Page 8 of Earthbound

Motogo nodded once, before dismissing her with a wave of the hand. ‘Go.’

‘This way,’ the armed guard said as he started to escort her through the camp.

‘I know where I’m going, I’ve done it enough times.’

I am irritable today, Yeeran thought.

The soldier didn’t appreciate Yeeran’s quip. His hand moved to his drum as he said, ‘No matter how many times you’ve done it, I’m not letting you out of my sight.’

Yeeran sighed. Once she’d have been afforded significantly more respect. Once she had been colonel.

But no matter the situation now, she could never go back to being a soldier who traded in blood. The last year had opened her mind as well as her heart.

The war camp was a sprawling, noisy thing. It lived like a beast, its breath thick with cook fires, its ribs the tents that lined the mud-sodden streets. The claws were the many armouries, and its teeth, the soldiers who wielded the weapons.

The noise of the camp was as familiar to Yeeran as her own heartbeat: the pounding of the drums as warriors practised their drumfire, the war songs of soldiers carrying out formations, the snorts of camels in their pens. If she shut her eyes the last year would fall away, and she’d be back on the Bleeding Field, Rayan as her captain, Salawa as her lover.

A simpler time, when death was her only worry. Survival was a much weightier burden to carry.

But now, Rayan is king, and Salawa is dead, she thought. Time has changed more things than just me.

The guard escorting her took her down a different path than she was used to. ‘Why are we going this way? Isn’t it quicker to turn left here?’ she said.

The soldier gave her an irritated glance. ‘There’s a flood up ahead.’

That’s what happens when you set up camp in a marshland.

The Wasted Marshes were a chieftain’s nightmare. The flash flooding, the wet ground, the poisonous creatures all made it an uninhabitable terrain. But the elves had not come unprepared. Ships full of timber had arrived at the coast to fortify the soil beneath the tents. Thicker tarp had been sent for to ensure the tents were waterproof. They had moved their livestock to the rockier ground, opting for goats and sheep rather than less agile cows and pigs. Dogs prowled the campsite to ward off smaller venomous animals.

It appeared that once the four chieftains worked together, they could create something quite powerful: a city capable of laying siege for months, if not years.

I could not stomach years of this, Yeeran said to Pila.

Diplomacy is slow, and boring. Pila yawned from somewhere inside Mosima.

It is.

Can you come back now so we can go for a ride with Amnan and Furi?

Pila knew her words would make Yeeran wince. It was her way of asking to heal the rift between her and Furi. And each day, Yeeran’s answer was the same.

We can go on a ride on our own.

It was difficult to feel lonely when you were faebound, but Furi and Amnan had become an important part of her life, and their absence left a dull ache.

Not that Furi was gone. No, as the fae’s ambassador Yeeran saw her constantly. But they were no longer lovers. Furi had made it clear that their love only created more trauma. And that was not a penance she was willing to suffer.

Yeeran was led past a group of soldiers practising hand-to-hand combat. The air smelled of boiled leather and sweat as they lunged at each other with bare fists. They grew silent as she walked by. Something about them looked off to her. Then she realised what it was.

‘A new uniform?’ she whispered in disbelief. Stitched onto their sleeves were all four symbols of the elven tribes: Waning, Crescent, Eclipse and Waxing.

The coalition was truly coming together.

‘Move on,’ barked the soldier by her side. She hadn’t realised she had stopped and quickly stepped back in line with her escort.

The camp was large, and it took some time for her to reach the edge of it. This new route moved through areas Yeeran hadn’t seen before and she tried to memorise as much of it as she could.

They passed three greenhouses and two mess halls teeming with soldiers at lunch. As they turned a corner Yeeran heard strange squeaking sounds emanating from a tent to her left. It was larger than those that housed soldiers, but smaller than some of the greenhouses.