The Anvil of Ice (18 page)

Elof, who had been Alv, sat there in the sunlight for as long as it lasted, and moved little, for he was in truth like a newborn infant; all his great strength had deserted him, and it was slow to return. But he was patient, and ate as much as he wished of his provisions, knowing that he would soon be fit to hunt and forage again, and that before long the caravans would be rolling along the roads once more. The first of them came southward only a week or two later, and he greeted it with joy, for it was Kathel's returning, having overwintered in the north. The trader was equally pleased to find him.

"Look at this! Thirty wagons dragging, out of forty-five! Wheels, hubs, axles, sometimes it's only the dirt holding them together, and that's what your misbegotten bitches of northern roads are doing to an honest man's profits! Well, Alv, how fare you? Thinner but happier, by the face on you—"

"I've been ill, but I'm better. And by the by, my name's Elof-"

"Ahah!" thundered Kathel exultantly, leering and tapping a finger to the side of his red-veined nose. "So you
were
being close, then, and not giving me your right one, and didn't I always say it, Master Ourhens?" He nudged the small bald man violently in the ribs. "
Didn't I
? Alv, no name for a man, that, I said. Changeling indeed! Well, far be it from me to blame a lad for being careful at first, far be it. Let's have a drink on it!"

Elof let him assume that was how it was, because changing Kathel's mind over anything was hard work, and he had enough of that with his carts. It took nearly four days to work all the repairs, and Kathel in gratitude left him so much food it almost filled the little space in the forge. And as his caravan filed away southward, with many shouted promises to return northward next spring, if they could, Elof suddenly felt he would welcome that, even with the prospect of another winter in between. For all their strangeness, for all the frost that still lingered late into the mornings and the storms of driving sleet and rain that came rolling in from the distant sea, the marshes were becoming a home to him, almost a shelter from the bitter demands of the world. Here he need worry only about himself, and that not so much now. They were a peaceful place as spring drew nearer, and even the echoes of an-cient strife seemed to ring less loudly among the unheeding chatter of the birds.

But later that day they rang out once again, for as he went searching the margins of the Battle Lands for more iron to replenish his dwindled stock of hoop tires and horseshoes, he came upon a whole heap of corpses thrown up by the flooding after the thaw. Most of them were fragmented past recognition, but one huge form lay whole, face down and a little apart from the rest, half out of the mud as if he were even now trying to escape. He seemed to be wearing black ringmail, which Elof had always found too corroded to reforge. This looked better than usual, but as Elof waded out unsteadily to examine it he saw something gleaming in the mailed hand still clutched by the mud. Gently he reached down and parted the stiff fingers— and saw the sword hilt they grasped crumble to fragments in that instant. Below it something black went slithering back down into the mud; he grabbed it—then yelped with surprise and pain. But he held his grip, and with great difficulty managed to pull it free, and wiped it clean on the grass. It was the blade the hilt had held, black like the mail, and it had cut deeply into his palms. Forgetting his pain, he whistled with admiration, holding the dark metal up to the sun and seeing drops of his blood run gleaming down the rim. "And what smith of old made
you
, my beauty, that you Ve still such a cutting temper, eh? I'd have liked to meet him, and tell him you're every bit as sound and as sharp as the day he made you. And find out how!" he added, with a deep sigh of envy. He held it by the tang, weighed it, balanced it, flexed it and finally swept it up in a great arc, lopping the heads from the nodding grasses. And that put a thought in his mind, and he looked over to the pile of cloven corpses, and nodded thoughtfully. It was hard to number them, but there might have been thirty or more. He whistled again, looked down at the dark shape, and made to turn it over and look upon the face of one who had wielded such a weapon and to such effect. But the very movement and the touch of his hand disturbed a delicate balance. With a soft whispering sound the mail-clad figure slid back down into the mud, and was instantly sucked down. Only the mailed hand stood upraised an instant, then it was gone in a swirl of bubbles. For two breaths Elof stood there astonished, and then he raised the dark blade to his forehead in silent salute.

