“Lord Gaunt!” Steelfox said. “Joy!”
“Lord Gaunt?” Joy sputtered.
“Both of you!” said the Karvak princess. “Cease! Other balloons come!”
“I think,” Snow Pine said, having crossed the span on the rope, “that’s a very good reason to take you hostage, Steelfox.”
As Snow Pine entered the ger, the black sword in Steelfox’s hand changed. Its blade shifted from onyx to a surface perfectly reflective, except for its violet tint. Steelfox raised it, but it seemed to resist her grip.
On instinct, Joy kicked at Steelfox’s hand.
The blade fell, and Snow Pine snatched it up.
White-robed, cowled figures in the ger lashed out, but Snow Pine swung once, twice, thrice, and as the warriors fell, their faces appeared, purple and ghostly, as additional images within the reflective blade.
“Stop!” said the surviving white-clad figure. “I have lost too many friends already.”
By now Flint had followed Snow Pine into the crowded ger, and he aimed a sword at Nine Smilodons. “Wise advice,” he said. “That is Schismglass, now fully awakened in the hand of its chosen wielder, she who claimed it from the depths.”
Inga arrived and raised her fist.
“Very well,” Steelfox said with a sad smile. “I am your hostage. It will do you little good.”
“We’ll see,” Joy said.
“You don’t understand,” Haytham said, “and maybe you will believe it from me. Those balloons are under Jewelwolf’s command, and the soldiers aboard will kill us all. She and Steelfox have had a falling out.”
Joy stared at Innocence, at Steelfox, then turned to her mother. “What do you think?”
“I think we cut our losses and get the hell out of here.”
Joy guarded their retreat and was about to leap across when Haytham said, “Take me with you.”
“What?” Joy said.
“What?” Steelfox said.
“You need me to handle Haboob. And there’s a price. We’re going to try to find Corinna. She’s a survivor. If anyone lived through that, it’s her.”
Steelfox said, “You are as changeable as the wind, my inventor.”
“I have always loved the wind. You did make me into a slave, Steelfox. Take care of Northwing. Tell her I’m leaving the journal with her. She’ll know what I mean.”
When they were across, Snow Pine slashed the rope with Schismglass.
Arrows from the approaching balloons began streaking the air. One hit Snow Pine’s hand. Crying out, she kept hold of the rope but lost the blade.
Schismglass fell to the battlefield below.
“Are you all right, Snow Pine?” Innocence called across the widening gap.
“None of your business!” Joy called back, as she helped haul her mother to safety.
“I don’t want to be enemies!”
“I don’t care about want or fault!” she shouted back. “Haytham, Haboob, give us altitude!”
“Yes. For now,” Haytham said.
The doom of Svanstad fell below them.
CHAPTER 33
FATES
Nan walked a slanted route through the streets of Svanstad, scraping the snow, and sometimes the stone beneath, with troll-shards. She meant by this to begin a vast odal rune that stood for “family land” or “inheritance,” so as to lend strength to the city’s defenders.
As she walked it seemed strange she saw so few people. It was as though it was a plague year and everyone was shut up in their houses. Or as if it were her former house, not so far from Svanstad, the year the last of her and Freidar’s sons died. In those days even a cairn would have seemed more companionable, for at least a cairn does not pretend to be a place of joy. She’d borne only a few months of it before asking Freidar if they might move somewhere far from Soderland.
When she was one-quarter done with the rune, she was near the north gate. And so she knew when the gate groaned open and riders began rushing through.
She knew there was no escape, not for most of the citizens, and not for her. There was no way she could complete this rune.
However, she was not wholly committed to a particular shape. A change of plan, and she could be halfway to completing the kaun rune, which could mean “torch.” She would have to be careful, but it could be done.
Her path led away from the gate district, into a poorer region. The Karvaks would not come here first. The military targets, and the best looting, lay elsewhere. The royal family had demanded a certain amount of stonework in every structure, but here the regulation was often ignored, and so wooden and thatch buildings sprouted everywhere, or else stone buildings of haphazard and sometimes stolen materials. Whenever she glimpsed a rider, she did not stop to verify its identity but hid behind walls or dug into the snow. Whenever she saw someone on foot, Nan warned them to run.
