Assail

by Ian C. Esslemont

  Two men and one woman came pushing into the water from upstream. Two covered him while the third reloaded.

  ‘This is our claim!’ one fellow shouted.

  The accent was unfamiliar to Kyle. He kept his arms wide. ‘It is none of my business,’ he said, ‘but I do not think this land belongs to you.’

  ‘You’re right,’ the woman answered as she drew near. ‘It is none of your business.’

  The three were armoured alike in plain soft leathers sewn with bronze rings and lozenges. The swords and crossbows they carried appeared rather shabby and mass-produced.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ the first fellow asked.

  Kyle motioned up to the distant ridgeline. ‘Just passing through.’

  The three eyed one another, uneasy. The woman looked him up and down in obvious disapproval. ‘You don’t look like you’re too well equipped to take on the ice giants, stranger.’

  ‘Ice giants?’

  The three laughed. ‘Just arrived, hey?’ the woman said. ‘Yeah. The locals call them the Icebloods.’

  ‘Ah. I see.’

  ‘You see what?’ the woman snapped, annoyed. ‘Anyway, you’re right about that moving on.’

  The other two laughed again.

  Hands up, Kyle dared a small gesture to the woman. ‘If you’ll forgive me … you don’t look much like prospectors yourselves.’

  She glanced to her two partners – no more than hangers on, Kyle thought them. ‘That’s right. We’re no dirt-grubbers or sifters. The plan is to guard this stretch of creek. Then, when everything else has been tapped out …’ she shrugged, ‘we offer this virgin patch on auction to the highest bidder.’ The two men nodded, grinning. ‘We should make a dock each, hey boys?’

  ‘That’s right, Gleeda,’ one answered.

  ‘And what will you do with it?’ Kyle asked.

  The woman screwed up her face. ‘Do with what?’

  ‘This … dock. All the money.’

  ‘Who the fuck cares? I’ll buy a house so big there’ll be rooms I never use. I’ll eat quail eggs and fucking bird liver all day.’

  ‘A life of luxury. Doing nothing.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So your goal is to do nothing with your life,’ Kyle affirmed. ‘I don’t know. Sounds … pathetic to me.’

  The woman’s mouth turned down and she raised her crossbow. ‘For someone on the sharp end of three bolts, you’ve got a big mouth on you, fellow. Now, you can throw your life away, but it would be a shame to waste a fine-looking ivory-handled sword like you got there.’

  Kyle glanced to the weapon at his side. ‘I wouldn’t touch this, if I were you.’

  ‘Shut up. Cover him, boys.’ Gleeda carefully reached in to pull the weapon from its sheath. ‘Damn, that looks sharp,’ she said, and, cradling her crossbow in her arm, she moved to touch her thumb to it.

  Kyle tensed, readying himself.

  The woman goggled at the naked slit where her thumb had been. She screamed.

  Kyle rolled forward through the shallow wash to kick one fellow down. A crossbow thumped, releasing. No lancing pain stabbed him so he charged onward, pulling the second fellow’s crossbow down and smashing a fist across his jaw. He turned to Gleeda. She was fumbling to bring up her own weapon. A single leap and he snatched it away and turned it on her.

  Gleeda glared her bloody rage. Then her gaze went to the blade lying on the naked gravel bed of the wash. It gleamed there like glowing ivory. ‘You’re … him,’ she half mouthed. ‘That fella.’ She backed away while squeezing her mangled hand. ‘Whiteblade …’

  Kyle gestured them off with the crossbow. The three stumbled back across the creek. He picked up the blade and carefully resheathed it then edged away, weapon raised until he entered the woods. He jogged on for a time. Once he’d gone far enough he shot off the bolt and slammed the weapon against a tree to break it and threw it away.

  Three days later, in a valley far higher above the dry prairie plateau, he knelt at a pond of run-off next to humps of shadowed snow. Beneath the snow rested a layer of deep sapphire ice thicker than his arm. It crackled and almost seemed to steam in the heat of the gathering spring.

  He was kneeling to scoop up the frigid ice-water when a voice spoke, close and gruff: ‘You are bold.’

