Mark Newton - The Broken Isles

‘I can’t hear a thing,’ Randur moaned.

Brynd ignored him and marched a little further up the slope. The ground was frozen solid. It began to rain, gently at first, then came heavier drops — again, he noticed, not snow, but rain .

‘For fucksake,’ Randur said, drawing up his hood, ‘I don’t know why we couldn’t just ride to the top.’

‘Though this is a friendly visit, we need to see what they’re made of,’ Brynd replied, pulling up his own hood. ‘We need to see what they’ve got, what their capabilities are. And, most of all, we need to shut the hell up .’

Brynd moved cautiously up the slope for a few minutes. He kept looking around for any signs of scouts, but he could see none. It annoyed him that they had no one guarding the perimeter.

Randur followed, rather reluctantly, and whispered, ‘Hey, I think I can hear something now. What can you see?’

As Brynd crested the hill, the scene down below presented itself slowly.

Row upon row of yurts and tents stretched in precise rows as far as he could see. Fires, set within immense cauldrons, were burning at regular intervals, at intersections in the lanes. Meanwhile, strange shapes lumbered in the half-light, occasionally illuminated by the flames.

Immense and ragged banners rippled in the evening breeze, each bearing exotic insignias, with strange shapes and curves to the designs. Meat was being cooked in aromatic spices that he couldn’t recognize, but which reached him even at this distance. And, all around this vast site, humans and rumels — with other, similar-looking life forms — were sitting in enclaves or standing to attention as they were addressed by some more senior official. Brynd estimated that there were twenty or thirty thousand warriors down there, and Bohr only knows how many beyond. Some wore bright armour, some were covered in dark cloaks, but what struck him was how similar they looked to people from his own world. Their attire was not more exotic than could be found among the cultures of the Boreal Archipelago — a fact that was both comforting and unnerving. It was as if there were some shared characteristics, some common essence between the two worlds. That seemed to confirm the new histories that Artemisia had provided. They were cultural cousins.

Randur came up alongside him and, with his jaw open wide, managed to say, ‘Well bugger me. Would you look at that.’

‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Brynd replied.

‘Well you wanted an army, chief,’ Randur said. ‘It looks like you’ve got one.’

‘Not quite. We’ve still got to persuade them to fight with us.’

The two of them remained stationary as they examined the expanse beyond, contemplating just what this could mean, until something barked in a language Brynd did not recognize.

He knew what that meant.

Cursing to himself for letting his guard down and his senses slip, he held up his hands, leaving his sabre by his side, and suggested to Randur that he do the same. Then Brynd searched his surroundings in order to locate the source of the voice.

‘What’s going on?’ Randur asked.

‘It’s all right — they’ve scouts, and in a way that’s what I wanted to find out,’ Brynd muttered. He addressed the approaching warriors who he heard somewhere in the darkness. ‘I am Commander Lathraea of the Night Guard, senior officer of the military in this world. I have liaised with Artemisia in seeing that you were brought here.’ On noting no reply, he ventured, ‘Welcome to the island of Y’iren. .’

‘Albino,’ came the strained reply, followed by whispers in a foreign tongue.

‘Can you see them with your fancy vision?’ Randur asked.

Brynd scrutinized his immediate surroundings: the hilltop was dark, and he could only discern spindly bushes or the contours of the landscape. The voice, still giving orders in some strange tongue, was definitely coming from down the slope, but there he could only see crooked trees or lumps of rock or frozen mud. It alarmed him that he could not see them with his enhancements.

A twig snapped nearby, his attention shifted. Now he could see something: the rain was clinging to four opaque forms that were marching towards them. It was the water that defined their presence, the edges of their bodies, rather than the bodies being physically there.

‘I still can’t see anything,’ Randur said.

‘I see them.’ Brynd pointed towards the four water-covered shapes. ‘You might struggle in this light, but they’re very definitely there. Four of them.’

‘Fuck, I can see their footprints in the snow.’ Randur shuddered and moved to draw his sword.

Brynd held back his arm. ‘It’s all right. Remember, they’re on our side.’

‘Don’t see why they have to creep up like this.’

‘It’s good,’ Brynd replied. ‘They mean business, and we need armies that mean business, instead of littering battlefields with their inefficient corpses.’

Brynd held up his arms again and declared some basic greetings.

The figures became quite still, before fading into existence. The hominids possessed dark skins that reminded him of his obsidian chamber for their faint sheen. With no discernible hair, and a strange headband bearing tribal symbols, they stood a good foot shorter than himself, and each one was clutching a dagger. They were lean and, unbelievably for the weather, clothed only in light bronze armour and baggy breeches. They must have been freezing, but they showed no signs of suffering. As they came nearer he counted five of them, all in all; their movements were fluid, and their muscles looked tough and wiry.

‘I am Commander Brynd Lathraea from the city of Villiren, representing Jamur Rika, an ally of Artemisia.’ He repeated himself a couple of times but could only hear the wind in the distance.

Then he got a response: ‘You. . both of you, come. . Come with us.’

Brynd couldn’t tell which of them was speaking, though their voices seemed warped and distressed. It might have been all of them speaking simultaneously, for all he knew. ‘At least we can communicate,’ he whispered to Randur, who looked petrified. Brynd addressed his otherworldly comrades once again. ‘Yes,’ he said, nodding and smiling to make sure they understood. ‘We bring you no harm.’

‘I thought they were meant to be on our side?’ Randur moaned.

Marching through the rain at knifepoint, they headed down the slope towards the encampment. Even though they traversed the hill in a wide zigzag to make the descent easier, they still managed to slip occasionally on the mud. Each time they did, their captors showed no signs of concern. They merely waited impatiently for Brynd or Randur to stand up again, brush themselves down, and continue towards the camp.

It seemed an eternity, that walk. Brynd realized that what he was about to witness was very special, and also that he was an ambassador for his entire people. Perhaps he should have brought Artemisia, but he had not anticipated an actual meeting — he only wanted to see them from afar.

As they entered the fringes of the encampment, past the yurts made with thick fabric and enormous brass cauldrons, Brynd was overwhelmed by the noise and smells of this suddenly present civilization: the odours of unfamiliar food, and the harsh clamour of a new language. Here was a new city, of sorts, that existed on no maps.

Brynd didn’t know where to look first. So many oddities presented themselves to him: beings of perplexing shapes, uniforms of subtle shades, markings etched across metal, insignias on flags. In addition to the creatures who had located Brynd and Randur, there were others wandering past them. They were some degree taller than the humans, green-skinned, long-limbed and remarkably slender, with a smooth elongated face and two black eyes. They wore tight leather tunics and their light steps barely marked the mud and snow as they moved gracefully past.