The Forge in the Forest (9 page)

"That's just what I need!" laughed Elof. "Encouragement! It's all very well for you, you're not going—"

Roc put down his ladle with a clatter. "And who in Hella's name'11 stop me?"

Elof stared at him. "Are you serious? You are serious! Roc, you're daft! Here you're well settled, you've the best smithy in all this town and Kathel for a patron. In a year or two you'll be rich."

"Aye, and when I told you as much, it didn't stop you, did it?"

"Well… But I've a purpose, Roc…"

"And haven't I?" growled Roc. "I'll be rich, says you? Aye, just in time for the Ekwesh."

"Yes… But Roc, this journey must take more than a year at its swiftest. What about Marja? Doesn't she have some say?"

Roc shrugged. "I never promised her anything, she's no claim on me. She'll have the smithy, of course, with old Hjoran; they'll manage fine till I get back. She waits. Or she doesn't."

"Roc, you well know there's a chance you never will get back! I don't want to drag you away…"

"Understood," grunted Roc, "but it's my decision, nobody else's. If you're too daft to stay, someone's got to keep an eye on you. And I fancy a share of the sport this time, see? You won't shake me like you did before!" And indeed when, some three weeks later, the time came to depart, Elof was no nearer managing it.

It was a motley group of callers that came knocking on the gates of Kermorvan's house that evening as the sun slid down behind the clouds of early spring. First to arrive were two tall men clad in rough green and russet, marked as northerners by their copper skin. Gise and Eysdan were their names, and they hailed from villages far inland, on the margins of the dense northern woodlands; they themselves were foresters, men accustomed to rove freely under the shadow of trees, wise in their lore as few sothrans were. They both bore broad falchions, Gise a short bow of strong Wisant horn and Eysdan an immense long-hafted axe. They were quiet men, exchanging only curt greeting with the noisy corsairs who came straggling in soon after. Though they had obviously been celebrating their departure, it encouraged Elof to see them no worse than merry. Besides Ermahal and Maille, Kermorvan had judged only three others sound or trustworthy enough to make the journey; they were all sothrans, men of the sea but with some experience of wandering on land. Dervhas, Ermahal's helmsman, and Perrec had been deserters from Bryhaine's small war fleet, and Stehan a hand on a trade ship; Borhi, the youngest, had been a fisherman till exiled for killing a man in a drunken brawl. After them came the hunter Kasse, slipping shadowlike into the courtyard, and then three more northerners, Tenvar, Bure and Holvar. Lighter skinned than the foresters, they were burghers' sons of Saldenborg who had fought in that rich port's brief but heroic defense, and made their way south through many hardships, passing scatheless through the Forest's arm. They too were merry, but what worked on them like wine was new hope, a fresh light in eyes that had long worn the dull gaze of the fugitive. Their new garb and weapons put swagger in their step and flourish in their salutes to Kermorvan, seated at his ease beneath the yellow-crowned locust tree in the center of the yard. Last to arrive were Roc and an older Sothran of somewhat the same aspect, Arvhes; chosen at Kathel's suggestion, he had been a trader of his caravan when Roc and Elof met it, and spoke the northern tongue well.

When all this company was assembled, Ferhas brought wine. Kermorvan pledged each of the company in turn, and they drank his health. It was no time for greater ceremony; thoughts of the paths they must tread weighed upon them all, and the only words exchanged now were quiet inquiries about gear and provisions. "We must do our best to slip away unnoticed," Kermorvan had decided. "For one thing, Bryhon's rabble might gather to bid us a warm farewell; for another, if there are any spies about, better they cannot say what time we left, or by what roads."

A file of ponies was led out of the old stables, and they busied themselves loading their baggage. Their vestigial side-hooves marked the beasts as of the Northland stock, short of leg and coarse of coat against long-limbed Sothran breeds, but Elof and the other northerners rejoiced to see them. The sothrans were not so sure. "Sight too free with the flamin' teeth for me!" grumbled Ermahal, skipping awkwardly out of one irritated beast's way.

