The Bonds of Stone, page 21
Chapter 34
Jump
The problem with towers was that they had more than one floor. A Kitaye treehouse would let you go down a rope or a ladder and be free, on the ground and open in a moment. Instead, as Ami and Sawi broke past the break room, they found themselves on the same twisting stair they’d both walked to get up here. Stone steps and torches. Voices above and below in idle chatter.
At least their escape remained a secret.
“Which way?” Sawi asked as Ami hesitated.
“Down’s more obvious, but they’ll have more guards,” Ami muttered, more to herself than her Vis tagalong. “No guarantee there’s a way out up top . . .”
“A small chance over none?”
Ami blinked, shook her head. “Not how it works, Sawi. Up we go.”
“But?”
Ami brushed by the Vis, holding the stolen sword steady as she rose with determined steps. Sawi followed, their Najahn robes close enough to swish into one another as the coming storm sent its blusters whirling through the tower. Another marker of its status: few windows sealed with glass. Gladdring’s tower came off cozy. This one, the prisoners could suffer.
The thought almost made Sawi pause mid-stride, did make her stumble and draw a glare from Ami.
Before she’d been a prisoner, Sawi hadn’t ever once thought of what happened to people hauled into places like this. Part of that could be excused away, as they did things different on Vis, but she’d been on Noctia long enough now to notice the guards hauling away everyone from street thieves to would-be deserters to merchants with loose morals. They’d disappear from sight and that’d be that.
Except now she knew they’d be strung out on plain cots, freezing, till the Najahn gave them a clean exile or a cleaner cut.
“Focus,” Ami whispered as they hit the next level, another cell set. The door through to the guards’ area was shut, muffled laughter beyond. “If they open it, you need to strike first.”
Sawi mouthed a prayer to Vis that, in the interest of all their lives, the door would stay closed and indeed it did, the god doing his part to keep the guards interested in their cards or their dinner.
The next level didn’t grant them the same luck, though words and creaking hinges gave the sneaking pair a warning.
Ami bolted up as the landing came into view, a guard holding a dinner basket walking out. The man’s eyes went the wrong way, back to his buddies, and with both hands occupied, the man never stood a chance. Sawi thought Ami would go for some brutal stab, a gutting, but the Guardian flipped her grip, instead mashing the sword’s hilt into the guard’s face and crumpling him into the doorway.
“Run!” Ami called back, her mauling not unnoticed by the two other guards waiting inside.
Sawi gave them a brief glance as she sped by, wide eyes and fumbling feet their primary traits. Ami’s victim sprawled in moaning uselessness, the basket and its dirty dishwater scattered all across the floor.
Better than blood.
The next landing put their strategy to the test, the stairs ending with the stone floor and several doors. All three looked the same: solid caramel wood, the black iron handles favored by the Najahn. Ami almost spun in place, trying to decide, only for Sawi to brush past her and pick the rightward one.
An easy choice, as the others likely led seaward. Maybe Ami couldn’t hold her directions straight in the spin, but keeping track of herself amid heavy cover was something any Vis had to learn, or else the swinging vines would leave you lost.
Beyond the door waited a deserted room stuffed with trunks, heavy ones labeled with numbers. The room’s only light—a lantern near the door hung dead—came from a broad, arced window at its back. Unlike the narrow slits in the tower’s stairs, this one had glass, its glint matching the falling snow in the dimming day outside.
“No exit,” Ami said, looking around Sawi into the room. “We have to—”
A crossbow’s quarrel slammed into the wood over Ami’s head, quivering in the splintered board. Ami cursed, pulled herself inside as Sawi went deeper amid the trunks. Ami slammed the door, turned and started tugging a trunk over.
“Help me,” the Guardian snarled, and Sawi did, the pair working quick move one trunk before the door and stack another on top.
“What are these?” Sawi asked as they moved, the simple question doing its part to edge off the fact that some Najahn had just tried to shoot them.
Shoot them. As in, not trying to take the pair alive.
If Sawi ever found Gladdring again, the man would wish she’d left him to rot in Mottilan.
