A Sword From Red Ice (96 page)

Poor Hammie, Vaylo had thought, waving them on. It
was good to see them doing something lighthearted, good to know also
that his own lady, Nan Culldayis, had set them on the path toward it.

One of these days he was going to have to marry
her. He was no fool. He knew that of the two of them she was the one
with all the admirers. And the teeth.

The upper level of the hillfort was an oddly
disjointed place, filled with tiny slant-ceilinged rooms that led
from one another like jammed-in boxes. Corridors as such ceased to
exist. To get to a room you had to walk through a room. The only
spaces that were remotely private where those that abutted exterior
walls—and most of them were running with damp. Vaylo sincerely
hoped that the man who had designed this place had been forced to
live in it. Between the deeply flawed roof and this dungeon-like maze
it was about the most ill-planned, ill-formed lump of stone he'd ever
had the misfortune to stay in. Made the Bluddhouse look like a
palace. Made it look very good indeed.

The Dog Lord made his way across the floor,
walking from room to room. Most of them were empty, but if you
weren't careful you might surprise some poor sod on a chamber pot, or
give someone who'd just fallen asleep the fright of his life. Vaylo
made a lot of noise.

Trouble with Gangaric's visit was that it hadn't
just unsettled the boy. It had unsettled him as well. Bludd was being
run into the ground, its defenses neglected. Gangaric had said that
Quarro had grown lazy and distracted—claims Vaylo found easy to
believe. Out of the seven of them Quarro had always been the one with
the greatest sense of entitlement. First born, first sworn, first to
get his own roundhouse—none of it through any effort of his
own. The only reason why he'd ended up with the Bluddhouse was
because his fool of a father had decided to head west and conquer
Dhoone. Quarro had never had to fight or struggle for anything in his
entire life. And what was beginning to make less and less sense was
why he, Vaylo Bludd, was stuck in this godforsaken mold heap in the
middle of nowhere while Quarro was sleeping with whores and digging
bear pits at Bludd.

It had been different when he thought all was well
there. The Bluddhouse secure in the hands of his eldest son was
something he could live with. For a certainty he would not set
Bluddsmen against Bluddsmen for the sake of claiming a house. Yet
what if he was needed? What if all Gangaric's words were true and
Bludd was vulnerable and known to be vulnerable? Quarro Bludd was not
the Bludd chief.

The Dog Lord was.

Big Borro's wife was there. Mogo Salt's mother and
his two sisters. All sorts of Faas and HalfFaas, Nan's older sister
with the beautiful name, Irilana, Scunner Bone, Odwin Two Bear's
large and sprawling family, who always made a point of having two of
something in their names, the fine and ancient family of Bulls . . .
the list went on. Clan was there, in the Bluddhouse, and if Quarro
was not watching over it then something had to be done.

So what was keeping him here?

Vaylo took the door to Nan's solar, and as he
passed in to the light and the warmth he knew the answer was his
fostered son.

"Granda, where's the wolf dog? You said you
were going to bring him." Pasha Bludd, nine years old and bossy
as a general, scrambled from the sheepskin rug by the hearth to
accost him, arms folded. "The others are waiting."

It was true enough. He did remember telling his
granddaughter a few hours ago that he was going to fetch the wolf
dog, but then he'd had men to see and Hammie to check on, and between
the sun setting and Hammie's remark about Burning River he'd clean
forgot about the dog. "He'll be with Dry, in the tower."
The wolf dog and Cluff Drybannock had always been close.

Pasha marched toward him. "I'll go and fetch
him then."

"No you won't."

People remarked that Pasha Bludd looked like her
granda when she frowned. He certainly hoped it wasn't true. He didn't
think it would be becoming for a chief to look so delightful. "Sit.
Play with the other dogs. Rub my feet."

She tried to hold the frown, but it crumpled on
her at the mention of his feet and she barked out a laugh. "Rather
rub pickled eggs."

This statement left him speechless. The three dogs
lying by the fire did not bestir themselves. The big black-and-orange
bitch was on her back, all four legs splayed like sticks in a jar.
The other two were more decently arranged, but one of them was
smelling bad. "Where's Nan?"

Pasha shrugged. "She came and went."

