Swallowed by Stone

"Pro tip: if you're ever strapped to a mule climbing into a frozen mountain, focus on not throwing up. It's the small victories that keep you going. That, and the fear of choking on your own vomit while bound."

The mule's gait was smoother than I'd expected.

Each step flowed into the next with a rhythm that spoke of an animal bred for exactly this terrain—rocky, uneven, treacherous to anything not suited for it. The grey moved with a patience that seemed almost meditative, its large dark eyes scanning the ground ahead, its pale ears swivelling to track sounds I couldn't hear.

I should have been grateful. Should have been relieved that I wasn't being dragged face-down across the rocks, or left behind to die in the wasteland, or any of the dozen worse fates that had seemed possible an hour ago. But gratitude was hard to summon when your arms were bound behind your back, your legs were strapped down like lumber, and every jarring step sent fresh reminders of the bruises that covered your body.

The straps cut into my chest. The support at my back pressed against my spine at an awkward angle. And the constant, rocking motion of the animal beneath me was already making my stomach churn with a queasiness that threatened to become something worse.

Don't vomit, I told myself. Whatever you do, don't vomit.

Throwing up while strapped to a moving animal, unable to turn my head properly, unable to use my hands to wipe my face—the thought was almost worse than the nausea itself. I focused on breathing. Slow. Steady. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The same technique Mum had taught me when I was eight and prone to car sickness on the winding roads through the Tasmanian highlands.

In. Out. In. Out.

The nausea subsided. Slowly. Grudgingly. But it subsided.

I risked a look around, taking in what I could see from my elevated position on the grey's back.

The formation was precise. Military, almost—or what I imagined military formations looked like, based on nothing more than films and half-remembered history lessons. The leader rode at the front, his sleeker mount picking its way through the rocks with an ease that made the terrain look gentle. Behind him came two riders flanking the path, their eyes constantly scanning the surrounding landscape. Then the first cargo mule—carrying two of the wounded from the fight, their pale faces slack with pain or unconsciousness. Then me, on the grey. And behind me...

Behind me, Nelson walked.

I couldn't see him directly—couldn't turn far enough in my restraints—but I could hear the scrape of his boots on stone, the ragged rhythm of his breathing, the occasional grunt when the rope connecting him to Martel's mule pulled taut. He rode just ahead of Nelson, never looking back, never adjusting his pace to accommodate the bound, exhausted stumbling behind him.

He's struggling, I realised. Even Nelson has limits.

The thought was strange. Uncomfortable. I'd spent three days thinking of him as something other than human—a force of nature, a machine built for survival, immune to the weaknesses that plagued ordinary people like me. But he wasn't. He was flesh and blood, same as me. And flesh and blood could only take so much.

More riders followed behind Nelson, bringing up the rear of the formation. I counted at least eight of them, plus the walkers I'd seen earlier—scouts ranging out on either side, disappearing into the rocks and reappearing somewhere else, maintaining a perimeter I could sense but not see.

They're not taking chances, I thought. Even now, even with us bound and broken, they're treating us like threats.

Or maybe they were watching for other threats. Other dangers lurking in the foothills, waiting to strike at the unwary. The thought wasn't comforting.

The terrain changed as we climbed.

The scattered boulders of the lower slopes gave way to something more dramatic—walls of rock rising on either side, channelling us through passages that felt more like corridors than natural formations. The path narrowed, widened, narrowed again, forcing the formation to compress and expand like a living thing navigating the arteries of the mountains.

The grey handled it with the same patient sureness it had shown since we'd started moving. I swayed against the straps, fought to keep my balance, and tried not to think about what would happen if I fell.

The light was changing.

I noticed it gradually—the way the shadows seemed to deepen, the way the sun's rays seemed to struggle to reach the ground. We were moving into shade. Not the shade of clouds—the sky above remained clear, that pale blue I'd grown accustomed to—but the shade of stone. The mountains themselves were swallowing the light, their bulk blocking the sun as we climbed deeper into their embrace.

And with the shade came cold.

Not the cold of night, or the cold of winter. Something different. Something that seemed to seep from the rocks themselves, as if the stone had never known warmth and resented any attempt to bring it. I felt it first on my face, then on my hands, then spreading through my body as the temperature dropped degree by degree.

The Scouts moved through the cold without complaint. Their clothing made more sense now—the close-fitting garments, the dark colours, the luminescent threads woven through the fabric. I found myself staring at the rider ahead of me, at the soft patterns of light tracing along his shoulders and down his arms. The glow was brighter here, in the shade of the mountains, than it had been in the open air.

