by J. V. Jones
Vaylo could imagine it. Bludd routed at Ganmiddich and Robbie Dun Dhoone puffed-up with victory asking himself: What next? He was a king now, you could not forget that. Kings and clan were a dangerous mix.
Nan had been roasting wild carrot and leek on little wood splints over the fire. When she spotted Vaylo she removed them from the heat and rose to meet him. Without a word passing between them she ducked under his free arm, slid her hand around his waist and drew him toward their tent.
Vaylo was glad of her. As he walked between his lady and his grand-son, uncertain as to who was supporting whom, he tried to still his thoughts. He felt old and loose.
Word spread through the camp quickly. Thrago dead, Hanro dead, hundreds of Bluddsmen slaughtered. Vaylo sat on the hard ground in front of his tent and watched his men grow restless. They would ride on the Bluddhouse tonight given the choice. Quarro’s refusal to send forces to aid his brother offended them deeply as Bluddsmen. “We should break the Red Gate by dawn,” he heard more than one man murmur.
Vaylo did not bother to point out the two problems with this. One, that Bluddsmen would be fighting Bluddsmen, shedding their own blood at a time when clan was already suffering. And two, with Nan, Pasha, Aaron and three wounded in the camp, they boasted a force of twenty-four. And anyone would be very much mistaken if they thought the Dog Lord would lead a strike on the Bluddhouse while leaving his grandchildren and wounded unguarded. That meant the true number was something under twenty.
Under twenty could not take a house.
Talk was unsettled around the fire that night. Men had taken themselves for long rides, away from camp and into the woods. Things had been killed. Someone had brought down a boar. Vaylo could smell it, though it had not yet been butchered, just split and drained. Talk was of Withy. Many in the camp had lost friends or kin. There was a sense of time running out. Great and terrible events were happening to Bludd while they were camped on a bald hillside, biding time.
Vaylo took to his bed early. He, Nan and the bairns retired to their small canvas-and-deerskin shelter and snuggled for warmth. Pasha had unfastened her braids and Vaylo ended up with his granddaughter’s thick black hair in his face. He had to stop himself from hugging her and Aaron tightly to his chest. This time last year he had boasted nineteen grandchildren. Now he was down to three.
He did not sleep. He feared he would dream of Thrago and Hanro and he feared those dreams would be filled with blame.
When Odwin Two Bear’s cry came Vaylo rose to his knees and buckled his sword. “Stay here,” he warned the people he loved most. To Aaron he said, “Remember what we spoke of earlier.”
The boy nodded solemnly.
Vaylo left.
The rest of the warriors in the camp were ahead of him—including Wittish Owans, who was one of the wounded. It was not a good night to strike Bluddsmen. Tempers were hot and they were liberal with their swords. The Unmade were already engaged.
Vaylo saw the rippling blackness and smelled empty and frozen spaces. You could hardly believe the forms had weight until you saw the grass flatten beneath them. Vaylo counted four. Only two were shaped to wield swords. The front two were something other, loping monsters who carried weight and muscle mass on their backs. They screeched like gulls. Ancient cunning lived in their small dead eyes.
They were more dangerous than the forms that held Kil Ji. They had to be isolated, then circled with swords. Someone had to risk entering the lethal space they commanded. Bluddsmen were up for it. Tonight, northwest of their roundhouse with the news of Bludd losses still unsettled in their heads, they were the beings who were possessed.
Bludd had always been the most fiercely terrible of all clans. Here, on open ground, they found their stride. Later, when Vaylo thought about it, he would use the word calling. There was as much beauty to be found in Bluddsmen’s swordblows this night as there was in Sull arrows piercing hearts.
They lost just one man, the swordsman Harkie Selmor, whose father owned a dairy farm east of the roundhouse. Vaylo took Harkie’s life swiftly after the boy lost part of his gut.
Afterwards Bluddsmen cleaned their swords. They sat on the grass and rested. The stench of earth burning as the two voided steel swords sunk beneath the ground was overpowering. Looking north toward the Deadwoods, Vaylo spoke a two-word prayer.
