The Farrow Ridges

At sunset, we all took our places at the pentagon table in the newly-completed Great Chamber of Farrow Hall, a splendid two-storey building, with its council room, meeting attic and a small basement library, that stands on the northern shore of the Farrow Lake. Beyond its broad windows, the sun was sinking down below the glittering Farrow Lake, fluffy clouds reflected on its smooth, golden surface.

The Roost Marshal banged his gavel and called the meeting to order. Manticula, a mistwaif from the small colony established just below the Five Falls, read the minutes of the previous meeting and we voted unanimously to accept them. Then we started working down the agenda.

Hirum Gryke, a white trog from the Water Caverns, rose to make an impassioned plea that fishing by incomers in the caverns be limited, since stocks of the stone-eye fish - upon which the white trogs depend - were being depleted. It seemed a reasonable request and the vote was carried. Next Manticula rose to her feet and we heard her soft voice speaking inside our heads.

‘I propose we begin construction on the Garden of Contemplation,’ she said. ‘Like Waif Glen in Great Glade, it will be a haven of tranquillity,’ she explained, ‘ a place where all in Farrow Ridge will be able to meditate and reflect…’

She spoke persuasively about how it should be designed, with concentric circles of sallowdrops and blackpines, and with a fountain at its centre, and we have agreed on a site just below Midridge on the eastern shore.

‘If, as councillor Lammergyre proposed at our last meeting, phraxsteam factories are established on the Levels, then it is fitting that these should be balanced by a place of peace and refuge on the other side of the lake.’

When the proposal was put to the vote, it was carried without dissent. Next, Phineal Glyfphith, my old friend, the webfoot leader, climbed to his feet. ‘I shall get straight to the point,’ he said. ‘The Great Clam wishes Farrow Lake be renamed.’

Everyone gasped.

‘Renamed?’ said the Roost Marshal sharply.

‘It wishes the lake to be called the Cloud Catcher.’

‘We white trogs have always called it the Daylight Lake, or the Water Beyond…’ Hirum Gryke objected. ‘Why should we change now, because of a bunch of webfoot goblin newcomers?’

Manticula was thoughtful. ‘We came, like many newcomers, to a place known as Farrow Lake. If we adopt the name proposed by the webfoots, where does that leave the rest of us?’ Her voice was clear in all our heads. ‘The cloddertrogs of High Farrow, the settlers of Low Farrow, the white trogs of the Water Caverns… What of them?’ She frowned. ‘The lake does not belong to to the webfoots…’

‘No,’ said Phineal Glyfphith, ‘yet it has been seeded by one of the immortals. The Great Clam is one of the ancient ones, older even than the mighty caterbird. It honours our new community by its presence. It guides us. It…’

‘It might guide you webfoots,’ Hirum Gryke broke in hotly, ‘but it doesn’t guide us white trogs. We have the Great Stalactite and its eternal droplets…’

The Roost Marshal turned to me. ‘You’re being very quiet, Hedgethorn. What do you think?’

‘I… I’m not sure…’ I began.

Just then, Vitus, who’d been as good as gold till then, suddenly started to jabber and grizzle in that way he has when he’s getting tired. I jiggled him about on my knee and hushed him to be quiet. I turned to the others.

‘Names are powerful things,’ I said. ‘Take Vitus here. I daresay he had another name once, chosen by his parents. But when I found him I named him Vitus - and to me, he’ll always be Vitus. My special little Vitus.’

The others nodded. The Roost Marshal frowned, wondering where my argument was taking me.

‘So it is with the Farrow Lake,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter what name we give it, so long as its waters remain special to us all.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I propose that we each call the lake by whatever name we choose. I shall continued to call it the Farrow Lake, but if the webfoots wish to call it the Cloud Catcher, they should be free to do so.’

The Roost Marshal nodded. ‘A most pragmatic solution, Hedgethorn,’ he said.

