by J. V. Jones
“Charge to the first hill!” he bellowed, kicking heels into horseflesh. He needed to put some space between himself and his thoughts. “Last man gets latrine duty.”
Hammie, Gods love him, knew the jig so well by now that he got the best start of the lot of them. The others caught on quickly enough but not before Vaylo and his armsman had pulled ahead. The dogs howled in excitement and sprinted after the horses. Well, three of them did. The wolf dog was subdued and when Vaylo glanced over his shoulder he saw the creature falling behind. It moved through the space between the column and the fort, a lone wolf padding through the dust.
Vaylo filled his lungs with air and concentrated on reaching the hill. Hammie had passed him and he could hear others at his heels. The topsoil was finally dry after the thaw and the horses threw powder as they charged. Big Borro was riding one of Ockish Bull’s stallions and the creature was a wonder to watch. It almost didn’t hurt to have it pass you. When he got back to Bludd, Vaylo reckoned he’d buy himself a horse from the Bull stables. Something that wouldn’t beat his tailbone black and blue.
As the land began to rise, Vaylo’s stallion slowed and no amount of thigh squeezing would cajole it. A handful of men with superior mounts passed Vaylo, and he found himself struggling to keep ahead of the pack. He felt out of sorts, bothered by his visit with the injured boy, regretful of not having spoken farewell to Dry.
It was a relief to reach the hill. A rocky bluff provided a natural finish line and Vaylo counted seven men assembled ahead of him. From the way he was joking and preening, Big Borro looked to be the winner. The men cheered when their chief made it. Vaylo acknowledged their goodwill with a grunt. He was sore and out of breath. Then his stallion went and embarrassed him by lowering its head and pulling up a thicket of grass.
“Some racehorse you have there, Chief,” Big Borro said. “Five minutes from home and it’s ready to feed.”
Men laughed, and suddenly Vaylo understood how Gullit must have felt that day on the redcourt. His father would have been getting old by then. Over fifty, and that famous Bludd vigor would have been in decline. Perhaps he’d just discovered he could no longer stay ahead of his men. Perhaps the incident with the spear had touched a nerve.
Vaylo patted the stallion’s neck and forced himself into good humor. “He’s a soldier’s horse. Stuffs himself whenever he can.”
The joke was an old one, but the men needed it. He needed it. Gullit Bludd’s ghost had to be exorcised, lest the son end up as bitter as the father. Spying Nan and Pasha bringing up the rear with the sword horse, Vaylo found a genuine smile.
“You said last man,” Nan told him calmly. “That wouldn’t be me.”
The warriors laughed again, this time with genuine warmth. Nan Culldayis was their lady. For the past two months she had cooked and cared for them, listened to their private fears about absent loved ones and worrying ailments, and given sensible advice on everything from the best way to clean brass belt buckles to the wording of messages sent by bird. They loved her, Vaylo realized with pride. And that was something his father had never possessed: a woman as fine as Nan.
“Who,” Vaylo bellowed above the stamping and panting of horses, “in this sorry crew of warriors came last?”
“Wull did,” cried Odwin Two Bear.
“No, I didn’t,” replied the lanky, tattooed former Castleman. “It was Midge.”
Midge Pool’s eyebrows disappeared beneath his thatch of red hair. “Not me. I got here ahead of Wull.”
“You blind, boy,” countered Wull Rudge, who at twenty-eight was a good ten years older than Midge. “I had time to groom my horse, dismount and take a piss afore you got here.”
“But I—”
“Silence!” Vaylo roared at the lot of them. “Bluddsmen don’t squabble like little girls. If no one is prepared to come forward and admit the rear then all will be on half rations tonight.”
Shamed, the warriors hung their heads. They were whelps, Vaylo decided. He had twenty-five years on the eldest, Marcus Borro. How was he going to take back the Bluddhouse with a crew of forty boys?
“I was last,” Midge Pool murmured, gaze on the ground.
“No. It was me,” Odwin Two Bear corrected him. “In all the dust I failed to see I was bringing up the rear.”
Big dark-haired Wull Rudge gulped. “Chief, it was me. I was last.”
Vaylo glowered at them as he waited to see if anyone else would claim the rear. When no one else spoke, he said, “All three of you, latrine duty—and no rations tonight. When I ask a question I expect it answered promptly and with truth.”
