The Edge of Plenty

[Marunae]

The Vassaling had brought Marunae to Beacon once a cycle every cycle and still it looked like a city plucked from a dream. And that was not a terrible thing, nor a beautiful thing, it simply was - a place where the markets and the streets and the administrative centres had all been carefully placed as though lifted straight from imagining.

Aside from the great mass of tents strewn around the outer walls, there was no sign of the ramshackle build of many other cities - that so often repeated history of river, ford, tavern, houses, farms, village, town. It was simply a city that somebeast had drawn into existence in a single night countless cycles ago.

Not countless, Marunae thought, remembering the old campfire stories called the Founding Cycle. Stories of building and consolidation but also of conquest and subjugation, some stories told while the younglings were about and others left for embertime, guidance for lost and hurt beasts to prove that even through the hardest times could come future calm.

She had encountered similar stories on her wanderings; stories of the time of borders, before unity, when every interaction between peoples was a fight for resources and there was no such word as mercy.

It was not a past she liked to think about. But one thing had always been true of the great family; they knew where stories came from, in their deepest oldest shapes. The fable of the Story Eater came to mind, the strange little story of an alligator who had lived a hundred cycles and who knew stories that went back a hundredscore cycles and more. And this alligator had a handsome way of life; he challenged any beast to tell him a story that he did not already know, and if he knew how it ended, then he would eat them.

The family storyteller had confounded him. Where stories bled from parent to child in most places, in the great family they bled down two generations at once, and in doing so false memory was extinguished and the original story always survived.

The family storyteller had told him the tale of the first Alligator to escape the Green Forest, and had won not only the contest but the protection of the alligator for a small town. The alligator got to keep their diet for as long as there were brigands on the road, but the townsbeasts were safe now and the great family's stories could continue unabated.

The Founding Cycle contained a story called The Architrave, which told of the beasts who had laid out the plans for Kastor's great city and so many secondary fortresses aside. Beacon and every other one of the New Cities matched this model; they were a core of Duty, a great housing district of Hearth or Home, an artisan and market district of Care, all wrapped around by a farming district of Plenty.

They were met by a small group of Knights on the road, and directed to the tent city on the edge of Plenty. One of the Knights ran ahead, and by the time the wolf packs and the wagons of Kavo's Trove reached the tents, an array of beasts had come to greet them.

"Ashielf!" Marunae yelled from the cart, hopping down before it had drawn to a halt and running over to her old vassalmate. They crashed shoulders and Marunae could not help but pick the smaller beast up and hold him tight for a moment. "Missed you, Landhopper!"

"Put me down and shut yer face, Legs." The squirrel managed a scowl for all of a moment, then disintegrated into cackling after Marunae obliged. "Good to see you too."

The other beasts moved in a little closer, and Ashielf clucked. "Oh aye," he said. "Introductions. Messenger Shora, running for the Emergency Corps. She'll take full news of the new arrivals to Farer to work out rations and care." A mink saluted.

"Mosane of the great family, who sets up bunk-swaps with worse-off beasts who need somewhere better'n a tent to stay for a while. She avoids the flooding areas." The older river otter gave her a nod and a smile.

"Cerrig Medge, of the Ninth Burrows. They were flooded a little while ago and they make up the majority of the residents here in Hope." A mole nodded sharply.

Marunae nodded. "Flooding's what took Kavo's Trove as well. These beasts are all without a home. They have food that was meant for the fall haulers, and all the furs and hides they could pack before the flood hit."

The array of spokesbeasts looked at each other. Cerrig Medge's brow softened. "If they'll cede some furs and hides for windbreaks, we can set them out a plot to the west. There's still a good deal of rain but with a few timbers, a bit of time and whatever paws they can spare to help, we'll have them set up within the day."

"Tell us what you need." A great rumbling voice came from behind Marunae, who couldn't quite help but smirk at the look of panic on the other beasts' faces as Kairon stopped by her shoulder. "And leave the heavy work to us. That's what you wanted to say, isn't it, whitefur?"

Bahto stood a little way from them both, but visibly nodded.

"Good." Kairon said. "Then you'll have two packs to do the work. We're due at the forest in six days, and it's five days hard run - so tell us what you need done."

And everything fell into motion. Ashielf grabbed Marunae by the sleeve and dragged her to the side as moles and wolves and familybeasts started moving and talking and carrying. They were joined by Marrow, Koga and Ruka soon enough.

"Look at you, coming in all saviour." Ashielf elbowed her with a chuckle.

