Goodeve and Mendel began to weep in terror.
“And here’s the most inexplicable part, gentlemen—this completely constitutes a war crime—yet we have not had a true state of war declared in over a thousand years, a time long before any of you or your great-great-great-grandsires were born. So even the defense of the ‘fog of war’ will not hold.” Ashe exhaled, then looked down at the floor for a long moment. When he raised his head, there was something colder, nastier in his eyes, but a smile had taken up residence on his lips.
“So here is what we have in common, gentlemen—and I’d like to think that it is the only thing we have in common: we will all be going together to face military justice for your crimes—you for the commission of them, and me as your commander and sovereign.”
The soldiers looked at each other in confusion.
Ashe’s smile widened. “We are all going to face Firbolg military justice. I am not entirely certain what that will entail, but since your actions destroyed what I valued most in the world, what I lived for, in fact, it hardly matters to me what the consequences might be.”
Immediately the men began begging in concert, their pleas running into one another.
Ashe stepped back from the bars of Reynard’s cell and held his hand up cautiously, as if in comfort.
“Now, now, gentlemen, do not be distressed. I have a hard time imagining that the Firbolg could visit anything upon us that is worse than what you did to Grunthor. And while he had the additional injury of shock at your violation of all things holy, you will at least know what you are being buggered for. The only real difference I think you can expect is that, while apparently you were shoving your cocks in the Sergeant’s mouth after you had already cut his head off—because otherwise you would no longer have them, as he definitely would have bitten them off—I am certain that the Bolg will not allow that to happen with you. They will probably just rip out all your teeth first so as to ensure the safety of their own equipment. As for other orifices, well, I happen to know that the Bolg only consider that an option if the recipient is alive, so you should expect that experience to be repeated frequently, for as long as they can manage to keep you from dying of hemorrhaging or splitting apart. So get some sleep; we’ll be taking a long wagon ride tomorrow.”
He turned and started to leave the stockade, then stopped and held up one finger in the air, as if remembering something.
“Oh, I almost forgot. I want to thank you gentlemen for your assistance in helping me rid myself of a nickname I was given long ago by Anborn ap Gwylliam, my uncle, my father’s brother, that I have never actually liked. It was he who chose to call me ‘Lord Gwydion the Patient,’ which I always have thought made me sound as if I am in a hospice. But now, gentlemen, now that your actions have truly ruined my life, I would say with certainty that patience is no longer a virtue that I can claim. Do, by all means, give me the opportunity in the course of our mutual journey to the Bolglands to show you what I mean, if you’re up for the consequences. I haven’t roasted anyone alive in a good long while. Have a pleasant evening.”
He turned and left the stockade, whistling a grim tune that was devoid of any music.
17
ON THE ROAD APPROACHING YLORC, EASTERN CONTINENT
Rhapsody spent as much of the nightmarish journey to the mountains as she was able curled up like a baby in the womb on the wagon board beside Achmed, covered with a soft blanket, trying to sleep, and failing routinely.
After the first two days the Bolg king apparently had deemed it wise to stop during the day and take shelter, allowing the horses rest and the entire contents of the wagon freedom from interaction with the rest of humanity that was traveling the roads and the Krevensfield Plain.
The Lady Cymrian had worked up the courage to climb into the wagon bed from behind the board, and, fighting down her gorge, used her fire lore to remove as much of the heat from the wrapped body parts as she could. The wind was cool at summer’s end, but the sun beat down relentlessly, and she could not bear to imagine what was happening to Grunthor’s corpse beneath the blankets.
“Burlap,” she had muttered at one point to Achmed upon climbing back onto the board.
The Bolg king’s brow furrowed. “What?”
“The bastards wrapped him in burlap, as if he were a potato or an onion, the fuckers.”
“Even more reason to leave their garrisons and towns in smoking ruins,” Achmed retorted darkly. “Are you set?”
