The ground exploded in front of Hobb, sending clods of dirt and rock flying into the air around him. He felt the breeze of their passage against his cheeks. Men in the squad ahead of him fell, screaming, as shrapnel from the blast ate into and through their bodies. Hobb himself ignored the noise and fury of the explosion, reasoning that if it was his time to be pulverized, no amount of incidental wriggling would make a difference.

  “Spread out!” bellowed the Citizen-Sergeant in the tight ranks ahead. “Form skirmish line!”

  The lower officer’s voice was abruptly interrupted by a tearing arpeggio of clattering explosions, rippling from Hobb’s left to right from ahead on up the steep slope. More men in the ranks ahead fell, cut down as if by magic. But the survivors dutifully spread out, and someone picked up the fallen standard. The source of the gunfire was a string of low redoubts further up the slope, scattered men with long guns just visible behind their wooden walls.

  Hobb was armed only with the long dagger that he now kept with him at all times. The men surrounding him had spears, crossbows, and zeal.

  It was zeal that would carry them through to the end, thought Hobb, as the line surged forward under the imprecations of its officers. It was not fear, or discipline, or Howe’s carefully considered tactics. Those would help. But zeal—zeal for the Republic, for democracy, for the equality of men—would propel them over the walls. His side had it, and the demoralized, frightened mercenaries in the redoubts did not.

  The long, flowing line of widely-spaced, red-clad soldiers surged up the slope toward the redoubts, and Hobb surged along behind them. Three weeks of waiting in a fruitless siege of the fort, staring deliriously up at Beatrice Snugg’s fearsomely contemptuous face carved into the very bones of the earth, had exhausted Hobb’s patience. His Republican Guard were going up the hill toward his antagonist, and Hobb had rebuffed every suggestion that he remain behind.

  The guns crackled again, but fewer of the Guard ahead fell. Sir Thomas had improvised quickly after the battle at the river, inventing entirely new ways of organizing and moving men to counter the technological advantage of the Snuggs. The Guardsmen dissolved into small squadrons, each with a pre-appointed objective; the individual men maintained space from each other, pushing toward their destinations in a loose cloud. Some fell, but each unit made its way forward, buffered from the worst effects of the concentrated fire from above.

  Hobb panted from the steep, fast climb, but the hot fire from above and the screams and shouts of men around him drove him on. Large stones began to tumble down the hill as well, in between the volleys. But the slope ahead of Hobb crawled with red, and no amount of stones or gunfire was going to turn back the uphill tide.

  Boris ran at his side, and when the loose formations reached their designated points on the wall, he gently held Hobb back from the fighting. Sir Thomas had grudgingly permitted them to follow along well behind the assault, but made it clear that Boris would be disassembled in slow, methodical detail if the First Minister came within a hundred yards of actual combat. And Hobb, even through the haze of pain that flowed from his wound and clouded his thinking, knew that he would only be in the way when it was time for the stabbing to begin.

  In the event, the Snugg mercenaries spent relatively little time on a hopeless defense of their redoubts. There were too few of them. They retreated upslope to the main fort, where two of the big guns spat thunder and death down at the attackers.

  More thunder could be heard, coming from many miles to the north. But those guns were turned to a different attacker.

  Hobb and Boris stopped downslope of the main fort to rest, watching the Republican Guard assault the walls and gates. Hobb had no clue how long the fighting went on, but numerous efforts to pierce the gates were driven back by gunfire and vicious, hand-to-hand combat. The tide of battle only turned when several squads of the Guard worked their way onto the lattice of scaffolding that still framed Beatrice Snugg’s face above the fort, pouring crossbow bolts down on the defenders. Late in the afternoon, the surviving mercenaries fought their way out the northward gate of the fort, making their way north along the western ridges of the valley while trailing guns and casualties.

  That night, Hobb sat wearily in the remains of the fort with Sir Thomas and the command staff. Pearsy joined them from the valley below, where he had remained throughout the assault, apparently fearing that the visage of his late wife might be inspired to join in the melee and sear him from the face of the earth. Sir Thomas sat with them, reporting the results of the action. He had a bandage on his left arm and a nasty graze on one cheek that might one day turn into a dashing scar.

  “We have 329 casualties so far,” announced the young knight-general, “to, in my estimate, about sixty of theirs. But they have far fewer men to spare, and must split their forces between us and the…” he trailed off, looking down at the ground.

