The Anvil of Ice (45 page)

Through the gloom moved the travelers, and it seemed to them that light leaf mold rustled beneath their feet, that the sounds of harsh voices and the clink of weapons and armory and even the sound of the sea faded into the small night noises of any woodland; that the smells of cooking, of blood, of death vanished among the many strong scents of trees. Not the sharp evergreens of Tapiau's forests, these, but the blossoming fruit trees that must till recently have flourished here. So perhaps they also were revenged upon their slayers, for the travelers slipped like ghosts themselves among the lines of picket and sentry, moved between the trenches and the fosses and the tents of dark hide. Kermorvan had noted each position of the enemy, each obstacle on their path; at any given moment, though he could not see far ahead, he knew what must lie there. When he was in any doubt Ils, to whom the dark was no greater than that of the duergar's delvings, could set them aright. But always as he turned and twisted the little bough Elof felt a light pattering on his hand, as a few more needles fell away.

So they passed through the lines of the enemy, and came at length to the wide breach in the wall, like the outline of a great blazing spearhead that had struck down into the stone, splintering, shattering, melting to nothing. The black-armored sentinels squatting there nodded and bowed their heads, dreamed perhaps of the dank chill forests of their harsh homeland, while their watchfire flickered and sank under the wood-shadow. Death hovered over them in those few seconds of passing gloom and they never knew it, nor paid any heed to the slight choking sound, half anguish, half fury, instantly stifled as Kermorvan caught rein of his temper. There were only a few faint scufflings among the rubble then, that might be rats climbing after carrion, and they too faded and were gone.

In the darkness the wall seemed to go on upward forever. Elof moved almost in a daze, hardly able to believe the clifflike heights he scaled were the work of men. The massive stone blocks he clambered over, as great almost as those of the Mastersmith's tower, must rather have been hewn and raised by the creatures, human and animal, who stood as carved pillars on the houses below. Very fair those houses had been in the days of their pride, but pitiless gleams of passing moonlight revealed them like hollow teeth, crownless now, jagged, blackened, empty windows agape or yet smoldering, pitiful as the skulls in the fields. Bodies lay unburied on the rubble at their bases, or found a grave of sorts beneath it, only a limb thrust grotesquely out, or simply a smear of blood across the paving, dust-gilded already and trampled in by many feet. It was a mixture of wonder and horror too rich for the smith, too much the nightmare of his youth writ grotesquely large; he wrapped the darkness he carried tight around himself, to see no more than he must. Kermorvan clambered on, thin-lipped, without looking back. Only Us seemed little impressed with the city of the carnage, except to shake her head wonderingly at the foolish strife among men.

When they reached the top of the wall, clambering over the rubble of the blasted parapet, she stopped and shivered. "I feel very high up here. And out in the open. Is that shadow-thing of yours fading?"

Elof looked around, and nodded. "It has lost many needles, amid too much stone."

"Then save it!" said Kermorvan. "Do you bestow it safely, for we may need its last powers yet. Up here behind the battlements we should be able to pass without it, if only we tread silently."

They moved then like sentinel spirits above the shattered streets, agleam with Ekwesh watchfires. The battlements were broken in many places by catapult shot, and the flagstones of the parapet cracked; here and there the wallhead had fallen away, leaving gaps they had to jump across. Many of the defenders who had fallen on the ramparts yet lay there, in places so thick it was hard to step among them, white faces and wide eyes yet staring up at the travelers as they passed. To Elof they seemed to be asking why he had come so late, and from Kermorvan's expression he felt much the same. It seemed like a century, though it cannot have been more than an hour, before they reached the southern flank of the outer wall, and found their path blocked.

Here, as in other places where outer wall drew close to inner, a short bridge had been built between them, defended at either end by a high gatehouse, turreted and galleried, straddling the parapet in front of them. Tall gates of iron, blank and featureless, barred the way along the wall. Elof looked hard at them, wondering about their weak spots, but knew he could not break them silently enough to avoid an alarm.

"Tread softly here!" whispered Kermorvan. "For we do not know who holds this part of the outer wall, and dare not simply knock. I have no wish to be quilled through by my own folk, if they are too hasty to challenge before shooting. We must see them first. So I rely on your eyes, Ils!"

