‘I also,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Answering to Father’s. But with a better heart. And when we come through it all …
‘Then we may truly set the woods afire!’ he grinned. ‘Let it startle whom it may!’
When Kermorvan came bustling up the hill at nightfall, sat high on his huge warhorse with its feathered legs, he stopped dead in astonishment at what confronted him. The trench now stood at some two hundred paces long, and three wide, and deeper than the height of a man. The back wall was being built up with drystones, by peasants skilled in the work. The fore wall was lower, a bank in the earth, and men were driving narrow slots through it at regular intervals, while others carried up stones from the lakeside, some of them wide flat slabs from the outcrops.
‘Missing your drainpipes?’ laughed Kunrad, though his dry voice cracked a little.
‘Bugger the pipes! What in Hella’s name’s all this?’ demanded the old man, heaving a leg laboriously over the saddle. ‘More fortifications?’
‘Not exactly,’ grinned Kunrad, helping him down with encaked hands.
Kermorvan fastidiously brushed off the lumps of mud. ‘Could be some kind of earthfort, such as our forefathers built when they first came to this land. You still see remains of them, here and there, on hilltops just like this. Burned out, mostly, so hot the stones themselves have fused like glass!’
Kunrad paused. ‘Burned out? Well, well. Then they may not have been forts!’ He looked along the trench. ‘This too is an ancient thing, such as Northern smiths no longer use. My prentices have never heard of it, and I only from an old book, and some older wisdom! But it should serve us here, thanks to the strong arms of your folk. The last loads of clay and fuel come tonight, and it should be in use within a day.’ He licked a finger, and help it up. ‘If the Powers are on our side, and the wind holds. And the corsairs keep away!’
‘The wind’ll hold, at this season,’ said Kermorvan. He said nothing of the corsairs. ‘Gets stronger toward midnight, in the spring and summer. Comes singing round the old towers and moaning in the wells. It’ll be there, all right. But will you? A long ride and no sleep last night, long day’s labour and no more tonight – Alais is worried about you, you know!’
‘I’ll be all right,’ said Kunrad wearily. ‘Where is she, anyhow?’
Kermorvan winked. ‘The kitchens! ‘Bout time she was put to some proper woman’s work!’
Kunrad looked askance. Kermorvan had some very sothran attitudes. ‘And she stood for that?’
Kermorvan shrugged. ‘Never a cheep! Bossing around a whole bevvy of clucking peasant women. They’ll be sending up some grub soon, and you look as if you could use some. And speaking of Alais, my lad—’
Kunrad lunged past him suddenly, his voice edged with strain. ‘Easy with that stone, there! You’ll cave in the bloody channels!’
‘Never mind!’ muttered Kermorvan gruffly. ‘It’ll keep!’
Yet it, whatever it might be, churned over and over in Kunrad’s mind as they laboured on into the dark. Torches were lit, and by their light men hauled up great bundles of dry firewood from the castle, and the still larger bales of brush and branch and peat. Some were stacked, but after a time more went into the trench, till the weary labourers fell down among them and were almost buried. Their fellows had to probe with sticks to make sure none were left. Even the hardened peasants were beginning to collapse now, sprawling insensible to the curses and kicks of their overseers, and Kunrad felt shame at using them as roughly as their masters did. He knew he could not have stood such treatment, for all the toughening the long journey had given him, and the old strength he had regained. Yet he dared spare none of them, any more than himself. When their labours were done, his would only be beginning.
And now there was Alais – sothran lady, princess of the old royal line, fair, brave and powerful, whom he had come so near losing, and might still. What was it Kermorvan meant to say? The obvious, probably. That Kunrad was a foreigner, a commoner, poor. That however much he liked and respected him …
‘Olvar! Get that bank shored up before it falls on someone!’
The obvious. Hands off Alais. And what would Alais say? She might be willing to run away with him, back to the North.
‘Overseers! Bring up those end timbers now. ‘Ware, and don’t catch the lip of the trench!’
Back to the North. And that might be all the pretext some sothran lords would need. Wars had started over less. Over and over as the figures came and went across the torchlit hilltop, bringing supporting timbers for the wall and the brushwood for the firing of the clay, he seemed to see her face. Over and over in the darkness, until suddenly it was no longer fleeting and flickering but there, steady against the dark, staring at what had sprung into being so swiftly. Her red hair whipped like the torch-flames.
