The Dread Hammer

by Linda Nagata

  But if we do not? Tayval asked, speaking their shared fear.

  Both sisters knew that without the Biddens’ maze of defensive spells, the Koráyos people must eventually be conquered, and not because they were weak. They were fabled warriors, men and women both, trained to the field. But they were few. Measured against the great cities of the south, the Koráyos were a tiny tribe. Without the spells of the Bidden to keep the Lutawan king at bay, his warriors would come. If the southerners lost ten thousand men each year for ten years fighting to gain the passes, they would still come, and eventually they’d break through. Then the Puzzle Lands would be overrun and the Korayos people forced to live by the cruel customs of the south—or murdered when they refused.

  So Takis and Tayval dreamed together of making peace with Lutawa, and securing the future of their people—and if peace could not be made with the wicked creature worshiped now as king, then they would do all they could to see a new king set in his place—but it would not be Nedgalvin.

  In the world-beneath Tayval tugged a thread, and the trail to the pass faded from sight. She twitched another thread—a concert of others—and a false trail opened.

  Leaning over the gazebo’s half wall, Takis watched, until far below she saw the line of horsemen emerge from the trees to follow the false path Tayval had laid for them. They entered the narrow canyon.

  The moon had sunk so low its light couldn’t reach into the defile, so Takis listened to the distant clip-clop of the horses’ hooves to gauge their progress.

  It’s time, Tayval said.

  Takis straightened. “It is time,” she repeated aloud, her voice grim. In her heart she did not believe there would ever be another general more suitable for king-making than Nedgalvin.

  Tayval tugged on a thread, and the night’s quiet was shattered by a great crack! and then by a deafening crash of stone as a cliff gave way in a thundering avalanche and the ground trembled.

  Takis walked back to her horse.

  Nedgalvin rode at the head of his column of men. The trail was steep, and the horses labored to climb it, but he was grateful for the dense forest that would keep them hidden from any eyes watching from above.

  The Bidden witch had said to come alone, and he might have done it, just for another chance of a night with her. Takis was an entirely different creature from the dull and stupid women of the south, who required guidance in the least task. She was mixed blood, of course, part Hauntén and maybe not truly a woman at all, but something more. Nedgalvin had met enough Koráyos women on the battlefield that he suspected all of them were descended from the bastard daughters of wandering Hauntén. They were bright, strong, and daring. He smiled to think of the temerity Takis had shown. It was her ambition to be a kingmaker! To tempt him to treason . . . and he might have listened. The kingdom was shot through with rot. Everyone knew it, though no one said so aloud.

  But Takis had made a mistake when she told him about the fortress where the refugees were housed. The deepest rot in the kingdom was among its insipid women, those who whispered to one another of sisters and daughters who’d made a new life in the north. Such women were like sheep. If one wandered, another would follow without thought, and another after her, and so it was that many hundreds had disappeared into the Puzzle Lands where, no doubt, they warmed the beds and kept the kitchens of Koráyos masters.

  The exodus must stop. The Lutawan Kingdom depended on both the labor and the wombs of such women. Nedgalvin was determined to end the whispers. He would take Fort Veshitan and slaughter the refugees he found within its walls. It was the right and proper thing to do.

  Beneath the trees, the setting moon did little to show the way, but as they left the trees and entered a narrow canyon, the moon’s feeble light was extinguished altogether by the high walls. After that Nedgalvin rode with his lantern in hand. Its faint beam picked out the trail. Several minutes passed. Then suddenly his horse snorted, sashaying to the side, its tail whisking the air in irritation. Nedgalvin raised his lantern to see what lay ahead, but his light didn’t reach more than a few feet. He urged his horse on, but it refused, so he dismounted. Behind him, other animals were stopping—champing, stamping, blowing—while farther back in the dark came the clip-clop of more hooves. Wind soughed through tree branches, and a tiny stream trickled beside the trail.

