by J. V. Jones
Dent-headed Corbie Meese nodded. “Aye, Chief.” He might have been a bit disappointed by Mace’s schedule, but he was a better man than to show it. Bowing his head respectfully to Raina, he vaulted up the stairs.
Taking her cue from Longhead and Merritt—two people who never wasted an unnecessary word—Raina said to Mace, “Longhead awaits your decision on the guidestone. The remains must be laid to rest with proper ceremony.”
“It is not your concern, wife. You are not guide or chief.”
“Something must be done. Now. There’s a scrap heap out there that used to be the Hailstone. How can we regain our dignity as a clan if we are forced to look at it every day?”
“Enough,” Mace hissed. “I have made plans. Longhead will hear of them when I choose to tell him.”
His words were like a slap to her face. He had made arrangements for the stone in secret, robbing her of the chance to have her say.
Detecting the heat in her cheeks Mace stretched his lips. “You forget your place.”
She did, he was right. It was something she had to be careful of, that overreaching of her authority. A chief’s wife had no dealings with the gods. It had been a mistake to claim the guidestone as her responsibility: it revealed ambition. Yet how could she not care? This was her clan and she was one of the very few people within it who could see beyond Mace Blackhail and his self-promoting war. A quick glance at her husband’s face helped sharpen her mind. She could not give him too long to think.
“Will you at least do me the favor of letting Longhead know you have the matter in hand? That way he might stop pestering me. I’m run ragged as it is.” Raina waited.
Mace’s expression slackened, the careful scrutiny of moments earlier withdrawn. Not forgotten. Withdrawn.
“I’ll send a boy.”
Raina nodded. Instinct told her she needed to put more distance between herself and the guidestone. “About the rehousing. There’s close to two hundred families camping in the hallways, and more are arriving every day. It’s becoming dangerous. Only last night a Scarpewife knocked over an unguarded lamp outside the great hearth. If Bev Shank hadn’t acted as quickly as he did we would have had a fire on our hands.”
Mace shrugged. “I’m sure you have it all in hand. The widows will doubtless give up the wall.”
He watches you, you know. Little mice with weasels’ tails. Bessie Flapp’s words echoed in Raina’s mind. How did Mace know what she had asked the widows in confidence? Unsettled, she pushed ahead. “The widows have agreed to give up their hearth for ninety days.”
“You have done well, Raina.”
The words sounded like genuine praise, and she could not stop herself from glancing around to see if anyone else was within earshot.
Mace did not miss her reaction or its implications, and muscles in his lean face contracted. “And will Scarpe families be allowed to stay there?”
Here it was. And yet again he was already ahead of her. She would not think of that now, though. Would not wonder who amongst the widows had turned against her and was whispering secrets to the chief. I must learn from him, she told herself before speaking her first lie.
“That was never an issue. We both know it wouldn’t be wise to house Hails and Scarpes so closely. That’s why I decided to let the tied Hailsmen use the widows’ hearth. The Scarpes can have my quarters. There’s a lot of unused space there—dressing rooms and sewing rooms and whatnots—it should be enough to keep them out of the halls.”
Mace looked at her for a long time. She was certain that he knew she was lying, but equally certain he would do nothing about it. What she had not imagined was that he would reach out and touch her.
“You’d make a fine chief,” he whispered softly in her ear before he left to plan the war.
THREE
South of the Dhoonehouse
Rain trickled down the Dog Lord’s collar, found a groove in his wrinkled old back and rode it all the way down to his smallclothes. Damn! He hated the rain. If there was anything worse than wet wool next to your vitals then Vaylo Bludd had not encountered it. Itched, it did. Felt as if an army of fleas were holding a tourney down there—and an underwater one at that. Not to mention the smell. Vaylo had never harbored much love for cragsmen—every clan chief he knew had trouble collecting the lamb tolls—yet he had to give them this much: Wet wool was surely one of the foulest-smelling concoctions ever cooked up by the Stone Gods, and every cragsman in the clanholds had to live with it.
