Chapter 19
The road dropped out of the pines and Mab saw Northwatch.
In her mind, she'd assembled a rough fortress from the pieces Varek had given her—stone, timber, mountain—and built it to the scale of Lord Cresswick's holding, because that was the only scale she had.
Northwatch was not that scale.
The fortress filled the head of the pass.
Granite walls rose from the living rock, gray stone merging with gray mountain until the seam between them vanished.
Watchtowers flanked the approach, each one flying a black banner with a silver sigil that snapped in the wind, and between them the gate stood open.
They were iron-banded oak doors taller than any building Mab had ever entered, set into an arch carved so deeply into the cliff face that the stone above it jutted forward like a brow.
The road narrowed as it approached. The column, which had been riding three abreast since the plateau, fell to pairs, then single file. Varek's arm tightened across Mab's belly.
Behind them, the supply cart wheels ground against rock. Annie's voice drifted forward, asking Drogga something about the banners. Drogga's answer was too low to catch, but Annie laughed.
Mab did not laugh. She was counting watchtowers and losing track because the road curved and new ones kept appearing, set higher up the cliff where the mountain bent.
She had known it would be big. Varek had said fifty souls. Fifty souls needed walls, and walls this size meant rooms she couldn't picture, corridors she'd get lost in, a hall where fifty faces would turn toward her at once and see—
What? A scullion with a grease-stained belt. A human woman riding in front of their war-leader with her hair loose and her thighs aching from three days on a horse she still didn't know how to steer.
The black horse walked on beneath them. Varek hadn't spoken since the pines. His chest was warm against her back, his breathing even, his arm across her lap the same weight it had been for three days.
The gates grew as they approached. The shadow of the arch fell across the column, and the air changed.
Colder. Stone-scented. The horse's hooves rang differently on the flagstones inside the passage, the sound bouncing off walls close enough that Mab could have reached out and touched them on either side.
Then the passage opened.
A courtyard. Wide, flagstoned, ringed by buildings that climbed the inner walls of the mountain in tiers.
Forge smoke rose from somewhere to the left.
The clang of a hammer on iron carried across the open space.
To the right, a long low building with hides stretched on frames outside it.
Ahead, set into the mountain itself, a pair of carved wooden doors smaller than the gates but still massive, flanked by torches that burned even in daylight.
People were already gathering. They came out of doorways and down stone steps and around corners.
The warriors behind them began to peel off.
Horses steered toward the left side of the courtyard where a boy with moss-green skin was already opening stable doors.
Grald swung down from his saddle and said something to the smith at the forge that made the smith throw a chunk of slag at his head.
Fenrik led his horse past without stopping.
The supply cart rattled through the gate passage. Annie was standing up in the back, one hand on the cart rail, the other pointing at everything she could see. Brownie's head poked out from the blankets beside her, ears pricked forward, nose working.
The column was dissolving around them. The strike force dispersing into the fortress like water into sand, absorbed, expected, home.
Mab was not absorbed. She was sitting on a very large horse in the middle of a courtyard full of strangers, and she could feel every single one of them registering the fact that their war-leader had brought a human woman home in his lap.
A woman with gray-streaked braids crossed the courtyard carrying a basket of bread on her hip, glanced up at Mab, and walked on.
Two warriors near the stable doors paused their conversation long enough to note Varek's horse, then resumed it.
An orc child, small and green-skinned with a shock of black hair standing straight up, ran toward the cart with a shriek that echoed off the stone walls, scrambling up the wheel before anyone could stop him.
"Puppies!" The word came out half-mangled, the child's tusks still too new to shape speech properly. "You brought puppies!"
Annie, who had never met an orc child in her life, did what Annie always did with children. She grinned, grabbed him under the arms, and swung him into the cart bed beside Brownie's blanket nest.
"Careful with the brown one," she said. "He bites."
Mab watched this happen. She watched the child's mother come around the corner of the tannery building and stop, hands on hips, shaking her head but not calling him back. She watched Drogga say something to the mother that made the woman snort.
Normal. All of it so terrifyingly normal.
Varek's arm lifted away. He swung his leg over the horse's neck and dropped to the ground, then reached up for her.
She let him lift her down. Her legs buckled on contact with solid ground, and his hands stayed on her waist until she found her footing.
"Steady."
