The Dragon Hammer (Wulf's Saga Book 1)

by Tony Daniel

  The otherfolk were very different from the Tier. Most of them were secretive. Their essences—their “dasein,” as Tolas called it—were usually tied to complicated natural objects like groves of trees and waterfalls. Some couldn’t go far away from these places without getting sick or even dying.

  Nobody knew where the Tier and otherfolk originally came from. Most, including Tier themselves, just thought that they had always been there. The Tretzians had the idea that the Tier and otherfolk had come into being when Tretz had risen from the dead, and that they were spirits of the damned he’d brought back with him from the coldest depths of Helheim. These souls couldn’t take human form again, so they found bodies that would work. They slipped into the most complicated animals or objects, which were all that could hold them, and transformed them into half men and half animal, tree, or other natural thing.

  Wulf thought this explanation was pretty far-fetched. Wulf had asked Rainer what he thought. Rainer had shrugged and said he figured that believing Tretz made the Tier was as easy as believing Sturmer made the thunder with a big hammer pounding on the mountains, so why not?

  Elves and gnomes were different. The gnomes considered themselves human. They had a system of lore that claimed they had once been man sized but had bred themselves small so they could become the servants of dragons. Gnomes claimed that there were still cousins of theirs inside the dragons. Dwarves.

  Elves claimed to be connected to the stars in the night sky in some way. Like the gnomes, the elves had a special purpose. Saeunn had never been able to explain what it was to Wulf. Or hadn’t wanted to.

  After Wulf and Ravenelle settled into their council seats in Bear Hall, the Tier began to speak. This was not the court. Earl Keiler was not the King of the Tier. More like the leader everybody could settle on.

  Wulf had read about meetings like this in the sagas but had never seen one. Nobody had privilege of place. No one was considered better than anyone else.

  It was an idea that hadn’t even occurred to Wulf until Tolas had brought it up once during a tutoring session.

  “That would be total chaos,” Wulf said. “People can’t decide to rule themselves. They could do…anything.”

  “Is that so?” Tolas said. “Is that what happens in the sagas?”

  “The law-speaks mostly decide on something everybody can agree on, I guess. But those are just—”

  “Stories?”

  “Yes, Master Tolas. I mean, I like stories, but they aren’t truly real, most of them.”

  At that, Tolas had smiled in his sardonic way. “It would appear that I have taught you very little at all, von Dunstig,” he said. “Now I want you to write me a five-hand scroll on the benefits of rule by an aristocracy. By tomorrow, please.”

  “But nobody else has that assignment,” he’d exclaimed. “It’s not fair!”

  “Fair? What does ‘fair’ have to do with anything,” Tolas answered, unmoved.

  “And if I do finish the assignment, then that proves my natural superiority,” Wulf said with a wicked smile.

  “Hope springs eternal in the dim light of morning, von Dunstig,” answered Tolas. “I’ll expect to hear you declaim your argumentation before the Elder Bell rings imbiss.”

  He’d gone with an argument against chaos, the war of all against all. You needed a king or strong ruler to make and enforce the law or everybody would suffer.

  But by the time he’d considered all the counter arguments—which he knew Tolas would expect from him—he hadn’t been so sure at all.

  X X X

  “We have been gathering information,” said Earl Keiler. “Master Roland Washbear, third cousin to Baron Fisher of Flussufer, will give a report.”

  A raccoon man stood up to speak.

  “We think that the Sandhavener force is a vanguard,” he said. His voice sounded like a child whining, but Wulf knew this was just the way raccoon people spoke. “It is commanded by Trigvi von Krehennest. We believe King Siggi is waiting to see how the new crown prince handles the assignment. If he takes Raukenrose, then Siggi will send in the full might of the Sandhaven army. But if we deny the Sandhaveners a hold, Siggi will not have a base in the mark. He will have to launch attacks from Potomak.”

  “Not likely,” said a beaver man. “The Skraelings will revolt if he fills up the garrison there. It’s a very tricky situation. The Powhatans are practically at war with the Tidewater as it is. I’m in Potomak once a month on trade, and you hear things…”

  “Potomak has talked about seccession for over two hundred years and nothing has ever come of it,” said Keiler.