Hunching his shoulders against the rain, the Dog Lord picked up his pace. The field they were crossing had a slight cant to it that Vaylo felt keenly in his knees. It was growing dark now, and the bit of wind that had been ragging them all day had finally shown its teeth. Sharp gusts sent rain sheeting into their faces. Nan had her hood pulled all the way down to her eyebrows. The color had drained from her lips, and her eyelashes were spiky with raindrops. The bairns were miserable. Pasha was hugging herself, teeth chattering uncontrollably as she rubbed her arms for warmth. Aaron hadn’t said a word in over an hour. Vaylo didn’t like the way he was shaking. Hammie didn’t like it either, and had tried several times to pick up the bairn and carry him. Little Aaron was having none of it, and squirmed free from his grip every time.
Hammie himself seemed the least ill-affected by the storm, and without gloves, oiled top cloak or hood there was no doubt he was bearing the worst of it. He was a Faa man of course, that had to have something to do with it. Faa men were stoics. If there was an unpleasant task to be done they’d simply tuck their heads low and get on with it. Slop buckets hauled up from the pit cells, elk fat rendered for soap, boils lanced, drains unblocked, holes dug: Faa men did it all. And none of them were complainers.
Vaylo sighed heavily. He’d been chief to so many good men. And where had he led them? Men were dead. Children were dead. Clan Bludd lay broken and in pieces. Gods knew they had deserved a better chief.
Stop it, Vaylo warned himself. What was done was done. Dwelling in the past was an indulgence best left to widows and old men. A chief could not afford to live there: the price exacted by self-reproach was too high. Oh, he knew he had done many things wrong—doubtless somewhere some god was keeping a list—but he could not let that stop him. This small band of four was his clan now. Nan, Hammie, the bairns. They were a short distance southwest of the Dhoonehouse, traveling through territory of an enemy clan, without horses, food or adequate clothing, and with only one good knife between them. The Dog Lord had no time to waste on regrets.
What had Ockish Bull said that spring when they lost ten hammermen in the mother of all fuckups that became known as Bull’s Brawl? Mistakes have been made. Gods willing I’ll make no more.
Vaylo grinned. Thinking about Ockish Bull always did that to him. Who else would have dared to insult the memory of Ewan Blackhail in a Hailish stovehouse filled with Hailsman? Who else would have had the jaw?
“Pasha. Aaron.” Opening up his greatcloak, Vaylo beckoned his grandchildren to him. They wouldn’t come at first so he had to bully them. The sight of their granda baring his teeth usually made them roll their eyes and groan, but tonight the bairns were subdued. They came to him, but more out of habit than anything else. Tucking a child under each arm, he hiked up the slope. Water squeezed out from the bairns’ woolens as he hugged them.
Vaylo cursed their father, silently and with feeling. Pengo’s treachery had led them to this. Pengo Bludd had been so eager for any kind of fight that he’d deserted the Dhoonehouse, taking everyone he could bribe, sweet-talk, or bully along with him. Only forty had remained behind, and a holding the size of Dhoone could not be defended by such numbers. When the attack came they’d had no warning. There’d been no one to spare for long watches. Robbie Dun Dhoone and his army of blue cloaks must have been laughing as they broke down the door.
The Dog Lord let the bile rise to his mouth, and then jabbed it against his aching teeth with his tongue. Where had Pengo been when the Thorn King came a-knocking? Riding
south most likely, his nostrils twitching to the smell of city men’s blood. The damn fool had chosen the wrong war! Thought he’d engage the Spire Lord’s army in the south rather than protect Bludd’s holdings in the north. Well I hope he finds some measure of glory fighting city men for he’ll get nothing save a swift death from me.
The anger warmed but did not comfort Vaylo. The rain kept coming, running down his face and streaming off the tip of his nose. It was hard to see, even harder to know what to do. As best he could tell they were crossing an overgrown graze. Stalks of gray, winter-rotted oats slapped his legs, and waist-high thistle burrs kept snagging his cloak. Everything was wet and getting wetter. Underfoot, the rich blue-black soil of eastern Dhoone was rapidly turning to mud. Vaylo swore he could hear the mosquitoes hatching. The night had that smell to it; the soggy aliveness of spring.
