by Tom Deitz
Giant’s Fingers, it was called. It consisted of a narrow iron point that could be driven between the halves of a double door, or between a door and jamb, far enough to admit additional thicker points to either side. These were connected by a scissors action, and, when forced in opposite directions, could pull most doors far enough apart to spring whatever locks or hinges they might have. Or splinter wood outright.
Zrill heard the lock explode on this set, and the agonized rip of thick oak being torn asunder. A moment later, someone was brave enough to reach through with another, similar, tool and snap the bar.
Not until the doors swung back did they meet any resistance, and Zrill wasn’t in range of that combat. What he could see, as he rushed forward with the rest, were shirtless young men sheened with sweat, wet rags wrapped around their heads. Most were fairly dirty, though their eyes were white and wild. Heat rode forward with them, with billows of steam and a stronger sulfur smell. The bulk were simply armed: a few swords or daggers, though many carried long iron bars. Perhaps they’d found the forge, Zrill thought, as he shifted his grip on his blade, seeking an opportunity to strike, but finding progress impeded by stone walls to the left. He stepped on something soft, startled to find it one of his comrades he’d not seen fall, in what was becoming a onesided battle ahead.
“It’s the heat plant,” someone hissed. “It’s how these folks survive the cold.”
Zrill merely shrugged and struggled onward, as the skirmish ebbed and flowed. And then the man before him was falling, and he was in the front ranks. He leapt over the body, stuck his sword without thinking into the heart of an older man armed with a blade shorter than Zrill’s, and then casually batted aside the wrist of the woman who took his place, a bloody dagger in either hand. She gave him the best fight he’d had—or the most dangerous, depending on how one considered it—and fought like someone well versed in such things. In the end, Zrill had to cripple her, taking off one hand outright, and laying open her other arm from elbow to wrist. He left her in her blood, trusting to the heavy boots of those behind to finish what he’d started.
And then space roared around him, and he released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, relieved at finding himself unconfined. He leapt to the left to accommodate those behind, and found himself staring up at rank upon rank of massive stone and metal blocks each four spans square, their tops crowned by countless pipes and ducts, many thrice as thick as his body. A complexity of valves and gears at waist level fronted them, serving some function Zrill couldn’t fathom.
That they were important, however, was evident by the fierceness of the fighting around them. Someone jostled Zrill, and he started, then joined the rest—forgot everything except reflex, and succumbed to the ritual of advance, stab, parry; advance, parry, stab, and leap that quickly ruled his world. A final thrust into a naked torso, and then the slow rise of breathy silence as the battle ended. Zrill wiped sweat from his eyes with a finger through the eyeslots of his helm—and realized that the chamber was taken.
“Check for other entrances and secure them,” the commander yelled. “Disable the controls on these, and follow me—we must rejoin our fellows.”
“Disable?” someone challenged.
“Let them freeze,” came the commander’s reply.
Zrill, who by virtue of being one of the farthest from the entrance was among the last to leave, wondered if he was the only one to hear someone call in clumsy, Eronese-accented Ixtian, “No, you fools! You have no idea what you’ve done.” And then Zrill reached the entrance, and let the corridor enclose him with wet stone walls, but clearer air and cooler. And then they reached the stables again, and joined the upward battle.
Pain flowed down Krynneth’s arm like a fresh-forged blade slicing ice. Except that he’d never planned to be on the receiving end of Eronese steel hilted by Ixtian smiths and wielded by an Ixtian soldier. He endured the pain stoically. To succumb would mean his life, and survival must come first. If only he’d thought to bring a shield to his meeting with Lorvinn—but that had been a ceremonial encounter. At least he had his sword and knew how to use it. Unfortunately, so did his opponent: a man about his size, face hidden save for dark eyes that caught the glare of the torches as Krynneth led what passed on this level as a charge toward the gate tower. Forget the central keep. It had fallen first, to forces welling up from the stables below, and down from the Warden’s quarters in the topmost level. Whether Dormill, who’d succeeded Lorvinn, had survived, he didn’t know—nor care. For good or ill, Lorvinn was his leader.
