Chapter 377: The Space Between the Walls

I woke before the horn sounded.

For a few moments, I remained still beneath my blanket, listening to the forward camp prepare for battle. Leather creaked. Someone coughed. A pot lid fell to the ground, followed by a whispered apology that accomplished very little.

My ribs hurt when I sat up.

The healer who had checked them the previous evening had offered a remarkably detailed explanation of why climbing a mountain and fighting another battle would not improve matters.

I had agreed with everything she said.

That had not made her happier.

Outside the tent, the eastern sky was beginning to pale.

Stonewake stood above us, dark against the mountains. No smoke rose from its lower chimneys. Fuel had become too precious for comfort, and the defenders were saving what they could for the kitchens and infirmaries.

I fastened my armor, then stopped with my hand on the last strap.

A folded letter lay beside my cloak.

It had arrived late the previous night with the next riders from Westmere. Evelyn had written most of it. Adriana had added a paragraph reminding me that being supervised did not excuse making the supervision difficult.

At the bottom, Julian had written that the first seeds in the children’s garden beds had sprouted.

Carol believed hers were winning.

Ignatius had asked whether his father was remembering to let the duck sleep.

I folded the letter and tucked it inside my coat.

Then I went to find Thor.

She was standing over the map with Lexander, Ordel, and Dema.

Aurethar and Tareth had already left to watch the northern approaches. The two enemy dragons had been seen before dawn, but neither had come close enough to attack.

That would change when the road began moving.

Ordel pointed to the nearest covered gallery.

“Three principal supports. We weaken the lower pair, pull the roof outward, and leave the retaining wall alone.”

“And if it doesn’t fall outward?” I asked.

“Then Bruni will have a more difficult morning.”

Bruni stood a little apart from the table, testing a heavy chain between his hands. He glanced over.

“I heard.”

“You were meant to.”

Dema set a small stone on the map above the gallery.

“Our people will come down from the gate when they see the second signal. They can hold the upper road while you clear the lower section.”

“How long can they remain outside?” Lexander asked.

“Long enough if we keep the enemy away from the gate. Not long if the ram starts moving.”

Thor looked toward the larger shelter below the southern wall.

Smoke had begun curling from beneath its roof.

“They know we’re coming.”

“We were unlikely to keep the wagons a secret,” I said.

“No. But I’d have appreciated their sleeping late.”

Veyra arrived to confirm the hospital and bridge junction were ready. Her soldiers had built two barriers, with room between them for wounded men and supply carts to pass. The healers had a stone storehouse, a guarded yard, and a separate route back toward the bridge.

Nobody would be borrowing those guards.

Thor waited until each commander had repeated the part that depended on someone else.

Then she rolled the map.

“Open the road. Keep it open. Everything else can wait.”

The first arrows rose with the morning light.

Istren’s archers shot into the openings along the gallery, forcing the defenders away from the firing slits. Our shield line advanced from the bridge road, boots scraping over stone as the slope steepened.

I went toward the exposed bend with a small escort and two engineers carrying marking flags.

There was no useful cover for the last stretch.

The enemy knew it.

A stone struck the road ahead of us, shattered, and sent sharp fragments across the slope. One hit my thigh hard enough to make my leg buckle.

The ice held.

I kept moving.

Another missile came from the siege engine behind the lower shelter. This time I saw the arm move.

I drove wind across its path.

The stone struck farther downhill, bouncing once before disappearing into the scrub.

I could spoil their aim. I could not promise to catch every rock they threw.

“Wide intervals!” I called.

The soldiers spread as far as the road allowed.

An engineer reached the first marker point, drove her flag into a crack, and dropped behind a low outcrop. The second followed. Those flags would tell the wagons where the repaired road ended and the weak shoulder began.

A small task.

An essential one.

An arrow struck the first engineer’s sleeve and pinned it to the ground.

She cut the cloth loose with her knife before I reached her.

“I’m not hit,” she said.

“Good.”

“Your coat is smoking.”

I looked down.

A burning fragment from one of the enemy pots had caught along the hem. I slapped cold over it and watched the smoke die.

“This is becoming an expensive war for clothes.”

She stared at me for a moment, then laughed once, sharply, and crawled toward the next marker.

Below us, Lexander’s force reached the gallery.

The fighting disappeared beneath its roof.

I could see only pieces of it: a shield driven backward, a spear breaking, a man stumbling into the light with blood down one side of his face.

Ordel’s engineers went in behind the first rank.