Once an old man said, “I told the man in black, and I’ll tell you, I’m not going anywhere!”
“Man in black?” she asked, pausing. “Dark hair? Yellow skin?” But the fellow was already ambling away. She heard screams in the richer districts. There were fewer cries than she might have expected. Perhaps the Karvaks were being more merciful than advertised. But her feet led her on. She had chosen a task, and she would complete it.
It seemed odd to her that in the end Freidar, on his foamreaving trip, had been in less danger than she. Or perhaps that was false, and his doom, too, had come. Then at least she might see him soon.
She saw a boy, with the look of an orphan or a runaway, spot her from a hovel window. “Flee!” she said. “Flee to the harbor and swim! This city is doomed!”
“I’m hiding from the man in black!” he said, apparently trusting her. “He touches people and they disappear! He’s gotten everyone!”
She stared at him. Then she could only laugh like a madwoman. Of course. Had she returned to the Fortress, perhaps she too would have been made to vanish by the man in black.
Such was luck, or fate.
“Run!” she said, and she put all her experience of disciplining boys into her voice. “Doom has come to Svanstad! Run, boy! Run!”
He ran.
She could go to her grave in good conscience.
Boys, I will see you soon.
A dozen yards to go.
Jewelwolf rode Aughatai into the city behind the first wave of troops. She had no intention of disciplining them; her instructions were to kill everyone. Even her father had always spared people with useful skills, but Svanstad, and Kantenjord had already claimed too much from her.
Most of all, it had poisoned her sister against her.
She spotted an old man the riders had missed and fired an arrow through his head. A stray cat met the same fate, and a dog, and a bewildered toddler clutching a sword, separated in the chaos from his family. The exercise helped calm her. She reached the Fortress and joined the slaughter of the servants, but by then something was greatly nagging at her.
“There are not enough people, General Ironhorn,” she said.
He frowned, as much at the killing, she realized, as at her observation. She resolved to watch him more carefully. But Ironhorn said, “I agree, khatun. We haven’t found the princess, the Mad King, or the Retired King. But that aside, the Fortress and city seem nearly deserted. Most of the people must be hidden somewhere.”
“Could they have escaped?”
“Our spies reported no escape tunnels. Our allies beyond the fjord have reported no fleeing ships.”
Jewelwolf gazed toward the fjord, thinking of the galleon of Kpalamaa. But even it wasn’t large enough to house a whole city. “Bring me the traitor,” she said.
The Oxilander Huginn Sharpspear was brought before her, the spy Grundi in his wake.
“You have saved me a great deal of trouble,” Jewelwolf said, “and you will be rewarded.”
“Thank you, Great Khatun,” said the stout Kantening chieftain. “We wished only to end the conflict.”
“That is my wish as
well,” Jewelwolf said. “One thing I do not understand. This is a great city. My troops have put scores to death. There should have been thousands.”
Grundi said, “I do not understand it, Great Khatun. There must be a hiding place.”
Sharpspear seemed genuinely troubled. “Perhaps under the Fortress? That they did not share it with me saddens me greatly—”
A burst of red light blazed forth from the poorest part of the city, and a wall of fire a hundred feet tall began slicing its way through the town. Much of Svanstad was stone, but the flame was so overpowering that fire spread through all parts of the city.
“Up!” Sharpspear said. “To the rooftops! This place is all of stone, but we will need air!”
It seemed good advice. With three arbans beside them, Jewelwolf’s company led the horses to the battlements. There they saw a fiery rune inscribed across the city, wreathed in smoke, like the burning shape of a bird. The screams of Karvaks and horses came to Jewelwolf’s ears.
“A trap,” Jewelwolf said. “Somehow they evacuated the city and set a trap. I have lost many men.”
“They didn’t tell me?” Sharpspear said. He seemed more troubled by this than by the death and destruction. “Why did they not trust me?”
“Khatun!” Ironhorn approached, ignoring Sharpspear. He offered Jewelwolf a black sword she’d feared she’d never see again. “This weapon was found outside the city gates. It fell from your treacherous sister’s balloon.”
