CHAPTER 6
Wolf Dog
“NAN, YOU’VE DONE
enough. Leave him.” The Dog Lord knew he sounded hard, but he could
not think of any way to soften his words. Nan was nursing a sick
clansman when she should be readying herself and the bairns for the
journey. “We depart within the hour.”
Nodding, Nan turned
back to her patient, the young swordsman Yuan Bryce who had been
injured during the battle with the Unmade. He was lying on a
matress raised off the floor by a wooden pallet. Cluff Drybannock
had built the pallet and four more like it. Only Yuan’s was now in
use. The four other men wounded on the Field of Graves and Swords
were dead.
He, Vaylo Bludd, had
killed them.
The Dog Lord crossed
to the pallet and laid his hand on Yuan’s shoulder. The skin was
cool. Blood of poppy glazed his eyes. He was a boy, Vaylo reckoned.
Nineteen. He’d spoken three yearman’s oaths. Next winter he would
have taken his full oath, swearing himself to Bludd for life. His
back was broken though, and he could not move his legs. For twenty
days Nan had nursed him, hoping that function would return. It had
not. Cluff Drybannock had built a wheeled cart and furnished it
with a padded seat. It stood on the far side of the sickroom door,
out of sight. The one time Yuan had seen it he had become so
agitated Nan and Cluff had been forced to restrain him. You could
still see the bruise on Nan’s face.
“Gods watch over
you,” Vaylo said quietly.
“They do
not.”
Vaylo had not
expected the boy to reply. Nan caught Vaylo’s gaze.
Careful, she warned.
The boy’s pupils were
so large Vaylo could not tell the color of his eyes. They watched
him though, waiting upon a response. Vaylo did not have one. You
could not tell a warrior “be glad you are alive” when he could no
longer wield a sword. Could one say “be glad your injuries came
from being thrown from your horse and not from voided steel”? Five
men had been carried from the battlefield on stretchers that night.
If Vaylo had been a betting man he would have named Yuan most
likely to die. The boy’s injuries had seemed the worst—not enough
to invite mercy killing, but sufficient to make a favorable outcome
unlikely. The other men had various hurts; cuts, slashes, piercing,
tears. Nothing, Vaylo judged, that would not heal if the wounds
were cleaned and properly tended.
Nan Culldayis and Jud
Meeks had stitched and tended those wounds, and Vaylo did not think
any two people could have done a better job. Washed with alcohol,
poulticed with mud and herbs, stitched with cat gut, painted with
silver, monitored day and night: the wounds should have healed. Yet
they didn’t. Infection had set in. Tissue had not swollen, pus has
not formed, yet bodies had been eaten alive. Something had leaked
between the stitches. Something black and smoky that smelled like
frozen earth.
When it became
apparent the men were not recovering, Cluff Drybannock, Vaylo’s
fostered son, broke open his horn of powdered guidestone and drew a
guide circle around the sickroom. “Xha
vul,” he murmured. “They are being taken.”
Hearing the words
Vaylo had both known and not known what they meant. We are chosen by the Stone Gods to guard their
borders. For some reason the Bludd boast sounded in his
head. It struck him that the injured men were crossing a border,
and he, Bludd chief, could not allow that to happen. Malice bided
on the other side. How he knew this he could not say. Perhaps it
was the faint, empty scent of the smoke, or the look of solemn
expectation in Drybone’s eyes.
What Vaylo had failed
to realize straightaway was what those words would cost. Even
Drybone had not fully understood. He had drawn a circle in powdered
guidestone, passing the men’s fates into the hands of the Stone
Gods. For twelve hours the sickroom became hallowed ground.
Bluddsmen came, spoke prayers, left. The injured men slept
restlessly, tossing and moaning. Each time they awakened there was
less life in their eyes than when they’d fallen asleep. Fear made
them clutch at Nan as she tended them. One, the swordsman Boyce
Willard, had begged Nan to open his stitches and let “the filth
out.” She had done just that, taking her maiden’s helper and
slitting the cat gut.
It was then, seeing
the smoke vent along Boyce’s leg, that Vaylo knew what he had to.
Nothing could save these men—no nursing, prayers or guide
circles—and it was his duty as chief to kill them before they could
be consumed by the smoke. Cross that border and they were lost. The
Stone Gods could not claim them in that blasted land. Drybone had
told him that men who were killed by Kil
Ji, voided steel, were unmade. And right now, as he watched
the smoke of annihilation cumulate in the hollow of Boyce’s belly
and pelvis, Vaylo realized that the only way to prevent them from
being destroyed by voided steel was to slay them with live steel
instead.
You could not call it
a mercy killing if one of your motives was protecting yourself.
