A Dark Sacrifice

by Madeline Howard

  Far removed from Kivik’s airy vantage point in the tower, down in the mazes and the firelit chambers of the fortress below, his people were reacting with excitement, fear, and anticipation.

  In the outer bailey, a martial atmosphere prevailed. The fighting men were energetic, almost eager, finding relief, after such a long period of idleness and uncertainty, in the familiar preparations before a battle. They polished their swords until they gleamed, sharpened spears, mended their gear. Messengers came and went, relaying the Prince’s orders. Even the horses in the stables caught some of the excitement, growing restive and nearly unmanageable.

  Elsewhere, his gaunt host of refugees gathered together in uneasy congregations, exchanging news when they had it, speculating when they did not. Whatever spell the fortress had cast over them before, it was unravelling now that the jaws of the trap had closed and no one could escape. Sometimes they tried to bolster their own spirits, muttering about the towering height of the outer fortifications or reminding themselves and each other of the mighty gates, murder holes, and arrow slits.

  “There’s seven great walls they have to get through or over,” someone would say. Or “A warrior of Skyrra is worth three from Eisenlonde.” Not one of them had been up to the ramparts to see for themselves; they could not know that the men of Skyrra were outnumbered by a great deal more than three to one.

  Meanwhile there was great activity among the camp followers, those weathered and sinewy women who had seen battle before, even if their position at the rear driving the heavy wagons had usually spared them actual involvement. They fletched arrows, tested bows, put their knives to the whetstone. In the infirmary, Thyra and her healers began to cut up linens and roll them into bandages, grimly sacrificing the last of their chemises and undergowns. So the preparations went on into the evening and all through the night.

  At dawn, there were signs of sluggish movement in the enemy encampment. While the Eisenlonder camp stirred back to life, two separate companies of ice giants went stalking across the fields in the early morning light and disappeared into the forest. Crows screamed in the pinewood; there was a roaring, a rending, and a crashing of many trees falling at once; the air filled with the scent of murdered pines.

  Shortly thereafter the first group of Skørnhäär returned, dragging some of the tallest trees behind them. Stone axes rose and fell, and in a remarkably brief time the logs were bare of branches. Then the giants began building ladders, splitting some of the discarded limbs for rungs, chopping them into smaller segments, and hammering them to the frames. In the meantime, the second company emerged from the woods and set to work stripping branches, too.

  In the gatehouse, Kivik had gathered his captains together in a small candlelit room within the thickness of the walls, to study plans of the fortifications and add the final touches to their plan of battle.

  They did not take long to reach an agreement. Because the great encircling outer wall was miles around, there could be no question of defending every part of it. Some sections, however, rose much higher than others, particularly to the north, where the ramparts reached such incredible heights it did not seem possible the enemy would even attempt to scale them. Therefore, men would be concentrated at strategic locations on the east and west walls, and especially on the south, which was by far the most vulnerable.

  “Particularly here by the gates, where the assault is likely to be most fierce,” Kivik was saying, when a rising clamor of voices came in through the arrow slits along one wall. His curiosity thoroughly aroused, he led the captains clattering up to the roof, to see what had occasioned such excitement.

  They had no need to question the men stationed on the battlements; the cause of their uproar was there for Kivik and his officers to see as soon as they arrived at the parapet. “But what do you suppose it is that they are building?” asked Skerry.

  For the ice giants had stopped making ladders and were working on something more complex and mysterious: a construction made out of logs whose purpose neither the Prince nor any of his men could readily identify. The Eisenlonders were busy too, digging what appeared to be postholes near the camp, mining the slopes just below the woods. At the same time, one of their chieftains, a great yellow-haired lout, went riding back and forth astride a white horse, shouting orders to the toiling giants.

  “So they can speak to the Skørnhäär—some of them can, anyway,” Kivik said under his breath. “But in what language? What sort of speech could they possibly have in common?”

  “They may speak with them,” Skerry answered, “but even so, they dare not approach too near.”

