Gutter Rats: Origins Chapter 7

The next day they actually got underway pretty early. It seemed the general was ready for the journey to be over too.

The road leading to the fort was worse than any they’d traveled before. It led up the bottom of a side canyon, rutted and rocky. When it was visible at all. It disappeared often in the sand and rock.

The wagons got stuck in the sand over and over. Soldiers had to help the horses and oxen pull them out. Even the palanquin struggled. A couple of times it tilted badly as some of the men carrying it fell. That brought angry shouts from the interior and sharp words from the general.

The canyon walls reached higher and higher as they went. More than once Quyloc looked up at them uneasily, fearing to see Crodin nomads rising out of the rocks. He saw none, but that didn’t make him feel that much better.

Around noon they reached a spot where the canyon took a sharp curve around a low bluff. Balanced precariously on top of the bluff was a huge rock. Quyloc eyed it uneasily as he drew near. It looked like it would fall at the next puff of wind. Whoever was in the sharp bend when it did, would be crushed to a paste.

The road was so narrow at the curve—it wasn’t really a road at that point, only a carved out dip in the rock—that they almost couldn’t get the wagons through it. The wooden sides scraped against the rock, but with a lot of sweat and swearing, they finally got all of them through.

It was late in the day when they reached the fort.

“Welcome to Lost Hope, boys,” Telin said.

“I hate it already,” Glane said. “It looks terrible.”

It wasn’t much to look at. The fortress was made of crudely-shaped, reddish blocks of sandstone, quarried from the buttes that loomed nearby. There were towers at the corners. It sat on a plain that sloped down to several deep canyons that led off to the south and west. The land around it was sand and sandstone, with only a few wiry tufts of hardy grasses and some low shrubs. A hot wind kicked up, flinging sand in their faces.

They trudged into the fortress, their entrance marked by a lone drummer standing on top of the wall. The soldiers posted there turned out to look at them.

“That’s a rough looking lot,” Rome observed. The border veterans were unshaven and dirty. They were coated in dust. Their uniforms were faded and torn.

“How long until we end up like them?” Kerv asked no one in particular.

The outpost commander came out to greet them, a major by his insignia. His tabard was unbuttoned, showing his belly. He bowed to the general, who looked at him in disgust. “Welcome to Lost Hope, er…the Crodin outpost, General Stanley. I am Major Stemper.”

“Weren’t you informed of our arrival?” Lord Stanley asked, holding a handkerchief to his nose.

“Oh, aye, we were informed.”

Stanley’s eyes narrowed. “And this is the best you could do? Have you no clean uniform to greet your general?”

“This is my clean uniform. It’s also my dirty one. They don’t supply us all that well out here.” He shrugged. “Spit and polish don’t make sense on the border.”

Stanley’s face was growing red. “I should have you thrown in the stockade.”

The major shrugged. “It is your right.”

“Look at you, sweating and dirty. You are no officer in the king’s army.”

“Give it a couple days. You’ll be sweaty and dirty too. There’s just the one well and precious little water comes out of it. Not enough to waste on bathing, that’s for sure.”

Stanley’s outrage turned to concern. “No…water?”

“We’re about two steps from the devil’s asshole here. No, there’s no water.” The major scratched his arm pit. “Damn sand fleas. I hate them the most.”

Stanley pressed his fingers to his eyes. “Where are my quarters? My lady is tired.”

“You can have mine if you want. There’s not much to them. They’re dirty, cramped and hot. And that’s on a good day.”

“They will have to do.” Stanley pointed at Major Stemper. “Know that I will be sending a strongly worded complaint back to the king, who is my uncle. You can expect serious discipline.” He wheeled his horse and rode back to the palanquin.

“Oh, no,” Stemper said to his retreating back, “maybe I will lose my command. Maybe I’ll be stationed elsewhere. That would be terrible.” Stanley either didn’t hear or pretended not to.

