The lieutenant blew out a long ragged breath and held out her hand. He took it in a tight grip. ‘Honesty is a rare gift among strangers,’ she said with feeling.
‘An easy gift, since we may not see the morrow.’
She lowered her gaze to the chest at their feet. ‘Well then … let’s get to it.’
They each took a handle, and together they carried it up to the top of the wall.
Lady Orosenn was on the catwalk speaking to Voti and Malle. Beyond, up the valley, the fog appeared to be breaking up. The rumbling was not diminishing, however. Even atop the wall, Jute felt the vibrations hammering through his boots.
‘This is your people’s last chance,’ Lady Orosenn was saying. ‘There will be no escape once it is upon us.’
The young king’s mouth pulled down, accentuating his long jaw. ‘We will not abandon what is ours.’
Lady Orosenn simply dipped her head in acceptance. ‘Very well. I have to confess — I hold little hope.’
Voti bowed. ‘Thank you for that frank admission. I will go to tell my council.’
Lady Orosenn answered the bow and he descended the ramp, followed by his bodyguard of ten spears. Malle remained; she leaned against the shaking stone blocks of the wall, peering out.
Cartheron arrived and nodded to Lieutenant Jalaz. ‘Time,’ he said. She gave a curt bob of her head. ‘You’ll need eight veterans.’
Malle turned from the wall. ‘Riley and his boys are up for it.’
Cartheron gave his assent.
‘Time for what?’ Jute asked, feeling a strange sort of growing unease.
Lieutenant Jalaz squeezed his shoulder, grinning. ‘Wish me luck, Jute of Delanss.’ She jogged off down the ramp. Malle leaned out over the catwalk and snapped her fingers. The majority of her remaining guards rose where they’d been squatting below among the chests.
‘What is going on?’ Jute asked everyone.
Cartheron shouted down: ‘Open the gates!’
‘Open the gates? What for?’
But Cartheron ignored him, going to the wall to lean out, peering down. Jute went to his side. Below, the gates of bronze-sheathed timber swung open and Lieutenant Jalaz appeared, jog-trotting north at the head of a train of four munition chests, each carried by two men and piled with shovels and picks.
‘What is this?’ Jute demanded.
Cartheron finally turned to him. He was rubbing a hand over his balding pate. ‘A gamble.’
‘A gamble? What sort of gamble?’
‘Orosenn assures me that all the soil and dirt ’n’ such is going to be scraped up, so no point in burying a charge. But there’s rock crevices and cracks where the bedrock comes mounding up. They’re gonna look for some of those at our maximum range. Push a few munitions down there for a little extra oomph.’
Jute snapped his gaze to where Lieutenant Jalaz and her team were disappearing into the banners of ground fog. ‘There’s no time for that!’
Cartheron just brushed his fingers down his jaw. ‘It’s a good throw. Worth four chests.’
Jute could not believe such callousness. ‘Four chests! What of nine people?’
That must have stung, as the old commander’s gaze flicked to him and he grated, his voice tight: ‘Don’t lecture me, son. They’re good people doing what they do best, so leave them to it.’ He walked off, unsteady, looking bowed. Jute moved to follow, but Malle caught his arm.
‘Let him go. Do not add to his pain. Nine lives, you say? Well, what of all of us?’
‘But-’
The hardened old woman stopped him with a look. ‘There will always be buts, captain. The important thing is that choices be made. Now comes the hard part.’
‘The hard part?’
‘Yes.’ Her gaze shifted to the north. ‘Now we wait.’
The walls became crowded as the evening passed. Everyone wanted to watch; perhaps out of a kind of perverse fascination to see the end. Conversation was almost impossible: one had to press one’s mouth to anyone’s ear to be heard over groaning earth, the rumbling avalanche, and the growing thunderous grinding of tonnes upon tonnes of moiling rock and earth.
To make it worse, it was now blowing snow. The fat flakes came out of the heights, driven by a cutting wind that only grew in intensity. Far to the east and west, all along the uplands as far as Jute could see, the thinning clouds hinted at a wall of white covering the heights — an unbroken sheath of snow that was utterly featureless except where tall ridges of black rock poked through like knife-edges.
He scanned the curved rock before the fortress where it descended to the north; the bedrock carried only low brush and dwarf trees, but it combed downward into a forest of cedar, fir, and birch. Just at the fringe of these woods was where Giana and her team were supposed to be digging. He could see no sign of them, however.
The vibration punishing everyone’s feet was becoming almost unbearable. One of the pounded dirt ramps collapsed into a heap of soil, it seemed soundlessly, as the cacophony of the leagues-wide avalanche grinding down upon them drowned everything out.
Squinting into the blowing snow he could make out entire swaths of forest disappearing as if swept down by an invisible hand. The enormous blocks of the wall juddered and bounced as if toys. The last screen of trees between them and the avalanche fell towards them, their crowns swinging down as if bowing in farewell. Come on! he urged Giana. Run!
Something appeared through the curtain of snow but it was not what Jute expected. To all appearances it looked like a flood of extremely muddy water creeping up the slope of the bedrock. Sticks and detritus roiled amid the froth of the approaching tide. It took him a moment to grasp that the sticks were in fact the stripped trunks of mature trees, and that the coming tide was a churned froth of mud, silts, soil, and sand, all being scooped downslope towards them in front of a solid wall of one of the ice-tongues. And before this flood emerged six figures, running pell-mell for the high land and the wall.
Jute tottered and stumbled his way down the ramp to the gates, where a team of locals waited to swing closed the twin leaves. The figures, completely mud-covered, ran on while the very earth jumped and shuddered beneath them. Now Jute counted only four.
The quartet came barrelling in, dripping, sheathed in mud and streaks of blood, and fall to the ground, panting and gasping. King Voti’s people pulled shut the leaves. Jute and a number of Malazans stooped to the four, rubbing away muck, pulling a shattered length of wood the size of a dagger from the arm of one of them. To Jute’s immense relief Lieutenant Jalaz emerged, bruised and bloodied, from the layers of clinging muck encasing another of them.
‘You fool!’ he growled, though of course she could not hear. She understood, however, and shrugged weakly. He waved for her to stay where she was and tottered up the ramp.
What he found above reminded him of what Lady Orosenn had said about there being no escape. Entire forests of tangled trees were building up amid the coursing wash of suspended soil and earth that was passing to either side of the rise. Orothos, under directions from Cartheron, had his crews blasting these logjams to pieces. Meanwhile, the roiling mass of coming earth just kept mounting higher and higher. Of the township of Mantle there remained no trace. The effect of all this was as of the worst naval engagement Jute had ever endured. He ran to Lady Orosenn, motioned that he wished to speak. She lowered her head. ‘What are they doing?’ he yelled.