The Dread Hammer

by Linda Nagata

  “I understand,” Seök said softly.

  Smoke nodded. “I put it on you to keep Ketty safe when I’m not nearby. She’s the mother of a Bidden child, and is owed Koráyos loyalty.”

  Seök did not even try to conceal the keen insult he felt. “Of course I’ll safeguard her! I don’t need to be threatened to do what is right. She’s clearly no soldier, but a vulnerable young woman like my own dear wife, and is owed protection on that alone.”

  Smoke drew back, looking confounded by this outburst, but after a moment, he shrugged. “It’s just that I love her. You understand?”

  Seök did. And what did it mean that a demon like Smoke could have the same feelings toward his wife that Seök had toward his?

  Smoke turned back to Ketty to bid her goodbye.

  “But aren’t you riding with us?” Seök asked.

  Smoke scowled in contempt at the horses. “I hate riding almost as much as I hate walking. I’ll be going ahead to make sure there are no wolves lying in wait along the road. Bring my horse though. I’ll likely need it later.”

  So Seök called to the stable boy to bring the other horse. But Smoke wasn’t quite through. He caught Seök’s sleeve. “Keep an eye on the Lutawan too. If he shows any disrespect to Ketty, I want to know of it.” Then he did as demons will: he unfurled himself into vapor and sped away. The startled horses snorted and danced in fright, but Seök held onto them.

  When the horses were quiet again Seök climbed into the saddle, and as they set out his thoughts went again to his own wife and he offered up a short prayer to Koráy, Please, Lady, grant that I may see her again.

  Seök led them east into the mountains. At first there was little conversation, but after a time he found himself talking to Ketty about his wife and his business as a teamster, and she was excited to hear that he had just come south from the Binthy sheep country where she’d been born. She didn’t talk of her missing baby though. There was no point in it.

  Seök didn’t see Smoke all that morning. Despite the demon’s absence, he felt sure they were being watched. Nedgalvin said as much when they stopped to rest the horses. “He’s here somewhere. I can feel his presence like a chill on the air.”

  Ketty shot him an angry look but Nedgalvin didn’t notice. He didn’t speak to her, or even look at her, that Seök could see. Of course it was rude, but Seök figured it was just as well. If Nedgalvin never spoke to the woman he could not insult her, and Seök would ask for no more than that.

  Midafternoon found them deep within the East Tangle. They followed a back road that wound through a pine forest above steep valleys where plantations of timber bamboo grew. The slightest breeze would rush through the canopy of bamboo leaves with the sound of a cataract, but when the breeze rested a deep quiet filled the mountains. It was during one such respite that they heard ahead of them a clip-clop of hooves and the crunch of wheels against the paving stones.

  Moments later there came around a bend in the road a farmer’s cart pulled by a gray pony. Two men walked beside it, one young, one old. They looked up with a start at the travelers. Seök was surprised to see fear on their faces. They whispered to one another as if debating their options. Then the young man shook his head. A pony cart could hardly hope to run away from three horsemen, so they had no choice but to come on.

  Seök waved, hoping to ease their fear. “Greetings to you,” he called out. “Though you look uneasy—have you had trouble on the road?”

  “Ah, sir!” They hurried forward, and Seök dismounted to meet them.

  Nedgalvin followed his example, but Ketty stayed on her horse, eyeing the two farmers anxiously.

  The older farmer studied both Seök and Nedgalvin with a squinting gaze. “Are you soldiers, sir?” he asked with some hope.

  “Retired,” Seök told him.

  “Ah, well.” He looked disappointed. “It’s my advice to you not to go on. It isn’t safe. There’s a bloody-handed demon, not a mile behind us, waiting at the crossroads, with long, brown hair and a beardless face, dressed in britches and boots—”

  “But no shirt!” the youth cut in. “Just a scabbard on his back!”

  “Yes, and he has but one arm,” the elder added.

  “No, Pa. His other arm was in a sling!”

