A Sword From Red Ice (54 page)

Drybone followed his gaze. "No. It is the
Field of Graves and Swords. I have walked there. Most swords no
longer stand. Those that do are rusted and no longer have their
points." A myth made true. As a boy Vaylo had heard of the Field
of Graves and Swords, a graveyard where warriors were buried with
their swords sticking up through the soil. He had thought it a fine
thing, for the field was said to form the first line of defense for a
legendary fortress—even in death the warriors guarded the
fastness. It was strange to learn that this small hillfort was the
site of such a legend.

"What happened to the nine missing men?"
Vaylo asked, no longer sure if he even changed the subject.

Cluff Drybannock touched the container made of
bone at his waist. "I sent them on a sortie northeast. They
never returned."

"What was their purpose?"

"To gather intelligence on the Maimed Men,
and hunt freely if they so chose."

"You rode out to find them?"

Silence, and then as if by prearrangement both men
moved out from the window and turned to look at each other full-on.
Dry's brick-colored face was grave. "I headed a search party.
Their tracks were not hard to follow and we found . . ." He
struggled for a word, "their remains within the day."

Vaylo touched his container of powdered
guidestone. "Who died?"

Cluff Drybannock listed their names in perfect
formal ranking beginning with the longest-serving sworn clansman,
Derek Blunt, and ending with the yearman, Will Pool, brother to
Midge, who had taken his first oath seven months back. Vaylo knew
them all. "Gods keep them."

Knowing he had no choice but to press on, he said,
"Their horses?"

"Also gone."

"Dead or taken?"

Dry's nostrils flared. "Both. This warrior
does not know a word to describe what was left of the men and their
horses. Their shadows were left behind, burned into the grass."

Oh gods. "How long ago did this happen?"

"Sunset will mark the eleventh day."

Vaylo had to walk, and began to circle the vaulted
room. His brain twitched as shocks ran through it. Bluddsmen dead.
Derek Blunt had been forty-three, an experienced headman and an
expert mounted swordsman. How could a heavily armed party come upon
him without warning? "Was there sign of the enemy?"

"Big Borro found something close by, a
sword-shaped hole cut into the turf. We dug and tried to find what
had caused it. Six feet down we hit rock, but the sword-shaped object
had burned through it and could not be reached."

Halting by the pile of roof debris, Vaylo turned
over a rotten timber with the toe of his boot. Wood lice scuttled
away from the light. "What's happening, Dry? What is the threat
we are facing?"

Cluff Drybannock stood to attention, shoulders
straight and chin high. "I fear the worst, my lord and father.
In the days before I came to Bludd I heard things. The Trenchlands
are full of whispers. Some say the trees start them. I was a boy and
much ignored. Men and women would talk freely in the tavern where I
served them. They did not believe a boy of seven had ears. Most were
Sull or part Sull, and sometimes when the hour grew late their talk
would turn to the threat growing in the darkness. They spoke of Ben
Horo, the Time Before, and Maer Horn, the Age of Darkness. War had
visited them in the past and would again. Most agreed the auguries
were bad. Xalla a'mar, night is rising, they would say. Lisha mat
i'scaras. We must grease our swords.

"The words pulled the iron in my blood like a
magnet. Why, I cannot say. A thousand years have passed since the
shadows last rose, and the Sull believe they are due to rise again. I
fear those shadows, my father. I fear our clansmen died by hands that
were formed from maer dan, shadowflesh. I fear we stand at the
closing of an Age and if we are not vigilant and fail to fight, the
Age will see an end to the Stone Gods and to clan."

Vaylo breathed steadily and showed no reaction to
his fostered son's words. Many things struck him at once, yet in the
silence that followed it was sadness that took hold and grew. It had
been unsettling to hear Dry speak those Sull words with such casual
precision. Twenty-five years in clan yet it seemed the language of
his birth was undiminished. Unsettling also to hear him speak for the
first time about those years before he came to Bludd. Vaylo had known
nothing about Dry's boyhood in the Trenchlands, save that when he
arrived at the Bluddhouse he was badly beaten and close to starving.
Yet even unsettled Vaylo had been stirred with pride. Cluff
Drybannock was a man worthy of respect. My eighth son. And much
though Vaylo wanted him to be clan, he was not. A divide stood
between them and if Vaylo looked forward he saw a parting in the
distance, a dark line on the horizon. Like the Rift. Not realizing he
was massaging the pain beneath his heart, Vaylo said, "Tell me
what killed my men, Dry. If we encounter them again we must
understand what we fight."

