The Great Rift

by Edward W. Robertson

  A part of Dante knew Stann's plan was the wise course. What more could they do? March on Setteven, and plague the capital with norren dead? Leave the Territories undefended to rush out and terrorize Old Gask? The empire's heartland wasn't like the sparsely-peopled Norren Territories or the yawning woods around Narashtovik. Even with Dollendun and Gallador taken out of the equation, any of the cities of Setteven, Yallen, Voss, or Fonneven could raise five thousand fighting men in an instant if they felt genuinely threatened. So long as the norren stayed put on their side of the river, the king's war effort would be hobbled by the usual politicking, apathy, resentment, and costs. No peasant wanted to die fighting a race of towering giants who just wanted to be left alone. Anyway, if there was to be a clash of armies, let it come here, on their home ground, behind their own defenses.

  Yet another part of him thought it was a mistake. The liberation of the Norren Territories must have been a shock to the king. But no step of their campaign had yet touched human lands. To talk Moddegan into peace, they would first have to cast the shadow of fear on his heart. They should take the western shore. Torch the palace. Carve Moddegan's name in hundred-foot letters on a hill above Setteven, and then carve an equally large dagger above it.

  Instead, they were settling in to be sieged.

  The chieftains found a warrior whose nulla was calligraphy and began drafting their peace proposal. Dante wandered off to a deserted house and pulsed Cally through his loon.

  "We need more sorcerers," he said once the old man answered.

  "Why would you need more of those? They're such trouble. Always turning things into other things. Knocking down walls when walls are sorely needed."

  "Because right now our mighty troop numbers all of me. I've heard of one or two among the norren here, but they sound like minor talents. I don't know where Hart and Somburr got to—either they went off to rally more clans, or they're here and I've lost track of them."

  Cally hmm'd. "Are you admitting you're insufficient?"

  Dante rolled his eyes at the dirty wall of the silent house. "Aren't we supposed to be famed for our priests who can shape the nether like Arawn himself? How will it look when the ethermancers of Setteven smear us across the streets?"

  "Bloody?"

  "Gutty, too."

  "I'll see if any of the Council would like to volunteer," Cally said. "Then I will pull rank on the monks, because that is what rank is for. Do you think you'll be able to survive two more weeks without them?"

  "If I don't, we'll know who to blame," Dante said. "You."

  The chieftains sent their messenger downstream to the king. Dante spent a day walking around the city. If a fight came, he didn't like the look of the north end of town. The south and east were far from impregnable, but there were some hills there to aid the defense, and a tightness to the streets that would squeeze enemy troops into vulnerable narrows. By contrast, the north of Dollendun was set on a flat plain. The houses were scattered and rural, the streets perversely wide. It would be no task for the redshirts to overrun them with sheer numbers, then use the structures for cover as they advanced on the heart of the city.

  So just past the last of the northern houses, he started raising ramparts of dirt. He didn't use a shovel. He used the nether, taking hold of its earth-embedded weave to drag the ground up with it. Slow work. He'd only lifted a mound six feet high and twenty feet long before he had to lie down in the shady grass for a nap. Still, it wasn't his intention to build a wall around the city all by himself. He just wanted to see if such a thing could possibly be done.

  Judging by his first day of work amongst the grass and flowers and beetles and bees, the answer was no. After putting together a stretch of rampart fifty feet long but just waist-high, his touch passed through the nether like water through river-weeds; it stirred, swayed, and stayed put. The following day, three norren emerged from the houses and stared at him for ten minutes. He figured they were just gawkers, killing time watching the man who could move dirt by waving his hands, but an hour later they returned with shovels and picks and ten more men. Wordless, they set in beside him, hollowing broad ditches on the exterior of the fortifications and pitching soil up the growing slopes. Dante squinted at the river and smiled.

  The next morning, the norren at the ditches doubled in number. By the end of a week, hundreds of men and women toiled with shovels throughout every minute of daylight, putting their restless nomad energy to work protecting the city that had become their present home. Citizens trickled in, too. Some dug. Others brought food and water for the workers. A handful sang or danced or told stories while the warriors rested in the shade. Blays showed up of his own accord for a few hours every day before returning to Lira and Corra. Whenever Dante walked back to the house, Corra watched him with those sparkling silver eyes.

  Blays was there in the fields when a hunched young norren approached Dante with his hands tucked into his sleeves. Dante straightened, letting the nether slip away, and wiped his arm across his brow. The days had turned warm.

  "Excuse me," the norren said. His beard was patchy enough he might have been a teenager. Instead of meeting Dante's eyes, the youth gazed past his shoulder.

  "Yes?" Dante said.

  "Is the idea here to keep the enemy out?"

  "That's the general theory of fortification, yeah."

  "And you're doing this with earth?"

  "Sure enough." Dante gestured at the river flowing bluely to his left. "If we can, we might flood the ditches with water, too."

  The young man nodded and frowned at the ground as if asked a particularly fiendish arithmetic problem. "What are your feelings on explosions?"

  "I prefer not to be near them."

  "Oh." The norren turned to walk back to the city.

  Dante jogged after him. "You can't ask a question like that and then just trot off. What brought you out here?"