They carried axes, wedges, and hooked bars.

The enemy had built the shelter to resist stones dropped from above. They had not intended to defend its supports from men already beneath it.

A horn sounded from the hold.

Dema’s people came through the lower gate.

Dwarven shields led, with elven archers moving close behind them and beastfolk soldiers covering the wall’s blind angle. They did not charge downhill. They advanced to the narrow section, secured it, and waited for us to reach them.

The second signal went up.

Bruni stepped into the road.

He pulled the heavy chain across the outer supports while Ordel’s team cleared away. For an instant, the whole structure seemed too large and too solid to move.

Then Bruni leaned back.

Timber cracked.

The gallery shuddered, its weight shifting onto supports that no longer stood square beneath it.

“Clear!” someone shouted.

Our soldiers fell back.

Bruni pulled again.

The roof came down with a roar of broken beams and sliding earth, collapsing outward onto the slope exactly where Ordel had said it should.

Dust swallowed the road.

When it thinned, sunlight lay across a stretch that had been hidden for weeks.

Then the furnace ram began moving.

It came out from beneath the larger shelter on broad iron-bound wheels.

The head glowed through vents in its housing. Men pushed from behind shields fixed along its sides, while others hauled guide ropes to turn it toward the narrow approach.

Behind them came infantry.

Thor was already moving.

Mjolnir struck one of the forward braces with a sound I felt through my teeth. The frame lurched, but did not collapse.

Someone beneath the shelter shouted an order.

The ram’s furnace flared.

Heat rolled across the road, strong enough to make the nearest soldiers recoil behind their shields.

I brought cold against it from the bend.

Steam burst between the two forces.

For a moment, nobody could see anything.

“Stop!” Thor shouted.

I pulled the cold back immediately.

The steam thinned.

She had moved to the side, where the furnace’s heat was less concentrated.

“Keep it off the road crew!”

I changed position, directing wind across the ram instead of driving winter straight into its mouth. The heat bent away from the cleared stretch. Smoke streamed sideways into the enemy’s own infantry.

They cursed and tried to spread out.

Istren’s arrows found them when they did.

At the gallery wreckage, Bruni lifted a beam and rolled it downhill. Engineers rushed into the space he cleared, checking the road surface and dragging broken planks aside.

Lexander reached the upper end and clasped Dema’s forearm.

For the first time since the siege began, Stonewake’s defenders stood in an unbroken line with the soldiers who had come to help them.

It lasted perhaps three breaths before the enemy struck again.

Fenrir came through the dust below the ruined gallery.

There was no roar to announce him.

One moment, the slope held broken timber and retreating soldiers. The next, something enormous and dark drove upward through it, scattering men who had thought themselves safely behind their own line.

Bruni turned.

He still held one end of the chain.

Fenrir hit him before he could set his feet.

The impact shook loose stones from the retaining wall.

Bruni staggered sideways, one foot sliding toward the road’s outer edge. His shoulder struck the wall above him hard enough to crack old mortar.

Fenrir’s jaws closed on the chain rather than the giant’s arm.

Then the wolf pulled downhill.

I understood what he wanted a moment before Ordel shouted it.

“The wall!”

If Bruni went over the edge, the damaged supports might go with him. If the wall collapsed, the road would vanish beneath half the upper bank.

The enemy did not need to kill us to close the way again.

Bruni let go of the chain.

Fenrir had expected him to fight for it.

The sudden release sent the wolf sliding backward through the wreckage, buying Bruni a moment to brace himself. But the giant’s movement had already shifted the bank.

A crack opened above his shoulder.

Stones began falling.

Bruni raised both hands against the leaning section.

“Move,” he said.

The engineers ran.

The wall settled onto him.

I left the bend.

Behind me, the enemy siege engine launched again. The stone struck near the engineers’ flags, but my escort had already taken cover.

I could not be in both places.

Thor reached Fenrir first.

Lightning struck the slope in front of him as he lunged toward Bruni’s exposed side. Fenrir twisted away from the brightest part of the strike and came up against Thor with his head low.

Mjolnir met him at the jaw.

The sound was terrible.

He recoiled, then swept one enormous paw across the road. Thor threw herself backward, landing hard beside a broken beam.

I hit the ground between them with a ridge of ice.

Fenrir smashed through it.

Fragments struck my face and shoulders. I raised my hammer just in time to catch the force of his next blow against it.

The impact drove me to one knee.

Pain tore along my ribs.

He was close enough for me to see blood between his teeth.