  “Say it, General,” commanded Hobb, rubbing absently at the wound in his shoulder.

  Sir Thomas swallowed manfully. “They must split their force between us and the Giant-men,” he said in a steady voice; but his eyes showed he still struggled to believe it. “Sir Quarterfoot reported back a few minutes ago from the latest scout. He tells me the other army has driven the Snuggs back from their fortifications at the northern end of the valley. The mercenaries are fighting a rearguard back down the valley toward their settlement. Quarterfoot thinks it won’t last more than a day. Their opponents are… formidable.”

  “Then it is a race,” mused Hobb. “A race to find something the Herald knows and I do not.” His vision swam, and he found that Boris had reached out a hand to steady him as he sat.

  “Rest, First Minister,” said Sir Thomas. “You’ve done enough for today. Your presence encouraged the men.”

  To the north, the guns rumbled ominously: seven loud booms.

  “Advance at dawn, general,” instructed Hobb, struggling to keep his voice level as he tottered toward a nearby bedroll. “We take and hold the town for long enough to find what the Herald is keeping from me. We need the Snuggs to give the Giant-men a bloody nose on their march down the valley, and then get out of our way.”

  And then, not bothering to remove the tattered and stained remains of his once-white shirt and dark gray suit, Hobb collapsed on the blankets, too weak to cover himself. Tender hands drew the blankets around him and covered his head, and then darkness took him.

  ???

  The boat bobbed gently in the darkness, the stars above providing a visual anchor by which Hobb could judge his own movement. He sat on the stern bench, looking up at the stars in the cool air of a late June night.

  “It’s almost over, you know,” remarked a voice next to him.

  Hobb looked down from the stars and regarded his companion on the stern bench. Truth be told, the other man took up most of the bench, and Hobb was crammed precariously to one side. He sniffed the familiar wash of foul body odor that announced the presence of his old adversary.

  “What’s almost over?” asked Hobb.

  “Your journey,” replied the Archdeacon. “Very soon you will have served your purpose, and God will permit you to lay down your burdens.”

  Hobb snorted.

  “I am told,” he replied, “that on the upper reaches of the Broobana there live bands of primitives whose holy men divine their futures by examining the chief’s shit on the morning after a ritual feast. I further have it on excellent authority that one of these bands, after their headman had an untimely case of constipation, was plunged into religious crisis and committed suicide to a man. And yet, Archdeacon, I would sooner consult a scatomancer than for reliable information on my future. Your appearance is the nocturnal affliction of a weary mind and an injured body.”

  The Kettle smiled broadly. “You needn’t take my word for it, Hobb the Wise,” he said. “Judgment awaits, whether you believe in it or not. Hell is filled with confident atheists.”

  “What do you mean, do you suppose?” asked Hobb curiously, shifting his body awkwardly to face Ratwaddler beside him. “The psychists at the Royal Academy proclaim dreams to be a manifestation of the mind’s own obsessions and insecurities, unshackled from the discipline of the waking world.”

  Ratwaddler smiled gently. “And?” he prompted.

  Hobb grimaced. “If my deep and unconscious mind is secretly a believer in the One True God, shackled in iron bonds of false rationalism and crying out for salvation, then I shall return to Uellodon at once, resign from government, eat my hat, and then have myself thrown from the Rose Tower.”

  “You needn’t secretly be a believer to secretly be guilty,” answered Ratwaddler.

  Hobb looked at the stars reflected in the water around them for many minutes, saying nothing.

  “My bones are down there,” remarked Ratwaddler, his tone unreadable.

  “They’re in good company,” whispered Hobb faintly.

  “It’s time, Hobb,” said the Archdeacon. “You know what we must do.”

  Hobb nodded, shifting around to face the rear of the boat. His hands and feet were bound. Ratwaddler did the same, and he too was bound. The sky was black above, and no stars could be seen.

  “On three, then?” said the churchman.

  “I expect this time it will stick,” said Hobb.

  Stop, said the oarsman.

  Wake.

  ???

  Hobb’s eyes snapped open. It was cold, and the sky above was dim. Dark clouds roiled the air above, hanging low over the tops of the ridges. Above him, the pale, bald face of Boris looked down. He was kneeling over Hobb, with one hand on his forehead and another pressing against the wound in his shoulder. Boris’s slightly red eyes seemed to burn even in the dim light.

  “Wake, First Minister,” he said, in his strange, roly-poly accent. “It is past dawn, and the Guard is moving to the north. We mustn’t be left behind.”