  It was true: the Eisenlonders continued to give their formidable allies a wide berth. Wherever the great stony figures went, the barbarians left a broad circle of empty space around them. “I don’t envy them their new friends,” commented Roric, scratching at his beard. “The bloody skinchangers are bad enough. But it must be cursed cold down there with the cursed giants.”

  Kivik could only agree. Only the lightest scattering of flakes was falling over the fortress, yet the sky continued to pour down snow and sleet on the Eisenlonder encampment. Even keeping as much distance as possible between themselves and the giants, the men down there had to be suffering agonies of cold. Nor would wolfskin cloaks and gaudy woven blankets offer much protection from Winter personified. Already many of the barbarians appeared half frozen. Their cloaks were heavy with ice and their faces almost as blue as the giants’ hair.

  “May they all suffer frostbite,” growled Deor, shaking a fist.

  Though Kivik eventually released his captains to their various duties, he and Skerry lingered on the gatehouse roof, eager to learn what the giants were building. Already, the creatures had placed eight stout logs upright in the postholes, packing in enough dirt to hold them in place, then added to each of these supports a cross-member, somewhat smaller in size, that rested inside deep slots cut into the tops of the uprights. Next, they began lashing wooden arms to the beams—whose purpose was finally revealed as some kind of axle.

  “Siege engines,” said Skerry, his face gone blank with astonishment. “They are building trebuchets!”

  Kivik, too, was momentarily confounded. Like any young prince, he had naturally been thoroughly educated in warfare, taking lessons alongside his brothers and his cousins. In the course of those studies he and Skerry had both seen drawings and even models of similar machines. But no siege weapons had seen use in all of Skyrra for hundreds of years. They were part of a past, a way of life, intentionally abandoned after the worldwide cataclysm known as the Change. Kivik strongly doubted that any of the ordinary fighting men were capable of recognizing these engines, though the barbarians were building them right under their noses.

  But neither, he thought uneasily, have the Eisenlonders ever displayed any such arts of war. Until quite recently they had been best known for cattle raids, thievery, and avoiding pitched battle, their tactics—if you could call them that—consisting of lightning-swift strikes and surprise attacks. Yet there before him was evidence of a sophisticated kind of warfare unlike anything the barbarians had known or used in the past.

  Kivik felt the hairs rise at the back of his neck. Not for the first time, he was aware of unknown forces and agendas at work, far beyond anything within his experience. “Say that the Eisenlonders taught the giants how to build these machines—but who taught them?”

  To this Skerry had no reply, either busy with his own thoughts or else absorbed in watching the preparations down in the camp, where the Eisenlonders had taken over from the giants and were attaching ropes and a sling to each of the trebuchets.

  Kivik’s mind went back to some of the more fantastic ideas they had mooted last night. It made no sense, he told himself, that the Dark Lady of Phaôrax should have gone to such lengths simply to capture or kill Winloki, when nothing could have been easier than sending emissaries to Lückenbörg months ago, years ago, to swoop down and abduct the girl.

  Yet who else had the
power or the will to stir up a war like this one, and yet take no visible part?

  “Maybe,” he said slowly, “maybe we have arrived at the right conclusion, only the wrong way around. We know Ouriána has been expanding her territories for all these decades, but we never imagined she would ever be a threat to our lands, because the distance between us was so impossibly far, and most of all because she never sent her armies farther north than Rheithûn.”

  The ideas were coming swiftly. It astonished Kivik how clearly he saw things now—how wretchedly blind he and others around him had been before. “All this time we believed ourselves safe, were certain she would be satisfied gobbling up the old Empire lands, and that once she had done so, her hunger for conquest would be sated. But why did we think so?”