  He held out his arms, turned, and was quite startled to find a near-giant standing directly behind him. The man must have possessed a good full third again in height over Kyle, though he knew he wasn’t all that tall to begin with. The fellow wore thick leathers and possessed a wild mane of mussed brown hair tied up with leather strips, and an equally wide and bushy beard that touched his chest. A sword hung on one hip, a long-hafted axe at the other. The fellow regarded him from within his nest of hair with something like an eager grin, as if hoping Kyle would go for his sword. He kept his arms wide. ‘I’m just passing through.’

  The grin broadened on the man’s ruddy features and he scratched his scalp beneath his bunched and matted hair. ‘You pass through to what? To peak? You’ll not like it there, I think.’

  ‘I’m looking for someone.’

  The expressive brows rose. ‘Oh-ho! Looking for someone! You have friends here, yes?’

  ‘Yes, in fact I might.’

  The giant slapped Kyle’s side, nearly sending him tumbling into the pond. ‘Ho! You are funny little man! I give you chance. You go south now. Don’t come back.’

  Kyle rubbed his ribs. ‘Do you know a man named Stalker? Badlands? Coots?’

  The fellow dropped his grin. He edged backwards from Kyle. A hand went to the bearded axe at his side. ‘The Losts? Yes, I know.’

  Losts? Kyle wondered. Well, that made sense. They called themselves the Lost Army. ‘Well … they named me Lost as well.’

  ‘Did they?’ the man rumbled. He threw his arms wide. ‘Cousin!’ He wrapped Kyle in a crushing hug and lifted him from the ground. Only when he set him down again could Kyle breathe once more. He leaned over, hands on knees, sucking in air.

  ‘I am Cull Heel!’ the fellow announced, his voice booming over the valley. ‘Come! You go with me to Greathall!’

  Hardly able to talk, Kyle nodded. ‘Thank you, yes,’ he gasped. ‘Thank you.’

  Cull set off upland. Kyle hurried after; the fellow set a fast pace with his great strides. ‘I know lowland ways,’ he was saying. ‘I travel. Sail as pirate. Work as mercenary. Much fighting, little coin. Wife not happy.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Oh – I was a mercenary as well. For a time.’

  ‘Same as Losts. They go too, I hear. They come back.’

  It took some time for Kyle to realize that he’d been asked a question. ‘So they said.’

  Cull grunted his understanding. ‘We go but we come back. Always. Cannot escape.’

  ‘Escape?’

  By way of answer, the big fellow opened wide his arms as if to embrace the entire valley. ‘The land. The Holdings. We are one.’

  ‘Ah. I see.’

  They climbed steeply for the rest of the day. Towards evening, Kyle was surprised by a shadowy figure awaiting them in the woods. Cull walked on, giving no clue that he’d seen the stranger. When they were quite close, Kyle cleared his throat and gestured ahead. ‘Someone’s there.’

  Cull bunched his thick brows as if vexed. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh – so, a friend?’

  ‘No. No friend,’ the man answered darkly.

  Closer, Kyle paused as he saw how the black trunks of the trees shone through the outline. Some sort of shade, or revenant. Cull walked on. He passed quite near to the tall wavering shape with its frayed tattered leathers and long unkempt hair, yet made no effort to acknowledge its presence.

  ‘There are trespassers on the Holding,’ the shape called after them.

  Cull waved the back of his hand at the outline. ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘You must deal with them!’

  ‘Certainly.’

  As they walked on,
Kyle following Cull who did not slow, the last thing the shade said was a murmured, ‘We are ashamed.’

  Kyle decided not to ask what all that had been about.

  They only stopped when Cull led him to what was an obvious campsite, complete with a lean-to of cut boughs and a ring of stones. The big fellow set to cutting wood with his bearded axe. Kyle followed his lead by gathering more wood. It was dark when Cull got the fire going by taking out a tinderbox and striking flint to iron over a bed of dried moss.

  Once the fire was sure, the big fellow sat back. Overhead, the aurora was out in wide draping bands of green and yellow frilled in pink.

  ‘That was ancestor,’ Cull said, throwing another stick on to the fire and raising a great gust of sparks that flew up into the night. Kyle watched them rise on and on, as if they would join the aurora itself. He decided that Cull was talking about the shade. ‘Tell me to kill all trespassers.’ He poked a thin stick into the fire then pointed it at him. ‘Like you.’

  ‘Thank you for not killing me.’

