Prologue: Danger at Shadowmill Pass Suri counted each step as his father walked behind the counter of their family tailory within the Cludan markets. One, two, three and the old tailor made it behind the doorway to the back workshop. Four, five, six and all the way to 10, and he was deep within the towering storage shelves where his many creations lay. Each step took about a second and a half, with his father’s gait slowed by all the years of hunching over a stool threading leather straps between pieces of armor. Suri knew his father paused — usually for 30 seconds or so — to take an inventory of his stock. Then he shuffled back to the shop’s storefront. By the time he made it to the front, Suri turned the wooden slats that opened the stall to the public, and his mother — already outside — hung a sign reading “Closed for Lunch. Return in 22” on the front. Meanwhile, his sister Willow grabbed all of their satchels from the shelf beneath the counter and handed them out as the family left the shops. In one precise minute, the shop was closed, and it was time for a well earned meal.
As they walked the 701 footsteps home — at his father’s pace, so as not to leave him behind — Suri and his family made small talk about the day. They waved to their fellow merchants at their stalls, peddling wares to the Proximan traders and Illyrian caravans that funneled through Cludos. A trading city nestled in the foothills beneath the Shadowmill Mountains, Cludos was a throughway between two of the biggest city states in the region. It wasn’t massive, just a couple thousand trade families strong, but it was vital to the region. Because of that, wealth coursed through the city like water flowed down the Arpeki Canal. As much as Suri’s family wasn’t rich, they lived a comfortable life.
Today wasn’t a great morning at the shops. Three Proximan salesmen missed their scheduled pickup times for hand-crafted gear. These orders took months to plan, and his father grumbled about the inconvenience of the situation.
“I’ve got two more orders of platemail left to make by next week, and I can’t get started until I clear their armor out of the shop. And they need to pay me. This is why I ought to charge some money up front.”
His father couldn’t do that. Not with the pact that King Kylo and the Cludan Alliance had signed when Suri was just 3. That was 10 years ago, back when Proximus was fledgling under the dawn of Kylo’s rule. With advantageous deals with Cludos, Kylo envisioned a booming economy that his crown helped back through strategic loans toward weapons and defense mechanisms. Innovation begot land, and land begot influence. Now, Proximus was one of the most wealthy and prosperous city states in the Southern Belt, the independent states to the south of the Northern Territories. The Proximans still came to Suri’s father for their finest armor, though. Even the finest tailors could not match his care.
Suri didn’t bother arguing. He knew when he needed to let off some steam. Plus, a light day at the shop meant he could knock off early for the day and play shinny with his friends. Once he gobbled down lunch, he’d tell his mother that he planned to go scout prices among the other shops. They both knew that this meant he was done with work for the day, and she would cover for him when his father inquired as to his whereabouts. His father was serious, dedicated to his craft so much that he missed Suri’s birth from a long night at the tailory. He’d been slowly working to rein in his workaholic nature — Suri’s mother certainly helped by giving Suri room to be a young man. He only had four more year until his Promotion, when he would go off to University in the Northern Territories along his brother, Ptalos, who had been studying the tailoring arts to take over the family business. Suri had his eye on bladeworking, grown from his love of the swords that visiting traders wore on their belts. He even had some practice, sharpening and repairing chips in his metal skate blades from his long afternoons playing shinny. His mother knew that dream, but his father never inquired. He was loving, for the most part, but in true middle child fashion, Suri was out of sight and out of mind with so much work to be done.
Once they got to the house, Suri fetched his sandwich — half-burnt and leftover from supper the night before. He grabbed an Illyrian Udu fruit from the kitchen to try and mask the charred taste. His father mulled over a sandwich or some leftover beef roast. Willow grabbed the remnants of a cheese wheel and some toasted bread, while his mother fussed over a crock of Needlethorn soup that had been slowly roasting on the fire pit outside all morning. He could hear her muttering to herself from the cracks in the front shutters. Before his father could finish choosing the beef, Suri had housed his meal — Udu juice sticky across his lips. His father laughed. Once he got out of the shop, his father’s stress vanished. But Suri knew this moment was fleeting, a glimpse into the man he wished he could be as much as an escape from the overworked reality.
