INTRUSIONS

The blood hissed as it dripped on a patch of old snow. The ring of lanterns revealed the creature’s carcass bristling with arrows and weeping crimson from a multitude of sword slashes. It was a rat the size of a pony, its eyes glowing copper in the lantern light. Its jaw was lined with a row of incisors that had almost ripped off the leg of one man, but it was the claws that had taken the life of another. It was also those claws that had enabled it to climb over the repair work in the breach.

“Damn,” Alton D’Yer whispered.

It wasn’t like they hadn’t been vigilant. The breach was well guarded, and a good thing. Alton did not want to imagine the damage the creature could have wreaked if they hadn’t been so watchful.

Yet, they had not been vigilant enough. Maybe they’d relaxed a little, a little too much, with Blackveil relatively quiet and the repair work done on the breach.

Hissss, came the sound of more blood sliding into the snow.

“We’ll increase the guard,” Alton told Captain Wallace, who was in charge of the encampment at the breach. “I’ll send to my father for reinforcements. In the meantime, I’ll spare as many men as you need from the tower encampment.”

“Yes, my lord,” Captain Wallace said. “Thank you.”

As the son and heir of the lord-governor of D’Yer Province, Alton was the ranking person at the wall to whom the officers came for major decisions. Alton was also a Green Rider, whose mission was to solve the mysteries of the wall and fix it. If he’d not been the son of the lord-governor, he’d be just another cog in the wheel of the encampment, which consisted of both Sacoridian soldiers and members of the D’Yer provincial militia.

Mostly Alton was able to leave the administrative tasks to the military and concentrate on his own work. Occasionally his position proved useful because it allowed him to get what he wanted and when—for the most part—but it was times like this that made his stomach clench and left him wishing he possessed no rank whatsoever.

Hissss.

“Drag this thing away from the encampment,” Alton told the captain. “Burn it. But be careful of the blood.”

“Yes, my lord.” Captain Wallace turned and commenced issuing orders to his underlings.

Dale Littlepage, a fellow Green Rider who’d been assisting Alton at the wall since autumn, appeared at his elbow. “Gruesome,” she said, looking down at the creature.

The two Riders backed off a few paces to allow the soldiers the space they needed to prepare the carcass to be dragged away.

“Leese thinks she can save the one man if his wound doesn’t fester,” Dale said, speaking of the encampment’s chief mender. “But he’ll lose his leg.”

Alton sighed. Both men were Sacoridian troopers. He’d have to write a report to the king. The widow of the dead man would receive some reparations, and so would the injured man. However, the military had little use for someone with only one leg and he’d have to find another way to support his family if he had one. It would not be an easy life.

Alton glanced at the wall. Except where lanterns illuminated it, it vanished into the night, blotting out the stars. The actual stonework rose only ten feet, but magic extended it seemingly to the heavens, a bulwark that was impenetrable to the denizens of the forest and protected Sacoridia and its neighbors.

Until the breach.

Repeatedly Alton and his people had tried to repair the breach, even reopening the same quarries that had been used centuries ago to build the wall, but it was only stone. There was so much more to the wall’s strength. Thousands of souls were bound to it, and their song, a song he now felt reverberate through his bones, created the magic and strength that made the D’Yer Wall what it was.

A masterwork. A thing of magic. An artifact of monstrous slaughter.

He watched as the soldiers lashed ropes around the dead rat creature. Until he could figure out how to extend the magic to the stonework of the breach, they could expect more incursions of this kind from Blackveil. The one hope he’d had, the book of Theanduris Silverwood, only confirmed that the magic used to strengthen the wall required the sacrifices of thousands of magic users.

Since Daro Cooper, a newish Rider Alton hadn’t met before, delivered the translated manuscript of the book days ago, he’d pored over it time and again. Daro had also brought the news of Osric M’Grew’s death at the hands of Second Empire and he’d spent time, along with Dale, in mourning. Was still in mourning.

Now his grief only hardened his determination to solve the problem of the breach.

A soldier ran toward them, his buckles and mail glimmering in lantern- and firelight.

“Sirs, our perimeter guards just caught an unauthorized person approaching the encampment.”

Alton and Dale exchanged glances. First the creature and now an intruder? It was turning into a long night.

Their intruder was seated beside one of the watch fires, the soldiers who guarded her fully alert, their hands gripping sword hilts. She hardly looked dangerous, but after the incursion of the creature, he didn’t blame the soldiers for their tension. And in these unsure days, one never knew in what guise danger would appear.

She rose as they approached, but it was difficult to tell much about her except that she was of a similar age to both Alton and Dale. She was plainly cloaked. If she carried any weapons, the soldiers would have confiscated them.

At first no one said anything and they gazed at one another across the fire.

“Greetings,” the young woman said in a pleasant voice, finally breaking the silence.