Sovereign Ice

II

In the Age Hereafter

Michael

Envision if you will the crumbs of a long-forgotten meal swept from a dusty hearth. That, my love, is what remains of the Earth we knew. 

You’ve seen how languages carried through, to a degree, but without a brain as magical as that possessed by the metal man, years of scholarship, not mere moments, would have been needed to bridge the connection between our world and the new.

Of the Great Change, I’ll provide more detail once the mother-goddess known as Maya comes more fully into view. For Maya alone stood at the center of that change, taking it into herself more fully than all the rest of the world combined. 

For now, it is enough to know that nation states and philosophies, networks of trade, religions, and ways of life, all deeply rooted and without the slightest recognition of their own mortality, became equal in the moment of their annihilation. 

After that, there was nothing to argue about anymore. 

To say that one percent of humanity survived would be a vast overstatement. And with the rest went all of mankind’s beliefs and prejudices, all medicines and miracles. The slate was wiped clean. 

The living world too collapsed, fated to suffer yet another great extinction, of the sort the Earth has known more than once in its long cycle through the stars. It was an extinction during which the thinnest of lines separated man from beast, and a feral darkness took its toll on both the greatest and the least of souls. 

Rats survived. A few cockroaches too. As with man, the barest breeding populations of birds and fish, of insects and growing things, of predator and prey, in whatever space or foothold could be found - these all together spent the centuries holding on.

In time, the world that was gave way completely to a new foundation. Among humans, populations once threadbare began to rise slowly from the brink of extinction. Farming and husbandry were reborn. History began again, built on the vague memories of a few survivors, on ideas carried with them out of the generations of the Great Change, from the time when the seeds of new mythologies were sewn. 

And then there was magic. The change brought with it more than the sweep of death. On its heels came a metamorphosis of nature. There was a reordering of things both vast and small, such that powers we of old deemed but fanciful now became real, as influential as gunpowder or the atom and as rare as gold. 

So it was that Major Ulean DeVries of the Fourth Troop a Foot found himself fascinated, but not alarmed, when a man of metal and a massive saber-toothed cat joined his side in a contest with Keltoi raiders.

The Major recognized power when he saw it and opportunity too. If anything, this was a gift of the moment and a promise of more to come.

###

In the Age of Discovery

Major Ulean DeVries

Waste nothing, especially luck.

“Come, I wish to thank you,” said Major DeVries to the metal man. “There is time to rest, and to look after your feline… ah, companion.” When he noticed the uneasy angle at which the armored giant stood, DeVries added: “We’ll tend to you as well. I will have the company surgeon look after you both. Please, this way.” For a moment, DeVries thought of alerting the giant to the blood it had acquired across both mask and chest armor, but finally decided against such etiquette. For today at least, such a fearful look had virtues of its own.

The Major turned, putting his back to the unusual pair in a gesture of good faith. With an outstretched hand he beckoned them toward the wagons. DeVries had almost made his way back to the picket line before he heard the first stirring of movement behind him. They were coming! 

It was obvious the armored giant spoke little of the Ayelsford tongue, and what he did speak had become quaint with age. The tall one seemed to be recalling his grammar in bits and pieces as he tried to answer DeVries. And there was something else that puzzled him, something more than the simplicity of the giant’s phrasing, something the Major yet could not put into words.

With a smile, DeVries realized he was a bit uneasy as to whether there was a man within that suit of armor at all, or if the metal mannequin itself had been magically animated and brought to life. The cat seemed real enough, but of no living species with which he had experience, either from the explorations of his own people or from the few records and precious histories they had managed to recover from the past.

Could the giant be from the Old World, and his enormous feline chattel too? Had they stepped across a thousand years to meet him at this place and time? Their names they had given in three syllables, and two were for the cat. ’Sky’ and ‘Air-Rock.’ It was like nothing DeVries had heard in all his travels.

Certainly, there was magic involved. He had donned his white ceremonial gloves for more than mere appearance. They provided a safe barrier against touch-borne enchantments, and there remained the possibility that the coincident arrival of these massive and mysterious outliers was no coincidence at all. If they had been sent to interfere in this brief engagement with the raiders, he could only conclude their assistance would come at a great price later. The game had already cost him three troopers dead, and his scouts unheard from.