  Hobb sat up suddenly, his head light and his eyes weary. But the pain in his shoulder had died down considerably, and his mind felt clear.

  The Guard’s makeshift camp in the ruins of the Snugg fort was almost completely empty of soldiers now. Only wounded Guardsmen and attending physicians were left, and perhaps a dozen mercenary prisoners chained and guarded in one corner. The sound of sporadic gunfire crackled to the north, and drops of rain began to be blown in on the heavy wind.

  Hobb gathered up the reluctant and groggy Chancellor Pearsy, then strode purposefully over to the group of prisoners, not bothering to change the clothes he had slept in. Boris trailed along beside them.

  “Gentlemen,” he addressed the mercenaries. The looked up at him sullenly. “Gentlemen,” he repeated. “We are all businessmen here, are we not? We have needs, you and I. You need to be away from the bloodbath that is coming to this valley, and to have enough coin in your pocket to make your way to safer lands with your families or your sweethearts. Am I correct?”

  They looked at him suspiciously, but a handful rewarded him with nods.

  “Very good,” Hobb encouraged them. “We consider the greater good in the Republic, you know. Our concerns are larger than the self-interest of the individual; we want the best for our whole community. I want you to think like Republicans, gentlemen. And I’m going to help you. Are you ready?”

  He gave instructions to the guards, and the chained prisoners were separated into two groups, by about fifty feet. Hobb stood between the two groups and looked from one to the other.

  “These are your communities,” he announced loudly. “Whichever community gives me the best and most complete information about the interior of that mining complex will go free, each man with ten gold crowns in his pocket.”

  He paused for dramatic effect.

  “The other community,” he continued then, “will have their eyes gouged out and be set loose to starve in the wilderness.”

  He sent Pearsy to talk to one of the groups of prisoners, and went himself to the other. Their eyes were desperate as he approached.

  “There’s a library,” said one of them eagerly, keeping his voice low. His companions nodded, looking anxiously at Hobb. Hobb smiled.

  “Tell me about this library,” he said.

  ???

  Hobb, Pearsy, and Boris caught up with the advancing Guard units several hours later as they poured through the pass at the south end of the valley, on the east side of the river. They were trotting forward toward the settlement, but Hobb found that his legs and breath felt stronger and more spry than they had in months. He caught them easily and found General Sir Thomas Howe’s standard. Howe himself, walking alongside his men as the horses had not been brought up, acknowledged Hobb with a slight nod, but did not stop. Their objective was obvious, and it was close.

  A low cluster of gray and brown buildings lay on both banks of the river, and a remarkable bridge spanned the water between them. It was light, airy, and beautiful in its mathematical simplicity. The pilings were of concrete, and the span itself was made of steel.

  A year ago, Hobb would have gaped in awe at the fantastic expense of such a construction, but a steady diet of fantastic and impossible experiences had jaded his palette. Of course the Snuggs had built a bridge of steel. There were Giant-men and a dragon running about just to the north; he half-expected to see fleets of flying carriages pulled by winged horses.

  But then, as he watched, Hobb finally did see something that impressed him. Emerging from one of the three large cave openings at the base of the eastern ridge, a long serpent of steel and smoke clattered toward the settlement, moving much faster than a galloping horse. It rolled on wheels, like a carriage, but there were a dozen cars all strung together, and the car at the lead belched black fumes from a stack at its front. The cars behind were a variety of platforms and boxes. Some of the platform cars bore crowds of people, and others were stacked with crates or loose goods, tied down with cabling.

  Young children with oddly squat heads clambered all over the dozen cars of the strange, serpentine vehicle, though they were concentrated in the smoking car at the front and a large, boxy car at the rear. A group of them actually seemed to be hanging off the front and sides of the lead car, working frantically at details that were too small for Hobb to make out.

  Hulking, man-shaped figures, twelve feet tall and glittering with plate armor, appeared suddenly on the far side of the bridge. More were pounding down from the north, moving at a dead run to cut off the escape route of the long vehicle. They bore massive, two-handed swords that were nearly as long as the Giant-men were tall.

  “General!” shouted Hobb. “We must take those mines! The settlement and the train are of no consequence; the library is in the tunnels!”

  Howe looked at him blankly, uncomprehending.

  “Take the tunnels,” repeated Hobb. “Go in there, and flush out any Snuggs that are left, and occupy them before the Giant-men arrive in force.” He nodded at the gathering crowd of oversized warriors on the west side of the river.

