by Court Ellyn
Nearby, Rhian shoveled ash and charred bone and puddles of unidentifiable wetness into small mounds on the flagstones. He said nothing as the cart trundled past, gave the grisly contents a glance, then ducked his head over his own task. Thorn had made short work of the ogres lying dead in the courtyard; in his rage he had burnt them up. But the rest? Those in the keep? How were four men were to dispose of dozens of massive bodies? And afterward? Could Ilswythe ever be cleansed of the stains, the stink, the ghosts that would linger in memory?
Laral must have been thinking the same thing. The cart lurched to a halt as he stopped pushing. “We need help, sir,” he said, rubbing an ache from his shoulder.
He was right, but Kelyn didn’t want to admit it. He clenched his fists; inside his gloves, his fingers felt sticky.
“Eliad can bring his highlanders down from Drenéleth,” Laral persisted. “They’d—”
“No!” If Kelyn invited help, he didn’t know how he would keep Rhoz and Carah away. They must not see their home like this, see the stains, the empty corridors, everything they cherished in ruins … Goddess’ mercy, the horror in their faces, the blame in their eyes. If they looked at him like that … He held up a hand, bidding Laral stay put, then hurried away behind the burned shell of the falcon mews, fell to his hands and knees and broke into sobs. Failed, he had failed everyone he knew, everyone who counted on him. What kind of protector was he? A protector foresaw danger. A protector kept his people alive. What right had he to fly a banner over his roof? Dead, dead, they were all dead, and he hadn’t been here to save them. He tore the kerchief covering his own face and retched in the ashes.
When he returned to the cart, Laral said nothing, only shuffled his feet and looked at the ground. Kelyn grabbed the hitching poles on the front of the cart, and in a surge of rage and self-loathing tugged it into motion. Laral could help or not.
The burning yard lay behind the bulk of the Great Hall. Ash rose in a steady plume and cast a haze across the sun. Inside the high stone walls, Thorn Kingshield raked bones into the flames. Soot streaked his face and stained his white shirt and riding leathers. His eyes were bloodshot, lids red-rimmed and swollen. From smoke or sorrow, Kelyn couldn’t tell.
Thorn clenched his teeth and swallowed hard as he helped unload the cart and laid the remains on the embers. His hand trembled as he stretched out an arm and whispered, “Eshel.” New fire settled over the remains. “This the last of it?” he asked.
“All save the ogres,” Kelyn said, “and that elf who led them.” His father had spat the word much the same once.
Thorn leaned on the rake in exhaustion. “Doesn’t seem right, burning the ogres where we burned their victims.”
Kelyn nodded. “Courtyard will do. Besides I don’t fancy dragging them this far.”
“How the hell will we move them?” Laral asked.
“We can hook up the horses,” Kelyn suggested. “The ogres provided plenty of chain.”
Laral headed toward the stables, one of the few outbuildings left standing, where they had secured the two gray palfreys and two Elaran blacks. Kelyn made his way back to the courtyard. “Rhian, you might as well take a break. We’ll pile the ogres right here, and you’ll just have more to shovel.” The young avedra dropped his spade with a clatter and stretched his back.
“Come help me gather these chains,” Kelyn added.
Rhian eyed the keep apprehensively. He’d refused to enter the halls since discovering the horrors inside.
He’ll just have to buck up, Kelyn thought as he started up the steps. But Rhian didn’t follow. Kelyn turned, irritated, and found him standing stock still with his head tilted and a quizzical expression on his face.
“What is that? Do you hear it?” Rhian asked.
Low on the breeze came the sound of singing. Gruff and rhythmic, the song swirled around Ilswythe’s towers as if searching for a way inside. “Dwarves,” Kelyn said and started for the gatehouse.
Rhian pursued. “M’ lord, wait!” The incredulity on his face implied the rest: Caution, you daft old man. Long swimmer’s legs carried him swiftly ahead.
Ilswythe’s gate was a wreck. A battering ram had splintered the iron-banded doors and twisted the portcullis like chicken wire. Instead of repairing the gate, the ogres had stacked beams and heavy furniture, wagons and barrels into the holes. Later, blasts from two insistent avedrin had flung the shoring far and wide, so the four men had spent their first evening at Ilswythe plugging up the gate again. It wouldn’t take much for a determined soldier or two to break through. Rather than pick his way through the debris, Rhian made for the narrow sortie gate, lifted the iron bar, and poked his head out.
