Sludig shrugged. “Let the fairies starve in their hole, my lord. We can’t get in, but they can’t get out, either.”
“They will not stay in there forever,” said Isgrimnur. “I cannot believe they will be unable to find their way out again. They tunnel like moles, those Norns.”
“Then we will come back and finish the job,” said Sludig, and drank deeply.
Isgrimnur watched his men beginning the long process of breaking down the camp and preparing for the trip south. They were in no hurry, nor should they be: many of the wounded were still too weak to walk, and it would be a long march home to Rimmersgard—even farther for most of the mercenary troops. He thought for a moment of the tall fellow he had knighted for helping kill a giant. Nabbanai, was he? Or Perdruinese? Something southern. That one likely wouldn’t reach home until Aedontide, poor devil. But perhaps his new rank would help speed his way. “Did we give those fellows who killed the giant anything? Some gold?”
“I will see to it, my lord.” Sludig stretched. “But not being a knight myself, I don’t know exactly how much to give them.”
Isgrimnur showed him a sour grin. “You need not fear I’ll forget your long, hard service, Sludig. In any case, you will be recognized and rewarded by the king and queen, too. So these men—reward them well. It takes courage as well as luck to kill one of those monsters.”
“Courage is always in supply,” Sludig said. “Luck, not so often, so let’s offer our thanks to the mountain for coming down on our enemies. The good Lord alone knows how many men we would have lost if we’d had to take the city inside it.”
“Shall we drink to the mountain? That seems strange, somehow.” Isgrimnur looked up at the great jagged cone. Steam and smoke still wreathed its upper reaches, as if to show that no matter what had happened, a scattering of stones here or there, the great peak still remained above such mundane things as even a war between mortals and fairies.
“Why not?” Sludig waved his bowl for more and one of the carls dutifully came forward with the jug. “We have drunk to defeated enemies before this, if they were brave or noble. The mountain ended the war, and because of that many of our men will see their homes and families again. That strikes me as noble enough to warrant a salute.” He lifted his bowl. “To the mountain! Long may she keep her secrets hidden from God-fearing men. Long may she keep the Norns out of the light and away from our lands.”
“Yes, I can drink to that, my friend,” said Isgrimnur as he lifted his own. “To the mountain, and to the end of killing.”
“And to all our brave dead.”
Isgrimnur, thinking of Isorn his son, suddenly could not find words and only nodded.
When they finished their toast Sludig sat silently, regarding the shadow-darkened peak. “At any rate,” he said suddenly, “now perhaps we can put our swords away for a time. The war is over. The Storm King and the Norns have been destroyed or driven back into the darkness.” He looked at the duke, slightly shamefaced. “In truth, I think I would like to buy a farm.”
Isgrimnur laughed so hard he spilled the last of his ale. “By the Ransomer, I wager that never in a thousand, thousand years, will such a thing come to pass—my brave, bloody-handed Sludig turned farmer! But thank you for amusing me when I thought I was beyond it.”
Sludig smiled. “Perhaps it will not happen, my lord. I have been wrong erenow, and changed my mind a hundred times about other things. But at this moment, after all we’ve seen and done, I think it would be nice to watch things grow.”
The Order of Builders had repair work underway almost everywhere in Nakkiga; with his noble blood, rank, and especially his new importance, it was easy for Viyeki to go where he pleased, see what he wished, and ask whatever questions he wanted. But the thing he was seeking did not appear on any of the official schemes, so it took some time before he tracked down the gang chief who had led the small crew.
The chief, a slender, older Hikeda’ya with hands so callused they were yellow, led Viyeki into the highest tunnels behind the mountain’s face, far above most of the work that had been done to shore up the gates and defend the heights of Ur-Nakkiga, to a place many hundreds of cubits above the starting point of the rockfall.
“Here it is, my lord Host Foreman,” said the underling. “The work was done in the very first days of the siege and then abandoned.”
Viyeki looked around. The natural cavern had been hastily and crudely enlarged, but that was not what caught his attention. A row of a dozen or more tunnels had been gouged in the cavern’s rough floor nearest the outside of the mountain, each tunnel as wide as Viyeki’s waist. Somewhat strangely, the rough chamber had its own well.
“Where does this water come from?” he asked, looking down into the blackness. He dropped a pebble, heard it splash not far below.
“From one of the meltwater rivulets that run down from the peak,” the chief told him. “All thanks to the Garden, the mountain itself makes certain we will never die of thirst.”
“And what was the purpose of your task here? What need was this digging so high above the gates meant to serve?”
“We were never told, Lord Viyeki.”
Finished with his inspection of the well, he examined the crude tunnels that had been sunk into the cavern floor. Their endings were beyond what he could see with his torch but they seemed unexceptional. When he had first discovered a passing mention of this place in the order’s records chamber, Viyeki had felt sure he had found something important, but now that he was here it was hard to see it as anything more than another abandoned project from the confusion of the siege’s early days. “Do you know who ended the digging here?”
The gang-foreman looked at him in surprise. Underlings were seldom told much about their work, and they almost never, ever asked. “No, Host Foreman. But the high magister himself came to see it in the beginning. Perhaps he was displeased with the location chosen.”
So Yaarike had been here to inspect the digging. “And did he say anything about the project being abandoned?”
Again the look of incomprehension. “No, lord. The order came to us some eight or nine bells later. There was much to do and it was a muddled time. I’m sorry I cannot tell you more.”
Viyeki nodded. “No matter. I am only correcting some of our records back at the order-house. Your assistance has been appreciated.”
The gang chief looked cautiously pleased, but still maintained his stance of extreme humility. “It is an honor to serve you, Lord Viyeki,” he said. “Everyone knows that you saved our people from starvation.”
He waved his hand, dismissing the praise. “The spirit of the Garden was watching out for us all.”
As he followed his guide back down the steep tunnels to the lower levels of the works, he felt compelled to ask, “Did anyone visit this site during the last days of the siege, after the work was abandoned?”
“I don’t think so, Lord Viyeki. Why would they?”
“Of course,” Viyeki said. “Why indeed?”
The temple bells rang to mark the passage of the days, and the life of Nakkiga continued as it had since the siege’s end, the city both mourning its dead and rejoicing at its unexpected salvation. But Viyeki found he could not do either with any comfort: the questions of what had happened before the collapse of the mountainside still worried at his thoughts like a canker. Even his wife Khimabu, who was otherwise very contented with the state of affairs, noticed his distraction.
“It would be one thing if you mourned the dead properly, dressing in white and paying the priests for bells to be rung on feast days,” she told him. “But instead you go about with a long face and your robes covered in dust like a common laborer. My family wonders what is wrong with you—and so do I.”
But on the few occasions he tried to explain, she did not want to hear.