“It’s the north,” Porto explained.
Endri shivered again. He stared up the hill at the ruined castle, then made the sign of the Tree. “I just wanted to earn a few coppers.”
Porto could not help pitying this young man, so far from all that was familiar. “Have you never fought before?”
“In an army? Not really. By the time I joined the prince and Camaris, we were on our way to Erkynland. We were some of the last onto the field at the Hayholt.”
“Even the last onto the field must have seen some fierce fighting. I was there.”
Endri shrugged, but he looked shamed. “I was near the back. No one ever tried to kill me. I swung my sword at a few of the Norns as they ran past after the tower fell, but I didn’t hit any. Too fast. Like swinging at shadows. Or at flying bats. And that was the only fighting I’ve seen.”
“I killed a Norn at the Hayholt,” said Porto, and in that moment, beneath dark skies and battered by the wind, it might have just happened. “Or rather I was fighting him when he died. It was when the tower fell, Angel Tower or whatever it was called—were you close when it happened? All around the storms were raging and thundering, but there was fire in the sky, too. The world seemed upside down.” He fell silent for a moment, uncertain how much he wanted to remember. “Where I stood,” he said at last, “the tower went down with a great groan and roar, like a living thing. The ground jumped beneath me and knocked me down. Snow, dirt, water, all thrown into the air in a great spout, like a whalefish’s breath, then they began to fall back to the earth. For a moment I could not see anything at all, mud and stones tumbling down all around me, then something rushed out of the flurry and knocked me over again. Before I even had a chance to make the holy Tree, something swished past my head and a hand grabbed at my arm. Someone was trying to kill me—that was all I knew—and I pulled out my dagger and jabbed and jabbed. I was lucky. I hit something and it collapsed on top of me. As we fought I realized that blood was splashing on me—not dripping, Endri, splashing, as though I lay in the course of a stream. Whatever was on me sagged off then, and I got to my feet. It was one of the White Foxes, and my knife had cut deeply into its belly, but it was also missing part of its head.”
“What do you mean?” Endri’s eyes were wide, like Porto’s younger brother when he had told him ghostly stories in their childhood bed.
Porto shook his head at the memory. He did not like remembering that bloodied, death-pale creature, here, so close to those ruins at the top of the pass. “Perhaps a part of the tower had fallen on him, lad. I can’t say. But his helmet was gone and part of his head was dinted in. His one good eye was filming over. I do not know how he fought with me even for those few moments. No mortal could have done it with all his brains out that way.”
“Do they not die?” Endri sounded terrified.
Porto silently cursed himself for making things worse. “Nay, nay, of course they do. This one had already died by the time he fell off me. For the love of the Aedon, man, most of his blood was out! The White Foxes are canny fighters, strong and crafty, but when people call them immortals they mean only that they have long lives. They may go on for centuries, as it’s said, but with a yard of steel in their guts they will die like anyone else, trust me.”
Still, his tale did not seem to make the younger man feel better about the upcoming struggle. Porto decided he would be more careful telling stories in the future.
“While the Order of Echoes sent their calls out upon the dreamwinds, Lord Yaarike the Magister of the Builders employed the Singers led by Tzayin-Kha, who would become one of the revered martyrs of those final battles. Her Singers went secretly among the enemy, traveling on mirror-courses. Undetected, they spread fear among the mortals, but they were too small a force and too weak after the destruction of Ineluki Storm King to do more than sow confusion and bring back knowledge of the enemy.
“The stories they carried gave Yaarike and his lieutenants no solace. The People were greatly outnumbered, and Isgrimnur of Elvritshalla and most of his mortal troops were battle-hardened.
“Lord Yaarike Kijada and his advisors knew that without the protection of Tangleroot Castle, however degraded that fortress had become, their forces would be quickly overcome. Many of the defenders under him believed that the only choice left was to sell their lives as dearly as they could, but others believed just as strongly that they should abandon the stronghold by night, when the mortals were hampered by darkness, and hope that at least a few of the People might make their way back to Nakkiga, where a proper defense could be mounted.