With the council business concluded, I left the Farrow Hall, Vitus in my arms. As I stepped outside, I saw Laria running towards us. Her face was flushed.

‘Hedgethorn,’ she said, ‘Forden has sent news…’

‘Make sure everything is securely strapped down, including yourselves!’ Captain Gart Ironshank instructed jovially as we boarded the Wind Zephyr.

It was only a little phraxlighter, traditionally used as a short-haul ferry in the low skies over Great Glade, but now it was as laden as a sky tavern. Every inch of the Wind Zephyr’s decks had been utilized by her captain. Ice-hooks and grappling irons were stowed in the gunwales, oiled leather sacks containing dried tildermeat and gladewheatmeal were strapped to the small aft deck, and firefloats were clustered like sapgrapes on either side of the phraxchamber. A thin plume of steam rose from the Wind Zephyr’s funnel as Kultuft and I clambered aboard and strapped ourselves into the low bucket-seats behind the helm.

Gart was obviously eager to be off. The little community of Farrow Lake was slumbering, the settlements on the east shore with their windows dark, while on the north shore, the cookfires of the webfoot huts had still to be lit. No one would notice our departure. It was just as the captain had planned.

‘This expedition will prove perilous enough without bringing undue attention on ourselves,’ he’d muttered as he’d pored over his sky charts the evening before.

Now, in the cold grey light of early dawn, he pulled back on the flight levers and opened up the phraxvalves, setting the chamber to a steady, vibrating hum. The funnel belched steam as the Wind Zephyr took to the sky and rose steadily higher above the misty tree line.

Soon Farrow Lake and the beautiful Five Falls were distant glimmers of light in the dark, brooding expanse of the mighty Deepwoods. We rose higher, and the great ironwood stands around us dropped away. We passed through misty wisps of cloud and rose higher still. It wasn’t long before the Wind Zephyr was among the billowing mountains of white cumulus, a magnificent ever-shifting landscape of mist peaks and cloud canyons. And still we kept on rising, the air becoming ever colder and the Wind Zephyr taking on a coating of glistening ice.

Gart turned to me, his side-whiskers white and icicle-festooned. ‘Brea out the ice-hooks, Forden, and keep the phraxchamber clear while I light the firefloats.’

I nodded and set to work. At this altitude, the danger of the phraxchamber freezing over was very real, and if it did then the stormphrax it contained would become dangerously unstable. As I chipped away at the barnacles of ice coating the phraxchamber’s surface, Gart lit the firefloats - sumpwood oil burners contained in delicate latticework cages of spun copperwood. They fanned out around the rattling phraxchamber on thin chains, warming the air around it and keeping it stable.

‘Why are we flying this high?’ I asked through chattering teeth as Kultuft whimpered and shivered by my side.

‘It’s an old trick the skycrafters used in the old days,’ Gart explained, ‘taking their vessels up into the high sky and catching the powerful wind currents up there… It’s not without its risks,’ he admitted. ‘But if we’re lucky, we can hitch a ride on the Edge stream to the south and cut weeks off our voyage.’

Just as he uttered these words, the Wind Zephyr bucked and kicked like a gnat-plagued hammelhorn and, but for the straps that held us secure, we’d have been thrown from the phraxlighter to our deaths. Instead, we clung to the gunwales as the little craft was buffeted and pummelled by the fierce forces of the high sky, while around us, the equipment and provisions rattled and creaked and fought to break free.

Just as I began to suspect that my last hour had come and that this brave little craft could take no more, the Wind Zephyr seemed to break free and rise above the terrible turbulence. Now, the wind was rushing past us at tremendous speed, propelling the phraxlighter forward seemingly effortlessly on a cushion of air.

At the helm, Gart slumped back, exhausted but delighted. ‘We made it!’ he beamed. ‘All those hours with dusty old sky charts were worth it.’

‘What now?’ I asked as the Wind Zephyr sped across the great blue vault of the high sky, the air current around it, warm and balmy, in contrast to the freezing turbulence below.

