The Dread Hammer

by Linda Nagata

  This time Smoke heard him. He saw the truth of his father’s words in the deep current of the spell. He cast his sword away and collapsed to his knees, his head bowed. He half-hoped the Trenchant would kill him, but Dehan was not even armed.

  Britta quieted, comforted by her grandfather’s tender murmurs. Smoke started to raise his gaze but Dehan said, “Keep your eyes down. Do not look at her.” Smoke dropped his gaze to the ground.

  “As you now see,” Dehan said, strolling in a slow circle around Smoke, “I have caught the three of us in a spell. It’s a very horrible spell. It’s made to keep watch on your obedience. Disobey me in any way—it doesn’t matter if I know it—and this child will suffer. No punishment will be visited on you—”

  Smoke groaned in soul-deep agony. He would rather be burned than to hear his daughter’s wailing cries again.

  “I think I never taught you an odd fact about our kind. It seems the Hauntén are well known for bloody feuds within their families. Koráy was the first of us. She wanted no such weakness in her own family line so she laid a spell over the generations. We call it the tyranny of the firstborn. You feel it, don’t you? An unbreakable love for this firstborn child?”

  Smoke glanced up for a moment, wondering: Did his sister Takis hold such power over Dehan? Could it be so? Then he remembered himself and looked down again. In a tiny, cold corner of his heart he felt a terrible admiration for his father. This was a perfect spell. If the punishment had been visited against himself he would have fought it, but laid against his daughter—he could not endure it. He would obey the Trenchant in all things. It was as simple as that.

  His father had circled fully around him. Smoke stared at Dehan’s boots, crushing the grass that grew before the cottage door. In a plaintive whisper he asked, “What have you done with Ketty?”

  Was she even now lying dead within the door?

  “She is dead to you,” the Trenchant said with cold malice. “As you condemned me to live alone, so I condemn you.”

  As the Trenchant stepped aside, Smoke risked a glance at the door, but it was bright outside and so dark within that he could see nothing. The hearth spirit might have told him the truth of it, but of course the hearth spirit would have long since fled in terror.

  Still, he smelled no blood.

  “Up,” the Trenchant said. “Take up your sword, and follow.”

  Smoke was on his feet at once, sword in hand. He cast one longing glance at the cottage door, but he dared not go inside to look.

  Dehan was walking away. Smoke looked down at the sword in his hand, then up at his father’s retreating back. “You don’t fear me at all.”

  Dehan turned to look back with a curious gaze. “Should I?”

  Smoke answered truthfully. “No, my father. Not at all.”

  ~

  For many years my father, the Trenchant, feared his children would be the last generation of the Bidden. Smoke proved him wrong, and fired his ambition. If Smoke could get a child with the pretty shepherd girl, why couldn’t Dehan do the same? In my father’s eyes Smoke was never really one of us—which is a sorry excuse to covet his son’s wife.

  What Passes For Truth

  They walked for most of an hour. Now and then Britta fussed, but each time the Trenchant spoke to her in a soothing voice and she quieted. Smoke felt betrayed. Didn’t she miss him? Didn’t she miss Ketty? Why wasn’t she crying in hunger? Then he realized, “You put a spell on her, didn’t you? So she won’t cry.”

  “She’s my daughter now,” the Trenchant answered. “There’s no need for her to suffer.”

  All the rage Smoke had locked away came roaring to the surface. “She’s my daughter! Why do want her anyway? You have two daughters! Britta is mine.”

  The Trenchant turned around. Smoke stopped too, and for a few seconds they stared at one another. “Listen closely,” the Trenchant said. “This child is mine. Nearly a year ago, I spent a few nights with a young Binthy girl. Britta is the fruit of that tryst—”

  “It isn’t true!”

  “You thought to steal her from me, and the woman too.”

  “It’s a lie!”

  “You will treat it as the truth. Do you understand?”

  “Where is my wife, Ketty?”

