Caught a glimpse of armour, copper skin, as a great weight ground down on him and forced his face into the earth. With sickening suddenness, as if not a moment had passed, he was back in the last day of his childhood, some twenty-five years ago, taken unawares by the raiders who had ravaged his village. But now though he was weary there was strength in his arms, smith's strength, and as they were wrenched behind him he struggled and snarled and fought. He jerked one arm the way it was being pushed, felt his attacker lose his balance, and thrust out once again. The hard hands tore free, the man was flung back, but there was no sound of him striking the ground, only a rattle of loose earth and stone, a terrified shriek, and a moment later a thudding splash from below. The other attacker hesitated, Elof swung around, seized the fingers that held him and twisted them back; the man let go with a scream and Elof was on top of him with fist swinging. He sprang up as another came running with spear levelled, seized the shaft and snapped it with bruising strength across his knee, then fell on the spearman with the bladed truncheon. But as he raised it for the killing stroke another blade passed across his throat, one more pricked his neck below the ear, and a narrower blade jabbed him painfully over the kidneys. He let fall the truncheon, and rose very slowly to his feet. The faces of the men running up, hard and brown and scarred not only by wounds but by ritual cicatrices, were all too familiar in their cast; with bow, spear and sword a ring of Ekwesh warriors hemmed him in.
Ekwesh
! Till then, confused in time, it had seemed only natural that he was fighting his lifelong foes - but now the implications pierced him like a catapult bolt. For a crazed moment he wondered if he might not have somehow sailed on around the world to the Ekwesh homeland; it was said to be a bleak place like this. But he knew better than that. What then were they doing here? His blood still boiled; he had half a mind to try and break through their ranks and run for it. He might make it. But then they would comb the area, and might capture Roc. Better to wait, bide his time…
A broad man in a fur-trimmed cloak strode forward, cheeks hatched between cheekbone and jaw with a chieftain's scars in the shape of wings, and gestured at his pack and sword-belt; Elof did nothing. Two warriors dropped their weapons, seized him and tore the pack from his shoulder. Elof thought of the hammer at his side; if he could keep it from their sight… One warrior tugged at the buckle of his sword-belt, and Elof made a furious lunge for the hilt, struggling with the men who held him; it availed him little, but it was not meant to. The scuffle lasted only a minute, and ended with Elof on the ground being kicked with ironshod boots, but the hammer was tucked safe among his furs. The chieftain gestured him up, and Elof lurched to his feet more unsteadily than he needed to; let them be off their guard only a moment… The chieftain caught his arms and spread them wide, then ran long fingers through his jacket and gave a grunt of satisfaction; he plucked out the hammer and hefted it before Elof's face. "You are soldier?" he demanded, in some barely comprehensible form of the Sothran tongue.
"No!" spat Elof, then reined in his temper, remembering the exaggerated prestige this reiver people attached to warriors, and their contemptuous treatment of any who were not as fair game. "That is - I am, when I have to be. But by choice I am a smith." The chieftain's face was blank. "A - a Shaper, a
shaman
of metals…" It was the Ekwesh word he used, and the chieftain drew back as if he had trodden near a copperhead. He spat on the ground and gestured to the others, and they searched Elof from top to toe; he ground his teeth as the chieftain fingered through his precious pack, knowing what danger lay in the jewels he bore. The chieftain plucked out the anklets and the half arm-ring, admired them a moment and to Elof's astonishment replaced them, handing him the pack.
"You carry this, for now," he said. "Answer with your head!" He spoke with an atrocious, guttural accent, but better than other Ekwesh Elof had heard; also, he used terms that had a strangely literary or archaic ring to Elof, and others he could only guess at. "So! You speak for self now, then before
Iltasya
."
Elof knew some words of the Ekwesh common tongue, but that one he had never heard. "My ship sank out there," he said, pointing out among the floating ice. "I barely made it to shore."
"We see the sail sinking," said the chieftain. "Guards search the shore. You come from West-over-sea, from Br-Bras'eal?" He mangled the name. "Alone?"
