“Fifty-four running paces,” he shouted.
He latched the crossbow and put a bolt on the stock, turned, and began to lope down the road toward the mountain.
Wha’hae appeared at the gate and Gabriel opened it. There were three scouts and Gabriel immediately knew there was trouble; all three men were badly shaken, like men who had endured real pain.
“There’s a gap, Cap’n,” Wha’hae said. He was a big man with a big head and a wiry mustache, and fear sat ill on him. “Crawlies came at us over the road.”
“Losses?” Gabriel asked. “No Head!” he roared back in the cavernous hall behind him.
“We only lost one horse. Fuckers came at us—’orrible.” Wha’hae shrugged. “If’n they see movement, maybe.”
Mortirmir was pulling on gloves. “I’ll go,” he said. “They are flesh and whatever. I’ll handle it.”
Gabriel thought for a moment, balancing the squandering of ops against lives and time.
“Go,” he said. “No Head?” In fact, he desperately wanted to go himself. The delay was ripping him apart. He needed to do something.
The man appeared.
“Dan says the gap is fifty-four paces wide. He were running like a deer; bra’est thin’ I e’er seen.”
“What?” Gabriel asked.
“We shot some o’ the fuckers and then—you know? They eat each t’other?”
“Yes,” Gabriel said, making a face.
“Favour and Kriax ran for it. Kriax went in some hole. Or it’s quick sand. I wasn’t …” Wha-Hae paused. “Any road, Favour made it across and counted. Fifty-four.”
“Kriax?” Gabriel asked.
“Daud the Red pulled her out o’ the sand. Bra’est thing I e’er saw.” Wha’hae was calming, but he wasn’t fully in control of his words.
No Head thought a moment, then went back and started roaring orders at Sukey, who was still at the top of the ramp.
“I’ll need two wagons and the rest o’ the greens,” No Head said over his shoulder. “And my pick o’ men.”
Long Paw appeared.
“Ser Robert?” the emperor nodded at Long Paw. “Your command. There’s a gap in the causeway. Report when you have a bridge or it is untenable. Magister Mortirmir is under your command.” Gabriel looked at the young mage, his eyes slightly narrowed.
“Yes, sir,” Mortirmir muttered.
“Wha’hae—how far?” he asked.
“An hour’s fast ride. Call it eight miles,” Wha’hae answered.
“Paw, as soon as you know it can be bridged, I want a report. And then another messenger so I can start an hour before you complete. We do not want the army strung out on that causeway and then halted, waiting, with the local flora and fauna coming at them.”
“Christ almighty,” Wha’hae said.
Gabriel turned to Michael. “New march order?”
Long Paw ran to his horse; No Head already had Sukey and Blanche and a set of tablets. He was running through supplies, and he was simultaneously naming off men or women with carpenter or siege engine skills. They came out of the ranks, most of them archers, and brought their horses.
In less than ten minutes, the green banda rode out, with two heavy wagons between them—one loaded with lumber—and Morgon Mortirmir riding just ahead of the wagons.
“I want to go myself,” Michael muttered.
No Head paused as Gabriel opened the gate. Casa knights led by Philipe de Beause moved out into the cavern and made sure the ramp and road were clear.
“Fifty paces is a long bridge, Cap’n,” No Head said. “If I can’t patch it, I’d have to use all our stored lumber and all our pontoons. And it’ll take …”
Gabriel was watching as Bad Tom gave the all-clear sign. “How long?”
“Three days,” No Head said.
“We don’t have three days,” Gabriel said.
No Head saluted, rare for him. “I’ll see it done,” he said.
“We have to do this just right,” Gabriel said. “It’s going to be like one of those logic problems with so many logs and so many salmon sandwiches. Michael, you and I are going to stay here, in the rear with the gear, and make decisions.”
“I’d rather fight monsters,” Michael said.
“Me, too,” said the emperor.
Daniel Favour jogged through the overpowering heat, stopped and drank off his canteen, and ran on. The mountain was close now; maybe a mile. He could see a gate, or an opening.
