The Anvil of Ice

by Michael Scott Rohan

  "Better a beast than a searching eye. And we have our swords, and the bushes are some shield. Anyway, I will sit watch for what remains of the dark. I have no taste for sleep."

  "Better find one, then. We've a long way to go before we come among men again." Roc laughed. "Makes you a real journeyman now, and all!"

  "Don't mock me! "

  "Ach, I only meant you'd let yourself in for a bitch of a journey—"

  "I know what you meant. It was still a mockery. I wanted it so much—but I had to have the journeyman's stamp, and now I have not, and that, that loses me… more than you know."

  "Can't you just fake the stamp? Damn, I wish I'd thought, I'd have taken Ingar's. He won't be needing it now!"

  "Do you imagine I could ever have worn that? And no, I could not counterfeit a convincing stamp, for I do not know the mysteries that go with it. Any real journeyman could unmask me."

  "Aye, I see. And the penalty for impersonating a guildsman—it varies, I hear. They don't always chop your hands off."

  "No. It makes you worthless as a thrall."

  "Well, well, we'll try something else. I'll settle for some sleep for now. Do you the same."

  "I'll try, in a while. And Roc…"

  "Mmnh?"

  "Thank you."

  "Hmmph. You'll have plenty of chances. Won't let it slip your mind. G'night!"

  Alv sat awake, listening to the night sounds of the wood, the scuttle and slither of small creatures among the damp leaves, the thump and rustle of larger bodies, the eerie cries of the hunters on the ground and in the air that silenced all else and made his own breath sound deafening. In truth, sleep weighed down on him, but he was afraid of surrendering to it, of releasing the tight rein on his thoughts. Always a vengeful shadow hovered beside them, awaiting its chance, and he shrank away from confronting it. But very soon weariness overtook him, his head dropped on his chest, and he was sinking down, down into dark dreams of noise and fire and squalor, hatching a snake that turned to strike at his heart. Then he was digging frantically into a vast mound of papers, trying to find someone lost beneath, coming upon a slender arm ringed with gold, but when he clutched at the shoulder it sank inward under his fingers like rotten wood, with a soft popping rustle-He sat up, hearing his own whimper, and found himself staring at a wide shadow with glimmering eyes and pointed quivering ears. It tensed rigid as he snatched up his sword, whirled and bounded away back through the bushes with the selfsame rustle. He stared around, shaken and shivering— some beast, more curious than hungry. He had slept most of the dark away, and dawn was graying the sky. What would the new light bring him? Release? Hope? He grimaced. Could he face her now, even if he found her? He turned stiffly onto his side, pillowed his head on his arm and slept on uneasily.

  For most of a week they walked through the woodlands, down trails made by animals, not men. Early one cold morning they came upon the makers, a great herd of wis-ants feeding among the trees. Their breath steamed around their shaggy heads as they chewed cud and belched thunderously, and their deep rumbling lows echoed as they tossed their horns at the newcomers. Alv, used to the even larger white cattle, simply skirted the herd, avoiding bulls and young calves; Roc sidled nervously from tree to tree. "They're not so dangerous," Alv told him. "They say there are far bigger beasts than those in the Great Forest across the mountains—"

  "Then spare me the trip!" Roc hissed, looking nervously back up the trail.

  "You never know," Alv said drily. "If we don't find ourselves somewhere to work soon—"

  "There'll be plenty of towns needing a good smithying team like us. Stands to reason!"

  "Does it?" said Alv, and strode on without waiting for an answer.

