Calay couldn’t quite bring himself to get worked up over the fate of Vosk’s dog. And given that he only called for the thing for ten or fifteen minutes, it appeared Vosk couldn’t get too worked up either.

Once the morning’s drama, human and canine and reptilian, was well and concluded, they got moving again. Calay was glad for it. He appreciated the opportunity to make himself useful, but he couldn’t help feeling agitated. Had Geetsha been spying on them? Was he going to have to worry about her? Not that she seemed to have any clue as to his identity or his nature, but a naturally inquisitive nose-about was problem enough.

“Damn dog,” Vosk muttered as he hoisted tents and bedrolls back up onto the birds. Calay grunted noncommittally. He wasn’t a fan of animals; they seemed to have a preternatural ability to sniff out his kind.

“Maybe he’ll turn up,” Calay offered, willing to put on a show if nothing else.

“Perhaps.” Vosk tightened the last of the cargo straps. “Or he’s off in search of his actual owner. He belonged to one of the fellows who didn’t make it back.”

“We had watch on all night,” Calay offered. “He must have run off on his own during Adalgis’, ah, commotion.” A quick smile. “I can guarantee nothing stole into camp in the night and ate him.”

Vosk rolled his big shoulders in a shrug, as if to say he’d already put the matter to rest. The dog clearly wasn’t some cherished pet. Animal life in these parts was cheap.

Adalgis was sluggish on his feet when they began walking again, but he didn’t complain. Riss parked him up front, presumably to help set the pace, and Calay volunteered for rear watch. He wanted distance between himself and the frog-voiced girl. And now that he thought about it, distance between himself and Torcha was probably smart, too. As much as he enjoyed talking to her–that was genuine, she was a hoot–it occurred to him that asking him too many questions about her homeland and the war might reveal a little too much about what he himself didn’t know. He didn’t want anyone making assumptions by subtraction.

Of course, that meant he and Gaz skulking around together, separate from the others, and that was its own type of ill-advised. They were going to have to mingle just enough to look normal.

Gaz was eager to hang back. He’d been staring holes in the back of Calay’s head since the snakebite incident. Calay could imagine what he was about to ask, but better to let him ask it.

Their slower pace meant that Calay had more time to study his surroundings. Camping so close to dark meant he’d seen little of the deeper swamp by full daylight, and it was… interesting. Thick swathes of spiderweb and moss alike bridged the upper trees. Everything was gauzy, draped in the stuff. The trees looked like brittle bones beneath aged skin. Like the hands of some arthritis-gnarled old man.

The swamp had a particular aroma, too. Deep and earthy and–if Calay admitted to himself–not entirely unpleasant. Growing up deep in the urban heart of Vasile, he was new to such earthy smells. The depth of it fascinated him.

The longer they walked, the wetter things seemed to get. Calay had the vague sensation of walking at an angle, the slightest downward slope. The trail they took was hard-packed dirt, obviously manmade, or at least man-assisted, free of the muck and packed at a slight elevation to avoid the seeping mud. It appeared well-maintained enough. Geetsha’s people, he presumed. Or perhaps more loggers like Vosk and the Baron’s men.

Calay took a couple quicker steps, until he was walking beside Gaz rather than behind him.

“So,” he said. “I get the impression you need to talk.”

Gaz peered down at him sidelong and huffed, amused. “Just wondering how prepared I gotta be for a potential shitstorm.”

“Potential shitstorm? This entire contract is a potential shitstorm.” Calay smiled sweetly. “You’ll have to specify.”

Gaz rolled a big shoulder and pointed none-too-subtly toward the fore of the group, where Adal and Geetsha walked the pair of moa along.

“That whole thing.” One of Gaz’s thick eyebrows hiked up. “Was that your genuine medicinal quick wits or did you scribble up a cure for him?”

Ah. So it wasn’t quite what Calay had expected him to ask. He’d expected Gaz to be equally curious as to how Geetsha knew what type of snakebite to treat. Of course, when he thought about it longer than five seconds, he realized Gaz hadn’t been privy to all that. It was easy to assume Gaz just knew everything he knew and shared all his suspicions, joined at the hip as they’d been since fleeing the city.

“I most certainly did not.” Calay reached up and gave Gaz a quick one-two pat on the shoulder. “I would never risk our cover for something so minor.”

“He seemed… really weirded out by you, is all.”

Gaz had a point. Calay had picked up on an air from Adalgis that wasn’t entirely friendly.

“I think he’s annoyed the others all like me so much,” Calay said without a shred of irony.

Gaz’s laugh thundered from the rear of their little caravan. He laughed so hard he slapped himself across the chest.

“Sorry!” he called when the others all cast inquisitive looks their way. “Sometimes my friend here is unintentionally hilarious.”

Calay was midway through preparing some smart remark when a shriek rang out through the marsh, loud enough that Gaz physically startled at his side. Everyone stopped moving. Up ahead, the moa snapped their heads upward, feathers rustling, sharp and alert.

The sound did not come again, and in the following silence, Calay shifted his eyes up to Gaz’s, wordlessly questioning.

Gaz swept his attention left; Calay looked right. They took inventory of the swamp around them: rotten logs, patchy and sodden holes in the earth, cobwebs. Nothing looked out of place. Of course, Calay wasn’t certain what native to the swamp could have made a sound like that.

The hairs on the back of his neck rose. He reached up, rubbing at the back of his collar. His fingers felt goosebumps.

Nobody moved for quite some time. The silence was palpable, thick, broken only by murmured chatter from up ahead, too quiet for him to make out the words. Female voices. He spared a glance toward the fore, where Riss and Geetsha were conversing lowly, but he didn’t take his eyes off the trail behind them for long. Gaz’s hand lingered on his belt.

By creeping, relieving degrees, the sounds of the swamp returned: insects began to buzz again. One of the moa chirruped. Calay exhaled a breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding. The swamp seemed to resume its breath in the same instant, a great release of tension, the way the sea might swirl and churn when something massive has just passed through it, unseen.

<< Chapter 10 | Chapter 12 >>

Riss was only eleven years old when her father took her on their first hunt. Stalking patiently through the bush alongside him, she’d killed a boar with nothing but a spear. Sure, her father had been standing by with a matchlock pistol, but that hadn’t made the threat any less lethal. The fear hadn’t been any less real.

She was seventeen when she first killed a man. Shot him point blank through the face when he and his brigand friends had waylaid a client’s carriage. In the seconds before she’d pulled the trigger, the fear had gripped her by the throat.

The war? That was year upon year of fresh new fear, fear for her life and fear for those under her command.

She was thirty-one when she’d led Gaspard and the crew into that ambush, then dragged him bleeding into the wagon. The fear then was a new fear, a fear of loss. It had been insurmountable.

Every time she’d felt that fear, she’d smothered it. For her father. For her clients. For her crew. For Gaspard.

She was an expert at swallowing fear and appearing stonefaced. And she swallowed that same fear when it rose in her like bile at the sight of Adal sprawled out on that bedroll, his eyes sunken, his face beset by an eerie pallor that reminded Riss far too much of a dead man. She ground her boot into the fear’s throat and glanced aside at Calay, who observed the sickly man with a physician’s distance.

“Give him an hour.” Calay’s voice was smoothly confident. Riss wasn’t always the best judge of character–that’s what she kept Adal around for–but his confidence didn’t sound to her like that of a man trying to convince himself. He sounded sure.

Funny, then, that his companion Gaz kept looking to him so nervously. Like Calay were the one he was worried about rather than the one who’d been bit by the snake.

Riss made a mental note to come back to that later. She had bigger things to worry about. She lifted her voice for the benefit of the entire camp.

“I’d give him ten hours if I had to.” She made a point of glancing around, making eye contact. “Same as I would for any of you.” Another pause. She nodded slightly over to Vosk. “Besides. It isn’t as though we’ve got other options for an apothecary, given the circumstances. Take all the time you need, Calay.”

Every hour they weren’t moving forward was an hour that whittled the already-slim chances of survival for the missing logging party. It meant another hour spent in unfamiliar terrain with resources that would further dwindle. Riss was aware of all that. But she wouldn’t risk Adal’s health unless it became a do-or-die necessity. And even then…

Calay rolled a slim shoulder and rose up from his crouch.

“I’ve done all I can for him. Water and rest are all he needs. If we’ve got the right antivenin he’ll be right as rain.”

The words didn’t soothe Riss’ fear as much as she’d hoped they would. She trusted Calay as much as she trusted any short term hire for a contract like this. Which meant she trusted him to do his job like a competent professional. Nobody got paid if they all died. And if her Second died on his watch, Calay’s medic share would certainly suffer for it. He wanted to get paid just like any other. He wouldn’t screw this up.

“It was just bad luck.”

Riss’ ear caught the tail end of a conversation happening over by the fire. Geetsha and Torcha sat, conversing in quiet murmurs, and when Torcha’s eyes met Riss’, her mouth bowed into a sympathetic grimace.

“The snakes are more afraid of you than you are of them,” said Geetsha in her odd, creaky voice.

The present moment was just a little too much for Riss. Too much chaos, too much creepy swamp girl, too much worry for her dear friend. She pinched the bridge of her nose and let her eyes fall closed, inhaling deeply. She took a moment so simply shut it all out. To take inventory of tasks that needed completing: breakfast, packing up the camp, readying themselves to move once Adal was able.

At her side, someone softly cleared their throat. A male. Riss peeled an eye open.

Vosk stood beside her, rubbing at his chin. He stared awkwardly aside for a moment, then spoke askance, briefly:

“This place doesn’t hesitate to show its hand early.”

Riss furrowed her brows.

“What I mean to say is I’m sorry about your friend. This swamp is a horrid place. I wish I’d never set foot in it.” Vosk continued to observe her from a sort of oblique angle, as though he feared her wrath should he face her head on. Riss shrugged minutely, as if physically shrugging his comments off.

“Adal is a veteran and a fighter,” she said. “He’ll be fine.”

She wasn’t about to let one of Tarn’s guards comfort her like some weeping willow.

“Of course.” Vosk took a step aside. He gave her a there-and-gone smile that was just as much in apology as sympathy. “I’d never imply otherwise.”

It occurred to Riss that perhaps Vosk had been speaking to her for his own benefit rather than hers. Who knew the details of exactly what horrors he’d experienced, stuck out here for as many nights as he’d been. Perhaps Vosk was just blowing off steam, the way someone stuck in a shit-sack swamp would do to someone else who had just been victimized by said shit-sack swamp.

Now defying both her fear and her natural tendency to rebuff kindness, Riss gave Vosk a quick little smile of her own.

“It’s a minor setback,” she said. “Certainly not how we’d prefer things, but well within our capabilities.”

She hoped to strike the right balance between confident camaraderie and empathy for the terrors he’d witnessed. And it appeared to work, because Vosk buckled with what looked like genuine relief.

“I knew you were the right one for this job,” he said. “The Baron told us about you. He said we’d be in good hands.”

Flattery, though, was where Riss drew a line.

“I’m sure he did,” she said. “And I’m sure he grossly exaggerated half of it, bless him.”

“Riss?” Calay called out to her across the encampment. He’d returned to Adal’s side, adopting a loose kneel.

She rushed over, taking wide steps and attempting not to look as hurried as she actually was.

A hint of color had returned to Adal’s face, which appeared drier. Residual sweat still dampened his bangs and skin, but when Calay mopped it away, it stayed mopped.

“His sweat’s broke,” Calay announced, stating the obvious. “Like I said, he’ll be just fine.”

Riss allowed herself a smile, her heart beating so frantically that it was a wonder the entire company couldn’t hear it.

###

Breakfast was a tense, quiet affair: leftover swamp hen eaten in silence punctuated by the sounds of Adal’s uneasy slumber. He murmured through his unconsciousness, twitching occasionally, and Riss kept glancing over, half-expecting him to be pale as death again. But no. He appeared to be improving, despite his obvious discomfort.

Geetsha offered to take the moa for a forage. Everyone dispersed to their own business. Riss crossed her legs and settled down beside Adal’s bedroll, at a loss for what else to do.

When he awoke, it was sudden and swift, as though he’d been roused from a nap. He jerked upright, blinking furiously, and scrubbed a hand down his face. His gaze held the disoriented quality of a man in a foreign place, until he set eyes on Riss and relaxed.

“Lieutenant,” she said, swinging him a casual little two-fingered salute. “It is very good to see you.”

Adal fell back onto the bedroll with a relieved groan.

