The Sword of the South - eARC (43 page)

“No, a pass. The walls cut right across it.”

“Could it have been South Keep?”

“South Keep?” Trayn frowned, then nodded slowly. “You know, it might just have been. I’ve never actually seen it from above, and I didn’t get much of a look at it as we passed, either, so I can’t be certain. But if it was…what a
range
she has!”

“And the dragon was right there, attacking the fortress?”

“No. I think it was on the far side, close to the border but right there in the pass. If it really was South Keep, anyway.”

“Trayn, there’s no way a dragon could be there on its own.”

“Bahzell and Wencit went south,” Trayn said slowly, in answer to Lentos’ grim tone.

“Of course! She was drawn to their locus by her concern and found a dragon there. Not only that, it must be connected with their mission. By the Scepter, that must be it! And there’s only one way a dragon could be there.”

“Sorcery,” Trayn said grimly. He tried to rise, but his balance was uncertain and Lentos pressed him firmly back.

“No, Trayn. You’ve done your part. Leave this with me.”

“But is there a Council messenger in Belhadan?”

“There’s always a messenger in Belhadan. I’ll send word at once, but they’ll have to touch down outside the shields. And you realize, of course, that even a wind walker may not catch them in time.

“I know, but we’ve got to try!”

“We will,” Lentos said, his voice like iron. “And if we’re too late,
someone
is going to pay for it!”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

South Keep

Kenhodan eased himself in the saddle and looked gratefully up at a sky which was no longer dropping snow, sleet, or even rain upon his head.

It was a pleasant change he hoped might even last for a day or two.

The snow had cost them four miserable, motionless days, and even after that the weather had been chill, damp, foggy, and thoroughly miserable. The temperature had hovered at or just below freezing during the day (and considerably lower than that at night), and the leaden clouds hadn’t broken until late the day before. The cold and mist had oppressed him, but now a stiff breeze had pushed the last fog aside and the sky was a deep, glorious blue, studded with drifting, high-piled white clouds, while the sun was warm on his shoulders. The air was still brisk and melting snow lay all about, but he could almost believe in spring once more.

He settled back, his eyes automatically sweeping the slopes above them, and felt a fresh surge of the awe he doubted was going to fade any time soon. He’d thought they were into the East Walls before the snow; now he realized they’d only touched their fringes at the time.

Steep mountains shouldered into the sky, with snow like ash after a fire still piled on their slopes. He saw more snow blowing in streamers from the highest crags, and the road swept between majestic slopes clothed in dark pines. He’d watched the mountains grow through yesterday’s fog, but he hadn’t truly appreciated the sheer weight of earth and stone until the weather cleared. Now he did, and there was something about their bulk that made him grateful for the forests fringing the valleys, almost as if their trees gave him someplace to hide from the peaks’ frowning disapproval. As the mountains climbed higher, the trees thinned and then ended, replaced by snow-covered grass and bare stone that had no interest in mere mortals’ affairs. Their brooding bleakness was beautiful but oppressive, built to a scale too large for comfort, and he was glad to be this far below those soaring summits, listening to countless rivulets brawl and fume with snowmelt as they raced down the mountains’ flanks. The air was clear and clean and the sound of water was a chill, crystal song in the early morning.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Bahzell’s voice startled him.

“Yes. I hadn’t realized they were so big—
or
so beautiful.”

“Aye, but they’re after being more than that, too. The making of the Empire, they were. South to north, they’re after running four hundred leagues, though folk call them the Ordan Mountains up on the edge of Dwarvenhame. But ‘Kormak’s Battlements’ they were in the first days, and rightly so. They’re after shielding the Axemen’s entire eastern frontier.”

“Are they this…formidable everywhere?”

“That they are, and passes are few. There’s no more than a handful as might be suited to trade or invasion. Oh, there’s more places than anyone’s ever likely to know as smugglers can be slipping through, but South Wall, Traitor’s Walk, Cragwall, the Pass of Heroes—those are the only true roads through. There’s North Pass up in the Ordans, but that’s after leading into Dwarvenhame, and it’s a foolish, foolish man takes on dwarves in the mountains. Which leaves aside the wee problem of slipping past the Sothōii and my own folk, first.”

Kenhodan nodded, but his attention was elsewhere as the road thrust abruptly out to sweep around the flank of a mountain. The roadbed’s northwest side fell away in a sheer precipice and he caught his breath as he gazed down through a thousand crystalline feet of air into the heart of a hidden river valley. Shadows cloaked it, but a silver thread ran through snowy forest far below, glittering, and he drew up and stared down, his heart aching.

