“Still, what a wonderful thing, if I understand Jasper correctly—to be able to signal over a distance underground! Have the… the Big Folk, as you call us, ever known of this?”
Cinnabar laughed. “I can assure you they did not. You’ll forgive me if I say we thought it more likely to be something we needed to protect ourselves against your people than to aid them.”
“Fair enough. And I promise I will keep the secret—the gods know I owe you and your folk that much and more. But it seems to me another example that you Funderlings have misplaced your trust when you ask me to lead you. Even were I as veteran a commander as you suppose—which, I assure you, I am not—I still know too little about this underground world in which we fight. The Qar reaching that chamber before us caught me completely by surprise. How did they do it?”
Cinnabar’s amiable, weathered face showed surprise even in the thin light of Vansen’s lantern. “But Jasper says he told you. The road should have been stubbed there, but he knew by the smell of the air that a second opening had been made, so that means there must be a new tunnel upthwart the stub-end at the far side of the Great Dancing Chamber…”
“There, you see? I still don’t understand.” He raised his hand. “No, do not explain it to me now, Magister—there is too much to do. But when we return and have our council, I need you and Chert and the others to help me learn. We must find a way to remedy my ignorance before I get us all killed.”
The Funderlings and the two Big Folk were grouped around one of the large tables in the refectory of the Metamorphic Brothers’ temple, a place that had become the seat of the Funderling War Council, as Vansen had come to think of it—mostly because only the refectory and the chapel were large enough for many to sit down together.
In the previous days Ferras Vansen had sometimes viewed his involvement with these little men and women as almost amusing, as if he had been asked to lead an army of children, but that had ended long ago with the first assault by the Qar. Anyone who still doubted the seriousness of their situation need only descend to the deep, cold room beneath the main altar where the bodies of the two fallen Funderlings, Feldspar and Schist, lay waiting for their burial cairns to be built.
Vansen looked across the table at Jasper, Magister Cinnabar, and Brother Nickel. Nickel’s power within the Brotherhood seemed to grow stronger by the day: there had been no confirmation yet that he would be the next abbot, but the other monks seemed to take it as a given. Chaven was also at the table—the only other person Vansen’s size—but the physician seemed fretful and preoccupied. Beside him sat Malachite Copper, another important Guildsman, tall and slender for a Funderling, who had brought a contingent of volunteers down from the town to help defend the lower tunnels. Although the cavern-dwellers had no lords as such, Copper was the closest thing Vansen had seen down here to what he would have called a noble. Judging by his clothes, he was certainly the richest of them all. Young Brother Antimony rounded out the group: Vansen had been told that Chert Blue Quartz and his strange adopted son were off on some private errand and could not be present.
“I must beg your pardon,” Vansen told the others. “I simply cannot accustom myself to the way you talk—upwise, thwart, sluiced, scarped, stubbed—I cannot understand it, not swiftly enough to lead men into battle. I am used to fighting on solid ground that spreads like a blanket before me, but here I find the blanket is wrapped around my head. I think you should give this task of leadership to someone like Cinnabar or Copper.”
“I do not like to fill my head with details.” Malachite Copper spoke lazily, as though it was almost too much effort to finish what he was saying. “I will have enough to do with leading my own scrapesmen. No, not me.”
Cinnabar also shook his head. “As for me, I have not the knowledge of fighting, Captain Vansen, but I will do my best to help you to think as we think.”
“But how can I learn all your people know? These drumstones, Stormstone’s tunnels—I do not have time to become a scholar, even had I the wit for it!”
“Likely none of us is fit to perform the job entire,” Chaven said. “If we want to survive we must work together and try to forge a single martial leader from among our disparate parts—a patchwork soldier, as in the old tale of King Kreas.”
“Still,” said Copper, “even if the mighty Stone Lord himself were to come out of the deeps to lead us, we would need more men than we have. Cinnabar, my dear, you must send a message to the Guild telling them to send every able-bodied fellow who can be spared to fight—sadly, we cannot pull the workers from the few jobs Hendon Tolly has given us without causing suspicion. That may bring us as many as a thousand. Until then we have less than two hundred all told, four pentecount at the outside, and only a few of those capable fighters. How many Qar wait on the far side of the bay?”
Vansen shook his head. “We never knew when we fought them—that was part of the hardship, that they could make their numbers and positions so confusing. But judging by what I saw of them marching, long ago, I guess they still muster several times our numbers.”
“And from what you say, we could not hope to outfight them even if we matched them man for man,” Cinnabar said.
“The March Kingdoms could not defeat them with many thousands, including hundreds of veteran fighters, cannon, and armored cavalry. But we were overconfident.” He smiled sadly. “We will never be so again.”
“Is there any chance the upgrounders—I mean your people, Captain Vansen—might help us? Surely Hendon Tolly does not want the Qar roaming free beneath his castle!”
“No, but first you would have to convince him,” Vansen said thoughtfully. “That might be done… but then even if he agreed to help you he would never simply give you back Funderling Town afterward. Once he knew of the Stormstone tunnels and everything else belowground, he and his soldiers would be here to stay.”
Malachite Copper broke the long, morose silence. “But the fairy creatures must fight us down here,” he pointed out. “Surely that should be to our advantage, if we can only improve our numbers.”
“Don’t forget they have Funderlings of a sort among them,” said Cinnabar. “And other creatures of the deeps as well, like ettins, some of which we only know from old stories…”
“So it is hopeless. Is that what you are saying?” Nickel stood up. “Then we must all prepare to meet our maker. The Lord of the Hot Wet Stone will save us if he sees fit—if we have pleased him—but if not, then he will do with us as he wishes. All this warlike posturing is for nothing. The Nine Cities of the Funderlings will be emptied but for dust and shadows.”
“We do not need that kind of talk,” Cinnabar said angrily. “Would you terrify our people into recklessness? At the very least, Nickel, think of our wives and children. Ah, but I forgot—you Metamorphic Brothers do not have time for such trivialities!”
“We do holy work!” Nickel shouted and the argument began in earnest, even Copper joining in, but Ferras Vansen was no longer listening.
“Enough,” he said. When they did not heed him, he raised his voice, deeper and stronger than any of theirs. “Enough! Shut your mouths, all of you!” Everyone in the room turned to stare at him in surprise. “For the sake of the wives and children you mentioned—for all of our sakes—stop this squabbling. Brother Nickel, I heard you say ‘the Nine Cities of the Funderlings’—what does that mean?”