“Earth and Sky smile upon me,” Jewelwolf said. She claimed Schismglass and drew Crypttongue. “This is a sign that my plans are correct. Grundi, attend.”
The spy came closer. “Yes, great one. I have wielded Crypttongue before, and if you wish I can do so again—”
His voice broke off in a scream, as she plunged both swords into his chest.
“Why?” he whimpered.
“You have been in the city for days, and somehow the whole population escapes without you knowing? You are either a fool or a traitor. If you are the first, I am rid of you. If you are the second, why, soon I will know all you know.”
As Grundi died, Jewelwolf conducted the experiment she’d failed to complete with Steelfox’s shaman. With great care she was able to precisely shred Grundi’s essence between the weapons. She pored over the contents of his calculating mind and was surprised to see that he’d neither been lax nor treacherous. The Karvaks had simply been outmaneuvered.
She released the remnants of Grundi to the great beyond. The body slumped to the stones.
“I do not know where to search for the missing people,” she announced to the grave gaze of Ironhorn and the bulging eyes of Huginn. “But when the flame dies, we will loot this city and raze it. It will be as though it had never been.”
Walking Stick leapt through the snow amid the cliffs of the fjord’s western side, carrying in his pack the scroll-painting A Tumult of Trees on Peculiar Peaks. With his command of chi, no man could follow him, even if they had seen him. With a great effort he jumped fifty feet from a narrow, crumbling ledge to the top of the cliff and looked out upon the ruin of Svanstad. He bowed to whatever departed Runewalker had laid a trap for the nomads.
There was no time to mourn the city. He had to reach the redoubt.
Walking Stick raced through forested country, bursting onto a road. A gaggle of armed peasants was headed north to the defense of Svanstad. “Flee!” he commanded them. “Tell others! Svanstad has fallen! If you wish to fight, take to the mountains and the Skyggeskag, and dig in for a long war. If you cannot do so, return to your homes and surrender as soon as the Karvaks come! There is no dishonor in this! Either way, turn back!”
He ran on into higher country, wreathed in woodlands. Here was a place empty of people, though soon there might be many here, taking up the life of bandits. He climbed a tree and paused for breath before withdrawing the scroll. It seemed no heavier than ever. Peculiar indeed.
The great snowy mountains swirled in his vision, and he looked down upon the tiny figure of the self-portrait of the sage painter. It seemed to Walking Stick there were throngs of other such tiny figures nearby.
“How do they fare?” Walking Stick asked, knowing his words would be conveyed to the guardian of the magic painting.
The self-portrait was stroking a pet rat he’d picked up somewhere. He said, “They are frightened, but they are well. For now. We have never had so many people here before. Thousands! Hunger is the great worry. Remember that time flows swiftly here.” He cooed to the rat. “Do not worry, friend Xiaohuang, no one will eat you.”
“Tell Princess Corinna they must keep hope. I have not rested since she agreed to have her people shelter in the scroll. I will still not rest until we reach the high pasture, the seter, she called it.”
“You can find it?”
“I have a mind for detail, friend.”
The self-portrait had to laugh. “That you do, Walking Stick.”
“I will yet win this war, portrait.”
“I admire your resilience, but how? All you have now is yourself, formidable as you are.”
“I have the scroll.”
“What you have is a handful of fighting monks and a mob of frightened refugees.”
“What I have,” Walking Stick said, and the barest hint of a smile crossed his face, “is thousands of trainable people inside a realm of accelerated time flow. Thousands of people who know at last exactly what is at stake. And that means, I have an army.”
CHAPTER 34
REUNION
Torches blazed around the perimeter of the great tree stump in the harbor of Larderland. A handful of figures stood upon the meandering pier leading to it, and a crowd upon the shore, including the pensive Bone, Gaunt beside him. Mad Katta stood upon the timbers, and Erik Glint and Freidar the Runewalker beside him. There too was Yngvarr Thrall-Taker with Brambletop and Taper Tom and a few men Bone didn’t know, presumably from Yngvarr’s crew. A few steps back stood Tlepolemus of the Likedealers, and beside him Ruvsa the Rose.