Kelyn resented the avedra for his veil-piercing eyes and himself for his blindness; at the same time, he was grateful that Rhian had thought to check for ogres lurking beyond the walls.
Rhian gave the nod. Kelyn slipped out the door.
The King’s Highway rolled over the moors from the south, crossed the Avidan River, then curved below Ilswythe’s hill as it continued west. Upon the western stretch of roadway, a cloud of dust swirled around three hundred dwarves marching in formation. Three supply wagons followed. Their song rose from the dust and with it, a banner. On the cerulean field, a miner’s pick crossed a longsword. “Thyrvael,” Kelyn said. His neighbors to the north. Was it premature to feel relief? Part of him dreaded that his old friends had come to attack his gates, too. King Valryk might have secured an alliance with the dwarves as well as the ogres.
No, that seemed unlikely. According to Thorn, the dwarves and ogres had been battling each other underground for twenty years now. “Did my brother send for them?” he asked Rhian.
The avedra shrugged. “I helped him send the messenger falcons, but the dwarves weren’t one of mine.”
The dwarves neared Ilswater Ford, and there the march halted. The singing trailed away as they surveyed the blackened skeleton of the town. Few buildings had survived the fires. The mill’s wheel had collapsed into the river and lay lodged across the current; the river complained loudly. A foreign banner tinkling with bones and painted with a vermillion axe still stood in the square. The dwarf in the lead tugged off a horned helm, revealing a knotted coif of straw-colored hair, and knelt on the bank. Her head bowed low.
“Want me to see if they’re friendly?” Rhian asked. Disappear and read some minds, he meant.
“Aren’t you too tired for that? Let’s just ask them and be done with it.” Kelyn raised an arm and called, “Dagni!”
The blond dwarf stood and raised a blunt hand in reply. She started up the hill, her troops in tow, and Kelyn started down. The avedra dogged his steps. He could fill his hands with fire in an instant if it turned Kelyn was a trusting fool.
“Commander,” the dwarf said, slamming a fist to her chest. Grief pulled her cragged, square face into a grimace. “We saw the fire from the slopes.” Her chin indicated the Silver Mountains and the dwarven city carved into the stone. “Seems our worst fears are confirmed. Our deepest condolences, sir. We feel to blame. Our cousins in the Drakhans were unable to hold back the tide. Their casualties have been enormous. We should have told you, years ago.”
Too late now for regrets of that kind. “My brother informed me. I do not blame you for this atrocity.” Only myself. Twenty years before, when the dwarven warriors marched south to fight for the Black Falcon in Fiera, Dagni stayed behind as foreman of the Thyrvael mines. They had flourished in her capable hands. Today, however, she didn’t look like a miner. She wore full armor, something Kelyn had never seen a dwarven matron do. The points of her pickaxe glinted sharply over her shoulders. As he surveyed the soldiers drawing up behind her, he saw that a good many were women, and all armed for battle. “You received a falcon from Thorn?”
Dagni nodded, jaw tight. “Aye, ‘the Black Falcon attacked his guests,’ it said and not much else. I expected Brugge to come racing up the Iron Road, angry as a hornet.”
Kelyn bowed his head. Rhian drifted awa
y a few steps, using the excuse of keeping watch on the horizon to avoid the dwarf’s eyes.
Dagni was no fool. “He’s slain, then?”
Two dozen dwarves had marched to the royal city as Valryk’s guests. Stubborn dwarves didn’t often abandon a battlefield. Master Brugge had fought atop a dining table, fending off six or seven soldiers with nothing but a helmet he’d torn from an enemy’s head. Numbers had finally overwhelmed him. Men wearing the uniform of the Falcon Guard dragged him down and washed over him like a black wave. “He was my friend,” Kelyn said. “I’m so sorry.”
Dagni muttered in her own language, something sharp like a curse, and turned away, a gloved hand smashed over her mouth. After a while she straightened her broad shoulders and said, “Thank the Mother our son is at sea. I would’ve lost them both.”
“Didn’t any of our men escape?” asked a young woman in the first row of fighters. A tear slid like liquid silver down her cheek. She shared Dagni’s square face and fair hair. Likely one of her eight daughters.