“No idea,” Ami said, stepping back from their makeshift barrier, sword ready, as if that’d do anything against a crossbow. “Try one. Might be something we can use, because we could damn sure use something.”
Sawi picked one at random, flipped it open to see assorted clothes. Decent garb, not Najahn, but nothing that’d help them. The contents, though, clicked with the numbers outside.
“It’s prisoner’s stuff. What they had on them,” Sawi said, shutting the trunk. “Not, uh, great.“
“Unless one’of them had a big sword,” Ami swore. “Think, Vis. You’re supposed to be clever, aren’t you?”
Was she?
Sawi glanced around the room, but the trunks were the only things there. A thud bounced against the door. Someone jostled the handle. Ami cursed—she was always cursing, but their barrier held. For now.
The window came next, and when Sawi pressed her head to the glass, she almost screamed. The tower had height, sure, but they’d built it into the Noctia cliffs. Outside, a leap away, lay rugged rock and open slope. A gap between the window and that freedom, sure, but nothing a good Vis couldn’t manage.
Sawi didn’t hesitate, taking her own stolen sword and smashing its hilt into the glass. The blow punched through a crack, a second one—Sawi had never broken glass before, but she’d seen a drunk Ami cut herself on a shattered wine bottle, so treated those shards with caution—splintered the window the rest of the way.
“What’re you doing?” Ami called as the door rattled again. The Guardian had her back pressed up against the stacked trunks, pushing with her legs. Sweat ran down Ami’s face despite the chill now racing into the room. “I didn’t come all this way to jump.”
“Hope you like getting shot, then.”
The tricky thing with the window was that it didn’t hit the floor, and its height meant the leap would be a face-forward, diving affair. Get a good lift, arc your body, and plan on a roll as you hit the ground. Harder than a fern’s frond, but the same idea. Sawi took a deep breath, the fresh icy wind going in and filling her with ecstatic life.
Something cracked the door. Sawi glanced, caught a big ax’s silver edge as the weapon withdrew.
“C’mon,” Sawi said. “We’re out of time!”
“If you think I’m jumping out some window, you’re insane.”
Sawi was about to make a standard Vis coward crack when she caught Ami’s tone, the sensible fear sitting in the words. A Foti Guardian, that’s what Ami was. She’d never gone swinging through the jungle, probably saw every jump as a risk to her ankles, not a chance to fly free. Leaping out a window, much less one into space, wouldn’t be a first, second, or fiftieth choice.
“You have to, Ami,” Sawi said as that ax struck again, withdrawing fast to let a guard’s blinking eye peek through the hole. “Either that or they’ll kill you, skar or no.”
“Yeah, figured that was a possibility.” Ami grinned, gripped her sword in both hands as she stood up from the crates. “Better this than letting Fassle get his fancy execution.”
Sawi felt her mouth hang open as Ami assumed a fighter’s stance a stride away from the trunks. She wasn’t going to jump? Was just going to swing that blade till the guards tore her apart?
“Don’t throw your life away,” Sawi said.
“We’re proving a point, Sawi,” Ami replied, shaking herself loose. The axe struck again, tore a whole board free. Someone stuck a crossbow into the opening, so Ami flipped the top trunk’s lid up, caught the quarrel as it fired.
“What point? That you’re a moron?”
Flipping her short sword to her off hand, Ami snagged something from the trunk. A guard in the room pushed, sending the trunk lid falling forward. The Guardian chucked the object, some heirloom, through the broken board, laughed as someone in the other room cursed.
The ax struck again, pulling at a second board.
“I’m a Guardian,” Ami replied, flipping up the trunk again. “Dying for my Aegis, Sawi. That’s what I swore an oath to do.” She laughed again, pulled another object free. “This guy’s shoes are the stiffest things.”
The trunk lid slammed down, Ami chucked the second shoe.
And Sawi jumped.
