Why not? he thought to himself, and carefully lifted one out and tucked it into his belt. It was heavy and it dug into his belly, but Chert tightened his belt and decided it would have to do. He replaced the lid on the stone box, then cut some cord from a loop hanging from a peg on the wall before closing the storeroom door.
He put water in a bucket for the dust masks and hurried back across the temple and out the front hall, pleased to see that the monks seemed finally to have understood the danger: half a dozen of them were dragging the most valuable statuary inside, and the temple’s ancient iron siege doors were being swung into place. Chert doubted the temple had ever been besieged—certainly it hadn’t happened within his memory—but the Funderlings’ native dislike of windows and other such upground fripperies would serve them in good stead now. As with most large Funderling buildings, the temple’s air and water came in by ducts from other parts of the great limestone labyrinth beneath Southmarch and its storerooms were kept full of food even in lean times. An enemy would find it hard to drive them out quickly.
Chert met two of Sledge Jasper’s warders on the far side of the Curtainfall. One was all but senseless and being dragged by his comrade, who was bleeding in a half-dozen places.
“Go back!” the upright warder said, gasping. He shook blood out of his eyes. “The wardthane and the big man, the upgrounder, are surrounded. The fairies made a cloud of blindness around them. They’ll reach the temple any moment—they’ll kill us all!”
Chert could get nothing else of use from the man and let him drag his wounded fellow toward the temple. Terrified by the thought of what lay ahead, he wondered for long moments whether he should not follow them back, but the sloshing bucket in his hand, carried so wearyingly far already, helped him make up his mind. Captain Vansen was in trouble. Only Chert could help him, at least until Cinnabar showed up with more men.
By the time he had gone another few hundred steps he could hear shrieks of pain and anger in the distance and his heart was pounding faster than a craftsman’s hammer.
Forgive me, Opal, he thought. In that moment he missed his wife so fiercely that it felt like a hole, like cold wind blowing right through him. Forgive me, my old darling, I’m doing it again.
Ferras Vansen was in the middle of a waking nightmare—strange shapes, guttural cries, and mad shadows cast by the flickering light of torches. Vansen, Sledge Jasper, and five of the remaining warders had barricaded themselves as best they could in the narrow hallway between the last two of the Festival Halls in an effort to keep the attackers from breaking through—at least two or three dozen Qar, he felt sure, although it was hard to tell in the darkened passages. He doubted the fairies had expected so little resistance or they would have sent more than this scouting party. But the number of invaders wasn’t important: if Vansen and the others failed, nothing would remain between the Qar army aboveground and the temple caverns.
And then they will be through into Funderling Town, Vansen thought, wiping at his stinging eyes. Innocents—women and children. And from there the fairy folk would find it easy enough to break through into the castle above.
Five of us. And even if we somehow stop them for a while, there’s no guarantee they won’t send reinforcements pouring down from above. Vansen did his best to catch his breath, squatting behind the barrier of rocks Jasper and his men had thrown across the narrow passage to give them protection from the occasional arrow that came hissing out of the hall beyond. But why so much effort to take the underground part of the castle? They’ve lost near a hundred of their fighters here in the past days. The battle had gone on for hours today, but the Funderlings and Vansen had the advantage of defending narrow tunnels: they had killed far more than they had lost. The Qar must know that the gates of Funderling Town can be shut on the castle side, sealing it off from the rest of Southmarch. Did they honestly think they could sneak through without resistance? It made no sense.
He wiped at his eyes again. The invaders, primarily the ugly little imitations, the drows, had almost filled the far chamber with the choking dust they blew out of tubes, a weaker mixture than they had used on the acolytes in the Boreholes, but still enough to make it hard for Vansen and the others to fight. Even in small amounts it not only filled their eyes with tears but made their heads reel and their chests hurt with every breath. Vansen prayed that Chaven could come up with something, although there was scant chance it would do them any good now. The Qar were too close to breaking through.
Vansen took a breath and coughed, his throat stinging. “Could we get more of your people here to wall off this passage completely?” he whispered to Sledge Jasper.
Jasper started to speak, then ducked his bald head as an arrow snapped past overhead and rattled away behind them. “Can’t do it, Captain. Anything we could throw up that fast they could pull down. Those are drows—likely they know near as much about stone as we do.”
“Perin’s Hammer,” Vansen swore bitterly. “What a place to die!”
Jasper laughed, a harsh bark that turned into a cough. “None better, Captain. With the earth herself beneath you and around you.”
“Ho, Thane.” One of the Warders was peering over the makeshift barrier, taking advantage of the lull between arrows. He turned to Jasper, eyes wide and white in his dust-smeared face. “I think they’re coming at us again.”
“Out of arrows,” said Jasper, rising to a crouch. “Now they’re going to try to finish the job. Up and show them, boys—if we die, we die like stonecutters!”
Vansen put off standing as long as possible. The corridors were low for him anyway, and the thin cloud of the poison dust still hovering in the air was less overwhelming behind the barricade.
He climbed to his knees and peered through the angle where the makeshift barrier met the corridor wall. Not all the Qar could see as well in the dark as the drows and Funderlings, and he was grateful for that: some of the attackers carried torches, which allowed Vansen to make out what was going on. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to fight for his life in total blackness.
The torches were bobbing and fluttering now, but their light was mostly blocked by the dark shadows of advancing Qar. They knew Vansen and his defenders had no arrows: they were not afraid of making themselves targets.
They’re just going to rush us and rely on numbers, he realized. All or nothing.
“Fight for your homes!” he bellowed, rising himself until he filled the passage almost to the top. “For your people and your city!” Then the enemy came rushing toward them, howling and shouting, and Vansen could not think anymore.
Ferras Vansen stood gasping, his eyes stinging not from the Qar’s poisons but from his own blood, which streamed from a cut on his forehead. Their enemies’ first rush had failed—the attackers had dislodged several rocks from the makeshift wall, but Vansen and the warders had killed several of them and their bloody corpses now fouled the Qar side of the barricade, making it harder for the attackers to keep their footing. However, when the bodies got high enough—if Vansen and his men lived long enough to pile more bodies—the invaders would simply climb over the stone wall on a ramp of their own dead.
“They’re coming again, Captain.” Sledge Jasper’s face was covered with cuts and dirt, an ugly mask that made him look even more grotesque, like a wicked troll out of some old myth. “I can hear them getting nearer.”