Then Thor’s hammer struck his flank, and the pressure vanished.

I scrambled sideways as he turned on her.

We did not chase him when he withdrew two paces.

We stood between him and Bruni.

Behind us, Ordel was shouting measurements to the engineers.

They were building a brace beneath the wall.

We needed to give them time.

Fenrir looked past us and understood that too.

He shifted.

The enormous wolf folded into the shape of a man in a dark coat, standing amid broken ice and splintered timber.

Blood ran from the corner of his mouth.

He wiped it away with his thumb, looked at it, and smiled without warmth.

“You’ve brought a great deal of strength for a road.”

Thor adjusted her grip on Mjolnir.

“You should see what we bring for a bridge.”

His eyes moved to me.

“And how many roads are behind you?”

I knew what he wanted.

Westmere. Orselle. Greykeep. Children in a garden. A gate opening when someone believed it safe.

He wanted my attention everywhere except the ground under my feet.

“Enough people are watching them,” I said.

He tilted his head.

“Are they?”

Behind us, a timber struck stone. Ordel ordered another wedge driven home.

Fenrir heard it.

He came at us again.

This time he changed while moving.

Thor stepped left. I went right, drawing him across the open space instead of letting him drive straight toward the wall.

He chose me.

I let the first rush pass close enough to feel the heat of his breath, then drove winter beneath his feet.

He slid only a little.

It was enough for Thor to strike the ground beside his foreleg, throwing broken stone into his path.

He leaped over it.

I was already falling back.

We gave ground in steps, refusing to let him pin either of us against the wreckage.

It was not graceful.

It worked for longer than I expected.

Then a horn sounded from the enemy camp, and Fenrir’s ears turned toward it.

Above the valley, two dragons had come down toward the road.

Aurethar met the nearer one before it reached the hold.

They passed so close that their wings nearly touched. Fire flashed between them, bright enough to leave a stain across my vision.

Tareth drove the second dragon wider over the valley, keeping it from descending behind our line.

Neither fight looked controlled from the ground.

The collared dragon twisted toward Stonewake’s gate, its throat glowing.

Aurethar struck from above and to the side.

The blast went into bare rock beneath the wall instead of the men standing outside it.

Stone cracked. Dust poured downhill.

Dema’s defenders held their position.

At the ram, Lexander had reached Thor’s abandoned flank with a fresh section of soldiers. They drove the infantry away from its side while an engineer cut one of the guide ropes.

The machine slewed across the slope.

Its downhill wheel struck the wreckage of the gallery and jammed.

The ram could still burn.

It could no longer reach the gate.

Fenrir looked from the stranded machine to the braced wall behind us.

Bruni was lowering one hand.

Ordel waved his people clear.

“It’s holding!”

Fenrir backed toward the slope.

Thor took one step after him, then stopped.

“Let him go.”

I kept my hammer raised until the great wolf disappeared behind the enemy’s retreating shields.

Then I discovered how hard I was breathing.

The battle did not end when Fenrir withdrew.

The enemy kept shooting. Their siege engine still controlled part of the exposed bend, and the furnace ram remained hot enough to prevent anyone approaching its front.

Thor returned to the ram with Lexander while I went back to the road.

Bruni sat against the sound section of the wall, one arm hanging awkwardly while a healer examined his shoulder. He tried to rise when he saw another beam blocking the way.

Ordel pointed at him.

“No.”

“I can move that.”

“So can six people who haven’t just held up a mountain.”

“Part of one,” Bruni said.

“Sit.”

Bruni sat.

I found the engineer who had lost part of her sleeve still working near the flags. She had acquired a shallow cut across her forehead and a look that discouraged questions.

“Can the carts come through?” I asked.

“Not until someone stops throwing stones at this bend.”

I looked downhill.

Istren was moving his archers into the newly opened position above the gallery. From there, they could finally see the siege engine’s crew.

He raised one hand.

The first volley sent the crew beneath their shields. The second kept them there while our soldiers moved along the lower bank.

When the crew abandoned the machine, I let the wind ease.

The engineer watched the hillside for another full minute.

Then she planted the final flag.

“Now,” she said.

The first wagon carried flour.

It came up slowly, the driver walking beside the lead animal while two soldiers watched the wheels.

At the damaged stretch, everyone seemed to stop breathing.

The wagon rolled over the road Bruni had nearly died preserving.

The braces held.

It passed the ruined gallery, turned beneath the scorched wall, and disappeared through Stonewake’s lower gate.

A sound rose from inside.