Best to keep the giants close and make every effort to draw out their true nature. 

“Color Sergeant Connel, any word from Lieutenant Graynam?” DeVries shouted for all to hear, even though the sergeant stood but a few strides distant.

“No, sir,” answered the stocky elder of DeVries’ command. Silver haired and somewhat punctilious, Connel commanded the respect of the Troop. It was clear to the Major that if Connel and he were ever to give simultaneous and contradictory commands, the word of the Color Sergeant would be in action before the old campaigner had finished speaking. 

“He’ll soon see the smoke from our pyres,” Connel went on, “or smell it.”

“Perhaps,” DeVries nodded. “You think Graynam and his pony soldiers are still out there? I don’t like it, losing contact so completely. He’s to screen us from raiders, now we’ve three dead and …” Voice rising, DeVries’ arm shot out in a gesture toward the anomalous giants now close upon his heels. “…and that! You’d think they’d have seen that! When they mount those exalted ponies of theirs, is the air so thin at that height it precludes common sense?”

“I’m hoping the Lieutenant and his men might still be with us, sir.”

 “Of course,” DeVries answered. “What are the damages, Color Sergeant?”

“The three lost.”

“Of course, of course,” DeVries interrupted. “Wounds and the like? Munitions and supplies?

“Nothing taken, little damaged. That is, answering the last of the Major’s queries first, if you take my meaning. As to the other, Trooper Niamh took her first wound, a flesh cut ‘cross the thigh. She’ll be limpin’ but fine. Ah, and one of the oxen’s in a bad way, sir.” 

“I see. Color Sergeant. We’ll encamp here for the night. No use running if they come back for a fight. Keep the men gathering wood. I want fires enough for twice our number. Guard the oxen downwind of the big cat.”

Clearing his throat, Connel diverted his eyes downward and spoke more softly. “Will the Major not be falling back on the column, if you take my meaning?”

“Damned if I’ll be falling back on the column!” DeVries shouted before bringing himself under control. “Our orders,” he continued more circumspectly, “were to fall back upon encountering a superior force. Correct me if I’m wrong, Color Sergeant, but the odds were barely three to one, and they without firearms. And we, we…” he said, hooking his thumb over his shoulder, “have a metal giant and a mountain-sized lion, or tiger, or whatever the hell that is, on our side.” At a whisper, DeVries added. “No more talk of falling back now, eh, Color Sergeant? You wouldn’t see that flag you carry turning at the first sign of trouble?” He smiled.

“They’re on our side then, Major?” asked Connel, speaking loudly enough that all could hear and take comfort from his words.

“Of course. Of course. Or, they will be shortly,” DeVries said with more determination than confidence. He turned back toward Skye, throwing an expansive smile in the direction of the towering metal mannequin. “Color Sergeant, let’s find out if we can ease their wounds and fill their bellies!”

And so they did, although it took DeVries a frustrating amount of time to understand the necessities as experienced by his magical guests. Stools were brought for them to sit on, one for DeVries and two for the giant. There were few pleasantries they could exchange, but DeVries plunged in, gamely taking the measure of the being before him.

“Lord Skye,” he said, adding the title in an intuitive flourish, knowing how well shameless flattery had a way of paying dividends. “I want to thank you for your assistance today.”

The giant nodded, saying nothing.

“But can you enlighten me as to the cause?” DeVries asked. “Or the coincidence? How did you chance upon us so fortuitously?”

“I don’t know…” was all the metal man managed in return.

The more he conversed with the metal giant, the easier their discourse became, but the Major found that merely getting the words right provided little success. Unless the headache building behind his eyes had stolen his comprehension completely, DeVries was convinced the metal man wanted nothing more than to be taken back home to his mother. It was as if the mind behind the mask bore little maturity, an intellect no greater perhaps than that of a ten-year-old boy. It made DeVries think of his son and wonder what young Sobel was up to, back at home.

As to the cat, although the creature evidenced nothing remotely like a voice, DeVries was taken aback by its glancing, expressive actions, and by what appeared to be a silent conversation it was having with the metal man. 