She peered into the deep shadow beneath the turret. "I see nobody on the gallery at this side, nor on the bridge, nor at the windows. If there are sentries, they must be watching the outward side. But how can you hope to get past?"

"Climb across to the bridge, of course," said Kermorvan, and padded forward, unwinding a rope from his pack, while the others gaped in disbelief. "And from thence to the far rampart. The outward side of the tower is featureless to discourage grapnels, but on the inward side there is guttering. I will go first, and hold you, if the rope will reach." With long swift fingers he knotted it round his waist and sprang swiftly up onto the top of the battlements, crouching so as not to be seen against the sky. When he reached the guttering he straightened up swiftly and inched his way out spiderwise, long limbs outstretched, face flat to the stone. The others heard his taut whisper. "The rope… too short! Follow as best you can—Ils, then you, Elof!" Ils swallowed audibly, but managed to clamber up with Elof s help. He heaved himself after her, steadfastly refusing to look down, but when he reached the corner of the gatehouse he found her frozen in the way, her face leaden in the moonlight. "Be bold!" he whispered. "Your mountainsides are higher, delvings deeper!" But not so open, he guessed, nor without a single handhold, and he felt his own palms go moist at the thought.

"
Kerys
!" hissed Kermorvan. "Come on, you fools!" Elof swallowed, detached an arm from the rope and caught Us round the waist to steady her. With that encouragement she began to shuffle forward again, a little unsteadily, but gaining ground as she went. Elof saw that her eyes were tight shut. He inched along after her, sword slapping awkwardly at his legs, wondering if he really could hold her; short of stature she was, but solid. But at last there was Kermorvan, balanced on a waterspout, reaching down to help her over the rim of the battlements onto the parapet behind. In helping her up Elof staggered and for one nightmare moment looked down into the shadowed pit of rooftops beneath. Then Kermorvan's hand reached out to him also, and he was tumbling over the ramparts onto the grimy stone.

They lay there a moment in the deep shadow of the gatehouse, in a gasping heap, catching their breath, savoring a sudden release from tension. Then Kermorvan chivvied them afoot in fierce whispers, and turned to climb the far side of the bridge. But just as Elof scrambled up, the swordsman spoke in his ear. "Hsst! What's that?"

They stared. In the shadows at the far end of the bridge something glinted, shifted, shimmered, became clearer. A tall figure took shape, clad in bright mail covered by a dark surcoat. He was busy removing his helm, like a weary sentry coming off watch. He looked up, started violently and swept out a great sword. Kermorvan made no move to draw, but stood calmly watching. The armed man hesitated.

"Who goes?" he demanded. His speech was like Ker-morvan's but gruffer and less precise. "Speak, or I'll—"

"Has the moon gone to your head, then, that you do not know me, Bryhon?" demanded Kermorvan in return.

The newcomer stopped dead, stiffening with evident amazement. The moonlight shone clearly on his face now, and Elof all but choked. He was very tall, taller even than Kermorvan and more broadly built, certainly older. His hair was jet black, long and waving glossily around his neck, though only a few strands straggled across the top of his pink scalp; his beard was equally thick and glossy, with the same stiff wave in it, the eyes heavy-lidded and still, the nose long, straight but slightly bulbous. It was a well-made face in its way, but to Elof, for a moment, it seemed very terrible. There was no fine resemblance, but the overall likeness of cast and coloring was so strong that, just for a minute, he had mistaken the man called Bryhon for the Mastersmith.

Bryhon took one jerky step forward. "You!" he barked, and his sword flashed up. Within the inner gate there was a soft clatter of arms, a scuffle of heavy boots and four mailed men came spilling out onto the bridge, looking from him to the newcomers with cold, alarmed eyes. Three had short bows drawn ready in their hands, the fourth an arbalest, and their surcoats bore the same claw device as Bryhon's. The dark man cocked a shaggy head at the travelers. "Do you look at this, then, lads, and believe it if you will! My lord Kermorvan, come swarming up walls in the watches of the night!"

