Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  “Never, my prince.” About this, at least, he could speak his mind honestly. “We must do whatever we can to preserve our people.”

  “Exactly,” said Pratiki. “And we must trust our beloved monarch to know the best way to do that.”

  “Of course, Highness. I hear the queen in your voice.”

  “Just so.” Pratiki grew excited again. “Look now! See what is coming! They have heard the hammers striking—they have come to the summons!”

  Viyeki saw the earth bulging in front of the castle’s curtain wall in several different places, like the disruption of the soil above tunneling moles—but only if those moles were the size of houses. But Viyeki could not concentrate on what he was seeing, because an astounding idea had seized him.

  By the Garden that birthed us, I believe that even Prince Pratiki does not know what the queen seeks! The idea was breathtaking. Not even a prince of the royal house of Hamakha knows the secret of this Witchwood Crown!

  * * *

  The sudden appearance of Norn troops outside the walls of Naglimund seemed as unreal as a nightmare. Sir Aelin and Captain Fayn scrambled down the tower steps and ran across the common toward the wall of the inner keep, but by the time they had climbed the battlements a wedge-shaped section of the outer wall had already cracked and collapsed. The shapes of the first besiegers clambered over the rubble into the outer keep—huge, hairy shapes.

  “Aedon preserve us,” cried Fayn. “Those are giants!”

  Aelin watched the monsters pick their way through the ragged hole in the curtain wall and across piles of fallen masonry, but as terrifying as they were, he was most astonished by what they seemed to be carrying.

  “Norn soldiers are riding on their shoulders,” he said.

  “What are you talking about? I see only those white, shaggy hell-beasts. Your eyes are better than mine.”

  “The giants are carrying Norns with hammers!” Aelin insisted. His great-uncle Eolair had told him that the fairies used magic hammers at Naglimund during the Storm King’s War, but he had thought it was the Sithi who had done that, not their Norn cousins.

  The sentries on the remaining lengths of the outer wall had regained their feet, and now rushed to either side of the breach and began firing arrows down at the invaders, but although one of the hammer-carriers was hit and knocked off a giant’s back, the rest quickly made their way over the broken stones and started up the slope toward the inner keep. Fayn shouted for the castle’s defenders to hurry to the battlements, and soon archers stood on either side of him along the wall of the inner keep, loosing their shafts down at the approaching Norns and their hulking, two-legged steeds. At Fayn’s next shouted order, a group of pikemen rushed out of the gate to engage with the attackers, but Aelin could see already that the brave defenders were not enough to overcome the giants. Each sweep of a hairy, pale arm sent a mortal soldier flying, and none of them rose after they struck the ground.

  “We will need more soldiers!” Aelin called to Captain Fayn.

  The cries of defenders and the roars of the shaggy Hunën drifted up from below. The giants had now set down their Norn riders and formed a wide defensive circle around them. Then, as if seized by madness, instead of continuing toward the inner walls, the hammer-wielding Norns began to strike the ground with their long mallets.

  “What are they doing?” said Fayn. “Torches! Bring torches here!”

  Dozens more of Naglimund’s mortal defenders crowded onto the front of the castle wall to stare down at the dead grass and dark earth covering the common below them. Torchlight only made it clearer that the castle’s defenders were rapidly being slaughtered by the collared, armor-clad giants.

  Fayn too could see the sally had been useless. “Fall back,” he shouted to the defenders below. “Men of Naglimund, fall back to protect the keep!”

  Even as he said it, the Norns brought their hammers down on the hard ground one more time, then halted. For a moment near-silence fell across the outer keep, and although a few flaming arrows still plummeted to the ground from the castle walls, the Norns and giants seemed not to care.

  Aelin could make no sense of it. The hammermen and giants had only created a small breach in the castle’s outer curtain wall, but if the gap was big enough for Hunën, then the nimble Norn soldiers should be scrambling through after them like a swarm of white ants. Instead, most of their army still waited outside the wall. As fearful as he already was, Aelin felt an even greater terror beginning.

  Why don’t the rest attack? By the gods, why? What are those damned White Foxes waiting for?