  “But—” began Sir Thomas, obviously about to say something sensibly tactical.

  “I order you,” bellowed Hobb, “by the authority of the Republic and its King, to occupy those mines!”

  Sir Thomas shook his head wearily, and then raised his trumpet to his lips. Hobb had quite forgotten that Sir Thomas, not long ago a company captain in the scout cavalry, did his own signaling. There was a strong, jaunty blast, in a particular arpeggiated pattern, and before long the ranks of the Guard were wheeling and shifting to move toward the three caves on the double-quick.

  “Give me a company, Sir Thomas,” demanded Hobb.

  Howe scowled at him, but called over one of his staff.

  “Take the First Minister to Sir Quarterfoot,” he instructed, not bothering to lower his voice. “Keep him alive if possible, wherever he may go, but no suicide missions. Hit him on the head and bring him back to me if he puts himself in danger.”

  Hobb did not spare Sir Thomas a glare, but trotted after the staff officer, trailing Boris and Pearsy.

  As they approached the cave entrances from which the long vehicle had emerged, hawks swooped and circled just over the heads of his troops, screaming angrily. Some went so far as to claw at the heads and faces of the soldiers. But Hobb gave them little heed. He had come too far now to trouble himself with the beasts of the field or birds of the air. He did wonder, for just a moment, at the recovery of his strength from a festering wound that, yesterday evening, had left him delirious and barely able to walk. But Hobb had too many concerns now to dwell on one small piece of good fortune.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  The three weathered, square cave entrances loomed closer across the narrow valley floor.

  ???

  Within the caves, all was chaos, claustrophobia, and death.

  A stench assaulted Hobb’s nostrils the moment they passed into the center cave opening. It was a hard, sulfuric, metallic smell, like the rotten eggs of a metal chicken. Its assault grew, the deeper they went. And other assaults waited for them; the Snuggs had not yet entirely abandoned the complex. Small pockets of skirmishers held choke points in the tunnels, forcing the Guard to advance slowly and hack them down with their overwhelming numbers.

  The noise of gunfire up close, in the tight confines of the cave systems, quickly drove Hobb to near deafness. The first round he’d encountered up close had scared him so much that he dropped the long dagger he carried. Fumbling in the dark, he couldn’t find it, and felt a brief twinge of regret. But he was soon forced to move on, waving, pulling, and occasionally punching his close companions to get them moving in the right direction.

  Hobb had, finally, a destination in mind.

  He had memorized the directions from the exceedingly helpful prisoners in the captured fort; both groups of which he had left under guard, resolving to return and pass judgment on their relative merits once he could evaluate the accuracy of the proffered information.

  Soon after entering the caves, they came to a large, open chamber, out of which ran steel rails about three feet apart. Hobb quickly deduced that they were the tracks for the long vehicle he had seen depart earlier. Similar tracks were used frequently in mining operations, though these were propelled by hand engines. It was a shame, really, that the Giant-men had intercepted the second train on the west bank of the river. It was such a marvel, it almost deserved to escape.

  But Hobb had little time to pause in admiration for his enemy’s ingenuity. As the few pockets of holdouts were overwhelmed by the Guard, Hobb strode imperiously through the open space, past rows of strange, alien eggs that sprouted pipes into the ceiling, and into a passage beyond. He passed through a narrow doorway in the rock, finding a stair leading up just as the captured mercenaries had described. He consulted the map he had drawn based on their testimony, and then started up the stair.

  Then, to Hobb’s surprise, Boris shoved him roughly to one side, just as a clattering, tearing explosion of noise came from above. The red-clad scouts ahead of him fell limply to the floor. More explosions came from above. And then a deeper rumble shook the floor, and a massive block of stone abruptly crashed down, accompanied by a blast of acrid, sulfuric smoke.

  “The way is blocked,” said his laconic secretary.

  “They’ve collapsed the tunnel!” shouted Pearsy, who had gone a few steps ahead and held up his oil lamp.

  Hobb swore under his breath.

  “Follow me,” he said to Pearsy and Boris. “There’s another way, I think.”

  They followed Hobb as he strode through the chaotic, violently loud tunnels of the complex. The scout company fell in behind, moving through the tunnels with the tense alertness of hunters. Hobb looked again at the map, using it to follow the twists and turns. Panic began to rise in his chest, as he imagined they might be lost here in the close, dark spaces.

