Chapter 422 The Ridge

Holdfast woke Andraste at midnight.

Eleven days after the ridge. On the roof of the house on the rise, where she sleeps when it isn't raining, with her back to the chimney and the blade across her knees and Vessa on her chest.

It hummed.

Not the way it hums toward the east at night, very faint, like the queens under the garden. Loud. A long low note, all down the length of the dark, so loud the slates under her shook.

And Vessa woke. And turned.

Not east.

North.

Andraste came down the ladder into the children's room so fast she didn't touch the rungs.

I was awake. I'm always awake at midnight; it's when I sit on the floor by the heap. She stood in the doorway with Holdfast in her hand, humming, and Vessa on her chest with her small head turned toward the wall, toward the north, and her face very white.

"Hyrran," said Andraste.

Hyrran is north. Through the courtyard arch. The permanent one, the one Kyria's cutters put in the year we were married, so the Hyrrani could come and go. Through it, the ridge. The snow. The city on the shoulder of the mountain where a First Blade sleeps on the wall with her blade beside her.

And under the ridge, very old, very strong, the queen who's never been taken.

The ears heard it a breath after Vessa.

Ilka, at the edge of the Watch, with her grey tea. Hearth's listening silver on every rock. Tiamat's stations, the nine over New Hearth and the one on Root.

All at once. Into the map room. Into the silver.

Hyrran.

Grey ships.

Many.

Okafor was at the long table before I'd got up the stairs. She sleeps in the chair some nights. She had the chalk in her hand.

"How many," she said.

"They're still coming," said Ilka. Through the ears. Very fast. "Out of nothing. Over the north pole. Hands, hundreds. Ashen. And the long grey ships. The ones from One." A pause. "I've stopped counting the grey ones. They're landing."

"Where?"

"The ridge," said Ilka.

Okafor didn't look at the slate.

"Four minutes," she said.

The General's drill. The first one he ever ran, the day of the Watch, on the plain past the canyon with a watch in his hand. Six minutes the first time. Then four. From the first ear hearing something to every arch on the Hedge opening onto it, with everyone through.

We'd drilled it a hundred times.

We'd never done it at midnight with the thing we drilled for already landing.

The bell went in the town under the garden wall.

Then in Thera. Then in Shell, and Tor Isca, and New Hearth past the sea. Then every arch on Avalon lit at once, every one, with every queen under the garden singing.

And everyone came.

I don't mean everyone the way I usually mean it. I mean everyone. Nobody waited for Okafor to say a name. The Hyrrani came off the north field where they sleep in their rows, forty thousand of them, in iron, already moving, already silent, toward the courtyard arch, toward home. Because it was home. Because it was their ridge, and their city, and their children asleep on it.

Andraste went through first.

Of course she did.

I'll write it the way it happened. Because it was the first time anything had come for the Hedge itself. Not a tithe world. Not a world we went to save. One of ours.

It was snowing on the ridge.

It always is. That's what Hyrran is. The ridge, high, very cold, with the snow coming sideways off the peaks, and the long drop on the far side to the iron sea, very far below, that you can hear but never see. And on the shoulder of the mountain, the city. Stone. Old. Built into the ridge itself, with walls a thousand years old and the forges under it, deep, where Odra works.

Grey ones on the walls.

That's what I saw first, coming through the arch into the snow behind Andraste. Grey ones. On the walls of the city. Hundreds of them. Tall. All the same. Standing on the top of a wall where a First Blade sleeps with her blade beside her, very still, in the snow, in rows.

As if they'd always been there.

And past them, in the sky over the ridge, the long grey ships. Coming down. One after another. Out of the snow. With their ramps open.

And more coming out.

The city was awake.

The Hyrrani who'd stayed. The old ones, the young ones, the ones who forge and the ones who teach and the ones who hadn't come to Avalon because somebody had to stay on the ridge. Children. Not many; most Hyrrani children are born in wars and come when they're ready to fight. But some. In the houses on the inside of the walls. In the halls under the city.

Awake. In the snow. Looking up at their own walls.

At the grey ones standing on them.

Andraste didn't stop.

She went up the wall.

