Even as she hurtled towards the ground with the wind booming in her ears she could hear the sound of Lightfast’s priceless sun-crystal being smashed to smithereens against some adamantine cliff. In those few moments it took to fall three hundred feet her mind cleared and she became extraordinarily calm. Composedly she took note of her surroundings so that when she landed she would know where she was in relation to the secret and tortuous route to the door of Ironstone Keep. It came to her, too, that everything in fact mattered a great deal. Curiously, it was the urisk she thought of, though briefly; that immortal creature Crowthistle. He lived, and so must she.
He had lived forever.
And so would she, regardless.
On the rocky rampart, Ashqalêthan snipers watched the sky-balloon’s demise and believed they had destroyed one of the weathermasters aiding Narngalis. ‘The mage sprang from the stricken vessel to avoid the flames, and fell to his death down a crevasse,’ they said, when reporting their success to Chohrab. The ailing King of Ashqalêth jubilantly and mistakenly told Uabhar that one of the last remaining weathermasters had been slain, and the King of Slievmordhu was gratified.
‘It is most likely the Storm Lord’s granddaughter who has fallen,’ said he with a smirk. ‘There was talk the chit had some shield of enchantment about her, but if she hurled herself from the basket to avoid being burned alive she must have been as perishable as the rest of us. Now the age-raddled Storm Lord is the only remaining threat.’
Contrary to Uabhar’s deductions Asrăthiel had jumped from the balloon, fallen three hundred feet and landed safely. Not so much as a bruise marred her flawless skin; not so much as a fingernail was chipped. After her body slammed into a rocky outcrop at high speed she merely picked herself up and looked around, trying to get her bearings.
She had guessed it would be that way.
Never had she taken the testing of her invulnerability to such limits, but there was no reason to suppose that plummeting from a great height could cause her injury, any more than fire, or water, or disease, or any bane of mortalkind had ever touched her.
Having survived the fall unscathed the damsel found herself standing on a ledge above a whistling, echoing gorge, deeply cloven. Overhead the stars were coming out, and by their feeble light, combined with her heightened sense of the atmosphere, she was able to discern her surroundings. Along tiny ledges jutting only inches from sheer walls she made her way. If the shelves petered out she dropped fearlessly to footholds further down the cliff face in a manner that would have made the most intrepid mountaineer think twice. If she missed her purchase she slid out of control, only to be brought up on the next projection, bones unbroken, flesh intact. She swung from rocky arches, climbed scarps and leaped across gulfs that would have made mortal hearts quail, and her strength never failed, though her heart pounded with excitement.
In this way the weathermage came, at length, near the door of Ironstone Keep well before Prince Ronin’s battalion. King Warwick’s watchmen, who had seen the balloon destroyed, spied her. Recognising her immediately they first poised stockstill, jaws agape—for, ignorant of her immortality, they had believed her to be dead, killed in the balloon crash. Overcoming their astonishment the men were filled with joy, and sent word to the two kings inside the fortress, who, greatly gladdened, sent mounted men-at-arms to escort the damsel to their inner sanctuary. By the time Ronin’s troops appeared, Asrăthiel was safely within.
The warriors of Slievmordhu surrounded the basalt portal, which was shut fast against them. The massive door was shaped like a gigantic wheel, and it could be rolled back and forth by use of heavy, geared machinery within, but could never be operated from outside; nor could it be burned like the wooden doors of the Red Lodge. Ironstone Keep was immune to fire.
On the south side of Ironstone Pass King Chohrab Shechem’s health had deteriorated. He lay, fevered, on a velvet couch in his ostentatious pavilion at the Ashqalêthan encampment, and his physicians were unable to cure him.
That night, in the wake of Prince Ronin and his battalion, Uabhar rode up the steeply winding paths with princes Kieran, Cormac and Fergus, to join Ronin in the vigil at the stone door. Confident of victory and wishing to appear warlike the king carried his personal arms: his shield, ‘Ocean’, his knife, ‘Victorious’, his spear ‘Slaughter’, and his sword ‘Gorm Glas’.