Shadows in the tower vault lengthened and grew
richer as Dry spoke. Light shining between the slats of the
boarded-up west window threw horizontal stripes across the walls as
the wind died to a murmur.

"It is told that what the universe creates it
will destroy. Gods are birthed with stars to give us light, and Xhan
Nul, the Endlords, are birthed into the void of space to bring
destruction. These powers are locked in a war that is finite. For
many Ages, the gods and the light have prevailed. Earth has thrived.
The sun shines and makes life. Civilizations grow and people have
inhabited all lands that can sustain them. The Sull are taught this
cannot last. From the moment of its creation the world was doomed. It
exists and therefore must end. The destiny of the Endlords is to
bring about that destruction.

"The destiny of the Sull is to stand against
them. Many Ages ago, after the War of Blood and Shadow, the Sull
sealed the Endlords and the creatures they had taken in a prison
named the Blind. How they did this, I do not know. The walls of the
prison are said to exist in a place beyond the physical realm. We
cannot see or touch them. Once in a thousand years one is born, Jal
Rakhar, the Reach, who can approach these walls and break them. I
have heard whispers from the forests east of Bludd. The Reach exists
and she has caused a crack in the wall between worlds. And the Sull
make ready for battle as the first of the Endlords' creatures force
their way out."

It took a moment for Vaylo to realize Cluff
Drybannock had stopped speaking, for his words lived on in the quiet
of dusk that followed. How long had they been in this tower? To Vaylo
it felt like days.

I am an old man, he told himself. A chief in
search of a clan. This battle is not mine.

It took an effort to speak. "These are the
creatures you believe slew Derek Blunt and his men?" After the
words spun with cool beauty by his fostered son, Vaylo's voice
sounded harsh and world-weary to his ears. "What are we dealing
with here?"

Cluff Drybannock did not appear to notice. All the
while he had been speaking he had not moved from his place by the
north window. He did not move now as he replied. "The Endlords
are voids that can spin matter around themselves and take on living
form. They walk the earth to claim men and other living beasts for
their armies. One touch of an Endlord and you are taken. Unmade. Men
become other, their flesh sucked dry of life and replaced with an
absence of light. The Endlords arm them with Kil Ji, voided steel,
which is said to be forged from the strange metals of time itself. If
you are killed by voided steel you are also taken."

Vaylo was beginning to understand things now. "The
sword-shaped pit in the earth?"

Dry dropped his gaze from his chief. "This
warrior believes it was made by Kil Ji."

Drawing a hand over the stubble on his chin, Vaylo
looked through the hole in the roof at the sky. It was the color of
deep mountain lakes. Underwater, that was how he felt, plunged from a
world that allowed him to stand upright and see ahead, into one that
was murky and had no place to rest his feet. Nine men lost, and if
Cluff Drybannock's fears were true they weren't even dead. Did that
mean they would never rest in the Stone Halls of the gods?

"Yet they died fighting," Vaylo said
quietly, barely aware he was speaking out loud.

You could not be a clansman and fail to comprehend
the full horror of those words. Dry nodded softly. "The Stone
Gods have long memories. If the men are ever freed from the thrall
of the Endlords the manner of their deaths will not go unrewarded."

The Dog Lord found he had to think about this
statement for a moment. Light was leaving the tower quickly now,
making way for the chill of night. "How can my men be freed?"

Straightaway he could see this was a question that
Cluff Drybannock had hoped not to answer—perhaps not even to
himself. He turned to look out the window and fill his lungs with
fresh air. "Once a man or woman is unmade they join the ranks of
the Endlords. They too will wield Kil Ji and unlike those who are
imprisoned, they have no need to force their way out. They are here,
amongst us, and they walk by night. To reclaim them for the Stone
Gods we must slay them through the heart."