  He answered his own question. “Because it was comfortable, because it was convenient. Yet if her armies had ever ventured into Arkenfell, or even into Weye, we would have recognized our danger readily enough! Then, at the very least we would have made firm alliances with Mistlewald and Arkenfell, perhaps with her enemies on Thäerie and Leal. But if she strikes at us now, using the Eisenlonders as her puppets, if she strikes now while the kingdoms of the north are fragmented, disorganized, not even capable of recognizing our true enemy—”

  Kivik drew in a long breath and let it out. As things stood now, Ouriána might swallow all the kingdoms of the north at a gulp and be in a position to attack the coastal principalities of Hythe and Weye from the north and south at the same time.

  As if it were a sign, the sun disappeared behind a bank of clouds, casting a deep shadow over all the valley.

  By late morning the air quivered with tension. Knowing that the first assault would begin very soon, the defenders assembled in force up on the ramparts. Their helms and shield-bosses gleamed with a cold light; their swords and spears gave back a deadly glitter. On the valley floor the enemy stood ready, rank upon rank, and a murmur rose up from the horde, like the sound of the sea.

  Kivik passed among his men, speaking such heartening words as were customary before a battle. Behind a feigned cheerfulness, a reckless air of courage, he managed to conceal his own misgivings. And the men responded: backs were a little straighter and heads rose a little higher wherever he went.

  Down by the trebuchets, the giants had harnessed the largest of the Varjolükka to the dangling ropes, and the purpose behind all the digging on the slopes was no longer a mystery. The Eisenlonders had been mining stones, stacking up great piles of rocks and boulders by the siege engines, ready for use.

  At a signal from the man on the white horse, giants by each of the machines took up several large stones and dropped them into the slings. One by one, the loaders aimed and roared out their orders, bear-men rose up on their hindquarters and heaved on the ropes, and the wooden arms swung, slinging the first deadly missiles high into the air, speeding toward the fortress. Up on the walls, men scattered before the deadly barrage of falling stones.

  Under the covering fire of the trebuchets and a rain of arrows from the Eisenlonder archers, other giants began to haul the long siege ladders forward. With the use of long forked poles, they pushed the ladders upright, angling them against the walls until they were lodged so firmly between the battlements that the defenders were unable to shake them loose.

  As the giants drew back again, a lone trumpet sounded; a great noise went up from the barbarian host. Then the front ranks swept toward the foot of the wall and began swarming up the ladders. The battle had truly begun.

  At the beginning, the men of Skyrra were able to cast down most of the ascending Eisenlonders as swiftly as they climbed up. But the numbers of the enemy were just too great. Before very long they had forced a way from the ladders to the parapet, from the parapet to the wall-walk, pressing the defenders hard.

  Again and again, Kivik flung himself into the middle of the conflict. No prince of Skyrra had ever hung back during an engagement. In truth, when the battle fury gripped him, it would have been impossible for him to hold still. He moved from one point to another, wherever the fighting was most heated, shouting out encouragement to his men, slaying every Eisenlonder who came in his way.

  In the noise and confusion of battle, his heartbeat accelerated, while everyone around him seemed to slow. He no longer felt the cold. Sweat dripped down from his forehead into his eyes and he dashed it away with a thoughtless gesture. When one shield shattered, he snatched up another and kept on fighting without a pause.

  Through the corner of one eye, he could see Skerry fighting along beside him. His cousin’s style was altogether different, each stroke aimed methodically, precisely, so that his opponents fell back steadily. A hail of arrows came pattering down, glancing off the stones, and Skerry ignored them. A sword flashed and he swung up his own, hardly breaking a sweat. When a barbarian lunged in his direction, Skerry capably finished the man off.

  Kivik adjusted his grip, which had grown slippery with somebody’s blood, then took a mighty swing at a convenient head. The barbarian flung up his sword to block, and the blades locked. Kivik pushed with all his might, forcing the man to take two steps backward; then, as the swords disengaged, he aimed a swift downward cut to the knee. Somehow the blow landed higher than he intended and was absorbed by the skirt of a chain mail tunic.

