48
It felt as if they reached the foot of the mountains in no time at all. But then, the pass they were heading for was only forty minutes’ walk as the crow flew. Now that Fletcher thought about it, it seemed strange to know that the Forsyth men were so close, yet they had not seen them in over two months.
As he took in the sierra, stretching left and right as far as the eye could see, Fletcher realised that these were no Beartooth Mountains. The sides were as sheer as the walls of Vocans itself, and the colouration was the light brown of sun-dried clay, though he knew from Sir Caulder’s stories that the mountains were actually made from a crumbly sandstone. But regardless of their composition, they had come to be known as the Bronzestone Bluffs, an ignoble and inaccurate name for the natural wonder that separated the tropical jungles from the temperate plains of Raleighshire, not to mention the civilised world from the barbarian orc hordes.
‘I’ve not been back here since … you know,’ Sir Caulder said over the squeak of the wagon wheels. He was sitting on the back axle – walking for too long chafed his stump against the leather holder of his peg leg. ‘Wasn’t much to look at then, nor will it be now.’
They were going up an incline now, where the steep walls of the mountains funnelled in on either side. Above, the sky was a bright, empty blue, and Fletcher was filled with the temptation to summon Ignatius and fly ahead. But then …
‘Halt!’ Rotherham’s voice called out from ahead.
Fletcher hurried past the wagons, shouldering his way through the ordered rows of his troops. Then he stopped, filled with confusion. They were in the right place – but there was nobody there.
‘Where are Forsyth’s men?’ Rotherham growled. ‘The buggers should be here.’
Looking around, Fletcher could see they were in a canyon, not dissimilar to the one they had passed through in the ether. There was no grass here, just a dry, desiccated mud beneath their feet, shadowed by the natural bulwarks stretching into the sky around them. The walls of the mountains angled inwards, ending with a gap no wider than a stone’s throw across. Through it, Fletcher could see the green of tangled grasses and beyond, the rippling leaves and thickets of the jungle edge.
On the right-hand wall, a natural ledge seemed to have been worn up the side, just broad enough for a man to walk upon. At its highest point, perhaps two storeys up and two score yards from the canyon entrance, the ledge extended outwards into a platform of sorts. There, the remains of some kind of building could be seen, now no more than a ring of foundation stones, with the remaining rubble strewn about the ground far beneath it.
‘’Tis the old watchtower,’ Sir Caulder said, stomping up behind him. ‘Fell down long ago, before your father was even born. We used to post sentries on the ledge – you can fit half a dozen men and a campfire up there, and the base keeps most of the wind out. You get a pretty good view of the approach into the canyon too.’
‘Handy,’ Fletcher said, avoiding the temptation to walk up the ledge and have a look.
Instead, he wandered forward, towards the mouth of the canyon. It amazed him how narrow the gap was – Ignatius could have sat in the centre and scraped the edges if he extended his wings. If an army were to pass here, they would have to march through the bottleneck in a column of no more than ten men abreast.
‘We call it the Cleft,’ Rotherham said, following behind Fletcher. ‘If you saw it from above, it’d look like an hourglass, with this gap as the pinch in the middle.’
‘And this is the only way into Raleighshire?’ Fletcher asked.
‘That’s right,’ Rotherham said. ‘The mountains extend into the Vesanian Sea to the west, and the front lines protect the borders to the east, beyond Watford River. This is it.’
Fletcher took a step closer, then stumbled, his foot hitting something hollow and metal.
‘What’s this?’ he said, half to himself. He kneeled down and scraped away the mud from a round shape, so badly rusted that it blended with the earth.
‘Another relic from the past?’ he asked.
‘Actually, that’s a bit newer,’ Sir Caulder said, getting down on one knee and laying his hand on the rusted object. ‘Believe it or not, this is the first cannon ever made, not a few weeks before you were born. The first gun, in fact, by all accounts.’
He chuckled and shook his head.
‘I’m surprised the old girl is still here.’
‘Wait … didn’t Othello’s father invent the gun?’ Fletcher asked.
‘That he did, lad,’ Sir Caulder said, brushing aside some dirt to reveal a word embossed on the side.
Thorsager
‘What’s it doing here?’ Fletcher asked, tracing his fingers across the old lettering of Othello’s family name.
‘Your father, Edmund, commissioned it. Challenged all the blacksmiths in Corcillum to come up with something that would be devastating across a small area, with that gap over there in mind. So, Uhtred showed him this. Of course, it wasn’t much more than an iron tube packed with rudimentary gunpowder and old nails, but it did the trick. The early prototypes used bamboo segments, would you believe it!’
Fletcher grinned, picturing Uhtred as a young man, pottering about in his forge with pieces of bamboo. Sir Caulder sighed and patted the rusted frame.
‘We never fired the bloody thing, except when Uhtred demonstrated it, of course. Must have sat here since the night your parents died. The Forsyths probably thought it was junk.’
