The Anvil of the World aotwu-1

by Kage Baker

  “A demon and a saint having kids?” Smith pondered it. “Funny.”

  “Not to the Yendri, it isn’t,” said Mrs. Smith.

  “Let’s talk about something else,” begged Burnbright.

  So the subject was changed. Not long afterward the fire was banked, and everyone retired for the night, with the exception of the Smiths’ baby, who cried for a good hour.

  The next day, once camp was broken, proceeded in much the same way as the previous one had. Endless hours they rumbled across the empty fields, and though Smith watched the horizon, he saw no threatening darkness there, not that day nor on the next few to follow. The Smiths’ infant cried, the Yendri kept himself aloof, Parradan Smith killed no one, and Lord Ermenwyr did not die, though he remained in his palanquin as they traveled and the purple fume of his irritation streamed backward in the wind.

  “Mama!” shrieked the Smiths’ younger boy, pointing behind them. “Dragons!”

  It was the fifth day out, and the Smith children were reaching critical mass for boredom.

  “Don’t be silly, dearest,” his mother told him wearily, jogging the screaming baby on her shoulder.

  “I’m not! They’re flying up behind us and they’re going to get us! Look!”

  Nobody bothered to look except Smith, who turned on his high crate to glance over his shoulder. To his astonishment, he saw some five or six winged forms in the air behind them, at a distance of no more than a mile or two. He turned completely around, bracing his feet on the edge of the cart, and shaded his eyes for a good look.

  “The dragons will get us!” chorused the Smiths’ other children, beginning to wail and cry.

  “No, no, they won’t,” Smith shouted helpfully, looking down into their cart. “Dragons won’t hurt you. And anyway, I don’t think—”

  “The lord in the black tent says they do,” protested the little boy. “I went in when the big lady came out to eat so I could see if he was really a vampire like the runner said, and he told me he wasn’t, only he’d been bit by a dragon when he was a little boy for making too much noise and it made him half-dead forever but he was lucky ’cause most dragons just eat children that make too much noise, they fly overhead on big wings and just catch them and eat them up like bugs!”

  “Now, Wolkin—” said his father.

  “I told you not to bother that man!” said his mother.

  “Well, that just isn’t true,” yelled Smith, mentally damning Lord Ermenwyr. “Dragons don’t do that kind of thing, all right, son? They’re too small. I’ve seen ’em. All they do is fly over the water and catch fish. They build nests in cliffs. People make umbrellas out of their wings. No, what we’ve got here are gliders.” He pointed up at the winged figures, who were much nearer now.

  “Yes, Wolkin, you see? Perfectly harmless,” said his father.

  “Just people with big wings strapped on,” explained Smith. “Sort of. They carry letters sometimes.”

  “And they have, er, flying clubs and competitions,” added his father. “Nothing to be afraid of at all.”

  “Of course not,” Smith agreed. “Look, here they come. Let’s all wave.”

  The children waved doubtfully.

  “Look,” said the Smiths’ little girl. “They’ve got pistol-bows just like you have, Caravan Master.”

  “What?” said Smith, as a bolt thunked into his left thigh.

  The gliders were raking the caravan with boltfire. The result was screaming confusion and an answering barrage of shot from the caravans. Smith, firing both his weapons, glimpsed Parradan Smith standing, snarling, balancing as he sent boltfire from an apparently inexhaustible magazine into the nearest gliders. He saw Balnshik hanging out the side of the palanquin, bracing her feet on an immense old hunting weapon, and firing with deadly accuracy.

  It was over in seconds. The closest of the gliders veered off, dropped something beside the road, and went down in a tangle of snapping struts and collapsing green fabric. The others wheeled. They lifted and floated off to the east, rapidly vanishing. The thing that had been dropped coughed, spurted dust, and exploded, throwing liquid flame in all directions. Fortunately the carts were well clear by the time it went off.

