by J. V. Jones
Vaylo regarded the spear tip pointed directly at his face. Absurdly, he thought he recognized it as one of his own. Then again it had probably been Dhoone’s in the first place, seized by Bludd after the strike on the Dhoonehold. Such were the transitory possessions of war. Take himself. He’d once commanded three roundhouses, now he was down to exactly none.
Which means I have nothing but thin air to lose.
Grinning savagely, the Dog Lord spoke his name.
FOUR
Negotiation
Bram tried not to shiver when the Bludd chief spoke his name. They had all guessed the stranger’s iden tity the moment they spotted the first dog, but it had not prepared them for hearing the man speak. The Dog Lord’s voice was savage and calm; the voice of a man who had killed and would kill again. Bram thought of his brother’s account of the one and only meeting between himself and the Bludd chief. “He’s an old man,” Robbie Dun Dhoone had pronounced, the morning after Dhoone had been retaken. “Past his prime and losing his edge, and if it wasn’t for his hellhounds he would never have escaped.”
Hearing the Dog Lord speak, Bram Cormac knew his brother’s words to be a lie.
The dogs reacted to their master’s voice by altering the pitch of their growls. Slow thunder rumbled deep within their throats, making Guy’s and Jordie’s horses blow nervously and flick their tails. Bram squeezed the mare’s flanks with his thighs, coaxing the beast to calmness. Now if only he could calm himself.
“And exactly who do I have the pleasure of addressing?” The Bludd chief’s voice came again, cold as the rain driving against his face. He wasn’t a big man but his shoulders and chest were well-built, and he had something about him—a kind of iron-hard solidity—that gave him a powerful physical presence. His linen shirt was sodden to the point of transparency, and the woolen waistcoat he wore over it was so weighed down with rainwater it sagged. His long gray hair was braided into warrior queues, and grease had combined with rainwater to produce an oily iridescence. The blade he held was a foot long and badly cankered. Bram regarded it closely, wondering if it really could be the simple kitchen knife it seemed.
“I’ll do the asking, Dog Keep.” Guy Morloch brought the point of his spear to the apple of the Bludd chief’s throat. Immediately, the big wolf dog to Bram’s right lunged forward, hackles rising. Guy’s stallion threw back its head, nostrils flaring, eyes darting wildly as it tried to track the wolf’s movements. With a single twist of his free hand, Guy shortened the reins, forcing the bit into the stallion’s tongue. Controlled, the creature quieted, but Bram could tell from its eye whites that it was still dangerously close to panic. The wolf, satisfied that the spear point was no longer threatening his master’s throat, dropped its belly to the mud and bared its teeth.
Vaylo Bludd waited for quiet. Whilst Guy’s horse was bucking he had shifted his ground slightly, moving away from the bushes that had first concealed him. The hefty armsman at his back quickly did the same. Bram found himself wondering about those two movements as the Bludd chief spoke.
“If I were you I’d ride on, Milkman. My dogs are hungry for white meat.”
So he knows Guy isn’t a Dhoonesman. Bram looked to the tall Castleman and wondered what else Guy was giving away. Guy Morloch was a crack swordsman on the tourney court, but he was inexperienced in field combat and although he was still wielding the spear, he had made the mistake of backing off. And while the Dog Lord stood his ground, coldly focused on the man he correctly judged to be the leader of the party, Guy was jumpy. Even through the deep shadow created by his visor Bram could see Guy’s gaze springing from Vaylo Bludd to his armsman to the dogs and back again. Perhaps Jordie Sarson saw this too, for the young blond axman walked his horse forward a few paces and fixed the Dog Lord with a hard stare.
Vaylo Bludd didn’t even glance in Jordie’s direction. Addressing Guy he said, “You could have left of your own accord. Remember that, Milkman, as my dogs bid farewell to your throat.”
With a small motion of his knife hand, he commanded his beasts to stand. Hairs along Bram’s neck flicked upright as the five dogs rose in unison and began to close the circle. Golden eyes glittering, fangs dripping, they snarled and grunted like pigs.
Ride on! Bram wanted to shout to Guy Morloch. We’re not here for this. We’re just traveling through.