  The baby caught her breath. For a moment no sound issued from the round astonishment of her mouth, and then she wailed. Smoke fell to his knees. “I’m sorry! Don’t hurt her. Make it stop.”

  “It’s you who has hurt her. You must make it stop.”

  Between shuddering breaths Smoke whispered, “You want me to deny her?”

  “I want you to obey me.”

  The baby’s howls reached a new frenzy. Smoke thought that next she must faint, if a baby could faint. “I have no wife!” he screamed. “I have no child. This is what passes for truth.”

  Once again Britta grew quiet, soothed by the Trenchant’s gentle pats, his calming words. She hiccupped for a time, and then her sweet eyes closed in exhausted sleep.

  “You will not speak of the Binthy woman again,” Dehan said, bending to kiss the baby’s tender forehead. “You will not look at her, or acknowledge her in any way.”

  Then she is alive.

  It was something. And still Smoke shuddered. He felt himself burning, and the horror of his situation made worse because he could not see an end. He had felt the Trenchant’s spell and knew he couldn’t break it; he didn’t have the power or the skill. And he couldn’t plot against his father; the spell would know. And he couldn’t attack him head on; his precious daughter could not endure the punishment, and she would die. Smoke could see only one path to freedom, and that was to kill her . . . but that he would never do.

  “At least tell me what it is you want from me!”

  “I want your obedience, just as I did before, only now I will have it.”

  “My father. I will fight in any battle, but I pray to you, do not send me to slaughter innocents. I cannot do it.”

  “Of course you can. You’ve done it, and you will do it again, as I see fit.”

  They went on after that. Smoke stumbled, hardly aware of the ground beneath his feet. After a time—and without any true plan—his reflection began to dissolve, and the soft rhythm of his steps gave way to silence. Dehan noticed. “You will walk,” he told Smoke. “As a man is meant to walk. Unless I send you forth, you will exist always in this proper reflection. You are a man, and not a Hauntén that cares nothing for any creature other than itself.”

  Hours passed. Eventually they crossed the forest road, but Dehan didn’t turn to follow it. He headed on, into the western reaches of the Wild Wood. If they kept on and didn’t become lost, they would eventually reach the low, jagged mountains of the East Tangle that guarded the eastern boundary of the Puzzle Lands. Dehan, of course, would not become lost, and he knew every trail through the mountains. But the journey would require days. Britta could not survive so long without her mother.

  Then the threads trembled, bringing to Smoke an awareness of others nearby, and Ketty among them. You will not look at her. He sensed that she was sad, and that she’d been weeping.

  A few minutes later he followed Dehan to a meadow where horses were hobbled and set to graze. A party of Koráyos warriors rested just within the shade of the trees. Smoke looked them over. He knew most of them by name, but it didn’t matter. They were Dehan’s men. They stood up at sight of the Trenchant, calling out greetings. Britta stirred, disturbed by the noise. She bleated weakly. Ketty pushed her way past the warriors, to stare across the meadow. Smoke’s heart raced, but he remembered Dehan’s command and looked away.

  Ketty did not share his restraint. “Smoke!” she screamed, while the men held her back. “Smoke, help me, please! They took our baby away!”

  Smoke stopped walking. He stared at the ground, thinking about the men who were holding on to Ketty. He wanted to cut their hands off! How dare they touch her? But he wanted them to hold her just the same because he was afraid of what would happen if s
he came running to him.

  Rage took over her voice. “Let me go!” she screamed at her captors. “Let me go!”

  But then she wailed, a high, frantic sound and moments later she was sobbing, “My baby, my baby, my baby . . .”

  Smoke risked a glance and saw that Dehan had delivered Britta to her. Now that she was in her mother’s arms, Britta started crying too, but as a baby should cry, indignant and hungry—not with screams of agony.

  Smoke heard Dehan speaking to Ketty. “Care for our child,” he commanded her, “but do not call out again to my demon son. He will not answer you.”

