The Forge in the Forest (4 page)

Chapter Two
- The Casting

The wind came howling across the Marshlands with a million savage voices, driving dark clouds in a swathe before it, scything down the brown reeds of autumn in its path. Again he cowered fever-ridden behind the rattling door of his forge, hearing on the blast the echoes of ancient battles upon the fens, the distant, hungry cries of the myriad dead who lay beneath them, arisen now and hunting, hunting along the gale. Gusts hammered on the wood like huge hands, huge as the blackened and crumbling fist from which he had snatched that sword…

He awoke abruptly, and lay shivering a moment before he became aware of the soft bed beneath him, the worn richness of the counterpane under his clutching fingers. The chill was all within his dream; the Marshlands lay far behind him. But he knew he had not been wholly dreaming; he listened a moment, with a leaden swell of apprehension. The bedhangings were dark silhouettes against a faint graying of the darkness; not even a tassel stirred, yet the howling was still in his ears. The threadbare rug slipped underfoot as he swung himself out of bed, the cool air stung his skin and the smooth slabs his feet as he padded over to the outward window. But this was narrow, and the grille stopped him leaning out far enough to see. The house, like most of any size or age in the Old City, faced inward around its own quadrangle and presented as blank an aspect as possible to the outward world. He turned and sprinted past the door curtain, out into the open gallery and up the stairs that led to the roof. By the time he came out among the dilapidated tiling his head was swimming, his heart laboring, a familiar ache burning deep in his chest; the night's labors had spent his strength. He had to steady himself a moment on the crumbling stone parapet before leaning out to look.

The city below lay in deep shadow, but bright flecks of firelight flickered here and there—surely too brightly for this ashen half-light at night's end. And though the air hung still as a dusty tapestry, the stormy voices were clearer than ever now, closer, louder, a hungry, savage baying that made him shudder where he stood.

The touch of something soft and animal on his bare back made him jump. "Small wonder you're shivering," growled Ils' voice. The duergar girl reached up to drape a robe round his shoulders. "On your feet no more than a month, and you're gallivanting around in your skin!"

"I'm all right!" he protested, with a resentful shrug. "This would be a warm day, where I was born!" But he slid his arms into the garment nonetheless, grateful for the warmth of the fur lining. The winter, they said, had been the fiercest in the city's memory, and this spring was hardly warm yet.

"Good!" she said firmly. "After all, you cannot heal from fevers in just a moment!" Elof smiled thinly, glad she was ready to make a joke of the matter. That sudden closing of a mortal wound had opened a wider gulf, that moment of strange recovery had briefly stood like a barrier between him and his friends who witnessed it, like a bare blade tossed on the table between hands poised yet hesitant. Ils, for all her care of him, had grown warier than any. Only the racking sickness that had come swiftly upon him, a symptom of humanity as it seemed, and some price paid for so terrible a wound, had dispelled their doubts. They had remembered what manner of blade struck the blow, and blamed all strangeness upon that. He did not gainsay them; but as his mind cooled he knew it was not so. Yet even now his thoughts blurred as he probed them; he understood it no better himself, no better…

"The row woke me, too," she muttered, calling him back to himself. "What devilry are the humans up to now? It comes this way, by the sound."

"I don't know. I fear… Listen!" They heard it clearly, the sound of footsteps, pounding steps stumbling on the dawn-slick cobbles, running as a man does at the end of his strength or a quarry a length ahead of the pack. Around the corner of the street below staggered a young man, a boy almost, long-limbed and very thin. He ran with the reeling stride of desperate exhaustion, his copper-skinned face suffused with blood, his breath rasping in his throat. He dived into a gap between the houses, stopped short with a despairing flutter as he saw the stone wall of the citadel blocking the alley's end, and turned to flee. Then he sprang back in fright as a wave of yelling men with torches poured in upon him, blocking his escape. In an instant he was overwhelmed, kicked and beaten to the ground. The horrified watchers saw a rope slung over the grille of a window in the wall below. Struggling and screaming, the helpless youth was being dragged over to it.