Whatever the point DeVries had made, Skye would turn to Erok and, after a gesture of the hand or the subtlest cant of the head, return his attention to the Major as though confidences had been exchanged and the words conveyed to DeVries jointly considered. Certainly, when DeVries considered the green eyes of the saber-toothed beast, he saw what must be fires of intelligence burning alongside its untamed soul.

The more he watched the metal man, the more it became clear to DeVries that the armor plate was not something Skye wore, but was a part of the giant as certainly as DeVries’ own calluses were a part of his skin.

Whatever inhabited the marrow of those massive joints, DeVries doubted it was flesh and blood. Coming to the same conclusion, the surgeon sent to attend Skye’s ankle soon gave up, and with a helpless shake of her head gladly stepped to the veterinary side of her practice. 

“She wants you to lie down,” Skye explained to Erok at the Major’s direction. “This is Surgeon Raimi. She needs to touch your shoulder.” With a grunt, the saber-tooth eased to her belly, leaning slightly to bring her hurt within easy reach of the surgeon.

After examining the saber-tooth’s wound, the woman drew the biggest surgical needle she could find from her kit. It was not enough, and so a tent mending needle was called for, boiled clean, and quickly turned the trick.

“Easy, big girl,” Raimi said in a calming tone. But as she threaded the needle through the oozing tear in Erok’s shoulder, the big cat barely winced, going on to endure the surgeon’s work with less dispute than many a hardened soldier. 

“Lord Skye,” DeVries asked suddenly, “does the big cat not feel pain?” 

At first the armored giant was silent, preoccupied until DeVries repeated his query.

“Yes, oh yes.” The metal man answered, stepping away from the saber-tooth, as if distancing himself from something felt all too keenly.  “And here.” The metal man touched his mid-section and circled a middle finger where a man’s stomach would have been.

“She is wounded in her belly?” DeVries asked, ducking his head down to see if any fresh blood were visible in that quarter. He could find none. “She hurts in her… Erok is hungry, is that it? Of course, of course. I could use something to eat myself,” DeVries assured Skye.

“Very hurt,” Skye emphasized. 

“What about you, Lord Skye? Are you also in need of a decent meal?”

But the more the metal man explained, the worse the Major’s headache became. That Skye had no need for human sustenance, neither for bread nor beer was not surprising, but what did he mean about being filled from time to time by the spirit of Maya? 

“You’re telling me that you have no need to eat,” DeVries confirmed.

Skye nodded.

But the saber-tooth, the metal giant assured him, was a different matter. Erok had not eaten in days, perhaps a week since the food they carried with them had run out. She was starving.

“We began in the wind, where the ice is high,” Skye explained. “Maya made a sled for us and we packed it full. But the ice never ended. Until today.”

 “I’m not sure what we might…” DeVries began and stopped. “She could hunt, couldn’t she? These woods have game.” The thought of a thousand pounds of starving predator so close at hand, regardless of its present civility, was more than DeVries was prepared to accept.

He had an idea. “Doc, have you seen to the wounded ox?” DeVries asked.

Applying a healing unguent to Erok’s shoulder, the surgeon worked the semi-solid paste into the spaces between her stitches and answered DeVries without turning from her work. “The ox? It may be hobbled. Hard to stop the bleeding on that one, it’s already torn my stitches.” 

“Color Sergeant!” DeVries interrupted, standing at a turn to deliver his order into the maze of activity behind him. “Slaughter that ox!” 

With a slight bow and a more civil tone, he returned his attention to Skye and Erok. Addressing the metal man, he asked “Does your companion know whether she would like her dinner raw or roasted?”

Though Skye relayed question, it seemed in fact the big cat did not have an answer. Though they led her to the fallen oxen, it did little more than present Erok with a puzzle. However anguished her stomach, she seemed unable to solve it. 

When DeVries ordered the cook to gut the ox, the big cat averted her eyes to the spill of blood and entrails.

“This is food?” Skye asked. 

“What sort of thing were you carrying on that sled of yours?” DeVries asked. “Kibble? Carrots? Wheat cakes?”

The metal giant just spread his hands as if helpless. “Erok food.”

Sighing, DeVries lowered his head. The best life had done to prepare him for this was his own young son. Here was a boy coddled too tenderly by his mother. When hungry, Sobel often turned up his nose at wild meat, finding it acceptable only when cloaked beyond measure in a stew or gravy pie.