  A low noise like an unending clap of thunder shook the ground, making Aelin’s bones shiver and his ears itch. The castle’s curtain wall suddenly began to wobble where the first breach had been made; a heartbeat later, huge chunks of stone began to shake loose, then the ragged edges of the breach fell away and the hole in the wall opened even wider—but still the Norns waiting outside did not rush in.

  “Fayn!” Aelin called. “Fayn, something evil is happening at the outer wall!”

  As he watched, the curtain wall suddenly heaved. A large portion of it on either side of the breach simply crumbled into pieces. Shocked, Aelin could only wonder if the Norns’ magic had summoned some invisible giant to join the siege. Then he saw something vast moving toward them, slithering out of the wreckage of the curtain wall.

  No, he realized, not something, just the evidence of something—the raised ridge of a vast shape tunneling beneath the ground, impossibly swift and headed toward them. By the immense mass of soil it displaced, tumbling entire houses as it surged toward the inner keep, Aelin knew it must be unimaginably huge.

  The giants and the Norn soldiers who had reached the inner keep all scattered as the hidden thing plowed through the spot where their hammers had earlier struck the earth. For a moment its back crested above the roiling earth, a rounded, mud-caked immensity like ship’s hull turned upside down. Aelin, full of horror and surprise, thought he recognized its shape.

  A cave-borer? But so big! He had seen signs of the many-legged digging beasts in the Grianspog Mountains, and had heard tales of some growing in the depths to the size of prize bulls, but this thing, whatever it was, must be a dozen times larger—as big as a barn.

  Then Aelin had no more time to wonder: the hidden shape swam toward them through the soil with horrifying speed until it struck the foundations of the keep’s inner gate.

  The wall shuddered and swayed beneath Aelin and the rest like a sapling in storm winds. He and Captain Fayn tumbled against the battlements, struggling to stay on their feet, but half a dozen of Fayn’s men closer to the impact tumbled screeching off the wall. Then, as those who remained stared down in wide-eyed horror, a shape that seemed possible only in a nightmare burst up through the soil beneath them, its many legs flailing. It was a cave-borer as Aelin had guessed, plated like a woodlouse but impossibly huge. The vast jaws that could crush stone clacked once, then it fell back into its hole and began shoving against the roots of the castle wall again.

  “Run!” Aelin shouted. “It is an earth-borer as big as a house. It will eat the walls right from beneath our feet!”

  Fayn, to his credit, did not stop to question this impossibility, but bellowed for all his men to follow. They sprinted toward the stairs while the entire battlement rocked beneath them like a ship in a storm. The borer rammed the sunken foundations of the wall over and over. The last thing Aelin saw before he joined the exodus was the rest of the Norn army swarming through the breach in the curtain wall.

  Aelin hurried down the steps, certain that they would collapse at any moment. “Hernystiri!” he shouted. “Men of Hernystir, where are you? It is Sir Aelin calling you! Come to me! Come to me!”

  As he reached the bottom of the earth of the inner bailey the entire wall began to sway behind him. Dozens more Erkynlandish soldiers were hurrying toward them from different
parts of the castle, but he and Captain Fayn shouted at them to stay back. Within moments the part of the battlements where Aelin and Fayn had just stood sagged, then one of the tower tops crumbled, dumping chunks of mortared stone as big as wine barrels into the inner keep.

  Once they had led the remaining defenders to a safer distance, Fayn bent to catch his breath, then straightened up, his face almost as pale as a Norn’s. “By the mercy of Elysia, Mother of God. Giants. Digging monsters. Like in the old stories. What can we do against such things? How can we keep them out?”

  “We can do little without numbers,” Aelin said, “and I fear it is too late to defend the walls at all. See, they have more of those great, digging earthwicks—the walls are beginning to fall in more places now. The White Foxes are breaking their way in on all sides. We can only retreat to the keep.”

  Fayn shouted to those who could hear him to fall back toward the center of the fortress. “But what of you and your men?” he asked Aelin. “This is not your battle.”

  “It is now. We could not leave you to fight alone.”

