Sycamoreepub-9781473226845-48

Our destination, Childs told his soldiers, was a place that he had only seen from a distance, mostly uncharted terrain which hadn’t been explored for a century or more. ‘Not much roaming the Ayros Mountains at this time of year, but the clansfolk don’t hibernate and we’ve a big stretch of wasteland to cross between here and there. Stay on your toes.’ As if any of us needed reminding.

The plains of the wasteland sprawled before us, broken, dirty, desolate and dangerous. The day had started with a cold and clear pink sky. The sun, bright and low, melted the ice under our boots and we churned frost and snow into gritty red mud. There were grey clouds on the horizon, surrounding us with the promise of fresh flurries, but there was little wind to push them in our direction. In Old Castle, it was probably a sedate winter’s morning.

As usual, I was on point. Seventeen soldiers followed me, wrapped in thermal travelling cloaks, faces covered by scarves beneath helmets of hardened Dust, eyes squinting against the gleam of sunlight reflecting off the icy plain. A two-day march would deliver us to the black mountains which rose against a backdrop of snow clouds. Somewhere among those jagged peaks, someone was sending a distress signal. Our orders were to find out who. Danii hadn’t picked it up yet, but he reckoned that the weather over the mountains could be interfering with the signal and we’d need to get closer before we heard it.

Around midday, we took a few minutes’ break in the shelter of a huge mound, concealed by a thick layer of snow and ice. Perhaps the mound was a ruin from the old world; perhaps a frozen carcass belonging to one of the behemoth monsters roaming the wasteland. The summer months were the worst, when it felt like we had to face a different monster every day. In winter, a lot of them hibernated or perished.

While the platoon ate rations of nutrition cake, Bahn seized the opportunity to ensure that everyone took their daily dose of atropine. Childs had placed big Mikel in charge of carrying my rations and water canteen. We didn’t linger long. While we were preparing to set off again, Danii’s voice came over the tank’s array.

‘They’re still fighting up in the north.’ His tone was worried inside the glass helmet. ‘Sounds like the clansfolk are really digging in.’

‘Well, while they’re busy up there, they won’t see us down here,’ I replied and Danii forced a chuckle. We both knew that Command had given us unusual orders – Childs and the rest of the platoon knew it, too. Rescuing stranded soldiers wasn’t a common use of resources – rare, in fact. We certainly hadn’t received these kinds of orders before during the last ten months. ‘Who do you reckon is transmitting the signal, Danii?’

‘Don’t know. Command must think it’s someone important, otherwise they would’ve sent us north instead of out here.’ There was a long pause. ‘There’s fuck all in the Ayros Mountains, Wendal. It’s uncharted territory, desolate. And we’re still a day or two out. If soldiers are stranded there, I don’t give them good odds of surviving long enough for us to track their position.’

‘Keep listening, Danii. When we’re close enough, you can tell them to come down.’

‘If they’re able. How’s the tank?’

‘Good as new,’ I said, and it was mostly true. Despite Hanna’s warnings, the tank was showing no signs of losing power, and the engineer’s expert touch had left it feeling stronger than it had in weeks.

‘Then you keep listening, too,’ Danii said. ‘I want to know if any clansfolk are heading our way. Do a good job, maybe I’ll stop wisecracking about your wife.’

I smirked. ‘Fuck you, Danii.’

‘Finn!’ Childs snapped. I hadn’t realised he’d been talking to me. ‘I said back on point.’

Danii sniggered in my ears. I led the platoon out again.

Later that day, we faced a minor skirmish. It occurred as the afternoon was heading into evening and the sun was beginning to set. After hours of trudging across a bland, repetitive landscape, we ascended a hill of scorched red rock rising above the ice and snow. The tank’s sonar covered our immediate area, bouncing between me and each soldier. The sound of our merged platoon had become familiar to my ears by this time, and I’d identify anything hostile coming out of the wastes. Which I did, at the hill’s summit.

I saw steam rising as I reached the top. Several soldiers behind me complained that the air smelled worse than usual. Signalling for the platoon to wait, I walked a little way down the slope to investigate what the sonar had detected, and my eyes beheld a strange sight.

A quagmire. It saturated the land with poisonous acidic waters, bubbling between huge growths of a glass-like stone that radiated a faint green glow, illuminating the rising steam misting the cold air. The quagmire was huge, stretching to the left and right further than the tank’s helmet allowed me to see, and I imagined that from way up in the sky it would appear as a mountain range all of its own. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen one on the wasteland, but never as large as this.

Childs stepped up beside me, consulting his map. He muttered something about the quagmire marking the end of the Rust Plains and the beginning of the Ayros Range, but it had changed, he said, grown exponentially since the map was made. He swore when I reported that it could take leagues of marching to skirt around it, until I added that its width was less than its length. The quagmire would slow us down, but at least we could stay on course.

‘I’d judge less than three hours to reach the other side,’ I said. ‘But I’m picking up hostiles.’