At first I thought it was another signal.

Then I recognized cheering.

The second wagon carried grain. The third carried medicines, cloth, and salt. Behind them came fodder, because surviving animals would be needed long after this day’s fighting ended.

We did not send the entire convoy at once.

The road was narrow, the enemy remained close, and every wagon had to leave room for wounded men coming down.

Near the gate, I helped carry a stretcher past a waiting team.

The soldier on it was foxfolk, with a blood-soaked bandage around one thigh. He caught my sleeve as we set him down for the healers.

“Did the carts get in?”

“Yes.”

“All right.”

His hand loosened.

The healer bent over him immediately.

I stayed until she told me he was breathing steadily.

Then I went back outside.

By late afternoon, we had a defended corridor from the bridge to Stonewake.

The siege was not over.

The enemy still occupied much of the valley. Their northern camp remained intact. We had neither freed the collared dragons nor destroyed the forces surrounding the hold.

But their covered approach lay broken, and the furnace ram had been disabled. Thor had smashed its exposed axle after Lexander’s men forced the remaining crew away. Ordel’s engineers were letting the furnace cool before anyone investigated what powered it.

Nine of our soldiers had died during the assault.

Thirty-four were wounded, several seriously.

Stonewake’s defenders had lost six more, with nineteen carried back through their gate for treatment.

The numbers came to me in separate reports, interrupted by requests for stretchers, water, tools, and fresh guards.

I wrote them down before fatigue could make me remember them incorrectly.

There would be names beside every number before we sent word home.

Dema found me near the hospital junction.

“The hold’s council would like to thank you.”

“Tell them to thank the road crews first.”

“They are.”

She looked toward Bruni, whose arm had been secured against his chest with enough cloth to furnish a small house.

“And the bakers are discussing how much bread a giant eats.”

“More than you think.”

“We assumed that.”

For the first time since she had come to Greykeep, she smiled without immediately looking worried afterward.

I entered Stonewake at dusk.

Inside the lower gate, the street was crowded with people trying to unload wagons without getting in one another’s way. The effort was not entirely successful.

A dwarf woman stood outside a bakery, shouting at a young man carrying flour.

“Not against that wall! It’s damp!”

He turned, saw me, and grinned.

The same young dwarf who had carried a sack up the footpath the night before.

“My mother,” he said.

“I guessed.”

She inspected the open sack, rubbed a little flour between her fingers, and frowned.

I waited.

“Could be finer,” she said.

Her son looked at me with vindication.

Then she seized my wrist, pressed a piece of warm bread into my hand, and turned back to directing the unloading.

I stood in the street holding it.

It was coarse, unevenly baked, and hot enough to sting my fingers.

I ate it anyway.

Farther uphill, children sat on steps watching the wagons pass. A pair of elderly elves had carried stools outside and were behaving as though they had merely come to enjoy the evening traffic.

One of them lifted a hand to me.

I lifted mine back.

Thor found me on the wall after sunset.

Below us, our soldiers were strengthening the corridor while the enemy’s fires burned farther down the valley.

“Your ribs?” she asked.

“Still present.”

“The healer will be delighted by that precise assessment.”

“How’s Bruni?”

“Angry that his shoulder needs rest. Otherwise, he’ll recover.”

“And the dragons?”

“Tareth has a tear along one wing edge. Aurethar’s being examined. Both came back under their own power.”

We stood quietly for a while.

Then I took out the letter from home.

“Julian says the seeds have sprouted.”

Thor glanced at me.

“Already?”

“Apparently Carol considers it a contest.”

“Of course she does.”

I looked down at the road, where another pair of wagons had begun the final climb under lantern light.

“I should write back.”

“Yes.”

“What do I tell them?”

Thor rested her bandaged hand on the parapet.

“That we got the flour through. That the wounded are being cared for. That there’s more work tomorrow.”

“And Fenrir?”

“Tell the council exactly what happened.”

She nodded toward the letter in my hand.

“Tell the children their seeds need watering.”

Later, I wrote to Evelyn and Adriana beneath a borrowed lamp, with the sounds of Stonewake’s kitchens coming through the open window.

I included the losses. I told them about Bruni, the dragons, and the road. I told them I was still being supervised, with increasing enthusiasm from the healers.

On a separate sheet for Julian and the children, I drew a crooked wagon beneath a very large gate.

My drawing was terrible.

I labeled the sacks so nobody would mistake them for rocks.

Then I added one final detail: a small wooden duck riding beside the driver.