A Place To Bloom

The Gate

Nestled between peaks that towered upward on the right and left was a stone wall with an archway. Beside the archway, embedded into the stone, was a bronze plaque.

Terbulin Pass, 17889 feet. Beyond this gate, the Empire cannot protect you.

And if I hadn't kissed Guenevieve, I'd have been in a warm bed snuggling up with Sarina at this very moment. I'd push my fingers into the frazzled, kinky mass of her hair. She'd laugh and tell me to leave it alone. Later, she'd lean back in a warm bath and close her eyes, and allow me to comb it out, massaging her scalp with olive oil.

We'd be married. On the run from the Invisible Hand instead of marching into a war where men go in and don't come out.

My fingers wouldn't be numb, either.

To the right of the archway was a totem twenty feet tall and half covered in ice. Goat stood at the apex atop Cougar, Falcon, Rattlesnake, and Wolf, and at the foundation was Orca.

We entered through the archway into a snow-packed courtyard scarcely twenty by twenty feet, an oblong square built more out of respect to the adjacent mountains with only a cursory nod to geometry. On the far end was another archway with a large, oaken door barricaded by three heavy iron bars and not one, but two closed, iron portcullises.

Portculli. Portcullix. Whatever.

On each side were narrow, vertical slits that let through slivers of blue sky, angled on the interior for archers to have any attack they desired, and adjacent each were baskets of arrows with a dusting of snow all over the fletchings.

The rampart above had stone crenellations that came up shoulder height, and there were two men up there. Each was adorned in a black fur coat with metal armored plates peeking out from beneath. They turned to look at us as we came up; the bottom halves of their faces were covered in woolen cloth. One of them called out, "Zaken! Fresh meat!"

Davod turned to me with his brow furrowed. From the side came the creak of iron hinges as a door swung open and smacked against the stone, and another man emerged. He, too, had a heavy fur coat, but his face placed him well into his middle years. His long, dark-green hair hosted more than a few strands of white and was pulled behind his shoulders. The collar where his coat and armor ended hinted at muscles enough to mark him as a man not to be trifled with.

He stepped up to us, sniffing the freezing air.

Davod spoke first. "We've been called to arms. We're supposed to go..."

"Ye boys been smokin?" His voice was a deep baritone with the thick accent of the Beaver Clan, and his words came out more as a statement than a question. His eyes shifted among us.

"Huh?"

"What?"

"Me?"

Ales answered him more decisively. "Yes we have, sir."

Zaken stepped up to him, his nose inches from our friend's face, and passed his eyes up and down his body. "Honesty. Good quality." Then he turned to the rest of us. "What o the rest o y'all?"

Faren raised his droopy eyes to the man. "I've got more..."

"Not anymore, ye don't!" Zaken snapped at him. "That'll get ye killed down there, and I don't want yer blood on my hands, ye hear?"

Faren froze. He'd struggled to breathe since the path through that last escarpment, and coming up to the gate he was dizzy. Those words snapped him to attention.

Zaken shook his head and turned to each of us as he continued. "Keep yer mind sharp. At all times. That man down there'll get ye killed. And no drinkin, neither. Survive down there, and ye get to stay up here."