If only he could find her.
Steel flashed in from his right, the follow-through of the stroke that had opened his left arm. He parried the blow, then twisted his blade beneath it, as he stepped back and ducked. And then stabbed: an economical blow, if one were strong-wristed. Not what the foe would expect.
His point found resistance, but he ducked again, and lunged, felt the foe’s sword slide off his shoulders as he drove his point through mail and leather into flesh, then danced back to withdraw it. The man screamed and staggered. His chin strap broke and Krynneth got a glimpse of a face as young as his own, but gray with pain and despair. The sword slipped from failing fingers. The man raised his chin, even as he clamped hands across the gushing wound below his sternum. Krynneth read the gesture, and gave him the mercy cut: ear to ear.
But only because the battle had moved on.
He raced to catch up: along the corridors within the outer walls, where he’d hoped resistance would be less. If they could reach the gatehouse and hold it, they could isolate Barrax’s troops and ensure their own escape.
Oblivious to his aching arm and the blood trail he was leaving, Krynneth careened around a corner, seeking a battle he could hear but not yet see. How bad his wound was, he had no idea. He might die of blood loss; might not. In either case, his duty was to the hold.
The corridor he stumbled into was short and lit only from the larger passages to either side. It took a moment to realize that he’d also stumbled onto Lorvinn herself, with a band of half-clad soldiers at her back, forcing a smaller group of Ixtians in Krynneth’s direction. His comrades saw him—maybe. Silently as he could, he crept forward, holding to the shadows, trying to still his breath. Closer. There were six of them. With any luck …
One fell. The soldiers poured over him. Krynneth moved. A quick leap—slash—roll across the hallway took an Ixtian across the back of his knees. The one next to him got a continuation of the same blow across his left arm and back, and Krynneth managed to slam his fist into the side of the last man’s head before he reached the wall. Fortunately that man was right-handed, and had any response blocked by the wall, which gave Lorvinn herself time to finish him.
With three men suddenly moaning on the stone floor, the remaining two Ixtians bolted. One fell to a bold Eronese spearman who jumped one of the fallen to stab the man in the back. The other made it to the end of the corridor and fled. Krynneth started after, but Lorvinn restrained him. Her face was awash with sweat beneath her crooked helm, and her sword was red to the hilt, with the same red staining the wool robe beneath her hauberk. “No,” she rasped. “I have another task for you. And not one for a coward, though it may seem otherwise.”
“Aye, Lady,” Krynneth gasped, as half Lorvinn’s small force moved past at a sign from her. Someone grabbed his arm and tied a rag around it near his shoulder.
Lorvinn spared a glance down the hall. “Someone needs to get word of this to the King. Others may have thought the same, but I order you to flee this place. There’s a stair to the Guard-Hall near here that only the Wardens know about. Take it to there. Rally anyone you find, if any there still be—there’s a chance they don’t know of this. From there—remember the exit I showed you.”
“But—!”
“Go!” Lorvinn shouted, giving him a push. “Third door, second chamber, press the black door in the tapestry twice. Now go!”
Krynneth started to protest, but Lorvinn was already
striding away from him, following the Guard. Krynneth watched for a dozen breaths—long enough to catch his own—then followed the Warden’s instructions. A moment later, with guilt a burden on his shoulders, only slightly salved by responsibility, he was following turn after turn of stairs down and down and down.
Lorvinn was fighting for two things. Her life—or her honor, which was effectively the same thing—and to protect the secrets of the hold. She was seeing fewer hold folk all the time, and fewer yet alive, while every turn seemed to bring her and her ragged band of loyalists into combat with an ever-increasing host of grim, dark-faced men in Ixtian livery. Worse, she hadn’t managed to find either the acting Hold-Warden, or any of the sept commanders. Granted, most would’ve been in bed—or preparing for it. But surely this attack hadn’t been so well planned it could’ve taken out all of them, especially as they varied their sleep schedule to a set rotation.