  “Stop,” gasped Smith, but the keymen were already applying the brakes. The carts shuddered to a stop, their iron wheels grinding in the stone ruts and sending up a flare of sparks the whole length of the caravan. He jumped from his high seat and fell, clutching his wounded leg. Scrambling up painfully he saw Parradan Smith already out and running for the fallen glider, holding a freshly cocked weapon upright over his head as he ran. Burnbright had turned and was racing back toward them, looking terrified.

  “Anybody hurt?” Smith shouted, leaning against the cart as he tried to stanch the flow of blood down his leg.

  It was some moments before he could get a coherent answer. Luckily, he had been the only one to sustain a wound. One of the Keymen Smiths had been slightly stunned by a bolt striking his steel pot-helmet, deflected by its wide brim; another shot had ricocheted and hit Keyman Crucible sidelong on his upper arm, leaving a welted bruise the size of a handball. Lord Ermenwyr was unharmed, but his luggage was struck through with a dozen bolts at least, and he had leaped from the palanquin and was screaming threats, in surprisingly full voice, at the remaining gliders, now only distant specks on the horizon.

  “So much for his being a vampire,” Smith muttered to himself. He was binding up his leg with a rag when Parradan Smith approached him, his face stony.

  “You’d better come see this,” he said.

  “Is he dead?” Smith inquired, limping forward. The other man just nodded.

  The glider was certainly dead. His neck had been snapped when his aircraft crashed, and lay at a distinctly unnatural angle; but it was obvious he’d been dead well before the impact. His quilted flight suit was torn and bloody in a dozen places.

  “Damn,” said Smith.

  “Those are my bolts,” said Parradan Smith, pointing out a scatter of small black-centered wounds. “Custom-made. Those two would be yours, probably.”

  “You’re a lucky, lucky man,” Lord Ermenwyr told the corpse, coming up to stare at it balefully. “If you were still alive, after what you’ve done to my best shirts—well, I wouldn’t want to be you, that’s all.” He prodded the body with his boot. “No weapons. I suppose he was the one designated to drop the incendiary device.”

  “Probably.”

  “Good job Nursie nailed him before he managed it.” He poked at the man’s left arm, from which a big barbed steel projectile protruded.

  “So these are hers too?” Parradan Smith pointed at two others, one in the dead man’s right leg and one between his ribs.

  “Yes. They’re designed to take down elk.”

  “And these are mine, and these are Caravan Master’s, so—” Parradan Smith stooped and pulled three feathered darts from the body. “Who the hell fired these?”

  Lord Ermenwyr’s eyes widened, seemed, in fact, at the point of starting out of his face.

  “I’d be careful with those, if I were you,” he said faintly.

  They were little tubes of cane, tipped with what appeared to be thorns and fletched with small curling green feathers.

  “Poisoned?” inquired Smith.

  “Aren’t all darts that mysteriously appear out of nowhere smeared with deadly poison?” said Lord Ermenwyr. Parradan Smith tossed them away.

  “Do you know who fired them?”

  “No!”

  “Well, somebody fired them,” said Smith. “What I’d like to know is, what was this one trying to do? He and his friends?”

  “Trying to kill me, obviously,” said Lord Ermenwyr.

  “Have you enemies, my lord?”

  “Dozens of them,” Lord Ermenwyr replied. “And they’re nothing to Daddy’s enemies. In fact, I wouldn’t put this past Daddy. He’s never been fond of me.” His rage had burned quickly down to ash, and he was pale, beginning to shake.

  “Don
’t be ridiculous, Master,” said Balnshik, appearing behind them suddenly. She looked over the battered corpse with a cold eye. “You know perfectly well that if your lord father had wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now.” She stooped and pulled her steel points from the body. Some of the clothing tore as she retrieved the last one, and Smith leaned forward with an exclamation.

  “Look, he’s got a tattoo!”

  “So he has.” Balnshik glanced down at it. “One of those nasty little assassins’ gangs, isn’t it? There you are, Master, you see? Nothing to worry about.”

  “Nothing to worry about?” cried Lord Ermenwyr, his eyes bugging out again. “When I might have been riddled with boltfire and burned into the bargain? By the Nine Hells, what do you think’s worth worrying about?” His voice rose to a scream. “You’re going to let me die in this horrible featureless wilderness and I’ll have no tomb, not even a proper funeral—”

  He broke off with an oof as Balnshik seized him and threw him over one shoulder.

