A Sword From Red Ice (9 page)

Hunching his shoulders against the rain, the Dog
Lord picked up his pace. The field they were crossing had a slight
cant to it that Vaylo felt keenly in his knees. It was growing dark
now, and the bit of wind that had been ragging them all day had
finally shown its teeth. Sharp gusts sent rain sheeting into their
faces. Nan had her hood pulled all the way down to her eyebrows. The
color had drained from her lips and her eyelashes were spiky with
raindrops. The bairns were miserable. Pasha was hugging herself,
teeth chattering uncontrollably as she rubbed her arms for warmth.
Aaron hadn't said a word in over an hour. Vaylo didn't like the way
he was shaking. Hammie didn't like it either, and had tried several
times to pick up the bairn and carry him. Little Aaron was having
none of it, and squirmed free from his grip every time.

Hammie himself seemed the least ill-affected by
the storm, and without gloves, oiled top cloak or hood there was no
doubt he was bearing the worst of it. He was a Faa man of course,
that had to have something to do with it. Faa men were stoics. If
there was an unpleasant task to be done they'd simply tuck their
heads low and get on with it. Slop buckets hauled up from the pit
cells, elk fat rendered for soap, boils lanced, drains unblocked,
holes dug: Faa men did it all. And none of them were complainers.

Vaylo sighed heavily. He'd been chief to so many
good men. And where had he led them? Men were dead. Children were
dead. Clan Bludd lay broken and in pieces. Gods knew they had
deserved a better chief.

Stop it, Vaylo warned himself. What was done was
done. Dwelling in the past was an indulgence best left to widows and
old men. A chief could not afford to live there: the price exacted by
self-reproach was too high. Oh, he knew he had done many things
wrong—doubtless somewhere some god was keeping a list—but
he could not let that stop him. This small band of four was his clan
now. Nan, Hammie, the bairns. They were a short distance southwest of
the Dhoonehouse, traveling through territory of an enemy clan,
without horses, food or adequate clothing, and with only one good
knife between them. The Dog Lord had no time to waste on regrets.

What had Ockish Bull said that spring when they
lost ten hammermen in the mother of all fuckups that became known as
Bull's Brawl? Mistakes have been made. Gods willing I'll make no
more.

Vaylo grinned. Thinking about Ockish Bull always
did that to him. Who else would have dared to insult the memory of
Ewan Blackhail in a Hailish stovehouse filled with Hailsman? Who else
would have had the jaw?

"Pasha. Aaron." Opening up his
greatcloak, Vaylo beckoned his grandchildren to him. They wouldn't
come at first so he had to bully them. The sight of their granda
baring his teeth usually made them roll their eyes and groan, but
tonight the bairns were subdued. They came to him, but more out of
habit than anything else. Tucking a child under each arm, he hiked up
the slope. Water squeezed out from the bairns' woolens as he hugged
them.

Vaylo cursed their father, silently and with
feeling. Pengo's treachery had led them to this. Pengo Bludd had
been so eager for any kind of fight that he'd deserted the
Dhoonehouse, taking everyone he could bribe, sweet-talk, or bully
along with him. Only forty had remained behind, and a holding the
size of Dhoone could not be defended by such numbers. When the attack
came they'd had no warning. There'd been no one to spare for long
watches. Robbie Dun Dhoone and his army of blue cloaks must have been
laughing as they broke down the door.

The Dog Lord let the bile rise to his mouth, and
then jabbed it against his aching teeth with his tongue. Where had
Pengo been when the Thorn King came a-knocking? Riding south most
likely, his nostrils twitching to the smell of city men's blood. The
damn fool had chosen the wrong war! Thought he'd engage the Spire
Lord's army in the south rather than protect Bludd's holdings in the
north. Well I hope he finds some measure of glory fighting city men
for he'll get nothing save a swift death from me.

The anger warmed but did not comfort Vaylo. The
rain kept coming, running down his face and streaming off the tip of
his nose. It was hard to see, even harder to know what to do. As best
he could tell they were crossing an overgrown graze. Stalks of gray,
winter-rotted oats slapped his legs, and waist-high thistle burrs
kept snagging his cloak. Everything was wet and getting wetter.
Underfoot, the rich blue-black soil of eastern Dhoone was rapidly
turning to mud. Vaylo swore he could hear the mosquitoes hatching.
The night had that smell to it; the soggy aliveness of spring.