‘We sit back and enjoy the ride,’ Gart laughed, tousling Kultuft’s hair.

Just then, the phraxchamber gave an ominous, clanking shudder that set the firefloats stuttering and smoking and straining at their tether chains.

‘By Earth and Sky,’ Gart muttered, no longer smiling. ‘It seems I spoke a little too soon…’

‘Do something! Please, do something!’ Laria was pleading. Vitus was writhing about in her arms, his little arms and legs flailing, his face red and twisted up with pain. And he was screaming - screaming with pain and fear. ‘Hedgethorn, for the love of Earth and Sky, do something! ‘

Yes, yes. I must do something. But what?

The venom of the hoverworm is deadly. It courses round the body, causing it to swell up until the hapless victim becomes so huge and buoyant that he or she flies up into the air and off into Open Sky, never to be seen again. That was Vitus’s fate if I didn’t do something. And quick.

But what? What should I do?

The slaughterers, they knew a thing or two about the hoverworm. As far back as the First Age of Flight, they knew how to treat its bite. An antidote of charlock and hempleaf, that’s what they used.

And the librarian knights of the Second Age of flight. They used a similiar concoction. Hover tincture, they called it. No librarian knight’s equipment was complete without the antidote to the bite of the hoverworm, which they wore on their arms in a small ironwood phial.

And then the Freeglade Lancers. They’d taken to carrying the same ironwood phials around with them, attached to their belts. The same antidote against the hoverworm bite in their forays into the Deepwoods around Great Glade.

‘Laria,’ I said. ‘Listen carefully. This is important. Get Vitus inside the hive-house…’

‘He… he…’ Laria clutched at the struggling infant, already growing bigger, lighter in her arms. ‘Hedgethorn, what’s happening?’

‘Get him inside the hive-house,’ I repeated. ‘The venom’s taking effect. Get him inside the hive-house! ‘

Gripping Vitus tightly, Laria stumbled across the veranda and through the door. The baby screamed and howled. I rushed in after her. I had to be quick. A fully-grown soldier might last an hour at the most before the venom sent him soaring into Open Sky. But how long might a baby last? Fifteen minutes? Ten?

With my heart thumping and my hands shaking, I climbed the ladder to my loft. I emerged at the top. I looked around at all the junk I’d amassed over the years. Boxes and crates, stacks of barkscrolls, tools I’d replaced with better ones but couldn’t discard. Old furniture. Old clothes. Memories…

And there, on the far side, against the plaited walls, was a small chest. It contained my old Hive militia uniform; it contained my medals, my papers. It had seemed the perfect place to put the uniform of the brave Freeglade Lancer I’d found dead on the ground after the Battle of the Farrow Lakes. Parvis Helm…

‘Hurry, Hedgethorn!’ Laria Chillax’s voice cut through the air. ‘He’s dying…’

I seized Parvis Helm’s uniform and pulled it from the chest. I lay it on the wooden boards and rifled through it - tunic, helmet, breastplate… Belt!

Below me, in the hive-house, the screaming ceased. In its place came a desperate snuffling gasping for air. I knew that Vitus’s neck and chest must have swelled so much he was finding it difficult to breathe.

‘Hedgethorn! Hedgethorn!’ Laria shrieked.

I ran my trembling fingers over the belt and there, attached by a leather loop, was a phial. I pulled the cork from the neck of the small bottle with my teeth, spat it away and sniffed. Charlock and hempleaf. Hover tincture. The antidote I’d been searching for.

‘Hedgethorn, I can’t…’ Laria’s anguished words turned to a loud scream and I spun round to see her hands grasping desperately for Vitus. The poor mite was twice his normal size now and still inflating, and so light that no matter how hard Laria tried to keep a hold, he slipped from her grasp and soared up into the air. ‘HEDGETHORN!! ‘

If we’d still been outside, he’d have been a goner for sure. He would have risen up into the air and off into Open Sky. But here, inside the hive-house, he still had a chance…

I reached out, plucked him from the air and wedged him beneath my arm. Then, with my free arm I raised the phial of antidote and put it to Vitus’s bloated lips. One drop slipped into his mouth. Then another. I rubbed his neck and he swallowed. I counted off another half dozen drops of the antidote. He swallowed again, and again…

I climbed down the ladder slowly, Vitus in my arms. Already the swelling was beginning to go down. I handed him over to Laria, who cradled him to her breast, tears streaming down her face.

