A Sword from Red Ice

TWENTY-THREE Hard Truths at the Dhoonewall

The only remaining hillfort in the Dhoonewall that remained livable was a kidney-shaped mound of dressed stone that had a second roof built on top of its original slate roof. The second roof consisted of massive panels of copper soldered together and bent in place, that were secured, as far as Vaylo Bludd could see, by man-size needles that had been driven through the copper and between the slates— and into the original wooden beams underneath. Had to be about a hundred of those iron rods sticking out of the roof, Vaylo reckoned, and he wouldn't be surprised that if he actually decided to take the roof stair all the way up to the top, walked across the scaly green carpet of verdigris and stood by one of those black needles he would see it was a spear. Fighting men had erected this roof, using whatever resources they had at hand; copper stockpiled from the mines to the south and clumsy spears they did not need. Vaylo could imagine it. Their roof was leaking and they were wet and miserable. They'd applied to their chief and been ignored. Attacks were coming from the north, their equipment was rusting, their clothes black with mold; a supply wagon had failed to arrive— Pissed off, they'd forged this roof, using a fortune of Dhoone's precious copper in its making and sending an angry message to their chief. Behold us, we are sons of Dhoone. The force with which the spears have been thrust into the roof, punching great dents in the metal, told all.

Of course the second roof barely worked better than the first. The soldiers never did seal up the dents, and rain found its way through them and ran down onto the first roof and along well worn paths to the mold-barrel fortress below. Vaylo didn't like to breathe the air. He frowned at the slimy black film on the walls and found it surprisingly easy to imagine it invading his lungs. He had bid Nan do what she could, but she was one woman fighting against a horde of spores and quick as she flung back shutters to let in the wind the little black devils were invading her mop bucket, infiltrating the very agent of their own destruction. Nan laughed about it, and staunchly refused help. Vaylo had a feeling she liked being the only woman amongst a hundred and eighty men.

Well close enough to a hundred and eighty … but he would think about that later, when the sun wasn't shining in squares upon the flagstone floor that were almost warm when you walked on them, and the laugher of the bairns wasn't tumbling down the spiral-cut stairs.

Vaylo passed through the hillfort's central hall and into its northern ward. The building and part of the wall it defended was wedged between two hills. It was a basic structure with three rounded wards at groundlevel, three smaller ones on the floor above, and a warren of cells and store rooms on the upper level. Upwall, about two hundred feet to the east, a broken bit of watchtower with a partially collapsed roof remained standing. Vaylo hadn't gone up there yet, but he intended to do so soon as he had noticed Cluff Drybannock spent much of his time there. Drybone had visited the other five hillforts in the chain and pronounced them larger and better sited, and wholly destroyed. "Tumbled stone and freestanding walls are all that are left," Dry had said. "The roofs are gone and fox pines have seeded in the wards."

The hillforts still made little sense to Vaylo, though he was glad for his own sake that Dhoone had built them. Situated on the northern edge of the Copper Hills, they looked down over the scrubby fellfields, heaths and uplands that lay to the north. They had seen hard fighting in their time, that much he could tell, for there were places in the cur-tainwall where you could see the ghosts of long-past impacts: spider cracks of the kind that were caused by heavy shot, sections of stone that had melted to glass, craters and burn rings. The sight of them gave Vaylo a queer feeling in his chest. He knew the Maimed Men controlled a broken city somewhere to the north, but he wasn't sure if they had ever been capable of such a violent assault.

The Dog Lord chided himself as he passed through the ward door and onto the battle terrace. He should have learned the histories from Molo Bean and Ockish Bull. It would be reassuring to know exactly what the deal was here. It could be that a thousand years ago some bold Blackhail chief had launched a fiendish attack from the north. Maybe, gods bless them, the Lost Clan had been in ascendancy and Dhoone had felt threatened by their closeness. The clanholds were nothing if not stingy with their histories. Withy and Wellhouse kept tally, so the stories went, and there was something about a locked room at Castlemilk that was said to contain precious scrolls. For fifty-odd years now the Dog Lord had-in the deep and longstanding tradition of Bludd chiefs-disdained learning the history of the clanholds, but he was beginning to regret his ignorance.

Mistakes have been made. Gods willing I'll make no more. Thinking of Ockish Bull made the Dog Lord smile. His words performed the alchemy of placing contrition right next to defiance.

Vaylo's smile held as he spread his hands wide on the stone balustrade and leaned out into the fresh air. He was looking north over the fort valley and the headlands beyond it. The afternoon sun was blocked by the fortress at his back. This was the best spot in the entire building, this broad, half-roofed battle terrace that extended out from the northern ward. Standing here a man could imagine he was he sail-ing north on a great ship through a strait that passed between two islands. The wind blew in your face no matter what time of day or night you came here and you could not see the earth below your feet.