  "Well." He folded his hands back into his sleeves and furrowed his brow, staring past Dante's shoulder again. "Explosives. I can make them."

  "And you think an incoming army might not appreciate being blown up."

  "Wait, won't they?"

  Dante hid his smile. "What's your name?"

  The boy straightened. Freed from his hunch, he was a good four inches taller than Dante. "Willers."

  "How do you set off your explosives, Willers?"

  "Fire works good. Yeah, you touch the fire to the explosives and then the explosives explode."

  "I'll take all you can give me."

  The kid was so shocked he looked Dante straight in the eye. "Really? It won't be too much. I have to mix a few things and two of the things are hard to find even when you know where to look."

  "Whatever you can get." Dante gestured at the half mile-long line of raised dirt and the scores of norren working to make it even longer. It was a quarter of the way to a small hill. If they could reach it, the north face of the city would be sealed by the rampart. "We've got a lot of ground to cover."

  Willers nodded quickly and scurried back the way he'd come, leaning forward so far into his strides it looked like he'd topple right over.

  "I didn't know we'd get to blow things up," Blays said. "If I had, I would have conquered a city much sooner in life."

  "Well, we all have regrets," Dante said.

  "At least we're here now and have the prospect of blowing things up in the future. I feel like that's what's truly important."

  Around them, warriors dug on. Messages came and went from Cally and the scouts, but from the only one that mattered—the message to the king—there was no word. Day to day, Dante's movement of the earth felt no different from the one before, but after a week, he could pile up dirt or sweep it down without conscious thought. He was stronger, too, able to add a hundred yards to the ditches and ramparts each day before the nether grew fluttery and weak.

  Two weeks to the day, the messenger returned. Most of him, anyway. All his possessions had been confiscated; he'd been forced to walk naked for miles from
Setteven before a farmer, finding he had no clothes that would come close to fitting, offered the norren a long cloak. His right hand had been confiscated, too—the hand that had delivered the treaty.

  He had another message, too. The armies of Gask had finally mustered. They would begin their march to Dollendun in days.

  23

  "Well, that's a relief," Blays said, wandering away from the plaza where the announcement had been made.

  Dante goggled. "It's a relief that we're days from being attacked by thousands of people with bows and swords and devices that can crush us with rocks?"

  "It beats digging ditches all day."

  "Yes, and now we can use those ditches for our own graves."

  Blays gave him a skeptical look. "It's a relief to know that whatever's happening, it's probably not going to continue happening for much longer. Either we'll use the streets to bleed to death in or to dance down with funny little hats on our heads. I'm tired of waiting to see what they'll do next. Well, pretty quick I won't have to."

  "That is sort of comforting," Dante said. "In a very horrifying way."

  "See, it's all about perspective. You'd be lost without me."

  Within hours, norren citizens began filing into the camps to enlist in the makeshift army. It became quickly apparent there wouldn't be enough proper weapons to go around. Smiths took to forges and banged on metal. Fletchers sent their clansmen out to gather wood and feathers while they carved fresh shafts. Others found flaky stones and sat in circles, swapping stories while they chipped the rocks into points for arrows and spears. The Clan of Dreaming Bears proposed a raid on one of the barracks across the river. They planned to send scouts that night to find where the redshirts' arms might be cached.

  Dante returned to the rampart on the north end of town. It was nearly complete, its line extending from the river to within a bowshot of the small hill that would help command their flank. He'd been hoping to curve the line of dirt south around the hinge of the hill and cut off the eastern approach to the city as well. He doubted he'd have time. He'd have to string up whatever ramparts he could between other hills and buildings, doing his best to funnel the invaders down a couple of streets where the bulk of the norren could stand firm.

  Willers came to him that afternoon with a cotton bag the size of Dante's fist. It was unnaturally heavy and shifted like sand. It smelled sulfurous, hellish, like something dredged up from a lake inside a steaming cave.

  "What's it made of?" Dante said.

  Willers blinked past his shoulder. "Materials."

  "That only you know about?"

  "No, lots of people know about them. It's how they're put together they don't know."

  Dante hefted the lumpy bag. "How big a burst will this produce?"

  "If you are within five feet of it, it will quickly spread you across many more feet. If you are within twenty, you might fall down, or be upset with your ears for refusing to stop ringing."

  Dante walked across the grass to a stop some forty feet away, set down the bag on top of a small mound of dirt, and walked back to Willers, who was staring at the bag with horrified anticipation, as if it were a puppy about to piddle on his neighbor's rug. Dante sent the nether to it in a flash of heat. A white flash seared his eyes; as the heat touched his skin, thunder rolled across the plain and smacked him deep in his chest. He blinked away the stars. A claw of black smoke rose from the scorched dirt.

  "How did you make it burst without touching it with fire?" Willers said.

  "I've got tricks, too." Dante rubbed his ear. He could smell the smoke now, ashy and acrid. "It won't stop them altogether. But it may give them something to cry about."

  "If they're sad, will they go home?"

  "Who knows?"

  He looned Cally to ask for all the soldiers Narashtovik could put together. Cally said he'd see what he could do. He did not sound optimistic.

