The Anvil of Ice

by Michael Scott Rohan

  Elof heard him, but he had sunk down in a heap on the deck.

  "What's the matter with you?" barked Kermorvan.

  "You heard him!" whispered Elof, clutching handfuls of empty air. "The man, the great shaman—fear none dare resist—blade that never strikes a blow—Kermorvan, he was my master! And it was I made that blade!"

  The old chieftain heard and understood, for his cackling laughter rang high in the air. "Then may your own work skewer you! May the breasts of your daughters fill our cooking pots—" But Kermorvan was not a man to be trifled with. In a fury of loathing he spun round, and Elof heard the whistle and thud of the swordblade as it struck once, twice, again, and the laughter shrieked away into a whistling, gurgling scream, and was still. The women heard also, and raised a great clamoring cheer, and one voice shouted, "He didn't die easy!"

  "Throw that offal over the rail!" barked Kermorvan, and he stooped to Elof and raised him up. "I do not understand all I heard, but obviously you do. You will tell me more later, when we can be apart. But I say this for now, I see no great evil in you. If something you have made finds an ill purpose—well, who better to unmake it? Think on that!"

  It was two evenings after the attack that they wearily turned their bows in between the high cliffs of the northern cove, hauled its bows high on the silvery sand and sank down in utter relief. They built a great fire then, for the cliffs would hide the smoke, and the weary corsair crew slept while the women cooked food and mulled wine from the barrels the Ekwesh had taken. Then all ate and drank, the women with them, and their mood grew riotous. Elof, who would have sat apart, they embraced as a brother, and plyed him with wine, praising his courage and great strokes that had cleared their way. He was the youngest of the crew, and well favored, and the women also made much of him, the younger ones fluttering around his neck or drawing him into the boisterous dancing around the fire. And he was nothing loth, for the wine had drowned his darker thoughts, and all his life he had known little of women. Kara's face danced before him a moment in the flames, but the arms round his neck he could feel, the lips against his own were warm, if not so fair, the bodies in his arms were firm, if not so slender. The fumes of the warm wine clouded his mind like breath on glass; he reeled, and two girls bore him up, one thin and red-headed, the other dark and plump, with merry eyes bright with promise. Wine held the whole camp in its grip, a potent wall against the terrors of the last days, and in its turn invoked a higher defense and refuge; the corsairs knew few restraints, the women had all but lost theirs in the shock of battle and abduction. Soon bodies lay sprawled across the warm sand, writhing in a different dance, blind to all except inner need. Elof staggered and reeled between the girls, giggling and breathless with excitement; they stumbled away up the beach to a shallow little cave between the cliff roots, and sank down gratefully on the dry sand of its floor. There clothes, torn and befouled by death in many forms, fell away, leaving only living flesh and blood yet flowing, and no barrier between them. Darkness and oblivion rushed in his veins, roared in his head, till all he knew of was the warm flesh enfolding him, the soft damp skin that trembled and fluttered against his body, the breasts pressed flat against him or hanging like fair fruit to his hungry lips. He turned from one to another, taking and giving an animal comfort that blotted out all else; and yet as breath grew fast and shallow, as the fire roared, blazed, to its height and the hammerstroke struck searing sparks to weld the linked bodies rigid, it was Kara he saw, Kara he held, Kara was the vision in flames within, that consumed him in an instant to darkly glowing embers, and in the last to sleep.

  He woke before dawn, slipped out from between the girls, covering them with their clothes, and staggered down to the beach to bathe. The shock of the cold water revived him, and he came out feeling cleansed inside and out, but mortally chill and hungry. He dressed in such of his clothes as he could still bear to wear, found others among the booty, and wine, bread and meat among the remains of the orgy. As he strode back along the beach he came upon Kermorvan, sitting with his back to a rock and throwing pebbles out into the gray water, and greeted him merrily. "I didn't see you enjoying yourself last night!"

  Kermorvan gazed up at Elof with bleak eyes. "Enjoying myself? In that?"

  The weight of bitterness in his voice startled the smith. "What ails the great warrior, then? Do you not like girls?"

  "Of course!" said Kermorvan indignantly. "But not like that!"

