“But the Northmen were determined not to lose their chance to destroy the Hikeda’ya, and so they chose the best climbers from their ranks and set them to scale our great mountain and silence its defenders. Terrible battles took place along the steep mountain tracks, in its darker places, even before the steaming vents that gave forth from Nakkiga’s flaming heart. And though our Sacrifices fought bravely, they were greatly outnumbered by the mortals, who could spend men like cheap coins, and at last the Northmen were able to bring their great war engine to the gates. Soon the Northmen had found nearly all of our tunnels along the mountainside, and many pitched battles were fought where the mountain’s precious interior touched the outer air. Those passages that had been secret but now were found out were quickly sealed by the queen’s Order of Builders, sometimes even as those defending it still remained on the far side, so that the mortals could not come at Nakkiga from those ways. Then the Northerners in turn buried the outside of those passages beneath stone so that we could not use them again even if we chose, and began to find and destroy the few hidden passages still left to us from which our Sacrifices could harry the mortals. The ways into and out of the mountain now nearly all made useless, the battle narrowed to the ground around the great gates themselves.
“The mortals’ rebuilt ram was covered with plates of hammered black iron to repel arrows and spears, and its body was the trunk of a great birch tree, the oldest that had stood in the old city’s Sacred Grove, which had once been our Garden on this faulty earth, the hallowed spot where traitors and unruly slaves had been sacrificed at the turning of every Great Year, until the Well of Eternity was discovered in the depths of the mountain.
“The gates of Nakkiga themselves had been set up before the days of the Parting, even before the queen first came into possession of the city, and they were strongly built and full of old songs. Even the mortals’ mighty ram with its iron head in the shape of a savage bear could not cast it down, but the Northmen had the scent of blood in their nostrils and would not turn away from their purpose.
“Hour after hour, day after day, the ram crashed against the gate’s witchwood timbers, and each blow echoed through Nakkiga’s squares and across the houses of the city like the tread of some fearsome creature. It seemed that even the gate must fall at last if the Northmen could not be driven back.
“In that terrible hour, one of our nobles took it upon himself to save the city. General Nekhaneyo of Clan Shudra, the greatest warrior of his illustrious family, gathered three score of brave Sacrifices, each one a hero many times over in the Wars of Return, and after consulting with the Celebrants and other loremasters, led his troop into perhaps the last passage still hidden from the mortals, a secret track through the roots of the mountain, untraveled since the days of Ur-Nakkiga’s first conquest by our people.
“We will never know what horrors they found there, or what terrors they faced, but when the brave ones emerged once more into the light of day from a forgotten cavern at the mountain’s base near the shores of Lake Rumiya, their numbers had been almost halved, and many of those who remained bore dreadful wounds and burns.
“But with the hourly battering of the mighty gates bringing disaster ever nearer, their leader would not give them rest. Nekhaneyo told his warriors, “We are already dead and our ends sung! Let what we have already lost bring freedom to those we loved! For the Queen and the Garden!”
“Their heroic charge will be talked of as long as the Hikeda’ya live and as long as our Garden is remembered. Nekhaneyo led his survivors by cover of darkness around the mountain’s foot, riding so fast that it is said their horses’ hooves struck sparks from the stones in their path. They came upon the Northmen at the gate just before dawn. With surprise on their side, they slaughtered the sleeping mortals by the hundreds, and would have laid fire to the ram itself had not the mortals’ leader, Duke Isgrimnur of Elvritshalla, rallied his startled troops and led them in counterattack.
“The mortals swarmed like rats, and though Nekhaneyo fought his way through their unending numbers until he had almost reached the Northmen’s leader, he fell at last, hacked and almost bloodless, a few scant steps from the mortal duke. The rest of his brave Sacrifices were soon surrounded and pulled down. So ended Nekhaneyo’s Ride, and it seemed at that moment that Nakkiga’s doom was sealed.
“When they heard of Nekhaneyo’s fall the people surrounded the Council Hall, crying out that all was lost and demanding that the sleeping queen be taken down into the mountain’s depths so that at least the Mother of All would be saved. But Host General Suno’ku, a great favorite of the people, stood on the steps of the hall and called them all cowards, shaming them, and asking how Nakkiga could fail when so many of them yet lived.
“‘Are there no stones to be cast?’” she demanded. “‘Are there no sticks to be sharpened into spears, no ancient witchwood blades of our ancestors hanging on walls to be taken down and given the chance once more to drink mortal blood? Have all the Hikeda’ya been destroyed already, leaving only ghosts who wail and lament?’
“When she had silenced them, Suno’ku gave them heart again, saying that it was better to die standing than to kneel to a conqueror and still receive death, or worse, to be made a slave. She reminded them of great Hamakho himself, who had walked all the way through Tzo with a dozen fatal arrows in him, and she called out the names of her own ancestors, including Ekimeniso himself.
“‘Do you think when we meet someday in the Garden that I could face the shade of my great foreparent, our queen’s consort, if I laid down my arms and let the mortals have their way? Do you think I could bear his gaze if I knew that I had let fear make me a weak thing? Eight hundred seasons gone I killed a mortal slave in combat to win my rank in the Order of Sacrifice. Why should I not rejoice to think that I may yet kill dozens more in defense of my homeland?’
“Their spirit restored by her words, the people dispersed back to their houses and living quarters, determined to fight to their last breath and last drop of blood. And some said that in that hour Suno’ku became as great a hero as her legendary foreparent, Ekimeniso of the Brooding Eye.”
—Lady Miga seyt-Jinnata of the Order of Chroniclers
Aerling Surefoot was a wiry, dark-bearded Rimmersman with hands that looked too big for his arms. When Porto offered his services, the frowning man asked only two questions.
“Can you climb?”
“I was raised on housetops. My father was a carpenter.”
“Not quite the same, falling off a house and falling off a mountain. But we’ll see. Can you follow orders?”
“Yes, sir.”
Aerling looked him up and down. “You’re a bit tall for scrambling in some of the small spaces we have to use, but at least you’re thin. ’Twill help.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not scared of these whiteskins, are you?”
“No. I hate them.” Endri’s empty face still came to him every night in his dreams, his friend’s ghost silent and sad. “I want to see them all dead.”
“You’ll get no argument here.” Aerling finished sharpening his knife, wiped the whetstone on his breeks and slid it into his pack. “Just remember, they may look like dead ’uns but they’re as alive as you or me. Full of tricks, yes, but when you cut them, the same red blood comes out. When you kill them, they’re as dead as any ordinary man.”