“Nothing that we know about,” said Isgrimnur. “But our ignorance is as big as my belly. Is he right, Ayaminu? Is there nothing else between us and the Norn mountains? And is my man right to suspect that something else is going on that we do not see?”

“It depends first on what you mean by ‘nothing,’” she said. “The lands between the wall and the mountain you call Stormspike are no longer inhabited, and most of the city that was built there long ago is in ruins now. But that does not warrant they will not be waiting in ambush, or that forces from Nakkiga itself will not meet you before you reach the gates.”

“We will have more talk about these gates later,” said Isgrimnur. “But now we must consider what is immediately in front of us. Sludig, could it be that the Norns simply have no arrows left, no weapons they can hurt us with until we close with them in actual combat?”

“I await that hour,” said Brindur, still sharpening. “I wait for nothing else.”

“You will have a sword that is little more than a dagger if you keep scraping away at it like that,” the duke told him. “But that isn’t my chief concern. Is there anything else that makes you worry, Sludig?”

The younger man shook his head, his forehead and brows drawn together in frustration. “Only feelings, my lord—the smell of the thing. We have fought them many times now and the Norns are nothing if not subtle. They brought many strange weapons against us at Naglimund, both during the siege and later, and just as many tricks in the last battle at the Hayholt. Poison powders. False gates. The dead made to walk. Giants summoned like tame hounds, crushing and rending everything they could reach. But where are these things now? Since their escape from the ruined fort they have managed only noises and shadows, which the men have grown used to, which no longer strike fear in any heart. As for actual fighting, we have seen only a few stones and a few arrows from the tower’s three beaks and that weak spot on the wall, aimed at the siege engines and the ram. A few of our men have been downed—by chance as much as anything else.” Sludig’s frown deepened. “And so I must ask myself—are they truly so weak?”

One of Brindur’s Skoggeymen, an older warrior with gray-shot whiskers, spoke up. “The fairies are few now, Duke Isgrimnur, whatever Sludig may think. They have lost the war and we carry it to their own land, as we should. Soon we will destroy them all so they cannot trouble us again. Why make a mystery out of weakness?”

Sludig scowled. “Because when you suppose that an enemy is weak, Marri Ironbeard, you only realize you were wrong when they’ve killed you.”

“Perhaps you have lost your taste for this kind of fighting,” Brindur said, briefly raising his eyes to give Sludig a hard look. “Or perhaps your friendship with trolls and fairies—yes, I have heard about you, Sludig Two-Axes—has made you reluctant to pursue them. Or even afraid.”

Sludig’s hand dropped to one of the bearded hand-axes in his broad belt. His eyes narrowed. “My lord, did you not grieve the loss of your son, as we all do, I would demand you to prove that charge with your own hand, man to man.”

“Enough!” shouted Isgrimnur. “No accusations. Brindur, you insult Sludig for no reason. His loyalty is beyond doubt. I too have conversed with, and even fought beside, trolls and fairies. If you question his loyalty, you question mine!”

Brindur shrugged. “I take nothing back, but I did not say he was guilty of treason, merely asked him if he had the heart for this fight.”

“This is only what our enemies would wish, to have us arguing and biting each other’s backs. Enough!” Isgrimnur was furious. “I asked Sludig a question, Brindur, and he answered me—before you needlessly insulted him. I ask you the same question. Do you believe that the Norns are as weak now as they appear?”

Brindur tested the edge of his blade with his finger, then sucked the blood from his fingertip and spat onto the packed, icy ground in a place the rugs didn’t cover. Outside the wind had risen again, rattling the duke’s tent so that the cloth hummed like the wings of a monstrous insect. “Yes, the White Foxes are fierce fighters. Hard to kill. I do not make the mistake of thinking otherwise. They surprised us with reinforcements at the ruined fort, but we have seen no signs of any more coming. We killed enough of them there that I doubt more than ten score or so of those reinforcements survive, and they had scarce enough fighters in the first group. So I think they are spent and have but little strength left. Our own men are hungry enough in this blighted, frozen place, and we have brought food for ourselves out of Rimmersgard. The Norns were already hungry weeks ago, and whatever tricks they have, I doubt they can feed themselves on air or they would not have attacked so many villages for grain and other supplies. So my wits tell me Two-Axes is only jumping at the same shadows and strange noises that he himself talked about.”

Another petty, pointless sting. Before Isgrimnur could shape a reply, a figure, half-obscured by a crust of snowflakes, pushed in past the quivering fabric of the tent door.

“I crave pardon, Your Grace, my lords,” the soldier said. “I bring a message from Jarl Vigri. He says there are pieces falling from the wall after the last blow of the great Bear. He thinks it is about to come down.”

Brindur’s dour mood dropped away in an instant. “Ha! By God,” the thane said, climbing to his feet, “If the wall is coming down, I will not be the last to paint my blade with fairy blood!” He turned to one of the younger Skoggeymen. “Fani, you fool, where is my helmet?”

Isgrimnur still had things he needed to discuss with Brindur and the rest, including the letter that a messenger had brought him only this morning, but he would never keep their attention now. As he watched the thane and his Skoggeymen scrambling for their weapons, he thought briefly of trying to make their rush toward the wall more orderly, then decided it would be better to bow to the inevitable. Even if the wall was badly damaged it might not fall for many more swings of the battering ram, and even the most anxious Rimmersgard warrior could not come to grips with the enemy until that moment. In the meantime, letting Brindur and the rest vent their impatience on an immense weight of black stone might just be a good idea. His other news could wait.

Two of Isgrimnur’s house carls were standing outside the tent, one with his battle-helmet and his White Bear and Stars standard, the other holding the duke’s large and patient horse. Isgrimnur heaved himself into the saddle, not without help, then spurred upward after the others.

The battering ram, close against the wall but well to one side of the three-beaked tower, was just about to make another stroke as Brindur and the rest reached it. Like Vigri’s soldiers who were already crouched on either side of the massive device, they held their shields above their heads to ward off arrows from the tower or wall, waiting for their chance to attack.

The ram’s sloping roof, which protected the men beneath it from defenders’ arrows, was the length of a tithing barn, though much narrower, and so large that it had to be assembled in sections like the bear-headed ram itself. Snow had been piled high atop the ram’s roof as a protection against flaming arrows, but Isgrimnur saw no sign of Norns now and little evidence of defense or defenders at all.

The ram’s overseers chanted loudly and beat their drums, competing with the war-cries of Brindur and his party. The sweating, grunting ram-handlers drew the great log back as far as its heavy chains would allow; then, at the chief overseer’s command, let it go. The Big Bear’s grinning iron muzzle swung forward and smashed into the already weakened wall with a loud crunch. The wall still did not collapse, but it shifted and bowed inward where the ram had struck, causing a shower of stone chips when cracks between the unmortared stones widened.