  "Well, how, then?" demanded Elof, more than a little nettled. "At your sword's point?"

  In a flash Kermorvan was on his feet, his pale eyes glaring down into Elof s and his fist bunched in the smith's jerkin. "I was not raised to suffer any taunt lightly! Be glad it is untrue, or I might find pleasure in proving it on your hide."

  "Well? You scorn me freely enough! Were you raised to do that? Where's the harm in all that went on, rough-grained though it be? I saw nobody taken against their will."

  Kermorvan subsided, muttering, "It profanes something sacred… Something vital between a man and a woman that ought to be theirs alone—respect, regard, cherishing… Out on the sand like lust-ridden animals— but I am sorry I insulted you, smith. It is simply that you do not understand."

  "What makes you so sure of that?" inquired Elof drily. "I may be village-bred, but I love. I shall cherish her all my life, if I can only find her again. But she and I, we both inhabit bodies, they will have their needs. And those needs may be overwhelming, warrior. Especially in the face of what we lived through yesterday." He looked at the lines on the tall man's face, the shadows under his eyes. "You slept poorly last night, I would guess, if at all. But I slept, though I have seen less slaughter than you in the world."

  "Aye," sighed the other, "I have seen too much. And I fear you and I may live to see more. Forget my harsh words, if you can, for you may well be wiser than I. But tell me, you who were village-bred, you who were taken by this great shaman—what have you seen, in your time? What is this thing you made, this blade? Tell me, if you will, for I fear it concerns all who oppose the Ekwesh, and perhaps also the Ice."

  Elof studied the face before him, eager yet anxious, with the bright, direct eyes of an eagle. How much would he understand of what must be told? This man of justice, would he understand mercy? But he was right, inescapably right. Told it must be, and at whatever cost.

  "Mylio!" was the swordsman's first reaction. "That name is of my people, but there is nothing else good of it. It was borne by nobles of the old north, some of whom yet lived on in Bryhaine—but the last was exiled in my father's day, I think. A scholar, but a wicked, ambitious man who maltreated his peasants beyond bearing. Is this his son?"

  "Maybe. Or the man himself. There were treatises on the extending of life in his library—all on the forbidden wall."

  Kermorvan's brow darkened with sudden distrust. "Dark arts! I have never believed in them, not truly, but… But you have studied them."

  "I have," said Elof steadily. "Hear me out." Kermor-van nodded, acknowledging that that was just. He hung on every word, choking back the hundred questions that hovered on his lips, until Elof told of the night-shapes, of the bell and the strange warrior-party whose coming it had heralded. "Kerys!" breathed the warrior. "Duergar—it could only be… The cut trees also, and the minework-ings. That explains much, very much."

  "D-Duergar?" asked Elof, puzzled.

  "Hear him!" breathed Kermorvan, almost laughing. "He walks among marvels, and does not know them! You have never heard of the Elders, the mountain-folk? Why, they—but go on, finish your story."

  Elof shrugged, and told of the sword's power unleashed, his warning and his strange escape. "So you see, we had been carried, somehow, further and faster than a horse could have borne us, to an easy path down."

  Kermorvan nodded. "You were taken by secret ways through the mountains, not over them. Naturally that was faster. But go on." His face was sympathetic as Elof told of their troubled wanderings, his loss and his decision to seek healing in the Marshlands. K
ermorvan stared with greater wonder at the sword when told of its origins, but kept silent. It was only when Elof told of the strange rider that he sat up sharply, as if arrow-struck. "Raven! You've seen Raven!"

  "I've seen many ravens. There were two that night—"

  "I mean the man, the…"He swallowed, and looked wildly around him. "Your visitor! You…" He shook his head violently.

  "You don't believe me, I see," said Elof sharply. "Well, I cannot prove it. But who is this Raven character anyhow? I could use a word or two with him—"

  Kermorvan was making undignified stuttering sounds. "Oh, I believe you," he managed to say at last. "You would not say anything so ridiculous if it were not the truth! But suppose I said I saw the maiden Saithana swimming up to join us here? Eh? Because it's about as likely!"

  "What d'you mean?" cried Elof.

