Endri smiled. “At least being tall like that keeps your ballocks up high in the air where people aren’t as likely to kick them.”

Porto shook his head, glad to see the youth’s spirits lift a bit. “Don’t forget, there’s only a small difference between them being too high to kick and them being low enough to punch. I swear by all the saints, it hurts just as much.”

Somebody blew a horn. It echoed along the hillside like a sudden shriek. The color drained from Endri’s face. “What’s that?”

“It’s only the stand-ready,” Porto told him. “Don’t fear. We’ll come through this all right.”

It is always dreadful, waiting for the fighting to begin, Isgrimnur thought. But it was much worse when the enemy was as unknowable as the Norns.

As he stood watching sunrise color the sky above the pass, Isgrimnur remembered the first time he had waited for a battle to start, long ago—so long ago! Could so many years truly have passed? His father Isbeorn had led a company of dalesmen against Fanngrun, King Jormgrun’s rebellious cousin. Isbeorn had not wanted to fight, but Fanngrun had chosen to march through the thane’s family lands in the Hargres Dale on his way to attack the king in Elvritshalla, and the king had made it very clear that if Isbeorn and his carls did not dispute Fanngrun’s passage across their lands, then they were traitors, too.

As they had stood waiting, on a morning not much brighter or more pleasant than this one, Isgrimnur’s father had seen his young son’s look of poorly hidden fear.

“Do you know what the worst thing about fighting is?” Isbeorn asked.

“What, sire?”

“There’s a good chance we’ll live.”

Isgrimnur, all of thirteen summers old, though a good size for his age, hadn’t known how to answer to that. His father was not a man given to jests, even grim ones. At last, he said, “You say we’ll live?”

“The odds are good. It is not our job to stop Fanngrun’s army, merely to show ourselves willing—to prove to the king that we are his men. That is best done not by fighting Fanngrun’s Vattinlanders face to face, but by harrying them through our land as quickly as possible. They outnumber us greatly.”

“I still don’t understand. You said we’ll probably live. Why is that the worst thing?”

His father grinned, teeth gleaming in his grayshot beard. “Because if we’re killed, we go straight to Heaven, don’t we? Doing our king’s bidding and defending our home in the name of the True God against unbelievers.”

This was far beyond Isgrimnur’s youthful understanding. “But our King Jormgrun is an unbeliever, too. So are most of his court!”

“God only cares about His soldiers and what they do. So if someone happens to put a spear through me, don’t worry—I’ll be on my way to Heaven like a stone out of a sling. They can only kill your body, son. Your soul is beyond any mortal harm. If we survive this day, it means we may have to wait another sixty years or more before we can stand before the Lord’s great throne.”

Isgrimnur had never felt as reassured by the explanation as his bluff, pious father likely meant him to, but it had set things in a different light.

I wish it were true now, he thought. I wish we had nothing to fear but death. But fighting the Norns was different: thinking of their dark, empty eyes and their ghostly faces, the duke could not help feeling that his soul was in danger—that there were powers that could not just keep him from Heaven but also drag him away to wander in darkness forever. And Isgrimnur was by no means the only one who felt that way: a few enterprising Rimmersgard soldiers had emptied the font at an abandoned church they had passed weeks ago, in their march north, and were now selling the holy water at a brutally high price. Soldiers were rubbing it on their faces and other exposed skin, even drinking it, in the hope of somehow protecting themselves not only from the blades of the White Foxes, but even from the immortals’ very existence.

The dawn light was strong enough now to touch the weathered gray stones at the top of the ruined castle’s highest tower, a building whose odd, thorny shape and unfamiliar construction whispered that its makers had not been human. The air was chilly but not as bitter as it had been. That was something. Too much cold sapped the strength from a man’s limbs.

Isgrimnur ignored the pounding of his heart and the sourness of his stomach as he looked to his captains, then turned and pointed to the catapult men.

“Let fly,” he called. “Knock down those walls. Push the whiteskinned bastards’ faces into the mud.” He turned back to his captains. “With your men, now. We will soften them up a bit, first with stones, then with arrows. Then it will be fieldwork, men—all hard graft until we drive them out.”

The first catapult arm leaped forward with a hum and a loud clack. A stone flew through the air and knocked an edge off one of the freestanding walls.

“Soon!” Isgrimnur shouted. “Captains, keep your men at the ready. Soon we will pay them back for Naglimund and the Hayholt!”

Except for a few Sacrifice sentries and the chanting Celebrant priests around Ekisuno’s coffin, most of the Hikeda’ya survivors who crowded now into the root-tapestried hall were of Viyeki’s own Order of Builders, several score of battle-trained engineers resting quietly or moving like shadows in that ancient place, illuminated by gray morning sky, the ruin’s only roof. They could all hear the battle noises from the hill outside the tower, but could do nothing except wait to see if the Order of Sacrifice’s defense failed. If it did fail—and Viyeki thought that likely—they would all have to retreat to the tunnels, then sell their lives down in the dark in hopeless resistance against the victorious mortals. Viyeki should have been frightened at what lay before him, at the thought of never seeing his wife or home again, but he was too angry. The more he thought of it, the more he felt certain that Yaarike was right: the Order of Sacrifice as well as Akhenabi and his Singers had been foolishly overconfident, with no plan made for retreat and no attention given to any outcome except victory.

As if he had guessed what his host-foreman was thinking, Magister Yaarike made a gesture of summoning. Viyeki went to him.

“Yes, Master?”

“Let us walk a little ways apart. What I have to say—and show—is not for these others.”

Viyeki followed him to the emptiest section of the great hall. The broken spiral columns in each angle of the sixteen-sided room showed him that the tower had been built back in the era of either the fourth or fifth Royal Celebrants. He knew that even now, so many years after Viyeki had left the academy behind, Yaarike would be annoyed with him for not remembering which.

Even in his despair and fury at their situation, Viyeki could not help being excited that his master had so often singled him out on the retreat from the south, treating him almost as an equal. Magister Yaarike was more than the head of an order, although that would have been honor enough to assure a place among the tombs of the greatest; he was also the oldest member of Clan Kijada, a family that had been powerful long before the Hikeda’ya and their kin had fled the Garden and come to these lands. Viyeki’s own parents were distinguished enough, a justiciar and an admired court artist, but his Enduya clan had never been of much importance—a middling noble house whose children mostly became palace clerics or low-ranking Sacrifice officers.

But Magister Yaarike had always looked beyond Viyeki’s indifferent family heritage, and for that the host foreman was extremely grateful. He doubted any other magister of the Builders would even have given one of such middling birth a position of importance: Yaarike was one of Nakkiga’s few leaders for whom “unconventional” did not always mean “untrustworthy.”