Partisan - Book II

The Flesh That Shivers

Seven shadows move along a white tree line, watching the tall, pale wall and the small forms that walk along it.

The trees are not charred up here, not as they were down near Fort Morgalth, and whereas that southern hulk of iron and steel had been dark and rusting, the thing before them now is a creature built on a sheet of ice.

After three days of travel, they have found it: a base, obscure and small—much smaller than even Morgalth had seemed. This place doesn't impose itself as Morgalth had either; instead, snow is god here—cold, freezing snow that seeps in through leather and wool, down to shivering flesh and chilled bone. It cakes itself on everything, and but for the black and blue armor glinting on the patrolling guards, Allayria might think this place a sister base to Eastwatch.

Another problem to consider, Allayria muses, eyes flickering back to the long horizon where, beyond, the Roften fort lies. Whatever they are going into now, she still has strong doubts about what waits for their return.

But for them to return, they must get inside. 

Here is where you must go—the place we most desperately need an unseen advantage, a strange mix of her own voice and Beinsho's murmurs in her head. The place all these children are being taken.

They find the cracks Grismen was talking about on the first day. They open one on the second night.

Under the mask of moonless twilight they creep along walls of ice and steel, fingers pressing against the rivet, feeling, sensing how deep it goes. Deep enough.

It takes Allayria, Lei, and Hiran to widen it, Caj stepping in when they hit the metal. He and Allayria work the brunt of it as light breaks on the pastel horizon and the others narrow the entry point so roving eyes won't notice. They are wedged between sheets of ice and steel, a narrow corridor, a sliver of a coffin.

The air is oddly warm when they break into the hallway. Much warmer than Eastwatch. Allayria thinks Grismen must have been right, that the Jarles must have dug down, set up furnaces that plume their dark heat up into these chilled corridors.

"Look for a sign or something that tells us where we are," she murmurs to the others. "Remember to stand straight. Caj—take the back, I'll take the front."

They move slowly, silent until Tara spies a small corridor down to some kind of empty mess hall.

"Soldier's barracks?" Fae suggests.

"If we can find someone," Hiran adds, leaning in, "someone stupid, maybe we can fool them into showing us where to go."

"We know where we need to go," Lei says and everyone stares at him. He blinks.

"To the center," he says after a moment. "The most protected part of the base will be its center, the place farthest away from the walls. Whatever archive or facility they have, it will be there. Once we get there, it's a matter of how to get in and if the rooms are upstairs or downstairs."

"Oh well, just that," Hiran snarks. "I'm sure the hordes of Jarles soldiers patrolling the hallways won't be bothered by us—"

"Not here," Allayria murmurs in warning and Tara's elbow jabs into the Solveig man's side. "Ok, we move southward. Pair off. Finn: go in back with Caj. Hiran, Tara, Fae: center. Lei: up with me. A couple paces between. Act..."

She hesitates.

"I don't know, just don't act guilty."

"Such clear directions," Hiran mutters but there's an oomph of air. Tara must have elbowed him again.