Prologue
“What do you mean they can’t find him, have they even LOOKED?” Lieutenant Sam Farmer was, to put it nicely, displeased. “It’s not that big a transport!” He paid what passed for a camp barber to shear his bright red hair and beard the day before and now you could see his face and scalp flushing with anger.
Major Mitchell’s black hair still hung at his collar, he planned to wait until he returned to Cauls for a proper haircut. And he actually felt pleased with this turn of events, though he tried to hide it. “I personally spoke to the Captain of the Murphy, he had the ship searched top to bottom, twice. I thanked him and would have asked that it be searched again, but they are already behind on account of the weather. I’m sorry, you’ll just have to spend another month here.” He wasn’t sorry. Lieutenant Sam Farmer was the best officer in Mitchell’s command, but he had completed his yearlong tour and it was time for him to leave. However, his replacement had somehow been lost in transit. No one knew how, least of all Mitchell, but he retained his best man another month and that did not displease him. “Look on the bright side, we’ll leave together. You can bunk with me!” The joke fell flat, as expected. Farmer might be a great officer, but his sense of humor had abandoned him.
Mitchell felt glad to have the Lieutenant for another month, not only because Farmer was a good officer, but also for the sheer joy of seeing the young Sam Farmer get screwed over. To the Major’s thinking, part of Farmer’s success lay in the fact that things always seemed to go the young Lieutenant's way. Mitchell harbored a little jealousy, and didn’t mind seeing Farmer… displeased. He actually kind of enjoyed it, and Farmer knew it. “Don’t worry, you’ll be leaving Rattlesnake soon enough.”
Rattlesnake outpost sat at the base of a natural cliff three hundred miles south of Cauls that formed a natural barrier between the kingdom and the wildlands that stretched toward Paso. The fort was not particularly large, but the walls and floor were formed together into a solid piece making it nearly impenetrable. Water could exit through a single large drain, but more solid things, like soldiers or their rations, had only one way in or out; over the forty-foot-tall walls. A small stairwell climbed the wall and a crane peeked over, but no doors or gates broke the grey perimeter. The outpost originally served as a lookout for armies invading up the ancient road into Whybar, but these days, the men stationed there spent far more time battling the outpost’s namesake; along with heat, rain, and boredom; than they did spotting any soldiers.
Samuel Farmer joined the infantry at sixteen. He convinced his father to get him a waiver to join so young. Nine years later, he turned twenty-five two weeks before he finished his year at the outpost. In the preceding years of service, he filled out his five and three-quarter foot frame, earned a commission to the rank of Lieutenant, and earned a slot in Captain’s training when he returned to the capital. If he ever returned. His replacement was supposed to be on the massive resupply transport that arrived this particular afternoon. But that replacement, one Lieutenant Brave, somehow managed to embark on the journey to Rattlesnake without arriving. And so Sam Farmer would have to wait another month until the next transport arrived.
Lieutenant Farmer served as the officer in charge of the morning watch, fourteen men plus himself, and a sergeant, that patrolled the wall from midnight until eight every morning. Sleeping all day had its perks: this time of year, the night stayed comfortably cool compared to the humid days; the morning watch usually avoided the additional duties of cleaning the camp, building maintenance, or clearing the little trees that grew along the perimeter; and Farmer preferred working at night. But today had not been nearly so laid back for Farmer and his men. A steadily increasing rain marked the last hour of their watch. By the time they made their way back to the barracks, they were soaked, and the drone of the rain echoing off the high walls made sleep elusive. The barracks leaked and the drops splashed across his bed. When the rain finally stopped, the transport arrived.
Restocking was one chore morning watch could not avoid, all personnel at the fort needed to carry the rations from the crane to the storehouse. Farmer’s men caught a quick nap before time for them to prepare for their watch, but Farmer was too busy shouting at superior officers and puzzling out how transport personnel could lose a whole person. He didn’t get any sleep after his discussion with Major Mitchell. Something seemed off. He felt angry that his replacement could not be found, angry that he would spend another four-plus weeks in the tiny backwater post, but something else bothered him also. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
The fort was a big rectangle, in the northwest corner sat the communications building, with the huge aluminum mast reaching up over the wall. To the east sat the command building; to the south the storehouse. Next to the storehouse, you could find the dining hall, and on the other side of that lay the barracks. An armory rested across the small drill field, and next to the armory sat the electric generation building. The system couldn’t power the whole fort, instead only the communications building and a pair of floodlights received electricity. Next to the generator, the fuel depot loomed; a huge plastic storage tank that transport crews swapped out for a full tank every resupply. Next to it was a water tank they resupplied in the same fashion. And then, in the center of the east wall, the staircase and the crane stood watch. The stairs were four flights of rickety wooden terror with a shack at the foot of it that held a desk for the officer of the watch. It had room for a desk, a chair, a stove, and little else. A copy of the stairs stood on the outside of the wall, except the exterior stairs included a linchpin at the top and the room at the bottom served as a gatehouse. The linchpin could be pulled by the watchman on duty at the top of the stair and the exterior stairwell would fall away from the wall, leaving no way for any attackers to enter the fort. The crane was newer, all steel, and could swiftly lift nearly anything in the fort, buildings included, provided an adept operator sat at the controls.
