“It is not likely . . .” began Ayaminu, but fell silent at the duke’s violent gesture.
“We should have rounded up all the White Foxes when the battle ended,” Isgrimnur said. “We should have taken their heads, prisoners or no, like Crexis when Harcha fell.” He looked to the Sitha. “That works for fairies as well as for ordinary men, doesn’t it? Cutting their heads off?”
Ayaminu stared at him but did not answer. Isgrimnur turned his back on her and crunched away through the drifts, back to his waiting soldiers.
“Your Grace, a rider is coming. He bears Jarl Vigri’s banner!”
Isgrimnur blinked and looked up from his map to scowl at the messenger. “Why do you shout so, man? There is nothing strange in that.”
The young Rimmersman colored, though it was hard to see against his burned-red cheeks. “Because he does not come along the eastern fork of the road, from Elvritshalla, but the western fork.”
“Impossible,” said Sludig.
“Do you mean from Naarved?” demanded the duke. “What nonsense is that?” He stood, bumping the makeshift tabletop with his belly so that the stones meant to represent armies jiggled and jumped. “Why would Vigri be in Naarved when he’s supposed to be protecting Elvritshalla?” Vigri was one of the most powerful Rimmersmen lords after Isgrimnur himself. He and his father before him had been some of the duke’s most steadfast supporters. It was impossible to believe that the jarl, as earls were called here in the north, would wander away from his sworn duty. Isgrimnur shook his head as he pulled on his fur-lined gloves. “Thank the Ransomer my Gutrun is still safe with our friends in the south. Has everyone in these lands run mad?” He pushed his way out of the tent with Sludig close behind. The Sitha-woman Ayaminu followed, quiet as a shadow slipping along the ground.
The messenger and his horse were wreathed in the plumes of their frosty breath. Beyond them the immensity of the Dimmerskog forest covered the eastern side of the road in snow-blanketed green, the trees silent as sentries frozen at their posts, rank upon rank until they disappeared into white mist.
“What do you have for me, fellow?” the duke demanded. “Is it truly from Vigri? Why is he not at Elvritshalla, defending the city?”
The dismounted rider did his best to bend a knee, but he was clearly almost too cold and weary to stand. “Here, Your Grace,” he said, holding out a folded parchment. “I am but the messenger—let the jarl himself speak.”
Isgrimnur frowned as he read, then waved to his carls. “Give this man something to eat and to drink. Sludig, Brindur, Floki—we must have words. My tent.”
Inside, the men crowded around the duke, anxious but silent. Ayaminu had come in as well, but she stayed to the shadows as ever, still and watchful.
“Vigri says that the White Foxes have been returning north through our lands for over a month, mostly in scattered handfuls that stayed far from our towns and villages,” Isgrimnur began. “But one large group, well-armed, and many of them mounted, were too big to ignore. This one traveled slowly. Vigri says they are carrying the body of a great Norn leader back to Sturmrspeik—perhaps even the queen of the Norns herself.”
“A body?” said Ayaminu from her place near the doorway. “Perhaps, but it is not the queen’s. Utuk’ku Silvermask is not dead. She has suffered a terrible defeat but we would have known if she had perished. And although her spirit was present at Asu’a—the place you call the Hayholt—her bodily form never left Nakkiga. She still waits inside the great mountain.”
Isgrimnur frowned. “Well, it is some other notable of the White Foxes whose body they carry, then. It doesn’t matter. Vigri says this group have kept together in a small army, and because of that they plunder broadly as they go. They did great damage along the outskirts of Elvritshalla, so Vigri came out to challenge them with much of the city’s strength, several thousand men. The Norns fought fiercely, but at last he drove them away into the wilderness. Once he had done that, though, he did not feel he could simply let them escape.” He glanced down at the letter, frowned again. “Merciful Aedon grant us good luck, he says he has trapped all those White Foxes—hundreds of them—in a tumbledown Norn border fort on the very outskirts of their land, at Skuggi Pass.”
“Their old Castle Tangleroot,” said Ayaminu. “It can be no other.”
