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She released the remnants of Grundi to the great beyond. The body slumped to the stones.

“I do not know where to search for the missing people,” she announced to the grave gaze of Ironhorn and the bulging eyes of Huginn. “But when the flame dies, we will loot this city and raze it. It will be as though it had never been.”

Walking Stick leapt through the snow amid the cliffs of the fjord’s western side, carrying in his pack the scroll-painting
A Tumult of Trees on Peculiar Peaks
. With his command of chi, no man could follow him, even if they had seen him. With a great effort he jumped fifty feet from a narrow, crumbling ledge to the top of the cliff and looked out upon the ruin of Svanstad. He bowed to whatever departed Runewalker had laid a trap for the nomads.

There was no time to mourn the city. He had to reach the redoubt.

Walking Stick raced through forested country, bursting onto a road. A gaggle of armed peasants was headed north to the defense of Svanstad. “Flee!” he commanded them. “Tell others! Svanstad has fallen! If you wish to fight, take to the mountains and the Skyggeskag, and dig in for a long war. If you cannot do so, return to your homes and surrender as soon as the Karvaks come! There is no dishonor in this! Either way, turn back!”

He ran on into higher country, wreathed in woodlands. Here was a place empty of people, though soon there might be many here, taking up the life of bandits. He climbed a tree and paused for breath before withdrawing the scroll. It seemed no heavier than ever. Peculiar indeed.

The great snowy mountains swirled in his vision, and he looked down upon the tiny figure of the self-portrait of the sage painter. It seemed to Walking Stick there were throngs of other such tiny figures nearby.

“How do they fare?” Walking Stick asked, knowing his words would be conveyed to the guardian of the magic painting.

The self-portrait was stroking a pet rat he’d picked up somewhere. He said, “They are frightened, but they are well. For now. We have never had so many people here before. Thousands! Hunger is the great worry. Remember that time flows swiftly here.” He cooed to the rat. “Do not worry, friend Xiaohuang, no one will eat you.”

“Tell Princess Corinna they must keep hope. I have not rested since she agreed to have her people shelter in the scroll. I will still not rest until we reach the high pasture, the seter, she called it.”

“You can find it?”

“I have a mind for detail, friend.”

The self-portrait had to laugh. “That you do, Walking Stick.”

“I will yet win this war, portrait.”

“I admire your resilience, but how? All you have now is yourself, formidable as you are.”

“I have the scroll.”

“What you have is a handful of fighting monks and a mob of frightened refugees.”

“What I have,” Walking Stick said, and the barest hint of a smile crossed his face, “is thousands of trainable people inside a realm of accelerated time flow. Thousands of people who know at last exactly what is at stake. And that means, I have an army.”

CHAPTER 34

REUNION

Torches blazed around the perimeter of the great tree stump in the harbor of Larderland. A handful of figures stood upon the meandering pier leading to it, and a crowd upon the shore, including the pensive Bone, Gaunt beside him. Mad Katta stood upon the timbers, and Erik Glint and Freidar the Runewalker beside him. There too was Yngvarr Thrall-Taker with Brambletop and Taper Tom and a few men Bone didn’t know, presumably from Yngvarr’s crew. A few steps back stood Tlepolemus of the Likedealers, and beside him Ruvsa the Rose.

Yngvarr called out, “To whom shall I pay the one-half man-price when Katta falls?”

“You may discuss rivers flowing upward and pigs flying when they occur,” Katta said with a grin. “Now stop avoiding combat!”

“Nithing!” Yngvarr shouted. “Sorcerer! You die now!”

The two stepped onto the great trunk.

Gaunt pushed her way up to Ruvsa. Bone stayed close to Gaunt; he reflected it had been a good policy thus far.

“Must they fight to the death?” Gaunt demanded.

“It is not necessary,” Ruvsa said, her face impassive, “but they have agreed to a combat with no surrender. The loser must be unable to respond.”

“Let none enter or leave the circle of the tree trunk,” called out Tlepolemus, “until the holmgang is done.”

Yngvarr fought with an axe, Katta with a staff. Yngvarr, who had mocked Katta’s claim to blindness, nevertheless took care to circle quietly behind the monk. Katta for his part took up a defensive posture and waved his staff as though tracing out seagulls’ wings in the air.