They had spoken very little, almost not at all, as they traversed the breadth of the continent. Achmed’s sallow skin was growing paler, she noticed, but his jaw was set and there was a sharp look in his eyes that was growing ever harsher as they traveled.
She understood how he felt.
The nausea that had filled her body from head to toe upon beholding her beloved friend’s head, the eyes packed with crossbow bolts, the mouth and hair defiled, had only grown stronger with each day that passed. Her body was holding the grief, but her mind had somehow managed to numb itself to the point of disconnecting altogether. Any concept of what would happen beyond the next moment was unreachable.
She could summon no thought beyond her pain.
Achmed, in spite of no longer having the ability to sense the heartbeats of the continent, seemed to be able to predict the ebb and flow of people on the road, so their journey was accomplished with very little interaction with the rest of the continent’s population. Little to no conversation took place between them; they passed as silently as it was possible for two furious souls driving a wagon carrying the defiled body of their beloved friend to pass.
After slightly more than a fortnight, they found themselves in sight of the Teeth just as the sun was setting.
The mountains had been wrapped in the magic of the Lightcatcher, the ancient instrumentality built into Gurgus Peak that channeled the vibrations of the light spectrum for so long, utilizing Kurh-fa, the green power of grass hiding, that at first it had appeared to Rhapsody as if the mountains had vanished into the overwhelming expanse of the Krevensfield Plain. She was sitting upright, staring around her, when a cavalcade of Bolg soldiers on horseback appeared as if from the air, shocking her further and causing her to tremble violently.
Achmed brought the wagon to a halt as the green haze faded and the mountainous realm she had known well for a thousand years appeared before her eyes.
The massive city of Canrif came into view, all of the doors and gateways and edifices carved into the stone of the mountains visible.
All across the wide mountain range Rhapsody saw guard posts and encampments of soldiers stretching for as far as she could discern.
The mounted guard that had just appeared signaled for permission to approach the wagon, and Achmed granted it.
“Perhaps you should step away for a moment, Rhapsody,” he said, more direct order than suggestion, climbing down from the wagon board as the soldiers dismounted. He reached up and helped her to the ground, then spoke a few sharp Bolgish commands that set a guard group of hirsute soldiers in a circle around her.
Rhapsody stood, sick at heart and shivering in her dressing gown, as the remaining soldiers conferred with the king. Several of them returned to their horses, mounted up, and rode off in the direction of Ylorc while Achmed pulled the wagon gate down. The Lady Cymrian turned away, unable to watch.
But she could not block out the sounds.
In all the years she had been among them, Rhapsody had never known the Bolg to mourn aloud. But as they took in the sight of their beloved military leader’s corpse, a wave of vocal grief that was unmistakable rolled through the assemblage, agitating them into a state of barely contained fury.
Then, to a one, they threw back their heads and loosed a roar of rage that would have made Grunthor proud.
“Summon the Archons here, and prepare great braziers around the perimeter of the Moot,” Achmed instructed. “I need the first unit of the Keepers of the Dead to report here as well, and a catafalque built for his
viewing. He shall lie in state as none before him, and all shall see what our enemies have done.
“In doing so, the reason for what we will do next will be unfailingly clear.”
* * *
Within a single turn of the day, what Achmed commanded had been accomplished.
Gwylliam’s great Moot, an ancient amphitheater built into the ground outside the breastworks and guardian towers of the Bolglands, used as a gathering place for the Cymrian Council, and the site of great tribulation and great diplomacy, had been outfitted as it had surely never been before.
All around the vast, deep circle of earth, known to the human geologists as a cwm, the enormous Bolg army stood guard, every stone rampart filled with soldiers at attention. Rhapsody, accustomed to the hundred thousand or so attendees at each Cymrian Council meeting every third year, had trouble believing her eyes at the sheer scope of demi-humanity filling the enormous amphitheater carved into the steppes leading up the mountain range.
