The Anvil of Ice (14 page)

Roc's angry outburst died on his lips. A hundred feet or so below him stood a tall boulder, just where the road across the pass flanked a steep drop. The moon had fallen below the mountains now, but snowglimmer and the lightening sky were enough to show him the shape that lurked in its shadow. A human shape, its face hidden from him— but not its dark robes, and he knew them at once. "Our late beloved master!" he whispered. "May he wait there for us till he freezes!"

He made to get up, but Alv pulled him down. "Not for us! Or he would be waiting on the other side of the boulder—
hsst
!"

Roc's eyes widened, and he flattened himself down in the snow. Further along the slope, just below the level of the ledge, a shadowy group of figures had appeared round the side of the mountain, marching surefootedly down the steep snowbank toward the road. Alv caught his breath. They were unmistakably the same strange shapes the Mastersmith had dealt with before, whom he had taken for mountain spirits or something of the kind. But as they passed below him they sounded all too solid, with a crisp crunch of boots in the snow. He heard their voices, too, speaking a tongue he did not recognize, gruff and peculiar but not in any way sinister. There was even a brief burst of laughter, silenced by a sharp word from the head of the column. There might have been thirty or forty of them, and from the tall shafts many of them shouldered, and the subdued metal jangle of their gear, Alv judged them to be a party of warriors. They came to the road, and their boots rattled and clattered on the ancient stones as they headed up the pass, and the first dawn glimmer filled the sky.

Then Alv and Roc realized who it must be that the Mastersmith awaited. A kind of sick apprehension grew on Alv as he saw the Mastersmith step out from behind the rock into their path, though they were still some hundred paces away. He spoke, and then the leader of the column-quiet voices, but angry words, that was clear. Then Alv saw the Mastersmith snatch something from his shoulder and cast aside its wrapping, and the Iceglow gleamed on the strange blade he himself had completed only five or six hours since.

For an instant Alv's mind writhed in torments as twisted as the substance of the sword. His skills, his learning, his very life he owed to the man who waited below, though he had long since lost any illusions about why they were given. He had seemed useful, that was all. But whatever his motives, it was the Mastersmith who had first treated him with any human decency. A metal once alloyed is not so easily made pure; a great debt there remained. And these nightshapes, what did he owe them? They were many against one, and well armed, against an untried weapon of a different kind. But something deeper in him, some clearer sight, saw differently. Everything about the smith seemed colored with a treachery blacker than the shadow he lurked in, a menace darker by far than the bluff and open manner of the warriors. Rightly or wrongly, Alv could bear it no longer. Before Roc could catch him, he sprang up, cupped his hands and yelled. His voice rang between the mountainsides. "
NO! Get you back, get away! The blade has a power—"

The little knot of figures scattered in the instant the blade was leveled at them, bounding up the mountainside with the speed of squirrels. Only the leader and three or four others failed to run in time, or perhaps stood their ground regardless. Nothing visible happened, but something seemed to pass across them with the force of a blow; they crumpled before it, staggered and howled as if in agony or madness. The leader tottered to one side, clutching at his head, and stepped straight out over the side of the road. Another ran wildly in a circle, slipped and went skidding out after him. The others tumbled threshing into the snow, heaved and lay still. And in the next second the blade swung up toward Alv and Roc.

Panic descended on them both like a cloud, and they turned and fled wildly up the mountainside. They ran and ran, slithering and tumbling in the snow, barging blindly into rocks and into each other, hardly seeing. It was accident only, perhaps, that they ran in the same direction and passed behind a tall outcrop of the cliff, into deep shadow.

