by J. V. Jones
They had taken over Clan Withy ten days ago for no other reason than its roundhouse was southwest of Dhoone. Pengo had led the assault, backed by three of his seven brothers and nine hundred hammermen and spearmen. Vaylo almost pitied the Withymen. The anger was upon Clan Bludd, and the proud Withymen, who had lived in Dhoone’s shadow for two thousand years, must have thought the Stone Gods had deserted them. Perhaps they had; the Dog Lord claimed no knowledge of such things. He did know that Withy had received the fury meant for another clan.
Blackhail. Vaylo’s entire body stiffened at the word. It was Clan Blackhail his four sons had attacked that day, not Withy. It was Mace Blackhail’s face they saw in their minds as they smashed every bone in the Withy chief’s corpse. It was Raif Sevrance, he who stood at Duff’s and proudly admitted slaughtering Bludd women and children, whom they imagined gutting with their three-bladed spears.
Pengo, Hanro, Gangaric, and Thrago had killed two hundred Withymen between them that day, and another eleven hundred had died by other hands. Proud Withymen, who wore ringmail over coats stuffed with blue fox fur, and boasted, We are the clan who makes kings.
The boast was true enough. It was a Withyman who had proclaimed the first Dhoone King and a Withyman who crowned him.
Vaylo buckled his gorget to his plate. If Withymen made kings, then it was Blackhail who slew them. Oh, people forgot that now. Five hundred years had passed since Dhoone last had a king, and in that time Blackhail and Dhoone had cozied up like two blind men with sticks. Bludd was the enemy. Godless, ruthless Bludd. Yet it wasn’t a Bluddsman who put an arrow in Roddie Dhoone’s throat, it was the Hailsman Ayan Blackhail. Vaylo’s blue eyes shrank. Roddie Dhoone may have been a mother-spoiled weakling with a cruel streak as deep as the Black Spill, yet an arrow was no way to kill a king. A Bluddsman would not have killed Roddie Dhoone at distance; he would have walked straight up to him and thrust cold steel through his Dhoonish heart.
No matter, no matter. What does anything matter? Vaylo grabbed his gray braids in his fist and held them down while he fixed his horned helm in place. Other men wound their braids beneath their helmets to help buffer blows, but not the Dog Lord. His braids streamed free in battle. It was a small thing, but such small things made men who they were. And when the battle was joined this night, two thousand Bludd-sworn eyes would be looking toward his braids.
Vaylo touched the red leather pouch containing his measure of guidestone before he tucked it beneath his plate. Stone Gods, see my clan through this night.
The Clan Withy roundhouse was only a tenth the size of Dhoone’s, yet its builders were artful and had shown a penchant for building down, not up or outward. The chief’s chamber was sunk far below the earth, perhaps even to a depth of a hundred feet. Vaylo could only wonder where the Withy chief had dressed for war, for it hardly seemed likely that he’d willingly climb the hundred and twenty steps to the surface while loaded with two stone of plate.
Vaylo climbed and puffed and was careful where he put his feet. Already all thoughts were falling from him. He was the Dog Lord, and he must lead his clan to battle as he had led them a hundred times before. If the Stone Gods showed him grace, then dawn would find him one step closer to taking the Hailhold. If they turned their cold cheeks toward him, then he would strike somewhere else another day.
For he would have Blackhail. He was the Bludd chief, and a hard life long lived was his reward. Gullit Bludd had died in his sixties, yet Thrago HalfBludd had lived until he was eighty-two and Wolver Bludd before him had seen out ninety-four years in the Bluddhouse. Vaylo expected he would live for another thirty years himself . . . and by his reckoning that was more than enough time to send Mace Blackhail to hell.
“Vaylo. The Bludd host waits upon your word.”
It was Cluff Drybannock, crossing over from the boat-size piece of white oak that formed the Withy door. Drybone was dressed in armor only marginally less battered and worn than his chief’s. A hand-down from Ockish Bull, who had been dead these past five years and who had stood second to every oath Drybone had ever spoken. Oil lamps flickering in the perfect circle of the entrance hall showed the hard bones in Drybone’s cheeks and the brilliant blueness of his eyes.
A young scrap of a boy came running over with Vaylo’s war hammer, the metal all shiny and near dripping with oil. Vaylo didn’t have the heart to tell him that he had not wanted it cleaned, that he liked it good and worn to match his armor, his sword, and his horse. “Strap it on me,” he commanded the boy, who might have been Strom Carvo’s son.