  Cautiously, he moved forward on foot. Soon the beam of his light picked out a tumble of stones across the trail, and a few feet farther on, a cliff wall studded with sparse brush and stunted trees. He frowned. Had he missed a turning in the trail? He cast his light to the right, walking several paces, hoping to discover the proper way. Then he turned about and explored to the left.

  But there was no way forward.

  Suddenly, he understood. He spun around, bellowing to his men, “It’s a trap! Turn around. Retreat to the lowlands. All haste! Do not wait—”

  His last command was forever lost behind a great, thunderous concussion, as if God had driven an ax into the mountains above and split them wide. Then came a deafening roar that shook him, blood and bone, shook the very ground he stood on. His light went out as grit pummeled him from all sides and a wind blasted up the canyon. He screamed at his men to run, run! But he couldn’t hear himself. He couldn’t hear them. He could see nothing. But he knew where the cliff was. Ignoring his own orders, he began to climb.

  ~

  When Smoke was little he’d awake in nightmare, always the same one, a dream of being trapped in a crushing cage of blood and bone and no matter how he kicked and struggled he couldn’t free himself. Once he said to me, “My father wanted me to die in there,” which is of course the truth.

  My father calls Smoke his demon child, but if my brother is a demon it’s our father who made him so.

  Enchantment

  At first Ketty was afraid. Not of Smoke—not so much—but of the unseen perils of the Wild Wood: the wolves, the bears, the lions, the Hauntén, and the vast labyrinth of trees that held her isolated from any other human presence.

  She didn’t count Smoke as human. Not entirely, anyway.

  “Why do you live so deep in the Wild Wood?” Ketty asked him, on that first morning in the little round cottage.

  He was crouched at the hearth, frying fish he’d collected from a trap in the brook. “I can do what I want here. And my mind is quiet. I almost never hear voices.”

  “You heard mine.”

  He nodded, smiling to himself. “And for that I’ll always be grateful.”

  Ketty thought it odd that such sweet words could be spoken by a murderer, but really, it was better not to think too much about what Smoke might have done before she met him.

  Very quickly, their life together took on patterns. On most days they went into the forest to gather roots, fruits, herbs, and nuts against the coming winter. They never hurried, but spent the hours laughing and kissing and talking of inconsequential things. These days passed sweetly.

  But every few days Smoke would go alone to hunt.

  The first time he was gone Ketty stayed in the cottage with the door closed, while all her imagined fears gathered around outside. But as the days passed her imagination grew less fevered. Soon she worried only a little about the wolves, the bears, the lions, and the Hauntén. Then she would stand at the cottage door and listen to the murmuring of the brook and the gossiping of the trees as they spoke to one another in rustles and creaks on topics beyond her understanding, until late afternoon finally brought a happy shout from the forest, “Ketty, I’m home!”

  Then she’d run to meet Smoke as he came striding through shafts of mist-drenched sunlight with the quartered carcass of a deer over his shoulder, or the meat of a forest sow—and despite the blood and the smell she’d hug him gingerly and kiss his mouth, because even if he wasn’t entirely human he was showing himself to be a good husband, in every way that mattered.

  Smoke marveled at the binding threads that tied him to Ketty; each day there were more than the day before, all of them tight and st
rong. He felt her always in his thoughts. Even when he was far away he knew if she was content or if she was concerned. If anything should come to threaten her he would know it and be able to return to her within seconds along the world’s weft.

  But there was nothing within his holding that would bring her harm. The beasts of the Wild Wood knew his will and didn’t trouble him, and if any woodsman dared to venture so deep into the forest, Smoke would know it by the trembling of the threads—and such a trespasser would be dead long before he could follow the scent of wood smoke to the cottage.

  The days passed, until winter chased away the brief autumn season, laying crisp snow across the meadow. On that first snowy morning Ketty was happy. With her bare hands she scraped up the snow and packed it into a rude clump. And to Smoke’s astonishment she flung it at him when he turned his back. When it exploded against his shoulder she ran away laughing and only after several seconds of thought (and another snow stone bursting against his chest) did he understand it was a game.

