“Do you think the Norns are guarding it?” he asked now. “Or are they hurrying back to Stormspike Mountain?”

“They will defend this pass,” she said. “They have no choice. Do you see what has happened to the wall on the right side of the tower?”

Isgrimnur squinted, but in the fading twilight it was hard to make out much beyond the high wall’s shadowy, massive presence. “No. My eyes are not like a Sithi’s. Speak plainly.”

“A very few years ago, just before the beginning of the Storm King’s war, the earth shook here—a great writhing of the ground that threw down many parts of the wall around Nakkiga-That-Was, including that section beside the tower. If you look closely, you can see that the tower itself tilts slightly to one side.”

“I see no sign of the wall having collapsed.”

“Because repairs were done—but they were hasty. My people sent a number of our families to help them. This was before the Hikeda’ya moved openly against us, but Queen Utuk’ku still refused our offer. We know, though, that the repairs were over-swift, most likely because the queen’s eye was turned southward to the lands of men.”

“Over-swift? What do you mean?” This was Brindur, who had joined the impromptu council. “I may not have your damnable fairy eyes, but they look solid enough to me.”

As always, Ayaminu seemed unperturbed by insults. “Yes, the stones were piled up once more with as much skill as could be rendered, but not all the rituals were observed or the proper things done. The queen was keeping her holy Singers busy then, preparing the way for the Storm King’s return. We can all be grateful they failed at that, but also that they were so gravely occupied by it, because the Words of Binding and other necessary cantrips were not sung here. The wall is weak. It can be breached with nothing but force.”

“What else would we use?” Brindur demanded. “Trickery, like your accursed breed?”

Isgrimnur spurred his mount between the furious Rimmersman and Ayaminu. An argument with their one source of knowledge was a bad idea, and the Sitha-woman had seldom offered this much help before. “Please, explain,” Isgrimnur said to her. “What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. You have force. You have implements of war and siegecraft like your great battering ram. The wall is weak there, and the rituals that would have made it all but impervious have not been performed. The tower itself was damaged by the shaking earth and the wall was badly weakened.” She looked up the pass to the spiky shape of Three Ravens Tower. “You will lose men. The Hikeda’ya will fight fiercely. But if you wish to pass the walls of their lands, this is the place it can be done.”

“And why should we trust you?” Brindur snarled. “You have not seen fit to offer such useful advice before. Why now? And why could you not have told us that another Norn army was coming down upon us at the ruins?”

Ayaminu only looked at him blandly. “I knew nothing of that army. The Hikeda’ya are aware of my presence, I promise you, Northman. They take pains to keep their plans hidden.”

Isgrimnur was not to be distracted from the matter at hand. “But are you certain now? Could they be keeping something else from you?”

“Of course. But what I tell you is true—you could ride along this wall until the season changed and not find a more vulnerable spot.”

“You see my dilemma, don’t you?” Isgrimnur frowned. “I have the safety of several thousand men in my hands. Can you promise me success?”

Now the Sitha showed emotion for the first time, a faint twisting of the lips. “I can promise you nothing, Duke Isgrimnur. Many men will die. So will many Hikeda’ya. Any one of us may suffer that fate at any time, and a battle between desperate enemies will not make the chances less. But if you wish to pass the wall and enter the lands around Nakkiga—if you truly mean to take the city itself—then you can find no better spot. That is all I have to say. The decision is yours.”

“Look, we have reached the camp. Endri, did you hear me? We are here.” The younger soldier had not been badly hurt during the Norns’ escape, but like Porto himself he had been overwhelmed with a terrible, pressing weariness afterward and had spent most of his time on the back of Porto’s horse sliding in and out of troubled sleep. “Endri?”

“Can we stop now?”

“Yes, that’s what I said. See, the fires are lit—in fact, I smell food cooking.” The sun, unnaturally late in the sky this far north, had only just disappeared, although midnight was surely not far away. The camps, set up well out of range of even the strongest bowshot from the looming walls, nestled in the shelter of the thick, snow-mantled pines on either side of the steep canyon. As Porto reined up he took a brief look at the beaked tower, which squatted against the purple-blue sky like some horrid heathen idol from the primeval days before the Ransomer was sent to Mankind. “Come on, lad,” he told his companion, deliberately turning his back on the tower. “We don’t want to miss whatever supper is left—I am famished.” For the last stretch of the climb Porto had been forced to watch the tower loom larger with each moment, and despite his words to Endri, he found that the thing he wanted just now more than food or even drink was to find a spot where he could not see the tower at all until night finally hid it from view completely. It seemed to be watching them. He could almost imagine that their puniness, their mortal insignificance, actually amused it.

When they had found a fire, and were scooping the last congealing bits of stew out of the cooking pot, Endri suddenly looked up. “Porto?”

“What, lad?”

“I can’t remember the way home.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t remember the roads we took, or how we got here. I couldn’t find my way back again. Don’t leave me.”

Porto looked at the other men around the fire, mercenaries from Nabban and Perdruin and a scrawny, hard-muscled veteran of Josua’s Erkynlandish army, wondering what they would make of the young man’s neediness. Not one of them even looked up from their bowls. “What do you mean?” Porto asked him quietly. “I’m not going to leave you, lad. I promise.”

“I can’t even remember the road to my own house. You remember it, don’t you? You’ve been to Harborside. I know you have.”

Porto shook his head. “Been there? I’ve been trying to rid myself of that memory for years,” he said, hoping to jolly the younger man out of his mood. “You should thank the saints to have lost it. Dreadful place. Not a patch on the Rocks.”

“No jokes, Porto.” Endri was staring intently at him now, his eyes showing a touch of panicked white around the edges, made all the more eerie by the flickering firelight. “I don’t want jokes. Promise me that when it’s over you will show me the way home.”

“We will go together.” Porto did his best to keep his voice light, though he was almost as beaten down by these dark, frightening lands as Endri. He sometimes thought that if he did not have the boy to watch over he might already have deserted to head back south, risking wolves and wild giants and all the other dangers. “We’ll all go home then—you, me, these fellows here, and old Duke Isgrimnur leading the way. People will line up along the roads to cheer us—‘The men who finally defeated the Norns!’ they’ll shout. And you won’t need anyone to show you the way because your people, my people—my wife and son—they’ll all be waiting to welcome us home.”

Endri stared at him for a long moment without saying anything, his face still wild. Around his neck was his red and white Harborside scarf, grimy now with mud and matted with pine needles. The young soldier reached up and touched it and his expression softened, his eyes blinked. “Of course,” he said. “Of course. Thank you. You are a good friend.”