“Ah, you’ll like tonight’s meal,” he said as he squatted beside the fire. “Endri, are you awake yet? You won’t taste a finer one even in the duke’s tent.”
Endri said nothing, so Porto leaned over and gave him a gentle shake. “Come on, lad. If you don’t get up, you’ll miss the feast.” But something felt wrong, as though someone had stolen Endri away and replaced him with something solid and immobile.
Porto turned the youth over. Endri’s face was slack; his eyes were open, but already they had filmed over. He did not look peaceful, but he did not look pained, either, and that was a small solace. He had been dead for hours.
The meal forgotten and the water boiling away to nothing, Porto slumped down beside the body and wept until the wind made his cold, wet cheeks burn.
He did not want to bury his friend in direct sight of the looming mountain, so he dragged the body to a clearing in a stand of young evergreens at the outer edge of the grove where he had been working. As the long northern twilight waned he scraped and hacked at the hard ground with his axe until he had made a trench deep enough to keep Endri safe from scavengers. Porto reluctantly took back his cloak but felt like a robber for doing it, so he made a bed of pine branches and then cut more branches to make a blanket to cover the body. He briefly considered taking the young man’s prized Harborside scarf to return it to the lad’s mother, but in the end he could not do it. Never once had Endri taken it off, and his pride in his old setro had been one of the most notable things about him. Buried in this bleak, foreign land, without a tombstone, he could at least go into the next life with something he prized, something that had reminded him of his home.
As it grew darker and the stars, like shy children, came out to watch him, Porto laid his friend in the grave and covered him over with fragrant pine boughs, then carefully filled the hole with earth. As he piled heavy stones on top to protect Endri’s resting place he could hear other soldiers camped just a short way from him, their quiet conversations beyond his hearing but their voices murmurous as a river, and he wondered in a strange, empty way how many of them would also lie cold beneath these skies before all was done. At last, as night settled onto the north, he kneeled beside the mound and recited the few prayers he could remember.
“So began the Siege of Nakkiga.
“The mortals in their thousands swarmed across the plain at the mountain’s foot, making their camp in the fallen houses of our ancestors like snakes in an ancient wall, bringing their great ram and other engines to attack our city’s gates. At first the queen’s Sacrifices and other orders were in disarray, but Marshal Muyare of the Iyora clan and his descendant-cousin General Suno’ku took the remnants of the Sacrifice army and began to train all Hikeda’ya, male and female, old and young, for a desperate defense of Nakkiga.
“Nor were the other orders idle, and many deeds of unsung heroism were done by the Builders of Lord Yaarike to shore up the city’s defenses, and by the Harvesters of Lady Luk’kaya, who labored long and hard in the mountain’s deep gardens to feed the people after a long era of war and its hardships.
“The Celebrants and the Echoes bound the other orders together in a web of shared thought. In the midst of all these measures, Akhenabi, the Lord of Song, prepared his order for a great strike against the mortal enemy, to weaken their hearts and turn the taste of their presumed triumph to ashes in their mouths.
“At first all that our people could do to fight the invaders was to attack them from above the gate, tunnels, and emplacements dug in centuries past by the Builders of old. Hikeda’ya struck from secret places along the mountainside, which had long fallen out of use and had to be cleared anew. From these hidden places the finest archers of the Order of Sacrifice rained death on the Northmen, killing many more than they lost.
“Yaarike’s Builders, working with the masters of both the Singers and the Caster engineers, created machines which could throw fire and flaming bolts down on the attackers from these high places, and at first these new engines found great success. Three times did the Northmen try to bring their great ram to the mountain’s gates, and three times were they driven back, their hoardings in flame, and many of the ram’s wielders dead or terribly burned.
