The Narrow Path To War

by D L Frizzell

  "I'm making you my deputy," Alex said. "That way you can be an official member of my team." He matched Seneca's stare. "I guess I do sound like Marshal Redland."

  "I accept," Kate said, not seeing the tension between Alex and Seneca. She put the badge on and puffed out her chest.

  "Great," Alex replied.

  "You'll be safe," Kate replied. "I won't hit your head with a rock."

  She caught Alex off-guard with her comment. "Well that's..." he replied, "comforting."

  "Is that a promise for all of us?" Seneca asked.

  "Yes," Kate said.

  "Then I guess we're all staying together," Seneca conceded. "Again."

  "Something tells me she's pretty good with a rock," Niko said.

  "Uh-huh," Alex muttered, still aware of the lump on the back of his head.

  Seneca approached Alex and whispered, “I don’t know that you have the power to deputize, but you've raised the stakes and I don't have a choice but to play along."

  “I’m going to assume I do until I hear otherwise,” Alex replied. “If it makes you feel better, we’ll call her a provisional deputy until Marshal Redland can make it official.”

  "None of this is personal, despite what you might think, " Seneca told Alex. "I'm just doing my job. Now, it's safe to say we have a common interest," he added, "let's remember that."

  "That's been my point all along," Alex replied.

  Half an hour later, the pursuit team reached the edge of the Crumbles. Alex gazed at the expanse before them. Spread out before them were the boulders that had tumbled down the farthest. The first ones they encountered were spaced widely apart, having rolled beyond the others to sit by themselves. Some had settled into the soil until they were half-buried, while others sat atop bedrock and still seemed capable of rolling.

  "They actually are spherical," Alex marveled as he passed a boulder that was taller than he was, even on horseback.

  "That boulder probably wasn't here six months ago," Niko said. "There must have been pretty big boulderlanche for it to roll this far."

  "I guess that's why we don't have accurate maps," Sergeant Brady said.

  The team steered around the assorted boulders until Niko's wagon could no longer fit between them. At that point, everyone dismounted their horses and began moving equipment from the wagon onto the ground. Alex removed the saddlebags from Althayr and unclipped them to make a pair of backpacks for himself and Kate. He loaded the first one with his equipment; sleeping roll, spare clothes, climbing gear, and ammunition for his pistol. Kate put her belongings in the other one, packed the linen outfit that Sarah gave her, along with some leather pouches, a canteen, and some small food items. Lastly, she produced a pair of elbow-length leather gloves and put them on.

  "Here," Niko said, handing Alex two bundles from the wagon. “The first one has enough rations for a week's travel, while the second one has your portion of dynamite.”

  "Thanks," Alex deadpanned. "I didn't think my pack was heavy enough already."

  "No problem," Niko smiled, then leaned in to whisper. "Does Kate have anything to protect herself with?"

  "Well," Alex wondered. He'd given her the razor blade, but that probably wouldn't be enough to face off against a horde of jugs. "We could give her that parlo she picked up at the trees. It's in decent shape."

  "Okay," Niko replied. "She seems to be pretty good with a blade, so give her this one, too." He produced a machete and gave it to Alex. "Just don't make her mad, eh?"

  "Thanks, I'll try."

  "Good luck, Alex." Niko turned to pass the remaining gear out to the rest of the soldiers.

  Alex walked over to Kate and gave her the mismatched blades. He stared as she lashed their sheaths to her hips and tied the laces to the inner part of her thigh, blushing when she noticed him.

  "What?" she asked.

  "Nothing."

  The soldiers produced a small canvas tent from the wagon, which they laid out on a grassy area between two boulders. They tied ropes to each of its four corners and stretched them out to their full length. On the middle of the tent, they arranged some additional gear; water, rations, ammunition, and two duffel bags full of explosives.

  Once everything was assembled together on the tent, they folded the edges over and tied it into a bundle. Colonel Seneca checked it to make sure it was done correctly, then ordered them to proceed.

