Bilman believed the Phantom Shore was exactly that. A Phantom. An ignorant fantasy. When the party set off west at the dawn of the next day, Iskal at the lead and herself one place behind as his Marcher 1st Class, she turned to face the horizon just as they neared the beginning of the first mountain pass. It was supposed to be at early southlight that the Phantom Shore was seen most clearly, but she saw nothing but the great curtains of mist shifting along the shoreline.

  Fadaka walked past her as she stood there, then Fiegh and Lithan, each with their partizan spearswords resting over their pine-green shoulder pads. When she returned to ranks, she saw the 4 others waiting for her at the summit of the eastern slope.

  Iskal always seemed big to Bilman. He wasn't especially tall, nor broad. Compared to the average man he was technically on the slighter side. He carried with him a certain strength and grace though. His shoulders, while narrow, stood firm and straight all the same. But the banks of the eastern pass entrance dwarfed him.

  Long ago, earlier Collosean kinfolk had carved this monumental gate. The entrance stood open, a tall, slender space the height of a eucalyptus tree, with pillars of white stone etched with fine carvings flanking either side. Bilman was young still. She'd risen to 1st Marcher early in life, and yet had only been sent to monthwatch on three occasions. Each time they returned to Embestour they had entered this gate, and each time it had instilled a heightened sense of... something. Vigilance, perhaps? As if the carved runes on the looming pillars were heeding caution - but of nothing particularly tangible. Maybe it's because it was built in times of greater strife. And, for a landmark of such magnitude, it always seemed eerily empty. Bilman had never seen any other Colloseans standing at the foot of the gate aside from those in her unit, and no wind ever seemed to pass through the rock fissure and out into the bright eastern expanse.

  The 5 of them tapped the side blades of their partizans on the stone work as they entered into the pass: a mark of good fortune and respect. It became immediately more frigid as they moved from the morning spring sun and into the shy blue light of the chasm. The road remained narrow for about fifteen miles, with not enough space for more than three people abreast at parts. Eventually they happened upon another demi-unit of soldiers heading towards their monthwatch at a post in the southeast. Iskal stopped and talked in short words to the equivalent Frontstock while resting propped against the rockface that gleamed silver-black in the shadows. Bilman and the others stood awkwardly, sharing visible but whispered comments about the stranger troop.

  They moved on, and eventually came to the clearing, where the valley opened before them, and pines and other evergreens could be seen climbing up to the treeline on both sides, where they met and buried themselves in blinding snow on the upper southern peaks. To the five of them it was like entering clean river water. Fresh scents of springflowers settled around them: Gardanias and grape hyacinth, all pointed out by Fiegh as they continued on the short journey to the first camp. They settled at the centre of a ring of white jasmine near a small but urgent stream that led into a cave opening too small for any of them to fit into.

  'We taking the same route back as the way we came?' Asked Lithan of Bilman, while they were enjoying some cured turkey sausage they'd procured from an Easthaven pantry market. Even at this high an altitude, there was no need for a fire, such was the warmth of the Collosean springtime.

  'I don't see why we wouldn't.' Bilman replied.

  'I don't know, to venture out a bit maybe? I'm bored of compact ground. I want to see some things not many others have. It's one of the few upsides of the monthwatch... search for some forgotten roads.'

  ‘Lithan is aiming to be flippant.’ Bilman thought. Was he testing the level of his station? Her’s and Iskal's tolerance? He'd spoken similarly once or twice during the monthwatch. Although conversations between the five of them during that time were surprisingly infrequent, partly because Iskal was acting so aloof and distracted the whole time.

  'There's a reason those roads are forgotten.' said Bilman as she threw a piece of turkey gristle into the river. 'This is your first monthwatch but I'll teach you some lessons you should already know. One, you will be bored and that's a good thing. Two, this isn't an adventure nor is it an exploratory mission.'