Except for the occasional violent outburst of grief, often by one of Grunthor’s descendants, the enormous crowd was silent, stunned. The Sergeant-Major had been more than an epic soldier to the Bolg; his astonishing life span and extraordinary leadership skills had rendered unto him the status of a demi-god. Rhapsody had always known this, but the sheer power of the grief at the loss of their demi-deity, second in respect and fear only to the king himself, battered against her like a violent rainstorm, or the edge winds of a tornado.
If she weren’t so rent with anguish, she would have been terrified just to witness their gathering.
Grunthor’s body lay in state, decked out in full military uniform with the “medals” of honor that Bolg cherished, the femurs, ulnas, and jaws of fallen enemies, his head sewn back on by the careful ministrations of the Keepers of the Dead. Achmed had refused to allow them to remove the bolts or to mask the bruises, however. He had assured Rhapsody that to hide the way the Sergeant-Major had died was itself a dishonor.
As a result, every one of the hundreds of thousands of Bolg that filed past him was enflamed at the sight of the atrocity that had been perpetrated on their beloved leader and countryman.
And, in the back of her fuzzy mind, Rhapsody tried to calculate what could be done to contain that wrath once he was committed to the Earth.
She had literally no concept of the answer short of the razing of the entire continent.
* * *
From the morning of the second day after their return to Ylorc through the night, then all the next day as well, the population of the Teeth filed past the catafalque. Children had come, each carrying a stone to add to the base of the elevated wall on which Grunthor’s open coffin had been laid, so that by the time the night came on the second day it appeared that he was lying in state atop a mountain.
The vast ceremonial braziers roared with angry fire, lighted at sunset the first day and fed throughout the night. Rhapsody was certain that the residents in the nearest city to the Bolglands, Bethe Corbair, could see the glow and the cyclonic plumes of smoke rising in the distance, and were no doubt trembling as she was.
The first thought that pierced the numbness in her mind that had settled into her brain like mortar was that Ashe had most likely notified the cities of the Alliance by avian messenger of the threat of war brewing, so it was probable that their garrisons and outposts were alive with activity as much as the Bolg’s were.
The thought caused her to step away from the Summoner’s Rise of the Moot, the place from which she had long ago called the first Cymrian Council of the new age, and vomit. She had eaten almost nothing in the course of her journey in the wagon, and so found herself wracked with convulsions, producing nothing but bile.
The numbness returned a few moments later.
Finally, as the night came on the second day, the Archons, the elite council of leaders and elders of the kingdom, came forward to the catafalque, following the Bolg king. Achmed had arranged for Rhapsody to chant the name of silence from the Rise, a mighty task that left her throat raw, until at last the population of the Teeth was listening, still in the throes of a brewing rage.
Achmed nodded to her from the floor of the Moot.
The Lady Cymrian swallowed heavily, and began to sing the Sergeant-Major’s dirge.
The first few lines, the Song of Passage that celebrated the Earth from which his race had come, was the standard death hymn sung at every funeral that she had ever overseen in Ylorc. Her throat, raw from sobbing and scorched in the aftermath of bile, produced wobbling notes with no sweetness to them, rasping, sour sounds that, ironically, seemed to soothe the Bolgish ears in attendance.
She sang of his victories, of his bravery, of his longevity, and his numerous progeny, which had always been a source of great pride to him.
She kept the song to those things that the enormous assemblage would find comfort in, avoiding any of the things that had made Grunthor special to her personally.
There would be time for that later, she knew.
The final lines of the dirge welcomed him into the Earth, and celebrated the strength his body would impart to it.
And then, with no finesse, the dirge ground to a halt.
Achmed exhaled and nodded his satisfaction to her, then addressed the roiling crowd below her, who hovered on the tiers of the Moot above him.
“Withdraw from the steppes to beyond the chasm, beyond the guardian mountains to the Blasted Heath and past it,” he instructed, his voice betraying his exhaustion and the fury that had not been dimmed by it. “There is to be order; the Sergeant would have demanded no less. None shall take action until I command it. When we move, it will be as though the Teeth themselves have come to Roland.”