Then Guy’s horse began to buck. The big black stallion kicked out with its back legs, throwing Guy forward in the saddle. Guy’s head snapped back. His spear went thudding to the ground as he fought to keep his seat. Twisting the stallion’s mane in his fist, he forced its head up. At the same time Jordie kicked his horse about face and charged the nearest dogs. They leapt back, shaking their heads so hard their eyes bulged. An instant later they sprang again. Sweeping his case-hardened spear in a half-circle, Jordie attempted to keep them at bay.
Leaping forward, the Dog Lord seized the fallen spear. With perfect violence he plunged the spearhead deep into Guy’s foot. A choked cough puffed through Guy’s lips as blood gushed from the punctured leather of his boot. The dark liquid steamed in the frigid air and for a moment Guy simply looked at it, seeming more puzzled than shocked. His stallion, terrified at the prospect of being caught between the Dog Lord and his wolf, lowered its head, humped its back and unleashed a massive, twisting kick. Guy was flung from the saddle headfirst. His thornhelm flew from his head and went bouncing toward the snarling wolf. Guy landed hard on his buttocks, and quickly rolled free from the stallion’s hooves. Liberated from its rider, the horse whipped its head from side to side, desperately scanning for an escape route. When it found the way to the west blocked by a single black-and-tan bitch it charged. The bitch moved a beat too slow and Bram heard the sharp retort of bone breaking as the horse overran the dog.
Jordie Sarson moved immediately to protect Guy but was brought to a halt by the four remaining dogs forming a block around his horse. As he tried to force his mount to ignore the slavering beasts, the fat armsman charged him. Jordie danced back, swinging the spear point back and forth between the armsman and the dogs. Kept at bay, the young blond axman could do nothing as the Dog Lord hefted his spear over his shoulder and sprang forward to impale Guy Morloch.
“Stay your weapon!” Bram screamed. “Or I’ll run your grandchildren through.”
All heads turned to look at him. He was shaking uncontrollably, and the motion sent sparks of light bouncing off his watered-steel blade. Don’t think of the sword now, Bram warned himself.
Forcing his chin up he met gazes with the Dog Lord. The man’s eyes were black and full of fury. He was breathing hard and his gut fat trembled as he stilled himself. Bram watched the spear. Only when he saw the white-knuckle grip relax did he judge it safe to breathe. Nothing in his fifteen-year life had prepared him for a moment like this.
Whilst Guy Morloch and the Dog Lord had been trading words, Bram had been watching the copse of blackthorns. The fact that both the Dog Lord and his armsman had moved away from the bushes had set him to thinking. Such a small but deliberate act. It occurred to Bram that they were trying to draw fire . . . but from what? Possessions? A wounded comrade? What exactly lay in the middle of the dense tangle of thorns?
So Bram had watched. When the Dog Lord had lunged forward to stab Guy Morloch’s foot, Bram had spotted a movement. Immediately the motion stilled, but it was too late. Bram was known for his eyes. When riding out in company he’d lost count of the times when Robbie or someone else had turned to him and said, “Tell me what you see, boy.” During the retaking of Dhoone, Robbie had waited to give the order to charge until Bram confirmed that only one of the Thorn Towers appeared manned. Even this very night it had been Bram who spotted the cloak thrown over the bush, Bram who was convinced he saw the gleam of eye whites deep within the shadowy canes.
Neither Guy nor Jordie had wanted to stop. They had a task to complete and were anxious to be done with it. Jordie was simply eager to return to the excitement of the Dhoonehouse, where Robbie had created an
atmosphere charged with gravity and purpose. Whereas Guy had made no secret of the fact that he thought the task beneath him. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the fact that Robbie Dun Dhoone had asked for a personal favor, the Milkman would not be here this night. Guy Morloch was nobody’s nursemaid.
When Bram had forced a halt on the mud slope, stating his belief that someone was hiding in the blackthorns, Guy had punched a gloved fist through the rain. “We have no time for malingering, boy. If we stop to investigate every shepherd taking a piss between here and the Milkhouse we won’t be done until spring.”
Bram had nodded slowly, not expecting much else. He had used the time while Guy was speaking to study the bushes more closely. The cloak was brown as mud, but as the rain beat down on it some of the grime was washed away. After a few seconds he said, “I think the cloak is red.”
