"But the barton—"
"Oh, well. The barton's together, and they'll fight—they're good at that. Come the day—"
Come the day, Gird thought, and no one will have to live in a place like this, ever again. The black, disquieting hill loomed higher as they plunged into one of its gullies, angled downslope, then up and across to another. He had been days coming here, after the gnomes' message arrived, passed from one guide to another.
Blackbone was as bleak as its hill, a cramped village of dark stone huts locked in by steep slopes. It stank, not with the healthy smells of a farming village, but with rot that would never become fertility, human waste and garbage piled on barren stone. A thin dark stream writhed behind the row of dwellings, too quiet for its rate of flow. Wisps of sulphurous steam came off it. As a mining village, it had no farmsteads; the barton, Gird found, had adapted to circumstances, and met in the mine itself.
"They dunna come 'ere," said the yeoman-marshal, Felis. "They come to the outside, we got to haul it that far, and load their wagons. Inside they dunna come."
Gird found it hard to endure even the outer tunnel, as daylight faded in the distance. Now he was out of sight of the entrance, sweating with fear, and hoping the barton would think it was the heat. Around the gallery where they drilled, torches burned, smoking. In that dim and shaking light, the men and women looked like nightmare creatures, monsters hardly human. He had already noticed that they were all grimed with the black rock. Now their eyes glittered in the light, the whites unnatural against dark-smeared faces. He glanced up, seeing the dark rock overhead far too close.
One of the women grinned, teeth white against the darkness. "You're no miner, eh? The rockfear gripes you?"
No use to pretend. "It does. I'm a farmer, used to no more than a bit of roof between me and the sky."
She laughed, but not unkindly. "At least you don't lie. Lead us out to fight, then, and you'll be free of this rock." The emphasis on "you" caught his attention.
"And you? Do you want to stay here?"
"Nay—but what do I know of farming? I'd go to other mines, could I." Some of the faces nodded agreement, others were still, with a stillness Gird had never seen.
He had no time to wonder at that, for the detailed plan of battle had to be made that night. Now that he'd seen for himself the shape of the land, the way the dark rock loomed over the wagon road into Blackbone, he could mentally place his few archers where they could do the most good. The barton members nodded when he spoke, but he wondered if they understood at all. None of them were archers. Most of them had never been out of Blackbone in all their lives. They knew digging and hauling, enough carpentry to build ladders and simple boxes, and not much more. They'd been drilled with picks and shovels. Gird felt the edges filed onto the shovels and wished he could have such metal for better weapons.
One of the men nodded. "They 'ad to give us good steel, see, or it wouldn't be no use against this rock."
"But no smith," said the woman who had asked him about rock-fear. "They brings us the tools, but takes no chances we'll make swords."
Deep in the ground, away from natural light, Gird lost track of time and would have gone on all night, but they had candlemarks for measure, and brought him back out to sleep under the sky. He almost wished he'd stayed within, for the air stank worse than in the mine itself, and he felt smothered.
The next day, his troops arrived. None of them liked Blackbone Hill. He saw the looks sent his way, noticed how they angled away from the line of march, as if they didn't want to set foot on that dark stone. He hated it himself, felt a subtle antagonism through his bootsoles. What if he was wrong? What if the power of Blackbone turned against them, preferred the lords? The gnomes had said it would not, but they were, after all, rockfolk. Their goals were not his goals.
Threesprings barton, kinbound to Blackbone, had sent twenty-seven yeomen, the largest contingent. They were all darkhaired, dour, barely glancing at Gird when he spoke to their yeoman marshal. A third of them were women, all as tall and thickset as the men. Longhill, barely a day's march away, had sent fourteen: its best, the yeoman marshal assured Gird. Deepmeadow, Whiterock Ridge, Whiteoak, Hazelly, and Clearspring had been on the march two days each. Some of them had never been so far from home; they clutched their weapons and foodsacks as if they expected the rocks to sprout demons. Westhill, the most veteran of this lot, had marched four days across the rolling hills. Their sturdy cheerfulness heartened the novices more than Gird could; he did not explain that Westhill had no village to return to, for the lords had burnt and salted it over the winter.