The hill graze was one of dozens they had crossed since escaping the Dhoonehouse. The land east of the Dhoone was mostly grassland. Cattle and horses grazed here in summer and spring, sheep year-round. Yet numbers had dwindled, and Vaylo hadn’t spotted a single black head in two days. Livestock had been seized. Dhoone’s horses were now roasting over Bludd fires and swelling Bludd breeding stock. Their sheep were cropping grass in the Bluddhold. Without animals to care for, Dhoone farmers had either fled or were lying low until better times. And now that a Dhoone sat upon the Dhooneseat once more, those better times were about to start.
Word was already being spread. Twice now the Dog Lord and his small company had been forced to drop belly-down into the wet grass as mounted Dhoone warriors rode past. Both times Vaylo had spoken a prayer. Please gods, let them not be man hunters.
He would take all their lives—Aaron, Pasha, Nan, Hammie and then himself—rather than risk being dragged back to the Dhoonehouse and the man who ruled there. The Dog Lord had looked into the eyes of Robbie Dun Dhoone and seen what absences lay there. The Thorn King had jaw, no doubt about it, but it wasn’t the hot, reckless jaw of Thrago HalfBludd or the muleheaded jaw of Ockish Bull. It was a cold and calculating jaw. The sort of thing that would drive a boy to pull the legs off a cockroach just to see what it would do, and a grown man to use others and then discard them like gnawed bones.
Vaylo shivered, not from cold but sheer relief. Robbie Dun Dhoone had not laid hands on his grandchildren. Thank the sweet gods for that.
It had been a hard five days since they’d escaped, no doubt about it. After the Dhoonehouse had been sacked their little party of five had been forced to retreat to the Tomb of the Dhoone Princes. Right then, with Robbie Dun Dhoone beating down the door, Vaylo wouldn’t have given a tin spoon for their chances. Dhoone had retaken Dhoone, and Bludd—the clan who’d been squatting in the Dhoonehouse for half a year—had to be made to pay for their presumption. Robbie had ordered the slaughter, not capture, of Bluddsmen. Not a moment too soon, Pasha had located the secret entrance that led to the tunnels beneath Dhoone. Mole holes, Angus Lok had called them. Vaylo had not believed they existed.
Yet another thing he was roundly wrong about. The network of tunnels had deposited them in a dense copse of crabgrass and black willow, at the bank of a muddy creek just one league southeast of the Dhoonehouse. It had taken most of the night to travel the dark, underworld passages of Dhoone.
The ways beneath the roundhouse gave Vaylo chills. They were old and haunted, and they smelled of things other than clan. In some places the stonework was so rotted that you could poke it with your finger and watch as it dimpled like sponge. Tree roots, pale and glistening like intensities, pushed through the walls and ran along the floor and ceilings in hard ridges. Hammie had to be careful with the makeshift torch he had fashioned, for most of the rootwood was long dead and the roots hairs crisped to black the instant they felt the flame. Some of the tunnel walls had collapsed, and they had been forced to backtrack several times. Originally they had been heading north, but collapsed tunnels drove them east and then south. Once, after pushing their way through a narrow opening, they had entered a cave used by hibernating bats. Every footfall raised clouds of chalky guano that smelled so caustic it brought tears to Vaylo’s eyes. The Dog Lord had liked it not one bit, but he had been a leader of men for too long to let his discomfort show. Speaking a command to his dogs, he had sent the five beasts ranging ahead in search of a way out.
Nan had been a pillar of strength that night. Her calmness was catching. The way she held her head just so, her light way of walking, and the level tone of her voice created an atmosphere that affected everyone. The bairns had been as good as lambs; quiet, most definitely frightened, but so confident in Nan’s calmness and their granda’s ability to fix any problem—whether it be a broken top in the nursery or armed men in the hallway—that they never once lagged or showed fear. Good Bludd stock there, Vaylo thought with some pride.
If he were to be honest, the night in the tunnels had gone hardest on him. In his fifty-three-year life he had experienced many kinds of weariness, but nothing matched what he’d felt during the escape. Winning a battle made you feel immortal, capable of chasing down every last enemy and then dancing and drinking till dawn. Losing one crushed your soul. And for a man who had already sold half of that soul to the devil, that didn’t leave very much left.