‘It’s a piece of history,’ Fletcher said. ‘For both Uhtred and my family. I’ll have it taken to Raleightown and mounted.’
It pleased him, to know that his father and Othello’s family had some connection. In fact, the invention of the gun was what had begun the dwarven bid for equality. Perhaps if his father had not issued the challenge, the world would be a different place.
‘Ah, that’s where Forsyth’s lads are hiding. There’s a campfire,’ Rotherham shouted. ‘Tents too.’
Fletcher turned, scanning the empty canyon behind him as if he had somehow missed them as they walked in. But no – Rotherham’s hand was pointing through the canyon exit, into the knee-high grass beyond. As Fletcher looked more closely, he could make out the shapes of tents in the grasses.
‘Those idiots,’ Sir Caulder snarled, stomping through the Cleft and into the grasses. ‘They’re camping on the wrong damned side.’
Fletcher followed. He winced, the glare of the sun hitting him as he stepped out of the canyon’s shadow. To the left and right, the mountain curved outwards and away, leaving a few hundred feet of tangled grasses and low bushes before a wall of jungle began. A few stunted trees dotted the area, but otherwise it was devoid of life.
‘Anyone here?’ Fletcher called, beginning to feel uneasy. There were dozens of tents littering the ground, but if there were occupants, they did not make their presence felt. Many of the sorry structures had collapsed in on themselves, and various barrels and crates lay abandoned beside them.
A hollow breeze rushed past, funnelled through the canyon behind.
‘Lazy fools have abandoned their posts,’ Sir Caulder concluded, kicking at a ring of stones on the ground with his peg leg, tumbling a rock into a pile of half-burnt bamboo in its centre. ‘Probably snuck back to Corcillum as soon as we arrived in Raleightown. We’ve been undefended all this time!’
But Fletcher was not so sure. He crouched down and buried his finger in the ashes in the fire pit.
‘No,’ he said, feeling the barest hint of warmth. ‘This fire burned itself out only an hour or so ago; plus the ashes would have been blown away by now if this had been here any longer. Maybe Didric got a message to them last night, told them to make their way to Watford Bridge this morning. We might have just missed them.’
‘But that doesn’t explain why they left everything here,’ Sir Caulder said, scratching at his grizzled beard.
The Foxes were pouring through the Cleft now, peering curiously at the remains of the Forsyth camp. Soon the soldiers were wandering aimlessly through the abandoned tents, prodding them with their swords and lifting the lids from the barrels.
It was only then that Fletcher noticed him. A topless man, standing in front of a tree, halfway between the Cleft and the jungle. It was hard to tell – he could just see him through a shimmering heat haze. No … not standing. Tied to it.
‘Foxes, skirmish formation!’ Fletcher shouted. Instantly, the soldiers snapped into action, sprinting into a loose line, spread across the grassy basin.
Fletcher’s heart pounded in his chest. The man could be anyone. A deserter perhaps, left by the Forsyth Furies to die. But Fletcher’s gut told him different.
‘Forward, slowly now,’ Fletcher commanded, striding towards the man.
He walked twenty paces ahead of his soldiers, eyes scanning the edge of the jungle. The fronds of the vegetation wavered in the breeze, presenting Fletcher with an ever-shifting wall of green.
At first, he had thought he’d seen rocks, strewn about just in front of the jungle’s edge. But then he saw the red stains on the grass around them, the muskets and swords, scattered like discarded branches.
Dead men, in black, Forsyth uniform. Eyes, wide and staring, mouths half open in petrified terror. There was so much blood, more than Fletcher had ever thought possible.
‘Halt!’ Fletcher shouted.
The men could see the bodies too now, their exclamations of horror loud in his ears. Fletcher’s eyes flicked to the semi-naked man. He was … moving.
Fletcher ran ahead, his eyes flicking between the tree and the corpses beyond, heart juddering in his chest. Now, he saw the death apples rotting on the ground beneath the foliage. This was a manchineel tree, so poisonous that were one to shelter beneath it, the very raindrops that dribbled through its leaves would sear your skin like acid. And the poor man was strapped bare-skinned to its bark.
A shock of dark brown hair obscured the man’s face. Though he was more a boy, truth be told, if his skinny frame and sunken chest were anything to go by.
Fletcher drew his khopesh and struck the vines that tied the boy to the trunk, wincing in horror at the sight of the blistered skin along the lad’s back, red and weeping with sores. This was orc handiwork.
Then the boy turned, and Fletcher jerked with recognition. It was Mason – the escaped slave who had guided Malik’s team during their mission. Even as Fletcher’s eyes widened with surprise, the boy whispered something, barely more than a croak forced through cracked lips.
Fletcher leaned down and lifted the boy into his arms, careful to avoid the raw skin on his back. The body seemed to weigh almost nothing; so little meat existed on his frame.
‘What happened?’ Fletcher asked, leaning forward.
It was little more than whisper, but the word rang like a death knell in Fletcher’s ears.
‘Run.’