‘Albino,’ came the strained reply, followed by whispers in a foreign tongue.
‘Can you see them with your fancy vision?’ Randur asked.
Brynd scrutinized his immediate surroundings: the hilltop was dark, and he could only discern spindly bushes or the contours of the landscape. The voice, still giving orders in some strange tongue, was definitely coming from down the slope, but there he could only see crooked trees or lumps of rock or frozen mud. It alarmed him that he could not see them with his enhancements.
A twig snapped nearby, his attention shifted. Now he could see something: the rain was clinging to four opaque forms that were marching towards them. It was the water that defined their presence, the edges of their bodies, rather than the bodies being physically there.
‘I still can’t see anything,’ Randur said.
‘I see them.’ Brynd pointed towards the four water-covered shapes. ‘You might struggle in this light, but they’re very definitely there. Four of them.’
‘Fuck, I can see their footprints in the snow.’ Randur shuddered and moved to draw his sword.
Brynd held back his arm. ‘It’s all right. Remember, they’re on our side.’
‘Don’t see why they have to creep up like this.’
‘It’s good,’ Brynd replied. ‘They mean business, and we need armies that mean business, instead of littering battlefields with their inefficient corpses.’
Brynd held up his arms again and declared some basic greetings.
The figures became quite still, before fading into existence. The hominids possessed dark skins that reminded him of his obsidian chamber for their faint sheen. With no discernible hair, and a strange headband bearing tribal symbols, they stood a good foot shorter than himself, and each one was clutching a dagger. They were lean and, unbelievably for the weather, clothed only in light bronze armour and baggy breeches. They must have been freezing, but they showed no signs of suffering. As they came nearer he counted five of them, all in all; their movements were fluid, and their muscles looked tough and wiry.
‘I am Commander Brynd Lathraea from the city of Villiren, representing Jamur Rika, an ally of Artemisia.’ He repeated himself a couple of times but could only hear the wind in the distance.
Then he got a response: ‘You. . both of you, come. . Come with us.’
Brynd couldn’t tell which of them was speaking, though their voices seemed warped and distressed. It might have been all of them speaking simultaneously, for all he knew. ‘At least we can communicate,’ he whispered to Randur, who looked petrified. Brynd addressed his otherworldly comrades once again. ‘Yes,’ he said, nodding and smiling to make sure they understood. ‘We bring you no harm.’
‘I thought they were meant to be on our side?’ Randur moaned.
Marching through the rain at knifepoint, they headed down the slope towards the encampment. Even though they traversed the hill in a wide zigzag to make the descent easier, they still managed to slip occasionally on the mud. Each time they did, their captors showed no signs of concern. They merely waited impatiently for Brynd or Randur to stand up again, brush themselves down, and continue towards the camp.
It seemed an eternity, that walk. Brynd realized that what he was about to witness was very special, and also that he was an ambassador for his entire people. Perhaps he should have brought Artemisia, but he had not anticipated an actual meeting — he only wanted to see them from afar.
As they entered the fringes of the encampment, past the yurts made with thick fabric and enormous brass cauldrons, Brynd was overwhelmed by the noise and smells of this suddenly present civilization: the odours of unfamiliar food, and the harsh clamour of a new language. Here was a new city, of sorts, that existed on no maps.
Brynd didn’t know where to look first. So many oddities presented themselves to him: beings of perplexing shapes, uniforms of subtle shades, markings etched across metal, insignias on flags. In addition to the creatures who had located Brynd and Randur, there were others wandering past them. They were some degree taller than the humans, green-skinned, long-limbed and remarkably slender, with a smooth elongated face and two black eyes. They wore tight leather tunics and their light steps barely marked the mud and snow as they moved gracefully past.
He did not know their customs, but, out of habit from dealing with tribespeople throughout the Archipelago, Brynd made sure not to lock eye contact with anyone, and asked Randur to do the same, so neither would accidentally cause a confrontation. It seemed to be an instinct not to offend anyone, but it was difficult as Brynd could not help but feel how these creatures were pausing to look and stare straight back at them. Here, they were the oddities — they were the exotic specimens on parade.
They passed an area where enormous bronze chariots were lined in neat rows, some covered by mesh-like cloth to protect them from the rain. Brynd caught the briefest glimpse of one: an opulent carriage with spiked wooden wheels and polished metal glimmering in the nearby torchlight. Further along, black muscled horses — finer and more aggressive than any he’d seen before — were being led into larger and more impressive tents to shelter. Somewhere in the distance came singing, which moved along a harmonic scale, and then he heard drumming. Nearby huge sides of animals were being turned on spits as they roasted over fires. It took two of the tall, green-skinned creatures to turn each spit.
Then, within a vast clearing, he witnessed perhaps the most resplendent sight he had ever seen.
It was their wings he first noticed: immense, jagged and jutting into the air; and when caught in the cauldron fire they stood out clearly against the night sky. They reminded him of the Onyx Wings in Villiren, and were just as imposing — in fact, he realized he never knew the history of those statues. Could they have been related in some distant way to these creatures?
Then, when Randur and Brynd came nearer, the creatures’ bodies could be discerned moving slowly, their pale underbellies revealed, with darker skin on top. Their heads were disproportionately smaller, relatively flat and squat with narrowed eyes, and within their wide maws were numerous, minute yet dangerously sharp-looking teeth. Each whole being was held in place by immense chains tied to posts the size of ancient trees.
Dragons, he thought. The very stuff of mythology.
There were five of them, at least in this clearing: beyond, chained to further posts, more could been seen drifting about, their wings extending and folding, possibly agitated they were not soaring in the air. Soldiers seemed to be moving around between them in a training regime.
Brynd glanced across to Randur and said, ‘You’re unusually silent.’
Randur stood agape, apparently not knowing what to make of all this.
That would make two of us. . he thought to himself.
Brynd and Randur marched for some time through the centre of the encampment and Brynd still could not take it all in. He required more time than a mere walk-through, more hours to sit and observe and perhaps engage in some kind of conversation with these people. And it was not just for the fact that this was an event in the history of his world; no, he needed to understand how they would function, how many of them there were — and, more importantly, what their strengths and weaknesses would be on the battlefield.
He would find out soon enough, no doubt.
Eventually they reached a wide, hessian-coloured tent, which bore insignias made from gold leaf, or something very similar. The very top of the tent contained a look-out platform: two or three soldiers stood up there, bipedal, hoofed, with human chests and huge, angular heels, and what looked from Brynd’s position to be bulls’ heads. Each was carrying a spear.