By the time the dogs finally found an exit and came running back to their master, Vaylo had fallen into a kind of dream walking. One foot in front of the other, and to hell with the pain in his knees and heart. His vision had shrunk to two separate circles that he’d long stopped attempting to force into a single view. To him it looked as if there were ten dogs milling around his legs, not five.
The dogs were scratched up and caked in mud. Two were soaking, and the big black-and-orange bitch had a gash on her left hind leg that was oozing blood. Yet devotion burned clear in their eyes. Their master had lost his human pack and been forced to flee the den, and now their sole desire was to ease his suffering. When Vaylo had finally set them a task they’d torn through the tunnels in their eagerness to complete it. They wanted so badly to please him.
Realizing this, the Dog Lord had made an effort. Forcing his vision to trueness and bringing his weight to bear on the knee that pained him the least, he patted and roughed up the huge, dark beasts. “Good dogs,” he repeated over and over again as he took time to give attention to each of them. Relief made the dogs act like puppies, rolling on their bellies and baring their necks, all the while mewing needily like kittens. The youngest, a muscular black with a docked tail, dribbled urine onto a bed of white mushrooms that had sprouted in the darkness of the tunnel floor. No one will be eating those in a hurry, Vaylo thought dryly.
Standing upright, he had addressed the wolf dog. “Lead the way.”
They all got caked in mud as it turned out. The dogs had found a tunnel rising to ground level—one that looked as if it had been dug by midgets—and everyone had been forced to drop to their bellies and shin through the icy sludge. Rainwater sluicing along the tunnel floor had mixed with the clay soil to produce a kind of potter’s slip that poured into every nook and cranny and then set like cement against your skin.
For some time Vaylo had been aware that his small party was heading south, and he was dreading the journey ahead. When the wolf dog finally broke through to the surface, he was dead tired. Dawn light, filtering through an opening choked with willow and crabgrass, made his eyes sting. Despite everything his spirits lifted. His clan of four was free and unharmed, and now he could spend his days making those who had wronged him pay. That was when he saw the stone ring framing the exit portal. Hairs across his back rose upright, and even before he could name his fear the words from the Bludd boast sounded along the nerve connecting his spine to his brain.
We are Clan Bludd, chosen by the Stone Gods to guard their borders. Death is our companion. A life long-lived is our reward.
Part of him had known all along that the tunnels under Dhoone had not been built by clan. A chief might dig a hole in the earth as a last-ditch escape rout
e, but no leader of clansmen would risk the scorn of his warriors by constructing a network of mole holes so extensive that a man could pass from one end of a clanhold to the other while never seeing the good light of day. Such measures ran too close to caution for that. No. These tunnels had been dug by minds that thought differently than clan. Minds that valued survival above all else. These tunnels had been dug by the Sull.
The exit had been braced with an oxeye of blue marble deeply veined with eggshell quartz. Unlike most of the other stone bracings in the tunnels this one had not crumbled or rotted. The marble had resisted the restless trembling of the earth and the stresses of hard frosts and sudden thaws. Its surface was lightly pocked with corrosion and lichen had begun to sink its root anchors into the stone, yet all of its massive quarter-circle segments had held their alignment so truly that the ring they formed was as perfect as the sun.
Or the moon. For there it was, etched deep into the hard blue stone, the moon in all its phases. Crescent, gibbous, full, and the new moon, which was no moon at all, simply a dark uncarved space marking the beginning of the cycle. That space haunted Vaylo even now, three days later. It said something about the Sull, he’d decided, something about their absolute foreignness to clan. He wasn’t a man given to sudden fancies but that space, that stark absence in the design, spoke of hell and places unknown, and the darkness Ockish Bull had said existed before time.
The Dog Lord felt a shiver coming and shook it off with a sharp snap of his head. Damn Robbie Dun Dhoone and his high-stepping blue cloaks. Their roundhouse was stuffed with ghosts. Vaylo blew two lungs’ worth of air through his lips. Who was he fooling? The entire Northern Territories were stuffed with ghosts. You couldn’t build a doghouse or an outhouse without feeling the hard chunk of cut stone hitting your shovel the minute you began to dig out the ground. The Sull had been there first. They had built atop every mountain, hill and headland, upon every lakeshore, riverbank and creek bed, and in every mossy hollow, barren canyon and dank cave.