The Dread Hammer

by Linda Nagata

  Night came, and her pain grew. Ketty was frightened. By midnight she lay in bed, her skin glistening with sweat as the birth pangs wrenched from her moans and tears. Smoke could hardly bear it, and when she begged him to make it stop he was sure that she would die, and that this was his punishment for murdering his mother on the day of his own birth.

  Many times he turned to consult the midwife’s book. Though he had long since memorized everything it contained, he looked again and again for something he might have missed. But there was nothing. Only her agony, that went on until dawn.

  Then her cries changed, and it all grew worse. She growled and screamed and wrestled with the demon inside her. And then as her legs parted, he saw at last a dark mass at her sacred gate. “Ketty! I see it! It’s just like the picture. Our baby is nearly born.”

  Yet another agony came over Ketty and she screamed and pushed.

  “Easy, easy, my love,” Smoke urged her, remembering the instruction from the book. Then the baby’s head was free. He looked at it, and knew that his mother’s vengeance had taken a different form. It was a demon head—all squashed and malformed, wrapped in blood and slime. Smoke drew back in fear . . . but truly, it was just a little thing. He reached out to support its head in his palm, astonished at its fiery warmth. Then he helped its shoulder to slip free. And then, with a sigh of deepest relief from Ketty, the rest of the baby slid into the world.

  The baby was a girl. Smoke held her slippery body in his two large hands, frowning at her. “She’s ugly, Ketty.” Her fists were moving in little circles, and after a moment she bleated, and then she wailed.

  Ketty shuddered, lying exhausted on the bed. “Give her to me. Let me see.”

  Smoke tied off the umbilicus as the midwife’s book instructed, and then he held up the howling child for Ketty to see.

  Astonishment illuminated Ketty’s face. “She’s not ugly! She’s perfect. Hand her to me.”

  A strange feeling came over Smoke. Was it the scent of this ugly, shriveled baby? Surely it was not her looks! But something about her made his heart swell with a dire affection. She was still squalling in his hands, but when he bent to kiss her forehead, she quieted. As he gazed at her, it seemed to him he had never seen anything so precious.

  “Smoke!”

  Ketty’s sharp tone recalled him. He smiled. “We have a daughter, Ketty.”

  “Let me hold her.”

  He passed the baby to her, and she cradled the tiny child against her breast. Smoke looked at them and thought he should die of joy in that moment, and that he would surely die if they were ever taken from him.

  “I hope I never am parted from you Ketty.”

  Her shining eyes shifted from the baby, to gaze at him. She smiled. “And why ever should you be?”

  Demon-Ridden

  Nedgalvin sat with his legs bent, back against a wall, basking in the late afternoon sun that still warmed a corner of his tiny prison yard. His wrists were shackled to a chain around his waist, and his ankles were shackled to one another. Any movement on his part and the chains would rattle, so he sat very still. It was easier to pretend he was in the courtyard of his estate, recovering from some long illness, if he didn’t hear the chains.

  How much time he’d spent in this lovely, clean prison he didn’t know. Summer had come. He knew it by the length of days, not by the heat. The season here was much cooler than in the Lutawan Kingdom.

  His guards still called him demon-ridden.

  It would have been easy enough for him to cooperate, to say what they wanted him to say, to do what they wanted him to do. For the most part they were not cruel men. Their job was to punish and to retrain failed and criminal soldiers, and from what Nedgalvin could work out, they were good at it.

  But they’d failed with him.

  Fourteen days of floggings had not brought about any change in his answers when they asked him who he was, so they stopped both the questions and the beatings. In return, he allowed them three days of peace. Then he assaulted one of the guards and they flogged him again.

  After that they took more care in how they handled him, but he still managed a minor assault often enough that they’d started putting a sedative in his water. For days afterward he assumed he was sick. It had taken him a long time to work out the truth, despite the bitter taste that was always in his mouth.

  He didn’t fight them anymore. He couldn’t muster the energy. But he was still demon-ridden and couldn’t be trusted in the company of other prisoners. So he was taken alone everyday to this same tiny courtyard where he sat in the sun like a useless old man, remembering his former self and the two-hundred men who had died under his command.