Riss didn’t bother to ask him how he felt. He probably felt like shit. Instead, she took a more productive approach.

“Thirsty? Hungry?”

He was both. She’d saved him some stewed hen, which he accepted in rapacious silence, and he asked to have his water topped up three times. Riss watched him eat, mindful of his pace, and couldn’t help but laugh a little.

“Save some for the rest of us,” she said, and he paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth.

The severity in his eyes surprised her. He stared for a moment, then glanced back down into the bowl.

“I feel like I’ve been asleep for days,” he said. “Like I haven’t eaten for half a week.”

That explained the appetite, Riss supposed. She lifted a hand.

“Maybe your body was working overtime to get that snakebite out of you. Needs extra fuel.”

Adal’s shoulders hunched in a wary shrug. He kept eating, though slower now.

“How long has it really been?” he asked.

Riss glanced up at the sky. Tough to gauge the position of the sun given the encroaching treetops, but she could see enough for an estimate.

“An hour, maybe closer to two.”

Adal squinted at her. “You’re not bullshitting me, are you,” he finally said. As if she ever had.

“I dreamt it took days,” he added after a moment. When he finished his stew, he licked the spoon clean. “It feels as though it took days. I expected to wake up with a beard.”

Riss thought it might be better not to ask him, but curiosity got the best of her.

“Dream anything else interesting?” she asked, slowly gathering to her feet.

Adal’s silence said a lot. She didn’t press further.

Vosk’s voice rose up from over near the pair of moa, sudden and surprised:

“Eight? Where’s Eight gone?”

Riss cast a curious glance around the camp. The dog was nowhere to be seen. She hadn’t even noticed. As panicked as she’d been for Adal, she might not have even noticed if a person had gone missing.

<< Chapter 9 | Chapter 11 >>

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​For several strange moments, all Adal could hear was his own heartbeat thundering in his ears.

Time had a peculiar way of slowing down during certain moments. Moments of intense concentration. Moments that necessitated intense quiet, such as creeping through the underbrush behind enemy lines. Moments when his body seemed to all but shut down and take the clock with it, freeing his mind up to think through its next move.

It’s just like last time, he thought with some dismay. The first casualty. It’s going to become a running joke.

He had the presence of mind to stretch out his legs, bracing himself against the log where he sat by leaning his weight through his arms. He stared down at his calf, dumb with shock. He’d barely even felt it.

So what next, then?

Time sped up, slingshotting him into the present. Calay arrived in a scramble, half-dressed with his satchel slung over-shoulder. When his eyes met Adal’s, they were wide with surprise, if not quite worry. The medic was quick on his feet, dashing over and folding himself into a neat, careful kneel beside Adal’s boots.

“Did you get a good look at it?” he asked.

Adal blinked. “What’s there to see? It’s just two holes in my leg.”

Calay also blinked, but it was the prolonged blink of a long-suffering parent, the type who regrets telling their child there are no stupid questions.

“The snake,” he said, voice flat. “Did you get a look at the snake.”

Oh. He had not.

“It was just a blur and ripples. It was half in the water. I barely saw a thing.” Adal’s mouth tightened as he spoke. Because upon saying those words, he realized what he was admitting to: that he had no idea what type of treatment to suggest. No idea what path to set Calay down. He still didn’t trust the man, something about him set Adal’s teeth on edge. Now Adal had no choice but to… listen to him. To trust his purported wisdom. To listen to some smooth-talker with a northern accent get all father-knows-best.

“All right,” Calay said, inhaling. He reached down and grabbed the cuff of Adal’s pant leg. He rolled it up, yanking the canvas up without asking permission. Adal might normally have voiced complaint, but something strange was occurring inside his body.

His heart began to pound. That heartbeat which had rushed in his ears earlier now doubled in time, the beats of it no less strong and no less steady, just faster. Urgent. He swallowed. Was his heart racing because of the venom? Already? Or was his heart racing because he was afraid at the prospect of what the venom might do? Was there even any way to tell? Were his palms getting sweaty because of some bodily response, or was it just nerves?

Sitting stiffly, Adal wiped his palms on the knees of his trousers while Calay examined the wound.

“It’s impossible to say what did this,” the medic said after a short inspection. “There are three common venomous snakes on this island. They’re all rather different. Katangas and the vipers like that are more common in the northlands. In the south, you get blackmouths and rattlers and that sort. Did you hear a rattle?”

Adal tried to think back. He tried to school his body into calm by force of will alone. It was not working. The calm with which Calay addressed him, the way he spoke with an almost academic detachment about the potential poisons that could be working their way through Adal’s body that very instant, did little to quell the little peaks of fear beginning to rise in him.

“I don’t think so,” he said at last.

Calay’s fine silver-blond brows knit together in a look of consternation. He flipped his satchel open and extracted a small dark-wood box. Flipping open the hinge, he revealed inside a glittering array of glass vials, each filled with a scant amount of liquid and stoppered with wax. The liquids inside ranged from deep pine green to various shades of sickly, rotten brown.

“Well, Adalgis,” he said, and something about the way he said Adal’s full name was like the scrape of a fork on fine china. “I’ve got nine doses of antivenin for snakes. But most of them are fairly different. You a gambling man?”

Adal sat up straighter. His brows shot down low over his eyes.

“Fuck you,” he growled. What kind of bedside manner was this? Who had taught this man to be a physician? A bloody hangman?

“Give him the blackmouth.”

The voice that piped up from behind Adal’s shoulder was young, almost prepubescent.

Geetsha stood there, dressed in nothing but her undershift, which fortunately fell all the way to her knees. She was barefoot. She stood in a patch of moss, twisting it through her toes as she shifted her weight from foot to foot.

“I saw it,” she said. “Was a blackmouth. Give it to him or he’ll fall sick shortly.”

Adal’s heart twitched in his chest. That time was definitely nerves. The way Geetsha spoke, with an almost otherworldly confidence that seemed to come from somewhere outside her small, scrawny body…

Really, out of anyone to be at his side in his moment of need, anyone in this party, did it have to be Geetsha and Calay?

Calay regarded Geetsha with open distrust, eyes locked on her in a puzzled glare that approximated exactly what Adal felt inside. How long had she been standing there? How had she seen the snake? Hells, had she been watching him relieve himself?

“Where did you see it?” Calay asked, even as his fingers moved toward one of the vials in the box.

Adal’s palms grew sweatier still. He felt beads of sweat beginning to form upon his brow. Each breath seemed to come a little shallower than the last, as though he were trying to catch his breath after a long swim. He breathed in slow and deep to steady himself, or at least he tried to, because halfway through it just felt… difficult. Like filling his lungs all the way was a lot of work.

“There.” Geetsha lifted a long sleeve and pointed off into the swamp. Adal peered the way her arm gestured, but he didn’t see anything. Just stagnant puddles and mud.

Calay turned his head, also following the gesture, and let out a noncommittal grunt. Looking back to Adal, he shifted a little closer.

“Well,” he said. “You’re starting to look a little pale. If it was a blackmouth, you’ll be winded in twenty minutes and your heart will give out within the hour.”

Adal couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“Where did you learn medicine, lad?” He gasped. He started to say something else, a stronger admonition, but all that resulted from his efforts was a wheeze. “The… the muh…”

His voice sounded shrill with panic. Oh, how he hated that. But Calay did something that surprised him then. He reached up with his vial-free hand and settled it on Adal’s knee. Speaking calmly and clearly, he looked Adal straight in the eye.

“I learned from a man who knew what he was doing. I know what I am doing. If Geetsha really saw a blackmouth out there, all we’ve got to do is get this down your gullet, treat the wound, and you’ll feel fluey for a couple days but otherwise carry on living.” He took a short breath, then gave Adal’s knee a squeeze.

“But in order for me to treat you, you have to stop being a gigantic fucking baby.” Calay said that last bit with a smile that was knife-edge thin.

Adal couldn’t even think of an appropriate comeback.

“Churchbells, you’re a little shit,” he grumbled. He was glad to get that all out in a single breath. He put out his hand for the vial all the same.

###

Things got worse before they got better.

For starters, Calay’s antivenin tasted like garlic-slathered rot. Adal gagged as he swallowed it. Calay stood beside him, crouching to eye level, and coaxed him through drinking it down. He passed Adal a canteen afterward and told him to chase it with as much water as his stomach could hold.

“You’re astute,” Calay said in between all of Adal’s short-winded griping. “It does have wild garlic in it.”

He managed to hold it down, but he suspected that was simply due to the fact that he had yet to eat.

Calay rinsed and dressed the two tiny punctures in his calf. The man’s fingers were light; Adal barely felt it. His limbs felt somewhat far away. Far away and heavy, like they were each hundreds of miles long and burdened with millstones. Sitting up all the way was a chore. He watched the top of Calay’s head as he worked, deft hands spreading some sort of cream along the punctured skin, then winding a neat cloth bandage into place. It was tidy enough work. He’d received worse in field hospitals. And he’d recovered from all that.

“We ought to get you back to camp,” said Calay as he rose from his crouch. “You’re going to need a bit while this stuff works through your system.”

As Adal soon found, that was a marked understatement.

The stomach cramps kicked in not long after. Adal shuddered up off the log where he sat, and as loath as he was to accept the assistance, Calay had to help him down the path back to the campsite. Geetsha stood near the fire, conversing with Riss. Presumably she’d told Riss what was the matter, because Riss kept glancing over Adal’s direction, and when she finally saw him walking toward her, she blew Geetsha off in a hurry and raced to his side.

“Please don’t say anything,” Adal begged her through clenched teeth.

But Riss didn’t look like she was busy formulating any smart remarks. She looked sincerely worried. Which meant he must have looked as garbage as that concoction had tasted.

“Let’s get you down,” Riss said, and she moved to his other side. One arm each around Riss and Calay’s shoulders, Adal let himself be all but carried back to his bedroll. Muscle cramps started in his calf and worked their way upward into his guts, strange little flexes of the body that he had no control over whatsoever. When they hit near his diaphragm, his already-labored breath grew even more difficult. Be it the stress or the poison or the cure or what, his heart hammered against his sternum like it was trying to escape.

He sank down onto his bedroll with a soft, weary sigh. When he turned his head, he found the bedroll already wet, such was the sweat that was pouring from his brow.

“You’re sure he’ll be fine?” Riss asked Calay from far, far above him. He could see their boots, but their faces seemed a thousand miles away.

“If that’s what bit him, he’ll be fine.” Calay’s confidence was stern, almost soldierly. Almost. He lacked the discipline, Adal already knew. There was no way he’d served. He was too…

“Hey, old fella. You need more water?”

He ticked his eyes sideways. Towering over him like an ancient, ageless tree, Torcha peered down. She moved so quick that tracking her made him dizzy. Adal forced his eyes to close even though he was far, far too keyed up to even consider sleeping. The strange, distorted height was just a little too much taken with the cramping and the breathing and the sweating. The last thing he needed was to empty the remnants of dinner onto his bed for the next week and a half.

“I’m fine,” he said through tightly-grit teeth.

“Give him a little space, Torch.” Riss again. Footsteps sounded near his head. He couldn’t tell if they were moving closer or away.

Cramps rolled through his body in dizzying waves. He tried to find that far-off, silent place inside himself. The place he’d learned to go to that had gotten him through battlefield hospitals and long, agonizing wagon rides, when they’d carried him away from the front a mile at a time, his lung collapsed and his mind wild with what passed for army painkillers. But all that training felt like something from long, long ago. From another lifetime.

Through the cramps and the sweat and the too-recent memories itching their way to the surface, he focused on the sound of Riss’ voice. He could no longer make out exactly what words she was saying, but the calm, confident manner in which she was saying it gave him something to hold on to when the room started spinning in earnest.

<< Chapter 8 | Chapter 10 >>

All the marching sent memories of Adalgis’ army days swirling to the forefront. So many hours spent rigorously training in his months at the officers’ academy. So many years spent in the field sloppily undoing all that training and replacing it with practical real-world experience. And always in some backwater. And almost always in the forest. And almost always on foot.

He would be a liar if he said he hadn’t missed it at least a little.

Adal watched Riss and their new guide from a few paces behind. The girl–and she was a girl, a pale-faced knobby-jointed thing that certainly didn’t qualify as a woman yet–had taken a natural liking to their leader. Like many did. Or if not a liking at least a respect.

