“The oath te the stones?”

  “Yes.”

  “But yer kind doesn’t have the voice,” she said. “Ye cannot make the words.”

  She saw him turn to the pyre a moment then turn back to her, a great dark horror backlit by that furnace of his devising. “You will make them for me,” he said.

  She lifted her hands as if to ward away some evil but then she let them fall. In the sow’s death he had yet another home stolen from him. The misery etched across his face called to Mym’s mind that of her wouldbe daughter. She whose home and kin seemed eternal could not fathom what he was feeling, just as he could not fathom the tremendous consequence of his request.

  “Will you do it?” he said.

  “It’s never been done te my knowin. It’ll mean bindin us both te yer vengin and that’s the least of me worries. There are other things te consider when it comes te stoneoaths."

  "There is only what’s right and what’s needed and in this thing they align,” he said. “It seems plain to me."

  "It's not," she said and now she was starting to sound like her da."Fer one I think ye should stop thinkin about what ye might inflict on the baron and his lot and start thinkin about what's worthy of yerself and the fellow ye want ye be."

  He stared at her as if he didn't understand her meaning.

  She stared back. "When I came after ye I got a lot of me folk and friends killed or nearly so, and I killed plenty of yer kind down at the flood and I'm sure they weren't deservin of it."

  “These humans deserve it.”

  “It’s not about them. It’s about ye. It’s about me. I regret what I did while I was chasin that oath. Every night I close me eyes and see that girl get shot. I see all yer kin hangin up off their crosses. I hear yer lads and lasses hollerin and burnin up in that forest and hollerin less by less til there were none left alive. It makes me sick te think I was part of it. I should’ve been better than that.”

  “Will you do it?”

  “Khaz gettin crushed te pulp. Dara’s hands burnin off her very arms. Me da dyin alone, waitin fer his daughter te come come te him, never seein her again.”

  She shook her head and ran her hand through her hair, let it drop to her side. Looked at him again. “But this isn’t about me. It’s about ye and what ye lost. I just want yer eyes wide open regardin whether yer willin te subject yerself te such tragedies and the tortures that come with em.”

  “Yes,” without hesitation.

  “Well then. Maybe it’s time ye become what ye are.”

  “Is that what you did, lastborn?”

  “Aye. Still tryin te. Give me yer hand.”

  Beneath the roar of the fire her intonations swelled. The orc couldn’t hear them so he watched her and then there was a crash of noise from the boathouse and his face turned aside. She followed his look and saw Khaz’s firesoaked face peering out of one of the slatholes made by Orc’s foraging. She saw the dumbstruck surprise there. The confusion, the disbelief at what he was hearing and seeing. The face disappeared.

  She continued her calling, her rousing. There was an oath to be made, she sang. There were appetites to be sated. Come all, heed all, gather round and hallow the offering of one firespawn. She sang unknowing how the land would react and its voracity for her promise unsettled her.

  Another voice joined hers and she saw Khaz emerge from the boathouse, his fingers working across his instrument, his mouth shaping the sacred tones. His eyes held neither judgment nor question and his fellowship aided in her awakening of the deadland stones. They began cold, implacable. But now they warmed, humming in resonance to her song of vengeance. They hungered.

  Khaz nodded at her. They were ready.

  With Orc’s hands in hers she extolled the stones’ witnessing and it was that which empowered the oath she now gave on his behalf, for the more of them that heard the forswearing the more powerful the binding. The stones gave nothing in return. No power, no advantage. They expected restitution for their attention and that was all any dwarf required. It was all Orc required. The damoclean sword hanging over his neck. The compulsion to do the deed or to die trying.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  ***

  By the time they completed the ritual sunrise bathed the east in golden light. Orc trudged lopsidedly down to where the sow was now imprinted upon the sandy shore in gray ash and he knelt by this with his hands in his lap. Mym and Khaz turned away from his grieving and saw Daraway waiting by heavily cloaked against the cold dawn. She nodded to them.

  “Shall we go up?” said Khaz.

  "Wait,” said Mym. “I wanted te thank ye.”

  “It’s nothin.”

  “Only cause ye kept it so. Ye could’ve objected. I expected ye te.”

  He shrugged. His cheeks were flushed under his misshapen beard and his fingers had a blue cast to them from the night's exposure. “Everybody’s got a right te vengin,” he said.