“You see?” Bahzell waved at the sight. “It’s beautiful enough the East Walls are to choke your heart, but it’s not beauty as brings us here. The East Walls are after being worth half a million men when the King Emperor goes to war. I’m thinking that’s why Kormak pushed east and north from Man Home instead of south.”

“It was,” Wencit said softly, pausing beside them. His less-than-new poncho was smudged with slush and rough travel and his hair and beard were uncombed. He might have been an age-worn peasant staring at a spring he’d never hoped to see, but his eyes burned bright under the red ball of the sun, and his face was ancient beyond belief. The aura of years clung to him, potent with age and power enough to match even the East Walls.

“It was,” he repeated, just as softly. “Even then we knew the day would come when the Carnadosans brought their filth and war to Norfressa, and when that day comes, no fortress weaker than these mountains will stand against them.”

“When it comes?” Kenhodan’s voice was soft as he dared to voice the suspicions which had arisen in Sindor. “Is it coming soon, Wencit?”

He felt Bahzell stiffen beside him as he asked the question, and Wencit looked at both of them for a long, still moment.

“It is,” the wizard said, his voice oddly formal, “but not yet. There’s still a pause before the storm, but when that storm breaks, it will be like nothing any Norfressan can imagine. Only those who have seen it could understand, and only I remain of those who’ve seen.” He shook his head slowly. “Even the East Walls may not be strong enough to brave that storm,” he said softly, and touched Byrchalka with a light, courteous heel. The courser tossed his head, turned away from the valley, and trotted steadily up the high road’s steep slope once again.

Kenhodan, Bahzell, and Walsharno stared after him as Byrchalka trotted away from them, the packhorses following. He didn’t look like much, especially in the saddle of something as magnificent as a courser. Just a dirty old man with eyes of fire, his face drawn and old in the slanting, early light, whose words had stolen the warmth from the morning.

* * *

The road grew even steeper as it wound higher, and the air seemed thinner, cold in the shadows and chill even when the sun was brightest. They passed through deep cuttings, their sides covered with tool marks and glistening icicles, some as thick as Kenhodan’s body, where wind blew icily through the shadows. The trees ended, and there was no sound but their passing and the wind.

They slowed. Not even royal and imperial engineers could conquer the East Walls, and their way wound through tortuous switchbacks and curves. Spots had been provided where travelers might bivouac beside the high road, and they used them when they must, but an urgency lay upon them, and they pushed hard whenever they had light. Some places they were forced to dismount and lead their mounts up icy grades with the coursers following and watching the lesser cousins alertly, and each downslope led to a climb twice as steep. Twice they heard the rumble of distant avalanches as the sun weakened the packed snow.

They were twelve days out of Sindor when they topped out over a steep slope and an east wind swept up it to lash their faces, flap the skirts of their ponchos, and roar softly about their ears like the roll of surf. The day had grown grim and dim once more, the skies like wind-burnished slate, and Kenhodan shivered as the cold dug at him and that same wind seared his lungs.

“I hope that was the last climb of the day,” he told Bahzell wearily.

“It was, lad. Look yonder.”

Bahzell pointed ahead, and Kenhodan shielded his eyes with one hand, blinking away wind tears and fine, cold drops of rain. The road plunged downward, curving slightly, and the wind came up it into their teeth. A dimness bulked across the narrow pass some miles below them, but he could make out few details through the blowing drizzle sweeping up to meet them.

“South Keep,” Bahzell said. “I’m thinking as we’ll sleep warm tonight.”

“Thank the gods!” Kenhodan sighed, and squinted harder, trying to form a picture of the place. The misty rain defeated him, and he shrugged. Any fortress in such a dismal place could only be grim. There ought to at least be fires, though, and hopefully it would have a spare cot somewhere.

“Come on,” Wencit said. “It’s farther than it looks, and I’d like to be there before gate closing. Believe me, we
don’t
want to camp outside the walls tonight if we can help it.”

Byrchalka and Walsharno started forward considerably more briskly, followed by Glamhandro, and Chernion’s mare and the packhorses seemed to catch the mood as they realized the road sloped only down for a change. Kenhodan watched the keep draw closer, curious about this bastion of the Empire in its bleak and barren surroundings. What sort of men, he wondered, could stand garrison duty in such a place?

He realized only gradually how badly distance and mist had fooled him. What had seemed a low-lying blur slowly resolved itself into a wall; then the wall became a cliff, and his casual curiosity became something very like disbelief. The work of giants lay before him.

Granite walls towered up with a blue-great arrogance that shamed the natural cliffs to either side. There were three of them, those walls, and they were absolutely vertical, reared out of the East Walls’ bones. Kenhodan’s muscles tightened as they moved into South Keep’s shadow, like ants swallowed in shade as the walls soared above him, seemingly poised forever on the edge of overbalancing and avalanching down to destroy him.