"Don't haul so on the girths, man!" laughed Bure. "It's no longboat you're loading there!"

"Would it were, that I'd 'ave somewhere to kick you off! Give me a solid beast of Bryhaine any day, these jades are 'alf rat and about as well broken."

"But they will bear even you," grinned Elof, "over ways where your solid Bryhaine beasts would stumble every second step, and leagues long enough to burst their hearts. Not even Kermorvan's great white warhorse can match them in endurance."

"True," acknowledged Kermorvan. "I would never think to lead her on this rough a journey."

"It's said there are wild horses east of the mountains," said Tenvar mischievously, "giant ones. Maybe they're tamable. They sound better suited to bear a man of your, hmm, presence, Sothran."

"
Presence
?" growled Ermahal, purpling and rounding on the young northerner. Tenvar stood his ground, smoothing his small moustache nonchalantly, and his fellows moved to join him. Kermorvan's genial voice cut into the silence.

"And of mine! My long shanks lose grace on these little beasts; I am close to walking. But we will miss them soon enough, I reckon. Once within the pathless Forest no horse can help us, and we must be our own beasts of burden then." It was a sobering thought, and turned each man to securing his baggage once more.

But Elof had some skill in reading Kermorvan's impassive face, and whispered, "That was a cut well parried!"

"Aye, but spare me any more such! Those Saldenborg lads are fools to jest so, though they meant no harm. Ermahal would hardly be a corsair captain if he were a safe man to mock. Elof, you are a northerner of much their age, and they are used to heeding smiths; do you take them in hand!"

"I'll have them as rearguard, then, with Roc, away from the corsairs."

"Do you so. As well to have sharp eyes and live minds there, in any event, on the dark paths we must tread." Kermorvan gazed about the gloomy courtyard. "Now the sun is all but down, the city's voices grow quiet. The time of our going is here. Home of my fathers, night and silence claims you once more. Shall I ever rest at ease in you again? Yet it must be, it must be… Elof my friend, it may be that all our trials and troubles so far have been no more than a prelude to this."

"I was thinking the same," acknowledged Elof. "But of my own quest in particular."

Kermorvan nodded. "May that prosper, whatever else betide. Well, all farewells are said save mine; I must not linger." Then Ferhas and Kermorvan's few other servants came and knelt before him, a thing done rarely in north or south, even before great lords. Yet there was no servility in the gesture, but more of love, for clearly they wept. And when Kermorvan handed over a great ring of keys to Ferhas, they shook and rattled in the old man's hand. Elof saw then something of Kermorvan's shaping, for it was these old servants who had brought him up, as the deaths of his parents and his family left him increasingly alone. He was a lord shaped by vassals, a king molded in the image his followers sought to believe in, all the more so in an age and a place where kingship was no longer welcome. Such an upbringing might have turned out many ways, but in him, to Elof's mind, it had tempered pride and strength with compassion and restraint, and the urgent need to command with reason and respect for those commanded.

"Aye, agreed," said Roc. "Couldn't have been easy, though, growing up a prince with no domain past these four walls. Small wonder he was wild as a lad. But like I told Marja, there's few men else I'd follow where we're bound."

Ferhas was fumbling with the keys now, and even as the gates creaked open Kermorvan, Gise and Eysdan began to lead out the line of ponies. As had been agreed, the travelers pulled cloaks and hoods about themselves, and slung weapons out of sight; leading rather than riding their mounts, they would look like many another party of weary fugitives.

Ferhas saluted Elof as he had the others, but plucked at his arm and whispered vehemently, "You'll have a care of him, won't you, sir?" The idea of himself guarding that fearsome fighting man seemed absurd, but Elof could not laugh at the old esquire. He nodded, clapped him on the shoulder, and passed on. The long caravan ahead was silhouetted against the pale stone of the mansion opposite like figures on a moving frieze, as if already they merged with the faded chronicles of times past. The young northerners were on his heels; he heard the gate creak to, and awaited the sound of the lock. It did not come, and although he would not turn his head he held clearly in his mind the image of old Ferhas standing there in the wall's black shadow, listening, straining his ears until the last faint hoofbeat had utterly died away.