Vaylo unhooked his cloak and headed toward the
fire. Somehow Nan had managed to turn this damp room with its single
south-facing window, its hole-in-the-wall fireplace and its uneven
floor into the brightest place in the hillfort. As the room was small
the fire had some real effect; green mold had been banished entirely
and the black mold, while not gone, was at least dry. Nan had
scattered the floor with hay and laid sheepskins on top. A simple but
graceful table made from sheet copper hammered over fox pine had been
set beneath the window. When it turned up out of the blue ten days
back, Vaylo had asked Nan about it and received a surprising reply.
"Cluff made it for me. He remembered me telling him how I didn't
like to leave things on the floor overnight." Nan was the only
person who ever called Drybone "Cluff."

Vaylo pushed one of the dogs out of the way and
squatted close to the hearth. Heat made blood rush to his face. Pasha
brought him a cup of water and a thumb cup of malt. The liquor had
been a gift from Gangaric, carried all the way from Bludd. It was
such a treasure that Vaylo thought he'd be quite happy never to drink
it; just uncork the flask once a day and inhale.

"Why are you being so good to me?" he
said, his eyes narrowing at his granddaughter. "You think I'm
going to forget about the foot rub?"

It was then as he rolled onto the rug and made a
great show of pulling off his left boot that all three dogs stood.
Ears moving, they tracked a noise the Dog Lord could not hear.
Immediately Vaylo pulled himself to his feet. Fear jumped so quickly
in his heart it must have been there all along.

The bitch began to growl, a terrible low whirring
that sounded like the moving of gears on a war machine.

"With me," he told her. To the other two
he said, "Guard my granddaughter." His voice was so
fearsome they shrank away from it.

Pasha's black eyes were bright. Her features moved
through several uncertain states as she stepped toward him. "Granda."

"Stay here!" he roared, his voice harder
than it had been with the dogs. "Draw the bolt when I have gone
and let only those you know in."

The girl's bladder gave way and urine shot down
her dress, splashing at her feet. She stood still, and pressed her
legs together very tightly. Her jaw and teeth started doing something
behind them, like gnawing, but he did not have the time to comfort
her.

The black-and-orange bitch pushed her head into
his thigh as she followed him from the solar. The last thing he saw
as he closed the door was the remaining two dogs moving to flank his
granddaughter. He waited until he heard the charge of the bolt before
he and the hound made their way downstairs.

It was full dark now and few torches were burning.
Vaylo had left his rushlight in the solar and had to step carefully
through the shadows. Below him he was aware of noises, of sharp calls
and urgent footsteps and chiming metal. The first person he spotted
coming down the stairs was red-haired Midge Pool. The young swordsman
was running between the east ward and the west. Vaylo hailed him.

Midge had a lot of freckles, some of them on his
lips. "Drybone spotted mounted men to the north. He's raising a
party to meet them."

North? The fear ticked softly in Vaylo's chest,
seemed almost to turn over and reveal itself for what it really was:
recognition. Nothing but the Rift lay to the north. No Dhoonesmen or
Hailsmen were out there about to knock down the door. A Bluddsman's
true fate lay beyond the simple taking and defending of land and
houses. A Bluddsman's true fate lay on the borders.

We are chosen by the Stone Gods to guard them.

"Wait for me," Vaylo commanded Midge
Pool.

On their way to the stables, Vaylo arranged the
securing of the fort. Aaron was located and sent up to Nan's solar in
the company of Mogo Salt. Just as Mogo and Aaron were about to leave
the ward, Vaylo stopped them.

"Your father's hammer."

Mogo nodded with understanding and returned to his
bedroll, where his gear lay. Like all the men in the fort this day
Mogo was a swordsman, but his father Cawdo had been handy with a
hammer and he had taught Mogo a thing or two about hatchet-wielding.
He had also left him his hammer. Vaylo ill-liked commandeering a
man's weapon, but in this case it was not Mogo's primary armament.
The five-foot longsword holstered at his back was the weapon Mogo
Salt would draw in a melee.

"I don't have the cradle or chains,"
Mogo said handing the wedge-shaped hammer to his chief.

"Less to rattle," Vaylo said, winking at
his grandson. "I thank you, Mogo Salt, son of Cawdo. Fetch Nan.
Watch my grandchildren."