  The father shrugged. “Anyway, he was splattered with blood—not his, I’d wager—though he had a terrible scar on his neck. He was sitting there all quiet, with his back to the waystone and his sword across his lap, gazing this way down the road. He’s waiting for someone, I tell you. I just know it.”

  “He didn’t threaten you?” Nedgalvin asked curiously.

  “Nah. He said nothing to us, though we left him an offering of sweet cakes. But there was such a chill on the air we knew he had someone’s death in mind.”

  “He said he would look for wolves along the road!” Ketty said defensively.

  “Are there wolves in these parts?” Nedgalvin asked the farmers.

  Both looked at Nedgalvin as if he were loony. The old man answered, “No, sir. These are settled lands.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” Ketty whispered as the two farmers went on their way.

  Nedgalvin still didn’t look at her. He might have been talking to the air when he said, “Spattered with blood already. It didn’t take him long to find some poor bastard to murder.”

  “You don’t know what happened,” Ketty said, but her voice was soft with doubt.

  Nedgalvin pretended he didn’t hear her.

  They continued on. Ketty was anxious, so she kicked her horse into a trot and it was only a few minutes before they reached the crossroads where the waystone stood, but Smoke was not there.

  Ketty rode her horse in a circle around the waystone as if she hoped she might find him hiding on its other side. “Why isn’t he here?” she asked no one in particular.

  “He left the sweet cakes,” Nedgalvin observed. “Go fetch them, Seök.”

  Seök did, but he brought them to Ketty to eat. “We’re going to leave the road here,” he told her gently. “This far north, the only way through the East Tangle is by trail.”

  She looked at him with worried eyes. “But if we leave the road, how will Smoke find us?”

  Seök wondered that he could feel Smoke’s presence along the road while Ketty could not. “Don’t worry. He’s been keeping an eye on us. I know it.”

  A close eye, Seök thought, though he didn’t say it aloud.

  ~

  Is the Lutawan king immortal? Many of his people believe it. Many believe he is the worldly reflection of their god, Hepen the Watcher. I long to know the truth! If my duty was not to the Puzzle Lands I would travel south to find out.

  Lust

  Smoke had gone ahead along the road first thing that morning, alert for any sign of danger, but of course there was none. They were still in the Puzzle Lands, where Tayval kept watch. It wasn’t even midmorning when he settled down at a pretty spot alongside the road to wait for Ketty to catch up.

  He passed the time listening to prayers.

  Dismay, help me. Come to me, Dismay.

  The hour was still early. He was bored and the prayers were compelling.

  Dismay, avenge me!

  So he left the Puzzle Lands and chased the threads south.

  Hours passed on the journey. Noon was near when his reflection took shape in the borderlands, in a grove of oak trees on the outskirts of a farm he’d never visited before. Beyond the grove, the wheat fields were tall and green. A dilapidated farmhouse stood in the distance, with a barn beside it. Between them was a haphazard-looking paddock. Smoke counted seven horses inside it. Too many for a farmer. These were war horses.

  Smiling in anticipation, he turned to the girl who had summoned him. She looked to be about fourteen years in age. No doubt she was supposed to be tending the two cows that were tethered beneath the trees, but she did not watch them. Her eyes were closed as she knelt in a shaft of sunlight that reached down through the tree tops. Her lips moved
as she called to him, Dismay, please, please come.

  “It’s dangerous to call me,” he said softly.

  Her eyes opened. She looked up at him. She showed no fear. “Kill me too, if it pleases you, I don’t care.”

  Such cold hatred was in her gaze that he believed her.

  “They made me their whore,” she said. “Just because our family is poor. But this morning they sent me to watch the cows because now they want my little sister. She’s only twelve and as fragile as a flower. She’ll be dead by day’s end, I know it!”

  Smoke felt his blood heat. A flush rose in his cheeks as his heart quickened with desire. “What would you have me do?”

  The girl got to her feet. Her head barely reached his chest but she looked at him with such belief that he knew, in this hour, he belonged only to her. “Go to my father’s house and kill the indolent soldiers who are there.”