“Vigri left most of his soldiers to protect Elvritshalla,” Isgrimnur went on. “He says the men he has are too few to press a siege in such an open place and he fears the Norns will escape again. He asks us to bring our forces and hurry to his aid.”
“The castle may be falling down,” said Ayaminu, “but the passages beneath it are deep and vast. The Hikeda’ya could hold it for a long time.”
“Not if we drive them out like rats,” said young Floki, “with fire and black iron.” His broad face told how greatly that idea cheered him.
“Let the corpse-skins hide there until Doomsday,” Brindur said. “Our men have fought hard and long. Many of them have been away from Rimmersgard for more than a year, and many who came with us now lie buried in Erkynland and foreign lands even farther south. What does it matter what a few hundred Norns do? Their power is broken.”
“Their power is never broken while their murdering queen still lives.” Sludig bore no title yet, but was certainly due for advancement: he had been one of Isgrimnur’s most trusted housecarls even before the war, and had done great deeds in the struggle against the Storm King. “This might be the last of their generals and nobles, trapped in a ruin far from their home. I think Floki has the right of it, Thane Brindur. This is our chance to stamp on the whiteskins like baby snakes found under a rock.”
Isgrimnur did not much like either choice. “There are no words for the hatred I feel for those monsters,” he said slowly. “For what they did to my son Isorn alone I would kill every last one of them, man, woman, and child.” He shook his head, as though it were almost too heavy for his neck to bear. “But Brindur is right, our people are weary. I do not want to see any more good men die fighting the fairies.”
“Fight them today or fight them again soon,” Sludig said, slapping at one of the axes on his belt. The young Rimmersman had taken the death of the duke’s son Isorn almost as hard as Isgrimnur himself. Even now, Sludig’s hatred of the Norns ran hot and strong through his blood. “When they have recovered enough to attack our lands again, my lord, we will surely wish we had dealt with them once and for all in their time of weakness.”
Isgrimnur sighed. “Let me think, then. We have already made camp so we have this evening, at least. Leave me alone for a while.”
As the men went out, Ayaminu stopped at the tent’s doorway, her eyes gleaming like golden coins in the reflected light. “Do you wish me to stay, Duke Isgrimnur?”
He snorted. “You wished to come along to listen and watch, and since that was the will of our new king and queen, I said yes. Never did I say that I would let you give me advice.”
“That is no surprise, I suppose. Elvrit’s race was always stubborn and bloody-minded. Perhaps the days of Fingil Red-Hand are not as far in the past as you would like to think.”
“Perhaps not,” said Isgrimnur sourly.
“Already slowed by the coffin containing the body of their great warrior, High Marshal Ekisuno, one of the largest troops of the People was soon joined by more Hikeda’ya fleeing the southern defeat. Their swelling numbers now impeded their progress even more.
“Duke Isgrimnur of Elvritshalla, the leader of the Northern mortals, pursued them with a great army of his race, but the People were also harried by one of the duke’s strongest allies, Jarl Vigri of Enggidal. Caught between these two cruel enemies, a mixed party of Cloud Children, most of them from the Order of Builders, along with a few Sacrifice warriors and those of other orders, were forced to take refuge in the abandoned fortress of Tangleroot Castle, where it seemed certain that the only conclusion would be their honorable and inevi
table deaths.”
—Lady Miga seyt-Jinnata of the Order of Chroniclers
Although the roof and most of the upper floors had long ago collapsed, the great hall beneath Ogu Minurato, the Fortress with Tangled Roots, was the least damaged part of the ancient, tumbledown castle. It was here that the rubble had been cleared to make room for the great funeral wagon, whose wheels were almost as tall as Viyeki himself. They had to be, because Ekisuno’s mighty witchwood sarcophagus was too heavy to be carried by any smaller cart: the various Celebrants now praying around it seemed no larger than children.