“Once a man or woman is unmade they join the
ranks of the Endlords. They too will wield Kil Ji
and unlike those who are imprisoned in the
Blind, they have no need to force their way out. They are here,
amongst us, and they walk by night.” Cluff Drybannock’s
words, spoken a month earlier in the broken tower, came back and
haunted Vaylo.
Arno and Gormalin:
They were the only Bluddsmen he had not killed as a mercy. Perhaps
he had killed them in self-defense. Perhaps rage. Either way he did
not regret it. His brothers had deserved to die.
Not these men,
though. Not Boyce, not Mad Malky, not Hector nor Jon. These were
men who had volunteered to ride out from the fort with their lord
and chief. Unlike others, they had survived the Field of Graves and
Swords.
Unlike Yuan, they had
not been able to live with their wounds.
Vaylo looked at the
paralyzed boy, and thought about the morning he’d taken the lives
of the four injured men. He’d ordered screens to be raised around
the pallets and then visited each man in order of rank. Boyce, as
the senior clansmen, had been taken last. Vaylo knew he had done a
poor job of honoring him. Boyce had heard the gasps and soft cries
of his fellow patients and when his chief appeared before him he
said softly, “I see you’ve cleaned your sword.”
No words existed to
describe the pain Vaylo felt at that moment. They had damaged
muscle in his heart. Inhaling, he waited out the
memory.
When he exhaled he
spoke to Yuan Bryce. “You have two arms. Be glad of them. Get well
and learn to load and fire a crossbow from your seat. You have
taken an oath to guard Bludd borders. Guard them.”
Nan shot him a stern
glance, but Vaylo did not care.
The lone window in
the room was covered with a horse blanket. Light shone through the
strap holes in the wool. Yuan’s skin was pale. Sweat greased his
forehead and throat. He blinked.
“Aye,
chief.”
Vaylo nodded
brusquely. “When you’re ready come see me at Bludd.”
He left without
looking back.
You’ll have an advantage when it comes to being chief.
You’re a born bastard. Ockish Bull had said those words to
him in the dark hours after he’d slain Arno and Gormalin. Vaylo had
not thought himself capable of laughter that night, yet somehow
Ockish had forced it out of him. They were both bloody, he
remembered. Ockish had dealt with the bodies, and then broke the
news to clan. They had a new chief.
Gods I miss him. Only Ockish had been able to lift
his mood when he was at his lowest, when chiefing made him do
terrible things.
The wolf dog had made
itself comfortable in the padded cart outside the sickroom door,
and Vaylo beckoned it impatiently. It was looking older, he
reckoned. So was he. Together they made their way through the
hillfort and out the southern gate.
The wind was lively,
pushing clouds. Overnight the brown winter grasses of the Copper
Hills had greened. Heather was sprouting. Streams were running on
distant hillsides, flashing silver when sunlight caught them just
right. Vaylo let the sun and wind work on him, resting his eyes and
breathing deeply. The Copper Hills represented something essential
to clan—the call of open space—and the Dog Lord found some part of
himself wanting to ride out and never come back.
Already the party had
started to congregate on the dirt court. There would be forty-five
in all, including Nan and the bairns, and mounts would be in short
supply. Horses were being strapped and saddled and supplies hauled
from the fort. Hammie Faa was in charge of logistics and he
appeared to be doing a thorough job. The chubby armsman only looked
slightly flummoxed as he packed the spare horse with blankets, fire
irons and oil-soaked millet. The horses would need to graze enroute
as grain was short. Meat was in short supply too, and Bluddsmen
would need to hunt.
Again, there was that
pang of anticipation. To be ahorse, traveling through the Copper
Hills, hunting for one’s supper and camping under the stars, was
not a bad way to live. Clansmen dreamed of such pursuits. In spring
and autumn they would mount longhunts, exchanging the comforts of
hearth and kin for the joy of the wild north.
“Granda. Are we going
yet?” The excited call came from Vaylo’s nine-year-old
granddaughter Pasha. She was sitting astride his horse, a rangy
black stallion with a white starburst on its nose. With horses
short, it had been agreed that Pasha and Aaron would take turns
riding with Nan, Hammie, Mogo Salt and their
grandfather.
Just as well I no longer have Dog Horse, Vaylo
thought. As the gods-ugly beast wouldn’t let
anyone ride him save me. Dog Horse had been lost during the
assault on the Dhoonehouse. Robbie Dun Dhoone had torched the
stables, and the only way to save the horses was to fling back the
doors and let them run free. Vaylo had a bolt-shaped burn scar on
his right palm as a souvenir of that night. He had not felt the
burn of hot metal at the time. His mind had been on his
horse.
So much lost. So
little gained.
“Granda,” Pasha
cried. “When are we going?”
