He crawled to his feet and ran after Endri. He could do nothing else. He had no one else to save.
Her song completed, the Host-Singer Tzayin-Kha fell to the uneven floor stones in the central hall of the ruined fortress where she lay gasping like a landed fish, her starvation-shrunken limbs twitching. Viyeki moved to help her.
“No! Do not touch her!” Yaarike cried. “The fire spirit still flows in her. Look.”
As Viyeki watched, several more of the red-robed Order of Song moved toward Tzayin-Kha as cautiously as if she were a sleeping dragon. One put a stick beneath her and rolled her over. Viyeki recoiled. The Singer’s face and hands, the only parts of her flesh he could see, smoldered with light beneath the skin, as though she herself had no more substance than a wax candle.
“Will she live?” Viyeki asked his master quietly. “She is the best of her order that we have.”
“And she was the only one who could have made the fire speak,” said Yaarike, shaking his head. “That was a magister’s trick, but she managed it. I am impressed that she still lives, although that may not be true for long. Still, even if she recovers she will be useless to us until she can be healed from this effort back in Nakkiga.” He turned to the Singers now lifting Tzayin-Kha’s body and wrapping it in a heavy blanket. Viyeki could feel the heat still coming off her at several paces’ distance. “Go, now, all of you,” Yaarike told them. “Get her away while the mortals are still in confusion. Thanks to Tzayin-Kha’s efforts, General Suno’ku has carved us an escape route, but it will close very quickly.”
As the Singers hurried out, carrying the steaming body of their leader like a holy relic, Yaarike nodded to Viyeki. “Now that all our Builders are out, we must go, too,” he said.
As they made their way up the narrow stairs toward the ground level of the roofless hall, Viyeki marveled at his master’s balance. Neither of them had eaten at all, or slept for more than a few moments in days, and Yaarike was old enough to have been alive when the Hikeda’ya first took Nakkiga Mountain for their own, but he climbed like a youth. Viyeki could only hope to have half his master’s vigor when he reached the same age. If he reached a greater age at all, which had seemed unlikely for some time now.
“Your idea was clever, Viyeki-tza,” Yaarike said from the near-darkness above, his voice pitched low. “I thought Suno’ku would balk at it, but she is rare for her order, and even more for her age. I admit she surprises me—I was impressed that she would abandon that cumbersome wagon and her ancestor’s coffin.” He laughed quietly. “Even better, though, your idea amused me.”
Yaarike rarely handed out praise. Even though they were now only a few paces away from angry mortals with arrows and axes, Viyeki was full of pride. “Thank you, High Magister.” Still, he was puzzled, too. “I only meant to frighten the Northmen. You say it amused you?”
“It is one thing to win a battle that you should lose. It is another to pour salt in the wounds you inflict. It is scant compensation for the Storm King’s failure, but I wish I could have seen the mortals’ faces as the sarcophagus came down on them. Do you think they thought it was General Ekisuno himself, come to burn them all—?”
Viyeki heard the soft rustle of the magister’s garments suddenly cease. He reached out a hand to touch his master’s elbow, letting him know he was behind him.
The magister turned and took his hand. He made the finger-sign “Silence” against Viyeki’s palm, then the brushing symbol that meant “Wait.”
A moment later Yaarike said, “They have gone out of the castle again. By the Garden, those mortals are as noisy as cattle. How did they ever defeat us in the past?” He led Viyeki up the crumbling steps and into the night air, his tread slow and cautious.
“Should we not hurry, Magister?”
“There will be no escape at all if we are caught. Save your haste until we need it.” Yaarike struck out toward the far side of the ruins, heading at an angle toward the hilltop that towered over the Tangleroot Castle ruins.
Viyeki could hear the shrieks of wounded mortals from the slopes below and was filled with contempt. Foul brutes. Could they not even bear their injuries with dignity? “Do we know where to join Suno’ku and the rest?” he asked.
Yaarike did not turn around, already leaning into the rising slope. His voice fluttered back to Viyeki, soft as a moth in flight. “It will be easy enough, Host Foreman. Suno’ku is her ancestor’s heir, and more. We need only follow the trail of dead mortals.”
“By Dror and Aedon and all the rest, what is happening?” Isgrimnur stamped toward the group of men standing around the wreckage of the fiery wagon that had killed more than a dozen of his soldiers in its downward progress and had terrified at least ten score more into running headlong into the blind night. He feared that many who fled had already been killed by the Norns, but prayed that he would be able to find and bring back any survivors when the sun was up. The night had been a disaster, and now the Norns had escaped the ruins and were heading north again.
Isgrimnur sniffed the air and felt his stomach turn over at the tang of burned flesh. As he neared the gathering, he raised his voice again. “I said, what is happening? Why are you men huddled here? Sludig, is that you? I see Brindur’s horse—where is he? I told him to follow those damned, sneaking creatures. We must not let them get away. We must hound them through the wilderness until every last one of them is slaughtered.”
“Jarl Vigri went after them with his bowmen,” said Sludig from the darkness, but his voice sounded hoarse and strange. “Brindur is . . . he is . . .”
Isgrimnur felt his heart and innards go cold. He hurried forward, ignoring the pain of several bleeding wounds. “Oh, sweet Usires, is it Brindur? Is he . . . ?”
It was only as he reached the circle of men that Isgrimnur could see faces. One was Sludig’s long, mournful countenance, and the rest seemed to be Brindur’s Skoggeymen. But the man who was kneeling next to the smoking wreckage of the cart and the huge, upended coffin, Isgrimnur was surprised and relieved to see, was Thane Brindur himself.
A black, charred shape lay half in and half out of the scorched sarcophagus. Here and there a bit of pale flesh, a few grinning teeth, or a spot of unburnt bandage gleamed through the ash. Only a single arm protruding from the blackened, shriveled mass remained whole. Around its wrist was a thick gold bracelet.
Brindur glanced up, his eyes red in the torchlight and his face suddenly looking decades older. “It is his.” Brindur lifted the arm so that the bracelet caught the light. “He won it at Kraki’s Field against the remnants of Skali’s army just half a year ago.” Isgrimnur must have looked like he still did not understand, because Brindur blinked and said, “This is Floki. My son. They burned him alive and rolled him down the hill to frighten us like children.” Brindur shook his head slowly. “God curse them. God curse them!” When he spoke again, it was more quietly. “Telling his mother—that will be the foulest part.”
“There is nothing worse,” said Isgrimnur. “As I know myself.” Sludig leaned over and touched the duke’s arm, reminding him that there was much to do. “You stay here for now, Brindur,” Isgrimnur said. “Bury your son—and the others. Break camp and follow us when you can.”
“And so it goes on,” said Brindur.
Isgrimnur didn’t like the sound of that, and was almost glad he was leaving the thane behind for now. Brindur was a good man, but perhaps this had been one blow too many. Still, Isgrimnur understood the man’s pain. “We will all remember your son,” he said. “May God take him swiftly to His bosom in Heaven. Their tricks, the form of his death, they mean nothing—just more cruelty in the cruel war these bastard fairies have forced on us. Floki was captured in battle and died a hero. It is as simple as that.”