  As he spoke, the wall they had just quitted rumbled once more and slumped even farther, disgorging huge chunks of stone that crushed both fleeing soldiers and entire houses with equal ease. As Aelin lunged away from the last few bounding fragments of mortared wall, he saw that the giants who had brought in the first Hammer-wielders were now climbing through the gap in the inner wall, and even as he watched, two of Naglimund’s retreating defenders were obliterated by the swing of a huge war club.

  “Haste!” Fayn shouted, voice raw with anger and grief. “Fall back to the keep, all of you! We cannot stop them here!”

  As the captain and Aelin hurried the surviving defenders toward the center of the fortress, one of the pursuing giants howled at them in what sounded like mocking triumph, waving the limp corpse of a mortal soldier above its head like a banner. Aelin felt a flush of shame. He knew he should run, but the sight of a murdered man being waved like a dirty rag filled him with sudden rage. He picked up a piece of the wall as big as two fists and hurled it at the giant. Any stone he could throw was far too small to do any serious damage, but the missile struck the giant’s shaggy leg and the creature barked in pain. It flung away the guardsman’s body, then lurched after Aelin and Fayn.

  “By the head of Aedon, now you’re done it!” Captain Fayn cried. “Run, man!”

  They were far behind the other survivors, and within a few moments Aelin could hear the giant growling and panting behind them. He grabbed Fayn’s elbow and yanked him to one side just before a club the size of a tree trunk smashed down, but he was too late to save the guard captain from a second blow that came a moment later. It hit with a dreadful muffled smack and flung the captain two dozen paces or more through the air. Fayn was dead before he landed, half his head gone and his limbs bent in all wrong directions, like a shriveled spider in a dusty corner.

  Aelin ached to avenge him, but knew that with no weapon but his sword, he stood no chance against the hairy creature. And as long as his men were alive and needed him, he also had no right to toss his own life away.

  The giant had almost caught up with him. Aelin dodged into a deserted building and pulled and bolted the door behind him, then realized he had taken refuge in one of the castle’s chapels—a place where his own gods might not even see him.

  I have been a fool. Aelin cursed himself as he shoved benches in front of the door. His moment of weakness had cost Fayn his life, and lost Naglimund one of its staunchest defenders. If you can hear me, great gods, I beg your forgiveness.

  The roaring giant outside the chapel seemed to have entirely forgotten the rest of the battle in its furious search for Sir Aelin. As it battered its way through the heavy door, he climbed onto a reliquary and from there to the sill of a side window, then scrambled out and dropped gracelessly to the ground.

  As Aelin ran toward the heart of the castle he could see that the inner keep’s walls were collapsing on all sides, uprooted by the tunneling of more borers. White-faced Norns seemed to be everywhere, dragging screaming mortals from their hasty hiding places and killing many of them on the spot. They had surrounded the main buildings of the keep as well, and hooting, bellowing giants were busily smashing in the doors.

  It is too late, he realized. We have already lost. Naglimund is doomed.

  * * *

  Everywhere Cuff looked, manlike, white-faced creatures swarmed through the outer keep, like what happened when he disturbed a rats’ nest on his way across the rooftops. The pale things were killing everyone; even as he watched from shadows of a narrow alley, one of them stabbed a priest with a spear then hurried on, uninterested in the holy man’s dying moments.

  Cuff the Scaler did not always understand what was happening around him, but this time he did understand, and it terrified him more than anything ever had: demons were climbing out of Hell to destroy the living. Only demons would hurt priests! Priests were the ones God had sent to care for His people, to keep the bad things away. But now even the priests were helpless. Hell had opened and all the devils were here in Naglimund’s keep.

  Cuff ran into an alley to hide and crouched shivering behind a pile of stinking rubbish. The terrified shrieks of women and children being slaughtered panicked him into tears. No! Mustn’t cry, he told himself. Father Siward said not to! Only little children cried—Father had told him that many times.

  A trio of soldiers backed into the alley. Cuff could tell by the swans on their coats that they were Naglimund-men and he almost called to them, but a moment later a tall demon on horseback rode into view, the horse’s hooves clacking on stone. Half a dozen more white-skinned demons followed their mounted leader, blocking the end of the alley. The devils carried axes and long, strange spears and their ghostly faces grinned as if at some terrible joke, but their eyes were black and empty. Cuff wept silently in helpless terror as the demons sprang at the soldiers and swiftly cut them down, hacking them even after they were dead.