No more.
He stayed awake all night repeating it, watching for men and creatures that should have been dead.
They had been lucky. Four against twenty-five, including Wittish: fair odds when it came to the Unmade.
As the sky began to lighten in the east, Vaylo found himself recalling Angus Lok. The ranger had said many things to him over the years, but one thing, spoken in the Tomb of the Dhoone Princes, was beginning to stand out. Return to Bludd and marshal your forces and wait for the Long Night to come.
It sounded, now Vaylo thought of it, about right.
We are Bludd. Chosen by the Stone Gods to guard their borders.
Vaylo rose as the first rays of sunlight streamed toward the camp. There had been more than beauty present in the Bluddsmen’s Swordblows. Truth was there as well. He knew what he had to do.
For a wonder, the bairns were asleep in the tent. The leather cage with the bird inside it was lying next to Aaron’s foot. Vaylo took it and walked east from the camp.
By scheming with the Surlord of Spire Vanis, he had already made one unholy alliance in his life. What was one more compared to that?
A man could not lose his soul twice.
He had to retake Bludd. Dangers were mounting and he, his men and his grandchildren needed to be safe in the Bluddhouse. Everything else must taken second place.
Sull needs Bludd. Bludd needs Sull.
Reaching a level area of land below the camp, Vaylo snapped open the cage door and took out the bird. The tiny gray starling was alert in his hand. When it was free of the leather walls it began to chuff.
Vaylo threw it into the air and watched as it rose high in the silver sky, circling to find its bearings.
It was a powerful bird. It commanded an army.
Four hundred Sull appeared on the horizon the next day to help the Dog Lord regain his house.
CHAPTER 36
Schemes
THEY TOOK HOARGATE into the city of Spire Vanis. Mallin said the gate itself had been carved from the largest tree in the world. “A bloodwood from the southern Storm Margin. It took them ten days to chop it.”
The gate was twenty feet wide, twenty-five feet tall and four feet thick. It was formed from a single piece of wood that had been relief-carved with the likeness of a giant bird of prey. Bram had never seen anything like it in his life. He wondered about the machinery that was so powerful it could raise it.
“It’s never raised higher than ten feet,” Mallin told him, his gaze as always less than a second behind Bram’s. “Remember this is a city. Much of it exists for show.”
Bram tried not to stare too much as they passed beneath the gate and entered Spire Vanis, a city built from pale gleaming limestone. The scale of it was hard to comprehend. A hundred Dhoonehouses could fit between its walls.
“Shall we take the tour?”
Bram nodded. Mallin seemed almost jaunty. Some of it was probably relief. The ranger had given Bram detailed instructions on what to say if either of them were stopped at the gate by red cloaks. They had not been stopped. Even so Bram had noticed that Mallin had been pretty happy ever since they’d left the Weasel camp at Blackhail. Sometimes the ranger let his prejudices show.
“Hoargate market,” Mallin said as they passed into a large open square filled with wood-and-canvas stalls. “If it’s live they’ll kill it for you and if it’s dead they’ll try and raise it.”
Bram smelled the mouthwatering fragrances of charred meat, grilled onions, yeasty bread and toasted spices. He saw girls. Many wore substantially less than clan maids. They looked at him boldly; Bram wondered if it was because of his horse. Gabbie was slightly crazy and incli
ned to eat blankets but you could not deny he was a fine-looking stallion.
Mallin stopped and bought food—charred steak cut into slices and rolled inside flatbread—and they ate in their saddles as they rode south through the city. Bram felt like a king.
The journey here had been hard but uneventful. Bram guessed that Mallin had chosen a route to steer clear of events unfolding at Ganmiddich and Bannen, and they had spent a lot of time in the dense evergreen forest south of Blackhail. They had not stopped at any clan, though Mallin had slipped into Duff’s stovehouse for an hour one evening. Nights were spent camped in the open air, with only bedrolls and longfires for comfort. Bram fell into deep sleep every night beneath skies filled with spring stars.
