Time for something different, I think. Here is a short story, one I’ve written some years ago, presented in three parts. This is part one. Look for part two next week, and the conclusion of part three the week following.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three
7th Late Spring, 59th year of the Company Calendar
Somewhere in the Viridian Coast
I.
The dead city of the long disappeared First People rests among mountain crags wreathed in low hanging clouds and hidden from the valley below by the many pine and fir trees that grow thickly upon the slopes. The emptiness of the sky hangs above the ruins, blue and silent and timeless. Whistles and long low moans rise periodic and random from the loose stonework as the high mountain breezes play restless through the crumbling mortar.
A flock of birds is startled from the nearby trees and takes to the air with raucous cries. Humans have come to this tomb. They make their way up the steep slopes with difficulty. They throw grappling hooks, they use guidelines, some are expert climbers and set the route for the others to follow. They are not loud but neither do they feel the need to be particularly quiet. The tomb has its dangers, yes, but they do not fear the dangers of this dead and nearly forgotten place. They do, however, respect those dangers - they number nine men and women, eight of them veterans of exploring tombs like this one, and they have between them a total of seventeen firearms and many more bladed weapons.
They have chosen to come upon this place in the daylight. The dangers of this place care little whether the sun is high or not. The company intends to work by day and find some small and easily fortified place for the nights. They do not yet know they will not be able to linger here long enough to see the sun set.
All but one of them will survive this day’s work, though there will come more than a few times where one or another of the survivors is certain their time has run out.
The party ascends the last hurdle that blocks sight of their destination. A man named Tayyip Ozdemir hauls himself up the last few hand lengths of dangling rope and onto the ridge from where he can spy the layout of the entire ancient city. He is clean-shaven, thin and lean where most of his people are given to a healthy roundness, his hair a mop of brown curls with roots going to gray. He stands, three feet in height, and gazes upon this place he has long labored to find.
A grunt of annoyance from behind him brings him back to the present, and Tayyip steps aside from where the grappling hook secures the rope line. A man pulls himself up onto the ledge. He is not much taller than Tayyip, but wider - stout arms, a barrel chest - and a shockingly bright orange-red beard, braided with carved bones. Tayyip carries nothing but a small satchel at his side, while this man has a hatchet at his waist, a revolver on the other side, and a carbine strapped to his back. He is named Raulo Michelis. He does not stand, proudly, as Tayyip does, but rolls onto his side - careful of his carbine and revolver - and gasps for breath.
“A long way from the sea, Saeralin,” Tayyip says. His people are Siphlin from the Siph river valley, which, like the islands of Saeralia, is mostly all at sea level. Tayyip, however, has been climbing these high mountains for years in search of this particular ruin and has grown accustomed to the altitude.
“I’ve been in seas,” Raulo gasps, “that had swells. Taller than. These fucking hills. You keep calling. Mountains.” The Saeralin groans and pulls himself upright, moving away so the others of the company still below can begin ascending the rope. “So don’t you bloody think Raulo Michelis can’t keep up with a scrawny bint like you, Siphlin.”
“I never once doubted it,” Tayyip says. He knows better than to offer Raulo a hand up.
“You see any Broken moving about down there?” Raulo asks, shading his eyes and peering towards the ruins.
“I’ve not seen any. Though, I’ve never once known a ruin to be free of their presence.”
“We’ll handle the ugly mutts when they show,” Raulo says, turning to help his company ascend the rope. “That’s what you hired us for, and no brainfucked glowy-eyed magic monstrosities will ever get the best of Raulo’s Wayfarers.”
“Your colorful descriptions are ever a delight,” Tayyip says, though Raulo is no longer listening. Tayyip takes a small device that looks similar to a sextant out of his satchel, as well as a compass. He measures the sun’s position, pulls out a small journal, records the date and time and jots down quick notes in a neat, clean hand.