  "I mean, you smith of strange marvels—" But then he shook his head, and looked around uneasily. "I cannot say. I have to think… Later, not now."

  "Not now?" groaned Elof. "But I have to know what to do, now! You see what I have unleashed!"

  Kermorvan visibly gathered his wits, and considered. "Yes. And I can find some counsel in what you have told me. What can be made, as I said, can be unmade. Or it can be countered. Make some other weapon, since this particular power of yours is with you once more, and go up against it."

  "But how?" breathed Elof, "I lack the knowledge—"

  "Which your former master has. A problem, yes. But do you not see that he also lacks something? The power! The art, or whatever you call it, or he would have made such a terrible thing himself, and never have entrusted it to an apprentice. Perhaps he did not expect it to come so powerful from your hands—but I wonder… That absence of his was so convenient; he may have been tempting you, to see what you might produce. He may even have planted the seed of that betrayal of your fellow apprentice in your mind, which would lift some of it from you. But whatever the reason, you have one great comfort, evidently—in this strange art of ours, you are more potent than he!"

  Elof sat gaping like an idiot, as the clear cold voice hammered home its truths. Waves washed through him as they fell against the beach, and he felt something burgeon within him, rising from toe tip to the roots of his hair, so that it bristled and rose. His hand sank to the goad at his belt, closed around characters he had remembered. "Yes!" he breathed. "It must be so! He knew …"

  "So! Then your problem is simple. Find yourself a better master, and learn what you need from him."

  "But who? Most mastersmiths would have no truck with a vagrant like me—except old Hjoran, and he knows nothing of the kind of things I would need…"

  "No masters among men, maybe—but there are others."

  "Others?"

  "Aye, and you have met them already, and that alone is like a meeting out of dreams to me, or a childhood fable. Again, your master has kept you ignorant of what might serve you in the world. For it has long been said that in the high mountains bordering both Northland and Southland dwell the Elder folk, the stunted ones that in your northern tongue are named the duergar."

  "In my tongue?" asked Elof. "But before you used it, I never heard the name, not even as a childhood tale. Though I was not told many tales…no, not even then."

  "Yet it is known even in our poor cloistered Southlands, where no legends ride abroad to smithy doors. In the wild lands on our inland marches, under the shadow of the mountains and the Great Forest, only a few dwell, hillmen and hunters—simple at best, more often cloven in mind. Some claim to have occasional meetings on the high slopes with the Elders of the mountains, and they revere them more than their own civilized lords." He shook his head. "It is said they are the greatest masters of smithcraft, and once taught our ancestors. It is said also that seeking them out is deadly peril." He sighed. "But our need is great. And you who are so powerful a smith might find welcome among them, for they are clearly no friends of the man you seek to counter, and once you saved them from him. Most important of all, you know what no others seem to— a region where they may actually dwell."

  "I do," mused Elof. "Though the aid I gave them is paid, surely, and it would be a long and dangerous journey alone…"

  "So it would. But you need not go alone. I will come with you—if, after all I have said, you can tolerate me."

  "Tolerate you?" Elof looked askance at the tall young man beside him, selecting another pebble to throw with deep care and concentration. He thought of a flying leap between ships in poor light, in armor that would drag a man down living into Amicac's jaws if he so much as slipped, all to save lives among his crew. "But you have a purpose here, among the corsairs—"

  "My purpose is fighting the Ekwesh. That tore me from my home, and what shreds of prosperity and influence I yet enjoyed. I had hoped to lead this ship in time, to buy and recruit others and weld them into a real shielding force. But last night I saw finally that for all that butcher's work, all the lives lost, I had hardly scratched the surface of their armor! One ship—a thirtieth part of a tenth part of their present fleet, and that barely a tenth of what their force might be, if they are united under one banner! That above all I must fight. And I do firmly believe that you have been sent to me to do that. You, smith, you are my chance, and I must not fail it, or you. I ask again, will you go with me?"

  "How old are you, Kermorvan?"

  "Twenty-five years."

  "You look older. I am only twenty, twenty-one at most, and hardly fit, it seems, to be running loose in this world. If you will tolerate me—why then, I'll go with you gladly."