He took the blade home with him, and he worked long into the stormy night, crafting the best hilt he could for it. He longed to make one worthy of such a weapon, if only to be about something more demanding than cartwright's or farrier's work. But how could he, maimed in spirit as he was? He sighed, like the wind in the old stone chimney. It was not only fine materials he lacked, but the power to make anything worthwhile of them. So he toiled at reducing and reforging scraps of the finest steel he could scrape together, and sighed often, and not only with the weariness of the labor. But as he worked, watching the flames dance to the singing wind, he found a rhythm and a harmony that gradually became a tune he could hum, a theme as sweeping and spacious as the fens that gave it birth, noble in tone but with a darker, sadder undertone. It seemed to reflect the origins of the sword only too well, and in the end the hilt he made pleased him. Its bold shape suited the straight sweep of the blade to perfection, and for the grip he had found a coil of silvered wire he could weave into a fine pattern. Most important of all, though, he had calculated the weight exactly against the blade's; the new-made sword balanced beautifully in the hand. It was the first fair thing his hands had shaped for many a day. When he had flattened and fined the last rivets holding it to the tang he set it on the anvil and sat for a long time gazing at it, watching the strange cloudlike patterns the firelight sent chasing across the tight coils of the grip, as if he had somehow put the wide fenland skies into his work. Or was it only the firelight? He turned it this way and that, hunting the faintest glimmers like minnows in the pools, refusing to admit even the faintest cool chill of hope. He paid little heed to the new song of the wind, rising in a gusty urgent howl across the marsh, pressing the fire down like an unseen hand and setting the door rattling.

At last, when the best of the night was past, he thought reluctantly of his bed. But even as he rose and left his anvil, the door shook violently with a sound that was not the wind, a thunderous knocking and a gruff voice shouting.

"
Come out
! Come out, you smith of the saltmarsh, and shoe me my horse! Day is near, and I must be on my way!"

For an instant Elof stood shocked and indecisive, and all the eeriness he had seen and sensed in that place seemed to gather around him. But then he took hold of his courage. He had no choice. Why was he here at all, after all, if not to help somebody in trouble on such a night? But he snatched the sword up from the anvil before he strode to the door. He slid back the bar, opened it a little— and an instant later, in a sudden gust of terror, he all but slammed it shut.

On the road outside, its breath steaming in the wind, stood a horse of immense size, a very warhorse, and the stately rider in its saddle matched it well, for he seemed taller than mortal man could be. He was muffled up in a dark cloak, but at his back he bore a long, pointed black shield, and he was sliding a long spear back into its saddlerest; its butt had left its mark on the door. Then he swung himself down, and as he did so the cloak parted, metal rang softly, and the firelight glimmered on the black armor beneath.

But even as Elof s hand tensed on the door, a hot onrush of contemptuous anger drowned his fright. What good would skulking behind a door do? Let this be the warrior from the pit himself arisen, he wasn't going to show he was even remotely afraid. He hefted his new sword, and swung the door wide. And as the newcomer stepped forward, Elof saw that he wore a breastplate as brightly black as a moonlight lake, wholly unlike that strange dark ring mail. At his side swung a great broadsword in a scabbard of the same hue, and he threw back his hood to reveal a high black helm. The visor made shadowy pits of the eyes, but beneath it the pale-skinned face was imperious, a great eagle nose and a bushy gray-black beard revealing thin hard lips set in a strange ironic smile. Behind him the great horse whinnied impatiently and pounded the road, and slowly Elof lowered his sword. "Where to, at such an hour? And in such haste?"

Without lifting his visor, the tall man looked Elof up and down before he spoke, and his voice was deep and stern. "This last night I was in Nordeney, and before the day breaks I must be in the Southlands."

A distance, all in all, of some thirty or forty leagues, at the very least. Elof stared, and barely repressed a chuckle. "Well, I'd gladly believe that, if you had wings—"

The tall man's gaze did not falter, nor the twist of his lips, but it looked less like a smile. "If the wind may, so also this horse of mine." He lifted his head and gazed around the sky. "But even now the stars grow paler! So out with your shoe, smith, and be quick about it!"

Elof stiffened in anger, but the madman was right, he was wasting time. The sooner he was shot of him, the better. He shrugged contemptuously, hooked the sword into his belt and turned to the rack of horseshoes he had made, looked dubiously at the great brute outside, and set the largest to heat, working the bellows till it glowed. The tall man turned without another word, and backed the horse up before the smithy door.

