The Pitch Mask

Roshan grinned through his soot-crusted beard, his knife flashing as he began parting the expensive fabric into forearm-length bandages. "Three hundred guilders never smelled so much like boiled mutton," the old teamster grumbled, slathering a fistful of white tallow across his leathery cheeks. "If we ever make it to the low taverns in Vessaran, the barmaids will think we’re roasted mutton pastries."

"If we make it to Vessaran," Faris said dryly, "you can buy them all the mutton they can eat. Until then, grease your nose."

The teamsters and guards moved with urgent efficiency. The panic that had threatened to tear the camp apart after the collapse began to settle into the rhythmic, mechanical routine of caravan labor. Men and women took turns at the tallow tub, working the rendered fat into raw ears, blistered wrists, and peeling foreheads before binding the grease-soaked linen masks tightly behind their heads.

Within twenty minutes, forty survivors stood in the white canyon gloom, their faces masked in pale linen stained with gray axle-pitch at the center, their eyes squinting through grease-smeared lids. The suffocating, choking coughs that had filled the defile began to ease into muffled, steady breathing.

Faris walked to the brass spigot on the rear of Wagon Seven.

The two-thousand-gallon cedar cistern was still anchored by the heavy deadman chain to the ironwood bedrock spur, its iron-banded spruce frame groaning under the weight of the water. Faris unhooked a heavy brass padlock and chain from their harness kit, looped the links twice through the wheel of the brass spigot, and snapped the lock shut.

The metallic click echoed sharply in the quiet canyon.

Several guards and teamsters looked up, their eyes widening behind their linen masks.

"Starting now," Faris said, holding up the brass dipping cup that hung from the cistern bracket, "water is on a measured draw. One pint per person at dawn, one pint at dusk. No exceptions. No private canteens filled from the spigot."

"We worked the traces, Faris," a tall caravan guard named Nevan said, stepping forward, his hand resting instinctively near his sword pommel. "We've got two thousand gallons in that tank. Why starve us of drink when our throats are burning?"

"Because two thousand gallons is sixteen thousand pints," Faris said, holding Nevan’s gaze without blinking. "Forty people drink eighty pints a day at bare survival ration. The twelve surviving highland oxen drink two hundred and forty pints a day just to keep from dropping in their tracks. That gives us roughly fifty days of water if nothing leaks, nothing spoils, and the tank doesn't crack from aftershocks."

Faris pointed a gloved finger north, toward the colossal wall of collapsed limestone that sealed the Notch ahead, and then south, toward the jagged canyon walls boxing them in.

"We don't know how long we are trapped here. We don't know if the Marcher lords will open the gates behind us without demanding a triple toll, and we don't know if there is a path over the high rim that a human being can climb without breaking their neck. Until we have a verified road out of this notch, every drop of water in this tank is life. Anyone caught tampering with this lock will be put in irons and left without a water share for thirty-six hours. If that sounds harsh, feel free to walk north over forty thousand tons of rubble and find your own spring."

Silence settled over the group. The teamsters looked at one another, then down at their boots. None of them stepped toward the wagon.

Soraya-shah leaned heavily on her cane, studying Faris with an unreadable expression. "You take command easily, child. But declaring martial order is simple when people are frightened. What is your plan for the road?"

"First, we secure the living," Faris said. "Sabiha, take Wagon Four. Strip the cargo crates and lay out clean canvas for the injured. Daryush needs his splints tightened, and three of the drivers have second-degree burns on their forearms from touching the wet gravel. Use the tallow liberally; do not let them scratch the blisters."

"Understood," Sabiha said, turning immediately to organize two porters.

"Roshan," Faris continued, "inspect the undercarriages of the four remaining freight wagons. I want secondary brake chocks hammered under every wheel, front and rear. If the ground shifts again, I don't want another wagon sliding into the fissure."

"Right away," Roshan grunted, already reaching for his mallet and iron wedges.

"What of the draft oxen?" Soraya asked, gesturing with her cane toward the narrow ledge along the south wall where the twelve surviving highland oxen stood huddled, their broad, shaggy heads drooping low in the dust. "They cannot wear linen masks. If they breathe this marl for three days, their lungs will congest and they will die."

"We build nose-bags," Faris said. "We have twenty feed bags in the baggage cart. We grease the interiors with tallow, line them with coarse burlap, and strap them over their muzzles. It won't stop everything, but it will filter the heavy grit and keep them working."

Faris turned their attention to the perimeter. "Baraz!"

The burly rear guard hurried forward from his post fifty paces down the road, his heavy leather coat caked in white dust, his eyes darting nervously toward the southern defile. He had pushed his linen mask down to his collar to speak, his chest heaving under his brigandine.

"Faris," Baraz said, his voice trembling despite his size. "We have a problem. A bad one."

Faris’s stomach tightened, but their face remained an unreadable mask. "What is it?"

"You told me to check the southern perimeter—the narrow passage through the Black Cleft where we came through this morning," Baraz wheezed, wiping a streak of sweat and grease from his brow. "I took two men and walked back three furlongs to verify the retreat line."

Soraya took a half-step closer, her ironwood cane sinking an inch into the dust. "The Marcher gate is four days south. Is the defile clear?"

"There is no defile," Baraz said, his voice cracking with dry, ragged dread. "Twenty minutes after the main fall on the north rim, the southern wall must have sheared off. The narrow neck through the Black Cleft is completely filled. A hundred-foot slab of black basalt dropped straight across the chasm, followed by thirty feet of loose shale. It’s choked solid from canyon floor to rim."

A sharp, suffocating silence fell over the small clearing beside Wagon Seven.

Faris turned slowly, looking south toward the narrow ribbon of sky between the towering canyon walls.

The road ahead was crushed under forty thousand tons of limestone. The road behind was sealed by a hundred-foot slab of sheared basalt.

Forty survivors, twelve oxen, five damaged wagons, and a single cedar cistern were locked inside an eight-hundred-yard tomb of caustic rock, with twelve hundred feet of sheer, unstable cliffs rising straight into the pale, indifferent sky.

Faris looked at the greasy linen mask in their hand, then down at the locked brass spigot of Wagon Seven.

"Well," Faris said softly, their voice cutting through the rising terror in the camp like a cold draw-knife through raw pine. "That settles the question of retreating."