Not that it mattered as she strode along little-used corridors in one wing of the Middle Hold, intent on preserving one other thing. The hold itself might be lost now, but she could ensure that no more secrets fell into Barrax’s hands than she could help. And so, she bent her steps toward the Lore hall.
Happily, the hall wasn’t located in the part of the hold where the attack had been concentrated. If she was lucky—
She wasn’t. She darted up an atypically wide and straight staircase two steps at a time—only to meet a force coming down: three men, in finer robes and better-weaponed than any she’d met before. She charged them, relying on loyalty to close ranks with her. Her sword clanged against that of the man who moved to meet her. A thrust from behind her took his life, and she hurtled on—almost to the landing. She returned the favor of a thrust an instant later, while someone grabbed the spear the third Ixtian had poked forward and yanked—catapulting him down the stairs, even as blows rained down on him. He reached the floor in pieces.
By then Lorvinn had moved on. The doors to the Lore hall stood closed across a corridor at the top of the stairs, but she heard other steps pounding toward her from the side: heavily armed men at a run. She fumbled at the catch—the place was never locked—and felt it give. More troops veered into view. She braced, then relaxed. They were her own people, under the command of Vorminn, Hold-Warden himself. Not many, but better armed than her band.
“You had the same idea I did,” she shouted.
Vorminn wasn’t looking at her. He was gazing back the way he’d come—while Lorvinn’s troops kept watch on the larger chamber below. “Fire it if you can!” Vorminn shouted. “They’re coming—everywhere!”
Lorvinn hesitated but an instant, then opened the doors and slipped inside. Her men would have to forgive her desertion. It was Eron’s forgiveness she sought now, and no other. Scarcely looking at the racks of books and manuscripts towering around her on every side, she grabbed the nearest, strewing precious documents on the floor. A candle guttered nearby. She flung it atop the heap, not bothering to watch as she continued around the enormous room, adding fuel to the fire growing by the door. Once she ripped a tapestry down and added it, then found a cache of lamp oil and hurled it atop a series of particularly important codices. Most were duplicated at War-Hold-Main, but not all—not the latest research and theory. It would perish now, but maybe some of it could be reconstructed.
On and on she moved—halfway around the hall—while fire roared behind her, merging with the crackle of charring pages. Smoke filled the air. She coughed. Her eyes watered. She thought of fleeing, but she’d left loyal men and women outside, facing their doom; she could do no less. A quick survey showed a third of the room in flames. If she didn’t hurry, it would be her pyre.
Raising her arm across her face, she staggered through litter, sparks, and wayward burning pages toward the door. The heat beat her back at first—fire by the door had been a mistake, but she’d been working on reflex, not logic. Or maybe that had been logic: Deny access, and damn the consequences. A second try put her at the exit. Fire licked the hem of her robe. She beat at it absently as she set her shoulder against the studded oak. It moved—slowly, as though something lay against it. What, she dared not think.
But then she was through, though she could barely see for the tears in her eyes, or hear for her own coughing. Shapes swam into view from either side—but not until she heard them speak did she recognize them.
Not by their voices, but their language. The buzzy, hard-voweled accents of Ixti.
She grabbed for the door, intent on self-immolation.
Too late. A blow to her wrist numbed her hand. A press of bodies bore her to the floor, and then away. Her heels thumped against every tread as they dragged her down the stairs. “Send water,” she heard someone yell—thank The Eight she had a good grasp of the Ixtian tongue. “Save what you can. If nothing else survives, we need the Lore hall!”
And then she was being dragged along smooth marble. Not without a struggle, of course, but a mailed fist to the head made her see stars and flirt with a darkness deeper than night.
Abruptly, she was jerked to her feet, and spun around, only to be thrown to the floor again. Unable to break her fall, her face hit the pavement—hard. Something shattered in her nose, and her throat filled with blood. Its sick/sweet odor fought with the smoke in her nostrils. Her head swam.
