Chapter 33: Tagkarit - Maya's Reach
Personal System Calendar: Year 00012, Day 15-28, Month VI: The Imperium
Imperial Calendar: Year 6857, 15th to 28th day of the 6th Month
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Outskirts
While Maya Village was slowly becoming recognized in the far reaches of the continent, and while kingdoms would send royal birds with sealed letters and criminal organizations tested their nerve against the roads patrolled by their masked specialists, life in the quieter corners of the village's territory continued at its own unhurried pace. Not everything that mattered was dramatic. Some of it was just people getting up in the morning and doing the thing they knew how to do.
About five kilometers due northeast of the main village entrance, where the main road branched off toward one of the ten camping outposts that now dotted the territory at even intervals in every direction, a small community had established itself beside a stretch of water that had existed long before anyone thought to build a village nearby. The stream came down from the eastern reaches of the northern Lonelywood territory, fed by sources deep in the mountain watershed, running clear and cold through a section of forest that the Beast Dominion Wars had torn open into something approaching a large clearing. The war had uprooted the ancient trees by the thousands in this area, their massive forms toppled and scattered by forces that did not distinguish between living things and obstacles. Three years of undergrowth had softened the scar somewhat, but the loggers who worked this stretch still found usable timber among the fallen giants, dragging out only the clean usable pieces and leaving the ones that still carried residual magic from the battle. Nobody was particularly interested in what those pieces might do if you cut into them.
The stream was deep enough in its lower sections to sustain a genuine fishing operation, five feet at the deepest points, with a small lake that had formed in what was almost certainly a crater left by some very powerful spells left by the war or it could be a foot print of one very large beast that had come to pass through it, who knows what the actual truth was behind it. But the locals of Maya Village who had fought in the Beast Dominion Wars confirmed this when asked, though they only described it in the shorthand of people who had decided not to revisit the full details of that bloody war more than necessary.
The community that had built itself here was called Tagkarit by most of the people who had now lived in it. Others called it Maya's Reach, which was what the village leadership tended to use in official correspondence. Both names were acceptable. The place itself did not particularly care what it was called as long as the fish kept swimming.
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Marck Spense and the People He Brought Along
The man responsible for the community's existence was named Marck Spense, and he was one hundred and thirty years old, which placed him in the category of people who had long since stopped being impressed by things that younger people found remarkable. He had been considered close to a master-level river fishing expert in his old settlement of Dimah, on the southern reaches of the central-western portion of the Central Subcontinent, and the qualification close to was doing modest work in that description because the people who had fished alongside him for decades would have dropped the qualifier without hesitation.
Dimah was gone now. The Beast Dominion Wars had not confined their devastation to the territories immediately surrounding the Great Forests. Some of the larger beasts, displaced from their own territories by the cascading upheaval of that conflict, had traveled distances that nobody had thought possible before the beasts proved it to them, and when they arrived in settled areas they did what beasts of that scale did: they caused havoc until the armies came and killed them, and by then the havoc was already done. Dimah had been one of the unfortunate places where one such beast had escaped from the net of their kingdom's army.
Marck had survived because he was on the water when it happened, which was where he spent most of his time and which had been saving his life in one way or another for most of a century. He pulled people into the water that day who otherwise would not have made it alive on land, because that was also a thing he knew how to do. When the army finally came and the beast was dead and the settlement was assessed, only thirty-five of the old fishing community remained alive. His grandchildren, all five of them, were among that number. Their parents on the other hand were not fortunate enough.
He heard about Maya Village the way most people in the region were hearing about it by that point — from merchants, in passing, in the tone people use when describing something they are not entirely sure they would even believe. A settlement inside the Great Forest. Officially recognized by the Empire. Actively seeking people with skills to contribute. His kingdom was apparently allied with the Empire, which added a layer of credibility that he appreciated.
