The Forge in the Forest (10 page)

"Nor I you, Bryhon Bryheren. Now may we pass?"

Bryhon's deep laugh was wholly genial. "Am I preventing you? But for all the world I would not! Go, succeed, or be damned to you!" And, still chuckling, he turned and strolled off into the dark.

Elof glared after him. "For a moment I thought that human mantis meant what he said!"

"In part, perhaps," mused Kermorvan. "We are of the same order, the same discipline, that one and I; we have endured the same trials, and may speak of them to each other as I may not even to you, a friend. That bond even hatred cannot wholly expunge." He smiled. "But you and I, we have shared our own ordeals, and others no doubt lie ahead. At least we need skulk no longer! Mount up, all, and follow! Guards, there! Open the gates!"

"Open! Stand aside for a lord of the city!" cried Roc in his powerful voice, and the other sothrans joined him at once. The northerners, who had known no authority stronger than town elders or guildmasters, smiled to see how the guards scurried to the immense windlasses and set the long weight-chains clanking down over the stone, the heavy gates grinding inward. As the first gap appeared it seemed to Elof that a deeper darkness came spilling in, like the shadow of some vast beast lurking, and a light but chilling breeze. He shivered, but when Kermorvan led the column forward beneath the deep arch he followed gladly enough; he thrilled to the clink of the smoothly metaled High Road beneath his pony's hooves, the grating rumble of the gates closing behind them. It was exciting, after all, to be a wanderer once more.

He looked up. The sky above was pearled with a full moon rising, but the city walls barred its light. The company plunged into shadow like deep water, dark and cold. Roc looked back at the Gate ramparts, and nudged Elof; a lone watcher stood there, outlined in silver. "You've good sight by half-light," he grunted. "Who'd that be? Ten for one it's that bugger Bryhon."

Elof looked, and smiled wryly. "A poor wager, Marja." Roc snorted violently. But he dropped back a little, and a moment later, when he thought Elof was not looking, he turned and waved, and for many minutes he would surreptitiously look back.

Across the plains of the city the caravan trotted, that Elof had first seen as a gaming board of fields, spacious and rich. But over them had passed the Ekwesh, plundering and destroying beyond all reason, and after them the refugees. They had made their pitiful camps of tent and shack there on land that should have grown food to help support the city. The camps cultivated only a few scant patches and at poor yield. But the blame was the city's. Much waste could have been avoided, if it had accepted the northerners and made use of their willing labor, instead of branding them beggars. The thought angered Elof. Kermorvan was right; why had he needed to fight to prove it? What made men so blind to their own best interests?

It was long before they passed the last of the little campfires, but longer yet before those fires faded from his thoughts.

Chapter Three
- The Ocean of Trees

Little was said of their route, for little could be said. Those who had fled westward had not lingered to make maps, nor sought to perpetuate any memories of their ordeal. It seems that such maps as the Chronicles preserve were all made at a much later time, for it is certain that Kermorvan found none to guide him; the charts of Bryhaine ended at the Shielding Mountains. He had, however, conferred with Kasse and all other folk he could find who lived in the lands nearest the range, eager for any word of what lay beyond. But few could tell him much. All along the foothills lay the western arm of the Great Forest that they dreaded, and from their own experience Elof and Kermorvan could hardly blame them. Few save outlaws and wild, solitary men dared cross the margins of the trees: fewer still ever returned, and their tales were fantastic and contradictory, full of strange sights and visions.

In the end, though, Kermorvan found he had few choices. He had to pass the Shieldrange somewhere, and only in two places could he venture that without going through the Forest's arm. He could circle the mountains to the southward, by Orhy Lake on the Gorlafros, the great river Westflood, where the rich lands ended and the increasingly barren Wastes began. But those few who had stood atop the summits of the Shieldrange had all reported sight of other summits on the horizon across the river.