Someone knocked her helm aside and yanked her up by the hair. She saw boots: fine elegant boots of tooled leather, ornamented with gold leaf and jeweled filigree. She saw the hem of a gold-embroidered robe of black velvet, and then dared look higher—high as the belt, which was tooled to match the boots, but which also bore a fantastically worked geen-claw dagger. A hand clutched it, gloved in mail and black suede, but what caught her eye was the ring. Carved gold it was. Lorvinn looked closer, blinking through tears of pain her mind could not suppress.
It blurred. Cleared. Blurred again. And then she saw: the arms of Ixti.
“Your Majesty,” she heard someone say, “we believe this woman to be the Hold-Warden.”
Lorvinn grabbed frantically at the dagger—to what purpose she had no idea. Feet came down atop her, bearing her to the floor. A rib cracked. A boot stomped her hand and pain argued there with numbness seeping down from her wrist.
“My name is Lorvinn san Ferr-een,” she gasped. “Kill me now, whoever you are, for I deserve to die.”
“No,” came a voice as cold as a wind off the northern ice. “I will not kill you, though die you will. But only when certain others can witness that dying.”
And then something hit her head, and she saw no more.
Krynneth had to halt halfway down the stairs to sit down. He had no choice, really; the steady movement, the exertion of the descent, and the demands the steep treads made on his legs and balance required it. As did the queasiness rising in his stomach, that might be a response to pain, the tight spiral, or even the preposterousness of the situation. In any event he sank down on a step, barely able to see despite the feeble light of an ancient glow-globe some turns below. The silence overwhelmed him, and he thought briefly that he ought simply to lie there and sleep. Then, when he thought it was safe, he could sneak out again and slay the Ixtians in their beds. Probably that would happen anyway. War-Hold was a warren of secret rooms, halls, and stairs.
Which of course assumed Ixti’s success, which wasn’t guaranteed, though it seemed likely. Attacked at night, with no warning, from two directions, the battle wouldn’t go in the hold’s favor. Not in a place designed to be attacked from without, not within. And he knew who was to blame, too. If not Kraxxi’s fault, it was his lover’s. Merryn’s.
Only six people he was aware of knew that secret exit, three of whom had gone north into Eron. He and Lorvinn were two more, which left Merryn. Merryn, whom Krynneth had admired almost as much as he’d admired Lorvinn herself.
Dizziness swam near. Krynneth bent over, removed his helm, and let his head fall between his knees. Darkness encroached, then retreated, leaving him marginally more alert. He donned the helm
again but didn’t buckle it, and rose—carefully, bracing himself against the wall.
And continued down.
He found the door before he expected it, and pressed a hidden stud. Stone slid sideways, revealing a large, dimly lit chamber hewn from solid stone: the assembly hall of the Night Guard, where someone was supposed always to be on duty.
Someone was—or had been.
Thirty of them actually: caught unaware and murdered by a force that had found the outer door but not the inner, which confirmed what Krynneth had suspected. That door, which he’d never seen opened, had given onto the secret corridor by which his foes had entered. He’d seen it from the outside the night of Kraxxi’s escape and their aborted pursuit. Seen it and wondered. Clearly the invaders had as well—to the Guard’s regret.
But there were other ways in and out, one of which Lorvinn had only revealed to him four days ago.
Stepping over the body of a woman named Vynyn, he knelt to press a series of floor tiles in sequence, and was relieved to see another section of wall slide sideways. He was in it before it fully opened, fumbling for the closure stud. Found it—and moved on—through pitch-dark, which forced him to shuffle along lest he stumble, while he raked the wall to his left with his less functional arm.
On and on he traveled, through the dark, sometimes tending uphill, sometimes down, aware only of the increasing cold and his own growing weakness, and, more and more, of a pounding in the silence that was the sound of his heart pumping an ever-decreasing supply of blood.
Kraxxi sat in a padded chair to which he was bound by golden clamps and golden chains two spans away from Merryn, who was likewise accoutered, and watched firelight flicker and flare over War-Hold. Men guarded them ten deep to every side. The land between the hold’s crag and that on which they sat opposite the hold’s southern side was plowed to ruts by hooves and the odd war machine, where a thousand of Barrax’s elite troops had made their way by stealth through what once had been a secret gate and was no longer.