  “Don’t just stand there,” she scolded him. “Defend yourself!” And a third snow stone went flying on a path that would take it past his shoulder. He caught it instead and flung it back at her underhand—though he made sure to miss. But she was caught by surprise, and jumped back anyway—and he was there to catch her, heaving her over his shoulder. She laughed, her hair wild in her face. “Put me down, you idiot. This is not how it’s played. You must make your own snow stones and throw them at me—”

  She shrieked, when he made as if to drop her, but of course he caught her again, setting her feet gently on the ground. “Never, Ketty,” said. “You’re precious and I would never hurt you. I don’t understand how any man could.”

  “It doesn’t hurt, silly.” Then she laughed at herself. “Not so much, anyway.”

  All that day Smoke was quiet, seeming wrapped up in thought, which was not his way. Ketty worried. “Tell me what’s on your mind,” she urged him, as they lay together that night, with only the glimmer of the hearth, and the hearth spirit, for light.

  He sighed. “Do you know why men are cruel to women?”

  She turned toward him. “Smoke! You are never cruel to me.”

  “Not me, silly. Men like those in the Lutawan Kingdom. Men like your father. He especially should have loved you. I think men like that have evil hearts.”

  “No, my father wasn’t evil.”

  “Then why did he beat you? It makes me furious even to think on it!”

  She kissed his nose, his eyes. “Hush. Don’t be angry. I am Ketty of the Red Moon.”

  He laughed. “You’re a maddening woman, it’s true.”

  “Ha! But anyway, he wasn’t so angry when my mother still lived.”

  Smoke didn’t answer right away, so she kissed him. For a while. Finally, he spoke. “I didn’t have a mother.”

  “What?” She propped her head up on her hand and frowned. “What do you mean, no mother? Where did you come from? Out of a tree? Conjured from a fire?”

  “Cut out of a corpse.”

  She tensed, reminded again that he wasn’t quite human. But then she guessed the truth. “Your mother died in childbirth, right? Why don’t you just say it, instead of making it sound like you were born in evil? Women die giving birth. It’s a sad thing, but it happens.” Again, his answer was delayed. She said, “I heard of a boy once, whose mother died minutes after he was born. His father had four sons already. He cared nothing at all for a fifth. He claimed the infant was evil. He took it away from the breast of his sister, carried it into the forest, and left it there for the wolves.”

  Smoke sighed. “My father gave me no name.” Then his teeth flashed in a grin that banished his somber mood. “My sisters—they’re twins—they were only eight years old when I was born, but they decided they had to steal me away. I suppose they found some woman to nurse me, though I don’t remember it. I remember them though. They played with me like a doll. For ten years! They were the best mothers.”

  Ketty smiled too. “And did they finally grow tired of you? Or have babies of their own?”

  “No. My father came one day. He spoke to them gently, saying I was too old and they couldn’t play with me anymore. They were eighteen then, grown women, but they cried when he took me away.”

  “And did you cry?”

  Smoke snorted. “In front of my father? Ketty, even at ten, I was not that foolish.”

  “He made you become a warrior?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you want to?”

  “It’s what we do.”

  She squeezed his hand, suddenly frightened. “So it’s at least twice you’ve almost died. First when you were born, and then when that soldier Nedgalvin cut your neck.”

  “He didn’t hurt me so much.”

  She shivered, squeezing closer to his warmth. “Liar.”

  Smoke chuckled.

  “He was trying to cut your throat, wasn’t he?”

  “Why do you want to talk about him?”

  “Because it makes me afraid when I think what could have been. Smoke, if he had killed you we would never—”

  “Shh…” He set his fingers against her mouth. “He didn’t kill me. I hate him though. And someday I’ll kill him.”

