The Black Wall

1. The Invasion: Six Months Before the Verdict-2

Gre’pa, smoke curling in reeking tendrils from his fur, scooped us up, each in a massive, clawed hand, and tossed us behind Dakar, who straddled the creature’s neck, clinging to the brass chains pierced through its cheeks.

Without bothering to check if we’d gotten a grip on the smoldering fur, Dakar let go of the chains, leaned forward into his mount’s neck, and let the creature carry us away.

I’d trained riding a karakh before the mission. Since our descent into the valley an endless week before, I’d spent every long day strapped into a harness behind Dakar, but I’d never, until that moment, imagined needing to ride as the shepherds do, without a harness, or even the benefit of the chains.

Fire and light filled my senses, and burning wind, and now over everything the acrid stench of smoking fur. My palms burned where they clung to the thick, white hair, and my legs felt like rubber. Pain screamed from my hip.

The creature leapt from tree to tree, and even through its panic it kept itself between us and the ground. I had no idea if Rohm still clung behind me, or lay dying on the forest floor somewhere behind. I could only press myself into Gre’pa, feeling the rhythm of surging muscles, while I waited to fall and be consumed by the fire that raged on every side.

Maybe, I thought, using fire to drive off the karakh worked, after all.

Our flight, panicked though it was, faded to monotony. I clung to the smoldering fur, choking against the rancid stench of burning hair, which was so strong that the banshee wind of the valley couldn’t tear it away.

After what seemed like hours, I felt the karakh slow. The grasping fingers of branches were gone. Leaping from tree to tree was replaced with an even, crab-like amble. The wind still screamed.

I peeled my face from where I’d buried it in the burnt hair of Gre’pa an eternity ago.

Smoky, orange light oozed over the eastern peaks, which now reached almost to the zenith. Gre’pa had carried us due east to the treeless, boulder-strewn slopes at the base of the Wall. Rough chunks of obsidian ranging in size from pebbles to towns scattered to our left and right. Behind and below, grey smoke shrouded the forest of red, fern-like trees, rolling off to the north in the dissipating tendrils of wind. Beneath it, the fire throbbed orange and red and yellow.

My numb limbs failed at last, and I released Gre’pa to slide onto the lichen-encrusted rocks. There I lay, looking at the grey light of the sky with burning eyes. The karakh stepped away.

The blurry image of Rohm’s face peered down at me, silhouetted against a smoggy blue sky. A light, cool breeze brushed around us.

“Rohm. I didn’t know you made it.” The words burned my throat.

“Right behind you, clinging to Gre’pa’s ass, General. I’m as surprised as you.” Rohm’s voice was no better off than mine. “And I take back everything I’ve ever said about that glorious beast.”

I tried to sit up, but the effort made my head swim, so I settled back down onto the jagged shale. My fingers felt like claws. I could still feel flames dancing along my limbs and face.

I coughed. The sound was soft and dry and sent flames into my lungs. “Who made it?”

Rohm hesitated, but I couldn’t make out the captain’s expression through the shadows. “Us. And Dakar and Gre’pa, obviously. Six other karakh and their shepherds. Dassik, the new Artificer, but he’s burned bad. Five men in pretty good shape, and another eleven not so good. Was fifteen when we got up here a few hours ago. Now eleven, if that tells you anything. Not good at all. We’ll probably be down to eight by tomorrow morning, though it looks like anyone who lives through the night will survive long enough to be killed by something else. If you want to consider that good news, go ahead. It isn’t going to get any better.” He ended with a shrug that might have been apologetic. “And Vimr.”

I closed my eyes again. Twenty-two of my soldiers were still alive and uninjured enough to carry on. Twenty-two out of the five hundred who’d descended into the valley. Twenty-two and Vimr.

“What about the powder?” It was a question I didn’t want to ask. If we’d lost the powder kegs to the fire, there wouldn’t be any point in going on. I had heard no explosions, but I doubted I would have noticed them over the wind.

Rohm nodded as if he’d expected the question. “Not as bad as it could be. Eleven kegs can’t be accounted for. Might still find a few where we camped, but I wouldn’t count on it. Dersh and his karakh—Zha’an or something—grabbed the other half and got up here before the fire rolled through. Don’t ask me how they did it.”

It was the best news yet. I hoped eleven kegs would be enough to get through whatever door we’d been sent here to find. Only one way to find out.

“What do we do now, General?” I heard the question he was asking. Can we go home now?

I said nothing for a long time, eyes closed. Rohm probably thought I was planning some grand course of action, but my mind was blank. “Where are the others?” I asked at last, voice rasping, peeling my eyes open to look at the silhouette of my captain.

Rohm nodded past my shoulder, and I sat up enough to crane my head in that direction, wincing at pain even that slight motion shot through my head. The rocky slope we sat on fell into a crevasse fifty paces to the south.

“They fell in?” I asked, realizing how stupid the question was as I asked it.