  “We’ve only started to watch them,” Washbear continued. “They’re clustered to the northeast. Yes, the township has fallen, but most of the troops are camping near their supply wagons outside the walls. We have a count of five thousand, more or less, with three thousand line units and the rest support. But I want to point out again that these are estimates, not established facts.”

  Keiler turned and spoke to Wulf. “Thoughts, Lord Wulf?”

  For a moment he panicked.

  Why is Keiler asking me? What does it matter what I think?

  But from the earl’s expectant tone of voice, it was obvious he was trying to pull Wulf into the discussion.

  Wulf cleared his throat. “I don’t know,” he said, then remembered Ravenelle’s advice. Well, they were practically orders. “I mean…we don’t know enough. Master Koterbaum would say we need to know their dispositions, where the fighting men actually are, and how they’re equipped and organized. We don’t know any of that stuff, do we?”

  “Do we have time to find out before an attack?” Keiler asked Washbear.

  “Give me a couple of days and yes, we can,” Washbear answered.

  “So the matter before us is—”

  “Just a cursed eyeblink,” said a high, grating voice. “There is something more to talk about.”

  Wulf located the voice’s origin. It was a thin-faced little fox man. He’d only met a few of his kind. They stood only a hand or so taller than the gnomes.

  “Baron Smallwolf,” Keiler said. “Please tell us what you mean.”

  “What I mean,” said Smallwolf, “is why fight at all? Tier for the Tier!”

  There was a murmur from the crowd that let Wulf know some agreed with him.

  Quite a few.

  Chapter Thirty:

  The Dispute

  “The Tier were here before men,” said Smallwolf. “The valley belongs to us, not to them.”

  He’s got the history wrong, Wulf thought. Half the Tier clans migrated to the Shenandoah Valley after Duke Tjark opened it up.

  Maybe this was politics, and he ought to smile and listen to the fox man rant on.

  “Men are a cursed lot, hated by the divine ones if you ask me, and they bring evil with them,” Smallwolf continued. “They believe the land belongs to this man or that man. We Smallwolf spit on that. All the land is sacred.”

  What a load of crap, Wulf thought. Anybody who’d heard or read the sagas, especially Tjark’s and Ake’s sagas, should know that the Tier had been constantly at war before Duke Tjark came along, and not just war among different animal people, but among their own kind, too. There had been fifty different bear kingdoms, and all of them fought each other.

  “Actually,” Wulf said, speaking up loud enough to be heard. “Tjark’s Saga does say there were people in the valley when—”

  But Smallwolf either wasn’t paying attention or didn’t want to hear. “I say let the men fight. Let them slaughter each other. Then this will be Tier land again. To cold hell with them, to cold hell with men—” Smallwolf glared at Wulf. “Down with men!”

  A few in the shadowy audience of the law-speak shouted in agreement. Others—more, he thought—growled their disapproval.

  “Thank you, Baron Smallwolf.” Lord Keiler gave the fox man a small bow of the head. “As always, powerful words to think on.”

  Wulf started to say something, but Keiler g
lanced at him and shook his head slightly.

  Wulf could imagine what Master Tolas would have replied to Smallwolf.

  He’d cut him to pieces with logic and examples, Wulf thought. Of course, it would be hard to make Smallwolf look like more of a complete idiot than he already did.

  But Tolas was a teacher and a scholar. I’m…curse it to cold hell, I have to say something.

  He turned to Smallwolf. “Baron Smallwolf, we were attacked. We. And if there’s one thing I know, it’s that the von Krehennests hate Tier. Every Tier in the Tidewater is either dead, in a work camp, or indentured. They’ll do the same here if they can.”

  Analyze it. Think. Like Tolas taught you. Like Koterbaum would expect of a thoughtful warrior.

  “Look, there is the option of retreat into Bear Valley. That has always been the plan for the last defense of Shenandoah,” Wulf said. “You can see on any map that the valley is a natural fortress. It is a valley carved into a mountain. There is only one easy entrance, and that’s to the north. The sides are shaped almost like a bowl they’re so regular.”