A full-throated roar of understanding rocked the Moot and echoed off the mountains behind it to the east.
“Sharpen every blade, curry and saddle every horse, be prepared. When I return, you will be ready. Extinguish the braziers; when they are lit once more, it will be time to assemble.”
The enormous assemblage tarried for a moment, waiting to see if there were any further instructions, then broke apart like a scrambling anthill dissolving from the slanted layers of the Moot and moved, as if the Earth itself were doing so, in great streaming lines, back into the kingdom of Ylorc.
The Bolg king signaled to the Archons, and together they approached the funeral bier. He glanced up at Rhapsody, a terrible frown on his face, and then to the far end of the Moot. She nodded and made her way toward the exit.
The Bolg, watching in silence, lined the pathway from the Moot across the steppes to the gates of the mountain kingdom as the Archons bore Gunthor’s coffin back into the arms of the kingdom of Ylorc, the Firbolg king and the First Woman following behind.
Then they scattered, hurrying to their outposts and battlements.
18
DEEP WITHIN THE MOUNTAINS, IN THE LORITORIUM
The Archons had been tasked with digging the grave within the Loritorium, the secret unfinished city deep underground within the mountains that Gwylliam the Visionary had begun more than two millennia before, meant to be a repository of elemental lore, books of great knowledge, and magical objects, found incomplete by the Three when they first came to Ylorc.
Sklvarch, Archon of Tunnels, had taken the lead with the project, providing diamond-edged shovels and picks to his fellows, with aid from the only Namer the Bolg had ever produced, Kandyrs, specially trained by Rhapsody. Kandyrs sang the incantations of Earth and Water, causing the ground to soften for the tools, and so the project that would have normally required many weeks of effort was accomplished in a day and half.
The site that Achmed had chosen for the grave was at the base of another catafalque, the altar of Living Stone on which the Sleeping Child lay in repose.
The Bolg king had the weary Archons set the coffin down outside the Loritorium and wait, resting, while he and Rhapsody went in. They traveled through the cavernous place, its high stone ceilings echoing the sound of their footf
alls as they made their way through what had long ago been planned to be streets.
“Do you remember how he got the Earthchild here in the first place?” Rhapsody mused, still clad only in her soiled dressing gown which whispered around her as she walked.
Achmed smiled sadly and nodded. The battle that had waged beneath the ground with a massive demonic vine, tainted with the blood of a F’dor demon, had set the place the Child of Earth originally slept alight with rancid smoke and devouring flames. Grunthor, a child of Earth in a completely different way, had melded his body into hers, walking free of the flames and coming to this place, hollow and empty as it was. The Earthchild had stretched out on the very catafalque they were now approaching, where Grunthor had separated from her, stepping free of her, bringing her to safety and silence and warmth within the ruins of the unfinished Loritorium.
It was a silent, sacred place where each of the Three had stood guard in different ways, tending to her over the years into centuries into millennia, a stalwart vigil for one of the last Children of Earth, whose rib was sought by every F’dor still in existence in the air of the upworld, because if one of them could obtain it, that rib would serve as the key to open the Vault of the Underworld, setting the rest of their captive destructive race free on the world.
When the remaining two of the Three had climbed over the stony barricade Grunthor had built as a last line of defense for her, they paused atop it.
The Earthchild was there beyond it on her bier of stone, still asleep.
Achmed gave Rhapsody his hand to steady her in the descent from the enormous ledge of rock and led her to the catafalque, in front of which an enormous grave loomed.
The immense being, carved as she was from Living Stone and whose brown skin displayed lines and irregular stripes of vermilion and green, blue and purple, seemed healthy and well. Her eyes, closed in eternal slumber, were fringed with lashes that were green like grass at their tips but were showing signs of gold closer to her eyelids, evidence that the Earth was preparing for autumn. Her long, grassy hair was displaying the same colors.