The Great Rift

by Edward W. Robertson

  "I once spent several days thinking about ducks."

  "What would possibly possess you to do that?" Blays said.

  "Cally."

  "Oh."

  "Yeah."

  "Wait," Blays said. "Hey. Wait. Then you must know the thing it is that ducks do best."

  "Quack?"

  "Sit." A grin spread over Blays' face, unstoppable as a blush. "They sit there. Like feathery, bug-eating idiots."

  Dante drew back his chin. "You've got an idea."

  "I've got an idea."

  It was foolish and wonderful and perfectly Blays. Best of all, it would work. As night fell, Dante burst into laughter, his giggles rippling over the waters. He told Blays to tell Hopp to get to work on fortifying the shore, then ran north to get to work himself, the torchstone lighting his way.

  The next day passed with terrifying swiftness. He obsessed about hours. Each hour meant a mile. One mile closer for the king's army to approach. Of course it didn't quite work like that. Some hours the army would be stopped to rest. Other hours they would march and march, covering two or three miles every sixty minutes. But in the aggregate, for each hour the army existed, it would cover the better part of a mile. It had been forty miles away whenever it set out that morning. It could cross that distance in two days. 48 hours. He had 48 hours left. Not that he was certain he would die in the fighting. But in the normal course of life, you wake in the morning with the expectation you will continue to live for years or even decades. For tens of thousands of hours. Hours too many to mark or measure or care; in fact, there was no conscious expectation of decades of life at all. Just an unconscious assumption running so deep you never thought of it at all.

  Dante could count 48 hours. After than, he might have no more hours, or a single one, spent in battle, or 40,000 until he died in bed with a smile embedded in his long white beard. He didn't know. He didn't know and he couldn't know, and so his heart beat as if it were trying to work a lifetime of beats into the few hours he had left.

  The norren finished connecting the rampart to the northern hill. A couple inches of groundwater had seeped up through the ditch below the earthworks' outward slopes. Dante strode to the river, where a small dam of land held the waters from the ditch, and took hold of the nether lurking beneath the dark soil. He slid the damming earth up onto the rampart. Cold brown water sluiced into the ditch, flooding it to a depth of three feet.

  They sent away those unable or unwilling to fight—the children, the elderly, the crippled, those whose beliefs forbade the shedding of blood. Most of the women stayed to fight. They sent Corra away, too, her painting in one hand, one of Blays' knives in the other. She didn't wave. Just watched Dante from over her shoulder as she walked down the road southward from the city.

  24 hours. Twenty miles. Both went by in a blink. The scouts confirmed the redshirts' movement. In all likelihood, they would cross the remaining few miles in the day, camp nearby for the night, and attack with the dawn.

  Clan warriors drilled civilians in advances and retreats. Others helped erect barriers of wooden spikes across the main roads and dumped debris across others. The chiefs finalized their strategy. Assuming the main body of the king's forces would come down through the north on their side of the river, while the troops quartered on the western shores landed via boat to attack from the flank or rear, the norren forces would be divided similarly—most deployed to the northern edge of the city to man the ramparts or shadow the army south if it tried to swing around on them, while a smaller force would be left near the shore to fend off the amphibious assault. In true norren fashion, several clans would be dispatched to roam the streets, killing any scouts, delaying expeditionary forces, and keeping watch for any major flanking movements.

  Dante and Blays would be posted on the shore to oversee Blays' plan. Six hundred norren would be with them, including their clan and the Nine Pines. They might be outnumbered twofold or more. Then again, so would their main troop.

  He didn't touch the nether that day. Typically, a few hours of sleep would refresh him, but he wasn't certain he would sleep at all that night.

  As twilight fell, the smoke of scores of fires rose from the forest north of town. Dante watched from the docks. The last gray light flickered on the water. Blays and Lira were a ways up the shore; Blays stood behind her, arms around her waist. They didn't appear to be talking. Just watching the smoke bloom and the light fade.

  As the night took hold, firelight shined through the black pines. Waves sloshed against the docks. Dante's loon pulsed, startling him.

