“Hope they stay that way,” he said, and turned to face
amidships, where two squads skirmished.
When he
began yelling to them, I knew I was dismissed. I walked to the bow and watched
until the mountains formed the sides of a canyon through which we passed, and I
feared their weight and the depths of the night would swallow us between them.
I could not see the top of the cliffs, which seemed to nearly meet overhead.
Never have I felt so small as I did them. I shivered and went below and wrote
in these journals, and ate and slept again. I no longer practiced with my
lightspear.
I woke to
the bawling of mastodons and the tramp of boots throughout the hold.
“We’re
here,” a squad-captain told me in passing, and I picked up my helmet and slung
my bundle of lightspears across my mastodon’s back. She, of course, was alert
and eager to leave the ship. I chided her for letting me sleep later than I had
wished. I rode her toward the bow, and waited for the ramp to drop. The other
mastodons parted to give us room, so much respect was my beast accorded.
When our
great slab of metal fell away, I saw
only a white wall of mist in its place. When we trod the whole way down the
ramp, the ground was covered with smooth stones at the river’s edge; the water
smelled both warm and fresh. All around me were the great humped forms of other
mastodons.
“Even the
Swarm could not have hidden our greatships alone,” said a voice ahead of me,
and I rode until I saw that it was Jerem Cozak, turning toward me as he spoke.
“So they have conjured this mist by heating the water. Come with me, Del Tanich
of Ariel. It is time we made good your promise.”
I thought I
knew what promise he meant, but I would have followed regardless – and my
mastodon would certainly have trailed the matriarch. We left the others
unloading behind and rode along in silence, climbing away from the river. The
ground became soft and moist, the grass like moss between our toes. A dense,
loamy forest grew nearby, though I could see nothing further than Jerem Cozak
in the thickness of the mist. I shivered, despite the warmth. We rode like that
for most of a watch, past boulders and shrubs and copses of woods, until the
hill leveled out just as it climbed above the mist and our bodies and our
mastodons chameleoned to match.
“Behold the
Jade City,” said Jerem Cozak, pointing to the east. And I did.
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