"I just waved around the authority," Marunae said. "This one here saw the danger coming."

Ashielf looked Marrow up and down. "Well I never," he said. "Bona-fide Deathtouched, as Kastor scratches."

"...as Kastor scratches what?" The skunk blinked.

"I'll tell you when you're older." Ashielf cackled again. "So what brings you this far south? Spooky lads like you spend most of their time basking under the Lights, don't they?"

"Rather be a spook basking under the Lights than a familybeast flitting about all year with no concept of home."

"Ouch!" Ashielf placed a paw over his heart. "This one's got barbs on his tongue, Maru!"

Marunae laughed easy, put a paw on the squirrel's shoulder. "I've taught him some of the fighting, but the bunk-chat is all his. Let's tone it down a little, aye? Marrow, Ash?"

"Aye, will do. 'Pologies, mate. Old friends get me excitable. So, Maru's been training you up?"

"Mmm. Folks don't much like it when I bless a place to stop a fight, and I do have a bit of a habit of barbing at beasts. Sorry about that, by the way. It turns out that's a bad idea around wolves. Maru's taught me how to catch a punch and how to get another beast to the floor. Situation gets much worse than that, then it's blessing time."

"Brash around wolves, and the lesson wasn't to shut up? Oh, you an' I are going to get along famously mate. Famously." The squirrel clapped a paw on his shoulder, then turned back to Maru. "Dinner, aye? The three of us, if'n'you like. Not so sure we can fit your wolf friends, though."

"On which topic..." A rumbling baritone sounded from behind and above. Marrow flinched slightly as Bahto hunkered down next to the three of them.

"I realise we may not see each other again," he said to Marunae and Marrow. "It is not much, but this is something the Kindler asked me to give you, in thanks."

Two pieces of fabric, in his outstretched paws. One a light green with heavy dark green embroidery, a thicket of heavy thorns dotted with red and pink flowers. The other a simple white with black embroidery, a host of flake and crystal patterns.

"We recovered so much of what made Kavo's Trove home to our kind, that the Kindler wanted you to have your own pieces." The white wolf looked uneasy for a moment, and Marunae swore she could feel the conflicts running through him. "Thank you for all you did. They would never show it, but my pack and Kairon's... both had friends and family there, and you set us up to save them all. We're grateful."

Maru nodded. She untied her own neckerchief, took the green fabric from Bahto's paw, and tied that in place. "Thank you. To you and the Kindler, and to Kairon, and to whoever made this. I hope to see you at the forward base before the forest push."

Bahto nodded, straightened up, and strode away. He lent his shoulder to a heavy cart-beam being carried by a couple of adolescents, and disappeared into the throng.

Marrow looked askance at his scrap of fabric.

"The pennants hanging in the village," Marunae said. "They picked out a couple that would suit us. Not so musclebound after all, hm?"

"I guess not." The skunk tied it round his wrist, looked at it again. "It feels... important."

"Mm. Something that'll show up on our scrimshaws when we're gone, aye?" Marunae secured the double-knot behind her neck.

A rabbit Vassal staggered to a halt, and gasped for breath. "Mar..."

"Steady, lass." Ashielf put a paw on her shoulder. "Muster up, then speak when you're able, aye?"

The rabbit nodded gratefully. She bent down and leaned on her knees for a moment, recovering her breath, and she shook her head clear and stood back up. "Marunae of the great family?"

"Aye," the tundra hare nodded.

"Fare has need of you in the Hall. Says it's urgent, ma'am. I'm to take you with."

Ashielf cursed.

"Ash, will you take Marrow please? Find him a spot to bunk up somewhere in the city proper? I'll join you both for dinner as soon as Fare's done with me. I promise."

The squirrel perked up a bit. "Aye, Maru. I can do that."

"Well then! Lead the way, miss...?"

"Kenai, ma'am. Vassal ninth season."

Marunae nodded, and jogged to keep up.



In the centre of Duty stood the Council. Among the New Cities with their inner walls and buildings of slate mined from Chandler's Razor, the Council was the biggest of them all. A single great dome with four halls, each striding out in a different compass direction.

The Knights Hall stood to the South and it was here that Kenai led Marunae. They broke away from the main colonnade quickly, disappearing through a side door and up a flight of stairs to the hallway of the Seniors, where there were rooms for eight that had never housed more than their original four until a few seasons ago, when the Emergency Corps had formed.