  The giant frowned at the glowing tip of the stick. ‘I have enough killing. Besides,’ he shrugged, ‘too many come.’ He eased himself back against a log. ‘Too many to kill.’

  ‘They are coming for the gold.’

  The fellow swished the glowing tip through the air, making circles and snake-like lines. He seemed delighted by the designs. ‘Yes, the gold.’

  ‘Why don’t you just let them take it?’

  ‘Gold in the land. They take the land.’

  He felt like a fool. ‘Yes. Sorry.’

  ‘I’m sorry for them.’

  Kyle shook his head in amazement. ‘They are running you from your land and you are sorry for them?’

  Cull continued swishing the stick. ‘Gold least important thing in land.’

  ‘Really? Then what is the most important?’

  The fellow thought about this for a time. Frowning, he peered about at their forested surroundings, his brows crimping. Finally, a big infectious grin split his lips, and he offered, ‘Life.’

  Kyle thought that a strange answer but decided he wouldn’t argue with his host. They slept then. For a time the blazing banners of the aurora kept him awake. It reminded him of Korel and the lights that glowed above the Strait of Storms. But they had been far fainter, more diffuse. Here they appeared so bright and low he thought he could pinch them between his fingers.

  Over the next three days of climbing snow-patched slopes, Kyle decided that his host was very strange indeed. The man didn’t seem to think the way he did. At times he seemed a child in a giant’s body; at other times he was just plain odd. When Kyle remarked on the great rush of run-off streaming down the rock faces and the gathering summer, the man answered: ‘Sun not the enemy. Time the enemy.’

  Another day Kyle found him standing very still and solemn as he appeared to be doing nothing more than studying the mossy forest floor before him. He stood with him for a time, but soon became bored and moved off to sit and rest for the unannounced, extended stop. Cull woke him with a gentle touch. Kyle started up, peered back to where the man had stood for so long. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Powerful ancestor fall there long ago,’ Cull answered, and started off.

  Curious, Kyle crossed to the spot which appeared no different from any other patch of needle-strewn ground. Then he noticed how the dirt was darker here, far wetter than the surrounding earth. He knelt and brushed aside the leaf bracken and litter. Something gleamed amid the dirt. He dug deeper into the dark wet humus. A layer of it came away in a swath. Below gleamed a black smooth face of buried ice. Kyle flinched backward in shock and surprise. His hand throbbed, numb yet tingling. How like the Stormriders – but different. Theirs had been an alien cold, seemingly anathema to flesh and blood as he knew it. This was not so alien. Frigid, yes, but somehow far more comprehensible. Like … well, like a snow-capped mountain peak: formidable and inhospitable, but also majestic and awe-inspiring at the same time.

  ‘Little brother,’ Cull called, sounding far away.

  Kyle shook his head and blinked to clear his vision, as if emerging from a dream. ‘Yes, sorry. Coming.’

  Towards late afternoon, they exited the forest to push through the tall weeds and saplings of what had once been cleared land. Fields, Kyle decided, now abandoned – or neglected – to fall back to the forest from where they’d been taken. The fields climbed a rising slope that allowed a magnificent view of the haze-shrouded lowlands.

  Cull led him to the burnt ruin of what once must have been a very long hall. Only the butt-ends of its huge logs had escaped the fire, many as broad in girth as a large shield. Its fieldstone foundation lay as a mute line of rock among the weeds. The Iceblood waved to the fallen shell. ‘Behold, Greathall.’

  Kyle did not reply at once. He took a wondering breath. ‘Very … impressive …’

  Studying the wreckage, Cull nodded his solemn agreement. ‘Yes. Very impressive.’ He motioned Kyle onward. ‘Come. We find wife.’ He led the way round the ruins to the rear. Here was a much more modest structure: a cabin of smaller logs, chinked, with a sod roof. Smoke curled from a roof-hole.

  ‘Ho! Wife!’ Cull boomed out.

  A crash such as a dropped plate or bowl sounded from within. The door of adzed planks was thrust open. A woman of a scale to match Cull emerged, towering and broad, bearing an even greater tangle of wild unkempt auburn hair. She wore a tanned leather jerkin, trousers and moccasins, and a knife the size of a shortsword was sheathed at her side.