  His misgivings were to prove true. The trees grew thin and sparse, and they left the woodlands at long last, coming to many places of men under the roots of the mountains. They had little real idea of where they were, or where they were going, for the Mastersmith had taught Alv much about what lay under the land, but little of what lay above it, and there were few maps in his library. From the sun and the look of the land, Roc reckoned that they were now almost level with Harthaby, but they avoided it for fear of the Mastersmith's connections, and stayed among the inland villages. The first of these lay among open, wind-scoured moorland, one step from the tundra that lay ahead of the Ice in the heart of the land, where there was no mountain barrier. Sheep grazed among the flinty rocks, with shepherds to watch them; they were polite to the well-dressed travelers, but quick to point but that their own villages had each its proper smith, seldom a full guildsman but adept enough for them. They could often find a bed for the night at such a smithy, but no proper berth, and they had to suffer many embarrassing questions about where they came from and what they were doing. Roc represented them as followers of a master who had died suddenly before he could set Alv his prentice pieces; that won them much sympathy, but no more help, and they were obliged to move on. Journeying ever southward along the smaller roads, often no better than hill tracks, they came to towns, farming centers of a size with the one Alv had grown up in, and found all of them, too, had smiths enough. These were usually older journeymen with no chance or ambition to become masters, content to work out their days with thrall assistants or locally born apprentices whom they would send to masters elsewhere to finish their training; they sought no stranger apprentices, however skilled. Masters there were in some of the towns nearest to the High roads, but chiefly less able ones such as Hervar had been. Almost every man, though, looked askance at Alv the moment he entered their door, and when in the town of Rasby one at last consented to give him a trial, a terrible thing was revealed.

  The master's name was Hjoran, a huge jolly fellow grown almost too fat to reach his anvil. He had a name for tolerance in the town, to the point that he had once taken a girl as apprentice, which was reckoned strange enough though not unheard-of; she had become a jeweler in a nearby market town. But he seemed wary of Alv, watched him closely throughout the work, and squinted dubiously at the knife and axehead he had commanded.

  "Fine craft enough, laddie, fine enough," he wheezed, turning them over in his fingers. "A trifle fancy, maybe. Truth be told, best I've seen from a younker so long's I can recall. But—" He shook his head. "Where's the feeling in 'em? Where's the virtue? These're just lumps o'metal, there's never a bit of life between 'em."

  Roc gaped, and Alv sprang up from the hearthstone where he had slumped. "But… I did everything aright! You saw, you heard—"

  "Aye!" protested Roc, "and he's made many a strong work before now—"

  "I don't doubt it!" shrugged Hjoran uncomfortably. "There's something about those tools of yours, though it's a strange thing to me. And no master in his right mind would've taught you the things you know 'less you showed more'n a trace of craft in you. But look, lad, can't you see for yourself?" He wheezed and rumbled over to his shelves, and pulled down a neat but unimpressive axe. "Piece Marja made. I save it to show women can do well's most men at this game. Truth is, it's not that good beside yours, you've got an uncommon hand—but there! What's the virtue in that?"

  Alv rubbed his fingers over the fine markings in the steel, traced a flicker of light that seemed to be not all reflection. "To go where it's aimed, as mine was—"

  Hjoran drew a line on his untidy workbench and let the axe fall lightly. It struck a hair's breath from the line. He thrust a handle into Alv's piece, and repeated the test. It fell three fingers' breadth away, and skidded sideways. "There you are, laddie," he muttered. "And don't think I'm not sorry."

  "Listen here, Master Hjoran," Roc spluttered indignantly, "almost the last thing our master said to him was that he'd made master's work!"

  Hjoran weighed the axehead sadly. "Don't doubt that either, boy. And I don't understand it anymore'n you. Smith don't lose the power he's born with! Can use it badly, maybe not at all—specialty's he gets older—but lose it? Like a fire going out? No, never. But it makes no difference. Not a rich man, me, not li
ke your big-town smiths. Can't afford an apprentice who's only half a smith. Can't even set you your prentice pieces."

  Alv had sunk back onto the hearthstone, his face the color of the ashes that coated the earth floor. "So what then must we do? Approach one of the wealthier smiths?"

  "Aye, and get a boot up the arse for your pains! They get paid to take apprentices, boy, big sums too, and run 'em like a manufactory. They'll take a talentless nothing if his folks pay well enough, there's always odd jobs for them, but not a couple of wandering tinkersmiths—sorry, but that's how they'll see it!" Hjoran looked at the young men, Alv with shoulders bowed by shock and despair, Roc huffing and fidgeting. "If you want my advice, though…"he began, after a moment.

