Chapter 375: The Mountain Road

Halwen’s first request was for buckets.

Her second was for twice as many buckets.

By the time I reached the courtyard, a third request had arrived, this one specifying that the lids should fit properly and that nobody was to send vessels which had previously held lamp oil.

Mary read the note aloud, then handed it to the quartermaster.

“Apparently,” I said, “we’ve been neglecting an important branch of warfare.”

“Water?”

“Lids.”

She gave me a look over the top of her papers.

“If you’d like to inspect them, there are forty-six waiting by the wagon.”

I went to inspect the lids.

It seemed safer.

Melody was there already, testing the straps around the supply chests. Kerran stood beside her, listening as a gray-bearded man traced a route on a board with a piece of charcoal.

The man was one of the Lyradoni who had reached us through the marshes. His hands were broad, his left forefinger crooked from an old injury.

“I worked the upper cutting beds,” he said when Melody introduced us. “Before they closed the workings.”

“Are you traveling with them?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“My daughter’s only just stopped waking to ask whether we’ve left her behind.”

“Then stay with her.”

Relief softened his face. He bent over the board again.

“The drains don’t run where that sketch says. That’s the old surface ditch. There’s another channel beneath the spoil bank.”

Kerran frowned.

“Could someone move through it?”

“Someone small and foolish. Mostly it moves water.”

Melody’s ears tilted toward him.

“That sounds like experience.”

“I was fourteen.”

He marked a second line, then tapped it firmly.

“If rainwater’s getting into the spring chamber, look here first.”

Halwen studied the board for a long moment before asking him to begin again, more slowly.

No one hurried him.

Across the courtyard, the soldiers checked their equipment while two healers argued about which chest should be easiest to reach. They settled it by moving a sack of oats and making room for both.

I wished every disagreement in the kingdom could be resolved that way.

The relief party left before noon.

I remained at Greykeep.

That decision was sensible, necessary, and considerably less comfortable than putting on armor.

Thor found me watching the gate after the last cart had gone.

“You know it won’t bring them back faster.”

“Mary said something similar about a letter.”

“Mary is often right. It’s an irritating habit.”

She handed me a folded message.

“Something to occupy you.”

The seal belonged to the watch along one of the roads beyond Westmere. The report described travelers coming down from the northeastern hills: dwarves, elves, and beastfolk, with several human families among them.

They were not a fleeing column.

Not yet.

They had sent representatives ahead to ask for help.

“Another kingdom?” I asked.

“A hold and the settlements trading through it. Their messenger says the roads are closing.”

“Surtr?”

“Yes. With Othellos’s officers announcing that anyone supplying the hold will be treated as an enemy.”

I unfolded the second page.

Three bridges seized. Two storehouses burned. A market town abandoned before soldiers arrived.

No great battle. No city falling in a single night.

A country being squeezed until people could no longer move food through it.

“They’re expected tomorrow,” Thor said.

“Bring Eleanor into the meeting. And Bruni.”

“Already sent for them.”

I glanced up.

Thor smiled faintly.

“You may occasionally assume the rest of us can read a report.”

That afternoon, I found the twins and their friends in the garden with Julian.

He had marked out four little beds beside the larger one he was tending with Garrick Valewood. Each child had been given a wooden marker and very firm instructions about where the seeds belonged.

Ignatius had planted his in a straight line.

Carol had planted hers in something she insisted was also a straight line, provided one looked at it correctly.

Seraphina was drawing a sun on her marker.

Garrick had dug a hole large enough to bury a boot.

“That’s too deep,” Julian told him.

“The seed can grow up.”

“It has to reach the light first.”

“It will be strong.”

Julian looked toward his grandfather for assistance.

Garrick Valewood rested his forearms on the fence.

“Strong things still need a fair chance, lad.”

My son considered that, then began putting soil back.

I crouched beside Carol. Her fingers were longer than I remembered, and the wrist beneath her rolled sleeve looked different too. The changes were easier to notice after I had been away for several days.

She caught me looking.

“I’m still me.”

“I know.”

“Rysa says growing doesn’t make you someone else.”

“No. It doesn’t.”

She pressed the soil around a seed with great care.

“Will I have to learn everything faster?”

The question caught me unprepared.

Julian stopped sorting the remaining seeds.

I sat back on my heels.

“You can learn at the pace you need. We’ll help you.”

“What if my shoes grow slower?”

