“WELCOME TO THE VALLEY of Bawnnd Ondor,” Flock Commander Astol said. He blew on his bamboo whistle and Carduus dipped his head momentarily. Carduus drove his wings hard on the downstroke, creating a rumbling whoosh. The invisible weight of rapid climbing pushed down on Carny, but he kept on polishing his crossbow. He only worried now when his ass started floating away.
“What did he say?” Wiz asked.
Carny shook his head. Wiz had taken to Flower faster than Carny did. The man smiled like he was being paid in silver. His memory was shit, but he could stitch a cut and whip up a potion with his eyes closed, so Carny said nothing.
“Sounded like ‘Valley of Bone and Thunder,’ ” Knockers said.
Carny opened his mouth to correct him but thought better of it. Valley of Bone and Thunder . . . beat the hell out of the slyt name, which probably meant Valley of Runny Shit and Stomach Cramps anyway.
Carny wiped his chin with the back of his hand and finished polishing his crossbow before tucking the cloth into a pocket. When he looked up, Miska was bouncing her big tits in excitement as they flew into the valley. Most of the men on board were looking at her instead of the land below. Carny was onto her—at least, he thought he was. She considered them just a bunch of dumb peasants from villages so backward they thought ice was dead water.
Well, she could think what she wanted. Sure, less than half of them could write more than their name and they looked like beggars and thieves, but they still had pride. Most important, they had each other. Carny sat up and nodded to himself. It was a hell of a revelation to realize that the most important people in the world to him were sitting on the back of this rag. He trusted them, and they trusted him. Ahmy . . . he wasn’t so sure about. It was hard to trust a man who believed in worlds you couldn’t see. What Carny did trust, however, was that Ahmy’s crossbow was in perfect working order, just like the rest of the shield, and when the arrows started flying, that’s what mattered.
“How’s it look for farming?” Carny asked, standing up and grabbing a plate to support himself.
“I’ll tell you when we land,” Big Hog said, keeping his head between his knees.
Carny knew he would. He rolled his head on his neck a couple of times and looked out at the valley. Their last briefing was fresh in his mind and he wanted to put detail to the crudely drawn map he’d looked at.
Running on a north–south axis, the valley stretched three miles along its length, divided down the middle by the Formaske River, a gray-brown streak that flooded twice a year but was currently at half its normal height as this part of Luitox was hit hard by the drought. Barely a mile across at its widest point, the valley floor was a tattered collection of dried-up dosha swamps, fields of ten-foot-tall saw grass, and scattered stands of trees and bamboo.
Forming the valley wall to the west was a series of jungle-covered mountains, the highest peak a thousand feet below them. The mountains to the east were similar, although a single peak near the north end looked to be right at five thousand feet with them.
It was, as their briefings had said it was, a valley in the middle of nowhere. Looking at the mountains, Carny felt no joy despite their similarity to the ones back on the coast. There was no beach, no navy bringing in fresh food, and sure as fuck no slyt whores waiting to ease his pain every night. He’d spoken to Squeak about his biggest concern, but the little cripple had smiled and said to trust him. He could get Flower and the much more powerful white powder called Sliver anywhere, even in a hole like this.
“We’ll see,” Carny said under his breath, turning his head and spitting.
“I don’t know why the Forest Collective would want this place,” Knockers said.
“I’ll pay the slyts to keep it,” someone said. No one laughed.
“Iron Fist up ahead!”
They were halfway up the valley, which looked to be its widest point. From the air, Frontier Castle Iron Fist appeared as a brown stain on top of a nondescript hill. The name didn’t mean shit though. It was a castle the way Carny was a bright, shining warrior of civilization. Under construction for a month, Iron Fist was in reality a large camp covering forty acres. It was surrounded by a six-foot-tall earthen wall, a meager two-foot moat, and four heavy wooden gates, one facing each cardinal direction.