‘To think we almost lost you,’ I said, smoothing the hair on his little head as Laria sobbed. Vitus looked up at me, his eyes bright and tear-filled.

‘Da-da,’ he said.

‘My dear Forden,’ said Captain Gart Ironshank, clapping me on the back, ‘what we need, to brighten our spirits and restore the fire to our bellies, is an expedition!’

We were walking beside the Farrow Lake on a winding path from the bustling webfoot village towards the Levels. My nameless one, Kulltuft, was bounding ahead on those great galumphing legs of his. He’d grown to almost twice my size in the half year or so since I found him in the Northern Woods, and had proved a loyal and obedient companion, not to mention an excellent bodyguard.

‘Here, boy!’ I called. ‘Heel!’ In answer to my call, Kulltuft came bounding back down the path and came to a halt by my side, nuzzling me affectionately with his misshapen head. ‘An expedition, Gart?’ I said, turning to the old phraxship captain.

He nodded. ‘I’ve got it all worked out. In here.’ He tapped the side of his head and smiled. ‘What Farrow Lake needs to grow is industry - a stilt-factory producing goods we need right here, instead of shipping them all the way from Hive or Great Glade.’

Gart came to a stop and pointed out across the flat marshy mudflats of the Levels.

‘And what better place for a stilt-factory than here? Just think of it, Forden. The purified steam from the factory’s phraxengines would turn this wasteland into a market garden to rival any in Great Glade, and all the ironwood ore we could possibly need is just beyond, in the Western Woods…’

I tickled Kulltuft behind one ear, and was rewarded by a deep, growling purr.

‘That’s all well and good,’ I said, for I knew as well as Gart how the by-products of the phraxengines that powered stilt-factories didn’t produce pollution, but instead nourished and watered the land they stood on with the steam from their funnels. ‘But to build phraxengines, we’d need stormphrax - and plenty of it.’

‘Precisely,’ said Gart, smiling delightedly. ‘When the Farrow Lake militia defeated the mire pearlers, we captured Commander Felvis Yellowmane’s war-chest - a great iron-bound sumpwood thing it was, stuffed full of hivegeld and gladers; money he probably owed his troops and was hoarding. Well, as head of the Farrow Lake Chamber of Commerce…’

Gart drew himself up to his full height and puffed out his chest. For the first time I saw the ribbon at the collar of his topcoat, and the guilded carving of an ironoak acorn that dangled from it.

‘I proposed to the council that we invest that ill-gotten loot in buying stormphrax, and building a stilt-factory for the good of us all.’

‘But the stormphrax markets in Great Glade are controlled by the phraxmerchants. We’d need permits and permissions and payoffs…’

‘Not if we by-passed the phraxmerchants and went straight to the source,’ said Gart, his eyes twinkling.

‘To the phraxmines of the Eastern Woods?’ I said with a sharp intake of breath. ‘It would be risky. Even if we managed to get a berth on a sky tavern, we’d have to get past the merchants’ militia.’

‘Who needs a sky tavern when we’ve got the Wind Zephyr - the finest little phraxlighter this side of the Farrow Ridges? She’s fully repaired, supplied and ready to go. And I’ve got a very good friend in the Prade mine who I’ve been meaning to look up for years. What do you say, Forden?’

I weighed up Gart Ironshank’s proposal. If it worked, it could be the making of our little community here in Farrow Lake. But the risks were high and the dangers very real…

‘I’m in, on one condition,’ I said, patting Kulltuft on the head.

