“Sorry, Captain.” The young fellow was clearly surprised, his voice unsteady. “Won’t… I won’t do it again.”
“No, you won’t. And speak more quietly. I may be an upgrounder, but even I know that sound travels strangely in caves.”
“You’re right, Captain. I beg your pardon.”
“Withheld, for now. Get on with it.” Doubtless the young warder was only trying to keep fear at bay. Still, it was distracting.
“Sir,” Dolomite said after another sustained silence, “a troop of southerners have formed up and look like… yes, they are moving forward. But these don’t look like Xixians!”
“Their emblem? Can you see one?”
“A wolf or a dog, Captain…”
“The autarch’s White Hounds,” Vansen said. “I wondered when we would see them. They are northerners—from Perikal, or at least their fathers were. Fierce as a wounded bear in a fight. How many?”
“Looks like one lantern for every ten or twelve, Captain. I can see… perhaps twenty lantern in the first mass of troops.”
“So many? And Jasper and the others?”
“Crouched out of sight. The Hound-men are still coming forward, but slowly. The ones in front have spears, but there are bowmen just behind them.”
“Can’t let them get too close. Tell me when they are halfway between the rest of their troop and Jasper’s rocks.”
Dolomite squinted. In the silence Vansen could hear his own blood throbbing in his temples. The White Hounds may be a couple of hundred trained soldiers, he told himself, but they’re the ones on unfamiliar ground. My men are fighting in their own fields. Still, he could not help thinking of the vast line of Xixians snaking back up the tunnels behind these ten or twelve score, swelling to fill the larger chambers with armed men, several thousand in all, their ranks eventually leading up to the encampment on the surface where twice that many soldiers waited. The Funderlings talked a great deal about rockslides, and this would be a rockslide of murderous humanity; no matter what heroics they performed or good fortune they might have, they would never overcome such odds.
“Those Hounds are almost halfway, Captain,” whispered Dolomite, startling Vansen out of his unkind thoughts. “Almost… almost…”
“Then give the signal!” Vansen said. “Here!” He handed up the lantern; the warder lifted its shutter and stood to hold it in the air above his head.
“Jasper’s seen it!”
“Then get down, man!” Vansen reached up and yanked hard, toppling him backward. As the lamp spun away, spattering burning oil as it bounced down the shallow slope, three arrows splintered against the stones just in front of them.
“Sorry, Captain…”
“Don’t apologize, Warder, just get back to work. They won’t be shooting at us again now that we’re dark. Tell me what you see. Are our crossbowmen taking any of them down?”
“Some, but there are many more arrows stuck in shields.”
“We could aim lower if the cursed floor wasn’t covered in lumps of stone. You Funderlings need to keep things a bit more tidy.”
“Captain?”
“Never mind, Dolomite. Tell me more.”
“They’re down low, those White Hound men, and they’re going forward only a little at a time, when their archers are firing. And…” He stopped, suddenly. “By the Elders,” he said then in a strangled voice, “that was Chrysolite. I know him!”
Vansen let him have a moment, but only that. “Many good men will fall. We need to make sure we take down more of theirs—many more. Report.”
“The Hounds have almost reached the place where our men wait. Ah! And now they come together, they come together… ! Oh, no, stop them! Don’t… !”
The cries of men fighting and dying now echoed so densely that Vansen could hardly hear what the Funderling was saying. “Dolomite, I need you to tell me what you see!”
“The southerners, the White Hounds, they’ve reached the rocks and they’re trying to push out Jasper and the others. They’re using spears. Oh, Elders, it is terrible to see!”
“Don’t see it, then, just tell me what’s in front of you. As if it were a picture in a book.”
“The… the southerners and ours are fighting very fiercely in the rocks. In some places, the Big Folk have pushed in between the stones and are fighting with our people in the open spaces. In others Jasper’s men have fallen back. Ah, there is Cinnabar bringing men to help them—they are all holding near the back of the rocks…” He stopped to lean even farther, so that Vansen reached up and grabbed the little man’s collar to prevent him from tumbling off the rock. “Oh, no, Captain! The southerners are getting past!”
“What does it look like?”
“Sorry, sir. Some of the White Hounds have found a way past along the edge of the cavern—they’re slipping by while the rest are fighting in the middle. They’ll be behind Jasper’s men in a moment… ah! Ah!”
“Keep talking, boy.”
“It’s bad now, sir! The White Hounds have gotten past on both sides of our soldiers. They’re surrounded, our men are surrounded; they’ll be overwhelmed… ! Let me go help!”
“No! Stay here. Curse this dark place!” Vansen fumbled in his pack. “How I wish I could see. Tell me things that are happening, Dolomite, not what you think might be happening. Are the White Hounds all around our men now?”
“Yes, sir. Almost as thick on this side as on the other. It’s a ring of torches all the way around… !”
“Good.” Vansen held something up. “Do you know what this is?”
He felt certain that the young warder was staring at him as though he had gone utterly mad. “It’s… it’s a cuttlehorn, sir. One of those stony seashells. Like the one the Brothers blow to call the monks to prayer.”
“Would you like the honor of blowing it, then?”
“Sir?”
He put it in the warder’s hands. “Blow it. Loud as you can. It is time to call those White Hound bastards to temple.”
After a long moment, a rasping, breathy note rose beside him, growing louder and louder until its triumphant clamor set echoes bouncing all over the Counting Room. In the shuddering aftermath of the horn’s call came a sudden roar from Malachite Copper’s Funderling troop, who had been hidden in the rocky slope above the place where the autarch’s soldiers had first entered the cavern, and now came streaming down onto the backs of the nearest White Hounds.
“There are Funderlings—Copper’s men!” said Dolomite excitedly. “They are attacking the upgrounders!”
“I know.”
“The killing is terrible, but they are forcing the White Hounds forward into the rocks! Some of Copper’s men are shooting crossbows into the entrance, keeping the other southerners out of the Counting Room.”
Vansen nodded. “It is time to sound the horn again, Warder Dolomite. You haven’t lost it, have you?”
“No, Captain!”
“Good. Then let them hear it once more. Let Sulepis himself hear it, somewhere back up the tunnel—let’s hope it makes his skin crawl!”
“Yes, Captain!” A moment later the mournful call rose again, louder than the first time, so loud that Vansen felt pleasantly sure that the Xixians who survived were going to remember it with fear.
“Those Hounds know they’re in a fight now!” Dolomite called a few moments later, having quite forgotten about silence. “And their other troops can’t get in to help them! Look, the autarch’s men are turning into hedgehogs, all spiked with arrows! Oh, Earth Elders, but they are still fighting.” His voice faltered a little. “So much blood!”
Vansen decided it was time for his next trick. He sent Dolomite down the slope to Corundum’s engineers to make certain they were ready, and while he waited for the young warder’s return, he hefted the weighty cuttlehorn in his hand. Brother Antimony, who had given it to him, had told him it was made from a creature of the ancient days that had turned into stone.