A Sword From Red Ice (10 page)

The Dog Lord felt a shiver coming and shook it off
with a sharp snap of his head. Damn Robbie Dun Dhoone and his
high-stepping blue cloaks. Their roundhouse was stuffed with ghosts.
Vaylo blew two lungs' worth of air through his lips. Who was he
fooling? The entire Northern Territories were stuffed with ghosts.
You couldn't build a doghouse or an outhouse without feeling the hard
chunk of cut stone hitting your shovel the minute you began to dig
out the ground. The Sull had been there first. They had built atop
every mountain, hill and headland, upon every lakeshore, riverbank
and creek bed, and in every mossy hollow, barren canyon and dank
cave.

Vaylo remembered his favorite fishing hole in the
Bluddhold, a green pond no wider than a man could spit. It was set so
deep amongst the basswoods and sword ferns that if you didn't keep
your eyes lively you'd miss it. He'd stumbled upon it after old
Gullit Bludd had given him a beating for some misdemeanor or other,
and cautioned his bastard son not to show his face in the roundhouse
for a week. By the fourth day, Vaylo recalled, he was so hungry he
was spearing wood frogs with his boy's sword and tearing tree oysters
from rotten stumps.

That was when he found it, the fishing hole. He
was looking up at the canopy, tracking some scrawny squirrel that he
hadn't a snail's chance in a salt barrel of ever catching, when he
walked straight into the water. Icy cold and clear as emeralds, it
was so beautiful that even a boy of nine couldn't help but catch his
breath and admire it.

Of course, he did what every nine-year-old would
do when faced with a body of still water; he found some pebbles and
skimmed them. As the pebbles skipped over the surface they created
ripples that attracted silver minnows in search of flies. "Fish!"
Vaylo had shouted triumphantly, and promptly set about whittling a
fallen branch into a rod. As he worked he invented fancies about the
fishing hole in his head. He was the first living man to ever stand
here, the first to blaze a trail through the impenetrable tangle of
Direwood, the first to pull a two-stone trout from the hole's icy
depths. When he got to the tricky part where he had to notch the
stick to run a line, Vaylo was so absorbed in his daydreams that he
lost his grip on the knife.

He'd been sitting on some bit of rock close to the
water's edge, and the blade plonked into the silt at his feet. As he
dug fingers into the sand to grasp the hilt, his gaze slid between
his legs and onto the face of rock. Something was engraved in the
stone. A crescent moon, cut so deep that a lizard had laid her milky
eggs in the hollow, stood above a single line of script. Vaylo was no
scholar, and he wouldn't learn to read until many years later, but
he'd seen enough clannish writings to know that the script wasn't
clan.

The quarter-moon was a sign of the Sull.

Vaylo recalled feeling many things at that moment:
excitement that he had stumbled upon a site once held by the Sull;
fear that some kind of danger still lurked in this place; and
disappointment that he had not been the great discoverer after all.
The Sull had been here first.

It had been a lesson that had stayed with him for
close on fifty years. Clan had gained land at the expense of the
Sull, and a chief's job was to insure they didn't get it back.

"Granda! Your nose is red!" Pasha's
high, excited voice cut through Vaylo's thoughts, forcing him in to
the present. Where he most definitely belonged.

"Granda's nose looks like beetroot,"
Aaron chimed. "There's only one thing for it," Vaylo
proclaimed loudly, glancing from one pale and shivering grandchild to
the next. "Last man to the top smells like cow fart."

Pushing Pasha and Aaron from him, Vaylo charged up
the slope. They had been heading along a creek bed that ran along the
base of a small hill, and the first part of the climb was steep. His
knees creaked, a muscle in his left thigh started cramping, and all
seventeen of his remaining teeth gave him grief as blood pumped at
pressure through the roots. But dammit he was going to make it to the
top of that hill. Behind him, he heard the bairns' feet thumping as
they scrambled to catch up. Pasha called after her granda to wait,
while little Aaron squealed excitedly at Hammie Faa to get moving.
Vaylo laughed out loud at the thought of Hammie being dragged into
the race, then wished immediately he hadn't. Gods, but he was old.
Lungs as holey as his had no business getting involved in anything
faster than a brisk walk. And exactly which Stone God was responsible
for making a man want to do a fool thing like win a race? Unable to
decide whose domain it fell under, he cursed all nine just to be
safe.