‘Name it,’ said Gart.

I smiled, ‘That you make room for one more.’

It was a balmy evening and the three of us were out on the veranda of my hive-house. Laria Chillax - the widow of the brave lancer I had fought alongside at the battle of Farrow Lake - and I were sitting in rocking chairs, sipping sapwine and watching the golden sunlight spread out across the Farrow Lake, then set above the Western Woods. Vitus, the little foundling I had rescued from the battlefield, was getting stronger every day. As we watched, he crawled across the boards, shepherding the three wooden balls I had carved for him.

‘I’ve been thinking about my future here in the Farrow Ridges,’ Laria was saying. ‘I was a seamstress back in Great Glade. And with an excellent reputation by all accounts,’ she added with a self-deprecating laugh. ‘With Parvis dead, there’s nothing for me back there. And I wondered whether the Farrow Ridges might benefit from a small tailor’s shop…’

I thought it was an excellent idea. Before the battle, the Farrow Ridge settlers’ clothing had been brought in on the trading vessels that docked at the Needles. None had visited for months, and I was sure Laria’s idea would prove a winner. We talked of where she might come by a sewing machine; whether there might be someone locally who could make her buttons, toggles, fasteners. We made plans for constructing her a cabin, to include a workshop and small store, on the lakeside plot next to my own hive-house.

Unlike the main cities of the Edge, where business is conducted in dockets, gladers, waifmarks , hivegeld and such like, the Farrow Ridges has no currency. Instead, we barter, exchanging goods for goods, or for works carried out - joinery, plumbing, tiling, boat-repairs, letter-writing. That sort of thing. Laria laughed as we tried to decide whether a worsted hackjacket and matching breeches were worth more or less than a side of hammelhorn, or a newly tiled roof, when all at once, Vitus let out a scream that was shrill and urgent and filled with terror and pain.

‘Vitus!’ Laria cried out, leaping from the rocking chair and dashing to the far side of the veranda, where Vitus lay, silent now and motionless. ‘Vitus, Vitus…’ she moaned, gathering his body up in her arms and cradling him to her breast. ‘Vitus, what is it?’

In the short time that she had stayed with me, Laria had treated Vitus like the child she had never had with Parvis Helm. And Vitus adored her in return.

She turned to me, her green eyes wild with fear. ‘Hedgethorn,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘I… I don’t know…’ I said. ‘Perhaps…’ And then I heard it, a loud hissing noise, and I saw a flash of green and yellow. ‘Oh, no,’ I gasped. ‘A hoverworm.’

Laria spun round. ‘A what?’

‘A hoverworm,’ I repeated miserably. ‘A Deepwoods creature. It usually favours the darkest parts of the forest. It must have come down to the lakeside to drink…’

Laria inspected Vitus’s hot, limp body agitatedly, and let out a stifled cry as she discovered the two marks puncturing the skin of his left arm. She looked up at me.

‘He… he’ll be all right, won’t he?’ she sobbed, her tear-filled eyes imploring me to assure her that he would be.

But I could not. How could I? After all, I’d learned from bitter personal experience that, if the victim of a hoverworm’s bite was not given the antidote to its vile venom within the hour, then he or she would surely die…

The hive tower was decked out magnificently. Woven boughs of lufwood arched overhead, tiny lanterns hanging from them in glittering clusters, while the traditional sumpwood globes, painted green and red, floated in the warm air.

In the middle of the floor, a mighty fire blazed, around which long tables had been arranged to form a circle. These groaned under the weight of good things to eat - tildersteaks, glazed legs of hammelhorn, steaming bowls of spicy tripweed, and, of course, Wodgiss sausages.

Hedgethorn Lammergyre, the new mayor of Farrow Lake, had spared no expense to make this a Wodgiss Night to remember. After the terrible trials and tribulations of this last year, there are many of us Farrow Lakers who are heartily grateful to him for his efforts.

