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the
river’s black waters floating with a thousand dead things. And the
river banks covered in upturned crabs. And the overhanging trees
dangling with the lifeless forms of bats and ornithens. The sheer
sight of it all filled him with building dread and foreboding. For
it seemed this scourge lay far more widespread than he’d initially
thought.
    Still, for a time, leaving
Buccuyashuck behind and striking out along Far Trail helped pushed
it all from his mind and he began to feel marginally relieved. Gone
now were the primary reminder of what had befallen Hovel. And
before him lay Chandry’s Steppe, a vast sweeping tract of land that
disappeared off into far distant horizons.
    Chandry’s
remained predominantly savannah, but dotted here and there were
crab farms. When he were a wee lad, when the crab farmers had not
yet moved in and claimed patches of this once unspoilt wilderness
for themselves, Gargaron had thought Chandry’s Steppe the most
exotic place in all the world. A place where a boy could play and
explore without fear of being attacked and swallowed up by some
nasty meat-eater. For predators with a taste for boy-giants rarely
set foot upon the Steppe. Folk knew not why. Though some claimed it
were the grass-eating Maymas that kept predators at bay. Tall,
horned creatures, with short thick necks and piercing tusks, the
Maymas, if threatened, worked in vast numbers to see off potential
foe. Often with devastating ferocity. While Gargaron had never
witnessed this he had watched the Gooya plains trolls chase would-be killers away.
By nature, Gooya trolls were a docile lot. So long as they did not
deem you a threat. You could sit amongst them as you might sit
amongst lambs if you did not threaten them. Gooyas though were
quick to anger if provoked. And none too many beasts were a match
for a coordinated pack of Gooyas on the offensive. Thus Chandry’s
to Gargaron had always been a land without danger. A peaceful place
where fowl and beast thrived.
    Giant Moorhens roamed the Steppe, even nowadays,
Gargaron knew. And Goliath Prairie Dogs would rise from their
burrows and stand at their doorways to sniff the grassy air to pick
up scents of food or potential mates. And were he to have strayed
there at night (which were more not than often these days) he would
have observed fan flowers sway in dusk’s failing light before
curling up and humming dreamily at the rise of stars. And at
midnight, when the moons of Vasher and Syssa and Leenurs were full,
the pixies and fairies would come out to dance and fly about on
night’s balmy breezes. The fireflies would light the hushed
witching skies in a dazzling array of silent pulsing, twinkling
light. At dawn, the pale, smoky wraiths of folk long departed would
emerge from misty earyth and could be seen holding parley with one
another. As a boy this were the furthest place on Godrik’s Vale he
had been. And the most magical.
    Yet, as he began
his trek across Chandry’s toward the yonder town of Autumn he
noticed almost immediately the sense of complete desertion and the
pervading, crushing silence. No sounds of ornithen, no sounds of
squeaking prairie dogs, no shrill calls of plains hawks. As he
walked he looked for them. But there were no sign of anything left
living. Naught save great clouds of buzzing green flies, acting
almost as beacons for the mortid dead that lay bloated and rotting in flattened
grass.
    The mortid consisted
primarily of hawks and ornithen both. But not all. Some were
prairie dogs, some moorhens, some blind serpents, some the docile
Gooya, some the Maymas. All were sprawled through field and meadow,
across hill and flat. No matter how far Gargaron went, no matter
where he cast his gaze, something of the dead filled his vision. At
one stage he crested a rise in the roadway and abruptly he brought
his stride to a halt. Spread out before him were what he took to be
the aftermath of war. An entire battlefield of
dead.
    Orken soldiers they looked to