‘I think so, sir.’

The helmet had augmented my vision through the mist and I could see what the sonar had detected. It was a safe bet that what I saw moving was a cluster of newly hatched dracons; they liked to make their nests in the humidity of quagmires. Lizardoids, nearly as large as humans when young, they hung from the underside of a growth of glassy rock that resembled a wave frozen before it crashed down into the sea. I couldn’t tell how many there were, but there was a lot.

‘I don’t think they can see us through the mist, sir.’

‘Any sign of the mother?’

That was the real threat. Adult dracons were as vicious as they were big and powerful, but I saw no sign of anything other than the infants and told Childs so.

‘Probably off scavenging for food.’ Childs thought for a moment. ‘What do you think, Finn? Can we make it past the nest undetected?’

‘Probably safer to flush them out, sir. Don’t want them at our backs.’

‘Agreed. Let’s get this done before the mother comes home.’

Childs and I returned to the rest of the platoon and he explained the situation. He told everyone to put on their filter-masks – the air of a quagmire could be just as deadly as its waters and too potent for atropine – and then gave his orders.

‘Danii, report to Command. Tell them our location and what we’ve found. This place has changed since it was last charted. Archers, cannoneer, you’re with me and Finn. The rest of you clean up anything that gets behind us.’

The rest of you were armed with short swords, the standard weapon for city soldiers. We were trained in their use proficiently, of course, but dracons liked to attack from above and it was better to thin their number before they reached the ground.

Hanna stepped forwards. ‘Grenades, sir?’ she offered.

‘Save them for the clansfolk,’ Childs growled as he fixed his own mask, and his voice became muffled. ‘Now then, Finn, let’s test that shoulder cannon.’

I led the way down the hill to the edge of the quagmire and along one of the paths of solid glassy ground that snaked through the bubbling water. It was decorated with tufts of dark, poisonous foliage that gave off the same green glow as the rock growths. There were three archers in the platoon, carrying crossbows, bolts notched and ready. Two – Mikel and Karla – were from Old Castle. The third was a woman from High Bridge who I didn’t know yet, and the cannoneer was the grim-faced Amelia.

There was a good area of solid ground before the nest of dracons. Childs and the four soldiers lined up on either side of me. The rest of the platoon waited behind, swords drawn and ready. The dracons hung from the rock, clustered together, stirring, hissing, but apparently asleep in the grey cocoons of their wings.

Childs gestured to me. The ether-cannon on the tank’s shoulder whirred, lifted and took aim. Once the commander had ensured the archers and his fellow cannoneer were ready, he whispered, ‘Now, Finn.’

My cannon whumped. A pleasing blast of ether magic swirled the mist and crashed into the nest. Dracons hissed and screeched and dropped from their perches. Childs opened fire, quickly followed by Amelia. Their cannons were longer and fatter with a wider blast radius than the tank’s weapon. The shards of ether crystal inside gave them enough power to keep firing for twenty minutes non-stop before their magic needed regenerating. Childs and Amelia didn’t hold back, and neither did I.

The dracons who hadn’t already been smashed against the glassy rock of their nest came flooding out, gliding down on the membranes of skin stretching between their legs. With elongated heads on the end of long necks, their mouths appeared to be comprised of nothing but sharp teeth, and they were panicked, angry, more than eager to rend the flesh of their attackers.

It was a massacre more than a fight. The three ether-cannons punched monsters from the air with lethal bursts of magic, hardly giving the archers a target to aim their crossbows at, allowing nothing to get through for the rest of the platoon to pick off. A score and a half of them at least, the dracons were grouped so closely together, they were impossible to miss. I heard a drone inside my helmet; the shoulder cannon was straining to make the shots so I switched to my arm cannon. Not as powerful, but powerful enough. Lizardoid bodies broke, crashing into glassy rock, splashing into agitated pools of acid. The mist swirled and the screeches of monsters carried across the wasteland.

When Childs drew a halt to the attack, I could tell he wore a satisfied expression beneath his mask. The silence was only broken by bubbling, steaming water.

I reported what I could see. A couple of dracons had made it to the ground, but they were scurrying off into the quagmire, fleeing. Most importantly, the sonar gave no signal that the mother was responding to the dying cries of its young. Childs ordered the rest of the platoon to ensure none of the bodies on the glassy path were still alive, and they set about them with their swords. I told my commander that the shoulder cannon had failed the test, and he nodded, once, curtly, before giving the order to move out.

We had incurred not one fatality. If only all battles on the wasteland were so easily won.

My estimation of the quagmire’s size proved to be accurate. We trod carefully along the paths between the acidic waters, the platoon wearing their filter masks, the tank’s magic field filtering out toxicants in the air for me. Anything else living in this place was small and had no interest in picking a fight, and I detected nothing more than creatures scurrying to be out of our way. In little more than a couple of hours, we had reached the other side of the quagmire and were back on the plains, icy and dusted with snow.

