It’s statue-still, even as our eyes and augurs roll past. I half expect it to turn and meet our gaze, show some sign of life, but it doesn’t. It’s watching another empty recess just like the one that holds it steady, set into the cliffside opposite. A long spear rests in its hand, tilted so the point hangs out in the open, but the point looks blunt. Worn down by the wind and a hundred thousand years. Cracks and blisters mark the stone around it, match a few narrow wounds across its chest.

“Is it awake?”

Hail takes a breath, lets it out slow and deliberate. “Let’s find out.”

SIGURD TRIED TO wake the glassy thing up, but not too hard. A few scattered shots mark the crags on either side, leaving tracks across the shell’s glassy hull and scarring the shallow features of its face. The company came knocking, but stopped as soon as it realised that the strange machine would sleep through the noise. We don’t mean to tempt fate, but we don’t have a dreadnought flying support.

Hail sets up directly across the valley, with the Juno and I watching her back. We brace for recoil and trade notes from our fire-control, flaring plates and cooling surfaces in anticipation. Salt stands at the foot of the glassy shell, his wings loose in their housings, engines ready to pull him away in a second. He glances back at us, puts up a thumb.

Starting.

We can hear his augurs go to work, scanning the alien machine head to toe. He’s got his sensor-bands set as narrow as they’ll go, and they run for less than half a second. The silence is sudden and heavy, but the shape in the alcove doesn’t respond.

Cold and quiet, he sends. Can’t tell where it ends and the stone begins.

Not that we were expecting anything else. Sigurd marched a couple hundred shells down here, and this thing watched them do it.

Well, it won’t mind us, then, replies Hail. The Spirit straightens, looks down into where Sigurd was trying to reach. Where the cliffsides meet in the middle, turning the valley into a cavern. Let’s hope there aren’t any more of them.

But we were never going to be that lucky. The air gets darker as we walk as the sky narrows, and the Eye-light starts to fade. More alcoves mark the slab-sides, following the slope of the ground below them. Most are empty, but a few still have glassy shapes standing inside.

How many do you think there were?

Hail looks out over our head. Counting the ones we saw before?

And all of the empty spaces.

The Spirit cocks its head. Four hundred, easy.