He tried not to think.
About half a mile from the mountain, he came to another gap, but this one was only partial. Something like the fist of a malevolent god had slammed into the causeway and broken away about two thirds; for several hundred paces the road was just wide enough for a man on horseback.
Favour didn’t stop or think. He ran on, his pace increasing. He didn’t look down; like a tightrope walker, he kept his eyes on the approach to the gate and kept going. Nothing struck him; perhaps he was too small, or too fast, perhaps there was nothing below him. He knew if he looked down and saw crawlie legs, he’d lose it.
He kept running, his lungs on fire, his legs weakening. He tried to think of a prayer, but nothing came; he tried to think of home, and nothing came.
And it all took a long time.
But he crossed the broken patch, and then, almost instantly, he was in the mouth of the gate. There was a ramp up, worn almost as smooth as glass. It seemed to exhale age; a vague smell, like old books and graveyard.
Favour looked into the mouth of the arch.
Well? What’d you come here for, if not to go in? he asked himself.
“Come on, scout,” he said aloud. “Scout.”
He made himself go into the mouth. There was writing on the walls, and here and there the sparkle of a black jewel, perfectly polished like an insect’s eye.
Ten paces in, it was as dark as pitch. He paused, much against his will, and his imagination supplied it all: spiders and webs and unseen hands and nameless horrors waiting just beyond the last light, things older than man …
He stopped and breathed, his hands on his thighs.
His eyes began to adjust to the darkness.
The cavern was huge. It rose above him like ten cathedrals, and there were carvings and perhaps even a hint of colour. And deeper in, there was a kind of light, like the glow of fungus in the night of an Adnacrag forest; the kind of glow you best see out of the corner of your eye.
Favour managed a prayer. Then he started forward, his terror only slightly overbalanced by his sense of duty.
Step by step he pushed himself forward.
The fungus glow grew brighter. Not very much brighter, but it developed a shape and a sense of distance, and he took ten more laboured steps, wondering if he was walking into a dragon’s mouth. His sweat was cold; undigested food roiled in his gut.
Ten more steps. The silence was older than humankind, the hall higher than history, the darkness around him deeper than sin.
He had a temptation to scream, or sing. But he was a scout; he moved quietly and stayed to the left-hand wall, latchet up, the point of his bolt and his eyes moving together, discipline overcoming fear.
Or perhaps simply cohabiting with fear.
Ten more steps.
His heart began to beat very fast. Very, very fast.
There was … something there.
It was like a curtain of starlight. He had trouble judging the distance, but in the center was a small pillar, like a giant’s tooth. Like …
Like …
He almost bumped into it.
It stood waist high off the glass-smooth floor, and it held a flat plaque. Beyond it was the curtain of night sky without stars—the deep blue-black of the abyss.
He put his hand on the plaque and felt the keyhole.
“Son of a bitch,” he said.
He turned and was immediately shocked at how far he’d come into the cavern. The mouth now burned like a furnace in the distance, like a white-hot eye.
&
nbsp; He turned and started back, moving as quickly as he dared.
Long Paw rode up to the gap and shook hands with Kriax. She was already mounted.
“Bad?” he asked.
She shrugged.
No Head rode up and looked at the gap, and then the others were halting, forming ranks, and dismounting. The men-at-arms immediately turned outward, watching the edge of the causeway. Every archer put a shaft to his bow and another five in his belt.
“Fucking hot,” someone said.
The wagons rolled up, the horses rolling their eyes in fright.
“Water the horses,” Long Paw ordered.
Mortirmir dismounted and walked to the edge. “Ser Robert?” he asked.
Long Paw had to struggle to recognize himself as “Ser Robert.”
“Yo?” he called out.
“With your permission,” Mortirmir asked. “I will empty this area of these … things.”
Long Paw made a face. He had just seen his first crawlie. “Do I need to know how?”
Mortirmir raised both eyebrows and then shook his head. “No,” he said.
Long Paw looked back at No Head. “Can you bridge it?” he asked.
