The rising sun bronzed the backs of their necks and stilted their shadows out before them as they walked the rutted track out of the boglands and onto a high plateau. There camped the grand army of the [armiger]. A massive pavilion with opal and blue panels stood at the camp’s center. Thousands of men were thronging it and chanting something while thousands more jogged up from the tents pitched about and thousands more tended to horses and squatted under tarps and stood around dungfires that flared the outskirts of the camp.
"Wish this lot had come te the span," said Khaz. He cupped a hand to his ear. "What’re they sayin?"
"North," said Mym.
"Why's that?"
"Can't tell. What do ye see Dara?"
"Those are the armiger's colors, but I don't see him anywhere. Wait."
The chanting erupted into a cheer that rose and as it rose Daraway pushed onto her toes and tilted her chin to peer over the crowd.
"Oh," she said. Her heels dropped.
"What ye see?" said Mym.
"Nothing nice."
Mym jumped and she saw over shoulders and through raised fists and spears and swords. Beside the pavilion an orcish sow and her cub were raised on a post and hanging in the morning sun. Their wrists were bound and tied to the post's head and their heads sagged forward and ribcages bulged over hollow bellies. Someone had driven a [soldier's knife] through the sow and into the post.
"Well?" said Khaz.
Mym watched Cousins skip light footed up the rut ahead and dip for a sprig of prairie fire and tie it up in her hair.
"Ye'll see in a minute."
They pushed through the throng as it decamped. The [armiger]'s retainers loaded the pavilion's cushions and furniture into hand carts and horse carts. Stakes were pulled and it collapsed and revealed to them the crucified sow and cub.
Khaz's hand snapped around the nearest wrist of the nearest [retainer]. "Where's yer armiger?"
"At the big tent little man."
He nodded at the post. "He know yer doin that?"
The [retainer] laughed and tried shaking his wrist away but Khaz's fingers were grown swinging hammers and shifting blocks of stone larger than any man.
"Lemme go."
"He know?"
"Course he knows. He's who strung em up there."
Khaz looked at the [retainer] with an expression cast from black iron. The man whimpered and wilted onto his knee. His hand purpled and swelled like an eggplant in summer. Passing soldiers bearing pikes and shields and blades slowed to watch. Over their shoulders peered camp followers who kept their wares in bags or on beasts or between their legs.
"Ye best take us te him," said Khaz.
"My wrist," the [retainer] gasped.
Khaz looked into and through the gathering crowd. "Ye show me where he's at."
Mym put her hand on Khaz's shoulder. "Oy Khaz, this big tent's got te be his, aye? Leave off the poor man fore he melts into the ground."
Khaz released his hold and the [retainer] rolled onto his back in the dirt and held his hand against his chest and looked at it wide eyed as if it was some alien thing growing out of his arm.
Khaz shook his head. "They shouldn't be killin no lads. Lads don't come easy."
"They do for us," said Daraway. She had Cousins under her arm.
"Still no reason for that."
"There certainly is."
"I can't see it."
"You will the moment this army finds what's left of theirs."
"Ye speakin in mysteries woman."
Daraway shrugged. “There’s no mystery here. Sometimes war is about power or land or politics. Other times it's just about killing."
Suddenly a [knight] in silvered armor on a steed too large for the spare land put his shadow across them and removed his visored helm. "I'll be damned and short two copper for it. He said you were here and here you are. Dwarves. Real as daylight and fitted for fighting. Hail dwarves. Fall out with me. The armiger'll be coming down to the road forthwith." He nodded at Cousins. "That little one with you?"
"You bet," said Cousins.
"Not supposed te be," said Mym.
"She's with us," said Daraway.
The [knight] eyed Cousins then Mym then Daraway. "Take care she don't get lost ma'am. This here's a big army in a harsh country with a lotta men, and some of em were made worse than the land."
Mym looked sideways at Cousins. "And there are orcs."
The [knight] donned his helm and yanked its base back and forth until he had both eyes centered in its narrow slit. "Them too, but they don't stand much chance with us here. Not meaning to offend you. I heard about your folk and them on the seaway span. But we've been keeping them in their place for generations and dwarves hadn't seen them since when?"
