Judd, Verne and Giordi followed the steward who had met them in the foyer of the fort through several passages, arriving in a room that was part armoury, part cloakroom. Sir Fereak was there, giving instruction to several of his soldiers and looked up at their approach.

“Ah, you’re here in good time…with no cleric?”

“Cleric Caste wanted to repair his appearance before supper.” Judd explained, having caught Caste’s reason as they were leaving Suvau’s home. “Sir Fereak, this is Verne Sachon, an archer of tried and true skill,” Fereak clasped Verne’s hand, “and this is Giordi Gavoli, a minstrel.”

“Oh good, we’ll have a tune later. That’ll cheer her ladyship up.” Fereak said dryly. “Before we leave this place, put on a cape.” Judd and the others chose a cloak each from the array hanging from the hooks. They smelt like sweaty soldier. Judd tried not to grimace. “You’ll be glad of it on the wall,” Sir Fereak insisted, “you can feel the chill of the south, especially with the sun’s diminishing light and the changing of the seasons. Come.”

Sir Fereak led them through the armoury/cloakroom to an iron braced wooden door at the end. He opened it and Judd was hard pressed not to gasp at the icy flurry that smacked him in the face. Suddenly the slightly smelly cloak was pulled tightly around himself as he followed Sir Fereak up a set of stairs that had a very small amount of shelter before becoming exposed to an expanse of sky. They climbed the stairs to the landing where a soldier greeted Sir Fereak. To the left was an arrow’s flight of wall before it met with the side of the mountain Fort Omra was built against. To the right was the rest of the wall and in front, was Maul.

Judd’s jaw dropped and he darted forward to the edge of the wall. There was a three foot high barrier to keep anyone from toppling over into the south with higher portions built along the wall for protection against attacks. Judd gazed at the expanse of Maul, his soul chilled by more than the drop in temperature.

“Quite the sight, isn’t it?” Sir Fereak said from behind him.

“It’s…”

Desolate. Barren. Decaying. Burned.

Fort Verion was closer to the mount of Maul than any other fort in Terra. However, Fort Omra was a near runner up. Judd could just make the sides of the mountain, obscured by a haze of rising heat and smoke. Other mountains ended in a peak but the mount of Maul was cut off as though someone had taken an axe to it. It was from the severed head of the mount that the smoke billowed, crackles of red sparking in the dark clouds that filled the air with a constant gloom.

The southern mountain range that protected the eastern side of Terra from most monster incursions reached its grandest heights about where Fort Omra was built. On both the north and south sides, the mountains reduced in height, becoming smaller, less jagged and eventually became hills and gentle slopes. However, the mount of Maul was well in the south, a single large mountain with the southern hills of the range cowering around its base, almost ducking their heads as if to avoid it.

The land beyond the mount was impossible to make out but if what Judd could see from between the mount and the wall was an indicator, there wasn’t much to behold. The land was dead and grey, lifeless like a corpse. There were some brittle remains of trees, scorched black and twisted, sticking out of the earth and Judd but wondered just how long it had been since a single leaf or blossom had bloomed on their branches.

The land was cracked and blistered, like clay that had formed a surface after a storm, dry and brittle, curling up at the edges, creating chasms and dangerous places to fall…or for things to hide in.

“That’s what I thought Maul would look like…” Judd admitted quietly.

“I’ll never forget the first time I saw it.” Sir Fereak shook his head. “You suddenly realise just what Terra would look like should the wall fail.” Judd’s skin prickled painfully. Sir Fereak pointed to the mountain. “She’s smoking heavily tonight. Must be brewing another legion of monsters.”

“Truly?”

Fereak shrugged. “It’s not conclusive…but she does seem to get a bit antsy right before another assault.”

“She?”

“Because the mountain gives birth to the monsters.”

“Where do they come from?”

“See those cracks in the ground?” Judd nodded. “Some of those go deep into the bowels of the mountain. It’s out of those that the monsters emerge.”

“That’s a lot of cracks.”

“Sometimes they fill with molten rock and it looks as though the mountain is bleeding but most of the time, they are the passages the monsters come from.” Sir Fereak clapped his hand on Judd’s shoulder and gestured to a trebuchet that took up most of the width of the wall. In order to pass it, one had to clamber around it. “We’ve used this beauty to try to block some of the passages but the monsters just dig their way through or around them.”

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“Hey Verne,” Judd called to the archer who was still taking in the sight south of the wall, “did you see this?”

“Whoa…” Verne’s eyes widened and he approached the trebuchet in awe. “That’s fantastic.”

Judd chuckled and looked at Sir Fereak. “Any chance someone could show Verne how it works?”

“Rone!”

“Yes sir?”

“Give the archer a tour of the trebuchet.”

“Yes sir!”

Judd stifled a laugh at Verne’s giddy excitement. A peel of thunder rolled overhead. It seemed the grey clouds were not just mountainous billows but held a storm within their grasp, one it was now threatening them with.

“Damn rain…” Sir Fereak muttered. “Still, if it’s raining, it isn’t snowing.”

“Snow…” Judd breathed with wistful awe. He had only ever heard of snow. It sounded beautiful.

“Judd, this thing is brilliant!” Verne declared, redirecting Judd’s attention back to the trebuchet.

“It can be turned in any direction required,” Sir Fereak bragged, “most of the time we have it aimed at the south but now and again…”

“We saw the stone pillars marking monster breakthroughs on the north side of the wall.” Judd nodded.