The chatter from the back of their little caravan wasn’t quite so respectful. He could hear snippets of it, when they weren’t crunching too many twigs and leaves underfoot. Torcha and that northerner Calay talking about druids and mosses and other such fanciful crap. While there was no denying that certain places were afflicted–the term used in polite society–Adal had seen worse. A swamp where some trees bore the remnants of an old world curse wasn’t something to be taken lightly, but it also wasn’t worth all the gossip.

Calay was bringing out the worst in her. Adal tried to focus on what was ahead of him rather than worrying about Torcha’s superstitious streak. He didn’t like how this new medic had immediately zeroed in on the youngest member of their team. Adal was far from an overprotective fatherly sort–Hells, his experience with his own father was enough to put him off that sort of behavior for life–but something about the man’s actions seemed predatory in a way he couldn’t pinpoint. And Torcha could be easily distracted at times. Prone to chattiness in the field. She hadn’t been through the Academy or even field training like the rest of them. It was like Calay had honed in her lack of discipline and leeched himself to her side as an easy in when it came to the group.

Or perhaps he just wanted to sleep with her. Maybe Adal was reading too much into it. All he knew was that he was irked.

It was remarkable, the change in scenery. Mere hours before, they’d walked upon what more or less constituted dry land. To the point of where Adal was starting to wonder if ditching the horses really had been necessary. But not long past the idol-decorated tree that passed for a welcome sign in this territory, things got soupy.

Geetsha was good. The trail they followed was thin and winding and, to Adal’s untrained eye, nearly invisible. Yet if they followed in her footsteps, their boots stayed dry. She was light on her feet, but as he was following after Riss and Vosk, he just had to step where they stepped. Even the mud wasn’t so bad, so long as one was careful with the placement of one’s feet.

It rather reminded him of gavotte lessons. And he’d been good at those.

Suddenly, a voice from behind him, low with a gasp of wonder:

“Adal, look up there! Silkpók!”

He hadn’t been looking up. But at Torcha’s call, Adal raised his eyes toward the treetops. He couldn’t quite see what she was talking about at first. But he scanned to his left, then to his right, and he finally saw it lurking in the droopy, yellow-green branches midway up a willow. A big orb weaver spider. Its bulbous body lay perfectly still in a shimmering web that sparkled with dew. For all it moved, the spider may have been dead. Adal’s shoulders twitched a little as an intrusive thought crept into his mind: passing beneath one at an inopportune moment, scrabbly little legs flailing as a gust of wind or just plain malicious bad luck knocked the spider from its perch and straight onto his face below.

It wasn’t a phobia as such. Who liked the idea of a spider falling on their face?

“What’s that word you just used?” Calay was asking Torcha. Adal kept walking, eager to pass beneath the spider and out of range. Just in case.

“This type of spider weaves a real fine silk,” Torcha explained. “In the textile districts, they farm them.”

“They farm spiders on purpose?” Calay sounded dubious. Adal couldn’t blame him.

“Well, more like they set up shop where the spider colonies already lived, would be my guess.” Torcha laughed a little. “Otherwise that sounds like a pain in the ass. Silkpók is what they call the fabric once it’s finished. But it can mean the spider too.”

“That, my friend, is vile.” Calay’s voice was kindhearted as he said that, edged with a little humor.

Was he flirting with her? Adal restrained a sigh. That was the last thing Riss needed to deal with at the moment. It had been easier in the army, keeping the unit from fraternizing. They were all simply too exhausted all the time. There was no time for amorous extracurriculars when that time could have been spent sleeping.

Now that Adal bothered to look up, he saw a few more spiders spread out among the trees. They were high enough up and far enough back in his field of vision that their size seemed diminished, though, so he didn’t experience that crawling sensation upon his palms. Just so long as they didn’t make camp near many.

###

By the time they were ready to make camp, Adal couldn’t have cared how many spiders were lurking overhead. The darkness was thick, crowding, inky. They could barely see any trees past the fire. And all their bedrolls were crowded around it so closely that Adal dismayed more at falling victim to a random elbow or foot in the night than creepy-crawlies.

Geetsha explained this was the largest patch of dry land for a while, so despite how crowded it would be, it was either camp here or keep marching after things had grown uncomfortably dark.

Riss wisely chose to stay put. And as soon as Adal sit down, the fatigue washed over him like waves on the surf. He was perhaps a little out of shape compared to the peak of their marching days, and his feet tingled some.

They crammed their bedrolls onto the available land as best they could, letting the fire burn down to coals in the encampment’s center. Space enough for tents was out of the question. Crammed together like sardines in a tin, everyone attempted to wriggle into their bedrolls with as much personal space as possible.

“Ah, it’s just like the good old days,” Torcha said from somewhere on the other side of the fire. Adal snorted.

“You joke,” said Calay, “but where I grew up this sort of arrangement wouldn’t have been uncommon. Except there were top bunks, too. And someone was always jerking off on the top bunk. And you always knew.”

Sleep was upon him before Adal could think of anything to say in response to that.

###

As usual, Adal was the first besides the watchman to wake. Laying still in his bedroll, he took a moment to experience the sounds of the marsh.

Midges buzzed in the distance, and some sort of bird cawed out a few times. The call was far enough away that it echoed some. Or perhaps there were simply two of them. Adal wasn’t sure if that was what had woken him.

Something scratched and snuffed through the grass not far from where the others slept. For a moment Adal steeled himself, worried at the prospect of some predator nosing toward their camp, but then one of the moa paced into view. It was bent down, big taloned feet sinking into the mud without a care. It yanked its beak down into a patch of scrubby moss at the shore of a puddle, digging around for… grubs or whatever. He wasn’t sure what lived down there.

Careful to be quiet about it, Adal inched out of his bedroll and rose to his feet. He left his armor in its bag, though he did grab a sweater and pulled it on. The last of the spring chill hadn’t quite abandoned the mornings, and why not be comfortable when one had the option. He stepped into his boots but didn’t bother to lace them up.

Stepping over and past all the sleeping bodies, he nodded over to Calay, who sat upright beside the waning coals of the fire.

Struck by the sight of Calay resting on his boulder, Adal couldn’t help but be reminded of a crow or a vulture or some sort of carrion bird. He sat there sharply, just watching, and gave Adal only the faintest nod of recognition as he passed.

“Quiet night?” Adal asked, voice just shy of a whisper.

“Very.” Calay yawned and knuckled at an eye, his raven’s pose disrupted. “Geetsha didn’t see anything on first watch, either.”

Adal reckoned that was a good sign. He walked past the man and toward the trail, the way they’d come the night before. He walked down it and stepped around the trunk of a willow, just far enough from camp so as to be out of view. Then he unlaced the front of his longjohns and got to his morning business, urinating down into the moss.

Once he finished up, he took a single step away from the tree and back toward the trail. He never saw the snake coming. Truth be told, he didn’t even feel the bite until a couple startled seconds had passed. There was simply a surge of motion, a faint heat along his calf, and then a thrash and a warning hiss as he instinctively kicked the creature off his leg. Scaled body churning and writhing, it raced off into the water, leaving ripples in his wake.

Back at camp, people were stirring. Calay called over, asking if all was well.

Had he yelled? He must have yelled. Adal took a couple steps back down the path, then sank onto a fallen log. His heart began to pound as the reality of what had just happened set in.

“Adalgis?” Calay called again.

“I’m here,” he answered. “Snake. A… fucking snake. I’ve been bitten.”

“I’ll get my bag!” The urgency in Calay’s voice was worrying. Adal sat there, trying not to move, trying to recall what kind of snakes even lived in these marshes and exactly how venomous they were.

<< Chapter 7 | Chapter 9 >>

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The guide was not what Riss expected. She couldn’t have been older than twenty. And when she spoke, she sounded more like a teenager, speaking in a faintly squeaky voice that recalled nothing so much as a kid with a sore throat. This was the best Tarn had been able to find? Or was the region simply so sparsely populated that she was the only person familiar with the swamps that was willing to take the job?

At Riss’ side, Vosk seemed just as puzzled. Riss stepped forward and took the lead. The group behind them slowed to a gradual halt, gathered under the boughs of the twisted, bone-decorated tree.

“Hello there.” She gave the girl a breezy, confident smile. “You must be Geetsha. I’m Riss Chou. The Baron sent us.”

Now was not the time to project anything but calm, smooth confidence. Whatever their reservations were with Tarn’s choice of guard, that horse had bolted. They couldn’t back down now. Regardless of the money she’d lose, Riss wouldn’t do that to an old friend. And Tarn must have chosen her for a reason. He was a lot of things now, newly-titled and settling into civilian life, but their long talk in the castle had assured Riss that his edges had not been dulled. Settling into a noble’s life had barely even blunted him. Tarn must have chosen her for a reason.

“Riss, hello.” Geetsha shook her head back and forth for a moment, an odd gesture. She hadn’t said anything worth disagreeing with, had she? After a couple repetitions of that motion, it became clear that Geetsha was actually clearing her hair out of her eyes. She just used her whole body to do it, shaking like a dog emerging from water.

“You chose good days to come,” said Geetsha after a moment. “There shouldn’t be rain. Trails will still be fresh.

Riss glanced aside to Vosk, who gave the slightest nod.

“I could get us to where the skirmish took place,” he said. “But you might have a better or quicker way to get us there.”

“Skirmish. The skirmish.” Geetsha repeated the word a couple times. She had a trace of an accent, although Riss couldn’t place it. Just a faint wisp of difference to Vosk’s. The southern manner of speaking common tongues always sounded so thick and cottony, like they were speaking through a mouthful of mashed potato.

Geetsha momentarily closed her eyes. Riss studied her openly, unconcerned with being polite.

She looked about eighteen, with fair skin that seemed a stranger to sunlight. Her hair was shockingly white, like bleached flour. Though the clothes she wore were somewhat tatty–ragged edged canvas and hemp, it looked like–she was clean. Perhaps she was some sort of nomad. Riss had heard tales of them, during the war: mobile camps of swamp dwellers who moved through the thickest marshes on canoes, camping on dry land as they encountered it. Subsistence hunters. Rarely anything worth trading. Kept to themselves.

“So you live in here?” Riss asked, hoping to coax a bit more information from her.

“Yes,” said Geetsha. “We all do.”

“Your family?” prodded Vosk.

“There are more of us than you think.”

For some reason, Geetsha’s answer sent a little shiver up Riss’ back. What a weird way to phrase it. Weird and slightly ominous, however unintended.

“Do you have anything you’d like to pack on the birds?” Gesturing back toward the moa, Riss stepped aside some, so as to grant Geetsha a view of the crew at large.

“No.” Geetsha patted a heavy, drooping satchel that hung down at her hip. “This is it.”

It sure didn’t look like much. But Riss supposed that if the girl was native to these parts, she hadn’t need to pack much. Maybe she foraged most of what she ate. Perhaps she’d even share that knowledge, or trade it. They were well-provisioned, but it paid to keep a constant awareness of that sort of thing.

“Everyone,” Riss addressed the group with a lift of her voice. “This is Geetsha, the Baron’s guide. She’s a local in these parts.”

The mercenaries gave mumbled greetings. Torcha waved. There would be better time for introductions once they made camp for the night.

Riss peered past the sign, down toward where the trail descended into the swamp proper.

The change in scenery was drastic. While things had grown gradually murkier and wetter as they’d descended the incline, there was little standing water. The trees had still been sparse enough. But down past the sign, things grew wilder. Great, bent willows with twisted and exposed root structure seemed to jostle with one another for available soil space, like crooked teeth crowded into a child’s too-narrow jaw. Drifts of thick grass sprouted up seemingly at random, stiff and bladelike, and further off in the distance the first of the puddles reflected their brown-black environment.

As creepy as the bone-strewn sign in the trees was, Riss supposed it made sense. This was truly the boundary. Any further in without preparing and one was taking serious risks.

“So, Geetsha, the path my loggers took follows the trail, mostly. We stuck to it until we hit the spring, then–”

Geetsha cut Vosk off, nodding excitably.

“The spring, yes! I can get you there. Or the braided copses. Or the groves.”

Riss assumed they were speaking some sort of logger shorthand. Eyebrows arching some, she stepped a little closer to listen.

“Which groves?” Vosk sounded a little unsure. “The crawling groves, or…?”

“There are many groves.” Geetsha tilted her head, staring up at the sky for a time. “I speak of the grove where there were gunshots. And the fire was disturbed. And the tree ate your friend.”

It was quick, the way Vosk’s eyes went wide. And equally quick how he shuttered his expression, forcing his mouth flat. He inhaled sharply, nostrils flaring, and then nodded a single time.