Wrapped in furs against the chill of the night Uabhar braced his feet upon the wide stone platform of the threshold. ‘Narngalis! Grïmnørsland! You have no hope of triumph,’ he shouted. His blustering had deserted him, now that he knew himself the victor. He resumed his old facade: unruffled, persuasive, eloquent. Buffeted by erratic highland updraughts, blazing torches flickered all around him, gripped in the hands of the mighty crowd of armed warriors that thronged outside the door. The flames spat out droplets of hot pitch and resin, throwing weird shadows into chasm and cleft. Firelight splashed like honey against louring cliffs. ‘You have walked into your own tomb! You will starve. Dead kings beneath the mountain are you!’ Uabhar jeered. Silence answered him. ‘Yet I am not unmerciful. If you come forth unarmed, I will treaty with you. Come forth and live!’
The wind careered through cavity and rift, keening with a disquieting dissonance that resembled mourning at a funeral and set on edge the teeth of the listeners. Their apprehension deepened when it came to them that they hearkened to the sound of actual sobbing. Here in the Black Crags, amongst the adamant slabs and sudden drops and sheer rock faces, the wailing sounded louder. Eerily it echoed and ricocheted. Weepers, the wights that heralded deaths amongst humankind, were once again broadcasting their portents of doom.
‘It appears that Wyverstone and Torkilsalven give no credence to your good intentions, sir,’ Prince Ronin said to his father. He was standing at a short distance from Uabhar, dressed in plate and mail, helmed and fully armed. Kieran, similarly equipped, waited close by.
Slievmordhu’s monarch stepped back from the door, his spurs jingling. ‘Bring in the quarriers,’ he cried.
Several men ran forward, garbed in the stout leather jerkins and heavy boots of mine workers. Some rested ladders against the door and ascended them; others worked at the portal’s base. All used augers to drill oblique holes, angled downwards, into the rock. They would fill these strategically positioned worm burrows with water, before plugging them securely. It was an old and effective mining technique. Overnight, when temperatures dropped below freezing point at these high altitudes, the water would turn to ice, expand, and crack open the stone.
‘Stand back!’ Uabhar ordered his troops. ‘Give the diggers space to work!’ The soldiers complied, gathering about the door’s threshold in horseshoe formation.
Even as the miners worked the wind dropped, and clammy steams came coiling out of the hollows of the mountains. Eying those mists the men shuddered and drew closer together.
Within the yard-thick walls of Ironstone Keep the kings and princes of Narngalis and Grïmnørsland presided over a large gathering of their foremost advisors, including Asrăthiel. Sentinels, looking down upon the rocky platform in front of the door from spy-holes high in the outer walls, kept the assembly informed as to the movements and demands of those who besieged the fortress. The debate had been long and intense, though marked by solemn composure. They made a striking picture, the two royal families standing together beneath the high-vaulted ceilings; the dark-haired, grey-eyed Narngalish in porphyry and indigo, their tabards emblazoned with the emblem of a sword; the blond, blue-eyed westerners in aquamarine and turquoise.
As pale as pearls was the beautiful face of the weather-mage, and her aspect was bleak. The inner turmoil she had suffered since receiving the tidings of her kindred’s fate was like a sickness. Often to be seen staring blankly into the distance, she spoke very little and kept to herself. She never smiled.
‘Alas,’ King Warwick was saying, ‘my plans have come to naught. I intended to hold the pass until you arrived, Thorgild, then abandon the fortress and let the
enemy advance piecemeal through the defile so that my troops could pick them off with ease. Now the foe has discovered the door and I realise my mistake, for we find ourselves trapped in the keep. I can only blame my lack of foresight on battle fatigue.’
Asrăthiel said, ‘We ought to take advantage of the hours of darkness, and the chaos of the milling crowds before the door.’
‘Indeed. We shall rush the enemy and overwhelm him!’ said Warwick.
‘Agreed!’ Thorgild said, clasping the hand of the Narngalish king in a firm grip of friendship. ‘And when we have broken free my trumpets will sound from the peaks, and my cavalry will come pouring through the pass, to our aid!’
