“Nothing is necessary,” Coruth said. “But some things are more devoutly to be wished for than others. The sword must stay with Malden. No matter what.”
“Even if-he doesn’t-want it?”
Coruth clucked her tongue. “This is the problem with being able to see the future. You see how little what people want matters. And you watch them make terrible choices, and do things you know they will regret. Malden will have no joy of that sword. But if he does not keep it, everyone will suffer.”
Cythera understood-though she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Being a witch was about making hard choices. Or maybe it was about having no choices at all.
“Even if Malden keeps the sword, though…” she said, close to sobbing now. She was certain she would collapse soon, and fall into black, deep sleep. She lacked the energy for anything else, but she could not rest until she knew. “Even if he-keeps it. I saw-I saw multiple futures where he still held it. Which one will come to pass?”
“That’s not for me to say. It’s up to you.”
“Me?”
“There’s a reason I demanded you start your training now. Malden will have a role to play in the shape of destiny to come. Yours will be even larger-and darker.”
The look on Coruth’s face was almost sympathetic now. Cythera knew why, because she’d seen herself in those glimpses. She’d seen her own fate.
In some of those futures Malden put down the sword and took up a golden ring which he slipped on her finger. Those futures were already fading, receding as they became less and less probable.
In some-still bright and lucid, still distinctly possible-he turned away from her and they never saw each other again.
And in others just as real to her, he used Acidtongue to strike her down, to slay her, while tears rolled down his cheeks.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Morget whirled his axe through the air and brought it down hard against his makeshift pell-a block of fire- hardened wood driven into the ground. The axe bit deep into the post and he felt the bones of his arm flex and twist with the blow. The pell was already scarred in a hundred places, and chunks had been taken out of its sides, revealing pale wood underneath.
He lifted the axe for another stroke.
He had, after all, nothing better to do.
At his back two thousand warriors cooked food or sang old drinking songs or sharpened weapons or gambled or fought among themselves. Most of them were drunk. It was the oldest barbarian remedy for boredom. But Morget never touched ale or mead. He drank milk when he could get it, or water when he must. Unlike most people, he never got sick from drinking well water. Whatever fate drove him would not let the flux or an ague bring him low. His abstemiousness made him a rarity among the eastern clans, and added to his fearsome reputation.
But it did mean he had to sit through every boring moment of a warrior’s life (of which there were far too many) stone cold sober-and therefore prey to his own dark thoughts.
Two hundred yards away the walls of Redweir loomed over him, blocking out the morning sun. Whatever architect or engineer had designed this place had done a better job than they did at Helstrow. The bricks of the wall were made of red sandstone, impervious to any weapon the barbarians had brought with them. The city’s gates were sealed tight and barred with stout iron that would resist his battering rams. The defenders inside refused to be drawn out to fight for their city, despite constant taunting and the threat of a protracted siege. Though Morget had been camped for three days outside the wall, well clear of arrow range, occasionally the soldiers inside would still come out on the battlements and fire an arrow at them. The barbarians made sport of running out into the no-man’s-land to collect these missiles and then running back before the archers could nock another arrow. Only one man had been killed, when the defenders had been smart enough to send up two archers at a time.
Morget’s axe came down and chopped a scroll of wood off the side of the pell. His back ached with the effort. He prepared for another blow.
Before he could strike, however, he heard a hollow voice echo up from a hole in the ground near his feet.
“-mud in places I can’t wash,” the voice grumbled. “Mud so far down my ears it’s coming out my arse.”
Morget set down the axe.
Balint and her sappers emerged from the hole, climbing wearily up a ladder to the surface. The dwarf’s men were westerners-thralls now, recruited from the great mass of prisoners taken at Helstrow. They looked like their souls hurt worse than their backs. They carried mattocks and picks that they tossed on the grass as if they loathed the very touch of their tools.
“It’s done?” Morget asked.
Balint hauled the end of a rope out of the hole. “I used to live in this city, you know. There’s a whole colony of dwarves in there, maybe twenty of ’em, all living together in a palace all their own. This is the only place in Skrae you can get proper dwarven ale before it goes flatter than a spinster’s chest.”
“Were you successful?” Morget asked again.
Balint reached up to touch the spiked iron collar around her throat. Morget had fastened it there himself, after he spared her life.
“Aye,” she said softly. She handed him the end of the rope.
Morget hurried to attach the line to the harness of a team of oxen, big woolly beasts he’d had brought over from the eastern steppes. They could haul away the ocean, he’d been told, if you could find a way to chain it. Their drover lowered his goads and they started stumbling forward.
“You’re a bastard, you know that?” Balint asked.
Morget frowned, unsure of what she meant by that. Marriage was a rare occurrence in the East, and most children were born of passion, not wedlock.
“You know. A son of a bitch,” Balint tried.
Morget shrugged. He knew very little about his mother, actually. “The woman who birthed me was a thrall from the North. When they brought me to her, moments after I came howling into this world, she turned her face away, and then she died.”
“After giving birth to a pillock as big as you,” Balint said, “I would want to die.”
“Death is my mother now,” Morget said. He turned away from this cryptic debate and roared at the drover to redouble his efforts.
The rope Balint had brought him led down into a tunnel she’d been digging for three days. Its far end was attached securely to a series of supports directly under the wall of Redweir. She had so thoroughly excavated down there that the supports were the only thing holding that wall up.
The oxen hauled on the taut rope, digging their feet deep into the reddish soil. The rope creaked. The oxen lowed. If the rope broke-ah-but suddenly it went slack and the oxen hurried away.
For a moment it seemed the rope had simply snapped, and achieved nothing. Then he began to feel the ground roll under his feet. Very good-it was done.
Morget turned to face his army. He lifted Dawnbringer over his head, and to a man, no matter how drunk they might be, the barbarians gathered their weapons and stirred. “Now,” he said, as a deep rumbling noise began to sound from the tunnel.
The barbarians screamed and rushed toward the wall. The defenders, jumping up and down in their bewilderment, rushed to the battlements and started drawing their bows. A random volley of arrows swept toward the horde and a few barbarians were knocked down and trampled. Still, Morget’s army howled toward the impenetrable wall. They weren’t even headed toward one of the gates-just an unbroken stretch of red sandstone brick, as if they meant to dash their heads against it.
Before they reached the wall, it was gone.
It came down in a spectacular cascade of falling masonry and red dust. They swept through a cloud that
