A Sword From Red Ice (34 page)

That was a thought that never failed to make Vaylo
smile. Robbie Dun Dhoone might have won back his roundhouse, but
Bluddsmen had stripped it down to the bare walls. Vaylo had no idea
where the loot had gone—he hadn't taken anything for himself
except a half-dozen kegs of fine Dhoonish malt—and he found he
didn't care. Gone was enough. Gone would slow the Thorn King down.

"Hammie;" Vaylo said, turning about to
address his armsman Haimish Faa. "When did you last see the wolf
dog?"

Hammie was huffing and puffing his way up the
hill. He was thirty years younger than the Dog Lord but about four
stone heavier and Faa men, like Bludd chiefs, had never been walkers.
Hammie wiped his red and wet nose with his coat sleeve, wincing as
raw flesh met coarse wool. "He left as soon as the bairns awoke.
'Bout dawn."

The Dog Lord nodded, his mind eased. He'd seen the
other three dogs throughout the day as they ranged hack and forth,
patrolling, guarding, hunting. The big black bitch had brought down
two jackrabbits and carried them straight to his hand. The young male
had brought back a sick-looking woodrat and Vaylo had taken it from
the dog's jaw and flung it as if as he could. Unhappily it hadn't
been the last he'd seen of the rat as the dog kept finding it and
bringing it back. Every time this happened the worm-infested vermin
looked a little worse for wear, and Vaylo thought to himself, Do I
really have to touch this? Touch it he did though. The young male's
eagerness and joy were two things he didn't want thwarted. You
couldn't have a dog love you unconditionally and not give anything
back.

The wolf dog had been with him for seven years and
of all the dogs Vaylo had loved and owned it was the wolf dog who was
closest to his heart. The Dog Lord did not show it, he did not need
to, for the two of them knew what lay between them. The Dog Lord's
worries were the wolf dog's worries. His kin was the wolf dog's kin.
That the dog had stayed up all night guarding Aaron and Pasha was as
it should be. The wolf dog had been present that terrible day when
Vaylo had found seventeen of his grandchildren dead and buried in the
snow above the Bluddroad. The dog knew how precious the two remaining
grandchildren were. Still it wasn't like the wolf dog not to home
every few hours. All the dogs ranged wide and then returned at
various times to insure their human pack was safe. Vaylo hadn't seen
the wolf dog since last night when he'd scolded the beast for
snatching a rabbit from the fire. It was good to know that after the
wolf dog skulked away in shame and anger he returned later to guard
the bairns.

Truth was they were all hungry and short-tempered.
Rabbits alone did not make a meal. If you ate too much they gave you
the runs and if you didn't eat enough you starved. It was, as Ockish
Bull would have said, a choice between the ugly and the just plain
bad. Nan and the bairns got the best of it. The organ meat could stay
with you for half a day, but the muscle meat, which Vaylo and Hammie
enjoyed, only hung around long enough to bid a fond farewell to your
gut. The dogs didn't mind it, but then what did dogs know about
decent food? Vaylo was grateful for what they caught, but after
fifteen days of jackrabbit, woodrat and opossum his gratitude was
wearing thin.

It was turning out to be a hard journey, harder
than he had imagined when he'd first decided its course the night
they escaped from the Tomb of the Dhoone Princes. The distances
involved were longer than he'd anticipated and the hardships more
wearing than he could have foreseen. Nothing to eat except lean meat,
no clothes except what lay on their backs, no weapons except a
kitchen knife, a longknife and a maiden's helper. Until yesterday
when they finally entered hill country, they hadn't even been able to
cook the meat brought down by the dogs, so wary was Vaylo of lighting
a fire. Man hunters were out in the Dhoonehold, searching for the Dog
Lord and his party, and all it would take for them to spy their prey
was a lone line of smoke on the horizon or a flickering orange glow
amidst the trees. Twice now Vaylo had spied mounted men in the
distance and each time he'd known they had Dog meat on their minds.
Man hunters had a look to them: lightly armored, finely horsed,
hungry. Vaylo feared them, for he very much doubted whether Robbie
Dun Dhoone cared if his enemy was taken dead or alive. The man
hunters carried crossbows and would shoot at distance, and there were
nights when Vaylo could not sleep for the thought of Pasha and Aaron
being shot in the back.