Viyeki was disturbed to see how quickly things had fallen apart here outside the sacred protective walls of Nakkiga. Only a few mortal centuries gone and the natural world had all but swallowed Ogu Minurato, eating away at its walls and foundations, replacing them with its own substance, so that a sea of roots now covered the stone floors where the queen’s Sacrifices had once drilled. It was a reminder that the greater world lived at the same hurried pace as the mortals—that it was Viyeki and the rest of his Hikeda’ya kind who were forever out of place.
This world knows its own, he decided. After all, the Cloud Children were exiles from the sublime Lost Garden and could not expect any other place to fit them as well.
“We live too much in the past,” said a voice behind him, as if contradicting his thoughts.
Caught by surprise, Viyeki turned to see his master Yaarike watching the scene. Viyeki made a gesture of respect. “All praise to the queen, all praise to her Hamakha Clan,” he said in ritual greeting. “But I beg your pardon, High Magister. I do not understand what you mean.”
“Our love of the past impedes us, at least in this situation,” Yaarike said.
By looks alone, Viyeki and his mentor could almost have been brothers. The skin of the High Magister of the Order of Builders was smooth, his face as refined as his noble ancestry, but subtle, almost imperceptible tremors in his hands and his voice revealed his age. Yaarike was one of the oldest of the surviving Hikeda’ya, one who had been born even before the fabled Parting from their Zida’ya cousins—the ones the mortals called Sithi.
“How can we live too much in the past, Magister?” Viyeki asked. “The past is the Garden. The past is our heritage—that for which so many of us have fought and died.”
Yaarike frowned slightly. His hair was down; it hung beside his face on either side like fine white curtains. “Yes, of course, the past defines us, but the simplicity of your response disappoints me.” He made a flicking gesture with his long fingers that was halfway between irritation and fondness.
“I am shamed, lord.”
“You are the cleverest of my host foremen—I should not have to explain myself. But I meant that we are suffering here and now because of our own overconfidence, Viyeki-tza.” In such moods, his master’s endearments often sounded like belittlement. Viyeki waited silently.
“Remember what you first learned when you entered the Order of Builders so long ago? When you discover a flaw in stone, do not examine only the flaw, but how it formed, what it will do if left alone, and how the stone around it has responded. Do not neglect what beauty may have been created—if there were no flaws in order, life would be immeasurably poorer.”
Viyeki nodded, uncertain of what this had to do with overconfidence. “Please help me see how to examine this flaw, Master.”
“That is a better response.” Yaarike nodded. “Ask first how many centuries have we planned this campaign against the mortals? The answer is, for almost eight Great Years—five centuries, as our enemies reckon it, since the Northmen first took mighty Asu’a from our kind. On that day Asu’a and its Zida’ya king, Ineluki, both fell to the enemy, and the precious witchwood groves were burned. So many mourning banners were flown when the news came that all Nakkiga was draped in white.”
“I remember, Master.”
“Mad with grief,” the magister continued, “the people cried, ‘Never such loss again!’ But now we have been defeated once more.”
“Surely not all this could have been foreseen, Master.”
Yaarike shook his head. “I do not criticize our Sacrifices, who gave their all, and of course I could never find fault with the Mother of the People—to criticize the queen is to doubt the most sacred of truths. No, it is not our plan of battle I criticize, but our overconfidence. And here we see one perfect example.” He gestured to the immense coffin atop the wagon. “I cannot help but think that an army, even one with so distinguished a leader as High Marshal Ekisuno, should not be carrying such impediments as the marshal’s casket along with them when they go into battle. If we had won, then whether Ekisuno had lived or not, it would not have been an issue. But since we lost, we are now forced to carry him with us—and as you no doubt noticed, we have been somewhat slowed by the great warrior’s corpse in its monstrous, weighty coffin.”
In the hush of the ruined great hall, the only noise beside the murmur of the funeral Celebrants repeating their death-prayers was that of the wind keening in the broken ramparts above. Viyeki wondered why his master would say such a thing, especially about a personage as important as the late Ekisuno. It seemed almost a sardonic joke, but it was never possible to be certain with the order’s high magister, who was deep as the innermost chasms of Nakkiga. All Viyeki could do was nod and hope that he did not offend.
