Days of Blood and Fire

by Katharine Kerr

  4

  VIA

  A figure most mixed in its influences, injurious to those figures it does fall between upon the map, but good in all manner of journeys and most beneficent indeed in the Land of Gold. Yet if it fall into the Land of Silver, it bodes great evil in matters of Love,.

  The Omenbook of Gwarn, Loremaster

  WHEN RHODRY AND THE three dwarves finally left Cengarn, closer to noon than dawn, they headed northeast on a narrow dirt road that climbed and twisted its way round sheep pastures and coppiced woods. It took climbing only two of those hills for Rhodry to start wondering if he could endure this journey. Although he was more than used to wearing mail and carrying its particular pattern of weight, he’d never hauled a pack on his back before. Garin had fitted a sheep’s skin across his shoulders before loading him up, but even so, the wood and canvas chafed, dug, and shifted position constantly. Since he was carrying Dar’s bow, he couldn’t hook his hands in the pack straps to steady the load as the dwarves were doing. Under the hot sheepskin he began to sweat, which made the chafing worse.

  The real problem, though, was the walking. Rhodry had started learning to ride when he was three years old, on a little Eldidd pony, and from then on the major part of his waking life had been spent on horseback. His warrior’s code, in fact, labeled walking as something fit only for peasants and other such inferior beings. By the time he’d grown into manhood, his legs had grown into the shape of a horse’s barrel

  Now the uphill walk made his turned-out knees ache first, but his hips soon followed, especially when the pack began to rest heavy on his kidneys. While the dwarves strode on ahead with their short but straight and sturdy legs, he waddled after them, blistering his feet on the road and his back muscles on the pack as he fell farther and farther behind. Finally, when the dwarves were halfway up the third hill and Rhodry was just starting it, Garin called a halt. The dwarf waited until Rhodry staggered up to them before speaking.

  “This won’t do, Otho. It’s unjust to expect our silver dagger to learn the ways of the road all at once, like. When we stop at the farm to pick up the supplies you bought, we’ll have to bargain for a mule as well, to carry his pack and the extra food and suchlike. You can always sell it later on, when he’s used to trekking and ready to try the pack again.”

  Otho made a sputtering noise, but Mic nodded, agreeing with the leader. Rhodry felt like kneeling at Garin’s feet and singing his praise like a bard.

  “How much farther to this farm?” he said instead. “I don’t mind admitting that this mile or two’s been a humbling experience.”

  “Then it was worth somewhat, eh?” Otho said with a grin. “Not far now, lad. Just keep putting one tender elven foot in front of the other, and you’ll get there, sure enough.”

  Rhodry said nothing, but the silence cost him.

  Fortunately the farm turned out to be reasonably close by. While Otho haggled for the mule, Rhodry sat down in the muck and swarming flies with his back against the cow barn and fell straight asleep. The sun was a fair bit lower when Mic shook him awake.

  “Time to get on the road again,” the young dwarf said.“We’ve finally got the mule loaded up the way Uncle Otho likes.”

  Walking without a fifty-weight of gear and pack turned out to be a good bit easier, but even so, every muscle in Rhodry’s legs ached by the time they were among the wild hills. He was honestly taken aback by how thoroughly his body had shaped itself to ride horses, by how unfit he was to travel any distance on his own two feet. The surprise turned him stubborn, and he forced himself onward, refusing to ask for a rest even when Garin glanced his way as if offering him the chance. As the road dwindled to a goat track, the pace slowed anyway, because they had to pick their way through rocks and brambles. When they paused to rest, Garin cut Rhodry’s old sheepskin into strips and tied them round the mule’s pasterns.

  “This wretched mule is going to make it hard to travel at night,” Otho growled. “I wish we’d never acquired the thing.”

  “Hold your tongue,” Garin said. “Killing the man you’re trying to repay is no way to settle a debt, and that’s that.”

