The Dread Hammer

by Linda Nagata

  Seök handed him the reins of the spare horse. “Tighten up the girth,” he advised. Smoke could tell he was angry, but it didn’t matter. Did it?

  A hard rain fell late in the afternoon, striking freezing blows against the bare skin of Smoke’s back and shoulders and forcing him to get out his coat. With Ketty’s help he got his right arm into the sleeve. Then she lifted the coat around his shoulders and secured the first button, but he wouldn’t let her do anymore. “I’m not a child,” he growled, shooing her away. “I can button my own coat.”

  “Fine! Have at it.”

  His cold fingers struggled to make the buttons work, and twice he caught Ketty watching him with a critical eye. So when at last he managed it, he gave her a disdainful look. “I told you I didn’t need help.”

  To his smug satisfaction, she turned her gaze to the Dread Hammer, beseeching help for herself, no doubt.

  At day’s end the rain ceased, but fog took its place. All was silent except for the dripping of water until suddenly a tinkling of pretty chimes sounded from the trees all around them. Almost as soon as the ringing began the music of the chimes retreated, rolling away to the east in a wave of sweet sound.

  “What in God’s kingdom is that?” Nedgalvin asked. Then, as if just realizing it, “There’s no wind to stir up so many chimes.”

  Smoke was secretly glad Nedgalvin had asked, because he wanted to know too, but he didn’t want to let Nedgalvin know he didn’t know.

  Seök glanced at him as if he had a perfect understanding of Smoke’s puzzled thoughts. “It’s the trees,” he said. “They keep watch in the East Tangle, and ring the chimes whenever anyone approaches a border post.”

  “The trees?” Nedgalvin said. “Do you take me for a fool?”

  Smoke snorted. “This is not the Lutawan Kingdom,” he reminded Nedgalvin. “Don’t abuse Seök for answering you truthfully—though maybe he should be less free with the Koráy’s secrets?”

  Seök shrugged.

  They went on. Before long they smelled wood smoke, and soon afterward a stern voice called to them from out of the fog, “Stop now and identify yourselves.”

  They had been discovered by a company of Koráyos soldiers, who had come to investigate the chimes. Some of these soldiers were friends of Seök from his days in the army, so on that night they slept under a roof and were warm.

  The border post was nestled in a pass at the summit, so they began the next day with a descent, following a barely visible track down through the forest. Smoke stayed close to Ketty and brooded over the threat made by Thellan the Hauntén. He didn’t doubt she would keep her word and come after Ketty if she had the chance—because that’s what he would do. At midmorning he reined in his horse. Nedgalvin and Seök were riding ahead and didn’t notice, but Ketty stopped beside him. “What is it?”

  “I should send you away.”

  She looked so hurt he could hardly stand it. “We already talked about this!”

  “Ketty, you’ll be safe in the Puzzle Lands.”

  “I’m not staying! I’m going with you.”

  “I’ll bring Britta back to you.”

  She looked away. Her lips were parted as if there were words on her tongue that wanted to step forth but they weren’t quite brave enough to do it. Then she looked at him again. “I don’t think Takis will let you come back.”

  He laughed. “What are you talking about?” His smile faded when he saw tears in her eyes. “Ketty, did Takis say she’d close the Puzzle Lands against me?”

  “She didn’t have to say it. She wanted you gone.”

  Smoke thought on it, remembering Takis’ bad temper, and her words to him—You’re not Bidden, Smoke, and you don’t belong to the Puzzle Lands. “You might be right, Ketty,” he conceded. “And if so, there’s no choice. You have to come with me.”

  Relief washed over her and she smiled so very prettily that he wanted to take her down among the tree roots without another second wasted. But of course she would complain it wasn’t the proper time.

  ~

  Sometimes I envy the Lutawan king, whoever he is. It must be convenient to be able to read the minds of men.

  The Wild Wood

  In the late afternoon they passed beyond the border of the Puzzle Lands—and beyond the protection of the border spells. Smoke was in a state of suspense over Thellan. He jumped at every least noise and didn’t dare to leave Ketty alone. “What’s got into you?” Ketty asked. “You’re as edgy as you were in those first days after Britta was born.”

