Chapter 376: What Reaches the Gate

Thor’s first message from the mountain road contained four requests and one complaint.

More rope. Spare wagon fittings. Fodder. Heavy cloth for the forward hospital.

The complaint concerned a mule that had bitten Ordel.

Mary read the last line twice.

“Do we need to do anything about that?”

“Send my condolences to the mule.”

“I’ll leave that out.”

“Probably wise.”

The report had taken the better part of two days to reach Westmere, where a rider carried it through the gate. Thor’s force was still approaching Stonewake. They had established guarded stopping places along the route and left soldiers at the worst junctions, reducing the strength marching with the main column.

It was necessary work. It also meant that every additional mile cost us men who could not stand beside Thor when the fighting began.

Eleanor ran a finger along the route.

“If these reports are right, we can shorten the second stage by repairing this crossing.”

“Can the supply wagons use the road beyond it?” I asked.

“Empty ones have. That’s not the same answer.”

She turned to the steward of Westmere Hold.

Edric Vale had come through the gate at dawn, bringing a road surveyor and the sort of tired expression I increasingly associated with people responsible for feeding other people.

“The quarry carts used it years ago,” he said. “The western approach is sound. The culvert under the eastern bank needs inspection.”

“Then inspect it before we put grain over it,” Mary said.

The surveyor nodded.

Edric looked at the list of supplies.

“I can provide another twelve teams. Their owners will want payment, and they’ll want to know when the animals are coming back.”

“Pay them,” I said. “Tell them the truth about the return.”

“That’s unlikely to make them happier.”

“No. But I’d prefer their anger now to their surprise later.”

He gave a short nod and began writing names.

For the next three days, the war passed through Greykeep in sacks, wheels, and exhausted messengers.

I learned that a wagon could be ruined by a piece of iron smaller than my thumb. I learned that soldiers could eat what horses could not, but that this observation did very little to solve a shortage of fodder.

I also learned that Mary could identify the sound of an overloaded cart from inside a room with the windows closed.

She stopped speaking in the middle of a sentence one afternoon, tilted her head, and said, “That axle won’t make it to Westmere.”

It did not make it across the courtyard.

Afterward, I stopped questioning her hearing.

The children treated the preparations as a fascinating public event until Evelyn restricted their viewing area to the steps above the loading court.

Julian sat with them there, explaining the different markings on the wagons.

“The blue cloth means medicine,” he told Carol.

“What’s the green?”

“Fodder.”

“For horses?”

“And mules.”

Ignatius considered this.

“Does Father’s duck need some?”

“Your father’s duck is made of wood.”

“It might get hungry on a long trip.”

Julian looked at Garrick Valewood, who was repairing a cracked sideboard nearby.

His grandfather did not rescue him.

Instead, he asked, “What would a wooden duck eat?”

The debate that followed occupied all four children long enough for the next two wagons to be loaded safely.

Julian eventually came down to help his grandfather hold the replacement board steady.

“You did that on purpose,” he said.

“Of course.”

“Does that work on grown-ups?”

Garrick glanced toward me.

“Sometimes.”

I decided I had urgent business elsewhere.

The message announcing the first fighting arrived after supper.

Thor and Lexander had reached the western valley below Stonewake. Their scouts found the seized bridge held by a reinforced enemy company, with barricades at both ends and archers occupying an abandoned tollhouse.

They had taken it before dawn.

I read the account beside Evelyn while Adriana sat across from us, one hand resting against her stomach.

Istren’s archers had covered the tollhouse windows. Veyra’s soldiers advanced behind shields while Bruni lifted a wagon barricade out of the road and discovered that someone had chained it to the bridge.

According to Thor, this had delayed him briefly.

According to the engineer who added the next paragraph, the bridge parapet would require substantial repair.

“Briefly,” Evelyn murmured.

I continued reading.

The enemy had tried to burn the crossing during their withdrawal. Lexander and the advance guard reached the fire pots before enough could be broken across the decking. One span was scorched, but the engineers judged it usable after reinforcement.

