The Anvil of Ice (15 page)

The master's name was Hjoran, a huge jolly fellow grown almost too fat to reach his anvil. He had a name for tolerance in the town, to the point that he had once taken a girl as apprentice, which was reckoned strange enough though not unheard-of; she had become a jeweler in a nearby market town. But he seemed wary of Alv, watched him closely throughout the work, and squinted dubiously at the knife and axehead he had commanded.

"Fine craft enough, laddie, fine enough," he wheezed, turning them over in his fingers. "A trifle fancy, maybe. Truth be told, best I've seen from a younker so long's I can recall. But—" He shook his head. "Where's the feeling in 'em? Where's the virtue? These're just lumps o'metal, there's never a bit of life between 'em."

Roc gaped, and Alv sprang up from the hearthstone where he had slumped. "But… I did everything aright! You saw, you heard—"

"Aye!" protested Roc, "and he's made many a strong work before now—"

"I don't doubt it!" shrugged Hjoran uncomfortably. "There's something about those tools of yours, though it's a strange thing to me. And no master in his right mind would've taught you the things you know 'less you showed more'n a trace of craft in you. But look, lad, can't you see for yourself?" He wheezed and rumbled over to his shelves, and pulled down a neat but unimpressive axe. "Piece Marja made. I save it to show women can do well's most men at this game. Truth is, it's not that good beside yours, you've got an uncommon hand—but there! What's the virtue in that?"

Alv rubbed his fingers over the fine markings in the steel, traced a flicker of light that seemed to be not all reflection. "To go where it's aimed, as mine was—"

Hjoran drew a line on his untidy workbench and let the axe fall lightly. It struck a hair's breath from the line. He thrust a handle into Alv's piece, and repeated the test. It fell three fingers' breadth away, and skidded sideways. "There you are, laddie," he muttered. "And don't think I'm not sorry."

"Listen here, Master Hjoran," Roc spluttered indignantly, "almost the last thing our master said to him was that he'd made master's work!"

Hjoran weighed the axehead sadly. "Don't doubt that either, boy. And I don't understand it anymore'n you. Smith don't lose the power he's born with! Can use it badly, maybe not at all—specialty's he gets older—but lose it? Like a fire going out? No, never. But it makes no difference. Not a rich man, me, not like your big-town smiths. Can't afford an apprentice who's only half a smith. Can't even set you your prentice pieces."

Alv had sunk back onto the hearthstone, his face the color of the ashes that coated the earth floor. "So what then must we do? Approach one of the wealthier smiths?"

"Aye, and get a boot up the arse for your pains! They
get paid to
take apprentices, boy, big sums too, and run 'em like a manufactory. They'll take a talentless nothing if his folks pay well enough, there's always odd jobs for them, but not a couple of wandering tinkersmiths—sorry, but that's how they'll see it!" Hjoran looked at the young men, Alv with shoulders bowed by shock and despair, Roc huffing and fidgeting. "If you want my advice, though…"he began, after a moment.

"Yes, Mastersmith?" they chorused.

"Well, you lads with your fair skins, you've got a Sothran look to you. You could do worse than head for the Southlands—not just south of here, the real rich Southlands, Great Suderney across the Marshlands, Kerbryhaine as they name it themselves. Not that I've ever been there, but I have met a few traders who have, and they do say that they don't believe in true smithcraft there! Mostly never heard of it, and those who have pay it no heed. Think we're a load of savages to go singing to our work. Well, I've never seen any Sothran smithcraft, to my ken, but I'd be damned surprised if you with your touch couldn't do a damn sight better. Teach 'em a thing or two, maybe make your fortune."

"That's it!" whooped Roc, springing into the air. "That's it! Thanks, good master, thanks a thousand times! Alv, Alv, what say you? Shall we go south, and see my people's land? You know I've always wanted to!"

Alv looked up. He was pale of face, and there was a distant, remote look in his eyes, but he nodded willingly enough. "If that's what you wish, Roc, I'll go southward with you."