  “You’ll have to excuse his lordship,” she said. “It’s time for his fix. Come along, darling.” She turned and strode back to the caravan.

  Smith stared after her; then his attention was drawn back to the corpse, as Parradan Smith bent and methodically dug his bolts from the wounds.

  “Is that an assassins’ tattoo?” he asked.

  “How should I know?” said Parradan Smith tonelessly, not looking up.

  They scraped out a grave in the dry ground and covered the body with a thin layer of earth and stones. The green wings were laid over all.

  Speed once they’d started up again was limited because Keyman Crucible’s arm became swollen and painful. It was well after dark by the time they were able to make camp; by then Smith’s leg was throbbing and fairly swollen too. As the fires were lit, as the tents were being set up, he limped slowly to the hut and waited for Ronrishim Flowering Reed to emerge.

  “You’re an herbalist, aren’t you?” he said, when the Yendri came out.

  Flowering Reed looked him up and down with distaste.

  “Are you going to ask me for healing?” he asked.

  “Yes, if you can help me.”

  “In the name of the Unsullied Daughter, then,” he said, “I will require clean water. Have your minions fetch it.”

  The only person available to be a minion was Burnbright, who obligingly fetched a bucket of water from the pump and stayed to watch as Smith reclined before Flowering Reed’s tent and submitted to having his trouser leg sliced open.

  “Aren’t you going to cauterize it with something?” she inquired, wincing as Smith’s wound was probed. Smith grunted and turned his face away.

  “Do you use a sword to cut through flowers?” replied the Yendri, extracting the bolt and regarding it critically. “Ah, but I forget; you people do. It may surprise you to learn that the most violent solution to a difficulty is not always the best one.”

  “I was just asking, for goodness sake!” said Burnbright, and stormed away.

  “Got anything for pain?” Smith asked through clenched teeth. Flowering Reed shook his head.

  “I do not keep opiates for my personal use,” he said. “I believe it is better to learn to bear with inevitable suffering.”

  “I see,” said Smith.

  “When you and all your people learn to see, there will be rejoicing and astonishment through the worlds,” said Flowering Reed.

  Smith endured in silence as his wound was cleaned, and the Yendri took a pungent-smelling ointment from his pack and anointed the wound. As Smith shifted so the bandage could be wound about his leg, he looked over at Flowering Reed.

  “What do you make of the attack today?” he inquired.

  Flowering Reed shrugged again. “One of your people’s interminable quarrels. Filth slew filth, and so filth lusted after vengeance.”

  Smith decided there was no point attempting to defend the blood feud as part of his cultural heritage. “But who do you think they were after?”

  “I have no idea, nor any interest in the matter,” said Flowering Reed. “Though if I cared to speculate on such a thing, I might begin by observing who defended himself most viciously.”

  He tied off the bandage, and Smith sat up awkwardly. “Parradan Smith?”

  “Perhaps. On the other hand, your people are always ready to unleash violence upon others. He may simply have been the best prepared.”

  “Nice to get an unbiased opinion,” said Smith, getting to his feet.

  “Leave me now. I must pray and cleanse myself.”

  “Go ahead.” Smith limped away, and Burnbright came running to lend her shoulder for support.

  “Isn’t he awful?” she hissed. “Now he’ll put his nose in the air and meditate on how much better he is than anybody else.”

  “At least he was willing to fix my leg,” Smith said.

  “Only because you asked him. They have to if they’re asked; it’s part of their religion or something. Don’t think for a minute he’d have offered on his own.”

  “You don’t like the Yendri very much, do you?”

  “They’re always raping runners,” Burnbright informed him. “Not so much caravan runners like me, but the solos, the long-distance messengers, all the time.”

  “That’s what I’d always heard, but I thought it was just stories,” said Smith. “Since they’re supposed to be so nonviolent.”

  Burnbright shook her head grimly.

