The Castle of the Winds

by Michael Scott Rohan

  The tall corsair nodded. ‘Done any weaponsmithing?’

  ‘Some. Of course.’

  ‘Any good?’

  Kunrad nodded, keeping his manner curt. ‘I think one of your boys’ll have my sword.’

  The longboat commander glared at him, unsheathed his blade and tossed it. There was a rumble of amusement along the wharf. The tall corsair caught it easily, looked it over as if a touch disappointed by its plainness, hefted it, swiped it in the air with fierce grace, and gave a short laugh. One of his large front teeth was gold-capped, and what looked like a garnet gleamed in it.

  ‘I’ve already got a Northland blade. But this one—’ He drew his own sword and passed it to the commander, sheathing Kunrad’s in its place. ‘Not so bad. Not at all! Neat catch, Padrec!’

  ‘I could make you a better yet,’ said Kunrad. ‘Far better, if you give me good makings. And our tool-kits and baggage, from our ship!’

  The corsair raised his eyebrows a fraction. ‘We’ll see. Padrec, get your crew settled, and come drink. We’ll see this your cargo well stowed! You three – follow!’

  He led them up the narrow stair at the same long-limbed trot, never looking back to see whether they stumbled or faltered, being chained by the neck and weary. His followers drove them on with blows and curses through a small iron-bound door, into a rush-strewn courtyard milling with torch-lit life. Women washed clothes in steaming coppers, or piled peat-slabs to dry against the stone foundations; children shrilled and squalled and chased free-running goats and chickens. The tall man ignored them, or kicked beasts and children aside impartially, if the women didn’t retrieve them first. Guards lounging in front of a heavy door snapped to attention as they saw him.

  ‘Open!’ he barked, without slackening his stride, and they flung back the door barely in time. A black stairwell opened into the rock, and he went clattering down, his cloak sweeping dustclouds from the steep stairs. They looked newly cut, and crude, with debris in the corners. They led only a little way down into a narrow corridor, like an extended cellar in the bare rock, shored here and there with rough timber. Low doors opened to either side, some heavily barred, but at its end stood a larger one, whose heavy outer bolts the chieftain unlocked with crude keys from his belt. He threw it booming back, unleashing a waft of hot dry air, and a dull glow that set Kunrad positively tingling with its familiarity. The room he was bundled into was long and low and by the look of it carved out of a cave in the stone, its roof, now rolling with smoke, finished off with patches of coarse brick and rough-cut rocks, crudely mortared in. The smoke rolled from under the brazen hood of a wide forge-hearth at the far wall, its heaped coals blazing in the fierce draught. The corsair chieftain roared at his followers, and the door was slammed to behind them. The coals dimmed, and the smoke went back into the chimney again. The air was heavy, for the room had no windows Kunrad could see, unless perhaps those narrow crevices high in the wall. Deep voices murmured, and squat figures scuttled back into the shadows at the tall man’s bark.

  ‘Our main forge. The shipwrights have another, but this is where you’ll work, and bunk down for now. We’re crowded in this forsaken hole, and there’s no better. Think yourself lucky it’s warm. We need weapons and armour made, when there’s time, and refurbished when there isn’t. Maybe we’ll let you work on the ships and war-engines a little, in the open.’ He snapped his fingers. The smiths were suddenly seized and held fast. ‘That’s for later, when we can trust you. Work well and we’ll see; but for now—’ Even as he spoke, cold fetters snapped around their ankles, linking their feet with stiff rods and chains, too close to let them run. The tall man watched them struggle to control their expressions.

  ‘Till you learn sense!’ he said, answering their silent rage and humiliation. ‘And realise what I’m telling you now is truth. You’re here, you stay, and don’t get ideas about making a bolt for it! Within the citadel, well, you’re most likely safe enough, behind strong walls and weapons and ways clear to the sea for our supplies. Even so …’ He trailed off for a moment, uneasily. ‘Even so. Men, women, brats – we lose the odd one. They get careless, they stray. Maybe they get lured out. I don’t know, nobody sees it happen – but they just seem to walk off, any time, no matter what. And they don’t come walking back.’

  ‘Some do!’ said a short grey-haired man, with a venomous laugh. ‘Hey, boss, remember the last of these icerat tinkers we had? He thought he could make it!’

