Surrounded? I thought just North and East:
There were at least seventy other Callas, stretching in a mild arc north and south of Calla Bryn Sturgis. Calla Bryn Lockwood to the south and Calla Amity to the north were also farms and ranches. They also had to endure the periodic depredations of the Wolves. Farther south were Calla Bryn Bouse and Calla Staffel, containing vast tracts of ranchland, and Jaffords said they suffered the Wolves as well…at least he thought so. Farther north, Calla Sen Pinder and Calla Sen Chre, which were farms and sheep.
“Farms of a good size,” Tian said, “but they’re smaller as ye go north, kennit, until ye’re in the lands where the snows fall—so I’m told; I’ve never seen it myself—and wonderful cheese is made.” “Those of the north wear wooden shoes, or so ’tis said,” Zalia told Eddie, looking a little wistful. She herself wore scuffed clodhoppers called shor’boots.
The people of the Callas traveled little, but the roads were there if they wanted to travel, and trade was brisk. In addition to them, there was the Whye, sometimes called Big River. This ran south of Calla Bryn Sturgis all the way to the South Seas, or so ’twas said. There were mining Callas and manufacturing Callas (where things were made by steam-press and even, aye, by electricity) and even one Calla devoted to nothing but pleasure: gambling and wild, amusing rides, and… But here Tian, who had been talking, felt Zalia’s eyes on him and went back to the pot for more beans. And a conciliatory dish of his wife’s slaw. “So,” Eddie said, and drew a curve in the dirt. “These are the borderlands. The Callas. An arc that goes north and south
for…how far, Zalia?”
“’Tis men’s business, so it is,” she said. Then, seeing her own man was still at the embering fire, inspecting the pots, she leaned forward a bit toward Eddie. “Do you speak in miles or wheels?”
“A little of both, but I’m better with miles.”
She nodded. “Mayhap two thousand miles so”—she pointed north—“and twice that, so.” To the south. She remained that way, pointing in opposite directions, then dropped her arms, clasped her hands in her lap, and resumed her former demure pose. “And these towns…these Callas…stretch the whole way?” “So we’re told, if it please ya, and the traders do come and go. Northwest of here, the Big River splits in two. We call the east branch Devar-Tete Whye—the Little Whye, you might say. Of course we see more river-travel from the north, for the river flows north to south, do ya see.” “I do. And to the east?” She looked down. “Thunderclap,” she said in a voice Eddie could barely hear. “None go there.”
A feeling was rising in Tian, one so foreign to his nature that he didn’t even recognize it. “Isn’t right,” he said. “Nossir. By the Man Jesus and all the gods that be, it isn’t.” He looked to the east, where the hills rolled away into a rising membranous darkness that might have been clouds but wasn’t. It was the edge of Thunderclap.
He produced the Tavery twins’ map, opened it, and tapped an arroyo in the hill country northeast of town. It wound its way deeper and deeper into those hills before ending in one of the Calla’s old garnet mines. This one was a shaft that went thirty feet into a hillside and then stopped.