The hill graze was one of dozens they had crossed
since escaping the Dhoonehouse. The land east of the Dhoone was
mostly grassland. Cattle and horses grazed here in summer and spring,
sheep year-round. Yet numbers had dwindled, and Vaylo hadn't spotted
a single black head in two days. Livestock had been seized. Dhoone's
horses were now roasting over Bludd fires and swelling Bludd breeding
stock. Their sheep were cropping grass in the Bluddhold. Without
animals to care for, Dhoone farmers had either fled or were lying low
until better times. And now that a Dhoone sat upon the Dhooneseat
once more, those better times were about to start.

Word was already being spread. Twice now the Dog
Lord and his small company had been forced to drop belly-down into
the wet grass as mounted Dhoone warriors rode past. Both times Vaylo
had spoken a prayer. Please gods, let them not be man hunters.

He would take all their lives—Aaron, Pasha,
Nan, Hammie and then himself—rather than risk being dragged
back to the Dhoonehouse and the man who ruled there. The Dog Lord had
looked into the eyes of Robbie Dun Dhoone and seen what absences lay
there. The Thorn King had jaw, no doubt about it, but it wasn't the
hot reckless jaw of Thrago HalfBludd or the muleheaded jaw of Ockish
Bull. It was a cold and calculating jaw. The sort of thing that would
drive a boy to pull the legs off a cockroach just to see what it
would do, and a grown man to use others and then discard them like
gnawed bones.

Vaylo shivered, not from cold but sheer relief.
Robbie Dun Dhoone had not laid hands on his grandchildren. Thank the
sweet gods for that.

It had been a hard five days since they'd escaped,
no doubt about it. After the Dhoonehouse had been sacked their little
party of five had been forced to retreat to the Tomb of the Dhoone
Princes. Right then with Robbie Dun Dhoone beating down the door,
Vaylo wouldn't have given a tin spoon for their chances. Dhoone had
retaken Dhoone, and Bludd—the clan who'd been squatting in the
Dhoonehouse for half a year—had to be made to pay for their
presumption. Robbie had ordered the slaughter, not capture, of
Bluddsmen. Not a moment too soon, Pasha had located the secret
entrance that led to the tunnels beneath Dhoone. Mole holes, Angus
Lok had called them. Vaylo had not believed they existed.

Yet another thing he was roundly wrong about. The
network of tunnels had deposited them in a dense copse of crabgrass
and black willow, at the bank of a muddy creek just one league
southeast of the Dhoonehouse. It had taken most of the night to
travel the dark, underworld passages of Dhoone.

The ways beneath the roundhouse gave Vaylo chills.
They were old and haunted, and they smelled of things other than
clan. In some places the stonework was so rotted that you could poke
it with your finger and watch as it dimpled like sponge. Tree roots,
pale and glistening like intensities, pushed through the walls and
ran along the floor and ceilings in hard ridges. Hammie had to be
careful with the makeshift torch he had fashioned, for most of the
rootwood was long dead and the roots hairs crisped to black the
instant they felt the flame. Some of the tunnel walls had collapsed,
and they had been forced to backtrack several times. Originally they
had been heading north, but collapsed tunnels drove them east and
then south. Once, after pushing their way through a narrow opening,
they had entered a cave used by hibernating bats. Every footfall
raised clouds of chalky guano that smelled so caustic it brought
tears to Vaylo's eyes. The Dog Lord had liked it not one bit, but he
had been a leader of men for too long to let his discomfort show.
Speaking a command to his dogs he had sent the five beasts ranging
ahead in search of a way out.

Nan had been a pillar of strength that night. Her
calmness was catching. The way she held her head just so, her light
way of walking, and the level tone of her voice created an atmosphere
that affected everyone. The bairns had been as good as lambs; quiet,
most definitely frightened, but so confident in Nan's calmness and
their granda's ability to fix any problem—whether it be a
broken top in the nursery or armed men in the hallway—that they
never once lagged or showed fear. Good Bludd stock there, Vaylo
thought with some pride.