It was growing dark, but we couldn’t make camp in the open, so Childs kept us marching through most of the night. At one point, we heard the distant roar of an adult dracon – the mother returning to the nest to find her children dead – but we faced no new threats from the wastes and continued marching until the earliest hours of morning. Beneath a clear sky full of dazzling ether, we eventually reached eerie ruins, an expanse of weathered stones sticking up from the ground like the broken bones of a past age; and here we stopped for a few hours’ sleep.

Warm inside the tank, I stood sentry while an exhausted platoon found shelter between the ancient stones, wrapped in thermal cloaks, using their packs as pillows. No fires tonight; no hot food. We dined on hard, sweet nutrition cakes. There was little conversation; there was little to be said. Another day on the wasteland, another day closer to home.

‘I’ll take a look at that shoulder cannon if there’s time in the morning,’ Hanna told me tiredly. She rolled her eyes. ‘Tonight, Childs wants me to prepare some spells.’ She took her pack and found a secluded spot among the stones.

Childs himself was the last to bed down, and he gave me a nod before doing so, telling me to stay sharp. They all slept a little better knowing that I watched over them.

Alone and guarding the cold and quiet night, I waited until I was sure no one would disturb me before opening the tank. The plates parted and I locked the suit into position before taking the helmet off. Remaining within the suit’s warm magic field, I pulled the information node that Hanna had given me from my pocket. I’d slept more soundly than I thought I would at Icus, and I didn’t get the chance to record a message for Eden. Now felt like a good time to do it.

The resin bead on top of the node glowed with a faint light when my thumb pressed it, and I spoke into the wooden box.

‘I’m not best pleased with you, Eden Finn. The last two forts I’ve been to didn’t have a letter waiting for me. I hope this doesn’t mean you’ve …’ I was going to say, ‘Given up on me,’ but I couldn’t bring myself to, not even in jest. I tried to keep my tone light. ‘The wasteland is every bit as shitty as you said it would be. We’ve teamed up with a platoon from High Bridge. Currently following orders to investigate some distress signal coming from the Ayros Mountains. Didn’t think Command cared enough about stranded soldiers to send a rescue team. I’m recording this from the camp we’ve made in some ruins, and I can’t help wondering about who lived here all those years ago.’

There were a lot of stones covering a large area, resting at odd angles, chipped and worn down by millennia of exposure. Too many to be a random settlement.

‘This place must’ve been a village or town. Maybe it was built during the age of the Salahbeem. Maybe the inhabitants knew the Gardeners and … and …’

I couldn’t do it. My air of unconcern evaporated and my voice cracked. ‘Over half the soldiers I set out with are dead. There have been days when I honestly thought I’d die, too. Only a couple of months to go. I … I think about you all the time. Fuck, I’m so close to home now. I love you, Eden Finn. And I always will, in this life and the next. Don’t give up on me.’

With three quick presses on the resin bead, the recording stopped and my message was locked and stored. I kissed the wooden box and slipped it back into the pocket. I’d send it to Eden when we reached the next fort.

Pulling the helmet down onto my head, I ordered the tank to wrap its plates around me. To the soft crackle and pings of the sonar, I closed my eyes and instantly fell asleep.

After only a couple of hours, dawn had arrived and Childs was waking us up.

Gloomy soldiers emerged from the ruins into the dim light, stamping their feet against the cold and blowing hot breath into their hands. The red orb of the sun hadn’t risen far above the eastern horizon, where Old Castle lay, and clouds were closing in. The Ayros Mountains looked so much closer than yesterday.

It was while we breakfasted on nutrition cakes that Danii announced he could finally hear the distress signal we’d been ordered to investigate.

With his hands pressing the receiver-phones to his ear, he said the transmission was odd.

‘I need a little more than odd, Danii,’ Childs snapped.

‘It’s weak, sir, phasing in and out.’

‘Can you understand it?’

I couldn’t hear the signal at all, but then the tank’s array wasn’t as finely tuned as Danii’s, and my ears weren’t as keen as his.

Danii crouched, squeezing his eyes closed in concentration. ‘It’s not city code, sir. It’s a vocal transmission. I think … I think it’s Salabese.’

Childs growled. ‘Could be clansfolk.’

‘There’s too much static to be sure.’ Danii removed the phones and shook his head. ‘It’s gone again, sir.’

‘Disturbing,’ Childs mused, staring off at the mountains. ‘If the clansfolk are behind this signal, why announce their position? If they’re not, then why the fuck are city soldiers transmitting in Salabese? Send a report to Command, Danii.’ He faced his platoon. ‘The rest of you prepare yourselves.’

With grim expressions on tired faces, the platoon donned helmets and packs, and stood to attention before their commander. Childs nodded, pleased.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Hanna.

‘Are my spells ready?’

‘Good. We’ll be needing them soon. Finn, you’re on point. Danii, monitor the signal. Let me know when it comes back.’