THE BONE AND THE ANVIL - The View from the Watchtower

The high tower of

View from the

The high tower of

Oakhaven tasted of pigeon droppings, rust, and the damp wool of

Quell’s cloak.Lieutenant

Roderick stood near the crenellations, his left boot resting on a stack of dry oak firewood that someone had forgotten to carry down to the guardhouse three winters ago.

He was wiping the brass objective lens of his spyglass with a dirty silk handkerchief—a habit he’d picked up in the southern garrison town where dust got into everything, including a man’s teeth.”You’re going to rub the glass flat,

Roderick,” Quell grunted.Quell didn’t have a glass.

He didn’t need one.

His eyes were small, pale, and set deep beneath a forehead that looked like it had been carved out of an ash stump with a blunt adze.

He was leaning against the stone sill, spitting occasionally down into the dry moat thirty feet below.

Each drop hit the dead nettles with a tiny, dry tick.”It’s misting up,” Roderick said.

He didn’t look at

He adjusted the knurled brass ring, brought the glass back to his right eye, and leaned his shoulder against the cold lime-plaster of the tower wall. “The fog’s rolling out of the shale-beds faster than usual.

Cold front coming down from the crags.””Cold’s been here three weeks,” Quell said.

He shifted his weight, his iron-studded harness squeaking like a wet pig. “What are you looking at?

The wood-haulers aren’t back till sunset.

If the penal gang dropped another pine down the gulley,

Ostrander will flog ’em whether you watch or not.””Not the timber gang,” Roderick murmured. “Down in the

Near the three-mile marker.”Quell snorted.

He pulled a small leather pouch from his belt, pinched out a wad of black tobacco that smelled faintly of molasses and old boots, and shoved it behind his rear molars. “Told you yesterday.

Two runaway diggers from the canal cuts.

One got caught in the sluice gate—shattered his thigh, bled out before noon.

The other one’s been running since midnight.””The eastern boy,” Roderick said.”He’s dog meat.””He made it past the shale-slide.”Quell finally turned his head, his thick neck creasing into two grey folds over his leather collar. “Past the slide?

With no boots?””See for yourself.” Roderick held out the heavy brass tube without turning around.Quell didn’t take it right away.

He spat a dark brown stream over the ledge, wiped his mouth with the back of a hand scarred by old iron-burns, and snatched the glass with an ill-tempered jerk.

He jammed it to his eye, grunting as he fought the focus.”Too far left… up… there.

Ah.” Quell went still.

The wind caught the frayed edge of his cloak, slapping it against the masonry. “Stupid little rat.

He’s sprawling on the stone.

Look at his feet—he’s leaving half his skin on the rock.””He’s been running three hours,” Roderick noted, his tone flat, professional, the voice he used when recording ledger entries for the quartermaster’s grain receipts. “No coat.

Just the linen shirt they give the ditch-diggers.””He’s done,” Quell said.

He lowered the glass, though he didn’t hand it back.

He held it in his fist like a short club. “Look at his knees.

Five scag-hounds closing the ring.

Earless one’s leading ’em.

That brute’s got more scar-tissue than brains, but it knows when a liver’s ready for pulling.””Fifty copper bits,” Roderick said suddenly.Quell blinked, his red-rimmed eyes narrowing. “What?””Fifty coppers says he gets up.””You’re soft in the head,

The glass-sickness in the camps is getting to your brain.

Look at the angle of his head—his neck’s about to be snapped.” Quell laughed, a dry, coughing rasp that ended in a spit. “Make it two silver groats, and

I’ll take your money.

He doesn’t survive the minute.””Two groats,” Roderick agreed quietly. “Done.”Silence fell over the high tower again, save for the dull whir-whir of a raven circling the timber stacks down in the parade ground.Roderick didn’t take the spyglass back.

He leaned his forearms on the cold stone, staring out into the grey haze with his bare eyes.

Down in the ditch-camps, men died every day.

They died of dysentery, they died of iron-rot, they died because a three-ton pine trunk slipped its hemp rig and crushed their ribs into jelly.

Roderick had signed eighty-four death certificates since the autumn leaf-fall.

Most of them didn’t have names—just numbers stamped on brass tokens they wore around their necks so the grave-diggers could tally the shovels.Number 827-001.

The eastern kid from the sluice cuts.

Roderick remembered when the consignment arrived from the southern slave-barges six months ago.

The boy had been skinny as a dry reed, his skin the color of old parchment, eyes dark and vacant, like a room where the lamps had been blown out years ago.

The guards had called him a mute because he hadn’t cried out when they branded his shoulder with the

Hegemony’s three-rungs stamp.”Wait,” Quell muttered.

His voice lost its mocking edge, dropping an octave into a low, gravelly rasp.

He brought the glass back up to his eye, his knuckles turning white against the brass.”What is it?” Roderick asked.”The earless hound… it backed off.”Roderick leaned forward, squinting into the gloom.

The fog was thick down there, a milky soup filling the bottom of the gorge, but he could see the dark shapes—five small, angular shadows crouched on the grey shale.

And in the center, the boy.”Did he hit it with a stone?” Roderick asked.”No,” Quell growled.

He shook his head, pressing the glass so hard against his eye socket that his brow puckered. “No stone.

Something… the light’s bad.

The damn fog’s reflecting.””Reflecting what?

The sun’s down behind the crags.””I don’t know,” Quell spat, his tone rising, tinged with a sharp, ugly irritation. “It’s… orange.

Like somebody dropped a hot coal in a bucket of grease.

It’s coming from his neck.”Roderick frowned. “The boy didn’t have flint.

They search ’em to the skin before they turn ’em into the ditch.””I know what they do!” Quell snapped.