Pasha had the long legs of a colt and the sheer
bloody-mindedness of a Bludd chief and within half a minute she had
passed him. Vaylo huffed and puffed and willed himself up the hill.
Rain blasted his face and the wind sent slimy, partially decomposed
leaves splattering against his chest like bugs. It was getting so
dark that he could barely see his feet. Just as he thought he might
at least come in second, his grandson overtook him on the final
stretch. Windmilling his arms and whooping with delight, Aaron
streaked ahead. The Dog Lord growled at him as he passed.

"Granda!" Pasha shouted once she'd
reached the top. "You'd better hurry. Hammie's gaining."

That won't do at all, Vaylo thought. It was one
thing to lose a race to a young whippet of a girl, another thing
entirely to lose one to a chunky spearman with two left feet whose
favorite saying was "A thorough job beats a fast one every
time."

Clamping his jaw together, the Dog Lord reached
for his final reserve of strength. He found himself remembering the
days he'd spent living at the fishing hole. The rod had worked like a
charm. And with the fish nipping like puppies and a place to call his
own he'd decided to stay away two weeks not one. That would show his
father. When his son failed to return after the first week, Gullit
Bludd would be beside himself with worry. Vaylo imagined the scene of
his homecoming over and over again during the long nights camped out
in the forest; his father's gruff but relieved welcome, the playful
cuffing, the peak in Gullit's voice as he said, "You had me
worried for a while there, son." It had felt so real that the
morning he returned to the Bluddhold, Vaylo had actually expected his
father to be standing on the redcourt, waiting for him. Only Gullit
Bludd had not been at the roundhouse that day. He'd taken his two
legitimate sons on a longhunt four nights back, and had left no
message for his youngest son, the bastard. The old hurt burned within
Vaylo like fuel. Once a bastard, always a bastard. Well, just watch
and see what a bastard can do. Fists pumping, Vaylo attacked the
final stretch of the hill as it were an enemy that needed beating.
Hammie had to be thirty-years younger than he was, yet the Dog Lord
refused to think about it. Jaw was what counted in the clanholds, and
no one had ever had more of it than the man who had stolen the
Dhoonestone from Dhoone. One final push and the hill was to. Hammie
tried to keep pace but his short sturdy legs were designed for
distance not speed, and he fell back when Vaylo topped the hill.

As the bairns rushed forward to cheer them, both
men shared a long, weary "What the hell were we thinking?"
glance before dropping to their knees. Hammie began to wheeze like a
goat. The Dog Lord felt a familiar pain his chest, but ignored it.

"Hammie smells like cow fart!" Aaron
dove on top of the spearman, propelling him farther to the mud.
Laughing so hard she snorted, Pasha ran to join her brother and soon
both children were jumping up and down Hammie's belly roaring with
laughter and yelling. "Cow Faa-rt!" at the lop of their
lungs.

Hammie endured this for about as long as any man
could before firmly setting the bairns on their feet. Wiping himself
off he ran with some dignity. "Seeing as I haven't had a bath in
over a month, I'd say that cow fart might just be an improvement."

This statement started the bairns giggling all
over again. Vaylo was concerned about the noise, but glad in his
heart to hear it. Pasha and Aaron deserved this. They'd been as good
as gold these past five days, and quieter than was good for any
child.

"Hush now, little ones." Nan's voice was
gentle but firm. She hadn't taken part in the race, and only now
reached the top of the hill. The wind had dragged back her hood and
sheened her face with rain. "It's late and we must be quiet."

Vaylo nodded his thanks. Somehow Nan knew that he
couldn't bring himself to discipline his grandchildren just then. She
was the smartest one of the lot of them, and the Dog Lord was glad
she was his.

As he held out his hand so she could pull him up,
he heard a low howl echoing from the south. Wolf dog. Even though he
had heard the call of his oldest, best-loved dog countless times
before, Vaylo felt a loosening of muscle in his gut. Some sounds
bypassed a man's thoughts and entered his body directly, and the call
of a wolf was one of them.

All five dogs had been ranging wide throughout the
evening, forming a protective circle around the party and hunting
small game for food. Just before sunset the oldest bitch had brought
Vaylo a jackrabbit still in its winter whites. Vaylo had no appetite
far raw meat and judged it unsafe to light a cookfire, yet he had
taken the rabbit from her jaw all the same. A dog giving up its prey
for you was no small thing, and only a fool didn't understand that.