Kelyn cleared his throat, lest his voice crack. “No.”
A rustle of movement jangled through the companies as the widows and daughters, cousins and friends made the sign of sorrow, drawing curled fingers across their faces. A wail rose from somewhere in the middle phalanx. Another joined it and another, ripples of sorrow spreading fast.
“If there’s anything I can do…,” Kelyn offered. But what could he do for them now? Too late. He’d been blindsided just like everyone else gathered at Valryk’s table. But unlike most, he had seen the signs. He should’ve guessed. So many friends dead now because he had failed to heed the signs: Brugge, Garrs, Lander, Uncle Allaran and Cousin Ni’avh.
Dagni wagged a finger at him. “Ach, lad, don’t pity us. Give us orders instead. We’re in the middle of a cave-in, but things aren’t so hopeless that we can’t dig out.”
A stone seemed to lift off Kelyn’s chest. “I’m grateful beyond words. We’re in desperate need.”
Dagni’s hard face broadened with a brutal smile. “Together we will avenge our dead.”
Kelyn glanced away, humiliated. He didn’t even have a fortified position to strike from, or an army, or a king to back him. How was he to wage war? “There’s so much needs doing. I can’t see beyond the mess inside my own walls.”
Flint-sharp eyes examined the broken gate. “Stone and metal are our business, Commander. We can have that repaired by tomorrow morning. What else do you need?”
Kelyn led the dwarves through the sortie gate and into the courtyard. The answer was plain enough.
“Ai, Goddess’ bosom,” Dagni swore, glaring at the wreckage. “Damnable bogginai. They ruin everything with their stink. We have our ways, Commander, never you fear. Many an ogre den has fallen to our korzai, and all must be scoured to make them habitable.” She turned and barked orders over the heads of her soldiers. Some dispersed for the broken gate, some for the water well, the rest for the keep. Kelyn followed her up the steps and into the tainted darkness.
While Dagni took charge of clean-up, Kelyn saw to personal affairs. During their initial inspection of the keep, Thorn had discovered to his horror that his library had been laid waste. He seemed as sick over the ruined books as he was over the slaughtered household. Kelyn hadn’t had the heart to peek at the ledger room; he expected the same kind of destruction. He worked his way deep into the family wing, past rooms where his children had grown up, rooms that were now fit only for rats and ghosts. The ledger room lay in the farthest, quietest corner of the keep, beneath Thorn’s vast library. Here, Ilswythe’s history was told in lines of numbers and tallies, a thousand years’ worth of expenditures and profits, a tale of the land and its workers. Ancient scrolls filled cubbies; more recent bound tomes lined shelves. Kelyn was surprised to find things moved, a few ledgers splayed open, but nothing destroyed. Within these pages lay the secrets of how Ilswythe was run, how she survived. Why not annihilate these records? Why bother reading them?
A narrow door between shelves led to Etivva’s rooms. Kelyn’s inspection found the shaddra’s shrine to the Mother-Father utterly untouched. Not a single candle had been stomped or the veiled, faceless statue vandalized. Did ogres venerate the Mother-Father? Or was this the wish of their Elari commander?
Regardless, as Kelyn feared, someone had sniffed out the vault. In the back corner of the ledger room, the false shelf stood ajar. Surely Solandyr had shipped every coin to Bramoran. How was Kelyn to rebuild his holding? He swung aside the paneling and unlatched the vault’s iron door. Leather bags, velvet bags, canvas bags, all heavy with coin, still occupied the shelves. Kelyn opened a few to make sure his eyes told him the truth. Silver coins spilled into his hands. He let out a bark of laughter. A few empty bags lay to the side and coins had been stacked into neat columns. Nearby he found a parchment with foreign writing. Patterns of dots and lines like numbers. That bastard was tallying my silver, Kelyn realized. Why hadn’t Solandyr sped the coin to Bramoran as spoils? The only explanation was that the Elari had expected to hold Ilswythe indefinitely. “So sorry my brother interrupted you,” he muttered, then balled the parchment in his fist and closed the vault. His relief was so profound that he felt faint. He could rebuild, pay soldiers, and feed his family. But for how long? With ogres running rampant across the Northwest, he feared that the harvest, that commerce entire, had ground to a halt. The wheels that made the world turn had struck the insurmountable stone. A stone placed there by malicious hands. How to get them going again? The problem was too vast, the solution too elusive. Kelyn’s head throbbed. He could fix only his own house, one room at a time.
