A Thief in the Night (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-three

C
roy and Mörget studied a map for a while, then they all mounted their horses and headed to the northeast. The way led up a slope, at first gradual but ever steepening. At times they crested a ridge of land and could see out beyond the trees and across great vistas of green valleys to hills in the distance. Then the trees began to grow thinner on the ground, and shorter of stature, and soon the sunlight that burst through the gaps between their branches was strong enough that Slag could not bear it. He put on a wide-brimmed hat and rubbed burnt cork under his eyes to cut the glare, but eventually he was forced to throw a cloak over himself and allowed Croy to lead his pony on a line. To keep the horse from panicking, the dwarf rigged up an ingenious device—a set of square iron plates mounted on the colt's bridle, which kept it from looking to either side or behind. It could only see Croy's horse ahead of it, and instinctively stayed in line.

Malden kept an eye on his own horse, not wishing to be separated from the others again. The jennet seemed badly spooked after her encounter with the giant beetle. It didn't seem to help that Malden still stank of the thing's thick blood. He had to whisper soothing words to her constantly lest she panic and run off. He was barely aware, then, when they crossed some invisible border and suddenly were out of the forest. It was not until Croy called for them all to look up that he raised his eyes from the ground.

He saw at once they had climbed a great hill that stood at the foot of a great towering mass of rock—the Whitewall, the chain of mountains that separated the land into eastern steppes and western plains.

Beyond that wall lay the land of Mörget's people. It was better than any fortress wall could be at keeping the two countries apart. The mountains were too tall to be climbed—Malden had heard that men who tried climbed up above the air itself and smothered, drowning for lack of breath. The mountains were so high that their peaks were swathed always in snow, for which fact the range was given its name. Only in a few places was the terrain low enough to be passable—places that were heavily guarded for that reason.

Tallest of those mountains was the one called Cloudblade, which formed the keystone of that endless range. Its jagged top, like the roots of an extracted and upturned tooth, did indeed cut through the clouds overhead, and pennons of mist streamed from its rocks. Above a certain height nothing grew on its slopes, and only the pale rock that formed it was to be seen.

About a third of the way up the slope, the vestiges of an ancient road ended at a pair of massive stones carved into the shape of upright menhirs. It was hard to judge their height from such a distance but Malden thought they had to be taller than the spires of the Ladychapel. Strung between them like the laces of a corset were countless chains, brown and red with ancient rust.

“The House of Chains,” Malden said aloud.

“What do you see, lad? Tell me what you fucking see,” Slag demanded from underneath his cloak.

“A doorway tall enough for the Bloodgod to walk through without bowing. Chains as thick as Mörget's waist, unbroken for centuries.”

“Aye, that's the place.” Slag wrestled with the cloak until one of his eyes peered out of the shadows. “Oh, aye.”

They climbed as high as the horses could take them, intending to reach the entrance before sunset. The hills refused to make it easy. They had to force their mounts over long stretches of broken rock and up through a defile where some house-sized stone had cracked in half, leaving a passage as narrow as a man's outstretched arms. They emerged into a barren waste of stones that shifted dangerously underfoot, where only a few sparse clumps of grass grew up through the scree.

It was as desolate a waste as Malden could imagine. A thin cold wind touched the rocks with icy fingers, while thin rivulets of water trickled past below the fallen stones. Had he been told no human being had entered that land in a thousand years, Malden would not have been surprised.

He was quite startled, then—as was Croy's horse—when an emaciated man wearing nothing but a loincloth stood up from behind a rock and hailed them all.

Croy wheeled his horse around to keep it from bolting. One of his hands reached down to touch the pommel of Ghostcutter. The other he raised in a gesture of greeting.

“Well met, Sir Croy,” the stranger said. His voice was scratchy and thin, as if he had not used it in many months. “I am Herward, a humble servant of the Lady.”

“You know me?” Croy asked.

Malden didn't like this at all.

The hermit bowed low and touched the stones. “We have never before met,” he said, as if this were a small, unimportant detail. “Yet I know you! For one night, as I lay in my stony bower, a vision came to me in my sleep. A dream, you may well call it! Yet 'twas as clear as day, and as vivid. I was told of your coming.”

Malden tried to catch Mörget's eye, but the barbarian had backed his horse a few steps and was focused entirely on the hermit.

“A knight of honor, bent on holy quest. With him a mighty warrior of the East, and a lady who must be protected at all cost.”

“Don't forget a pissed-off dwarf,” Slag insisted, “and a thi—” He glanced at Malden, who realized he'd been about to say “thief.” “An, erm, a whatever the hell this idiot is.”

“Well met, Herward,” Croy said. He took his hand off the pommel of his sword and reached out with both hands, as if he would embrace the hermit. “If you serve the Lady, you are my friend, and I thank you for this welcome. What else did She say, in this vision? It may be crucially important to our task.”