There is nothing like this great midwinter feast for bringing communities together and raising the spirits. This year, snow had come swirling down and a bitterly cold wind had turned the Farrow Lake to ice. Three of the Five Falls had turned to frozen icicles and many Farrow Lakers had likened this bitter winter to that legendary one, so long ago, that had afflicted the great floating city of Sanctaphrax.

But the warmth of the hive tower soon banished such thoughts from our minds as we raised goblets of hylewine and tankards of wodge-ale in the traditional toast - “Earth and Sky!”

I downed my drink in one and looked around at the faces in the firelight. They were my neighbours - the solemn long faces of the webfoot goblins of Farrow village; the hard, weatherbeaten traders from the shacks in the Western Woods, and the eager, excited faces of the new settlers and their young families, who were establishing themselves on the fringes of the eastern shore. Our little community had grown so much since I’d arrived, I realized, and now the war was over, would grow bigger than ever.

‘Earth and Sky… and Farrow Lake!’ I cried, raising my re-charged goblet.

‘Farrow Lake! Farrow Lake! Farrow Lake!’ The hive tower resounded with joyful voices raised in celebration. Across the fire, Hedgethorn, his little foundling cradled in his arms, laughed delightedly.

‘Why, Forden, came a familiar voice, and turning, I saw my old friend, Gart Ironshank, coming towards me. ‘Just the person I was looking for.’

The captain shook my hand warmly and drew up a chair. ‘Quite a festive gathering,’ he said, looking round appreciateively. ‘Good to see things getting back to normal…’

‘They’ll never be normal for me,’ I said. Alcestia’s beautiful face appeared in my mind. ‘But life has to go on.’

‘Indeed, indeed,’ said Gart, nodding, ‘which is why I have a very interesting proposition to put to you, Forden, old friend…’

Vitus, Vitus, Vitus…

I named him myself, the little bundle of life I found nestled among the death and destruction of the battlefield. Nearly three weeks have passed since the terrible events of the Battle of the Farrow Lake and, thank Earth and Sky, the little fellow is thriving.

It would be an exaggeration to say that everything is back to normal, for nothing will ever be the same again. Yet for all that, some semblance of normality has indeed returned to the Farrow ridges. The fallen - from both sides of the conflict - have been removed from the battlefield, and their bodies sent ceremonially and reverently soaring up to Open Sky on flaming pyres. Poor Forden was too ill to attend his Alcestia’s funeral, but later performed a solitary ceremony of his own. My friend has been subdued since his tragic loss and my heart goes out to him.

The lake and landing jetties and buildings that were damaged in the phraxfire have been repaired. The felled trees have been cleared, used for timber and firewood, and recent heavy rain has washed away the blood that stained the ground. In its place, thousands of red papery-petalled woodlilies have sprung up, their crimson flowers serving as a poignant memory to those who died.

Scores perished in the Battle of Farrow Lake, including many that I had come to regard as friends, yet today the Farrow Ridges are more populated than ever. For not only did several of the Freeglade Lancers decide to remain here, sending for their families to join them, but many others from Great Glade have decided to move to this quiet outpost, so different from the mighty city they chose to leave behind.

And then there is Vitus, who, at less than a month old, is the youngest of our community…

Despite asking around, I was unable to find out anything about the tiny newborn baby I’d found. No one knew anything of his mother or father, and I could only assume that they were newcomers who had been caught in the crossfire and perished.

Though tiny, Vitus is a strong little thing. He has dark blue eyes, sturdy limbs - and a powerful set of lungs. When I headed back to my hive-house with the little fellow swaddled in my scarf, he bellowed with red-faced indignation the whole way. Thankfully, his distress was caused only by hunger, and after drinking some warm hammelhorn milk (taken from a bottle with a makeshift teat I fashioned from the thumb of a glove), he fell into a deep and contented slumber.