Suri walked outside and walked up to the crock. It smelled fucking delicious. He had no idea what his mom was frustrated with, but he knew the night’s dinner was going to meet the highest bar he could imagine.
“I’m going to scout out the prices in the shop,” he said. “There aren’t many customers, and the afternoon is bound to be slower.”
“Yeah, I figured you were going to say that,” she replied, then paused to think. Suri couldn’t tell if this was good or bad, but he could feel the cool wind of a mountain pond on his face just thinking about the shinny games he had in store.
“Be careful, and I want you back within the gates with light to spare. There are rumors of an envoy from Proximus coming in this afternoon, and the guards aren’t going to be so easygoing if you’re out past closure.”
“With that going,” Suri gestured toward the crock, “I’ll be home with time to spare. Are you making potato rolls, too?”
“Your father is going to make them when he gets home. He didn’t make dinner last night, so it’s his turn.”
So that meant the potato rolls were going to be burnt. Lovely. He groaned and his mother smirked. With that approval, Suri ran inside, grabbed his skates off the coat hooks behind the door, and jetted toward his friends’ house.
Lio and Kiril were Suri’s best friends since birth. Their families owned three shops in a row in the Cludan Market and they all had children within a few years of each other. Lio’s mom forged blades and arrowheads — Suri always thought Lio was so lucky — and her dad baked bread on the other side of the kiln. Kiril’s dad was a hunter who left for long expeditions into the Northern Territory; his mother worked as a butcher, preserving and slicing what her husband caught and selling it to other shopkeepers whose work kept them within the walls. Back when the children had barely learned to walk, the families took turns watching the next generation — something Ptalos helped with, too. As they grew, helping around their respective family shops, they only grew closer from seeing each other every day — and, maybe from the occasional shenanigan.
This was such an event. Suri banged twice on the shutters of Lio’s house, then banged four times on Kiril’s across the street. This was the code for an excursion into the mountains for some pond shinny. Grab your stick, grab your skates and run out before a parent stops you. They all understood the assignment.
Lio bolted outside first, stick in hand and skates dangling from her neck. She had auburn hair and tan skin, with smudges of ash here and there from working on blades with her mother. Suri once saw her break a stick in her hands when they lost a three-on-three tournament. She was yoked, and damn hard to play against. Kiril snuck out last, but his stick clumsily smacked the frame of his door. It didn’t really matter — his parents let him do whatever, anyway. He was short and built, well-fed from select cuts from the family butchery. He was a menace on the ice, too, though Suri’s quick speed made skating laps around Kiril easy. He’d tire out after a couple games, and then Suri would take over. He could already envision the goals, planning out the celebrations he’d hit.
“Make sure that everyone can hear you,” Suri yapped.
Kiril scrunched his face and gave a nyuh sound.
“I’ve been pent up in the forge all day and I’ve been sweating like a pig,” Lio said. “Let’s go to the far pond, I could use the cold air.”
The kids played at three different ponds. There was the flood pond near the southern orchards, where runoff from the mountains filled a small pond that froze during the winter. Closer to the city, though, it was just starting to freeze as the eastern winds ushered in autumn. A little further away but more often frozen, Suri’s brother had found a pond near an outcrop of caves when he was younger. This is where he taught Suri to skate, before he and his friends went to the far pond. The far pond was a trek, all the way to Shadowmill Pass, the gateway to Proximus, at least an hour’s hike in the snow. But, the crystal clear ice was the best to skate on, and the cold air of the mountain burned their lungs with freedom when they skated there. It was always Kiril’s first choice, too, and Suri liked the idea as well. The only problem was getting home before curfew, but he figured they’d have at least a couple hours of time up there before they needed to head back.
“Let’s go”
***
Suri didn’t notice the soldiers walking toward him until it was too late. He didn’t notice when hundreds of Proximan soldiers set up barricades across Shadowmill Pass. He didn’t even hear the incantations of mages knocking boulders into rubble to create roadblocks.
All Suri noticed was that he had scored a goal, and his friends didn’t come celebrate with him.