"I'm steady." She wasn't. The courtyard was too open. The sky was too wide. The buildings climbed too high around her on all sides, and every window was an eye that could be watching, and every doorway could hold someone who was about to say—
A young orc woman jogged past with a coil of rope over her shoulder, called out to the boy at the stables in a language Mab didn't know, and disappeared around the corner of the long low building without a second glance.
Nobody was staring.
An orc coming down the stone steps from the second tier caught sight of Varek and changed course. He was broad through the chest and graying at the temples.
"Captain." His voice carried easily in the stone space. "The Warchief is on his way down. He saw the column from the upper hall."
"Korah." Varek's hand didn't leave Mab's neck. "Anything I need to know before he gets here?"
"Smith wants a word about the weapons manifest. Thessaly wants a word about the wounded count." Korah's gaze settled on Mab. Assessed. Not her body—her face. The assessment took two seconds. "And he'll want to know about the humans."
"He knows. Drogga sent word from the holding."
"He knows what a letter told him. He'll want to hear it from you." Korah looked at Mab again. "And from her, I expect."
Mab met his eyes. Gray-green skin, deep lines carved by weather and years, tusks worn smooth. Kind eyes.
"I'm Mab," she said, not sure what else to say.
"Sergeant Korah."
"It's good to meet you."
A bark of laughter. Korah looked at Varek. "I like her."
"Me too." Varek's thumb moved against Mab's nape. "Where are the children's quarters?"
"Arranged. Second floor, east corridor, two doors past the healer." Korah paused. "Mab's, too. If she wants them."
"She stays with me."
Korah took that in with the same mild professionalism he'd applied to everything else. "I'll let Thessaly know." He turned and walked back toward the steps, already pulling a folded paper from his belt and squinting at it.
"Mab!" Annie called.
Mab turned and found the girl climbing down from the supply cart with a spotted puppy tucked under one arm. Brownie and the remaining four puppies were with the orc child in the cart bed. Drogga was watching over them.
Tibbs dropped from the cart on the far side. He landed solidly, his pack on his shoulder, and stood very still, taking in the courtyard the way Mab had. Counting. Measuring. Looking for the threat.
"Stay close," Mab said to him, and he moved to her side without argument.
The sound came from above first. Boots on stone, heavy enough that Mab felt it in her feet before she saw the source. Then a shadow fell across the upper steps, and the Warchief of the Mountain Clan descended into the courtyard.
Targesh Ironhide was what happened when the mountain decided to walk.
Mab had thought Varek was large. Varek was large.
But Varek fit inside the scale of a man—a massive man, an impossible man, but a man.
Targesh exceeded the category. He stood a full head taller than Varek and broader through the shoulders, and the scars that mapped his skin were not silver with age but layered, old over older over oldest, a record of decades spent between his people and whatever came for them.
His tusks were long and yellowed. His eyes were the color of iron in winter light.
He crossed the courtyard without hurrying. Warriors stepped out of his path. He carried no weapon that Mab could see, which somehow made him more frightening. A man that size did not need a weapon. He was the weapon.
Varek stepped forward to meet Targesh and inclined his head. "Warchief."
"Captain." Targesh's voice was lower than Varek's. It came from somewhere in the bedrock. His gaze swept the courtyard and landed on her.
"This is Mab," Varek said.
"Mab." He said her name like he was tasting it, turning it over against his tusks. "You came north with my captain of your own choosing?"
Mab straightened her spine. "Yes."
Targesh's gaze moved to Tibbs. The boy stiffened beside her, but held his ground.
"And you, boy?"
"My name is Tibbs." His voice came out thinner than he wanted it to. He swallowed and tried again. "I chose to come. So did Annie."
"Annie?" Targesh looked toward the supply cart, where Annie stood watching the proceedings with wide eyes.
"I wanted to come," Annie said. Her chin was up. "Drogga said there were orchards."
Targesh's mouth moved. The closest he came to a smile, Mab suspected. "There are orchards."
He turned back to Mab. Held her gaze for a count of three. Then inclined his head, the same acknowledgment Varek had given him.
"You're welcome at Northwatch. All three of you. The mountain doesn't turn away those who come freely."
The words were formal. They carried weight, spoken by the man whose word made it true. Mab felt them settle over her, beside everything else she was carrying and couldn't yet sort.