  The chieftain shot him a hard look. ‘Ah yes, that one,’ he mused. ‘Just about to mention him, I was.’ The look, thought Kunrad, suggested otherwise. ‘A smith of Dunmarhas, as I remember. A clever little bugger, in his way. But he came back. A few nights lost on the Marshes were enough for him. In fact, I believe his tools are still around here, somewhere.’

  ‘Not that he had any use for ’em!’ sniggered the other, leering contemptuously at the captives. ‘Or much else!’ There was a nervous edge to his mockery, and the chieftain rounded on him.

  ‘Will you be holding your lousy tongue, Palhe? They come back sick, that’s all, deadly sick. Stands to reason – fall in the pools, drink the water unboiled. Marsh-blind, liver-rot, yellow vomit like I had, or worse. No mystery in that!’ He shivered, and rubbed his waxy hands in the forge-warmth. ‘No place for men, this boghole! And believe you me, we mean to be getting out very soon. Well out! And you—’ He fixed his bleak eyes on Kunrad. ‘Be you a help, you come too! There’ll be money enough for a skilled man then, and a good fighter. But give us any sweat, seek to sling your hook, even, despite all I’ve said …’ He waved idly at the blank walls. ‘Ach, I don’t think you’re that stupid. What’s outside these? A sixty-foot dive, and then the Marshes. Afoot, in a boat supposing you could steal one – still, one way or another, the Marshes!’

  There was a grim relish in the word. Gille looked sickly at Olvar.

  The corsair chuckled. ‘You’re better off here, believe me. We’ll even give you a couple of helping hands – Hey, you two!’ He glared into the shadows, shading his eyes from the forge, and whistled sharply. ‘Here! Now! Heel! Hop to it, savvy?’

  Out of the glaring firelight two extraordinary figures came shuffling forward. Cripples, thought Kunrad, poor misshapen naturals; he was disgusted at the way the corsair whistled them up, like dogs. Then his jaw dropped like any callow child’s; there was a proportion in them beyond all deformity, yet human it was not. They were short, the lesser no higher than his belt buckle, the taller than his chest, but that was more than made up for in breadth of body and the limbs that bowed under the tension of their massive muscles. Their rounded shoulders were broader even than Olvar’s, their necks short and thick, their heads heavy and oddly long under tangled thatches of black hair. They looked down, away from the corsairs; but to the newcomers, suddenly, they raised their heads. The features were heavy and blunt, coarse and animalistic beneath dark slathers of furnace dirt; heavy brows overshadowed the deep-set eyes, wide and brown.

  Gille stared, and swore. Olvar grunted with surprise. But something deeper than simple astonishment moved Kunrad, when he caught one flash of those eyes.

  The corsairs chuckled, enjoying their shock. ‘A facer, ain’t it?’ said the short man. ‘Duergar they be, to the life! The Mountainfolk! Didn’t think there was such things, eh?’

  ‘Pretty brutes, to be sure!’ said the chief. ‘But fit to fetch and carry, tend the fire, pull the bellows. Even do some crude ironwork, if you can first hammer the idea through those thick skulls!’

  Another corsair snorted his disgust. ‘Fat chance! Sooner talk to a mutt! Copped those twain and an old ‘un grubbing on a hillside, and never a clear word out of ’em, even when we headed the oldster!’

  ‘Aye, an’ that’s truth!’ spat the short man. ‘A lash, smith, that’s all they’ll understand! You’ll needs lay on, and hard, mind! They don’t feel pain like proper folk!’

  ‘Or a touch of a hot coulter! To the she, aye, an’ then watch the buck jump!’

 
The tall corsair joined in the chuckles. ‘Use them as you will, so long as the work is done! A shame you must share their stink, but there’ll be more air for you soon enough, if you put your backs to it. You, Jaho, see our guests given rations and paillasses. In the morning you’ll have swink enough! And, Mastersmith, we’ll speak more of that sword!’

  They trooped out noisily, awaiting no answer. The door banged open, then shut; the bolt clanged. Smoke swirled and boiled out of the hearth. Kunrad coughed, and then stood silently, looking at the half mythical creatures before him, and extended a tentative hand. They stood, squat, hard, unmoving and returned his gaze. He took a half step towards them, and his chains rattled. They did not respond. He sighed, and turned to the others. Olvar and Gille looked back at him, equally silent. Wind whistled in the wall slots and moaned in the chimney.