“So you saw,” was all he had to say to that.

However young their guide may have been, Tarn had chosen her for a reason. She’d already been to the site of the attack.

“Take us straight there,” said Riss. “The quickest possible route.”

“I can do that,” Geetsha said. And then, a moment later: “What are you looking for?”

Riss blinked.

“We’re looking for the Baron’s logging party. And his son. Didn’t he tell you all that?”

“The Baron told me to meet you here. He said you were coming. He didn’t say why.”

Well, it was a sort of need-to-know basis operation. Still, that surprised Riss. Tarn hadn’t thought to warn her that there were bandits running around? Or perhaps he’d assumed that someone as well-traveled in these parts already knew. Either way, it was an intriguing detail.

One aspect of Tarn’s command she had always appreciated in the army was that he had respected her enough to give her details. He understood the unique working relationship she and Adal had developed, understood that they weren’t quite a standard sergeant and lieutenant, and he’d worked with that peculiar chain of command rather than demoting Adal for all but ceding the unit to her.

Tarn had let her into the map tents during meetings she hadn’t technically had rank worthy of attending. He’d shown her trust and respect.

It was time she proved worthy of that once more.

“It is a thick, wet walk,” Geetsha said, prompted by nothing.

“You’re right.” That must have been her way to hurry them up. Riss gestured to the others. “We ought to get moving.”

<< Chapter 6 | Chapter 8 >>

After a long sleep and a meaty breakfast, Calay was ready to ride. Except they weren’t riding, they were walking. And walking was a less exciting prospect.

Slinging the larger of his bags onto one of the moa, he checked the interior of his satchel. Herbs for poultices, bandages, those sorts of things. And a few vials of precious human blood, pilfered from his various sources over the years. He didn’t trust them on the packbeasts. Or more accurately, he didn’t trust his mercenary colleagues not to accidentally unpack them. The satchel was annoyingly heavy against his lower back, but his line of work necessitated some sacrifice.

They followed a thin, meandering trail further and further from the road, into thickets that grew in both darkness and intensity with what felt like each individual passing step. The Baron’s man, Vosk, took the lead. Riss followed him, her pet Adalgis close behind. Then Torcha. Then Calay. Gaz marched along at the rear, hatchet on shoulder, ready for action.

Calay wasn’t sure “action” was an accurate thing to anticipate. But he wasn’t sure what was, so he didn’t bother saying anything.

The Baron’s man, his story had lodged a troubling hook in Calay’s mind. He tried not to think on it overmuch as he walked.

“This guide will be meeting us at the sign,” Vosk called back to the group while they walked. “Her name’s Geetsha.”

Pretty name. Calay wondered exactly what sort of person they were meeting. Someone who was apparently comfortable traversing this terrain alone and on foot. He’d grown up in some tough, filthy places and spent a tense few nights in Vasile’s darkest dungeon, but the idea of traveling alone in a fucked-up man-eating swamp was a little too much for him.

“What’s the sign?” Calay called to those up ahead. He imagined a pub sign with a little cartoon tree eating a little cartoon man. The Ravenous Shrub.

“You’ll know it when you see it. Sort of tough to put into words.” Well that didn’t explain much. Calay rankled, rolling his eyes.

He left the up-front chatter to the Baron’s envoy and Riss. Picking up his pace a little, he threaded across the fern-lined trail until he was walking alongside Torcha.

“So you grew up in these parts,” he started, tilting down somewhat to address the much-shorter woman.

“In a loose definition of these parts,” she said. “Semmer’s Mill may not have the castle, but it’s a larger town than Adelheim. More industry.” My, the way she instantly brought all that up seemed a little defensive.

“Don’t worry,” Calay reassured her. “I haven’t mistook you for one of the peasants.”

She laughed, a bright and airy sound. It was out of place, given their setting. In a good way.

They passed beneath a curtain of dry, wispy moss. The stuff appeared fragile as old cobwebs, draping from the boughs of a spindly tree. Calay brushed a strand of it aside, allowing Torcha to pass through. The trail curved to the left and they followed it, beginning to descend at a slight decline.

“I was more wondering if you’d ever had a reason to venture here.” Calay phrased it like a confession, as if he’d been caught red-handed expressing interest in the woman’s life. If she mistook it for flirting, well, that might only benefit him.

“Not into this particular swamp.” Torcha shook her shrouded head. “But some like it. Bogs and the like aren’t uncommon around here, if you couldn’t tell.”

“I was blessedly born on rockier shores.” Calay grinned a little.

“Most of the land from here to the southern coast is swampland of some type or another. And almost all the drier patches are farms. It’s not a bad climate for…” Torcha trailed off for a moment, lifting one hand, palm up. “Cotton and crap.”

“Cotton and crap.” Calay snorted.

“Semmer’s Mill is, as you might have guessed, a farming town. Grain mill and all. But the miller’s lifestyle never suited me.”

Calay took a moment to look her over, from the loose weave of her comfortable red-brown clothes to the long-barreled pistols holstered at her waist. In Vasile, she might have been mistaken for some sort of performer. They had a lot of those in the big town squares, sharpshooters showing off the dazzling accuracy of the latest newfangled firearms.

A cursory examination of Torcha’s belongings hinted that her guns were newer. She didn’t seem to carry a powder horn. The bandolier slung across her shoulder would have told more, but her cloak covered it. He was curious what kind of firepower she was packing.

“Riss called you her long arms specialist. I take it you served with her?” He was genuinely curious at this point, not just making conversation.

“Something like that.” He caught the very edges of a mischievous smile on Torcha’s mouth.

“Something like that?” He kept prodding her. “Last I checked you were either in the army or you weren’t.”

“I ended up in the army eventually!” Torcha laughed again, a lighthearted cackle. “It just didn’t start out that way. I just sort of tagged along.”

Calay didn’t get it. “A conscript?”

“More of a freelancer.”

Reaching the bottom of the shallow decline, they followed a series of serpentine bends in the trail that led to a sharper slope, navigated by means of a series of switchbacks. Calay, easy on his feet in his well-worn boots, kept up the pace with Torcha’s much-shorter footsteps.

He preferred walking beside her and Gaz. Bringing up the rear had a big disadvantage: every so often, Calay swore he could feel the moa’s eyes upon his back. The birds marched along quietly behind them, their clawed talons scraping on the hardpack of the path. Traveling with birds instead of horses wasn’t common on the coast. He’d seen them in use during his travels, of course, he wasn’t some bright-eyed foreigner all agog at all these inland customs.

But they were unusual. For starters, they were giant, but they weren’t heavy. Their footsteps were almost suspiciously light. Made it sound like they were padfooting around. Trying to sneak up on him on purpose. Too quiet, too light-footed, and the shine in their eyes was far too intelligent.

Calay tried not to dwell on the birds, kept his attention on Torcha.

“I don’t understand how you could be a freelancer in the…”

He trailed off. Upon reaching the bottom of the hill, they reached the sign. Vosk was right. He knew it when he saw it.

“Mistress’ tits,” he murmured below his breath.

The sign in question was a series of skulls and bones, twisted skeletal remains woven through the softly-draped branches of a swamp willow. Vertebrae-adorned braids trailed down from thicker branches where big, horned ox skulls were lashed with rope. Sightless, sharper-featured skulls stared down at them. Calay considered their sharpened teeth and wondered what they once belonged to.

Gone yellow-brown with rot and age, the bones dangled there like eerie fruit. He spied a big, blunt-featured feline skull that had to be a swamp panther.

None of the skulls appeared human. That was a relief… wasn’t it?

Gaz loomed up behind them, slowing to a stop.

“You don’t see that every day,” he said after a moment’s silence.

Movement from the tree’s trunk. For a single, insane moment, Calay thought My gods, the trees are coming for us already!

But no. It was a hooded figure. A person just like them. Their guide, he supposed. The figure wore a shin-length green cloak with a heavy hood, though she swept it back as she approached them. She shook tangles of bone-white hair free from her collar, and the face revealed when she stepped into the light was almost just as pale. She was young-looking, round through the cheeks and eye sockets. Owlish.

The woman stopped and stared at them for a few seconds, a little wide-eyed. As if she’d expected fewer of them. Or expected something different.

“Hello!”

When she finally spoke, her voice was an odd chirp, young and awkward like a man’s on the cusp of puberty.

“This is what’s gonna guide us into the marsh?” Gaz spoke lowly in his ear. He may well have spoken for the both of them.

<< Chapter 5 | Chapter 7 >>

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Evening crawled in at a snail’s pace, the sky slow to darken. Riss wasn’t in a strict taskmaster kind of mood; when Torcha and Calay suggested a hunt she let them go. In the meantime she made camp with Adal and Vosk.

When the time came to see the Baron’s soldiers and the horses off, Riss waved them off. She watched the small herd of animals and their shepherds ride away down the road, and once the sound of hoofbeats receded into the twilight, something felt… different.

Adal seemed to feel it too. He stepped a little closer to her and put a hand to her arm.

“I can tell you’re thinking what I’m thinking,” he said.

Riss curled up a smirk. “Oh? What am I thinking, Mister Altave?”

Adal’s voice held a subdued, pensive quality. “That this now feels much further away from the glow of civilization than the map says.”

… That was a closer approximation than she would have given him credit for. She grunted, an admission.

“It’s less how far we are now and more how far it’s going to feel when we’re four days on foot into the marsh.” She turned away from the road and walked back toward their campsite, passing by the dozens of spent and scattered fires.

The only real route into the marsh, if you could call it that, lay upon the same crossroads where they made their camp. A faint trail wound through the sparse trees, venturing deeper if one knew where to look. Vosk had directed them to its trailhead and they’d camped not far away.

Riss made herself busy: checked on the moa, unfurled her bedroll beside the tents, set to building the fire. Just as she unhitched her hatchet from her pack, Adal emerged from the woods, arms laden with kindling and branches. He’d beaten her to it. Of course he had.

Together, they dug a shallow firepit and built a pyramid of kindling. Riss unpacked her firestarter kit and chipped flint against the fire-steel until it sparked. As her hands worked the shard of flint and the small steel cylinder, the world seemed to melt away. She and Adal could have been sitting by any fire at any time, years in the past or years in the future. Something about the clink of flint on steel and the smell of fresh kindling and the tickle of smoke, it all became a gateway to another time and place. Every other time and place.

“Are you hungry?” Adal asked, clearing his throat. Riss blinked.

“Of course I’m hungry,” she said. “We’ve been riding all day.”

Reaching into his satchel, Adal produced a small apple. Its skin was waxy and shiny, striated pink and red. Some local variety Riss didn’t know the name of. She took the fruit in hand and smiled her thanks.

Adal busied himself with the fire, stoking it and adding progressively thicker branches. As he settled onto the bedroll beside hers, he spoke to Riss in a quiet, offhand way:

“You’re doing fine.”

The words were like a crossbow bolt. She shivered. Am I?

He knew. He somehow always knew.

The apple was tart, its flesh crisp. It made one’s teeth work for their reward, and eating it proved to be a much needed distraction from her thoughts. When Torcha, Gaz, and Calay tromped back into camp whooping triumphantly, lifeless swamp hens dangling from their hands, Riss was grateful for the noise.

###

Swamp hen wasn’t exactly a well-known delicacy. Riss had eaten it before–in the field, one couldn’t be picky–and found it nothing special. But she hadn’t had Deel swamp-dweller wisdom on her side in the past, and whatever Vosk had done to the birds was nothing short of extraordinary.

Riss tore chunks of flavorful dark meat off the bird’s thigh, each bite tender and tangy. Vosk had stewed the birds in some sort of broth that was mostly vinegar, a technique Riss had never heard of, and it had turned the tough, tasteless game tender and moreish. They ate the birds over sweet potatoes, digging in with such enthusiasm that conversation around the fire ground to a halt.

Finally, Riss broke the silence with a heavy sigh. She slouched back onto her bedroll and set the plate of picked-clean bones aside.

“Well,” she said. “If you cook like that every night, I don’t know if Baron Tarn will get you back.”

Vosk chuckled modestly, licking some sauce off his thumb.

With the fire burnt down to coals, the campsite glowed with a rosy red-orange color. Beyond the fire’s reach, the forest wasn’t terribly dark. A half moon and scattered stars gave light enough to see by. Enjoy it while it lasts, Riss thought.

“I hate to disrupt the mood…” Calay’s voice was muted, thoughtful. “But you were there, weren’t you?” He was looking at Vosk. Vosk seemed to take a moment to process the specifics of what you were there meant, but then he nodded.