The wind swam through her robes, the window’s edges brushed her own, but Sawi took flight into the dim air. For a long moment Sawi felt her stomach lift, felt the god’s hold on her relax. As the beat died, Sawi curled her arms over her head, swung her face towards her stomach, and hit the frigid cliff side in a roll. Pain and panic played a pattern at first, Sawi’s momentum carrying her quick on the icy rocks as scrapes and bruises broke through the Najahn robes. Her fingers, legs, feet struck out wide, aiming for purchase and finding it in pieces, every grab, every kick slowing her speed until Sawi came to a sprawled stop. On her back, bleeding, with a shoulder telling her it might not be in the right place anymore, Sawi stared across a curling, wide crater wall running away from the Ringed City’s Najahn end.
Free. Sawi smiled, ignoring a bit lip and its leaking blood.
“Where’d you go?” Ami’s call came through the window, stressed and confused. “Don’t tell me you decided to end it without a fight?”
Sawi flipped herself over, scrambled up the rocks. “I’m out here. You can make the jump!”
Could Ami?
Better that she try, at least.
“You’re crazy,” Ami’s reply, the Guardian unseen through the window, but closer.
A loud crack hinted the door’s last moments were fast approaching.
“You’re saying a Vis can do something you can’t?” Sawi asked. “Am I better than you, Guardian?”
Ami didn’t reply. The sharp clang of metal on metal rang through, followed by a scream. Sawi stood, was about to turn and beat a survivor’s run, when the Guardian’s form appeared in the window, not just measuring the distance but flying at full speed. Ami had strength, didn’t have accuracy, and her jump through the window scraped the stone’s side, throwing her leap into a warped spin.
Sawi cursed, kicked herself to the edge and reached out, aiming for Ami’s hand and getting the Guardian’s boot instead as the spinning, falling Foti smacked into the steeper cliff Sawi herself had cleared. The hit sounded like it crunched bone, and Sawi’s arms burned as she doubled up her grip on Ami’s boot, trying to shimmy back on her knees.
“C’mon, Ami,” Sawi said, freezing teeth chattering. “Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead.”
Ami’s ankle cleared the slope as Sawi tugged, then the Guardian’s thigh, the Najahn robes falling all over. The progress, though, gave Sawi hope: she’d get Ami over the edge, and with the Vis skar, she’d be—
A click. Sawi glanced up, saw the crossbowman taking aim through the window. Right at her.
“Sorry Ami,” Sawi said, doing the only thing she could.
Letting go and rolling, down the frozen rocks into the dark.
Chapter 35
Endless Effort
The bodies could move.
Svarde and Kivi scrambled into the cavern where the Dead King’s band had been scattered about, standing in eerie silence. The pair pulled up, Svarde dripping out a Foti prayer as he watched the forms shamble. Some walked as well as any man while others, missing a foot, a leg, or both, tugged themselves across the stone and dirt floor. Like a disturbed ants nest, the bodies seemed to move at random. Though, as Svarde watched, patterns and reason emerged.
Some vanished down the side tunnel towards the deserted city. Others piled stones around Svarde’s entry, the beginnings of a barricade. Still more set about to sharpening what weapons remained, or breaking rocks to make new, crude versions. If this was a normal force, Svarde would’ve declared no time for such things, that instead they needed to rush back to the city, close the gates, and pray the fiends passed them by.
Instead, he saw those bodies work without fatigue, without needs, without hesitation or distraction. Taking out their physical imperfections, the dead were the most efficient force Svarde had ever seen.
Which prompted a question, one Svarde tossed Kivi’s way.
“If he’s had all these around for so long, how come this whole place isn’t sealed up?”
Collapse the tunnels, fill anything you couldn’t block with spikes, traps, and fiend-flaying material. Easy enough with years upon years at your disposal, so why hadn’t it been done?
Svarde sighted the Dead King in the chamber’s middle. He stood with that blade of his stamped into the stone like some carved statue. Maena circled at his side, muttering to herself as she often did these days.
“C’mon, Kivi,” Svarde said. “Let’s see how we can help.”
The ferrite snorted. A question as they edged around the forming barricade.
“Because Jochi’s army’s coming to us,” Svarde answered. “They’ll meet us here, and together we’ll destroy the fiends. Simple.”