  Niko gathered any items the squad wasn't taking with them and loaded them back onto the wagon. Once he had them ready, he tied everybody’s horses onto a long harness and maneuvered the wagon around the boulders until he faced east. As an afterthought, he opened his saddlebags and went through his supplies. He counted out half a dozen signal flares, a medkit, a box of matches, and a folding utility tool. He gave them to Alex.

  "Thanks, Niko," Alex said.

  "No worries," Niko smiled as he climbed onto the buckboard.

  “I wouldn’t expect us to return for at least a week,” Seneca told Niko.

  “Alright,” Niko replied. “Captain Hathan-Fen said she might have some more soldiers battle-ready in a few days. Do you want me to have them come up after you?”

  “Just have them set up camp here,” Seneca said. “Tell them to watch out for falling rocks.”

  Niko caught Seneca’s meaning. If this mission was going to be a replay of the Jug invasion ten years earlier, Seneca wanted as few casualties as possible.

  “Good luck, Jim,” Niko said.

  “Same to you, Niko,” Seneca said, and shook his hand.

  Niko spurred his team to a walk and tugged the horse train along behind. He looked once at Alex and waved farewell.

  Wyler gazed through his binoculars up the Crumbles. “There's no easy path up the boulders, colonel, but I guess we knew that.”

  “We’ll have to spider-walk the gear to the Sentinel Bridge,” Seneca told him. “Hopefully it will get easier from that point.”

  Wyler cringed. Scaling a mountain of massive granite spheres was not an exercise he looked forward to. The chance of starting a boulderlanche would increase as they climbed farther up the slope, and the additional gear would drive that risk up even more.

  “Squad, step up!” Sergeant Brady ordered the men. He grabbed one of the ropes and gestured for Gurnig, Sturm, and Leeds to do the same. With a distance of ten meters between each of them, Brady and Gurnig took the lead to climb the first tier of boulders. They pulled on the ropes and lifted the gear onto the boulder that sat midway between them.

  “Gurnig and I will pull the bundle forward,” Brady told the privates. “You two keep enough tension on the ropes to keep it in the air. Understand?”

  Sturm and Leeds nodded together.

  “Lift,” Brady ordered. All four men pulled on their ropes and raised the bundle a few inches off the ground. Brady and Gurnig pulled it forward until it was directly between them again and set it down. “Make sense to everyone?”

  They nodded again.

  “Good,” Brady said. “This flat area will be good for us to get our rhythm. I expect we’ll move pretty quickly for a while. After the first kilometer, Gurnig and I will rest in the back while Sturm and Leeds take the front. Traore and Wyler will take control of the rear ropes while Gurnig and I rest. Gurnig and I will then return to the front once we've rested. Got it?”

  “Got it, Sergeant,” Leeds said.

  “Yep,” Sturm said. When Brady stared at him, he upgraded his answer to a proper military response. “Yes, Sergeant.”

  Seneca, Alex, and Kate stood on neighboring boulders and watched the team lift the bundle onto the first tier of boulders.

  “That’s an interesting way to move equipment,” Alex noted. “Have you done this before?”

  “Not in an actual situation,” Seneca answered.

  “Looks like they’re doing okay so far.”

  “That's because they're moving straight across,” Seneca said. “It'll get a lot harder when we angle up the boulders with nothing to hold onto.”

 
Seneca put his binoculars in the case on his belt. “Now, what am I going to do with you two?” he asked Alex and Kate.

  “You’ve seen me run the city wall a hundred times,” Alex said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I can climb,” Kate said. “I don’t need help.”

  Seneca looked at her. Her size was his primary concern. She was shorter than anyone on his team, which meant she would have to jump twice as hard to scale the boulders. “Young lady, I know you are used to taking care of yourself, but,” he pointed at Alex, “I'm worried you'll have difficulty keeping up with us."

  "I've done it before," she said, adjusting her gloves.

  "When?" Seneca asked.

  "Sometimes."

  Alex and Seneca exchanged puzzled looks, then watched her hasten past the rest of the squad.

  "Deputy, that girl alarms me on every level," Seneca said.

  "I know what you mean, Colonel."