“But Lord Yaarike knew that to abandon Tangleroot Castle in secrecy and haste would mean not only a shameful retreat, but an even more shameful desertion of the body of the martyred hero, High Marshal Ekisuno . . .”
As Viyeki made his way into the interior of the ancient ruin, the echoes of the funerary priests chanting prayers for General Ekisuno’s voyage back to the Garden made the place seem almost homelike. Back in Nakkiga, their city in the mountain, the air of the public places was usually sonorous with the voices of Celebrants, and in the great martyr-temples of the queen’s family and other noble dead, the chanting for the departed never ceased.
Only the walls of the old keep still stood intact, though its roofbeams were long gone and the stars now its only ceiling. Viyeki made a ritual obeisance as he skirted the huge casket and its circle of murmuring clerics, then discovered his master standing by himself near the wall in an attitude of meditative contemplation. As always, Magister Yaarike looked to be the very essence of calm, but Viyeki had served the lord of the Builders for more than three Great Years, through times both bad and good, and he had learned that his master was never as unmoved as he appeared. Viyeki treasured the fact that he knew his master so well, but considered such insight to be his secret trust. We owe correct outward behavior to our inferiors, his mother had always told him, but even more to ourselves. When we think of what is right, we can be what is right. Warmed by the memory of her, Viyeki sat beside his master and waited.
No little time passed before Yaarike finally spoke to him. “I am beginning to think that the only acceptable tactic is to try to break through the ring of black iron with which the mortals have surrounded us. Not tonight, when they would be expecting us to do so. Tomorrow when the sun comes back they will attack this hill and these inadequate walls. We will have to hold them off at any cost, then be prepared to try our escape when darkness returns—when the mortals will be tending their wounds and expecting us to do the same.”
Viyeki was more than a little surprised, but he knew better than to think Yaarike simply wished to run from a fight. “Will you share your reasons, High Magister?”
His master made a small gesture of annoyance. “Have you given up thinking for yourself, Viyeki-tza?”
The idea that he had failed his master even in such a small thing burned like fire. “Forgive me, my lord. I understand that you believe our deaths can achieve more somewhere else. But I cannot see that it makes any difference whether we fall here or farther up the pass, or even fleeing toward the outer walls of our city. It is not as though we will be close enough when the mortals catch us for any in Nakkiga to see us die.”
“Ah. I sense the misunderstanding.” Yaarike nodded. “You are thinking of only where our deaths will be most appropriate or most useful. But I have another puzzle for you to consider, just as I used to set you problems of engineering when you were an apprentice. What if we do not die?”
“I don’t understand, Magister.”
“It is too early to start considering an honorable death, Host Foreman Viyeki. In fact, an honorable death is only a suitable alternative when death cannot be avoided. But even the most fanatical of the Queen’s Teeth or the Sacrifice Elite know that their first responsibility is to stay alive and perform their duties as long as possible. Did you see the great iron ram the mortals brought? The one lashed to a w
agon bigger even than Ekisuno’s caisson, pulled by three teams of oxen?”
“Yes. It is made of black iron and shaped like a bear’s head.” Viyeki frowned. “I think it is foolish. Like a child’s toy, however huge it may be.”
“You would not say that if you saw it knocking down the walls around our innermost preserve—or even Nakkiga’s great gates themselves.”
“Impossible!”
“Why?” The magister’s eyes were bright, his face unusually animated. “What do you think will happen after we are dead here, our lives tidily but honorably laid down in a hopeless fight?” Viyeki had never seen his master like this, showing what looked like actual anger. “I will tell you. With us gone, the Northmen will proceed through the pass and march across our lands. Soon they will reach our outer walls, the very walls that Akhenabi and the rest convinced the Queen—may she live forever—not to repair. We would need ten thousand Sacrifices to defend that ruined barrier now against even a small army like this. We have not a tenth of that number of warriors left in all Nakkiga, I feel sure. Do you hear my song, Host Foreman? Do you apprehend its melody?”
