Ch 3.24: Endurance

Elaina felt bad. Two weeks of marching, twelve hours a day, the sun beating down on them hotter and hotter as they moved towards the warmer part of their country and out into Kaldish, and the most she felt was a little boredom. The benefits of having a class, I suppose. It wasn’t just that though; her party was at least sweating in the heat, but she’d grown up in the region, and the rest of the students marching with them looked half dead from the second day onward. The only exception was Prisma, who even only just having received her class managed a bit more composure, but not as much as Elaina’s actual party.

The worst part was passing by “home,” if that’s what she could call it. She didn’t have any friends there anymore, and her parents were… parents, not friends either. She felt more at home back at the academy than she had their, dangers and all. She didn’t mention that they came within ten miles of her old village as they passed the turn in the road that would have lead them there, no point in it even if she wanted to go visit. That, and talk during the march was strictly prohibited.

The change in landscape was more stark than she’d thought. While home had been a little more rocky than the rolling plains near Endrin, they were still mostly the same, but as they pressed only a few days north the terrain shifted into a harsh wasteland, the weedy grass thinning and eventually disappearing entirely, replaced by larger slates of stone and fine red sand. The air was dry, near tasteless compared to the muggy stodge she was used to, and the wind seemed to blow less and less. It was no wonder traders had hardly ever come from this direction to her town.

If it weren’t for the river they marched along, she could have imagined them getting lost. For the last two days of their journey everything looked the same except that river, an endless expanse of red under the blue horizon that might as well have been pure darkness for all navigation purposes, the sound and sight of the rapids their only guide.

Then they came upon it: Marden. It was just over a cliff that the river they had been following dropped off, the largest drop in elevation Elaina had ever seen this far north. The city wasn’t quite as big as Castletown outside Endrin, but still far larger than Elaina’s home. It was comprised of buildings made of yellow stone set up on top of the crimson sand, most with thin wooden roofs on top. They were almost all short, single story buildings, with only a handful of taller ones towards the center.

It was surrounded. Tents like the ones the army had marched with for the officers to sleep in encircled the city, and from the cliff vantage that Elaina had it looked more like a siege than anything else, but there was no sign of fighting, no destruction, just occupation.

“We camp here tonight,” Calivahn said, pulling up to the students on top of a grey stallion. “Tomorrow morning, we make the descent.”

That threw Elaina’s stomach in a twist. It was a long way down, easily two hundred feet, and from her vantage she couldn’t see an easy way to descend, but there had to be something to get all those tents down.

“For today, you’re dismissed.”

Those last words fell on the other students as if a wet blanket had been tossed on them, their spines bending at the relief to stop standing at attention. “Dismissed” didn’t mean they could leave of course, but they could remove the packs they’d been carrying and start spreading their bedrolls out on the ground. Elaina stretched her arms out, still relieved at the freedom of motion even if she wasn’t as exhausted as her fellows.

“Can’t imagine the horses are going to have a good time tomorrow, much less the wagons and carts,” Tira said as she threw her own pack to the ground. She had her back turned to the cliff, and it seemed like she was deliberately trying to look away from it.

“Yeah,” Elaina said, slipping her bag off her shoulder and rolling the stiffness out of her arms. “It looks… different, down there.”

“That’s Kaldish for you,” Tira replied. “Different.”

Elaina looked back to Carly and Flora, and the three of them seemed to agree that whatever was on Tira’s mind, she didn’t want to talk about it at the moment. Maybe once we get our own tents down in the actual camp.

It was their last night sleeping under the stars, though their early stop meant the night wasn’t actually close to coming yet. Instead of looking up to gaze on them then, Elaina’s eyes drifted back down and away to Marden, to the camps surrounding it. They were here to protect the nation of Endrin from a rebellion, apparently, but things looked relatively peaceful, even considering the distance she was viewing things from.

She couldn’t help but wonder, If we’re here to prevent an attack, why is the camp way down there instead of atop the cliff?