up. The contents were a mess; Bess had used some bluish-red substance as ink, and it had smeared with abandon. The words were readable, though, even if the scrawl was untidy. “Light of the moon called,” he read aloud. “Don’t follow. Bess.”

“Well, that settles that,” said Delie.

Macel shook his head. Something wasn’t sitting right. Before he could ponder any on what that might be, Bennett’s voice interrupted them. “We start back at once.”

Macel returned the note to his pocket, and led them back into the cave.

They ate a sombre dinner that evening, Macel, Sam and Delie huddled together in the dining room’s smallest table. It was pressed tight against one of the thick beams holding the wall up. Macel could feel the wood pressing into his back whenever he leaned too far backwards. He had to sit in the middle. Sam wouldn’t sit next to Delie, and Delie wouldn’t sit next to Sam, and he needed to talk to both of them.

Eilidh was safe, for now. Lieutenant Bennett had her brought straight to the northern wing of the fort, previously marked off as overflow bunks but seldom used aside from by horny soldiers looking for a private corner to enjoy each other’s bodies. The Lieutenant had sent everyone else away as soon as Eilidh had been laid on a bed, but she herself had not left the northern wing since. Sergeant Donnelly had briefly made an appearance in the dining room to collect a plate for her. The Sergeant never usually showed his face there. Officers never did. Even Sergeant Malleston ate elsewhere more often than not, and he was generally well-liked around Plateau Watch.

Able at last to stop worrying about Eilidh, Macel had been able to turn his mind towards other matters. Bessily. The note she’d left.

“I can’t see that she’d go through the trouble to write that for no reason,” said Delie, chewing on a mouthful of bread. “What’s she used for ink, anyway? It looks like fruit juice.”

“Who cares what she wrote it with,” said Sam. “It’s not blood, so it’s not interesting.”

“You have no imagination, Sam.”

“Oho, is that a fact?” Sam held out his hands in mocking showmanship. “Well, why don’t we all listen to Adela while she and her amazing imagination explain what fascinating insights we can learn from the ink Bessily used?”

Delie scowled at him. “For a start, it says she didn’t have a pen—”

“Pen, no pen, it’s all noise,” said Macel. “All that matters is the words. I need to go after her.”

“Macel, are you mad?” asked Sam.

“It says ‘don’t follow’,” said Delie. “That’s the one part that’s actually clear.”

He shook his head. “She doesn’t mean it. She’d want me to go after her.” A memory stirred, a conversation once shared with Bessily. She’d asked if he would follow her. He hadn’t said yes. Maybe he should have. What if this was a test?

Delie wasn’t convinced. “If she wants you to follow her, she wouldn’t have written exactly the opposite.”

“I dunno,” said Sam. “In my experience, girls are quite happy to say the opposite of what they mean. She’ll probably get into a strop if you don’t read between the lines. Isn’t that right, Delie?”

Delie stood fast, her chair scraping on the floor. At several tables nearby, faces turned to her. “That’s it. I’m done.”

“Don’t go,” Macel said. “Ignore Sam if he’s being a dick. Please, Delie—I need your help right now.”

She paused for a second, then sat down again.

“Whatever it says, you can’t very well go after her,” said Sam. “You don’t have a clue where she’s gone. How are you going to find her?”

That was a good point, one which Macel hadn’t thought of. Still, it didn’t make him less determined to go. He took a bite of salted beef and chewed on it as he read over the note again.

“Light of the moon?” Delie leaned over Macel’s shoulder and pointed at the words. “It’s not right, is it? There are two moons.”

“They phase,” said Sam. “Was one of them dark last night?”

Delie rolled her eyes “Dark doesn’t mean gone. Bess isn’t a child, she knows this.”

“But it’s hardly relevant,” Sam pointed out. “She’s trying to tell us which way she went, not give us a lesson in the firmament. What would you have had her write? ‘I’ve gone in the direction of the moons—even though I couldn’t see one of them, and thus it had no bearing on which way I went’?”

Macel shook his head. “What if she isn’t talking about the sister-moons?”

“Like what?”

Like a mysterious woman in the clouds who keeps giving her messages, perhaps? But no. He’d promised Bess he wouldn’t spread her secrets. “Bess is from Tol Manase, right? Perhaps it’s a local expression.”

“And she expects us to understand that?” Delie looked sceptical.

“Or she doesn’t realise it’s an uncommon phrase,” said Macel. Growing up beyond the Merrowain, he knew all about that. When he and Tanis had come to Pattinsdale, their funny little mannerisms had been thrown into sharp relief. Once, he’d gone to the town’s market to buy a guinea-fowl for supper; the stallkeeper’s wide eyes and his young son’s confused laughter when Macel asked for ‘galleenie’ had left him in a cold sweat for a couple of nights. “Bess spent her whole life in the arse end of nowhere, till she came here—and who has she really talked to but us? She’s never had the chance to figure out that local slang’s a thing.”

“The moon on Tol Manase goes west-to-east,” said Sam. Macel and Delie both looked at him. “Tema Caerlin grew up on Tol Manase,” he explained. “She said her bedroom was in the western gallery of her house, and she used to stay up and watch the moonrise from her window.”

“I don’t remember her saying that,” said Macel.

Sam shrugged. “I can’t help what you remember. It’s true.”

“So she’s gone east?” Delie asked. “How could she keep track?”

“There’s not many different ways to go, from where I left her,” Macel mused. “You saw the landscape there. Unless she can scale sheer walls, it’s either forward or backward.”

“She could have swum across the water,” Sam pointed out.

“Or followed those stones,” added Delie. “There was a pass in the cliffs I saw. She might have gone that way.”

“No,” said Macel, maybe a shade too firmly. “She didn’t go that way. I’m certain of that much. Bess was...” He paused. Neither Delie nor Sam knew about Bess. “The stones affected her,” he said.

“Affected her how?” Delie asked.

“Like a headache or... I don’t know. She didn’t like going near them. She wouldn’t go that way.”

“So east then,” said Sam, “and maybe she only walks at night.”

“That would be foolish,” said Delie.

“And Bessily isn’t foolish?”

“She made ink out of fruit,” said Delie, exasperated. “She must have some sort of head on her shoulders.”

“I’ll go east,” said Macel. “I’ll go east and I’ll keep going until I find her.”

“You’ll get lost,” said Sam.

“And then we’ll have to go after you,” Delie added.

“Preston!” Sam stiffened at the sound of Lieutenant Bennett’s bark. She was stood just a way behind them, with the Sergeant loitering behind her. Macel stuffed the note in his pocket, surreptitiously as he could. “Preston, I’m told you have a sweetheart in the valley. Today’s your lucky day. Go to her.”

Sam said nothing immediately, no doubt suspecting a trick. Macel didn’t blame him. Bennett seldom showed any awareness of her soldiers’ private lives, let alone supported them.

“Quickly now,” she said. “Master Speke’s been kind enough to lend you one of his horses.”

“Lieutenant?”

She laughed silently. “You don’t trust me, do you? You think I’m up to something. Preston, it’s as simple as this: Cailie’s in a bad way. She needs medical help. Somebody needs to go to the valley and fetch a doctor, a since it’s now evening and you have a place to stay for the night, you’re the obvious choice to go.”

Sam nodded. “A doctor?”

“Or two. And hurry. Cailie’s life is in your hands.”

Sam ran to the exit, leaving his dinner half-uneaten. When he was gone, Bennett looked over to Macel and Delie. “Eat quicker tomorrow,” she said. “This isn’t social time.” And then she turned on her heel and slinked out, the Sergeant clinging tight to her back.

“Bitch,” whispered Delie, loud enough for Macel alone to hear.