so blue it appeared to have been freshly scrubbed and painted.
Hadn’t the sky been the color of old lead when I’d set foot in the Corpsemaster’s black carriage?
It was hot. Summer hot, dog days hot, not the milder early spring hot it should have been.
Chills made tiny footsteps up and down my spine. How long had I been in that damned carriage?
I mopped sweat. Felt my clothes stick to me. Hell, I was soaked.
My shadow was pooled and tiny at my feet, on cobblestones that made up a circle maybe twenty yards across. There were patterns set into the circle, formed by swoops and swirls of copper and lead that intersected and wove and parted and looped in ways that made my eyes water.
I thought at first the cobblestone circle was fenced at its perimeter. But as my eyes and head cleared, I could see that while the circle was bounded by a ring of waist-high stakes topped with ornaments of some kind. There was no fencing between them.
Beyond the circle was an endless plain of swaying green grass that flowed like a sea away in every direction. No trees. No walls. Not a hint of Rannit. Nothing but tall green grass rippling in the wind.
And no telltale sign of wagon-wheel ruts that might mark the long way home.
“What the Hell?”
Piper and Lopside snickered. “You all say that,” said Piper.
Piper was little more than a kid. His face still bore an enthusiastic crop of pimples. His Army uniform was too short at the ankles and the sleeves, which only accentuated his boyish appearance.
He wore plain Army dress blues. But the uniform, though familiar, wasn’t complete. His name wasn’t sewn over his chest. No unit identifier. There was no collar insignia, nothing to mark him as infantry or cavalry or sorcerer’s corps or Wagoner. He showed no sign of rank at all. The Sarge would have burst a vein at the sight of such a uniform.
“Would you mind waking your pal, Mr. Markhat?” asked the other man. “I’d rather not startle a halfdead, no disrespect intended, sir.”
Lopside was maybe my age. His uniform matched Piper’s, in that it didn’t tell me a damned thing.
“You didn’t seem to mind startling me.”
“Kids these days.” He rolled his eyes at Piper. “Maybe this will help. You’re a guest of the Corpsemaster. This place doesn’t have a name, because it doesn’t officially exist, but we call it the Battery. Everyone who comes here arrives asleep. You’ll leave the same way, get back home a few hours after you left. No, I don’t know where we are in relation to Rannit. No, I don’t know where the trees went. And no, I don’t know why it’s so damned hot. It’s been this way for eight months. You get used to it.”
I drank some more water.
“Fine. I’ll wake my friend. One question first.”
“I probably can’t answer it. But I’ll try.”
“You said everyone arrives asleep. Who is everyone? Who else comes here?”
“Can’t answer that.”
“Didn’t think so.” But it hadn’t hurt to try. I tossed him the pitcher and eased my way into the carriage.
“Evis,” I said. I poked him gently. “Wake up.”
He didn’t stir. He’d managed to cover his face in a fold of his cloak and I braced myself and yanked it back, exposing his pale face to the sun.
If Lopside hadn’t grabbed me by my belt and hauled me out of the carriage ass-first my career as a finder might have ended then and there, at the hands of a grumpy vampire.
“Evis,” I said, mopping blood off my cheek. “It’s me, dammit. Wake up.”
“Finder?” I kept my distance while Evis composed himself. “What the Hell?”
“Told you,” muttered Piper.
I sighed and grabbed the pitcher.
Chapter Three
Once Evis was shielded from the sun, we set out.
The cobblestone circle, Lopside explained, was just the point of arrival. Leading away from it was a cobblestone path that bore the same metallic swoops and turns as the circle. I learned quickly not to try and follow their meandering path, because that made one’s walk unsteady. Piper and Lopside were clear on the deadly consequences of stepping off the path.
The things lurking in the grass, they explained, were always hungry.
The path, like the circle, was lined with waist-high wooden stakes each painted a cheery white.
Human skulls watched from atop each stake. Fresh white skulls, so new they gleamed. Each skull bore an equally preserved pair of bright blue eyes, and every set of eyes in every gleaming skull followed you as you passed.
“Twenty-two thousand, eight hundred and six,” said Lopside as we walked.
Evis was faster to catch on than I.
“How long did it take you to count them?”
“A month. We get bored sometimes.”
Skulls. They were talking about the skulls. Twenty-odd thousand.
I moved my ass to the center of the path.
“How much farther?” Evis’s voice was strained. Even beneath yards of black silk, I imagined that impossible sun was bright enough to nearly blind him.
“Not much.” I heard a far-off shout, and Lopside waved us to a halt.
“They got the oh-threes ready a day early,” he said.
I was about to ask him what the Hell he meant when something louder and sharper than thunder split the air.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
The blasts were so loud I felt them in my chest, felt them rattle my teeth.
Unseen things in the grass made waves on its surface as they fled. Piper laughed.
“Reckon they got the mixture just right that time.”
“Shut your mouth,” Lopside spoke. “Let’s make sure they’re done.”
Smoke billowed up in the distance. The blasts faded, and the smoke dispersed, blowing over us in gouts.
It stank. It was strange, but not entirely alien. I realized I’d smelled something like it, once before.
“Cannon,” said Evis softly. “Remember that smell from Werewilk, Markhat? Same thing.”
“Ours are better,” said Piper. “They’re still using a two-to-one ratio of-”
“I said shut your mouth,” snapped Lopside. “No talking out here.”
Piper reddened and fell silent.
Evis pulled back enough silk to let me see his dark lenses. “Well. This should prove interesting, after all.”
A horn blew ahead of us, then again, and again.
“All clear.” Lopside motioned us forward. “Keep walking. Stay on the path. When you get to the painted red line, close your eyes and take one more step.”
“You’re not coming?”
“Orders. Get moving. He doesn’t like to wait.”
Evis was already in motion. I shrugged and caught up.
“You know what’s going on?”
“Not entirely,” he whispered. “But I’ve heard rumors. It seems Avalante’s research into mundane projectile weapons has been resumed by the Corpsemaster.”
There was nothing around us but a prairie. Ahead was just more of the same, cut only by the curving path we followed.
“It’s flatter than ogre-stomped. And empty.”