They moved to stand on the north side, able to see into the cultivated land beyond the protective wall of Fort Omra’s village.

“Sometimes the monsters dig so deep and long, they find their way onto our side of the wall.” Sir Fereak shook his head. “That’s what we’re here for, essentially. Nothing can get over the wall. There hasn’t been a large enough monster to do so in a long time.”

“What about giants or dragons?” Giordi asked, rubbing his hands and blowing into them.

“You’d have to check the archives but I don’t think any of those have been seen in at least two hundred years.” Sir Fereak shrugged. “Dragons would be a problem but even a giant would struggle to get over this.” He patted the wall.

“I’m surprised it’s so tall. I thought it was built to thirty feet, or thereabouts.”

“That’s just the minimum limit that was put on the wall’s height. Here you can see, it is at least fifty feet.”

“And wider than I thought.” Judd admitted. “I mean…you could fit a feasting table along here with room for chairs on either side.”

Sir Fereak laughed. “Now there’s a morbid thought. Feasting inside the wall.”

“Inside the wall?”

“A great deal of it is hollow.”

Judd pushed his hand through his hair. “Hollow?”

“Ah, here is your cleric,” Sir Fereak waved Caste forward, nearly drowning in a fur lined cape that was made for a solider at least a foot taller than him and probably twice as strong, “he’ll be able to explain it better than I.”

Judd let Caste’s green eyes grow wide at the sight of the south and the smoking mountain before asking him the question about why the wall was hollow.

“Oh…well…it’s really quite simple,” Caste trembled, tearing his eyes away from the mount of Maul as Sir Fereak led them for a stroll along the wall, bypassing the trebuchet where Verne was speaking almost animatedly with Rone about how it worked, “when the wall was first constructed, it was a single layer of stone, thirty feet high with wooden beams bracing it on the northern side. Against a single minotaur it would hold but if the mount of Maul released a dozen of the monsters, they could smash their way through. So while the original wall was maintained, a secondary wall was constructed behind it. And because it was done without constant imminent threat, it could be built much more strongly and with the wooden beams bracing it on the inside.”

“So the wall is hollow all the way through?” Giordi breathed.

“For the most part which allowed for messengers to travel within the wall rather than outside of it, exposed to possible monster attacks.” Caste looked up and Judd knew what he had felt, the first touches of rain and it wasn’t the big, heavy drops of the north, still infused with warmth. These were nasty, spiteful, biting drops that made you wonder if your skin had been gashed.

“I know of several areas where parts of the wall have caved and it was simpler to reconstruct it without dealing with the cave in.” Sir Fereak admitted. “So you can’t travel the entire length of the wall on the inside of it but it can be accessed on the north side through barred and bolted doors. Fort Omra has no need to utilise the hollow portions of the wall but I know Fort Verion and Mavour use some of the interior of the wall for siege and armoury storage.”

They were able to walk along the wall, four abreast, even allowing for space to dodge the soldiers who remained on guard, watching the mount of Maul and keeping a sharp eye on the giant cracks in the earth.

Judd adjusted his cloak, the rain no longer dropping in sporadic gusts but coming down in an earnest drizzle, bringing another degree of chill he thought was impossible to reach. “I wonder if Andigre ever imagined that we would be walking on top of a wall that he helped defend hundreds of years after his reign?”

“Doubtful when it was only one block deep.” Caste snorted and Judd eyed him darkly.

“I imagine turning the wall into a rampart to allow soldiers to patrol the entire length was an afterthought once the wall was built as wide as this.” Giordi waved his hand to the wooden boards they stomped on. “What are those?”

Judd turned to see what Giordi was pointing at. There were long black cords travelling down from the wall to the ground on the northern side.

“Ah, the death drop.” Sir Fereak winked. “The test of a soldier’s metal.”

Judd’s spine trembled. “How so?” He asked despite himself.

“When monsters tunnel beneath the wall and emerge on the north side, we need to get down as quickly as possible.” Judd peered over the side of the wall, sure his heart had gone into hiding in his boot as he saw just how high they were. Sir Fereak held up a metal pincer contraption with a hand grip. “Anyone who wants to be a soldier in my fort must take one of these, hook this portion over the cord,” he did so, still holding firmly to the grip, “and drop from the edge of the wall.”

Judd, Giordi and Caste all gulped at the same time.

“The pincer grips the cord and slows your descent to something slightly less than fatal speeds until you reach the ground where the cord is tethered so you will survive…as long as you don’t let go.”

Sir Fereak chuckled at their expressions and put the pincer grip back in the chest, closing the lid against the rain that was falling and could no longer be denied. The soldiers along the wall who had the regrettable task of sentry duty during the night, even while it was raining, hunkered down for the long watch. Sir Fereak ushered Judd and company back towards the fort.

“Have…has anyone died from this efficient yet terrifying drop?” Giordi asked what they were all thinking.

“Not anyone who held on tightly to the grip,” Sir Fereak slapped Judd’s shoulder, “but there have been a few broken legs on the landing…come, let’s eat!”

“Oh, yes let’s…” Caste muttered, stumbling from the weight of his cape.

Giordi gave him a push in the right direction then looked at the trebuchet. “Verne Sachon! It’s getting too dark out to play! Come on!”

“I was not playing!”