  ‘All right!’ he said, answering what he had not been spoken. ‘It’s my fault you’re here, I know it. If it’s humanly possible, I’ll get you out. Out of here, out of the Marshes – and out of these fetters, first of all!’ They looked back at him, and he knew they did not believe him. ‘We can do it! We can always do it! You should already see some ways; I have. But it’ll take time. Meanwhile, we’ll have to work.’ Impulsively, he looked back at the duergar. Their chains were heavier, manacles that tethered wrist to ankle. ‘And you! All that goes for you too!’

  They lowered their gaze, and turned, and like bent old creatures they shuffled away without a word spoken. Kunrad heard Gille exhale, as if some tension were released.

  ‘Talk about weird brutes!’ whispered Olvar.

  Gille shivered. ‘And did you smell them? Like beasts. Those horrible faces …’

  ‘Are they?’ demanded Kunrad softly. ‘Try looking at them. Look property! Not like the corsairs! Look at them as people!’

  It was him they looked at, both of them. ‘Whatever you say … boss,’ said Olvar. The hesitation was slight; and there was angry resentment in Gille’s eyes. But Kunrad nodded. He was still the master, and the chains could have weighed no heavier.

  Slumped on the rough straw mattresses, grateful for gulped-down bowls of fish stew and coarse bread, they did their best to rest. Even exhausted as they were, getting comfortable felt impossible, although they managed to slide the metal cuffs high enough to get their boots off. The duergar retreated to a cubbyhole behind the benches at the far end of the forge, and were silent still. Kunrad was the last to sleep, for the cares that lay upon him, cursing his folly that had brought them to this pass. Not that he yearned any the less for the armour; but it no longer seemed a wholly real thing. It was as if the cold metal he had shaped had come to stand for something else, something deeper he could not grasp, and yet had to.

  The wind off the Marshes, moaning in the chimney, caught his mood only too well, and the strange night-cries it bore. Only the voices of bird and beast, perhaps; but to him, as he was, they were spirits astray out there among the reeds and rushes, lost and wandering beyond all redemption. Small wonder, he felt, that people might stray off from here. He battled hard with the blackness in his heart, and it says much for his strength that he slept at last. But in the heart of the night he was awoken by another sound, loud but brief, stifled so quickly he hardly knew whether he had heard or dreamed it. It was a woman’s weeping.

  They knew it was morning only by the thin rays that knifed down through the crevices across the smoky air. Before long, as the duergar tended the forge, the door banged open and the corsair chieftain came striding in, with armed guards at the door and a half-dozen leather-aproned followers bearing heavy baskets that clanked and clattered. ‘Your little ship’s in,’ he said curtly, coughing at the smoke that swirled out from the hearth. ‘Here are your tool kits and stuff, and your day’s rations. Now be about some work! We’ve a mighty store of gear wants repairing, this isn’t a hundredth of it! Bad mailshirts, worse blades – these lads of mine can’t keep up. Fix what you can, salvage the rest and use it. Waste nothing, mind! Run up one mailshirt out of two, that wise. Got it?’

  ‘That’s not always the best way,’ said Kunrad mildly. ‘As often as not it’s better to patch them together with new rings, if you’ve the wire. And other materials …’

  The chief shrugged, and turned to a wizened creature who was eyeing the Northerners with deep suspicion. ‘Well?’

  ‘Some,’ the sothran smith admitted unwillingly. ‘There’s a wire drawer there on the end bench to size it, with your swage blocks and such, or to make more – if you can! But naught else, for all things are costly to obtain out here, save spooks and stinks! You Northerners can all read and write, can’t you? Well, I want a close tally kept—’

  The chief waved impatiently. ‘Back to your own forges, for what little bloody use you are!’ The little man scuttled off, looking back with wide frightened eyes, and his followers with him. The chief leaned back against a bench. ‘How you manage is your business, Mastersmith, so long as it’s swift. And no idling, if you want bread, and a whole gullet to swallow it! Now, set your lads to work, and come talk. For you I’ve a task more demanding.’ He drew Kunrad’s sword, and leaned close. ‘Tell me what you can craft that’s better than this!’