Behind him, the contractor company - Raulo’s Wayfarers - ascend. Their pathfinder, a slim woman from the Nolsved desert named Natalie Svoboda, comes up the rope last, ascending with the grace peculiar to her people such that she seems to float rather than climb. The company has even managed to hoist up the Scholar named Danil Sokolov - a man who has been, for these last few weeks, a waking nightmare for the entire company and especially for Tayyip. The Stillwater Academy blessed him with funding, only to turn around and curse him when they required he be accompanied by a - shudder - colleague. It wouldn’t be so bad, Tayyip thinks, if Danil wasn’t a Navan, looking much the same as Tayyip but nearly twice as tall.
“Faith and fire,” says Danil, rubbing at his waist, where a rope had secured him to the back of one of the big contractors from Dalkria named Sami Batrawi, while Sami climbed the cliff. Sami was not two, but three times as tall as Tayyip, and looked carved straight out of the mountainside. “Must we have taken the most difficult possible route into these mountains? What is the point of hiring a pathfinder if all we do is go straight up every sheer cliff face we find.”
The contractor company sets about checking their gear, studiously ignoring Danil. Danil has been complaining about Natalie’s routes since the first day in the mountains, and Natalie has made it clear to the company that she won’t tolerate anyone stepping up to defend her - she can defend herself very well, thank you. Still, Tayyip is everyday surprised by her patience.
“This route keeps us safe from the Broken,” Natalie says with a mild shrug, and goes about hauling the rope up and securing it to the back of her pack.
“Are you sure this is the place, Tayyip?” Danil asks, ignoring Natalie and coming to Tayyip’s side.
“You can see the proof with your very own eyes, Scholar Sokolov,” Tayyip says, not bothering to hide the sharpness in his tone at the stupid question, compounded as it is by the insult of being called by his first name.
Danil eyes Tayyip askance, his expression that of a man aggrieved, as if Tayyip is the one acting improperly.
“Yes, yes, I see the ruins, Scholar Ozdemir,” Danil says, “but ruins are not proof that this is the Forbidden City itself. Just a pile of stones the First People built in some Faith-forgotten mountains.”
Tayyip ignores the other Scholar. Questioning whether these ruins are the ruins at this juncture, after two weeks climbing these mountains, is just patently foolish. Besides, Tayyip is sure.
Seeing his company has their weapons loaded and ready and that nothing has been lost in the latest climb, Raulo joins Tayyip and Danil at the lip of the ledge.
“Well I’ve gotten you up here, Scholar,” Raulo says, rubbing his hands together, “so you can have your little look-an-see. Are you satisfied that living in this cursed wilderness has left you as brainfucked and insane as the Broken? Can we go back to Rikeport where we can all enjoy a real look-an-see down a tavern wench’s blouse, or are you going to persist in this madness?”
Tayyip points to a large dome, built on a high ledge. Four spires rise from each of the corners, each spire placed in one of the cardinal directions. One of the spires has collapsed completely, while two of the others have broken off so they look like unfinished constructions. The southern spire alone remains intact.
“I will find what I am seeking there, mister Michelis,” Tayyip says. “The satisfaction to my madness. I trust you can get me there without issue?”
“Oh no, I don’t think so, Siphlin. That’s another hundred meters of climbing at least. Let’s just jolly well risk life and limb so we can look at some old building that’s as like to come down on our heads as it is to be a nest for them Broken bastards,” says Raulo. He raises his voice to carry. “What do you say, company? You want to get stuck full of arrows made of fucking stone and covered in dragonshit? Maybe have a good fall, break all your legs so we can leave you out here to bloody rot?”
There’s a chorus of, “No, captain!”
“Well there you have it, you little runt,” Raulo says to Tayyip, clapping him on the shoulder and giving him a toothy grin. “Nobody wants to go any further up the fucking mountain into that dirty growler.”
Tayyip is used to these gestures. He actually rather likes the way Raulo runs his company.
“You are telling me this is beyond your abilities, then?” Tayyip asks.
“Beyond my abilities? Beyond Raulo Michelis’ fucking abilities?” Raulo winks at Tayyip, then turns and strides to his company. “The honor of your fucking captain has been called into question you ugly mollies! This scrawny bint doesn’t think Raulo’s Wayfarers are up to the task! Up to it! Fah, just ask any of the whores in Rikeport if Raulo is bloody well up for it! Sami, you fucking up for it?”
