The Anvil of Ice (25 page)

"My purpose is fighting the Ekwesh. That tore me from my home, and what shreds of prosperity and influence I yet enjoyed. I had hoped to lead this ship in time, to buy and recruit others and weld them into a real shielding force. But last night I saw finally that for all that butcher's work, all the lives lost, I had hardly scratched the surface of their armor! One ship—a thirtieth part of a tenth part of their present fleet, and that barely a tenth of what their force might be, if they are united under one banner! That above all I must fight. And I do firmly believe that you have been sent to me to do that. You, smith, you are my chance, and I must not fail it, or you. I ask again, will you go with me?"

"How old are you, Kermorvan?"

"Twenty-five years."

"You look older. I am only twenty, twenty-one at most, and hardly fit, it seems, to be running loose in this world. If you will tolerate me—why then, I'll go with you gladly."

Chapter Six
- On the Anvil

"A dark prospect, and a long journey on two feet," said Kermorvan, as he surveyed the evening landscape spread out before them. Below the hillcrest on which they stood the country fell away to great stretches of tangled woodland and empty plain, without sign of life or habitation; the wind howled across them unhindered. Only on the far horizon could the jagged peaks of mountains be made out, sullen and shadowed below an angry sunset. Never once, though, did he turn and look back to the hills through which they had come, and the bay that lay beyond.

He had insisted that they should slip away at once, before the corsairs awoke. "Or they may try to prevent us. They might even be foolish enough to try main force." He smiled. "Though I doubt if they could stand against you and I together."

"But… you don't think you're deserting them?"

"With so much loot? The rascals are richer now than they deserve to be, through me. And by returning these women they can buy off their outlawry and be quit, if they are wise. No, I owe them nothing—though I agree they might not see it in that fashion! So let us be gone!"

Thus they had hastily gathered gear and food together, and made their way out of the inlet and along the sandy shore of the bay to where its cliffs could more easily be climbed. Kermorvan, in addition to the single-handed sword he usually wore, bore a heavy pack that Elof guessed contained his war gear, but it seemed to slow him not at all as he bounded from rock to rock with an ease the smith's shorter limbs could not match. Through the rolling hills beyond, Kermorvan kept up a punishing pace, and stopped only as the sun fell toward the distant peaks.

"You see," he pointed out, "our search took us north of the marshes into the Debatable Lands—there they lie, that dark and hazy expanse! To the northeast there, already in the long mountain-shadow, is the southward way you and your friend took." Elof thought of Roc, as he often did, and wondered how he had fared among his own people. What would he make of this strange character, this
corsair with lordly manners? They had one thing in common
, beyond doubt, and that was a kinder heart than their outward selves suggested. "We, though, must seek a quicker way north," Kermorvan added. "Even if it is a whit more dangerous. So we will follow the High roads that run by the coast at first, and only later turn of? toward the mountains." His look grew remote, as if he strove to see further than the eye alone could reach. "I will be glad to see them again, those mountains," he sighed. "They are noble places on their lower slopes, with green woodland and many fair lakes, and the heights had great majesty. I often wished to go higher, but deemed it rash to brave the Ice all alone. And now you tell me you lived there many a long year!"

"In a high house, and no doubt well fortified in more ways than one. But I didn't know you knew the mountains, Kermorvan! You're no northerner, are you?"

"Not I!" he said, laughing. "But when I left my home in the Southlands a few years past I traveled north with some merchants, for a brief season. I journeyed south again down the coast ways, and know something therefore of their broils and pitfalls—though doubt it not, they will have increased. Then it was I saw clear proof what the Ekwesh were about, and grew less blinkered than most of my kin. The little towns raided, they wounded my heart— the rooftrees yet smoldering, the fields laid barren, the bones of their defenders left to the sky to mourn and the scavenging beasts to bury."

Elof nodded. "Perhaps you saw Asenby, where I grew up, left so some seven springtimes gone."

"I saw many such, and no one living to tell me their name. One looks much like another. Come! We have a long road ahead of us, the more we manage the lighter the morrow!"

"It's almost dark…"

"So it is. But would you sleep out on a barren hillside, when there is a fine firwood downhill, with branches to make a good shelter? I'll show you how. Come!"

And thus it was throughout most of the days that followed, with Kermorvan very much the leader of their little party. Elof did not resent this, for the Sothran knew the way well, and was moreover a practiced woodsman and accomplished trapper and hunter. Elof thought how much more comfortable such skills would have made him and Roc on their wanderings, and strove to learn from him. That first night a few lopped fir sprays became a welcome roof against the trunk of a great tree. "The art," Kermorvan remarked as he wrapped himself in his great cloak of dark green, "is to make the roof steep enough to spill off rain, but not so high that the warmth of your body goes to heat a great pool of air overhead." He pillowed his head on his bundle, and muttered a curse as it clanked. "Not as snug as your smithy, perhaps, but it will serve."

My smithy
! Suddenly a great longing for it flooded over Elof, an overwhelming homesickness. For squalid as it was, it was the only home he had made himself, and he missed the security and peace he had found there, even the monotony that went with it. His precious tools still hung there, if they had not been stolen. Why had it all been wrested away from him? Why should he not simply make his way back there, do what he could, serve in his way? These duergar creatures—how human could they be, dwelling beneath the mountains? What did they live on? They had looked human enough, in their way—but strong and dangerous also, having little in common with ordinary human beings. Even the Mastersmith had feared them, till he had the sword. Seeking them out—a mad idea, forced on him like all the rest… He tossed and turned in a fit of resentment, hearing the pine needles whisper vague secrets beneath him. Why? And by whom? What power, what arrogance? He ground his teeth at the memory of that mocking smile, and glared at Kermorvan. In the morning that one would tell what he knew of Raven, if it had to be wrung out of him; Elof had to content himself with that.