“No, General.” Rohm’s forced chuckle turned into a cough. “There’s water down there. Fast running stream. Fish, too, I guess, though I didn’t get close enough to see any, myself. We lost everything in the fire, and we don’t have enough provisions left to get back to the grotto the way it—”

“We’re not going back to the grotto,” I said, hating how much sense he was making. “Two, maybe three days more at the most. Faster now.” Now that there’s so few of us, but I couldn’t finish the thought out loud. My voice caught in my throat, and I despised myself for it.

My army had been annihilated by its own existence. Had we just come with the karakh, we would have traveled faster. Maybe fast enough to avoid conflict. Fast enough to flee the fire. The deaths of four hundred and eighty-four men were—are—my fault. I could blame the Arch Bishop and Vimr for the others if I were the type of man to set my responsibility at someone else’s feet. They had been the ones who forced me to bring that absurd army across the continent. But it had been my call to bring them into the valley.

Now they were dead. And because they were dead, the survivors could complete their mission.

I thought back to the Salamander, and the specter of death that had continued to chase me like my shadow since then. And now this. The grand finale.

Rohm’s eyes flickered, but he only gave a quick nod. “Yes, General. I’ll inform the others.”

In the end, it wasn’t that simple, because nothing is ever that simple. Of the five that included Rohm’s “not so wounded,” three included broken bones, and the next morning five of the burned could walk, and four others needed to be carried on litters but would survive.

For all my words to Rohm, I would not push them any further. Not for a Heaven I’d lost my faith in years before, not for the Arch Bishop of N’narad and his schemes, nor the Grace of Fom and hers.

I would go on along with the remaining officers, mounted on five of the karakh because we had a job to do. I released the rest to go back to the five hundred still waiting in the grotto, and the more than nine hundred who waited in the foothills outside the Wall. I gave the remaining provisions to those returning with the wounded, and the fish they’d caught that afternoon. I sent two of the karakh back, too, in case they ran into any more trouble. Vimr objected. I continued with my orders as if he hadn’t spoken, and he fell into fuming silence.

Those that were to go back watched with blank stares as we plunged into the smoldering forest, and returned my parting salute with empty, mechanical precision. I had time to wonder if I would see any of them again, but then they were gone, behind the ethereal barrier of curling smoke and blackened pillars of the giant trees, and I was clinging to Gre’pa, thankful now to have the luxury of the harness. Vimr muttered something behind me, lost in the crack of brittle underbrush.

We traveled until the trunks looming out of the void in front of us were nothing more than shafts of shadow in the glossy haze cast by the starlight that glinted through bare branches. I intended to call a halt during the long twilight, but Vimr had beaten me too it, so I had them press on into the night, out of spite, like a seventy year old toddler.

Within an hour of setting camp, the watch reported we weren’t alone. They’d heard low voices in the darkness to the south, over the pops and snaps of falling, burnt branches. The first watch had reported to Rohm, who had reported to me out of ear-shot from Vimr.

I called them over—Isam, tall, balding, and hunched, and a burly, bearded thug everyone called Keg.

“Sound like another ambush?” I asked, glancing where Vimr had waddled to relieve himself.

“Nah,” Keg answered, picking at his short, ruddy beard with a thumb and index finger. “Women. Not that that means anything, I guess, but children, too. Like a town.”

“A town?” I looked around at the blackened trunks. Little gusts of wind curled fingers of ash from the ground, visible in the Eyelight glaring up from somewhere beyond the eastern peaks of the Wall.

“Well, a settlement or something, anyway,” Isam answered. “I heard it, too.”

“They survived the fire, then?” I realized the idiocy of my question after it left my mouth.

Keg grunted.

“Who survived?” Whined Vimr’s voice from where the little man lurched out of the darkness behind the two scouts.

Isam turned to face him. “A settlement or something, I guess.”

“It should be purged, then.” Vimr’s voice was bored.

I ground my teeth. “Children and their mothers? I don’t think so.” I turned to the two scouts. “Keep an ear to it. Tell the next pair on watch to do the same. We’ll move on before dawn. Take the long way around. With the karakh, we’ll be gone before they know we’re here. You hear anything—anything—that sounds like more than a few surviving kids and their mothers, let me know.”

Nobody moved. Isam studied me a long time before he spoke. “We’re with Cardinal Vimr on this one. We’ve had enough of these bastards, and I’m pretty sure the other men feel the same way.”

“I gave you an order—”

“You can bring me up on insubordination charges if we ever get back to civilization,” Isam stated. “But Cardinal trumps General, anyway, so good luck with that. I’d rather get out of here alive and let the courts decide, how about you, Keg?”

The stocky shadow of Keg dipped his head in agreement.

The silhouette of Vimr nodded as if a difficult but apt decision had been reached. Rohm watched, expressionless. I couldn’t blame him. Had he argued, he’d only be tossed out with me. The men had made up their minds. The mutiny was complete.