High Iron Read online

  These scouts reported news that was somewhat better: the army had indeed assembled, at the eastern edge of Red Gorge, but it was moving very slowly. It may have been only a war tournament, or perhaps a gathering for some cult ceremony of theirs.

  The second wave of scouts, however, told us exactly why the dunters moved slowly, and it was not because of any cult meeting: They were protecting a new span of railroad that was being laid. The tracks, the scouts said, were aimed right at us.

  “The dunters have an engine that’s going to crawl all the way out here?” my cousin Britta asked. She and I were speaking with our friend Jed, who had ventured out as one of the scouts.

  “It seems so,” he said. “They’re confident enough to be laying the track.”

  “They must have improved what they had before. I thought that pumper they had could barely haul itself from one side of Red Gorge City to the other.”

  “It barely could,” Jed said. “They must have something better now. They may be dim, but they’re not foolish enough to embark on all this construction if they have nothing to run on it.” He seemed earnest, which was unusual for him. Usually he would not speak even this much about the dunters without ridiculing them considerably more. He stood before us with his arms folded, and his eyes slightly narrowed. We had gathered outside the fence of a paddock which lay between my family’s house and Britta’s. There beside our well-kept pasture it was hard to imagine the uproar of a swarming horde of dunters, and harder to imagine that they could ever threaten us.

  “You did not see an engine, though?” I asked.

  “No. Just horses and wagons hauling out the ties, and the rails.”

  “I’m surprised they can make such improvements to their machinery.”

  “They may have help. Outlaw dwarves, or who knows who. But Aiman, they were working in a fever. We were not very close to them, but close enough to see that much. Their kobolds were scurrying around, and so were they. It looked grim.”

  “I wonder how long it would take them to lay track all the way out to our borders,” Britta said, “if that’s what they’re doing.”

  “It would take some time,” Jed said. “Months. And even the forging of that amount of track would be a challenge for them, I think.”

  “They don’t have the foundries for it,” I said.

  “I don’t think so, no. But I’m sure they will labor day and night nonstop, if that is their goal. And they won’t hesitate to work their kobolds to death and toss them aside all along that new line, if need be.”

  Now Britta’s face darkened. She reached back absently to take her hair in both hands, pull it around front, twist it like a rope, and then let it go. She said nothing.

  The two of them were understandably distressed, but I was thankful for the timing of all this. I thought I could at least take relief in that. It was well into spring, now, and our sheep had been shorn and had lambed. Any intrusion the dunters could manage—if that indeed was their plan—would not disrupt us too much. (I did not understand, at that point, the size and determination of that expeditionary army.)

  I soon became a scout myself. I was curious to see this unprecedented rail project of Red Gorge and perhaps get a glimpse of what they intended to run on it. I took along Britta, and convinced Jed to head back out. Britta is my father’s sister’s daughter, two years older than I. She is well-respected in our family, and in Emmervale. Jed, for his part, is a lanky runner who covers ground like few others, whether on the longball field or out in open country, and we knew we would likely find ourselves on foot once we got close enough to the dunters. We loaded packs, took two muskets, and dressed to blend into the fields.

  My father spoke to Jed and me before we left:

  “Stay safe. Any glimpse of what these dunters are about should tell you much. You won’t need to count their teeth. Remember, Aiman, you have a place here. Emmervale needs you.”

  “Emmervale needs all of us,” I tried to correct him. “Or perhaps you are thinking of Britta.”

  “You, Aiman. You must understand this.” He nodded, almost to himself, in support of something he was thinking.

  “I suppose,” he said, “you have never had to live through a time of darkness. In times like these, the people want leaders. Learn as much as you can, but stay safe. And then come back quickly.”

  As we departed, Jed turned to me and said:

  “No weight on your shoulders, here.” Now he wore his usual careless and contagious smile. “Once again I thank my parents for not bearing me into such a prominent family.”

  The three of us left early in the morning through the west gate of Emmervale town. I rode my family’s saddle horse, and Britta had her own. Jed rode the same one he had just taken out a few days earlier.

  We headed west. For some miles we rode past farms, and alongside planted fields. The houses we passed were whole, and occupied. Then, all too soon, the only structures we saw were burned-out, half-tumbled ruins. The land was still good—tall grasses and wildflowers grew—but there was no one to work it.

  “We must send more people out here,” Jed said. “Emmervale could double its size four times and still not lack room.”

  “Do you plan on turning up settlers next week?” I asked him. “We can hope that our children restore these homes and plant these hills. As long as no one else plants them first.” I nodded toward the horizon before us, and the dunters beyond it.

  Four days later, early in the afternoon, we were far to the west of Emmervale. From what Jed had told us about the location of the army when he saw it, we must have been close to the advancing eastern end of the new railway. We slowed, and kept our eyes open.

  The land had flattened. We crept through a prairie. I knew the country, somewhat, because in better days I had traveled out this direction to sell wool to a trader from Varenlend. I had done quite well with those transactions, and had made a number of trips. But I would meet her by a certain hill, a landmark, which lay well to the south of us now. Up here the land was smooth, and largely featureless.