It was hard to deny that he had found the events at Weasel camp thrilling. Not at first, not while they were happening, but later when he thought about them. The seamlessness. The cool hand of Hew Mallin. The small but vital part that he, Bram Cormac, had played.
They never spoke of it later. Or before for that matter. It was something created out of nearly nothing. Bram had simply been reacting to Hew Mallin, watching the ranger closely, following cues. If it was a test Bram hoped very much he had passed.
They had poisoned the well.
In the Scarpe chief’s tent, before Yelma Scarpe had entered, Mallin had slipped him a small package wrapped with squirrel skin. Bram had been alert after that, though at the time he had not realized that Mallin had sprinkled something on the brazier that would make him cough. A current in the tent had sent the smoke from the doctored brazier straight toward him. Mallin noticed everything, used what he could. He had been waiting for either the Scarpe chief or her nephew to lose patience with the coughing boy. All the ranger had to do when Uriah Scarpe sent Bram from the tent was to add, “Get yourself some water from the well.”
It had been enough for Bram to understand Mallin’s purpose.
What Yelma Scarpe would never normally allow—strangers access to her well—had been achieved in a series of flawless moves.
It was child’s play after that. Bram had accepted a dipper of water from a Scarpe girl, dropped it so that it spilled on her dress, and then slipped the contents of Mallin’s package into the wellshaft while she and her friends were distracted with drying off the dress and cleaning the dipper.
Bram didn’t know what was in the package but if he were to guess he would say it was something to make people sick, not kill them. Softening, it was called on the battlefield. Mallin, and therefore the Phage, had softened Scarpe for Raina Blackhail.
The night Bram had spent above the stables at Blackhail had been enough for him to know how things stood between the chief’s wife and Scarpe. “Chief’s should make a strike,” one of the groomsmen had murmured. “Clan would be behind her if she did.”
Bram would have liked to know what happened. Had Raina Blackhail struck the camp? And if she had, would she even realize that the Scarpe defense was not as vigorous as it should have been?
Probably not. Clan warriors did not post signs informing people they were sick.
“And this is Mask Fortress,” Mallin said, interrupting Bram’s thoughts. “Sadly you do not see it at its best. It lost its high tower last winter. Rotten foundation apparently. Brought the whole thing down.”
Bram looked and saw a gray-white fortress with high walls and three towers which looked plenty tall to him. The north face of Mount Slain rose behind it; ice still holding fast in its crevasses and at its peak. “That was the tower that killed the Surlord?”
“He was in it when he died. Let’s leave it at that.”
Judging from the pointedness in Mallin’s voice, Bram guessed that the old surlord, much like Yelma Scarpe, was someone Hew Mallin had not liked.
It made it easier, Bram had discovered, when you liked the people you advanced and disliked those you undermined. It had been satisfying to put the poison in the well. Yelma Scarpe was a conniving weasel who was trespassing on Blackhail land. Raina Blackhail was beautiful and strong: she had deserved the Phage’s help.
Who are they to interfere in matters of clan? Bram dismissed the small voice in his head. He was “They” now. Bram Cormac was Phage.
He held his head high as he toured the city. He was part of a brotherhood that shaped the world.
“I’m tired of viewing the sights,” Mallin said abruptly after they had passed the windowless ivory facade of the Bone Temple. “Let’s find some rooms and rest.”
Bram was just fine with that. He noticed the ranger headed back in the general direction of Hoargate. Bram made a note of the route. He liked to keep track of his location. The streets were busy and dirty. Men wheeled barrows heaped with bloody lamb carcasses, draymen drove carts stacked high with wooden cages containing live chickens and piglets, and children and dogs ran everywhere, chancing for scraps.
“This should do,” Mallin said as they approached a shabby, three-storied inn not far from the western wall.
The inn did not have a legible sign for Bram to read, but he did notice that the stableman who came out to greet them as they dismounted appeared to be acquainted with Hew Mallin. There was something knowing in the old man’s nod.
“Day, sirs,” the man said, pulling two carrots from a pack strung at his waist and feeding one to each horse. “Will we be having the pleasure tonight?”