It was an honor, and the boy’s hands shook as he laid the great spiked and lead-weighted hammer in its cradle of soft suede and fastened the steel chains about it. As always when the hammer was laid against his back, Vaylo felt the first stirrings of battle fear. So many battles, so many melees, yet in all this time he still hadn’t found a way to calm the turmoil in his stomach and the hammering of his heart.
Thrago had the Dog Horse standing ready as promised, and as Vaylo and Cluff Drybannock passed under the oak door and emerged into the late afternoon light, he trotted the old black stallion forward. Vaylo stood on the steps a moment and looked out upon the sea of red that was his men. Pengo was there, on his great gray warhorse, his hammer as big as his head. Gangaric, Vaylo’s third son, stood at the fore, dressed in new-forged plate, a troop of Clan HalfBludd axmen surrounding him. Vaylo recognized men from Clan Otler, with their maroon-colored battle cloaks and clean-shaven faces, and men from Clan Frees with copper wire braided into their hair, and the bones of their ancestors forming bosses on their shields. Even little Clan Broddic had sent sixty men, who sat high upon their snowy horses, resplendent in oxblood leathers and hound-skull helms. All the Bludd-sworn clans had sent men, even cursed Clan Gray who could ill afford them, and that meant something to the Dog Lord. No matter that of the two thousand horsed upon the Withy greatcourt, fifteen hundred were Bluddsmen. No matter at all.
Ties of blood and battles bound Bludd to HalfBludd, Frees, Otler, Broddic, and Gray. Dhoone had more clans sworn to it than Bludd, but ties didn’t run as deep in the middle of the clanholds as they did in its farthest reaches. All clans here today knew what it was to defend themselves against the Mountain Cities, against Trance Vor and Morning Star . . . and against the cold quick arrows of the Sull.
Vaylo took a hard breath as he descended the steps. He would not think about the Sull . . . not here, not now.
Using the bottom step as a platform, Vaylo mounted his horse. The beast was lively today and fought the reins the moment he pulled them. Vaylo fought back, and the Dog Horse screamed and reared and other horses shied away to give it space. Vaylo was not displeased. Drawing his greatsword from the hound’s-tail scabbard at his side, he looked upon the faces of his men and roared, “South to Bannen!”
The howls of two thousand warriors followed him as he rode to the head of the line.
The Dog Lord set a hard pace. The day was cold and clear, and the wind was changing, and there’d be a half-moon rising soon enough. The territory north of Withy was wooded with elms and white oaks, with many groves cleared to provide forage for wild boars. The grazing land and wheatfields lay to the north. To the northeast, the dull brownish waters of the Easterly Flow could be seen, as they bow-curved north toward Dhoone. Southwest, toward Bannen, lay a landscape of gentle rolling lowlands seeded with white heather, thistlegrass, and oats.
Vaylo pulled great quantities of air through his lungs as he rode, savoring the coldness of the day and the ice upon the wind. The snow underfoot had a crust to it that snapped with a pleasing sound as the Dog Horse claimed ground beneath him. At his back, Vaylo heard the thunder of his men, and the noise made the bloodlust rise within him.
Bannen. They had once sworn oaths to Blackhail, had fought beside the Hail chief at the battle of Mare’s Rock, yet that almost wasn’t important. It was where they lay that counted. The Banhold pushed far into Blackhail’s southern reach. Take it, and Bludd would have a base for attacking
the Hail Wolf himself. Vaylo had thought long on this and knew that an attack upon Blackhail would be better coming from the south, not the east. Gnash could not be bested; the Gnashhold was crammed with Dhoonesmen and its roundhouse was as good as a fort. Bannen, though . . . Bannen was something else. Bannen could be taken. Blackhail and Dhoone would be expecting the Dog Lord to strike west, take Gnash or Dregg. They would not think he would move south instead. Bannen herself would not be expecting an attack; her doors would not be barred, her livestock would be afield, and the foot-thick layer of sod that lay over her roundhouse could be doused and set alight.
Vaylo arched low in the saddle, letting the wind stream his braids behind him. Once he had Bannen, he could begin taking Blackhail’s sworn clans. Scarpe first. The Hail Wolf’s birthclan. No one would weep to see them taken. Dregg next, though the Dreggsmen were hard-bred warriors and Vaylo knew they would give him a fight. Orrl last. Vaylo had respect for Orrl; like Bludd, they knew what it was like to live on the far edge.