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Kate and Alex made faster headway than the rest of the team, due to the fact that they only had to carry their packs. When they reached the second tier of boulders, Alex became aware that the others were hundreds of meters behind them. Looking ahead and seeing more tiers piled in quick succession above their position, he realized their lead would only increase.

  "Let's wait for the others," he said.

  “Why?” Kate asked as she ran her glove along the smooth boulder in front of her.

  “We don't want to get too far ahead of them,” Alex said.

  "There's a big rock up there," Kate replied, pointing up the slope of stacked boulders. "We can wait there."

  Alex saw what she was talking about. An outcropping protruded between the boulders ten tiers above their location. The upper edge of the rock was capped with grass, meaning it was flat on top. It looked big enough to hold the entire squad.

  "Have you been here before?" he asked.

  "Yes," she said. "I take care of the rock squirrels that live there."

  "Do you visit them a lot?"

  "Yes," she replied. She then pulled a small leather pouch from her backpack. It was sealed tightly with a string and filled with some kind of liquid. A heavy, rancid smell wafted into the air when she opened it. "We'll need this now," she said.

  Alex covered his nose with his forearm. “That's disgusting," he said. “What do you have in there?”

  “Bug mule spawn juice,” she said. She dipped the fingertip of her glove into the pouch. When she pulled it back out, it was coated with a pearl-colored slime. She offered the pouch to Alex.

  “No thanks,” he said, staring at her hands. “I don’t want to know how you got that.”

  “From a bug mule,” she replied, confused that the answer wasn’t obvious to him. “All I had to do…”

  He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Don’t tell me.”

  She resealed the pouch and returned it to her backpack. She rubbed the fluid onto her gloves until they were fully coated, then interlocked her fingers and flexed them to adjust the fit. “It’s sticky,” she said.

  Alex felt his gag reflex kick in but managed to suppress it.

  Kate slapped her hands on the top half of a boulder. She placed one knee against the boulder and pushed hard. Her hands remained attached to the boulder as she leveraged her weight up. When she had enough momentum, she peeled her gloves away from the rock face and hopped onto it with little effort.

  Alex stared at her, astonished. He climbed the adjoining boulder on his own, only to see Kate had already climbed another tier and was starting a third. By the time he climbed the next two, she was already waiting for him on the stone outcropping above the boulders.

  "Look at her climbing up those boulders!" Gurnig exclaimed from far below.

  Wyler pulled his binoculars out and trained them on Kate. They watched in disbelief as she made it to an outcropping and sat down to wait for Alex. "Vonn can't even keep up with her," he said.

  "She must be using some kind of trick," Gurnig said.

  "Keep moving, gentlemen," Seneca ordered. "I'll find out how she's doing it."

  Once Seneca made it up the boulders to the outcropping, fatigue had started working its way into his muscles. It reminded him he was not as young as he used to be. He made his way over the ledge to join Alex and Kate. Alex was pushing a piece of food into a gap in the rock. He cleared his throat to get their attention.

  Alex jumped up, embarrassed. "Hello, colonel," he said.

  "Don't let me stop you, deputy," Seneca said dryly. "It looks like you were doing something important."

  "I wasn't, Colonel," he said. "I mean, Kate would have done it, except her hands are dirty."

  Kate held up her gloves. They still glistened with spawn juice. “My gloves are sticky,” she said.

  “I saw how fast you climbed those boulders,” Seneca said to Kate. “Is that how you did it?”

  "Yes."

  "What do you have on your gloves?"

  “Don’t ask," Alex interrupted. "Seriously."

  “I'll guess it's also the source of that odor,” Seneca added.

  “Yes,” Alex nodded. He saw a group of flies congregating near her. She ignored them. “It’s a kind of...glue...she uses to grip the rock face.”

  Seneca approached them. “Interesting,” he said. "May I see some of that?”

  Kate handed the pouch to the colonel. He opened it. He did not have as strong a reaction as Alex but did wave his hand in front of his face to disperse the flies. He put a gloved finger into the pouch and got a small dab of it. Rubbing the goo between his fingers until he had trouble pulling them apart, he looked at Kate.