Mogo bowed formally at the neck. "Chief."

Vaylo left them, and hurried down the stairs to
the stables. He'd lost Midge Pool somewhere along the way but the
bitch was still at his heels.

Through a throng of men saddling horses, checking
cinches, and harnessing swords, Vaylo Bludd met gazes with Cluff
Drybannock. The flame-blue eyes were always a shock. The otherness of
them, the fuel that burned there.

"What do we face?" Vaylo asked his
fostered son as he came toward him. Drybone was wearing the red wool
cloak with the owl-feather collar and the lead weights sewn in to the
hem. The opal bands that bound his waist-length hair glowed like
coronas around the moon. "Nine mounted. They head from the
direction of the Field of Graves and Swords."

Nine. Vaylo looked into the holes at the center of
Dry's eyes and saw his worst fears confirmed. He said, "We ride
with thirty. I will not leave this fort undefended." His name
was Vaylo, not Pengo, Bludd.

"Aye." Cluff Drybannock nodded tersely,
went off to make the cull. The wolf dog trotted after him.

Vaylo saddled the black stallion. The beast was
skittish and eager; it nipped his hand as he fastened the nose piece.
Behind him, he was aware of men disappointed, of grumblings, and
hay-kicking. A slammed door. Do not rush to your own destruction,
Vaylo wanted to tell them. If Angus Lok was right they stood at the
sunset of the long night. There'd be time enough to get killed in the
years of darkness to come.

"Bludd!" Vaylo hollered as he swung
himself atop the horse. "We are chosen by the Stone Gods to
guard their borders. Death is our companion. A life long-lived is our
reward." Raising his hammer high in the air, Vaylo led the
charge from the west ward.

Hooves clattered behind him. Men shouted, "Bludd!
Bludd! Bludd!" Harness leather creaked and sawed. The cold night
air snapped at Vaylo's skin, bringing hair upright and raising hard
white mounds of gooseflesh. Cawdo's hammer felt a couple of pounds
too light and about half a foot too short. Its balance was off-center
and the head swung like a seesaw. Vaylo wondered if it hadn't been
designed for throwing.

Gods, but it was raw. The snow underfoot crackled
as if it held a charge. Pressure was dropping and the air had that
loose changeable feeling that meant something was coming in. Big
Borro had probably been right about snow.

Vaylo headed north into the valley, the bitch at
his horse's hoofs. The land was open here, without trees or tall
shrubs to break the view. All was blue. Overhead clouds held streaks
of light. Dry rode close to his back, his lean and sinewy stallion
effortlessly keeping pace. He had not drawn his sword yet, though
others in the line had. When Vaylo turned his neck to get a better
look at his fostered son he saw someone who looked wholly Sull.

"West of the Field of Graves and Swords,"
he said, seeing movements in the dark blueness that Vaylo did not.

Tightening his left rein, Vaylo made the shift in
course. The snow hit as they rode out of the north wall of the valley
and up to the headland. Flakes the size and shape of fish lures
began to fall.

Vaylo spotted the horsemen as he topped the ride.
Nine, as Dry had said. They rode horses of black oil whose bodies
rippled on the edge between solid and liquid like something seen
through thickly distorted glass. The men, if you could call them men,
were armed with blades that killed air. Snowflakes were sucked in,
and nothing came out. The men's calls were high and terrible birdlike
screeches that raked the nerves like knives. Their bodies existed on
a plain where shadow could support weight. Their faces were no longer
recognizable as human. Skin and features were black and sucked
inward, distorted by dark hungers. Something wrong about the hammer
too. For he could bash the shadow men with it but could not stop
them. One fell from its horse and continued fighting afoot, its
blade of voided steel mercilessly hacking horseflesh. Vaylo dropped
the hammer. "Dry," he called out to the man who had never
left his side during the battle. "Fetch me that sword."

It was a sword dropped by a young Bluddsmen who
would never again use it. A good plain weapon that had not once found
shadowflesh; the blade was perfectly silver.

"My lord and father," Dry said,
presenting his mighty six feet longsword to Vaylo Bludd.

"No," Vaylo said softly. Cluff
Drybannock was holding the blunt of the blade in his fist, offering
the crosshilts. As a beast horse charged them, Dry thrust the sword
into his father's hand.