Four of our soldiers were dead. Eighteen were wounded. The enemy had left prisoners and casualties behind, and the healers were treating both.

The bridge was ours.

Stonewake remained besieged.

Thor’s final paragraph was short.

We can now receive the first full convoy. Send grain, flour, fodder, and replacement bowstrings. The defenders can reach our position by the upper footpath. We are preparing to open the cart road to the hold.

I lowered the page.

Adriana looked at me.

“They’ll need more than one convoy.”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s make certain the second is ready before the first leaves.”

The attempt to stop that first convoy came before we loaded its final wagon.

A rider reached Westmere from the newly inspected crossing with a report that water was rising beneath the eastern approach.

There had been no rain.

By the time the second rider arrived, part of the bank had washed away.

The surveyor’s party had withdrawn under arrows from the hillside. They had seen men at an old mill diversion upstream, opening channels and breaking the retaining works.

“They’re flooding the road,” Eliza said.

Eleanor spread the survey beside Thor’s route map.

“If they cut the bank here, the water keeps feeding into the crossing even after the pond empties. We’ll need to take control of the diversion before we can repair anything.”

“How long is the alternate route?”

“Nearly another day for loaded wagons. Longer if the ground won’t carry them.”

A day mattered.

So did committing our reserve to the place the enemy had chosen.

We sent scouts first.

Their report came back the following morning: roughly forty enemy soldiers around the millworks, with more seen moving through the trees beyond. No siege equipment. No confirmed divine presence. The defenders had felled timber across the road and positioned archers above it.

They expected us to come uphill.

I looked at Eliza.

“I can help the engineers hold the water once we reach the channels.”

“You can. You can’t also cover every tree.”

“Then I won’t try.”

Eshara would remain at Greykeep with the ready reserve. Baldr retained command at Orselle. King Edric of Orenshal offered additional soldiers for the convoy escort, drawn from those who had rested since the Lyradoni evacuation.

Steward Edric Vale watched us settle the assignments.

“Two Edrics in one room and neither of us gets to keep all his horses,” he said.

For the first time that morning, Mary smiled.

I left through Westmere with the advance escort and Eleanor’s engineering party.

The convoy would follow as far as the last secure stopping place. Nobody wanted thirty loaded wagons trapped on a damaged road while we argued with men holding bows above it.

Before I went, Adriana caught my sleeve.

“Send word when the crossing is open.”

“I will.”

“And when you’ve reached Thor.”

“If the route needs me that far.”

She gave me a steady look.

“Uriah.”

I sighed.

“When I’ve reached Thor.”

Evelyn kissed my cheek.

“Come back with the same number of limbs.”

“I’ve become attached to them.”

“So have we.”

Behind them, Mirelle was speaking with Ressa, who had offered to help inspect the departing soldiers’ equipment while she recovered her strength. She was still too thin. She also looked more like someone living in the present than someone waiting for the next loss.

Julian stood beside Garrick Valewood at the edge of the court.

He raised a hand.

I raised mine back.

Then the gate opened, and the courtyard gave way to Westmere’s colder morning air.

We reached the damaged crossing the following afternoon.

The millpond lay above the road in a fold of wooded ground. Water poured through the broken diversion, carrying branches and pale mud down toward the culvert.

The road beyond it had collapsed along one side.

An arrow struck a tree ahead of our scouts.

We moved into cover.

Eleanor crouched beside a boulder and studied the water as if the shooting were an inconvenient weather condition.

“The outer bank first,” she said. “If it goes, we’ll lose the whole approach.”

“Can we work from this side?”

“Once those archers stop trying to kill us.”

A reasonable qualification.

Our captain sent one group farther west under the trees while the shield line advanced toward the roadblock. I went with the shields.

The enemy began shouting as soon as they saw my hair.

That was becoming inconvenient.

A crossbow bolt struck my ice-covered shoulder and broke. Another hit the shield of the man beside me hard enough to make him stagger.

I pushed wind uphill.

Leaves and grit tore through the enemy’s positions. Branches whipped across the narrow openings between trees. Their next volley scattered, giving our archers time to find the men who had exposed themselves to shoot.