"Now." Targesh straightened, and the formality dropped from him like a cloak. "Varek, the smith's manifest—"
"Korah told me."
"Thessaly—"
"I know."
"Then you don't need me." Targesh looked over his shoulder. "Verity?"
Movement from behind the Warchief's left shoulder.
A woman. Human. Shorter than Mab and rounder, with dark blond hair escaping from a knot at the back of her head and a leather-bound ledger clutched against her chest like a shield.
She had been standing behind Targesh the entire time, Mab realized, tucked in his shadow the way a sparrow tucks behind a wall in a windstorm, and now she stepped out with the slightly frantic energy of someone who had been holding herself still for as long as she could physically manage and had reached her limit.
"Are you quite finished?" Verity said to Targesh, in the tone of a woman who had decided long ago that the Warchief's size was not going to stop her from being impatient with him.
Targesh looked down at her. The iron eyes warmed. "I am finished."
"Good. Excellent." Verity turned to Mab. Her eyes were brown, quick, and already cataloguing. "Hello. I'm Verity. I keep the records. I need your full name, the children's full names, ages, dates of birth if you have them."
Mab stared at her.
Verity held the ledger open. A quill had materialized from behind her ear and hovered over a half-filled page expectantly.
Varek's hand pressed briefly against Mab's lower back.
"Stay with Verity. I'll find you when the smith is done with me.
" He held her gaze for a beat, then turned toward the forge with Targesh already moving beside him, the two of them falling into conversation before they'd crossed half the courtyard.
The crowd was thinning. Warriors led horses through the stable doors. The orc child had climbed out of the supply cart and was running back toward the tannery. Drogga was hauling a crate of supplies onto her shoulder, saying something to a smith's apprentice who'd come out to help unload.
"Name?" Verity prompted, drawing Mab's attention back to her.
It was a simple question, but Mab found herself hesitating.
She had been Mab the whole of her life. Mab the scullion. Mab who scrubbed pots. Mab who kept her head down and her hands busy and her name small enough to fit in the corner of a kitchen where no one looked twice.
But that wasn't who she was standing in this courtyard.
"Mabel," she said. The name felt strange in her mouth, too big, like a dress she'd outgrown in reverse. "But everyone calls me Mab."
Verity's quill scratched across the page. "Mabel, called Mab. Surname?"
"I don't have one."
The quill paused. Verity looked up. "That's fine," she said. "We'll leave it blank for now. And the children?"
"The children are Tibbs and Annie."
"Tibbs," Verity repeated, writing. "Surname?"
Tibbs's hand went to the leather cord at his neck. The wooden disc his mother had carved. "Don't know it," he said. "She died before she finished teaching me."
Verity's quill stopped and she looked up. "Tibbs, then. We'll find the rest when you're ready." She turned to Annie, who had drifted over from the cart with Bramble still tucked under one arm and her other hand already reaching for the quill. "And you, love?"
"Annie. I don't have a surname either. Or a birthday." Annie peered at the ledger. "How do you write that fast?"
"Practice and poor penmanship." Verity glanced at the supply cart. "Are those dogs?"
"Those are Annie's," Mab said, before Annie could launch into the full account. "One mother, five puppies. They came with us from the holding."
"The mom is called Brownie," Annie added. "I'm not sure about the puppies yet, except for Bramble. She's the mean one."
Verity wrote this down. She wrote everything down, in handwriting so compressed it looked like a fence made of letters.
"Ages," Verity said, not looking up.
"Thirty-two. Tibbs is thirteen. Annie is twelve."
"Twelve and three-quarters," Annie corrected.
Verity added the correction without comment. "Prior occupation?"
"Kitchen work."
"Kitchen work," Verity repeated, and the quill paused. "You'll want to meet Kira."
"So I've been told."
Verity tucked the quill back behind her ear. "Come on. I'll show you around first, then I'll point you at the kitchen and get out of the way."
She turned and walked toward the main doors. Mab followed, with Tibbs falling into step on her left. Annie handed Bramble to him, took two running steps to catch Verity, and asked, "Is there really an orchard?"
"Three, technically. Apple, pear, and a scraggly plum that produces about six plums a year."
Annie nodded and looked back at Mab with wide eyes.
"Plums!" she mouthed excitedly.
Mab couldn't help but smile back at her as they followed Verity inside.