He’d been outside for hours on his skates, playing shinny with his friends in the cold biting winds of the Shadowmill Mountains. This was a regular Saturday occurrence for the kids — go to work in the stalls for the morning, helping their families make a living trading flipping wares for the merchants of Proximus and Illyria, then finish the day with games of ice tag, races and more. By the time they reached home, it would take hours to thaw by the fire as they chowed down a warm meal. Suri was thinking about his mother’s Needlethorn soup and crispy potato rolls. They were his favorite comfort food, and at 16, he could eat a lot of them.
Right now, in this instant though, food was a long way from his mind. Right now, he was focused on winning. Down 5-4 in a shinny game going to seven, he had knotted the score against his friends Lio and Kiril. He wondered why no one came to defend against him as he buried the puck into a net marked by rocks and twigs. He turned around and quickly found out why.
That’s when Suri saw a gaggle of Proximan soldiers walking his way, 100 meters away and armed with halberds that scared him deeply. It looked like something out of his history book in school. It looked like something he didn’t want any part of. But something made his skates stick firm in the ice, holding his ground as the soldiers approached him. Lio and Kiril glided back toward him from a few meters out. Lio dropped her stick on the way over.
“Stop, don’t move at all,” the leader barked at them. That wasn’t a problem for Suri. His friends stood still, too.
“Who are you?” he barked again. “Where do you come from?”
“We’re from Cludos, we … we were just skating,” Lio spat out. “Who are you?”
“Don’t you know this isn’t time for games? This is a time of war.”
“War?” Kiril cut in, confusion across his face.
“Haven’t you heard? King Kylo declared war on your dithering city this morning.”
Suri hadn’t heard, but he’d seen the adults acting strange all morning. His father and mother spoke in hushed tones on the back porch as Suri ate his lunch, and there was a surprising lack of customers in the stalls. He had actually snuck away from the stalls early, leaving his sister Willow to mind the shop as he snuck out to the mountains. No one, though, had told him what was going on, nor had anyone told his friends.
Suri sensed danger — really, it was obvious with a dozen or so armed men around the lead soldier. But he sensed bloodlust, anger. He felt hated. And he knew why when he glanced down the row of soldiers and saw a man sizing him up, white knuckles on his halberd.
“What are we doing, fooling around, let’s capture them as ransom,” the man barked. “Maybe we can teach those Cludan dolts not to venture into our holdings.”
“Hold your temper, Vyron,” the lead soldier said, “these children aren’t a threat. They’re just unwise.” There was something in that last word, something unholy that made Suri’s skin crawl. Again he wanted to flee, but his feet wouldn’t budge. It was like he couldn’t communicate with them, like they spoke a different language.
The lead soldier stepped forward and leaned down in front of Suri, the ice crunching under his armored boots. His face frightened Suri deeply. A scar ran from the corner of the man’s left eye down across his nose and lip, interrupted by his mouth only to continue on the other side. His nose curled down, as if smashed into the lip from which a long mustache and beard hung from in wild directions. The effect produced a deep rasp to his voice, like he was trying to breathe hard while speaking. It was unsettling, and the tone of his voice made Suri think he was in danger.
“What’s your name, boy?” His breath reeked. Suri stayed speechless.
“His name’s Suri,” Lio cut in. The man raised a glove to hush him, not so much as looking in Lio’s direction. The man’s arm was well-padded with leather armor, fur sticking out of it at the joints. Mobile armor, the kind his father sold to the Proximans last harvest season. The deal had given Suri’s family so much wealth of food and dry goods. They traded some of it for the skates he wore now. God if they didn’t make that trade, maybe he wouldn’t be here right now.
“Suri, is it? Well, you’re quite the monk. Are you afraid of me, Suri?”
Yes, there’s really not a question about that, Suri thought. He felt a pit in his stomach just looking at the man, let alone his band of armed men behind him. If this was a time of war, if he was in danger, these men might kill him. Suri didn’t know what side he fell on, but he knew it wasn’t theirs. They knew it, too.
He gulped before saying no.
The man chuckled, his feet chopping up and down as he turned back toward his fellow soldiers.