Without warning hard hands grabbed them and forced them struggling to the ground. With all their strength they could not break free, nor could they reach their swords. A lantern flickered, and a burst of yellow light shone in their eyes. Alv stared at the ring of faces that bent over his—strange faces, all with the same cast, broad and coarse-featured with heavy brows; some were grim and gnarly, some round and wrinkled like a winter apple, and one alone was smooth-skinned, snub-nosed—a girl's face, grinning. Then the light vanished, and the strong hands scooped them up in the air, bouncing them along to the crash and crunch of boots in snow. Alv, too confused to struggle, felt the icy air flow past him at an incredible rate, and realized he was being carried up the slope toward the mountain crest. But all of a sudden the air became warmer and the echo louder, and the shadow around him as deep as midnight- For what seemed like hours he was bumped and bounced along, and the only recognizable thing he heard over the grind of boots was an occasional strangled protest from Roc. Then, equally abruptly, he was pitched forward on his face. Something hard struck him in the small of his back as he tried to get up, and then the mountain seemed to collapse onto his legs. But as it struggled away he realized it was Roc. He sat up, and the light flicked on again in front of him. There was the girl's face, grinning impishly, and a hand waving. With a final roguish waggle of her eyebrows she receded into shadow, and the light went out. From some distance away they heard, or more truly felt, a soft heavy impact, and then nothing.

Alv could do nothing but sit there and stare stupidly into the darkness. It had all happened too quickly. After a moment he felt the wind on his face, and realized he was out of doors—still, or again? But it had been on the edge of dawn when they seized him, and here it was dark. He turned and looked around, and saw the peak of a mountain silhouetted against grayish clouds, and others to left and right. But in front of him there were none.

"We're on the other side of the peaks," he said won-deringly. "And further down. The sun's not reached here yet."

"Don't be daft!" gurgled Roc, sitting up next to him. "You know that'd be a long day's climb from the house— a week by the forest roads!"

"Be still, then," said Alv softly, "and see. For dawn is upon us."

And before long the clouds above were turning to white, the sky to gray and then blue, bright blue, and in the clear air the land spread out before them. They sat at the high head of a mountain valley, on barren rock among the last thin shreds of snow. But not far below them green growth circled a little lake, and below it another, and another, all the way down the valley like a giant's stair, until at last all they saw was a glimmer of blue water between the burgeoning trees.

"We're away," whispered Rock, in utter awe. "We're only a morning's march from the lowlands, we've a head start.
We're safe
!"

"Yes," said Alv. "We're safe." And he bowed his head upon his knee.

Chapter Four
- The Smith of the Saltmarshes

So began his first great wanderings, in a lifetime filled with them. Terrible enough he was to find them, for he had lived all his life enclosed in small spaces, first in little Asenby, where he found no happiness, and then in the Mastersmith's house, where he believed that he had. His flight had been all in panic, driven by starkest need, thinking only of what he was escaping, the memory of what he had seen that moment in his master's eyes; he had not stopped to consider all that he was leaving behind. Only later, that night and through the harsh days that followed, did the true sense of what he had lost settle upon him—his past security, his promised future. At the first he was glad enough of his freedom, and went with a light heart for all the grief and guilt that haunted him, and the fear of pursuit.

To avoid it, that first day, they walked down the valley to the south and out into the woodlands beyond, stopping seldom, eating as they walked, saying little. They halted at last only when darkness forced it; the moon had long since risen, but shed little light through the trees. They made camp among thorny bushes under a high cedar tree; Roc thought to build a fire, but Alv would not let him. "Have it your own way," grunted Roc, cramming his mouth with dried meat. "Our cloaks'll keep us warm enough, but there'd better be no hungry beasts about. Beardogs, bears, the odd daggertooth—"

"Better a beast than a searching eye. And we have our swords, and the bushes are some shield. Anyway, I will sit watch for what remains of the dark. I have no taste for sleep."

"Better find one, then. We've a long way to go before we come among men again." Roc laughed. "Makes you a real journeyman now, and all!"

"Don't mock me! "

"Ach, I only meant you'd let yourself in for a bitch of a journey—"

"I know what you meant. It was still a mockery. I wanted it so much—but I had to have the journeyman's stamp, and now I have not, and that, that loses me… more than you know."

"Can't you just fake the stamp? Damn, I wish I'd thought, I'd have taken Ingar's. He won't be needing it now!"

"Do you imagine I could ever have worn
that
? And no, I could not counterfeit a convincing stamp, for I do not know the mysteries that go with it. Any real journeyman could unmask me."

"Aye, I see. And the penalty for impersonating a guildsman—it varies, I hear. They don't always chop your hands off."