A deep ravine edged the outer curtainwall, quarried deep and sheer in solid rock. Archers’ slits fanged the gate towers—row upon row of them banding the stone to mark the levels within. Gape-jawed gargoyles grinned at regular intervals from battlements so high they seemed tiny, and Kenhodan knew that at need each stony gullet would vomit banefire. The effect on any attacker would be dreadful, and the soot streaking their scaled stone snouts spoke of frequent tests. Above all, the scarlet and gold axe banner snapped and cracked, flaunting against the stone-colored sky from at least a dozen staffs.

But it was the gaunt perfection of the wall itself which demanded his attention. It was smooth as ice, without even the thinnest line to indicate where stone block met stone block, and his eyes widened as he realized that entire, stupendous wall was a single, seamless stretch of naked rock, as if the mountains’ native granite had reared suddenly skyward in a frozen comber of stone. Occasional patches of dark moss softened the hard, powerful granite, but they subtracted nothing from the keep’s forbidding power. Rather, they underscored the endurance of the never-taken fortress. It reared like a primeval force, the earth groaning under its weight, between cliffs quarried into knife-sharp vertical precipices. Wing fortresses protected the curtainwall’s shoulders, standing on upthrust islands severed from the mountain walls by more sheer chasms. An aura of power brooded over the pass, frowning down on the insignificant mites who’d dared to raise such stony strength.

“Impressed?”

He turned his head to meet Bahzell’s amused glance.

“Moderately.” He wasn’t certain how he’d managed to keep his tone dry.

“Aye, and well you should be. All the passes are after being well defended, but its South Keep lies nearest the Spearmen, and not even Axe Hallow’s this strong. The King Emperor was in no mind to take chances when he was after ordering it built, and betwixt the Empire and Dwarvenhame ─ which wasn’t after having joined the Empire in those days ─ the better part of two hundred sarthnaisks were after working on it for twelve years. That wall yonder ─” he flicked his ears at the curtainwall “─ that’s not after being
built
, lad. It was
forged
in place, and it’s after being
tougher
than the cliffs to either side.

“The forts on the shoulders protect the flanks, though Tomanāk knows only a herd of mad and mountain goats could be scaling the cliffs to reach ’em! The garrison comes and goes through tunnels inside the cliffs; there’s no other road. They’ve wells inside, as well, and South Keep’s after being stored for a five-year siege, come to that, though I’m thinking as it’s an unlikely army as could attack both ends of the pass at once.”

Bahzell shook his head as if marveling at the power he’d described, then Walsharno moved into a canter. Kenhodan followed on Glamhandro, pushing to catch up with Wencit and Chernion, who’d drawn ahead of them.

Two of South Keep’s three drawbridges were lowered over the dry moat, and Kenhodan glanced over the edge as Glamhandro’s hooves thudded on the thick timbers of the center bridge. One look was enough. The gorge was over fifty feet deep and its bottom was fanged with grim iron spikes. There was another row of archer’s slits at its very lip, forty feet above the gorge’s floor, and more banefire spouts stretched along the gorge wall just beneath them.

The portcullis was raised—the gods only knew how many tons of weight hung on massive chains, its lower edge glowering with wide flanges designed to lock into iron-reinforced sockets in the roadway when lowered. Halberdiers stood watch before it, and Kenhodan saw colorful splashes of color on the high walls to mark out archers. And this was only the
back
of the fortress—the side least likely to be attacked!

The gate commander stepped into the road as Wencit crossed the drawbridge to him. He shaded his eyes, and a squad of his men trotted towards him, but he waved them back as he recognized the wizard.

“Greetings, Wencit!” To ears which had been buffeted by the East Walls’ winds for over a week, his voice sounded unnaturally clear in the calm lee of the keep.

“Greetings, Captain…Tolos, isn’t it?”

“Aye, so it is.” The officer was clearly pleased to be remembered, and Wencit drew up and looked down at him from the saddle.

“I’m pleased South Keep mounts such an excellent watch,” he said, “but isn’t it a little unusual for travelers to be challenged on sight?”

“I beg your pardon?” Tolos sounded more than a little embarrassed.

“Come now, Tolos! Gate guard’s usually a lieutenant’s duty, isn’t it? And your men are clearly on edge. For that matter, I’m inclined to doubt you studied our faces so closely because you’re smitten by my beauty!”

“I think Earl Bostik had best explain, Sir,” Tolos said uncomfortably, and something in his tone tightened the wizard’s expression.

“I see,” he said after a moment. Then he shook himself and grinned almost impishly. “And is the trouble—whatever it is—so bad you feel obliged to detail a guide to keep an eye on us?”