When they were gone and the echoes of the woman’s wretched cries had finally faded, Tolly set the child down on his bed where it kicked and wailed.
“Do you know anything about changing a child’s smallclothes?” Tolly asked him suddenly.
“Sire?” Tinwright had not been expecting this.
“The creature stinks. I am sure it needs cleaning. We shall have to find a woman who can do it.” The lord protector shook his head in disgust. “My library is small—I am not going to share it with that ghastly stench.”
“Library, my lord?”
“We have incantations to speak, potions to prepare and serve to this little beast,” Tolly said with a look of distaste toward young Alessandros Eddon. “Okros explained it to me, although I do not remember everything he said. No matter! You are a scholar too… of sorts. We have all his books and papers. We have a day or so before the autarch’s bloody Midsummer Night—plenty of time. The magical royal blood is already there, after all.” He gave a sudden laugh—long, loud, and harsh. “Yes, the little beast is simply full of the stuff!”
28. Better Than Expected
“The Orphan’s journey north was a long one. He and Moros were menaced by robbers, heathens, cruel demons, and spiteful fairies…”
The fighting as the funderlings were forced back through the Maze was as bad as anything Ferras Vansen had ever experienced. He had been terrified facing the Qar, he had been confused and despairing almost his entire time behind the Shadowline, and of course his earliest fighting, raids that his old commander Donal Murroy had led against bandit chieftains in the Southmarch countryside, had been terrifying precisely because they were the first time he had faced opponents trying to kill him—but this was different than all of them. Most of it was siege work, breast against breast, shield against shield, a sweaty, slippery, exhausting struggle where a moment’s loss of concentration could cost your life. In some spots the ranks were so tightly packed that men were killed next to him but could not fall down until he and his Funderlings finally retreated; other times Vansen and his comrades remained tangled with the very Xixian soldiers they had killed and could not shove the bodies away until the southerners fell back. It was a disturbingly intimate war: because of the darkness and close quarters archers became almost entirely useless, so most of the struggle was with men you could touch and smell and see… if not see well. The bearded, desert-browned faces of the Xixians, their conical helmets and armor of overlapping plates, began to seem almost as familiar as those of the little men who fought beside him. Together, the two sides moved deeper and deeper into the earth, twined like courtiers engaged in a complicated dance. The defenders gave ground, and the attackers pressed them, so that sometimes it seemed to Vansen the entire struggle was only some complicated way of worshiping great Kernios, lord of death and darkness.
Has ever a stranger war been fought? he wondered to himself. And by more bewildered combatants?
After hours of bloody fighting, Vansen’s men were able to use their dwindling supply of blasting powder to drop a large section at the front of the Maze onto the autarch’s army, utterly blocking the central chamber known as the Initiation Hall with the rubble of collapsed walls, and thus closing the only route through the Maze. After retreating a safe distance, the defenders were able to snatch some much-needed rest as the Xixians labored to dig their way through the shattered stone that barred their path.
“But I need to know more!” Vansen told Brother Flowstone, one of the monks who had come to fight with the other Funderlings. With many of the Maze’s corridors now cracked and in danger of collapse, he had pulled his men all the way back to a wide, low chamber called the Revelation Hall where the young Funderlings spent the end of their vigil before finally being given a sight of the Shining Man. “Why can’t you tell me the names of these tunnels?” Vansen continued. “It’s the one thing Chert didn’t put on his map. With so many different ways to choose, we might even be able to attack the southerners from behind or from the side!”
“Because these tunnels do not have names!” A broken nose and several long cuts disfigured Flowstone’s youthful face. “I told you, Captain, we Brothers only learn the steps of the maze by heart so that we can pass through it and lead the celebrants. We do not learn the names of each back-around and blind pass. Don’t you understand, Captain? We Funderlings didn’t build this place.”
Vansen was astounded. “You didn’t? Then who did?”
Flowstone shrugged. “Perhaps the Qar. Perhaps your gods—the same gods that this mad southern king wishes to bring back to life. In a way, we are all strangers here.”
Ferras Vansen tried to rest, but as had happened so many times on this retreat, he got up after a short, ragged sleep and wandered through the makeshift camp, watching over his men and wishing he could do more for them. Too many dead had been left behind; here too many were wounded and in need of care. For a while Vansen lingered to watch some of the Funderlings building walls across the narrower end of the broad chamber so they would have some cover when the time came to retreat from the Revelation Hall—if any men were still left to retreat.
His heart heavy, Vansen wandered back to his own fire. “Gods! This will drive me mad!” he said. “We have used all but the last of our blasting powder. When they dig through this fall of rubble, we will have no other way to hold them back but our sinews and blades. Why did we say yes to Chert’s cursed plan—how much blasting powder will be wasted up above… ?”
“Might as well calm yourself, Captain,” Jasper told him. “What the Elders decree the rest of us will see.”
“But we need only hold them back for a day or two more, and it will be too late for the autarch’s lunatic scheme!” Vansen was nearly beside himself with frustration. “Am I wrong about the day, Copper?”
“We may not have had enough water to drink,” said Malachite Copper said, “but we have kept the water-clock damp as a ferret’s nose.” He shook his head sadly. “Up in Funderling Town they will be lifting a cup to Midsummer’s Eve.”
“Gods bite me. What do people who live in a dark cave care about summer?” Vansen asked pettishly.
At that moment, Cinnabar’s son Calomel came running through the camp. He was a great favorite, but the men were so weary and downhearted that few of them even bothered to look up as he passed. If they had, they would have seen his dirty face streaked with tears.
“Captain! Come quick!” he cried. “Hurry! Bring men! My father needs you at Initiation Hall!”
“What?” Vansen jumped to his feet. “But he only went back to look after the ones pushing rubble into the tunnel ...”
“The Xixies have used blasting powder of their own!” Calomel said, tugging Vansen back across the camp. “They have knocked down an entire wall of the Maze and they have trapped my tada!”
“Perin’s beard!” Vansen said, “I feared this. The autarch has finally decided he is tired of making his way inch by inch! Copper—bring your men. Sledge, you and Dolomite get the rest up and moving after us ...”
“Hurry!” shouted the boy. “Hurry—oh, they will kill him! They will kill my tada!”