  “Just stay close to me,” Smoke told her. “I don’t trust that Nedgalvin.”

  When they found a place to camp for the night, he went with Ketty to fetch water, and then to gather firewood. Seök was tending the horses when they returned, so Smoke started the fire, and then he put together a simple meal of dried fish, apples, and bread. Nedgalvin sat on the side, polishing the weapons Takis had given him.

  “Dismay,” he said after a time, “it surprises me what a fine little woman you make.”

  Ketty had been clearing a space for sleeping, but when Nedgalvin spoke she caught her breath and stepped back as if expecting a brawl. Smoke glanced at her curiously. Then he looked at Nedgalvin, trying to guess what the hell he was talking about. He took a wild shot. “Two days away from Takis and now you fancy me?”

  Nedgalvin stiffened; his bronze cheeks grew dark. “Don’t toy with me. There are no twisted men in the south. That’s a vice of the Puzzle Lands.”

  Smoke wasn’t sure he understood this, but it was easy to see his guess had been wrong. “So what do you mean by ‘a fine little woman.’ Is it a compliment?”

  Nedgalvin turned his gaze skyward as if to beg patience from the Dread Hammer—which was odd, because everyone knew the god of the Lutawans, Hepen the Watcher, despised the Dread Hammer. “Of course it’s not a compliment! I want to know why you’re serving as a kitchen maid when you have a woman with you who can do the work? It’s shameful!”

  Smoke and Ketty traded a look. Seök was still standing among the horses, but Smoke realized that he too was watching. Ketty spoke softly, sounding ashamed. “He’s right. In the north, cooking is a woman’s work. My father would never cook.”

  “I don’t cook at Samerhen,” Smoke said defensively. “Servants do it. But on patrol everyone takes a turn. Chieftain Rennish never gave the duty only to the women.”

  “I cook at home,” Seök announced, leaving the horses to come stand beside the fire, where he fixed a cold glare on Nedgalvin. “The men of the Puzzle Lands are not lazy like you Lutawans, and we don’t fear our women. It’s said you turn even your wives into slaves.”

  Nedgalvin had been polishing his long knife. Now he turned it around, so the hilt was in his hand as he stood to face Seök. He spoke carefully. “The women of the Puzzle Lands are different than Lutawan women, I concede. They’re not the dull cows we’re cursed with. But a man is made for war. Women are made to keep the house and the field. This is as God intended.”

  Smoke laughed. “The Dread Hammer didn’t intend any such thing. She is a woman Nedgalvin, and it’s said she battled your god, Hepen the Watcher, long ago and tossed him out of the north.”

  “That’s not a story I’ve ever heard.”

  Seök said, “Truth is twisted by your king. It’s why your people are corrupt.”

  Nedgalvin stepped toward him. “You dare to speak to me like this? You’re a tradesman! A common soldier.”

  “Truth doesn’t belong only to officers.”

  Smoke eyed them both, wondering if his oath to protect Seök included protecting him from Nedgalvin—but then Ketty surprised them all by stepping into the middle of the argument. “I used to pretend to be a stupid cow just to make my father angry, and I didn’t care if he beat me for it. That’s the way people are when you take away all their choices.”

  After a moment’s silence, Smoke said, “You should have let me kill him.”

  Ketty gave him a sour look. Then she set about finis
hing the dinner preparations. Seök went to wash up, while Nedgalvin returned to polishing his weapons.

  That night, Smoke was wakeful. He lay beside Ketty, his eyes half-closed, listening to the forest and to the threads, but mostly, listening to the whisper of distant prayers. He longed to go and answer one or two of them before the sunrise. It was only the fear of Thellan that kept him at Ketty’s side.

  At midmorning on the third day they came to the forest road. Seök reined in his horse and turned to face them. “This is as far as my knowledge reaches, and it’s as far as I will go. From here I turn south to Nefión. If you still want to go on to the dark heart you have to find your own way. I don’t know where it’s hidden.”

