“Uh,” she looked nervously at the others, not sure she could recall all their names. “Vaneshta is my roommate.”
Darish sighed. “Fine. Quick introductions, then.”
His words were hurried, as if reciting something horrendously boring. “Sena Pepha.” He gestured toward a willowy, dark-haired woman with overly wide eyes. She was looking at Iryana suspiciously. “She is our scout. Moves further ahead of the team as we’re moving through the forests, sends back signals.”
Iryana knew Pepha’s look wasn’t overly personal; every time she’d seen her around the fort, she’d seemed equally anxious.
Next, Darish pointed at a barrel-chested man in his early thirties with an expressive and curious look on his face. “Sen Vabihn, our heavy-hitter. Fights dakii with as much enthusiasm as they fight us.” Which was clearly a good thing in Darish’s opinion, based on his smile.
She nodded.
“Sen Mezhimar, archer. Gives us cover when needed. I know you can shoot, so you’ll probably hang back with him or stay near the center. We’ll see.” The tall, lanky man nodded at her. He had no bow, but there was a full quiver on his back and a bow-string looped over his belt.
“Sen Shahn,” Darish pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. The most average-looking man she’d ever seen stood there, thumbs tucked into his belt as he waited, expression empty. “Our main shield-bearer. Marches near center. You’ll start next to him, I think.”
He stretched, yawning deeply. “And you know Vaneshta. Great, let’s go.”
The soldiers fell into a loose formation almost immediately, despite not having left the fort yet. Iryana jolted, struggling for a moment to remember where she was supposed to be, before falling in beside Shahn.
She followed them, trying to match her pace to theirs. Chimney smoke rose into the sky around them from the hearth fires as they walked down the main street. It smelled of birch wood, rye, and boiling porridge. They passed the blacksmith’s forge, the fire just being built for the day’s work. Goods packed onto carts moved about the fortress. All with the dakii just outside the walls.
It was eerie.
“Don’t the dakii hear this?” she asked, doubting the Myura River hid much of the noise.
Vaneshta glanced back. “Sure, when they get close enough. But we patrol around the walls constantly, managing how close they get, mostly. And when a pack gets too close, we take care of it.”
Must be nice, she thought. If only her family had a quarter of their numbers, just a tenth of their metal-forged.
When they passed through the large gate, the first palisade opened just long enough for them to cross before crashing back to the ground, the outer palisade not opening until the first was down.
She’d been too amped up or too exhausted to inspect their defenses before. Now, she couldn’t keep herself from looking around.
There was a sizable field separating the walls from the first streets of the city, likely to give room for the archers to take down an approaching force. The field was a winding path of trenches and wooden spikes angled away from the fort. It would give them plenty of opportunity to take a beast down before it got too close, but she hoped the spikes had been sharpened with metal-forged tools. They wouldn’t be a great deterrent otherwise.
And looking back, she noticed that the outer walls themselves looked nothing like from the inside. The bark had been ripped off entirely; the surface smoothed.
Mezhimar, who was walking a few paces behind her, noticed her staring. “To keep them from climbing the walls.”
Iryana shuddered.
The walls of the Dovaki Post were just raw logs, but they weren’t meant to keep the dakii out for long if a pack set their mind to breaching them. They at least had a trench filled with pitch that they could light on fire to slow them down.
They walked slowly through the buildings of the abandoned city, peering down every alleyway and inspecting the loosely nailed boards over all the doors. The boards marked cleared buildings, and a missing one could mean a dakya was hiding inside. There were so many little details like this that the brigade used to live amongst the beasts.
Withered ivy crawled up the sides of the buildings, some of which were in decent condition though covered with a layer of grime, the others rotting around the edges. It clearly showed the difference between forged-construction and not; the forged tools imbued enough magic into the buildings to help them resistnormal wear. The streets themselves were cracked and uneven between piles of lingering snow.
Iryana fought the memories that threatened to rip through her focus when they passed a charred building where the inhabitants must have set a fire as a last resort. She’d seen that sort of thing before. When they finally left the ghost of a city and entered the woods, Iryana felt instantly calmer.
Vabihn started chatting absently, so Iryana knew they didn’t have to remain silent. It was strange making noise in the woods after years training herself to be soundless.
She looked over at Shahn, knowing she should try to start a conversation, start building a rapport with the soldiers of her team, yet nothing came out of her mouth. What did one say casually to a fellow soldier? She didn’t have a clue.
After a few miles of walking awkwardly beside Shahn, who was equally silent but didn’t seem bothered by it in the slightest, Vaneshta fell back and made Shahn take her spot next to Vabihn.
“So, you said you moved away from your family years ago,” Vaneshta started to say, and though she spoke quietly, it seemed to pull everyone’s attention. “Have you been training with them still? Doing, uh, whatever guardians do at your posts?”
Iryana looked over to the soldier. The tone of her question hadn’t sounded casual, but serious. This wasn’t the friendly chatting that Iryana had received when she’d first arrived. This was more an interrogation.