His first reaction to that information was that, he would tell anyone who asked, was that whoever built this place must have had several important screws come loose somewhere along the way. The Great Forest was where the beasts had come from that destroyed his home and killed most of the people he knew. The idea of walking toward it on purpose was the kind of thing you needed to work up to.
He worked up to it over the following months, as the news became more specific and as the alternative of rebuilding in the ruins of Dimah grew less appealing with each passing week. He had thirty-five surviving members of his fishing community. He had five orphaned grandchildren who needed somewhere to actually live and grow. He had a century of expertise in river fishing and enough years left in him, probably, to put it to good use somewhere it would matter.
He pointed everyone north and they started walking.
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What Tagkarit Became
That had been a year ago. They arrived at Maya Village with the slightly dazed expression common to first-time visitors who had been told what to expect and still found themselves unprepared for the reality of it. The walls. The imperial garrison. The Grimfangs walking alongside village guards with the casual familiarity of animals that had decided this was their territory and the humans in it were their people. The Mighty Peregrine Eagles perched on stations built specifically for them at various points throughout the village, occasionally launching themselves skyward with a wingbeat that you felt in your chest before you heard it with your ears.
Marck had almost soiled himself when one of the Grimfangs sniffed him at the gate. This was a thing he admitted freely because he was one hundred and thirty years old and had decided some time ago that dignity was less important than accuracy. The wolf was enormous, its face approximately level with his own, and it was looking at him with the amber intelligence of something that was deciding which category he belonged in. He stood very still and let it decide.
It sneezed on him and walked away. He chose to interpret this as acceptance.
He proposed the fishing operation to the village leadership after they had been there three months and he had satisfied himself that the stream and crater lake five kilometers south were viable. He walked the water daily for two weeks first, mapping the currents, assessing the depth variations, reading the signs of fish population the way he had been reading them for over a century. The leadership listened, asked reasonable questions, and approved it. The community's fishing expertise, specifically the ability to produce and manage a sustainable catch at a consistent volume, was exactly the kind of specialized skill the village was looking for in new pioneers.
They built the fishing hut first. Then a proper structure for drying and processing the catch. Then the residential quarters for the community, simple but solid construction using timber from the war-cleared area nearby. The loggers working that stretch became their neighbors, another thirty-five people working the fallen timber of the old battlefield with the methodical efficiency of people who had found a purpose. Together, the combined community of seventy permanent residents made Tagkarit feel like a place rather than just an outpost.
The five military outposts that had grown from the original two were positioned further along the road, housing rotating security forces and a small imperial garrison detachment. The camping outposts, ten of them now spread across the territory, provided resting grounds for patrols and visiting hunters alike. The Grimfang patrols swept through Tagkarit on their regular circuits. The Mighty Peregrine Eagles had claimed the perching stations built for them along the stream, and they fished here themselves when the mood took them, which meant that on certain mornings the community would look out at the water and find one of those thirty-five-foot-wingspan creatures standing in the shallows with the focused patience of something that had been catching fish since before anyone currently alive was born and had no interest in being hurried about it.
The wages the village offered were more than Marck's community had ever seen in Dimah. The lowest apprenticeship level paid three local gold coins per day as the standard village labor rate, elevated by twenty-five percent for the fishing pioneers who were establishing something new rather than joining something that was already running. Master-level fishers could earn up to ten local gold coins per day at the top tier, also with the pioneer elevation applied. In exchange, the community returned eighty percent of their catch to the village. The remaining twenty percent was theirs to use for their own consumption or to sell within the community. Given that the village provided food and housing at costs that made the outside world seem extortionate by comparison, the twenty percent personal allocation sat on top of an already comfortable base.
Marck had run the numbers on the walk north and confirmed them again after they arrived. In Dimah, on a good month, he would have considered himself fortunate. Here, even accounting for the eighty percent village share, he was clearing more take-home than he had managed in his best years as an independent fisherman. His grandchildren would grow up in a community that fed them, protected them, educated them, and paid them a living wage when they were old enough to work. That was not a small thing. That was everything he could ask for, or anyone for that matter.
