the ugly puckering of old scar tissue, small black eyes that watch the world with impersonal malice, dark hair, short and thick with dirt, bristling across the thickest of skulls. And had God given him a smaller frame in place of a giant’s packed with unreasonable helpings of muscle, weakness in place of an ox team’s stamina, still Rike would be the meanest dwarf in Christendom.
11
Wedding day
Mountains are a great leveller. They don’t care who you are or how many.
Some have it that the Builders made the Matteracks, drinking the red blood of the earth to steal its power, and that the peaks were thrown up when the rocks themselves revolted and shrugged the Builders off. Gomst tells it that the Lord God set the mountains here, ripples in the wet clay as he formed the world with both hands. Whoever it was that did the work, they have my thanks. It’s the Matteracks that put the “high” into the Renar Highlands. They march on east to west, wrinkling the map through other kingdoms, but it’s in the Highlands that they do their best work. Here it’s the Matteracks that say where you can and can’t go.
It’s been said once or twice that I have a stubborn streak. In any case I have never subscribed to the idea that a king can be told where he can’t go in his own kingdom. And so in the years since arriving as a callow youth, in between learning the sword song, mastering the art of shaving, and dispensing justice with a sharp edge, I took to mountain climbing.
Climbing, it turned out, was as new to the people of the Highlands as it was to me. They knew all about getting up to places they needed to be. High pastures for the wool-goats, the summer passes for trade, the Eiger cliff for hunting opals. But about getting to places they didn’t need to go…well who has time for that when their belly grumbles or there’s money to be made?
“What in hell are you doing, Jorg?” Coddin asked me once when I came back bloody, with my wrist grinding bone at every move.
“You should come out with me,” I told him, just to see him wince. I climb alone. In truth there’s never room for two on a mountaintop.
“I’ll rephrase,” said Coddin. I could see the grey starting in his hair. Threads of it at his temples. “Why are you doing it?”
I pursed my lips at that, then grinned at the answer. “The mountains told me I couldn’t.”
“You’re familiar with King Canute?” he asked. “It’s not a path I advise for you—since you pay me for advising these days.”
“Heh.” I wondered if Katherine would climb mountains. I thought she would, given half a chance. “I’ve seen the sea, Coddin. The sea can eat mountains whole. I might have the occasional difference of opinion with the odd mountain or two, but if you catch me challenging the ocean you have my permission to drop an ox on me.”
I told Coddin that stubbornness led me to climb, and perhaps it did, but there’s more to it. Mountains have no memory, no judgments to offer. There’s a purity in the struggle to reach a peak. You leave your world behind and take only what you need. For a creature like me there is nothing closer to redemption.
“Attack,” Miana had said, and surely a man shouldn’t refuse his wife on their wedding day. Of course it helped that I had planned to attack all along. I led the way myself, for the sally ports and the tunnels that lead to them are known to few. Or rather many know of them but, like an honest priest, few would be able to show you one.
We walked four abreast, the tallest men hunched to save scraping their heads on rough-hewn stone. Every tenth man held a pitch torch and at the back of our column they almost choked on the smoke. My own torch showed little more than the ten yards of tunnel ahead, twisting to take advantage of natural voids and fissures. The
tramp tramp
of many feet, at first hypnotic, faded to background noise, unnoticed until without warning it stopped. I turned and flames showed nothing but
11
Wedding day
Mountains are a great leveller. They don’t care who you are or how many.
Some have it that the Builders made the Matteracks, drinking the red blood of the earth to steal its power, and that the peaks were thrown up when the rocks themselves revolted and shrugged the Builders off. Gomst tells it that the Lord God set the mountains here, ripples in the wet clay as he formed the world with both hands. Whoever it was that did the work, they have my thanks. It’s the Matteracks that put the “high” into the Renar Highlands. They march on east to west, wrinkling the map through other kingdoms, but it’s in the Highlands that they do their best work. Here it’s the Matteracks that say where you can and can’t go.
It’s been said once or twice that I have a stubborn streak. In any case I have never subscribed to the idea that a king can be told where he can’t go in his own kingdom. And so in the years since arriving as a callow youth, in between learning the sword song, mastering the art of shaving, and dispensing justice with a sharp edge, I took to mountain climbing.
Climbing, it turned out, was as new to the people of the Highlands as it was to me. They knew all about getting up to places they needed to be. High pastures for the wool-goats, the summer passes for trade, the Eiger cliff for hunting opals. But about getting to places they didn’t need to go…well who has time for that when their belly grumbles or there’s money to be made?
“What in hell are you doing, Jorg?” Coddin asked me once when I came back bloody, with my wrist grinding bone at every move.
“You should come out with me,” I told him, just to see him wince. I climb alone. In truth there’s never room for two on a mountaintop.
“I’ll rephrase,” said Coddin. I could see the grey starting in his hair. Threads of it at his temples. “Why are you doing it?”
I pursed my lips at that, then grinned at the answer. “The mountains told me I couldn’t.”
“You’re familiar with King Canute?” he asked. “It’s not a path I advise for you—since you pay me for advising these days.”
“Heh.” I wondered if Katherine would climb mountains. I thought she would, given half a chance. “I’ve seen the sea, Coddin. The sea can eat mountains whole. I might have the occasional difference of opinion with the odd mountain or two, but if you catch me challenging the ocean you have my permission to drop an ox on me.”
I told Coddin that stubbornness led me to climb, and perhaps it did, but there’s more to it. Mountains have no memory, no judgments to offer. There’s a purity in the struggle to reach a peak. You leave your world behind and take only what you need. For a creature like me there is nothing closer to redemption.
“Attack,” Miana had said, and surely a man shouldn’t refuse his wife on their wedding day. Of course it helped that I had planned to attack all along. I led the way myself, for the sally ports and the tunnels that lead to them are known to few. Or rather many know of them but, like an honest priest, few would be able to show you one.
We walked four abreast, the tallest men hunched to save scraping their heads on rough-hewn stone. Every tenth man held a pitch torch and at the back of our column they almost choked on the smoke. My own torch showed little more than the ten yards of tunnel ahead, twisting to take advantage of natural voids and fissures. The
tramp tramp
of many feet, at first hypnotic, faded to background noise, unnoticed until without warning it stopped. I turned and flames showed nothing but
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