He sprang down and ran to meet her, seeing suddenly that her slender shape was outlined in glinting mail, with a bow at her back. Her eyes were grim. ‘The scouts we sent out,’ she said. ‘The first word came back not long since. There’s activity deep within the Marches – ships mustering on the river, many of them. That was all they could make out at the distance, but it’s enough!’
Kunrad drew breath, striving to clear his mind and many time and distance. The scouts had been sent out … ‘Four days since?’ His back grew chill as he caught her meaning. ‘And the word returned in—’
‘Less than a day. Relayed by flag and sun-glass. They dared not use smoke.’
He drew breath. ‘That’s something. But they could still he on us in a matter of days, with scant warning! Seems Merthian has blood in his eye, all right!’
‘He may have more yet. Father has placed the land on a war footing. He’s preparing an advance guard in case they come too swiftly, to stave them off for as long as he can; though he said that was a counsel of desperation. All men save those labouring must carry their arms at all times and wear armour, if they have it. I’ve brought yours, and the boys’.’ She pointed to a cart behind her. ‘With shirts and breeches, so we may wash the stinkards you stand in! And food for your men. They look as if they need it.’
He nodded. ‘Gille! Olvar! Have the overseers stand down their men! An hour to eat and rest. But only half of each team at a time! We’ve got to get that earth tamped back, at once! You’ve no notion what that wall will have to withstand!’
‘They need more than that!’ protested Gille, shocked. ‘You’ll kill somebody soon!’
‘The corsairs will do it better!’ snapped Kunrad, then shook his head. ‘Yes! Yes, of course, I’m sorry. Two hours now, then three later. A little more for those who must wait. And my lady, if you would send down to the castle for fresh men. Half as many, if Ferlias can get no more. But we must not stop! We dare not!’
It was near dawn before the last heap of earth was packed and tamped down around the foot of the great arced wall, leaving proud the upper rim and the row of strange slots along its face, each with its vent and channel. Kunrad inspected every inch, kicking, prodding, never leaving any small crack or slide in doubt. Then he took one of the unlit torches, and went by himself to a campfire. Those near by thought he was warming himself, until they heard him singing and saw the torch burst suddenly into flame. As soon as he was sure of it, Kunrad clambered on to one of the rough tree trunks set astride the great trench. He held the flame high, watching it gutter and flicker in the warm lake wind, and he sang words that none save Gille and Olvar understood, in the Northern tongue.
Spirit of light in the brightness feasting!
Friend of the smith at his hearthside feeding.
Come to the feast that I spread before you!
Kindle the hearts of the sturdy ash-logs
All the long years of their captured sunlight!
Crack the bark
And curl the needle
Glut yourselves on
Saps of springs past!
Gleaned glow of a hundred summers!
Cleanse it, that it shine eternal
&nb
sp; Undying, in the heart of metal!
Yet as he sang them, over and over, the labourers trembled, such was the command they heard even in his voice, that fatigue made harsh. When he began to shift his feet in time, and slap and stamp on the top of the walls, the sothrans crouched wearily and whispered among themselves, old tales their overlords had long forgotten, of the wonderworking smiths of the Northern folk. They watched, wide-eyed, as Kunrad, almost dancing with the intensity of his words, swept the torch about his head in a great corona of flame.
All at once it flared higher and faster than it should. With a cracked shout he plunged the torch down between his feet, into the top layer of brush. The fire seemed to leap to the wood almost before the torch even touched it. Kunrad tottered an instant astride the fire, off-balance, unable to jump either way. Then a gust blew, awakening a breath almost of eerie music along the line of pipes. Along the trench, before and behind, rushed great hissing plumes of flame, and the mastersmith was engulfed in an uprush of fire. The watchers sprang up with horrified cries, but Gille and Olvar were already running up around the end of the trench. The flame danced, guttered and parted, and they saw Kunrad stretched out against the last of the slope, beneath the high mounds of ore. The prentices half carried him down to a water-butt, and splashed his scarlet cheeks. His eyes flashed suddenly open, and the labourers drew back as if from the presence of some inhuman spirit.
