To my immense surprise, the first day and a half of our travel through the ravines passed without incident. Despite that, I could see why they made Kaczmarek—and others—uncomfortable. There was an uncanny sharpness and regularity to them. It was as if some titanic sculptor had carved out the mountains, and then in a fit of pique taken up a chisel dagger-fashion and stabbed at the work like a hated enemy’s back, marring it with deep, straight, peculiarly-connected gashes.

The light rain returned too with our entry into the mountains, and though no raging torrents spilled through the ravines nearly every surface was slick with a thin film of water flowing down the slopes. Rocks shed unwary feet like a duck’s back shed water, grasses tore free from the soil at the barest touch, and patches of mud threatened to lay you on your back the moment you misstepped.

As the finishing touch, a shroud of cold mist clung to everything around us. Not so thick as to truly be a fog; I could see my companions, and the way ahead; but enough to mask the scenery beyond us. Here a peak loomed through the grey, there the mist parted for a moment to reveal a wizened tree hanging on to the edge of the precipice, but the glimpses were only momentary, and soon faded to white again. But as long as I kept my eyes on the ground ahead—necessary, for the most part, on the treacherous footing—the mist could be ignored except for the obnoxious way it made it feel as though the air itself had been soaked by the rain.

The first time I feared something was amiss was late in the morning, before we paused for a miserable lunch of hard bread and cheese—though at least we had no want of water, rivulets of clean mountain water being everywhere. For a moment, the mists drew back like a curtain, revealing a peak to our left whose base we were hiking along. I marked it in my mind, as a good landmark if the mist cleared again. It was hard to gauge progress here, although every time I asked the jäger she assured me we were making good time.

At lunch, the peak seemed suddenly further than I had thought. It set me frowning, but I dismissed it as my own failing. I was no navigator, not in this weather. The final blow was struck after lunch.

I had Munter and one of the remounts strung on a lead rope, picking our way across a particularly nasty stretch of erupting rocks and the scrub clutching at their bases. When I had finally chivvied the remount free of the grasping brambles, I took a moment to wipe the rain and sweat from my eyes. When I looked up to the peak, I choked and nearly missed my footing. The mist had parted again, but instead of the vaguely conical peak we had been passing, this was a tumbled mass of slid rock and cliff faces, like a great handful had been torn away and the rest left to tumble where it might.

Recovering, I led the horses clear of the path and stopped to wait for Kaczmarek.

“What’s up, gefreiter?” She asked, tone strained. “Oi, stop it,” she snapped at Schnellchen—the moniker she’d assigned her horse—as the mare tugged towards the horses on my rope. I ignored it for the moment, opting instead to point up the mountain slope.

“When the mists clear—the peak is wrong, up there,” I said, my own voice just as tight as hers.

“What do you mean, wrong? It’s a mountain, man, there’s nothing ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ about them.” Nevertheless, she followed my direction. The mist had closed again. She sighed. “Do we need to wait?”

“I think we had better,” I said, grimly. “It’s not the peak we were passing earlier.”

“Wait, what?” She tipped her head to the side. “I thought you said you didn’t drink on campaign, man. Mountains don’t move around, and we haven’t left this ravine or passed another. You sure you’re not just seeing it from another angle?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so, though I shall very gladly be wrong.”

Behind us, His Highness emerged, followed by the magus. Kaczmarek greeted each with a curt “Schreiner might be seeing things. We’re waiting a bit for a gap in the mists.”

A rather stilted few minutes followed. We were all cold and wanted to keep moving, but no-one was willing to break the silence.

Finally, the mists parted to reveal the crumbling peak.

“Ahhh, Immer,” I cursed. I had truly been hoping to be wrong. Kaczmarek added some rather riper commentary to my own.

“What’s the matter?” His Highness asked. “Are we lost?”

Kaczmarek turned back to face us, giving me my first glimpse under her hood in a while. Her lip was chewed bloody. “Sort of, sir. It’s bloody stupid, but as Schreiner put it, the mountain’s wrong. That’s not the one that was on our left before lunch.”

“How did that happen?” The prince frowned, and though I knew he meant no ill by the words—it was just his natural curiosity—I could see the jäger biting back some scathing retort.

“I’ve got no bloody idea,” she offered instead. “It doesn’t make any sense. There’s no actual way for it to happen, unless we’ve wandered somewhere we really shouldn’t have. And I’d really rather not think about that option. Sir,” she added belatedly.

“The World Unformed?” He asked quietly, voice somewhere between awe and fear.

“I was trying not to say it, but yes.” Face blank, Kaczmarek turned back to her horse and tugged her arquebus free, sliding it from its leather carrier to begin loading it. “I have no idea how we’re supposed to get out, sir.”

For a moment, I questioned her choice of immediate action, but straight away kicked myself. Uncertain territory, uncertain circumstances. Better armed unnecessarily than unarmed when you need it, Friedrich. Some of it standard from the military academy, some of it Fechtmaster Doren’s own eclectic philosophy. He was a paranoid old man… but he was also a paranoid old man. I freed my own arquebus from Munter’s tack and set to loading it.

“According to the Scriptures,” I said, after spitting the end of a cartridge to the side, “Saint Morgan and her knights could escape the World Unformed because of their oaths to the Heavens. It gave them an anchor to the real world. Magus, would my vow offer the same protection?”

After a moment’s pause, he nodded decisively. “It should, yes. You have a certainty of destination, no? So you are fine. For my part, I am…” He hesitated. “Eh, I should be fine.”

