* * *
Marshal Teal stood at a brazier in his command tent high in the upper vales of the southern slopes of the Salt range. He warmed his hands over the charcoal and considered his next course of action. Scouting parties would have to be sent, of course, to determine whether the last renegades had chosen to hang about. His orders from Luthal had been explicit; his future position depended upon his thoroughness.
Still, he was confident. This was, after all, a mere mopping up. He was eager to return to clean out Mantle. Once their grip was secure upon this north coast of the Sea of Gold, they could consider their next move. Consolidation of the south coast, most likely. Then onward to the Bone Peninsula.
All funded by their war-chest of gold dust.
Thunder rumbled beyond the hide tent walls. A storm was on its way. Good. Perhaps the renegades would die of exposure and save them any further expenditure. Still, he would like to get his hands on that white blade. It would bring a fortune in Lether, or Darujhistan. He could name his price.
The thunder intensified into a constant deep ongoing roar that Teal thought he could feel through his feet. Then the ground moved. The brazier would have fallen had he not steadied it and singed his fingers. Panicked shouts sounded without. He threw open the tent flap, demanded of a guard: ‘What is going on?’
‘Earthquake, sir.’
‘Yes, I know that!’ He waved to indicate the men rushing about bearing torches. ‘What is everyone upset about?’
The guard swallowed hard. ‘Well, sir. Most of these lads have never experienced one. They say … well, talk is, the northern gods are angry at us.’
‘What a load of bullshit. You get out there and you calm them down!’
The guard saluted crisply. ‘Yes sir!’ He ran off, waving for others to accompany him.
Teal drew in a deep breath of the cold clean air. Gods give him patience! What could he possibly be expected to accomplish with these pathetic recruits! Give him drilled and trained regulars over these amateur foreigners any day.
He crossed his arms, hugged himself for warmth against the fiercely cold wind and peered into the low clouds to the north. It looked as if something was moving there behind the swirling banners of mist. He took a few hesitant steps, squinting. It was almost as if the entire slope above them was slowly shifting. Was it a rockslide triggered by the earthquake?
The ground beneath his feet began to vibrate. Not in the rolling of any earthquake he’d ever experienced, but as a constant low drumming vibration. A distant avalanche, perhaps?
The swirling clouds parted then, as if thrust aside by some broad front of wind. Through the dimness of the overcast night he saw that the slope above was much steeper and closer than he remembered. And it was moving – roiling and churning as it came. Even as he watched, entire swaths of tall spruce and fir fell before its advance, only to be sucked beneath the leading edge of tumbling rock and soil.
True panicked yells sounded now about the camp, all nearly drowned by the roar of the coming cataclysm. Teal stood transfixed. In his experience this was unanswerable. How could anyone respond to such an onslaught? There was simply nothing to be done.
Lieutenants came, shouting to be heard, but he merely waved to them to flee. ‘Save yourselves,’ he mouthed. And they fled. He chose not to. There was something inexorable, almost magisterial, in what he was witnessing. Running might gain one a few more minutes of life, but why fall in an undignified mad scramble?
He preferred to meet what was coming. And he did – just before the end.
The screen of conifers above the camp was the last layer of trees still standing before the mountain of churned-up soil and rock tumbling its way down upon him. The ground now juddered as if in agony; he could barely keep his feet. The avalanche roar was so loud it deafened him.
And he glimpsed, above the mounded-up tons of loose soil and talus, something glowing with an inner cobalt-blue light. A broad and low wall descending out of the heights, pulverizing rock, and growling an immensely deep basso rumble that was shaking the ground, and his breath left him in awe.
How beautiful, and how terrible …