"And they make it a poor risk," Kermorvan had concluded, tracing with a finger the rough map he had compounded out of many accounts. "If those mountains can be seen from so far off they are at least as high. We cannot tell how passable they are, or how far southward they extend into the Wastes. But it seems they do not continue northward very far—not as far as the passes in the west of the Northmarch, level with Iylan and Armen, our northernmost towns. And between those passes and the West-flood, we know there lie the Open Lands, hilly and lightly wooded, easy enough going. So that way lies our road, I guess."

"But could we not turn further northward still?" wondered Elof. "Are there not wide gaps in the Shield there, where the rivers come down?"

"Aye, the Shieldbreach, but that is past our borders. Those are the Debatable Lands still, doubly debatable now the Ekwesh hold so much of Nordeney! And see what lies west of them! Those uncanny Marshlands of yours; through those gaps run the rivers that feed them, swelled by the meltwater of the Ice and all it brings with it. That is no safe way for us!"

Elof shrugged. "What is, since we seek the Forest? And once I felt almost at home in those strange fens. But I agree. Wastes to the south, war to the north; by all means let us seek a middle way!"

The trek north and east was long, for at first they had to take the coast way that skirted the Forest's westward arm, but on the High Road the going was quick and sure. Only shelter for sleep was wanting, for all the roadside inns and post houses had been devastated by Ekwesh foragers, and the dwellings in the lands around, from peasant cot to high mansion, had fared little better. These grim reminders along the wayside, like so many hollow teeth, sharpened their vigilance; some of those foragers, stranded by the sudden flight of their fellows, might still be lurking in the land. Such folk as had returned to work their fields dwelt behind hasty palisades, greeting all outcomers with anger and suspicion; and in truth, they had little enough to spare for hospitality. Outside some gates brown-skinned bodies dangled on gibbets, and whether Ekwesh or northerner none could tell. Travelers on the Roads were even less trusting and many fled precipitately at the very approach of the company, or at the sight of darker skins among it. Such troubles eased as they turned steadily further inland, where fewer reivers had reached; at the ford of the river Yrmelec, boundary of the Northmarch, they encountered a strong guard of the Marchwarden's garrison, posted there by Kathel to watch for strays.

It was in these inland regions that Kermorvan had thought the outlivers of Bryhaine should seek refuge in wartime, rather than in the overcrowded city, and Elof could see why; they were rich warm lands, untouched as yet by war. The company fared more comfortably awhile, but came at last to the ending of the Roads in the upper valleys of the Yrmelec. Sound tracks carried them a few leagues further along the steep grassy slopes, and after that, paths maintained by the little farms they served. But one hot morning when they stopped to buy refreshment at one of these, on high ground above the Yrmelec's narrowing gorge, they found no onward path; dense woodland spread across the slopes ahead, growing thicker and darker the further the eye followed it. They had come once again to the margins of Aithennec, the Lesser Forest.

"That'ud be right, me lord," croaked the little old man who poured their ale. His speech was sprinkled with dialect words the northerners found hard to make out. "Further paths there were once, one or two even when I was a little lad, but they're long gone, long sunk back under grass, like the crofts they served. But 'twas not that way they led." He plucked at Kermorvan's sleeve, ushering them all across the cracked and weed-grown flagstones to the rear of the cottage. "Long gone, now, the crofters, their children off to the
kahermhor
, that High City of yours. The last I am now, all alone and naught at my back but fell and forest and barren
ygeldhyrau."

"He means…" began Kermorvan, but his voice dwindled. Nothing indeed lay at the back of the cottage, save a high plain, a sea of whispering green grass, and beyond it a smudged line of darker green. But above that, towering craggy and gray-white against the hazy blue sky, rose the vast peaks of the Meneth Scahas, shield and boundary of the realm of Bryhaine and all the western lands. Out to the southern horizon they stretched, an immense jagged rampart against the wild lands beyond. Northward, though, the mountains seemed to tumble and fall sharply away. From the last of them a ridge plunged down, ending in high steep hills, gray and misty and generally treeless, save around the river gorge that plunged between them. But beyond it another ridge swept upward, and the mountains continued their northward line.