Not the stairs. The wall. A thousand years of Hyrrani stone, sheer, with the snow on it, and she went up it the way Dinraal went up the ice in the crevasse, except she doesn't have silver that makes claws. She just went. Fast. With Holdfast in one hand, humming so loud I could hear it over the wind.

And came over the top.

Into the middle of them.

I've written Andraste fighting before. On Isca, going out into the swarm with the trees falling round her. On One, in the hall, with a grey one holding the other end of her grandmother's blade.

This was different.

The first grey one turned toward her. The way they all turn. Very smooth. Very even. And put its hand up. To catch the blade. The way the one in the hall did.

Holdfast went through its hand.

And through the grey one. And out the other side. And Andraste was already past it, already turning, already at the second one, before the first one knew it had been cut.

It didn't get up.

They always get up. That's what we learned on One. Okafor makes them heavy and they walk. Sera burns them and they walk. Andraste hits one into an ice wall and it gets up.

Not this time.

Holdfast hums, and the grey ones don't get up.

I don't know why. Asha doesn't know why. Vessa might; she was very small and very still on Andraste's chest under the iron, the whole time, with her head turned toward every grey one before Andraste turned to it. And Holdfast hummed toward them, louder, every time, before the cut, as if it were telling Andraste where.

As if it knew which ones were coming.

She went down the wall.

The top of it. In the snow. Through them. A long line of grey ones in rows on the top of the wall of her city, all turning toward her at once, all putting their hands up, very smooth, very even.

And her going through them like a door opening.

The Hyrrani came up the stairs behind her.

Forty thousand. In iron. Not silent now. Shouting. The way they shouted on Isca, going over the wall into the forest after their First Blade. Up every stair on every wall of the city at once.

And Kyria and Teshka at the front of them.

The grey ones didn't run.

They don't. There's nothing in them that runs. They turned toward the stairs, all of them, all at once, and came down to meet the Hyrrani in the snow on the stairs of the walls of the city.

And the stairs were where it was even.

I want to be honest about that. Andraste on the wall, with Holdfast, was not even. Nothing in the universe is even with that. But Holdfast is one blade. And there were a great many grey ones. And everywhere else on the walls of the city that night, it was the hall on One all over again.

Almost even.

Kyria and Teshka held the main stair.

Back to back. With their blades. The way they always do. Old. Not moving much. And the grey ones came down the main stair at them in rows.

And didn't get past.

I don't know how. Kyria's first blade is Holdfast now; she was carrying an old blade off the rack in Odra's forge, one that had come back. Teshka was carrying hers. Neither of them hum. Neither of them do anything iron doesn't do.

They just didn't let anything past.

I watched it for a long time from the foot of the wall. Two old women on a stair in the snow, back to back, not moving much. And the grey ones coming down at them, very smooth, very even, and coming apart.

Not because the blades were better.

Because Kyria and Teshka were.

"Eleven generations," said Teshka. Afterward. When someone asked her. "Of standing on stairs." She looked at her blade. Notched all down the edge. "They've had one."

Then the Hands.

Out of the snow. Over the city. Hundreds of them. With their fire lit.

And the Ashen, very high. Not coming down. Not yet. The way they hung over Isca, before the lid.

"They're not lidding," said Asha. Into the silver. From the courtyard arch. Talking very fast. "They're watching. They're waiting to see."

"See what?" said Okafor.

Asha didn't answer for a moment.

"How even it is," she said.

Risa flew the wing up through the snow.

From the courtyard arch. With her eyes shut. Forty interceptors and every one of Hearth's ships, coming up out of the arch onto the ridge and up into the snow at the Hands, Arcturus beside her calling left in two languages and Risa saying yes, thank you, I know.

Rowan at the front. And beside him, for the first time since Halcro, Callum.

His left arm was still in Maura's bandages. Halloway had said not this year. Halloway had said it was too early to say.

He'd taken an interceptor off the field anyway. And Risa had seen him do it, from the arch, with her eyes shut.

And hadn't said anything.

"Badly," Callum said. Afterward. On the ridge. When Nan Vey, who'd come through the arch with her iron to stand at the foot of the wall with the grandmothers, looked at him across the snow. "I flew badly, Nan."