“I’m . . . I’m not certain.”
“The Northmen will be at the very doors of our mountain. And the few of our troops that are not scattered across the south trying to struggle home, or have not already bravely and foolishly given their lives here with you and me, will be all that stands between Nakkiga and the revenge of the mortals. Do you know who waits at the base of the hill right now, staring up at us this very moment? Isgrimnur, the Duke of Elvritshalla, descendant of the same Fingil Red-Hand who slaughtered our kind all over the north, who threw down the holy stones of Asu’a itself and burned a thousand prisoners as demons. What do you think will happen when that great, black iron bear-head knocks down the Nakkiga Gates and Isgrimnur and his savages storm into the city?”
That was impossible, surely. Viyeki found that for a long moment he could not even speak. “But they couldn’t—!”
“Couldn’t they? Who would stop them? The leaders of the Order of Sacrifice are dead and rotting in the meadows of the south. Our queen has fallen into the keta-yi’indra—that deep, deathlike sleep of preservation and recovery. You felt her fall just as I did, just as every single Hikeda’ya felt it. We call it ‘the dangerous sleep’ because our people are leaderless while she slumbers.” He leaned closer. “Who will rule in her absence, Host Foreman Viyeki? The Order of Song, that is who. Akhenabi and Jikkyo and the rest of that bloodless fellowship. And if the gates of Nakkiga will not hold, the Order of Song will take the survivors and flee deeper into the mountain, to places the mortals cannot follow.” Yaarike shook his head. “And that is what our people will become—creatures ruled by sorcerers, slaves who never see the light of day, who hide in darkness and can be said to live only in that they have not yet died. The Garden that was our home will not even be a story anymore—or, if the tales still exist, Akhenabi and his order will teach that our people lived in darkness there, too, surrounded by stone and ruled by the masters of Song.” The magister paused, as if he had realized how strange and desperate his words had become. He looked around quickly, but they were still alone except for the silent guards and the even more silent coffin. “So tell me, Host Foreman, do you still want only to sell your life as honorably as possible here?”
Before Viyeki could answer—although he had no idea of how to reply—Yaarike waved him away as if he had failed some test.
“Go now, Viyeki-tza,” the high magister said. “If your engineers have finished clearing the well of stones, find some other useful task to keep them and yourself occupied. Let me think. It is nearly the only weapon that has been left to me. But remember what I have said, and remember your family and clan who wait for us back home. Most of all, remember that what is an honorable death for you might mean the destruction of your people.”
Porto barely slept. The night was full of odd shadows and the wilderness rang with cries that might have been wolves or the ghosts of weeping children, but there was more to his unease than fearsome sounds. He could not shake off the feeling that though the duke’s forces far outnumbered their enemy, and their troops were fresh where the Norns were hungry and exhausted, somehow they did not have the upper hand. Lying beneath the distant, uncaring stars, he felt as though he and all the other mortals were in a brightly lit room in the middle of great darkness, being watched by countless unseen eyes.
From time to time his gaze was drawn to the broken walls of Tangleroot Castle and the lights he sometimes saw flickering there. They were nothing wholesome, not the familiar glow of candles, rushlights, or oil lamps, but shimmers of ghostly fire in foul colors, marshy green or a cadaverous yellow that nevertheless caught his eye and seemed to pull him closer, though his body never moved. At last he rolled over to face away from the top of the pass, hoping to find better rest, but then was presented the sight of young Endri trapped in evil dreams, moaning and twitching through his own shallow slumbers, shivering in a cold that no scarf or cloak could keep out.
