The Anvil of Ice (21 page)

Shining steel! Spirit of falcon!

Spearpoint, mark you my word!

As a shaft of sunlight

Cleaves the cloud-roof

Strike asunder where you are sent!

"Some called them brave," said Kermorvan at last, "to undertake so perilous a journey. Others said that by fleeing they were only serving the will of the Ice, and called them cowards and fools for choosing to risk terrors unknown rather than helping preserve what they could of their own hard-won domain. Myself, I do not know; but I think I would have stayed. As it befell, in the end there was much bravery on both sides. For the ones who fled came across the mountains to these warm Southlands only after many trials, and a good half of their number perished along the way. There are tales of high heroism and great sacrifice in the journey, and the forging of the new realm.

"But in the east also there were heroes. Then, if ever, lived Vayde and many other mighty names. They held the realm together for two generations more, as the cold grew worse around them and the Ice and all it brought with it came sweeping across their northern borders. But in the end it made a great spearhead southward, and the glaciers came right up against the whole proud City by the Waters and ground it to powder beneath them. And there it lies to this day. Then those who were left abandoned their kings in bitterness, who had persuaded them to stay, and they too fled. Some went to the lesser towns in the east, but a good number went in the wake of their brethren, west and south. Many perished; some won through, at a cost even more appalling than their forerunners, for they were fewer, and ill prepared. That too was a time for heroes. But they found scant welcome in the birthpangs of the new realm of Kerbryhaine, for the bitter words and names once given had not lost their force, and some, it is said, yet lived who had endured them. So against heroism must be set great cruelties, and treachery and villainy on both sides. In the end the newcomers left their brethren and escaped to the more northerly parts of the lands between mountains and sea, which the first-come, preferring warmer climes, had not cared to settle. There, as time passed, they met and mingled with fellow refugees, brown-skinned folk from far westward across ocean and Ice. And that was the origin of your Northlands.

"The new settlers made widely scattered settlements, for the northerners had always been the outlivers of Kerys and the Eastlands. But without a central city to serve, this left them poor and weak, and though the enmity between north and south long ago grew cool, and there has been trade and a measure of friendship between us for many centuries, still the cities of the north cannot combine with each other to defend themselves, let alone with us. The habit of independence is grown too strong."

Elof nodded somberly, watching the two ends of a weld begin to glow in the fire. "I remember my own little town. The only link with the world beyond the walls was the guilds and the traders, and the word of Headman and elders the only law. They would never dream of submitting to a greater."

"Yes. It was only reinforced by the brown-skinned folk, for they were fleeing the bloody rise of the Ekwesh empire, and feared nothing more than creating another. They were peaceful farmers and fishers, not used to looking much beyond soil, sea and season, and they had paid their own toll in blood to find that peace. The settlers then were realizing how few they were against the south, which they feared, and how slow to increase; small wonder they made these sturdy newcomers welcome. So today's northerners are a good folk, but ever an inward-looking one. And that is a perilous thing to be, when the Ice is shaping its malice against you!"

Elof put down his hammer a moment, and looked at him. "My master talked as you do about the Ice, as if it was a live thing—"

Kermorvan's eyes widened. "
But it is
! He told you no more than that?" He shook his head in wonder. "Then it was no narrow road your master led you down, but a crooked one. Know what every child of our land learns! There is indeed a living will behind the Ice, and a malign one. It—or they, for
it
is said there may be more than one—hates all living things; I do not know why, but it does. Most of all it hates us, we humans, and what little order and civilization we have won for ourselves. It may make use of men for a time, but it seeks to drive us back to the level of the beasts, so that it may destroy us as freely as they. Thus it especially hates we of Kerbryhaine, furthest from its grasp, strongest against its purpose. The Ice is its weapon, slow but inexorable in its advance. Did I not tell you how it spearheaded south to cover the great city? Nowhere else has it yet dared come so far, though it chafes ever at the mountains north of your land—"

"That I know," said Elof quietly, as he drew the pieces from the fire and set them together with a rain of light taps. "I have heard it."

"You have heard…" Kermorvan shook his head, momentarily lost for words. Then he burst out, "But how did you dare go so close? The Ice is not empty, but peopled with fearful creatures, fell beasts and other terrible things that I can give no names to; that will draws them as it draws all unhallowed things, they ride the Ice as they might a ship and fare ahead as its vanguard, spreading death and terror. They come whenever its power is strong, at times even down to the marshes here with its meltwaters. How did you
dare
?"

Elof was silent a moment. The hammer stood poised in his hand, but did not fall. For he was thinking, remembering, as he had not for a long time, his first sight of the gleam in the sky, and the Mastersmith telling of his pilgrimage, his new apprenticeship, his reshaping, reforging—

Upon the Anvil of Ice.

Savagely Elof smote down upon the weld, with blows so fast and heavy that the sparks went dancing and skittering across the little anvil, and the pieces of hot steel seemed to flow together as one. He looked up, to see Kermorvan gazing
at him with
keen
eyes
. "I
was
astray," he said, but nothing more.

Kermorvan shrugged. "Who in this world is truly astray, I wonder? There are other powers than those of the Ice, they say. Certainly it was a timely straying that led you to us." He looked questioningly at Elof, seemed about to ask something outright. Elof hastily turned away and plunged the fastened metal into the improvised quenching trough, and was grateful for the concealing cloud of steam that arose about him. There were too many questions he did not yet wish to answer, even to himself—least of all to this strange man, who had been careful to say so little of himself.

And it was as if Kermorvan himself sensed that, and approved, for he added, "At least, timely if I do not keep us from our work." He looked around him, at the first faint tinge of gray in the mist. "Dawn approaches. How long… ?"

"Seven hours, perhaps eight. And another hour to refit it, I think. The mount should be reinforced."