No Head looked at the gap. “No,” he said. “With Morgon’s help, I can make a ramp down and ramp up the other side.”
“Then we need to hold the crawlies off for … twenty hours,” Long Paw said.
No Head was looking down at the sand. “If’n I told you what to move, could you move the big rocks?” he asked.
Mortirmir was briefly reminded of the day he’d put up the weatherproof roof on the great amphitheater in Liviapolis. “Yes,” he said.
No Head gestured. “Clear these disgusting bugs away and I’ll look at the sand. Mayhap there’s foundation left under it. Otherwise I’ll need ten days and a forest o’ trees to cross this.”
“What about Mag’s ice bridge?” Long Paw asked.
Mortirmir shook his head. “Ice melts,” he said, as if to an idiot.
Long Paw frowned. “Right. Magister, roll the bugs back and let’s see what No Head can improvise.”
Mortirmir walked away without a word. He stood alone for a long time, like a statue, and then he nodded once.
“Erue me circumdantibus me,” he said.
There was a little disturbance deep in the sand between the outflung edges of the gap, and then a little ripple like the disturbance of a pebble thrown into still water ran outward into the sandy plain on either hand. The wave front ran, and ran, until it was out of sight.
Mortirmir dusted his hands like a man who had done a job of work.
Far out on the plain, there was an explosion of mandibles and legs, a feeding frenzy of titanic proportions. Dozens, if not hundreds, of hills of struggling, vicious monsters surfaced, tearing at each other, but they were almost a thousand paces away. Nonetheless, they raised a curtain of sand.
Men crossed themselves.
Mortirmir took a pebble from a pouch at his belt and tossed it on the sand. He raised an eyebrow.
“Nothing down there is alive,” he said. He shrugged. “Well, to be honest, I suppose something more powerful than me might be alive. Or something whose whole notion of life is outside my perception.” He shrugged again.
“You fuckin’ fill me with confidence, magister,” No Head said. But he climbed down the ruin of the embankment and walked out onto the sand.
Nothing happened.
Far out, so far that it was almost imperceptible, a mountain of squirming crawlies broke the horizon above the dust clouds.
“God, that’s gross,” spat an archer.
No Head was down in the gap, and he walked along, slamming a spear butt into the sand. Kriax called out to him and he found the spot into which she had fallen. He marked the edge with an orange flag. Then he walked along the edges, planting more flags, little pieces of painted canvas often used to mark maximum ranges for the archers. He poked under the sand and found a huge block of stone, poked again, and leapt in the air.
“Dead bug,” he said. “Disgustin’.”
Morgon nodded absently. “Oh yes,” he said. “I will have killed quite a few.”
No Head came back up the side while most of the green banda stood and sweated and watched the distant struggles for dead crawlie flesh expand and expand, but still well beyond the reach of an arrow.
“How much juice ha’e you got?” No Head asked Mortirmir.
“More than you can imagine,” Mortirmir said.
No Head rolled his eyes. “Right. Under the left side, the foundation inintact. I need ye to pick up them big rocks; I’ve marked ’em all in blue. And set ’em neatly, all touching, on the foundation. Y’ll need to clear yon dead bug an’ all that sand.”
Mortirmir nodded. He waved a hand.
The dead bug rose, all two tons of it, and was flung like a round from a trebuchet off into the maelstrom.
Archers made approving noises. There was a patter of applause, and Mortirmir flushed with pleasure.
“Really, that was nothing …” he began, and then caught himself.
Mortirmir moved his hand like a scoop, and sand was moved; inaccurately at first, but in minutes, the line of the old foundation and the damage to the center of it were cleared like digs of an ancient ruin.
No Head coached the magister, grinning at his facility.
“Master Mortirmir, when this is over, you and I will build some beautiful things together.”
Mortirmir paused, one hand in the air, as if seeing No Head for the first time. “I’d like that,” he said. “I’m tired of blowing things up. The hermetical is for more than war.”
No Head nodded. “We’re going to make a palace,” he said. “Like no world anywhere has ever seen.”