The outpost’s barracks were too small to house so many men, so they’d have to sleep outside, they were informed. The soldier who told them that added, “You don’t want to sleep inside anyway. It’s much hotter in there. It’s unbearable once the summer heat sets in.”

“This…isn’t as hot as it gets?” Glane asked worriedly. It was already far hotter than Qarath was on the worst day of summer.

The soldier laughed harshly. He called to another soldier. “Hey, Lou. This guy wants to know if it gets hotter here.”

Lou laughed. “It couldn’t be hotter if we lived on a frying pan, Grimald.”

“There’s your answer,” Grimald said. “Welcome to hell.”

“It doesn’t seem so bad,” Rome said. “It’s pretty country.”

Grimald looked at him in surprise. He dug around in his ear with a dirty finger. “Did I hear that right?”

“You did.” Rome cracked his knuckles. “I’m ready for some action. When do we get some?”

“Whenever the Crodin say so.”

Rome frowned. “Whenever the Crodin say so?”

Grimald gestured at the buttes and canyons around them. “This is their land. You don’t see them if they don’t want to be seen.”

When he said that, Quyloc got a strange feeling. He turned and looked and caught a glimpse of a figure on top of the nearest butte. The figure quickly disappeared. Whoever it was, it clearly wasn’t a soldier.

“So, how do you find them?” Glane asked.

“You don’t. They find you. And when they do, people die. Mostly us.”

“Things will be different now,” Rome said confidently. “We marched here with nearly four hundred men. I heard the captain say the band that’s causing trouble can’t be more than fifty or a hundred warriors.”

Grimald laughed harshly, which turned into coughing. He spat on the ground. He was a short, skinny man with a large birthmark on his forehead. “Damn dust. It’s inside me, outside me. I hate it here. Two things.” He held up a stubby finger. “No, it’s not going to be different now, except more of us are going to die. And, no one knows how many Crodin there are. If you see one, guaranteed there are three more you don’t see. They never, never show their full force.”

“A worthy foe, then,” Rome said.

Grimald gaped at Rome again. He turned and looked at Quyloc, a question in his eyes. Quyloc shrugged. He was used to Rome.

Another soldier hurried up then. “We got a bet going, Grimald. You want in?”

“What is it?”

“The lord took his lady inside to the major’s quarters. We’re betting on how long it will take before she—”

A shrill, angry voice interrupted him. The door of the main building flew open. A veiled figure stormed out, still shrieking.

“Rats!” the soldier groaned. “Too late.”

After the veiled figure came the youthful general. “It’s not that bad, Lady Atheen. We can have it cleaned up.”

She turned on him and jabbed a finger into his chest. “I should have listened to my mother. I shouldn’t have come. She told me this posting was just a way for your uncle to get you out of his sight. She told me he hates you. I should have listened. What am I doing in this horrid place?”

She spun away from him, still cursing. Words no lady should say streamed from her with a variety and speed that would make any soldier proud. Then she started screaming at her servants and all the nearby soldiers to set up her pavilion at once and why wasn’t it already set up? People ran to obey.

Grimald nodded with respect. “I’m thinking she should be the general, not that snot-nosed kid.”

Stanley followed her, still trying to reason with her. She completely ignored him. Meanwhile, the major was standing in the doorway to his headquarters watching with a smile on his face.

The pavilion went up swiftly under the lash of the lady’s tongue. She disappeared inside. As if by unspoken agreement, all across the compound soldiers took a collective step toward the pavilion.

“They better set a tight watch around the lady’s tent tonight,” Lou said solemnly. He was older, maybe in his fifties, and missing an eye. “Else there’s going to be a whole lot of slits in it.”

Quyloc saw the hunger in the eyes of the men around him, especially the veteran soldiers. He caught a sudden glimpse of how quickly things could devolve without the officers to maintain control. Civilization was a thin veneer here. In that way, it wasn’t so different from the Pits.

Go to next chapter.