"Good! Good!" wheezed Hjoran, obviously glad to be quit of an embarrassing situation. "That's the spirit, eh? Break new ground, yes, yes… Well, getting late in the day, eh? You can give me a hand here in the forge today, sleep in my loft tonight—now Marja's not there, hahaha!— and be on your way the morrow. Give you some grub to tide you over, hah? And don't hang your head so, laddie. Sure you'll get it all back one day—and when you do, you just come back posthaste and see old Hjoran, hey? And he'll have you a master yourself before you can say solder, you'll see! Now—to work! Let's get this place cleaned up a bit!"

They took leave of Hjoran the next morning. He set them on the track south with directions to where it joined the High roads, and their wallets well stuffed with provisions for a week or more. Not slow to take advantage of his opportunities, he had worked them almost until they dropped, but the food was fair pay for it, when he had owed them nothing. Alv had been glad of the distraction, for the pains of hard labor had helped numb him to the blunter agony of emptiness, of loss. One after another all the things he had gained or hoped to gain had slipped from his grasp, and latest of all, it seemed, that single thing on which all his arrogance had been based, pedestal of the pillar that raised him above other men. And yet now, past the first sharp pain of discovery, free at last to brood, he found he could in some wise accept what had happened. He had misused his gift, he could use it no longer; that seemed like a natural consequence. In betraying, in wounding, was it not also his own flesh he had wasted?

Roc, munching on a sausage, was full of ideas and speculations about the south, which he hardly remembered. His parents had been small traders to the Northlands; he had been orphaned when plague swept the caravan they were traveling with, and sold off as a servant by the caravan's survivors. But half of what he said seemed to pass Alv by, and finally Roc burst out, "Aren't you excited, damn you? It was you who wanted to see the world! It was you who wanted a chance to make your fortune—"

Alv kicked at the weeds covering the gravelly face of the road. "Once, yes. But that's not what I need now."

"What then? The moon?" "If I could find there what I need, maybe." "What's that, then? And where will you find it?" Alv shrugged, and Roc raised his eyes to the sky. On the second day they came to the High roads, and Alv, coming out of his daze, marveled at the wide expanse of metalled trackway that lay across the hills like some pale gray ribbon, until it seemed to lead right up into the clouds on the horizon. But as they clambered up the bank he saw that the road was sadly ragged and cracked, and the wheelruts had long ago grown deep enough to churn up the bed, with no attempt made to fill them in. Here and there were potholes, where the ground under the bed had subsided; some were full of earth, and grass, fireweed and pale lilies grew in them undisturbed. Still, it was a good track for travelers on foot, and from thence their way south was swifter. But it was no easier, for though many great towns such as Saldenborg, Arlaby and Thuneborg lay alongside the roads, and there was much demand for good smithcraft in them, in these towns the guild's hand was heaviest, and Alv and Roc found themselves treated as little better than tinkersmiths. They looked like them too, for their once-respectable garb had grown ragged and rough, and only Alv's fair speech won them some consideration. Once in a while they would find some master or journeyman, less scrupulous or more needy, who would let them do petty work for a night's lodging, but more often they were driven out with a curse, or the dogs set on them. Once when this happened, Roc turned on a mocking apprentice and felled him with a blow of his ham fist, and they were hard put to escape the town watch. That night, as many others, they spent like outlaws, sleeping rough among the scrub, and stealing a fox's kill for their meal. And on the next day, as ever, they turned their steps onward to the south.

