The Hammer of the Sun (64 page)

Kermorvan nodded. "I fear you are right. She will scorn to answer us if we seek to talk with her now; each moment may be a gain to her, any one might be critical. I will not deny Louhi a chance of terms - if only for Kara's sake; but first we must make her feel the power you have given us. Make ready, then, and I will sound the call."

Elof stood rooted as the tall man strode away, feeling helpless, feeling as if the Ice flowed through him, veins and vitals frozen to crystal. Ils, oddly hesitant, touched his arm, and when he made no response she looped her own through it. He smiled at her thinly, "You're slipping, my lady. When he kissed you you didn't hack him on the shins."

Ils shrugged. "He learns, that long lad. Decidedly he learns."

"Would you kick me?"

For answer Ils twisted around and pulled his face down to her a moment, then as swiftly released him. Kermorvan's horns, marching out before the host, were sounding a single braying challenge, and the first full rays of the sun were blazing up over the eastern rim of the world. "Now go! Go, and may our work blister the pale hide off her!"

That first call had set the soldiers swiftly to work. They laid down those great shields, upon which Elof and every smith of Kermorvan's and Ils's realms, from apprentice to master, had laboured through many long months; the remorseless heat and sweat of that time came back to him as he watched, but also a growing thrill of excitement. Those who had lost or damaged their shields in the battle had gathered more from the slain, and from the store of spare ones they had brought. Now they were unscrewing the heavy bosses of the shields; behind these were the bolts which held on their wooden grips, and their covers of sturdy fabric. Off came the grips, and were laid aside; then off came the covers, and a swift golden shimmer seemed to play among the ranks. Quickly then the shields were laid down, and the grips refastened; then the horns sounded another call, and because this was a set and practised drill the whole army picked up its reversed shields almost as one man. Cursing sergeants ran to berate the inevitable few who had failed, but also to assist; speed was the all-important thing here.

Behind Elof stood some of the few Kerys folk who had chosen to follow Kermorvan rather than rest; they were mostly young and hardy, and two of them, to his surprise, were among the few women who had come out to fight. They had stayed close to Roc because he could talk to them easily in their own dialect, and they were plying him with puzzled questions. But all he would say was "Do you watch!" And it was not such a bad answer, Elof thought, for even as the next call sounded and the ranks reformed, some earnest of their purpose could not help but appear. The icewall nearest them came suddenly alive, shot with fleeting shimmers and sparkles of golden radiance, beautiful but so bright one hardly dared look at it, for it left blazing streaks of purple in one's sight.

One of the Kerysmen gasped and swore in astonishment, then fell silent, as Elof turned to him with what must have been a death's-head grin. "Well?" Elof demanded.

"A - a mirror!" stammered the Kerysman, in horrified fascination. "A mirror of the sun! A… b-burning-glass!"

"Aye, lad," said Roc with grim satisfaction. "That's just exactly what it is! The most mirrors there's ever been, or the biggest, however you care to look at it. But not just any mirror turns the sun better, gathering rather than scatter-turning a blow better than a flat one. And an inward-curving mirror turns the sun better, gathering rather than scattering the light. It was Hella's own job trying to find a shape good for both, let me tell you! But Master Elof did it!" For long moments the Kerysmen and women watched that great burst of light pulse and shiver upon the fortress wall, awed and fascinated; but evidently one of the women was also deeply disturbed by something.

"Well?" demanded Elof again. "Speak up, woman, I won't bite!"

"It's just that - even though the mirrors gather the light - can it really be enough - against ice such as that? True, there are many - but they would still all need to cast the light close together, into one single narrow place! How may they aim all for that one small target, for the time they will need?"

Elof nodded gravely. "There might be the makings of smiths in you folk still. As you say, men's arms weaken, their aim wavers; we could not depend on it for a moment. So within that metal we mastersmiths set virtues, potencies and attributes fitting to both its tasks; for what fits a shield better than to hold firm with its fellows in the shieldwall? Did you wonder at how tight ours held? If they had been made of lodestone they would not have held faster, nor moved more as one; yet when needed they could be plucked apart again without effort. And so it is with them now; or it will be, when all is prepared, and the command is given. Roc - by your leave…"

Roc nodded curtly, and turning to Elof s mount he handed him down the great shield slung from its saddlebow; the grips had already been reversed. Elof tore the cover from it, revealing a surface still mirror-bright after its long voyage; that was a work of virtues also, and of subtle alloys. "This is one of the master-shields," he said quietly. "There are others, here and there among the host; but they will command only if this and others of greater precedence are turned from the sun. We tested this weapon when we had only a few shields; where the master-shield's light falls, all follow. One or two, even ten, do little. But thirty under a clear noon sun could fire a tree, given time - or a hundred, a man. And though some, and their wielders, are lost to us, we have - what would you say? - some eight thousand still." He held the shield to his lips, and they heard him murmur a few words in a tongue of old; only his friends knew their origins.