“Then we’ll have words with your shoes.”

She smiled and returned to her planting.

Beside us, Seraphina finished drawing her sun and announced that her plants would grow best because they would have two.

Julian started to explain the difference between a picture and sunlight, then looked at me.

With these four, I understood his hesitation.

“We’ll begin with watering,” I suggested.

That caused a rush for the small cans.

Garrick Valewood caught Julian’s eye as the children hurried away.

“You’re allowed to say you don’t know.”

“I know how seeds work.”

“So do I. Those four are a separate matter.”

Julian laughed, and some of the responsibility eased from his shoulders.

The delegation arrived the following morning with mud on their boots and very little patience left for ceremony.

The dwarf who led them introduced herself as Dema, a road warden of Stonewake Hold.

She wore a mail shirt beneath a travel-stained coat. One sleeve had been repaired in green thread that did not match anything else she owned.

Beside her stood an elven carter and a foxfolk woman responsible for several hill settlements’ shared grain stores. They had traveled with six guards and three wagons carrying people who could no longer remain safely near the seized bridges.

Dema placed a broken iron fitting on the council table.

“This came out of our lower gate.”

Eleanor leaned forward.

“Heat damage?”

“And force. They brought a ram with a furnace built into its head.”

Bruni lowered himself carefully onto the reinforced bench along the wall.

“How big?”

Dema looked at him, measured something in her mind, and held her hands apart.

“Big enough that we’d rather you broke it before it reached the second gate.”

Bruni nodded as if this were a perfectly reasonable introduction.

Stonewake guarded a road through the hills. Caravans from several peoples used its markets, its covered yards, and the long stair road climbing toward the mountain settlements beyond.

The lower gate had been damaged during the first attack. The defenders had driven the ram back by dropping stone from above it, but the enemy had remained in the valley.

“They’ve started building shelters over their approach,” Dema said. “Heavy timber. Raw hides. They bring the work forward at night.”

“And the upper road?” Thor asked.

“Still open. Barely. It’s a poor route for wagons, and the settlements beyond us don’t have food to spare for everyone sheltering inside.”

The foxfolk woman unfolded a second map.

“Our stores were meant to carry the villages between harvests. We’ve already taken in the families from the southern slopes.”

The elven carter put a finger on a marked bridge.

“This is where the grain used to cross. They took it twelve days ago.”

I looked between them.

“How many people are at Stonewake?”

“Just over four thousand, counting those who’ve come inside,” Dema said. “More in the settlements along the upper road.”

“And your defenders?”

She gave Eliza the number quietly, then named their missing officers.

There was pride in her voice, but no attempt to make the situation sound better than it was.

“We can hold the stone,” she said. “We cannot eat it.”

We did not promise to send everyone.

Thor asked about the enemy’s camp, their patrols, their water supply, and the width of the road beneath the damaged gate. Eleanor asked where the original builders had sunk the foundations. Bruni asked whether the road would carry him.

Dema considered that question with proper seriousness.

“The lower section will.”

“And the upper?”

“We should inspect it before answering.”

Bruni seemed pleased.

Ordel studied the marks showing the enemy’s covered approaches.

“They’re trying to reach the gate without giving your defenders a clear target.”

“They’ve learned from the first attempt,” Dema said.

“So can we.”

The discussion continued until the room grew warm and someone opened both windows.

We needed current eyes on the valley. We needed to know whether the bridge could be retaken and held long enough to move provisions. We needed a way to reach the defenders without marching our entire force into a road the enemy had already measured.

Aurethar offered to survey the outer approaches, but Dema warned him that enemy dragons had been seen north of the hold.

“Collared?” he asked.

“One was. The other was too high for us to tell.”

His expression hardened.

“We’ll need someone watching the air while the ground scouts work.”

“We will,” Thor agreed.

That evening, orders went out to assemble a fresh force.

Lexander would join Thor. Ordel would oversee the preparations for breaking the siege works, with Bruni and an engineering company. Istren’s archers would support the approach. Veyra would take soldiers trained to hold a narrow road under pressure.

Baldr would remain responsible for the coastal defense. I would remain at Greykeep initially, where I could reach Westmere or Orselle if either needed help.

Nobody liked every part of the arrangement.

That did not make it wrong.

The first substantial report from the limestone workings arrived three days later.

Halwen’s handwriting began neatly and grew less patient toward the bottom of the page.