The mule beneath me shifted its weight, navigating a particularly steep section of the path. I felt my stomach lurch, my bound hands straining uselessly against the cord, my body fighting to maintain balance in a contest it couldn't win. For a terrible moment, I thought I was going to fall—thought the straps would give way, or my weight would shift too far, or some other catastrophe would send me tumbling from the animal's back to crack my skull on the rocks below.

But the straps held. The grey adjusted. And the moment passed.

Breathe, I told myself. Just breathe.

We stopped once, in a widening of the path where the rocks formed something like a natural amphitheatre.

The halt came without warning—the leader raising his hand, the formation condensing around him, the mules coming to rest with the patient stillness of animals accustomed to waiting. I watched from my position on the grey's back, trying to understand what was happening, why we'd stopped, what came next.

Water.

The leader had dismounted and was approaching a trickle of liquid that seeped from a crack in the rock face, pooling in a shallow depression before disappearing into the stone again. He crouched beside it, cupped his hands, drank. Others followed—a rotation, I realised, each person taking their turn while the rest maintained their positions.

No one offered water to me.

I watched them drink—watched the liquid glint in the fading light, watched them wipe their mouths and return to their positions—and felt my own thirst sharpen into something desperate. My throat was raw from the dust, from the exertion of staying balanced on the mule, from the simple biological need for hydration that I'd been ignoring for hours.

Ask, some part of me whispered. Ask them for water. The worst they can do is say no.

But I remembered the slap. Remembered the boot to my ribs. Remembered the leader's cold instruction: You will speak when spoken to.

I didn't ask.

The rotation continued. When it was done, the leader remounted, raised his hand again, and we were moving. The pool of water disappeared behind us, that brief oasis swallowed by the rocks, and I was left with nothing but the memory of moisture and the growing ache of my thirst.

Ahead of me, I heard a commotion. Raised voices—sharp, angry—and the sound of something hitting the ground.

Nelson.

I couldn't see what had happened, but I could piece it together from the sounds. He'd fallen. Or stumbled. Or simply stopped moving, his body finally rebelling against the impossible demands being placed on it. And now someone was shouting at him in that blended language, probably Martel, the words harsh and threatening.

A crack. The unmistakable sound of a whip—or something like a whip—finding flesh.

I flinched, even though I wasn't the one being struck. Strained against my restraints, trying to see, trying to understand what was happening behind me.

Another crack. Then silence. Then the scrape of boots on stone—unsteady, stumbling, but moving.

He was up. He was walking again. Whatever they'd done to him, it had been enough to get him moving.

How much more can he take? I wondered. How much more can either of us take?

The formation resumed its pace. The mountains rose around us, dark and indifferent, swallowing us deeper into their heart.

Time became elastic.

I don't know how long we travelled. The light shifted and changed, the shadows deepening, the temperature dropping further. My body settled into a kind of numbness—the constant discomfort becoming background noise, the pain in my bound arms fading to a dull ache, the cold seeping into my bones until I stopped noticing it.

I watched the Scouts instead. Studied them. Tried to learn whatever I could from their behaviour, their movements, their interactions.

They communicated constantly, but rarely with words. Gestures, mostly—quick movements of hands and fingers that seemed to carry meaning I couldn't decipher. Occasionally, sounds—clicks and whistles and soft, rhythmic patterns that might have been language or might have been something else entirely. I didn't know what any of it meant. Just watched it happen, filing away observations I had no framework to interpret.

Their movement was equally coordinated. When the formation shifted, everyone shifted together—a fluid reorganisation that happened without apparent instruction, each person knowing their position, their role. They moved like a single organism, responding to signals I couldn't perceive.

The glow in their clothing grew brighter as the natural light faded. I could see it clearly now—the threads pulsing with that soft rhythm, creating patterns of light that outlined each figure against the darkening stone. Some had more than others, I noticed. The leader's clothing blazed with it, patterns tracing along his arms and shoulders and down his spine. Others showed only faint traces, subtle threads that marked joints and seams.

Rank, I wondered. Or something else. Something that tells them who's who.

The mules had their own patterns. Lines of light traced along straps and buckles, outlining the shape of each beast against the gathering darkness. The grey beneath me was surrounded by a soft halo, its ears and eyes and muzzle highlighted in gentle light.

They've thought of this, I realised. All of it. Every detail.

The thought should have been interesting. Academic, even. But all I could feel was the weight of it—the sense of being utterly outmatched, utterly outmanoeuvred, caught in a system I didn't understand and couldn't escape.

We were their prisoners.

And we were being taken somewhere deep inside the mountains, to face whatever waited there.