  Otho snorted once, then devoted himself to his bread and cheese. Rhodry wondered all over again where Garin’s obvious authority had its roots; he’d never heard of the Mountain People having gwerbrets and lords, but there was no doubt that Garin expected to be obeyed tike one. About average height for a dwarf, broad in the shoulders, narrow in the hips, with the dark, full growth of beard so prized by the men of his people, he stood with authority as well as spoke with it.

  When they started off again, in the fading twilight, Garin took over leading the mule. By walking a bit ahead of it and kicking the bigger rocks and obstacles out of its way, he managed to keep them all moving for some hours after dark, but they were traveling much slower than any of the dwarves liked. When they made their camp, in a little valley between two hills, Garin and Otho walked a ways away from the others and stood squabbling in their own language for a long time.

  “They’re arguing about whether it’s safe to travel during the day,” Mic said. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. One thing, though. It’ll be a fair bit easier to use this bow I’ve been carrying in the daylight. I can’t see as far or as finely in the dark.”

  Mic trotted off to add this piece of information to the argument among the rocks. Rhodry unstrapped the baldric, placed the bow and the quiver beside his blankets, and sat down next to them to untie the bindings and pull off his boots. Garin had stressed the importance of airing out one’s boots and keeping one’s feet dry on these long marches. After he was done, Rhodry lay down, planning on a mere moment’s rest, but he fell asleep, too tired even to eat. He did wake once, when the dwarves began tramping round the camp and spreading out their own blankets, but drifted off again straightaway. Yet in his dreams he felt eyes watching him, dragon eyes, human eyes, and he kept hearing a peculiar screech or cry that came from too great a distance for him to identify it. From one particular dream of a ruined city he woke just after dawn and found himself in a cold sweat.

  All round him the dwarves were rolled up and snoring in their blankets. The mule, tethered out in a grassy spot, stood head down and drowsy. The sheltering trees round about rustled as the wind picked up, cool and welcome in what promised to be a hot bright day. Rhodry sat up, laying an automatic hand on the bow. Although he was wide awake, he could still sense the eyes from his dream. Or rather, he could sense one pair. Over the past week or so, he’d come to realize that there were two dream watchers. The dragon eyes considered him with curiosity, certainly,but it seemed an indifferent, utterly neutral gaze. The human eyes carried malice. It was malice he was feeling now.

  He threw back the blankets to sit up and look round— no one there, and he realized that he’d never truly expected to see anyone, either. All at once the mule tossed up its head and snorted, turning on its rope to sniff into the wind. Rhodry grabbed the bow and strung it, looping the bowstring into the notch at one end, hooking that end under his outstretched foot, and pulling back against the brace of his own leg to shape the bow as he finished stringing it. That done, he stood, nocking an arrow and taking a few steps away from his bedroll. Slowly he turned round in a circle, looking everywhere for signs of a hidden enemy. He saw nothing, but the mule snorted again, dancing a little.

  This time, when Rhodry looked among the trees he saw a figure watching him — At first he thought it a shepherd, because it wore tattered brigga and a rough shirt, all greasy and torn, but then it stepped out into the sunlight. Although the face was recognizably human, its body perched on a pair of legs as long and skinny as a stork’s, its back bowed out, and its arms hung tiny from its sides. Its head rose long and narrow from a skinny neck, so that the warty, wattled face seemed to float in front of the rest of it.

  “What do you want?” Rhodry hissed.

  Its eyes glittered bright, and it grinned, exposing long yellow fangs of teeth. There
was malice a-plenty in that smile, a twisted urge to rend and tear, perhaps, just for the joy of the bite. Rhodry swept up the bow and loosed. The bowstring sang; the arrow hissed and flew directly through the creature to rattle onto the rocky ground. Yet even though the arrow did no visible harm, the creature shrieked in agony as the steel-tipped shaft pierced it.

  “Stay away, then,” Rhodry snapped. “Be gone!”

  It bared its fangs in a snarl and disappeared. For a moment the snarl seemed to hover on the air like a greasy stain,then hurried after the rest of it. Rhodry shuddered convulsively, then carefully, one step at a time, walked over to retrieve his arrow. When he knelt down he examined the ground round about, but he saw no footsteps in the dust.