It was enough to turn the party around to investigate. Red was the color of sunrise and sunset, raw iron and raw meat, eyes stung by woodsmoke and thoughts stung by anger. Red was the color of Bludd.
“Drop the spear,” Bram shouted to the Dog Lord. His voice sounded small and puny to his ears, and it had clearly cracked over the word spear. To make up for it Bram stabbed at the blackthorns with his sword. “Now!”
The Dog Lord didn’t move. Bram could see him thinking. The Bludd chief’s portion of guidestone hung from his waist in a hollowed-out ram’s horn sealed with a cap of crimsoned lead. His lore was suspended beneath it: three dog claws strung on a flax twine. Bram wondered about that. Three dog claws, yet the Dog Lord always commanded five dogs. Whenever one of the five died it was immediately replaced. Bram risked glancing over at the bitch that had been trampled by Guy’s horse. The creature lay on its side in the mud. It was seizing, its chest and front legs jerking feebly as green mucus bubbled from its mouth. It would have to be killed, Bram realized. The Dog Lord would need a new dog.
“I canna set the spear down, lad,” the Dog Lord said at last, “until matters are settled between us.”
Bram was struck by how reasonable Vaylo Bludd now sounded. The spear he held was still clearly trained on Guy Morloch—one swift lunge and the Castleman would be dead—but something fundamental within the Dog Lord had changed. He was neither threatening nor threatened. His gaze did not stray once to the place were his grandchildren were concealed.
Bram had maneuvered his mare so he was almost directly above them. He could clearly see the boy and the girl, obviously brother and sister from their striking dark looks. They were shielded by a gray-haired Bluddswoman who clutched them tightly to her sides. The woman held a foot-long maiden’s helper in her right hand, but Bram’s new sword was four times that length and she had the sense not to engage him. Bram could see where one of the thorns had pierced her cloak at the shoulder. A perfect circle of blood was spreading through the wool. Seeing it, Bram recalled the tale told about Bluddwives: They would kill themselves and their children rather than risk falling into enemy hands. Something stoic and watchful in the woman’s lined face made him believe she was capable of such an act.
Oh gods. What have I started? Bram felt the beginnings of despair. He wished suddenly to be gone, to ride away from the frightened faces of Vaylo Bludd’s grandchildren and the jerking body of the dog, ride north as far as he could, past Dhoone and across the Rift Valley, right into the heart of the Want.
It was the sword. The damn sword.
He could barely look at it. “Bludd chief. Lay down your weapon or I’ll cut the girl.” Bram hardly knew where the words came from, but some anger meant for his brother made them sound like the real thing.
The Dog Lord must have heard it too, for although he didn’t drop the spear, he raised its point so that it was no longer directly threatening Guy Morloch. “Let’s not do anything hasty, lad. We’re both here to protect our own.”
“Run the brats through, Bram,” Guy Morloch cried from the mud. “Don’t listen to a word he says.”
Bram and Jordie Sarson exchanged a glance. The young blond axman had had the sense to keep the visor on his thornhelm lowered, which meant that the Dog Lord perceived only one boy in the party, not two. Jordie was barely eighteen, but you could not tell that from his build. Executing the smallest possible shrug, he gave command of the situation to Bram. Jordie Sarson was over six feet tall, a sworn clansman with a third of his face covered by the blue tattoos. He’d been trained to the ax by Jamie Toll, who everyone called the Tollman, and he shared the fisher lore with Robbie Dun Dhoone. Yet he was only two years older than Bram. And he didn’t know what to do.
Guy Morloch was breathing hard. Bram could not make out his face in the darkness, but he could see that Guy was curled up in the mud, nursing his bleeding foot. A stream of rainwater running downhill was hitting the Castleman’s back and then forking into two to flow around him. The rain itself was finally slacking, and a bitter cold was setting in. Bram shivered. Realizing his arm had been pulled down by the unfamiliar weight of his new sword, he made a clumsy adjustment. Glancing up at the Dog Lord, he saw the weakness had been noted.
“You know what we’ve got here, lad?” the Dog Lord asked in a leisurely droll. Softening a cube of chewing curd between his fingers, he answered his own question. “We’ve got what city men call an impasse. Way I see it, neither of us wants to budge. Now that could mean we stay here all night until one of us gets spooked or frozen and makes the sort of mistake that ends lives, or we could come to an agreement man-to-man.” The Dog Lord looked Bram in the eye. “Which is it going to be?”