Turning the stallion smartly, he headed east along the bluff. Nan and Hammie fell in behind him and others followed. Wind sent the heather rippling. Vaylo smelled stag musk. The dogs were ahead of him, following a scent trail uphill. Uncharacteristically, the wolf dog lagged behind. A whiff of deer was usually enough to drive it wild.
Vaylo made himself look ahead. Behind him the column was quiet. Forty men had just realized that they were no longer under the command of Cluff Drybannock. Six months back they had headed north from Dhoone with Dry as their leader. Now here they were, riding east to Bludd, under direct command of their chief. Vaylo knew he had to be hard on them. Dry had commanded quietly, by example. But Dry had never had to set Bluddsmen against Bluddsmen. By the end of the fifteen-day journey the forty had to be ready to obey him without thought, as a reflex. Fifteen days was not nearly enough.
Vaylo rode in silence. Clouds marched the length of the sky. A goshawk spied a grouse and made a dive. The horses lathered as they climbed the steep slopes. At midday, the column rested and took a cold mess of bread and cheese. Midge, Odwin and Wull did not eat. And although he had not specifically forbidden them a daytime meal, Vaylo was satisfied.
“Form up!” he cried when he judged the horses restored. “We ride until dark.”
They did just that. The ground was good, so they maintained a fair pace. After a couple of hours Aaron was handed off from Mogo Salt to Hammie, and Vaylo received possession of Pasha. The girl insisted on taking the reins and after a few minutes of supervision he left her to it. Her hair smelled nice. He liked the way she didn’t look over her shoulder for guidance when faced with problem terrain. She had the sense not to speak much either, though Nan may have primed her on that.
The height of the hills made for a short day. The sun disappeared behind a knife-edge ridge leaving a metallic sheen in the sky. Vaylo sent scouts ahead to check for a suitable campsite, and they returned after the light failed. As they led the way south to a high moor, Vaylo questioned them quietly about Dhoone.
“No sign of Dhoonesmen in the hills,” Rufus Black, the eldest scout, answered.
Vaylo nodded. This part of the clanholds was windblown and remote and the only folk who who used it regularly were cragsmen. Even so, Vaylo found himself cautious and ordered watches in all quadrants. Suspecting he would not sleep he elected to take the southern watch himself. Rufus volunteered to second him, but Vaylo turned him down. “I have the dogs,” he replied.
In truth he was glad to be alone. Hiking south as the camp was raised, he ate a dry supper of trail meat and pickled quail eggs. Nan had snuck him one of her fancy honeycakes but he fed it to the nearest dog. His mind wouldn’t settle. He’d volunteered to take the most likely watch himself, but now he wondered if he should be looking north, not south.
Like Dry.
It was the boast, the damned boast. Chosen by the Stone Gods to guard their borders. What borders? Bludd borders? Or those encircling the entire clanholds? And guard them from what?
Vaylo sunk to his haunches and whistled for the dogs. They’d been ranging back and forth in search of game and they did not heel immediately. Settling down to wait, Vaylo tried to push aside his unease. He had men to lead and a roundhouse to retake, and it didn’t do much good to dwell on Dry and his hundred men guarding the Dhoonewall. Did even less good to imagine that it was Dry, not he, the Bludd chief, who was upholding the promise of
the boast.
Chief first. Boast later. Once he’d taken possession of the Bluddhouse, he’d have all the time in the world to figure out mystery of the boast.
Plucking a wad of chewing curd from his belt pouch, Vaylo made himself comfortable for the watch. The stars were out, some of them, and a half-moon was shining through thinning clouds. Vaylo sat and did not think for a while.
The dogs came to him in their own good time. At first he didn’t realize that the wolf dog hadn’t homed. It could be willful at times and reluctant to obey a summons if it was closing on a kill. Vaylo whistled again, waited. Oddly enough, it had been Gullit who had given him his first pup. It was a sight hound, the runt of the litter. With irregular vertebrae in its tail and an infection in its right eye Gullit had judged it unworthy to be reared for the hunt. “Take it,” his father had said to him, “but you’ll to have to wean it yourself as I won’t waste a teat.” Vaylo had done just that, dipping a shammy in pig’s milk so the pup could suckle on the hour. After a week he’d taken her to Mogo Salt’s grandfather, the field surgeon Roagie Salt. Roagie had been the one who’d tended him after the worst of Gullit’s beatings; the dislocated arm, the broken collarbone, the punctured spleen. Roagie had given Vaylo drops for the pup’s eye and advised him to grind bonemeal into her milk to make her strong.