  “What Lord Wulf says is true,” Keiler said. “This is the last refuge. It is also the heart of Tier country, where more of us live in peace than anyplace else that is known.”

  “We could bottle up the southern entrance to the valley and hold out here a very long time,” Wulf continued.

  “We might gather force here and wait to assault Raukenrose until every possible fighter has joined us,” put in Count Davos Bara, the wolf person leader. “But the Sandhaveners will not sit still waiting for us to march out to face them. They’ll reinforce. They could bring thousands more in from the east. They have them.”

  “Meanwhile the Romans will easily see the weakness on their northern march,” said Washbear. “We don’t have a great deal of information from the south yet, but it’s logical that they would try to take advantage. The Empire wants the north. They wish to spread Talaia and the iron hand of Rome to every corner of the world, if they can.” He nodded toward Ravenelle. “Pardon my bluntness, Princess,” he said to her.

  Ravenelle looked like she was about to snap a reply, but checked herself. Wulf squeezed her hand, trying to reassure her.

  “Look, for the moment it doesn’t matter what the Romans might or might not do,” he said. “The Sandhaveners have invaded. They would like nothing more than to bottle us up in Bear Valley. It may be a fortress with only one gate, but that means there’s only one way out for an attacking force, too. They can keep us contained with a small force and choose when they want to attack.”

  “He has a point,” Earl Keiler said. “Furthermore, a decisive victory by either us or them would make the Romans think twice before moving north. Sandhaven may not fear Shenandoah, but only fools ignore the Roman Empire. So they will probably realize that they have to take control of the mark as quickly as possible, and take the fight to us sooner rather than later.”

  “So we have to take the fight to them,” Wulf said. “We have to take back Raukenrose and the northeast. We have to fight.”

  “For humans,” sneered Smallwolf.

  “For everyone,” Wulf said. “Sandhaveners might want to rule humans here. But they want to eradicate the Tier. We can’t let that happen.”

  Now there were more shouts from the unseen gallery, and enough were things like “the boy’s right” and “down with Sandhaven” to cheer Wulf up a little after Smallwolf’s depressing outburst.

  Smallwolf glowered even more hate at Wulf. Keiler, on the other hand, had his headed cocked to one side, as if considering Wulf in a new way.

  “Thank you, Lord Wulf,” Keiler finally said. “You sound like you know what you’re talking about when it comes to Sandhaven. Some of us have relatives there. We hear the terrible stories.”

  The bear man stood up, straightening his cape as he did so. His voice rose in timbre.

  “We will fight. The men of Shenandoah let bears be bears! They let Tier be Tier. Men may be evil in other places, but there is no better place than this valley. No sweeter land than these fields and mountains.”

  The speech was too much, and Keiler spasmed into another coughing fit from his scrofula. Everybody waited patiently for him to get it under control. This time his handkerchief came away with a smear of blood.

  Keiler straightened back up and raised an arm toward the roof of the cavern high above them.

  “We will fight.” He paused for a moment and let a hush settle over the inside of the circle, then finished in a long growl, a bear-whisper, that reverberated through the cave. “The dragon roars beneath our feet. We will be the dragon’s teeth and fire. This is our home, and we have to defend it.”

  Several of the Tier called out their approval of this. Although most Tier spoke Kaltish, their emotional cries came from the animal part of themselves. Some squawked, some screeched, some growled—and the beaver people uncurled their tails from beneath their butts and beat them against the ground.

  The gnarled wooden columns Wulf had noticed beside the fireplace seemed to do more than that. They blurred and dissolved. In their place stood beautiful, tall, and brown men and women. The tree people were here.

  “These are good words you speak, Keiler, but they are not needed for the Lindenfolk. We did not come to discuss running away,” one of the brown women said.

  The fox man, Baron Smallwolf, waved a hand dismissively. “Your kind can’t run away. You’re too slow. But what can you do if it comes to a real fight? You can’t keep those mannish forms for long. And then they’ll chop you down.”

  “This is Lady Meiner Fruling,” said Earl Keiler to the fox man. “Please be careful how you address her.”