“And us?” Kaczmarek asked, looking up from her arquebus. Or rather looking down, as she was withdrawing the rammer, which reached rather above her head.

“Oh, no, no,” Alemayehu said, waving his hands in a negative. “You should be completely safe, as long as we are not split up.”

“Alright, then, what do we do?” She slung her loaded flintlock over her shoulder and fixed the magus with a stare.

“Eh, just keep on as you earlier were,” he said. “If you are trying to lead us to our destination, I think it should work. So we keep going.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Is that safe, sir?”

“What did you say earlier, Schreiner?” His Highness cut in, chuckling nervously. “We lost safety somewhere in Nachberg? It’s most likely safest to keep moving for now in any case.”

“You’re right, of course, your Highness. Magus, thank you. Lead on, I suppose, jäger?” I glanced at her again. Her face was still quite nearly perfectly blank underneath the hood, but on her normally smiling or laughing or frowning features it was more unsettling than a deep scowl.

She took a deep breath, and then set off again at our slow trudging pace, picking her way along the slope. “If we all die here, it’s not my fault,” she said, in a muffled voice.

“Oh, don’t be so negative, jäger,” I said with forced cheer. “It’s something to brag about back at the barracks.”

She didn’t dignify that one with a response. I hunched my shoulders against the cold and hooked the lead rope in my slung hand—I still couldn’t straighten the last two fingers more than a bare whit, but the first two were fine enough to keep it from dropping—so I could reach under my cloak to check my scimitar. The drifting mist was suddenly the veil between worlds, concealing who knew what horrors. I shivered.

***

Hours later we were still walking, with no respite in sight. The sun, such as we’d ever had, had vanished behind mountains that now felt like oppressive prison walls around us, trapping us in this world of freezing mist and near-identical valleys. Twice now we’d turned to follow a different ravine, Kaczmarek striking out with a confidence I thought probably belied complete uncertainty. It was all the same to me. Rocks rising from the ground or tumbled from above, stretches of coarse grass, and wiry shrubs clinging to life as they might, cowering low to the ground to grasp at feet.

The breeze had kicked up to a wind some time ago, and now it was blowing ever more strongly, but I couldn’t see how we could take shelter anywhere here. By some Heavens-forsaken quirk of the geography, no matter which side of the rises we were the wind seemed to blow the same, steadily rising to a gale. Some of the rocks offered scant shelter, a depth of a metre or so of relief, but none enough to stop for the night.

I glanced behind to check on the prince. He was still gamely pressing on, but he was all but staring straight at his feet and clutching his cloak closed with one hand. My frown, an increasingly permanent fixture, deepened, and I looked ahead to Kaczmarek. She was trudging on with grim determination, but didn’t look in great shape either.

“We have to stop soon, jäger,” I called over the wind through chapped lips. Doubtless my nose was running too, though it was damned hard to tell with the amount of water going around.

“Yeah, thanks for pointing that out, gefreiter,” she shouted back without looking. “Let me just get the cottage out of my bags and we’ll break for the night!”

“We have to settle for something! The weather’s worsening and I mislike the idea of travelling here in the dark. How much longer do you want to go on?”

“I have no bleeding idea! Until we find somewhere we won’t all freeze to death with the wind stripping our skin away. How long do you think that’ll take?” Her tone was about as biting as the wind. I chose to ignore it.

“I don’t know either! But what do we do if it reaches full dark and we’ve found nothing?”

“Pray to the Heavens! Or curse them for sending us into this miserable place to die. Take your pick.” The jäger yanked her hood down and leaned further into the wind, signalling the end of that particular discussion. I bit my lip and slowed for a moment to get closer to the prince.

“How are you faring, your Highness?” I asked, still concerned.

He offered a tight smile, all teeth and no eyes. The journey had taken some of the baby fat—and privilege fat, to be entirely honest—off him, sharpening his features to a more mature look. The gauntness of fatigue and the cold highlighted it, sinking his cheeks so the nose and cheekbones stood out where they caught the light under his hood.

“I’ve been far better, I must say.” His voice was still the same, though, that incongruously young pitch. “I should quite like a mug of hot milk and a plate of stew about now, if that could be arranged, please. If not, I suppose I’ll settle for cold water and abundant fresh air.” He laughed weakly before gritting his teeth against a chatter that ran through them briefly. “Any prospect of stopping soon, Schreiner?”

I shook my head regretfully. “Damned hard to find a place the wind won’t scour us all night, your Highness. Where there’s a will there’s a way, sir, but we’re holding out hope for a better site.” I scanned the horizon again, praying to spot some cave or even just a hollow, but all I found was the same desolate grey, quickly darkening.

“Well, I’ll pray too. And let me know if there’s any word on the hot stew.” His face slipped for a moment. “I’m terribly cold,” he murmured, only barely audible through a brief break in the wind. My lips thinned. We were running out of time.

Once again, I stared into the mist, hoping for some place to hide. Instead, I met the flat shine of a yellow pair of predator’s eyes. And another pair. And another.

“Immer.” I shoved Munter’s lead rope into the prince’s hand. “Sir, stay with the horses.” Pivoting, I shoved a finger in the surprised gelding’s face and continued, “And you, if you bolt I’ll sell you for glue.” The bay huffed in a way that I hoped indicated understanding. Why am I talking to the horse? I shook off the absurdity of the moment.

“Jäger! Magus! Company, all sides!” I gritted my teeth and yanked my scimitar out, ignoring the burning under my arm. Once again, it seemed nothing could ever be easy.