“But the Northmen were determined not to lose their chance to destroy the Hikeda’ya, and so they chose the best climbers from their ranks and set them to scale our great mountain and silence its defenders. Terrible battles took place along the steep mountain tracks, in its darker places, even before the steaming vents that gave forth from Nakkiga’s flaming heart. And though our Sacrifices fought bravely, they were greatly outnumbered by the mortals, who could spend men like cheap coins, and at last the Northmen were able to bring their great war engine to the gates. Soon the Northmen had found nearly all of our tunnels along the mountainside, and many pitched battles were fought where the mountain’s precious interior touched the outer air. Those passages that had been secret but now were found out were quickly sealed by the queen’s Order of Builders, sometimes even as those defending it still remained on the far side, so that the mortals could not come at Nakkiga from those ways. Then the Northerners in turn buried the outside of those passages beneath stone so that we could not use them again even if we chose, and began to find and destroy the few hidden passages still left to us from which our Sacrifices could harry the mortals. The ways into and out of the mountain now nearly all made useless, the battle narrowed to the ground around the great gates themselves.
“The mortals’ rebuilt ram was covered with plates of hammered black iron to repel arrows and spears, and its body was the trunk of a great birch tree, the oldest that had stood in the old city’s Sacred Grove, which had once been our Garden on this faulty earth, the hallowed spot where traitors and unruly slaves had been sacrificed at the turning of every Great Year, until the Well of Eternity was discovered in the depths of the mountain.
“The gates of Nakkiga themselves had been set up before the days of the Parting, even before the queen first came into possession of the city, and they were strongly built and full of old songs. Even the mortals’ mighty ram with its iron head in the shape of a savage bear could not cast it down, but the Northmen had the scent of blood in their nostrils and would not turn away from their purpose.
“Hour after hour, day after day, the ram crashed against the gate’s witchwood timbers, and each blow echoed through Nakkiga’s squares and across the houses of the city like the tread of some fearsome creature. It seemed that even the gate must fall at last if the Northmen could not be driven back.
“In that terrible hour, one of our nobles took it upon himself to save the city. General Nekhaneyo of Clan Shudra, the greatest warrior of his illustrious family, gathered three score of brave Sacrifices, each one a hero many times over in the Wars of Return, and after consulting with the Celebrants and other loremasters, led his troop into perhaps the last passage still hidden from the mortals, a secret track through the roots of the mountain, untraveled since the days of Ur-Nakkiga’s first conquest by our people.
“We will never know what horrors they found there, or what terrors they faced, but when the brave ones emerged once more into the light of day from a forgotten cavern at the mountain’s base near the shores of Lake Rumiya, their numbers had been almost halved, and many of those who remained bore dreadful wounds and burns.
“But with the hourly battering of the mighty gates bringing disaster ever nearer, their leader would not give them rest. Nekhaneyo told his warriors, “We are already dead and our ends sung! Let what we have already lost bring freedom to those we loved! For the Queen and the Garden!”
“Their heroic charge will be talked of as long as the Hikeda’ya live and as long as our Garden is remembered. Nekhaneyo led his survivors by cover of darkness around the mountain’s foot, riding so fast that it is said their horses’ hooves struck sparks from the stones in their path. They came upon the Northmen at the gate just before dawn. With
surprise on their side, they slaughtered the sleeping mortals by the hundreds, and would have laid fire to the ram itself had not the mortals’ leader, Duke Isgrimnur of Elvritshalla, rallied his startled troops and led them in counterattack.
“The mortals swarmed like rats, and though Nekhaneyo fought his way through their unending numbers until he had almost reached the Northmen’s leader, he fell at last, hacked and almost bloodless, a few scant steps from the mortal duke. The rest of his brave Sacrifices were soon surrounded and pulled down. So ended Nekhaneyo’s Ride, and it seemed at that moment that Nakkiga’s doom was sealed.
“When they heard of Nekhaneyo’s fall the people surrounded the Council Hall, crying out that all was lost and demanding that the sleeping queen be taken down into the mountain’s depths so that at least the Mother of All would be saved. But Host General Suno’ku, a great favorite of the people, stood on the steps of the hall and called them all cowards, shaming them, and asking how Nakkiga could fail when so many of them yet lived.