Dawn finally came, but the morning sun barely made its presence felt. As Porto and Endri and the rest broke their fast on what flatbread the field kitchens managed to turn out, the mists rose as high as the surrounding hills but then stopped and hung, so it seemed as if a great, gray cloud had drifted down from the heavens and fallen across the pass. Although the wind had eased, a river of cold air still flowed down from the heights, making all the men feel heavy and old in their bones, paining the southern soldiers even worse than the Rimmersmen.
“I feel like I will die today,” Endri said.
“Don’t be foolish.” Porto gave him a shove, but the younger man only took it as though it were his due, as a slave might take a beating. “I won’t let you.”
“You’re a good friend, Porto. How did you manage to get born in the Rocks with all the thieves and beggars?”
“Don’t ask me, ask my mother. And don’t be so fearful. You and I are not even supposed to go up the hill toward the castle. We’ll be protecting the donkey—the arbalest. That’s what the commander told me.”
He and Endri were in position before the sun made its way above the eastern side of the pass. The engineers they guarded made sure the stone-throwing machine was ready, talking warmly and confidently of how soon they would knock down this wall of ancient stone or that one, as though the battle were no more than a tournament, some sort of contest with prizes for the winning troop.
“Like town-ball,” said Porto.
“What?” Endri’s eyes had a haunted look.
“Town-ball. This, the waiting before it starts. You know that feeling.”
“I never played.”
“A strapping, strong fellow like you? Why not?”
Endri looked shamefaced. “Too slow.” His face brightened a little. “Did you?”
“Play at the proper game, on festival days? Once or twice, before I went to soldiering. It is good to have long legs when you’re running, not so much when people are kicking your shins.”
Endri smiled. “At least being tall like that keeps your ballocks up high in the air where people aren’t as likely to kick them.”
Porto shook his head, glad to see the youth’s spirits lift a bit. “Don’t forget, there’s only a small difference between them being too high to kick and them being low enough to punch. I swear by all the saints, it hurts just as much.”
Somebody blew a horn. It echoed along the hillside like a sudden shriek. The color drained from Endri’s face. “What’s that?”
“It’s only the stand-ready,” Porto told him. “Don’t fear. We’ll come through this all right.”
It is always dreadful, waiting for the fighting to begin, Isgrimnur thought. But it was much worse when the enemy was as unknowable as the Norns.
As he stood watching sunrise color the sky above the pass, Isgrimnur remembered the first time he had waited for a bat
tle to start, long ago—so long ago! Could so many years truly have passed? His father Isbeorn had led a company of dalesmen against Fanngrun, King Jormgrun’s rebellious cousin. Isbeorn had not wanted to fight, but Fanngrun had chosen to march through the thane’s family lands in the Hargres Dale on his way to attack the king in Elvritshalla, and the king had made it very clear that if Isbeorn and his carls did not dispute Fanngrun’s passage across their lands, then they were traitors, too.
As they had stood waiting, on a morning not much brighter or more pleasant than this one, Isgrimnur’s father had seen his young son’s look of poorly hidden fear.
“Do you know what the worst thing about fighting is?” Isbeorn asked.
“What, sire?”
“There’s a good chance we’ll live.”
Isgrimnur, all of thirteen summers old, though a good size for his age, hadn’t known how to answer to that. His father was not a man given to jests, even grim ones. At last, he said, “You say we’ll live?”
“The odds are good. It is not our job to stop Fanngrun’s army, merely to show ourselves willing—to prove to the king that we are his men. That is best done not by fighting Fanngrun’s Vattinlanders face to face, but by harrying them through our land as quickly as possible. They outnumber us greatly.”
“I still don’t understand. You said we’ll probably live. Why is that the worst thing?”
His father grinned, teeth gleaming in his grayshot beard. “Because if we’re killed, we go straight to Heaven, don’t we? Doing our king’s bidding and defending our home in the name of the True God against unbelievers.”
This was far beyond Isgrimnur’s youthful understanding. “But our King Jormgrun is an unbeliever, too. So are most of his court!”