The dogs were trained for silent patrol and
although all had been taught to alert their master to danger by
issuing a single piercing howl, only the wolf dog ever sounded. The
other four always deferred to him.

"Everyone down," Vaylo hissed, cursing
himself for his stupidity. Thanks to him they were now standing on
the most exposed point for leagues—and not a damn tree in
sight. At least there was no moon to light them.

The mud smelled sweetly rotten, and when Vaylo
scooped up a handful he could feel the dead matter in it. Beetle legs
and stalks of grass scratched his skin as he smeared it across his
face, blacking himself out against the night. Nan didn't waste a
moment with feminine fussing and swiftly did the same to herself.
Hammie was closest to the bairns and saw to them before masking
himself. Both children submitted soundlessly to Hammie's
ministrations, but Vaylo knew they were scared. Tears welled in
Aaron's eyes.

Aaron was his only living grandson. Just seven
years old, the boy had lost his mother and his homeland. And he
hadn't seen his father in thirty days. Remembering his own tears as a
boy—tears of hurt and loneliness and rage—Vaylo reached
over and laid a hand on Aaron's back. The Dog Lord had spent thirteen
years growing to manhood in Gullit's house, and not once during that
time had anyone touched him with simple kindness. He was the chief's
bastard son, begotten during the drunken revelry of Spring Fair, his
mother rumored to be the lowest of the low: a common stovehouse
whore. The only affection he'd received was from his father's hounds.
Good dogs, who had treated him like pack.

Ahooooooooo. The wolf dog's howl came again,
pitched lower this time and closer. The Dog Lord's protectors were on
the move. Vaylo nodded to Hammie, and the small party began to belly
down the east face of the hill. It was raining hard now and Vaylo's
cloak was quickly soaked. About halfway down the slope he spied a
copse of spindly blackthorn and altered his course toward it. He was
listening intently, but could hear nothing above the wind. The wolf
dog's call had come from the south, and that meant Dhoonesmen riding
out from the Thistle Gate.

"Granda, I can hear horses coming."
Pasha tried hard to whisper, but at nine she hadn't quite gotten the
hang of it and the words came out louder than if she'd spoken them in
her normal speaking voice. Nan put a finger to her lip to hush her,
but the damage was done.

Hammie and the Dog Lord shared a glance. The
spearman had left his spear in the Tomb of the Dhoone Princes, where
he had used it to bar the trapdoor that led from the roundhouse to
the tomb. Hammie was still in possession of a good knife, though; a
foot-and-a-halfer cast from a single rod of blued steel. The kitchen
knife Vaylo now called his own was another matter entirely. The tang
rocked loose in its handle, and three days of rain had cankered the
blade. Of course Nan still had her maiden's helper—a slender
dagger with a wicked double edge and some pretty scrollwork—but
Vaylo would never consider taking it from her. A Bluddswoman had as
much right to defend herself as any man.

Scrambling with his knees and elbows, Vaylo pushed
toward the blackthorns. Finally he could hear what Pasha heard:
horses at canter, closing distance from the south. Dogs be good,
Vaylo willed. If the five beasts homed too quickly they would betray
their master's position. Right now Vaylo needed them to stay put.

Reaching the bushes, he tugged off his
rain-drenched cloak and threw it across the branches. It wasn't much
protection against the needle-sharp thorns, but it was better than
nothing, and Vaylo had the bairns' eyes and tender cheeks in mind.
Gesturing furiously, he beckoned Pasha and Aaron to push through the
tangle of winter-hardened canes and into the center of the copse.
When they hesitated he fixed them with the full force of his chief's
glare and hissed, "Now!"

Not once in Vaylo's thirty-five-year chiefdom had
anyone disobeyed an order spoken in his command voice and no one was
about to start now. The children jumped into action, ducking their
heads and plowing through the bushes as if they were being chased by
wolves. Even Nan and Hammie moved smartly, Hammie pulling his cloak
taut around his body and diving into the bushes like an otter into
water. Vaylo took little satisfaction from their responses. He could
hear horses closing distance from the far side of the hill, and the
rhythmic beating of their hooves sounded like war drums.