Thorgild’s youngest son, Gunnlaug, was particularly eager to fight. ‘We have been too long on the road,’ he said. ‘Let us begin the butchery! There are heads to be broken, and plunder to be got. Father, lend me your sword, that I might make you proud.’
‘You shall not have it. This is no time to be playing at heroes,’ his father said sharply.
‘Then,’ Gunnlaug replied, ‘I plan to win myself the sword of Uabhar, Gorm Glas!’ He drew out his own blade and brandished it defiantly.
‘We must all work together, Gunnlaug,’ said Thorgild. ‘The purpose of this battle is not merely to win personal glory. Your bragging becomes tiresome.’
The prince’s face congested with dark blood. He thrust out his jaw. ‘I will prove myself braver than any man here,’ he said.
Before he had finished his declaration a sentinel came running. ‘They are drilling the door!’ he exclaimed. ‘By morning they will have broken it!’
Warwick gazed at the man in consternation. ‘Then there is no time to be lost!’ he cried.
‘To arms!’ shouted Thorgild.
Prince Gunnlaug had departed even before the order was issued. He raced through the labyrinthine halls of the keep and climbed a steep stair. Halfway up he came to a halt and began to pull crumbling masonry from a window embrasure that had long ago been bricked up. On first entering the keep he had explored it, found this potential breach and kept the information to himself. When the aperture was clear he squeezed through, dropped to the ground and stole away into the night mists. After creeping around the outside of the walls to the siege-tunnel door he drew his sword and sprang amongst the miners who drilled at the stone door, bewildering them, kicking aside their cressets and lanterns, slaying four with his initial onslaught and striking terror into their hearts with his savage war cry.
Uabhar peered into the murk, unable to glimpse anything save for a swift-swirling glimmer of lamplight upon the silhouette of a warrior. Even in the confusion, the king’s cunning did not desert him. He commanded his men to be silent. They obeyed immediately, whereupon he shouted into the gloom at the door, ‘Who is this champion that wreaks havoc amongst my men?’
The chest of the lone combatant inflated with pride.
‘I am Gunnlaug, son of Thorgild Torkilsalven,’ he crowed, yet he kept out of sight, in the places where the vapours curdled thickest and the shadows were darkest.
‘Ah, Gunnlaug,’ Uabhar said into the blinding haze, and his tone now was sweet. ‘You and I have never argued. There is no dispute between you and me. I count you amongst the mightiest warriors that ever lived. If you cease your attacks upon my men and come over to me I will bestow magnificent gifts upon you—ten thousand acres of land, a seat beside me at my table and my authority to support you. How do you like my offer?’
The son of Thorgild, unseen, wavered.
Uabhar’s instincts, however, were keen. In the silence he sensed not denial, but imminent success. ‘Gunnlaug,’ he went on, ‘being the youngest son you will not inherit much land. You are well aware that your father is trapped in an awkward corner, with no hope of victory.’
For months Gunnlaug had been hearkening to the whispers of certain sly druids in Grïmnørsland who, on the instructions of Primoris Virosus, had been talking of Uabhar’s growing might, and speculating that he would one day become High King of Tir. He thought, Better the generosity of the winning side than the good favour of the losing side, and he recalled, too, with anger, his father’s reprimands. In that instant he made his decision. ‘I’m with you,’ he said to Uabhar, emerging from darkness into the light. And Uabhar in front of his fighting men welcomed the prince, grinning with glee in the knowledge he had acquired a warrior of great skill and strength, while depriving Thorgild of the same, and his son besides.
Such was the perfidy of Gunnlaug, last-born son of Thorgild Torkilsalven.
But Halvdan, suspicious of his brother’s lone departure, had noted that he headed for the side stair. Subsequently he stationed himself with the sentinels at the arrow loops and shot holes above the siege-tunnel door, peering through the vapours, watching for any sign that the miners had broken the stone. From that vantage point he witnessed the entire scene. When he saw Gunnlaug change sides so easily his wrath overmastered him and he could no longer rein himself in.