  Then they came upon a massive, reinforced portal of heavy steel, set into a narrow space in the rock. Beyond, the smell of sulfur was overwhelming.

  Hobb tore off a strip of his fine wool coat, poured water from his canteen on it, and wrapped it around his face.

  “Cover your mouth and nose, all of you,” he instructed. “Our helpful guides back at the camp told me the fumes here will make you sick.”

  And with that, he entered the vast, open chamber and began to descend.

  The stairs seemed to go on forever, but in reality, he walked downward for perhaps ten minutes. At the bottom, there was a guide rope leading out into the darkness, with dim oil lamps set at regular intervals. Even through the damp cloth, the air was choking, but Hobb could only go on. He was now a heavy stone, rolling downhill. There was no stopping.

  They came to a rope ladder, dangling down from the impenetrable darkness above. At the base of the ladder was a wide-brimmed, floppy hat. From somewhere nearby came a faint red glow; but this was not Hobb’s destination.

  “Up,” he said, gasping in the sulfuric miasma. He picked the hat up off the floor. “Just two at a time, they said. Boris, you come with me first. Pearsy, follow with Sir Quarterfoot once I drop this hat.” He put the hat on his head for safekeeping.

  “Let me go first!” protested Quarterfoot. But Hobb had already begun to climb.

  “Come and stop me,” he snarled down.

  If the descent seemed to take forever, the climb took twice as long. Many times Hobb had to stop to rest, clinging desperately to the narrow, swaying ladder, his arms stuck through the gaps to let them recover. But he refused to fall, and he refused to stop climbing. There was, in any event, nowhere else to go.

  Behind him, Boris waited patiently at each stop.

  “This ladder is so long,” he remarked to Boris at one stop, “I expect we’ll reach Heaven soon.”

  “If only someone would build a stairway,” replied the strange man.

  “I’d buy that,” agreed Hobb.

  They began to climb again.

  At last, they did reach the end of the ladder, though it was not Heaven. It was, rather, a rough opening cut in the side of a stone shaft in the ceiling, some fifteen feet tall. A series of rusty iron protrusions ringed the edge, and the ladder was fastened to steel spikes driven into the rock. Rickety wooden scaffolding was fastened to the outer face of the shaft, leading upward. But Hobb could go no further. He collapsed on the stone floor of the landing, massaging his aching arms. He feebly removed the wide-brimmed hat from his head and tossed it over the edge, signaling to Quarterfoot and Pearsy.

  The wait for their companions to join them was long. Hobb could not keep track of time in the darkness. While he waited he sat quietly with Boris, letting the burning seep away from his muscles and looking around at the space they were in.

  “Why are you helping me, Boris?” he asked.

  “Because you pay me,” came the answer from his secretary, barely visible by the light of a single oil lamp.

  “No,” replied Hobb. “Not a credible answer. You’ve been up to something since last fall, when you saved my life in the fight at the docks. Since then, you’ve been right at the edges of every important thing that’s happened—from Uellodon to Roosterfoot to Hoel and now all the way up here. You’re always just in the right place at the right time to do something, to nudge me in the right direction… well. In direction. I don’t know what you are, or who you serve—but it’s not me, and it’s not the Republic.”

  The visage of his companion grew fainter in the darkness as the lamp flickered.

  “That is an irrational conclusion, First Minister,” he said. “I am close to events of significance, because I have been privileged to be close to you.”

  Hobb shook his head. “No. It’s the other way around.”

  “And why do you think that?”

  “Because it was you, last night, in the boat.”

  “Your injury has clouded your thinking, First Minister.”

  “It has not. It was you. And just now you saved my life from that explosion at the stairs, when no man could possibly have known it was about to happen. Whatever you are… you’re more than some odd foreigner making his living as a scribe. I want to know what game you’re playing.”

  Boris leaned his face forward over the oil lamp. The light danced in his red eyes, and the wash of fear and cognitive dissonance that Hobb had so long suppressed and ignored rolled over him again. His eyes widened, and his joints locked up.

  “Come and find out,” said the suddenly terrifying man.

  And then he blew out the lamp.

  Hobb was left in silent darkness, too terrified to move.

  “Boris.” He whispered. There was no response. There was no sound of movement; his senses were almost entirely deadened. He was alone in the dark, underground, with no clue how to escape.