  Kivik ground his teeth. There had been a time—when he was young, very young—when he had firmly believed that a man fought only for honor and glory, that winning a battle was less important than how it was conducted. All this had changed: he fought now for the survival of his people and had no time for the conventions of combat. Ruthlessly, and with a lethal absence of compunction, he took every advantage he could. So when the barbarian swung, Kivik ducked, blocked with his shield, and moved in closer. Pursuing his advantage, he heaved up his sword and drove the pommel down, with all of his strength behind it, on his enemy’s helm.

  Momentarily stunned, the Eisenlonder stood immobilized. Seizing the moment, the Prince planted his heater shield against the other’s buckler and pushed, sending the man backward over the inside parapet wall and hurtling ninety feet to the yard below. Kivik did not even stop to watch him fall.

  As he turned, a rain of stones fell on the walkway almost at his feet. He leaped sideways, but not quickly enough to avoid an explosion of sharp pebbles as stone met stone and several of the rocks cracked. One fragment hit him just above his eye, drawing blood. He hardly felt the sting.

  Somewhere in the press of battle he had lost track of Skerry. There were bodies everywhere, Skyrrans and Eisenlonders alike, and he could only hope that his cousin’s was not among them. When he brought his sword crashing down on the helmet of an opponent, the blade, which was already notched, shivered into splinters. He tossed it aside, caught up a bloody axe from the slackened grip of a dead barbarian, and hewed to right and left.

  There came a brief lull, one of those welcome moments in the ebb and flow of battle when it was possible for Kivik to catch his breath. The men around him had beaten back a flood of opponents and managed to upset one of the Eisenlonders’ ladders. Those on the bottom rungs who had survived the fall were struggling to erect it again.

  Then one of the captains—Roric or Haestan, he could not be certain which—gave a breathless whoop of joy, and somebody else flung out an arm, pointing. At first, Kivik saw nothing but a blur of wings above the field of battle, then he realized with a lift of his heart that it was one of his own messenger hawks sent out days before. Taking this for an omen, someone behind him gave a hoarse cheer.

  A flight of arrows from archers down on the field went singing through the air. The bird turned, describing a beautiful curve across the sky, and by some miracle avoided being hit. Kivik held his breath. Then another flight went up, more accurate than before. One arrow clipped a barred grey wing, another struck full in the feathered breast. There was a brief flutter, and the hawk dropped like a stone.

  It landed in the ranks of the Eisenlonders, where whatever messages it had been
carrying were lost.

  6

  It was a hot summer night on Phaôrax, and a ghastly full moon shone down on Ouriána’s capital city of Apharos—that city of spires and steeples and dagger-pointed towers, comfortless and cruel to all but a favored few. The air hung heavy and breathless in the narrow streets; no hint of wind stirred the banners hanging limp outside the nobles’ tall houses or the trees in the palace gardens on the promontory. Even the waters of the bay were sluggish in the heat, and the hundreds of ships and boats tied up by the docks could scarcely be seen to rock. Yet a slow, simmering excitement continued to build as the night wore on.

  For this was the eve of the Faldhalüra, the Rites of the High Summer Full Moon, and the city was electric with the knowledge that shortly before daybreak the Empress herself would walk barefoot through the streets, on her way to bathe in the sea and call up prodigies and portents for the coming year.

  By an hour before sunrise, crowds of early risers had gathered outside the New Temple, eager to catch a glimpse of their goddess-incarnate and bask in her presence.

  A bell clanged somewhere within the precincts of the temple: once, twice, three times. Breaths bated, hearts trembled, as a door of beaten brass swung open. A thousand sighs went out together when Ouriána appeared in the opening and stepped down to the rough cobbles.

  She wore only a white linen shift that left her arms uncovered from wrist to elbow, but her beauty shown out more splendid and terrible than ever. Without crown, scepter, or necklet to set it off, it was somehow more primal, the response it evoked more visceral. Her skin glowed and her unbound hair was a curtain of silken fire hanging past her knees. Her eyes were like gates into unfathomable mysteries; few dared to meet her gaze as she passed.

  Like a sphinx or a leopardess she stalked through the city, and crowds of eager worshippers fell in behind her.