Elof was thinking rapidly, of the two Ekwesh who had first crept out upon him, one was dead, one still unconscious. The others could not have seen Roc; two were looking down the cliff, but that was evidently for signs of the man who had fallen. "My crew was drowned, I think. I called in case they had come ashore, but…" He shook his head resignedly. "It was a long swim…"
It would have been, for a man. The chieftain eyed him a moment. "Other guards will find them, if living; we go!" He turned to his men and clapped his hands. "
Ouakia'ma
!" With no more than the one command the patrol formed ranks around Elof, two of them carrying their unconscious comrade, and strode off down the promontory, winding in and out of the thorny bushes that had concealed them. They glanced about them as they went, stabbed a spear at likely-looking concealment, but made no serious attempt to search. Elof wondered about the "other guards"; at least they were not here yet. Roc would have time to take cover. But who were those others with him, that he had not seen? It seemed that even if the Ekwesh were masters of this dour land, they might not be unchallenged. And Roc was free; there might not be much he could do unaided against eleven armed men, but with aid… That was something; definitely something.
All the rest of that afternoon they marched, more or less southward, along an unchanging coastline within sight of the ice-strewn sea, and into the long summer evening that followed until no slightest trace of light remained to show their way. They halted then, and Elof, muscles weakened and gait unsteady after long weeks in the little cutter, fell groaning to the ground, clutching cramping muscles in calf and foot, but glad he had held out till the end; though it would have been little use his asking these grim folk for any rest. And yet he had already noticed many things unusual about them. For one, their armour of stiffened black leather was much thicker and heavier than the usual Ekwesh pattern, and the chieftain wore a short shirt of scale-mail beneath his cloak; the clan emblem on their gear was reduced to a stylized image sketched in with a few flowing lines, and they wore fewer jangling ornaments of metal, precious or otherwise. Only the chief had gold rings in his long ears, and bronze and gold tips to the braids of his coarse black hair. He himself was unusual, like none of their chieftains Elof had met before now, neither a malevolent old man nor a steely young fanatic. This was a heavy man of late middle years, stone-calm, granite-hard and grim of aspect; yet neither he nor his men indulged themselves in the casual brutality of most Ekwesh towards their captives. They neither beat nor bound Elof as they marched, and that itself was unusual; yet in some ways it made them more alarming. Their eyes were never far from him, and he guessed that if he had shown any tendency to slacken or sought to escape, he would have suffered both; but not necessarily as retribution, more as a cooly considered means to an end.
They built a great fire of brushwood that night, too great for anyone with anything much to hide or fear, and cooked over griddles among the ashes. Elof, seated in the smoky lee between two brawny spearmen, was wondering how long the food in his pack would last, when one of them passed him a deep wooden bowl of some boiled grain, a slice of bread and a chunk of smoked meat. Elof took the bowl and bread hungrily, but when he refused the meat it was thrust at him. "Eat!" barked the soldier, in an accent worse than the chieftain's. "Is long road, at first sun!"
"Be damned
if I
will?" exploded Elof, forgetting ail restraint in his loathing. "What carrion is it, flesh of some helpless thrall -"
The blow spun him round and stretched him flat on his back, blood trickling from his mouth across his burning cheek. "That word you swallow, or I strike it in your teeth, shaman of filth!" It was the chieftain who stood over him, almost slavering with rage; he had evidently sprung straight across the fire. "We are the Proud Ones! We eat no man's-meat, us!"
Elof heaved himself up on one elbow and glared at him. He should not have been so rash; but having spoken, to show any weakening now might be dangerous. "So?" he said, as sarcastically as his swelling lips would allow. "What do your shamans have to say about that, proud one? And the Hidden Clan?"
As he expected, that rocked the chieftain back on his heels; the spearmen sprang up and back, weapons ready. "What might you know of
Tlasuka
, shaman of West-over-sea?" He spoke very softly, fingers flexing near the short sword at his belt. "You are of their pale masters, maybe?"