  "How does it look?" Cally said.

  "Like we're in line for morning introductions."

  "How do you think you'll do?"

  "Oh, I expect I'll kill at least twenty people, personally. We'll see where it goes from there."

  "I meant as a whole, you dolt," Cally said.

  "Well, we're outnumbered. By a lot. Then again, I would bet on a norren clan-warrior over a redshirt grunt ten times out of ten. Then again again, the norren aren't used to fighting in groups this size, and many of them have never fought before."

  "Well, I sent five hundred men your way earlier in the week. I'm sorry I couldn't get them to you sooner, but if you can hold out for a few days, they may arrive in time to help."

  "Good." Dante shook his head. "You know what? I have no idea how it will go tomorrow. Put me in a room with four men with swords, and unless I trip and break my head, I can tell you what's going to happen. Fifteen thousand armed men shaking their spears at each other across one of the biggest cities in Gask? River-borne invasions? Sorcerers on both sides? I don't have a clue, Cally. Not the skinniest, most malnourished, runtiest little clue. This time tomorrow, I could be recounting you our great victory, or I could be telling you nothing at all, because I am at the bottom of a mountain of bodies. What if this is the last time we ever speak?"

  "I think you should calm down."

  "Should I? How often have you stared across the night at a thousand enemy campfires?"

  "Just once," Cally said.

  "When?" Dante scoffed.

  "During the Third Scour."

  Dante was about to declare him a liar; the Third Scour had taken place over a century ago. He remembered, with the usual jolt, Cally was well older than that. "What happened?"

  "As it turns out, I lived."

  "In the battle."

  "It was in the Collen Basin. Just after we took the palace." Cally cleared his throat. "If you're any student of history, then, which I know you're not—"

  "I know about the battle for Collen Basin."

  "Then why am I telling you this? We had the palace for two weeks before the baron's reinforcements returned. A true rabble. Disgusting. But they had fine steel while we had pitchforks and dysentery. What kind of a universe is this where a case of diarrhea is in charge of deciding who's right and wrong? The gods are laughing, I say.

  "Regardless of our gastrointestinal distress, we dug in while they advanced. I remember thinking we had better than half a chance; that the enemy were primarily conscripts out of Larkwood who didn't give a damn about the Basin. That and mercenaries, also from Larkwood, who'd been mere bandits until their silver started flowing from the baron rather than from whoever they could rob. Meanwhile, I was right around your age, however old you are now, except significantly more advanced."

  Dante snorted. "I highly doubt it."

  "My attitude exactly! So you can understand why I was less worried than I perhaps ought to have been. They simply had too many men, you see. That's what it came down to. That and the dysentery. We stuffed the buildings around the palace plaza with archers, and gummed up all the doorways in with tables and garbage and the like, but the enemy lit fires. What do you know! Archers don't like breathing smoke and flame any more than the rest of us. They pushed us back inside the palace, then smashed out those great red windows—have you seen then? No, of course not, they were smashed—and poured inside. We fought in the halls until you could hardly
stand from the blood.

  "Things got so desperate a group of us decided to lock ourselves in the old-fashioned dungeon cells and shoot anybody who got near the bars. Which doesn't make a lot of sense, in hindsight, but as I said, desperate."

  "What happened then?" Dante said.

  "Oh, we couldn't find the keys. So we ran away instead."

  "If I've got this right, then, what you're saying is just when things look their darkest, I should run away as fast as I can."

  "What I'm saying is I was certain I would die, but then I lived for another hundred years. Most of them happy." Cally stopped; through the loon, Dante heard him swallow some water or tea. "Look, right now you don't know how the next day will turn out. Yet you fear the worst even though you can't possibly know it will come! How can these things coexist? You don't know what tomorrow will bring. You might win. You might lose. You might win and die or lose and live. In the end, a single thing among all these possibilities will be the one thing that happens—and you won't know what it will be until it does. Probably not even then! Discovering these unknowns, these possibilities, that should be a joy. Whatever happens, you'll get the gift of knowing what!"