“Born up for it, captain,” Sami says.
“Briana, you up for it you saucy wench?” Raulo asks.
The woman, Briana, has just finished loading a double barreled shotgun. She is Saeralin as well, her blond hair and beard much more fine and soft than Raulo’s, braided with seashells fitted with beads of jewelry. She is Raulo’s lover and seems to be in a state of constant exasperation with the colorful man. She rolls her eyes at Raulo and slings the shotgun up to her shoulder.
“That’s a yes then!” Raulo laughs, then asks, “What about you Natalie, you up for it lass?”
“I’m more up for it than you dickless ladies,” Natalie says, grabbing obscenely at her crotch. Danil blushes.
“Never let it be fucking said Raulo’s Wayfarers aren’t bloody well up for it!” Raulo laughs. “Set about lads, set to it lasses, I’ve shit bigger shites than this little Siphlin but gods damn us all if we aren’t going to see him to his thrice cursed destination!”
Tayyip suppresses a smile as the Wayfarers, grinning and eager, set to throwing the ropes up yet another ledge Natalie has picked out. Tayyip allows them to go first, now they are closer to the Broken. He has a small gun known as a pepperbox in his satchel, but he does not think himself a reliable shot and would prefer not to be forced to its use.
“Superstitious headhunters,” Danil mutters, taking offense at Raulo’s mention of gods and at the man’s manner. Danil is a good company employee, he believes all gods are a lie and all men and women should moderate their behavior. “Aren’t they making too much noise? They’ll bring the Broken down on us.”
“Broken are mostly deaf,” Tayyip says, watching the company ascend the ropes. “They only hear deep sounds, thus their horns and drums. Voices don’t seem to rouse them, though heavy enough footsteps might. And I wouldn’t call any of these lot headhunters where they can hear you.”
“Why not? They exchange Broken heads for coin, so they’re headhunters,” Danil says.
“Raulo’s Wayfarers are a contractor company,” Tayyip answers, voice low enough not to carry. “Headhunters are just rough men and women who take coin for jobs, and yes a lot of their work is killing Broken. Contractors on the other hand are mercenary, true, but they’re a serious lot. They treat their contracts as sacred and they’re a small community of professionals, all of them registered with and vetted by the University. Mostly contractor companies hunt dragons, not Broken. Contractors even police themselves. If any company illegally broke a contract the other companies would hunt them down and see them hang. They’d do even worse to any who masquerade as one of them. It’s why we can trust them. If we’d hired headhunters for this kind of work, they’re as like to have slit our throats and taken our coin as they are to see us through to our destination. Not all headhunters are so cutthroat, mind, but that’s the risk you take hiring that kind.”
Danil just snorts in derision. “A mercenary is a mercenary,” he says. “And this Saeralin captain is an obnoxious and crass pirate.”
“Not all Saeralins are pirates. Raulo has a unique style of leadership, yes, but he knows how to get men and women to face danger without trepidation, and there is real danger ahead.” Seeing Danil’s expression, Tayyip just shakes his head and falls silent. Scholars from Danil’s branch of academia don’t socialize or get out much. “As you say, Scholar.”
Most of the company has scaled the fifteen or twenty meters up the cliff (not even close to Raulo’s estimate of a hundred meters), so he moves forward to climb as well, leaving Danil to the indignity of once again being hauled up by big Sami.
The company, two Scholars in tow, goes forward into the high city. Now they are within the limits of this ancient place they are grown more cautious, creeping forward with carbines and hatchets pulled free. They have all fallen silent. Regardless of whether Broken are notoriously hard of hearing or not, this is the quiet that descends over men and women when they are facing danger.
They come upon a pile of bones. Human skulls litter the bleached white refuse.
“Broken bastards,” Raulo growls.
“Never known a ruin to be free of them,” Tayyip says quietly.
Danil just looks afraid.
The Wayfarers continue forward…
Part One | Part Two | Part Three