Calay sought out Riss now, speaking with a lift of his palms. He was a constant gesturer, she’d noticed, a man who spoke with his hands as much as his mouth.

“I feel like Gaz and I are a little late to the party with what actually happened.” He sat cross-legged, regarding Riss across the fire. “And given we’re marching into that marsh tomorrow…” He trailed off, inviting Riss with a lift of his eyebrows.

He had a point.

She’d been sparing with details on the job listing. And Tarn had been sparing with details in his original letter to her. It was the old army way of doing things: everything that happened was on a need-to-know basis and the grunts didn’t need to know until they were just about in the thick of it. She’d planned on giving a more formal briefing when they entered the marsh proper.

Beside her, Adal pulled a face, his eyes narrowing at Calay. She twitched her hand a little, a tiny gesture meant to stave him off. Relax, the man’s asked a valid question.

They weren’t in the army anymore. Apart from the fact that she and Adal were the bosses, there wasn’t much of a hierarchy in place. Everyone had their assigned job. Everyone had their expertise. No one sitting at this particular fire was expendable cannon fodder.

“You aren’t that late to the party,” Riss told the man. She shifted her attention to Vosk. “In fact, I have yet to hear a first person account, myself.”

Vosk seemed to take that as a cue. He sniffed, then reached into his coat pocket. Withdrawing a small steel flask, he unscrewed the cap.

“Happy to tell you all I know, although I admit things are a little jumbled.” He took a nip from the flask and offered it aside to Gaz and Calay, who both shook their heads. Torcha, sat on the other side of him, accepted.

Riss reclined back and listened. She declined the flask when it made its way to her. Adal declined as well, possibly just following her lead.

Firelight played across Vosk’s features as he turned his head, staring off toward the trailhead for a time. Riss took a moment to study him. That cold, closed-off quality she’d sensed in him on the road had opened up some when he’d cooked their supper, but now he seemed to retreat again, as if he were less turning to look at the trailhead and more turning himself away from the fire.

“I don’t know how much you all know about the wood here,” he said at last.

Torcha cleared her throat. “I grew up outside Semmer’s Mill.” A small town a ways up the river, closer to the Deel than Riss’s hometown, at least. When Vosk didn’t speak up immediately, Torcha continued:

“You hear all kinds of stories about the woods.” She took a tiny sip from the flask. “Hunters that go in and don’t come back out. Witches living in bogs that are just as likely to eat you as grant you wishes.”

Vosk shook his head.

“Not the woods. The wood.” He grasped a small twig and twirled it between his fingers. “The Crawling Wood, they call it. That’s the place and the trees both.” Vosk braced the twig between his thumb and two fingers, then snapped it. “Trees grow different in the Crawling Wood. It’s tough to explain. You may have seen some examples at the castle, Riss. Strange grains, trees that aren’t seen anywhere else in the land.”

She did recall the gleaming, dark-veined wood of Tarn’s many bookshelves.

“Local legend has it that at some point in the distant past, something happened there. Back when the forest was druid homeland.”

Torcha chimed in with a quiet snort. “So back when druids were supposedly real.”

Riss gave her a look, mouth flat. Let the man continue.

“Look,” said Vosk, to Torcha. “Regardless of your views on druids, or magick, or any of the like. Everyone knows there are places where things are just… different. Wells of power. Or…” He seemed to fumble for the correct word for a moment. “Corruption.”

The word traced icy fingers up Riss’s spine.

“The groves in the Crawling Wood got corrupted somehow, way back when. And now they sort of… grow together.” Vosk set his jaw then, a fine line of tension standing out upon his throat. He shifted, drawing his shoulders a little tighter in. “They call it braidwood or meldwood. And it is extremely, extremely valuable. A good haul of meldwood sold to the right buyer feeds a man’s family for half a year.”

Tarn may not have been a man with an appetite for luxury, but he’d know a valuable resource when confronted with one. It made sense that Tarn would try to secure that trade, especially now that he had a castle to pay for.

“The Baron sends regular parties for it,” said Vosk. “Three or four a year, usually. We don’t go near the Wood during the rainy season. It’s too unpredictable. But any other time, well.” There was a tic at the corner of Vosk’s mouth, Riss noticed. Subtle but present. His lip twitched.

“The Baron put his son, Lukra, in charge of the expeditions. And whatever you might think about nobility glad-handling their kiddies through their first jobs, this wasn’t that. Lukra Gullardson was a skilled logger. He had a real eye for the marsh, too. Before the war, the old Duke, his logging parties lost double the men Lukra’s did.”

Tarn was hardly nobility. But Riss kept that thought to herself. It was clear her old commander had made a name for himself as a highblood in these parts.

“It was an uneventful expedition. We went five days in. No problems with snakes or bugs. Nobody got sick. We could hear the panthers howling some nights but they leave groups our size well enough alone.” Vosk seemed to grind his teeth a moment. That tic twitched at his lips again. “I’m still not sure whether we were tracked in or whether they stumbled across us and our cargo by accident. Bandits. I never saw how many. It’s all a little scrambly from here on out. They jumped us after nightfall. They had guns.”

Vosk pursed his mouth and let out an annoyed breath.

“In broad daylight it would have been nothing we couldn’t handle. But they caught us with our trousers down. They wanted our haul. Forced us all onto our knees. Took our birds and most of our supplies. We knew we couldn’t track them in the dark, so Lukra waited until dawn. He ordered three of us back home, to inform the Baron what had happened. He said if they couldn’t dredge up the thieves, they’d be back in a matter of days.”

Riss knew the story from there.

“Has there been any sign of them at all?” Calay spoke up after a few moments. His brows knit.

“Baron Tarn sent two separate scouting parties, but they haven’t turned up a scrap. No evidence of Lukra’s loggers, or a bandit camp. Nothing.” Vosk shrugged. “It’s possible they became lost. Or were overpowered by the bandits. Or perhaps they ran into something worse. I’ve seen what those trees can do.”

“What the trees can do?” This time it was Adal.

“Aye, sir.” Vosk looked Adal in the eye, and there was a minute shift in his face. The tic at the corner of his lips, Riss realized, had been anger held back. And it vanished when creeping traces of fear sneaked in.

“The meldwood doesn’t just meld with wood, if you get what I’m saying. They call it meldwood because it’ll meld with anything it touches. Other trees. Animals. Men.”

Stifling silence fell over the camp. The fire alone crackled.

“Some of the trees are more awake than others. They’ll seek out movement, heat, however it is they find people. It’s like they want to absorb things. Like they’re feeding.” He hid it well, but Riss could smell the residue of withheld trauma. It gleamed on some folks like sweat. Perhaps because it took one to know one.

“That’s why they call it the Crawling Wood.” Vosk’s voice lost some volume. “Because at night, sometimes, you can hear the trees moving. Little creaks and cracks like someone’s walking toward your camp, but you look up and no one’s there. The three of us Lukra sent back…” He paused. When he finally spoke again, Riss could tell the words he chose weren’t the first that came to mind. He’d sifted through them, each word spoken with care.

“We’re lucky the trees only got one of us on the way home.”

###

Riss had faced worse things than walking, hungry trees. Hadn’t she?

With each breath, she felt herself drawing closer and closer to sleep. Yet she couldn’t quite get there, jolted into semi-consciousness by little hypnic jerks and every creaking branch on the wind. She hated to admit it, but Vosk’s story had spooked her.

Little puff-snort snores drifted over from one of the other bedrolls. Torcha.

“That’s my cue,” Riss muttered to herself. She could fall asleep once the others did. It didn’t make any logical sense, she knew, but she hated being the first to drift off. Old superstition from her new-boots days.

“It is a rather soothing sound.”

Riss jolted at the voice, snapping her head to the side. Adal lay on his side, tucked up under a blanket, his back to her. She hadn’t realized he was awake.

“Can you believe this shit.” Riss shifted so that she was facing Adal’s back. He was visible as a slumped silhouette in the half-light of leftover coals. “Murderous trees.”

“Mm.” Adal was silent for a beat. “And to think I gave up a riverboat empire for the honor.”

“You’re mad.” Riss ducked deeper down into her blanket, smothering a yawn in her forearm.

“You’re worse.”

The retort was so juvenile Riss could only chuckle until it tapered off into a yawn.

The night passed without incident. She woke to the sounds and smells of someone fixing breakfast.

<< Chapter 4 | Chapter 6 >>

Later, Riss would wonder if the dog was some kind of omen. When she first set eyes on it, though, it wasn’t anything special.

Their ride out of town was an uneventful one, horses clopping along at an unhurried pace. They’d be camping at least one night before entering the heavy marshland and it was less than a full day’s ride, so no need to rush. The ride gave Riss a chance to gather her thoughts and to observe her new hires. Calay and Torcha had settled in to riding two abreast, conversing as much as one could while riding. Adal rode slightly behind her, alone with his private thoughts. Gaz, the big fellow, he’d fallen back and was chit-chatting to the porters.

As they descended Adelheim’s hill toward the lowlands, the landscape changed quickly. Gone were the signs of a settlement on the rebound, the smell of fresh sawdust and the sounds of hammers. Past Adelheim’s immediate reach, nobody had bothered to clean up after the war passed through. They rode past razed farms, burnt shacks, structures that had been so thoroughly demolished she couldn’t even guess at their original purpose. The northerners hadn’t fucked around. Anyone who didn’t submit and pay fealty was forcibly removed, and if the occupiers had no use for what got left behind, they left nothing but rubble.

So when Riss first rounded a bend and spied a tall, shaggy-furred dog sniffing by the roadside, her first thought was wow, he’s been living on his own a while if this used to be home. The dog–the first living thing they’d seen since leaving Adelheim–glanced up as the riders approached, lifting its big square-muzzled face. It sniffed the air, then threw its head back and loosed a pair of resounding barks.

The horses certainly weren’t dog-shy; they just kept on walking. Torcha gave the dog a wave as they passed.

Rather than staying put, the dog fell into stride, hustling a little to pace Riss’ horse at the lead then settling into an easy heel.

“Well you’re well-trained,” Riss said, glancing downward. She wasn’t entirely sure what to do. But in the end, since it wasn’t getting in the way, she didn’t see the point in wasting time and energy to shoo it. It would wander off on its own eventually.

“Looks to me as though you’ve made a friend,” called Adal from behind her. Riss laughed so low he likely didn’t hear it.

“More like a hanger-on.” Her tone was good-naturedly teasing. “I seem to acquire those.”

She didn’t see Adal’s reaction, but she imagined the look on his face well enough: that little pinched blink he made when he was annoyed, then a roll of his eyes.

Below her, the dog’s ears pricked. It picked up its pace, then broke into a loping run and took off down the road. Riss couldn’t tell what prompted it.

“Friendship is fleeting,” Adal said as he watched it go.

The forest grew more dense, the trees more pressing as they continued. Curtains of moss draped from twisted, cracked branches that bore the starts of budding new growth. The air had a moist, humid density to it. These sorts of murky, mushy places were always a little more humid than Riss liked.

Who ruins a perfectly good castle by building it in a swamp. The memory, a fleeting snatch of Gaspard’s voice, whistled past her ears like a gunshot. There and gone again. The impact of it felt like a gunshot, too. Riss squared her shoulders and set her eyes on the road ahead, focusing on the horizon. It was then that she noticed the rider ahead.

“Rider approaching,” she called over her shoulder. Not that she expected anyone to come of it. There were dangers on the road, of course, but bandits would be suicidal to attack a group this size. Especially a group plain as day outfitted as mercenaries.

The rider turned out to be riders plural: a lightly-armored man on a big roan horse and a pair of footsoldiers behind him. All wore the deep green cloaks of Baron Tarn’s garrison. The dog burst out of the underbrush and circled the lead horse, yipping twice. The lead rider loosed a sharp whistle and the dog padded slowly beside him, coming to a halt when his horse did. It plopped down on its ass in the dust, tail wagging.

The riders waited for Riss’ party to approach. As she rode up, slowing her own horse in the process, she searched their cloaks and the breasts of their jerkins for some sort of rank insignia but didn’t spy any. Not that the lack of such meant much–she wasn’t sure the local garrison even bothered with that sort of thing, beyond the fellow in the nice plate is probably an officer.

“You must be Riss Chou and company.”

She sized up the man on the roan. He wasn’t big, but the way he held himself in the saddle and the way the men at his flank sat utterly silent lent him a presence that made up for it. He was blond, broad-faced, hale. Blandly symmetrically handsome, if she thought on it for long. The Baron’s envoy. It had to be.