The Lieutenant looked up at the stairs when he entered the shack late that night. The night that should have found him back in Caul. A memory struck him as he looked at the old steps. Unlike the rest of the soldiers, Sam had been to Rattlesnake outpost before this assignment. His father, now General George Farmer, was once Major “Red” Farmer, Commander of Rattlesnake outpost. Sam’s mother passed away shortly after his birth and Red labored to ease his son’s loss with a constant flow of adventure.
Naturally, young Sam accompanied the Major to the outpost. The boy would race up and down the stairs, then convince the crane operator to let him “ride the hook” as it bounced and swung over the base. The crane was different then, not so strong or quick, but twice the height of the one in place now. The elder Farmer held more ambition than the present Major Mitchell. He would personally lead patrols through the surrounding area, and as often as not Sam would go with him. When a year passed and the time came for the father and son to leave, Sam Farmer almost cried. And he felt happy to return when he received his assignment. But a year was long enough; there were matters to see to back in Cauls.
First, there were matters to attend to at Rattlesnake. Sergeant Webster came huffing down the stairs just before one in the morning. One of the Privates, a man named Pearcy, reported that he saw something in the woods on the south wall. Another man saw it too, although Sergeant Webster wasn’t sure who the second man was and hadn’t seen it himself. “You know, it’s probably just a mouse, or maybe Pearcy’s shadow, but I thought you’d want to know.”
Farmer did want to know “Pearcy’s been here since the fall and never made a peep before, but now he’s seeing stuff? That seems odd, and you say someone else saw something, too?”
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“That’s right, Yes sir.”
“Well, it won’t hurt to take a look.” The climb would only take a minute and might burn off some of the rage Farmer still felt toward the circumstances he found himself in. He put on his helmet and walked out the door Webster left open. As he turned to climb the stairs, he paused. “I’ve been here too long Sarge, for half a second I thought I saw something in the drain,” he told Webster as he started again.
“Like what, a snake or a mouse or something?”
“Like a face.”
Pearcy was waiting at the top of the stairs. He led them to the south wall and pointed to the down.
“Something seems off, that’s all, Sir. I’ve been here 4 months and that’s not the way things are supposed to look.” Sergeant Webster looked ready to shove Pearcy off the wall, but he waited for the Lieutenant’s command.
While he didn’t say it, Farmer agreed with Pearcy. “Sergeant, take Pearcy and two other men down and do a perimeter sweep, starting with the south wall. Jenkins!” He motioned to a nearby private who nearly jumped out of his skin. “Run down and alert the Captain that we’re sending out a patrol. Then wake up the gun crew and have them report to their stations.” The single old anti-personnel gun had never fired in combat, but the crews kept it well-maintained and shot off a round once a week to make sure it still worked. It sat down the east wall from the stairwell. If something bad bubbled up from down in the forest below them, it would be nice to have the gun ready.
A string of “Yes sirs” followed the orders and the soldiers turned smartly to their assigned tasks. Farmer walked slowly back towards the stairs and silently passed them to the northern wall. He leaned on the rail and squinted, hoping he might see his replacement wandering in. One of the soldiers on watch quietly walked past.
“NOW!” The voice came to him far off and faint, but so strong and familiar that for a split second Farmer thought he heard his own inner voice. Then it echoed in the woods below and the familiar sound of bow strings releasing filled the air. The scream reached him next, and he turned to see the soldier that passed clutching at an arrow halfway through his thigh. As Farmer thought to scream out a warning, something hit his helmet so hard the headgear came off in a most uncomfortable way, that is to say, with a good deal of Lieutenant’s hide and hair still in the helmet. Another instant passed before he realized that whatever knocked his helmet off also knocked him off the wall and he fell headlong toward the commander's office. Fortunately, before any more discouraging thoughts could occur to him, he found himself in a deep and strange dream.
He was back in Cauls, his hometown, and capital of the kingdom, in the dark and narrow alleyways behind the South Market. There was some sort of celebration going on with fireworks and the merchants shouting out the superiority of their wares. Someone bumped past him and he spun into a wall. He could feel warm hair flowing across his face and heard a woman mumbling something to him. As he leaned in closer she looked up and gave him a cup of hot chocolate. He drank it and they nuzzled, the warmth of her closeness mingling with the drink. He thought he would never leave the little dream alley in Cauls.