He lowered the telescope with a sharp crack, the brass barrel clattering against the stone ledge.

His face was flushed, the thick purple vein on his temple throbbing. “I know how

Ostrander searches ’em!

But there’s a shine down there.

Look at the hounds—they’re crawling backwards!

Scag-hounds don’t crawl backwards from a corpse,

They don’t crawl backwards from anything short of a burning oil-barrel!”Roderick reached out and took the spyglass from

Quell’s hand.

Quell didn’t resist.

His fingers were stiff, twitches running through the thick muscles of his thumb.Roderick lifted the glass, pressed his eye to the cold ring, and adjusted the sight.The image jumped into clarity.The boy was lying flat on his chest, face half-buried in the shale.

His grey linen tunic was shredded across the back, dark trails of blood running down his ribs to wet the stone.

But he wasn’t twitching.

He was dead still.And around his neck—hanging from a greasy thong—a small, dark shape was glowing.It wasn’t a spark from a flint.

It was a deep, dull crimson, like iron just pulled from the forge-hearth before it turns white.

The blood pooling in the hollow of the boy’s collarbone was… moving.

It wasn’t running off into the shale.

It was drawn toward the bone pendant, sucking into the pale surface like water into dry sponge.”What do you see?” Quell demanded, his voice rough.

He reached for his tobacco pouch again, but his fingers fumbled, spilling a pinch of black leaf into the dust between his boots.”The bone,” Roderick whispered. “It’s drinking.””Don’t give me that eastern fairy-shit,” Quell snarled, though he didn’t step closer to the edge. “It’s a trick.

Some old charm he hid in his gullet and threw up when the guards weren’t looking.

A bit of refined

Crux?””It’s not

Crux,” Roderick said quietly. “Crux burns blue-white.

You know that better than anyone,

You’ve got enough of it in your lungs.”Quell’s face went dark.

His jaw set so hard the muscles bulged like walnuts under his grey skin. “Watch your mouth,

Lieutenant.””I’m just saying what’s there,” Roderick replied, his voice calm, deadpan.

He didn’t take his eye from the lens. “Crux is cold heat.

This… this is different.

And the mist is moving.””The wind’s coming up the canyon—””No,” Roderick cut him off. “Look at the fog,

Look at it.”Quell didn’t need the glass now.

Even with the naked eye, from three hundred yards up on the watchtower, the change in the gorge was visible.The white haze that usually settled flat and motionless in the valley floor was spinning.

Not swirling like a dust-devil, but rolling over itself in long, heavy billows, like steam rising from a slaughterhouse drain in midwinter.

The grey shale beds were disappearing under a sudden, dead-white blanket that seemed to rise out of the very stone.And then the sound reached them.It took five seconds to travel up the cliffs—a low, shuddering vibration that didn’t hit the ears so much as it hit the soles of their boots.

The loose firewood on the tower floor gave a tiny, dry rattle.

The iron oil-lamp hanging from the beam swayed an inch to the left.Quell swore.

A short, foul word in the southern dialect.”That wasn’t a hound,” Roderick said softly, lowering the glass.

His hands were steady, but his knuckles were pale.”It’s an alpha,” Quell muttered.

His voice had lost its anger; it was flat now, cold and practical, the tone he used when a trench wall caved in and he had to decide which buried conscripts were worth digging out. “One of the old ones from the deep crags.

It came down for the smell of the blood.””In the

Gorge?” Roderick shook his head. “They haven’t come south of the

Wall in twenty years.

Not since the campaign in the

Reach.””Well, it’s here now, isn’t it?” Quell turned away from the ledge, his boots crunching heavily on the grit. “Pay up.”Roderick turned to look at him. “The boy isn’t dead yet.””He’s fifty yards from an alpha white-wolf without a spear or a shield,” Quell said, his hand resting on the pommel of his heavy, iron-mounted broadsword. “He’s meat,

Dead or breathing, he’s meat.

Give me my two groats so

I can go down to the

Nail and get something that doesn’t taste like horse-piss.”Roderick reached into his tunic pocket, pulled out two thin silver coins worn smooth by years of handling, and tossed them.

Quell caught them in mid-air with a heavy leather-gloved hand, snapped his fist shut, and shoved them into his belt.”He ran two hours,” Roderick said to

Quell’s back as the older officer reached the top of the wooden stairwell.Quell paused, one boot on the top step.

He didn’t look back. “Lots of ’em run,

The ditch-diggers run, the mountain-peasants run, the deserters from the third infantry run.

The shale doesn’t care who’s running.

It eats ’em all the same.””He didn’t scream,” Roderick added.Quell scoffed, a quick puff of grey breath in the freezing air. “Give him a minute.

When the alpha starts on his leg-bones, he’ll scream plenty.

They always do.”The heavy oak door at the bottom of the stairwell slammed shut, the iron latch clattering into its keeper with a dull, final sound that echoed up the stone shaft.Roderick stood alone on the tower for a long time.The dusk was settling fast now, the sky turning from bruised purple to the flat, dead black of cold iron.

Down in the gorge, the white fog had swallowed everything—the shale, the five crouching scag-hounds, the dark shape of the boy.He lifted the brass spyglass one last time, squinting through the gloom until his eye pained him.He couldn’t see the boy anymore.

He couldn’t see the white monster.All he saw, right before the dark closed in completely, was a single, tiny point of faint red light—deep down in the fog, flickering once, twice, like a dying hearth-fire seen through a heavy snowstorm—and then it went out.Roderick collapsed the telescope with a sharp thwack, tucked it into his leather side-pouch, and began the long walk down the dark stone stairs.