Rather than depressing him, this feeling liberated him. He began to see the small things. The sharpness of the leaves backlit by sunlight. The skitter of sand crabs dislodged by the break of the waves. The shine of sweat on a woman's neck as she lifted her arms to clip clothes to a line. At times the sharpness of the world stole his breath. These sights were everywhere. Thousands of them in a single day. There weren't enough eyes to see them all. Perhaps that was the worst of what was to come: soon enough those eyes, already too few, would be lessened by another few thousand, leaving that many fewer witnesses to the world's golden wonder.
And sometimes life felt no different at all. The specter of war shuttered businesses across the city, but had no appreciable effect on Narashtovik's public houses. If anything, they grew more boisterous than ever, with laughing drunks spilling out the front doors by noon and by night. It was just such a place Dante and Blays found themselves on one of those summer nights when the sun threatens to never set at all—it was past nine o'clock, by the cathedral bells, yet the sun still hovered above the western forests, splashing the tavern with yellows and reds. To combat the too-snug humidity, Blays ordered mugs of summer ales, light and sweet and basement-cooled. They drank within the shade of the wall, fanned by the breeze through the open windows.
"We could tell the redshirts we surrendered last month." Blays wiped foam from his upper lip. "Just tell them to turn around and go home. Maybe by the time they got all the way to Setteven they'd be too tired and sweaty to bother coming back."
"Sure," Dante said. "Hoist a few of the king's banners over the Citadel, smile a bit, offer them our nicest teas."
"I'm not giving them any tea."
"Our third-finest, then. Those barbarians will never notice the difference."
"Consider it added to the list." Blays appeared to be taking actual notes. He squinted over his parchment, lips moving soundlessly. He dotted the sheet with his quill. "Now then. Alternately, we burn the city to the ground ourselves—quite safely, of course—then spread the rumor Arawn's already taken his vengeance on his treacherous servants."
Dante sipped his beer. "No good. That would just entice them to march in and piss on the ashes. Which I assume we'd be hiding in."
"You can't hide in ashes. One wrong sneeze and the jig is up."
"Fine. We'll hide in smoke instead. Very difficult to piss effectively on smoke."
Blays' quill scribbled. "Piss...on...smoke."
"It's called the Dead City, right? Maybe we can convince them it's full of deadly, deadly ghosts."
"Why don't you build a few tunnels beneath the city for us to move around through?"
"Could be useful," Dante said.
Blays snapped his fingers. "Got it. Build big old pits and camouflage them so the redshirts just march right into them. Like giant tiger traps."
"That could work on the front ranks. But after they've fallen, that will be the end of it. Anyone who's too stupid to not wander into a giant hole would have already stabbed themselves to death trying to eat dinner."
"So pair it with a giant distraction. A two-hundred-foot naked lady blazed across the sky! They'll be too busy goggling at the heavens to see the hole right in front of them."
Dante took a long drink. "This is not getting us any closer to not being murdered."
"You've gotten pretty good at digging ditches without a shovel, aren't you? Why don't you bury their whole army under an avalanche?"
"I don't have that kind of power. Anyway, we'd have to lure them under a giant cliff or something, and Narashtovik is sadly lacking in giant cliffs." Dante rubbed his eyes. "What did we learn at Dollendun?"
Blays narrowed his eyes. "That explosions are fun and hordes of armed men on horseback aren't."
"Cavalry will still be a problem. The city's too big to block all the streets. What can we do about that?"
Blays drove his finger down into the table. "That's when you spring the tiger trap."
"That might work. What else?"
"Man, I don't know. How many tiger trap-related ideas can one man come up with?"
"It pains me to say this, but will you forget the tiger traps? So we don't have any bombs. We don't have any loons. What do we have that they don't?"
Blays shrugged. "Two giant sets of balls."
Dante rolled his eyes. "Unless we plan to roll them down the hill at the redshirts, I don't see how that's useful."
"And one giant penis."