"You flew," said Nan Vey.

And Ingrid went up as lightning. And Okafor made what came down heavy.

And Tiamat and Aramaeis came through the arch from New Hearth and changed in the snow and went up into the Hands, side by side, with the snow going to steam on their silver.

And Hearth's three came through behind them.

Gilgamesh took the forge gate.

The gate in the bottom of the city wall that goes down into the mountain. To the forges. Where the grey ones were going, Asha said, because something in the forges was singing to them.

Odra was still in there.

Of course she was. She doesn't stop for anyone.

I'll write that one properly. Because I went down there myself, at the end.

The grey ones came to the forge gate in the snow. A hundred of them. Very smooth. Very even. And Gilgamesh was standing in it.

He reached over his shoulder.

And it was the axe.

The old one. Black and silver. With the notch in the edge from Holdfast. The one the light doesn't want to touch.

He didn't laugh this time.

Alexander was over the city. With his blades. Four hundred, five hundred, more, in formation over the walls, turning like starlings, coming down on the grey ones on the stairs in long silver lines.

They caught them.

That's what Alexander told me afterward. Sitting on the edge of the ridge with his helmet off and his face very young. The grey ones caught his blades. In the air. Bare-handed. Like the one in the hall caught Andraste's.

"Not all of them," said Alexander. "Most of them went through." He looked at his hands. "But they caught some. In the air. They'd never done that."

He looked at me.

"They're learning," said Alexander. "From us. While we fight them."

Julius held the halls.

The ones under the city. Where the children were.

He went down into them through the inner stair and stood at the top of the last flight, where it goes down into the deepest hall, the one cut into the ridge itself, with his cloak across it. And said the one word. And nothing came down the stair past him.

Nothing.

The grey ones came. They came down the inner stair in rows, very smooth, very even, and found a man in a plain uniform with a short sword and a cloak across the stair.

Julius told Isolde afterward that they were the first thing he'd ever fought that didn't make a sound.

He said it was very hard to hold a stair against something that didn't make a sound.

He held it.

Holt came through second.

He always does now. Since One. He came out of the courtyard arch into the snow a breath behind Andraste, in his old coat, which Tavvan had given back to him the morning after, folded, with the stick laid across it. Holt took the coat. He didn't take the stick.

He stood at the foot of the wall in the snow and looked up at the grey ones standing on it.

"Hal," he said.

Crane was beside him. Of course he was.

"The gates," said Holt. "How many."

"Nine," said Crane. "Into the city. Kyria showed me the plans the year of the wedding." He had his spanner in his hand. "They'll come in at all nine. They don't do anything else. They go in at every door at once."

"Then we close eight," said Holt.

Crane looked at him.

"And hold one," said Holt. "So they all come to it."

That was Holt's fight. I didn't see most of it; nobody did. He doesn't fight the way the rest of us fight. He sends.

He took a thousand of the Hyrrani who came through behind Andraste, the ones who'd been on the north field nearest the arch, and Brock and Saska, and Roan. And went round the outside of the city in the snow, at the foot of the walls, gate by gate. And at every gate but one, Roan put his hands on the stone of the arch over it.

And brought it down.

And then held it. Down. A thousand years of Hyrrani gate, fallen into the gap it used to frame, and staying there. So nothing could ever get through it again until somebody asked it to move.

Eight gates.

The ninth was the west gate. Low. Narrow. The one the forge carts go through. Holt stood in front of it in the snow with Crane beside him and looked at it for a long time.

"This one," said Holt.

And the grey ones came to it.

All the ones that had been coming in at the other eight. They don't think the way we do, Asha says. They go in at every door at once, and when a door isn't there, they go to the next one, and when there's only one, they all go to it.

Hundreds. Very smooth. Very even. Coming round the outside of the walls in the snow toward the west gate.

And in the west gate, Brock.

Iron. All of him. Filling it. The way he fills the top of a stair. With Saska half a step ahead.

And behind him, the gate. Low. Narrow. And behind the gate, the inside of the city, where the children were.

Holt didn't say anything to him. He didn't need to.

Brock stood.

They hit him.

