10.8

He was the fortress and the fortress was him.

That had been the words which rang through him like a temple bell that day.

Standing in the levy with a hundred other men from his village, together as a wall, spears held strong. It was what he had wished to be true.

It is what he had come to realize was so.

He had a name for his flesh then, but like every other fort it was not really his. Something said of him. But since when has his flesh been bone and meat instead of stone and timbre?

Since when did he have legs instead of foundations?

What even were legs but spindler, lesser, weaker foundations?

Since when did he hold a shield instead of a wall?

Since when did he move instead of maneuver and rise?

Since when did he stand instead of fortify?

What was being clothed if not weaker, useless reinforcement?

He was the fortress.

And the fortress was him.

He swelled beneath the earth and carried the armies to their place.

He guarded them from the arrows and fire of the Invader.

He overturned and speared assaults.

He stood tall with roots like the mountain.

His stones carved and made solid within him.

As him.

His foundations were struck, his towers tangled, his bulwarks undermined. His parapets were circumvented.

He was under siege and gathered in himself the weapons to counter. To reinforce, to support, to protect.

He was the fortress and no fortress was complete without those to protect.

A city drove into him like a battering ram against rotten timbres.

One single building corroding his stone with bricks, grappling his foundations into cobbles.

Stripping his timbres for doors, tables and cheap shingle.

He struck back, walls of the mind enclosing and squeezing that spur of a city.

Digging over the feeble foundations and rising anew, stronger than before.

The bog was damned, solid earthworks diverting it, aqueducts draining it, stone shaped to turn water. Timber and works of man stronger than mere earth and mud.

Except then the bog swelled with floods that had washed away lesser forts.

Sunk them.

Drowned them in silt and time.

But he was not so poorly built a structure to be found in such a place.

His roots were the mountains, his stones were solid, they fit together tight and their mortar was sure.

His timbres were from strong old trees and aged well besides.

And within him he had guards and villagers, the protected giving him strength beyond even his stones.

For what was a fortress without those it guarded?

Without soldiers and granaries and villagers.

He felt a tremor within him.

He felt his stones come undone.

Wild wyrmfire was a danger all its own. It was not the place of stones to hold against the anathema.

He called to the knights within. He called to the armies, to his other half.

He tried to reinforce their footing, he tried to harden their steel and wood and shields.

But flesh and bone was not stone and timbre.

And only so much weight could be born by such foundations.

He was a fortress but he could only be as strong as the place he stood.

Flesh made for poor ground to build a wall and as he watched from his many narrow windows, rising up behind the lines of battle he saw the knights and men of arms faltering against the wild wyrm and the invader bog.

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He pressed on anyway, supporting everywhere, on all lines.

He was a fortress and today he was a serpentine wall, dancing and weaving, rising and sinking away in roiling combat with five of his number.

A younger construction of mere earth might be overwhelmed, untested and green wooded such a bulwark would fail to cover so much land as he.

But Stone Fortresses were old, and so was he.

He had time to sink deep and become whole.

His foundations touched the very spine of the mountain here.

He had stones stacked tall from there and braced in a flesh of earth. And he was full of traps and snares.

Poised wood, solid iron teeth and the waiting knives in the dark of his halls.

Foul things and filth ready to be vomited on any that dared breach his walls.

Belly full of provisions and grains to last a half year and slay those that dared encircle him with starvation.

His Patience is sharper than any sword or spear.

The wind howled helplessly against his stones.

Gryphons soared from him and struck fiercely against their own numbers beyond his reach. He held their roosts in confidence ready to welcome them home, to restore and fortify their flesh such as could be done.

He was the Fortress and he would stand for all of them.

Whether against bogs, cities, winds or words, all were ephemeral to his stones.

Even their fire was nothing as long as he held his timbres safe, close behind stone skin.

His charges were far outnumbering the invaders. His foundations were stronger than the many elements gathered against him.

Only the feral wyrm that had been driven against him was a concern.

It was not acting as it should.

It lashed at only him and his.

It shielded the invaders from arrows no matter how high he raised towers to aid them.

It spewed its devouring breath on his stones and left them undone and the stones held above them loosened.

It harmed none but him and his.

That was not the act of a beast.

This was concerning. He had never found a wall yet that stood well against a wild wyrm. It was best to just go for thickness of earth and patience with such beasts and wait for them to leave or the Knights to slay them.

But something was wrong.

He was the fortress and the fortress was him.

He could guard his charges from wind and fire, from spears and arrows, from sword and steel.

But how would he guard against this?

He was the fortress and the fortress was him.

But what was a fortress that could not protect?

Was that anything at all?

He felt a shifting tilt in his foundations deeper than the mountains and stone.

The wild wyrm was rising.

The Gryphons flew as they should and moved to intercept the clumsy creature in the air.

But there was grace in it that had not been there before.

He pulled in his stones to consider, to plan and plot himself as defenders did. Penned in and surrounded in thought if not force.

Invaders were sometimes clever.

They set traps, they dug with patience to undermine less wakeful forts then he.

He tasted a snare in this.

He tasted maneuvers and ploys.

He tasted poisoned water in the wells and refugees sent to his gates to sap his strength.

There was a trap here.

The Gryphons swung by again and then they fell before the wild wyrm.

It was over almost before his windows could catch sight of it.

He felt cold creeping through his timbres.

His foundations felt even more unsettled.

For the first time in a dozen sieges, and twice more wars where he had been more encampment than solid walls, he felt something that he could never shed.

For every fortress was as much a thing of fear as stone.

One did not protect without something to defend against.

And even the strongest walls did not always hold against the works of a siege.

Whether by draining hunger of his charges or terrible power to break his walls, he had not always held.

And he felt the tremor in the deep at the spine of the mountain where his foundations stood. He felt a crumbling deeper still.

There was something he needed to do, a thing with wind blowing through empty halls and echoing over stones and the groaning creaking wooden timbres.

It was difficult.

Harder then pressing back the bricks of the city, or closing ranks against the waters of the bog.

Harder than hiding his timbres from the searing fire of spilled blood.

But he needed to do it.

He needed to wrench himself from his place in the order of the world and do what he almost could no longer remember.

But he had other memories then his own, huddled memories seeking shelter from storms and armies. Beasts and fury.

He gripped the memories of those he sheltered hard and slowly ground from those moments the secret puzzle of it.

Erecting it like a tower, shining meaning into it like a signal fire.

He had to give a warning.

To send word to his brother towers distant.

But not to a tower or other fort, but to a man.

A thing of flesh poorly suited to bear the burden of his stones and the weight of his power.

The wild wyrm that was not a wild wyrm released a curtain of death beneath it.

Slaying those he was made to protect in their thousands.

Shattering and breaking his walls.

Finally the labor finished and he managed to bring all the parts together in the correct order.

To give warning.

Just in time.

“Lord Thurzó, I fall.”

And then the all destroying anathema filled him.

And his timbres came undone, his stones became dust, his will unraveled.

He was a fortress, but inevitably he fell.