Watcher of the Dead

by J. V. Jones

  Odwin Two Bear fell into pace directly ahead of his chief. Dressed for bushwhacking in a waxed coat and oilskin pants, the swordsman presented no edges for barbs to catch. His longsword was cross-harnessed against his back. Its crosshilts and pommel formed the head and claws of a steel bear. “There’s a new trail heading due east. It’s been head-cleared for riders.”

  Vaylo grunted. Clearing a trail to a height of nine feet to enable mounted men to ride with impunity took some doing. It didn’t jibe with Gangarric’s description of Quarro’s stewardship of the Bluddhouse. What had Gangarric said about his older brother? Quarro grows fat and lazy—drinks ale all day and stays abed with Trench whores. A fat and lazy chief didn’t concern himself with clearing trails, especially if those trails were in the least accessible part of his holdings. Who had made them then? Did Quarro have a rival for the chiefship? Had some ambitious Bluddsman spent too many days watching his chief in his cups and begun laying plans to overthrow him? Or was it Dun Dhoone’s blue cloaks, quietly clearing a path to the Bluddgate?

  Neither was good. “How far did you scout?”

  “About three leagues.”

  Vaylo did some reckoning. “Does the trail break south for the roundhouse?”

  Odwin shook his head. “Could turn later though, above the grove.”

  It was beginning to sound like a secret path. Most trails through the Deadwoods radiated north from the Bluddhouse. Vaylo could think of a couple of reasons why a trail might ghost east above the roundhouse and he didn’t like any of them. It still shamed him to recall Robbie Dun Dhoone’s attack on the Sacred Grove six month’s back. As Bludd chief, he should have been home to defend his house.

  “Dhoone struck from the southeast,” Odwin said, proving he was smart enough to anticipate his chief’s line of thought. “They might figure northeast’ll be the charm this time.”

  “Are there clearings?”

  “There’s a beaver pond with some ground around it and another area that’s pretty open. Trees. No bush.”

  Vaylo glanced over his shoulder. Hammie Faa was walking ahead of Pasha and Aaron and beyond them was the seasoned warrior Big Borro. Big Borro knew something was up. The message he sent to his chief was brief. I’m ready.

  Receiving it in the form of a single steady look, Vaylo made his decision. “We’ll take the new trail.”

  Odwin led the way. It was a few hours past noon and weather closing in from the north was darkening the spaces between trees. Red oak, red pine and hornbeam were slowly being killed by vines that Vaylo had no name for, man-thick tumorous growths that mimicked the trees they meant to kill. As the canopy lost cover, undergrowth had thrived. Dogwood, sumac, bearberries and thorns formed a tough, woody bush that was close to impenetrable. The Dog Lord had whittled himself a staff—he’d be damned if he’d call it a walking stick—and he beat back the branches with feeling. For a place hailing itself as the Deadwoods it had a grievous amount of life.

  The boar howled like a creature from the underworld as the company slid through a break in the dogwood and onto the new trail. Cool and still, the trail tunneled through the undergrowth in a straight line. As Odwin had said, it was tall enough to accommodate riders but Vaylo found himself reluctant to mount. Behind him, he heard Pasha grumbling to Hammie about her sore feet.

  “When the chief walks so do we,” Hammie explained patiently, doubtless not for the first time.

  “You did well to find this,” Vaylo told Odwin Two Bear. “From the outside, it just looks like more trees to me.”

  Odwin nodded gruffly, pleased. The width of the trail made it possible for them to walk side by side and Vaylo could clearly see the warrior mark inked in red across Odwin’s left cheek. “It took someone a while to do this. Months. A season even.”

  The Dog Lord agreed. Like most Bludd chiefs before him, he had been content to let the Deadwoods be. They formed a natural barrier to the north of the Bluddhouse and if Bluddsmen themselves could barely traverse it what hope did foreign clansmen have?

  No one had counted on the ruthless determination of the Thorn King, Robbie Dun Dhoone. As he moved along the trail, Vaylo became more and more certain. This was Dhoone’s work. Had they already carried out strikes? For a certainty the trail had been used in recent days. The Dog Lord knew fresh horseshit when he smelled it.

  I stayed away too long.

