Not while Jack could still draw breath, not while Jack could still fight. He did not have the Sun Banner in his hand, but he held the sun in heart, the Sun-on-Earth had given him the Heart of Glory, and he would not fail.
Ngolo nodded sharply. Vozi squatted, grunted softly as she shouldered the General. Ngolo ducked under Jack’s right arm, then started to move, at a pace that was more than walk but less than run. Jack stumbled, strained to see through the shadows, strained to listen, strained to think, to think, to think.
Sunset ...
No. No. It’s sunrise, sunrise. We hold the Sun. We hold the Sun. The Sun.
He gave himself over to Ngolo’s guidance, concentrated simply on moving forward, always moving forward, always forward. They were going mostly downhill, each small rise agony as his muscles had to change direction. His hands were throbbing. His right hand was aching, curled into a claw. His fingernails were throbbing. His boots were the wrong size. How could a blister hurt more than anything?
They broke my hands ...
The thoughts chased themselves around his mind. Foot over foot. His eyes were chasing shadows, his head whirling with dizziness, exhaustion, hunger, thirst, cold. Foot over foot. Ngolo guiding him according to some plan Jack could not know.
His mind wandered. Foot over foot.
O let us sing
O let us sing
Foot over foot.
Above the mountains
Infinite the lake of stars
A fire burns brightly
Foot over foot.
A fire burns brightly
Burns brightly
brightly
“Here,” said Ngolo, stopping. “We can rest here.”
Jack sank to his knees, tilted over sideways, and was asleep before he touched the ground.
Five
HE WAS SHAKEN AWAKE far too soon. They were still in shadow, but the sun was shining on the upper peaks. Directly in front he could see a slope washed in perfect gold, all green grass until it rose up into gilt rock. He stared at it, tears pricking at its beauty.
“Sorry, sir,” Ngolo said, handing him the water can, a piece of goat meat. “There are soldiers behind us.”
Jack drank first, then chewed on the goat meat, tried to make his mouth work. Swallowed. Water. Swallowed. “Did you hear what they said, there at the end?”
“We were so worried they would see you—no.”
“They’re heading to the front. They said something big is coming.” Jack took a breath. “The General?”
“In the circumstances, call me Ben,” came a thin voice. “What’s the plan, major?”
Jack felt the tears welling at the sight of the General—Ben—sitting upright, being assisted by Vozi to drink. His hands—well, he was alive. He swallowed down his impulse to weep. It was exhaustion, and he could not afford to let it take him yet. “Sir—Ben—I—Vozi, where are we?”
“Ngolo?”
Ngolo took a deep breath. “I think—I think—that we’re at—last night we were reckoning our location—I think that slope over there is the Gate of Morning.”
Jack and the General—Ben—stared at the glowing green grass across the valley from them.
“It’s so beautiful,” Ben said.
“Everything up here is beautiful,” Jack said. His mind started to focus, moving past his exhaustion, his pain, his aching body, throttling down his fear. The Gate of Morning—so called from the first time the Empire had tried to conquer these mountains, when the sun kept rising on the death, and the dead, and the dying.
No Astandalan had seen the back side of the Gate. They had seen the front, the cliff face with the narrow dogleg stairs running down half a mile. The cliff was the watershed of a tarn; the tarn fed a stream, and the stream led down the valley to the Empire. Imperial forces had driven the Valleyites up the lower valleys, up the hills, up the mountains, and at the Gate of the Morning they had made their last stand.
A hundred Valleyites had held the Gate. When their arrows ran out they had used stones, cannonballs of ice, anything and everything. So many people had died the river had run red for days.
They had held the Gate until their reinforcements came from the back side of the mountains, until their shamans had done a work of joint magic such as had never otherwise been done by them, had closed the lower valley by breaking down the cliffs. The Empire had stopped at Bloodwater for a hundred and fifty years.
While Jack’s division had been sent up the Seven Valleys, the Eighth Division had focused on reopening the pass.
He looked at the General. “Have they opened the pass into Bloodwater, sir?”
“Ben. They were very close—I’m not sure that’s it wide enough for more than one man—”
“One would be enough.”
He squinted at the green slope of the Gate of the Morning, trying to make out details. The Gate was almost as defensible this side as it was on the other side, as if the makers had been as worried about enemies coming from the east as from the lowlands to the west. Well, perhaps there was a pass through to the rich plains on the other side of the mountains, or to Faërie, or to—
It didn’t matter. What mattered was that on this side he could see how the trail went up a precipitously steep slope in exposed doglegs, angling to where the crags of the mountain peak met the crags of a subsidiary summit. The gate was there. The crack was currently illuminated by the rising sun, the sun-in-glory. If only they could get up there before the Valleyites, they might be able to hold the pass. Most of them would be going the other way, down the Seven Valleys past Loe, but some of them would remember about the Gate of the Morning.
“We have to get there before they do,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Vozi put her arm over the General’s shoulder, and Jack, feeling refreshed from a few mouthfuls of goat meat and an hour of sleep, knowing his energy was deceptive, took the rear.
