“Why are we here, ser?”
The bells of Grimhaven were tolling somewhere behind them in the gloom. Kierke waited in the tower, rifle at the ready. Next to him, the older man shifted for a moment before settling again.
“We’re here because the Council has decreed that the north pass is to be watched at all times.” The old man pointed at the dimly seen ground in front of them. “I’ve watched this ground for thirty years now. So did my da, and his, and his before him. It’s the way of Grimhaven, young one.”
Kierke looked at the scene outside. Grey-green fog swirled ankle deep over the plain north of the low boundary wall, interspersed here and there by thin lamp posts that crooked and leaned off in a trail towards the distant, unseen pass. Gaunt, towering trees crowded the western and eastern side of the field, right up to the boundary wall. The wall itself was stone, crudely shaped but neatly stacked up to waist height, and grey under countless years of lichen and moss. The thin, weedy grass of the plain itself was unseen under the fog, as was the thin footpath that followed the lamp posts off to the pass itself.
“But why? Master Haerten told us about the semi-gaunts and their hunting parties, but I…” Kierke struggled to find the words, and fell silent. He did not have the words to explain the feeling he had in his head.
“The semi-gaunts want their land back. They were here when the Old Fathers arrived and carved Grimhaven out of the forests with hands of fire and force, and they have watched with envy and hatred as Grimhaven prospered over the years.” The old man patted the windowsill of the tower, which was made from scarred and battered plastibond. Generations of watchmen had carved their names into the grey surface, until every single inch of it was raised and ridged into names and dates. “These lands were wild and empty before the Old Fathers came. They brought light and fire from the skies, and tamed the forests. Now we prosper, while the semi-gaunts are wilder and more savage than ever.”
Kierke opened his mouth and realised that he was going to start with another question. He tried to compose his thoughts a bit more before continuing.
“This world is so big though. Grimhaven is a tiny place, and we don’t even talk to the Sky People any more.” He instinctively made the sign of the Holy Fleet over his shoulders and chest, and the old man followed without missing a beat. “We are so small, and we have not grown or pushed the boundaries of Grimhaven out for more than fifty years. The last expansion was…”
Kierke paused for a moment to try and remember the dates from his lessons, and the old man continued where he left off.
“...was in 947 After Landing, and that was more than fifty years ago now, yes.” A slow nod bent the weathered head with the greying hair. “The Phase Seven expansion was not even that large. A few acres of forest to the south, and the pipelines to the river. My da was a watchman back then. He told me how upset the semi-gaunts were.”
Kierke remembered the lesson from his own father - “Dumb questions get the lash, boy. Use your mind before your mouth.” - and spent a few moments longer to formulate his thoughts before continuing.
“It has been almost a thousand years since we arrived. No-one alive today in Grimhaven was responsible or even alive during the founding. Nor the semi-gaunts - Master Schael says that their lifetimes are shorter than ours, and they don’t have a written alphabet to share knowledge accurately between generations.” Kierke saw the images of the beasts in his mind’s eye, both the flat illustrations in their textbooks and the floating bodies in the science museum. “I am struggling to understand why they are still upset about something that happened almost a thousand years ago, to ancestors of theirs who are no longer alive, and which was done by ancestors of ours who are also no longer alive.”
The old watchman chuckled quietly when Kierke finished, but his answer was not immediately forthcoming. Kierke watched the fields, and the swirling fog, and wondered if the old man would report him to the Council.
“You ask difficult questions, young one. I can see why they assigned you to guard duty,” the old man eventually replied. His hands went to the binoculars on the side of the windowsill, and he lifted the devices to his eyes to scan the fog-shrouded field ahead of them for a few moments before lowering the lenses again. Kierke looked in the same direction, and saw one of the distant lamp posts flicker twice before settling into its previous steady glow again.
“Have you ever been over the bridge that crosses Beston Canyon?”
Kierke thought back to the last time that he had been in the western parts of Grimhaven, then nodded when remembered the old bridge. It had been built in the first century after the founding, and was rather worn by now - if still entirely serviceable for the traffic that crossed it on a daily basis.
“Did you notice the grooves worn into the middle of it?”
“The wheel ruts, yes. We followed them across on our last field trip there.” Kierke remembered the deep grooves in the bridge’s surface, and how the traffic had effortlessly slipped into the ruts and slid across the bridge. “Master Haerten said they were from the old mining works, and that the bridge was still perfectly safe despite the ruts.”
“People are like that too, young one. They fall into ruts, and keep doing the same thing over and over just because the rut is there.” The old man looked over, and Kierke struggled to match the grey eyes that looked at him. “Are the mining trucks still there?”
“No, ser. They stopped running in the seventh century when the original lithium mines played out. The new mines are to the south-west now, at Blyant and Kapri Point, and they don’t need to cross the canyon.”
“And yet people still drive into those ruts every day, back and forth across the canyon, without even thinking about the old mines.” The old man looked back at the foggy field, and sighed quietly. “Most of the adults here don’t even know about the old lithium mines. They read about it in school, and then they forget - because why should anyone alive today care about mines that wore out three centuries ago?”
Kierke sat and waited for the old man to finish his story, but he never did. The semi-gaunts arrived later that evening, just before sunset, and the big perimeter flood-lights came on and illuminated the entire field. Kierke shot and reloaded and shot and reloaded for what felt like an eternity, and then joined the old man and the two other watchmen from the second tower as they walked over the field and surveyed the dead, axes in hand to deal with any wounded survivors. The semi-gaunts were stretched out tangles on the thin grass, limbs twisted and fur matted from their green blood, and Kierke spotted more than one with crude bracelets around their arms, and shiny pebbles strung together into simple necklaces around their broad necks. Almost half of them wore animal pelts across their loins, indicating that they were mated warriors with females and offspring in whatever camp they had come from; the rest were naked, indicating new, unmated warriors.
After making sure there were no survivors, they walked back to the watchtowers and turned off the flood-lights again. Kierke cleaned his boots at the bottom of the stairs, washing away clotted blood and runny mud from where the field had been churned up, and wondered about the ruts worn into the canyon bridge. The old man next to him had hard, coarse hands, with calluses on the palms and fingertips - swinging an axe in the foggy field took a toll on your hands, given how thick those semi-gaunt necks were - and Kierke looked at his own wet hands and saw the same calluses starting to take shape there already, after only two seasons in the tower.
I like this a lot James! Really punchy, succinct style of writing
Nice read!