Kingdom's Fall

Chapter 18, Part 1

"I thought they said the marshes had been drained," Cuan said, raising his voice so it would carry to where Gray was standing. Somehow, the older man had found a solid place to stop and perch while he waited for Cuan to slog through the ankle-deep mud and catch up with him.

"They are drained," Gray called back. "Six months ago, this would have been impassable. Both of us would up to our waists in bog, and whatever the water didn't cover the insects would be eating."

Cuan scrunched his toes over inside his boot and lifted his foot from the mud. The bog lurched unwillingly upward and with a long, sucking sound, his foot came free. Without the pressure of his toes, he would have lost a boot in the process. Gray hadn't tipped him off to the trick; he'd had to discover it himself after several incidents that left him standing with one leg cocked high like a wading bird looking for a meal. Gray seemed immune to the difficulties that the marsh presented. He put his experience to good use, loping from one dry patch to the next with no real difficulty. Cuan was sure that the old man was showing off, convinced that at any point the half-jump, half-stride motion Gray used was going to fail him and that he'd end up sprawling in the muck. If he slipped at all, Cuan had yet to see it. Gray's clothes - above the knee - were spotless.

"You said there'd be Carelians," Cuan called again. "We haven't seen a soul."

"I said there might be," Gray said. "And there are. But not here. You think I want to walk us into a patrol on this terrain? No, lad, we're taking the long route. Some of the marshes will be passable to horse and wagon. That's where the Carelians will travel, and where they'll guard heaviest. This stuff," he pointed at the ground, "is still too boggy for them to use well, and if I remember correctly it's too far east of their frontier garrison."

Cuan reached the point where Gray was standing, and tried to find a similar spot to stand and rest on. The patch he found was limp and sodden, but was still an improvement over the sensation of mud closing tight around the sides of his feet. "So where are we going, then? I thought you wanted to talk to them?"

"We're at war, Cuan, or close to it. I'll walk up to the gates of a garrison when we've tried everything else," Gray said. "In the meantime, we'll take the marshes over suicide."

They loped on in silence for a few strides before Gray stopped, and spoke again.

"Before you were born, Varion set me an impossible task. The marshes have always been enough to keep the Kingdom and Carelia apart. What few places you could move an army across are so close that even if you could get enough men across, it would be impossible to maintain their supply lines."

"And the king made you invade."

"Yes. He wanted a buffer on the Carelian side so we wouldn't be dependent on the terrain." Gray made a face. "The thing is, as foolish as that sounds, it's almost starting to make sense."

"But we lost, didn't we?"

"I didn't say it was a success, lad. Just that it might have been built on a longer goal than I could see at the time."

"I don't understand."

Gray pointed off to the south-east, where a purple-blue ripple disturbed the horizon. "You see those mountains?" he asked. Cuan scrunched up his eyes and looked. He hadn't realised the shape was land, raised high but still far-off.

"I see them."

"The veil mountains. There's a river that runs out of them, that widens out and flattens once it hits the low land. It feeds these marshes from the Carelian side."

Cuan thought about what Gray had said about the marshes drying out. "You think they've done something to it?"

"Diverted it, or dammed it." Gray spat. "All these years, the Carelians have had the means to take the marshes from us, and it never once occurred to me."

"So why now?"

Gray paused. "Because they can," he said. It sounded half-hearted, like he didn't believe it himself. He took a long step off of his perch and was off, striding away towards the distant mountains. Cuan could see his rest - his well-earned and much-deserved respite from the mud - striding off with him. There had to be something he could do. Begging was an unlikely option. Gray had shown little tendency towards affording Cuan any more rest than he gave himself, and had more than once mentioned a need to 'toughen him up'. Dragging him along through the marshes was just another step on the long road to reaching Gray's required standards of hardiness. The only option that Cuan had left was to annoy him.

"And then what?" Cuan shouted. Gray took one final leap and stopped, turning back to look at his charge in confusion. Cuan forced down the urge to catch up and explain himself, and stood his ground.

"What do you mean, 'then what'?"

"What are you going to do when we get there?" Cuan asked. "It's a simple question."

"Oh, I understand the question, lad, but I'm not sure why you need to know the answer."

"Well, I've been following you because you made me to, at first. Drafted into the army was the reason, but mostly I was just afraid I'd have nowhere else to go." As Cuan spoke, Gray made his way back, taking his time as he hopped from one dry patch to the next. "With the king dead, and you wanted for his death, it seems like we're not really in the army any more."

"You need to know what authority I'm acting on?"

"No," Cuan said. A lump rose in his throat. "You left all those people to die back there. You didn't even try to help them. You just stirred them all up and left them to their fate."

There was a long silence between them. Cuan couldn't bring himself to look at Gray, to meet his cold, hard regard. Eventually, Gray spoke.

"You're right, Cuan," he said. "I did leave them to die. It was a hard choice, and maybe not the right one, but it's the one I made." A sigh shuddered out of him. "I could have tried to win back our soldiers, but it was too much of a risk. If I die, Cuan - if either one of us dies - then the Queen will go unchallenged. Between her and the Carelian army, they will chew the Kingdom up and spit out the scraps."

"I just don't know what we're going to do," Cuan said. "I'm not a soldier, no matter how many times you tell me otherwise. I can't be your army."

"Son, look at me," Gray said. "I'm not asking you to be an army for me. I'm teaching you it, because it's all I know. It's all I've ever known. I'm asking you to believe we can make a difference here. We have to do something."

"I just..." Cuan slumped. "I just wanted a rest."

Gray made a huffing sound and the corner of his mouth hitched up into a smile. "Fine. The next decent patch of ground we find, we'll stop and have a bite to eat. Sound fair to you?"

"There's one other thing," Cuan said.

"What is it?"

"How do you walk without losing a boot?"

Gray laughed. "Ah, well that I can help you with. Watch what I do, and follow me closely. I'll explain as we go." He made a three quarter turn and took an exaggerated step off the lump of turf he was standing on to a nearby clump of foliage, stepping off that to another that lay further on. Cuan gathered his nerve to make the first leap, and followed.