“And you are?” She put on a smile. The sound of hoofbeats gradually wound to a close as everyone stalled.

“Harlan Vosk.” He nodded by way of introduction. “Lieutenant of the Adelheim Garrison. I’ve been sent as assistance, and my men here will help the porters get the horses back to town.”

He sure didn’t look like a Harlan. Harlan was a friendly-sounding name, and despite the smile he gave her she couldn’t sense a degree of warmth radiating from the man.

“Appreciated,” she said. Vosk glanced past her.

“Uneventful trip?”

Everyone nodded and mumbled. Riss doubted he could hear anything they said, given the distance.

“I’ve been to the crossroads already.” Vosk gestured to a small crossbow hooked to his saddlebags. “Since we made good time, thought we’d have a sniff about for deer.”

“Any luck?” Riss didn’t see any carcasses slung across their saddles, but it seemed the polite thing to ask.

“Luck doesn’t stop by here very often.” Vosk chuckled ruefully, then glanced over his shoulder, further up the road. “I suppose we may as well get on. Call the hunt a bust. We’re well-provisioned. I’m not worried.”

“The Baron has been generous,” said Riss, unsure exactly how formal to be. She had no idea what Tarn had told his staff of her, if anything. She played it safe.

“Moving out,” Riss called to the group. “The Baron’s envoy will accompany us. Good to know the road’s clear.”

They set off down the well-worn path, two groups joined as one. The dog circled the riders some ways off, not seeming bothered by the distance. Vosk must have noticed her looking, because he spoke up without being asked.

“That’s Eight,” he said, nodding down toward the hound as it loped alongside Calay’s horse.

“Eight?” Riss tilted her head. Weird name for a dog.

“He’s the eighth dog in the Baron’s tracker stable.” Vosk lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “I’m sure the trainers have given him a more familiar name, but I don’t know it.”

Hell of a name for a dog. Riss kept riding.

 

###

 

Of all the things Riss had lost when Gaspard died, she missed her sense of competence the most. In better days, when leading a hunt back in her hometown or leading her scouts behind enemy lines, Riss had a damn grip on herself. She had a keenly-developed sense of her own abilities, an internal bullshit barometer that rarely failed her. Since leading her mentor, their clients, and the last of her employees into that disaster of an ambush, she felt so unsure all the time.

And that’s what rankled her as she rode along, making good time toward the crossroads. Something about this job had her hackles up. But she wasn’t sure if she could trust herself. Were her instincts really tugging at her, or was she just being overcautious? She’d been nervous as a gun-shy horse her first few jobs after Gaspard’s death. While the jitters had settled some, they hadn’t settled entirely.

At least it didn’t seem to show on her face. Small victories.

The road southwest out of Adelheim terminated bluntly in a crossroads, intersecting with the main north-south thoroughfare through the lowlands. They reached it with plenty of daylight to spare. A cursory examination of the road dust told Riss no wagon traffic had been through.

She left Adal in charge of organizing the porters and the horses, unpacking her own saddle and heaving her bags onto her shoulder. Stepping off the road and into the scrub, she searched for a suitable spot to make camp.

Small, twisty-trunked softwood trees sprouted irregularly from the red, iron-rich soil. All the larger trees this close to the road were stumps, dotting the landscape like big lumpy scars left over after some sort of illness. Good enough metaphor for a war, Riss figured. The war effort needed wood, so large chunks of the forest astride most major roads had been felled.

The lack of foliage made for piss-poor shelter while camping. And piss-poor cover, too. Riss could see the remnants of every campsite the road had hosted in months. Little heaps of ash, leftover stunted logs for seating, scraps of tallow and a few bones and hoofs.

“This place is a mess,” Riss muttered.

“It’s bad luck is why,” chirped a female voice from beside her. Riss’ shoulders twitched. She mostly suppressed the urge to jump entirely out of her skin.

Turning sideways, she narrowed an eye at Torcha, who had materialized beside her like a puny ginger ghost.

“Don’t do that,” said Riss.

“Do what, boss?”

Torcha was chewing on a stalk of fan grass, peering up at Riss sidelong like a chastened schoolkid. She was about the height of one, too. Riss almost said sneak up on me aloud but decided to drop it. It’s possible Torcha hadn’t been skulking. Maybe she’d just been too far lost up her own thoughts to hear her.

“Nothing. What’s bad luck?”

Torcha looped a slender finger through the air, drawing a little curlicue that indicated some of the spent fires that littered the roadside.

“It’s bad luck in these parts to make camp where someone else has. They say building a fire on the ashes of another is like uh, building something on a bad foundation.” The tilt of Torcha’s drawl tended more toward observation than fervent belief, Riss noted.

“But making camp right next to a hundred other camps is fine so long as the fires don’t touch?” Riss had to laugh.

“Peasant superstition, bosslady.” Torcha hefted her narrow shoulders in a shrug, hands upturning. “Don’t ask me.”

Stomping over grass and ash alike, Riss kept an eye out for a suitably flat patch of ground. As she strayed further from the road, she found herself looking for spots with a polite few meters’ distance from the closest aged campsites. Ridiculous. Yet once the suggestion was in her head…

A sudden flood of excitable, high-pitched barking sounded from the road. Riss turned her head just in time to watch a grey-brown blur streak off down the roadside and into a patch of undergrowth. Eight the dog, bounding away to where the forest thickened.

Vosk loped up seconds later, chasing after the hound as quick as a lightly-armored human could.

“That-a-way,” said Torcha, jerking her thumb.

Rather than continuing on, Vosk paused a beat. “He’s never done this before,” he said, brows furrowed.

Riss glanced off into the bush. It wasn’t typical behavior for a tracker dog to sprint off into nowhere like that. Was it possible he’d scented something? That seemed so unlikely, so coincidental…

But she’d had that weird feeling, that strange uncertain itch in her gut. It had been pulling at her a few hours now.

Ah, what the hell. Riss gave chase.

 

###

 

Chasing after a dog on foot sounded easier than it was. Bounding along, Riss could only run in the vague direction she’d seen Eight run. Torcha and Vosk hurried behind her, the clunk of the latter’s armor obvious. A bark rang out; Riss veered toward it. Dead twigs and leaves crunched under her boots. She noticed in a peripheral blur that the tree cover was back. Taller, twiggier, gnarled old trees that had made it through the war rose up around her, obstacles in her path which she ducked and weaved with ease.

A clearing broke into view and she slowed, spotting the dog in the center of it. The dog and… something moving.

Flies. A living carpet of them. As the dog charged up, they lifted in unison, moving like a single living organism for a moment until they dispersed. As they cleared, Riss spied what they’d been resting upon: the bloated remains of a horse, tangled in some roots.

Eight lurched forward on all four big paws, yipping excitedly. He didn’t quite alert in the same way Riss’ old dogs had, but the change in posture was enough. He thought he was leading them to something they’d been searching for.

“Not quite, ol’ boy,” Riss said as she took a few steps closer. Not too close, though, as the stench wasn’t pleasant. She couldn’t see a saddle on the horse, but that didn’t mean much. Bandits would have made off with that in a heartbeat.

Pacing through the clearing, Riss kept to the perimeter of it, eyes sweeping over the ground. The dog, seeing her disinterest in the horse, followed her. Vosk thundered up and into view, letting out a displeased ugh.

At the very edge of the clearing, Eight whuffed and shot in a straight line toward a particular tree. Riss followed, watching the dog’s body language.

Around the other side of a half-rotted trunk, she found the body. She presumed it was the rider of the horse based on nothing but proximity. He–well, it, the gender was indiscernible–sat upright, slouched against the tree with its head lolled onto its shoulder. It had been there for some time, most of the flesh withered away to husk and bone and hair. It was wearing studded leathers. The sort of cheap, easily-produced armor common to these parts provided one could afford more than rags.

But as disrespectful as it was, it wasn’t really the body that caught Riss’ eye. At least not in and of itself.

Coiled around the corpse’s neck, thrust up through some tatty holes in the linen cloak it wore, a flowering vine bloomed. The thickly-slithered thing was the size of Riss’ wrist in diameter, with deep purple blossoms that sprouted off it at random intervals. It snaked out along the roots of the tree, bathing the area immediately around the body in purple blooms.

Someone had suffered horribly here, but it was breathtakingly beautiful all the same.

“Well I’ll be damned,” said Torcha from behind Riss’ shoulder. “Ain’t that the prettiest thing.”

Riss rubbed at her chin. The old battlefield desensitization did her no favors when she tried to tell herself this might be a crime scene.

“You know,” she said to Torcha, “it really is.”

That odd itch in her belly only intensified. She stood there in the clearing for some time, admiring the corpse and its many flowers amid the shafts of sunlight that plunged through the trees. The dog’s whining finally broke her spell.

“What kind of luck do you think the peasants would call this?” she finally asked.

At her side, Torcha bent down and plucked a flower from the corpse’s brow.

“I reckon it’s good luck for us.” Torcha’s tone was definitive. She tucked the flower into the folds of her headscarf. “You always said I looked good in purple.”

<< Chapter 3 | Chapter 5 >>

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Calay Maunet sat upon a heavy wooden fence, puffing a stick of sliproot and gazing at the stars. Gaz loomed beside him, a bearlike silhouette backlit by distant torches. After an uninspired supper of stew and root vegetables they’d retired out to the yard, ostensibly to discuss the upcoming job. There hadn’t been much discussing though. Just a lot of smoking and wary silence.

“You still feeling good about this gig?” he asked Gaz with a tilt of his head. Gaz shrugged a single time, quiet.

“Suppose it’s too late to back out now.” Calay answered his own question and took another puff off his smoke. He’d cut the root with a bit of clove, both for flavor and to take the edge off the sedative effect. What it produced instead of sedation was now a mild, comforting drowsiness that calmed the scramble of his thoughts and made the stars twinkle just a little brighter. For the third time that evening, he offered the little cigarette to Gaz.

“I told you,” said Gaz, his voice a deep, amused rumble. “I don’t have trouble falling asleep.”

“Would that we could all be so lucky.” Calay rolled his eyes, though the dim lighting likely made it all for naught.

“You won’t have trouble falling asleep either, as of tomorrow.”

Calay grunted at that. “Yes, marching oneself through a marsh on foot tends to have the blessed side effect of exhaustion.”

Gaz shifted in his lean against the fencepost. He peered sideways to Calay, the craggy blocks of his face visible in profile.

“If this contract is giving you so much grief, why take it?”

Of course he’d ask that. Like taking any work in their particular situation was a bad idea. Calay slouched over some. Fleeting desire swept through him to lean over so far that his head ker-plunked onto Gaz’s shoulder. The fur trim on his jacket looked so cozy.

All right, perhaps he’d double the cut of clove the next time he rolled smokes.

“It’s a calculated risk,” he said, trying to sound less stoned than he felt.

“So’s everything.” Gaz could be a man of few words at times, but those few he did speak were often like splinters under one’s fingernails.

“I know so is everything,” he snapped. “But this is a calculated risk I think we should take on purpose.” He took a moment to gather his thoughts, reeling them in.

“This particular company run by Riss Chou. It’s a good risk. She has a reputation. Or well, the company does. It isn’t all hers. But it’s a known name and she’s running it now. Captain of the Baron’s garrison says the Baron rode home specially to meet her. Soon as I heard that, I figured it was our ticket.”

Their ticket to what, exactly, Calay still hadn’t worked out. What they needed a ticket to was less important than what they needed a ticket away from. Though this was a one-contract job, Calay hoped to finagle a way onto the woman’s roster of mercenaries in a more lasting capacity. It was the cover he and Gaz needed for a while, until things blew over at home.

If things blew over at home.

“It’s a good plan,” said Gaz.

“It was your plan,” Calay reminded him.

“The basics were mine.” Gaz lifted a hint of a smile, barely visible in the half-light. “You filled in the details.”

They made a good pair. That was, Calay supposed, why they still drew breath. Who knew how many Guard back home were looking for them. And who cared, anyway. Home was a long way off. Home was a couple hundred miles and a whole war zone away.

“You think she picked up on our accents?” he asked, absently curious. He wasn’t sure exactly how the war had affected the mercenary types this far south. He’d stayed out of the whole thing.

“Undoubtedly.” Gaz shrugged again. “But she didn’t say anything.”

