The forest changed between two steps, the change so sudden Stephan thought he was dreaming again. Instead of oak, beech, and maple, impossibly tall trees with smooth, black trunks as thick and straight as towers rose all around him. He tilted his head back and looked up.
While darker, the forest felt less suffocating. Unlike normal trees, whose branches reached towards the road, fighting even for the smallest scrap of extra sun, the giant trees’ canopies closed above the road completely. Instead of branches touching down low, they started at ninety feet above ground, seemingly with no end to them, and leaving a lot of open, airy space.
While his gaze drank in the breathtaking wonder, Stephan’s eyes settled on something standing out. A well-camouflaged treehouse was built right up against the trunk, about a hundred feet up in the air.
He waved towards it. A hooded figure emerged from the ground like a gray ghost, dry leaves tumbling off its shoulders not five yards away. It waved back.
“Greetings, traveler,” she said in a feminine voice, “what brings you to the Iron Forest?”
“I wish to see the Ranger. I have news about the capital and developments there.”
“The capital has fallen,” she said, “and the garrisons have abandoned their light-towers, what possible news could you bring?”
“The King, the old Queen, and the crown prince are dead. Queen Eleanor is fleeing east towards Cliffort, pursued by nobles seeking her hand at any cost.” Stephan had already prepared and considered what information he could share and what he should do to arrange a meeting with the Ranger. “The rest of the report is for Ranger’s ears only.”
The woman pushed back her hood. A deep frown marked her surprisingly young face. She had at least five years on Stephan, but no more than ten.
“I think you’re talking wind, but it’s not my job to think when I hear such news. Come, I’ll take you to my commander.” She raised her arm, finger pointing up. “You boys stay right here.”
Three more men rose from the ground like apparitions, and Stephan once more barely stopped himself from jerking away. He hadn’t caught a hint of them before they moved.
They saluted before climbing a rope so well hidden against the tree, it might have been invisible. The foresters scurried up faster than a man could walk without making a sound, reminding Stephan of giant mice.
“I’m Stephan,” he introduced himself, intoning, ‘And what’s your name,’ without saying the words.
She studied him an extra moment before speaking. “I’m Muriel. How did you get here, Stephan? I saw you running, and you’re quite good at it.”
“I came on foot,” he stated the obvious with an innocent smile, trying to shrug off Muriel’s implied questions with humor.
He failed miserably.
The joke earned him a dark look, and Muriel asked nothing else. “Try to keep up,” she said instead, and sprinted.
Stephan ran right after her, and the woman could run. Her feet seemed to hit the ground lighter than his, as the only sound he could hear was that of his own boots. He pushed himself harder, and when he drew close to her, she scoffed and sped up.
Stephan tried to match her once more, but his effort proved futile. She had gone from running as fast as a galloping horse to leaving the said horse in the dust, seemingly without exertion.
They covered about a mile when the woman slowed.
“Endurance issues?” Stephan chuckled as he caught up.
“No,” Muriel lied while struggling to regulate her breathing. “We’re approaching an inner outpost. I don’t want you full of arrows because you’re chasing me through the forest.”
Stephan looked up, scanning the canopy while running at a pace he couldn’t have imagined before receiving his class. High speed and lack of attention led to an inevitable outcome. One moment, Stephan’s feet were kicking off the ground, the next, he hit a bump and was spinning through the air.
The road rapidly approached his face, and Muriel flashed a grin dripping with schadenfreude. Stephan reached out with his hand without thinking. He slapped the hard stone, his body twisting with superhuman nimbleness, and landed skidding on his feet, eyes open wide in disbelief.
He wasn’t the only one amazed, as his escort was also staring at him, standing frozen with a stupid grin on his face.
“That was quite good,” she said with an awed voice. “You have some class focused on running and delivering messages?”
“Something like that.” Now that he was still, Stephan once more examined what he could see of the treetops.
“There’s half a mile before the outpost. You can’t see it from here, but the Trackers can see you.” She pointed towards an unassuming branch. “There’s one there, and another there.”
Stephan saw nothing until an arm detached itself from a tree and waved, its owner perfectly melding with the bark.
“Do you really have news for Boss?”
“I do. He will probably share some of it with everyone, but until he does, it’s for his ears only. Has anyone fallen ill ten or eleven days ago?” Stephan couldn’t help himself and had to ask.