  Ketty went to sleep soon after that, but Smoke was left restless by her questions, remembering that night:

  He hadn’t been afraid, going in. He’d been in the field only eight days, but Chieftain Rennish’s irregulars had already raided two villages, both deeper in the borderlands than the one they would hit that night. No one anticipated much trouble.

  Most of the Koráyos soldiers waited with their horses in a hollow among the hills, but Smoke had gone ahead with Chieftain Rennish. As dusk came, they were crouched on a brush-covered hillside, watching as the villagers came in from the fields.

  The fields and the village were both well kept. Round houses had been laid out in neat, concentric rings split by a single straight lane. Where the lane passed through the center of the village there was a square, with a common hall on one side and a plank-walled church on the other.

  Scouts had reported Lutawan troops billeted at the village the night before. Smoke saw no sign of the troops now, but it didn’t matter. By the Trenchant’s command, any village that gave support or shelter to the southern army—willingly or not—would be burned to the ground.

  As the last of the villagers disappeared into their homes, Chieftain Rennish turned to Smoke, and nodded.

  It was Smoke’s task to go in first.

  He reached out to the threads that lay beneath the world. His reflection became a streaming gray vapor. He entered the village, made invisible by the encroaching dark. Moments later, his human reflection took shape within the shadow of the common hall.

  For several seconds he made no move, only listened.

  He heard the clucking of chickens, the rustle of pigs, but nothing more. There was no murmur of voices, no smell of supper cooking, no people in sight at all.

  Yet in the weft and warp of the threads he felt the gravity of some two-hundred people, far more than indicated by the number of houses. So he knew the Lutawan troops were hiding in the dwellings—they must have been there all day—in expectation of this twilight raid.

  Smoke grinned. Chieftain Rennish was in for a surprise.

  Or she would be, if he didn’t warn her. He started to slip again beneath the world. He was already half-gone to smoke when a flaming arrow ignited the thatch roof of a small shed across the street.

  He stared at it, stunned.

  Fire was the signal he used to alert Chieftain Rennish and summon the charge.

  The flame took hold while he was still trying to understand where the arrow had come from.

  Then several things happened at once.

  A chorus of Koráyos war cries resounded from the south, followed instantly by a thunder of hooves storming toward the village. An arrow shot past Smoke, missing his ear by a whisper. And a commanding voice shouted fro
m somewhere nearby, “All forward!” And with that command, doors flew open, war horses were squeezed through doorways, and one after another, riders vaulted into their saddles.

  Smoke pulled his sword and attacked. The nearest Lutawan had only one foot in the stirrup when Smoke split his spine. Another fell with a slit throat. Then an officer who had made it into the saddle spotted Smoke and bore down on him at a gallop.

  Smoke retreated beneath the world. He emerged again across the square, the plank wall of the church at his back. The Lutawans were all on horseback now. They went charging off to meet the oncoming Koráyos militia—all but the officer who’d targeted Smoke.

  He had turned his horse around and was spurring it across the village square straight toward the church. Smoke glimpsed him: a tall man, lean, strong, with black hair and a neatly trimmed beard. As he bore down on Smoke he raised his saber high, anticipating the downward stroke. Smoke bared his teeth. Time to retreat again. Once more, he prepared to slip beneath the world, but this time the officer took him by surprise. He threw his sword.

  Smoke was young, barely sixteen. This was only his third battle. He hadn’t known it was possible to throw a sword with any accuracy. Then again, the blade missed its true target. It should have struck him full in the throat, severing his windpipe or his carotid artery, but instead it caught him at the curve of his shoulder and neck. The blade struck with force enough to hurl him backward against the plank wall of the church. The point of the sword passed through his neck and bit deep into the wood, pinning him.

  Again, he set himself to slip beneath the world.

  Or he tried to. But nothing happened. He didn’t go anywhere. He sensed the threads, felt their warp and weft, but his human reflection refused to yield. The steel of the sword had pinned him in the world.