The night was cool, the streets fast emptying. City folk hurried here and there with their smoking linklights, few sparing an eye for the drab procession that clopped and clattered across the cobblestones. The square of the citadel, where tall braziers burned, they skirted, and also the Merchant's Quarter, still busy and aglow with everything from crystal candelabra in high windows to rush dips and little charcoal ovens in the street stalls. He thought of Kathel, now on the northern borders ordering his new domain, and smiled; the merchant had not gone without giving Roc and himself strict orders to report on the wealth of any eastern lands, and their dearth and surplus of a long list of commodities. "You seem very confident we will find somewhere," Elof had said.

" 'Course you will, lads!" Kathel had puffed cheer-

fully, and then, remembering perhaps his claim to be the Honest, added, "But, well, it's a poor pedlar doesn't knock on even the rickety doors, eh?"

He would miss the man, thought Elof. And if he too was honest, he realized, he would miss this whole huge sprawling city as he had never dreamed he would. He rested a protective hand on the saddlebag that held his baggage, meager but heavy; a few garments, a change of boots, but chiefly the things he most valued, a certain gauntlet of mail, his precious tools, and with them a crook-tipped rod of worn bronze, the strange cattle goad that was his only inheritance from his first youth. He had brought that on impulse, not for any use it had. But now he knew why; to here also he might never return. Once a tiny village had been his world, then a lonely tower; the first small towns had seemed overpowering. But this, this teeming human hive, it could have swallowed them up a thousandfold. And for all its sins he had come to see that only out of such a community of men could arise the order and strength of will that was their best shield against the oncoming Ice. It made the wild lands beyond its bounds seem that much wilder, and himself more foolish to seek to venture into them once more.

Others seemed to be feeling the same. Bure, fond of his food, kept scuttling over to stalls they passed to buy last portions of local delicacies. Elof found it hard to blame him, for the northerners had eaten poorly enough before being chosen for the company. But then he saw Borhi the corsair slip across to a winestall, and Tenvar begin chatting to the market girls walking alongside, and he called them back into line. "That's well done," said Roc. "There's some as'll know us, and talk."

"For which I'll wager Lord Bryhon has ears listening!" agreed Arvhes, dropping back. "The happier I'll set out without flagstones flying round my ears."

"There's that," admitted Bure indistinctly, munching spicy chunks of fowl from a skewer. "Gate's not so far, though, now."

"A step is full far enough, with a mob in the way."

The shadow of the high gate tower might have concealed one easily enough. Now, though, there were few folk about in its shadow, and most of them sentinels of the City Guard. But the figure who stepped suddenly out of the shadows was clad in tunic and cloak of richly worked red velvets, and he was very tall. Elof exchanged horrified glances with Roc, and moved swiftly down the column to Kermorvan's side.

"A shame on you, my lord of Morvan," was the newcomer's jovial greeting, "that you sought to slip away thus! Did you think it could be kept from me?"

"I had my reasons, my lord of Bryheren," Kermorvan said coolly. "You, among others. What have you to gain by hindering me?"

Teeth flashed in Bryhon's beard. "I? Hinder you?" He sounded affably hurt. "I came only to wish you well!"

Kermorvan sighed, and rested an arm across his pony's back. "My lord, I fail to understand you. That we are hereditary enemies is of little moment in these times, but if the law permitted I would cheerfully slaughter you for all the wrongs you yourself have done my family. You have ever sought to thwart any plan of mine simply because it was mine! You are no generous adversary. Am I expected to believe you now?"

Bryhon shrugged. "If you are right, you bring us some small benefit. If you are wrong, you cost us little. I hope you do find survival in the east, most sincerely I do. Is that to be a crime in your kingdom?"

"Hardly. I accept your good wishes to the extent you mean them, and return such thanks as they are worth. Though from one who sought to murder me in secret…"

Again Bryhon shrugged. "In the best interests of the city—as the troubles that followed have proved. But we are warriors of the same high order, you and I. I would not fear to face you if I could, Keryn Kermorvan."