“Probably a couple folks.” Other than holding back a laugh, Muriel made no significant reaction. Even if someone had been struck by the curse, it wouldn’t be common knowledge. “Come on, follow me. The city is two miles away, and we’re not racing.”
You’re only saying that because you were losing, but Stephan didn’t voice the thought, and instead ran leisurely beside Muriel.
Now that he knew what he was looking for, he easily spotted the edges of the outpost protruding from the trunk, but the Trackers remained hidden. Muriel either made fun of him, or more probably, they were better at hiding than he was at spotting.
He was still focused on finding at least one of them when a more obvious cluster of buildings appeared. The lowest grayish-black walkways stood at around a hundred feet above the ground, with buildings climbing up the tree where the canopy swallowed them.
The second tree had a similar structure, as did the third.
“How do you defend this?” The question slipped Stephan’s mouth, the memories of Cliffort still fresh on his mind.
“How do you attack this?” Muriel laughed. “You need to scale a hundred feet up a smooth trunk just to reach the buildings. It took a lot of work to build, but it’s unassailable.”
“What if the attacker sets the forest on fire? Or chops down the trees?” Both seemed like viable options to bring down the settlement.
“And what?” Muriel answered, a hint of mockery in her voice. “You think we’d let them? Treetop’s never been conquered. Ironwood doesn’t burn, and while you could technically cut one down, it would take time and a lot of exposed people to accomplish. More than enough for everyone to move to another tree if we can’t stop them.”
Stephan nodded. He didn’t want to get into an argument on an irrelevant topic. Cliffort had never been conquered either.
“What about wells and water?”
“We have cisterns and harvest rainwater and fog. And in a pinch, you can use waterloggers, vines with deep roots that pull water from the trees. I’ve never heard of anyone ever running out once they get the hang of harvesting it.”
Muriel approached the nearest tree and pulled on a thin rope. A moment later, a much thicker, knotted rope came tumbling down.
“Watch out,” she stepped away, as did Stephan. The rope whished, then slapped the ground with a sharp crack, raising dust as it landed, the noise so loud Stephan was glad they moved aside.
That certainly could have dented that rotten helmet of mine. He didn’t really believe it, but the irony of it and the foolish way he had died wouldn’t leave his mind for days.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds, but still leaves a welt if it hits you,” Muriel said after noticing Stephan’s contemplative face.
“I was just thinking about something,” he offered a weak smile. “Do you climb first, or should I?”
She motioned towards the rope, and Stephan started climbing. The thick knots, spaced two feet apart, made it a simple matter. Easy enough even for those with average strength and agility, let alone for someone like Stephan.
Still, going a hundred feet up came with its own set of adversities. For example, looking down. Stephan did it once, then firmly planted his gaze ahead, eyes locked on the wooden platform above.
A pair of guards with drawn swords greeted him, but Muriel hopped next to him a moment later, and the men relaxed.
“Says he’s got news from the capital. I reckon Boss wants to see him.”
While she gave a brief introduction, Stephan scanned what he could see of the settlement. It was the exact opposite of Cliffort. Where the eastern fortress was carved out of rock, there was nothing but wood in Treetop. The platforms around the buildings were wide, with raised beds sporting cabbages, lettuce, and various herbs, while others overflowed with mushrooms.
There was not a single fence anywhere; even the canopy gardens kept close to the buildings that Stephan assumed were residential.
The noise was muted, bending strangely and mostly deadened by the foliage. Stephan could hear the sounds of life and someone hammering somewhere, but they seemed much too faint and distant.
Stephan drank it in. A completely different approach aimed at the same purpose of providing humanity with an extremely defensible position to withstand sieges and other turbulent events.
He had assessed the settlement with the eye of the Strategist’s student, and found the location much more to his liking, even if it was overly shady.
“And you believe him?” the guard asked Stephan’s guide, who shrugged, showing her endless confidence.
“I reckon Boss will punish him in some way if he’s wasting his time. He said the King and Queen are dead, the crown prince too. Should have some useful tidbits, if he isn’t pulling wool.”
The guards didn’t seem impressed, but also had no intention of stopping them. “It’s your funeral; the big man’s been in a foul mood these days.”
The conversation ended abruptly, and Muriel led him deeper into the city of Treetop.
AN: Woke up in the middle of the night with a migraine, and it’s been with me the whole day. Pardon if I missed any typos, I’ve been dropping things and colliding with furniture. Once upon a time, I would’ve spent the day in bed, sleeping…