For answer, Roc dragged a bundle out from under the thwart, and slung his bow across his back, with a closed quiver of arrows. "And yours?"
"Ail about me," said Elof, eyes sparkling. The cutter lurched sideways suddenly, and they staggered to the rail. "It's that will serve us - if you think you can hold tight for a half-hour or so?"
"For my life? Like the grip of the Ice its own self! But what to?"
"To me!" cried Elof. "Follow!" And springing up on l he port rail he sprang for the sea. Roc shook his head only once before he scrambled after.
They rose together, gasping with the water's chill. "Should've slung my furs -" gurgled Roc.
"No need!" cried Elof, and dashed the salt sea from his eyes. "See, our Seafire lists, true friend that she was! We'll need to be out from under, fast, or follow her down!" He was delving in his jacket as he spoke, and drew out with a cry of triumph a thing that glittered in the murky air.
"Hella's claw…" Roc yelled, but was cut off by the rush of water against the cutter's deck.
"Hold you tight now!" shouted Elof, and drew the metal about his brows.
The cold sting of it seemed to surge through him. He shuddered, and felt the water boil around his massive limbs; dimly a protesting shout reached him, and he remembered to stay still a moment, felt a weight at his side, arms close around the roots of the high fin at his back. Then he kicked out once, and was away. The sea surged behind him, and he was aware of the long mass that slid slowly down into the green depths; but he forgot his brief flicker of grief in the rushing joy of the waters. He had taken this shape for its strength, and because he had worn it briefly once before, hoping that might help him endure it longer. He had not bargained for the gradual change it brought to his perceptions. Sight and scent dimmed, but a strange new awareness filled his mind that had some aspect of hearing about it and some of sight; a world of floating shapes it drew him, swaying and darting, suspended among shimmering swirls and currents, a world of beauties and mysteries he could only guess at. It allured him to dive down, to explore all the marvels half-guessed at in this alien setting, this otherworldly sea; so strong was its call he came dangerously close to forgetting his burden, and in panic he forced the new sense from his mind. Lifting his head above water, he could dimly make out the shore, and that way he drove, acutely aware of how little time he had. Already his thoughts were beginning to blur, to waver with the strain of maintaining the mask; sooner or later it would slip, and be hard to regain. On he swam, the world an unregarded wonder about him save for the weight that dragged at his back, and the explosive outburst of his own breath.
The current came as a shock, a sudden upsurge, warmer than the rest, that lifted him suddenly and dashed him forward the way he was headed. His eyes lifted above the surface, and suddenly they saw only too clearly the high and jagged barrier out-thrust before them. In a sudden flash of panic he thrust out his hands to stave it off - and they were human hands. The mask had dropped, and his heavy clothes were dragging him own. He heard one sharp cry from Roc, felt a hand clutch at the soaked furs on his shoulder and tear free in the swirling water; he reached out blindly, but there was only water - and scouring, scraping stone. The surf threw him against it, dragged him back, threw him again - but this time he caught it, gripped and clung though it scraped the skin from his finger, clung as his legs were dashed against the stone. He let the flow carry him to a foothold, then with one desperate heave he kicked and hauled himself up ere the undertow could pluck him away again, clasped tight to the stone as the next wave roared over him like green glass, and painfully pulled himself to a secure hold.
Only then, gasping with effort and the chill of the water, could he spare a moment to look up. He found that he was crouching on a long spit of jagged black rock, one of many out-thrust into the sea by a coastline that was all rough cliffs, sculptured strangely by the sea that besieged their walls. He scrambled hastily higher, beyond the reach of the waves, and stood up, scanning the sea and the rocks around, ready to dive back in at the slightest glimpse of any form. He could see nothing living save himself and the few gulls that swooped and screeched about the wild air. "Roc!" he yelled, over the drumming of the surf, and again, many times, till his salt-raw throat protested. A gust of cold panic closed over him, and he scrambled back up the rocks, higher and higher, yet from every new point of vantage he saw no more, nor were his calls answered. He looked up desperately at the promontory above; it would be no hard climb, and it would give him a commanding view. As swiftly as the thought he set his weary limbs to the rockface.