The first one. Very smooth. With its hand. The way they hit Andraste in the hall. And Brock didn't move. And it hit him again. And he didn't move.

And then the second one. And the third. All at once. All of them. Hundreds of grey ones in the snow at the west gate, coming at one man made of iron standing in it.

And he didn't move.

Saska did.

Half a step ahead. The way she always is. Very quick. In front of him, in the gate, in the snow, with her blade, going at everything that came at him. Not stopping them. She can't; nobody can, except Holdfast. But turning them. A little. Every one. Just enough that when they hit Brock, they hit him wrong.

So he could stand.

They did it for an hour.

An hour. At the west gate of a city on Hyrran. Brock standing. Saska turning. The grey ones coming.

And Holt at the side of the gate, in the snow, with his coat collar up, watching. Not saying anything. Just watching. Every one.

And at the end of the hour, the grey ones stopped coming to the west gate.

Not because they'd stopped. Because there weren't any left out there.

Brock stood in the gate for a long time afterward. Iron. With the snow settling on him.

Then he stopped being iron.

And sat down. In the snow. Very suddenly.

Saska sat down beside him. With her blade across her knees, notched all down the edge like Teshka's. With a cut over her eye that was going to need Maura.

"You didn't move," said Saska.

"No," said Brock.

"Last time you moved," said Saska. "On Isca. On the west stair. When it caught me."

"Nothing caught you," said Brock.

Saska looked at him.

"I turned them," said Saska. "All of them. Every one." She was quiet. "I was half a step ahead."

"You always are," said Brock.

Holt came and stood over the two of them.

He didn't say anything for a long time.

Then he took off his coat. Again. And put it round Saska's shoulders.

"Captain," said Brock.

"Don't," said Holt. "Just let her wear it."

And in the city, the grandmothers.

The Mom Squad didn't fight on the walls. Mother said so, at the arch, before anyone could argue. The walls are Andraste's. The stairs are Kyria's. The inside is ours.

So they went inside.

Into the city. Into the houses on the inside of the walls, where the old Hyrrani were, and the young ones, and the children who'd been too small to come to Avalon. With the Hands' fire coming down on the roofs and the grey ones coming over the walls where the stairs were even.

And they got everyone down.

Into the halls. Under the city. Behind Julius on the inner stair.

A Hand's fire came down on a house by the east wall.

Old stone. Three floors. With a family in it, Hyrrani, who'd gone up to the roof to see the grey ones on the walls and couldn't get down because the stair was burning.

Mother lifted the house.

All of it. Three floors. Off the ground. Out of the fire. Up, into the snow, over the street, with the family on the roof holding on.

And put it down again in the next street, where the fire wasn't. Very gently.

She didn't say anything. She went on to the next one.

Rhiannon flew.

Over the roofs. With her wings out. In the snow. With her crown burning so bright the Hands' fire looked dim beside it. And everyone in the city in Hearth's silver, and everyone fighting on the walls with something Hearth had given them, got brighter.

And she came down on a roof where a child was, alone, very small, crying, with the fire coming. And picked the child up. And flew her down to the halls.

And then went back up.

Cleopatra put her field over the halls.

All of them. The whole of the under-city, from above. So that the Hands' fire, coming down, hit nothing but her field, and went out. Very calm. Standing on the roof over the deepest hall in her silver dress in the snow.

Asha and Eve, beside her. Reading the Hands. Telling Risa which ones.

Maura in the halls. With bread. Feeding everyone.

Ingrid going up as lightning and coming down again and going up.

Isolde, with her hand on her middle and her leaves, ten thousand of them, over the main street of the city, firing at anything grey that came down off the walls into it.

And Tiamat, very high, a dragon. With her brother.

And on the north wall, where the grey ones were thickest, where the stair is longest and there was nobody to hold it, my house.

Three of it. Luna and Sera and Hana. Without me, because I was at the foot of the wall holding the ridge up. Without Andraste, because she was on the wall going through them like a door. Without Risa, because she was in the sky.

Luna froze the north stair. All of it. Top to bottom. So that the grey ones coming up it couldn't stand, and came down it again faster than they went up.

Sera let go at the bottom. A little.