Blackbone barton greeted these allies with restraint—or, as Gird saw it, with total lack of enthusiasm. A few words passed between the Threesprings yeoman marshal and a Blackbone man, a mutter of family news, as near as Gird could make out, but nothing more. Longhill clearly expected no better; the yeomen smirked and sat quietly without attempting conversation. The others, barring Westhill, clumped up nervously and stared roundeyed from the taciturn Blackbone yeomen to the higher slopes of Blackbone Hill. Gird made his way from one barton to another, doing his best to reassure and cheer them.
Blackbone barton itself actually broke the ice with a contribution to the evening meal. Short of supplies as it was—as any remote mining village without farmstead support would be—the village nonetheless made a very potent brew and had saved it, as their spokesman said "For the day." Now the chunky little jugs passed from hand to hand, raising spirits or at least numbing fears. Gird, mindful of watchful eyes, took but one pull at a jug before passing it on. The story of his drunken rage had traveled farther than he had; he knew he dared not risk another, and certainly not before a battle.
By dawn, he had them all in position. They looked fewer in the morning light, when he knew an enemy was coming, and the land itself looked larger. Could they possibly hold the narrow throat, choke the lords' soldiers from the village?
Eight bartons. Near two cohorts, by his new reckoning, though he had none of his marshals along. And there, coming along the stone-paved trade road, were the mounted infantry, the archers he feared so much, the light cavalry, and—he squinted—and a small troop of the lords themselves, mounted. So—so the gnomes had been right. Whatever they got from the Blackbone mines was important enough to bring them out themselves. He could not read their devices, or recognize them by the colors they wore; the traders had told him all that, and Selamis had written it down, but Selamis was not here to remind him. Lords were lords, he thought to himself, and what difference did it make if he faced sier or duke or count—any and all would be glad of his blood, and he of theirs.
Because he was looking for it, he noticed that the lords' troops also disliked the touch of Blackbone Hill, and veered slightly until sharp commands brought them back. He told himself that the horsemen would have trouble on the slopes. Would horses, too, flinch from Blackbone? He hoped so; they were ruinously outnumbered otherwise. Perhaps he should have brought some of his regular troops—but there would have been no way to move that many that far without opposition, and he had had no time for additional battles. He looked over at Wila, who could see down into the cleft where his few archers waited, and held up his hands three times. Wila passed the signal on. If they could take the archers out, then his people could stand against a charge. Horsemen couldn't spread wide on that uneven slope. He hoped.
The clatter of hooves and boots rang loudly from the stones on either side of the track. Gird kept his head down, trusting his carefully placed archers to choose their targets wisely. He heard the twang of one bowstring, then another, then shouts from below. So it began, again, and he squeezed his own hands hard an instant, fighting down that last-moment fear that caught him every time. He stood, and waved his arm.
In that first scrambling rush downslope, Gird could see that his archers had done their work well; many of the lords' archers were down. Arrows flicked by, close overhead. A few of those below had found cover, and returned a ragged flight. Someone beside him staggered and went down, hands clutched to chest. Ahead of him, the front line of yeomen, with the best weapons, had engaged the mounted soldiers, unseating many of them and killing horses. The slope and sunrise gave them advantage, and Gird's archers continued to pick their targets wisely.
"Get the lords!" he bellowed, reminding them.
But the attack lost momentum, foundered. No arrows found the lords on their tall horses; Gird could have sworn he saw arrows slide aside, as if refusing to menace the magelords. The lords themselves drew no weapons he could see—not then—but their soldiers regrouped with amazing speed. They paid no attention to the wounded and fallen among them, striding over bodies as if they were merely more rocks. Gird had called for all his bartons to attack when he thought he saw the enemy crumbling, but now he had no unseen reserves, and the ground no longer favored him. Either his people were spread out along the road, outnumbered at each point, or he could call them to clump on the road itself, and try a frontal attack—exactly what he had not wanted to do with the weapons he had available.
Furious with himself, and with the gnomes who had advised this battle plan, Gird watched his ambush degenerate into a lengthy slaughter. Now that they were sure the rocky slopes held no more surprises, the lords and their soldiers pushed forward strongly on the road itself. Already they were beyond the range of Gird's archers, who would have to come out of cover to find targets. The yeoman marshals were looking over their shoulders now, expecting Gird to come up with something—some plan—and he could not think of anything. Could he hold them together? Would a rout be worse than this? Why had he ever thought the gnomes could design a battle plan for humans? He had to try something. He called them all in, trying to slow the enemy advance along the road. That might give someone a chance to escape.