  Neither was Dante. For all their tricks and troops, it would still be a numbers game. And the numbers favored the king. What happened if the norren were defeated here? There were still many clans scattered throughout the Territories, but not all that many. Too few to resist if the redshirts broke through. Once they were quelled, he had the sick feeling the king would turn his armies to the north. To Narashtovik. Cassinder would see to that. Their meddling would not go unpunished.

  His expression must have been dark enough to chill the dead. As he sat in a chair in the front room of the abandoned house, Corra wandered from her room and fixed him with her shining eyes.

  "What's wrong?" she said.

  He glanced up sharply, so shocked to hear her speak he nearly forgot what he'd been brooding on. "It's nothing."

  "This is nothing." She swiped her hand through the air, fingers trailing, then pointed at his head. "That is something."

  "Do you really want to talk about the war?"

  "Why are you afraid? I saw the soldiers in that house."

  Dante managed to smile and frown at the same time. "Four soldiers is one thing. But there's an army on its way. No man can reverse the tide by himself."

  She folded her hands at her waist. "So why don't you run away?"

  "I can't. This is my fault. And the fault of hundreds of others dating back to the day the first human took a norren for a slave. So maybe I'm blameless. Reacting to the mistakes of long-dead men. Trying to set right what was set wrong." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and stared at the dirty wooden floor. "But I don't think there would have been a war right now if we hadn't been tempting one. For that, I do share blame. I wonder if it would have been better to leave the norren alone to suffer the lesser burden of bondage. Soon enough, win or lose, thousands of them will die."

  "But what if the lives of their children are better for years and years and years?"

  "I doubt I'll be alive to see that."

  Corra clutched her arms to her ribs. "Why wouldn't you leave to live upon a mountain? Where no one can hurt you and you will never know about everything that's wrong?"

  He glanced up. Her eyes were their brightest yet, burning from the hollows of her cheeks. He took a breath. "You know that painting your grandpa made you? He had to finish it with his left hand."

  She cocked her head. "Why would he do that? He always painted with his right."

  "Because someone destroyed his right hand. For fighting back. But he finished the painting. It was the last thing he did before he died."

  "He painted me?"

  Dante nodded. "You're his granddaughter. You've got his blood. Even if they ruin your hand, you can finish your painting."

  She blinked several times, face pinched together by an invisible hand of emotion. "Thank you for telling me that. About Grampa."

  Dante nodded. That, too, might have been a mistake, telling her. At times it would haunt her, knowing her grandpa's dying moments were spent slumped over her picture. But she needed it. A knowledge of defiance. That until the day you met Arawn in that starry field, no matter what arose against you, you could stand and stare it in the eye.

  Perhaps he'd needed to hear that, too.

  He continued his work with the norren on the ramparts. The Clan of Dreaming Bears sailed across the river and sacked a lightly-guarded barracks, bringing home barrels of swords and spears. The citizens drilled in the squares. Steel flashed in sunlight. Stone points clacked against the cobbles. Arrows thrummed, smacking into bales of hay. Men and women hauled water from wells and the river. Through the loons, the scattered scouts let them know the king's army had left Setteven, eight thousand strong at the least. More would join as the army crossed the miles between the capital and Dollendun.

  A contingent arrived from Narashtovik two days later. Three of the Council's priests—quiet Varla, brusque and vulgar Ulev, and dark-haired, cunning young Wint—along with ten monks of lesser talents, including Nak. Dante met them with a smile, even Wint. It was good to see old faces. They would help greatly, too. The least of the monks was worth any ten soldiers. Together with Dante and t
he two norren adepts, it would make for a troublesome force.

  "How did you get reined into this?" he asked Nak.

  Nak puffed his cheeks in embarrassment. "I volunteered."

  "Why the hell would you do that?"

  "So that when you triumph, I can boast to the ladies I taught you everything you know."

  "You're not much of a monk, are you?"

  Nak's plump cheeks bulged in a frown. "If a monk can end lives in the name of his god, he ought to be able to create lives, too."

  Dante showed them around. Introduced them to Mourn and Hopp and a few of the other chiefs. When Dante explained he'd joined Hopp's clan, the priests gave him curious looks, but raised no questions about what that meant for his loyalties to Narashtovik.

  The incoming army was covering nearly twenty miles per day. By the time it ranged within a hundred miles, norren scouts estimated it had gathered another thousand men. On the evening it camped some forty miles from Dollendun, the boats arrived. The oars of fifteen war galleys lashed the water, plying upstream to dock on the west bank. Blays watched with Dante from their own piers.

  "I don't think they're bringing more troops," Blays said. "I think they're here to ferry the redshirts in Dollendun over to our side of the river."

  Dante peered through the twilight. "What makes you think that?"

  "You know how bad those boats stink. But have we seen a single soldier hop off since they've docked?"

  "Makes sense. Use their fleet to divert us to the shores while their main army marches in from the north."

  "Those things move like ducks on the water," Blays grumbled in grudging admiration. "Big, stupid ducks filled with hundreds of people who want us dead."

  "That isn't a very duck-like want," Dante said.

  "Then why are they always honking at people? Does that sound like something that wants to be friends?"