Bone was about to shout, “Katta, behind you!” but Gaunt seized his arm. “No,” she said. “Trust him.”

Yngvarr advanced and swung, but Katta dropped low and savagely struck the foamreaver’s arm. In what seemed a simultaneous motion, Katta slipped away from Yngvarr’s second blow and backed up to the edge of the tree trunk.

Katta was smiling.

“I will end that grin!” Yngvarr said. He lunged.

Katta stepped sideways and again struck for the weapon arm. The foamreaver winced and nearly dropped his axe.

It astounded Bone that Katta could fight so well. Unless . . . yes, if the Nine Wolves (now Eight!) were agents of evil, perhaps Katta could see one, however dimly. But it must not be a sure thing, or Katta would be throwing one of his cakes.

Yngvarr rushed in and scored a blow to Katta’s left arm.

The monk must have been in terrible pain; yet he took advantage of the connection to strike Yngvarr’s face with the staff. As the foamreaver reeled, Katta brought the staff down upon Yngvarr’s weapon hand, and this time Yngvarr dropped the axe.

Yet blood spattered across the great trunk, and it was all Katta’s. The monk was moving slower now, and Yngvarr caught him barehanded, tried to choke the life out of him. Katta brought the staff against Yngvarr’s neck and pushed back.

Now both men struggled to find their own breath and end the other’s.

Katta’s blood loss was deciding matters. The monk fell to his knees, still struggling. Now he pitched back. . . .

And out of the night rushed an amorphous shape, a nightmare beast with tassels.

“I respect no man’s laws,” said Deadfall.

The carpet engulfed Yngvarr, and the foamreaver kicked and struggled, but the life in him ebbed.

“Stop . . .” Katta said, rising to his knees, dropping his staff, and clutching his wound with his left hand. “Deadfall, do not take his life! That was never the goal!”

“As you wish.” The carpet unfolded, and a gasping, retching foamreaver crawled to the trunk’s edge. Now Deadfall wrapped itself around Katta like a cloak and, Bone suspected, stanched the flow of blood. “I will save yours instead.”

“I thought you had not ceased being my friend,” Katta said, crawling to Yngvarr’s side.

“Was that the purpose of this?” said the carpet. “To draw me out?”

“Among other things.” Katta put his hand on Yngvarr’s forehead. “Charstalker! You will afflict this man no more! Faced with demons I will never waver; your illusions hold no fear for me! For
Being is as one with Nothing, Nothing is as one with Being, Being is Nothing, and Nothing is Being
.”

Out of Yngvarr’s mouth and ears flowed a strange smoke, and within it coiled a fire that needed no fuel to burn.

“We’ve seen this before,” Gaunt said to Bone, “far to the East.”

The demonic Charstalker billowed over the dueling trunk, forming three blazing eyes. The Larderlanders gasped.

“Begone!” shouted Katta, and now he was throwing his enchanted cakes into the smoky mass. “You are less than an illusion! You are but the memory of a nightmare! You chased Wondrous Lady Monkey to this land in dreams, and once here you afflicted the Nine Wolves. But your time here is done!”

The Charstalker formed three of the ancient Kantening runes in the air. Bone was no expert, even after traveling with a Runewalker, but he thought they indicated fire, hail, ice, or other such woes. It was a fleeting gesture, however. The Charstalker’s substance broke apart. Its smoke drifted away to the east. Katta chanted, “
Travel on, travel on, cross the river of perception, and know at last the other side
.”

The demon gone, the Larderlanders broke into excited talking. Tlepolemus bellowed for the other bystanders to stay where they were, and amid the hubbub he knelt beside Yngvarr. “He lives!” said the Likedealer.

“Foul!” called out members of Yngvarr’s crew. “Trickery! We have no result!”

Ruvsa said, “Erik Glint, this is all very irregular. Your crew interfered, and your champion used magic.”

Gaunt said, “Ruvsa! The carpet Deadfall is part of our quest but hardly part of the crew. And you see the necessity of the magic!”