Mallin told him they would. Addressing Bram, the ranger said, “Go ahead. Take a room, order some supper. I’ll be with you soon.”
It was a dismissal. Bram unfastened his saddlebags, hefted them over his shoulder, and headed inside. Fearing it might be impolite to enter the inn by the side door, he took the more public-looking front door instead.
It led directly into a dim, cave-like room where men and women were drinking with solemn focus. Everyone halted what they doing to look at him. All dicing, supping and talking was suspended as the patrons appraised the stranger. Bram swallowed. He tried to appear harmless. The patrons looked mean. Two were wearing blood-soaked aprons.
“You got the wrong place, son.” A big man with blond hair and a full beard stepped forward. “We only cater to locals here.”
Bram’s instinct was to leave, but he fought it. “If I might have a word?” He had planned on adding “sir” to the end of his request but dropped it at the last moment. Mallin never called anyone sir.
The big man claimed the space directly in front of Bram. He was wearing an apron too, but it wasn’t blood-soaked.
“I’m with Hew Mallin,” Bram said quietly so no one else could hear. “We need a room and something to eat.”
“That so?” The big man did not give an inch. “What’s the color of his eyes.”
“Green.” Bram hesitated. “No, yellow.”
The big man nodded once. “It’ll do. Follow me.”
It occurred to Bram that this rundown smoky inn had better security than the city itself.
The inn was a warren of small rooms, tunnels, nooks and screened-off alcoves. One tunnel led belowground. Bram heard the low laughter of men rising from it. In a small sitting area near the back, four young women, all wearing little black aprons and caps, were sharing a platter of tripe. Bram tried not to color as he passed them. One of the women whispered, not too quietly, “That’s a fine-looking boy.”
Bram didn’t know what to make of that. At Dhoone he had been told he was too small, and had the look of the wild clans.
When he was seated he ordered whatever food was hottest and best, and a couple of drams of malt. “Dreggs or Dhooneshine?” the big man asked. Bram went with Dreggs. He downed his own dram quickly when it arrived and seriously thought about Mallin’s. This was an odd, hostile place and he wondered what he was doing here.
Mallin didn’t join him for the better part of two hours.
Sliding along the bench, the ranger ignored the congealing sweet-meats in gravy and the basket of hardening bread and looked carefully at Bram. “Why don’t you take out the blue cloak and put it on?”
&nb
sp; Bram blinked.
Mallin didn’t. “It’s cold in here,” he said, “and we may be in for a long wait.”
They were sitting in a small, screened-off alcove at the very back of the inn. There were no windows. A single lamp hung from a brass hook on the wall. Its flame guard was shaped like a rib cage. Bram watched the banded light it created jitter against the table. He recalled the moment when he had looked down the well shaft at Weasel camp. Ledges had extended from the well wall, probably so that the original digger could climb from top to bottom when he was done. It struck Bram now that being in the Phage was like climbing into that well. You were going down, but there were stages, places to rest during the descent. Bram had descended part of the way but had not reached the bottom. Mallin’s request meant another drop.
Bram glanced at the ranger. He was sitting with both hands resting on the table, looking back.
The cloak was at the very bottom of the second saddlebag. Even though it had been rolled tightly into a cylinder for many days, the creases fell away as Bram unfurled it; the wool was that fine. It had been dyed the rich heather-blue of Dhoone and its edges were bound with fisher fur. Bram had not worn it since his time at Castlemilk. He did not want to wear it now. Robbie had given it to him after the reclaiming of Dhoone, and Bram had so many strong feelings about it they could have mounted a fair-sized battle in his head.
He pulled it across his shoulders and fastened the copper thistle clasp, and resolutely did not think of his brother.
Mallin ordered fresh food and tankards of beer, and they did not speak as they ate and drank. Afterwards, Mallin slipped away for a while and returned looking brushed down and refreshed. He spoke casually with the big blond man, who Bram learned was the innkeeper Janus Shoulder. His inn was named the Butcher’s Rest. Bram supposed that explained the bloody aprons.