“Should he be scared?” the man shouted, stretching his arms wide as if to put on a show. His halberd gleamed in the sun that bounced off the ice.
Suri didn’t hang around to find out what happened next. As if freed by a broken spell, his feet finally worked, and he gathered the courage to dart away. With a turn of his skates, he bolted behind him, scrambling along the ice off a falling start. As soon as he moved, Lio and Kiril darted away, too. The soldiers gave chase, trying to run across the ice in their clunky armor. But skates are faster than boots on ice, and the boys got away. Suri turned behind him to see Lio right on his heels, a look of sheer panic on her face. Kiril was a few lengths behind Lio, a product of his being the worst skater in the group. In panic, his strides only worsened with imprecision. Suri could see his friend’s face reddening as his rapid breaths gave way to a pant. He hoped he could keep up, but he was too afraid to do anything. Behind Kiril, the soldiers started to pick up pace as they adjusted to the icy conditions. Another group of soldiers, and what looked to be mages in dark robes, lined up along the shoreline and watched.
The pond Suri skated on linked up to a small brook that ran through the mountains. He used to fish here sometimes with his brother, before he left for school in the Northern Territories. Now, he skated along the increasingly thin ice, keeping his momentum to avoid falling through to the babbling water underneath. With every breath he took, the cold mountain air stung his lungs. It made him feel alive, even though he had just escaped what he assumed might’ve been his death. There was something about those soldiers, their energy, that just made him unnerved to the depths of his soul.
Something bugged him about what he’d heard, too, and he pondered his shattered reality as he skated down the brook. Was Proximus really at war with Cludos? Months ago, Suri’s dad had spoken about the diplomatic relations between Cludos and its two major trading partners — Proximus and Illyria — at dinner a week ago. Cludos’ position between the two major mountain passes made it the perfect place for traders to spread their wares. The thin Isthmus of Cludos was a much easier place to trade goods than taking them to the water, where the rocky crags of the Shadowmill Range would have to be crossed anyway. Cludos grew from a collection of huts into a booming metropolis, and a variety of goods and services sprung up. That included his father, whose fourth-generation tailory provided the best armor in the region, and his mother, whose language mastery made her a valuable interpreter for sensitive business negotiations. Especially for the merchants of Illyria, who had been fighting Birmule over some islands in the Isper Sea, her interpretations were of vital importance. Given such an intermediary relationship with Proximus, Suri didn’t understand why war would break out against Cludos. He hardly knew what to expect from war to begin with, just the stories his father passed down of his grandfather’s bravery in some battles against rogue raiders in the Isper during his youth. That was so far back, and even if the region wasn’t always at total peace, no one ever challenged Cludos.
Lio shouted to him, “Slow down, the ice thins at the bend up ahead.” She was right, and Suri turned his skates inward to slow down. In their haste to get away, they had forgotten their shoes and a basket full of supplies on the far bank of the pond. Oh well, better to lose a basket than to lose a life. Suri looked back for Kiril as he slowed, taking stock of the situation. He didn’t see his friend, just Lio with a look of dread.
“Where’s Kiril?” Suri asked.
“I … he was behind me,” Lio said, her words as inquisitive as they were informative. “Maybe he’ll catch up?”
“We’d better wait,” Suri said, scanning the rock piles that lined the banks of the brook. This waterway ran all the way to Cludos, but it didn’t stay frozen once the mountains dropped into the plains. To his left and right, tall rises blocked the sun’s rays and cast long shadows over the narrow valley he and Lio stood in. No immense power formed such a construction, only the continual flow of water from all the tributary streams.
One rock crag stood out to him, hooking up and over a sort of cave. He could hardly see it unless he looked backward.
“Let’s go up there and take our skates off. It’ll hurt to walk on all this gravel, but at least we won’t fall in.”
Lio nodded in agreement and glided over toward where Suri pointed.