“Do you mean to outrun your army, Bludd chief?”
Vaylo looked around to see Drybone pulling alongside him on his gray. In the fading light he looked little like a clansman, and Vaylo found himself wondering why his Trenchland mother had sent him away. Surely he would have fit in well enough in Hell’s Town?
The Dog Lord managed a grim smile. “What’s the matter, Dry, frightened I’ll get to Bannen ahead of you?”
Drybone shook his head. “Just worried about an ambush, that’s all.”
“Cautious as ever.”
“Tell me you haven’t thought of it yourself.”
Vaylo could not. There was always chance of an ambush. “Open ground between here and Bannen. We’ll be there before the moon peaks.”
“We’re close to Gnash, Scarpe, Dregg . . . even Ganmiddich. The middle clans are all pressed close.”
With a small pull on the reins, Vaylo slowed his horse. He knew better than to trade words with Cluff Drybannock. It was close to dark now, the sun sinking in a red sky. The dying wind smelled of cold things from the north, of frozen lakes and ice fields and glaciers. Vaylo tasted old memories in his mouth, and the old desires rose with them. Looking into the blackness beyond the setting sun, he said, “Sometimes I wish I could just ride away, Dry. Head north and never come back.”
“Join the Maimed Men?”
Vaylo laughed. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing. I swear I thought of it a thousand times when I was a boy. To have the badlands and the entire Want as my ranging ground, to ride with storms against my back and the Gods Lights in my face and a hard frost beneath me.”
“And to lose two ears, three fingers, and a nose to the ’bite?”
It was true enough. The Maimed Men were an unhoused, unnamed clan who wandered the farthest reaches of the badlands. It was said that no man or woman among them was whole, that all had lost limbs or appendages to the frost. It was also said that the Maimed Men had come into being the year Morrow was wiped out by Dhoone and that many who rode their ranks could trace their ancestry back to the Lost Clan. Vaylo didn’t know the truth of it. As a child he had started north to join them a dozen times. He was a bastard, and his father wished he had never been born, and everyone knew the Maimed Men accepted traitors, exiles, and bastards.
Suddenly sober, Vaylo said, “We’ll ride at trot to Bannen.”
Two thousand men slowed to Drybone’s shouted order. Drybone himself moved back into the ranks; he was seldom comfortable riding at the head of a line.
Vaylo rode south and then west as the terrain demanded. The moon rose, half of it, and silver light ran upon the snow. Vaylo kept his mind in the now as he rode, determined not to think of another night similar to this one, of another ride upon the white.
The northeastern border of the Banhold was formed by a giant stand of black spruce, each tree as tall as thirty men. There were streams to be forded and ancient glacier tracks to circumvent and pale stone ruins where the horses feared to tread. As they neared the trap rock cliffs that protected the Banhouse, Vaylo sent six men forward as scouts.
Only one came back.
The man, a little red-haired bowman from Broddic, had taken a quarrel to the meat of his upper arm—clean through the stewed-leather munnion he was wearing. Vaylo called a halt, and all his sons and warlords and the warlords of his sworn clans gathered in a great circle around the bowman.
“They know we’re coming,” said the bowman, still atop his horse. “And there’s more than just Bannen.”
“Cawdo!” shouted the Dog Lord to the Bludd healer who was far back in the ranks. “Come forward and see to this man.” Then to the bowman. “Who else is present, and in what numbers?”
The bowman swallowed. His face was ghastly pale. “I saw Dhoonesmen . . . I’m not sure of their numbers. They were waiting below the cliff, quiet as the dead. What I saw had spears.” He grimaced as the healer bade him slide from the horse. “A Blackhail bowman—”
“Blackhail?” The words fell like ice from the Dog Lord’s mouth. A ripple of quiet, made up of held breaths and unmoving limbs, spread through the company of two thousand men. Suddenly it did not matter how the ambush had come into being, who among the Bludd-sworn clans had given word to Bannen. It mattered only that Hailsmen stood in the valley below.
Cawdo Salt pressed hard fingers into the bowman’s arm as he snapped the arrow shaft near the base. Wood broke with a sickening crack. The bowman swooned, but Cawdo held him firm. Vaylo could not take his eyes off the man’s blood, black and shiny in the moonlight.
