City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [101]
TWENTY-EIGHT
Dead forest after dead forest, and littered with snow: it was a landscape on constant repeat. Anything deciduous had long been killed off, and only various evergreen species persisted, banking up steep slopes into the dark distance. The horses helped them trudge northwards through the thick woodlands of Folke, the beasts insouciant of the hostile environment, just plodding along, showing fright at nothing.
Randur felt as if the four of them were now quite alone, despite these elusive beings that shifted behind serried rows of tree trunks. For the first couple of hours each day, Munio would hardly shut up, but after that they found the contemplative silence comforting. The only utterances then were instructions to guide them along certain well-trodden routes, or over difficult terrain.
Metal constructs, gargantuan rusted skeletons, their foundations buried deep in the earth, leaned towards the sky. Blood-tinged sunlight filtered through their even-latticed configurement, and the travellers’ path took them directly underneath, between the thick shadows. Vegetation had not fully reclaimed these relics, the first exposed structures he’d witnessed in a long time.
People talked of such remains being found off the southern coast, but they had long since formed artificial reefs, and become almost living things once again, contributing to the natural cycles. Rumours intimated there were also abandoned cities to be found, civilizations completely lost to the ocean. Before him now was a sense of history on Earth so compelling that he felt as though he himself barely existed at all.
Stranger, though, was how last night he’d experienced weird dreams of fur-covered creatures – with wings – swooping down to stare at him; and when he lurched awake to see what the hell they were, there was only the eternal calm of the night sky above him. It had happened for two nights in a row now, as they sheltered among ancient ruins. Their ghostly presence disturbed him.
*
On the third day they joined old pathways that would die away suddenly into the overgrowth. They’d cut their way through two small, dead communities, then along open tracks between desolate logging camps, or scarred and ragged opencast minescapes. Rika and Eir both seemed eager to understand the Empire’s diverse territories better, and questioned why these communities were all abandoned.
Randur told them just what the Empire signified out here.
‘When the Imperial armies claimed this island hundreds of years ago they declared they’d impose infrastructure and order. They sent the local tribes packing – unless they were considered civilized, which, roughly translated, meant abandoning their old ways for those of Villjamur. Quite a few were also forced into slavery.’
‘I heard of prisoners committing serious atrocities against soldiers who merely asked them to work . . .’ Rika said, defensively.
‘Did you ever question, my lady, the source of your information? They were indigenous races who didn’t want foreign soldiers disrupting their communities. Empire folk claimed it’d ensure great wealth for everyone. Well, that great wealth was sucked off to the trading cities, primarily Villjamur and Villiren. And even then it mostly fell into the hands of the few people who controlled the forges, especially those manufacturing weapons of war. They made a fat pile of cash, and more war always meant more business. They relied upon constant warfare, in fact. In the real histories, ones that weren’t rewritten by Empire-employed scholars, the people of Folke were heavily repressed and their will broken through season after season of starvation. A few local rebellions brought more military here, and then, a few decades back, once the population had submitted completely, the formerly booming markets changed – or the Council collapsed them. Different metals were now required, and these original mining communities were killed off. Just like that. And large numbers of people were forced to leave the island. So that’s why you’ll