Eynhere elof hallns styrmer Stallans imars olnere elof
...

It was the phrase the Mastersmith had first shown him, the words of power that had governed the shaping of Tarnhelm and sword, and even of himself; for in one word of ambiguity, signifying both
one alone
and
smith
, they had given him his name.

A lone thing gains power surpassing When joined among many by a smith
…

So it had been with him; for without his friends, what would he have been? And so it was with this. He cried out suddenly, and brandished the shield aloft. From along the slope above Kermorvan answered him, and other commanders about the hill. Then slowly, carefully, Elof angled his shield to catch the sun as it lifted above the horizon, and cast it into the heart of that amorphous glow. And as he did so, he caught his breath; for with a sudden brilliant flicker, like coals shifting in a fire, all eight thousand shields, each the height and breadth of a man, tilted to follow him.

For a moment it was as if the sun had stretched forth, not the long and lazy beams of dawning, but a limb of its own blazing substance, a great arm of flame that struck against that glittering wall. An image of fire like a living thing danced mockingly upon it. For long seconds nothing seemed to happen; then, as Elof s arm settled and grew steadier, and the other shields followed it ever more closely, the dancing image grew finer, more concentrated, impossible to look at. Even the reflected radiance of it was dazzling, and the air about them, that had been so frosty a moment since, grew slowly warm as spring. It settled and steadied until it seemed that the mirrors had captured the sun itself, and sent it out to fight; for upon that bright surface there formed a perfect image of the blazing disk high above.

In that very moment there came a deafening, explosive report, and across the face of the Ice a great white line sprang out, a crack that coursed and spread across the shining surface in a mad fusillade of sound, thrusting out others like living roots, crazing and opaquing all its transparency. From the heart of the blazing light there came a sudden frenzied shriek, the cry of the steam that boiled out through the cracks. But not fast enough, for with a sudden dull roar a great chunk of the ice was blasted out by its pressure, and went crashing down in a mad shattering music onto the frozen falls below. A wild wolfish cheer went up from the host, and Elof, his face taut with concentration, began very delicately to swing the beam of sunfire around towards the centre of the tower. He had played such games as this in childhood, in his few precious moments of idleness, turning the sun with a bright flake of mica or metal; it was strange to turn the light in such deadly earnest now. If he brought down
one of
those great ice-pillars…

But a warning shout from above showed him the activity upon the upper reaches of the castle; men were moving, files of black-clad warriors pouring out of the gates onto the paths along the ridge that led around the slopes of the Pillars of the Gate and up towards the army above. He winced, hating Louhi more than ever for what she was making him do. Slowly, very carefully, he began to shift his shield once more, as Kermorvan, breathless, came bounding down to his side. "Easy now!" breathed the king. "There's time enough; and with luck we need only give them a slight lesson!"

"I hope so!" grated Elof, fighting down his nausea. But it was too late for regrets; the first mass of warriors had reached the hill's edge. So had the light. Flame and fire flashed up as it touched; for there was no chill in the bodies of men to match that of the Ice. Like heedless insects they rushed into that burst of sunfire, and like insects they blazed up, withered and dwindled to a charred nothingness. Those at the light's edge were not instantly consumed, but leaped and capered as it touched them, and burst into little pillars of flame; those behind fell back, blinded, and found their hair and clothes catch about them. This way and that they rushed, fell on the steep slope and rolled crazily downhill through the melting snow till they fell like blazing starstones out into the abyss. The disk of light played searingly back and forth across the hillsides, splitting stones, steaming snow and blasting the black earth beneath to white powder; there was no shelter from it, for even those who sought it sprang up shrieking as air like the breath of some immense furnace wrapped itself around them, flaying their skin and blistering their lungs. The light began to tremble then, till Kermorvan put a steadying hand on the edge of the master-shield, countering Elof s unsteadiness.