“How many Hailsmen did you see?” he heard himself ask.
“Not many. Less than two hundred. Mostly it’s Bannen and Dhoone.”
Cawdo held a flask to the man’s lips and bade him drink.
Pushing away the flask, the bowman said, “They’ve taken the best positions at the neck of the valley, along the rise, behind the Banhouse. All high ground except the cliff is theirs. We’d have to ride through the bottleneck of the valley to reach them.”
The Dog Lord nodded. “Drink, man,” he murmured. Cawdo Salt had a silver-bladed knife in his hand, and Vaylo knew the healer was readying himself to cut out the arrowhead.
“We must turn back,” Drybone said in a strange voice. “We don’t know their numbers. They’re well entrenched in their positions, they know the ground, and they haven’t just come off a five-hour ride.”
“We strike now, bastard,” Pengo Bludd hissed. “There’s Hailsmen in that valley, and I for one don’t care whether they hold all the ground between here and the Night Sea. I’d ride through wild-fires and ice storms just to place my hammer into a single Hailish skull.”
Not one muscle in Cluff Drybannock’s face changed as Pengo spoke, yet Vaylo saw the anger in his eyes. He was probably the only one among two thousand who did.
“We can split up,” Thrago said, his hammerman’s chains rustling as he kicked his mount forward. “Take the cliff from two sides. Have the Broddic archers cover us as we go down.”
Pengo was quick to nod, one of his black braids falling loose from his helmet as he did so. “And we can send a troop of spearmen wide to attack the rear.”
“Aye,” agreed the HalfBludd warlord, “and post another west to flank them.”
“And hold two hundred pikesmen in reserve—”
“Enough!” roared the Dog Lord. “We will not split ourselves a dozen times over, like a leg of pork carved at table. We are Bludd and Bludd-sworn, and we are the Stone Gods’ chosen, and we will not ride like cravens to this or any other fight. Pengo. You will take a hundred men only and ride wide. Take up position a league south of the Banhouse, ready to cover a retreat if needed.”
Pengo glowered. “You said we would not ride like cravens. Yet you talk of retreat in the same breath.”
“It’s one thing to act bravely, another thing entirely to act like a fool. There is danger here. As Cluff Drybannock said, there is much unknown to us. I will not lead men into this battle without being
sure I have a way out.” As he spoke, Vaylo was aware of Drybone, sitting his horse at the far edge of the circle, watching him with Sull-blue eyes. I know you are right, Dry, he wanted to say. This is not a wise thing to do, but sometimes we must do things out of rage, not wisdom. If you were wholly clan, you would know that. But you are not, and I would have you no other way. Instead he said, “Dry, I want you and your swordsmen with me.”
Drybone nodded.
It would have to do. There was no time for anything more. While Cawdo Salt cut a cross into the Broddic bowman’s arm, turning the circular wound into something larger that could be more easily stitched, the Dog Lord and his warlords planned their strike. They settled on riding for an extra ten leagues and approaching the valley from the west, not the northeast as expected: Strike hard and fast and work their way south toward Pengo’s position.
A second silent strategy lay beneath the spoken one, and fifteen hundred Bluddsmen knew it: Kill every Hailsman in sight.
Vaylo led the main body west. The ground shook beneath the Bludd host, and the night wakened to their calls. Screams and terrible low bellows, Stone Gods named and named again, wolf howls, and desperate low keening thickened the air like smoke. Vaylo pulled his hammer from its sling and whirled it high above his head. Three stone of lead, limewood, and steel, yet it moved like a goddess in his hand. The bloodlust was upon him, and for the first time in eleven days and eleven nights, he allowed his mind to settle in the place where he kept his losses.
Seventeen grandchildren dead.
When he descended to the valley floor and the Dhoone host rose to meet him, he saw fear in their gray blue eyes. His hammer smashed into a iron-helmed skull, unhorsing the first foe that he met. Sword blades licked him like cold fire. All around, black spruces bent and rippled in the quickening wind. Torches circling the Banhouse burned red, but the half-moon stole their glory, turning the fields of snow blue. Vaylo smelled resin and sword metal and the stench of his own fear. Ahead he saw the Dhoone foreguard and the wing of spearmen that flanked them. The Bloody Blue Thistle had been raised above the black dome of the Banhouse, and the standard blew straight and true and to the south.