  “It would please me to do this. Who else is there?”

  “Only my sister. My father is away, my brothers have become soldiers, and my mother is dead.”

  “This is a dangerous prayer. More soldiers will come. If you flee you’ll be hunted. If you stay you’ll be blamed.”

  “Kill them,” she commanded him. “Whatever the price.”

  It was his way to submit to the prayers of a woman alone and in need. So he did as he was bidden.

  He came too late to save the young girl; she was already dead.

  But it was a pleasure all the same.

  Smoke returned to the Puzzle Lands, materializing beside a waystone that marked a crossroads in the East Tangle. He didn’t know the roads well, but he knew this was the most likely way that Seök would come because it was a good road that indulged in only the amount of wandering necessary to negotiate the ridges.

  The first thing he noticed when he returned was a strange tension in the threads that underlay the road. They felt as if they’d just been run—and not by him.

  At once he was alert.

  His first concern was for Ketty. He looked for her in the threads. He and Ketty were bound to each other so he found her at once. She was still riding the damned horse, making her slow way up the road in the company of Seök and that bastard Nedgalvin. Before long they would reach the crossroads—

  The threads stirred with a faint vibration. Smoke noticed it only because he was already seeking for Ketty. He looked for its cause, but the vibration faded before he could track it to its source. He shivered, certain that some force, some power, some spirit, was close by. He had no idea what it was, but he would find out, no matter if he had to hunt it in the forest or in the threads.

  He sat down with his back against the waystone. Out of caution, he drew his sword from its scabbard and laid it across his lap. Then he began to meditate on the structure of the threads.

  Two farmers passed by him. He paid no attention to them at all, but they feared him anyway and left sweet cakes beside him to purchase his good humor before they hurried on down the road. They were gone from sight when he again felt a flutter in the threads. He was on his feet even before a white mist swept from the pines. With his right hand he held his sword high, ready to strike, as a Hauntén woman took form in front of him.

  Thellan.

  She who had aided Pellas in the abduction of Britta. All the frustration, all the fury of that hour came back to Smoke. He lunged at her, swinging his sword in a great roundhouse stroke. Thellan jumped back in shock. “I am unarmed!” she shouted.

  “I don’t care!”

  He’d grown used to the sling. His balance was perfect as he lunged at her again, first with a jab that she evaded, then with a swift slice that would have done damage except that she dissolved into mist. The mist retreated and she materialized again a dozen feet away. She glared at him, affronted. “I did not come here to fight with you! I am unarmed.”

  “How did you find your way back into the Puzzle Lands?”

  “I haven’t left.” Her voice had gone inexplicably soft: husky and seductive. He felt threads twine around him as she spoke. “I’ve waited for you, Smoke. Didn’t I promise to?”

  He shifted his feet, beginning to stalk slowly around her, watching for the least moment of inattention. “You promised to come after me. Why have you come unarmed?” He thought of Nedgalvin and his skill at throwing a sword, and wished he’d practiced at it. If he could, he would have murdered her right then. It mattered nothing to him that she was unarmed. He preferred it.

  The threads she tried to cast around him broke and slipped away. Her eyes widened, and for the first time she looked afraid. “You’re still angry over the child.”

  “Of course I am!”

  “Don’t make it a feud. It was a debt that was owed. It’s paid now.”

  “Don’t mistake it,” he told her. “I’ll get Britta back if I have to burn the Wild Wood to do it.”

  A look of puzzlement came over her. She whispered as if to herself, “Wasn’t it you? That lust I felt in the hall . . .”

  Smoke’s lip curled. “It wasn’t me.” Thellan was a beauty, but he hated her all the same. He lunged again. He caught her in a moment when her mind was elsewhere. The sword’s tip touched her throat. Smoke glimpsed a flash of crimson blood as she spun aside. Then she was gone again into mist. This time she fled, streaming away to the east. Smoke followed her into the threads.