  ‘You!’ she called, glaring.

  Cull raised his hands defensively. ‘Now, now …’

  She started for him, a hand raised as if to clout him on the head. Cull backed away. Spying Kyle, the woman halted, surprised. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘He—’

  ‘A lowlander? You bring a lowlander here!’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Are you an even greater fool than everyone knows?’

  ‘We—’

  She turned on Kyle. ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Ah, Kyle, ma’am. I don’t have to stay. I could just—’

  ‘Shut up.’ She thrust a finger at Cull. ‘Find the cows. They’ve wandered off again.’

  Cull bowed low. ‘Yes, my chick.’ He headed off.

  ‘Why did you bring him?’ she called after him.

  ‘Because he is Lost!’ Cull shouted back, and laughed. He continued on, chortling to himself as he went.

  The Iceblood woman now cast her sceptical eye to Kyle. ‘What did my fool of a husband mean, lost?’

  Kyle cleared his throat. ‘Stalker and his brothers, ma’am. We were in the same mercenary outfit years ago. He made me a Lost.’

  The woman grunted at this, eyed him up and down. ‘Hmph. I see it now. So, Stalker made you a Lost, did he?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Well, then. Better make yourself useful.’ She pointed to the trees behind the cabin. ‘There’s a cache back there. We might have a smoked haunch or two left. Bring one in.’

  Kyle inclined his head. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Name’s Yullveig.’

  He nodded again, ‘Yullveig.’

  It took him some time to find the cache. It was a hut very high up in a tree. All the lower branches had been cut away. The ladder that led up to it consisted of staves of wood lashed to the trunk. They were fixed very far apart. After thrusting the haunch of venison into a burlap sack the only way he could manage the descent was to tie the sack to his belt.

  He returned to the cabin and knocked on the timber jamb. Yullveig invited him in. The little furniture within – a table, chairs of lashed wood, and a bed – were all on a scale that made him feel an infant. It didn’t help that when she urged him to sit his feet barely touched the dirt floor.

  ‘I must apologize for Cull,’ she said as she minded the pot simmering over the stone hearth. The steam wafting from it smelled of parsnips.

  ‘Apologize? For what?’

  T
he answer brought a small smile to her otherwise severe lips. ‘He fell climbing a cliff when he was a child.’ She tapped her head. ‘Never been the same since.’

  ‘Ah. I see.’

  ‘But he has a good heart,’ she said, adding, ‘Too good, his brothers said.’

  Kyle peered about the rather cramped cabin. ‘There are just the two of you?’

  ‘A son and a daughter. Baran and Erta.’ She started slicing the haunch. ‘Cull left with two sons and returned with one. Not that I am complaining. He left at my urging.’ She pointed the knife at the remains of the Greathall. ‘In his absence the hall was burned and everyone killed by lowland raiders. Just the four of us now.’

  ‘Yet Cull won’t kill the trespassers.’

  ‘No. He says death does not erase death.’ She cast him a significant glance. ‘A view not popular here among the Holdings, you can imagine. Our son did not understand. Damned him as touched. He’s off fighting now and Erta with him. Defending the Holding.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Her gaze snapped to him. ‘Sorry? Why?’

  ‘That he did not understand your husband’s choice. I do.’

  She nodded as she trimmed. ‘Yes. I see it in you. The blood-price.’

  ‘Blood-price?’ I owe no blood-price.’

  The woman snorted, almost derisive. ‘You lowlanders and your fixation upon vengeance, vendetta, honour and debts owed.’ She waved the carving knife. ‘That is the cheapest and simplest of blood-prices. It is self-aggrandizing. Self-righteous. And self-defeating. No, I speak of the only real cost of blood that matters – the price it exacts from the one who spills it. I see that within you and I respect it.’

  ‘Yet there are those who think nothing of spilling blood.’

  She nodded. ‘There will always be such. They are the enemies of order among people. They must prove their worthiness to enter into any accord. And if they fail …’ she shrugged, ‘someone must take it upon themselves to drive the dogs off.’

  ‘I think there are many dogs braying at the borders of your Holding, Yullveig.’

  She laughed aloud at that. ‘I think you are right.’ She set a wooden bowl before him. It contained a splash of the boiled parsnips, slices of venison, and a portion of heavy dark bread.