All the time while the Dog Lord had been speaking Bram had been concentrating on keeping his features still and his sword arm up. He had watched his brother often enough to know that you had to keep your expression guarded during parley. Robbie Dun Dhoone rarely let his true feelings show. So what would Robbie do here? After he’d thought about it for a moment, Bram decided that Robbie would never have got himself into a situation like this in the first place. Which didn’t help matters one bit. Bram took a deep breath and held it. He felt a bit light-headed, as if he might be sick. “I’ll listen.”
The Dog Lord nodded judiciously, as if Bram had been very wise. Indicating Guy with the butt of the spear, he said, “The Milkman called you Bram. You know my name. I’d appreciate the rest of yours.”
Guy Morloch shouted, “Tell him nothing.”
Bram frowned. Although he knew it wasn’t very charitable he wished Guy would just shut up. For a reason that he couldn’t quite understand he wanted to say his name out loud. If he were to die here, on this muddy hillside in the middle of the southeastern Dhoonewilds, his remains torn apart by dogs, then he wanted the man before him to know exactly who he killed.
Holding his voice steady, Bram said, “I’m Bram Cormac, son of Mabb.”
The Dog Lord pushed the softened black curd into his mouth and chewed for a while before speaking. Raindrops beaded on his five-day stubble as the downpour finally ended. “I knew Mabb Cormac. Your father was a fine swordsman. I fought against him at Mare’s Rock. Had two pretty blades, as I remember. Called them his Blue Angels, on account of their watered steel.” Vaylo nodded toward Bram’s sword. “Would that be one of them?”
Bram could not reply. Looking down at the sword, he saw his reflection weirdly distorted in the folded steel. His face was pale and elongated and his lips had been warped to a bloody slash. Still the same brown hair and brown eyes, though. The silver metal would not change that. Abruptly, he looked away. The Dog Lord had to know by now that the boy he was talking to was brother to Robbie Dun Dhoone, yet he had made no mention of it. Bram found himself grateful for that, but he still did not trust himself to talk about the sword.
Here, Bram, take it. Bear it across your back when you go.
The words were too new and too painful, and Bram spoke quickly to bury them. “The sword is my own business, Bludd chief. We have matters here that need settling. You are an enemy to this clan and a trespasser on this clanhold. Withdraw your dogs and release my man.”<
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As the final word got out, Jordie Sarson drew a sharp breath. Guy Morloch made a noise that sounded as if he were choking on a fish bone. Even the wolf dog stopped snarling. Cocking its head and raising its tail, it looked expectantly toward its master. Vaylo Bludd nodded slowly, as if such a declaration was just what he had been waiting for. For one crazy moment Bram imagined he saw a spark of approval in the older man’s eyes.
“So you’re Robbie Dhoone’s brother after all.” The Dog Lord spat out a wad of curd and ground it into the mud with the heel of his boot. “Well you’re young yet and have a fair bit to learn about parley, else you’d know better than to issue demands.” A quick glance at Guy Morloch. “Robs a man of his dignity, you see, makes him feel like a cornered bear. Now I can’t speak for you, Bram Cormac, but I’ve seen a man mauled by a cornered bear. He lost his left arm and three fingers from the right one, and even though a sawbones stanched the wounds and saved him, he never thanked him for it. Woke with the terrors every night, you see. Drank himself soft every day.” The Dog Lord paused a moment to scratch the rain from his stubble. “Me, I believe it wasn’t the loss of a limb that ruined him. It was the memory of the attack. An old bear, down on his luck and baited to the brink of madness, is about the scariest thing you’re ever likely to meet.”
Black eyes twinkled coldly as the sentence snapped to a close. Bram felt the heat of the warning flush his cheeks. This is the Bludd chief, he realized fully at last. The most feared man in the clanholds, and I’m sitting here threatening his grandchildren. Bram tried to swallow but his mouth was too dry and his jaw just clicked queerly instead. At the same time he became aware that a muscle in his sword arm had developed the queasy ache of imminent cramping. He had to do something—now—before the heavy blade started wobbling.