  "Yes, Mastersmith?" they chorused.

  "Well, you lads with your fair skins, you've got a Sothran look to you. You could do worse than head for the Southlands—not just south of here, the real rich Southlands, Great Suderney across the Marshlands, Kerbryhaine as they name it themselves. Not that I've ever been there, but I have met a few traders who have, and they do say that they don't believe in true smithcraft there! Mostly never heard of it, and those who have pay it no heed. Think we're a load of savages to go singing to our work. Well, I've never seen any Sothran smithcraft, to my ken, but I'd be damned surprised if you with your touch couldn't do a damn sight better. Teach 'em a thing or two, maybe make your fortune."

  "That's it!" whooped Roc, springing into the air. "That's it! Thanks, good master, thanks a thousand times! Alv, Alv, what say you? Shall we go south, and see my people's land? You know I've always wanted to!"

  Alv looked up. He was pale of face, and there was a distant, remote look in his eyes, but he nodded willingly enough. "If that's what you wish, Roc, I'll go southward with you."

  "Good! Good!" wheezed Hjoran, obviously glad to be quit of an embarrassing situation. "That's the spirit, eh? Break new ground, yes, yes… Well, getting late in the day, eh? You can give me a hand here in the forge today, sleep in my loft tonight—now Marja's not there, hahaha!— and be on your way the morrow. Give you some grub to tide you over, hah? And don't hang your head so, laddie. Sure you'll get it all back one day—and when you do, you just come back posthaste and see old Hjoran, hey? And he'll have you a master yourself before you can say solder, you'll see! Now—to work! Let's get this place cleaned up a bit!"

  They took leave of Hjoran the next morning. He set them on the track south with directions to where it joined the High roads, and their wallets well stuffed with provisions for a week or more. Not slow to take advantage of his opportunities, he had worked them almost until they dropped, but the food was fair pay for it, when he had owed them nothing. Alv had been glad of the distraction, for the pains of hard labor had helped numb him to the blunter agony of emptiness, of loss. One after another all the things he had gained or hoped to gain had slipped from his grasp, and latest of all, it seemed, that single thing on which all his arrogance had been based, pedestal of the pillar that raised him above other men. And yet now, past the first sharp pain of discovery, free at last to brood, he found he could in some wise accept what had happened. He had misused his gift, he could use it no longer; that seemed like a natural consequence. In betraying, in wounding, was it not also his own flesh he had wasted?

  Roc, munching on a sausage, was full of ideas and speculations about the south, which he hardly remembered. His parents had been small traders to the Northlands; he had been orphaned when plague swept the caravan they were traveling with, and sold off as a servant by the caravan's survivors. But half of what he said seemed to pass Alv by, and finally Roc burst out, "Aren't you excited, damn you? It was you who wanted to see the world! It was you who wanted a chance to make your fortune—"

  Alv kicked at the weeds covering the gravelly face of the road. "Once, yes. But that's not what I need now."

  "What then? The moon?" "If I could find there what I need, maybe." "What's that, then? And where will you find it?" Alv shrugged, and Roc raised his eyes to the sky. On the second day they came to the High roads, and Alv, coming out of his daze, marveled at the wide expanse of metalled trackway that lay across the hills like some pale gray ribbon, until it seemed to lead right up into the clouds on the horizon. But as they clambered up the bank he saw that the road was sadly ragged and cracked, and the wheelruts had long ago grown deep enough to churn up the bed, with no attempt made to fill them in. Here and there were potholes, where the ground under the bed had subsided; some were full of earth, and grass, fireweed and pale lilies grew in them undisturbed. Still, it was a good track for travelers on foot, and from thence their way south was swifter. But it was no easier, for though many great towns such as Saldenborg, Arlaby and Thuneborg lay alongside the roads, and there was much demand for good smithcraft in them, in these towns the guild's hand was heaviest, and Alv and Roc found themselves treated as little better than tinkersmiths. They looked like them too, for their once-respectable garb had grown ragged and rough, and only Alv's fair speech won them some consideration. Once in a while they would find some master or journeyman, less scrupulous or more needy, who would let them do petty work for a night's lodging, but more often they were driven out with a curse, or the dogs set on them. Once when this happened, Roc turned on a mocking apprentice and felled him with a blow of his ham fist, and they were hard put to escape the town watch. That night, as many others, they spent like outlaws, sleeping rough among the scrub, and stealing a fox's kill for their meal. And on the next day, as ever, they turned their steps onward to the south.