“‘Are there no stones to be cast?’” she demanded. “‘Are there no sticks to be sharpened into spears, no ancient witchwood blades of our ancestors hanging on walls to be taken down and given the chance once more to drink mortal blood? Have all the Hikeda’ya been destroyed already, leaving only ghosts who wail and lament?’
“When she had silenced them, Suno’ku gave them heart again, saying that it was better to die standing than to kneel to a conqueror and still receive death, or worse, to be made a slave. She reminded them of great Hamakho himself, who had walked all the way through Tzo with a dozen fatal arrows in him, and she called out the names of her own ancestors, including Ekimeniso himself.
“‘Do you think when we meet someday in the Garden that I could face the shade of my great foreparent, our queen’s consort, if I laid down my arms and let the mortals have their way? Do you think I could bear his gaze if I knew that I had let fear make me a weak thing? Eight hundred seasons gone I killed a mortal slave in combat to win my rank in the Order of Sacrifice. Why should I not rejoice to think that I may yet kill dozens more in defense of my homeland?’
“Their spirit restored by her words, the people dispersed back to their houses and living quarters, determined to fight to their last breath and last drop of blood. And some said that in that hour Suno’ku became as great a hero as her legendary foreparent, Ekimeniso of the Brooding Eye.”
—Lady Miga seyt-Jinnata of the Order of Chroniclers
Aerling Surefoot was a wiry, dark-bearded Rimmersman with hands that looked too big for his arms. When Porto offered his services, the frowning man asked only two questions.
“Can you climb?”
“I was raised on housetops. My father was a carpenter.”
“Not quite the same, falling off a house and falling off a mountain. But we’ll see. Can you follow orders?”
“Yes, sir.”
Aerling looked him up and down. “You’re a bit tall for scrambling in some of the small spaces we have to use, but at least you’re thin. ’Twill help.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not scared of these whiteskins, are you?”
“No. I hate them.” Endri’s empty face still came to him every night in his dreams, his friend’s ghost silent and sad. “I want to see them all dead.”
“You’ll get no argument here.” Aerling finished sharpening his knife, wiped the whetstone on his breeks and slid it into his pack. “Just remember, they may look like dead ’uns but they’re as alive as you or me. Full of tricks, yes, but when you cut them, the same red blood comes out. When you kill them, they’re as dead as any ordinary man.”
“Did you fight them at the Hayholt?”
Aerling shook his head. “Not me. I was here in the north, where we had battles of our own. When Skali Sharp-Nose fell in Hernystir we marched on Kaldskryke to take it back for Duke Isgrimnur. The people opened the gates for us—they’d had enough of Sharp-Nose long before—but Skali’s son Geli, that scheming little coward, wouldn’t surrender. He took his remaining men and climbed up to the top of St. Asla’s church tower. Sealed the stairs with rubble, they did, then sat up there shooting arrows at any of the duke’s men who dared to show themselves in the center of town. Thane Unnar sent me and a number of my men up there.”
“I thought you said the stairway was blocked.”
“We didn’t take the stairs, you tall lummox, we climbed it the way we climb the cliffs back home in Ostheim. Ropes, man, ropes. And if you don’t know your knots, you’d better learn quick, because you don’t want to be fumbling with an overhand bend while someone’s trying to put an arrow in your eye.” He stared at Porto for another long moment, then reached into his pack and pulled out a looped coil of strong cord. “Here. See that man with half his beard burned off? No, don’t ask him why or he’ll tell you the whole bloody, boring story. That’s Old Dragi. Tell him I said he should show you how to tie an overhand bend and a few other useful things—and how to untie them, too, for that’s sometimes just as important. Come back to me tomorrow evening and show me what you’ve learned.”
“What happened in the tower?”
“What’s that?”
“The tower of St. Asla’s. You said you climbed it.”
“Of course we bloody well climbed it.”
“Well . . . what happened?”