  “I can find it,” Smoke assured him. It would be exactly where his heart warned him not to go.

  “Seök, you should go on with us,” Nedgalvin urged. “You’re a good man, you don’t scare easily. Come along, and I can make it worth your while.”

  “You have nothing I need,” Seök answered him.

  Smoke smiled. He could have liked this man in other circumstances. As it was, he still daydreamed of slitting his throat.

  Ketty might have guessed his thoughts. She gave him a warning look, but then she turned to Seök and smiled. “Thank you for helping us, and please bear our good wishes to your wife, and to your sister.”

  “Thank you, ma’am, and may you find what you seek.”

  As Seök rode off, Nedgalvin looked after him regretfully. “We could have used another fighting man.”

  “We won’t get Britta back by fighting,” Ketty insisted. Then she turned her horse and set off east into the Wild Wood, leaving Smoke and Nedgalvin to follow behind.

  Seök had been a quiet presence, but he’d known the land well. His confidence had infected all of them—but now they had no firm direction. Smoke felt the threads and measured their tension against the vague dread residing in his heart, but he kept changing his mind about where they should be going until Nedgalvin complained, “We’re just wandering in this forest, aren’t we? You have no idea where the dark heart is!”

  Smoke shrugged, not wanting to admit it. “We’re too far north,” he decided—though he wasn’t really sure anymore which way north was. The weft didn’t run straight here, and the sky was so heavy with clouds he couldn’t see the sun. But he called for a change of direction anyway, and they went on.

  At twilight they camped beside a trickling brook. As Smoke lay beside Ketty, waiting for sleep, he listened again to the forest and to the threads—but he could not hear the prayers. He realized it with a start. He’d come so far east the prayers couldn’t reach him. Silence wrapped him, just as it had when he’d lived at his holding in the Wild Wood.

  He decided that since he wasn’t free to answer the prayers it was better not to hear them.

  Still, he missed them.

  On the next day they were up at first light—but it was a dim, gray light filtered through ominous clouds. Within an hour it was raining.

  Rather than struggle again trying to get his coat on with only one arm, Smoke took off his sling. Ketty protested, but he insisted he didn’t need it anymore. His left arm was stiff though, and it ached when he moved. The rain didn’t help. It kept up all day—a hard downfall that rarely eased. They camped early. Nedgalvin huddled under a tarp. Smoke and Ketty made a tiny shelter out of branches that leaked quite a lot.

  Rain was still hammering down in the morning when they set out again. Smoke studied the threads, but they were tangled, and though he chose a direction, he wasn’t at all sure what direction it was. He rode in the lead, with Ketty following behind him, and then Nedgalvin.

  After an hour or so Ketty called out to him, “Smoke! Look at that fallen tree there on our right. We passed that tree yesterday. I know we did!”

  Smoke turned in the saddle to see her gesturing at the fallen, moss-covered trunk of a long-dead tree on the other side of a small clearing. He scowled. “We’ve passed a hundred fallen trees. How do you know—”

  “Because I remember there was wormwood growing on its other side, and mint in the shadow of its rotted branches!”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Nedgalvin said. “We’ve been wandering all over this endless wood, but we haven’t been riding in circles.”

  “Let’s just look,” Ketty insisted.

  She turned out to be right about the plants, and after a minute Nedgalvin found their hoof prints from the day before, filled up with rainwater.

  “So,” Ketty asked tentatively. “Which way is east?”

  “God knows,” Nedgalvin muttered. “But Dismay surely doesn’t.”

  “We’re close to the dark heart,” Smoke insisted.

  “How can you know that when you don’t even know where we are?”

  “Because I don’t know where we are.” He turned to Ketty. “When Dehan came to our holding he cast a glamour on the threads so I couldn’t see the true weft of the world.”

  “Is it the same here?”

  “It’s not the same, but the threads are confused, they’re twisted. I think they turn back on themselves, though it’s hard to see.” He frowned. “It’s even hard to see you in the threads.”