Long Paw called out two women known to have fast horses and sent them for the column and the emperor.
“Tell him it’ll only be single file here,” he said.
As soon as there was a single line of massive blocks cleared and laid, Long Paw ordered his column forward. They left the wagons with No Head, and his carpenters, who were already working on a hand rail and a small, portable engine tower.
Kriax nodded to Long Paw. “We want to go ahead,” she said. “We want to get to Favour.”
Long Paw nodded. “Got water? Good. Lead the way.”
Kriax’s Vardariotes rode across the line of blocks and up the other side and went forward. The rest of the scouts followed; Wha’hae gave Long Paw a somewhat ironic salute, and then Long Paw himself was crossing. Behind him came the men-at-arms, squires, and archers of the greens, leaving half a dozen lances to cover the work.
“What if they need more?” Kriax asked Long Paw.
He grinned. “Mortirmir’s worth more than an army,” he said.
The scouts cantered off with spare horses trailing after them.
Four hours later, Mortirmir was standing by the pedestal and the plaque of the second gate with the emperor. Tancreda was manning one causeway point, Magister Petrarcha another, and a dozen lesser magisters were shuttling the troops along the road.
A great many crawlies were dead.
“Fifteen hours to pass the defiles,” Michael said. “If all goes well, no one oversets a wagon …”
“No Head has the second patch in,” Ser Milus reported. “Sukey says she can cross with wagons.”
“Nowhere to camp and no water,” the emperor said crisply. “We have to go through.” He paused and looked at his staff. “But if there’s an army waiting on the other side, we are fucked. I admit it; this isn’t a contingency I could plan for. I thought … damn it, I thought we’d fight at the gate.”
“Now we’re strung out on a hostile causeway with terrible temperatures and no water.” Michael frowned. “We could call everyone back and scout all the gates …”
“If I had worlds enough, and time,” the emperor said. “Only we have no time. We have two thousand men here and enough magistery to level a city. I say we open the gate and hope for some lu
ck.”
“Or God’s will,” Father Antonio said. He’d brought up a message from Sauce, and stayed to see a gate.
Gabriel smiled. “You know, Father, at the moment I would be delighted to accept God’s will.” He looked around.
Tom Lachlan tapped a thumbnail on his teeth.
Father Antonio raised an eyebrow at Mortirmir. “Why no green magic?” he asked.
Mortirmir shrugged. “Master Harmodius has a theory,” he began, and paused of his own will. “Never mind. I really do not know, but I will guess that there is a tie between a world, and its native … potentia. I will speculate that there is another native magik here, and that with time and effort, we could find it.”
Father Antonio nodded.
“Just do it,” Tom Lachlan said to Gabriel. “We’re playin’ fer keeps. No room fer caution.”
“You would say that,” Michael said.
“Aye,” Tom admitted. “I would.”
“Right. Gate formation,” Gabriel ordered.
The casa came up to the gate. Spears glittered in the cold darkness and armour took on a strange colouration, as if the men and women in the mirror-bright armour were ghosts, spirits of themselves.
Armoured squires leaned into their knights.
Armed pages stepped up. Behind Philip de Beause, a thin, graceful page in fine armour leaned her slight weight against the back of his squire.
“Note that the gates are the same width,” Morgon said.
“Shield up,” Gabriel ordered. He looked back at Cully. “What did you want to ask me, back at the last gate?” he asked.
Cully was looking at his arrow. “You saw the stained glass? O’ old Aetius the saint?”
“Of course,” Gabriel said. He was watching men fidget, and wondering why de Beause’s page didn’t know her place in the line and had such good armour, and calculating the hours lost, and thinking of Blanche, and …
“Only, Cap’n, his face were brown in all the panels until the battle, eh?”
“Yes, Cully,” Gabriel said. He wondered where his archer was going with this, but Cully had earned the right to rattle nervously.
“Right you are. No, listen, I’m going a twisty road, Cap’n. Here’s the point. In the panel of the battle, his face were golden yellow. Eh?”