  “Do we ride all the way in?” Jed asked.

  “As far as we can.”

  “We’ll be visible from some way off. I would prefer to be hidden down there in the grass, if we want to get closer than I did the first time.”

  “We’ll have to be more vigilant than the dunters,” I said.

  “Jed is right,” Britta said. “If we come to a stand of trees, we should dismount. I would rather walk a distance than be seen by their scouts.”

  “If they have scouts,” I said. “I’m not sure they’re clever enough to watch a perimeter. But very well. If we come to cover, we’ll stop. One of us will have to stay with the horses, though.”

  We did find a place to dismount, eventually; a small stream crossed our path, and there were trees growing along its banks. We tied the horses together, and then had to decide who would stay behind with them. We were facing each other in a triangle.

  “Odd or even fingers behind your back,” I said. We each hid one hand. “The odd one out stays here. Now.”

  We all showed our hands; each of us had just one finger out.

  “We are all number one, clearly,” I said. “Again.”

  This time Britta had chosen three fingers to my two and Jed’s four.

  “There we have it,” I said. “Britta, you have the most difficult job.”

  “I will stay, then. See what is going on and then get back,” she said.

  “We shall.”

  “How about if we turn back to be here by dark, if we don’t see anything?” Jed said.

  “That’s good. Britta, if we haven’t returned by dark, lead these horses back. You might cut down south to the woods; better cover there.”

  “You will be back,” she said.

  We left behind our packs, and I left my musket. Britta kept hers with her. We wanted to move quickly, and we were not going to get ourselves into a situation in which shooting would do any good.

  “You’re sure
you don’t want them?” Britta said, as I stowed the gun in the scabbard on my horse.

  “I can imagine our success if we have to shoot accurately, and then reload, as a squad of dunters runs at us,” I said. “No, we don’t need them. We are staying away from the squads of dunters in the first place. Isn’t that right, Jed?”

  “We’ll give them a large berth, yes,” he said.

  We left her and started walking. The grassland stretched out before us, with a few easy rises now and again, and we saw nothing at the horizon. This land, just like that to the west of Emmervale, was unsettled. A hundred years or more earlier, kingdoms had held sway out this far, and there likely had been low houses and grain farmers. But in our time, after the plagues and then the fires, the land was unused. What farmers had lived out this way had tended to build out of wood, or earth and thatch, rather than stone, so we saw few ruins. The only crowds the endless green grasses might host were flocks of ring geese and bronzewings overhead, but we saw nothing. We covered some considerable distance.

  “You might let me stand on your shoulders, Aiman, and we could see twice as far.”

  “Or I could stand on yours,” I answered.

  “No, I’m taller,” he said. “So it must be me atop yours. We’d see farther that way.”

  “Impeccable reasoning,” I said.

  And after that, we did not have to wait long for contact. A small group of dunters—it turned out to be four—appeared before us, walking a route that would carry them just to our north. There were a few kobolds following behind them, also. Jed and I dropped to the ground. The grass here was thick, and green; a wild grain with heads of seeds. We raised ourselves up to peer through it.

  Whenever I have a sudden scare, or see something which probably should have been scaring me all along, I feel a surge in my chest. It feels like quick heat, as if there is a small bit of lightning that strikes my heart. It hits me right behind my breastbone and front ribs. Perhaps it is a jolt of blood, but I feel it only in my chest. Maybe the heart pumps out something else apart from blood, some sort of firewater.

  I felt this when I saw these dunters. They were dressed in uniforms: black jacks with a red stripe across the shoulder. That stripe marked them as belonging to the house of a particular warlord; we didn’t know anything further about that heraldry, of course. Two of them carried muskets, and the other two, enormous broadswords. They looked capable. The picture of dunters I had held in mind was that of pale, spindly characters with long noses and awkward teeth, but these were meaty and stern. Their noses were indeed large, and their teeth so long that it made one wonder how they could eat; but they looked monstrous, not awkward.

  The kobolds behind them seemed to be porters. They carried powder horns and shot bags on straps hanging off their shoulders. One of them had a spare musket, also, ready to hand to a dunter.

  We nearly held our breath. They passed across our path. They seemed to be walking with purpose, although we could not tell to what end.

  It took some courage, I must say, for us to continue. We knew that we could well be cut off from our route back to Emmervale by that group of dunters, and by who knows how many others which might be marauding. But we pressed ahead. We crawled on all fours for some time, and then raised ourselves to scan the fields; we saw no more of them. We stood, both of us crouching, and sped ahead as best we could.

  In time we came within view of the black line on the horizon which was the main force of Red Gorge. I had intended to turn back, at this point, now that we knew how far they had advanced; but the land between us and that horde was vacant, a clear path. I wanted to bring back something more than the previous scouts had discovered. We kept moving.

  “We can get quite a bit closer,” Jed said. With that, I knew he also wanted to advance as far as possible, and it became out of the question for me to suggest we turn around. I could imagine Britta shaking her head at our risk, and of course she would have been right.

  We trotted ahead in our crouches. Jed was in front.

  “You mind to the right, and ahead,” I told him. I tried to watch our left, and to the rear. In retrospect this was very foolhardy, but we made it close enough to the main lines to see the work on the rails.