Troop barracks had been built using surplus navy sailcloth stitched together to form one-hundred-fifty-foot-long roofs hung over a frame of bamboo and sunk into the dirt. The walls were dried mud piled three feet high and smoothed by trowel. The only structures made of more substantial material were eleven stone watchtowers dotted around the perimeter set just back from the wall and the keep in the center of the camp.
Carny looked closer at the keep as they passed overhead. It was larger than he’d expected. He guessed it to be two hundred yards by three hundred yards. It was difficult to tell how tall it was, but he could definitely see the thickness of the walls. There was an outer row of blocks, a space that appeared to be filled with debris, then an inner row of blocks. Maybe someone was planning on building a castle.
“Guess we’re staying after all,” Carny said, looking up and finding Miska looking at him.
She beamed. “I know. With the Kingdom this far west and establishing a permanent presence, the Forest Collective must be all but finished,” she said, completely missing his sarcasm.
“What’s that?” Knockers asked, pointing to a large area being excavated near Iron Fist.
“Guess that’s the roost for the rags,” Carny said. He’d never seen an actual roost, but as there were already several rags penned in part of the depression, it was a good bet.
“I see other castles, too,” Knockers said, pointing to the west.
Carny couldn’t get mad at Knockers, but the boy was forever grinding on him with his constant curiosity and general amazement at every fucking thing they saw.
“Those aren’t castles—too small,” the Bard said. He’d kept his head down and worked on lyrics almost the entire flight. As one of the few literate soldiers in the shield, possibly the entire javelin, the Bard held a special position. For taking a few flicks to sit and listen to one of the songs he was working on, he’d pen a missive home for you to your wife or family.
Carny looked. “The Bard’s right. Those are small forts. Looks like they’re putting one up on every hill taller than the grass.”
“What are those wooden towers for then?” Miska asked.
Carny squinted. “For scaring slyts. Those are cats.”
Miska shrugged.
“Catapults.” He counted at least fifteen of them spread around in the different fortress positions. Looked like two per fortress, although he saw a couple with only one each. Those cats looked significantly bigger than the others. “High Command is really going all out.”
“The Forest Collective is on the run!” Ahmy said, reiterating his beliefs in case anyone within shouting distance wasn’t already perfectly clear about them. “We will overcome. You will see.”
“You could be right, Ahmy,” Carny said.
The devout Dendro looked surprised. Carny didn’t have the energy to have yet another deep discussion with Ahmy about the High Druid and the meaning of life. Agreeing with him actually worked to shut him up . . . sometimes.
“Say, LC,” Knockers said, pulling himself up to a kneeling position. “They’ve gone and put forts on all the hills, but how come they haven’t put any on the tops of the mountains?”
Men laughed. Carny thought about that.
“Well, it’s a long way to climb up there, for starters. We half wore our legs off going up and down the mountain on the coast, and we weren’t trying to haul anything bigger than Big Hog’s carcass.”
Those who had been on the mountain laughed. Big Hog held up a hand and made an appropriate rude gesture.
“Even if you did, not much you could do from up there anyway. If the slyts attack they’ll have to come into the valley and by the looks of it, if they do that, they’ll wish they hadn’t.”
Knockers nodded, but he didn’t look convinced. Carny decided to indulge him.
“You doubt our fearless leaders?”
Knockers’s eyes widened. “No. No, it’s just that they taught us in training that having the high ground was always the best.”
The shield grew quiet. Knockers was right, and that was troubling enough without looking at the ramifications of what that meant for them.
The normally son-of-a-prick flock commander came to the rescue. He turned in his saddle and addressed them. “Lads, you see those nasty little rags that have been flying with us? Well, even if every slyt in the FnC were to haul bony ass up to those mountain peaks, those sparkers would make sure they were R-and-T’d before the slyts had a chance to boil a pot of water.”
Laughter broke out as the tension evaporated. “Fucking right!”
Carny caught the flock commander’s eye. The man wasn’t grinning. He nodded at Carny and turned away.
Miska called to Carny, asking what R-and-T’d meant.