  What a fool he’d been to think Takis would leave the pass unguarded! What a fool he’d been not to go alone that night, to hear what she had to offer him.

  His eyes were closed, his mind adrift, when he heard the gate to the courtyard open. It was early for the guards to come. Somewhere deep down beneath the drug haze he felt a stirring of alarm. With an effort of will he pushed off his lethargy and opened his eyes.

  Two officers were in the courtyard. One he knew to be the prison warden. The other was a woman. Disgust stirred in his heart.

  Although Koráyos women were not like the stupid sows of the Lutawan Kingdom they were still women. It was their role to be servants of men, not to command them. To make a woman an officer and set her above the men in her command was insulting and degrading to all men, no matter their rank. Nedgalvin had long since decided that such woman officers were no more than puppets, mere mouthpieces of the Bidden who must command them in every least way. Nothing else could explain their success on the battlefield.

  The officer who now approached must have served her masters for many years, judging by her weathered face and steel gray hair. She looked familiar to Nedgalvin, and he wondered if he’d met her on the battlefield. She crouched in front of him, studying his face with a cold gaze.

  Nedgalvin’s pride chided him. He should do something—he had a reputation as a demon-ridden madman after all—but it was hard to get up, much less launch an attack, with his wrists shackled so closely to his waist.

  “By Koráy and the Hammer,” the woman said. “It’s Nedgalvin all right, though he must have lost forty pounds since the last time I saw him. Don’t you feed your prisoners here?”

  The warden shrugged. “If he wants more to eat he can work in the fields, but he won’t do that.”

  The woman cocked her head at Nedgalvin. “Woman’s work?” she asked him.

  “You know who I am.”

  “We met one night,” she agreed.

  He searched his memory and then it came to him. “That night I almost killed the Hauntén.”

  “Come,” the warden said. Taking Nedgalvin by the elbow, he forced him to stand. “You’re being transferred to Chieftain Rennish’s custody.”

  “Where’s Helvero?” Nedgalvin demanded to know.

  “He’s dead,” Rennish said. “What scheme he had in mind when he sent you here, I don’t know, but he was killed in battle not a week after your venture at Fort Veshitan.”

  “Nobody knew who you were,” the warden added. “Or why you were here.”

  Nedgalvin broke out in a cold sweat. He’d struggled for months to convince them of who he was; now that they knew . . . “You’ve come to execute me?”

  “That would be a pleasure to do, truly,” Rennish said. “But I’m sending you off to Samerhen instead. It was Takis you betrayed. It’s for her to decide your fate.”

  ~

  The Hauntén care nothing for people except as occasional amusements, especially in the spring. Their devotion is to the forest. It’s said they have a whispering language they use to speak to the trees, and the trees use this language to whisper among themselves of the goings-on in the forest. One tree speaks to another, and in this way news is carried all the way to the dark heart.

  A Cruel Wife

  It happened again on the day the baby was b
orn: the trees woke up and talked about it. Smoke heard them when he went outside to wash the soiled blankets, and again when he went to fetch water and an armload of summer flowers to sweeten the little cottage. He couldn’t understand their words of course, but he knew what they were saying. On that day there was nothing else worthy to be discussed except tiny Britta.

  Britta. That was the name Ketty gave her.

  Smoke liked the name. It was sweet and strong and pretty. “I was mistaken,” he told Ketty that evening. “Britta isn’t ugly at all. She’s almost as pretty as you are.”

  “You’re an idiot,” Ketty said, but she said it with a smile.

  Smoke hated to be away from the baby.

  Several days went by—for Smoke it was all a haze of sweetness as he doted over Ketty and Britta—but their provisions were dwindling, and with them, Ketty’s patience. “It’s your ill luck you weren’t born a woman,” she scolded him. “Then you might spend each day and night with your infant. But you are cursed to be a man. So go! Now! Today! And hunt before we all starve.”