Herward scratched viciously at his armpit. Malden could see that the skin there was already badly irritated. Now that he'd had a chance to look at the holy man, he saw just how unhealthy the poor fool was. His wild hair and beard had fallen out in patches where ringworm and probably mange had afflicted him. His sun-baked skin was so dry it cracked around his nails and in other places looked as scaly as snakeskin. His eyes were as yellow as his teeth.

How long had this man been living in these rocks, with no human company at all? Malden couldn't guess. Yet he had heard tales before of madmen, seized by holy zeal, who sought out the truly desolate places, there to worship in silence and utter privacy. He'd heard there were holy men who went to live at the bottom of abandoned dwarven mines, so they could be closer to the Bloodgod and his pit. Then there was supposed to be a hermit in the hills above Redweir who only came out to scream obscenities and throw his own waste at passing caravans. The drovers who passed that way considered it good luck to be so assaulted.

From what he could see, Herward was just as crazy. Malden tried to get the jennet to take a step back, out of range of flying excrement.

The hermit stared at Croy for a long while, saying nothing. Then he pulled at his beard and said, “She showed me your face, and his, and hers. She said I must aid you in any way I could, and allow you to pass as high as the gates of the House of Chains. She said I would be rewarded.”

“In what aspect did She appear to you?” Croy asked.

Malden's eyes widened. Was the knight really taking this seriously?

Herward bent low and placed his forehead against the rocks. He was certainly limber for someone who probably lived on lichens and whatever grubs he could dig out of the stones. “She appeared to me in the form of the Crone. As an aged women, bent with the blessings of motherhood and the bounty of long years. She had hair the color of old iron, and a fearsome cast to her eyes.”

Cythera slumped in her saddle and covered her mouth with one hand. “Oh, Mother, tell me you didn't . . .” she moaned, though not so loud that Herward might hear.

Chapter Twenty-four

“P
lease,” Herward said, “let me show you what meager hospitality remains in my power.” The hermit started walking away without another word. Malden got his jennet moving to follow, but when he looked back he realized he was the only one to do so. He looked at the others, wondering what was going on.

Cythera moved her horse near to Croy's courser and whispered something in his ear. He nodded, and the two of them cut away from the group, heading up the hill rather than following the holy man. Mörget had taken up a position near the head of the trail, where he could watch their rear, as if he expected the shire reeve and an army of knights to come after them. Slag stared up at the entrance to the Vincularium, perhaps impatient to get inside after so long on the road.

“Come along,” Malden said to the dwarf, and with a curse or two the dwarf followed where the hermit led. He left Mörget to his own business.

The thief and the dwarf headed back down the hillside a way, then up another slope where the horses had trouble finding solid footing. The hermit climbed over the rocks like a mountain goat, never looking back. As they neared the top of the hill, Malden expected to see a crumbling shack or perhaps a simple monastic cell, just big enough for one hermit to crouch inside.

He was not expecting to find a fortress up there.

Not that it was such a grand thing, really. The structure could have been dropped into the Market Square of Ness and fit easily. It was not so large as a castle, nor so well made. Its walls were of unmortared stone piled together in thick sloping walls. It showed signs of immense age, one whole wall having been smothered by clinging vines, its stones bleached white by centuries of sun. Yet it looked strong enough to withstand a cavalry charge, or even a siege if it came to that. It had towers at two of its corners, though one had collapsed into a pile of rubble. A massive iron gate stood rusting at its front.

A hundred men could have barracked inside its walls. From that position they could hold off a small army. They also had a perfect view of the entrance to the Vincularium, and with longbows they could hold off anyone who attempted to enter the tomb, or leave it.

“Was this place built before the Vincularium was sealed?” Malden asked.

“Oh, no. After,” Herward assured him. “A hundred men waited here, for a hundred years, to make sure the door stayed sealed.”

“They must have feared the elves greatly,” Malden said, as the hermit shoved on the creaking iron gate and gestured for them to ride inside.

“Oh, the Elders were deadly warriors,” Herward agreed. “Every man of that race was skilled with a blade. Their archers could outshoot any man now living. Worse still, they didn't fight like honest men. They would come out of the trees just long enough to slaughter a few of us, then slip back into the forest again where we could never find them.”

“The Elders?” Malden asked.

Slag explained. “That's what the elves called themselves. They believed that dwarves, humans, goblins, and the rest were all descended from them. That we were all degenerate sports of their master race.”

“They had some terrible magic as well,” Herward went on. “They could butcher a man in his sleep from a hundred miles away, if they only had a hair from his head or a piece of cloth he'd once worn. Why, just giving an elf your name was enough. They could use it, gain power over you. You understand why we had to kill them all.”

Malden climbed down from the jennet and tied her to a post in the yard of the fortress. The place was a husk, he saw, nothing but a few walls still standing after so much time. A ruin.

