Filed Teeth

III

Lord Hammer stopped.

We had come to a forest. Scattered, ice-rimed trees stood across our path. They were gnarled, stunted things that looked a little like old apple trees.

Fetch came down the line, speaking to each little band in its own language. She told us Kaveliners, "Don't ever leave the trail once we pass the first tree. It could be worth your life. This's a fey, fell land." Her dusky little face was as somber as ever I had seen it.

"Why? Where are we? What's happening?" Chenyth asked.

She frowned. Then a smile broke through. "Don't you ever stop asking?" She was almost pretty when she smiled.

"Give him a break," I said. "He's a kid."

She smiled a little at me, then, before turning back to Chenyth. I think she liked the kid. Everybody did. Even the Harish tolerated him. They hardly acknowledged the existence of anyone else but Fetch, and she only as the mouth of the man who paid them.

Fetch was a sorceress in her own right. She knew how to use the magic of her smiles. The genuine article just sort of melted you inside.

"The forest isn't what it seems," she explained. "Those trees haven't died for the winter. They're alive, Chenyth. They're wicked, and they're waiting for you to make a mistake. All you have to do is wander past one and you'll be lost. Unless Lord Hammer can save you. He might let you go. As an object lesson."

"Come on, Fetch. How'd you get that name, anyway? That's not a real name. Look. The trees are fifty feet apart..."

"Chenyth." I tapped his shoulder. He subsided. Lord Hammer was always right. When Fetch gave us a glimmer of fact, we listened.

"Bellweather named me Fetch. Because I run for Lord Hammer. And maybe because he thinks I'm a little spooky. He's clever that way. You couldn't pronounce my real name, anyway."

"Which you'd never reveal," I remarked.

She smiled. "That's right. One man with a hold on me is enough."

"What about Lord Hammer?" Chenyth demanded. When one of his questions was answered, he always found another.

"Oh, he chose his own name. It's a joke. But you'll never understand it. You're too young." She moved on down the line.

Chenyth smiled to himself. He had won a little more.

His value to us all was his ability to charm Fetch into revealing just a little more than she had been instructed. Maybe Chenyth could have gotten into her.

His charm came of youth and innocence. He was fourteen years younger than Jamal, child of the Harish and youngest veteran. We were all into our thirties and forties. Soldiering had been our way of life for so long we had forgotten there were others. Some of us had been enemies back when. The Harish bore their defeat like the banner of a holy martyr...

Chenyth had come after the wars. Chenyth was a baby. He had no hatreds, no prejudices. He retained that bubbling, youthful optimism that had been burned from the rest of us in the crucible of war. We both loved and envied him for it, and tried to get a little to rub off. Chenyth was a talisman. One last hope that the world wasn't inalterably cruel.

Fetch returned to Lord Hammer's stirrup. The man in black proceeded.

I studied the trees.

There was something repulsive about them. Something frightening. They were so widely spaced it seemed they couldn't stand one another. There were no saplings. Most were half dead, hollow, or down and rotting. They were arranged in neat, long rows, a stark orchard of death...

The day was about to die without a whimper when Lord Hammer halted again.

It hadn't seemed possible that our morale could sink. Not after the mountains and the ice storm. But that weird forest depressed us till we scarcely cared if we lived or died. The band would have disintegrated had it not become so much an extension of Lord Hammer's will.

We massed behind our fell captain.

Before him lay a meadow circumscribed by a tumbled wall of field stone. The wall hadn't been mended in ages. And yet...

It still performed its function.

"Sorcery!" Brandy hissed.

Others took it up.

"What'd you expect?" Chenyth countered. He nodded toward Lord Hammer.

It took no training to sense the wizardry.

Ice-free, lush grass crowded the circle of stone. Wildflowers fluttered their petals in the breeze.

We Kaveliners crowded Fetch. Chenyth tickled her sides. She yelped. "Stop it!" She was extremely ticklish. Anyone else she would have slapped silly. She told him, "It's still alive. Lord Hammer was afraid it might have died."

Remarkable. She said nothing conversational to anyone else, ever.

Lord Hammer turned slightly. Fetch devoted her attention to him. He moved an elbow, twitched a finger. I didn't see anything else pass between them.

Fetch turned to us. "Listen up! These are the rules for guys who want to stay healthy. Follow Lord Hammer like his shadow. Don't climb over the wall. Don't even touch it. You'll get dead if you do."

The black horseman circled the ragged wall to a gap where a gate might once have stood. He turned in and rode to the heart of the meadow.

Fetch scampered after him, her big brown eyes locked on him.

How Lord Hammer communicated with her I don't know. A finger-twitch, a slight movement of hand or head, and she would talk-talk-talk. We didn't speculate much aloud. He was a sorcerer. You avoid things that might irritate his kind.

She proclaimed, "We need a tent behind each fire pit. Five on the outer circle, five on the inner. The rest here in the middle. Keep your fires burning all night. Sentinels wil be posted."

"Yeah?" Brandy grumbled. "What the hell do we do for wood? Plant acorns and wait?"

"Out there are two trees that are down. Take wood off them.

Pick up any fallen branches this side of the others. It'll be wet, but it's the best we can do. Do not go past a live tree. Lord Hammer isn't sure he can project his protection that far."

I didn't pay much attention. Nobody did. It was warm there. I shed my pack and flung myself to the ground. I rolled around on the grass, grabbing handfuls and inhaling the newly mown hay scent.

There had to be some dread sorceries animating that circle. Nobody cared. The place was as cozy as journey's end.

There is always a price. That's how magic works.

Old Toamas lay back on his pack and smiled in pure joy. He closed his eyes and slept. Even Brandy said nothing about making him do his share.

Lord Hammer let the euphoria bubble for ten minutes.

Fetch started round the troop. "Brandy. You and Russ and Little, put your tent on that point. Will, Chenyth, Toamas, yours goes here. Kelpie..." And so on. When everyone was assigned, she erected her master's black tent. All the while Lord Hammer sat his ruby-eyed stallion and stared northeastward. He showed the intensity of deep concentration. Was he reading the trail?

Nothing seemed to catch him off guard.

Where was he leading us? Why? What for? We didn't know. Not a whit. Maybe even Fetch didn't. Chenyth couldn't charm a hint from her.

We knew two things. Lord Hammer paid well. And, within restrictions known only to himself, he took care of his followers. In a way I can't articulate, he had won our loyalties.

His being what he was was ample proof we faced something grim, yet he had won us to the point where we felt we had a stake in it too. We wanted him to succeed. We wanted to help him succeed.

Odd. Very odd.

I have taken his gold, I thought, briefly remembering a man I had known a long time ago. He had been a member of the White Company of the Mercenaries Guild. They were a monastic order of soldiers with what, then, 1 had thought of as the strangest concept of honor...

What made me think of Mikhail? I wondered.