There was some snow on the ledges, and he wondered briefly if he would find the Ice beyond the cliff top; but when he thrust over a hand for some hold to draw himself up, his fingers closed upon coarse plants and earth that was relatively soft. He scrambled more confidently over the rim and stood a moment, staring around. It was a bleak landscape that met his eyes, cold and hard, a rounded expanse of rocky, stone-littered slopes and vales clad in sombre shades of brown and purple; but it lived. Its colours were those of tough grasses and flowering scrub, moorland hues not unlike the Starkenfells of his Nordeney home; in the valleys there were clumps of green, and here and there a stand of stunted birches, but all over the slopes there were thick patches of spiky gloss-green, dotted with yellow flowers. A great clump of these bushes rose near him, and he knew they were a kind he had never seen before. It was only then that he fully realised what he had done, that he had crossed the sundering oceans, come to the lands of the ancient east, first among men to do so in well-nigh a thousand years. And he had taken a great step on his quest; yet desperately he wished it undone, so bitterly it stuck in his throat.
This way and that he gazed from the crest of the promontory, out to sea, along the cliffs and the little beaches that nestled below them. He could see clearly and far yet he saw nothing that he wished to, no trace of any human shape. Again and again he called, but his voice alone challenged the gull-cries over the bleak land, the empty sea. At last he slumped down at the cliff-edge and sank his head in his hands. He was beyond the release of mourning, of tears; the void that opened at his feet seemed less than that within him, and his loneliness infinite. Love lost, homeland renounced, friends forsaken; and now he had doomed his oldest friend, failed to save at this one crisis the man to whom he owed his life many times over. His life; what use was it to him? All that he had won with such effort he had tossed away. He sat here on a barren coast, in no better case than if he had never quit his hovel upon the Great Marshes, half a world away and many long years. Worse; for there he had its shelter, at least, the means to live, and a guilt that he could hope to expiate. Here he had - what did he have? Sword, hammer, pack with its precious burdens, all hung at his side - yet something was missing. He lifted his fingers cautiously, and clutched his salt-stiffened hair in tearing handfuls. There was no helm on his head. There had not been, he knew now, since he had climbed from the rocks; nor was it about his neck, for he had fastened it only loosely in his haste. The loss shook him rigid; yet he would have laughed it off to find his friend alive once more. The sky above descended on his shoulders, and it was made of granite harsher than any beneath.
But it was not so very long before he raised his head again. If there were the least thing he could do, he should do it; one folly did not excuse others. He must search for what he had lost. The Tarnhelm had almost come ashore with him; it would be folly to abandon it so easily. It could not have borne him across the oceans because he had never seen this shore and could not hold its image in his thoughts; but now he had. If he could find it, it might serve to bear him back, though the distance involved unnerved him; Bryhon Bryheren had travelled across the Ice with it, but only in short stages, with rest. He could not rest in mid-ocean. Meanwhile, there was a little food in his pack; while that lasted he would search for Roc. The clouds parted a little; the sun, still hidden, shed long beams over the land, touching the hilltops with a sudden glow of warmth, but shining cold upon the green waves
and the steely peaks of distant ice-islands. He watched the sea awhile, noting the run and flow of the surf that had borne him ashore, and how it varied and shifted with this wind. Alive, Roc should have come ashore somewhere near; dead, he still might. The place most likely was a beach some way down the cliff from the spit he had climbed, wider and less steep than the others he could see, and leading up to a shallow valley, a depression in the cliffs filled with bushes and birch that had grown straighter than was usual here in its shelter. And yet the wind seemed to be stirring them now…
There was movement in those bushes. Too much to be just one man - and yet among the dark foliage there was a brief but definite flash of red that could easily be the hue of Roc's hair. He leaned forward, eager to shout or wave, yet hesitant. Whatever moved, it would be out in the beach in a moment; then he could see. If it was Roc…