  After Ketty nursed the baby, the Koráyos warriors mounted their horses. Dehan put Ketty behind him on his own horse, with Britta nestled against her in a sling. They set out, with Smoke following on foot behind them. Only when it was too dark to see did Dehan call a halt. They camped, setting out again at first light.

  As Smoke walked, he contemplated his options.

  As he walked, he had a lot of time to think.

  At first he thought only of spilling blood—his father’s blood, especially. He envisioned his sword’s blade slicing through the muscles and veins and bones of the Trenchant’s neck. He envisioned it stabbing him through his corrupt heart. Smoke lived these moments in his mind, over and over again, in ever more gruesome detail . . . though of course it was only daydreaming. Nothing in his situation was changed.

  Maybe (his thoughts were wandering) maybe if he murdered the Trenchant with great speed, the binding spell would be shattered with the Trenchant’s life?

  Maybe.

  But if not—and it seemed more likely to Smoke that the spell would endure, just as old spells cast long ago by Koráy still endured—then Britta would no doubt die in some horrible fashion.

  Maybe it was even possible to die of pain.

  So Smoke’s bloody vengeance remained only a daydream, and the Trenchant was safe from his wrath at least for the present time.

  Eventually Smoke began to consider other blood that might be spilled. How had the Trenchant found him anyway? He’d been safely hidden in the Wild Wood for the better part of two years.

  His thoughts fixed first on Ketty’s father. Had he glimpsed Smoke, or suspected his existence after all? Smoke regretted not killing him and his companion. If Smoke hadn’t been so enamored of Ketty and eager to please her, he would have certainly killed both men, just on principle. He would kill them now if he could, because it would be better to kill someone than no one.

  Of course, he had gone to Nefión.

  His pace didn’t falter, but dread squeezed his heart. Had that venture alerted the Trenchant? It had to be . . . and yet he had seen—and been seen by?—only two people when he was there. The wise woman had known him, but he had preserved her innocence with the point of his sword. The merchant though, she who had sold him the cloth . . . she hadn’t recognized him. She’d thought him only a nameless forest spirit, so he’d let her live. He didn’t like to murder women.

  But I should have! And I will.

  Smoke was under a stricture not to murder the people of the Puzzle Lands, but Nefión was beyond the border.

  Smoke resolved to visit the treacherous woman as soon as chance allowed.

  But chance didn’t allow it that day, or the next. And as he doggedly followed the horsemen on through the Wild Wood he spent less and less time dreaming of his father’s bloody end, or of his forthcoming murder of the Nefión merchant. Such comforting enthusiasms could not endure against the bitter conclusion that he was well and truly trapped within his father’s binding spell. So he stopped thinking altogether and just walked on.

  Smoke hated walking.

  What point was there in walking when he could follow the threads that formed the weft of the world?

  He’d had to walk far at times when he was training as a Koráyos warrior, and on that blessed day he’d met Ketty he’d walked for miles and miles with her through the Wild Wood, but those were the only times he’d ever walked for any real distance. Even carrying game back to the cottage he’d never walked more than three or four miles.

  But now he had to walk all day, every day.

  It was another punishment inflicted by his father.

  Dehan couldn’t run the threads. Smoke was the only one in five generations of the Bidden who could. Running the threads was a trait of the Hauntén who were the ancestors of their cursed family—but no one had ever explained to Smoke why such a trick had lain quiet for so many generations before waking in him.

  Dehan had gone ahead with Ketty and his soldiers. Smoke hobbled after them, following a trail of hoof prints and manure. It wasn’t even midmorning, but already he was footsore and weary. His foul mood was made worse as he reflected on the hours that remained before the sun would go down. So when he came out of a dense stand of trees and into a partial clearing, and saw a single rider looking back at him as if waiting for him to catch up, Smoke’s sullen, simmering temper flashed. Such a pleasure it would be to kill this servant of Dehan! His hand rose to touch the hilt of his sword . . .