  Ignoring the pain in his knees, the Dog Lord picked up his pace. What had he been thinking all these months? First he’d taken Dhoone then Ganmiddich, and when he’d been routed from both of those roundhouses what had he done? Gone north to the edge of the clanhold and played dog-in-a-manger with Dhoone. He should have come home. Three days, that was how long Bludd chiefs were chained to the guidestone before the guide accepted their chief’s oaths. Vaylo recalled it as if it were yesterday, not thirty-six years in the past. He was young and hard-as-nails and he saw the Chief’s Watch as something to be endured, not a sacred passage into chiefdom. He believed in himself, not the guidestone or the Stone Gods. He had not expected the visions. Certainly he had not wanted them. He had thought Maurice Penhandlo, the old clan guide, was trying to kill him. Maurice had that little bowl of water and he’d dip his long bird claws into it and shake the droplets onto Vaylo’s face. Those droplets were the only thing that passed Vaylo’s lips in three days. They just made him thirstier.

  At first, he’d fought the mirages. They were fever dreams, brought on by cramping muscle, hunger and utter darkness. Gods, but the Bludd-stone had been cold. Pressed against it for three days and it had never warmed to him, just kept sucking the heat from him, taking and taking, giving nothing but nightmares in return.

  Of course Maurice Penhandlo would have called them visions. The guide left him alone that entire last day. He’d stoked the smoke fires, sealed the door and left. Vaylo supposed that he himself had fallen asleep—either that or been knocked out by the smoke. He remembered opening his eyes some time later and seeing . . . seeing things no man should ever see.

  Was it the future? He had not thought so at the time. He had looked out on a dark and blasted land patrolled, haunted, by forces compressed into human form, dread beings that distorted the very space that surrounded them. Bludd was gone and its roundhouse was smashed into blocks. The great forests of the east were burning and the sky was red with smoke. The dread beings did not fear the flames, and they walked where no man, woman or animal could ever hope to stand and live. As Vaylo looked on someone came running from the fire’s mouth, a young boy with flames on his back and legs. He was screaming in panic and fear. The dread beings moved toward him with their swords, and there was a moment when his gaze met the Dog Lord’s and the Dog Lord understood all that it meant to be the boy. It was like ticking through a life. Hope, followed by surprise and then fear. There was a flash of sheer terror when the boy realized there were worse ways to die than being burned alive. And then pain.

  He ceased breathing air and breathed pain instead.

  The Dog Lord had recalled that moment countless times over thirty-six years. His dreams returned to it again and again. The two questions he asked were always the same. Did the boy, in that final instant, feel relief? Vaylo would never know the answer, for in the vision that was the point when the dread beings turned their backs on the lifeless form of the boy and perceived him, Vaylo Bludd.

  They came for him, their forms rippling air, their swords sucking smoke from the fire. Vaylo had a choice then: flee or fight.

  And that was the second question: What would he do?

  For he had awakened at that moment and found himself back in the guidehouse, chained to the stone. He inhaled smoke, but it was from the smudgepots, not a raging forest fire.

  Flee or fight?

  Strange how you could think you were fighting only to realize you had actually fled. Was that what he had done by attacking Dhoone and then Ganmiddich? They had looked like fights, smelled like fights, but they had taken him away from his duty at Bludd. So weren’t they really fli
ghts?

  Enough.

  “Bring forward my horse,” Vaylo bellowed down the line. “Swift now.” Think too long and you got yourself stuck in tricky little traps of your own making. He was here now, and he’d fight tooth and nail to make sure the Bluddhouse didn’t fall into Dun Dhoone’s hands. That was what he could do; things that he couldn’t undo didn’t matter.

  Hammie brought forward Vaylo’s stallion and held the reins while his chief mounted.

  “Hand me the girl with the sore feet,” Vaylo commanded.

  Pasha was lifted from the ground and handed to Vaylo like a sack of grain. Undecided on whether or not she objected to this treatment, Pasha remained silent as the Dog Lord settled her in front of the saddle and kicked the stallion into motion.

  “Eyes lively,” he warned her, not trusting that all branches at saddle height had been cleared.

