anymore. Morg the Wise, they called him. For the first time in his life Morget thought he understood what that meant. The torment of it. What horrors had Morg seen in his time? Bad enough to watch a thousand men die. But understanding it-understanding everything. What greater curse could there be?
“You have a wyrd on you, boy.”
The word could mean many things. It could mean destiny, or it could mean doom. In the language of the barbarians there was very little distance between those concepts. It meant a driving fate, a power that possessed a man and made him do things others would go white to even imagine. Things that would destroy him-and make his name glorious.
“You think I don’t know that?” Morget asked.
“You want wisdom now? From me? Why do I owe you that? Don’t answer. I know the answer. You’ll say that you are my son.” Morg nodded to himself. “And you’ll be right. Very well.”
Morget took a step closer. He did not put the axe down.
“Here: take this message, as you please, and use it as you see fit. Morget Mountainslayer, you will not be able to stop yourself. You are too weak to defeat your own strength. Someone else must stop you, and you should hope they do it soon.”
Morget screamed in rage. “You give me riddles, like a scold!”
“Some truths,” Morg said, “cannot be made clear. They must be lived to make sense. Now.”
“What?” Morget demanded.
“Do it now. Before you lose the stomach for it. Now, while you hate me! I could not bear you to love me when you do this thing!”
Red light burst behind Morget’s eyes as the axe came down. And down again. And again. He did not swing it like a blade, but dropped it like a hammer, over and over, sometimes the edge catching on flesh, sometimes the flat smashing against bone.
When it was done the red ruin on Morg’s furs was not a man at all, but raw meat.
Morget plunged his hands into the gore and used his father’s blood to paint his face. Berserkers painted half their face red, because they were mad only half the time. Morget covered his shaved scalp, the back of his neck, plugged his ears with blood. It still was not enough.
Outside the tent the cold air could not touch him. The snow turned to steam when it tried to land on his face or hands.
He was aware of people all around him, of gasping mouths and staring eyes, but they seemed unconnected to him. They did not seem to matter. He thought of something. “The dog,” he said. His father had loved that dog. The dog had loved Morg back. Was that what Morg wanted from his children? He would not let Morg have that, not even in death. “Find the dog. Bring me its skin, so I may wear it around my neck, and every man know what I’ve done!”
If anyone responded he did not hear them.
He went back to his own tent, blind to the whole world, knowing nothing but fury.
He threw himself upon his furs and waited for his rage to cool. When he could finally talk again without shouting, he turned to look at Balint.
“At dawn you will do your worst. If even my father’s blood cannot cool my brow, I will have this city for consolation. Whatever devious scheme your black heart can concoct, I will make it happen.”
“I’ve been waiting for you to say that,” she told him, her voice low and husky. “You just made me happier than a nine-month’s pregnant girl on her wedding day.”
Chapter Ninety-Three
The workshop stank of brimstone and urine, enough to make Malden’s eyes water. It was hot inside, despite the snow that lay six inches thick on every surface outside the windows. Slag had his workers skimming orange crystals off the top of reeking vats or burning wood for charcoal, night and day. Other workers sat at narrow benches, grinding together the three necessary substances, or mixing it together with their fingers until it formed grains the size of corn.
“Finer! Grind it finer than this, you fucker,” Slag said, sifting black pebbles through his fingers. The apothecary’s apprentice he had admonished ducked his head and bent over his mortar and pestle again. “Malden, it must be ground finer. I need some kind of mill, maybe an upright wheel to crush the substance. And some kind of multiple-sieve refining sleeve to break it up smaller. I’m also going to need some kind of carriage for the device. I need iron, or better yet-bronze. As much as you can get me.”
Malden shrugged. “There’s a bronze statue of Juring Tarness in the Golden Slope. I doubt he’ll mind much if we melt it down.” He had no idea what Slag was after, really. The dwarf had tried to explain the nature of his secret project many times-apparently it was some kind of huge siege engine, far more powerful than a ballista, but operating on completely different principles. There was fire involved, and some kind of projectile, but beyond that it made very little sense to Malden. He assumed the dwarf knew what he was doing.
He had other things on his mind. He doubted that Slag cared much about what happened outside of his workshop-dwarves were notorious for their obsessions when they had a project to work on. Still, Malden needed to talk to someone about this, and Cythera was… no longer available. “Six cows, slaughtered and left to rot before the Godstone. Someone must have been hiding them when I did my last census of foodstocks. Do you know how much soup we could have made of those animals?” he asked. “Now they’re frozen to the cobbles so solidly no one can shift them, not even with pry bars.”
Slag shrugged. “Humans and religion. Never figured that one out myself, lad. Seems like you lot need somebody to tell you what to do. If there isn’t an overlord looming over your shoulder all the time, you invent one.”
“The barbarians only sent one stone over the wall today, so far,” Malden said. “The people seem to think these sacrifices are having an actual effect.”
Slag gave him a dubious look. “You ought to nip that in the damned bud,” he said. “They’ll start thinking soon that a human sacrifice will stop the attacks altogether. Or maybe they’ll try something far worse.”
“Worse than slaying each other for their blood?” Malden asked.
“Aye. Maybe they’ll think dwarf blood will work even better, since it’s a much rarer commodity. You! Don’t just dip your ladle in that piss! Skim the surface, skim, like this!” He made gentle sweeping motions with his hands. “All we want is the crusty bits from the top.”
Malden put a hand on the dwarf’s shoulder and squeezed. Slag winced out from under his grasp. “You-mind that brimstone! The stuff burns if you get it too close to the fire, you clumsy fucker!”
Malden took his leave without a farewell. Outside, the cold air felt good on his face. It smelled better than the air inside the workshop as well. Malden, who had grown up in a city without any kind of public sanitation, where the only known method for dealing with waste was dumping it in the river, had never imagined that Ness could smell good before.
Ness. His city. Imperiled and fraught with confusion it might be, yet he still loved the place more than he hated it. He truly wanted to save it from destruction. If he could only figure out how. So far he’d just found ways to delay the inevitable. He strained his mind for answers, for solutions. His thoughts grew less focused as he walked. Perhaps he was just tired, having slept very little in weeks. Perhaps he was just His reverie came to an abrupt halt when he heard a cry from the top of the wall. “Archers! Archers to your posts!”
That couldn’t be good. He scampered up the side of a tavern that abutted the nearest stretch of wall and jumped over the battlements. Men and women were running everywhere, gathering up quivers and bows. No one stopped to tell him what was happening. A hoarding stood nearby, a wooden gallery built over the edge of the wall from which archers could fire without being exposed themselves. Malden ducked inside and peered out through the firing slit.
Down below, the barbarian camp was a sea of movement and hurry. A wave of fur-clad warriors was headed right for the wall, and they were carrying ladders. Clearly they intended to scale the wall and fight their way inside. This is it, Malden thought. This was the moment he’d been dreading, because he knew that in a direct confrontation with the barbarians he could not win.