“Ah. I am glad you agree, Viyeki-tza,” Yaarike said. “And here is Commander Hayyano and his men, no doubt come to discuss how we may all sell our lives to protect Marshal Ekisuno’s lifeless body.”
Now Viyeki was almost certain that his master was speaking in some satirical fashion, although he still could not understand why: Ekisuno had not only been the supreme leader of the queen’s armies, he was also a descendant of the great Ekimeniso, the queen’s long-dead husband. If there was anyone whose corpse should be protected from profane mortals, surely it was Ekisuno.
Hayyano stopped before them and briskly made the several appropriate signs. He had been one of the less effective league commanders of the Order of Sacrifice during the battle for Asu’a, which may have been a reason he had survived, but he had learned the trick of looking busy and important. “How many of your Builders do we have, High Magister?” he demanded before he had even reached them. “We will have need of their engineering skills to defend this place.”
Yaarike was silent for several moments, long enough to remind Hayyano that he was outranked not just by Yaarike himself, but even by Host Foreman Viyeki. When Yaarike saw the realization finally cross the commander’s face—a subtle but unmistakable flash of unease—he waited a moment longer, then said, “We have enough Builders to make this place secure for a while, perhaps, League Commander, but not enough to defend it against a long and serious siege.”
“But there are many tunnels beneath us, Magister!” Hayyano said with poorly hidden surprise. “That is why this place is called Tangleroot! They will never be able to drive us out. And we will kill ten for every one we lose.”
“I was aware of the reason for the castle’s name, Commander.” Yaarike’s words were dry as dust. “And if we have no other choice, then yes, each of us can sell his or her life very dearly. But even if we kill twenty for every one of our fallen, we still will not survive long, and we will be little help to those who await us back at Nakkiga. Is that not our greater duty?”
Hayyano drew himself up. He may not have been one of the queen’s most successful officers, but he was a handsome, powerful figure and Viyeki knew him to be brave. Talk of duty had brought back his confidence. “My men and I are of the Order of Sacrifice, Lord Yaarike,” the commander said. “Our death-songs are already sung. Whatever the outcome, we will make the queen proud of us.”
“Certainly. If the queen lives, that is—as we all so dearly pray she will.”
Viyeki saw the Sacrifice commander react in shock to old Yaarike’s words. “May the Garden preserve her fro
m harm—of course she will survive!”
“As we all pray.” Yaarike made the familiar sign that meant May the queen live forever. “But in the meantime, we ourselves have two great responsibilities.”
“Protecting the body of Ekisuno, the queen’s most noble general,” said Hayyano promptly.
Yaarike’s nod was perfunctory. “Yes, of course. But also the lives of the queen’s living servants—my hundred and more Builders, and your three dozen or so Sacrifices, as well as the mixed two or three dozen from other orders, most of whom will be little use in a real fight.”
“You would not expect the Celebrants to fight beside Sacrifices, would you?” said Hayyano, looking uneasily at the funeral priests gathered around Ekisuno’s coffin. “In any case, they have their own work to do.”
“If the choice is between all of us dying like rats and the Celebrants taking a moment between prayers to swing a sword or throw a large rock, then yes, I think they should fight.” Yaarike’s face was emotionless, but Viyeki knew the magister well enough to hear the anger in his voice. “And as the highest noble within this refuge, I expect my word to be obeyed.”
“Of course, High Magister,” said Hayyano quickly, but his face suggested he was suppressing more argument. Viyeki thought the commander seemed helplessly transparent. Small wonder that despite high birth, he still held only middling rank.
“Good. Then I want you and your soldiers to make a survey of how we may best defend this place, Commander. We will put my Builders to work shoring up the most needful spots. The mortals who have besieged us—what are they doing?”
“At the moment, not much of anything,” said Hayyano. “They seem to think Ogu Minurato is already theirs and that all they have to do is wait.”
“They are not entirely wrong,” said Yaarike. “We have little to eat and the well is full of rocks. That at least is a task my Builders can begin now. Go, League Commander Hayyano. We will meet again when the First Lantern appears in the sky.”