We reached the first felled trunk.

A soldier behind it thrust a spear toward my face.

I caught the shaft against my sword, drove it aside, and struck him with the hammer’s haft. He fell backward into the brush.

The men beside me hauled themselves over the trunk.

Then a horn sounded from farther up the slope.

Not ours.

Reinforcements came down the mill path at a run.

They nearly reached our flank.

Our western group saw them first and shouted a warning, but the trees broke the lines of sight. For several moments, the hillside became a confusion of men appearing where nobody wanted them.

I could not throw lightning into it.

Too many of our people were mixed among theirs.

I climbed onto the fallen trunk, saw an enemy soldier raising an axe over one of our archers, and sent a narrow blade of ice through the axe handle.

The head spun away.

Our archer scrambled backward. Another soldier dragged him behind a shield.

“Left!” someone shouted.

I turned as a spearpoint scraped across the ice at my ribs.

Pain flashed beneath it.

Armor did not prevent every consequence of being hit. It mostly prevented the worst one.

I drove the attacker back, stepped off the trunk, and landed badly on a root.

For one miserable instant, I thought I had twisted my ankle.

Then it held, and I found myself absurdly grateful for ordinary joints.

Our captain rallied the line along the felled timber. The enemy had numbers moving toward us, but their charge narrowed where the mill path passed between two large stones.

I froze the wet ground there.

The first men slipped. Those behind them collided with their backs. Our archers, now clear of the fighting, shot into the gap.

The pressure eased.

“Upstream!” I called. “Take the sluice!”

The captain sent a fresh section around the right while we held the roadblock.

Within minutes, I heard our signal from above.

The enemy began withdrawing.

I let them.

Below us, the water was still eating the road.

Eleanor reached the channel before I did.

She had three workers with her and a coil of rope over one shoulder.

“Don’t freeze the wheel,” she said as I approached.

“I hadn’t planned to.”

“You were looking at it.”

“It was there.”

She pointed to the broken gate below it.

The wheel was intact. The wooden shutter it controlled had been smashed, leaving the pond’s outflow pouring through an opening too large to close with the remaining boards.

“We need to reduce the flow here. Then they’ll lower the replacement timbers.”

I knelt at the stone edge and put both hands into the water.

Cold moved outward through the current.

The water fought me. Every layer I thickened pressed against the next, and the force behind it did not care how tired I was becoming.

I built the obstruction gradually against the sides, leaving a narrower channel in the middle rather than trying to stop the pond all at once.

The roar changed.

Eleanor shouted an instruction. Ropes tightened. A timber dropped into place with a heavy splash.

Then another.

My fingers had disappeared beneath white ice. The ache in my ribs sharpened with every breath.

“Hold,” she said.

“I am.”

“Not you. Them.”

“Good.”

A third timber settled. Workers drove wedges into the guides and packed the remaining gaps.

Below us, the flow began to fall.

Eleanor crouched beside me.

“Slowly now.”

I eased the cold back.

Water forced its way through the rough repair, but no longer in a destructive torrent.

The timbers held.

I sat down on the wet stones.

Eleanor glanced at my face, then at my shoulder.

“Healer.”

“Road first.”

She stood.

“The road has more sense than to argue while bleeding.”

We lost two soldiers at the millworks.

Eleven were wounded, including the archer whose life had come down to a broken axe handle. We captured fourteen enemy soldiers. Others escaped into the woods with their wounded, leaving behind tools, food, and orders to keep the crossing unusable for as long as possible.

They had not been expected to hold forever.

They had been expected to make us spend time.

The knowledge sat badly with me while a healer cleaned the cut beneath my ribs.

It would sit worse if I let it make me careless.

We established guards above the millpond and sent scouts along both banks before the repair crews began work in earnest.

The culvert itself had survived. The bank around it had not.

Eleanor used stone from a collapsed boundary wall, timber from the roadblock, and language that encouraged everyone to move faster without quite becoming shouting.

I helped stabilize the worst ground while the workers packed it.

By dawn, an empty wagon crossed.