"Is that all we've got? Tiger traps and courage?"
Blays drank contemplatively. "Seems to me the real lesson in Dollendun is when they've got ten thousand men, tricks can only take you so far."
"Narashtovik's only got a standing army of about two thousand," Dante said. "And half of those troops were more of a sitting-army as recently as last year. Their training's not going to match Setteven's soldiers. I don't know how many men Olivander will bring back—a few hundred? At least they'll know which end of a sword is which. That's more than can be said for some of the citizens we've conscripted."
"Oh well," Blays said.
"Oh well?"
"As in 'Oh well, not much we can do about it now but have a drink.'" Blays did just that, then laughed. "Sorry. Is that obnoxious? For some reason I just can't convince myself to care."
Dante grinned. "Same here. It's like this is happening to another person."
"Another person who I also don't care about."
"Have we seen too much? Become jaded to even the worst horrors?"
"I don't think that's it." Blays stood, mug in hand. "I mean, if I find out the keg is empty, I'm still going to scream pretty damn loud."
That was the last they spoke of the invasion that night. Dante spent the next few days wandering around the city looking for opportune places to sink tunnels and tiger traps. Hammers rapped constantly as men boarded up their houses. Grocers began to shutter their empty shops, too; the remaining citizens had begun to hoard, buying up all foodstuffs in sight. Kav assigned the monks to update the decades-old system of rationing Narashtovik's granary. Dante began a tunnel to link the Citadel's basements to the far-off catacombs of the carneterium. An escape hatch, should worse come to worst.
Olivander rode into the city, the banners of Barden flying from his troop of 120 horsemen and another six hundred foot soldiers gathered from the east. He'd heard the gist of the recent infighting—Wint's betrayal, the attempt to set the Council against itself, Dante's proof and Wint's subsequent suicide—yet was still shocked to hear the story in whole.
"It sounds like the king's already half ruined Narashtovik," he said in his steady baritone. "Now he sends his army to finish the job."
"Think they'll have enough to do it?" Dante said.
From the steps to the Citadel's front door, Olivander gazed over the men being shuffled across the courtyard for the barracks and stables. There were clearly too many; some would have to be quartered in the abandoned houses beyond the gates.
"I got fewer men than I'd like," Olivander said. "But we may have enough. If the walls hold. If the people fight back. If the Council, depleted as it is, holds strong." The goateed man glanced down at Dante. "What do you think?"
"I have no idea. Something this big is beyond my capacity to predict."
Olivander grinned. "You admit not knowing something? Are we sure Wint didn't kill you and replace you with an impostor before he died?"
"Perhaps I'm getting older," Dante scowled. "But I suppose you'd know better than me."
Olivander snorted, but he was pleased to see Dante and the guards' progress drilling the conscripts. He took over from there to march the fresh soldiers around Narashtovik's boulevards, leaving Dante with even less to do. Men toiled in the streets from sunup to sundown, dragging rubble across the thoroughfares, erecting wooden walls with spiked prongs at key junctures.
Dante finished up his tunnel and, after consultation with Olivander, set to work on a tiger trap just before the intersection of a deliberately unblocked street halfway betwee
n the Pridegate and the Ingate. There, he convinced the stones to roll away, the dirt to part and hold. By the next day, it was twenty feet deep, ten across, and a full forty feet wide. Men sawed thin planks and laid them over the gap. It would hardly divert the enemy, but with a little luck, it might cripple a cavalry charge at a key moment.
The latest scouts returned. The king's army was marching north. If they didn't slow down, they'd be on Narashtovik within three days.
The buzz of activity became an ear-drilling whine. Dante went to the outskirts of the city to ruin the roads, littering them with ditches and holes. The day before the redshirts were expected to arrive, a man ran in from the outlying houses, screaming and waving his staff above his head.
"They're coming! The enemy is here! The king's army is upon us!"