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The Fish of Tagkarit
He had assessed the waters carefully before he would let anyone else put a net in them, because the Great Forest was not a place that rewarded carelessness and he had not survived one hundred and thirty years by being careless near water.
What he found was more than he had expected from a stretch of forest stream. Two distinct populations shared the waterway: fish that had been here since before the forest was a forest, local species adapted specifically to the conditions of this particular stream and lake, and migrants that traveled up from the great river system on seasonal cycles tied to spawning, temperature, and flood patterns that Marck could easily read the way most people read a sentence.
Five migratory species used the stream seasonally. The Silver Runback arrived first in Marck's understanding of the water's calendar, a schooling fish between thirty and fifty centimeters that came in dense seasonal surges during what old river communities called the Runback Surge. They exhausted themselves on long migrations, which made them simple to net when they arrived. An experienced fisher could smell a run coming before seeing it — they released a faint citrus-like scent when stressed, and that scent preceded the first silver shimmer in the water by enough time to have the nets ready.
The Redstripe Torrent Carp was a heavier proposition. Sixty to ninety centimeters of stubborn muscle that preferred the sections where the current ran fast and oxygen content was high. During spawning season its red lateral stripe glowed faintly as blood flow increased, visible even in murky water, which was useful for locating them and somewhat unsettling if you were not expecting it. They fought the line with the focused resentment of something that had spent its life swimming against strong currents and was not impressed by a hook.
The Glassfin Drifter worked at night, a twenty to thirty-five centimeter nocturnal migrator that was nearly transparent except for its visible spine and internal organs. Its fins refracted moonlight in a way that made sections of the stream appear to flicker with cold light when a school drifted through. Beautiful to watch, Marck noted. Moderate difficulty to catch, since they scattered fast when disturbed and moved in the slow currents where they were hardest to predict.
The Ironjaw Pikelet followed the migrating schools not to spawn but to eat them, seventy to one hundred and twenty centimeters of lean predator with a jaw that closed with enough force to break fingers if your hand was anywhere near it at the wrong moment. Experienced fishers cut the line rather than risk the retrieval of it, which was the rule Marck posted at the hut and enforced personally with his grandchildren. If you hook an Ironjaw, you would have to call him immediately. No exceptions. Many fishers who had encountered this species without proper warning had learned about it the hard way, usually by counting their lost or well remaining fingers afterward.
The Stormback Eel appeared during heavy rains, one to one point eight meters of serpentine muscle that emerged from deep channels and moved upstream in masses during flooding events. It generated mild electric pulses as it traveled, not enough to kill anything of meaningful size, but enough to make your hands numb for the better part of a day if you grabbed one without knowing what it was. The youngest grandchild had made this discovery on their third week at Tagkarit and had described the sensation to the rest of the family that evening using vocabulary that suggested the child had been paying closer attention to adult conversation than anyone had realized.
The ten local species ranged from the almost insultingly easy to catch down to something that actively required professional respect.
The Mudbelly Loach sat at the easy end, fifteen to twenty-five centimeters, a bottom-dweller that could be lifted by hand from the shallows and that survived droughts by sealing itself in dried mud it cocoons itself until the water returned. The Bluegill Spinner was similarly accessible, its bright blue fins making it visible from the bank, and it bit readily on almost any bait, which made it the teaching fish for every new member of the community who had not fished before. It also spun when hooked, tangling lines with the enthusiastic consistency of something that had developed this as its primary defense. The River Lanternfish was small, ten to twenty centimeters, but bioluminesced when startled, which meant that disturbing a school at dusk lit up the water from within with cold blue-white light. Beautiful, and also a reliable indicator of where your nets should go next.