They kept to cover as long as they could, down their slope, until they reached the bottom of the trail up the slope. They paused to reconnoitre at the last thicket of wind-twisted spruce.
“Well?” said Ben, looking to Jack. “This is your patrol, major.”
Jack craned his neck back so he could see the whole length of the trail, the zig-zags of the narrow path up the grass. The sun was still shining, still illuminating every blade of grass, filling the high mountain air.
He looked back. There were glints in the thin forest behind them. They were still quite far—far enough?
“We’ll just have to go for it,” he said. “We have no other choice. The Valleyites are moving to the front; some of them will be coming this way. But we are soldiers of Astandalas, and we will hold the Sun.”
“As we have done before,” said the General. “Give the order, major.”
“Ngolo first. Ben. Vozi. Myself. Now—go.”
And up they went. Horribly exposed the whole way, waiting any moment to be struck in the back by an arrow, a falcon’s tearing claws, a javelin. Jack put his hands on his thighs, concentrating on pumping his legs up, down, up, down. Each time they came to a corner he dared not look down, dared not look back.
Up, down, up, down.
Then, thinking it didn’t matter any longer, any more, that if he died with an arrow in his back he would die with the words of home on his lips, he started breathlessly to sing.
“O ... let us ... sing ...”
“O let ... us ... sing ...” The General took up the anthem, his voice breathy and thin, but without the night’s despair.
Vozi was next, her voice a clear soprano: “Of the golden city ...”
And then, in his untaught deep voice, Ngolo: “The city of golden roses.”
And the citizens of the city of roses
Who brought light to the darkness
The General stumbled, fell onto his elbows as he tried to keep his broken hands from hitting the ground. Vozi picked him up, and Jack made the mistake of looking back.
They were three-quarters of the way up the
slope. Two more turns ahead of them until they reached the Gate. Through the thickets of the distant slope he thought he could see a glint of ice, or polished metal.
“Go,” he said urgently. “Go.”
And up they went. This time the General started the verse, defiance in every line of his body, as he marched with parade-ground precision up the slope.
O let us sing of the city of roses
The golden city of roses
And the sun in our darkness
The lord of rising stars
They got to the Gate. They stopped there, looking down into Bloodwater, the infamous valley.
“I can see the bones,” Ngolo said, his voice sharp. “The ghosts—”
“Astandalas is on the other side of that rockfall,” the General said, pointing with his swollen hand at the far side of the valley. “Look, there is a gap—you can see the dust where they have been clearing it.”
Jack looked down each side of the crag. It had been superlatively well designed: from either side only one person could make the last approach at a time, up a steep and ungainly set of stairs set just a bit too far apart for easy climbing. The pass itself was smoothly floored with jointed wood, roofed and walled, with a jog in the middle so the two doorways were offset from each other. No clear thoroughfare, no clear shot from one door to the next.
Down the west side was Bloodwater. Down the east side was the beautiful green valley bathed in morning sunlight. Jack looked at the wider landscape. To the east, yes, indeed, there was a pass—a much lower and wider pass than any the Astandalans held—through the rest of the mountains. To the south, the narrow valley they had just traversed fed into what was probably one of the feeder valleys of Loe.
“Well done,” he said to Ngolo, sitting down to rest with them. “For realizing this was here.”
Ngolo passed him more goat meat and the water can. “Had to do something while you were inside the stone.”
Jack shuddered. He looked apologetically at the General. “The others were all dead by the time—except for Lady Norcell, and I—I had to give her the mercy cut.”
They were all silent. Vozi reached into her tunic, pulled out the tightly oilcloth-covered packet of his book of haikus. “Here you are, sir.”
Jack sat down where he could see the eastern approach. He scratched his head, was surprised to find his hand touching cold metal. He drew out the two remaining hairpins, the tiny tight wad of cloth that when he unwrapped it spilled one opalescent icy-blue scale into his hand.
“What’s that?” Vozi asked.
Jack unwrapped the oilcloth, turned the pages with his stiff fingers until he found the shadow-cut illustration of the mountains. “It’s a scale,” he said, tucking the scale into the gutter where it would not slide too much. “There was a giant ice serpent in the fortress.”
“What did you kill it with?” Ben asked after a moment.
Jack smiled thinly, explained as briefly and dispassionately as he could how the rescue mission had gone, what he had learned. The General listened carefully, taking it all in, making connections.
Vozi stood up to take a piss in some privacy, came back hastily. “Major—General, sir—they’re coming.”
It was too much to hope for that they would all go the other way. Jack didn’t bother to get up. He was considering. He met the General’s solemn eyes.
He looked down at his book, at the haikus, running his fingers over the engraved cover. Looked briefly at what was written on the inner flyleaf, his wife’s dedication, his Olive’s promise that no matter where he went in service to the Emperor, no matter how long he was gone, she would wait for him.