“She’ll never run straight with that kettle tail,” Roagie had said, “but she’ll sure sprint a fast curve.”
Moya, Vaylo had called her, after the legendary chief’s wife who defended the Bluddhouse from Dhoone’s armies while her husband was away.
Moya, the dog, turned out to be a brawler. Vaylo grinned thinking about her. Fierce and scrappy, she would lunge at anyone who looked at him the wrong way. He’d never been without a dog since. They had made him who he was. A boy with a dog at his heels was no longer alone. He had someone to back him up in a fight, an extra set of eyes and ears to keep watch, and something warm—and smelly—to sleep next to through the long winter nights. Vaylo had lost count of all the dogs he had owned. Hundreds, certainly. At some point he had stopped giving them names. It didn’t seem necessary. They were part of him like an arm or a leg. Might as well have called them Vaylo.
The wolf dog had been different though. Its dam had gone missing four summers back and Vaylo thought he’d never see her again. Fifty days later she’d turned up, fat and pleased with herself, trotting in from the north. When she’d given birth a month later it became apparent she had mated with a wolf. Right from the start, the wolf dog held itself apart from its siblings. More wolf than dog, it was the largest of the litter and suckled the hardest. It sucked its dam dry, depriving its brothers of milk. Its sisters lived, but there was never any doubt over who was top dog. Vaylo had taken the wolf dog in hand, but he realized early on that it could not be wholly tamed. Part of its soul lived in the north beyond the clanholds. On icy nights lit by stars no latch or tether could hold it . . . but it had always returned.
Until now.
The old pain in Vaylo’s chest knifed him. Ignoring it, he stood and headed south. He had a watch to keep. Three dogs ghosted at his side, serious and alert. To the north, Cluff Drybannock would be mounting his own watch, looking not to the clanholds but to the Rift. Vaylo wondered how long it would take the wolf dog to reach him.
The dog had chosen a new master. It would not be coming back.
CHAPTER 7
Captive
THE BUZZING GREW louder and more complicated as individual threads dropped in and out of hearing. He ignored it. The sound came from a place he didn’t want to be. The place was trouble, and he didn’t want trouble. He wanted to drift on the warm sea a while longer. Reason cast a dim light here, memory an even dimmer one. Drifting was safe. Drifting was good.
Or so he’d thought. Things began to gather on the horizon, in the shadows where salt water smoked into gas. The things had necks humped with rotator muscle and the fortified jaws of wolves. They waited for him to drift within striking distance. He was whole and they wanted to tear him into parts.
Watcher, they hissed. Over here. We’ll show you how to use that sword.
The words were a puzzle, but not a pressing one. Other things pressed harder. Drift and you were at the mercy of currents and undercurrents, prevailing winds and tides. For the longest time he had assumed he was drifting in circles. Harmless and unharmed. He was aware of the tow now. It was dragging him toward the hump-necked things, forcing him to make a choice. Do or be done to. Take action or let action be taken to you.
Raif Sevrance opened his eyes. Looked. Blinked. Failed to understand. Closed his eyes. It required an exertion of will not to return to the warm sea. He concentrated on receiving reports from his senses to hold himself alert.
The buzzing sound had the particular resonance of mosquitoes in flight. Anyone who had camped in the badlands in spring and summer knew the noise. Music of a thousand bites, Da called it. “While you’re out hunting in the Badlands, the Badlands is busy hunting you.”
The words were truer than Da had known. Tem Sevrance had died on a longhunt in the Badlands, split open from solar plexus to groin by a sword that cauterized blood vessels as it severed them. He’d been tracked down and hunted like prey.
Muscles clenched in Raif’s chest. His weight shifted and the room began to rock. A sawing noise sounded directly above him. Creaking and rustling followed. As the rocking motion subsided Raif smelled trees. Cedar and bloodwood scents were so strong he wondered why he hadn’t registered them sooner. And then there was the strange tingly odor of icewood. The smell of a full moon.