Another snort. Hard enough it drew a questioning look from the Foti.
“Yeah, I know it’s dumb to stay here, but somebody has to. As the guy with the sword said, the fiends can go anywhere once they get past this room. You saw the damage three of those monsters could do to a big, defended city. Set one or two on a normal town, and . . . ”
Svarde trailed off as they reached the Dead King, his approach interrupted when Maena planted herself before him, a scheming question in her eyes.
“You see anything interesting?” Maena asked.
Svarde took in the Rana captain, her capering glint a far cry from the soldier she’d been back in the Rat’s Fang. A desperate madness, perhaps, overtaking her after so long in these endless tunnels. She didn’t have Svarde’s bulwark, the decayed love for a dying woman so far beyond his reach and its purifying fire.
Though a madness like this . . .
“Going to answer my question, or use those?” Maena asked, nodding at Svarde’s hands. He hadn’t realized they’d slipped to his axe hilts. “Thinking of taking my friend’s sword for yourself?”
The reference pulled Svarde to the Dead King and his solemn stand, the man silent beneath his armor as he directed the bodies in defense. If he’d heard Maena’s quip, the man didn’t show it. Whether he’d notice if Svarde did try to tear the blade away or stick an axe through his armor, who knew.
Svarde wasn’t going to try and find out.
“It’s you,” Svarde said. The burning fiends hadn’t yet made any incursions. A moment to find whether his friend could still be trusted seemed a valuable thing. “You’ve changed.”
“Lot’s happened since we first set sail, Svarde. Are you the same as you were?”
“Same goal.”
“As do I. Carve these fiends into gristle and then see if we can’t use their bones to plug the portals. That’s my plan. What’s yours?”
Kivi snorted soft at Svarde’s foot. A bit grim indeed.
“If it were that easy—”
“Isn’t it?” Maena back-stepped, reached down and scooped a stone off the floor, the chipped rock making an easy toss from hand to hand. “This stone, your axes, his sword and these mangy corpses are what we’ve got, Svarde. We’ll throw them all at those bastards you saw coming out of the water down there and try, try, and try till we’re either immolated or crushed beneath their metal husks. Simple enough.”
“Is that how you planned your raids for Rana? A blind charge onto a Whent vessel, come what may?”
“That was then. This is now.” Maena, still tossing the rock back and forth, moved aside and opened Svarde’s path towards the Dead King. “You want to strategize, be my guest. You’ll find our friend’s not the most talkative sort.”
“You’re calling this conversation here? You’re not giving me any answers.”
Maena sniffed, spat out to the side. “You don’t deserve any, Guardian. Who I am is my concern, and mine alone. Keep your mind on your own problems.”
Svarde was about to argue that’s not what friends did, particularly ones about to march into battle. Something in Maena’s stiff look, though, pushed away the crack and killed the talk. The Rana captain had drained away as they spoke, going from pithy and playing to brittle and bristling.
At least, seeing as she had no real weapon, Svarde didn’t have to consider her a threat.
The Dead King gave a different conversation, namely one beginning and ending with Svarde’s greeting. The plated man didn’t respond, save the soft in and out of his breathing. When Svarde tried again, the silence persisted, though the work continued around them. The Dead King seemed a rock until his work was done, so Svarde set about doing what he could to get himself ready.
Hours passed as the bodies worked at their stone bulwarks. Carts rolled in from the old city’s tunnel, fractured wheels scraping against the floor shoved with tireless effort by their rotted pilots. Inside lay the very thing Svarde didn’t want Maena to have: weapons.
Crude swords, spears, shields and knives. Hammered out and sharpened with pitiful skill, their edges held more pits than Svarde’s battle-scarred skin. The spear hafts weren’t sturdy wood but old bones, fashioned together with tar and spit. Many didn’t have hilts at all, wielded by jamming a single end into the soft, barely-there flesh hanging from the Dead King’s soldiers.
Svarde muttered one curse after another watching the display, as the entire chamber filled with its fetid ranks, the ones not working to bolster the makeshift wall lining up in battle formations.