  But after another step he gave it up. He was not to murder the people of the Puzzle Lands. As Smoke drew nearer he realized the man who waited for him was his friend, Ekemian. Or his former friend? They’d been in the same training regiment, but did that mean anything now?

  “Former friend” seemed most likely.

  Smoke looked up at him. They eyed each other warily. Ekemian was a brown-haired youth tanned dark by the summer sun. He’d acquired a fuzz of beard since the last time Smoke had seen him. “No one likes it,” Ekemian said, his voice low and guarded. “We want you to know that.”

  Smoke’s gaze shifted back to the trail. He kept up his hobbling pace, passing within inches of the horse without looking up again. Ekemion spoke from behind him. “You never did anything more than what the Trenchant ordered . . . except when you showed mercy to the enemy . . . as any of us would have done.”

  His words bit into Smoke like a hook. Despite his resolve to keep silent he turned back, and in a low growl he said, “They were not the enemy.”

  They were innocent women, innocent children, with the misfortune of inhabiting a village—one village of many—that Dehan had decreed must disappear. It was the Trenchant's tactic to leave no haven for the enemy. Any border village where the Lutawan soldiers dared quarter was destroyed utterly. If the warriors were caught there, all the better, but in any case every man, every woman, every child was to be slaughtered, the houses and fields burned, and the livestock driven away to feed the Trenchant’s army. The Lutawan soldiers might still seek shelter for a night, but they knew that any village they stopped at would be swept away as if by the wrath of gods.

  Or the wrath of the Bidden. It was Smoke’s gift to come without warning, to slay with a demon’s speed . . . and that first time, at that first village, he’d done just as Dehan commanded. But he’d told Ketty the truth, that he did not care for the slaughtering of women and children, and the next time he’d made sure that a young girl escaped with her baby sister, and after that, he let many of the women slip past, though not all. Those that escaped were grateful to him. That was the strangest part of it, that they thanked him for his mercy, instead of damning him for his violence.

  Smoke had let them go, but they did not go away. It wasn’t long before he started hearing their prayers. Especially at night, he would hear their voices as they spoke of their devotion to him, as they prayed for him to come and avenge them—not against himself or the Koráyos soldiers who had burned their villages. They begged him to use his bloody sword against their own men—those soldiers, husbands, fathers—who had wronged them. And in their prayers the women of the south named him Dismay.

  Smoke had gone a few times in secret to do their bidding.

  Ekemian pressed his heels against his horse and set it walking toward Smoke. “I feel as you do, that they were not the enemy, but I know the Trenchant is wiser than I am—”

  “Don’t say more.” He
couldn’t bear to hear Ekemian make it out as rightful. Smoke well knew the difference between right and wrong. Everyone knew it. It was the difference between wrong and an even greater wrong that people would endlessly debate.

  Smoke knew it had been wrong—an evil deed—to murder the wise woman of Nefión, but for him it would have been a greater evil to falter in protecting Ketty and their child. But after all he had failed to protect Ketty. She belonged to the Trenchant now and Britta as well, so he’d murdered the wise woman for nothing and no doubt she had damned him for it. So be it. He was a demon after all.

  Ekemion caught up with him. Smoke could smell his fear. He could see it in the gleam of sweat on his face. But Ekemion was no coward, and he honored friendship. “Come, Smoke. Ride with me. The Trenchant has not said you must walk the whole way.”

  Smoke shook his head. “He will say it. Don’t tempt his anger.”

  Ekemion did a poor job of hiding his relief. “I’m sorry, my friend.”

  “You should ride on.”

  But Ekemion held his horse back, forcing it to walk at Smoke’s slower pace. Something else was on his mind. “Smoke, is the child truly—”

  Smoke turned and drew his sword from his back scabbard with such speed that before Ekemion knew quite what had happened, the tip was pressed against his throat. “It is the truth,” Smoke rasped.

  Ekemion sat in perfect stillness until Smoke remembered himself, and withdrew the blade. “All is changed,” he said. “Do not call me Smoke anymore.”

  “What is it then we should call you?”