“I’m not looking forward to crossing the Canyon again,” came a voice.
Thor snapped out of it, looked over, and saw Elden, a few feet away, anxiety on his face. In the distance was the outline of the bridge. The Eastern Crossing of the Canyon. Hundreds of soldiers were lined up along it.
“Nor I,” O’Connor added.
“It will be different this time,” Reese said. “We go as a group. We are in the Wilds only for a short bit, and then we are at the ships. Is a direct route to the ships. We do not venture deep into their territory before we hit the ocean.”
“Still, we’re beyond the Canyon, and anything could happen,” Conval said.
The group fell silent, and Thor listened to the sound of hundreds of boots crushing rocks, of Krohn panting beside him, of horses, being walked next to some of the warriors, clomping; he could smell the horses from here, the sweat of men afraid. Thor was not afraid. He was excited. Nervous, maybe. And overwhelmed with longing for Gwendolyn.
“Just think, when we return, next season, we will all be different men,” O’Connor said. “None of us will be the same.”
“
Thor took a good look at all the boys and men around him, and he thought about that. Nothing would ever be the same. He felt the world constantly changing around him, every minute of every day; it was so hard to hold onto anything. He wanted to freeze all of this, but even as he did, he knew that he could not.
*
They finally reached the base of the Western Crossing of the Canyon, and the group of them paused before stepping onto the bridge. Thor could see the look of wonder and fear in the eyes of his fellow Legion members. He remembered when he had first seen it, and he understood how they felt. Even now, looking at it for his second time, it inspired the same sense of awe and fear and wonder in him: the bridge spanned forever, disappearing from site, and the drop-off below was bottomless. Although the bridge was lined with hundreds of the King’s soldiers, it felt as if the first step onto the bridge was a step of no return.
They all proceeded onto the bridge, marching silently forward, and as they did, Thor felt the stakes raised. No longer was this another training exercise; now they were leaving the actual protection of the Ring. Now they would be real warriors, out there in the Wilds, where anyone could kill them at any moment. Now, it was life or death.
Everybody came a little bit closer to each other as they marched, and Thor could see the others clenching up, tightening their hands on their swords, everybody more on edge. Howling winds whipped at them from every direction, and more than one of them looked over the edge, then quickly pulled back. Despite himself, Thor looked, too, and immediately wished he hadn’t: he saw a plunge down to nothingness, ending in a mist. He swallowed hard, and wondered for the millionth time about the power of this place. Krohn whined, and came in close to Thor, rubbing against his ankles.
They marched and marched, and the span over the Canyon felt like it would last forever.
Thor heard a distant screech, and looked up to see Ephistopheles, high up, circling. She dove down, lower and lower, until finally she dove down right for Thor. Thor lowered his canvas sleeve and raised one arm, hoping that she would land on it. But instead she dove right at him, and as she got close, he could see she was carrying something in her claw. It looked like a scroll. As she neared, she opened her talons and let it drop; it flew through the air, landing near Thor’s feet. She screeched, flapped her wings, and flew off again.
Krohn ran over to it, picked it up in his mouth and brought it to Thor. Thor bent down, curious, and took the piece of parchment.
“What is it?” Reese asked.
“A message, perhaps?” O’Connor remarked.
Thor held it close as he opened it, slowly unrolling it, feeling protective of whatever it was. Clearly, it was a message just for him. Before he’d even finished unrolling it, he spotted the handwriting, and knew who it was from. He held it even closer, guarding it jealously. It was from Gwen.
He read with trembling hands as he walked:
“What is it?” Elden asked.
“What message do you hold?” Conval prodded.
But Thor rolled up the scroll and tucked it away in his pocket, not sure that he wanted the others to know.
“Is it from my sister?” Reese asked softly.
Thor waited until the others were not watching, then nodded back.
Reese nodded, then turned back to the road.
“She has fallen for you, my friend. I hope that you treat her well. She is delicate. And I care for her very much.”
Thor’s heart beat faster as he read her message again in his mind. It was strange, because he had been thinking of little else but her, and to receive an actual message from her, dropped down from the sky, made his thoughts seem to manifest into reality. He loved her more than he could say, and in a sense, he was already counting the days until his return. For the first time in a long time, he felt he had something strong to hold onto.
Thor did not know how much time had passed when they finally stepped off the bridge and stepped onto the soil on the far side of the Canyon. But he felt it like an electric jolt, felt the leaving of the Ring, beyond the protection of the energy shield. He immediately felt unprotected.
The others must have felt it too, because he could see them all tense up, hands on their weapons, as they looked all about them in wonder. Strange animal noises rose up as they followed the path as one, into a deep and dark wood.
Kolk stepped forward and faced the group.
“You’ll stay together, close as a group, your weapons drawn. We will move as one through this wood. It will be many miles until we hit the ocean. Our ships are waiting and ready to board, our men guarding them. The Empire’s army is camped too far to cause any trouble. But there could be isolated attackers. Stay alert.”
One hour after another passed as the path narrowed, the sky darkened, and they marched deeper into the twisting trails of the dark wood. Foreign animal noises persisted all around them, and Thor felt always on guard. There came occasional scrambling in the branches, and he and his brothers flinched more than once, but nothing ever attacked them.
Hours more passed, and finally the wood broke open: in the distance Thor could see, with great relief, and with a sense of awe, the crashing waves of the Tartuvian Sea. He heard them from here, and could already feel the change in the air. There was a wide open plain between here and there, and no sign of the enemy as far as he could see. He breathed a sigh of relief.
A huge, wooden ship sat there, sails fluttering high in the air, waiting for them, surrounded by the King’s Men, standing guard.
“We made it!” O’Connor said.
“No we didn’t,” Elden said. “We reached the ships, that is all. We still have to cross the ocean. That will be much worse.”
“I hear that the island is many days’ sail away,” Conval said. “The waves of the Tartuvian are supposedly stronger than a man can stand, its weather awful, and the sea filled with monsters and hostile ships. Our journey has not yet even begun.”
