spiked collars, and were attached to Rina by nothing more than leather harnesses. Bigger than wolves, they could pull her off the mountain easily if they wished.
“What are the hounds for?” Taniel asked.
Rina didn’t look up from her hounds. “The tunnel,” she said. Her voice was low, gentle. “I trained these three in the mines. They’ll cross forty yards and bring down a Privileged in a second. Musket fire doesn’t bother them.” She scratched one behind the ears. He turned toward her, massive head cocked, tongue rolling.
“What are their names?”
She pointed to the biggest one. “Kresim.” The next, “Lourad.” She patted the one who she’d been scratching. “And this is Gael.”
Taniel held a hand out to Kresim. The dog sniffed once and turned away.
“They’re not trained to be friends,” she said.
“They like you enough.”
She nodded. “I’m the master.”
“I see.” Taniel stood up. Bo arrived with Katerine, who gave them all a look of disapproval. Bo squatted beside Rina and slid a hand up around her waist. Lourad growled low in the back of his throat.
“Tst,” Rina hissed at the dog. Lourad lay down on the ground.
Bo backed off a step. “Damned big hounds,” he said to Taniel. “Things make me nervous.”
“You’re bedding their master,” Taniel said. “That’d make me nervous. I’m surprised you can stand after all the drink you’ve had.”
Bo craned his head toward Katerine. “She has ways of sobering a man up.”
“None pleasant, I’d imagine.”
Bo cringed.
Ka-poel emerged from the darkness of the town a few moments later dressed in her buckskins. Taniel had not seen them on her since Fatrasta. She normally preferred her long dark duster and wide-brimmed hat. The buckskins clung to her body, reminding Taniel she was a woman and not just a girl. Something he’d not noticed before. He noticed his hands were shaking from lack of powder, and took a sniff from his box. That steadied somewhat. He inhaled deeply and tried to resist taking more until it was needed.
Ka-poel was followed by Fesnik, leading a pair of donkeys laden with powder barrels, and a few steps behind him was Gavril. They all gathered around the Watchmaster.
“We’ve got enough powder to collapse their tunnel,” Gavril said. “We can trust you to set it off when we’re at a safe distance?”
“That much powder,” Taniel said. “We’d have to be too far away.” Vlora could do it from that distance. She’d always been able to detonate powder from farther away than any mage Taniel knew—her unique talent.
“We’ll use blasting cord, then,” Gavril said. “This will be quick. No one makes any noise until we’ve checked the tunnel—Rina, that includes your dogs. Who knows what kinds of traps they have waiting for us, or how many workers and soldiers they’ve got in there. Once that’s done we’ll set the powder, and then we hightail it out of there. We leave the donkeys if we have to.”
“What’d they do to deserve that?” Fesnik said.
Gavril rolled his eyes. “Everyone ready?”
Nods went around, and they left silently by the front gate.
The mountainside below was completely black all the way to Mopenhague, where the Kez army still camped. They proceeded into the darkness, going slow enough to let their eyes adjust. A sniff of black powder made Taniel’s brain buzz and brought his senses into sharp focus. The darkness held few secrets for him. For that he was glad—he still remembered the howling from the other night, and the sense he’d gotten of evil creatures prowling the mountainside.
Taniel went on ahead, Ka-poel following twenty paces back. They moved silently down the mountainside, their eyes sharp for Kez guards. Taniel reached the ruins of the first redoubt. It had been taken and retaken, then left for nothing and finally smashed by artillery and sorcery. He expected guards, but when he climbed among the stone rubble it was empty.
He checked each redoubt carefully. Were he the Kez, he would have left a small guard at each of them to raise an alarm of a counterattack—however unlikely. In the fourth redoubt he found a body, head removed by a cannonball and the corpse stinking in the tatters of a Kez uniform: a soldier missed by those who’d scoured the mountain for bodies the last week.
There were still no guards.
The digging started not far past the last redoubt. Taniel scouted the area for some indication of the enemy. There were no lights, no signs of people, nor when he put his ear to the ground could he hear the sharp clicks of shovels and