  Slowly, Hobb perceived that the darkness was not complete, however. Somewhere in the distance was another point of yellow light; faint, flickering. It was the only reference available to him, so he staggered to his feet and set off down the blackness of the hall, toward the light.

  Eventually he found it. It emerged from a single oil lamp, of the sort that the Snugg clique used. Near it, face down on the floor, was the body of a woman, blood pooling around her. A broad opening on one side led to a stairway down. Across the corridor were a pair of massive doors of some dark metal, standing half-open. Etchings that Hobb could not read covered the doors. Beyond, he saw faintly a broad, open space, punctuated at regular intervals by hulking towers.

  He picked up the lamp from the dead woman and held it up to the doors. A small scrap of paper had been affixed to one of the massive slabs, and on it was written a single phrase in Uellish:

  “Puerile melodrama,” he muttered to himself.

  A smell reached his nose, cutting through even the strong odor of sulfur that pervaded the tunnel system. The new smell was acrid, pungent, and smoky. Hobb looked up from his examination of the door and sniffed. The new smell was coming from inside the library itself. Deep in the cavernous darkness beyond the portal was a light, yellow-orange and flickering ominously.

  Hobb took a step through the door and sniffed again. It was, definitively, smoke.

  He hurried forward toward the light, raising his borrowed oil lamp ahead of him. The towering shapes in the darkness revealed themselves to be enormous shelves, crammed tightly with books—stacks, in the parlance of the librarian. The occupants of the stacks, as he glanced at them in passing, were a riot of different shapes and sizes, ranging from just a few inches tall to massive tomes with elaborate, gold-trimmed leather covers. There were scrolls, too—loose, or in cases.

  All was not ordered. Hobb came upon several places where books had apparently been flung off the shelves to lie in ugly heaps on the floor. Someone, he concluded, had been searching this library—urgently, and recently.

  In anguish, he passed by the stacks and piles, making his way to the growing patch of orange flame ahead. The smell of smoke grew rapidly stronger, and Hobb had to draw the crude mask up over his mouth and nose again.

  When he reached the source of the smoke, his heart sank in utter despair.

  Whole stacks were engulfed in hot, red flame. The ancient paper and parchment were gobbled up greedily by the fire, spreading with shocking speed from one row to another, from one shelf to another. He tried to approach one of the stacks, but the heat drove him back. It was impossible to go further.

  Down the rapidly-burning row of books, he saw a single human figure. It wore a dark cloak, with the hood thrown up over its head. Only the lower half of the face was visible, a grim smile on pasty-white skin illuminated by the dreadful flames. The figure turned and walked away, deeper into the stacks, and Hobb recognized the movements of his secretary.

  At that moment, the sound of footfalls behind him caused Hobb to whirl around. He saw there the wild-haired form of Chancellor Pearsy and the gaunt, lean frame of Sir Quarterfoot.

  “Help me!” cried Hobb, starting to pull books off the shelves.

  Pearsy’s eyes were wide and horrified at the conflagration of knowledge before him.

  “What can we do?” he asked. “We have no water to put it out.”

  “Build a fire break!” shouted Hobb, pulling more books off the shelves and flinging them away from the fire. “The shelves themselves are metal. They won’t burn. If we can make a circle around the fire, we can save most of the library!”

  “I’ll go for more of the company,” said Quarterfoot, spinning to run back out of the room. Pearsy and Hobb, left alone, set to work urgently.

  It was a race against the spreading fire, and both men knew it. They desperately heaved books off the shelves, flinging them as far as they could from the flames with no care for the advanced age and delicate constitution of the volumes. Some of the books simply crumbled when they were removed, and others were wrecked when they hit the floor. But the heaps of displaced books were out of the fire’s reach, for now.

  They worked alone, desperately. It took many minutes for just one or two men to ascend the long rope ladder; help in numbers would not be coming any time soon. Two of the scouts did show up after a time, and pitched in with the pitching out. Then two more came.

  But the fire was moving rapidly. Sparks jumped easily from one stack to the next, and the ancient books were bone-dry and lit in an instant. Though Hobb and his assistants labored mightily, flinging books and moving on as fast as they could, the fire was still faster. Soon it was plain they were being outflanked, as the conflagration spread faster than they could construct their break. The library all around them was roaring with red-orange heat, and the smoke was unbearable.

  “Get out!” shouted Pearsy. “We have to get out, Hobb, or we’ll all be smothered!”