“ ‘Roasted and toasted,’ ” Carny said, enjoying her obvious discomfort at the image. “You ain’t seen nothing until you see a charked slyt. They curl up like a caterpillar. Skin and muscles shrink so much the bones often snap. And the smell . . .”
Miska turned her head and heaved, trying to cover her mouth. Wiz shot Carny a glare and leaned over to help her. Carny shrugged and sat back down, ignoring the eyes of the men looking at him. He’d gone too far. Fuck her. She wanted to know what it was really like out here. Let her go and walk through a pile of charked slyts, hear the fat crackle as they burned. Maybe then she’d drop the bullshit.
The bamboo whistle sounded.
“You heard the man,” Carny said, strapping himself back in and taking stock of his equipment. “Strap up, cinch up, and bolt up,” he said, cocking his crossbow and sliding a bolt into the firing groove. “Looks peaceful down there, but that’s just the way Faery Crud likes it.”
Carduus slowed his wings, then held them out perpendicular to his body. The sudden silence was always unnerving, but Carny had grown to appreciate the feel of the wind. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine he was flying by himself.
Then the angle of the rag changed, and what was a glorious sensation of flight became one of accelerating fall. Carduus hit some rolly blues as they descended below the mountain peaks. His massive body shook and bucked like a canoe in rapids. Carny looked up and down the rag making sure everyone was in place. He caught Miska’s eye. She looked miserable. Her bosom was bouncing, but no one was enjoying the show now. He grinned and waved at her.
“Welcome to the Valley of Bone and Thunder!”
SHIELD LEADER LISTOWK reached up and took his pipe out of the linen band he’d wrapped around his helm. Until the Lux he’d never smoked, but it calmed his nerves, which seemed more on edge these days. He sat on the northern wall of the castle and watched the valley as dusk gave way to night. It had been a long day in the air and he was glad to have dirt under his boots again.
He’d asked the sentries in the watchtower nearest him if slyts were in the area, but they’d laughed and told him to take all the wall he wanted.
“I have to say,” the senior sentry had said, leaning out over the parapet of his tower, “we haven’t seen a slyt since we got here, and that was three weeks ago. Little bastards must have turned tail and run when they heard us coming.”
Listowk didn’t bother to reveal his rank and climbed the wall with thanks. He walked along it until he found a spot just far enough away from the tower that chatting would be discouraged, but not so far that they couldn’t see him. It was night, and this was slyt country.
He glanced to the right and made out the light of the small oil lamp they had in their watch post. Nodding, he turned back to the valley. The saw grass, so named for its serrated edges, stood silent watch. It covered the hill all along the north and west sides, giving way to dosha swamps when it reached the bottom. An occasional rustle in the grass was most likely a rat or some other varmint.
A heron, or maybe it was a crane, slowly flew past Listowk’s vantage point heading south. He never could remember which was which. He watched it until it vanished into the darkness.
A boy like Ahmist probably would have seen an omen in that. Listowk didn’t, but all the same, he would have preferred it had headed north. He turned and looked that way. The valley narrowed as it went north, hemmed in to the east by the tall mountain the troops were already calling the Codpiece for its roughly similar outline. Listowk didn’t see it, but he hadn’t had anything to drink yet, either.
Behind him, the din of hundreds of soldiers, flockmen, rags, and mules ebbed and flowed. He did his best to ignore it, but every so often a voice would pierce the night and he would catch a sliver of conversation, part of a joke, the tail end of a threat. That was one of the reasons he was out here and not back there. The boys needed a night to get settled. They’d already found three distilleries set up for business by the first shields to arrive. Best thing for Listowk was to stay out of the way and let them enjoy.
Something crawled on his right arm and he swatted it with his left hand, not bothering to see what it was. Rubbing away the carcass, he reached down and placed his hand on his crossbow. He knew the weapon was still there—he felt its weight on his thighs—but he liked to feel it with his fingertips. Reassured, he went about filling his pipe, taking his time to tap the tobacco down deep into the bowl.