It had been a mistake. It had been a disaster, and now the end would come. Gird held the retreat together, as foot by foot they were forced back through the village into the maw of the mine. He had been so sure that taking out their archers would be enough. It might have been, without the lords themselves there, with their wicked magicks. Their troops, who might have broken and fled—
would
have, Gird was sure—still moved forward, as if they had no thought at all, as if they could suffer no wound or fall to no death. Yet they fell, and died, and were trampled by their own. The faces he could see did not change expression even in death. Too far behind for any of Gird's weapons to reach, the lords sat veiled on their tall horses, watching, performing whatever magicks they could.
Here was still more evidence that some of the lords still had potent powers to call on. Rocks split, air hummed and thickened in his throat, unnatural light rippled over the battle, making it hard to see. And so he was going to die under a mountain of rock, because he had believed the wrong story. There wasn't any way out of this, but if he
did
live, he was going to have a few choice words for Arranha, if ever he caught up with him again.
He shifted to one side as the mine closed around them.
"Go on!" bawled the Blackbone yeoman marshal in his ear. "Let us take this."
"It was my bad idea." Gird smashed his club into a shoulder, and ducked aside from a pike. "I should be last—"
They fought side by side for a few moments, as the soldiers charged again. Then the momentum of that charge dissipated, and they could retreat further into the dark shaft without immediate risk. The soldiers were cursing the darkness, stumbling over loose rocks and the fallen.
"Hurry
up
," the yeoman marshal said. "Afore the lords get in, and make they magical lights—"
"But we should make a stand," Gird said. "I'll do it—a few others—"
"Never mind!" The yeoman marshal yanked Gird's arm hard. "Leave them to it; they'll find out—"
"What?" He couldn't see, in the dimness, anything but a flash of teeth.
"It's in the charm," said the man, almost gleefully. "Come with me."
What charm was that,
Gird wondered. It was that or be left in darkness, and Gird came. Dying inside a cursed mountain wasn't his idea of the way to die, but what choices did he have? None, like the rest of them. All around, in the darkness, he heard the rasp of feet on stone, the groans of the wounded, the heavy breathing. Deeper into the blackness, and deeper, twisting and turning through passages that were sometimes tight for a single man, and other times so wide that three or four abreast must reach out with hands to feel the walls. Gird clamped his fear within him, and tried to think, without success.
When the dim bluish light of a gnomish lamp blossomed nearby, he could not believe it. All around were faces equally surprised, mouths open. A firm, cool hand gripped Gird's, and he looked down to see the warmaster who had set this battle's plan.
"It is for you to command," the warmaster said. "No human noise!"
"Silence!" Gird bellowed and no one spoke. He bent to the warmaster, full of his own questions and complaints, but the warmaster's expression stopped him.
"It is that they are within, the outland lords?"
"Yes."
"You marshal your humans, follow my orders."
"Yes." There was nothing more to say. Whatever the gnomes demanded, he would have to perform, both by his contract and by the logic of the situation.
"Then go. Follow that one—" the warmaster pointed. "Go far and swift."
"You don't need our help?"
The warmaster's face conveyed secret amusement. "Human help for rockwar? Go."
Gird waved, and the others formed up to follow him, as he followed his guide. It occurred to him, as they plunged once more into a narrow dark passage, that the gnomes might have planned all this just to lure a few lords underground—though he hated to think that.
All he could hear behind, though he strained his ears, was the noise of his own people shuffling along. His guide carried a lantern, so he himself could see where to put his feet, but the others stumbled in darkness. At last, a dim shape of light ahead, that widened and brightened to daylight. He squinted against the light, and then as he came out, stopped short. They faced a gloomy sunset, a few rays of somber light escaping beneath heavy clouds. And that meant—he shook his head, to clear it. They had walked
through
Blackbone Hill? He peered up and over his shoulder. There it was, that gaunt, misshapen spine arched slightly away from them.