This far into the marshlands, anyone from Vasile—Calay and Gaz’s home port—was considered a northerner. And northerners were the ones who started the war, you see. Peasants were stupid. They didn’t understand nuance. Calay could have sat them down and told them that he was no more a Narlish invader than they were South Coast fisher tribes, but it was a lost cause. The fact that Vasile hadn’t contributed a single soldier to the war didn’t matter.

Fortunately for Calay—if unfortunately for the locals—the region appeared to still be in a state of turmoil. His and Gaz’s weren’t the only Vasa accents he’d heard since arriving in town. And Riss and her people certainly weren’t locals. Hellpits, even the Baron was a mountain man.

The Deel Valley seemed like a good place to disappear for a while. Until Calay got word that it was safe to slither back home.

“You hungry?” Gaz asked, absently fishing an apple from his satchel.

“Not particularly.” Calay tapped ash off his smoke on the fence post. “Sliproot is also an appetite suppressant.”

Gaz smoothed a hand across his dome with a snort. “Suppose that’s why you look the way you do.”

Lurching more upright, Calay squinted balefully into the murk. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

But he knew what it meant. The pair of them could not have looked less alike if it had been deliberate. Gaz was a rock-hard beef tower; Calay liked to think of himself as having a swimmer’s build. That sounded better than lean and approximately three-quarters Gaz’s height. Gaz kept his head shaved to stubble; Calay wore his silver-blond hair in a tidy ear-length cut, parted to the side as was fashionable back home. Gaz had that hideous face tattoo. Calay’s features were as yet unsullied. Gaz’s face had also been decorated by fists, boots, and a brick or two over the years, treatment that Calay had mercifully been spared despite running wild in the same slums.

“It means you should eat an apple,” said Gaz.

“It means you should get fucked.”

Calay swept a couple fingers up and flipped up a lewd gesture. He toked the last worthwhile bit off his cigarette, then ground the paper out on the fencepost. He held the smoke in for a moment, then exhaled in a vaporous billow. Gazing up at the stars through his smoke, he took a moment to marvel at just how many there were.

“You don’t see stars like this in Vasile.” Gaz’s voice was a low, pensive murmur.

“Please stop reading my mind. You’ll run into something horrible.” Calay hopped down off the fence post and shrugged his duster higher up his shoulders, burrowing into the collar of it.

“Something horrible or just something crude?”

“Probably both.”

Gaz lumbering along at his side, Calay set off across the grass to the rectangle of warmth and light that beckoned them to the inn’s interior.

###

The quantity, the concentration, and the combination of substances Calay imbibed before bed never seemed to make a difference. Despite the comfortable woolen cloud he’d smoked up around himself, sleep remained elusive.

Snores rumbled from many of the bunkroom’s occupied beds, Gaz’s among them. Never let it be said that man has a guilty conscience, Calay mused. Gaz could sleep through anything. Not that his own conscience was the thing that prodded him awake at night. He suspected his insomnia was hereditary, as much as he understood such things could be. It had been a constant companion since his childhood, an ally on the mean streets where an ill-timed nap could be the difference between life and death.

You’ll want to be well-rested in the morning, a little voice in the back of his head reminded him. As if he’d forgotten the looming prospect of a day of marsh trekking.

Temptation, like insomnia, was a constant companion of Calay’s. Presently that temptation reminded him that a sound night’s sleep was only a glyph away. A quickly-sketched sign in the right admixture could put him down for as many hours as he required, were it not for the fact that using blood magick on something as minor as sleeplessness was insane. Even if blood magick weren’t illegal in these parts–he wasn’t sure on the finer points of Sunnish law–all it would take was the wrong superstitious prick spotting dried blood on his pillow. Then he and Gaz would be fleeing yet another district. Presuming he got away with all the necessary body parts to run.

He supposed there were other options: he could slip out of his bunk and have a sniff around town. There was probably someone in this map-speck hamlet who could help him wear himself out for the night. Female, male, he wasn’t picky. Bathed, ideally. That would be the tough part in this sort of…

Somewhere in the middle of imagining all that, sleep grabbed him and pulled him under.

###

Calay is unsure how many days he has spent in the dark.

The cell is five paces long and just under three wide. Apart from the door and a few high slots for ventilation, the old stone walls are featureless. They are ancient and cold, old as Vasile’s foundations. The palace jails are a new experience for him, and frankly he thought there would be something to differentiate them from the others. But no. A cell is a cell is a cell when one is hungry and sore.

He wants to say it’s been two days because they’ve fed him twice, but he knows the guards at St. Loyorda’s like to fuck with the prisoners by staggering meal times. The palace fellows could be cut of a similar cloth.

Little do they know their treatment of him will be their undoing. The wounds they inflicted aren’t much in terms of jailhouse beatdowns: a few bruised ribs, a knock to the jaw that was already tenderly swollen, a split lip. But the split lip is enough.

They don’t know what they are dealing with, and in opening his skin they have opened the door.

Gritting his teeth, Calay tongues at the wound upon his mouth. He flexes his jaw and grinds his thumbnail into the cut, squeezing his lip with his fingers so a thin trickle of blood finds its way into his palm. He spits to assist the flow.

Pain itches through his mouth, but it is no worse than the pain throbbing through his jaw and ribcage. It is a sharper pain. A more welcome pain. The pain of progress.

The gathered smear of blood in his palm is pathetic. There was a time in his life when he’d have derided it as barely enough to practice with. But times are a little more dire than that presently. He spits into his palm to thin the blood yet further. It will dilute the effect as well, but he doesn’t need much. Far more important to get the glyph correct.

He stirs the blood and spit together in his palm, then dips his index finger in. Working from memory and praying he doesn’t fuck it up, he sketches the glyph upon his forehead. Then he holds his breath and waits.

The sensation that tingles through his eyes isn’t quite pain. It resembles the jabby pins-and-needles of a limb fallen asleep. Still, when experienced in the eyeballs it is disconcerting. Calay flutters a series of hard blinks in the dark, and in stutter-stop motion the details of the room become clear. His vision sharpens and intensifies, every line of grout in the stone walls now apparent. The night vision spell has worked. It’s fainter than he would have liked, but more than enough to work with.

Flexing and curling his fingers, he wipes blood and spittle from his palm. His stomach growls, and by reflex his eyes are drawn to the bowl of stew and mushy bread which sits uneaten on the floor.

Unfortunately, he needs that for more important ventures than feeding himself. Even as the weak, nauseating aftereffects of the magick stir unpleasantly in his gut, he is hungry. Hunger cannot be a priority now.

With dirty fingers, he scoops a few bits of meat and gristle from the bowl. Then he climbs atop his cot, edging toward the cell’s sole window. He plops the meat chunks there between the bars. Mouth a tight line, he resists the urge to lick his fingers. Tasting anything will only grant his hunger an audience.

He bides his time there in the dark.

He doesn’t know if he’s quick enough to catch a rat bare-handed. But now that he can see, he’s got more of a chance than before. And if he manages to get his hands on one, well…

There’s enough blood in a rat for him to sketch all kinds of things. Things not even a hundred guards and walls of stone a hundred feet thick can contain.

###

Calay snapped awake just before dawn, as usual. He felt sluggish and thick-headed, as if his every movement were hampered by cobwebs. The dreams—the racing, chasing dreams in which he was constantly pursued—hadn’t helped.

By breakfast, though, he’d steeped himself the right herbal blend for tea and was sharpening up.

By the time he and Gaz met the others outside the inn, he was a finely-honed blade.

Riss Chou led a small procession down the hill. A loosely-gathered pack of riders on horseback followed her, with a couple darkly-feathered moa bringing up the rear, their harnesses laden. Calay tugged on the brim of his hat as they neared, tipping it in greeting.

Atop a horse, Riss looked like she meant business even more than usual. And Calay got the impression by the cast of her face that she looked that way pretty much all the time. She had the tall, fit construction of a born-and-raised soldier coupled with the high-boned face of a family much better bred than his own. Only her deep tan and the piecemeal kit she wore ruined the illusion that she was some Inland Empire Praetorian Guard, here escorting one of the Emperor’s personal boot-lickers. Or perhaps licking those boots herself. The second in command she toted around looked much the same, except with snappier hair and leathers that all matched.

With them this time was a woman Calay had never seen before. A pale, freckle-dotted ginger whose mop of curls was desperately trying to escape her headscarf. Calay pursed his lips. She looked younger than Riss and Mr. Altave, although part of that could have been simply how short she was.

She noticed him looking and narrowed her eyes just a little. Calay hiked up a grin to show he meant no harm.

“Calay,” said Riss, ticking a hand between him and the redhead. “This is Torcha Lupart, our long arms specialist. Torcha, this is Calay. He’s our sawbones for this expedition.”

That tiny scrap of introduction was all it took for the woman—Torcha, Calay committed to memory—to flash him an easy smile rather than that wary squint.

Just like that, he was part of the squad.

Gaz chose that exact moment to burst forth from the inn’s doors, carrying both their bags. Glass rattled in Calay’s satchel and he grabbed at it eagerly. They’d have a lot of explaining to do if Gaz cracked open two dozen vials of human blood right there in front of the gods and everybody.

“And this is my lovely assistant Gaz,” he said to the riders. “In case anyone hasn’t yet had the pleasure.”

“It is a pleasure,” said Gaz, grinning wide. “Ignore him.”

Riss expelled a little air through her nose, a restrained laugh. She whistled to a porter, who emerged from the rear of the small crowd leading a pair of horses.

“We’ll be riding up ‘til where the road ends.” Riss lifted her voice to explain to the entirety of the small group. “From there, we’ll make camp at the crossroads. The Baron’s sent for a guide to meet us and take us deeper into the marshes. He’s also graciously donated an envoy from his personal guard who made it back from the original expedition. Between the two of them we should have more than half a clue about which direction to walk.”

She did have traces of a sense of humor, then. That was a mark in her favor.

Calay packed his things to his horse’s saddle. There was something disconcerting about traveling so light. Their contracts included all provisions, so he imagined most of that was packed on the pair of moa. But instinct twitched in his fingers, a wary dislike of traveling separate from his own food and water. He always had a couple days’ emergency rations packed away in his satchel in case events necessitated a quick escape. But a quick escape would be harder to accomplish atop someone else’s horse in unfamiliar marshland.

But Gaz was right. He’d said the magick words when he and Calay had been poring over the notice board for job opportunities: if we’re going to lie low, at some point we have to stop actively running away and establish some sort of cover. Mercenary work was an ideal way to do that.

And mercenary work that assisted the Baron in charge of these parts was a thing that could buy them necessary time if a retreat were necessary.

So Calay swallowed his anxieties and saddled his horse. Nothing about their present situation was inescapable. Besides, the Leycenate didn’t give a toss about anything happening this far south. They probably hadn’t even sent scouts. Probably.

“You think that horse is gonna be big enough?” Torcha called over to Gaz as he slipped a boot through the stirrup and mounted.

Oh, Calay liked her.

<< Chapter 2 | Chapter 4 >>

Riss had not seen Tarn Gullardson in some time. She sat there in one of his many sitting rooms and wondered exactly how it would feel to set eyes on him again. Perhaps more accurately, she wondered what he would feel when he first set eyes on her. Would it be pity? The line of her mouth hardened.

A servant scuttled near-silently into the chamber and executed a curtsy Riss only saw from the corner of her eye. The woman poured a cup of tea and set it upon the side table.

It took much of Riss’ self control—not a small reservoir by any means—to bite back a piss off. She wanted to be alone. But Tarn’s servants didn’t deserve her wrath. If their boss had called her all this way for the mercenary equivalent of a pity fuck, he was the deserving target. And he’d get it all right. She took the teacup by its stem and cradled it in both hands.

The sitting room was a handsome one, she had to admit, focusing on the decor to take her mind off less pleasant things. Shelves of some dark-veined wood she didn’t recognize lined the walls. The windows had fine, un-bubbled glass that offered a clear view to the courtyard below. She couldn’t tell if the glass was original or a particularly clever refurbishment. The furnishings—brass-bound leather, gleaming candlesticks that could have been silver or pewter, a geometrically-patterned rug that was undoubtedly Some Sort of Foreign—were certainly not what came to mind when she thought of Tarn.

Of course, when one is gifted a castle as a spoil of war, it probably comes with whatever’s inside it, she wagered.