In truth, they had no clearer idea than that where they were going, for if they knew little of the Northlands they knew nothing at all of the south, and there were few who could tell them what lay ahead. Not many northerners now bothered to go south, and it was still too early in the year for traders coming up from there. But they saw one thing, that the people themselves were changing; their skins were lighter, their faces longer, and here and there were eyes of blue or green, all reminding them both uncomfortably of Ingar. Alv spoke less and less, and there were nights when Roc suspected he had not slept at all. The towns were growing smaller and sparser again, and the land wilder. At last, after some days' walking through wholly empty country they came to a small, poor town with a strange name, Dunmarhas, in which many seemed to have pale skins like theirs—not that it made their welcome any warmer, for folk seemed deadly afraid of what came from beyond their walls, fair-spoken or no. But here at last simple smithcraft was valued, for the town smiths were poor craftsmen indeed and kept no rules of guild. In return for teaching them some simple skills the travelers could at least get food and a pallet by the hearth, and by then that seemed much to them. When they left Dunmarhas they found that they were leaving the mountains behind, the range curving away inland. As the land fell and flattened out before them, the weather grew wetter and the woodlands lower and very thick, with a few tall firs standing out proudly over a mass of aspens, junipers and other lesser trees. Dogwood, ferns and sedge bloomed by the road, daisies, lilies and columbines in its wide crevices, and willows hung over the many little brooks and rivers it crossed. Mists rose swiftly and hung dank about them, and clouds of insects made the noon hours a torment. The road ahead became a long, dead straight ribbon leading toward a horizon on which there was nothing—no rise, no fall, no wall or building, no feature taller than clumps of misshapen trees. The land became covered with tall grasses that hissed in the clammy breeze, and every so often gave way to expanses of soft green rushes. Mists and haze became more frequent, and the wind often brought them a tang of the sea Alv knew so well from his childhood. The rivers were fresh, though stained brown and sharp-tasting, but many of the stagnant pools were brackish, and the water that oozed into every footprint beyond the raised roadbed grew saltier day by day. They took to sleeping on the hard road by night, for nowhere else was dry enough, and there was seldom clear moonlight to walk by.

They had walked through this fenland for days, and their last food was all but gone, when, as dusk was falling and the mists were rolling across the roadbed, they saw the flicker of fires ahead. Alv seemed reluctant for company, but did not refuse Roc, who went stumping ahead at a great pace. As they came nearer they saw that the fires were dotted around a long train of wagons, forty or fifty at least, which had stopped beside ah old ruined shell of a building, the first they had seen for some time. Some of the wagons were small two-wheeled tiltcarts drawn by a single horse, others heavy four-wheelers drawn by teams of horses or oxen; a few even had trailers. Many men moved around the fires, a strong party indeed, and yet as the two travelers appeared out of the mist, shouts of alarm spread across the whole encampment, and men came charging up with swords and bows. Nor did they lower their weapons when they saw they faced but two men, young and ragged at that, and as pale-skinned as themselves. Tense questions rained at them from all sides in a tongue that they recognized but could not summon up in the stress of the moment. It seemed that any minute one of those taut bowstrings would loose. Then a tall bearded man in a fur-trimmed robe and hat shouldered his way through the crowd, waving the people aside, shouting something. Four bowmen remained with him, and one or two other men in robes with drawn swords, but the rest dispersed warily. He himself drew no weapon, but stared doubtfully at these two strangers for many slow breaths before he spoke, in the northern tongue.

"You wear our skins, but you don't seem to know our speech. Would this then be yours?"

"It is that I grew up with," Alv replied, "and my companion here from his youth, though he is one of your folk, by name Roc."

"And you are not?"

Alv shrugged. "I have not that honor, that I know of. A foundling I, raised a northerner and named Alv, that is all. Roc has forgotten most of your noble tongue in his long exile, and I know it only from books."

The bearded man smiled a smile as impenetrable as a stone battlement. "Well then, my fair-tongued foundling, my name is Kathel Kataihan, called the Honest, a dealer in things of small account and the elected leader of this paltry troop of peddlers you see before you. Are you come to sell, or buy, or how else may we oblige you?"

"A seat by your fire on this dank night, honest sir," chimed in Roc, "and perhaps a trifle of supper, as it's some hours since we dined. Nothing elaborate, you understand, for it would not agree with the digestion this late of an evening."

"Oh alas," intoned Kathel, "we are only poor traders with the least of victuals, sufficient only to get us across this godforsaken land without actually starving. If you were calling on us at our simple homes, why then we'd share our last crusts with you gladly, but as it is we dare spare no morsel or crumb for the sake of the loved ones we have with us."

"Ah, but how remiss of us not to explain!" said Roc smoothly. "We are not the common beggars or riff-raff as you would find in such places, but honest men of craft and lore traveling to the Southlands in search of other honest men who will appreciate our hard-earned skills, namely the working of metals…"