A helm of Narngalish steel lay at hand, a conical barbute with a reinforced nasal. Halvdan jammed it upon his head, then seized his father’s sword and shield. He raced in his brother’s footsteps, taking the treads two at a time, and when he saw the ruined embrasure he knew it had been Gunnlaug’s exit and jumped out. It was not long before he too had circumnavigated the walls and reached the mist-shrouded stone sill of the round door, where Uabhar’s troops were gathered.
Shouting, ‘While I breathe, I never shall forsake my country!’ he sprang to the attack. Like a spinning-top he whirled with such rapidness and dexterity that none of the men he encountered could stand against him. He hewed this way and that, making a bloody circuit of his foes. Brilliant sparks showered from his sword’s edge when steel bit steel.
The watchers above the portal of the keep saw this, and one hastened downstairs to take the news to the two kings, shouting it aloud as he ran. Men ran hither and thither, seeking the exit through which the princes had passed, so that soldiers could be sent to Halvdan’s aid, but no one had seen Thorgild’s sons depart and it was not known which direction they had taken in that maze of stone.
Witnessing Halvdan’s massacre from amidst a phalanx of bodyguards, Uabhar smiled. He murmured to one of his captains, ‘Another misguided hero, and a superb fighter like the first. Challenge him. He will be as venal as the one before him.’ To his soldiers he shouted, ‘Fall back!’ and they withdrew.
Uabhar had misguided notions of this second warrior’s character. His captain offered generous terms to him if he would change sides, but Halvdan would not even deign to listen. He was patriotic in the extreme, and above all, loyal to the people he loved. Having carved a lonely place for himself in the dimness before the stone door, surrounded by the bodies of the fallen, it came to him that there remained one way of saving his household and his kingdom from certain defeat. Hoarsely, panting for breath after his exertions, he called out, ‘I invoke my entitlement to a duel on behalf of Thorgild of Grïmnørsland. According to custom, this quarrel between kingdoms can be settled by single combat. I hold Uabhar Ó Maoldúin bound to answer to me with his body for this belligerence towards the kingdoms of the west and north. Let him stand against me!’
Uabhar strained his eyes, squinting into the gloom. ‘Who is it that offers this challenge?’ he asked Gunnlaug.
‘By his voice, it is Halvdan, my brother. And methinks he brandishes my father’s sword and shield, which were never offered to me.’
‘Halvdan? He who is friend to my son Kieran?’
‘The very same.’
Uabhar called back, ‘Your challenge to the house of Ó Maoldúin is accepted.’ He summoned the crown prince to his side, cutting short the prince’s outburst of surprise and distress that his father would risk his own life. ‘Let me speak first, Kieran,’ Uabhar said. ‘It is Halvdan Torkilsalven who makes the challenge of single combat to our household. You and he were born on the same night, if I remember correctly, or so your mother forever harps.’
‘And by the rules of single combat I have the right to choose someone else to fight in my stead. One man from the household of Ó Maoldúin must stand against him, and I deem you the best of us.’
The prince stood stock-still, speechless with a new kind of dread.
‘This night,’ said Uabhar, ‘Halvdan wields his father’s sword. As the two of you share a birth night, so you shall share the honour of bearing your father’s arms. Here is my shield, my knife, and my sword Gorm Glas. Conduct yourself courageously in contest against the son of Torkilsalven. If you do not vanquish him the house of Ó Maoldúin will lose the throne of Slievmordhu.’
Uabhar’s captain proffered the shield and weapons to the crown prince, but Kieran ignored him. He stared incredulously at his father. All around them the pinnacles of the mountains rose out of the brume, their summits outlined against star-filled skies. From somewhere beyond the vapours came the muffled sobbing of unseen weepers.
‘Father,’ said Kieran, ‘do you mean that I should go in combat against Halvdan?’
‘The Fates have laid their benison upon these weapons, and that will surely preserve you.’
‘My lord, since our earliest years, Halvdan and I have been the best of comrades!’
‘I daresay the son of Torkilsalven does believe himself to be fond of you,’ said Uabhar, articulating his words with exactness. ‘That is, of course, the beauty of the scheme.’
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