Then one carrying half a load.

The road settled slightly beneath the wheels. Eleanor watched, ordered another brace placed, and made the driver cross again.

Only after the second test did she send for the convoy.

I wrote to Adriana while we waited.

The crossing is open. I am bruised, annoyed, and being supervised.

Eleanor read the line as she passed.

“Accurate.”

The wagons reached us before midday.

We brought them across one at a time, leaving space between them and keeping the teams moving steadily over the repaired bank.

A wheel sank at the edge of the fifth wagon’s track. The driver stopped exactly when told. We unloaded part of the grain, shifted the wheel, strengthened the soft patch, and continued.

It was slow.

It worked.

I remained with the convoy as it climbed toward Thor’s forward position, leaving Eleanor and a guarded repair party to improve the crossing for the next journey.

Two days later, the seized bridge came into view.

One parapet was indeed missing.

Bruni stood beyond it, helping the engineers position a replacement barrier.

He saw the wagons and smiled.

“Food.”

“Among other things.”

“Good.”

That seemed to cover the important part.

Thor met me beside the tollhouse. A bandage covered the back of one hand, and she had acquired a tear in her cloak that I suspected she had not noticed.

“You brought what I asked for.”

“Mostly. The mule received no formal sympathy.”

“Ordel will be disappointed.”

She looked past me at the wagons.

Then the humor left her face.

“Well done.”

I had not realized how much I needed to hear that until she said it.

Stonewake rose above the valley in terraces of dark stone.

The lower gate sat between two projecting walls, one blackened by heat. Behind it, houses climbed toward a second wall and a higher entrance cut into the mountain itself.

The enemy occupied the ground below the southern approach.

From Thor’s observation post, I could see the covered galleries inching toward the damaged gate. The furnace ram waited beneath a larger shelter, its iron head dark for the moment.

Farther north, a dragon circled above the enemy camp.

A bright line flashed at its throat when it turned.

Aurethar watched it beside me without speaking.

Dema arrived with two defenders who had come down the upper footpath. They wore the same dust as the mountainside and carried empty food bags.

“We can take some up tonight,” she said. “But we still need the cart road.”

Thor nodded toward the map spread beneath a weighted cloth.

“We open it tomorrow.”

The plan was already taking shape. Istren’s archers would cover the exposed slope. Ordel had identified the joints in the nearest gallery where the roof could be brought down without collapsing the retaining wall above it. Bruni would clear the wreckage once the defenders secured the upper end.

Lexander would lead the force advancing from the bridge.

Veyra would hold the junction protecting the hospital and our route back.

There was work for me at the exposed bend, where the road passed within reach of the enemy’s siege engines.

I listened until Thor finished.

“And Fenrir?”

She pointed across the valley.

I followed her hand.

A man in a dark coat stood on a low ridge beyond the enemy galleries.

Even at that distance, the stillness was familiar.

He was watching the wagons cross our bridge.

“He came out when the convoy arrived,” Thor said.

I felt the old anger stir.

Then I looked down at the defenders filling their empty bags beside Dema.

“Let him watch.”

That night, the first provisions went up the mountain on human, dwarven, elven, and beastfolk shoulders.

It was less than the hold needed.

It was more than had reached it the day before.

I helped lift a sack onto one of the carrying frames. The young dwarf beneath it adjusted the strap, testing the weight before nodding.

“My mother’s a baker,” he told me. “She’ll complain about the flour.”

“Is there something wrong with it?”

“No. She complains about everyone’s flour.”

“Then I hope she enjoys herself.”

He grinned and joined the line climbing toward the upper path.

When they were gone, I found Lexander beside a shield stack, turning a small wooden duck between his fingers.

“Still hungry?” I asked.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

He looked toward the mountain.

“I’d like the next thing I send home to be good news.”

“So would I.”

Above us, a lantern appeared on Stonewake’s wall.

Then another.

Dema watched the lights, counting under her breath. When the signal finished, she let out a long, unsteady breath.

“They’re through.”

The food had reached the gate.

Tomorrow, we would try to bring the road with it.