  Never before had he trailed another through the weft and warp of the world, but he knew the Hauntén had followed his lead into the Puzzle Lands. He knew it could be done. And when he looked he saw the way at once. It was a vibrating path, akin to the leaves in a thicket that are left trembling after a deer has retreated from his arrows. He swept after her, coming up on her ghostly essence with unexpected speed.

  Not knowing what was possible, he let instinct guide him. He surrounded her. The pattern of his threads coiled around hers, binding her, arresting her motion in the world-beneath where nothing may remain fixed. So they both became solid creatures, spilling together into the world.

  Thellan was unready. She lost her balance and fell rolling across the forest floor. Blood leaked from her throat though the wound was slight, not nearly enough to kill her.

  Good.

  In that moment, Smoke decided he would not kill her after all. Not yet anyway. Not when he might use her to trade for Britta.

  He was still on his feet, sword in hand, so he lunged after her, determined to use his steel blade to pin her in the world just as he’d been pinned.

  But the lust that had preoccupied Thellan before was gone. Fear drove her now. She vanished within the threads as his sword stabbed down, so that the blade sliced uselessly through mist. But she formed up again not far away. “I came to make peace with you!”

  “I don’t want peace! I want my daughter.”

  “Best you protect your wife, because I’m going to kill her as soon as I’m able.” With these words, Thellan dropped again into the world-beneath and this time she shot straight away through the trees. But Smoke couldn’t tell if she went east or west because he didn’t know where he was and the trees in their summer leaf hid the sky so that each direction looked the same.

  Let her go then! Let her go. Time to return to Ketty.

  He slipped into the world-beneath and raced with all speed back to the Puzzle Lands.

  Ketty was still riding the damned horse. He formed up beside her in a swirl of gray smoke that made the animal shy and almost unseated her. “Are you all right?” Smoke demanded as he scrambled to grab the reins of her stupid horse before it could run away with her.

  Ketty looked at him, first in astonishment, and then with a sudden rush of anger. “Where have you been? I was so afraid. And why are you covered in blood and dirt? What have you been doing? You told me you were done with murdering, but it isn’t so, is it?”

  Smoke glanced in irritation at the bloody sword in his hand. He shoved it into his back scabbard, where the evidence of gore was not so apparent. “I never exactly said that.”

  S
eök had been riding ahead, but now he turned back, while Nedgalvin brought his horse so close to Ketty’s that both animals danced, flicking their ears in irritation. “Been out slaughtering more women and children, Dismay?”

  Smoke had promised Takis to endure the Lutawan, but he had not promised to endure insults. He pulled his sword out of its scabbard again. The only question in his mind: Whether to attack Nedgalvin directly, or his horse. Nedgalvin drew his own blade, but Ketty had other ideas. “Stop it!” she shouted, turning her horse, using it to force Nedgalvin back. “Stop it now!”

  Smoke grabbed her reins again. “Are you crazy? He’ll kill you!”

  “I don’t care about him! I want the truth from you. You didn’t really kill women and children, did you?”

  “No. Just a company of Lutawan soldiers who had raped and murdered a young girl.”

  Ketty turned to glare at Nedgalvin. Smoke was surprised to see him look shamefaced. “War is a terrible thing,” he murmured as he put his sword away. Smoke was startled by these words. The Koráyos soldiers would say the very same thing to one another when they did things (when he did things) that were inexcusable.

  Smoke slid his own sword back into its scabbard. “Have you seen any sign of the Hauntén today?”

  Nedgalvin looked suddenly eager. “Are they around? That whore Thellan—she was a beauty. I’d like to see her again.”

  “Careful what you wish for,” Smoke suggested.

  Then Seök surprised them all by speaking. “I thought the presence I sensed along the road was you.”

  Smoke couldn’t look at the man without wanting to kill him, but he was bound by his oath. “It was Thellan. She’s been hunting me, but I’ll ride with you now, and if she comes again I’ll kill her.”

  “Smoke, no!” Ketty protested. “If you kill her, they’ll never give us Britta back.”

  Smoke frowned, considering this. Was Ketty right? Really, this was too complicated. “Well, with luck she won’t come.”