Brynd reached down, sniffed the flask, then screwed the cap back on before tossing it back to Beale. ‘A waste of good vodka.’ He looked around the forest, before staring intently at her. ‘So you say you’ve seen nothing at all, sergeant?’
‘No, sir.’ Beale looked scruffy after five days in the mud and snow with little access to clean water. ‘A garuda whizzed by during yesterday afternoon, and I’ve circuited this part of the forest every hour, but all I’ve located is some ruins, sir.’
Brynd strode casually over to her shelter and tapped the rope holding it between the trees. ‘That’s good work, putting this together. It’s held up well enough considering there’s little canopy cover.’
Beale said nothing, simply nodded.
Brynd continued to assess his surroundings, each individual trunk, clearings, the skeletal tree line, as if hoping to discern something. ‘Five days and absolutely nothing, you say?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Good,’ he replied mysteriously.
She frowned. ‘Does this mean that I am to be relieved, sir?’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘Not yet. A small unit of soldiers will be arriving within the hour with. . someone who might cause alarm upon first sight.’
‘I’ve heard of a giant in the ranks,’ Beale offered.
‘She’s not that big, if that’s what you’re thinking, but yes, it’s her. What you may or may not see is to remain strictly within this forest, do you understand?’
Beale gave a quick nod, and that was that.
‘How is the rebuilding of Villiren?’ she enquired.
Brynd once again scrutinized their surroundings, like a paranoid man. ‘It has begun, but you’re better off out here.’ He indicated the wilderness. ‘This is where the real world is to be found, with trees and earth, not searching the veiled comments of businessmen for a kernel of truth.’
Brynd reached into his pocket, then unfolded a map, his breath clouding in the late afternoon chill. The sun was sliding over the horizon; the sky turning to the colour of dried blood.
‘Do you, uh, have any duties you require of me, commander?’ Beale asked, impatient and nervous in his presence.
‘Do you mean,’ he replied light-heartedly, ‘what am I, the commander of your army, still doing here so late in the day?’
‘I wouldn’t presume-’
‘It would be a fair question,’ Brynd said. ‘This is an issue of utmost secrecy and I can trust few people these days. However, a better question would have been why you were sent here in the first place.’
Beale remained silently annoyed with herself.
‘It’s all right — you just take orders and get on with it, I know. There’s a lot to be said for soldiers like you, and that spirit will get you far in the army.’
Beale nodded.
‘In an hour’s time, about fifty soldiers will descend on this woodland. They’ll take the main track through to those ruins you mentioned.’
‘Sir.’
‘You’ll say nothing about what you may witness, nothing about what occurs here.’
‘Indeed, sir. Though. . what will be occurring, so I know not to look?’
‘You can look,’ he said, ‘though I’m not entirely sure what to expect myself.’
‘Bleak times,’ Beale said.
‘You don’t know the half of it. Were you there in Villiren from the start?’
‘I’m afraid to say I was.’
‘You’re a brave woman.’
‘Lucky, I’d say,’ Beale added.
‘Lucky?’ Brynd gave a short laugh that emitted a cloud of his breath. Beale visibly shivered: the temperatures were plummeting as night approached. ‘Luck would have had you elsewhere in the first place. But, by Bohr, a lot of good men and women were just hacked apart like nothing I’ve ever seen.’
‘What was the death toll in the end?’ Beale asked.
‘The official estimate now stands at a little over one hundred and twenty-five thousand who died in or just after combat. .’
‘Shit. .’ Beale shook her head in disbelief. ‘Pardon my language, sir.’
He waved her apology away. ‘Though some of those deaths might be due to the cold weather and lack of food in the aftermath.’
‘You’ll see the place made good again, won’t you, commander?’
The albino gave a shrug. ‘We can but try. However, I’m not entirely sure that those events — that huge loss of life — weren’t the beginning of something bigger. There are millions scattered across the Jamur Empire-’
‘Don’t you mean Urtican?’
‘No,’ he said and looked at her with intensity. ‘The Jamur lineage has been reinstated for the foreseeable future. Empress Rika is safe and placed in senior command once again.’
‘But. . I don’t understand.’
‘That’s the least of your worries tonight, sergeant,’ he said, and walked away. ‘As you were — and remember to forget what happens later.’
Brynd wondered again what the former Emperor Urtica must have thought upon receiving his letter in Villjamur via garuda all that time ago, effectively annexing the city of Villiren from the Empire and taking what was left of the armed forces to support Jamur Rika. Brynd had received nothing in return, no indication that their declaration had even been read.
Later on in the night a torch flickered, moving between the branches; one, two, three of them now, all leading a small band of figures through the forest. Among the gathered silhouettes came Artemisia, a figure who towered over the others by at least a foot, and she moved with a fluid gait. At the front of the group walked Brynd, and he peered back to assess their progress.
He was surrounded by members of his Night Guard, the elite regiment that he led. More soldiers shuffled into line at the back, about two dozen archers with their bows poking up over their shoulders.
The group headed towards Sergeant Beale’s post. She stepped out onto the path with her hand on her sword, and saluted Brynd.
‘At ease, sergeant,’ he called, his voice absorbed by the black, dead forest. ‘You can fall in line with us at the rear now. We’ve scouts skimming around the edge of the forest.’
‘Am I relieved of duty?’
Brynd considered this for a moment before he called out, ‘Are you any good with a bow?’
‘As good as any,’ she replied.
‘Good.’ Brynd turned behind and gave some sharp orders. A bow was brought forward, along with a quiver full of arrows; he slung them towards Beale, and ordered her to fall in with the archers at the back of their unit.
They reached a clearing, the location of one of the ruins that littered the Wych Forest. Crumbling masonry of once-immense structures sprawled across each other, which was nothing new in the Boreal Archipelago, but here there was a key difference: none of these ruins was covered by moss or lichen like the adjacent deadwood — the smooth, pale stone remained blemish-free. This particular ruin seemed to have once been a kind of cathedral, with huge arches facing directly north. Little of the walls remained, but at the other end — opposite the slightly curved remains of the apse — lay a fully intact arch. It must have stood twenty feet high and, on closer inspection, its surface was remarkably smooth, like new — as if time had not touched it.
Artemisia moved past Brynd and marched right up to the archway as he gave instructions for the archers to line up in two rows extending from the archway, facing each other. Once assembled, they stood silently, in the cold.
The commander was not all that convinced. Of all the possible outcomes, the most likely would be that nothing happened, that this was all some ridiculous fantasy, and there would, in fact, be no extra military support coming his way.