  He walked back to the camp to find the dwarves awake, throwing back blankets and scrambling up.

  “What was that thing?” Mic burst out. “I’ve never seen one of the Wildfolk like that before. It was so big.”

  “Well, I doubt me if it was one of the Wildfolk.” Rhodry hesitated, wondering how to explain. “But it wasn’t really there, either. My arrow sailed right through it.”

  “We saw that.”

  The others waited, looking at him expectantly.

  “I told you about Alshandra, didn’t I?” Rhodry said. “Pd guess it was one of her people.”

  “What do they want with you?” Garin said.

  “Cursed if I know.”

  “We might all be cursed,” Otho broke in, “if we can’t figure it out.”

  All at once Rhodry felt dishonorable. For all his squabbling with Otho, he’d known the old man practically all his life, and he honestly liked his kinsfolk.

  “Why don’t you all turn back?” Rhodry said. “Garin, tell me how to get to this Haen Marn place, and I’ll try to find it on my own. This whole thing’s just gotten a good bit more dangerous, and I feel like a shamed man for dragging you into it.”

  “Hold your tongue, you stupid elf!” Otho snapped. “Don’t go dousing the wound with vinegar. You could have thought of that before we drove a bargain.”

  Rhodry stared, utterly uncomprehending.

  “Otho, one of these days I’m going to sew your lips shut, and life will turn much sweeter,” Garin said. “Rhodry, listen. You saved Otho’s life. We promised that in return we’d find you this wyrm. There’s an end to it. We have a debt bond between us.”

  “Well, what if I release you from the debt?”

  “There is no release. A debt is a debt until it’s paid.”

  All at once Otho got up and strode off, muttering something incomprehensible. When Garin and Mic exchanged significant glances, Rhodry remembered the story of their kinsman’s exile.

  “Well, you have my thanks from the bottom of my heart,” Rhodry said.

  Garin smiled briefly, then turned to Mic.

  “Get some food for all of us, will you? We’ve got a lot to do before we get on the road today.”

  Rhodry decided that indeed there was nothing more to say and went to lead the mule to water.

  Over the next few days’ worth of traveling, the land rose higher and higher in broken hills, gashed by steep ravines and white-water creeks. Through the thin soil huge black boulders pushed like knuckles on a fist. In narrow valleys they found farmsteads, round thatched houses and barns barricaded inside earthworks, where dogs rushed to throw themselves against the gates and bark savagely as they passed. Now and again they saw a farmer or his wife, too, standing guard with flail or cudgel clasped in work-gnarled hands while these strangers walked on by. Grazing in what grass there was they saw goats, never cows, rarely sheep, and each flock was guarded by two and three boys, never a single lad alone, and a pack of dogs.

  Late on the second day they passed an entire fortified village, some twelve buildings surrounded by stone walls laced with timber. Brown and white goats grazed on the tops of the walls, which were covered with sod. At the gates stood armed guards, two young men dressed in the omnipresent coarse brown cloth of this part of the world. One carried a sword, the other a dwarven-style battle-ax, with a long shaft and deep-bitten curved blade. As the dwarven party passed by, the pair went tense, ready to sound an alarm, no doubt, at the least sign of trouble.

  “Did these people pay fealty to Lord Matyc?” Rhodry asked.

  “Hah!” Garin snorted. “I doubt me if they know he existed. You find people like this all along the Deverry border, a tough lot they are, hating lords and foreigners alike. My people do a little trading with them, now and again, but they don’t have much we want, and they don’t much like us, either.”

  It was then that Rhodry realized they’d crossed the border between his native kingdom and the dwarven lands. Even though he’d known better in his mind, in his heart he’d always assumed that Deverry went on and on, right to the edge of the world, perhaps. He looked round at the glowering hills, dark with twisted pines, gashed with tumbles of rock down ravines, and realized that indeed this was a foreign land.

  “But you know, that village, from what I can see of it, anyway, looks like a Deverry village, or more like a dun, with that big broch in the middle and all.”