  It sounded like nonsense, yet Dante found himself comforted. He wanted to tell Cally as much, but something held him back, an emotion oddly like resentment. Instead, he gazed at the black water, the campfires burning through the forest.

  "Thanks, I think."

  "Well, if it gets that bad, you can always run."

  He closed the connection. Dante wandered up the shore, smelling mud and fish that had been dead for so long they barely stunk. If he had thoughts, he didn't remember them afterwards. Just the memory of the cool evening and the wash of waves upon the shore. It calmed him. He wanted it to be this way forever.

  Blays found him there a couple hours later. The blond man grinned. "Figured you'd be here. When it comes to water, you're like something that loves it."

  "Where's Lira?"

  "Bed. In no condition to walk."

  "Don't say anything more, or this night will come to blows."

  "Oh, it already—"

  Dante pushed his tented palms against his nose. "Forget it. I'm just going to go challenge the entire enemy myself."

  Blays laughed. "Listen, whatever happens tomorrow, the first bit's going to be fun."

  "I'm sure it will provide fond memories as I'm gargling my own blood."

  "I think we're doing the right thing, you know."

  "Do you?"

  "I haven't taken a census, but I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that 100% of the norren slaves would prefer to be not-slaves."

  "The issue," Dante said, "is whether they would prefer to be living slaves or dead not-slaves. And whether it's any of our business to intervene."

  "Well, we did. Oops."

  Dante laughed through his nose. Then it overtook him, rib-hitching laughter that had him shaking his head at the river. "Oops!"

  "We should probably put that on our tombstones."

  "That or 'It seemed like a good idea at the time.'"

  Blays grinned. "I'm going to put an arrow on mine pointing to yours, and then make mine say 'All his fault.'"

  "Oops."

  They laughed until silence took them, the hush of night, the whisper of waves.

  "Anyway," Blays said at last. "If I only have one more night of sleep ahead of me, I'd like it to be a good one."

  "See you on the frontlines," Dante said.

  Dante waited just a little longer before going back to the house. One last look at the moon. The stars. The silvery heavens and their cycle of perfection. He should have looked sooner, looked longer. There was no more time left.

  He slept. He meant to see the sunrise, too, but he woke to the full light of early morning and the blare of war-horns. It was time.

  24

  Blays burst through the door before the horns faded. "Well, come on! You wouldn't want to miss the big war, would you?"

  Part of his mind leapt to awareness, as if it had been waiting all night for this moment. His body was still clumsy with sleep; as he tugged on his pants, he toppled back into his mattress. He had little armor to don. Iron bracelets for both wrists, with a slightly larger pair clasped above each elbow. A leather vest composed of boiled patches sewn into supple deerskin, keeping him flexible across the hips and abdomen, along with a collar of similar construction. That was it. The rest was sheer decoration, the armor of the psyche: his black cloak, silver-trimmed. The brooch of Barden clasping it together. And his doublet, velvety black, the thick silver ring of Arawn's millstone sewn into the center of the chest.

  He was ready.

  The morning was already warm, thick with the moisture of the river and the forest. The barricades around the main plaza were manned by a skeletal defense. The footprints of thousands of norren soldiers led north to the ramparts. Dante jogged west to the shore where hundreds of clan warriors and Dollendun citizens sorted through arrows, wiped down swords, and stretched their limbs, working up a light sweat. Hot tea awaited Dante on the docks. One of the perks of rank.

  "They started loading up around dawn." Blays nodded across the river. On the far bank, the galleys waited beside the deepwater docks.

  Dante sipped his tea. "And how's our fleet doing, Admiral?"

  "See for yourself!" Blays swept his hand upstream. There, some twenty rowboats bobbed beside the pier, occupied by two-man teams of norren. Three little candles burned in the bow of each boat. As he watched, the first boat cast off its line and pushed into the river.

  "Excellent."

  Wint appeared beside him. The young Council priest's dark brows were pinched in a skeptical line. "Do you really expect this to work?"