The Stoneback Perch hid against riverbeds that its rough stone-grey scales matched nearly perfectly. Moderate difficulty to catch, but carrying mildly poisonous dorsal spines that caused swelling and numbness in anything that grabbed it wrong. Marck's note on this one in the hut briefing was specific: you wear gloves when you handle a Stoneback Perch, every time, without exception, even when you think you know what you are doing, especially then because there are times when one would forget when they already think they knew enough. The Amber Scale Bream schooled predictably with sweet meat and reliable habits, making it the community's staple production fish. The Whisperfin Catfish hummed faintly underwater and had whiskers sensitive enough to detect the vibration of most conventional traps, making it a moderate challenge that rewarded fishers who thought carefully about bait rather than just the placement of their traps.
At the dangerous end sat three species that Marck had described in detail before any of his people had the opportunity to encounter them directly. The Hooktooth Garlet reached one hundred and ten centimeters, lurked near the surface with needle teeth, and occasionally would leap to the surface to take low-flying birds, which meant a fisher leaning over the water in the wrong spot was making a very bad decision with unforgiving consequences. The Spinejaw Snapper was aggressive, territorial, and its jaws locked on impact, requiring tools to safely remove hooks from anything it had bitten, which was also the reason it bit hooks as aggressively as it did since it could not tell the difference between a hook and a crustacean. And the Blackwater Razorfish, sixty to ninety centimeters of stealth predator in the deep dark pools, was rarely visible until it struck, and its scales were sharp enough to shred nets and slice skin with equal efficiency and no personal malice.
Marck had illustrated all fifteen species on the board at the hut entrance himself, which was the kind of secondary skill you developed over a century of being in situations where a picture explained something faster than words could. The caution notes were specific and the illustrations were accurate. No one in the community had lost a limb in the year since they arrived, which he considered a reasonable early result for a community working at a Great Forest waterway.
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The Morning
The morning of the day this chapter concerns was like most mornings in Tagkarit: cool in the way that forest mornings were cool even in summer, the canopy filtering the light into something softer than what fell onto the open ground, the stream carrying its constant voice through the trees.
Marck was already at the water when his grandchildren found him, which was expected because he was always already at the water. He had the habit of old fishers who have spent enough years listening to rivers that they hear things in the current that do not resolve into words but tell you things regardless. The stream was running slightly higher than the previous week. The Runback season was approaching, which meant the Silver Runback schools would arrive within a fortnight if his reading of the water was correct. He had already told the community to have the large nets ready.
The village had provided five medium magical storage crates to every fisher at Tagkarit at no cost, part of the pioneer arrangement. They needed to be activated each morning so their preservation enchantments remained properly calibrated. This was the grandchild with the Stormback Eel education's job today, which they performed with the careful attention of someone who had learned recently that the natural world in this forest was not as forgiving as it looked and had revised their approach to assigned tasks accordingly.
The morning cast went well. The Amber Scale Bream were running in a loose school along the eastern bank where the current slowed, and the nets came up heavy with them. Two Redstripe Torrent Carp were in the trap lines, both legal size, handled with the respect their weight warranted. One grandchild found a Glassfin Drifter in the shallows that had apparently gotten confused about what time of day it was, and brought it to Marck for assessment before releasing it, which was exactly the correct instinct.
No Ironjaws. No Razorfish. No incidents requiring Marck to use the vocabulary he reserved for specific kinds of spectacular mistakes near water.
By midmorning the first load was packed into the crates and was ready for the village collection cart. Tagkarit's contribution to Maya Village's food supply, steady and reliable and managed with the precision of someone who had spent a century learning exactly how much a river could give if you paid it the right kind of attention.
The Mighty Peregrine Eagle on the far perching station caught a Torrent Carp of its own sometime around then, consuming it in three bites with the efficiency of something that had never once considered portion control. It regarded the human community along its bank with the distant approval of something that had decided to tolerate their presence and was content with that decision.
Marck watched it eat and felt something he had not expected to feel when he agreed to walk toward the belly of the beast all those months ago.
He felt like he was home.