Waddling off the ice, Suri’s skates stuck deep in the mud as his skates cut through the frosty surface of the ground. He couldn’t step on the rocks along the way or he’d bend his steel. Squelching and squapping with every step, Lio followed him, taking different footsteps to avoid sinking too deep. Once they reached the back of the rock formation, Suri turned around, lifting his feet and marching in a circle, before sitting on a small rock at the back of the semi-cave. His back angled at a sharp degree, barely fitting enough to take off his skates. It was icky work, but Suri couldn’t just take them off in the mud. With the pull of his laces, the rough bear leather felt heavy with the saturation of mud.
Once Suri and Lio took off their skates, they tucked under the rocky soil at the back of the cave and squatted out of sight. The angle wasn’t perfect concealment if the soldiers passed them and doubled back, but it was enough that with silence, they could avoid detection until they saw Kiril. How far would the soldiers chase them, anyway? After all, they were just kids. They weren’t a threat, even if they were threatened.
They waited, and they waited, but Kiril didn’t show up. What seemed like ages felt even longer as adrenaline faded and the kids didn’t see their friend. The moments felt heavy as they dragged forward. The sun dipped further behind the sheer edges of the mountain. They needed to go home, otherwise they’d be trapped in the dark.
“We should …” Lio said.
“I know,” Suri said with woe. “What if we wait five more minutes?
“We don’t have two to spare, let alone five. We need to get out of this pass before we’re stranded in the dark.”
She was right. Suri grabbed his skates and trudged forward. He looked out of the crag before exiting, scanning for a soldier. He didn’t see one, and he balanced across the stones that avoided sinking in the mud.
They trudged forward down the pass, scanning behind them to see if Kiril would show, or if a soldier might catch up to them. Suri had a sinking feeling, like he’d abandoned a friend. Had he? He didn’t know. He focused on the footsteps it would take to get back home, but his mind kept tracing back to the last time he saw Kiril.
Once they left the cover of the mountains, the sun opened up for a few more hours of light now that the cliffs didn’t block their angle. Plenty of time to make the 20 minute walk to Cludos, and plenty of time before the town guards locked the walls. On a night like this, with their friend missing, they wanted to get home desperately and get some help. Suri wanted someone to step in and help him. He wondered how Lio might have felt. The three had been friends since they first helped around the family stalls. Their parents were stall neighbors, and fate had it that they were born within a few months of each other. That made them practically inseparable ever since. Practically.
By the time Suri and Lio got to the walls of Cludos, the sun’s rays grazed ever so slightly over the walls, shining in their eyes as they closed the final meters of their woeful trek home. These gates were usually wide open, with a parade of farmers and traveling merchants wandering to and fro. Today, the gates were blasted open in fiery wreckage. Smoke rose form deep inside the walls, billowing around where the Merchant Hall stood towering at the center of the city. As the smoke became more and more prominent in their vision, Suri panicked, thinking of his family. Were his parents and sister safe? What about his home? Where was everyone?
“We shouldn’t go in the main gate,” Lio advised, and Suri agreed. There was no way they’d make it past whatever caused that wreckage, and they needed to figure out what happened before they took such blatant risks.
Suri and Lio snuck down into a gully to the east of the gate, entering the city through a drainage grate that led right behind their house. Kiril had wandered into it once when they were kids and gotten frightened, but the antics discovered one of their favorite covert entrances when they partook in shenanigans. Now, they used it to enter the city under much more dire circumstances.
When they emerged from the tunnel grate — peeking around to see if anyone was there, the area was oddly calm. Suri walked up to his back door, scanning cautiously, and peered through the window slats. Seeing no one, he clicked open the latch and opened it slowly — cautious halfway through for a squeak in the hinge. A hand reached out and stopped the door.
Willow shushed him and told him to back away. His mother and father were behind her, staring at the front of the house without breaking eye contact. They backed away slowly as Willow ushered Suri out the door.
“There are soldiers outside,” she whispered, pointing back toward the drainage grate. Lio stood watching, hesitantly looking toward her own home.
“Your parents are outside the walls,” his mother said to Lio as she walked out of the door. “We’ll meet them outside, but it’s not safe here.”
As the five of them walked back down the drainage tunnel, every step felt like a mile, and every second a day. Suri had lost his friend, lost his hometown and lost everything he could count on. As the twilight dawned on his face as he exited the tunnel, Suri began to cry.
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