But it was more also than his foes could stand. From shameful defeat they had fled to the fastness of the Gate, that to them embodied the Ice's conquering invulnerability, only to find it menaced also, and themselves driven forth to perish against a force they could not understand, let alone fight. That point of sunfire seemed to them more fearsome and awful than any of the terrors and wonders by which the Ice had fastened its thrall upon them, a greater, more devouring horror than all the dark rituals it demanded. It broke more than their onrush; it broke them. They obeyed that ancient enthrall, and died instantly; or they cast it off, and fled. Still they streamed from the doors of the Gate; but no longer in any order, and not towards the shieldwalls on the distant slopes. This way and that they ran, scuttling like pale things from beneath an overturned stone, no longer thralls of anything save their own terror. In pride and despair some flung themselves down from the heights, or ran headlong into the flame; but most fled incontinently into the vale or the hills once more, and there perished in the hardships of the days that followed. A few who kept some shred of sanity ran southward, around and behind the slopes where Kermorvan's army stood, for there neither Ice nor Sun could reach them. But there the Ravens were waiting, for Kermorvan had stationed them against such a chance. A few offered fight, and were cut down; the remainder were gathered in, and by Kermorvan's command well treated. They were no longer a threat to anyone. In one blazing day of wrath the cold grip on their people had been tried in an ordeal of fire; and in that fire it melted away. So also melted the ice upon the walls of the Gate; for Elof, glad to be free of such slaughter, had already swung back his shield, and after it he drew the sun, as if like Raven in the old tale he had stolen it for the succour of mankind.

Against the tallest of all the glassy pillars he flung it like a coin of whitehot gold, and ice and image shattered together, cracking, splintering, exploding outwards in a cloud of flying spicules; downward he played it, and cracks ran ahead of it, all the long length of the pillar. Great showers of shattered whiteness came plummeting after, fell through the beam and blasted back up as steam; then, with a tormented moaning crunch, the whole top-heavy column blew free of the main sheet and tilted out into emptiness. With the same momentous deliberation as the glacier-face falling into the sea it toppled away, away and down into the valley below. It struck the frozen falls with a ringing crash of glassy thunder, rebounded off with sickening slowness, and rolled down the flank of the vale, crushing a great swathe through the pines and plummeting at last onto the frozen surface of one of the lakes, splitting it to fragments and raising a huge fountain of dark water. Heads turned to watch, for that was an awesome fall; but their shields seemed to stir in their hands, for Elof, with a savage grimace of triumph, was already swinging the beam back against the patch of bared stone. Back and forth it coursed, and as the cold stone grew swiftly warm the ice began to melt outwards. A growing stream of meltwater poured down, and the searing air boiled into the gap; cracks exploded along the wall, and suddenly, with great tearing crashes, pillar after pillar began to tear free under its own weight and drop down into the chasm.

All the army of Morvanhal cheered wildly as they felt the power in their own hands blast those daunting walls to nothing; even Kermorvan was yelling in delight, crying out ancestral vows of vengeance for the razing of Morvan. Only Elof s face was grim, a mask as set as any Ekwesh shaman's, feeling the might of the sun tearing at the heart of his foe. He caught Kermorvan's eye, and called "Is that enough of a taste for her, think you?" Kermorvan nodded, and signalled to his men, and through the rumble of falling ice the bright-voiced horns rang clear. For long moments it seemed as if there would be no response from within the Gate; it stood there, silent and unmoving, while its shattered ice continued to sizzle and melt and fall away from the heated stone. Angrily Kermorvan signalled that the call should be repeated more loudly, and his heralds blew till they were scarlet-faced. As the sound died they all heard, quite clearly, the thin cold music of icicles vibrating in sympathy; but still there was no response. Elof frowned. He tilted his shield with unhurried care, and the sun-disc began to creep slowly up towards the still untouched crown of the Gate. As it settled on the rim of the first balcony a great cloud of steam arose, and meltwater poured down in a sudden stream. Then at last from within the battlements a single horn rang out in answer. Elof stared, cursed, and the light juddered violently. Within the very heart of that blazing orb, full in its glare, a door had opened, and onto the central dais of the balcony, raised high upon stairs, stepped a majestic figure. About her blonde hair the fire danced in a corona of light, against the sleek whiteness of her robe that sunblast shimmered and glowed; yet neither she nor the shadowy shapes behind her shrivelled or vanished, or seemed in any way affected.