Elof fought to keep up his arrogant front. "I am not; I have met them, though, men and non-men. And though they claim the Ice runs in their veins and their guts, I know that for a lie. I have spilled enough of both!"
He was appalled at the howl his words raised, till he realised it was laughter. Even the chief was staggering around clutching his sides. Evidently, he reflected a little queasily, he had achieved some degree of Ekwesh wit. "How many?" gasped the chief, when he could speak properly. "Five score?" More laughter, and Elof understood; wit for them lay in outrageous boasting, the more outrageous the better.
"Five score and one!" he snapped, straightfaced, to new howls, "But that One I only pinked in the shoulder, and she fled me!"
Silence chopped down like a blade. He had said something too much. But his blood was up, and he would not now back down. "If it's proof you're after, then do you only give me back my sword!"
Abruptly the chief straightened up, wiping his eyes irritably. "Oh no, word-shaman," he said. "You are captive, you stay. Not free to chase
bala'yu
!" That word Elof understood only too well; it meant 'deathbringer', and also 'fame' or 'honour'. "But know this of us; no Ice runs in our veins! Ancestor-laws, ancestor-duties we hold still, from days when clan first made compact with clan, to conquer…"
"And those duties, do they include playing thrall to the Ice?" blazed Elof.
The chief would not be baited into losing his temper and his face a second time. He met Elof s gaze with contemptuous stolidity. "No bonds bind us, save sworn word and honour. Our chiefs are no thralls to shamans! And we take no flesh of men, that is forbidden! We are the Proud Ones, the Kok'uen, the Raven Clan -"
"
Raven
?" Elof stared at the chieftain, unable to credit what he heard, or its import. Surely it meant nothing; all the Ekwesh clans were named for the totem animals familiar to the peaceful hunter-gatherers they had once been. Yet long ago, when Kermorvan had first told him who Raven truly was, he had added that many among the Ekwesh also revered him. In which case… "I too have heeded a raven's cry," he said softly. "He is the banner and sign of my land. Can it be the same?"
Heads turned in surprise, but the chieftain only grunted. "That Raven is totem
to
some among you, I had heard. Let us see who he favours!"
Elof smiled quietly. "He has favoured me."
As he expected, those words from a prisoner provoked a great wave of savage scornful laughter; he let it subside, and when he spoke again even he was startled by the ringing pride in his words. "He has favoured me, I say, my land and my king! To my poor door in such a wasteland as this he came, ere I knew who he was, a tall rider in black mail upon a mighty warhorse -" One or two warriors interrupted with crows of disbelief, but their voices faltered when they found themselves alone, and faded to silence when Elof s gaze fell on them. The chieftain and the others listened in silence, unstirring save for the firelight that leaped in their eyes. "He gave me aid I did not know I needed, aid that… that helped me to undo a great evil, that in the end raised me from the least of smiths to among the great of my land. More than once he has come, sometimes in other guise, always with aid and counsel…"
"What guise?" The chieftain's voice was soft, but his demand cracked like a whip.
"An old man, bearded and mantled, leaning on a staff… an old wanderer…" Elof sighed, and a black gloom overwhelmed him, reaction to his moment of pride. "But last in his warrior guise. Wiser I had heeded him then, and never come here…"
"Wiser!" agreed the chieftain sombrely, and gazed at him a while before he said more. "Shaman, you burn from within, and the flame is clear. I do not think you lie. We too know Raven in these shapes, warrior and wise shaman, though no man living sees him so. We follow his path, straight path of the warrior, no matter the price - though lies whispered, though trust denied. Though they set us to rot on land, to guard outlands bare of blood or fame or booty, though they trust us with no honourable station at sea, yet we Proud Ones serve as sworn to by our ancestors." The chieftain's face was an implacable copper mask, his voice pitiless as winter wind. "From word and duty we do not turn.
To Iltasya take all strangers
is said, to
Iltasya
you must go. Does Raven come to you now? I think not." He rose and returned to his chieftain's place on the more comfortable side of the fire. "Eat and sleep; you tread a long road, come dawn."