  “There’s no accounting for the smell,” he said, “but this could help us climb. How long does it last?”

  “It will last a long time if the boulders are clean,” she replied.

  “Would you let my men use some of this?” he asked.

  "Yes," Kate said. She handed the pouch to Seneca.

  Alex cringed.

  "As you were, deputy," Seneca told Alex. "We'll take a rest here before heading up the rest of the way."

  "Make sure they put their gloves on first," Alex implored Seneca.

  Corporal Wyler monitored the others as they lifted the gear onto a new tier of boulders. The plains were no longer visible behind them, and the boulders were bigger than he expected. It made for slower progress. Gurnig and Brady were having difficulty climbing the boulders with one hand while holding the tent ropes with the other.

  "Wouldn't it be easier to tie the ropes around our waists?" Wyler asked.

  "That would be dangerous," Brady told him. "If a boulderlanche starts, the last thing you'd want is to be tied to a tentful of explosives while trying to outrun a million tons of rock."

  "Right."

  Colonel Seneca returned from the outcropping, holding the pouch Kate had given him. "Here," he told the others. "Put some of this on your gloves and spread it around your palms. It'll help you grip the boulders."

  Brady set his rope down and took a dollop of the substance from Kate's pouch. He made a sour face at Colonel Seneca. "We get paid extra for this?"

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Sticks beneath feet. The sound wrong. Echoes. Repeats.

  The fog, thick. Deep down, more sticks. Click-clack-breaka-brack.

  Keep walking. The fog darkening.

  A terrible smell. Knows it well.

  Naked arms tickle. Grey, falling leaves.

  Piles on bare shoulders. Away on the breeze.

  An outline ahead. Fear, dread.

  The breeze grows. A wind knows. The smell.

  The sticks collapse. But not far. Not far.

  Sharp edges below. Blood flow. Not much.

  The tickle returns. It stings. It bites.

  Sink and drift. Hands claw the pit. Palms grow wet. It burns.

  The darkness clears. A hut appears.

  Too many doors. The center, a stone. A cinder begs. Words unknown.

  Grey leaves drifting.
Bitter. Blown.

  A man behind the fire. A fire behind the man. Through the cinder.

  A fire at the center of the man.

  Back away. Break away. Click-clack.

  Snapping sticks win. Pull down. Push in.

  Toward the light. Into the pyre.

  Nothing in the man. Nothing in the fire. The fire behind the man.

  The smoke blown. The hut gone. The hole within the man.

  The sticks click. The stacks clack.

  Bricka-brick. Breaka-back.

  The sticks never there. Bones everywhere.

  No!

  Daigre jarred awake to the sound of crunching footsteps nearby. The dream still vivid in his mind, he jumped to his knees, groping about for a handhold.

  As his mind cleared, he could tell there was a single person moving slowly around the ledge to the spot he had gone to get some sleep. He did not yet see who was approaching, since he had picked a secluded spot around a cliff face adjacent to the plateau. It was a good place to rest, as there was little room to navigate around the ledge to his position. Twigs spread across the ledge would warn him of anyone coming this direction. An intruder would keep their attention on the sticks to avoid falling onto the boulders far below. Bricka-brick. Breaka-back.

  Daigre shuddered. Eyeing a sharp stone nearby, he moved his knee onto it and settled his weight upon it. The pain sharpened his mind.

  His wits about him again, Daigre nocked an arrow and drew his bow by the time his visitor moved into sight.

  He let out a sigh when the person turned out to be Rannuk. He made a quick scan of the Crumbles below, then let the tension off the bow and set it down. The Jug, momentarily frightened, regained his own composure and found his way far enough onto the ledge to kneel.

  "I have a report, Master Daigre," the overseer said.

  "How long have I been sleeping?" Daigre demanded. When he was answered with silence, he scolded himself. "Of course, you Jugs don't keep time, do you?" He conveyed irritation at the Jug for waking him, though in truth, he needed to escape the dream. "Give me your report," he said testily.

  "The Plainsmen soldiers will be here soon," Rannuk said.

  "How many are there?"

  "Fewer than ten, Master."