The spring itself was not the only problem.

Water from the upper ground had entered through the damaged drain the quarry worker remembered. The survivors’ attempts to divert it had helped during light rain, then failed when debris blocked the narrow outlet.

The first healers had already separated drinking water from the old supply and begun treating the sick. Halwen’s arrival let them increase the clean supply while workers cleared the channel and moved the washing places farther away.

She had underlined one sentence twice.

Do not send anyone here expecting purification to replace nursing.

Evelyn read it over my shoulder.

“I like her.”

“The children?”

“Read the next page.”

Two remained dangerously ill. Several others had begun improving. Some adults were too weak to stand without help, and the healers wanted them transported in small groups rather than loaded together onto jolting carts.

Melody had established a sheltered stopping place along the descent. The fresh guards were keeping the road clear while Kerran checked tracks beyond the workings.

No large enemy force had been found nearby.

There were, however, signs of scouts.

“We keep the escort,” I said.

Eliza nodded.

“And we don’t send them chasing every print they find.”

At the bottom of Melody’s page was a separate note.

One little boy wants to know whether Greykeep has ducks. Please establish the facts before I make promises.

I passed it to Evelyn.

She smiled.

“We can manage ducks.”

While the limestone families began their journey in stages, Stonewake’s scouts brought us the news we had been waiting for.

And some we had hoped not to hear.

Aurethar returned with a scorch mark along one shoulder of his human-form armor. It was shallow, but seeing it brought every conversation in the room to a halt.

“One of the dragons challenged us over the northern ridge,” he said. “We disengaged.”

“Us?” I asked.

“Tareth was covering the second approach. Neither of us was badly hurt.”

Thor waited until he had taken the offered water.

“What did you see?”

“Two principal camps. The larger below the hold. A smaller one near the seized bridge. Supplies moving between them under guard.”

“And the dragons?”

“At least two operating from the northern camp. We couldn’t establish whether there are more.”

Dema’s scouts confirmed the furnace ram had been repaired. Another machine was under construction behind the covered approaches.

Then Eliza set a separate report before me.

A wolf had been seen beyond the enemy’s western pickets.

Far too large for any ordinary animal.

The witness had watched it disappear behind a ruined wall. A man in a dark coat had emerged from the same place moments later.

I looked at Thor.

“Fenrir.”

“Likely,” she said. “We should plan on it.”

My hands tightened on the edge of the table.

I remembered the wounded at the enclave. The enormous shape driving toward people who could not run. The force of that fight, and how close it had come to becoming something much worse.

Lexander read the report once, then again.

“He’ll look for whatever draws us apart.”

“Then the healers don’t sit behind us with a few tired guards,” Veyra said.

She moved a marker on the map.

“We give them a defended place from the beginning. And we don’t spend their protection to strengthen the front because the front gets loud.”

Thor nodded.

“Agreed.”

Aurethar traced the ridge above the upper road.

“And nobody pursues him alone.”

Nobody argued.

I visited the hospice that evening.

Tarin and Oren were sitting near an open window, arguing over the placement of a small wooden support beneath their bridge. Eamon sat beside them with his injured leg raised, a blanket folded beneath it.

He looked better than he had when we brought him home. Still thin. Still easily tired. But the feverish distance had gone from his eyes.

Garrick Valewood had left them a box of smooth offcuts and strict instructions about asking before borrowing tools.

“He says this one goes here,” Oren told me.

Tarin pointed at the model.

“It holds the middle.”

“It blocks the boat.”

Eamon looked at me with weary amusement.

“They’ve discovered why builders and river folk argue.”

“Can you make the boat smaller?” I asked.

Both boys stared at me.

Apparently that was not the answer.

Nessa arrived with a tray and settled into the chair beside Oren. Her leg was improving too, though she still used the furniture for support when she had been on her feet too long.

Tarin leaned against his father’s shoulder while considering the bridge.

The movement was casual.

That was what stayed with me.

He did not look first to make certain Eamon would remain there. He simply leaned, trusting the shoulder would be where it belonged.

Across the room, Elara was helping an elderly woman arrange letters from her grandchildren. Elianor passed through carrying fresh linen, paused to inspect Eamon’s position, and added another cushion beneath his leg despite his mild protest.

Outside, the evening bells began.

Oren moved the disputed support half an inch.

“What about there?”

Tarin studied it.