  Hobb nodded, and dropped to the stone floor to crawl away. He wept as he crawled, feebly gathering a few of the hardier tomes to take with him. But he could carry very little on his own. When they reached the door of the library, the four men collapsed on the ground, panting for air.

  “Shut the door,” said Hobb.

  “What?” asked Pearsy in consternation. “Why?”

  “Because it will cut off the air, you twit,” snapped Hobb. “Assuming there aren’t any other ventilation shafts in there, closing the door will cut off the air supply to the fire, and it will eventually suffocate itself. We can open it up in a day or so and see what’s left.”

  “What if there are other openings?” whined Pearsy.

  “Then the whole thing will burn,” replied Hobb sadly. “But if we don’t close the doors now, this passage and everything above it will fill up with smoke, and we’ll all die.” And, indeed, the upper part of the tall passageway was already dense with black smoke, visible by the scout company’s lamps.

  They heaved on the great metal doors, and they slowly ground shut. The smoke lingered at the upper part of the hall, and more of it poured out through the cracks in the door—but the conflagration was contained inside the vast library.

  “We’ve got to get out of here, First Minister,” said Sir Quarterfoot urgently. “This smoke is still too thick for us to breath safely. If we stay, we’ll pass out, and they’ll only find our bodies later. This is where you come willingly, or I hit on you head and take you with.” The grizzled cavalry officer’s face was grim, and Hobb had no doubt he meant every word. Two more of the scout company arrived, having finished the lengthy climb up the rope ladder. Quarterfoot sent them back to the lip of the opening to signal the others to remain below.

  “How do we get out?” asked Hobb. “I can’t climb back down that ladder. I’ll die in this smoke first.”

  “Those stairs across from the library are blocked,” answered Quarterfoot. “It looks like it’s the upper part of the stairway that the mercenaries collapsed down below. But there’s scaffolding that leads further up that great shaft in the rock where the opening is, from the rope ladder. We can keep going up. I sent a man to reconnoiter, and he says there are other openings, and he could feel fresh air. There must be a way out.” Quarterfoot absently handed back the wide-brimmed hat that Hobb had found on the ground at the base of the ladder, and he settled it on his head for safekeeping.

  Then he nodded, and turned to walk back up the long, tall corridor. But in his daze, he tripped over something and sprawled on his face, just barely breaking his fall with his arms.

  He swore, rolling over to see what had tangled his legs. It was the body of the dead woman. He crawled over and examined her closely. To his surprise, the woman he’d taken to be a corpse drew a tortured, shallow breath and opens her eyes, looking up at him. He started back.

  She was in her early sixties, with gray hair tied back in a bun. She was dressed in practical, hard-worn leathers, and another wide-brimmed hat lay near her head. Her body was marred by a number of stab wounds in her torso; a pool of blood had gathered beneath her. But she still drew breath. The eyes, unfocused and delirious, drifted to Hobb, not seeing who he was.

  “I found them,” she wheezed. Hobb, to his own surprise, took one of her bloody hands and held it gently. “I followed the last decision point,” the tormented voice went on. “I rescued them from the fire. Take them.” Then the eyes fluttered closed, and a spurt of blood accompanied her last breath from her mouth. The body went limp.

  Hobb looked closer. The body was resting on something, partially obscuring it. He carefully rolled the limp corpse out of the way and looked beneath it.

  There were three long scroll tubes, made of some dusky gray material. They were surprisingly light, as Hobb lifted one. It was slilppery, covered in the blood of the dead woman. At the end of the tube, he could make out a peculiar symbol, comprised of two lines crossed at right angles, with a circle at their center.

  Hobb picked up the three light tubes and handed them to Pearsy.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “You can translate these for me later.”

  ???

  Up and up they climbed, first on the scaffolding along the inside of the great shaft, and then later through tunnels that branched out into the rock. The passages were thick with hazy smoke from the fire below, and the men kept as low to the ground as they could. But the smoke was not inert; it was being sucked upward, as by a chimney. Their lungs burning, they followed the movement of the air, and at last came out into the light.

  They were on the top of the ridge, on a narrow, grassy sward that led to a sheer cliff on the west and steep, rocky slopes to the east. The wind howled around them, and heavy, black clouds roiled above, and rain pelted their faces; but all of the company who had ascended the ladder to the library level collapsed on the ground, breathing deeply in gratitude for the fresh air.

  As he drew life back into his aching lungs, Hobb’s gaze drifted up to a flat, rocky space nearby. There, to his amazement, he saw a giant bag of cloth lifting off into the air.