  The tree woman raised a branchy hand in acknowl-edgment. She turned to the fox man.

  Lady Fruling turned to the fox man. Wulf expected to see a look of scorn on her face, but instead she seemed saddened, as if the little fox man had disappointed her with his implied insult. “We guard the woodlands,” she said. “We have always guarded the woodlands.”

  Then, almost as quickly as they appeared, they changed back into trees that, if you looked carefully, had knotholes and burls that appeared almost, but not quite, like faces.

  “We need more than the Tier,” said Earl Keiler. “The gnomes train. They fight as units. The Greensmoke centaurs are the finest archers in all of Freiland. There are also the Gray Elves, if we can find them, or they us. Maybe even the Smoke Elves would help.”

  “The Smoke Elves cannot come. Eounnbard is cut off from us by Vall l’Obac.” This time it was a man, a man of the southern valley by his accent, who spoke.

  “We are not at war with Vall l’Obac,” Earl Keiler replied, looking pointedly at Ravenelle.

  “Maybe we should be,” said a woman’s low clear alto.

  Heads turned toward the voice.

  It was the tree woman, Lady Fruling, who had changed from a tree to a humanlike form again.

  “What do you mean, Lady Fruling?” asked Earl Keiler. He sounded confused.

  He didn’t expect this interruption, Wulf thought. Even canny old Earl Keiler can be surprised.

  “We have heard whispers across the Dragonback in the eastern woods,” she said, “that a new Roman mold has come to the Tidewater, coughed up through a smoking mountain by the dragon of Tiber. The Talaia priests have murdered the Tiber dragon, and they have used this black mold to gain power over House Krehennest. The Tidewater may be allied with Rome. Or, even worse, they may be enslaved to the bishops of Rome.”

  “We Romans are not enslaved,” said Ravenelle indignantly. “The bishops and the Pope are spiritual leaders, and that’s all.”

  Wulf winced. He’d thought it was probably better if she didn’t speak in a meeting like this.

  “What we have is order,” she said. “Each of us has a certain nature. Some are born to think, some are born to rule, some are born to work.”

  I’ve heard that before, Wulf thought, from Ravenelle’s Talaia priest, Father Calceatus.<
br />
  “We care for our bloodservants as we would children. They would be lost without us, and we would be lost without them, like a soul without a body.”

  “We?” asked Fruling.

  “The gentry, I mean.” Ravenelle was trying her best to sound reasonable, but Wulf knew that to any Kalte man or beast it sounded very condescending. “We have servants. Slaves are made to work with whips and chains. That’s how you Kalte treat your indentures. I’ve seen it in the fields around Raukenrose. Our bloodservants labor out of duty. They are happiest when they are working in the fields. They even sing while they work, you know. I’m told it’s very beautiful, even though I haven’t had a chance to…”

  Ravenelle’s voice trailed away. There was complete silence in the cavern. She looked around. All eyes were on her, and the Tier did not look happy at all.

  She’s about to see her bear nightmares come true, Wulf thought. Then he realized that they might actually harm her, they looked so angry. Many Tier were bloodservants in the southern colonies.

  “What Lady Ravenelle means to say,” Wulf piped up, “is that most of the south is not looking for war with the north.”

  “This new Host is a terrible thing,” Ravenelle put in, her voice trembling now. “It goes against all balance and order. It has to be stopped.” She reached inside the bosom of her dress and pulled up a little packet tied on a string around her neck. She held it up. “I got this from Prince Gunnar,” she said. “It is ater-cake.”

  “Why do you carry it?” asked Fruling in alarm.

  “The real truth?” Ravenelle said.

  Uh-oh. Wulf realized he was holding his breath. When Ravenelle told the “real truth,” there was no telling what she might say.

  “Yes, please,” Fruling replied in her honeyed voice. But Wulf was sure he heard a trace of acid in it as well. She seemed a being you crossed at your peril.

  “To protect myself,” Ravenelle said. “I found out the hard way. I can be mentally dominated by someone taking ater-cake. I plan to never let that happen again.”

  “So this packet contains the ater-cake?”