Week 17

  The oasis town of Sarapis was visible long before they reached it. Even at a distance, the town shimmered under a mirage of its own making. The road into town was newly churned into deep ruts by an endless trains of construction carts.

  Callie could see the reason for the traffic before they even hit the first palm: a ring of scaffolding circled the settlement, dwarfing the old clay wall behind it. Scores of dwarves moved up and down the scaffolds.

  As they reached the town perimeter, Callie looked up at the unfinished wall. “World’s fanciest sandcastle.”

  A dwarf hauling a barrel overhead grunted in appreciation.

  Callie shaded her eyes, taking in the scene.

  Where the wall met the ground, a team of dwarves clustered around a deep trench that ran the length of the perimeter. At regular intervals, another dwarf would climb down, carrying what looked for all the world like a gigantic magnifying glass. Once at the bottom, the dwarf would anchor the lens in a special frame, then chant a brief incantation.

  Immediately, sunlight focused through the lens, the air above the pit shimmering with heat. At first, Callie thought it was just an old-school solar furnace, but she watched as the sand at the base of the trench started to glow: first red, then orange, then yellow and finally white.

  “Glass-trenching,” said a voice behind her. “Standard practice in the old country. Only way to stop the sand from eating the wall. We can only do this here because of the purity of the sand here.”

  She turned. The speaker was a dwarf built like a siege engine. Every inch of his exposed skin was stained with alchemical residue.

  He extended a soot-blackened hand. “Gornath,” he said. “Foreman for the Sarapis project.”

  Callie shook his hand; it was hard as stone but surprisingly gentle. “Callie,” she said. “This is Briar, and our warg, Ember.”

  Gornath bowed to Briar and Ember both, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He squinted at the warg. “Is he the sort to bite?”

  “Only if I tell him to,” said Briar. Ember wagged his tail for emphasis.

  Gornath grinned, exposing a row of immaculate teeth. “I assume you’re here to help. Let me guess: Ranger, Beast Companion-Pet, Healer?”

  Callie shrugged.

  “We’re short on defenders so every bit helps. You are planning on staying, aren’t you?” He waved an arm in the general direction of the wall. “It’s a rush job. We only have a day or two to complete it. Follow me, and I’ll show you; might come in useful when the attack occurs.”

  Callie wanted to ask: “What fucking attack?” But kept her mouth shut.

  Gornath led them along the perimeter, past the scaffolds and lens-frames. Workers passed them in both directions, some carrying buckets of chalky powder, others bearing bundles of palmate leaves or bales of wire mesh.

  As they walked, Gornath pointed out the highlights. “The base layer’s done with focused sunlight. Glassifies the sand, makes a water-tight cradle. Next, we pour the binder…” He gestured to a dwarf stirring a cauldron big enough to bathe a horse in. The binder was a viscous blue-black syrup, thick with suspended grit.

  “What’s in it?” Callie asked, leaning in.

  Gornath seemed delighted by the question. “Trade secret, but I’ll give you the recipe for free, since you’re friends with the Bai Ze.” He nodded towards the edge of Briar’s talisman peeping out from the edge of her collar. “Desert sap, gypsum, a touch of volcanic obsidian ground fine, and a resin drawn from the spines of the cactus. The sap comes from the bluebarrel variety. See over there?” He pointed to a pair of dwarves who were tapping fat cacti with long copper tubes, collecting the ooze into glazed crocks.

  “Then, we blend it all with sand, and it hardens to stone under heat and pressure.” Gornath rapped a knuckle on the nearest completed segment. It rang with a satisfying, glassy ping.

  Briar ran a finger along the surface. It was cool and slick, like riverstone. “That’s wild.”

  Callie asked, “How do you keep the wall from cracking in the heat?”

  “Good eye,” Gornath said. “We run copper mesh through every third layer. Acts as a heat sink, lets it expand and contract without splitting.”

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  They passed a section where a dozen dwarves in soot-streaked tunics were chanting in unison, their hands pressed to the wooden formwork that shaped the next portion of wall.

  “The chants,” Callie said. “They’re more than just tradition?”

  Gornath nodded, his copper braids bobbing. “Every word is a rune. Weave the words, shape the substance.”

  They rounded a corner, and the full sweep of the oasis lay before them. The old wall, a low, crumbling affair, circled the city proper, but the new wall dwarfed it by three meters and gleamed like polished agate in the sunlight.

  Gornath stopped, and gestured for them to do the same.

  “The walls look complete but it hasn’t been reinforced.” He looked suddenly serious. “The final phase is what matters most. Once the wall is set, we usually inscribe the runes. Water and fire-wards, and demon-seals. We don’t have the equipment or manpower for that at the moment.”

  They spent a few minutes watching the dwarves work. Each crew moved with the relentless focus of a surgical team.

  Callie broke the silence. “Was all that just to convince me that Sarapis is salvageable; so that I would stay?”

