Page 67 of An Archer's Reckoning

Then I saw Bret in my mind again—shot in the front. I dithered between whether the front or back would be worse.

“Doggonit, Aaron. Stop that,” I chided myself.

My mind cleared as a remarkable sight resolved in the distance. I reined in my horse and stared.

Saltstone.

The capital city.

I’d grown up in a village with fewer than fifty people. Grove’s Pass held little more than three thousand. Yet here I stood—well, rode—gawking at a city of hundreds of thousands of souls.

Hundreds of thousands.

How do you even count that high? I shook my head in wonder.

From half a league out, on a crisp and cloudless day, I saw men scrambling like ants along the perimeter wall. The snows hadn’t hit Saltstone in earnest like they had the mountains, but the air felt pregnant with moisture, like it could happen at anytime. Most of the eastern wall facing me had already been raised to over fifty feet tall. Two giant towers loomed over either side of the gate, and flashes of blue revealed archers on duty within their perch. Another group of people, hundreds of them in plain cotton shirts and brown leggings, dug a deep moat in front of the wall.

How’d they know to do all this? I haven’t even made it to the gate yet.

It took another quarter hour to reach the gate. The moats being dug were deeper and wider than I’d thought, and I could now see there were two rings about twenty paces apart. The wall, once little more than a boundary marker, was now an imposing structure reinforced by logs twice as thick as my waist. The gate was guarded by men in dusty-blue uniforms who stepped forward with hands on sword hilts.

The once-open, welcoming capital of the Melucian Empire wasn’t taking chances with strangers anymore.

“Stop right there! Who are you, and what’s your business in Saltstone?” the leader of the squad asked gruffly.

“Sir, he’s a Ranger.” One of his comrades pointed to the silver flying owl pin I had forgotten was clipped to my outer cloak.

I nodded. “Yessir, that’s right. Came all the way from Grove’s Pass. Message for, um . . .”

“Who for? Spit it out, boy. We don’t have time to waste while you stammer,” the leader snapped.

I brightened, remembering my destination. “The General. General Vre. That’s who Cap’n said to see.”

The men looked surprised at the mention of their commander, but the leader simply pointed behind them, through the gate. “Go straight until you get to the center of town. Take a left across the river toward the army HQ. General should be there. Just ask one of the guards when you get there, and they’ll point the way.”

The massive new gates creaked open.

I offered the men a Rangers’ salute and urged my tired mount forward.

If I’d been awed by the gate, the city took my breath. I’d never seen so many buildings in one place, all crammed against each other. They reminded me of puzzles I played with as a boy, their oddly shaped pieces never quite fitting together perfectly.

More than the sheer size of the city, the constant motion and noise were overwhelming. The streets were alive. Everywhere I looked, soldiers raced toward some unspoken task, shopkeepers bellowed at customers, men and women scurried about their daily chores, and children streaked in every direction, shouting and laughing all the way. Hundreds of them. Thousands. More than I would ever be able to count.

People wereeverywhere, and the perpetual state of motion and raucous noise made my head hurt.

Why would anyone want to live like this? How do these people think or breathe?

And it wasn’t just the people.

Soldierswere everywhere.

I’d thought the world held more Rangers than civilians when I first walked through the door of the Rangers’ headquarters back in Grove’s Pass. Now, I wondered if every man in Melucia wore an army uniform.

A shout shook me from my musing.

“Hey, Ranger!”

I looked toward the voice to find a large man with muscles bursting through his blue coat and a neck almost thicker than his head was wide. Three maroon bars on his sleeve indicated he was a sergeant, likely one of the men assigned to train recruits.

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