Then, with no warning, a bee stung him in the ear, then another and another. Soon they attacked the side of his head, in a straight line. “You have to go,” she whispered. Why? Why was she whispering and why so many bees? She repeated, “You have to go.” Then a big wasp came and stung his nose, and brought with it a smell familiar but so out of place. “What is that smell?” He asked her, but she kept quietly insisting, now changing her refrain to “we have to go, we have to go, go go.” Then another bee stung him on the tongue and he sat up.
It was gas. The smell was gasoline. Blood covered him and it still wept from the gash in his head and he sat in a lake of gas that covered the floor of the fort to almost ankle-deep. Every scrape and scratch burned like a hornet’s sting and he was, understandably, greatly disoriented. There, next to him, where a Whybarrian coffee shop had been he saw the communications building, with one of the walls missing and the radio mast collapsed onto the dining hall. He stood and slowly turned to look at the headquarters. Two jagged new holes showed through its roof, each roughly the size of a man. Across the way, the gasoline supply line going from the storage tank to the generator shop lay in two pieces and at least a dozen holes poked through the tank. Half of them gushed gas. Everywhere along the wall homemade wooden ladders held barbarians climbing up them, hauling off rations and weapons, and shouting “We have to go!”
He pulled his sword from its scabbard and ran at the first barbarian he saw. The man’s arms bore stolen provisions and he ran toward a ladder. He didn’t even see Farmer until the Lieutenant’s blade sliced his throat. Momentum carried the raider a few steps more before he splashed down into the gas, spilling provisions and blood as he went. The next attacker came with more awareness. He carried a homemade sword: long and dull and heavy. He parried Farmer’s blows and replied with surprising skill, chipping the soldier’s sword once, twice before the third blow landed on an armored left shoulder like a tree falling. Farmer winced aside as the blade continued its arc to the ground, then he stepped back, putting his foot on his opponent's sword and sealing the victory with a quick jab into the abdomen. As the man with the long sword fell, Farmer met another, this barbarian with a spear and a dagger. He charged, but the Lieutenant’s sword quickly knocked aside his spear. The charge continued and the attacker lunged onto his quarry. As they fell together, Farmer reached up and pinned the man’s arms to his side in a bear hug, to keep him from getting at the dagger. They rolled around; soaking themselves in gasoline and splashing about until the barbarian looked up for a second then crashed his teeth down into the bridge of Farmer's nose. He loosened his grip an iota and the other man slipped free and ran to the nearest ladder. Farmer followed close behind and grabbed the ladder out from under his fleeing adversary. The barbarian and the ladder landed in a tumbled heap and Farmer retrieved his sword and dispatched him with a quick blow to the back of the head. He turned to find his next opponent and found none. All the barbarians were gone. Farmer walked to nowhere in particular, taking further stock of the damage, when Major Mitchell rounded the corner of the headquarters building. “Farmer, Come here!” He held his stomach as if it had grown considerably heavier than normal and seemed unsure of his footing. “Go to the staircase, collecting every standing man as you go. Retake the wall and send a runner back here to update me on the attack.” His breath came hard, and for a moment Farmer almost ignored his orders and took the commander to the infirmary, but the older man must have seen the thoughts in his eyes. “The first thing we must do is gain control of our perimeter, go take the wall!” Any ideas of insubordination went out of Farmer’s head and he began a brisk trot toward the staircase, calling on soldiers as he passed to follow him.
The run to the stairs burned a bit of the adrenaline off, and as he grabbed the banister to begin his climb, pain reminded him of the blow to his shoulder. Hot slag ran down his arm and he fought to suppress a dog-like yelp. He continued on without using the railing. As he rounded the last turn towards the wall, he heard a loud thunk and the whole fort lurched beneath his feet. To his right hung the gun meant to defend the fort, dangling from its emplacement, destroyed but never fired. There, above the gun, a ball nearly 6 foot in diameter came rolling off some sort of wooden shoot and down into the fort. Farmer paused, wondering what on earth it could be, but one of the men a floor or two below him figured it out first. “BOMB!!” Sure enough, the ball held a collection of old gunpowder, fireworks, and other explosives, wrapped up in burlap and more ready to blow than even the leakiest powder keg. Everyone surged to reach the top of the wall. Lieutenant Farmer stumbled his way off the stairs and onto the wall in time to see hundreds of flaming arrows take flight from their bows in the woods and arc up over his head. All around him the little band of soldiers began leaping over the wall’s railing to escape what came next. With a “fwoomp” the gas vapors ignited, and the force pushed Farmer against the rail. Half a breath later, a deafening blast wrapped him up with the railing and swept them off into the little woods below. The triumphant shouts of the attackers, along with the trees, rushed up and as they met his dream of Cuals returned, with a cheering celebration.