Nan had commandeered part of the terrace as a playground for the bairns, and pretty much every man in the entire hillfort came out here a couple of times a day to breathe some good air instead of moldy foulness. A couple of men were out here now, sitting on the crates Nan had brought out for the bairns. Mogo Salt and Odwin Two Mar were sitting with their backs against the fortress wall, spearing carrots from a copper bowl with the tips of their swords. At the opposite end of the balcony a man whom Vaylo did not recognize was keeping watch, armed with a beautiful limewood self bow.

Vaylo called across to him. "Where is Drybone?"

The man turft, revealing the high cheekbones and finely sculpted bonemass of the Sull. "Sir, he is in the tower."

He was accoutered with tokens of Bludd-the red leather grip on his sheathed sword, the hollowed-out bone containing his measure of guidestone, the carbuncles of garnet on his cloak brooch-yet Vaylo did not know him.

"What is your name?"

"I'm Kye Hillrunner, once of Trenchland, now of Bludd." His voice was proud but Vaylo detected the nervousness underneath it. He was young, and this was the first time he had met his chief.

"Drybone took your oath?"

"Yes, sir. Eight months back while I was housed at Bludd."

Now that he had gotten a better look at the boy, Vaylo saw that his features lacked the icy perfection of full-blooded Sull. "How long have you been with us?"

"Five years. I worked on Ockish Bull's horse farm. That's where I met Cluff Drybannock and he began to train me."

Vaylo nodded; he thought the young man needed it. "So you met Ockish?"

"He died soon after I got there. His son let me stay on."

So Ockish had taken the boy in as a tied clansman. It fit, for all Sull, even Trenchlanders, were known for their skill at breeding horses. And Ockish always had a soft spot for strays. Vaylo knew better than to ask Kye who his father was or what claim he had to Bludd. If he was a bastard that was his business. Subject closed.

"Keep the watch for Bludd," the Dog Lord said to him in parting. "We are chosen by the Stone Gods to guard their borders."

It was part of the clan boast and Vaylo hardly knew what made him say it, yet if he was surprised by his own words, he was surprised more by the young man's response.

"I know it. That is why I am here."

A cold finger of fear touched the base of Vaylo's spine. He looked at the young warrior, saw the slow bum of purpose in his inhumanly bright Sull eyes. It was not easy to turn away from it, yet Vaylo did, and headed back into the dampness of the fort.

What was happening here? he asked himself as he headed for the east ward. What trick was Ockish Bull playing from his grave? And what was Drybone's part in this? How many more Sull Bluddsmen would he stumble upon within these walls? Oh it was true enough Bludd had always taken in its share of Trenchlander mongrels—they shared a border after all—yet Vaylo could not set aside his agitation. The boast, the damn boast. We are Clan Bludd, chosen by the Stone Gods to watch their borders. Death is our companion. A life long lived is our reward. Fifty-three vears he had lived with those words, fired by their hard-driving pride. When had they changed on him? How could words mean one thing one day and then the next day something else?

The blond swordsman Big Borro opened the fortified east door for him, tugging back the greasy hank of leather that hung in place of a pull ring. "Snow tomorrow," he said as Vaylo stepped out onto the Dhoonewall.

Snow? Vaylo frowned at the sun and cloudless sky. It didn't seem possible, yet he was wise enough not to voice a contradiction. It had been sixty years since a Borro man was last caught in a storm.

The Dhoonewall was cracked and weather-beaten. Its northern edge had been carved by the wind, and the breakwall had tumbled so there was nothing to stop a man from stepping over the brink. Entire sections of stone walkway were missing, the gaps overlaid with loose planks. In others areas the stone had buckled and erupted upward, forming shambling mounds where weeds thrived. Vaylo was careful where he put his feet. From where he stood he could look both north and south, and the great breadth of the earth was visible. The Copper Hills rolled §ut around him in purple and rust-brown waves, a sight to thrill a clansman's heart.

Now the tower was another matter, and as Vaylo closed upon it he had some fear for his head. Chunks of stone had fallen recently. Others looked imminent. Unlike the main building, the tower had not been capped with copper and its collapsed and black-rotted roof timbers still gripped a tinkling deathtrap of slates. Vaylo made a dash for the door. Reminding himself that when he'd held the finest structure in the clanholds—the Dhoonehouse at Blue Dhoone Lake—he'd never much enjoyed it, the Dog Lord entered the collapsed tower.

It smelled like a wellshaft, and echoed like one too. Both the tower and the Dhoonewall sank their foundatioB deep into the cleft between the two hills, and the first thing Vaylo spotted was a way down. Should have brought a torch, he thought, for although the roof had fallen in, six stories still came between him and||e light. A single arrow slit high on the west wall provided the only source of illumination. Vaylo moved cautiously. Underfoot, the mold was as slick as ice.