  Chapter Six - On the Anvil

  "A dark prospect, and a long journey on two feet," said Kermorvan, as he surveyed the evening landscape spread out before them. Below the hillcrest on which they stood the country fell away to great stretches of tangled woodland and empty plain, without sign of life or habitation; the wind howled across them unhindered. Only on the far horizon could the jagged peaks of mountains be made out, sullen and shadowed below an angry sunset. Never once, though, did he turn and look back to the hills through which they had come, and the bay that lay beyond.

  He had insisted that they should slip away at once, before the corsairs awoke. "Or they may try to prevent us. They might even be foolish enough to try main force." He smiled. "Though I doubt if they could stand against you and I together."

  "But… you don't think you're deserting them?"

  "With so much loot? The rascals are richer now than they deserve to be, through me. And by returning these women they can buy off their outlawry and be quit, if they are wise. No, I owe them nothing—though I agree they might not see it in that fashion! So let us be gone!"

  Thus they had hastily gathered gear and food together, and made their way out of the inlet and along the sandy shore of the bay to where its cliffs could more easily be climbed. Kermorvan, in addition to the single-handed sword he usually wore, bore a heavy pack that Elof guessed contained his war gear, but it seemed to slow him not at all as he bounded from rock to rock with an ease the smith's shorter limbs could not match. Through the rolling hills beyond, Kermorvan kept up a punishing pace, and stopped only as the sun fell toward the distant peaks.

  "You see," he pointed out, "our search took us north of the marshes into the Debatable Lands—there they lie, that dark and hazy expanse! To the northeast there, already in the long mountain-shadow, is the southward way you and your friend took." Elof thought of Roc, as he often did, and wondered how he had fared among his own people. What would he make of this strange character, this corsair with lordly manners? They had one thing in common, beyond doubt, and that was a kinder heart than their outward selves suggested. "We, though, must seek a quicker way north," Kermorvan added. "Even if it is a whit more dangerous. So we will follow the High roads that run by the coast at first, and only later turn of? toward the mountains." His look grew remote, as if he strove to see further than the eye alone could reach. "I will be glad to see them again, those mountains," he sighed. "The
y are noble places on their lower slopes, with green woodland and many fair lakes, and the heights had great majesty. I often wished to go higher, but deemed it rash to brave the Ice all alone. And now you tell me you lived there many a long year!"

  "In a high house, and no doubt well fortified in more ways than one. But I didn't know you knew the mountains, Kermorvan! You're no northerner, are you?"

  "Not I!" he said, laughing. "But when I left my home in the Southlands a few years past I traveled north with some merchants, for a brief season. I journeyed south again down the coast ways, and know something therefore of their broils and pitfalls—though doubt it not, they will have increased. Then it was I saw clear proof what the Ekwesh were about, and grew less blinkered than most of my kin. The little towns raided, they wounded my heart— the rooftrees yet smoldering, the fields laid barren, the bones of their defenders left to the sky to mourn and the scavenging beasts to bury."

  Elof nodded. "Perhaps you saw Asenby, where I grew up, left so some seven springtimes gone."

  "I saw many such, and no one living to tell me their name. One looks much like another. Come! We have a long road ahead of us, the more we manage the lighter the morrow!"

  "It's almost dark…"

  "So it is. But would you sleep out on a barren hillside, when there is a fine firwood downhill, with branches to make a good shelter? I'll show you how. Come!"

  And thus it was throughout most of the days that followed, with Kermorvan very much the leader of their little party. Elof did not resent this, for the Sothran knew the way well, and was moreover a practiced woodsman and accomplished trapper and hunter. Elof thought how much more comfortable such skills would have made him and Roc on their wanderings, and strove to learn from him. That first night a few lopped fir sprays became a welcome roof against the trunk of a great tree. "The art," Kermorvan remarked as he wrapped himself in his great cloak of dark green, "is to make the roof steep enough to spill off rain, but not so high that the warmth of your body goes to heat a great pool of air overhead." He pillowed his head on his bundle, and muttered a curse as it clanked. "Not as snug as your smithy, perhaps, but it will serve."