  After a minute or so he began to relax. Dhoone had done a fine job clipping wood. What gall though, to make themselves a path right under Bludd’s nose. And where were Quarro’s patrols? Damn fool called himself the Bludd chief and didn’t do anything to secure his house and clan? Well, the old chief was returning and the new chief would find himself turfed out along with the Dhoones. Vaylo was becoming less and less inclined to treat his eldest son kindly. Quarro didn’t deserve respect. He’d be given one chance to surrender—that was it.

  “Granda, there’s a pool.”

  Pasha’s high reedy voice broke through the Dog Lord’s thoughts. They’d reached one of the clearings reported by Odwin, the beaver pond with a mud beach around it. Vaylo glanced at the sky. Two hours of daylight left. The desire to push on was strong but there was also a desire to be settled before dark. They had no choice but to spend the night in the Deadwoods and that meant planning and raising a secure camp.

  Vaylo called the halt.

  The beaver pond was, without doubt, one of the sorriest places he’d ever had the misfortune to spend the night. The mud around the shore was thawing and whatever had died there last summer was beginning to stink. Scrawny weed trees and rotten bulrushes with exploded heads were partially submerged in the water, and some kind of yellow scum floating on the surface was proving endlessly fascinating to flies. Pasha and Aaron quickly shucked off their boots and entered the shallows. Nan shrugged when Vaylo frowned at her accusingly. Children, water: her powers of control extended only so far.

  Vaylo left them to it. His mind was on camp defenses and he consulted with Big Borro and Hammie Faa on the details. There would be a full black watch: half of the forty-two warriors awake at all times. Fifteen on the camp perimeter, and six—three pairs of two—concealed at lengths along the trail. Vaylo was quietly pleased when more men than needed stepped forward to volunteer for the first trail watch. He took a breath, about to tell the chosen six that the wolf dog would be patrolling the entire area, scribing a circle that contained them as well as the camp, safeguarding the watchers and providing a third level of security, when he stopped himself. The wolf dog was at the hillfort with Cluff Drybannock. It had chosen a new master to defend.

  When facing good men who had just volunteered for dangerous duty after a full day on the road, it was unthinkable to show weakness. Vaylo set aside thoughts of the wolf dog and concentrated on preparing his men. Gods, but they were young and sharp. Drybone had attracted the best new warriors in the clan. The Dog Lord could see his eighth son in their solemn and thoughtful faces, hear Dry in their silences, in their unwillingness to engage in anything less than serious talk. It made his heart ache.

  He assigned each pair one of the remaining dogs. Without the wolf dog as pack leader they weren’t capable of organizing themselves as a wall around the camp but they would scout in a limited way as directed. Their ears and noses were still good.

  By the time the watch was in place and the camp settled it was dark. No fires would be lit and no tents raised so there was little comfort to be had around the pond. Nan, smart woman that she was, had set aside a flask of Dhooneshine for just such a night. Everyone got a mouthful. It wasn’t the liquor as much as the ritual of passing the flask man-to-man that helped. Even the bairns got a tasting.

  Vaylo untied his blanket from his bedroll and took up position for the first watch. Facing west toward Dhoone, he pushed a cube of chewing curd between his lips and watched the black outline of the trees against the blackening sky. Mosquitoes smoked his head. He endured them. Behind him, the camp grew quiet as men slept. Vaylo felt deeply uneasy. Drybone was gone, the wolf dog was gone and here he was, camped two days north of his own roundhouse, about to order Bluddsmen to attack Bluddsmen, plunging his clan into civil war.

  When the sound came he was half expecting it—something in him had been ready for hours—yet you could be expecting something and still be deeply and profoundly surprised.

  The cry came from the north.

  The Dog Lord rose and drew his sword. He had been still for too long and his muscles resisted their change in status. Old was the word that followed him as he tracked northeast along the camp perimeter. His night vision was not what it was and he was impatient with himself and the branches and exposed roots that slowed him. His mind was not what it was either, for he should have figured it out sooner.

  The real threat was not from the west. Not tonight. Not any night. The real threat was from the North.

  “BLUDD,” Vaylo roared. “To arms!”

  The first time he had battled the shadow beasts did not, in any way, prepare him for the second time. That first time at the hillfort, he and a small handpicked force had engaged nine Unmade horsemen who had fought in a way he had understood. As Cluff Drybannock had told it, the Unmade nine were the taken forms of his own men. They had once been Bluddsmen and although they were no longer recognizable as such, a shadow of their former existence glinted in the blackness like tooth enamel on a smile seen by night.