And Hana turned what came off it.

It wasn't the valley. It wasn't nine miles. It was one stair on one wall of one city, very long, very steep, in the snow. But when the steam cleared there was nothing on the north stair at all, and the three of them were standing at the top of it with their hands still out.

"Risa would have done the sky," said Sera. Out of habit.

"She's doing it," said Luna. And pointed up. Where forty interceptors were going over the city in a long line, very low, very fast, with the Hands coming apart behind them.

And Bree, in the fire.

The Hands' fire was everywhere by then. On the roofs. In the streets. The city's a thousand years old and most of it is stone, but there's wood in it, and cloth, and people.

Bree walked into all of it.

With her ribbon round her wrist going very long. Down every street the fire was in. Round every person she found in it. Old Hyrrani. Young ones. Grandmothers who'd come through the arch with the Mom Squad and gone into houses after children and not come out.

And the fire couldn't get in.

She told me afterward, on the ridge, at the end, with ash all over her apron, that she'd lost count of how many. Wren hadn't. Wren counts everyone. Wren said four hundred and nine.

Bree didn't believe her.

Aunt Nessa, at the foot of the wall with the grandmothers, did.

Then Odra.

The forge gate. Where Gilgamesh was. With his axe. Holding it.

He held it for a long time. Asha says forty minutes. A hundred grey ones and then more, coming to the gate in the bottom of the city wall that goes down into the mountain. Because something in the forges was singing to them.

And then, behind him, from the forges, Odra came up.

She doesn't stop for anyone. She didn't stop for the grey ones. She'd been at her anvil the whole time, with the Hands' fire coming down on the city over her head and the grey ones coming to her gate. Working.

She came up out of the forge with something in her hands.

A blade.

Not Holdfast. Not anything like it. Ordinary iron. Out of the ridge. Still glowing. The one she'd been working on when the bell went.

She walked past Gilgamesh in the gate. In her apron. With her scarred arms bare in the snow. A very small, very old woman with short white hair.

And swung it.

At the first grey one.

It put its hand up. The way they do. To catch it.

It caught it.

Odra didn't let go. Odra looked up at the grey one, holding the other end of her blade, very smooth, very even, and said something in Hyrrani. Very sharp.

Kyria told me afterward what it was.

That's my iron. Give it back.

And the grey one let go.

I don't know why. Nobody does. Asha's watched it on her instruments. It stood in the forge gate in the snow, holding the other end of a blade Odra had made out of the ridge, and Odra said give it back, and it let go.

And stood there.

Very still.

With its hand open.

And Gilgamesh, behind Odra, very slowly, lowered his axe.

"It stopped," said Asha. Into the silver. Very quietly. Not fast at all. "Lucas. One of them stopped."

And me.

I was at the foot of the wall.

In the snow. With my hands on the ridge. On Hyrran itself, the old rock under the city, under the forges, under everything, going down to the queen who's never been taken. Holding it. Because the Hands' fire was coming down on the city and the city was a thousand years old and it wanted very much to fall.

I asked it not to.

It's old rock. It's very stubborn. It said it had been standing up in the snow for longer than there had been Hyrrani, and it didn't intend to stop for anything that came out of a grey ship.

So it stood.

And under it, the queen sang.

I've heard her before. Through the silver in my armour where it hangs on the wall of the bedroom upstairs. On the ridge, when we were married, when the stone under us moved. Very old. Very strong.

She'd never been taken. Not in all the time there have been houses. Every queen on every world the houses ever found, they cut into pieces and put in towers. Not her. She'd been under the ridge since before the ridge, singing, and the Hyrrani had been on top of her, standing on stairs, for a thousand years.

And that night, for the first time, something had come for her.

That's why the grey ones were going down.

I felt it. Through the rock. Through my hands. Every grey one on the ridge, on the walls and the stairs and at the forge gate and the inner stair to the halls. All of them. Going down.

Not for the city. Not for the forges. Not for the children in the halls under Julius's cloak.

For her.

"Okafor," I said. Into the silver. "They want the queen."

Okafor didn't answer at once.

Then she said, very calmly: "Of course they do."

She'd worked it out before I had. She always does.