“The war lasted for twenty years. Half a man's life, but the blink of an eye to them. Here. Let me show you something I've found,” Herward said, his face lighting up with joy. He rushed through what had been a doorway—now it was just a hole in one wall—and busied himself in the shadowy room beyond. “Come in, come in!” he called. “Come see the prizes of my collection.”

Malden approached, and then stopped when he smelled the place. It must be where Herward lived, he thought, though it was also possible he used it as his privy. Maybe both. “So you collect things?”

“Yes! Come see!”

“You don't collect your own droppings, though?” Malden asked, just to be sure.

The hermit poked his head out through the empty doorway again. “What are you talking about?”

“Your, ah—your . . . Slag?”

The dwarf dropped from the back of his colt with a thud. “He's asking if you save your own shit. To throw at folks, or some other barmy purpose.”

“Shit,” Herward said, as if he'd only heard the word once, many years before. “Shit. Oh, no. I don't defecate.”

That got Mörget's attention. The barbarian had stopped just inside the gate, perhaps expecting a trap. “Every man shits,” he said.

Herward shrugs. “I don't eat, you see. The Lady sustains me on black mead. No, I haven't tasted food in nearly a year. So I don't defecate. I do urinate quite often.” He gestured again. “Now, please, come here!”

Malden and Slag approached the doorway but didn't step inside. The room beyond was hard to see, but it must have been an arsenal at some point. Bundles of swords and spears filled all the available space. Suits of armor hung from the ceiling, as if knights of old were sleeping up there in net hammocks. The armor looked subtly wrong to Malden, until he realized that the breastplates were far too slender for a human rib cage, and the helmets too long.

Moreover, all of the weapons and armor gleamed like gold.

“There was a battle here, long ago. The Elders fought a running retreat all the way to the entrance of the House of Chains, with the combined army of our king and all his bannermen hounding their heels. Many died on both sides. Now, so long hence, I still find their things here out among the rocks. When I find a good piece, I bring it back here to polish it and bang out the dents with a hammer.” Herward squinted at them. “Not sure why I do it. Maybe to help pass the time. Look at this.”

He handed Malden a shortsword with a square tip. The blade was notched and quite dull, but had not rusted to pieces like an iron sword would. It didn't feel quite as heavy as he'd expected, though.

“Bronze,” Slag said.

“Are you sure?” Malden asked. It had occurred to him that Herward had so many golden swords he might not notice if one went missing. “It's not gold?”

“I'm a fucking dwarf. I know my metals. That's bronze.”

Herward nodded happily. “The Elders wouldn't touch iron. Supposedly it interfered with their magic. Everything they made was of copper or bronze or brass.”

Malden made a pass through the air with the sword. “Well, that explains how we were able to beat them, eh? We had iron weapons. Clearly superior.”

“Bronze is as strong as iron, and carries just as sharp an edge,” Slag told him. “Also—it never rusts. It gets a nice patina, but it never corrodes. You come back here in a thousand years, these swords will be just as strong.”

“There has to be something wrong with bronze,” Malden pointed out, “since we won with our iron.”

“It's more expensive, is your main downside.”

“Then we . . . we won because we were . . . our hearts were pure, or some such,” Malden said, trying to remember old stories he'd heard as a child. “Because our cause was just?”

“You beat them by outbreeding them,” Slag said. “An elf lived near on a century, and never had more than one child. You lot bred like rats when you came over here.”

Malden frowned. He wasn't sure what that meant. “What do you mean, when we came over here? We've always lived on this land.”

Herward clucked his tongue.

“Wrong again,” Slag explained. “A thousand years ago this whole country was covered in a thick forest, right? All those fields of wheat were so many trees. Nobody ever cut them down, so they grew thick. My people, the dwarves, lived under the ground, and we had no use for that much wood. The elves lived in the forest, aboveground. Then the humans came, from the south. First they were just explorers. Looking for new lands to name after themselves. The elves laughed at the idea, but they didn't drive you off, because they didn't know what was coming. We barely even knew you were here, because you didn't dig deep enough to disturb us. Should have paid more attention. It was missionaries, what came next. Then traders, and trappers, and then followed the fucking settlers. They had families that had to be fed. Every generation of humans chopped down more trees, to make more room for their fields. Finally the elves started noticing what you were doing to their homeland.”

“What happened then?” Malden asked.

Slag flicked the sword with his fingers to make it ring, a high piercing note like two blades coming together. “You weren't the kind to leave peaceful like, not once you had your sodding big paws on a piece of earth. So it came down to you or the elves. This is where you finally wiped them out.”

Malden looked out through the gates of the fort, at the entrance to the Vincularium on the opposite slope. Though he could read and write and do figures, he'd never had any formal education. Certainly no one had ever told him this dark secret of his own history.