  “Come with me, then.”

  “No. Why should I?”

  He confessed the truth. “I have a dread of leaving you.”

  “Why? What do you fear?”

  “Anything. Everything. That some dreadful fate should find you while I’m gone.”

  She rolled her eyes in silent appeal to the Dread Hammer. “You are being silly! We’re safe here. How many times have you promised me it’s so? And anyway, starvation is a dreadful fate. Save us from that, I beg you.”

  Her tone had nothing to do with begging.

  “You’re a cruel wife,” Smoke told her.

  She narrowed her eyes and repeated herself. “Go.”

  So he took up his bow and a quiver of arrows and with reluctant steps he set out into the forest.

  He dawdled for a time, just out of sight. He felt the threads, sensing Ketty’s presence and the calmness of her soul as she nursed the baby and then settled down to read one of the midwife’s books over again. He knew there was nothing to fear and still as he walked away his soul was haunted by a terrible dread.

  He went anyway, of course. He didn’t dare return without meat in hand. It took an effort of will, but eventually he focused his mind on the hunt, and in the early afternoon he came back to the meadow with the carcass of a young pig, and a sack of brown mushrooms.

  It was a rare sunny afternoon, and Ketty was walking about among the meadow flowers with Britta in her arms. She was wearing the blue dress she’d made from the silk he’d brought her, while the baby was wrapped up in white flannel. They were so beautiful together. Smoke felt his desire heat, until it was almost overwhelming. “Ketty!”

  She turned at his shout, coming to meet him as he hung the carcass on the butchering tree. She looked it over with an approving eye. “So you have remembered how to be a man after all,” she teased.

  His smile was toothy. “I am remembering other things about being a man. You are so beautiful and I am so hungry for you. Come kiss me now, while Britta is sleeping.”

  She gave him a dark look. She was still healing, and wouldn’t allow him to come into her, insisting they must follow the advice in the midwife’s book (he could see that teaching her to read had been a poor idea) and wait until the second moon after the baby was born. She said, “You know it’s too soon.”

  “Come kiss me anyway, before I die for lack.”

  “Your hands are bloody.”

  He spread his arms wide. “I won’t touch you. Just your lips.” So she consented, and it was sweet, but it only made his need worse. “When I’ve died of the desire for you, then you’ll be left to reflect on your cruelty.”

  “You are such a baby!”

  And grabbing the sack of mushrooms, she turned and left him to the butchering.

  He hunted again a few days later, and after that Ketty said she was ready to walk about. She made a sling to carry the baby against her breast, and thereafter when the weather was fine they foraged in the forest as they’d done before, though now they went slower because Smoke was always stopping to admire his daughter and the sparkle of her green eyes as she watched the pattern of sunlight in the trees so far above her head.

  The first moon passed. The summer rolled on, and Smoke’s dread faded. Once again he felt assured. His holding within the Wild Wood was safe. No marauder could draw near without setting a warning vibrating through the threads . . . or so he believed.

  As the moon expanded to full he hunted more and more often . . . not for the purpose of bringing home meat, but because he couldn’t bear Ketty’s company—to be near her and not to be able to wrestle her down onto the bed and take away her clothes and enter into her . . .

  She was the cruelest of wives.

  But the moon took pity on him, at last, at last. “It’s tonight,” Smoke murmured, first thing as his eyes opened at dawn, beneath the smoky thatch. “Tonight the moon reaches full. Then you must let me have you again or I will die.”

  “You are such a baby,” Ketty whispered, still half-asleep, but she smiled, and Smoke kissed her, hard. In moments she’d forgotten herself. She kissed him in return, her hands encouraged him and her soft sighs sent his heart racing. But Britta, until now peacefully asleep beside them, fussed. At once Ketty turned to her. Smoke kissed her ear and then her breast, but she shooed him away as she set the baby to nurse. “It’s not the full moon until tonight.”

  “Ket-ty.”

  “Don’t whine. We agreed it should be so.”

  “You agreed. Not me. And what is the difference between this morning and tonight?”

