Steven Montano: Black Scars

When she seemed satisfied, Cross felt the tension in his body let up. He hadn’t even realized it was there in the first place. Sajai turned and started down the slope. Cross had the impression he was supposed to follow her, confirmed when Dillon nodded expectantly.

Sajai moved quickly down the hill, and Cross had to watch his footing on the unstable rock as he scrambled after her. Most of his gear was in his pack; all that he carried with him were his arcane gauntlets, bunched together in his fist.

“ I’m surprised you didn’t pick up more of their language,” Dillon said from behind him as they carefully stepped down the hill. Dark protrusions of rock jutted out of the stone and formed the semblance of steps, but the pace at which Sajai moved and the height of those steps still made keeping their balance tricky.

“ Me, too,” Cross said. “I’m better at reading languages than speaking them.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Do they think I’m idiot for not having learned more of it?”

“ I doubt they care,” Dillon said quietly. “They’re not like us. They don’t really judge.”

They came into the company of more Lith when they arrived at the bottom of the hill. The trek down the breadth of the mountain to the Reach itself would take hours, but the Lith had completely broken down their camp, and everything that had once been spread across the hillside had been rolled and neatly packed away and bound to the backs of stark white horses with reptilian skin and tufts of heavy hair on their feet and joints. The horse’s manes were like melted crystal.

The other Lith parted before them. Their weapons were sinuous and sleek, bows carved from stark white wood and swords and axes with blades made of translucent crystal. Cross saw no firearms anywhere in their midst. His spirit bristled as if threatened, and Cross had to exert some mental force to rein her in.

It’s like owning a pet wolf, sometimes.

Sajai passed through her fellows and walked towards the cliff, where they had a clearer view of the Reach. It looked like a sea of ice. Thick canyons of gray and green rock covered the landscape like wounds.

Sajai stepped up to the edge, propped one foot on a short stone that dangled precariously over open air, and looked out.

Cross had been sent by the Southern Claw High Command to learn something from this Lith woman, the leader of a tribe that in the past had given the White Mother valuable information about the Ebon Cities. He’d been sent to find something hidden out there in the wastes.

But the Lith had their own way of handing out information. They would not be rushed. They lived so much longer than humans, and much of what humankind found frightening was entirely familiar to the Lith.

She had to make sure that my need was genuine. She had to know I could be trusted.

Over the course of the past few weeks, Cross had done his best to earn that trust, with Dillon’s knowledge of the Lith guiding his actions. He felt bad for Dillon, really — the ranger was used to running reconnoiter missions for Hunter squads or charting out unexplored territory for Company deployments, not baby-sitting a warlock of dubious qualifications while he tried to get information from a race that he didn’t even share a common language with. Even though Dillon didn’t complain, Cross noted restlessness in his gait and in his thick voice. He was a ranger, after all — he wasn’t used to sitting still.

But you never complained when the mission came straight from the High Command. If they were giving the order, it meant that it was something the White Mother herself wanted done.

Without turning to regard them, Sajai pointed out to the Reach. At first Cross didn’t see anything: it looked like the same arctic wasteland it had always been. The air was dirty and cold and Cross tasted glacial smoke on his tongue. His scarred left hand burned in the frigid temperatures. Hard wind pushed against them.

“ Crap,” Dillon said after a moment.

“ Tell me about it…”

“ No, look!”

Cross followed Dillon’s gaze. A few miles away, just past a ridge of low and dark hills, amidst a drift of early morning haze and ash, was a stream of smoke that curled up into the sky.

“ Is that from a wreck?” Cross asked.

“ Looks like it to me.”

An airship, he thought. It could’ve been any sort of mechanized or thaumaturgically driven vehicle, of course — a tank, a Rathian war wagon, a Bonewalker, an Ebon skiff — but somehow Cross knew what it was.

Sajai looked at Cross. She made a simple hand motion: a sweep and cut, drawing her hand away from Cross and above her own throat, then back out towards the trail of smoke.

“ Follow,” Dillon said, reading the signal. His eyes went back to the smoke. “Follow and you will find.”

She’s been waiting for this, Cross thought. That’s why they’ve let us stay for so long. She was waiting for this day, this place, to show us where we needed to go. That ship had to be there. In order to find what we need, our next step is to go to that wreck.

Cross considered asking her what the smoke was, but he knew that she wouldn’t tell them.

Follow and you will find.

Cross looked at the smoke, and he felt something cold inside of him. It was as if eyes buried deep in the distance stared back.

“ Thank you,” Cross told Sajai. “Dillon. I think it’s time for us to go.”

Dillon estimated that the trip would take just over half a day. They’d spend only a portion of that time crossing the flat wastelands of the Reach — most of it would be spent descending the small mountain, which had to be done carefully lest they fall to their deaths.

Luckily for Cross, Dillon was an expert at getting around in harsh environments. The ranger might as well have been born in the wild. He was fairly quiet and reserved, opinionated when it came to which route to take or what areas to avoid, but soft spoken on most everything else.

Cross did know that Dillon had a temper. They’d been accosted by brigands on their way to the Lithian camp, a band of wasteland outlaws who made a living feeding off of small caravans and launching attacks on Southern Claw border towns. Dillon hadn’t taken kindly to their intrusion, and Cross knew that if he hadn’t used magic to scatter the bandits Dillon likely would have killed each and every one of them.

Dillon had mentioned having a sister, and a nephew. Other than that, the ranger seemed content to keep to himself, and Cross respected that, even if he did find himself occasionally starting conversations that faded to nothingness due to a lack of response on the ranger’s part.

Small stones scattered down the side of the mountain as they made their descent. Cross’ camel slowed their travel with its deliberate and even pace. Dillon led the way on a horse as black as coal. His horse was adept at sliding down the smooth slope, but Cross’ dun moved a bit more awkwardly, due largely to her rider’s inexperience. Cross was slowly becoming a better rider, but he’d spent most of his military career being flown to his missions, and he’d only been riding horseback regularly for about a year.

Still…I should be better at this by now.

The small mountain where the Lith made camp stood at the northern end of a low and craggy range that cleanly cut the Reach off from the southern plains. If they turned south, they could have followed the range straight to the city of Fane. The landscape was dark and jagged, and the hills looked like enormous shards of black glass. The sun was dull and low as they rode into the Reach. Cross had to draw his armored coat tight and turn up his collar, and even gloved his hands felt frozen as he clung to the reins.