[b]Caleb "Cal" Mercer[/b]
[hr]

Caleb Mercer strode down the Intrepid’s gangplank before the earth had finished trembling beneath her settling ballast.  Sun-baked jungle air rolled up to meet him; humid, green, and faintly sweet.  Around him the expedition frothed in the landing zone with engineers unspooling steam-line tethers, porters heaving teak crates, sentries fanning out with bayonets half-fixed.  Mercer threaded through the scene with ease, expression intent but unhurried.

At the fringe of camp he knelt, cinching the leather straps of a narrow field-pack until they bit comfortably into his shoulders.  The Steamwinder carbine—brass receiver catching flashes of sun—slid into its scabbard along his spine, muzzle capped against the damp.  His Webley rode forward on the belt, thong loosened for a quick draw.  Into jacket pockets went a pocket compass, a stub of carpenter’s pencil, and three folded sheets of oil-skin map paper still clean as virgin linen.

He straightened, tasting the moment the way a wine-man rolls a vintage on the tongue.  High to the southeast a serrated ridgeline shouldered above the canopy, its basalt spine mottled by strangler-figs.  If any place could offer a first rough sketch of this labyrinth, that crest would do.

“Right, then,” he announced to no one in particular, though a pair of wide-eyed porters paused long enough to overhear.  “I’ll take a stroll up yonder ridge, mark the lay of the land.  Back with a map in one hand and, God willing, both arms still attached.”

He tipped the brim of his slouch hat, an amiable salute to the bustling camp, and slipped beyond the outer picket, rifle in hand.