The nether leapt unbidden to Dante's hands. His heart leapt unbidden to his throat. A quarter mile of low houses blocked the view between himself and the southbound road. He jogged to the road and headed out among the deserted homes, many of which had been abandoned decades and decades ago during the repeated sackings of Narashtovik. Some were no more than empty lots, weeds growing among the teeth-like foundation stones. He peeled off his shirt, a light doublet emblazoned with the sigil of Narashtovik. The redshirts might ignore a shirtless commoner. An official of Narashtovik would face a much more critcal reception.
He passed a row of pine trees, their scent thick on the sun-baked air. Three hundred yards down the road, a legion of men marched into the hinterlands of the city, hundreds strong.
He turned to dash back to the walls and raise the alarm, then stopped dead in his tracks. The men weren't wearing uniforms. There was something wrong with their builds, too. Their heads were too high, their shoulders too bulky. Dante turned to meet them. He carried the nether, too, but as he grew closer, he let it fizzle away. When he saw the man at their front, he broke into a grin.
"Mourn!" he cried. "I thought you were dead!"
"Surprise." Mourn's beard was thicker. Beneath smears of soot and dirt, his bare arms showed fresh scars and half-healed cuts.
"Are you all right? How have you been?"
"If the period of my life before the last few weeks can be considered good, the last few weeks should be classified as not-good."
"Same here. I was imprisoned for murder, but it turned out I didn't do it." Dante smacked his thigh, smiling so hard his cheeks hurt. "What's happening in the Territories?"
Mourn tipped his head. "A lot of losses. A lot of deaths. For the redshirts, too, but those creatures multiply like they are not actually humans, but flies in crafty human disguises."
"I know what you mean. They're supposed to be here tomorrow."
"Supposed? Did you invite them? Because it would be strange to invite someone in to burn down your city and forcibly impregnate your women."
"It was an accidental invitation," Dante said. "I believe it was left on His Lordship Cassinder's doorstep during some ridiculous hunt for a make-believe bow?"
Mourn smiled for the first time since his arrival. "The world is very odd, isn't it?"
He had some four hundred norren with him. The Nine Pines and Dreaming Bears, along with the remnants of five other clans and a hodgepodge of survivors separated from their warrior-families during the skirmishes ongoing across the Territories. Mourn's troop would be no small addition to the city's numbers.
Blays clapped when he saw Mourn. Lira gave him her small polite smile. Many of the guards stared; norren freemen weren't uncommon in Narashtovik, but few lived in the city on a permanent basis. They probably hadn't strolled into the city in such numbers in generations.
Dante offered to put them up in the rowhouses just beyond the Citadel walls, but Mourn refused, electing to encamp in a park down by the bay instead. That night, the four of them went to a public house as they had so often months before, but something had changed. Silence stalked their halting conversation. Even Blays was hunted by it, smiling vaguely and nodding distantly when addressed. As soon as they finished swapping news of the days since Dollendun, they paid more attention to their beers than to each other.
Scouts came and went throughout the morning. Dante stayed close to the Citadel and the news the riders brought there. In the morning, the redshirts were ten miles away. By noon, they'd cut that to five. Guard-commanders shouted orders across the courtyard, directing their troops to the walls. The three sets of doors to the Pridegate were sealed. Horns squawked from across the city. Young men hauled arrows and swords and bows and spears to the walls. Olivander saddled the cavalry and ran sweeps of the outskirts in search of enemy scouts and sneak attacks.
Mid-afternoon, Narashtovik's scouts reported the king's army had encamped in the pine forests a mile from the city. The smoke of scores of campfires rose from the black woods. As the army showed no signs of coming any further that day, Olivander pulled most of the men from the Pridegate but doubled the scouts beyond it.
In the neverending dusk, Dante went to his balcony to read and soothe his nerves. Instead, in the warmth of the setting sun, he fell asleep. He woke in total darkness and bolted to his feet. Not because of any horns or fires or signs of war. But because he'd meant to see his friends before whatever came with the morning. Now it was too late.