"No. It makes you worthless as a thrall."

"Well, well, we'll try something else. I'll settle for some sleep for now. Do you the same."

"I'll try, in a while. And Roc…"

"Mmnh?"

"Thank you."

"Hmmph. You'll have plenty of chances. Won't let it slip your mind. G'night!"

Alv sat awake, listening to the night sounds of the wood, the scuttle and slither of small creatures among the damp leaves, the thump and rustle of larger bodies, the eerie cries of the hunters on the ground and in the air that silenced all else and made his own breath sound deafening. In truth, sleep weighed down on him, but he was afraid of surrendering to it, of releasing the tight rein on his thoughts. Always a vengeful shadow hovered beside them, awaiting its chance, and he shrank away from confronting it. But very soon weariness overtook him, his head dropped on his chest, and he was sinking down, down into dark dreams of noise and fire and squalor, hatching a snake that turned to strike at his heart. Then he was digging frantically into a vast mound of papers, trying to find someone lost beneath, coming upon a slender arm ringed with gold, but when he clutched at the shoulder it sank inward under his fingers like rotten wood, with a soft popping rustle-He sat up, hearing his own whimper, and found himself staring at a wide shadow with glimmering eyes and pointed quivering ears. It tensed rigid as he snatched up his sword, whirled and bounded away back through the bushes with the selfsame rustle. He stared around, shaken and shivering— some beast, more curious than hungry. He had slept most of the dark away, and dawn was graying the sky. What would the new light bring him? Release? Hope? He grimaced. Could he face her now, even if he found her? He turned stiffly onto his side, pillowed his head on his arm and slept on uneasily.

For most of a week they walked through the woodlands, down trails made by animals, not men. Early one cold morning they came upon the makers, a great herd of wis-ants feeding among the trees. Their breath steamed around their shaggy heads as they chewed cud and belched thunderously, and their deep rumbling lows echoed as they tossed their horns at the newcomers. Alv, used to the even larger white cattle, simply skirted the herd, avoiding bulls and young calves; Roc sidled nervously from tree to tree. "They're not so dangerous," Alv told him. "They say there are far bigger beasts than those in the Great Forest across the mountains—"

"Then spare me the trip!" Roc hissed, looking nervously back up the trail.

"You never know," Alv said drily. "If we don't find ourselves somewhere to work soon—"

"There'll be plenty of towns needing a good smithying team like us. Stands to reason!"

"Does it?" said Alv, and strode on without waiting for an answer.

His misgivings were to prove true. The trees grew thin and sparse, and they left the woodlands at long last, coming to many places of men under the roots of the mountains. They had little real idea of where they were, or where they were going, for the Mastersmith had taught Alv much about what lay under the land, but little of what lay above it, and there were few maps in his library. From the sun and the look of the land, Roc reckoned that they were now almost level with Harthaby, but they avoided it for fear of the Mastersmith's connections, and stayed among the inland villages. The first of these lay among open, wind-scoured moorland, one step from the tundra that lay ahead of the Ice in the heart of the land, where there was no mountain barrier. Sheep grazed among the flinty rocks, with shepherds to watch them; they were polite to the well-dressed travelers, but quick to point but that their own villages had each its proper smith, seldom a full guildsman but adept enough for them. They could often find a bed for the night at such a smithy, but no proper berth, and they had to suffer many embarrassing questions about where they came from and what they were doing. Roc represented them as followers of a master who had died suddenly before he could set Alv his prentice pieces; that won them much sympathy, but no more help, and they were obliged to move on. Journeying ever southward along the smaller roads, often no better than hill tracks, they came to towns, farming centers of a size with the one Alv had grown up in, and found all of them, too, had smiths enough. These were usually older journeymen with no chance or ambition to become masters, content to work out their days with thrall assistants or locally born apprentices whom they would send to masters elsewhere to finish their training; they sought no stranger apprentices, however skilled. Masters there were in some of the towns nearest to the High roads, but chiefly less able ones such as Hervar had been. Almost every man, though, looked askance at Alv the moment he entered their door, and when in the town of Rasby one at last consented to give him a trial, a terrible thing was revealed.