Ils cursed, turned to the stairs, but stopped. The street was four circuitous floors below; by the time they got there, even with weapons, the victim would be past help. Elof looked around desperately. Many of the heavy roof-tiles of glazed earthenware were missing, others looked loose; he seized one, and it came away in his hand. Wolfish baying laughter arose; one of the mob was about to drop the noose round the boy's neck, others to throw their weight on the rope. Elof poised the tile, and threw.

The sureness of his aim startled even him. With a loud smacking sound the tile took the noose-man on the side of the head and stretched him flat on the ground. "
Good
!" yelled Ils; an instant later her tile clipped the arm of the first man on the rope, and he fell down screaming among its coils. The other rioters looked up with angry shouts,

but dropped back in alarm, guarding their heads from a lethally accurate shower of tiles.

Then from the street sounded fast hoofbeats, horn-calls, shouts, and suddenly a tall man on a great white warhorse plunged in among the rioters, calling orders in a clarion voice. A sword was at his side, but he laid about him with a huge drover's whip, his bronzen hair flying, and screams arose from the crowd as it milled this way and that to escape hoof and lash. Behind him streamed men in the armor of the City Guard, and they fell upon the rioters, striking about with their pikeshafts.

Before the pikes the mob's killing mood changed at once to panic. They dropped their victim, boiled about and scattered, tripping over him in their hurry to escape, and horseman and guards wheeled off to break and disperse them. Elof breathed his relief, only to see a straggler suddenly turn back, stoop over the sprawling youth and with brutal precision thrust a long knife through his stomach. Elof s last throw caught the slayer only a glancing blow to the thigh, and with a savage gesture he hobbled off. Before Elof could react the horseman came cantering back through the melee, but the youth's writhings had stilled. At the rider's word a pair of guards ran up. One bent over the bodies of hangman and victim, looked up to the rider and shook his head.

By the time they had made their way downstairs Kermorvan was already in the courtyard, leading his horse to the stable and calling loudly for breakfast.

"I don't have such an appetite," said Elof grimly, as he followed the warrior into the cool gloom of the Lesser Hall, where a wizened old servant was setting out a few plain dishes. "Not now." Ils, who had herself cut down men without the least qualm, nodded agreement.

"You should keep your strength up," said Kermorvan dryly, tearing at the loaf of hot cornbread before him. "After tossing half my ancestral roof into the street, you must be exhausted." He washed the bread down with a swallow of strong cider and smiled, more sympathetically. "I know, it was the only thing to be done. But jesting apart, spare the roof if you can; those tiles are old, and costly to replace. As for the boy—you did right to fell those roughs, but console yourself; it was a kind of justice nonetheless. It was that lad and two others who set on and robbed a shopkeeper, earlier this morning. An old man, who may well die."

Almost overhead, on the high seaward towers of the citadel, ringing trumpets mirrored the sunrise in their tone, signaling the beginning of the city's day. Elof rubbed his stubbled chin. "So? When it could only stir up more trouble between city and northerners, another riot? You are sure?"

"We took one of his complices, and he confessed. They were starving, he said, and I believe him, skin and bones that he is. But they also thought to avenge that northerner who was robbed on the outskirts last week. Avenge! Twelve more that I know of have died in the uproar this morning, ten of them northerners. By now it may be more. Do you wonder I insist these things are stamped out the moment they begin, and thoroughly? There is no end to them, they breed."

"Aye, but have a care!" said Ils darkly. "You're brewing trouble for yourself, making yourself unpopular with the rabble. Ask Roc, ask Ferhas; they hear the gossip, and it's that you're too soft on the northerners. They were herding that one here to string him up on your window. A little love gift, since you like them so much. And you're still only Marchwarden-elect, you've not the full powers yet."

"Till noon today only. And have I not been given every encouragement to use the rightful powers of office to the hilt and past this last half-year?"

"That's not what Bryhon and his bullies will be shouting," said Elof.