He said, “Vozi, give me your sword. Then you had better start down.”
“What—major, no! No—you can’t—”
“Vozi,” he said intently, “don’t be a fool. The General is what’s left of command staff: he needs to get to headquarters and report. Ngolo is a wizard; you’ll need him to guard you magically, open the Border, and let the Eighth Division wizards know you’re Astandalans, not Valleyites. That leaves you and me—”
“I’ll stay—”
“I’m better at hand-to-hand fighting,” Jack said sharply. The General nodded, face grave. “You need to guard the others.”
“But sir ...”
“That is an order, Vozi.” Vozi still looked mutinous. Jack swallowed. “It is—Vozi, it’s my duty as your officer to be first into battle, last out of it. Now: give me your sword. Go.”
The General said, “Would you like me to take your book to your family?”
Jack was flexing his hand on the wire-bound hilt of Vozi’s short-sword. He swung his arm, opening his shoulders, feeling some foolish ghost of strength come back to his hand.
He took a deep breath. He turned to the General. “No thank you, sir.”
“I will write to them—”
“Thank you,” he said, and then he said, “Sir, it’s time for you to go.”
Vozi and Ngolo both said farewell in the Zuni style, gripping his upper arms in their hands, trying to blink away their tears. Jack wanted them to turn, wanted them to go, wanted them to get as far as they could.
“I’ll hold it as long as I can,” he said. The General raised his swollen, broken hand in a salute.
“Heart of Glory. I will see you again, major, this side of the sun or t’other.”
Jack saluted with the sword, and with one more backward look they set off in single file down into Bloodwater. Down on the eastern side the Valleyites were splashing across the stream at the very bottom of the valley, starting up the trail. One after another, in a long silver and brown snake, out of the woods, onto the grass. The first of them had reached the lowermost dogleg on that side. They showed no evidence they knew an enemy was waiting for them.
He had two hairpins and a sword and his book. Some goat meat and a water can that Vozi had left for him.
He set down the sword, knotted two of the larger tatters together to hold the book snug against his heart. Walked back to the western side of the Gate of Morning, saw his soldiers reach the first dogleg, Ngolo first, the General second, Vozi third.
Looking around as he came back, saw suddenly the cache of stones left to the side of the western doorway.
He spent several minutes moving them all to the other door. The silver snake was a third of the way up the slope, still descending out of the woods, over the stream, hundreds of them—thousands of them—were they planning on overwhelming the Bloodwater pass and coming at the Empire that way?
He touched the book, pressed it to his heart. Thought again of his son, asking question after question, learning to read.
Walked back to the western side. They were a third of the way down. He could see the white bones in the tarn at the bottom of the cliff, the stream that had run red for days.
A hundred men had successfully defended this pass against the First Army of Astandalas until reinforcements came.
He had no reinforcements coming. The General would not try; he would order the pass closed behind him.
He had two hairpins, a sword, a pile of stones, his book of haikus, his heart.
He took a deep breath. Set his back against the Empire. Set his face to the sunrise.
Above the mountain
Infinite the lake of stars
A fire burns brightly
Waited.
Author’s Note
Enjoyed the story?
Stone Speaks to Stone is set just before the Fall of the Empire of Astandalas, in the latter days of Artorin Damara’s reign. Jack Greenwing’s fate is rather more complicated than the end of this story indicates, as we see from the beginning of the series about Jack’s son Jemis and his friend Mr. Dart, as they come into adulthood in the years after the Fall. Stargazy Pie is the first book of Greenwing & Dart, followed by Bee Sting Cake (2017) and Whiskeyjack (2018).
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Did you love Stone Speaks to Stone? Then you should read Stargazy Pie by Victoria Goddard!
Magic is out of fashion.
Good manners never are.
Jemis Greenwing returned from university with a broken heart, a bad cold, and no prospects beyond a problematic inheritance and a job at the local bookstore.
Ragnor Bella is a placid little market town on the road to nowhere, where Jemis’ family affairs have always been the main source of gossip. Having missed his stepfather's funeral, he is determined to keep his head down.
Unfortunately for his reputation, though fortunately for several other people, he falls quickly under the temptation of resuming the friendship of Mr. Dart of Dartington, Squire-in-training and beloved local daredevil. Mr. Dart is delighted to have Jemis' company for what will be, he assures him, a very small adventure.
Jemis expected the cut direct. The secret societies, criminal gangs, and illegal cult to the old gods--to say nothing of the mermaid--come as a complete surprise.
Book One of Greenwing & Dart, fantasies of manners—and mischief.
Read more at Victoria Goddard’s site.
Also by Victoria Goddard
Greenwing & Dart
Stargazy Pie
Stone Speaks to Stone
Bee Sting Cake
Whiskeyjack
The Sisters Avramapul
The Bride of the Blue Wind
The Warrior of the Third Veil
Watch for more at Victoria Goddard’s site.
Stone Speaks to Stone: A Tale of the Nine Worlds Page 5
