A Guile of Dragons (10 page)

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

Knife

T
he next day they stopped at a large farm on the bank of the Whitewell to get the supplies they would need in their trip over the mountains. Morlock knew the people well; he often stopped there for provisions when he took the road home. Usually he only needed food, though. Now he wanted heavy clothes for the summoner and himself, food for both, and some kind of weapon. He was no good with a bow, and swords are useless, unless you expect to run into a duelist. An axe would have been best: good for defense, and useful, too. Morlock never felt that it was trouble for nothing when he carried an axe over the mountains. The farmer only had one, though, and was unwilling to part with it. Morlock settled at last for a knife. Decent metal, but terrible work: his fingers itched for the tools and time to set it right. But the time, at least, he didn't have; the summoner had stamped away from the haggling with unconcealed impatience.

There was a problem with the farmer, too. He had assumed that Morlock would stay and work for the knife, as he usually did for his provisions. “The horses are more than enough for the clothes and food,” he explained. “But the knife is different. Metal's scarce. On this side of the mountains, I mean.”

Morlock understood. “I'll bring you a knife from Thrymhaiam.”

“Bring two.”

“One,” Morlock said flatly. They could do without the knife, if need be.

The farmer saw it in his face. “A real working knife, now,” he insisted, conceding the point. “None of these silver showpieces.”

Morlock stood. “Northern steel. From my hand or my father's.”

“I don't want better.” The farmer stood and they struck hands. Then they went to make packs for the provisions.

Fifteen days later the two Guardians were high in the Whitethorns, at the source of the Whitewell. This was a hot spring, running out of a steep snow-clad mountainside. The banks of the stream were anything but white: black mud, gray stone—even green with life at spots. But it was striking to see water running in the deep snow of the high mountains.

“This is rather high in the mountains for a hot spring, isn't it?” Earno asked the thain.

Morlock shrugged. “Northhold is new.” It seemed to be a proverb.

“When will we get through the mountains?”

The thain glanced at him in surprise. “It's mostly mountains, in the ‘Hold.”

“But not like this.”

“No. In . . . Dwarvish we call the Whitethorns ‘the Walls.' Or maybe ‘the Shields'; Dwarvish doesn't distinguish. We are in South Wall, now, a low part. You could almost cart goods along the Whitewell.”

Earno felt differently. But he was no mountaineer.

Morlock led the way up a nearby ridge and pointed. “Look.”

Earno was already looking. For long days the horizon had been narrowing—deeply oppressive to him, who had grown up on the wide plains of Westhold and spent much of his life upon the sea. The nearest mountains had become the limit of vision, and although these were gigantic Earno had begun to feel as if he were spending day after day in the same frigid closed room.

But now, between two nearby mountains, there was a break in the horizon. He could see deep into the north, many days' travel: hills and smaller mountains, blue with distance, some topped already with snow, like still white flames in blue smoke.

“Those low hills you see before us,” Morlock was saying, “extend over to the west, past what we can see. Beyond them, ahead of us, you see a group of snow-covered peaks.”

“Yes.”

“That is Thrymhaiam, home of the Seven Clans.”

“Then we go through the hills.”

“No. It is not a good idea to travel through the gravehills.”

“Ah. The Dead Corain. Now I shall see their graves.”

“You see them now. If it were night you would see the banefires.”

“They still burn, then?”

“Yes. We will see them as we travel west around the hills. It will take more than one night.”

“Why don't we turn east? I can see the end of the hills; it must be the shorter way.”

After a moment Morlock said, “We might do so, if you wish. There is a settlement of the Other Ilk that way.”

The phrase “Other Ilk” struck Earno strangely. He wondered what it meant, but he felt he should know. Then at last, he dragged up the memory, from when he was trading with many nations in the unguarded lands: it was an expression dwarves used to refer to non-dwarves. Earno was of the Other Ilk—as was Morlock himself, really.

“We must go east,” Earno said. He was thinking that he might hear some news of Lernaion that way. “I'm sorry,” he added. He never cared to overrule a subordinate, unless it was necessary.

The thain nodded. “The Hill of Storms is near there,” he observed, almost conversationally.

This caught Earno's interest. “Why would they settle there?” he asked as they began to descend the ridge's far side, “these . . . Other Ilk?”

“It is only a colony, really, from Ranga í Rayal, a settlement beyond Thrymhaiam to the north. Ranga has good farmland, but they don't have as much metal as they'd like. There are rich deposits near the gravehills, though, so they established a mine there.”

“Couldn't they trade for the metal?”