"Aye, me lord, that's all there is now, the Wild. Times are even now, on a dark night or in a wintry storm, it come a'creepin' and a'tappin' round my door. And when I'm gone, why, it'll stroll in an' make 'isself at home. Old Edhmi down the valley there, he'll be the last then, and it'll go call on him." He gave a wheezy laugh. "And when 'e goes, what then? Where d'you think it'll fetch up, one day? Eh? It's only got to wait! We go, my lord, one by one we go, and it takes another step."

They took their leave of the old farmer, and set out across the wide plateau. Its whispering grasses brushed at their legs as they rode, as if seeking to hold them back from the wilder lands beyond. Even the ponies seemed to sense a change in the air on this easternmost margin of their land. Camp that night was lonely and windswept, and they huddled gladly round their fire. By the next day they were at the plateau's end, a downland slope ending in a stream that was marshy and hard to ford, and a shallower rise to the high hills beyond. These the company found no more comfortable, their grass short, dotted here and there with scrub and sparse trees, but boasting no better shelter. The company's tents of oiled leather and fabric could keep the spring rains out, but the wind chilled them mercilessly; in the days that followed, mountain and sky above them vanished all too often under weeping cloud. One such drizzling afternoon they saw atop the summit of the hill ahead a great irregular slab of dun stone, a tangle of bushes about its base. It had an eerie look to it, upthrust thus against the gray overcast sky like a giant's forbidding hand. Elof and Kermorvan, sure it could not be natural, rode ahead to examine it. Even before they reached it they saw it bore some inscription. But it was soft sandstone, and time had run rain and rough mire down the deep-graven letters, blurring them into mere rain furrows that could not be read. Disappointed, Kermorvan urged his mount round the far side of the pillar, and called back to Elof. "We may guess what it spoke of, anyway! Come see!"

Beyond the stone the hillside fell away sharply and steeply; the valley below, like so many they had passed through, was enshrouded in rainy mists, its further slope invisible. Or was it? Even as Elof strained to see, the shifting breeze whipped the shroud away, and unveiled for a moment the lands beyond. There was no further slope; the hills were at an end. They had come through the pass, and to north and south he saw for the first time what few men living of the Western Lands had looked upon, the eastern flanks of the Shieldrange. Out into the Open Lands they curved like an embracing arm, and below them, as far as he could make out in either direction, a rough-cut ribbon of blued steel lay stretched across the land, spreading here and there into thin threads and broader curls. This could only be the Westflood, its threads tributaries and its curls lake and mere. Between mountain and river the Open Lands were as Kermorvan had predicted, rolling and sprinkled with patches of light woodland. But it was what lay on the far bank that caught his gaze and gripped it as does the void beyond a cliff edge. That was what the stone had spoken of! There was blackness, an ocean of it to the gray horizon. Elof stared at it balefully, knowing it for what it was, straining his stinging eyes into the depths of the rainstorm for some break, some gap in its grim solidity. But save for stray threads straggling from the West-flood, there was none. Over all the lands before them the Great Forest, Tapiau'la-an-Aithen, still reigned supreme.

A new onrush of rain swallowed those distances, and Kermorvan pulled his pony's head round, calling to the company and pointing downslope. Not far below them was the only woodland for a league or more dense enough to afford them shelter. "We may still reach it ere the worst of the storm comes over! But though it is not yet the Forest, be you on your guard!"

They found it hard to remain so as they urged their bedraggled beasts down the steep slope, hooves skidding and sliding in the slippery grass. At last they had to dismount and lead the poor brutes down, broad flanks steaming in the sharpening downpour, and they were well soaked ere they reached the sheltering eaves of the wood. The downpour beat upon the outer leaves, hung there and dripped down in long rivulets, driving the company on deeper beneath the treeroof. A heavy twilight gathered. "I'm almost missing good old Nordeney snow!" Roc grumbled, stifling an immense sneeze. Kermorvan gestured curtly for silence, and sent out Eysdan and Kasse as scouts. The huge northerner slipped through the trees every bit as silently as the smaller man, and only the softest of rustles betrayed how they circled round among the dense bushes, seeking the slightest trace of danger. Meanwhile the company huddled against their beasts for warmth, and sought to forget how tired and hungry they were.