“I told you that the king and queen of the High Throne were journeying to the great city in Rimmersgard the northmen call Elvritshalla,” Jarnulf said. “Every mortal in these lands must have known it—don’t blame me because you chose to ignore it.” He made the gesture Defense Against Falsehood. “The royal party should have been long past us on their way back—the weather must have delayed their return—but remember, I said we should cross the North Road two days ago near the forest and strike east. You are the one who would not trust me and insisted we find another spot. No, Makho of the Talons, I think it is your suspicions that will kill me.”

“He is too insolent,” Kemme said. “Give him the death he expects, then we do not have to hear his lies. He is a spy who has led us into a trap.”

Jarnulf smiled grimly. “Of course I have. And what better way for me to make certain of that than to die in the same trap? Do you think that when it is dark, and we try to break free, these short-sighted Erkynguards will be looking to see which of us are Hikeda’ya and which of us are the Hikeda’ya’s mortal slaves—slaves whom they despise even more than you?” He shook his head. “Kill me if you will—or at least you may try.” He let his hand drop to his blade. “It might not be so easy as you imagine. But if you do not wish to test me now while enemies surround us, then tend to your own affairs, and I will tend to mine.”

Jarnulf bent and took a short, charred stick from the fire, then walked back down the narrow space between the split stone to his pack, which was farther along the crevasse, near the giant Goh Gam Gar.

“What are you doing, mortal?” Makho demanded.

He did not look back. “Writing out my death song.”

•   •   •

Kemme, Makho, and Saomeji, who was fast regaining his strength, huddled in urgent talk, plotting a path they could take when the blue-gray evening had gone fully dark. Already dozens of the mortals’ torches had bloomed at the bottom of the hill.

Nezeru understood the situation, though she had been excluded from the discussion: Saomeji had said that he could not long maintain the protective illusion in daylight, and it was clear the mortal soldiers would wait sensibly for morning, as if the hilltop were a besieged castle, instead of hunting for the Hikeda’ya in the dark. That meant the best time to try to break out would be in the last hours before the sun returned, when the mortals were at their weakest and most timid. But even with the aid of darkness and a little surprise, she did not think their queen’s hand would survive—not all of them, at least. The queen’s Hikeda’ya were so few, and the mortals were so many—!

Mother of All, give strength to your servant. My life is yours. My body is yours. My spirit is yours. Nezeru calmed herself with the familiar, soothing litanies of duty she had been taught long before her first woman’s blood. Better to die fighting to escape, she told herself, than to die hiding like lowly animals. We live for the queen so we must die for her as well, without complaint. Otherwise our oaths are meaningless.

Halfway down the hidden space between the great stones, past the giant’s hairy bulk, she saw the pale-haired mortal scratching away with his burnt branch on a dry, scraped goathide he had taken from his pack and unrolled across his lap. Makho had risen once to look at what he was writing, but had walked back shaking his head. Nezeru was curious, and her body ached for something to do, even just to rise and walk a few steps.

As she passed the giant, who had looked asleep, Goh Gam Gar opened one of his blood-tinged eyes. As always, she found it hard to meet that only partially animal stare. The creature’s voice was a deep rumble. “Death is coming, little Blackbird.”

Nezeru hesitated. “Of course it is. Death comes for all—except the Queen of the Mountain. But death is only a door, and the Garden is on the far side.”

“Nicely said.” Goh Gam Gar scratched his hairy belly with a clawed finger as wide as Nezeru’s wrist. “For someone who has never died.”

As she clambered over his mighty legs, almost sickened by the bristling fur scratching against her ankles, Nezeru felt the deep rumble of the monster’s laughter.

The mortal had make crude symbols all over the hide, lines and branching forks and simple shapes. She thought it looked artless, and was almost saddened for him, that his death should be celebrated with such an indistinguished scrawl. As she watched, he finished the final row and held it at a little distance to examine his work. She thought the charcoal-scratchings looked like something a child would make on his first day learning from the Chroniclers.

“Does it say something?” she asked. “What kind of marks are those?”

“Those marks are the old runes of my people, from the time before we became your people’s slaves,” he said without looking up. “It is my death song. You should understand that. Sacrifices make them too—especially you Talons.”

For a moment she was almost pleased he understood the difference, knew something of the sweat and blood and suffering it had cost her to become not just any Sacrifice, but a Talon of the Queen. “But we do not write our songs on skins.” Nezeru still had not decided what to make of the mortal, but this was something she could understand. “We sing them after we have taken our sacred oath.” She remembered the ageless cavern where the ceremony had taken place, the crack in the floor that had spilled heady, sweet fumes that rose from the holy Well, and the inhuman voices that had sung so softly and sweetly in the dark deeps. “Little more than a circle of seasons has passed since that day—I remember it as clearly as if no time had passed.”

“You are fortunate, then, Sacrifice Nezeru, that yours is safely sung. My people do it differently so I am not so lucky.” He gave her a keen look that she could not decipher. “Go and ask the giant to come here.”

Uncertain, but also wondering what the mortal planned, Nezeru crept back up the crevasse to where Goh Gam Gar lay, big as a toppled haywain. He did not open his eyes until she told him that Jarnulf wanted him, then he grunted and rolled over. He did not stand, but crawled on hands and knees the several paces to the end where the Rimmersman sat, blocking most of the width of the crevice as he went, forcing Nezeru back to Jarnulf’s side.

“Do you wish me to crush your skull?” Goh Gam Gar asked the mortal with what sounded like honest curiosity. “I did not take you for a coward, little man, but perhaps you would prefer to die on your own terms?”

Jarnulf’s smile was icy. “When I die, I aim to take as many with me as I can, Jarl Hunë. I suspect you would be a rough partner for such an enterprise.” His pale blue eyes looked a blank gray in the gathering dark. “I do not think you love Chieftain Makho, the one who gives you pain.”

“No. I do not love him.”

“Then help me play a small trick. I am not death-sung like these Hikeda’ya. My last song must fly high and far, so that the old gods of my people can see it from Himnhalla—from the starry heavens.”

“Do you wish me to throw it?” The giant watched as Jarnulf wrapped the hide around the arrow shaft, the ashy symbols now hidden. “I fear I will crush it instead.”

“I can send it farther and higher with my bow than you can, even with those great thews of yours,” Jarnulf said. “All I need you to do is to remain where you are and block the space between the two stones, so that Makho and his angry friend Kemme cannot see what I do.”

“And what will you do in return? A slave like me is too poor to do favors, especially for doomed mortals, and I already helped you once.”

Nezeru did not understand what the giant meant. Helped the mortal how? When?

“The doomed part is not up to you, Goh Gam Gar,” Jarnulf replied. “As for my repayment, that will be for you to decide one day. Tell me, do we have a bargain?”