“I’m sure it’s great, Thaissa, thank you,” Fletcher whispered back.
With a flourish, he unraveled the cloth with a sweep from the pole, allowing a flag to unfurl and flutter in the breeze.
“People of Raleightown, I give you … the Foxes!” Fletcher announced, and was relieved to hear a roar of approval from both soldiers and townsfolk as they saw Thaissa’s handiwork.
It was the first time he had seen the flag, and the result astounded him. Stitched on a cloth of rich burgundy was the golden outline of a fennec fox, a single paw lifted, nose pointing straight as an arrow. It rippled in the wind, glorious in its detail and color.
“Foxes, are you ready to fight?” Fletcher yelled, cutting short the cheers.
“Sir, yes, sir!” came the reply, shouted in perfect unison.
“Sir Caulder, give the order,” Fletcher said, forcing back a grin.
“About turn,” Sir Caulder barked.
Forty-two feet spun on their heels. Forty-two more stamped down.
“Forward … march!”
And Fletcher’s heart sang with excitement. Because Fletcher’s Foxes were on the move.
CHAPTER
48
IT FELT AS IF THEY REACHED the foot of the mountains in no time at all. But then, the pass they were heading for was only forty minutes’ walk as the crow flew. Now that Fletcher thought about it, it seemed strange to know that the Forsyth men were so close, yet they had not seen them in over two months.
As he took in the sierra, stretching left and right as far as the eye could see, Fletcher realized that these were no Beartooth Mountains. The sides were as sheer as the walls of Vocans itself, and the coloration was the light brown of sun-dried clay, though he knew from Sir Caulder’s stories that they were actually made from a crumbly sandstone. But regardless of their composition, they had come to be known as the Bronzestone Bluffs, an ignoble and inaccurate name for the natural wonder that separated the tropical jungles from the temperate plains of Raleighshire, not to mention the civilized world from the barbarian orc hordes.
“I’ve not been back here since … you know,” Sir Caulder said over the squeak of the wagon wheels. He was sitting on the back axle—walking too long chafed his stump against the leather holder of his peg leg. “Wasn’t much to look at then, nor will it be now.”
They were going up an incline now, where the steep walls of the mountains funneled in on either side. Above, the sky was a bright, empty blue, and Fletcher was filled with the temptation to summon Ignatius and fly ahead. But then …
“Halt!” Rotherham’s voice called out from ahead.
Fletcher hurried past the wagons, shouldering his way through the ordered rows of his men. Then he stopped, filled with confusion. They were in the right place—but there was nobody there.
“Where are Forsyth’s men?” Rotherham growled. “The buggers should be here.”
Looking around, Fletcher could see they were in a canyon, not dissimilar to the one they had passed through in the ether. There was no grass here, just a dry, desiccated mud beneath their feet, shadowed by the natural bulwarks stretching into the sky around them. The walls of the mountains angled inward, ending with a gap no wider than a stone’s throw across. Through it, Fletcher could see the green of tangled grasses and beyond, the rippling leaves and thickets of the jungle edge.
On the right-hand wall, a natural ledge seemed to have been worn up the side, just broad enough for a man to walk upon. At its highest point, perhaps two stories up and two score yards from the canyon entrance, the ledge extended outward into a platform of sorts. There, the remains of some sort of building could be seen, now no more than a ring of foundation stones, with the remaining rubble strewn about the ground far beneath it.
“’Tis the old watchtower,” Sir Caulder said, stomping up behind him. “Fell down long ago, before your father was even born. We used to post sentries on the ledge—you can fit half a dozen men and a campfire up there, and the base keeps most of the wind out. You get a pretty good view of the approach into the canyon too.”
“Handy,” Fletcher said, avoiding the temptation to walk up the ledge and have a look.
Instead, he wandered forward, toward the mouth of the canyon. It amazed him how narrow the gap was—Ignatius could have sat in the center and scraped the edges if he extended his wings. If an army were to pass here, they would have to march through the bottleneck in a column of no more than ten men abreast.
“We call it the Cleft,” Rotherham said, following behind Fletcher. “If you saw it from above, it’d look like an hourglass, with this gap as the pinch in the middle.”
“And this is the only way into Raleighshire?” Fletcher asked.
“That’s right,” Rotherham said. “The mountains extend into the Vesanian to the west, and the front lines protect the borders to the east, beyond Watford River. This is it.”
Fletcher took a step closer, then stumbled, his foot hitting something hollow and metal.
“What’s this?” he said, half to himself. He knelt down and scraped away the mud from a round shape, so badly rusted that it blended with the mud.
“Another relic from the past?” he asked.
“Actually, that’s a bit newer,” Sir Caulder said, getting down on one knee and laying his hand on the rusted frame. “Believe it or not, this is the first cannon ever made, not a few weeks before you were born. The first gun in fact, by all accounts.”
He chuckled and shook his head.
“I’m surprised the old girl is still here.”
“Wait … didn’t Othello’s father invent the gun?” Fletcher asked.
“That he did, lad,” Sir Caulder said, brushing aside some dirt to reveal a word embossed on the side.
Thorsager
“What’s it doing here?” Fletcher asked, tracing his fingers across the old lettering of Othello’s family name.
“Your father, Edmund, commissioned it. Challenged all the blacksmiths in Corcillum to come up with something that would be devastating across a small area, with that gap over there in mind. So, Uhtred showed him this. Of course, it wasn’t much more than an iron tube packed with rudimentary gunpowder and old nails, but it did the trick. The early prototypes used bamboo segments, would you believe it!”
Fletcher grinned, picturing Uhtred as a young man, pottering about in his forge with bamboo. Sir Caulder sighed and patted the rusted frame.
“We never fired the bloody thing, except when Uhtred demonstrated it, of course. Must have sat here since the night your parents died. The Forsyths probably thought it was junk.”
“It’s a piece of history,” Fletcher said. “For both Uhtred and my family. I’ll have it taken to Raleightown and have it mounted.”