  The chieftain listened, turning the blade in a shaft of light, as Kunrad described the various kinds and shapes he could make, all the refinements and improvements he could add, the strength and richness of the decoration. The corsair’s eyes were as yellow and dull as his complexion, but they gleamed with greedy anticipation. ‘How soon?’ he interrupted. ‘A fine straight blade of this pattern, with the blood-channel like you said, but to fit me – the best you can make, the mingled metal with the gold inlay? And the fancy pattern-work hilt, the jewels on the grip, all the trimmings?’

  Kunrad made a great show of considering, as he had seen his father do. ‘Well, let me see now … If I’m let work upon it all my time … let me see, let me see, two or three trial pieces first, pick the best and so on … blade first, hilt second – a plain one to test it … but drawing the wire especially … Mmm? Maybe two weeks? Say three to be safe. Once I have the makings in hand, of course.’

  ‘Nothing’s safe, Mastersmith!’ said the corsair sardonically. ‘Two weeks. Leave the rest to the boys and the beastfolk. List all that you’ll need, and you’ll have it. But you’ll be a damned wise man to deliver all that you promise!’

  Kunrad watched him go, hearing the door boom shut again and the massive bolts slide home. The strongest sword or axe he could shape wouldn’t cut through those nearly quickly enough. And there was that gaggle of guards, as no doubt there would be every time the door opened. They had crossbows, some of them; no fighting your way past those. At anything to do with fighting, as he had expected, the corsairs were able and disciplined to a fault. Their weaknesses would lie elsewhere. Another kind of craft would have to serve him here.

  He smiled slowly to himself. Then the hair bristled on the back of his neck. He looked around quickly, and saw that one of the duergar was watching him, through the slowly settling forge-smoke. There was no more expression on the face, but something was different – in the stance, perhaps, less lumpish, more eager. And there was something about that face, now he saw it raised and in the light. Look past the hair dirt-tangled around it, the perpetual slather of grease and soot …

  The she. He hadn’t taken that in, at the time. It was a woman. He could see the shape of her now, though the duergar build and the hunched stance concealed it. Quite a young woman, too, if human standards applied; most of the apparent age on that face was dirt. Dirt deftly applied – cleverly, even.

  His scrutiny must have been too obvious, for she turned sharply away, hunching more than ever. But he had not missed the sudden widening of those large eyes, the quick flash of fear. He looked hard at the other duergh, laboriously beating out a dented helmet-hoop under Olvar’s direction. That one was male – no. A man. A husband, perhaps, if they had such things, or a kinsman.

  Something caught his eye, by the bench wher
e the woman had been crouching. He stooped to pick it up. It was a book, small but thick, well bound but better worn, and much stained with soot and strange substances. He thought better of trying to talk to her, and carefully opened it. It was in the Northern speech, and it looked like a tract on smithcraft, handwritten as they often were. Keeping one eye on the strange creatures, he began to read, slowly at first and then faster, as he grew used to the old-fashioned script. It was about smithcraft, all right; a basic enough tract, of the kind prepared by some Masters with many prentices to teach. This one was more advanced, for journeymen, and it had passed through many hands, that was obvious from the thickly clustered marginal notes. Some of these were in more modern scripts, one in particular in new-looking rough black ink, a neat hand but so cramped and abbreviated only another smith could easily read it. This writer was evidently an advanced journeyman, nearing his mastership; but there was a tone of suppressed excitement about the notes, as if he had suddenly tapped a whole new fount of knowledge. As Kunrad, master that he was, read on, he began to feel the same growing thrill.

  Throughout that afternoon they brought the materials he had listed for the sword, with armed guards as always watching the door. When it closed Kunrad spoke to the duergar, though they gave no sign of even hearing. ‘I’m going to need a lot of wire. Strong wire, but finer than the stuff from the mailshirts. The wire drawer is set, and the sword-makings—’ He paused. All the metals you need should be there. I’m going to ask you to help with other matters, but in any time you can spare, it’ll answer well to your strength. Remember what I said.’

  He turned away without waiting for an answer, while the prentices elaborately tapped their heads at him. ‘Good to see you’re keeping your sense of humour,’ Kunrad said flatly, waving away the forge-smoke. ‘How’re those chain-shirts coming along?’

  ‘Badly. Especially the patch-up jobs. Why didn’t you tell the man they won’t last like that? You said to give the new rings a virtue against rust, but we’d need a lot more phosphoric corrosives. Without those the new could feed on the old, and not hold.’