He did drowse at last, lulled by the rush of the wind in the pines overhead and their heavy fragrance, undisturbed by the owls that came to perch on them and the scurrying of small things among the pine needles. He woke only once, with a full moon in his face, and peeped out between the branches to see wide white wings flash across its disc, once, and vanish. He sank back into sleep, and dreamed of Kara.

Next day, as they marched down out of the woods and out onto heathlands, he found Kermorvan still strangely unwilling to talk outright about the dark visitor. "Somebody once told
you
!"

"I was not under his eye, then!"

"And I am? Then so are you, as long as we're together. I'd better know something of him for my own protection, hadn't I?"

"Protection?" Kermorvan sounded puzzled. "Raven is not evil. Or, I should say, he who is called the Raven, for it is only a given name; I have heard many others-Wanderer, Hooded Man, Father of Storm, Lord of the Battlefield. I know not which, if any, is truly his own. Such a power is not so easily confined within a single name."

"A power? A lord of the Ice?"

"Did I not say there were others? Powers that defend life as the Ice seeks to destroy it? Though which of the two is stronger, or whether they are equal, or whether both serve a greater power yet, no one can agree. But such powers there are, and my people have long revered them— too long, perhaps, for they have faded into half-truth and legend, figures on walls and banners, half-remembered songs, no more. Saithana, if truly she exists, may be one. But Raven certainly is! For know, smith, that you shod the steed of a great power that night. If you like, a god!"

"He said as much!" Elof gasped. "But then… if this is as you say, and it makes my head whirl worse than the wine, he did indeed bring me to meet you… for what purpose?"

Kermorvan shrugged. "Who can say? But purpose there was, and we are working it out with every stride we take. Do you see now why I have not cared to think too heavily about this? Every choice I make, every decision, affects our cause in many subtle ways. And not necessarily for the best! The Raven is not evil, but he does not take sides, they say. He is the defender of life, in all its forms, and human life most of all. He is, or was once, a great sign among us, but I have also heard that he is yet respected, at least, by many of the Ekwesh." He walked on a long way, letting Elof digest that. "And even if he does favor our cause, he may not give the help we would wish. For his is an enemy to sluggish stagnation, it is said, and favors change and growth even at the cost of strife. He will not allow men to become dependent on him, save perhaps to balance the enmity of the Ice. So he will stir their affairs about in strange and willful ways, in the guise of a trickster— as you have found!"

At length Elof said, "Now I come to understand much, and a wider world opens before me. But it is a confused one, and even more dangerous than I had thought it—not merely full of ordinary and unconnected dangers, but a very battleground of forces! Small wonder the Mastersmith denied me such knowledge, he who serves the Ice, seeking to turn me down its paths for his own purposes. But I remember nothing of such lore even from my far childhood in Asenby."

"Aye, such things came to be little thought of there, as the high wisdom of old slipped away and the people's concerns turned more to the harvests of soil and sea. Perhaps this secretive smithcraft of yours helped that dwindling, hoarding knowledge as its wealth, away from the common run of folk. That was one reason I never considered it more than a mere superstition, when first I met it. Now…" He gestured helplessly. "A wider world has opened to me also, and every bit as confusing. I held the view of most educated men—among my people, that is—believing the powers were something remote and impersonal, guiding our affairs from afar. I held tales of their appearance in human form parables at best, and at worst lies to the credulous. How after all could some such airy being don a human frame, like a cloak?"

"He seemed solid enough to me, that Raven!" said Elof sourly. "And that damned great beast he rode! Or was everything illusion?"

"Perhaps not," mused Kermorvan. "I always found tales of the powers riding from place to place, or indulging in less dignified behavior, absurd or blasphemous. But I remember reading one philosopher who purported to explain them by holding that the powers assumed human form the better to understand us and influence us—sharing the ordinary joys and pains, strengths and hindrances of our bodies, and cloaking much of their awe and might. Another held that they could only affect this material world directly by taking some solid form in it, and that that form was more or less fixed, reflecting their absolute natures. You may guess I thought this feeble stuff then. But now…" He shrugged eloquently. "I am baffled. And that is not something I will ever readily admit."

"But the horse rode faster than any normal horse might," said Elof thoughtfully. "Or so it seemed…"

And so they made their way up through the wild country, talking and disputing, marveling at each other's wholly different brand of learning. At day's end they often found it had lightened their road, speeding them further on than they expected. In that first day they neared the margins of the Debatable Lands, and at the next day's dawning the High roads of the coast were already in sight.

"I have a little money," said Kermorvan thoughtfully. "Enough, maybe, for a couple of horses, when we come to somewhere that will sell them."

"Might it not be better kept for food?" asked Elof.

"No, I think not. Speed will help us, at least for a time. If pressed, we can always sell the horses again. Or eat them," he added thoughtfully. Elof grimaced.

But it was long before they found anywhere to buy food or horses, for the first small town they came to along the roads lay in ruins, and the next also, and the next. They might perhaps have found some stored food the fire had missed, but neither man could bring himself to search. It had all happened some months since, but the stench of fire and decay hung over them yet, and unburied skulls still grinned among the fireweed in the blackened fields. These towns had lain between the roads and the sea; the next, Randeby, was inland, and built around a high bluff, and it stood, after a fashion, having driven off a heavy attack with loss. But there the fugitives from the other towns had come, eating up the already scant supplies. Famine and pestilence hung over its walls, and gaunt-cheeked men and women encamped at its gates swooped down on the travelers with savage shouts the moment they were seen. Kermorvan had to fell three to drive them off, and for all the rest of that day he was silent. "Human wolves!" he said at last. "Poor creatures! For the last small coin in our purses, or crust in our satchels."