  It was like a sky lantern, but at a vastly inflated size. It was nearly sixty feet tall and half again as wide, with a small basket suspended beneath it. The basket was large enough to hold perhaps four people, and two of the small, squat-headed creatures were in it already. The whole affair was floating about thirty feet off the ground. A cable bound it to the rock of the ridge line, and a flimsy rope ladder connected the basket to the ground. Dozens of similar bags were already higher up in the air, being blown south by the heavy winds.

  At the base of the last aerial vehicle, a group of perhaps ten Snugg mercenaries was standing guard, pointing their long guns in all directions. A single figure—a woman, by the shape of it—stood at the base of the ladder, her hands full of bundles and papers, her face pointed up. Just above her, a man clung to the ladder against the wind and rain, one hand extended, apparently urging her to climb, or perhaps to hand him the bundles. The woman wore something resembling a military uniform, with a cape flowing behind her. The man was dressed in worn and disreputable-looking leathers, and his head was bare.

  And beyond them, climbing up over the lip of the flat, rocky space, were the hulking shapes of the Giant-men.

  There were three of them; scouts, perhaps, or a strike team with some particular mission. They were dressed, not in the gleaming steel body armor that their companies normally wore, but rather in hardened leathers with strips of metal sewn in to give them more flexibility. Seeing the gathering of humans on the flat space, they ran forward, brandishing their enormous steel swords.

  The Snuggs turned their guns to the Giant-men and fired. The results were unimpressive.

  The woman at the base of the ladder looked at the impending slaughter of her mercenaries, and then up at the man on the ladder, still gesturing frantically to her. She put her feet on the ladder, trying to climb with her hands full, but made little progress.

  “Get up!” hissed Hobb to Sir Quarterfoot. There was an opportunity here, he sensed. Quarterfoot, Pearsy, and the eight scouts rose to their feet, looking uncertainly at the three Giant-men tearing the hapless mercenaries to shreds some distance from the bag’s base.

  “Seize those people!” ordered Hobb. “I recognize the woman—Veridia Snipe. She’s a high ranking official in the Snugg clique. Grab her and whatever she’s carrying, and let’s get off this ridge.”

  Quarterfoot and the scouts started forward, with Hobb just behind them. They neared the floating bag, and Veridia Snipe turned to see them for the first time.

  At that moment, several things happened all at once.

  Snipe dropped all but one of the bundles she was carrying, and handed the remaining small, squirming package up to the man higher up on the ladder. Then she cut the cable holding the floating bag to the ground.

  The last of the mercenary guards went down, leaving the Giant-men with an unobstructed path forward to Veridia Snipe on the landing—and to Hobb.

  The wind suddenly, and inexplicably, died. The air was as still as if they were underground again. The rain ceased as well.

  The Giant-men pounded toward Hobb, intent on murder. But Hobb had spent many hours reading the diary, and particularly the glossary of words at the back. He had even studied Sir Richard’s guide to their pronunciation. There were three words he had taken great care to memorize.

  “” He spoke the word with a certain resignation. If he or Sir Richard were wrong, he was a dead man.

  The Giant-men stopped.

  “” he commanded. Without hesitation, the towering humanoids immediately drew daggers from their belts and carefully, deliberately, slit their own throats. They fell to the ground, twitching and gurgling slightly. Hobb marveled, but then his attention was drawn to a threat for which the diary had given him no weapons at all.

  In the distance, not far to the north along the ridgeline, a great hulk drifted in the still air. Its wings were impossibly wide, its neck was long and snaking, and gouts of fire burst from its mouth, directed at the ground. But it was flying implacably, inescapably, toward the fleet of aerial bags and their defenseless occupants.

  From behind Hobb came a great rumbling, rushing noise, as if someone had suddenly placed a waterfall directly at his back. He whirled, away from the flying serpent and the dying Giant-men, to see what the noise was. He was just in time to see a wide triangular shape, with a man suspended beneath it, go rocketing over his head, into the air—toward the dragon.

  Hobb the Wise opened his mouth.

  “We’ve all got our frustrations,” he said, in a sing-song voice.

  , he thought.

  “But have a little patience,” he continued loudly. The man under the flying wing rocketed away form him, toward the serpent.

  “And entertain another possibility…”

  He turned helplessly toward Quarterfoot, who was also drawing breath to sing.

  “Be less like you…”