  'I didn't mean we-'

  'Shut the hell up Lithan. Three, until you reach any position above Marcher 2nd class, which, based on your current trajectory should be about 40 years from now, you listen to your route instructions and smile blissfully about the choices.'

  Lithan looked forlorn, deflated. But it was necessary. Bilman actually went easy on the rawflesh soldier. She looked to Iskal for any further words but he was away yet again, staring up at the crown of treetops above them.

  They bunked in after dusk and awoke again at the southlight. This would be the routine for the next seven days. Sleep, wake, walk. On the second day, they talked of their plans upon return to their home, specifically the three days of downtime before they're back to their jobs as city peacekeepers. Bilman was looking forward to returning to this norm. When the five of them worked as the peacekeepers in their small neighbourhood in the materials town, the Western district of Embestour City, tensions were usually at a tepid minimum. However, when they were sent away on monthwatch, it always seemed more like they were vague acquaintances who'd met perhaps a handful of times. Sure, Lithan was a rawflesh, but Fiegh and Fadaka had been around for a good while now. And Iskal? She'd known him since she was 18, when she, a rawflesh herself, helped a young Marcher 1st class run drills at the district school as part of a program instituted by the Collosean Prime Regent.

  On the third day they reached the minetown of Unhaln, located at the lip of the Unhaln iron mine. It was a modest town bordering a modest mine. It was rough and ready, as were most of the Collosean mine communities, but they didn't mind. As soldiers they rarely got much side-eye, except on the odd times they fancied a scrap. Unhaln was located just off the Easthaven road anyway, so they were used to travellers, vagabonds, soldiers and sellers.

  By the fourth day they'd begun to ascend up the path that climbed sharply up the outer body of Zyhifa, the Mezzanine Mountain. It was hard going, and they were tiring already from the endless step-by-step pursuit of their home. It seemed a longer journey on the way out. The call of one's own hearth can have such an effect. At the end of the fourth day, they camped high at the cloudline. In the thin air the stars were so bountiful in the peacock-blue night that they seemed to illuminate the open-air enclave they'd found for themselves. They'd not seen anyone else all day as this route was chosen almost exclusively by soldiers and solo travellers. It was far too steep taxing on merchants and their poor mules.

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  Although, on their way out at the start of the watch, they'd seen a tamed Gorgon Bull up this way, astride it a wealthy-looking statesman, with personal guards on either side. It was Lithan's first time seeing one, and he melted into the rock out of pure panic. They all had to in fact, as its sheer mass - about two-to-three times that of a steer bull - required all to move out of its lane.

  On the fifth day, they reached a crossroads on the descent. The main pass lay ahead to the left: A wide, shallow way with cart grooves embedded in it that sauntered down into an alpine valley where some farmland could be seen. To the right was an old goat track that snaked up a northern slope for a quarter mile or so, before it ducked under the cover of a thin crop of pines in between two steep mounds.

  Iskal turned and silently motioned up the goat path with a double point of his fingers. Bilman thought it odd, but didn't question it. Maybe he knew of some secret strawberry bushes under those trees or something?

  They ambled under the cover of the pines for about an hour. It was slow, seemingly directionless. Bilman was about to speak up when Iskal stopped and stood, ruminating, hand tight to his Partizan, the pommel firm to the earth. Something to the right had caught his eye. Bilman followed the line of sight and saw a fissure within a natural wall of mountain stone, through which they could spy old, proud-looking beech trees which grew so thick the path beneath then became blind after a few hundred feet.

  'What's ailing?' Said Bilman, making sure the others were out of earshot.

  'That path doesn't look too worn.' He replied. He looked troubled, but anticipatory in some odd way, like he were expecting to meet something or someone.

  It took Bilman a few moments to understand his words. 'You're not thinking about Lithan's waffling the other day are you? I didn't even know you were listening. You seemed... absent.'

  'I'm always here, always listening. Keep that in mind.' He winked at her, breaking from the concerned expression. 'What's say we take the afternoon to see what's up there? Maybe we'll see some more Gorgons? Find some arcane flora that'll make us all rich?'