Bone thought it was a good argument, but Ruvsa raised her hand. “Nevertheless! I must rule that Mad Katta forfeits, and Captain Glint is the losing party!”

Gaunt spoke up. “Ruvsa,” she said, “we all saw what Katta did for Yngvarr. For your husband! Does that count for nothing?”

“The holmgang is the holmgang,” Ruvsa said. “It comes from long ago. Mercy has no part of it—”

A great booming silenced Ruvsa and the crowd. A splashing and surging rent the lake.

“What is out there?” demanded Tlepolemus. “Send to the lighthouse to illuminate the lake.”

“Skrymir,” Deadfall said. “He has found me.”

Gaunt and Bone backed up a discreet distance from the water. They were not abandoning friends, Bone told himself. Merely getting into maneuvering room. And out of illumination . . .

The lighthouse beam swung to and fro and at last halted to light up a monstrous stony shape, a head and torso of house-like proportions rising from the water.

“Greetings, Lardermen!” boomed a sardonic voice. “I thought I smelled old comrades here. Much have I heard of your exploits, and now I will see your fighting prowess firsthand.”

What Bone presumed to be Skrymir Hollowheart rose beside the piers, towering thirty feet above them all, revealing the gash within his stony chest. He looked among the ships and selected the proudest one,
Ironbeard
.

He stepped on it, breaking it in two.

The men still aboard screamed and fled to the pier or the water. Skrymir chuckled and snapped the mast, raising it over his head like a club.

Yngvarr Thrall-Taker, teetering, hauled himself to his feet. He sounded astonished. “Troll-jarl! But I am your
ally
! It is my ship you’ve destroyed!”

“I will compensate you,” boomed Skrymir. He swung the mast onto the island of the holmgang.

The foamreaver stared stupefied at his doom, but Katta, still wrapped in a magic carpet, leapt and knocked Yngvarr out of the way, sprawling men and carpet into the water.

The mast shattered, and fragments sprayed among the onlookers. Some fell, and Bone feared for them.

Skrymir was saying, “Any others seeking compensation? No? Good! For I am Skrymir, and this is the end of the human age. Svanstad has burned, victim of the Karvaks and the death-rune of the Runewalker Nan. In this wolf-time human law is nothing. The codes of pirates and the edicts of kings are null. I demand the return of the entities called Innocence and Deadfall. They once were a set; they will be again!”

Gaunt strode into the torchlight. Bone would have covered his face with his palm, but it was his job to be pulped first, so he scrambled to get in front of her.

“Innocence is not here!” Gaunt shouted. “And Deadfall is a free being!”

“Not here?” Skrymir answered. “But I can smell his essence. Did I track him here, or was it a premonition?”

A boy’s voice called out from the darkness above.

“It doesn’t matter, troll-jarl! For I’ve come from the ruins of Svanstad, following
your
scent! I’m here!”

Bone saw the round shadow of a Karvak balloon overhead.

“Delightful!” Skrymir called out. “Now get down here!”

“Leave these people alone!” Innocence said. “Leave my parents alone! Leave Deadfall alone! I want nothing more to do with you! I am chosen of the Heavenwalls of Qiangguo. I am wielder of the power of the Great Chain! I will take no more orders.”

“Defiance? Amusing! And pathetic. Come down from there!”

“Skrymir Hollowheart!” called Steelfox from the balloon.

“Ah,” said Skrymir. “The elder sister, overshadowed by the younger. So sad. I am aware of your falling out. Do not fear. I will not antagonize the Karvak Realm by killing you. Every single other inhabitant of this island, now . . . well, that’s quite possible. We’ll see how matters stand.”

“Innocence Gaunt is under my protection!”

“I alone decide who plays with my toys.”

Skrymir raised a gigantic axe. “Wayland the war-smith made this, his price for our aid in driving the uldra into their retreats. Let us see how it fares against ironsilk.” The air boomed as he hurled the weapon.

Bone felt like a mouse with a tiny hammering heart as the axe clove the balloon’s gas envelope. With a vast hiss the craft settled onto the great tree in the town square. With a great crash the axe destroyed a house.

Yngvarr sputtered onto the shore. Deadfall, still wrapped around Katta, flew itself and the monk toward the balloon’s wreck.