Kermorvan growled. "Let us hope we have that long, then. These chants of yours, these symbols you're scratching… Will they really achieve anything?"

Elof smiled as he selected two more strips of metal and jabbed them into the fire. "That's to be seen. They are not slowing my work. Not by more than minutes."

"No? Those minutes may count!" He spoke harshly, in the effort to rein his eagerness. "But go ahead! You must work as you know best how."

"I thank you!" said Elof, and meant it. Once again, a compliment, once again a burden of responsibility; this Kermorvan did know how to sway people to his purposes. "I think… I think they are worth trying, though they will be less effective on something not new-made. You understand, it is not the power of the art that I doubt. It is myself."

Kermorvan, suddenly nonchalant again, rubbed a thumb over his stubbled chin. "Then I think you need have no fears."

Elof shrugged, turning the metal in the forge. "We will see, in a few hours."

"Perhaps. And what then, Elof?"

"You set out to fight the Ekwesh."

"And you?"

"I? I turn for home," Elof plucked out the longer piece, and began to straighten it. "Though if you could set me ashore above or below the heart of the Marshlands it would make my path shorter and safer…" He hesitated, and did not know why.

Kermorvan appeared not to notice. "We cannot leave this area before we fight, here where there is always mist to cloak us. And we cannot return to it afterward, not for weeks; the fleet may stay and search, or leave a force to trap us. So we can only land you if you take ship with us, now." He leaned forward fiercely, and red forgelight shone against his keen gray eyes. "Why not, Elof? It'll be uneven enough as it is—fifty of us to maybe a hundred of them. Someone like you might well turn the scale."

Elof snorted. "I'm no warrior—"

"No? If you're not, who is? You're strong even for a smith, and fast. You've some swordplay, at least. And you hate the Ekwesh, that's clear. So come with us!"

"Aye, come!" grunted the captain, stumping up through the mist. "Got the better of me, and there's not so many 'as done that, eh, Kermorvan? And speaking of that, if you've a moment, perhaps you wouldn't mind fixing some bands on a new 'alberd-shaft…"

Elof gave a splutter of laughter. "That, at least, and ones that won't cleave so cleanly. For the rest—we'll see! Now, somebody put their back to those bellows, or we'll never have this thing straight—"

The sun stood past noon before he had done, and the mists had thinned to a heavy haze. A new strong mounting was prepared, and the reforged ram swiftly bolted into place. At once the captain had the corsairs scurrying about to raise the mast and reload their gear, but Kermorvan seemed unable to tear himself away from the weapon, running fascinated fingers over the dark menacing gleam of the metal. "'I take back my words!" he said with soft exultation. "You have made this a finer thing than ever it was—stronger, sharper. There is a faint strange shimmer on it…"

Sprawled exhausted on the warm sand, Elof took a moment to understand what he was hearing. Then abruptly he rolled over and scrambled up, eager to look but hardly daring. What was the swordsman seeing? Could it be that he also had a touch of the art in his blood?

"Like fish darting in a pool!" added Kermorvan, entranced. "As if sunlight truly were forged into it, as they tell of the duergar smiths of old—ach, I waste time! But now we've a real chance!" He turned away to call for ropes and rollers to be readied. Gingerly Elof reached out and touched the warm metal, peered at it, into it. Under the greenish sheen of the steel a light coursed indeed, now strong, now pale, pulsing like blood in veins. The work, crude as it was, had come alive under his hands.

On impulse he plucked his sword up from where it lay by his cloak and jerkin on the sand, and gazed hard at the hilt he had made. Clouds gleamed back at him though the sky above was clear, glancing and shifting in the mesh, vagrant as thoughts. The realization, the honing of hopes he had deliberately dulled, was almost painful, like stirring a limb long unused. But there was no escaping it, and pleasure in the very pain. He should have suspected as much the moment he touched the clumsy old hammers and pincers, felt the emptiness in them; he had not even noticed it in his work for Hjoran. It took power to perceive power—and the lack of it. With a surging yell of sheer joy, he hurled the sword wheeling into the air and caught it, closing his fingers round the cool glitter of the hilt, clutching
it to
him. What
it might
be he could
not guess, but
a virtue dwelt in that hilt. His art was his again, and his long healing complete.

"A martial sight you are, of a sudden!" laughed Ker-morvan, striding up the beach. "Well, sir smith? Are you then thinking of coming to fight alongside us, or of slinking away to rot in your smithy—assuming you ever find it again?"

Elof thrust the black blade vertically down into the sand, to stand like some sinister outgrowth. How strange, that he should have worked some quality into the hilt, and not know its purpose. But then, what did he know of his own, now? Go back to the marshes and live as before? The fenland had seemed so right for him once, a place of hiding, not so much from the Mastersmith as from his own self-loathing, a bitter purge needed for a mind made sick. He had found punishment in suffering, and made some restitution, perhaps; there were many travelers now safe who would not have been but for him. And in that, it seemed, he had also found healing. Now, for all their bleak loneliness, the fenlands had almost become a safe haven, a retreat where he could go on living a simple, useful life with few demands beyond staying alive, forgetting his cares and fears. But was he right to forget them, now his health and his craft had come back to him? Was it right to go on riding? The world marched on and would not wait for him, squatting in the rushbeds. What of his vengeance on the Ekwesh? What of his debt to Roc? What of his pledge to Kara? And what of the grim power he had unwittingly set in the hands of a ruthless man?

For a moment he felt bewildered, but a moment only. Then he nodded, at once angered and amused. Whatever strange power had brought him here, it had chosen its time with care. The Ekwesh were growing bolder, and he aided them who failed to resist them. Whatever good he could do in the smithy, he could do more in the world beyond. And there was so much of that to see, so much to learn, and he was yet young.