  “The difference is the full moon.”

  “You are a horrible wife.”

  He couldn’t stay. He wanted her so badly he feared he would hurt her. So he took his bow and set off yet again into the forest. But he forgot to hunt. He only wandered, murmuring to himself, “Oh, Ketty, oh Ketty, oh Ketty, oh . . .” And he forgot to keep watch over the threads.

  Not that it mattered. What came was hidden from him by a magic greater than his own.

  His first warning was the high, ringing wail of Ketty’s terror racing through the threads. Horror washed over him. His reflection dissolved into a haunt of gray smoke. He reached out, seeking Ketty, but she was gone, he couldn’t find her. He couldn’t find Britta. Despair slowed his transit. Were they already dead? Then he realized he also could sense no wolves, no bears, no lions.

  No enemy.

  Nothing.

  It was as if the forest was suddenly empty.

  So it was he knew a higher power had come, likely a Hauntén from the dark heart of the Wild Wood come to avenge the midwife. But Smoke would make it regret its trespass.

  His spirit sped along the threads. Within the forest, he was a coil of gray smoke snaking between the trees and, before long, streaming across the meadow. He burst back into existence just steps from the cottage. Even before his feet touched ground he had his sword out of its scabbard. He leaped screaming at a half-glimpsed figure sitting on the wooden threshold of the cottage. But he pulled up at once when he saw who it was.

  This was no Hauntén spirit out of the dark heart of the Wild Wood, come to lay waste to his family. No. It was his own father, Dehan the Trenchant, who sat on the threshold in the warm sunshine, with Britta sleeping peacefully against his shoulder.

  Dehan eyed his wayward son but said nothing. Smoke’s gaze shifted minutely—right, left, up—knowing a trap had been laid. It would not surprise him at all if a bolt of lightning should leap from the blue sky to strike him dead. It did surprise him that nothing happened.

  He tightened his grip on his sword, looking his father in the eyes. “Give her to me.” His words were barely coherent, spoken around his fury.

  The Trenchant hissed in contempt. “You’ll never touch her again.”

  Smoke could barely breathe for the heat of his rage. A shudder ran through him. Then he advanced on his father, half a step, then half again, his gaze fix
ed on Dehan, alert for the slightest motion, the least tightening of a muscle in Dehan’s face, his neck, his hands—hands that held Smoke’s sleeping daughter! If he had seen any such sign he would have leaped, sword swinging, but Dehan only watched him, the contempt on his face his only shield.

  “I’ll kill you,” Smoke warned.

  The Trenchant answered calmly, “No. You will bring no harm to me, but will obey me in all things.”

  Smoke hesitated again. There was a trap. He knew there was. Never had he felt so afraid. His reflection wavered as he stretched his senses out, following the empty threads . . . but they were an illusion, a glamour cast on the true structure of the world. Even as he realized it, the glamour dissolved, and he felt the presence of a powerful spell. It was coiled around his spirit, and around the spirit of his tiny daughter, but it began with the Trenchant. He had bound the three of them together. But why?

  “On your knees,” the Trenchant said softly. “Now.”

  Instead, Smoke advanced another half step, his sword held ready above his shoulder.

  Awareness ran through the binding spell. Britta woke with shocking abruptness, screaming as if a red cinder had been laid against her skin.

  Smoke screamed in turn, shuddering, afraid to go forward, unwilling to turn back. “What are you doing to her? Stop. Stop it now.”

  The Trenchant patted the baby’s back and whispered in her ear, and her screams subsided to terrified crying. “I am doing nothing to her,” Dehan said. “On. Your. Knees.”

  Smoke was so stunned he hardly knew what Dehan had said, but the binding spell listened, and when Smoke remained standing it touched the baby again, and once again her tiny lungs screamed in abject pain. The Trenchant’s cold fury grew suddenly hot. He arose and, cradling the suffering child in his arms, he bellowed, “I am doing nothing. It’s you. You, you fool. Britta suffers each time you don’t obey me. On your knees! Now, if you would ease her suffering!”