Yesterday had brought an easing of his fears. The
Copper Hills were a no-man's-land of bleak moors, wind-stunted pine
forests, heather fields and rocky peaks. They had seen no sign of
habitation in over two days and last night Vaylo had finally judged
it safe to build a cookfire. They had been weary, but merry enough,
and for a wonder Hammie had produced a small wedge of red cheese.
"The laddie from Dhoone gave it to me," he said by way of
explanation, "and I was saving it for the right moment."
They had all taken a bite, though Aaron had spit his out, declaring
it tasted like chicken wattles, and that had caused a huge scrap
amongst the dogs. While three of them fought over Aaron's chewed-up
leftovers, the wolf dog had sneaked in and stolen the rabbit from the
fire.

Vaylo had roared at all of them then, the bairns
included, and ordered everyone except Hammie to go to sleep. His
nerves were not what they had been, he realized later as he lay atop
his cloak and looked out at the dim, starless night. The loss of
forty good men at the Dhoonehouse followed by the rigors of a
fifteen-day journey had worn him thin. How old was he now?
Fifty-three, fifty-four? Too old to be starting from scratch, yet
what choice did he have? Last night, before beginning his watch,
Hammie had said to him, "Chief, we're living through bad times."

Vaylo had not replied, though he knew well enough
what his response should have been: "Hammie, I created them."

Gullit Bludd had not taught his bastard son much,
but by default Vaylo had learned certain things at his father's
hearth. The first amongst them was that no one would look out for him
save himself. The second was that if he made a botch-up of things—be
it letting the dogs out when one of the bitches was in heat,
forgetting to haul the warriors' leathers in from the rain, or
failing to skin a deer carcass before it froze—it was no one's
responsibility but his own. Break it, you fix it or get a beating.
That was the way Gullit's hearth had worked.

It had not been a bad lesson all in all, though it
had come back to haunt him in recent months. He, the Dog Lord, had
brought the clan-holds to its knees, and Vaylo had the uncomfortable
feeling that there was no one to set it to rights—only him.
Gods, why had he ever accepted Penthero Iss' offer of aid? He should
have taken the Dhoonehouse alone. The invasion was damned from the
start, from the very first moment when Vaylo had said to Iss'
emissary, "Do what you must, halfman. Just spare me the details
so I can deny them."

Suddenly tired, Vaylo stopped climbing and sat on
a loose hump of rocks. Below him, Nan and Hammie were shepherding the
bairns along a particularly sharp draw. The wind had tugged Nan's
sea-gray hair from her braid and flushed her cheeks with blood, and
she looked young and a little bit dangerous. She'd taken to
holstering her maiden's helper crosswise on her back like a
longsword, and Vaylo knew that the little pouch at her waist that
used to contain her portion of powdered guidestone now held henbane
instead. She'd come across it ten days back, growing on the banks of
a melt pond near the Dhoone-Spur border, and picked it and dried it
for self-protection. It was deadly poison and she had enough to kill
all of them, save the dogs, and the only place she trusted to store
it was her powder pouch for no child would ever dare touch that.

"Pasha. Aaron. Slip behind those bushes and
relieve yourselves. Quick about it now." When Aaron hesitated
Nan set him in motion with a pat to his backside. Hiking quickly up
the remaining slope, she left Hammie to pick up the rear.

The Dhoonewall can't be that far away now,"
she said to Vaylo as she sat beside him on the rock and gazed south
across the rolling highlands of Dhoone. "And then this journey
will be done." Nan Culldayis was no talker and she spoke only
when she had something to say. Vaylo waited.

"A hundred and eighty men await you at the
Dhoonewall," she said finally, still looking ahead. "That's
exactly three times the number you commanded thirty-five years ago on
the raid to steal the Dhoonestone from Dhoone."

She was right, and Vaylo understood all she meant
by those words. Somewhere not far north of here lay the fastness
known as the Dhoonewall. It had been the Dog Lord's destination right
from the start. His eldest son Quarro commanded the Bluddhouse and
Vaylo knew enough about the greed and ambition of his seven sons to
guess that he would never be welcomed back. The Bluddsmen at the
Bluddhouse would be loyal to Quarro now, and a failed and aging chief
arriving home with a single armsman as escort probably wouldn't be
allowed through the gate. Worse, he might even be shot during the
approach. So no, not for one minute had Vaylo considered returning to
the Bluddhouse—he would not debase himself by appealing to his
eldest son for shelter. He would head north instead to the
Dhoonewall, where the longswordsman Cluff Drybannock stood ready with
a hundred and eighty men.