Aerling snorted. “Put it this way. Being Skali’s son, young Geli may have had a beak on him like a bird, but he couldn’t fly like one.”
It was becoming very clear to Viyeki that the informality he had enjoyed with Lord Yaarike during their flight from the southern lands was now truly gone. He had to wait in the antechamber for his master’s time just like any other high official of the Builders’ order.
Viyeki noticed other high officials looking at him more than they generally did, some curiously, some with scarcely hidden resentment. He wondered whether Yaarike had already told some of them about his plan to make Viyeki his successor. Whatever the case, the magister seemed in no hurry to see him; Viyeki spent a long time waiting in the antechamber.
At last the door to the inner sanctum swung open and several figures emerged. General Suno’ku was in the lead, her pale hair bound in tight military braids, her owl helmet under her arm. As she and the other Sacrifices walked past, faces resolutely empty, she saw Viyeki and slowed long enough to nod formally to him.
“Try and talk sense into your high magister,” she said quietly as she passed, and in that instant he suddenly perceived the force of her contained anger and had to resist the urge to step back, as if from an open flame.
Yaarike sat behind the wide table in the middle of his sanctum, almost hidden behind mounds of maps and building plans. Viyeki’s first thought was that his master had aged tremendously in the last months. Yaarike’s back was as straight as ever, and the hands holding the documents were steady, but there was something in his eyes and face that Viyeki had not seen before, a suggestion of weakness that he could not quite identify but could not ignore. Was it despair, or something more complicated? The continual pounding of the Northmen at the gates had become a drumbeat of approaching doom, and the entire city seemed to shuffle to its rhythm. Only the rigorous training of their orders—or the active threat of overseers with whips—kept both the high and low castes at their work.
“Come in, Viyeki-tza,” Yaarike said when he saw him. “Close the door. Have you been to the Singers’ order-house?”
“I have been there, yes, but that is all. I told my name and my commission to the speakstone in the courtyard but they did not open the doors or even answer.” Scorned and ignored, Viyeki had felt like a mere messenger instead of a magister’s heir.
Yaarike slowly shook his head. “Lord Akhenabi is determined to win the war by himself.”
“But why, Master? Why will he not work with you?”
“Oh, he sends his minions when it is necessary. And it is not me he resi
sts, but cooperation with the Order of Sacrifice.”
Yaarike seemed to be doing Viyeki the honor of speaking to him as an equal again, or nearly, and that eased the host-foreman’s mind. “It is a bad time for rivalry,” was all he said. “The mortals are at our door.”
“The queen is asleep,” said the high magister, shaking his head. He lifted an ornament from the table, the skull of a witiko’ya, one of the long-toothed, wolflike creatures who had made the lands around Ur-Nakkiga their home before the Hikeda’ya came. Carvings all over the city portrayed the great hunts of yore, of Ekimeniso and even Queen Utuk’ku herself riding in pursuit of the deadly beasts, carrying no weapon but hunting spears. “The queen is asleep and the mortals, as you correctly observe, are at the door. Now is precisely the time for rivalry. When our revered Utuk’ku is awake, all of the ambitious lords and ladies are bottled in a jar like flies and can only buzz in circles, gaining small advantages here or there. No, now is the time for those who want it to grab for power.” Yaarike laughed sourly. “In fact, there may never be another chance like this, Host Foreman. They are playing for high stakes in the very shadow of destruction.”
“I saw General Suno’ku in the antechamber,” Viyeki said. “She told me, ‘Try and talk sense into your master.’ If I may be so bold, Magister, what did she mean?”
Yaarike set down the long-toothed skull and flicked a bit of dust from its low crown. “She wants my help to force Lord Akhenabi into line, because I am one of the eldest of the order-magisters—almost as august as Akhenabi himself.” He showed a wry smile that had little warmth. “She thinks the Lord of Song unwilling to bend himself to the greater good.”
“And is she right?”
“Of course she is, as she defines it. But Akhenabi has always considered the greater good to mean what is best for the Order of Song. And for himself.”