He recalled another day that had begun with frigid sleet, when he and his crew had hauled up a giant tapen, its tentacles coiling and grasping as the creature fought for its life in the unforgiving sea air. They didn’t know quite what to do with it, but they weren’t willing to cut it away and lose a valuable net, so Sharr and his men had beaten it, gaffed it, shot it full of arrows, even stabbed it with a makeshift harpoon fashioned out of a fillet knife lashed to a docking pole. When finally the beast quieted, they hauled it aboard, assuming it was dead.
No sooner had the tapen struck the deck, than it found new reserves of energy, a monster dose of will. It rolled across the deck, its powerful limbs crushing or shattering anything it could grip on to – Sharr himself was injured when his feet were yanked out from under him and he went down, his head striking the starboard gunwale. He was lying there with his head bleeding, watching as the monster fought to the death, his crew battling to kill it before it tore out the transom and sent them all to the bottom, and he had smiled. He would not have traded places with anyone that day.
Now, folding tents mechanically, the erstwhile fisherman glanced down the hill only to see the tapen once again – it wasn’t a giant this time, nor was it threatening his life or his boat, but it was there just the same: lying in the mud, halfway to the stream, legs and arms flailing in the air.
‘Stalwick!’ Sharr roared, running down the slope. He slipped, tumbling out of control, then dizzily regained his feet. Others heard his cry and ran to see what had befallen the irksome soldier. Within moments, Stalwick had half the squad standing over him in the freezing rain.
‘Brand’s coming,’ Stalwick panted, his eyes rolling white and his limbs twitching in an ungainly dance, ‘March on Capehill, now. Malakasians know. Capehill now. Malakasians know. Brand is coming!’ Something wet ran from Stalwick’s nose, sticky phlegm the colour of spoiled milk, bubbling from one nostril as his convulsions subsided. He lay in the mud, his gaze focused on something half a world away.
‘Let’s get him up,’ Sharr said. ‘Get one of those tents back up and find some dry clothes or blankets.’ A few of the men hustled off. ‘And bring Gita,’ he continued, ‘quickly! Tell her to get over here now. One of you stay with me; we have to listen to everything he says. We can’t miss a word.’
Although Sharr remained by Stalwick’s side all day, he didn’t speak again until the following morning. As he stared out at nothing, he looked as though he had been kicked by a horse.
Raskin rode hard as the sun rose behind her. She was less than a day from Traver’s Notch now, and she promised herself as soon as she had found the officer in charge and reported the loss of her entire squad to a grettan pack the previous Moon, she would find a tavern – the one she’d visited before, The Bowman – and get drunk. How long she would stay drunk was yet to be determined, but it certainly wouldn’t be less than three to five comatose days.
Staying alone at the border camp had been difficult, but Raskin hadn’t wanted to abandon her position, not when she was all that remained of her squad. She didn’t patrol; that would have been pointless – the first band of border runners she stumbled upon would have flayed her and left her for the grettans. Instead, she stayed in her tent, tended her horse and periodically went in search of firewood. She had plenty of food, enough to last through the Twinmoon, but somehow being warm and dry was no real comfort. Twilight came early in Gorsk during the winter Twinmoons, and Raskin sat up most nights, listening to the sounds of the forest with her blankets clutched nervously beneath her chin. She cried frequently during the long periods of darkness.
Denny, Mox, Maia, even Sergeant Greson with his homemade mittens, they all visited during the Moon she waited alone in camp. Sometimes they came all at once, whole, healthy and laughing. Other nights, they came to her one at a time, haunted, broken and bleeding. Mox was the worst. He had been torn to pieces by the first attack, and whatever remained of him the following day had been scattered when the grettans returned. When Mox visited Raskin’s tent, he came with pieces missing: one leg chewed off below the knee, both hands, part of an arm and half his throat. He never spoke; she worried that if he had, his voice would have been little more than a raspy gurgle. Raskin felt guilty about it, but in the end she was glad her old friend never said anything.
Occasionally she was visited by the Ronan, Garec Haile. He had saved her life. He knew the grettans were coming; he’d told her to get back to her horse. Had she not been in the saddle, ready to ride, Raskin would have died with the rest of the squad, but as it was, she barely managed to outrun the one grettan that pursued her down the draw and into the river. She had no idea where Garec was now, him and the South Coaster, the fennaroot smugglers working with Rodler of Capehill. She didn’t care.
One Moon. She had promised herself she would stay in camp for one Moon, following procedures, until someone arrived with orders or until one of their platoon mates came west from the border station for a visit.
No one did.
Before he’d died, Sergeant Greson had mentioned strange goings-on, and a curious lack of communication from Capehill. Raskin wasn’t sure, but she feared that perhaps she had heard nothing from the major because somehow the southern occupation had been jeopardised, perhaps even beaten by a surprise attack from the Falkan Resistance. Her fears were fuelled on this, her first trip out of the mountains; she had set off for the border station less than a day’s ride away, but when she reined in alongside the wooden gates spanning the Merchants’ Highway, she knew something was wrong. The second squad in her platoon, the one that staffed the border crossing, was missing.
She was alone, a full Twinmoon’s travel from home.
Capehill was too far, alone, so avoiding the main routes into Falkan, Raskin turned towards Traver’s Notch, conscious that she was fair game for any number of human predators. Whilst her chances of encountering other Malakasian soldiers along the Merchants’ Highway were good, her unwarranted fear that they had all been killed or pushed south continued to bother her all the way down the Remondian foothills.
Now, nearing the canyon leading into the Notch, Raskin began to breathe easier. Had she been travelling with the squad, they would have come into town from the northeast, through the mining encampments and over the ridge. There were several decent roads over those hills, kept open even during the worst Moons of winter. But she was riding alone and didn’t want to come too close to the mining camps for fear that she might disappear for other reasons entirely. So she dropped down from the foothills, entered the forest south of the Notch and picked her way west towards the main avenue running into town. Behind her, the sun rose and for the first time in the past Moon, it felt warm.