Putting his shoulder to the great beast's rump, Elof seized its leg and bent it up against his knee. Its weight seemed immense, the play
of
the muscles hard and taut— a real warhorse, worthy to bear this armored giant of a man. But it submitted calmly as he checked that the old shoe had been cast cleanly, leaving no nails behind in the massive hoof, and that no dirt had fouled the site. Then he reached out for the pincers and seized the shoe out of the fire with the air rippling about it. But as he brought it to the hoof to try it, he saw with dismay that it was narrower by a third at least than the huge hoof must have. And he had no suitable metal to make more, short of melting down smaller ones. Sullenly he held it up to show the rider, who gazed down at it impassively.

"It's too small—" began Elof, but he stopped, choking with disbelief. The heated air rippling about the red-hot shoe distorted it like a deforming mirror, thicker and thinner by turns, until it almost seemed to be flexing— swelling—stretching itself out…

Unable to credit what he saw, Elof brought the shoe down against the hoof. A cloud of smoke hissed upward, though the huge horse did not stir. And when the smoke cleared, Elof found himself looking at a perfectly fitted shoe.

The wind howled through the open door, the forgefire juddered and shrank away, and Elof felt the hairs on his neck bristle. Without looking up, he snatched up the hammer and nails laid ready and, doing his best to ignore the icy shivers in his back and his guts, he quickly and expertly nailed the shoe firm.

Letting the leg fall, avoiding the stranger's eyes, he reached around for the rasp to make any trim needed, but a plate and mail gauntlet closed ice-cold upon his bared arm. He had to look up, and saw the stranger shake his head. The warhorse neighed and stamped like thunder, and the huge man sprang to the saddle, his sword ringing at his side.

"Fit for the steed of a god. And now good night to you—Master Elof!"

"I'm no master!" said Elof between his teeth, and then, because the smile grew positively malicious, and he felt he was being toyed with, he shouted above the rising wind, "What did you do, damn you?"

The tall man laughed, like high surf breaking on gravel-stone. "I? Nothing. All that was done, you did. But there's light in the east, and battle bids me haste—here's your fee, Mastersmith!"

The gauntleted hand swept out from behind the cloak, and a thick disk of silver was tossed to him. It rose and fell slowly, as if through water or oil—very slowly, but with a dizzying spin that held his gaze fixed. He reached out for it, leaped up, his fingers closed around it—and something black rushed between and snatched it. He tumbled in the mud with a jarring, derisive croak ringing in his ear. Two huge ravens stooped over him, squabbling over the coin one held in its beak, then they wheeled up and after the horse as it sprang away and went thundering down the road toward the Causeway. Elof, dizzy and lightheaded, sprang up and stormed after it, shouting he knew not what crazy insults into the teeth of the wind. But the great charger did not gallop out onto the Causeway, but sprang lightly down the slope beside it and out into the marsh. And Elof, mad as he was with the ravens mocking overhead, leaped after it. The strange steed sprang away, over land, over marsh, over sheets of open water, seeming to gallop effortlessly on, and Elof ran behind it. The great wind arose again behind him, and seemed to bear him along in great bounds, till he hardly knew whether his feet touched ground or ran in the empty air. Ahead of him now the ravens rode it and flew faster still, but they could not catch up with the rider. A great light shone around the black helm, and the dark gray cloak streamed out behind him, flapping and spreading in the wind of his passage until it seemed to fill the whole sky around him, and blot out all the light, until suddenly he was running in blackness, and came to a hesitant halt, swaying and panting. How long he had been running, or where to, he had no idea, though he felt only a little out of breath. Surely dawn couldn't be far off… He took a hesitant step forward, heard a slight splash, and swore as he felt chilling water running around his ankles. Then he looked up, and the blackness had turned to gray, but it was the gray of evening, not dawn. He stared wildly around him. It was the familiar fenland he saw, with wisps of mist drifting over the grasses, and small birds swooping low across them, calling the rain. But it was no part of it he had ever seen before. He was alone in the midst of the marsh and the mist, with the night falling and no idea where in all the wide leagues the smithy or the Causeway might be, and no way to get back.