DeVries turned to the man in leather boots and bloodied apron, a dripping bayonet still gripped in his right hand. “Cooky, get this beast a pail of corn cakes and a case of our bottled beef. After that, let’s butcher some steaks for the troop tonight. For the big cat, too. I hold little faith the corn cakes will go far. For our feline guest, I want the ox cut up, spiced, stewed, gravied, mashed – I don’t care what you need to do to it, just find something she’ll eat! Get whatever help you need.” 

“And for the armored gentleman, Major?”

“Maybe some axle grease,” DeVries quipped. “Just a joke, Cooky. I don’t think our tall friend will be eating. But I want the cat well fed. Do you hear me?”

“Aye, Major, I have the notion.”

Turning to Skye, DeVries smiled and made an expansive gesture with his still gloved hands. “Lord Skye, forgive me. Your companion obviously has a more refined taste in victuals. My men will now make every effort to prepare an acceptable meal for…Erok.” He watched the imposing saber-tooth with curiosity, seeing if it understood. A heartbeat later, its eyes brightened. The message had been conveyed.

“You have the freedom of the camp, Lord Skye. I ask only that you keep Erok a fair distance from the oxen. They seem a bit skittish in her presence. Other than that, your needs will be attended to as best we can, and later, after I have attended to my duties, we shall see if we can help one another, eh?”

With that, DeVries took his leave, making his first duty the delivery of instructions that would keep his troop alert for any untoward actions on the part of the cat and metal man. He had seen some remarkably large bears go down before only a few Ayelsford percussion rifles. The saber-tooth would be no different, wounded as it already was and soon to be weighed down by a heavy meal. It would be vulnerable. And the giant. Even a giant relied on his legs, arms, and eyes. His sharpshooters should be able to deal with some of those features. 

The one thing the Major did not know was whether either of his guests could wield magic against him. That worry kept gnawing at the back of his brain, that and wondering after the fate of his scouts, including the young Lieutenant Graynam.

In the Age of Discovery

Skye and Erok

To say Skye found his new circumstances overwhelming would be to imagine the confusion of a child lost amid the raucous avenues of the Ayelsford capital. As much as that child might, Skye wanted to see once again the reassuring face of his parent, of the mother-goddess Maya who had been his source of life, knowledge, and meaning for all the days he could remember. 

Skye and his saber-tooth companion Erok had always spoken to Maya in the same thought-to-thought, feeling-to-feeling fashion by which they communicated with one another, but the limits of that communion had been sorely tested within a day or two of stepping beyond Maya’s sanctuary. 

At first Maya’s voice grew dim and, by the time her last whispers spoke of loneliness and regret, pleading for their return, the way back had already been blocked by snowfall and the thunderous opening of new crevasses. Soon after, the voice of their mother-goddess was gone. 

As Skye spread his hands close to the intense heat of a funeral pyre, he had to admit that being among this group of men was better than slogging across the ice. At least they were no longer alone, and brave Erok, who had endured hunger without complaint, was now being fed the best these troops could offer. In fact, she had been at it for hours, making quick work at first of a few yellowed corn cakes, then applying her broad tongue to something the cook had broken out of bottles and warmed over one of the fires now blazing all about the camp. Finally, they spit-roasted the dead oxen, which –when properly cut and seasoned - Erok had accepted as to her liking.

The troopers too praised their share in the meal, congratulating the oxen on its wonderful flavor, though the poor beast, Skye considered, was no longer in a position to appreciate their enthusiasm.

Even though he had wandered nearly a hundred yards away, Skye could feel the satisfied hum of Erok’s thoughts as she licked at meat bits and juices. It was the fate of the dead that had piqued his curiosity and, by standing at the pyre, he could both warm himself and watch as the flesh, costumes, and bone of the corpses dissolved in the raging fire.

It smelled bad, death did. It looked worse. He had never seen anything of the like until the raiders came to call on Maya and her sanctuary.

Before the assault on their home, the metal man had understood death only as a concept, much as a child might, without any mental wrangling about ultimate meaning. Now concern gripped him about Erok’s wound and the immediacy and danger of everything about them. He wanted to go home.