It was! He sprang up as the square, burly figure emerged from the bushes, cautiously, as if expecting trouble. Elof waved, hailed, and saw him start, look up, and wave back - no ordinary joyful wave, but a scything, flattening gesture, urgent, sinister. Danger! Come down! Or did he mean stay out of sight? Elof half turned, hesitated -
Caught a glimpse of armour, copper skin, as a great weight ground down on him and forced his face into the earth. With sickening suddenness, as if not a moment had passed, he was back in the last day of his childhood, some twenty-five years ago, taken unawares by the raiders who had ravaged his village. But now though he was weary there was strength in his arms, smith's strength, and as they were wrenched behind him he struggled and snarled and fought. He jerked one arm the way it was being pushed, felt his attacker lose his balance, and thrust out once again. The hard hands tore free, the man was flung back, but there was no sound of him striking the ground, only a rattle of loose earth and stone, a terrified shriek, and a moment later a thudding splash from below. The other attacker hesitated, Elof swung around, seized the fingers that held him and twisted them back; the man let go with a scream and Elof was on top of him with fist swinging. He sprang up as another came running with spear levelled, seized the shaft and snapped it with bruising strength across his knee, then fell on the spearman with the bladed truncheon. But as he raised it for the killing stroke another blade passed across his throat, one more pricked his neck below the ear, and a narrower blade jabbed him painfully over the kidneys. He let fall the truncheon, and rose very slowly to his feet. The faces of the men running up, hard and brown and scarred not only by wounds but by ritual cicatrices, were all too familiar in their cast; with bow, spear and sword a ring of Ekwesh warriors hemmed him in.
Ekwesh! Till then, confused in time, it had seemed only natural that he was fighting his lifelong foes - but now the implications pierced him like a catapult bolt. For a crazed moment he wondered if he might not have somehow sailed on around the world to the Ekwesh homeland; it was said to be a bleak place like this. But he knew better than that. What then were they doing here? His blood still boiled; he had half a mind to try and break through their ranks and run for it. He might make it. But then they would comb the area, and might capture Roc. Better to wait, bide his time…
A broad man in a fur-trimmed cloak strode forward, cheeks hatched between cheekbone and jaw with a chieftain's scars in the shape of wings, and gestured at his pack and sword-belt; Elof did nothing. Two warriors dropped their weapons, seized him and tore the pack from his shoulder. Elof thought of the hammer at his side; if he could keep it from their sight… One warrior tugged at the buckle of his sword-belt, and Elof made a furious lunge for the hilt, struggling with the men who held him; it availed him little, but it was not meant to. The scuffle lasted only a minute, and ended with Elof on the ground being kicked with ironshod boots, but the hammer was tucked safe among his furs. The chieftain gestured him up, and Elof lurched to his feet more unsteadily than he needed to; let them be off their guard only a moment… The chieftain caught his arms and spread them wide, then ran long fingers through his jacket and gave a grunt of satisfaction; he plucked out the hammer and hefted it before Elof's face. "You are soldier?" he demanded, in some barely comprehensible form of the Sothran tongue.
"No!" spat Elof, then reined in his temper, remembering the exaggerated prestige this reiver people attached to warriors, and their contemptuous treatment of any who were not as fair game. "That is - I am, when I have to be. But by choice I am a smith." The chieftain's face was blank. "A - a Shaper, a shaman of metals…" It was the Ekwesh word he used, and the chieftain drew back as if he had trodden near a copperhead. He spat on the ground and gestured to the others, and they searched Elof from top to toe; he ground his teeth as the chieftain fingered through his precious pack, knowing what danger lay in the jewels he bore. The chieftain plucked out the anklets and the half arm-ring, admired them a moment and to Elof's astonishment replaced them, handing him the pack.
"You carry this, for now," he said. "Answer with your head!" He spoke with an atrocious, guttural accent, but better than other Ekwesh Elof had heard; also, he used terms that had a strangely literary or archaic ring to Elof, and others he could only guess at. "So! You speak for self now, then before Iltasya."
Elof knew some words of the Ekwesh common tongue, but that one he had never heard. "My ship sank out there," he said, pointing out among the floating ice. "I barely made it to shore."
"We see the sail sinking," said the chieftain. "Guards search the shore. You come from West-over-sea, from Br-Bras'eal?" He mangled the name. "Alone?"