  An infinitely small part of the horror had been knowable. The Dog Lord had not appreciated that at the time.

  He did now.

  They wielded Kil Ji, voided steel, but the Unmade metal had been forged into knives, not swords. And the lean and rippling forms who wielded them moved inhumanly fast. Vaylo recalled something Ockish Bull had once told him as they watched a fight between two city men at the Spring Fair. Cash and goods were riding on the outcome and over a thousand clansmen had gathered to watch. Vaylo had thought the rules too mannerly—all the fine stuff including headbutting and eye-gouging was disallowed—but once the fight got started and he saw the skill and brutality of the fighters his opinion changed. One man in particu lar caught his and Ockish’ eye: a slight, dark-haired Vorlander on the far side of forty. His opponent had to have been ten years younger, with a pretty set of muscles and a sly face. The Vorlander had experience on his side though—and speed. Vaylo had never seen anyone move so fast.

  “He’s got the old mercury in his veins,” Ockish had whispered in Vaylo’s ear as the fight came to its grisly end. “It comes from a different age.”

  Watching the Unmade slice through the darkness around the camp, longknives of voided steel sucking air into oblivion, Vaylo began to understand the full implications of what his eighth and best-loved son had told him about the Endlords. They were as old as the gods. Before there were clans, before there were even humans, the Endlords had been massing their armies. Other, older beings had been taken and unmade.

  Was it Ockish Bull’s mercury men who attacked the camp now? The Dog Lord doubted he would ever know.

  The camp had mobilized and a core of twelve warriors formed a block around Nan and the bairns. Drybone had trained them well. The twelve hadn’t needed to be told that their longswords would be a liability in the underbrush, and had staked their claim on the only open ground, the mud beach. Four were in the water. Vaylo gave them a brief nod as he cut across the camp. It was too dark to make eye contact with Nan, so he didn’t try. She had her maiden’s helper and pouch of poison. She knew what to do.

  The remaining t
hirty warriors were in the process of cinching the perimeter of the camp. Ranks were already broken. Knots of warriors had formed as clansmen came to the defense of clansmen. The Unmade were blade-shaped forms striking in perfect silence. Their longknives were the best weapon for the underbrush. Vaylo could see his men struggling to swing their swords in the tangle of dogwood and sumac while the Unmade’s knives pierced like darts.

  “Spear them!” he screamed. “Don’t let them flank you.”

  Keeping his sword close to his body, Vaylo joined the line. Straightaway he smelled the sharp, sickly odor of chyme. Someone had been struck in the gut. Gods save him. A swipe at the elbow refocused Vaylo’s mind. As he spun to protect himself he caught sight of his attacker up close. Its lips were curled back like a dog’s and its eyes revealed the shatter-blasted remains of an Unmade soul. Vaylo shamed himself by stepping back. He pulled the stench of gas and ice along with him. A sword slid in to the space he’d vacated. At first he couldn’t understand why, then he heard a high-pitched wail as live steel deflected voided steel, forcing both blades down and into the brush.

  Vaylo cursed his eyes. The Kil Ji had come at him edge-on and he hadn’t been able to spot the lean black line in the darkness. Glancing to his right he saw the blond swordsman Big Borro tugging his sword free from the brush. Vaylo drove forward to protect him, awkwardly bracing his sword hilt as he tried to isolate the blade from the snarl of sumac. A branch scraped along the lower orbit of his left eye and he could not prevent the reflex that demanded he close his eyes to protect them. He opened them perhaps less than a quarter of a second later but it was too late. Big Borro was opened by a single stroke of voided steel, traveling up from his hip, across his torso and along the right plane of his face. The violence and precision was breathtaking. Blood spattered Vaylo’s hands and the roof of his jaw.

  As Borro fell to the forest floor, something rippled in Vaylo’s peripheral vision. Angling his sword cross-body as a shield, he stepped sideways and back. The Unmade shadowed him so swiftly it was as if it was accelerating through a medium thinner than air. Bending slightly at the knees and rotating at the hip, Vaylo presented the edge of his sword to the oncoming blade. Off balance and improperly braced, the Kil Ji hit him like a body blow, bringing him to his knees.