Since then, Vitus has been as good as gold, feeding regularly and sleeping through the night. For the first couple of weeks, I left him in the cot I’d made him, with Plume - my loyal cantationary bird - on guard. Whenever Vitus stirred, he would fly off to find me, crying like the baby himself, so that I knew to return. This last week, however, with so much to do, I have kept him with me in an adapted backpack, his legs dangling down my back and head darting about in his curiosity, or resting on my shoulder, asleep. In this manner, he has accompanied me as I’ve dug my fields, gathered wood or taken my coracle out on the lake…

It’s strange how things work out. I’d always assumed I’d be a father, yet sadly it was not to be. When I was young, I fell in love with a grey goblin called Innis. She was beautiful and kind and, betrothed to one another, we made plans for our lives together - before she caught fog-fever and died in my arms. Some while after that, I was conscripted into the Hive army and sent to fight at the Midwood Marshes - and then, of course, I moved here. The years passed, and those early dreams faded. Yet now I have become a father - of sorts - after all.

‘We’ll be fine, you and me, little one,’ I told him one night as I settled him down in his cradle. ‘Don’t fret, Vitus. Hedgethorn will look after you just like his own.’

Even as I spoke, though, I knew that I was fooling myself. Oh, I could feed him and look after him well enough, but he needed more than that - baby Vitus needed the love and special care that only a mother could give him. But where could I, a battle-scarred veteran, ever find such a person?

As I pulled the tilder pelt up over his sleeping body, there was a gentle knock on the door. Wondering who might be visiting me so late at night, I crossed the room and opened the door to see a tall fourthling standing before me. She had long reddish hair and the greenest eyes I’d ever seen.

‘Hedgethorn Lammergyre?’ she said. ‘My name is Laria. Laria Chillax…’

I stood on the edge of High Farrow and looked out across Farrow Lake. Below me the Five Falls thundered into its glistening waters, while to the west, the Levels stretched away to the smoke-coloured blur of the Western Woods.

My pit-house home lay at the far end of the lake, and beside it, the pinnacled roofs of the webfoot village were glinting in the early morning light. Below Midridge, the ugly scar of the great trench stood out amid the desolation of the eastern shore, and close by, on the lakeside, was the battered hive tower of my friend, Hedgethorn Lammergyre.

Without him, I wouldn’t be standing here now, I thought.

He had found me on the battlefield and tended my wounds patiently for weeks, until I was strong enough to get up. And when I had, the first thing I did was to walk up here to High Farrow. I needed a crutch and stopped frequently on the path to catch my breath, but as the dawn broke, I reached the remembrance stones.

There were many of them, bearing the names of people I knew and people I did not. The fallen of the Battle of Farrow Lake. I had snapped a twig from a lufwood tree on my way and, clutching it in my hand, I searched among the stones at High Farrow’s edge. At last I found the remembrance stone I sought. Looking down at it, I read the name chiselled into the blue-grey rock.

ALCESTIA, of the Farrow Lake Militia, it read, May Open Sky Take Her Soul.

I knelt before it and traced the words with a finger. Alcestia, my Alcestia, was gone. She’d died of her wounds on the second day of the battle, the white trogs of the water caverns powerless to save her. As the smoke from the shattered Eastern Woods began to drift away, they had brought her body here to the edge of High Farrow for sky burial.

As I lay in Hedgethorn’s hive tower fighting for my life, they had prepared the lufwood pyre and laid Alcestia upon it. Then, with flaming torches, they had set fire to the buoyant logs and the pyre had risen into the darkening sky. Higher and higher the burning wood took her, until at last, she disappeared into Open Sky. Open Sky, where we all came from, and Open Sky, where we all must go…

I fumbled in the pockets of my topcoat and, drawing out a flintbox and matches, I lit the lufwood twig I had brought. It flared into purple flame and, letting go, I watched it soar up into the golden glow of dawn.

‘Farewell, Alcestia,’ I said, tears flowing freely now. ‘We’ll meet again… in Open Sky.’