"Mother of Gods." Vaylo murmured.

They both fell silent after that Vaylo could see
Dry's profile, see him blinking as he worked the air in and out of
his chest. After a while Vaylo asked him, "How do you know so
much? A boy eavesdropping in a tavern would not have learned all
this."

Dry turned so he could look directly at his chief.
"The ranger Angus Lok told me much of this last winter, when we
held him in the pit cell below Dhoone."

Of course. Vaylo should have guessed. He knew the
ranger well. When they'd met all those months ago in the Tomb of the
Dhoone Princes, Angus Lok had tried to tell him some of the very same
things. He had certainly warned him. "Return to Bludd and
marshal your forces and wait for the Long Night to come. Forget about
Dhoone and this roundhouse and your fancy of naming yourself Lord of
the Clans. Days darker than night lie ahead." Vaylo had barely
marked the words at the time, so intent was he on holding onto the
Dhoonehouse. Yet Angus Lok had found someone else nearby who was
willing to listen, someone whose blood pulled him toward the Sull and
their causes, someone who was hungry to know.

Vaylo searched for how he felt. Almost you could
not blame the ranger—bring a snake into your house and you will
end up bitten—but he was less certain about Dry's role. Should
he have listened so eagerly? How could you stop a man from wanting to
know the history of his people? You could not, and to do so would
deprive him of his freedom. That was that, then. There was no
disloyalty on Dry's part, only listening. Yet it still hurt.

Dry stood waiting and Vaylo knew him well enough
to know that he was anxious about his chief's reaction. Vaylo made an
effort. "Angus Lok's information is usually sound, though he is
particular in how and where he metes it out." It was the best he
could do for now, and Dry sensed it.

Dry could have pointed out that Angus Lok only
told him what he would have eventually discovered for himself, yet he
did not. Instead, he said, "A half-moon is rising."

It was a truce. Cluff Drybannock was part Sull and
he could not deny it—did not want to deny it—and Vaylo
knew he had little choice but to accept it. Neither man wanted to
dwell on what it meant for the future: Sull goals and clan goals
would not remain the same. For now they were both united in defending
the hillfort: leave it at that. "Let us walk in the moonlight
back to the fort," Vaylo said. Cluff Drybannock crossed the
chamber and took his chief's arm, and they were both comforted by the
touch for a while.

The Weasel's Den

The march was grueling on both men and horses and
Marafice was glad they had thought to bring the carts that the
grangelords, in their haste to return to Spire Vanis and enter the
contest for surlord that was surely taking place there, had left
behind in the camp. The grangelords had left behind a lot of things
without value—servants included—and it all added to the
general motley of Marafice Eye's crew.

The carts now, they were a good thing. Saved the
badly wounded having to be thrown over the backs of horses, or even
worse—God forbid—being dragged behind them on sleds. The
first thing he'd done after the rout was to set those fancy
grangelord servants hitching the carts. It all had to be executed in
haste of course for it had not been clear then whether or not the
Bludd army would mount a full pursuit. Luckily they had not,
preferring instead to chop down most of the remaining Hailsmen, chase
the city men off the Crabhold and occupy and secure the gate. It was
a miscalculation, Marafice reckoned. For any war chief with
experience could have taken one look at the tired and bloody city men
army and known it for easy pickings. The Bludd warrior in command was
lazy, Marafice concluded. He had the swaggering looks of his father,
the Dog Lord, but he was not half the man. Marafice shuddered as he
forced his great black warhorse down into the rocky stream. That
moment after the horn sounded and the front line of the strange new
army broke free from the woods behind the roundhouse, the Knife had
known fear so concentrated it had stopped his heart. Clan Bludd. He
had recognized their colors and their trappings straightaway and he
knew instantly that he must call a retreat. He had met the Dog Lord
man-to-man, looked into his eyes, and heard the timbre of his voice.
Marafice Eye, with twenty years spent in the Rive Watch protecting
three successive surlords, had never met anyone who had impressed him
like Vaylo Bludd.