Elof was thinking rapidly, of the two Ekwesh who had first crept out upon him, one was dead, one still unconscious. The others could not have seen Roc; two were looking down the cliff, but that was evidently for signs of the man who had fallen. "My crew was drowned, I think. I called in case they had come ashore, but…" He shook his head resignedly. "It was a long swim…"
It would have been, for a man. The chieftain eyed him a moment. "Other guards will find them, if living; we go!" He turned to his men and clapped his hands. "Ouakia'ma!" With no more than the one command the patrol formed ranks around Elof, two of them carrying their unconscious comrade, and strode off down the promontory, winding in and out of the thorny bushes that had concealed them. They glanced about them as they went, stabbed a spear at likely-looking concealment, but made no serious attempt to search. Elof wondered about the "other guards"; at least they were not here yet. Roc would have time to take cover. But who were those others with him, that he had not seen? It seemed that even if the Ekwesh were masters of this dour land, they might not be unchallenged. And Roc was free; there might not be much he could do unaided against eleven armed men, but with aid… That was something; definitely something.
All the rest of that afternoon they marched, more or less southward, along an unchanging coastline within sight of the ice-strewn sea, and into the long summer evening that followed until no slightest trace of light remained to show their way. They halted then, and Elof, muscles weakened and gait unsteady after long weeks in the little cutter, fell groaning to the ground, clutching cramping muscles in calf and foot, but glad he had held out till the end; though it would have been little use his asking these grim folk for any rest. And yet he had already noticed many things unusual about them. For one, their armour of stiffened black leather was much thicker and heavier than the usual Ekwesh pattern, and the chieftain wore a short shirt of scale-mail beneath his cloak; the clan emblem on their gear was reduced to a stylized image sketched in with a few flowing lines, and they wore fewer jangling ornaments of metal, precious or otherwise. Only the chief had gold rings in his long ears, and bronze and gold tips to the braids of his coarse black hair. He himself was unusual, like none of their chieftains Elof had met before now, neither a malevolent old man nor a steely young fanatic. This was a heavy man of late middle years, stone-calm, granite-hard and grim of aspect; yet neither he nor his men indulged themselves in the casual brutality of most Ekwesh towards their captives. They neither beat nor bound Elof as they marched, and that itself was unusual; ye
t in some ways it made them more alarming. Their eyes were never far from him, and he guessed that if he had shown any tendency to slacken or sought to escape, he would have suffered both; but not necessarily as retribution, more as a cooly considered means to an end.
They built a great fire of brushwood that night, too great for anyone with anything much to hide or fear, and cooked over griddles among the ashes. Elof, seated in the smoky lee between two brawny spearmen, was wondering how long the food in his pack would last, when one of them passed him a deep wooden bowl of some boiled grain, a slice of bread and a chunk of smoked meat. Elof took the bowl and bread hungrily, but when he refused the meat it was thrust at him. "Eat!" barked the soldier, in an accent worse than the chieftain's. "Is long road, at first sun!"
"Be damned if I will?" exploded Elof, forgetting ail restraint in his loathing. "What carrion is it, flesh of some helpless thrall -"
The blow spun him round and stretched him flat on his back, blood trickling from his mouth across his burning cheek. "That word you swallow, or I strike it in your teeth, shaman of filth!" It was the chieftain who stood over him, almost slavering with rage; he had evidently sprung straight across the fire. "We are the Proud Ones! We eat no man's-meat, us!"
Elof heaved himself up on one elbow and glared at him. He should not have been so rash; but having spoken, to show any weakening now might be dangerous. "So?" he said, as sarcastically as his swelling lips would allow. "What do your shamans have to say about that, proud one? And the Hidden Clan?"
As he expected, that rocked the chieftain back on his heels; the spearmen sprang up and back, weapons ready. "What might you know of Tlasuka, shaman of West-over-sea?" He spoke very softly, fingers flexing near the short sword at his belt. "You are of their pale masters, maybe?"
Elof fought to keep up his arrogant front. "I am not; I have met them, though, men and non-men. And though they claim the Ice runs in their veins and their guts, I know that for a lie. I have spilled enough of both!"
The Hammer of the Sun Page 13