He opened his eyes, looked right, left, overhead. He saw the deep greens and blues of pine forest canopy and the gray of an overcast sky. Things were beginning to make sense. And at the same time no sense at all.
The base of his spine was pressed against a hard ridge. Judging from the numbness in his left foot and left buttock, it had been pressed there a while. Hot points of pressure underlay his entire body, creating alternating welts of pain and numbness. Realizing that his left ear was bearing the weight of his skull, he turned his head. Tears sprang in his eyes as blood rushed into the freed earlobe. It hurt like hell. Irritated, he sat up.
The movement set his prison in motion. He was caged, suspended from the limb of a bloodwood by two ankle-thick ropes that twined in a sheet knot three feet above the cage and were rigged to a pulley. The bloodwood’s trunk was five feet away. Raif judged that if he rocked the cage hard enough he could smash into it. He hadn’t looked down yet, but he was beginning to understand things. Smashing into the trunk might break open the cage—it was constructed from hardwood lashed to a steel frame—but it wouldn’t free him, unless you counted a drop to the death as freedom. The bloodwood was massive. Its trunk had to be at least twenty feet round—too wide to grip in a descent. Below the pulley limb, the tree had been expertly delimbed. All potential footholds had been planed smooth. Raif was on eyelevel with one of the scars left behind by the delimbing. It was as smooth as a tabletop. Some kind of shiny sealant had been painted on the exposed wood. Raif looked at the workmanship for a long time. The people who’d hauled him up here knew exactly what they were doing.
When he was ready, he rolled onto his stomach. The mosquitoes that had been feeding on his neck and forearms buzzed into flight. Raif ignored them. It was harder to ignore the flares of pain sent up by his numb flesh. A lattice pattern was stamped into the meat of his palm.
Concerns about his body fell away as he looked down at an eighty foot drop. Bloodwoods were the tallest trees in the north. Raif had seen stripped logs two hundred feet long. The trees themselves could be double that. He supposed his captors could have hauled him higher, but then they’d have to put more effort into raising and lowering the cage. Eighty feet was plenty high enough to discourage a prisoner from attempting escape.
Wire cut into Raif’s thighs and chest. As he shifted to relieve the pressure, the cage fishtailed on its horizontal axis and seesawed on its vertical
axis. Ropes ticked as they managed the tension. Raif bellied closer to the middle of the cage. He decided the best way to minimize the rocking was to keep his weight centered. The cage was a six-by-five oblong, four feet high. Raif wondered who had made it. Not clansmen, that was for sure. Clansmen would never hold a prisoner in a contraption that held his feet above the earth. All men, even the condemned, were allowed congress with the Stone Gods.
This was city-built. Their god floated in air. Raif imagined that an elevated cage might even bring a city-prisoner and his city-god closer. So what was a city-built contraption doing in possession of the Sull? The cage was too ugly and heavily welded to be Sull-wrought. And judging from stories told by Angus Lok, the Sull weren’t known for taking prisoners. Warn once, then kill: that was their policy on trespass. Yet they had taken a prisoner. Him.
That was a Sull settlement below.
Raif’s gaze tracked the details through the forest. The settlement was like nothing he had ever seen. It stood in a partial clearing of pines. Perhaps one tree in ten had been left standing. The standing trees had been decrowned, delimbed and honed to points. The pointed stumps formed gray-white spears, each a hundred feet high. Raif wondered if it was possible for standing timber to fossilize, for that’s what the trunks looked like: trees made of stone. The closest of the trunks formed the points of a perfect square. Canvas had been suspended between them at a height of about twelve feet creating a large open-walled shelter. Light shimmering off the top of the canvas formed a crosshatch pattern Raif recognized: ray skin. Orwin Shank owned a dagger with a ray skin grip. “Grip alone’s worth more than ten blades,” Orwin was fond of telling people. “Removes the need for violence—I draw it handle up and hypnotize my foe.”
Raif calculated that Orwin’s dagger had possessed about half a square foot of skin. Right now he was looking at over six hundred square feet, carefully—invisibly—seamed. The canvas rippled in the breeze, rolling waves of blue and silver light. If clansmen had owned such a thing of wonder and wealth, they would not have turned its decorative surface toward the sky. They would have pitched it face down for all to see.