  Gornath shrugged.

  “Let’s take a look at your wounded,” Callie said.

  “I’ll bring them to you. You can set up in the shaded area under the palms.”

  ***

  Callie cleaned and set two dwarven forearms in the time it took Briar to organize a makeshift first aid station. She was tying off a suture when Gornath ducked in.

  "We need you to treat the engineers first so that they can get back to the wall," he said, watching Callie work.

  "For the ‘attack’ you mentioned earlier?"

  Gornath glanced around, then leaned in. "World Tortoise just survived a siege. The demons lost, but they split. Most of the horde is moving north but some stragglers are moving east to the Shattered Spires just past the White Plateau. Sarapis is the last waystation before they hit the Spires." He patted the nearest cot's occupant as if to apologize for the interruption. "Runners from the Salt Stone Watch came through this morning. Said the beasts are hungry after their defeat."

  Briar made a face. "The Tortoise survived, but we get the leftovers?"

  "How bad?" Callie asked.

  "Bad," said Gornath. "At least four hundred, maybe twice that not including siege demons. And we don't have a wall yet. They want to strip Sarapis for supplies: food, water, animals, slaves, whatever. We can either make it too painful for them or…"

  “You could burn the whole place down. Scorched earth.” Callie felt a cold spot in her chest. "Have you heard of a fire mage called, Tanith?" she asked.

  Gornath's eyes widened. "You know General Sekhmet?"

  "Are you sure you’ve got the right person?" Briar said.

  “General Tanit Sekhmet Imhar?” Gornath shrugged, good-naturedly. "No one calls her Tanit. Or Tanith. Word is she turned the desert to glass again; killed thousands of them. A runner said that the Path is covered with ash and powdered bone."

  He looked at Callie, then back at Briar. "You both friends with her?"

  "More or less," Briar said. "Is she okay?"

  Gornath shrugged. "I have no idea. The runners seem to indicate that she might be mopping up."

  Callie chewed her lip, calculating the odds. Tanith could take care of herself. It was Sarapis and its inhabitant which they needed to worry about.

  “Our engineers are back to full strength, thanks to you. But we’ve got a lot more wounded from the front,” Gornath said. “Better come with me.”

  ***

  They followed Gornath out into the white glare.

  He led them to the biggest house on the row: a repurposed caravanserai, now occupied by the wounded. Inside, the stone walls were blessedly cool, but the stench of blood was thick enough to taste. Master Lin, the healer, was not in this area either; perhaps he had kept to his hut in the hills.

  The closest patient lay on a table made of a door balanced on crates. His leg was wrapped in layers of linen, but a steady trickle of dark blood ran down to the floor.

  Gornath called out in an attempt at levity, "The healer is here. No more bleeding on the carpet, you hear?"

  A woman was already standing over the boy. She stepped back, eyeing Callie with a look of total despair.

  Callie peeled away the top bandage. The wound was spectacular, a perfect illustration of what happened when bone met blunt force at an oblique angle. She poked gently at the muscle, then pressed both hands just above the wound and closed her eyes.

  She used [Bone Setting] and [Mend Flesh], then [Soothe Pain].

  The mana pulsed under her palm, the bleeding slowed, then stopped. She held the pressure a moment longer, letting the mana stitch together what nature couldn't. When she pulled back, the wound had sealed: still ugly, but no longer actively dying.

  The woman exhaled like she'd been holding her breath for a year.

  Callie didn’t wait for her thanks. She moved from case to case with unnatural speed, her [Triage Instinct] guiding her from case to case with pin-point accuracy. Briar worked hand in hand with her, cleaning wounds with salves and dosing patients with anti-microbials derived from the Verdant Crucible [*] according to Callie’s instructions.

  When the salvageable cases had been addressed, Callie scanned the cots, looking for any cases which were flagged as beyond hope. She found one at the very back among three dead bodies. There was a pool of something brown and sticky just outside the curtain, and the wet, rattling sound of someone in too much pain to be quiet.

  Callie stepped inside.

  The cot held a single body, skeletal under the thin blanket. The man’s face was gray with fever and streaked with dust, but the nose and jaw were unmistakable.

  Theron. [**]

  She stood there for a moment, letting the memories settle; mostly how she had treated him with callous prejudice when she had thought he had abandoned his party member, Thistledown, at the Petalorian Archive.

  His left leg was gone above the knee, the stump wrapped in a bloody linen so old it had started to crust. It was a botched job. The bandage was badly tied, and seeped an alarming amount of gray-red fluid. The flesh above the cut had been hacked rather than sawed.

  Theron's eyes fluttered open. For a moment he looked at Callie without recognition, then the focus returned. “Doc,” he croaked, voice shredded by thirst. “You’re a sight.”

  ______

  [*] See Book 1 Chapter 12

  [**] See Book 1 Chapter 4 and Chapter 9