“Endri!” he shouted. “Damn it, man, grab the other hammer and help me knock these stakes in!” Even as he said it, Porto lifted his own maul and swung it, but as he brought it down he was almost knocked from his feet by a tremendous rumbling impact as the great wall that sealed the valley finally collapsed.
He turned and saw the Rimmersgard soldiers scrambling forward over the tumbled stones of the wall. They were bellowing like wild things, and he was so taken by the sound of it, the way it murmured in his bones and made his heart race even faster, that for long instants he did not hear Endri’s warning. The young man was leaping up and down, shouting at him and pointing upward; Porto saw a movement at the corner of his eye and turned away from the spectacle of Isgrimnur’s soldiers charging the gap just as the first of them began to fall back, sprouting arrows.
Something was tumbling toward him down the slope at the side of the valley. Something very big.
For a brief instant, as Porto tried to understand the size of the shadowy mass skidding downward toward them, he thought, “Dragon!” his mind ready for any kind of madness the Norns might be able to summon. Then he saw it for what it was, a slab of rock the size of a village church. Even as he watched, it tipped and began to tumble.
Porto dropped his heavy maul to run, but because he was still looking back at the huge stone as it grew bigger by the instant, he tripped over the dead man he’d taken the hammer from. The man’s face was right below him, mouth sagging open, and for an instant as Porto fell it looked as though the corpse was warning him. Or perhaps taunting him: You think staying alive is easy?
Porto hit the icy ground hard, felt a brief spray of cold snow, then struck his head so roughly that his thoughts shrank to a narrow tunnel of light in a field of black emptiness. Even the boulder that was about to crush him seemed far away, without meaning, though its thunderous approach seemed to drown all other noise. No matter, he thought absently. Everything was over. Over.
And then he was yanked away, scraped face-first across the rough, stony soil and its layer of snow, heat and chill and bright white pain all battling for his attention—but Porto had no attention to give.
It had not been the great stone that had hit him he realized an instant later, floating in dreamy detachment. He saw its shadow slide past and heard it smash the Donkey into splinters, then he watched the great catapult arm bounce away, end over end like a spoon thrown by an ogre’s child, until it finally stopped, leaning upright against the base of Three Ravens Tower.
Endri stood over him now, the sky a swirl of pearl bright light and dark clouds. Porto could only stare up at his friend in wonder. He knew something had happened, but his thoughts seemed to be at the end of a long string, and although he pulled at it, all he was doing was reeling in more and more string.
“The catapult is gone!” Endri cried, as if that should mean something.
The young man’s eyes were so wide Porto thought it must be painful.
“Now the ram, too. I think the Norns found a way to push that rock down on . . .” Endri paused with a look of confusion. Still puzzled, he turned to look behind him, as though someone had tapped him on the shoulder while he stood in a deserted place. A moment later the youth dropped to his knees, far more slowly than the great stone had traveled down the mountain. Then, equally slowly, he toppled forward onto his face. His chain mail gave a single soft clash as he hit the ground, then Endri lay still and silent, a black arrow quivering in his back.
Duke Isgrimnur did not want to look back at the damage the monstrous stone had caused in its fall, but he could not help himself. The head of the iron ram was intact beneath the rubble but the great log, a single trimmed pine trunk more than thirty paces long, had been crushed to splinters, and he could see broken bodies in the pile of shattered stone and wood. Then an arrow whickered past his helmet, and he hurriedly turned back to what lay before him.
Fewer Norns had been lying in wait behind the small, hastily built second wall than Isgrimnur had feared at first; the fairies had saved their arrows and put them to deadly use, although most of his men had been shot in the first instants of surprise. Though many Rimmersmen fell in the first charge, their comrades had pushed forward after them, climbing over the dead to reach the second wall. Brindur himself had led his Skoggey kinsmen over the top, shouting the name of his dead son Floki, and within moments was among the Norns on the other side, howling with mad glee as he hacked at his enemies. Vigri’s men quickly followed. The Norns were deadly fighters, but they were outnumbered by more than a dozen to one, swarmed as though beset by hunting hounds. Within an hour Isgrimnur’s forces had taken control of the wall.
A few more White Foxes tried to hold the tower, but its portals had not been fairy-magicked and Rimmersgard axes soon splintered the doors and knocked them from their hinges. Terrible fights took place in the darkened stairwells and in the uppermost chamber between the great beaks, but at last the final Norn died, pinned against a wall by several spears. The besiegers dragged the pale creature’s body to the hole in the bottom of the beak and shoved it through. It spun slowly down the long drop to the ground and bounced when it struck, like a discarded fish head.
Thane Brindur had sustained many wounds but none of them were mortal. He licked his lips and grinned as one of the barber-surgeons cleaned and stitched the worst of them. “I told you,” he growled. “Fairies can die like anyone else once you shove a yard of iron into them.”
Isgrimnur, who in his time had killed more than his share of Norns, did not bother to reply to Brindur’s comment. “The rest of the White Foxes are gone. That was but a token force. I counted only a few score corpses. The rest have fled back to their city.”
“So?” Brindur rubbed his finger along a freshly sewn cut that extended from his wrist to beyond his elbow, then he examined the blood. “That is only another hundred that we will kill later rather than sooner.”
Jarl Vigri approached with several of his thanes. “The scouts are back from atop the cliffs, Your Grace. Yes, that boulder was the Norns’ work—the tools are still there where they dropped them. But looking out across the lands beyond the wall, the scouts say it is still several days’ march to Stormspike from here. Those who escaped may be waiting for us in ambush along the way.”
Brindur wiped his bloody finger on his already muddy, blood-spattered surcoat. “Slaughter them in droves like the beasts they are or kill them one by one—it makes no difference to me as long as we destroy that foul nest in the mountain.”
Isgrimnur frowned and tugged at his beard. “We are already in territory that no mortal armies have entered in centuries. We have lost a quarter of our army in two or three small skirmishes on the outskirts of the enemy’s lands—what makes you think they will not fight even harder to defend their home? The Bear is smashed, as well as two of our catapults, so how do you propose we enter Stormspike, Brindur, even if the Norns are too few to defend it? Which is by no damn means certain.”
“It is certain,” Brindur said. “If they had reinforcements a day or two away, do you think they would have let us break down their wall and walk into the Nornfells without a fight?”