  “They say it’s an act of love, not violence, and their girls take it as a compliment, so why shouldn’t we? Self-righteous bastards. We learned all sorts of defenses against them at the mother house.”

  “Nice to know,” said Smith. “How’s Crucible’s arm?”

  “It’s huge, and it’s turning all sorts of colors,” she said. “I don’t think he’ll be able to crank tomorrow. That means you’ll have to take his place on the key. That’s what Caravan Masters do.”

  “Oh,” said Smith, who had been looking forward to a day of riding stretched out on the shipment of flour from Old Troon Mills.

  “Funny about the dead glider,” Burnbright said.

  “What was funny about him?”

  “He was from Troon.” She helped him to a seat beside the fire. “I recognized him. He used to hang out at the Burning Wheel. That’s the bar where all the gamblers go.”

  “You think Lord Ermenwyr’s a gambler as well as a vampire?” Smith asked her wryly.

  She flushed. “Well? I never saw him any other time but after dark until today, did you? And he never eats anything, and he looks just terrible! But he’s not a gambler. He’s somebody’s ambassador, was what I heard, and he’s been called off the job because he’s sick so they’re sending him to the spa. What, you think the gliders were after him?” She looked surprised.

  “He thinks so.”

  “Hmmm.” Her face was bright with speculation. Just then Mrs. Smith called for her, and she ran off to the kitchen pavilion.

  No one slept particularly well that night. The Smith’s baby screamed for two hours instead of the usual one. Smith divided watches with the keymen, taking the first shift, so he was up late anyway, getting stiffer and more chilled before Keyman Bellows took his place. Just as Smith had got himself drunk enough to pretend his wounded leg belonged to somebody else so he could doze off, he found himself sitting up, his heart pounding. He turned his head, staring into the west beyond the ring of carts. The faintest of touches on his face, a trace of moisture in the air, a scent as powerful and distinct as the sea’s but certainly not the sea.

  Across the fire from him, Mrs. Smith leaned up on one elbow in her bedroll.

  “Wind’s shifted,” she muttered. “That’s the Greenlands. We’ll see it, tomorrow.”

  Smith lay back, wondering what she meant, and then he remembered the dark mountain.

  He had forgotten it next morning, in the haze of his hangover and the confusion of breaking camp. He took Keyman Crucible’s place on the key, crowding beside him
as Crucible pedaled, and the effort of winding for the push-off alone was enough to make Smith’s biceps twinge. By the time they were three hours on their way he had mentally crossed key-man off the list of possible careers for himself.

  Busy with all this, Smith did not glance up at the horizon until the noon meal was handed along the line, and then he saw it: a rise of forested land to the northwest, and above it a black jagged cone. It didn’t seem very big until his mind grappled with a calculation of the distance. Then his eyes wouldn’t accept how immense it must be.

  He put it out of his mind and attempted to unwrap his lunch with one hand. It was a pocket roll stuffed with highly spiced meat. He chewed methodically, looking back along the line of cars, and wondered again what the purpose of the glider attack had been. Robbery seemed unlikely, at least of the cargo. The most valuable thing they were carrying was Lady Seven Butterflies’s holistic eggs, and the mental image of a corps of gliders attempting to fly, bearing between them perhaps a cargo net full of big violet eggs, was enough to make him grin involuntarily.

  What if one of the passengers had something they wanted? The fact that the dead man had an assassin’s tattoo didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t also a thief. One man may in his time take many professions, as Smith knew too well.

  He looked forward at the cart where the Smiths rode. They were jewelers; were they carrying any of their wares?

  He turned back to look at the cart that Parradan Smith and the Yendri shared. They rode in mutual silence. Parradan Smith watched the eastern horizon. Flowering Reed’s uneasy stare was fixed on the black mountain to the northwest. Smith ruled out the Yendri, who was carrying very little luggage and had no trunks at all. His race disdained personal possessions and produced nothing anyone would want, traded in nothing but medicinal herbs and the occasional freshwater pearl.

  Parradan Smith, on the other hand, was couriering something. What? The instrument case he carried didn’t seem heavy enough to be loaded with gold, as Burnbright had speculated.