If he were to be honest the night in the tunnels
had gone hardest on him. In his fifty-three-year life he had
experienced many kinds of weariness, but nothing matched what he'd
felt during the escape. Winning a battle made you feel immortal,
capable of chasing down every last enemy and then dancing and
drinking till dawn. Losing one crushed your soul. And for a man who
had already sold half of that soul to the devil, that didn't leave
very much left.

By the time the dogs finally found an exit and
came running back to their master, Vaylo had fallen into a kind of
dream walking. One foot in front of the other, and to hell with the
pain in his knees and heart. His vision had shrunk to two separate
circles that he'd long stopped attempting to force into a single
view. To him it looked as if there were ten dogs milling around his
legs, not five.

The dogs were scratched up and caked in mud. Two
were soaking, and the big black-and-orange bitch had a gash on her
left hind leg that was oozing blood. Yet devotion burned clear in
their eyes. Their master had lost his human pack and been forced to
flee the den, and now their sole desire was to ease his suffering.
When Vaylo had finally set them a task they'd torn through the
tunnels in their eagerness to complete it. They wanted so badly to
please him.

Realizing this, the Dog Lord had made an effort.
Forcing his vision to trueness and bringing his weight to bear on the
knee that pained him the least, he patted and roughed up the huge
dark beasts. "Good dogs," he repeated over and over again
as he took time to give attention to each of them. Relief made the
dogs act like puppies, rolling on their bellies and baring their
necks, all the while mewing needily like kittens. The youngest, a
muscular black with a docked tail, dribbled urine onto a bed of white
mushrooms that had sprouted in the darkness of the tunnel floor. No
one will be eating those in a hurry, Vaylo thought dryly.

Standing upright, he had addressed the wolf dog.
"Lead the way."

They all got caked in mud as it turned out. The
dogs had found a tunnel rising to ground level—one that looked
as if it had been dug by midgets—and everyone had been forced
to drop to their bellies and shin through the icy sludge. Rainwater
sluicing along the tunnel floor had mixed with the clay soil to
produce a kind of potter's slip that poured into every nook and
cranny and then set like cement against your skin.

For some time Vaylo had been aware that his small
party was heading south, and he was dreading the journey ahead. When
the wolf dog finally broke through to the surface, he was dead tired.
Dawn light, filtering through an opening choked with willow and
crabgrass, made his eyes sting. Despite everything his spirits
lifted. His clan of four was free and unharmed, and now he could
spend his days making those who had wronged him pay. That was when he
saw the stone ring framing the exit portal. Hairs across his back
rose upright, and even before he could name his fear the words from
the Bludd boast sounded along the nerve connecting his spine to his
brain.

We are Clan Bludd, chosen by the Stone Gods to
guard their borders. Death is our companion. A life long-lived is our
reward.

Part of him had known all along that the tunnels
under Dhoone had not been built by clan. A chief might dig a hole in
the earth as a last-ditch escape route, but no leader of clansmen
would risk the scorn of his warriors by constructing a network of
mole holes so extensive that a man could pass from one end of a
clanhold to the other while never seeing the good light of day. Such
measures ran too close to caution for that. No. These tunnels had
been dug by minds that thought differently than clan. Minds that
valued survival above all else. These tunnels had been dug by the
Sull.

The exit had been braced with an oxeye of blue
marble deeply veined with eggshell quartz. Unlike most of the other
stone bracings the tunnels this one had not crumbled or rotted. The
marble had resisted the restless trembling of the earth and the
stresses of hard frosts and sudden thaws. Its surface was lightly
pocked with corrosion and lichen had begun to sink its root anchors
into the stone, yet all of its massive quarter-circle segments had
held their alignment so truly that the ring they formed was as
perfect as the sun. Or the moon. For there it was, etched deep into
the hard blue stone, the moon in all its phases. Crescent, gibbous,
full, and the new moon, which was no moon at all, simply a dark
uncarved space marking the beginning of the cycle. That space haunted
Vaylo even now, three days later. It said something about the Sull,
he'd decided, something about their absolute foreignness to clan. He
wasn't a man given to sudden fancies but that space, that stark
absence in the design, spoke of hell and places unknown, and the
darkness Ockish Bull had said existed before time.