of the forests had been coming north at nights, raiding New Design’s livestock.
(Not-quite-deer and almost-turkey: that was the best of the local stock. What Morton wouldn’t give for a decent mutton!)
In the last year, the beast had killed three herdsmen and a guard. In the year before that, two boys and a schoolteacher. In the year before that . . .
Eyewitnesses said the beast was like one of the oaks, come to life, bristling with claws in place of leaves, feeding on blood, not rain; that it was like a great serpent but also like a bear, or a man, or a machine. It must have come east from the farthest-out west, where things did not yet hold to their proper forms, and that was all Morton would say about that to a lady.
The mission of Morton’s party—and there were other scouting parties out in the forest, to the west and east—was to track the beast’s movements back to find its lair. They weren’t planning to engage it; once they’d found the monster’s lair, all of New Design’s fighting men would come back with torches and bows and the few precious rifles.
Morton’s party had stopped at the stream to refill their canteens, and in hope that the monster might have watered there itself, and that they might pick up its trail. They’d seen Liv there by the pool; they’d thought at first she was one of their own, one of the women of New Design, somehow lost. Then they’d wondered if she was some shifter or sylph or naiad, hence the bows at the ready, for which Morton apologized.
“Creedmoor is hunting your serpent-monster,” Liv said.
“Maybe he’ll save us the trouble, then. Maybe the monster will take care of him for us. Either way, we had best head home.”
It hadn’t even occurred to Liv that Creedmoor might be overmatched. She felt a sudden vindictive thrill.
They walked for three days. The forest remained unchanging. The oaks remained serene. They came across more of the mutilated deer, the savaged trees, but the monster’s spoor was old, the corpses rotten; nevertheless, they hurried on past.
They came to New Design at noon.
It had high walls made of logs of solid oak, painted with red pitch. Before the walls, there was a wide and waterless black moat. Tree-tall wooden watchtowers overlooked the moat. On the other side of it stood a town of low log huts. Thin trails of woodsmoke rose into the sky. Turkey wandered the muddy tracks of the streets, and the deerlike animals whined and honked uneasily in their pens.
The men and women of New Design dressed in furs and buckskins, or simple worn shifts, or threadbare scraps of ancient uniforms; they dressed like border bandits, but they held themselves like honest folk.
No single house stood above the others; nothing, save the watchtowers, exceeded a single story. Nothing was ornamented. The impression was of a rigorous and severe democracy and fraternity—though later Liv would wonder if the absence of stairs was more due to a shortage of metals and nails and competent carpenters.
“New Design,” Morton said. He waved an arm at it.
Morton turned to the General and stared into the man’s blank eyes. “We built it in your honor, sir. That you should come to it at last in such a state . . .” And he broke down and sobbed. Singleton and Blisset stood by, pale and awkward, while the townsfolk came slowly over the moat’s wooden bridge and gathered round.
Liv stuck close to Singleton and Blisset as the townfolk called out, “Who is this? Morton, what is this?”
Singleton gathered himself, clapped for attention, and shouted, “Hey! Hey! Stand back! Show some respect! This is the man! This is General Enver! He is! I swear it, I swear it by the fucking Charter! Stand back!”
“Do you know what you’ve brought us, ma’am? Can you understand?”
Liv admitted that she could not, that she was a little confused. The Mayor cleared his throat and tried to explain. . . .
After the battle of Black Cap Valley, many of the Republic’s surviving forces deserted; the true believers did not. The true believers fought on against the Line, though they knew they were doomed, and every battle after that was a rout, and soon they weren’t even really fighting battles, but striking like bandits from the forests and hills; the true believers fought on because the Republic wasn’t like the other petty border states and fiefdoms and kingdoms and freetowns and the like. It was not