  “Well, these border folk, they came from Deverry, after those wars you had over the true king and all that,” Garin said. “They were on the losing side, I think.”

  “They were,” Otho chimed in. “After Maryn took the throne, a lot of the Cantrae lords fled to what you people call Cerrgonney, and when Maryn’s grandson—I think he was a grandson? Well, one of Maryn’s descendants, anyway, but eventually he followed them to Cerrgonney to impose his peace, and some of them, the most stubborn ones, like, fled here.”

  By then they were climbing a hill just beyond the village, and Rhodry paused for a look back. He could see clearly from this height into the compound, a thing of mud and pigs, small children running round half-naked among the chickens, wood houses with mangy thatch clustering round a broch built of piled stones caulked with mud. Yet flying from the broch was a crude pennant, whipping this way and that in the wind. Finally he got a look at it—a boar device.

  “The final end of the enemies of the king,” Otho said with obvious relish. “Stinking whoreson bastards.”

  “You sound like you remember them,” Rhodry said.

  “I do. I was a young man then and just come into your country.” Otho seemed to be about to say more, but he let his voice trail off and looked away. “Well, no use in standing round here, flapping our lips. Let’s get on our way.”

  The longer they traveled, the more Rhodry grew inured to hiking in rough country, but still he tired early, stumbling along after the dwarves on blistered feet by the end of the day. Their route kept climbing, higher and higher toward the white mountains, which grew larger at the edge of the view. Finally, too, their luck with the weather broke, and it rained. Late one afternoon a storm came blowing up so fast that he first thought it dweomer, but the dwarves explained that the mountains spawned fast storms.

  “It’ll blow over soon enough, too,” Garin said. “But we’ll make an early camp.”

  Although tents were too heavy and bulky a luxury to bring on a journey like this, the dwarves did have lengths of coarse-woven linen canvas, smeared heavily with grease from sheep’s wool, that could be laced together and pegged out as a lean-to of sorts. Just as the clouds were piling black and swollen overhead, they found a rise of boulders with a couple of scraggly, twisted pines growing among them where they could sling their canvas and weight the edges with loose stones against the gathering wind. In among the boulders was a narrow space where they could cross-tether the mule as well, and give the poor beast a bit of shelter. Nearby a river, narrow but cut deep, threaded its way between rocks.“Going to be dark, and it’s going to be noisy,” Garin announced. “What if that storklike creature comes snooping round? Or somewhat worse? I say we stand watches, lads.”

  Even Otho had to agree to that. Just as the first drops of rain began falling, in a round of broken twigs for want of straws Rhodry drew the longest an
d the last watch with it. Huddled under the scant shelter, they all spent a cramped and miserable night of it, but Rhodry managed to sleep, no doubt more than the others, simply because he was so tired. Even so, he was glad when Mic wakened him for his turn on guard. It was a chance to stretch and to get away from the smell of other people’s damp bodies and clothes, to say nothing of the rancid lanolin of sheep long gone.

  Although the rain had stopped by then, the air was cold, and he was shivering as he picked his way down to the stream over the wet and uncertain footing. Since he was thirsty, he squatted down, fumbling for the tin cup tied to his belt. From behind him he heard a sound that might have been a footfall. Sheer warrior’s instinct brought him to his feet and spun him round just in time to see a gray shape rushing for him. As his hand went for the bronze knife at his belt, the thing stopped and hovered some ten feet away. It was roughly man-shaped, but its head was a lumpish affair with no features that he could pick out, elven sight or no. When Rhodry drew the bronze knife and flourished it, the creature snarled like a wolf and disappeared. Well, fancy that, Rhodry thought. Someone just tried to drown me. Behind him the river raced fast and swollen, with the occasional gleam of foam or bubbles in the broken light. He decided that his thirst could wait till the others woke.

  Garin was first up, squirming out of the shelter just as a pale streak of silver in the east announced the rising sun. When Rhodry told him of the attack he considered for a long moment, running his hand through his beard.

  “Well, now, I don’t know what to do,” he said at last. “So they fear that bronze knife of yours, do they?”