Hall of Smoke by H.M. Long

Author:H.M. Long
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

TWENTY-FIVE

Five days after I joined the Arpa, we came to Iskir. We were in Eangen’s far north now, and the Algatt Mountains swept across the horizon in a great, brooding wall of stone and snowy peaks and tattered cloud. This was the home of the Iskiri, a land of rock, dense mossy forests and waving, reedy marshes. This was where I’d spent months of every year, first watching for, then eventually hunting Algatt raiders. I knew the road we traversed as well as I knew Albor. I knew the waystones that marked our way and the bends of the rivers, the glisten of the lakes. I knew where the fog bellied in the ravines, where the marshes could be traversed, the best places to camp, to hide, to ambush.

And I was alone in that familiarity. However close to me Nisien rode, he had no memory of this place, no sense of its importance and history. He couldn’t understand what it was to be an Eangi, side by side with Eidr and Yske and Vist, running these forests and scouting from these ridgelines – all in service of the goddess who had let them die.

I lost myself in remembrances until we reached a well-trodden road alongside a marsh.

“Iskir is in a hidden valley up ahead,” I warned Polinus.

The commander called a halt and sent scouts, combing the countryside for any sign of life while we rested in the warmth of the evening sun and the rustling of marsh grasses. As we waited I battled a rebellious, desperate optimism: the Iskiri were the wildest, most violent of the Eangen. If anyone could have held out against the Algatt, surely it would be them.

But what little hope I’d conjured faded upon the scouts’ return. They spoke to Polinus in Arpa, but from the calm and dismissive language of their bodies, it was clear that the village was uninhabited.

My stomach lurched. I fought to keep my emotions down, my face impassive. It made sense, after all. If there were any Eangi alive in Iskir, Eang would have been wrong and Ogam would have found them. Iskir was gone, just like every other settlement in the Algatt’s path.

That night we camped on a wooded rise near the town. Nisien was on watch so I rolled out my bed in a more secluded location than usual, behind a large boulder and a cluster of pines so low and gnarled that they draped like a curtain. The wind whispered through their boughs as I rested my shield against the tree, cleaned my boots and drank a little from my water skin.

The presence of Iskir tugged my eyes west, down the hill. I had not been able to see the black scar of the town during our ascent, but I knew where she was. I knew the hill we camped on. I even knew the rock I sheltered under. I’d sat atop it as a child on sentry duty, bickering with Yske and braiding her hair.

The night settled in.

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