He laughed a little before it became a cough. ‘Friend of the smith at his hearthside feeding’ he choked. ‘Damn near bit the hand there, eh?’
‘You almost overdid it,’ said Gille reproachfully. The pipes sighed again, the flame flared and soughed, and it seemed as if the whole hillside breathed like a great beast. Smoke billowed skyward, and the sweet smell of burning wood. The front wall popped and cracked, but it held firm.
‘Almost!’ Kunrad exulted. ‘But it works, lads! It works! Now we’ll smother the vents – it’s charcoal we want, not ashes! And—’
‘And it’s a smith we want, not an invalid!’ said Gille severely. ‘When that’s done, you rest!’
With the dawn new lines of men came toiling up the hill, stopping in shock as they saw the stumbling scarecrows, mud-caked and mindless, who shambled down past them. Kunrad himself looked little better, freshly clad but still haggard and weary, with his face all smoke-blackened once again. He had grudgingly stretched out for a brief nap, but he was already on his feet again, peering down into the smoky pit, poking around with a pole, ordering this or that vent opened or stopped. ‘Charring bravely!’ he said, smacking the cinders from his arms. ‘It’d take days of slow burning, normally, but we can’t spare that now – what’s this, Olvar, fresh hands?’
‘Yes. But scarce half the number, as you feared. Some too old or too young.’
‘No matter! They’ll serve!’ He waved to the new arrivals as they squatted down, whispering among themselves, and shouted. ‘Welcome! We need you!’ He rubbed an arm over his face. ‘Is it my smoky eyes, or are there some more—’
‘Yes. The overseers stayed, and some of the others said they’d he back after a dip down below. Tough buggers, these whiteskin boys.’
‘Let’s hope we can make their sweat worthwhile!’ said Kunrad feelingly, and waved the peasants to their feet. ‘Half the teams to the fuel stacks there, the others to the ore mounds! We’re going to heave ’em in layer upon layer – so we keep in the juices! We’ve built the hearth – now we’ll bake the pies! Just like your mamma’s best!’
There was some laughter at that, but not much. The labourers were too much in awe of this tall Northerner who dared to kiss their princess in public, as the whisper ran, and kindled fire with song, as in a folktale. They ran to work at his word, averting their eyes, and shovelled with desperate force, as if a Power bade them.
As the fire was stifled Olvar and some of the strongest men sprang down into the trench to level off the layers as they came down, at constant risk of being overwhelmed by the great cascades of purple stone. The wood beneath, still charring, was forced lower and lower, compressed more tightly till the song of the wind in the vents rose to a high seething whistle. The heat in the trench grew more intense, and some of the fuel layers caught as they were laid, flaring briefly until more shining ore came crashing down to stifle them. All this while Kunrad was running back and forth along the front wall, lost in clouds of dust and smoke, leaping in and out of the trench with manic energy to direct the laying of the layers.
Slowly, as the day wore away to the afternoon, the trench filled almost to the brim, and the labour grew slower with the terrible need for care. Delays grew while a collapse was filled, or an overlarge boulder was hammered into pieces, let it cause a blockage. Over one such Kunrad stood, directing the hammers and wedges, a wild, smoke-blackened figure with a colourful rag tied round his head where cascading ore had cut it. In the low golden light of early evening his spidery shadow waved and gestured across the whole hillside. Gille and Olvar, snatching a hard-earned rest, watched him in mild amazement.
‘Say now, brother prentice,’ enquired Olvar. ‘D’you remember a time when he was just a nice amiable workaday weaponsmith? Instead of a mighty warrior, wonderworker, groper of princesses in the public gaze? Don’t seem possible, do it?’
Gille shrugged. ‘Remember when we were two innocent lads who knew nothing of the world, but all about sleeping under the same roof two nights running?’
‘Same roof be damned!’ groaned Olvar. ‘Roof short and simple. Bed, for that matter; or hayloft in your case. I envy these folk! Never mind the hue of the skin, they’re just like mine. Hey there, lad!’ he called to a nearby worker, a shock-haired young farmhand hardly smaller than himself.
‘Yer will, me lord?’
‘Don’t call me that!’ snapped Olvar. ‘I was born in a two-room fisherman’s shack, with three brothers. Expected I’d die there, if I ‘scaped drowning! Guess you feel the same about your homestead?’