He returned to the Great Hall, past dwarves wrapping chain about an ogre’s ankles, and slunk through the unobtrusive door in the Hall’s back corner. His study had been ransacked. The walls were bare. Someone had removed all his father’s trophies. Fieran banners, shields, helms, all taken from one battlefield or another, had adorned most of the wall space, a testament to Lord Keth’s victories. The space above the mantelpiece was empty, too. That hurt most of all. The falcon blade was gone. Kelyn had never named it, not even when it first drew blood. He didn’t know why. The sword was just a tool, he supposed, like any hammer or spade, and what was romantic about the job it performed?
He righted the heavy andyr desk but found his chair was missing a leg. “Bloody vandals,” he grumbled and sat on the floor among the scattered papers instead. What purpose did it serve, wrecking the place like this? What were the ogres trying to accomplish? At least the rug remained and appeared to be largely free of blood and filth.
How tired he was. Bone-tired. He shouldn’t have sat down. Cruel to leave the work to the dwarves, to Laral and Thorn and Rhian, but the horrors of his labor caught up with him, and his mind longed to hide amid the soft oblivion of sleep. But there wasn’t a pillow left in the keep that he trusted. His bedchamber had been smeared with blood and marked with urine; the reek was so foul that he doubted he’d be able to sleep there again. He laid his head back against the window ledge and listened to the voices of dwarves, the clop of horse hooves in the corridors, the song of tools at the gate. The moment his eyes closed, he slept.
A pillar of light drifted through the doorway. As silver and bright as Thyrra, the Lady Moon, it whispered, “Tírandon.”
Kelyn woke with a start. The door was closed. No one had entered. Just a dream.
Someone knocked heavily. Dagni’s voice intruded. “Commander?”
Kelyn scrambled to his feet, scrubbed the haze of sleep from his eyes. He wished he could do the same for the cobwebs in his head. Beyond the window glowed a lavender sky awash with bright orange clouds. He had slept for several hours, it seemed. His body ached from pulling the cart and lifting the dead.
Dagni cracked open the door, saw him awake and invited herself in. She had removed her armor and rolled up her sleeves. Sweat darkened her armpits. “Pardons, sir, but Lord Kingshield wants your advice.”
On leaden legs, Kelyn followed her
into the Great Hall. The ogre corpses were gone. A team of dwarves scrubbed the floors, chanting in their own tongue. An acrid smell that was almost strong enough to cover the ogre stink burned his nostrils. “You move fast,” he said.
“Helps when you have lots of hands and a good deal of practice. We’re almost ready for a bonfire.”
At the foot of the dais, below the high table, Thorn knelt over the Elari’s body. Signs of the lightning bolt that had slain Solandyr were seen in glaring red lines on his cheeks and fingers. The fair, pearlescent skin had started to discolor. Thorn carefully removed one piece of armor at a time and lined them up on the high table. “What should we do with this son of a bitch?”
“Do with him? You woke me for that?”
Thorn was unsympathetic. “Thought maybe you might want to hang him from the tower. Or maybe I should take him back to his people and let them deal with him in their own way.”
Kelyn grimaced. “He’s not worth the trouble of hauling off. And once this place is clean, the last thing I want is another corpse stinking it up. He led these monsters, he can burn with them. Put him on top of the pile and be done with him.”
That seemed to suit Thorn. He and Dagni grabbed the body by the limbs and lifted it into a wheelbarrow.
“A moment more, Commander,” Dagni said, dusting her hands. “Thorn mentioned you’re missing a sword of your own?”
“My falcon blade, aye. Bloody beasts probably dumped it with the rest of my father’s trophies. I haven’t checked the armory yet.”
Dagni’s nod was slow and contemplative. “I remember that blade, and its forging. Top quality, for plain steel, but…” She shrugged. “You might as well leave it where it lies, Commander. It won’t do you much good. If bogginai and their leaders are using hutza, you’ll need the same.” She climbed the dais, picked up Solandyr’s sword belt and tossed the weapon to him. “Swing that around a bit. See how she feels.”
Kelyn unsheathed the blade, tossed the belt and scabbard aside. “You’re sure this is hutza?”