  "Define 'work,'" Dante said.

  "Provide any positive impact whatsoever on our chances of success. Are you hoping their captains will laugh themselves over the railings?"

  Beside Blays, Lira stared Wint down. "These two have made a living out of appearing so foolish that no one takes them seriously until it's too late."

  Wint shrugged, his expression taking a humorous edge. "Forgive me for being concerned about my fate when that fate rests on the outcome of a smattering of rowboats versus a fleet of fully-staffed war galleys."

  "Yes, well, you're forgetting something," Blays said.

  "Enlighten me."

  "Those aren't rowboats. They're little wooden dragons."

  Wint's head jerked once, as if he were in pain. Or suppressing a shake of his head. Dante poured himself more tea, not that his nerves needed it.

  Brassy horns trumpeted from the woods to the north, jolting him, spilling steamy tea over his hand. Distant figures moved through the trees. Swarms of them. Masses. A living, breathing army. Pierced by sunlight, the river gleamed richly blue. The rowboats were a quarter of the way across it when the galleys shoved off and hoved toward the eastern banks.

  The galleys' oars centipeded through the water. Dante watched, along with hundreds of warriors, as the rowboats closed on the the galleys in the middle of the river. From a tight formation, the rowboats split apart, a pair moving to intercept each enemy vessel. Sporadic arrows flew from the topdeck of two of the galleys, stopping one of the rowboats cold. The rest were ignored.

  Unchecked, they slipped alongside the surging galleys like the pilot fish sailors see in the slipstreams of cruising sharks. One rowboat drew too close. The galley's prow rammed it head-on. The smaller craft disappeared beneath the blue. Across the rest of the rowboats, one norren in each stayed seated and paddling while his or her partner stood and latched fast to the galleys with spikes and ropes. With their boats secured to their huge hosts, the standing norren produced small packages and affixed them a couple feet above the waterline of the galleys' curved hulls.

  The norren reached for their candles. Not that Dante could see the flames across half a mile of glinting waves and sunlight. But he had watched the norren practicing the day before. Those whose candles had gone out went for fl
int and steel. Sparks sprayed from the shadows of the galleys, which plowed on across the river, foam curling from their fronts. A cry went up from one of the vessels. Too late, men appeared on the railings to fire in earnest on the norren below. The norren cut their ropes and rowed furiously away from the warships.

  One rowboat lagged behind, its two-man struggling with the package they'd attached to the galley hull. Dante's breath caught. The norren and the rowboat they stood in disappeared in a flash of white.

  The bang of the explosion rolled across the shore just as the second one flashed further down the line of ships. Wood and water splintered through the air. A string of flashes lit up the galleys. Shattered wood tumbled in smoldering arcs. Great booms thundered over the water, followed by panicked screams and hasty orders. Atop the bows, shaken archers regained their footing and pelted the paddling norren.

  Not all of Willers' bomb-bags went off. Not all opened more than a perfunctory hole in the galleys' sides. But half the boats trailed smoke from lethal holes punched through their sides, cold blue river water gushing into the void, quelling the fires with clouds of white smoke. Up and down the shore, norren cheered. The galleys redoubled their strokes to reach land before sinking.

  "Shoot," Willers said from Dante's elbow, startling him. "That didn't work at all."

  "What are you talking about?" Dante said. "Those two on the left are going to be housing fish within minutes. Five or six more will have to push in straight to shore if they don't want to sink. We'll slaughter them the second they land."

  "Yeah, but they all should be doing that. I used everything I had in those bags."

  Blays waved a hand around. "You're expecting too much out of life, kid. If you can sometimes blow up just half the things you want blown up, consider that a screaming success."

  "Pitiless Arawn," Wint said, flipping his black councilman's cloak off one shoulder to expose his narrow sword. "This may yet work."

  The undamaged vessels slowed to match the wallowing ships that were taking on water. The two doomed galleys launched longboats and filled them with men. A few redshirts plunged straight over the railings in panicky confusion. To the north, a monstrous group cry echoed through the streets.