It had seemed like a lifetime ago when Vaylo had
sent Drybone north to defend the two major passes in the Copper
Hills. The Dhoonewall was a defensive rampart spanning the six
leagues that separated the passes. It had lain unused since the time
of the River Wars, and only one of the original six hillforts
remained livable. Vaylo had feared Dun Dhoone using the fort as a
base to gather men and launch an attack on the Dhoonehouse, so had
decided to garrison it with Bluddsmen. His original plan had been to
kill two birds with one stone—send his troublesome second son
Pengo far away from the Dhoonehouse where he could do no harm. Pengo
would have none of it though—threatening to take the bairns
with him if his hand was forced—and Cluff Drybannock had
offered to take his place. Vaylo had regretted letting Drybone go.
Cluff Drybannock was the best longswordsman in the North. He was a
bastard, part Sull, part Bluddsman, and when he'd turned up at the
Bluddhouse twenty years ago Vaylo had taken him as his adopted son.
He missed Dry, and feared he had made a mistake by sending him away.

That wasn't what Nan was about here, though. She
had watched him these past days, seen his spirits fall and his temper
rise, and she sought to tell him in her own way that all was not
lost. If he had managed to carry out the most audacious raid of the
past hundred years with a crew of sixty men, then imagine what he
could do with three times that number. That was what Nan meant to
say. He could not deny the logic of it, but he had been young then
and filled with certainty. He was old now and the only thing that he
was certain of was that he had made mistakes.

Vaylo glanced down the hill, checking on Hammie
and the bairns. Pasha and Aaron were in good spirits, whooping and
hollering at one of the returning dogs. The bitch looked to have
another rabbit in her jaws. That made three in under a day.

To Nan he said, "I must be sure who my enemy
is before I send good men to fight. My sons are scattered across the
clanholds—some hold houses, some don't. If I were to attempt to
take their holdings from them by force then Bludd would be killing
Bludd. As for Dhoone, the Thorn King can keep it. I sat on the
Dhooneseat for a while and I canna say I enjoyed it. That seat is
cold, Nan, and it was won at too great a cost to my soul. Anything I
win now will be hard-fought and hard-defended. Yet what that prize
might be I canna say. Always in the past my next move was clear to
me: raid, invade, ambush, crack down on my rivals, attack. Yet things
have changed for me, and I'm no longer sure what comes next."

At his side Nan breathed evenly and did not speak.
Clouds were breaking up in the south and bands of sunlight swept
across the hills. It was too windy for frost, but it was cold enough,
and Vaylo felt the wind tears sting his eyes.

After a while Nan stood. Turning so that she was
opposite him, she said, "You knew my da, Nolan Culldayis. He
swung hammers with Gullit during the River Wars. Took up carving wood
after your father died, used to make foxes and blackbirds and other
fancies. I asked him once what he was working on. It was new block of
cherrywood and he'd just started whittling. He said to me, 'I don't
know what it is yet, Nannie. Knowing would ruin the surprise.'"
Nan raised a finely shaped eyebrow at Vaylo. "It was the
possibilities, you see. As long as he didn't know what he was carving
there were more of them."

Vaylo bowed his head at his lady, acknowledging
the wisdom of her story yet not sure if it meant anything to him. A
clan chief with jaw sprang surprises; he was not doing his job if he
himself was surprised.

Rising, he held out a hand to accept the bitch's
third rabbit of the day. She'd been waiting all the while Nan had
been speaking, halted by a small gesture of Vaylo's hand, and now she
came forward, wagging her tail so forcefully it rocked her bony rump
right along with it. "Good girl," he told her, taking the
bloody fur-covered sack from her jaw. He inspected it, frowned, and
then gave it right back. "Eat," he commanded. And she did,
opening her jaw wide and wolfing it down whole in an unlovely, jerky
motion that looked like a dry heave in reverse.

Vaylo was glad to have it gone. One more rabbit
and there was no telling what he might do: run back to the
Dhoonehouse and bunny-kick Robbie Dun Dhoone in the head.