Riss sipped her tea and moved her mouth around. She tried on a few expressions: mild smile, flat line, something she hoped looked contemplative and serious. Should she greet Tarn as a friend? As a former superior officer? She wasn’t going to let his newfound title push her around. At least not inside her own head. She’d pay the proper respects if his hangers-on demanded them. More than anything, she needed to feel the man and his offer out. She needed to gauge whether this job had been given to a competent mercenary or an old friend fallen on hard times or a poor brokenhearted dear who needed a pick-me-up.

Bluntly, it bothered her that she wasn’t sure how angry she was supposed to be.

She was stewing on that when the heavy wooden door swung open and the man himself stepped in. The Baron of Adelheim, no longer some hypothetical she could debate the pros and cons of. He was a flesh-and-blood thing she just had to suck it up and deal with.

The sight of him still inspired a reflex to salute. Riss clenched her teacup a little tighter for a beat.

Leaving the army had shaved ten years off Tarn’s face. The eyes that settled on her—dark, narrow, hooded beneath a heavy brow like a turtle peeking out of its shell—were lively. Like a man much younger than his five and some odd decades.

“Captain,” she said. Her mouth found that mild smile she’d tried on earlier. It came naturally. She found that, all her concerns about the job aside, it felt damn good to see him.

“That’s Baron to you.” Tarn’s voice was a rich boom; his laugh ricocheted off the walls.

“Oh, yes.” Riss placed her teacup carefully aside, then unfolded from her armchair. When she rose to her full height, she was still a few inches shorter than Tarn. Stooping forward, she swept a curtsy of her own in the southern style: cloak to the left, toe dipped.

“My apologies, Baron of Adelheim,” she said, lowering her voice a shade to really yuk it up.

Tarn groaned like she’d kicked him in the family jewels.

“If you never call me that again it will still be too soon,” he said. Riss straightened. Amused, she gathered her tea once more, then gave Tarn her full attention.

“Civilian life treating you that grandly, sir?”

Tarn brushed past her, stepping through the small sitting room and toward the door opposite the one he’d entered through. He gestured for Riss to follow, a brisk little officer’s swish of his hand. She fell in behind him and he led her into a larger chamber. It probably had a proper name, but Riss didn’t know it. More bookshelves lined the walls. A fire crackled in an impressive stone hearth. Beside it sat a spindly wooden liquor cabinet, the Baron’s target. He marched himself up and pulled the door open, taking inventory of the bottles within.

“You know half these books are in Sunnish?” He snatched a bottle from the cabinet and a pair of glass tumblers. “Civilian life means living in a castle with forty rooms full of books you can’t fucking read.”

Riss snorted. Tarn sloshed a measure of dark amber liquid into the tumblers and passed one to her. She took it, now holding a cup in either hand. He certainly didn’t seem to have changed much.

Still nursing the tea for the time being, she followed Tarn to the fireplace. There was only one chair, but he pulled the ottoman aside and offered it to her. Sinking into the high-backed leather seat, Tarn sipped his drink and let his eyes fall momentarily closed.

In that moment, he looked much the same as he had in his Inland Army days: a well-groomed officer of the stereotypical barrel-chested, broad-shouldered build that officers always seemed to have. But his mustache was no longer trimmed to military precision; he’d grown it out in the long and drooping style that was common to his new home.

She settled herself onto the ottoman and placed the liquor down beside her boot. Riss considered herself lucky in that moment to have a subordinate’s quiet to fall back on. Tarn was in control here; she didn’t have to break the ice. Which was fortunate for her, because she had no idea how to pursue this conversation.

“It’s good to see you,” Tarn said after some time. Something had shifted in his voice, a subtle turn away from conversational and toward… Riss couldn’t quite pinpoint it. Were he a stranger in a bar on ale three or four, she’d have anticipated he was coming on to her. But this was Tarn, so no.

“I don’t want to say I was worried because I know damn well you’re capable of taking care of yourself.” Ah. So the word she’d been searching for earlier was paternal.

“And here I am, fully taken care of,” said Riss for lack of a better response. Humor was a crutch in these situations. She wondered if he’d dare voice why he’d been worried.

How long are we going to dance around it? She sipped her tea, watching her old Captain, waiting with a crocodile’s patience.

There was a gulf between them that wasn’t there before. This gulf existed between Riss and everyone she’d served with. So more accurately: a gulf existed around Riss. She felt as though she stood on a narrow ledge, a plunging canyon to either side. Everyone from her old unit, and everyone she knew before the war too, they all resided beyond the canyon’s drop. On stable ground that was no longer familiar to her boots.

It hurt a little, seeing Tarn through the lens of that distance. She could tell it hurt him too. Tarn could talk to anyone under any circumstance. Yet now he regarded her like he had no idea what to say.

Gaspard had died almost two full seasons ago. Two seasons since Riss had taken over the company. Since she’d tried to gather up the pieces and build a functional whole with what was left over.

If he tells me it wasn’t my fault, I’ll slap him. The thought leapt into her mind like that reflex to salute: unbidden and undeniable.

Fortunately for the future of their relationship, he didn’t.

“Regardless,” said Tarn. “I’d be up the creek without your help, so I appreciate that you came.”

That caused her to sit up some. “It’s just wood, Cap. Thanks for thinking of me, but a lot of crews could do this job.” She downplayed things reflexively and wasn’t quite sure why.

“If it was just a logging trip and a case of a missing person, why do you think I called you here?”

Riss blinked. “Because it’s a particularly dangerous area? I’ve talked to the locals. I know most won’t venture into the marshes.”

Tarn took a deep breath then exhaled, a lengthy wheeze of a sigh that seemed to deflate the broad boulder of his frame.

“I mean called you here to this meeting, Riss.” The words had a sarcastic edge to them, though he blunted it some as he continued. “If I’d called you here to chop wood, we wouldn’t need a briefing beforehand, would we?”

For the first time since she’d unfolded the letter addressed to her and marveled at the seal of Adelheim upon the envelope, Riss wondered if there might be more to Tarn’s errand than he’d let on. She had never considered it before. Tarn was… Tarn. He had about as much artifice to him as a hammer. Or at least Captain Tarn had. Perhaps his Baron days had changed him.

“I assumed you wanted to, ehm. Catch up.” When she said it aloud, it sounded rather lame.

Tarn breathed out a quiet laugh, then downed the remnants of his drink. Riss still hadn’t even tasted hers. She didn’t even know what it was.

“That is true,” he said. “But I intended to save the catching-up for after you’ve returned. Better to do it when we have something to celebrate, no?”

Riss merely nodded to concede the point. She was interested now.

“The essentials of the job as described in the letter are correct,” said Tarn. “But there were some details I didn’t put to paper. And for good reason. These are the sorts of things one has to keep in mind in my new… hah, I hesitate to even call it a profession.” They shared a smirk.

“So yes: my eldest son Lukra did indeed disappear while leading a logging trip in the southern marshes. But things are a bit more complicated than that.” Tarn paused. Riss saw his eyes dart toward the liquor cabinet again, but instead she just nudged her cup toward him with the toe of her boot. She wasn’t in a drinking mood.

“Cheers.” Tarn collected the drink then lifted it to her. “I’ll get to the point. Lukra’s disappearance alarms me not only because he is my heir, but because I can’t be certain it wasn’t an act of man rather than an act of marshbeast, so to speak.”

He had Riss’ undivided attention now. The faint tang of black tea on her tongue suddenly tasted far away and uninteresting.

“So rather than a rescue mission, you think we’ll be searching for a body?” Riss wasn’t sure how diplomatic to be. She knew Tarn had a whole litter of children. She didn’t know how emotionally attached he was to any of them. He told her all the stories on their long marches, of course, but every soldier waxed poetic about his kids. Kids were an ideal. Kids were a sign. They meant peacetime and retirement.

“I have no idea.” Tarn lifted a burly shoulder. “All I know is that when I was preparing to put this expedition together, I kept finding reason after reason not to trust any of the local talent.”

Riss took that unspoken compliment to heart.

“Do you have any enemies?” She knew little of Tarn’s life since the war. Only that he’d received this great parcel of land and crumbling castle as thanks for his services to the Inland.

Tarn lifted his tumbler and gestured all about the book-lined room. “Riss,” he said, as though he were speaking to a child. “I am living fat on the backs of thousands of peasants. I live on occupied land which we took by force.”

“A lot of people saw the seizing of the Deel as a liberation,” she said. That was how she remembered it, at least. Two years? Was that all it took for her to view wartime with nostalgia?

“Many did, but many did not.” Tarn tossed back a little of his liquor, swirling it in the glass. “My point is that anyone in the valley could see me as an enemy, were they the right stripe of fanatic.”

“So anyone could, but nobody personal springs to mind?” That was a good thing.

Tarn shook his head. Riss raked her teeth along her bottom lip. “Huh.”

They sat in silence for a while, the crackling fire a backdrop to their private thoughts. Riss considered promising him directly: we’ll find him. And if we find him dead we’ll find who killed him. But she worried such a direct appeal to emotion would invite one in return. She did not want him holding her hand about Gaspard. Not now, not ever.

“Is there anything further I could help you with?” Tarn asked after a while. “Equipment? Men?”

“I don’t believe so.” Riss made a quick mental inventory. Tarn’s writ had paid for it all anyway. “I’ve got some of—” Fuck, she almost said Gaspard’s name. She dodged the other way. “—a couple of the old team with me. Hired a couple here in Adelheim. A medic called Calay and some muscle called Gaz, in case you know them.”

“I’m not familiar, no.” Tarn regarded her curiously. “Who from the old team?”

“Well, it probably comes as no surprise that Adal never left.” She smiled, faint but fond. “And Torcha Lupart, the sharpshooter. If you ever met her. I can’t remember.”

Tarn bellowed out a laugh. “Adalgis.” The crows’ feet at the corners of his eyes deepened with amusement. “Thank Loth he grew up into something useful when you fed and watered him properly.”

That he had. Riss could still remember the first time she set eyes on her Second, back when he was introduced to her as Lieutenant Altave. She’d never served under anyone less competent in the field and swore she never would again.

“You two are odd friends,” said Tarn non-judgmentally.

“We complement each other.” Riss pressed a thin smile. “I’m not taking any dead weight on this trip. I respect you too much to bleed you dry.”

Tarn focused on her, fully sober despite the two measures of liquor he’d sipped thus far.

“And I respect you too much to ask anyone else to do this.”

Riss tilted her teacup toward the man. “I’ll drink to that,” she said. She was offering a cheers, but instead he retrieved the bottle from the liquor cabinet and spiked her tea. Riss let it happen. The bottle turned out to be some sort of almond liqueur, sweet and a little nutty. It softened the bite of her tea in a rather pleasant way.

For the duration of that bottle, they were no longer Baron of Adelheim and Mostly Failed Mercenary. They were simply two old friends looking back on better days. At one point Riss did promise him that they’d find his son, no matter what. And to Tarn’s credit, he never mentioned Gaspard’s name once.

Riss didn’t start the long, slightly stumbled walk back to the inn until long after night had settled over the village. Tarn left her with the promise that he’d arranged for a guide to meet them, as well as one of his officers.

She took the path slowly, hands buried in the deep pockets of her cloak. Candles guttered in the windows of the squat buildings she passed. Torches and lanterns lined the road, as if lighting the way, a special procession just for her.

The southern marshes were a bit of a mystery to Riss. Her unit never had reason to scout that far south. Few roads circled close enough to the region to even offer a glimpse of them. Torcha, the closest thing their team had to a local, said they were a place of mystery and bad luck. The locals left offerings at the nearby shrines and hurried in the opposite direction.

But of course, as she always did, Fortune had a sense of humor. Valuable things grew in these dark and wild places. Lukra Gullardson had gone off in search of such specimens. Fine-grained exotic woods, valuable medicinal herbs, that sort of crap. Riss wondered what he’d found. If anything.

For a moment, on that lonely torchlit path, doubt skipped through Riss like a stone. What was she thinking, promising Tarn I’ll find your boy like that. Like he was some lost little lamb. Like she was some brave shepherd.

Yet framing it that way helped her. He wasn’t a lost lamb, no. But he was a lost person. And they’d tracked down plenty of those in the war. Fugitives, prisoners, the movements of enemy scouts—everything left tracks. She would follow Lukra’s into the mud. And even if she couldn’t find him—which she would—they’d fell the trees Lukra died for. Marshwood fetched prices high enough that Tarn’s fees would be but a pleasant bonus by comparison.

Riss slowed some on her walk back to the inn. She savored the light. Where they were going, the trees grew so tall one couldn’t even count on stars.

<< Chapter 1 | Chapter 3 >>

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