Isgrimnur brought his hands close to the fire again. “We have a large troop of the Norns that attacked Erkynland trapped in these ruins,” he said more quietly. “If you sent your people a message, Ayaminu, would they come? Would they help us to finish this once and for all?”
She returned a look that he could not interpret. It was always difficult with the Sithi, whose emotions and even ages were largely a mystery to mortals. He knew Ayaminu was venerable among her kind, perhaps even ancient, but to look at her she seemed scarcely different than one of the younger Sithi women like Jiriki’s sister Aditu. Perhaps her skin was thinner, her movements less robust—there were times when she almost seemed fragile, like a woman once considered a beauty but recently recovered from a long illness. Her golden eyes, though, were as bright as his wife Gutrun’s angriest stare, fierce as a hunting hawk’s.
“No,” the Sitha said at last. “As I told you before, Duke Isgrimnur, my people will not come. The Zida’ya fought as allies to you Sudhoda’ya—you mortals—but that does not mean our paths will always lead the same way from now on. We will not help you destroy our kin.”
“Then why are you here? Why travel all this way simply to watch?”
She turned the long staff she was working on this way and that to examine it in the firelight before putting blade to wood again. “You speak as though watching and learning have no value in themselves.”
Isgrimnur shook his head. Talking to the Sithi often felt like arguing with drunkards or children—not that they spoke foolishly, but the conversation always went around in circles until he forgot where it had begun. Perhaps she meant what she said—that she was only here to observe—but the duke did not trust it. Do Simon and Miriamele understand how unlikely it is that we will be able to live comfortably beside such strange creatures as these fairies? We will sooner make partnership with the birds of the air, I think. They are just too different from us—nor do they think we are worth the trouble of honest explanations. “Please do not muddle me with tail-swallowing words, Mistress Ayaminu,” he said. “Of course learning has value, but so does fighting to protect ourselves.”
“The Hikeda’ya are retreating to their own land.” The Sitha’s voice was mild, as though she merely proposed another interpretation.
The duke struggled to keep his temper. “Yes, after pillaging and murdering all over the north—and through Erkynland too. After trying to throw down the mortal kingdoms and set their dead master over all of us.”
She might have been amused, but he could not be sure. “So you will teach them not to do that by doing the same thing. Blood for blood.”
Isgrimnur shook his head. “Simon and Miriamele, the new king and queen in the Hayholt, bade me only make sure the retreating Norns can do no further harm. But without help from your people, I think I have no other choice but to ensure their good behavior by ending their race completely—that is what I think, more and more.”
“And you wonder why my people will not help you.”
“I wonder less, now that I have spent time with you, Lady Ayaminu.” Despite his best efforts, the duke was finding it hard to keep anger at bay. “It’s clear that you think nothing your Norn cousins do is worth punishment.”
“No, that is not true. But that is because I know the Hikeda’ya will punish themselves—are already punishing themselves—more deeply than you can understand.”
“Enough.” Isgrimnur rose in disgust. “Where I come from, we do not let murderers choose their own sentences.” He left Ayaminu to her carving and headed to the larger fire where Jarl Vigri and his thanes were passing a skin bag. The sun was down, and the crags behind the White Foxes’ castle gleamed like crooked teeth in the last light.
“You are back, my lord!” shouted Vigri. “The ale-feast has its guest of honor!” Vigri of Enggidal was a short man about whom it was an old joke to suggest there might be trolls in his family tree, but he was burly and strong. More than a few arguments at the jarl’s own supper table had ended when, offended by something, Vigri had picked up one end of the great oak trestle and flipped everything on it to the floor of the dining hall, often tumbling a few guests into the straw at the same time. Isgrimnur was glad to have Vigri beside him again. He was a steadier, more trustworthy lieutenant than Brindur, who blew hot and cold, or Brindur’s son Floki, who blew only hot.
Vigri and his carls seemed surprisingly drunk for so early in the evening, but the duke and his men had only just arrived and Isgrimnur knew it must have been difficult for Vigri’s soldiers to wait for reinforcements in an enemy land, especially a spot as gloomy as this, a place so ill-omened that Rimmersmen never ventured here, though the Norns had deserted the crumbling fortress centuries earlier. Vigri and his men would likely have spent the last several days praying for the arrival of Isgrimnur’s troop and hearing and seeing evil spirits in every shadow. Small wonder if they celebrated now. “I had to see to a few things. My men are not happy. Most of them expected to be at home in Elvritshalla by now.”
“My men feel the same, my lord,” said Vigri. “They heard a fortnight ago that the war was over, and not much before that, they learned that Skali Sharp-Nose is dead. We have won, so why are we still fighting?”
“It is one thing to win,” said the duke. “It is another to convince your enemies that they have lost.”
Vigri grinned. “Killing them is a good way to do that.”
Isgrimnur made a sour face. “Killing Norns is never as easy as it sounds. How many of them are here, and how are they disposed?”
“It is hard to say, Your Grace. They move in and out of the shadows like cats. Also, they look so much alike that it might be one Norn soldier seen in a dozen different places.”
“Then give me your best guess.”
“Perhaps as few as four score or so, perhaps as many as three hundred. But we have seen no giants among them.”
“That’s something to thank the good God for, at least.” Isgrimnur looked around the fire. “And what of us? Most especially, how many archers do we have? I know the White Foxes too well to charge in. We will pick off as many as we can.”
“I have a troop of Tungoldyr bordermen who can do what is needed with a yew bow,” Vigri said, and waved for the skin once more. “I would put them against any archers in the south, even the Thrithings-men.”
Isgrimnur nodded. “And I have my crossbowmen who were with me in Erkynland—those that survived, God save the rest. Those bolts will put a pretty hole even in that damnable witchwood armor.” The duke leaned and began to scratch with a stick on the snow-spattered ground. “So what does that make it? I brought a company of paid men for the forts, most of them foot soldiers, but a few lances as well. Most of them are untried, though, and new to the north. I also have a company out of Hringholt, as well as Tonnrud’s brother Brindur and their Skoggeymen. What does that make?” He scratched a few more times, frowned. He had not brought anywhere near as many men back from Erkynland alive as he would have hoped, and it pained him deeply. “With yours and mine we must have twelve hundred soldiers altogether, Vigri.” He felt a little better, and this time he reached out his hand for the skin as it went around. After a long swallow, he wiped his beard with the back of his hand, then took a second sizable gulp—he had given Vigri and the others a long head start on the drinking, after all. “And the siege machinery we passed on the road?”
“That is what I ordered sent from Elvritshalla, a few stone-flingers and a great iron battering ram to knock down gates and walls—the biggest one we’ve got.”
“Is it the Big Bear?” asked the duke with a smile. “I haven’t seen that snarling monstrosity for years. No wonder there were so many horses hitched to the wagon—that thing is heavy as a mountain!”