"Been a century at least," said Daraway.
"See? Like I said, not offending, just stating facts. Come take my stirrup and I'll walk you through this mess."
They walked beside the [knight]. Mym nodded at the crucified sow as they passed by. "I see ye caught some already. Ye find a tall and gray one? Ugly like, and carryin an ax like mine, but all along here is black metal shined up like obsidian."
The [knight] shook his head. "No. Only them two so far. She came ranging for food, so we know they ain't got none. Once the armiger put the knife to her cub she told where they're at. We're heading there now."
"He did it hisself then?" said Khaz.
"Of course. You don't leave that sort of thing to your subordinates," said the [knight].
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A group of men and women passed riding big browns and blacks and palominos. Each had a navy band tied around their arm and a plugged skin strung across their leather jackets. All wore long blades with flattened points. The skin of their cheeks and foreheads and hands were pallid and scarred. Some were missing eyebrows. They called to each other and laughed as they jogged their horses past expeditionaries afoot.
Cousins was all ears and eyes for them. "Veterans from the rising front,” she called them. “You can tell by them colors. They got ether in them skins and spread it all down their swords and light em on fire to fight the deaduns."
"Ye hear that Mym?" said Khaz.
"Aye. Good way te ruin steel."
The [knight] said, "Those burning blades keep the risen well away from your mountain. Look smart now. Here comes the armiger."
She heard the horse behind and would have turned to look but for the pride she carried and the bitterness. His stallion came alongside, big and whiter than snow in sunlight and cantering with high knees and neck arched and eyes ahead as if all other horses and riders were beneath notice. He passed at a yard in knee boots and chaps of dusty black leather and a black mail cuirass whose rings were chalky from time asea and they seemed to match the faint speckling on the stallion's haunch. He wore a plain [shortsword] at his hip and a dwarven [shortarm] stuck into a holster at his armpit with a grip of curved ivory and across his back a [long spear] with a wooden shaft wrapped in canvas and tipped with a leaf of plain steel. His eyes were blue like her da's and creased in their corners from past happiness. Mym meant to speak first but his eyes changed her world with a single look so her mouth opened yet she said nothing.
"Sir," said the [knight].
The [armiger] slowed his mount. "Malv. This them?"
"Yes sir."
"A fighting pair."
"Trio,” Mym managed to say.
“What’s that?”
“We're three," she said. She turned to Daraway but Daraway was gone and Cousins also.
The [armiger] didn't seem to have heard. "If two is all they could spare then two is enough for us. A dwarf in summer is worth ten men in winter. You two can follow a trace over bare rock?"
"No such thing as bare rock," said Mym.
"What does that mean little one?"
"It means we can follow yer trace."
"Good." He turned to the [knight]. "Find them a place of honor in the vanguard, then join me for the day. Friends." He nodded and reached back and slapped the stallion's hindquarter and cantered ahead.
As they watched him go Khaz said, "That it?"
"What do ye mean?" she said.
"Nothin. Where'd Daraway slip off te?"
"I didn't see."
The [knight] held out his gauntleted hand. "Come along. The armiger wants your eyes and ears at the front."
Mym let go of the stirrup. "Go on ahead. We need te find our friend."
"As you wish, but it's a long way to the front of the column. Don't wait too long or you'll spend most of the day just catching it." He trotted his mount after the [armiger].
She stepped off the track and Khaz after her. "Which way ye reckon?" he said.
She watched a group of youths pass on small burros whose manes were stiff like razors and whose eyelashes were long and sad. They straddled the beasts with their feet nearly dragging the ground and the boys talked loudly of the orc sow and what they would've done with her were they the [armiger]. The girls carefully kept their faces blank. She wanted to tell them such a fine man would never do the things they boasted.
"Oy Mym?"
"We'll start at the front and work te the back."
***
All day they searched the mileslong column as it snaked its way north. The setting sun yellowed the west and the shadow of the world darkened the east and the expedition halted and combatted the coming night with ten thousand flickering cookfires across the stretched out landscape. Of the [magistrate] they found no sign.
Mym unslung her pack and sat on the ground. "Guessin she don't want te be found."