Having set a poultice to draw the bullets from Forden’s wounds, sealed the whole lot in a clay cast and laid him in a hammock above a smouldering fire of thunderroot, I left the hive hut. There was nothing more I could do for him. He would sleep for at least three days. Time would be his healer now.

Part of the roof of my hive hut had been blown away in a phraxcannon bombardment, and there was also a gaping hole in the wall to the right of the doorway. I decided to start on the repairs immediately, relishing the thought of having something to do.

I worked all through the afternoon and into the night, cutting lengths of waterwillow to the right length and plaiting them slowly and methodically into place. The sun set and the moon rose, full and round and so bright it cast my beloved Farrow Ridges in eerie silver shadow.

It was close to midnight by the time my dwellings were patched up. Yet, even though I’d been up since daybreak, I was not tired.

I checked on Forden. He was out for the count. At least now, with the roof and wall repaired, he would not be chilled by the cold wind that was getting up outside. I heard it whistle and howl round my hive hut and I answered its call, stepping back outside and setting off on a walk.

I gave no thought to where I might head. I simply set off. Being outside, clearing my head; that was all I had in mind. It was only when I found myself in the Western Woods that I realized I’d walked right round the Farrow Lake and across the Levels. I stopped and looked about me…

Can there be any place more desperate than a battlefield at the end of a might battle? I strode through the decimated forest, picking my way over splintered tree-stumps, flattened rock-mounds and churned mud that was stained with blood and steaming with unspent phraxbullets, feeling sick to stomach. There were dead bodies on the ground, still to be cleared away, with shattered limps and gaping wounds. Our fighters and theirs. Enemies, united in death.

The horror of it all brought back flashbacks of the carnage wreaked at the terrible Battle of the Midwood Marshes. Back then, I’d lost many friends; grey goblins I’d grown up with, neighbours, comrades. The losses were soured by the fact that we all knew we were fighting on the wrong side of an unjust war. No-one dragooned into fighting for Hive by Kulltuft Warhammer and his cronies agreed with our battle with Great Glade.

Of course, we lost that war. And thank Earth and Sky we did! It meant that Kulltuft Warhammer was deposed, and a democratic council restored. Now, as I stared round me, I was more glad than ever that Great Glade had won. After all, if they had not, they could not have sent the Freeglade Lancers to come to our aid, and the Farrow Ridges would surely have fallen to our enemies.

What courageous fighters those Freeglade Lancers had proven to be! With their prowlgrins and their lances, theyhad routed the enemy, cutting them down like scythed blue-barley. I felt honoured to have ridden beside them into battle and humbled by the sacrifice they had made - a sentiment made all the more poignant by the body of the lancer I came across, lying on the ground.

‘Thank you, dear, brave comrade,’ I told him, tears welling in my eyes.

I noticed a piece of barkscroll protruding from his clenched fist. I prised his hand open. As the fingers unfolded, the barkscroll fell into my hand. I opened it and read the scrawled note written there.

To you, who has found this note, I would ask that the ring it encloses be delivered to my beloved, Laria Chillax, of the Reaches, Ambristown, Great Glade. Tell her I am hers until the end of time. Tell her, one day we shall be together again in Open Sky. Tell her, I love her. Tell her

The message stopped. My tears were flowing freely now. I looked at the ring - a simple gold band inscribed with two names; Parvis on one side, Laria on the other.

‘I promise you,’ I whispered, ‘I shall visit your Laria and…’

Just then, there was a noise behind me, and I turned to see a piebald prowlgrin pawing at the ground. It was snorting and growling and from the way it kept running off, then stopping and looking back at me, I knew it wanted me to go with it.

I wrapped up the ring, slipped it into my back pocket and followed the prowlgrin into the trees. We hadn’t gone more than a score or so strides, when I heard a strange noise. It was a plaintive mewling, like the cry of a snowbird, or the whimpering of a wood kitten, or…

As I rounded a vast lullabee tree, my jaw dropped. For there, amid the death and destruction of the aftermath of war, was the most incongruous sight I could imagine.

It was a newborn baby…