  In truth, they had no clearer idea than that where they were going, for if they knew little of the Northlands they knew nothing at all of the south, and there were few who could tell them what lay ahead. Not many northerners now bothered to go south, and it was still too early in the year for traders coming up from there. But they saw one thing, that the people themselves were changing; their skins were lighter, their faces longer, and here and there were eyes of blue or green, all reminding them both uncomfortably of Ingar. Alv spoke less and less, and there were nights when Roc suspected he had not slept at all. The towns were growing smaller and sparser again, and the land wilder. At last, after some days' walking through wholly empty country they came to a small, poor town with a strange name, Dunmarhas, in which many seemed to have pale skins like theirs—not that it made their welcome any warmer, for folk seemed deadly afraid of what came from beyond their walls, fair-spoken or no. But here at last simple smithcraft was valued, for the town smiths were poor craftsmen indeed and kept no rules of guild. In return for teaching them some simple skills the travelers could at least get food and a pallet by the hearth, and by then that seemed much to them. When they left Dunmarhas they found that they were leaving the mountains behind, the range curving away inland. As the land fell and flattened out before them, the weather grew wetter and the woodlands lower and very thick, with a few tall firs standing out proudly over a mass of aspens, junipers and other lesser trees. Dogwood, ferns and sedge bloomed by the road, daisies, lilies and columbines in its wide crevices, and willows hung over the many little brooks and rivers it crossed. Mists rose swiftly and hung dank about them, and clouds of insects made the noon hours a torment. The road ahead became a long, dead straight ribbon leading toward a horizon on which there was nothing—no rise, no fall, no wall or building, no feature taller than clumps of misshapen trees. The land became covered with tall grasses that hissed in the clammy breeze, and every so often gave way to expanses of soft green rushes. Mists and haze became more frequent, and the wind often brought them a tang of the sea Alv knew so well from his childhood. The rivers were fresh, though stained brown and sharp-tasting, but many of the stagnant pools were brackish, and the water that oozed into every footprint beyond the raised roadbed grew saltier day by day. They took to sleeping on the hard road by night, for nowhere else was dry enough, and there was seldom clear moonlight to walk by.

  They had walked through this fenland for days, and their last food was al
l but gone, when, as dusk was falling and the mists were rolling across the roadbed, they saw the flicker of fires ahead. Alv seemed reluctant for company, but did not refuse Roc, who went stumping ahead at a great pace. As they came nearer they saw that the fires were dotted around a long train of wagons, forty or fifty at least, which had stopped beside ah old ruined shell of a building, the first they had seen for some time. Some of the wagons were small two-wheeled tiltcarts drawn by a single horse, others heavy four-wheelers drawn by teams of horses or oxen; a few even had trailers. Many men moved around the fires, a strong party indeed, and yet as the two travelers appeared out of the mist, shouts of alarm spread across the whole encampment, and men came charging up with swords and bows. Nor did they lower their weapons when they saw they faced but two men, young and ragged at that, and as pale-skinned as themselves. Tense questions rained at them from all sides in a tongue that they recognized but could not summon up in the stress of the moment. It seemed that any minute one of those taut bowstrings would loose. Then a tall bearded man in a fur-trimmed robe and hat shouldered his way through the crowd, waving the people aside, shouting something. Four bowmen remained with him, and one or two other men in robes with drawn swords, but the rest dispersed warily. He himself drew no weapon, but stared doubtfully at these two strangers for many slow breaths before he spoke, in the northern tongue.

  "You wear our skins, but you don't seem to know our speech. Would this then be yours?"