  The force did not look terribly organized. Some dunters just seemed to meander about, in groups or as solitary individuals. Some watched the work, and others stood in clusters and jabbered with each other. None of them—fortunately for us—seemed to be keeping formal surveillance. Most of the hauling, of rails and ties, was done by kobolds. They were tiny forms, slight but quick, among the larger dunters. Others of their kind were also shoveling, ahead of the crowd, in order to raise a bed for the rails.

  Kobolds even drove the spikes. The largest among them—perhaps reaching up chest-high on a dunter—swung sledgehammers over and over again. We could see their short arms pumping. We could also hear the strikes. These were faint and out of time with the swings, due to our distance.

  “Do the dunters do nothing?” Jed asked. “Their dog-boys even secure the rails.”

  “I’m sure the dunters are more concerned with putting their fine intellects to work directing all this chaos,” I said. “And managing their supplies. Look at it all.”

  The rails and ties were piled up on wagons, pulled along next to the edge of the tracks by oxen. A line of the wagons crept forward, each waiting its turn to unload.

  “They’re not using their new engine to haul it all out?” Jed asked. “I assume their old ones could not have done it.”

  It had been three years since the dunters had rolled their first locomotive around Red Gorge City. They had made a show of it. They had done this for the pride and entertainment of their own masses, but made sure that a few straggling men—drifters and outlaws, for no one else would have gone near—had seen it also. Several of these observers had eventually made their way to Emmervale and shared this news with anyone who would listen. The locomotive had been rickety, apparently, incapable of pulling much more than its coal, but it was the first working invention of its kind.

  “It could be,” I said, “that they are saving their new one for a better debut. So it’s ox power for now.”

  Then I noticed something about the line of wagons: standing atop a pile of rails on one of them were two elves.

  Elves.

  I stared at them a moment, disbelieving, and then grabbed Jed’s arm.

  “Look at that third wagon!” I said. “Do you see them?”

  He lifted his head and peered.

  “Somehow they look like elves.”

  “They are elves!”

  “They can’t be,” he said. “The dunters would tear them apart. And the elves themselves wouldn’t be able to stand their presence.”

  “It is! They are!” I repeated. “Look at their robes!”

  He kept staring, but shook his head.

  “Well, they are not dunters, clearly. But they must be men, then. There is simply no way.”

  It was obvious to me. The elves wore white, and seemed taller and thinner than men. They stood on the wagons, perhaps even directing the dunters and kobolds.

  “You didn’t see them when you rode out here before?” I asked.

  “No. What would they be doing out there? Driving spikes for the dunters?”

  “But yet there they are. They’re on the wagons; maybe they’re involved with the materials somehow?”

  “Such as what—cutting down their trees for the ties?”

  Now something ripped through the grass before us. Two booms on our left. We dropped to the dirt. It was bullets. We had been seen, and two guns had shot at us.

  “I was to be watching the left,” I said. I don’t know why—I suppose it was an apology to Jed, but of course much too late.

  I crawled forward a few feet and raised my head. Four dunters were coming toward us. I saw others behind them, busy with their arms; they must have been reloading.

  “Up and run!” I told Jed.

  He sprang upri
ght and we raced directly away from the shots. Unfortunately this did not put us going back in the direction from which we had come, but rather to the northeast. This was not directly toward the end of the tracks, fortunately, but it wasn’t toward Britta and the horses either.

  Jed was a wondrous loper, as I said, and he surged ahead of me. We ran, having no better option; we had no cover, and we needed to get out of range of the guns, even if it drew the attention of that entire dunter army. Which is exactly what seemed to happen. I looked behind to see that the four dunters close to us were running hard, and far behind them more were splitting off that crowd. A few of the kobold porters scrambled along behind them, trying to keep up.

  We flew through the grass. I hoped that we had the four pursuing dunters directly between us and their comrades with the muskets, so that the gunners would have no clear shots. Then again, knowing dunters, they might have fired anyway.

  But they did not need to; another knot of them appeared now, to our left. We cut to the right. I saw a puff of smoke.

  “Down!” I yelled, and we both dropped. I heard the slug plow into the earth to our left. We rose and ran again.

  We raced over the waving tops of all that grass the way I imagined a hawk might swoop down over it to nab a mouse. But we, of course, were the prey.

  And now before us appeared yet more dunters. Where had they come from? There must have been parties ranging about which we had missed, and they had been drawn toward the gunfire. We now had them on three sides.

  “A plan?” Jed asked me.

  “Pull knives and head toward the smallest group,” I said. That meant the ones on our left; only three or four of them, and apparently only one gun. The odds would not get any better for us.

  We carried long knives, and drew them. We turned and ran at the dunters.

  There were actually three of them, I saw now. They too wore matching jacks, just like the first group we had seen, but these were black with a white star. One of them was reloading; he looked to be ramming down the bullet and wad. The other two pulled swords. They seemed glad to have our challenge. Both wore banded helmets, and one now pulled his further down his forehead. Both smiled, showing their teeth—all their teeth, this time, not just the usual protruding fangs.