Kermorvan shrugged. "If others will not act speedily enough, I must, Bryhon or no Bryhon. There have been riots enough with or without provocation, Elof; the first came in midwinter, while you yet lay ill. Then we thought it was a passing folly, a brief outburst at the inflow of northern fugitives when we were ourselves in need." Kermorvan shrugged. "Now we know better. Every day it grows worse, and every day more come, as the Ekwesh rampage through Nordeney. The common folk fear; they cannot believe our land will feed them all. I begin to wonder, myself. And so fear breeds hatred in both sides, and hatred leads to crime, crime to riot—"

"And to madness, all!" snorted Ils, tossing her thick black curls. "You men are all daft, to wish such miseries upon your fellows, and to suffer them so lightly. Look at us! Did we not come, we three, through danger upon danger to succor your folk? And what thanks do we find? Oh, you, Kermorvan, you they laud and applaud—or most of them, anyhow—you they make Marchwarden, and well they might. But us? Even your own precious faction point the finger at Elof as some kind of northern warlock, benign enough maybe but not to be trusted. And me they call his familiar! I can hardly walk abroad by myself. And that's your friends! What your enemies say—that moonstruck Bryhon and his rabble…"

"But that's mere malice!" protested Elof. "It's so obvious Bryhon seeks only to settle an old score. Surely few save his own close faction believe—"

"More than you think!" said Ils sharply. Her dark eyes flashed. "They don't want to believe they were so short a step from defeat. Nor that they had to be rescued by foreigners. And there's more like them every day. Well, I have had enough. I go, and soon! Back to the hollow hills I, and this city may slide into the sea for all I care!" The men sprang up, protesting, but Ils sat back, face set and stubborn. "Waste no more words! I endured this long only to see Elof made well, and the success of my healing." Her round fingers knitted together a moment. "He needs me no longer. My mind is made up."

Kermorvan sighed. "And you, Elof? What will you do, now you are well? I hope you at least do not wish to depart. My house is yours for as long you wish it, and the city folk do respect you; with your fair skin they forget you are a northerner—"

"Will I?"

Kermorvan flushed in embarrassment. "Do not take it so! I meant only that you may help overcome their foolish distrust of northerners. Remember, the first copper skins most have seen were on Ekwesh, and your folk look much like the reivers—too much, in eyes that saw the horrors of the siege. But if you and I can open those eyes to the old kinship, there is a chance…"

Elof shook his head. "I'm. sorry. Oh, it's true enough what you say, but no. My prime purpose, my heaviest duty, ended when that evil I unleashed was undone. Another promise claims me now. There's another place I must go-"

Kermorvan frowned. "What place?"

"I don't know." Elof looked out into the courtyard, to where the first long rays of the sunrise warmed the courtyard's cold paving. "I know only whither it lies. That way, in the path of the dawn, whither I must go. To wander. To roam across the whole wide world, if I must. I do not wish to tarry long. I dare not."

Kermorvan nodded. "I understand. But you will stay at least for today? And you, Ils? At least come to the ceremony, both of you, ere you settle your minds to any of this. There you may hear something to make you think…"

"I doubt that!" muttered Ils.

"She'll come!" grinned Elof. "She wouldn't miss it for the world, any more than I. Will it be you saying all these things?"

Kermorvan stood up, rubbing at his stiff back. "I appreciate the honor of my position less during early alarms… Yes, some of them, at least." He sucked in a long determined breath, and his face hardened. "I mean to make myself heard. The syndics have been dragging their heels over this matter of the northern refugees. We must settle it, secure their safety, and quickly. At whatever cost." Then his grimness faded to a smile. "Linger over your food as you wish, but I must be at the Syndicacy well in advance! Ferhas, my robes! Come, I beg you, both of you! For if this day goes as I think it may, I shall have need of my friends." He strode away from the table and up the wide main stairs, scabbard slapping at his riding boot as if to punctuate his shouts for his squire. Elof gazed around the gloomy hall, following the peeled and faded murals, the portraits darkened by centuries of smoke from the hanging lamps.

"He values us, you know," he said. "Admirers he has now, aye, and flatterers in plenty. No family at all…"