‘’Ud do, zur. If they bastard corsairs hain’t burned ‘en down. Out ‘o the night, never a word. Killed my main, stole old cow.’
‘Sorry I am,’ said Olvar, in a memory of his own dialect. ‘Flayed they’ll be for it, with your good help!’
The young man knuckled his forelock, making Olvar bridle, and stooped to his shovel. ‘And there’s our answer, I suppose,’ sighed Gille. ‘if we’d sat still and done nothing, you in your cottage, me in our manor, all this’d have come down about our heads soon enough. And we worse prepared for it. At least this way we’ll strike a harder blow!’
‘And take one!’ said Olvar gloomily, as Kunrad hailed them back. ‘Coming, Master! We must be near done, surely?’
They were. The ore piles had shrunk to mere gleanings, and the last scraps of fuel and kindling were being laid carefully across the top. Kunrad seemed calm now, save for the heaving of his chest and the gleam in his eyes. ‘See, boys! See? It’s holding! The first firing settled the clay! The wall’s so firm it’d stand without the earth! It’s time to fire her properly!’
‘That’ll take a while, won’t it, master? To light a mass like this, evenly?’
‘No. Not with your help and craft.’ He looked at his labourers, sprawling exhausted over the matted and trampled grass. ‘They think we can conjure fire. Would that we could! But what we sing into the flame, the steel will remember.’
When the labourers saw the torches lit again, they clustered close to sit and watch, half fascinated, half fearful. Gille and Olvar were pouring water over themselves at a waterbutt, and over Kunrad without waiting to be asked. The watchers drew breath, half expecting him to steam, as if he were himself a sizzling glede. Instead the water washed the soot from his countenance, and showed it fired by exhaustion into a pale hard mask of effort. He turned his reddened eyes on the crouching labourers. ‘On your feet, lads!’ he shouted. ‘The last long stretch, and then we’re home!’
The labourers heaved themselves up from the matted grass, with little of the customary groaning and grunting
and complaining. They parted before him silently as he picked out the overseers and stationed them, each with a few of the steadier men, at the mouths of the vents. ‘On my word!’ he was repeating, over and over. ‘Not before! Not after! Just then! And when you’re done, fall back, to the side, away! Anywhere but before the wall, or I’ll not be answerable!’
‘But, lord, what’ll yer word be?’ asked one of them awkwardly.
Kunrad’s mouth twisted in a smile. The man shrank back. ‘Believe me,’ Kunrad said, you’ll know.’
Gille and Olvar were lighting torches, as he had bade them. They offered him one, but he shook his head wearily. ‘The first fire is the master’s, remember? Always, even when so many hands are in the work. The burden of it remains his.’ He turned the torch in his fingers, almost numbly, ignoring the sparks that struck him, singing to himself as before.
Light of the past returning!
Sun of the forest set free!
Heat of a newer burning – Heed and hearken to me!
Kindle my thought in the flame of thy breathing,
Carry my words to the heart of the fire
Command all the elements mingled and seething,
Coupling deep in the furnace desire.
By the smith’s will let them conceive a child there,
Blood of the stone and black bone of the tree
Like and unlike in thy heat reconciled there,
Bursting forth fiercer and brighter than thee.
Light of the past returning!
Sun of the forest made free!
Setting the cold stone burning
Bow down and obey me!
He rose up, twirling the pitch-coated wood, looking to the prentices. Without a word they scurried to either end of the wall, standing on the hillside and the tall endstones thrusting spear-smooth from the soil. Weariness bowed their shoulders, but all the watchers could see it dragging Kunrad’s feet like invisible fetters as he trudged down the slope and stepped out on to the rear wall. The later afternoon wind whistled about him, whipping his dark hair in the same way as the pale flames of the torches. Still he sang, never relenting, and the words became clear to those who knew the Nordeney tongue. They heard, and whispered them to their neighbours, so that it became an echo, out of step as echoes always are, running rustling around the scarred hillcrest like the airs it spoke of. Gille and Olvar took up the chant, and they tapped their feet and patted their lips and wove the tune together in the manner of Northern mouth-music, while in the middle of the trench Kunrad hovered with his flaming branch.
The Castle of the Winds Page 35