Yngvarr called out, “To whom shall I pay the one-half man-price when Katta falls?”
“You may discuss rivers flowing upward and pigs flying when they occur,” Katta said with a grin. “Now stop avoiding combat!”
“Nithing!” Yngvarr shouted. “Sorcerer! You die now!”
The two stepped onto the great trunk.
Gaunt pushed her way up to Ruvsa. Bone stayed close to Gaunt; he reflected it had been a good policy thus far.
“Must they fight to the death?” Gaunt demanded.
“It is not necessary,” Ruvsa said, her face impassive, “but they have agreed to a combat with no surrender. The loser must be unable to respond.”
“Let none enter or leave the circle of the tree trunk,” called out Tlepolemus, “until the holmgang is done.”
Yngvarr fought with an axe, Katta with a staff. Yngvarr, who had mocked Katta’s claim to blindness, nevertheless took care to circle quietly behind the monk. Katta for his part took up a defensive posture and waved his staff as though tracing out seagulls’ wings in the air.
Bone was about to shout, “Katta, behind you!” but Gaunt seized his arm. “No,” she said. “Trust him.”
Yngvarr advanced and swung, but Katta dropped low and savagely struck the foamreaver’s arm. In what seemed a simultaneous motion, Katta slipped away from Yngvarr’s second blow and backed up to the edge of the tree trunk.
Katta was smiling.
“I will end that grin!” Yngvarr said. He lunged.
Katta stepped sideways and again struck for the weapon arm. The foamreaver winced and nearly dropped his axe.
It astounded Bone that Katta could fight so well. Unless . . . yes, if the Nine Wolves (now Eight!) were agents of evil, perhaps Katta could see one, however dimly. But it must not be a sure thing, or Katta would be throwing one of his cakes.
Yngvarr rushed in and scored a blow to Katta’s left arm.
The monk must have been in terrible pain; yet he took adva
ntage of the connection to strike Yngvarr’s face with the staff. As the foamreaver reeled, Katta brought the staff down upon Yngvarr’s weapon hand, and this time Yngvarr dropped the axe.
Yet blood spattered across the great trunk, and it was all Katta’s. The monk was moving slower now, and Yngvarr caught him barehanded, tried to choke the life out of him. Katta brought the staff against Yngvarr’s neck and pushed back.
Now both men struggled to find their own breath and end the other’s.
Katta’s blood loss was deciding matters. The monk fell to his knees, still struggling. Now he pitched back. . . .
And out of the night rushed an amorphous shape, a nightmare beast with tassels.
“I respect no man’s laws,” said Deadfall.
The carpet engulfed Yngvarr, and the foamreaver kicked and struggled, but the life in him ebbed.
“Stop . . .” Katta said, rising to his knees, dropping his staff, and clutching his wound with his left hand. “Deadfall, do not take his life! That was never the goal!”
“As you wish.” The carpet unfolded, and a gasping, retching foamreaver crawled to the trunk’s edge. Now Deadfall wrapped itself around Katta like a cloak and, Bone suspected, stanched the flow of blood. “I will save yours instead.”
“I thought you had not ceased being my friend,” Katta said, crawling to Yngvarr’s side.
“Was that the purpose of this?” said the carpet. “To draw me out?”
“Among other things.” Katta put his hand on Yngvarr’s forehead. “Charstalker! You will afflict this man no more! Faced with demons I will never waver; your illusions hold no fear for me! For Being is as one with Nothing, Nothing is as one with Being, Being is Nothing, and Nothing is Being.”
Out of Yngvarr’s mouth and ears flowed a strange smoke, and within it coiled a fire that needed no fuel to burn.
“We’ve seen this before,” Gaunt said to Bone, “far to the East.”
The demonic Charstalker billowed over the dueling trunk, forming three blazing eyes. The Larderlanders gasped.
“Begone!” shouted Katta, and now he was throwing his enchanted cakes into the smoky mass. “You are less than an illusion! You are but the memory of a nightmare! You chased Wondrous Lady Monkey to this land in dreams, and once here you afflicted the Nine Wolves. But your time here is done!”
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