He paced his room, angry with himself. A few minutes later, a door clicked in the hallway. He poked out his head, hoping to see Blays, but Lira strode down the hall instead, wearing shorts, a thin shirt, and a knife.
"Is Blays awake?" he said.
She shook her head. "Wore him out."
"I'm sure he's as happy about that as I am unhappy to hear about it."
She laughed. She didn't do that often. "What did you need to talk to him about?"
Dante shrugged. "Nothing much. Impending death. The end of the world. That sort of thing."
"Are you nervous about tomorrow?"
"Does feeling the urge to barf up your skeleton count as nervous?"
"That depends. Have you done anything to provoke your skeleton?"
Dante laughed. "I need to ask you something."
She raised an eyebrow. "If you really need to ask, you wouldn't ask whether you could."
"Do you two love each other?"
"Does that matter?"
"It probably does to Blays."
She answered without hesitation. "Yes."
"Good," Dante said. "Then you don't owe me any longer."
"Says who?"
"You owe him—and he owes you."
Lira tipped back her chin. "I can have more than one duty or loyalty. He knows who I am. I won't change for him."
Dante scowled in the darkness of the hallway. "What if I told you I value his life above mine? So the highest service you can pay me is to keep him safe tomorrow?"
"Then I'd call you a liar."
"Don't you dare."
She'd been flirting with a smile, but quickly cast it aside. "Are you serious?"
"It's probably safer to pretend that I am."
"Lyle's balls, you're intense sometimes." Lira stared him down. "You saved my life. That kind if debt isn't penciled onto a ledger. It's chiseled on stone. Unerasable."
His jaw tightened. "This war probably would have come eventually. The norren would never stand to be enslaved forever. It's a war I still believe in. But I share too much of the blame for why it's happening here and now. If that caused any harm to come to him..."
"Then what?"
"I don't know."
"I don't either." She nodded once. "I'll keep him safe."
She drew her knife and cut her right palm. Her eyelid twitched. She handed him the knife. He followed suit, but had taken a blade to his own skin too often to flinch.
"What's this?" he said.
"It's how we seal agreements in the islands."
They shook. Her hand was wet and warm. When their hands dropped, he sealed both wounds with a balm of nether. She flicked her hand, glancing down sharply.
He smiled. "No sense going to war w
ith a cut on your sword hand."
"I wouldn't have noticed." She smiled back. "I'll see you in the morning."
She walked toward the stairwell and headed down. On a whim, Dante decided to roam the city himself. He descended to the basement and took his tunnel to the carneterium. There, he emerged into the sweaty night and climbed the cemetery to the hill. Cally was there. So was Larrimore. Samarand and the Council members who'd died beneath the White Tree were there, too, although he'd forgotten where their tombs stood.
He nodded in whatever direction they may be in and continued up the grassy slope. He wasn't here for them anyway. It smelled like fresh leaves and a warm sea. Bugs of all kinds chirped and whirred. Beneath the ground, they silently ate. He touched the nether in the soil, felt the blank spaces of the coffins embedded within it.
Fires twinkled in the forest to the south. At the crown of the hill, Dante tipped back his head. The stars twinkled just as brightly. Jorus, too. The polestar. The crux of Arawn's mill. Some people prayed to Arawn—god of death, god of cycles—but Dante didn't. He knew the ancient god would pay him no mind.
So he hoped instead.
When he finished, he returned to his room and slept dreamlessly. He was up with dawn's first deathly blue hints. He dressed, put on his metal armbands and his sword, and went to the walls of the Pridegate without stopping for a breakfast he might not be able to keep down. The city was as silent as a snowfall. In the gray of the mounting dawn, Olivander was already atop the Pridegate, watching the city as if preparing to grab it by the throat.
"You didn't have walls in Dollendun, did you?" the middle-aged man said.
Dante shook his head. "We built a rampart, but that just encouraged them to come in through the side instead."
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