"The houses cut queens," said Okafor. Through the silver. To everyone. "That's what they're for. That's how they've always done it. The towers, the note, the collars, the keys. All of it out of queens." A pause. "And we've taken every piece back. Every tower. Morvane. Isca." Another pause. "They're running out."

"So they came for the one they never got," said Kyria. From the main stair. Through the silver. Not stopping. "The oldest on Hyrran. The one under my mother's ridge."

"Yes," said Okafor.

"Then they're not getting her," said Andraste.

From the top of the wall. Through the snow. With Holdfast humming.

And went down.

Into the city. Off the wall. Down the inside of it, past the houses, past the Hyrrani fighting on every stair, past the forge gate where Gilgamesh was. Down. Toward the deepest place. The way the grey ones were going.

Toward her.

I went after her.

Through the rock. The long way, a very short distance. Scattered. Down through the ridge, through the old stone, through the forges where Odra's fire was still burning, down. Past the deepest hall, where Julius was holding the inner stair with the children behind him. Past the roots of the mountain.

To the place under the ridge.

It's a cave. Very big. Very old. The size of the north field. With a roof of black stone so high you can't see it and a floor of black stone so smooth it's like water. Warm. The only warm place on Hyrran. And in the middle of it, very still, very large, very old, gold and grey and black in the dark—

Her.

And between her and the tunnel that comes down into the cave from the forges, standing in a line across the black floor, very straight, the Hyrrani who keep her.

There are always twelve. Kyria told me once. Twelve Hyrrani, old ones, the oldest, who don't go to wars any more, who stand in the cave under the ridge with their blades, for a year, and then twelve more. They've done it for a thousand years.

Nobody had ever come down the tunnel.

Until that night.

The grey ones were already in the cave.

Coming out of the tunnel. In rows. Very smooth. Very even. Hundreds. Across the black floor toward the twelve old Hyrrani standing in a line in front of their queen.

And the twelve didn't move.

And Andraste came out of the tunnel behind the grey ones.

And Holdfast hummed so loud the cave rang with it.

The grey ones turned.

All of them. All at once. Away from the twelve. Away from the queen. Toward the sound.

Toward Andraste.

She stood in the mouth of the tunnel with Holdfast in one hand and Vessa on her chest under her iron. Alone. With hundreds of grey ones between her and the queen, all turned toward her, all putting their hands up. Very smooth. Very even.

Waiting.

And then the queen woke.

She hadn't been asleep. Queens don't sleep, not the way we do. But she'd been very still. Very quiet. Listening. The way she'd listened for a thousand years to the Hyrrani on the stairs above her.

She moved.

For the first time since the ridge was a ridge, the queen who's never been taken moved.

She lifted her head.

And looked at the grey ones on her floor.

And sang.

Not to us.

To them.

Andraste, she said. In the middle of it. Very old. Very strong. Not to me. To the First Blade in the mouth of the tunnel. Wait.

Andraste waited.

They were somebody, said the queen. Before. I can hear it. Under the grey. Very faint. A pause. Every one of them was somebody's.

And Holdfast, in Andraste's hand, stopped humming.

Days 4720–4721. The Ridge.

Holdfast woke Andraste at midnight; Vessa turned north. Hyrran. Grey ones landing on the ridge; the ears stopped counting. Okafor: four minutes. Everyone went; the Hyrrani went home. Grey ones standing on the walls where a First Blade sleeps. Andraste went up the wall and Holdfast went through the hand that caught it; they don't get up from Holdfast. Kyria and Teshka on the main stair: eleven generations of standing on stairs; they've had one. Callum flew, badly; Nan Vey: you flew. Gilgamesh at the forge gate with the notched axe; Alexander: they're learning, they caught some; Julius held the halls against something that didn't make a sound. Holt closed eight gates and held one; Brock didn't move; Saska turned every one. Mother lifted a house; Bree, four hundred and nine. Odra: that's my iron, give it back; and it let go, and stood still. I held the ridge. They wanted the queen who's never been taken; they're running out. Andraste went down. The queen moved for the first time and sang to them: they were somebody, before. Wait. Holdfast stopped humming.