He had watched the soldiers build two pyres, one for their own dead troopers and one for the enemy fallen. Seven bodies in all. It seemed they wished to be dutiful to both, but placing the corpse of a raider next to their own would be less than respectful to the latter and an undeserved honor for the former. The subtlety escaped Skye’s reckoning, but he noted it for future reference.

He remembered nothing like these burning pyres from the tales Maya held in memory. He had not seen them in the projected plays and histories that often trailed across the cavern walls, offering flickering images of the age before. What Skye knew of death were headstones and cemetery lawns, comforting tree-lined properties awaiting the endless repose of humans and animals alike: these were Skye’s view of courtesies due a departed soul.

When he asked, the woman in charge of the pyres explained that the frozen ground permitted no digging. A handbreadth below the surface the ground lay as solid as stone, and graves were a luxury for noble and notable men, back in the heart of the Ayelsford (the land they called home).

Skye took it all in, watching everything, listening even with his back to the body of the camp, overwhelming his senses in a flood of visual and auditory information, some of it coming from Erok. He listened as the soldiers assigned to hauling wood and building fires grumbled at their task. Half-heartedly, they recognized the value of DeVries’ trick in building more fires than needed, deceiving the enemy into believing more troopers had joined them. Even so, they didn’t like slogging into the darkening forest to gather and chop wood. They liked less the quality of the kindling, as only a small amount seemed naturally fit for burning. The bad state of the wood led to the necessity of adding an accelerant. 

“We’ll be sorry about this,” said one female soldier. “It’s wasteful of the little we have.” In a gloved hand, she crushed a small, dark-colored square. Crystal facets within the resulting powder caught the light of nearby fires, then began to glow as she sprinkled the dust across a pyramid of freshly cut wood. Smoke followed, slowly at first, but as the female brushed the last of the glassy powder from her gloves, the new fire had begun to catch.

“Nothing to worry about. The column is well supplied with magics,” opined another trooper, an older male. “That’s Senator Cintratus back there with the General. You think they’ll let her catch cold?”

“No,” answered the first. “Just us.”

Soon the camp was as warm as the deepest parts of Maya’s sanctuary, and Skye luxuriated in the heat. It seemed to help him heal faster. Already the small depression left in his chest by the gunshot was barely noticeable, and his ankle had corrected itself by several degrees. His limp was far less pronounced.

Later, as night fell, the camp remained relatively light, its many fires reflecting down from a layer of clouds which had settled not far above the tallest trees. Some talked of a snow coming, and others of how it was too late in the season. In the heat from the fires, DeVries had given permission for his troopers to remove their crimson jackets. Their dark undergarments made them less likely targets anyway, if one of the spear throwers skulked nearby.

While Erok continued to eat, though more slowly and with greater discrimination, Skye was summoned to a fire where a handful of troopers sat in conference, including the man who had first approached them, the leader named DeVries. Although the officers had removed their heavy jackets so close to the fire, DeVries had not.

Before taking a seat, Skye was introduced in turn to captains Reese and Trumbull, lieutenants Gilford and Prince. Of the four officers, two were female: the long-faced captain named Trumbull and the small lieutenant called Gilford, whose blond pigtail caught Skye’s attention.  All were holding thick, well-handled mugs, from which they occasionally drank.

“More officers than needed for such a small party,” DeVries explained, “an unusual vanguard. Reese speaks several native tongues, including the language of the Keltoi, those raiders we tangled with today, though he didn’t have much opportunity to parlay. 

“Trumbull is our engineer and surveyor, making maps as we go. I think she plans future Ayelsford outposts and highways in her dreams. 

“Lieutenant Gilford is a journeyman mage; nothing too fancy, but she oversees the box of tricks we do have. 

“Prince there, him with the glasses, he’s our scholar and historian. Looks for any trace of Old World knowledge, legend, or artifact. Of course, all that embroidery is on top of their regular duties. Fair hands with swords and firearms all.” DeVries raised his mug and took a small sip. Skye noted the steam rising from the rim. “We were just in the midst of an argument we hoped you might solve.”

“I don’t know,” Skye answered, feeling doubtful. “I’m still… catching up to the way you speak. I don’t know, but I’ll try.”