"Kermorvan?" croaked one of the men, and gaped. Kermorvan, who had made no move to draw his own blade, inclined his head slightly, as if acknowledging a salute.

"Now why do you suppose he was doing such a thing?" said Bryhon icily. "And at such a time? He might, of course, be risking breaking his banishment—"

"I was never banished, Bryhon," said Kermorvan evenly. "You cannot banish a man in his absence."

"Which is why you left so abruptly," smiled Bryhon. "How do you know the law has not been altered?"

"Because the people are not yet so foolish, Bryhon."

Bryhon shrugged. "I'll not bandy follies with you. In all but name you were banished, and the last we heard you'd fallen in with just such a pack of sea raiders as we find baying at our gates the now." He shook his head grimly. "And only this day were all the syndics wondering how a crew of savages could plumb our defenses so well. Now we know, I fear."

Kermorvan's whole face seemed to narrow, eyes and nostrils pinched tight with fury, and yet he still laid no hand to his sword, and spoke coldly. "At another hour you might regret that, Bryhon. But it was forgetting all old wrongs and enmities I came back, bringing a great help in our need—"

"An army, then? And did you lose it along the way? I see nothing about you but a pair of thralls as ragged as yourself—"

"I am no thrall!" growled Elof, straining to copy the swordsman's measured coldness. "My name is Elof, I am a journeyman smith out of the Northlands. And this is the lady Ils of the duergar. We serve no man save as friends!"

"How fortunate a man of his high station," said Bry-hon, without once appearing to notice Elof, "to count as his friends vagrant blacksmiths and vermin." He shook his head and smiled as in quiet satisfaction; good humor smoothed his voice. "No, my lord. Even if all you said was true, still we could not have you coming back at such
a
time, sowing discord
among the
weak-willed and undermining the authority of the syndics. In the people's interest, it cannot be tolerated—"

"You invoke the people so readily, Bryhon," said Ker-morvan, his voice still calm but taut beneath, as if he could barely believe what he heard. "Why not ask them?"

The dark man shook his head again, and there was now no mistaking the cool gloating in his tone. "Alas indeed, that we will not be able to do! But you might confuse enough of them, to begin with. Even the rumor of your coming would split the city in strife. Better that they hear no more of you, or blame the Ekwesh if you are found—"

Kermorvan's sword hissed from its scabbard, and Elof s came snarling in its wake; Ils hefted her axe for a cast. But the bows were already leveled, the distance too wide. Elof knew that however fast Kermorvan was, he could not outrun an arbalest bolt. Bitterness welled up in him as he tensed for the last useless spring. To have come this far, this hard, to lose all to some infantile squabble…

"Halt!"

The voice that echoed along the parapet had none of Bryhon's suavity, but it was commanding enough to match him. "Halt there! Put up those bows! First man looses is cannibal meat! What in all the pits of Hella's afoot here?"

Bryhon turned on the burly figure in mail and helm who came stumping round the gallery of the gatehouse above, then looked warily as the inner gates opened upon a cluster of men armored alike. "Who are you, to countermand my orders? Do you not know who I am?"

"Aye, syndic, I do," said the newcomer firmly. "Just a citizen like anyone else, as you're always telling us. Not even in command of this quarter. As to who I am, I'm a sergeant of the Guard. Mind telling me what you and your followers are doing up here at this hour? Not had enough fighting today that you must be about the ramparts all hours of the night?"

"As well that I was, with you guardsmen asleep!" said Bryhon venomously. "I caught these traitors sneaking up here—"

"Aye, so I saw, sir.
And
being a guard, like, and all wide-awake. Seemed a mite hasty,
if
you'll pardon me, sir…"

"Look you here, sergeant, we are besieged, we cannot waste time on trials! These creatures are our enemies—"

The sergeant shook his head. "Can't agree with you there, sir. See, it's like this—the long one and the plump lass I can't avouch, but there's one I know is no friend of the Ekwesh, 'cause he's a good mate of mine—eh, Alv?" And he turned to Elof and pulled off his helmet, spilling out a shaggy mass of red hair, a hot red face beneath. "Or what was it I heard you called yourself now?
Ey-lof?"