Khaz sat beside her. "We can't find a familiar face among friends but ye intend te find that orc in this wide wild country in how long? Ye left eight weeks of meat for yer da and ye've spent two already gettin here, and ye'll spend two more gettin back."
"We'll find him."
"Don't know, Mym. Look around. Shit goes on forever and ever. Ye ever seen a sky so big?"
She looked up. A few stars twinkled in her side vision and vanished when she sought them. "Aye, standin atop the mountain."
Khaz chuckled. "That was a day. I’ve never been so cold.”
“Me neither.”
“Or knackered.”
“Nope.”
“I about walked straight over the icefall in that whiteout."
"Ye would've if I hadn't grabbed ye."
“Aye yer a hell of a ropemate. I don’t think I would’ve known I missed the ground til I became part of it. Can’t say I recollect much sky te be seen up there.”
"Not that day but I've been back up on mornins where ye can see clear up te the black heart and down te the span and over te the great southern sea."
"Aye?"
"Aye."
"I didn't know that."
"There's plenty ye don't know about me."
He nodded. "That's so."
She tore a strip of smoked meat and passed it to him. He thanked her and they watched the sky turn in colors.
"Look at this place," he said.
"Can't miss it."
"All these big folk in their hundreds and thousands and even with all the shit they lug along they don't even fill a corner of it."
"That they don't."
"Maybe ye should've gone scrapin the black heart for shard after all."
"Maybe."
They sat awhile in silence.
"Remember the tent?" she said.
He laughed. "I'll never forget. Yer da and Thayne never should've trusted them lowlander beans."
"They couldn't get enough of em."
"Curled my nails right off my toes they did. We were lucky there weren't no tinder or they'd've blown the top right off the mountain."
"I never told ye I hid da's matches."
"Aye?"
"Aye. Ye know how he gets around fireworks."
"Him and Thayne both. There was no savin that tent. Ye should've just left it up there."
Now she laughed. "I burned it."
"Ye didn't."
"I did. Those stains weren't ever comin out and I sure as hell wasn't goin te sleep in it again."
He laughed and she laughed and she felt as if they were back in the white mountain's valley after a long hunt. For a while they set to remembering to forget the now. The now would still be there tomorrow and when tomorrow came they'd forget the remembering.
After supper she unfurled her bedroll and laid in it. She rolled on her side and watched the western orange and violet explosion over the high desert, where great blackening clouds cruised on a bloodred floe of light chased by the bright and steady evening star. She imagined the colonizers who had come before and she wondered at the arrogance of anyone who thought such a place needed saving, or that people born therein needed redeeming.
Later Khaz snored loud enough to shake the stars from the sky and between his rumblings she heard Daraway walk up to their camp. Both moons hung behind her and Mym couldn't see her face.
"Evenin."
"Evening."
"Glad ye found us."
"Just followed the racket."
"And earlier? Ye get lost?"
She didn't answer.
"I know ye didn't. Somethin's between ye and the armiger. Ye don't need te say but I wish ye had given some warnin. Where'd ye put the girl?"
"She sleeps."
"Come on, there's room for ye here."
"I should go back. I just wanted to check on you."
"Then come on down here and check."
The dark figure of the woman hung there a moment and then descended to her as if stepping out of the heavens.
The dying cookfires glowed all across the darkened land. The million stars arced slowly overhead as cold and inexorable as a glacier and the land fell away from their coming as if embarrassed by its dim imitation of their majesty. The whole earth dove and gathered its dark as if to escape their sight and smother its shame. Mym watched the sky and wondered if she would ever see a more beautiful thing, and she hated herself for seeing it while her da had only a wall and a ceiling for looking at.
By first light Daraway was gone.
Khaz sat up in the gloaming and unwound from his beard and blanket and shook his head and blinked at the ground. He turned to look at her.
She jumped up and kicked dust over the place they'd lain and said, "Let's get on. Da isn't gettin better while we're shootin shit."
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> +1 [Belonging]: ...I reckon it's as much about who you're with as it is where you are or when. Speaking only for myself I knew I was gettin farther and farther from where I was born but around them dwarves and that right lady I felt more and more at home... (3/10)