  The mounted leader peered down the alley; for a moment Cuff was certain the Hell-demon could see him. His heart was beating so hard and so fast he feared it would shake him to pieces. Then the demon rider twitched his reins and turned his horse away. The others followed after him, silent as hunting wolves.

  When the screams and other noises of slaughter began to sound farther away, Cuff the Scaler found some of his courage again. He crept out from behind the midden-heap and scurried down the alley between the close-set houses. The streets of the inner keep were full of flickering red and orange light, and fires burned in several of the tall castle buildings as well, hungry tongues of flame licking up from the windows. For Cuff, Naglimund had always seemed as unchanging and immortal as the rocky hills of the Wealdhelm or the great forest itself. Now it was ablaze and bodies lay everywhere. He knew it must be the Day of Weighing Out, the end of all things that the priests had warned him would come to a world full of sinners.

  As he stared across the courtyard toward the keep he saw something burst upward through the ground and shake its great, blunt head in the air, scattering stones and dirt. Cuff knew that anything so huge and so terrible must be the Adversary himself, come to take them all. He turned and ran whimpering toward the long wall of the bake house, the closest structure that he could climb. He heard no pursuit, but even as he sank his fingers into the cracks in the plastered wall and began to scramble toward the roof, three or four shapes appeared from the shadows and closed in behind him. He tried to scramble out of their reach, but a moment later a hand closed around his ankle with a grip he could not break. The demons could climb as fast as he could! He looked down and saw a ring of bone-white faces looking up at him, black eyes staring. Cuff the Scaler had time only to let out a wordless, despairing cry before he was yanked from the wall.

  * * *

  Sir Aelin’s only duty now was to find any Hernystiri who still lived and get them out of Naglimund, to l
ead them south to the Hayholt and tell King Simon and Queen Miriamele and his uncle Eolair what had happened here. And all that would happen only if he managed to escape the monster outside and survive the next hour.

  This is all your doing, Hugh, he thought as he ran from the chapel, and if the king of Hernystir had stood before him at that moment Aelin would have killed him without hesitation, despite his oath of loyalty. All tonight’s blood is on your hands. Aelin, who thought so often about what a nobleman should do, tried so hard to live up to his great-uncle’s example, was almost in tears at the magnitude of the King Hugh’s betrayal, not just of his own subjects, but of all mortal men. I will see you brought to account for this. I swear on the hazel rod of Brynioch himself!

  The giant had realized he was gone: he could hear it roaring in frustration as it lurched back out of the chapel where he had been hiding, wood splintering and religious treasures being smashed underfoot. Aelin needed to find his men, but it was growing harder every moment to believe that any of them still lived. Darkness has returned. Nothing left but to fight and die.

  As he neared the residence a silhouette suddenly appeared in front of him, outlined against the climbing fires. To his astonishment, as he raised his sword to defend himself the shadowy figure cried, “No, my lord! It’s me!”

  “Jarreth? Is that truly you?”

  “It is, sir.”

  “Then hurry. A giant is behind me.”

  Jarreth fell in beside him, and pointed him toward the stables. “Over there, sir. Maccus and the Aedonite are at the stables getting our horses—if they still live.” Aelin heard the raggedness in his squire’s voice but could not fault the young man: it was a testament to his bravery that he was able to make sense at all in the midst of so many terrors.

  So many of the walls had collapsed that nearly all the torches that had ringed the inner keep were gone. White Foxes seemed to be all around, but Aelin was grateful to see fewer of them than he had first feared. Still, there were hundreds inside Naglimund now, and it took him and Jarreth no little time to make their way past the keep, moving from shadow to shadow. The Norns were already leading prisoners out of the innermost buildings, but they were also killing male prisoners on the spot; it was all Aelin could manage to keep moving. We can save none of them, he told himself. We would simply die ourselves, and then nobody would carry the word away. But knowing that did not ease the terrible ache. The High Throne must be told what happened here! These deaths must be avenged.