Kjell's Arc

Chapter 8 of 27

The road north ran straight up the mountain, and it ended at a wall of tents and fires. Kjell crouched behind a boulder and counted the enemy host below. Hundreds of men. Cook-fires in long rows. The besieged hold stood above them, its gate barred, its walls thin with defenders. The bond-mark pointed past all of it, to the hall cut into the peak. There was no road around. There was only through. Thorin dropped beside him, chainmail dulled with dust. The old warrior had walked every mile without complaint. He looked at the camp the way he looked at everything now, like a man reading a pass he did not trust. "Too many to fight," he said. "Too open to sneak." "There's a third way," Kjell said. He turned to Merlyn. Merlyn sat on the cold ground, the stone-bound book open across his knees, his blind eyes hidden behind the stitched blindfold. His fingers moved over a page. "You want a signal," he said. Not a question. "The hold is already fighting. Give the defenders a reason to sally, and the camp splits." "Can you make one they'll see?" "Fire on the north edge." Merlyn's thumb pressed a rune into the page. "Wind runs uphill here at dusk. Light the tents there. The camp turns to fight it. The gate opens. You go up the gap." Gunnar swung the censer from its cord. The ember bed glowed through the pierced lid, thin smoke curling out. "I carry the fire," he said. "I lay it and go." He said it flat, the matter closed. They waited for dusk. When the light went gray, Gunnar crawled the sparse edge of the camp, where the fires stood far apart. Kjell watched him spill embers into oiled canvas. The first tent caught. Then the next. Wind pulled the flames uphill in a ragged line. Men shouted. The camp came apart the way Merlyn said. Whole rows of soldiers ran toward the fire, blades drawn against nothing. Above them, the hold's gate ground open. Defenders poured down into the gap the fire had torn. "Now," Kjell said. They ran up the broken road. Thorgar took the front, both axes out, and split the two men who turned to stop them. Kjell put a throwing knife through a third. The fire roared at their backs. No one chased them through the smoke. They reached the hold's open gate as the last defenders held it. Kjell passed through into the yard, chest heaving. The camp still burned below. The road north was crossed. But the master's hall lay above the yard, behind an inner door of iron-banded oak, sealed by hands that had felt them coming. A rune glowed on the wood, cut deep and cold. Merlyn touched it and drew his hand back fast. "This one knows us," he said. "And it left the door locked from the inside."