I run my fingers against the hilts of mine, then tug once on the harnesses looped securely around my shoulders. We each carry a dozen daggers: six strapped across our chests in a bandolier; two against the harnesses around each thigh; and one tucked along each boot.
“Good,” I sign to him. “Blades.”
We simultaneously touch our hands to our two swords hung at the hips, then pull them out in unison and sheath them again with a flourish. Like the daggers, these are made of a near-indestructible metal, capable of slicing through almost anything.
I nod at his left blade. “Could use an extra polish, Corian,” I sign. “That edge is looking a little dull.”
“It’ll still cut a throat,” he replies. “I’ll sharpen it tonight.”
“Guns,” I move on.
We have two sniper pistols each, equipped with mufflers to silence them when they fire. A cloth bandolier running around my belt is full of bullets. Corian tosses me a few extra ones from his stash. I catch them and drop them into their slots.
“Bow,” he finishes. “Arrows.”
One crossbow each, strung across our backs, plus a light quiver of arrows, each cushioned with a fabric wrap to keep them from clanking against one another.
Finally, we check our armguards and gloves, then our black half masks, which will cover our mouths and muffle the rasp of our human coughs.
As we finish, Firstblade Aramin Wen Calla comes striding down our ranks for a final check. Our leader is young; some grumble that he’s too young for his position. Not long ago, he’d trained alongside the rest of us as a recruit. But even a few short years as the Firstblade has prematurely streaked silver into Aramin’s thick knot of hair tied atop his head. His eyes are as gray and hard as a thunderstorm, rimmed with ferocious dark powder. His lips are twisted down in a permanent scowl. Black fragments of jawbone stud his ears like multiple earrings. Following the tradition of other Strikers who have lost their Shields in the past, the Firstblade had cut those bones straight out of the Ghosts that had killed his own partners years ago.
It’s hard to grow old in this profession. You promote who you can.
He progresses along our line, stopping occasionally in front of the newer recruits to check a harness, tilt a chin up, offer a few words of courage.
“Talin,” he says when he reaches me.
I place my fist against my chest in a salute to him. He does the same before moving on.
Finally, when he finishes, he stands before us one last time. There are no speeches of glory, no rousing battle cries.
No one needs to tell us that we are the last defense Mara has against the Federation.
Down the line, a hush falls over all the Striker ranks. We pull on our masks at the same time, covering the bottom half of our faces in black. Corian looks straight ahead, his features flattened in concentration.
My heart hardens into stone. My mind pushes away everything except a single goal:
Protect my country.
The Firstblade gives the order. We step forward as one out into the silent world.
If not for the Federation on the other side of this mountainous warfront, if not for their Ghosts stalking the narrow passes, the land is achingly beautiful. The air is cold and crisp, half the sky clear and half a darkening gray. The moon hangs powder white above the tree line, craters visibly speckling its body. A cloud of birds glides through bands of fog drifting through the valley’s basin. The water of a nearby stream glows bright blue from the light of tiny river minnows, what our breakfast of fishcakes had been formed from, although now they teem only in the thousands where there used to be millions. Farther down the plains, I glimpse a herd of rare shaggy cows grazing in the mist. Even now, close to winter, they are searching for the sweet, yellow wildflowers carpeting the foothills, gemstones gleaming in the snow.
But what really makes this landscape breathtaking are the ruins of an ancient, long-gone civilization. The structures, scattered everywhere across all nations, are strange and lovely—bones of crimson steel bridges that rise hundreds of feet in the air, crumbling white and dark pillars cut into huge, impossibly perfect cubes. Now the steel and stone are overgrown with blankets of dripping green vegetation.
No one knows exactly how long ago this civilization existed. As old as five thousand years, some say. Whoever the Early Ones were, they were far more advanced than us. They left behind entire cities. Machines with wings. Ships made of metal. Sheets of engineered rock. A few suggest that some of the species we see now, like the wild cows roaming the plains, evolved from animals domesticated during their time. From the fallen skeletons of their steel structures, we broke down the parts and used them to fortify our halls and towers and bridges. From their abandoned weapons, we created our guns and bullets and blades.
From their books, the Federation learned how to twist humans into Ghosts.
I wonder where they went. One theory says they died out, killed by a sickness, and that we descended from the few survivors. Another claims they abandoned this earth to live elsewhere among the stars, and we are the stragglers left behind. Or maybe they too had demons to face, had destroyed one another with their hatred. I wonder if they would approve of how we have scavenged their leftovers.
We have all spread out by now, cutting a trail through the grasslands toward the woods nestled in the Cornerwell Pass. Occasionally we stop to listen, wondering whether the wind whispering through the pines will also carry the sound of teeth.
But the forest is still today.
We reach the edge of the woods. Here, the light dims, filtered through the thick canopy into rays dotting the floor. Dense layers of fallen logs pile in a green blanket of moss and ferns. The scent of cool, damp earth surrounds us, and from somewhere far away comes the faint trickling of a stream.
As time goes on, I start to notice the finer sounds. The drip of water on a leaf, the thud of a frog leaping onto soft soil. Corian walks several yards away, but our bodies always turn in sync with each other, used to years of our rhythm.
Then I notice a snapped twig against a branch. I pause and lean close for a better look.
Corian senses the shift in my movement without even looking at me. A moment later, he’s at my side, warmth radiating off him, his stare focused up on the twig too.
I sign to him with my gloved hands. “See the angle of the break?”
Corian signs back. “It’s down,” he replies. “Not sideways. Broken by something taller than this branch.” He points into the wood. “Came from that way.”
“Stag?” I ask.
“Would be more snapped branches here, if it was.”
“A scout, maybe? A spy?”
“Could be,” he responds. “I heard the southern patrols caught a prisoner of war fleeing through the valley this morning. There might be others.”
A glint of something wet on the forest floor catches my eye. I crouch. “Blood,” I tell him as I stare down at the single, fresh dot of crimson, the color a shade noticeably darker than human.
Corian nods in agreement, his lips pulled into a tight line. It’s not a stag or a scout. We have tracked hundreds of Ghosts. By now, the smallest hint is enough to let us know they’re nearby.
I point up once at the trees. “Take top watch. I’ll wait for your sign.”
Corian taps a fist quietly against his chest at the same time I do. Then he heads for the trees. In two steps, he pulls himself up into a nook. There he crouches, nearly invisible against the dark wood.