“Of course, of course. The question,” DeVries said with quiet seriousness, “was whether you and your companion are somehow from the Old World. Before the Great Change. Or are you entirely magical beings? Minions of the Frost Queen, perhaps?”

Skye canted his head and replayed the question a few dozen times within the quiet of his thoughts. It took a millisecond or two. “Minion. A servile, obsequious follower. Do I have the word right? ‘Frost Queen’ is unfamiliar… Do I have the words right?”

“Lord Skye, I’m certain the Major meant no insult,” said Captain Reese, using the noble title DeVries had first applied. “We know the Frost Queen holds sway in the North.”

The honorific had been given to Skye without any reason the metal man could discern, but so far he had taken no pains to correct its usage. 

“Minion,” explained the linguist, “was meant it in the sense of ‘subject,’ rather than ‘citizen,’ - as we would call ourselves citizens of the Ayelsford.” A glance from Reese to DeVries brought back the slightest of smiles, and Reese went on. “‘Frost Queen’ now, that may present a similar dissonance between our dialects.”

“Dissonance,” Skye repeated haplessly.

“We were wondering,” said Lieutenant Gilford - the female in charge of the troop’s magic - about the being you had mentioned to the Major, the mother figure you called Maya. Could she be one and the same as the Frost Queen, the authority whom we seek to meet?”

Skye’s emotions leapt in an instant. At once he realized these troopers might be his escort home. They were soldiers, seasoned wayfarers. Already they had proven kind enough to treat Erok’s wounds and feed her. They referred to Skye himself as a “lord.”

He answered cautiously. “I’m so sorry, Lieutenant Gilford. I cannot know. Perhaps if you tell me more of the Frost Queen, I can say. I have never heard Maya call herself by that name. Never by that name.”

Gilford was about to speak again when DeVries thrust his mug forward in a gesture to interrupt. “We should make it a game!” said DeVries. “Rather than our fair-haired Gilford say all she knows of the Frost Queen, I’m thinking she will tell one thing and you, Lord Skye, the next. We will go back and forth in this way, to see how few rounds are needed to reach a conclusion.”

The need for a game confused Skye but did not seem onerous. Then he realized, suddenly and with a falling heart, that if they needed to ask him about Maya they could not know the way back to her sanctuary. And if these soldiers meant her harm, they had far more means to do so than the wild men they called the Keltoi. His hopes splintering across the hardness of these new thoughts, Skye remained silent for a time, but DeVries continued to press for the game.

“The Frost Queen lives high in the mountains to the north,” Gilford began, “her kingdom protected behind miles of snow and ice.” 

Skye admitted the similarity to Maya, except for his uncertainty on the direction north. A helpful gesture from DeVries did little to clarify. Never having been outside Maya’s sanctuary, Skye was completely disoriented as to the path their journey had taken.

It now occurred to Skye that DeVries’ contest had its advantages, allowing him to say less about Maya than he might otherwise be encouraged to divulge. He wondered if DeVries felt the same way about the Frost Queen.

“Lord Skye and the saber-tooth came down from that glacier on our west flank,” offered the female named Trumbull. “Though the ice fields could wind along a circuit, up into to the north, I suppose.”

“Tales tell of a palace of blue crystal light, a city no man has yet to see.” It was Gilford again providing the description.

Skye doubted the word city applied to Maya’s sanctuary, but he had always loved the blue crystal lights. There were places throughout her caverns where Maya had set the stories she carried with her into the Great Change to playing along the walls. These were the remnants of her school books, her music, her bits of cinema, all the coiled and compact collections that had hung lightly over her shoulder on the day of the Great Change. 

These plays of shadow and light had shifted like endless memorials across the smoothed walls of a darkened cavern. In those blue flickers, Skye had learned of the world that used to rest beyond their sanctuary: of mermaids and meal worms, of electricity and elephants. He knew of skyscrapers and boy scouts, of pyramids and politics, of witches, wars, and wandering heroes. It was all a grand encyclopedia of fact and fancy, with no primer to sort the matters more clearly.