Knockers had taken to carving pipes out of a black-brown wood he’d found that was nearly as hard as iron. Took the poor lad a week to make one pipe, but he went at it like his life depended on it. Knockers had insisted on giving the first one to him. He’d tried to refuse, but Knockers looked like he might cry, so Listowk accepted the pipe.
Satisfied with his tamping job, Listowk put the stem of the pipe in his mouth and began patting down his aketon looking for his flint striker. He realized it had gotten so dark he could barely see the tops of his boots. Maybe left this a little late, he thought, but kept patting for the striker anyway.
“Found it,” he said, pulling it out of a pocket. He slipped the C-shaped steel striker over the knuckles of his right hand and took the piece of flint in his left. Positioning the flint over the bowl of the pipe, he raised the striker and then brought it down, sending a shower of sparks into the bowl. On the fourth try the tobacco caught and began glowing a bright orange.
He drew in a few puffs and just as quickly blew them back out. Tastes like shit.
The grass rustled again. He slowly put the striker and flint back in his pocket. Just as slowly, he gathered up his crossbow in his hands and gently eased the safety lever off. Despite the sentries’ shouts that the only thing he was likely to shoot was himself, Listowk had cocked it and put a bolt in the groove.
The glow from the pipe blurred his vision, so he moved the bowl to the side using his tongue on the stem. Squinting, he searched the grass, but there was nothing to see. The entire Forest Collective could have been camped twenty feet away and he wouldn’t have seen them.
He sat still, drawing the occasional puff and listening, but no more rustling sounded. Bored and feeling slightly ill, he took the pipe out of his mouth and banged it against the wall. He watched the embers fall down to the moat and extinguish in the slimy mud at the bottom.
The sound of something crashing back in the castle was quickly followed by raised voices. Listowk wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard Big Hog. He tucked his pipe back in the linen band.
“Time I checked in on the lads,” he said, thumbing the safety back in place and un-notching the bolt. He swung his legs up and over the wall and around so that his back faced the saw grass. Easing his body forward, he reached out with his feet and found the wooden walkway. He jumped down, impressed that the walkway didn’t sway. He had to give it to those mules; they built stuff to last.
More raised voices and the sound of running boots. Definitely time to see what they were up to.
He had just started walking toward the end near the watchtower when something hit the outside of the mud wall. He stopped and leaned over. An arrow stuck out of the mud right across from him. Were it not for the wall it would have hit him square in the balls. He froze, straining to hear or see the shooter.
He slowly turned his head away so that he used the side of his vision. Still nothing. He waited a few more flicks, then reached down and pulled the arrow out.
He ran his fingers along the shaft until he felt the fine grooves that had been cut into it with a knife. He didn’t need light to see that they weren’t random but mule runes. He had no love for the mules, but he’d grown to have a grudging respect for many of their ways. One was their skill at building. The other was their rune alphabet. You could convey a lot of information in a few runes.
TWO FC SCOUTS * WILL TRACK TO DAWN
Listowk rolled the arrow between his fingertips. He’d been right; the slyts were here and had Iron Fist under observation. He’d bet his left nut that they were sizing up the forts all over the valley, too.
He rubbed the shaft of the arrow against the edge of his rank shield until the runes were sanded away, then put the arrow in his quiver. More boots thudded on the ground and he caught a snippet that sounded like “you fucking bastards!”
He walked to the ladder and had just begun climbing down when the sentry poked his head out. “Figured you’d call it quits soon enough. All the action is in there.”
“It does sound it,” Listowk said, looking toward the barracks.
“I’d say come back again in broad daylight, but even then there’s nothing to see out there,” the sentry said, pointing toward the valley floor. “Been here three weeks, haven’t seen a fucking thing.”
“I believe you,” Listowk said, resuming his climb down the ladder.
When he got to the bottom he paused. Bastard had shot it right at him.
“Good hunting, Wraith,” he said, reaching into his quill and pulling out the arrow. As he walked into the camp he snapped the arrow in two and dropped it to the ground.