"Dry!" he called out, frustrated. "Are you there?"

The sound footsteps echoed along the tower's rounded walls. A line of masonry dust sifted from the ceiling. Vaylo's gaze tracked a movement across a dark spile he had assumed was solid stone and Cluff Drybannock came into view.

"I apologize for not lighting a lamp."

Vaylo huffed. "You did not know I was a-coming. Here. Take my arm. Lead me up."

It did not occur to Vaylo to doubt Dry's ability to see in the darkness. From boyhood Cluff Drybannock had always fared best by night. Whilst boys older than him slept peacefully in their beds, he was out on the redcourt, practicing his forms. Vaylo remembered spotting Dry once when he didn't realize he was being watched. A boy of twelve rendered blue by the moonlight, repeating the same sword stroke a hundred and twenty times.

Cluff Drybannock took his chiefs arm and guided him up the stairs. At some point between the first and second story the light increased, yet neither man made the motion to pull apart. Vaylo told himself that Dry was probably worried that his old chief would slip and break his neck.

Wind drilled through the tower. Vaylo wondered how much longer there was to go. The soft and fanBiar pain below his heart was letting him know that it resented stairs. Finally Dry slowed the climb and led his chief through a stone arch into a circular, vaulted chamber with boarded-up windows. The center of the vault had collapsed and a heap of stones, black lumber and roof tiles lay on the floor beneath it. Vaylo peered up through the hole and saw sky.

"The floor above holds up the remains of the roof." This did not seem like an especially comforting statement. Vaylo ignored it and crossed to the north-facing window. It seemed odd that Drybone had removed the middle boards from this window but not the one facing south. "I met one of your new men today," he said. "Kye Hillrunner."

Cluff Drybannock nodded, but did not speak. Vaylo supposed he had no reason to; no question had been asked.

Dry was dressed in serviceable gray wool pants and a tunic of gray suede. The quarter-moon he'd painted just beyond the crown of his hairline had faded, and although opal rings still bound his waist-length hair, Vaylo was gratified to see th&iis wrist leathers and the grip of his longsword were red.

"It is clear enough this day to see the Rift." Drybone's fine and powerful hand fell again on his chiefs arm, his touch light as he directed Vaylo to the exact direction. "It is the dark line on the break of the horizon."

Vaylo saw it. Without Dry he would never have recognized it for a gap in the world so little did the line in the far distance give away. "Is that where the Maimed Men live?"

"No. They lie east of here where the Rift is at fa deepest." "You watch it,"

Again there was no question and Chiff Dryhannock was silent "I set off for the Rift once," Vaylo said, his gaze still ahead. "I was nine and I was mad at Gullit, Decided to take off and never come back. Rode all the way to the Deadwoods, three whole days, before the anger finally left me and I turned for home with my tail between my legs. Had an idea about joining the Maimed Men." "This Bludd warrior is glad you did not join them." Vaylo was glad he was facing forward. Tears spiked in his eyes and he could let the wind blow them away. Seven sons and not a kind word or touch from one of them. He had been a bad father, he knew ii. Obsessed with matters of clan, short-tempered, selfish, but surely he had never been cruel? You were, countered a hard voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like his father's. You resented your sons for being born legitimate, for not having to fight tooth and nail as you did. It was true enough, that was why things were different between him and Dry. They were bastards, and they knew all the small and big things that meant. Keeping his voice level, Vaylo said, "Tell me why you watch." Seconds passed and the wind blew and then Cluff Drybannock replied, "My blood makes me."

The same cold finger that had touched Vaylo earlier touched again in the exact same place. He had not expected such an answer, but now that he heard it he could not claim surprise. All along he had known his fostered son was made of a different, older substance than he himself. Others had known it too. Ockish Bull had helped rear Dry, and upon his death had left him a small purse. The great swordmaster Vingus Harking, great-uncle to the HalfBludd chief Onwyn HalfBludd, had come out of retirement, wheeling himself north in a cart pulled by dogs, just to train Dry for one year. Vingus had worked with others during his time at Bludd, but it was word of Cluff Drybannocks burgeoning skill that had roused him from his fossilage at HalfBludd. You could not meet Cluff Drybannock and not realize his worth.

Something glinting in the headland beyond the fort valley drew Vaylo's gaze. "Is there a stream over there?"

Drybone followed his gaze. "No. It is the Field Of Grave 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 clansmen, 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 Semed 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 for-ward 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 shinesland 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 Guff 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 beome other, their flesh sucked dry of life and replaced with an absence of light. The Endlords arm them with Kil Ji, voided seel, wich is said to be forged from the strange meals 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 stubbie 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. "Ihe 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 chiefs 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 crosseojfche chamber and took his chiefs arm, and they were both comforted by the touch for a while.