As the conversation progressed, Skye found himself becoming more comfortable in the presence of these officers, and especially with DeVries, whom he began to see in the guise of the hero, of a strong and courageous warrior who might yet be persuaded to take them back home.

As best he could, Skye explained his experience with the crystal lights. Of them all, Lieutenant Prince - the historian -  seemed most impressed, even agitated.

“Do the women, the girls… Do they watch these projections for amusement or for learning?” It was Gilford who asked.

“Ah… The women. The girls,” Skye repeated, at first uncertain if their words had shifted beyond his ken. Then he knew the Frost Queen and Maya were not one and the same, for there were no other women in Maya’s palaces. Who were these girls of which the Lieutenant spoke?

“We were few,” Skye assured Prince. “There was Maya, Erok, and Bear. Myself. Bear is gone now, because bad men found our home. Raiders came, like here, today. We killed them all. But then, seeing that men still lived outside, Maya wondered if her parents might be near. She sent us to find them.”

“Parents?” DeVries asked.

“Mother and father,” Skye explained, as though the concept might be foreign to these officers. “On the day of the Great Change, she went outside, though they told her not to. Then the sky fell, and she had only our company since. But there are no streets here, no houses. Nothing I have seen in the crystal lights is here. Nothing at all.”

“Two great witches in the north!” exclaimed Gilford. “And one a child by the sound of it. What are we to make of that?”

DeVries finished his drink and grunted a short, dark laugh. “You’re a farm girl, Gilford. Were you ever surprised to see a second carrot in the same soil as the first?”

“A carrot that’s been growing a thousand years?” asked Prince. “Lord Skye, did you really live in the world before the Great Change?”

“No,” the metal man answered honestly, equating the words spoken by Lieutenant Prince with the day the sky fell. “Not me. Maya did.”

“Damned strange,” admitted Captain Trumbull. “A thousand-year-old child? Or a witch who walks through time? Eh… what’s that now?”

Behind them a commotion had begun. There were the sounds of challenges shouted and gun hammers cocked. Then the rap of ponies’ feet cleared the trees and five mounted soldiers rode into the lurid firelight, stopping just at the edge of camp.

The officers were on their feet in an instant, but hard-pressed to catch DeVries as he ran toward the new arrivals. Perhaps thinking better of his unseemly haste, the Major slowed as he neared the newcomers. There DeVries straightened, pulling at his red jacket to put it in better order. He crossed the last bit of distance at a measured pace.

From across half the camp Skye caught Erok’s startled thought and replied with an exclamation of his own. Both metal man and great cat could see clearly now: five riders and a harrowed woman, the female both crying and flailing out in a wild display of anger and anguish, such that the soldier behind her had difficulty holding her to his small mount. But it was not the woman who had shocked Maya’s children, but the lead rider alone on his mount. 

Riding at the head of the group came a thin, young sapling of an officer. He seemed both taller and younger than anyone else in DeVries’ company, but of immediate concern to Skye and Erok was his appearance. His skin was not as light, his nose a bit broader, his eyes dark but with an intensity that seemed to reflect the fires about the camp.

“Lieutenant Graynam!” DeVries shouted. “Get down off that mangy excuse for a starved cow. I don’t want to look up at you!”

Without a word the Lieutenant brought his pony to a halt within a few paces of his commanding officer and, while maintaining a posture of stiff discipline, dismounted in a single sweeping movement, hitting the ground and coming quickly to a full salute.

His skin was dark, though not as dark as the black fur hat resting ney cocked upon his head, its silver insignia glistening next to his raised hand. Lieutenant Graynam stood unspeaking.

“He must know Maya,” Skye said, expressing more hope than he wanted, but hoping nonetheless. “Or her parents. Maybe her parents!” He began to rise from his seat, but a thought from Erok held him back.

“Wait! Wait to ask,” Erok countered. “Wait. The Major is angry. Just wait…”

In a rage, DeVries confronted Graynam in a low voice. “Troopers Bishop, Pym, and Chattaway are over there burning on those pyres, Lieutenant Graynam.” Hands to hips, the Major had yet to acknowledge the lieutenant’s salute. “They would have appreciated the time to raise their rifles earlier today.” His next words came like thunder after the lightning. “Where was my cavalry? Where were the eyes of this unit when we needed them most!?”