  She looked at him with wide, worried eyes. “Then we are lost?”

  Smoke shrugged.

  Nedgalvin groused, “Yes, of course we’re lost! We can’t see more than thirty feet and the sun is useless behind these damned clouds, which were no doubt sent by the Dread Hammer to add to our misery, for like any woman, she must delight in inflicting misery.”

  “Any woman would delight in inflicting misery on you!” Ketty snapped and Smoke got ready to draw his sword. But to his surprise (and disappointment) the Lutawan managed to hold on to his temper.

  Ketty spoke again, tentative now. “Smoke? Instead of trying to guess which way is east, maybe you should just take us where the threads are the most twisted and confused.”

  Smoke thought about it. He studied the threads—and after a few minutes he decided there was a direction to the chaos. When he thought about going there his dread stirred, so he knew it was the right direction. “I don’t like it,” he said softly. “But I think it might work.”

  By afternoon the threads were so twisted and confused that Smoke could sense almost nothing of what lay around them. It made him jumpy, like a blind man in a crowd of thieves. It didn’t help that the rain refused to relent. “Ketty,” he said over his shoulder. “Maybe we should camp and hope tomorrow will show us the sun.”

  When she didn’t answer he turned around. Nedgalvin was riding behind him. “She had to stop,” he said. “Half a minute ago.”

  Smoke couldn’t sense her in the threads. Not at all. It was as if she’d vanished from the forest.

  He turned his horse and sent it racing back, only to find Ketty a hundred feet away, struggling to climb into the saddle. “Ketty! What are you doing?”

  “I had to make water.” She frowned at him as if he was being absurd.

  “You were gone from the threads!”

  “It wasn’t my fault! I had to make water.”

  “No, it’s just the threads are so chaotic here, I couldn’t sense you. Stay close, Ketty. If you get lost, I don’t know if I can find you.

  The rain went on another night and all through the next morning, but in the afternoon the steady downpour eased into a light, fog-shrouded drizzle. Though the sun was still hidden everyone’s hopes rose—until they found their way blocked by a raging, rain-swollen river.

  Smoke sat dejectedly on his unhappy horse, staring at the muddy water as it churned between brimming riverbanks. The far shore looked to be at least thirty feet away. Smoke didn’t know much about river crossings, but he didn’t like the look of this one. “It feels dangerous,” he said, turning to Ketty. “I don’t think you can cross it.”

  “Let’s follow the bank,” Nedgalvin suggested. “Maybe we can find a quieter place to cross.”

  Ketty was shivering, miserable and discouraged. “
Smoke, why don’t you go look for a place to cross? Run the threads, and we’ll wait here with the horses.”

  Smoke was tempted. A rest would be good for her and good for the horses—and what a relief it would be to travel apart from the stinking beasts! But he shook his head. “The Hauntén might come while I’m away.”

  “I’ll be here,” Nedgalvin said impatiently. He got down from his horse as if the decision was already made. “She’ll be safe with me.”

  Ketty looked at Smoke with her wide, sweet eyes. “The sooner we cross the river, the sooner we’ll have Britta back.”

  Apparently Nedgalvin was right. The decision already had been made. Smoke jumped down from the horse. He handed the reins to Nedgalvin. Then he caught Ketty as she slipped out of the saddle. “I didn’t think I would ever say this,” he murmured in her ear. “But stay close to the southerner. Better still, stay among the horses. Thellan won’t be able to get to you so easily there.”

  “When I first met you, you never worried about anything,” she chided him.

  He shrugged. “I never used to care.”

  After Dismay left, Nedgalvin found a tree with a thick canopy just a few feet from the flooding river. It kept off most of the drizzle, so he waited beneath it. Not that the shelter made any real difference. He was already wet through and through and had been for three days.

  How he despised this place! The Wild Wood was a Godforsaken wilderness. He’d never seen an endless rain like this before. In Lutawa the sun shone almost every day and water was precious, as it should be.

  Fat drops slipped off the leaves, drip-dripping against the ground. The river rumbled past.