  He laughed. It seemed like days since he'd last laughed.

  'You know our reporting is expected in no more than three days.'

  'Has a unit never returned late before? Not once in the ages-old history of the monthwatch?'

  'If you were really listening in that hyacinth patch you'd have heard what I said. That lost roads are that way for a reason. Look at the woodfall, the full-grown bracken growing out of the stones. Nobody has walked that way in some time. Doesn't that seem off to you?'

  'It's occluded, hard to spot.'

  'It's off the eastern road, someone's spotted it.'

  Look, there are always a million reasons not to do something. I'm making a call, my soldiers need some... oomph. Call it a vigor-inducer.'

  'This isn't because...?'

  Iskal looked to become awash with anger. Not just in his face but his whole body. The pommel of his partizan dug into the earth.

  'Apologies, Chief.' Bilman felt the prickle of shame, the embarrassment of naivety. It was foolish to bring up the discreditation. But she felt something else. A splinter of disappointment. A surprise at the reckless abandon of his station brought about by nothing but the mindless ramblings of a pimply marcher recruit. But no. The real reason was clear, and yet she stood silent as Iskal addressed the others, and shortly after guided them willingly through the slim gateway in the smooth stone. She was the last to cross, stepping through with a snap of dead twigs and rustle of catching vine leaves. The air became immediate. Palpable. But clean, cleaner even than the untouched mineral air of the Mezzanine Mountain.

  It was like she'd stepped into some distant humid tropic, akin to what she'd heard about the forests of the northern Triskellion. The branches of the beech trees drooped and curved at head height. Bilman wasn't even sure they were beeches anymore. They had the height but they spread horizontally with thick appendages like oaks. The sky was reduced to minute blue speckles in the canopy. What was this place? It was like the stone that ran either side of the crack they walked through was simply a thin wall that bordered some forgotten garden.

  The others were already fanning out like excited children. She caught up to Fadaka and Fiegh, who had found a docile white butterfly the size of a man's palm. It waltzed around the air for a few seconds before landing in Fadaka's heavy cupped hand.

  'Don't get too familiar with this place, we'll be back on the East Road soon.' Said Bilman.

  'Last I checked,' replied Fadaka, 'the Acting Frontstock has final determination over the Marching route'. He was the oldest and largest of the five, towering high at a good six-foot-six. He had fair skin like Iskals, but with swarths of black hair covering nearly everything apart from the crown of his head. When he spoke the words, he said them jovially in his deep timbre, but Bilman caught a faint scent of impertinence also.

  Iskal was now turning around the blind corner, where the path looked to cease its journey and patches of anaemic-looking grass took over. Fiegh was too busy inspecting an evening primrose that was growing out of some tree bark rather than the soil.

  Bilman wordlessly signalled them to follow after Iskal with her. 'Are you not getting a… disquieting sense about this place?'

  'What do you mean?' Said Fadaka, his long legs striding up the steady incline with ease.

  'Look around. Don't you find it odd that you can't see beyond the trees? That there's a wood where there should be solid stone. That we didn't notice this on the way to Easthaven a month ago?'

  'I saw it.' reported Fiegh.

  'Did you?'

  'I. Well I think so-' Fiegh said, trailing off, before he suddenly took off running. He ran so hard that he had passed Iskal and Lithan, and was near the treeline about two hundred feet ahead before Bilman and Fadaka decided to jog up after him.

  When they caught up, Iskal and Lithan now in tow, they found him kneeling, staring intently at something that had been splattered on some flat, broad dock leaves. Although, on closer inspection, it looked to be seeping out of the leaves themselves. It dripped with the heavy viscocity of paint, and beamed yellow like daffodil petals, even in the soft shade of the forest.

  'I've seen this. Not in person, never in person, but in a book, I'm sure of it.'

  'What book?' asked Iskal, crowding in for a closer look, his hand rubbing his unshaven chin.

  'A book on arcane flora.' Said Fiegh in monotone.