“Yes. They get most of their metal from us—that is, from the Seven Clans under Thrymhaiam. And we get food from them. But it's good to have a choice, you see. So the Rangans develop mines where they can. And Thrymhaiam trades with others for food. Your people, for one.”

“My people?” Earno was surprised.

“Westholders. They are great sea-goers, the people of Westhold. The trading ships come as far north as the Broken Coast, and beyond.”

“I once worked on a trading ship,” Earno observed.

“Yes, I know: the
Stonebreaker
, to the unguarded lands. They still sing that story on the ships. A guile of dragons attacked the convoy, and you killed the master dragon, Kellander Rukh, in single combat.”

Earno looked at him and smiled. “A sailor's first skill is lying, you know. They learn it before they tie their first knot.”

Morlock smiled a little, too, but said seriously, “You can tell when they're lying. They're too proud to lie about you, or Illion.”

“Well . . . Your line, too, is very famous,” Earno said generously.

Morlock paused, then said, “It's true. Naevros syr Tol carries a blade from Thrymhaiam, and would never use another. They say he's the best swordsman under the Guard.”

“The Hill of Storms—That was a great victory of your father's, wasn't it?” Earno insisted.

Morlock said nothing. He shifted the pack on his crooked shoulders and continued to lead the way down.

“Can it be you don't know the story?” Earno asked, following him. He thought it strange that Morlock could tell a tale of his father's greatest enemy, Earno himself, but none about his father. Had they failed to tell him about the heritage of the Ambrosii at Thrymhaiam? As much as Earno hated Merlin, this seemed wrong. He continued, “It was before the Northhold came under the Guard. The peoples of the north appealed to the Graith for aid against the Coranians, who were invading them. Merlin was a vocate, then, and when the Graith refused to act as a body he went alone over the mountains and fought the Dead Cor on the Hill of Storms. He defeated him with his own accursed blade, the sword-scepter Gryregaest—”

“I know all that!” shouted Morlock furiously.

They did not speak again for the rest of that day.

Presently Earno decided that he had made a mistake. Morlock must hate him for what he had done to Merlin. And Earno, for the first time, realized he felt guilty because of that. He had injured Morlock terribly, without knowing or intending it, years ago. He would do the same thing today, if it were needed to maintain the Guard. But he felt guilty all the same. And he wanted Morlock to forgive him for what he had done. He saw now that he had been trying to ingratiate himself with the thain—he, the Summoner of the Inner Lands!—so that he would be forgiven. And Morlock had dismissed him with contempt.

And rightly so. The boy had earned his hatred. It had been ungenerous of Earno to try and take that from him, too. He would not try again.

The next day they walked into the mining settlement after dark, just as the banefires on the crown of the Hill of Storms began to burn. The hill stood high, dark and threatening over the settlement, and the intense blue fire obscuring its height cast no radiance into the town. You could sometimes see shapes moving in the banefire light, but as Morlock had told Earno the night before, it was not a good idea to look for them deliberately. “Because then the voices may follow,” he muttered, when pressed for an explanation, and Earno did not ask further.

Without saying what he expected, he had stood guard all night with the knife in his hand. Though obviously exhausted, he had pressed the march all the next day, trying to reach the settlement before another nightfall. Now that they were finally there, Earno noticed, he did not look noticeably relieved. But what he felt was his business.

“Is there a head man?” Earno asked the thain.

“There will be an Arbiter of the Peace. Her house is the high one, at the end of the street.”

“Very well. Stay here and watch over the packs.” Earno supposed it might have been useful to have the thain with him at the meeting. But he was tired of Morlock's sullen company.

“A moment,” Morlock said, and fumbled at his belt. “Take this, please.”

Earno found the knife in his hands. The extent of Morlock's dwarvish prejudice struck him speechless. Did he really think that a village Arbiter would attack the Summoner of the Inner Lands? Or that Earno Dragonkiller lacked his own methods of protecting himself? After a long look at the impassive thain, Earno placed the knife under his white mantle and silently walked away to the Arbiter's house.

The Arbiter was a tall woman, her hair as dark as Morlock's, her skin nearly as pale. There was nothing crooked or dwarvish about her, though. (Earno had begun to fear that everyone was like that in the north.) There was nothing hidden about her, either. Earno was announced while she was sitting over the remains of her dinner, and she leapt up to greet the summoner. By that time Earno had entered the room, and the Arbiter suddenly stopped and stared. Obviously she had been expecting his peer, but Earno (with his red-gray beard and stocky build) cut quite a different figure from the dark-skinned knifelike Lernaion. The Arbiter laughed, confessed her surprise, and led her guest to the seat of honor as the remains of her meal were borne away.