It was to the Emergency Corpsbeast's office they went now, past suits of armor and paintings and tapestries that told a hundred old stories of Kastor and the first Knights.

Kenai knocked three times on the door and was greeted with a prompt "Enter!"

They pushed in through the huge wooden door and there sat Polter Fare, who had asked Marunae if she would be interested in taking on Emergency Corps duties a few seasons in to her official Knighthood.

"Ah, good. Kenai, would you leave us please?"

This was... not normal, Marunae mused as the great door slowly closed behind her and the latch clunked loud.

"Marunae! You've brought an extraordinary number of wolves with you. Runner Shora gave me the outline - one of their villages was flooded?"

"Aye, sir. Not just Walkers under threat, but the old and the young and the infirm. Their village was placed all wrong and caught a brutal flood. Nothing remains."

"Even the wolf villages are falling. I am aware of the mission your skunk friend was sent on - are you?"

"He told me some of it, sir, and Koga told me the rest. Long recon, with the abilities of a Rattler to aid them, to find out the causes of all these disappearances and deaths."

"Just so. He will likely report to the senior Rattler sometime today - I look forward to hearing his conclusions. Is there anything time-sensitive that I should know now?"

"Deepfrost is melting, sir. Kavo's Trove was the worst-positioned village by far but there will be others. Leven Kean's watershed work helped me to identify them and will help us to identify more if we've the time to send evac parties."

"Deepfrost..." Fare's ear twitched. "Every route - trade, hunt, migration - every settlement, every territory with deepfrost will be affected. Every building, Maru. Every craftsbeast north of the deepfrost line factors it in to their timbers and their foundations. A third of the territory... gone."

He tipped his head back, and stared at the ceiling. "We are already far beyond what we can deal with, in terms of refugees. The mines at Chandler's Razor are gone, so even if the council had ratified a new city by now we simply wouldn't be able to build it. You know already that all Ice Walkers have been recalled and are being deployed to the south. Kairi told me you were on decent terms with at least two of the alphas in that travel-group so I assume that you know the rest of their orders as well - to push into the Green Forest and claim all the livable land that can be reasonably defended."

Marunae's lips were a little dry, but she nodded nonetheless.

"I have two particularly unpleasant updates for you. The first is that it is not just the mines at Chandler's Razor that are gone."

"I'm... sorry, sir. What...?"

"Chandler's Light was lost this past winter."

The blood roared in her ears. His next words sounded but it took her every ounce of discipline to take them from the air and force them into sense in her mind.

"Scouts and a Rattler - well, an ex-Rattler - went to determine what happened. The whole place was dead. The ex-Rattler said that their Walker contingent was lost some seasons back and never brought harvest. Their contingency, Staid Hearth, suffered the same fate and ran out before they did. She would only tell me the rest under oath that it never be written down."

She gave in to the necessity, and licked her lips. "Some of the great family lived there, sir. Please. For their relatives."

"The great family usually leave those beasts who cannot quite travel to lodge in Kastor's cities, yes?"

"Aye, sir. In exchange for what harvest we bring when we do. The family should be around Chandler's Razor about now, sir, or perhaps just left."

"Just left, I should hope." Polter Fare closed his eyes. "I'm very sorry, Marunae. Based on what the Rattler told me, it is extremely likely that your beasts were among those killed and eaten."

She could not suppress the gasp.

"Forgive me. This is why I intend to honor the promise, and never to write down the full extent of what happened there. The Rattler told me that the city suffocated itself in half-smoke in the last days of tallowing the dead. The accidental suffocation will make it to record. The rest will not."

"Tallowing?!?" Marunae's composure was gone now, and it was not coming back for the foreseeable future. "By the last black hair on Kastor's arse, sir! How did it get this bad?"

He closed his eyes again, pinched his nose and let out a long breath. "I don't know, Maru. The land, the weather, even the deepfrost all seem to have turned against us. The populations are getting frightened. There's beasts going around worshipping fire, Judiciary knights are reporting far more fights in every city that's already hosting refugees - which reminds me, we'll have to take your skunk friend's current escort away, a wolf in Knight's armor is the only chance we have of maintaining peace out in Hope now that Kavo's Trove is here. It's a bloody, pustulent mess is what it is, and I can't shake the feeling that pushing into the Forest is not the solution everybeast seems to think it is."

"Sir," Marunae asked with a wicked twist to her mouth. "If this is particularly unpleasant, then what do you count as bad?"

He looked at her, deadpan. "Greave Racker is dead."