“That might work.”

I left them to their engineering.

The first families from the limestone workings arrived the next morning.

They came in covered wagons through Orselle, then through the gate in groups small enough for the waiting healers to receive without confusion.

The two children whose condition had most worried Halwen remained behind under care. Their families stayed with them. Nobody suggested separating them to improve the pace of the evacuation.

Over the next several days, more followed.

By the time Melody returned with the final escort, all two hundred and seventy-six civilians and twenty-three soldiers had been brought out of the workings. The sickest children traveled last, once the healers judged the journey would help more than harm.

They were alive.

That did not mean they were well.

Evelyn spent much of that afternoon with the hospice staff, and Halwen went straight from the gate to the receiving rooms, dust still clinging to her cloak.

Melody found me afterward in the courtyard.

“You look tired,” I said.

“I spent three days telling a man that he could not bring a cracked millstone.”

“Did he bring it?”

“No.”

“Then you won.”

“He brought half.”

I considered that.

“Technically lighter.”

She pointed at me.

“Do not encourage him.”

Kerran came through the gate behind the last cart. He had a child asleep against his shoulder and was carrying a bundle of blankets under his other arm.

“The mother is with the healers,” he explained when he caught me looking.

“Of course.”

“He wanted to see the ducks.”

“We have ducks.”

Kerran looked immensely relieved.

Melody closed her eyes.

“Good. One promise kept without a committee.”

Oswin brought Mirelle the completed lists that evening.

The marsh villages. Ressa’s column. The limestone workings.

Three groups he had feared might vanish before anyone could reach them.

Their names now filled several carefully kept pages, along with places to stay, family connections, and notes about those still receiving care.

Mirelle touched the top sheet, then looked toward Mary.

“How many beds do you still need?”

Mary answered honestly.

More than I liked.

Steward Edric Vale had offered additional space at Westmere, including several repaired cottages near the western mill. Concordia could take another group once the recovering families were ready to choose where they wanted to settle.

The work did not end with opening the gate.

But that night, Mirelle asked the kitchens to send extra bread to the new arrivals and went to visit them with Helena, Lisbeth, and Adriana.

Cassia took Julian.

He brought his book of drawings from the four children, held carefully beneath his arm.

Oswin watched them leave.

“I should get back to the records,” he said.

Mary took the remaining papers from him.

“After supper.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it.

“You say that to everyone?”

“Only the difficult ones.”

He looked at me.

I nodded.

“It’s a distinguished company.”

Thor’s force departed for Westmere two mornings later.

The route from there to Stonewake would take days. Their scouts were already ahead, and the first supply wagons would follow under separate guard once the forward camp was secured.

There would be no arriving through a gate at the foot of the mountain.

Every mile had to be traveled.

Lexander stood with Io and their children near the courtyard steps. Ignatius had decided his father needed a wooden duck for luck. Seraphina was explaining that he must return it because she had helped paint it.

Lexander accepted the terms with appropriate seriousness.

Bruni crouched so the children could wave without having to shout quite so far. Garrick asked whether he could carry the whole mountain out of the way.

“No,” Bruni said.

“Part of it?”

“Maybe.”

Thor gave him a look.

“The planned part.”

Bruni smiled.

“The planned part.”

I walked with her to the gate.

For once, neither of us made a joke.

“Fenrir will want you angry,” I said.

“He’ll be disappointed. I intend to be inconvenient.”

“All right. One joke.”

She gripped my forearm.

“Keep the roads behind us open. If we ask for help, bring what we ask for.”

“I will.”

Dema waited beyond her, helmet beneath one arm. She had watched the farewells quietly, perhaps seeing more of the people going to her home than a council table could show her.

When Thor joined her, the road warden put on her helmet.

“My people will be watching the upper road.”

“Then let’s give them something worth watching for,” Thor said.

They passed through.

The courtyard gradually emptied. Io carried a sleepy Seraphina inside. Ignatius went with Julian, still explaining the proper care of wooden ducks. Evelyn and Adriana waited by the steps until I turned toward them.

Beyond Greykeep’s walls, the morning traffic resumed: carts, workers, new neighbors learning their way through unfamiliar streets.

Somewhere among them, a child who had spent weeks hiding in a quarry was seeing ducks for the first time since leaving home.

I stood a moment longer, listening.

Then Mary called my name from the council door, and I went to help keep the road open.