  “Yer not mad I bound meself te it?”

  “I may not understand everythin ye’ve been through with him but I trust ye.”

  “Still ye could’ve just let us be. Ye didn’t have te go and leash yerself onte it too.”

  He scratched under his scuzzy chin. “Well I figure with the two of ye edgin out over a cornice someone ought te be on yer anchor.”

  She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Thank ye,” she said.

  Now his whole face had gone pink. “Aye, and I thank ye for allowin me along.”

  Orc joined them then. She studied his face. Great dark rings around his eyes and a slouch to his shoulders. “When was the last time you slept?”

  “Couple nights ago,” he said. He looked at them one to the other. To Khaz he said, “I am sorry I didn’t greet you.”

  “Ye had other things on yer mind.”

  “You came far and at great risk to join us.”

  “Aye, we’ve seen some things I’d rather not’ve.”

  “As have I.” He turned to Mym. “Do you have anything to eat?”

  “Come on,” she said, and she led them up to the boathouse.

  Uhquah was on the dock and as they came in he bent over and pulled on a line running into the river and up came six or seven fish with cold water sliding off of their silver scales. Each was ten inches or so and their gills yet flexed in the air.

  “What’s this then?” said Mym.

  “A feast,” he said. He came under the roof of the boathouse holding the string of fish high so as not to drag them upon the ground. He too looked like he hadn’t slept.

  “For sharin?”

  “Aye for sharin. You can’t take an oath without havin a feast.”

  She and Khaz looked at each other. “Must be some blue tradition,” he said.

  “Yer not goin te give me lip fer accommodatin an orc inte the rite?” she said.

  “I’m not sayin I would’ve done it,” said Uhquah, “but it’s done now and besides everyone’s got a stonefounded right te seek vengeance. Leastways that’s how it used te be taught in the vale.”

  “And in the delvin.”

  “There you go. Now let’s clean these out and get te cookin fore the orckin take te guttin your horses.”

  Khaz pried two or three crossboards off of the dock and used Orc’s axe to shape them while Orc himself went back out to the sandwash to fetch an ember back. They built the fire beside the pierhead and soon the whole boathouse was filling with smoke and the succulence of cooked fish. Khaz had butterflied each out on its own stake and the scales blackened and the meat cooked within. There wasn’t much to them yet Mym went back outside to gather the bookmaker and her ilk for that was her way. When was the last time they’d celebrated something? When would they have another opportunity?

  As the greenskin and ogre and bookmaker shuffled past the longhorn stopped her with an outheld hand and he waited until they were alone.

  “You took the oath together,” he said.

  “Aye.”

  He nodded as if he had long expected this. He said no more.

  Back inside the fish were off the stakes and they steamed through their gills as they were passed around from man to orc to dwarf. The fillets were scraped clean of their flaky white flesh and the orckin bit open the heads and sucked out their contents and the ogre crunched down the bones. Afterward each sat under the firesmoke and wished for more yet none said as much. Uhquah withdrew his pipe from his boot and lit it with a coal and began to tell tales of former oaths fulfilled in accordance with the custom of the blue dwarves. He invited the whites to partake and Khaz retold the tale of Thayne and the glacier. Afterward he unslung a little wooden keg from under his pack and each of the humans and orckin and dwarves sipped a thimble’s amount of whiskey while Mym told of her late pursuit of Orc, of crossing the sea there and back, of the gravid slab in the sea of storms, of its culmination in the black heart of the world.

  “Yet here you both sit and shit,” said Uhquah. “Don’t the stones demand their share?”

  “The stones were satisfied,” she said.

  “Aye and with you both here I don’t see how.”

  She didn’t reply and the others who knew watched her and said nothing.

  The longhorn’s voice rumbled from the corner. “The wedwarf died,” he said, “and the orc supplied a proxy.”

  All turned to him. His mouth was stained from the little yellow flowers that had started to blossom up. “The armiger,” he said.

  Uhquah took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed its stem at Mym. “Cleftfoot there thinks you’re dead. Usually I wouldn’t stock his word but in this matter he knows a thing or several.”

  Uhquah leaned forward.

  “You aren’t dead little whitey, are you?”

  She looked back at him. “Not yet,” she said.

  He spat in the fire and clamped the pipe back between his teeth.