“Get down,” Vaylo
said. “Go and find your brother and help Nan with her
things.”
The girl’s smile
collapsed and she slid awkwardly from the horse.
“Today is not child’s
play,” he told her. “We leave behind a hundred clansmen. Conduct
yourself accordingly.”
Pasha ran toward the
hillfort with a little whimper of distress. Vaylo watched her slip
beneath the gate. He could not seem to keep his temper
today.
Whistling for the
wolf dog to follow him, he went to talk to Hammie. The armsman had
some last-minute questions and Vaylo was glad of the opportunity to
tell someone—who appreciated it—what to do. By the time they’d
finished conferring, the court was packed with men and horses.
Vaylo looked for Drybone, but could not spot his fostered son in
the crowd. When Nan came out with the bairns, men began mounting
their horses. Hammie helped Nan with her packs. Little Aaron
insisted on bearing his own bedroll and training hammer, and
stoutly shook away all help.
Everyone fell quiet
as Big Borro brought out the swords. Nine in all, five belonging to
the warriors who had died or suffered mercy killings on the Field
of Graves and Swords and four belonging to the injured whose wounds
had not healed. Big Borro carried the swords in a flat oval basket.
Collectively they had to weigh close to fifty pounds, yet Borro
bore them at arm’s length, held out from his body, in ceremonial
display. The Dog Lord did not know who had cleaned the swords, but
whoever it was had polished them so fiercely the sun bounced back
to the sky.
Nine blades to be
returned to widows, mothers, fathers and children at Bludd. Of all
the trials that lay ahead, it was this that disturbed Vaylo the
most. Your child is dead. No four words
in all the universe cut as deeply as those.
Mogo Salt put his
lips to his sackpipe and blew the stark and plaintive notes of the
Cragsman’s Farewell. Bluddsmen touched their measures of powdered
guidestone. Some clenched their fists. None wept. As prearranged,
Vaylo stepped forward and accepted the swords. The basket had been
lined with soft suede and Vaylo saw that Nan had embroidered it
with the War Dogs of Bludd. Where did she get the time, this lady
of his?
Nan had the bairns in
hand. Their packs had been set on the ground and their heads
lowered in respect. Vaylo passed them as he brought the swords to
the stallion that would bear them home. The horse had been trapped
and blinkered in maroon leather. In place of a saddle, a buckskin
cradle had been strapped to its back. The swords would be
transported in the cradle, and no man, woman or child would mount
the stallion until the swords had been brought home to
Bludd.
Hammie and others
helped lash the basket in place. Vaylo checked the cinches twice.
He’d be damned if this package was coming loose. While he worked,
the wolf dog bellied in the dirt and waited. When its ears angled
toward the hillfort, Vaylo glanced up to see Drybone standing in
the shadows behind the gate.
Cluff Drybannock had
dressed and armed himself in full Bludd regalia. A crimson collar
overlaid his greatcloak and his waist-length hair had been braided
into a warrior’s queue and bound in a knot at the back of his neck.
Copper wire had been wrapped around the grip of his longsword, and
his hand knife was suspended at his waist in a dog tail sheath.
Vaylo counted the details and resumed his task.
Drybone meant to
honor his chief and clan with his dress, yet he did not look like
clan. He looked like Sull: the red skin with its metallic tinge,
the cheekbones cut like diamonds, the eyes that took in light and
then gave it out.
When had he changed?
Vaylo wondered. Dry’s mother had been a Trenchlander whore, his
father a Bluddsman. Surely there had been a time when Dry looked
more like clan?
At Vaylo’s feet, the
wolf dog let out a single, high-pitched whine. Every night the dog
accompanied Cluff Drybannock as he walked the hill-wall, keeping
watch.
“Go,” Vaylo told
it.
The black and orange
dog sprang up and raced toward Drybone. Dry put out a hand to still
it and the creature dropped to its haunches ahead of the the
gate.
“Hammie,” Vaylo said.
“Call the column to order. You and Nan in the front with
me.”
“Aye.”
Vaylo walked wide of
the court to give men and horses space to maneuver. He waited.
Drybone did not move from his position by the gate.
“Come with me,” Vaylo had said to him in the dark
hours after the Field of Graves and Swords.
“I cannot, my father. I am Bludd and I am Sull. This is
where I choose to make my stand.”
Vaylo glanced at the
old Dhoonewall fort. Damp had rotted the masonry. Chunks of fallen
stone lay embedded in the courtyard. One of the chunks had a crisp
crater surrounding it. Vaylo wouldn’t have been surprised if it had
fallen in the night. Even so, the fort was still defensible. Its
broken watchtower was still high enough to provide early warning of
an attack. The copper roof would resist fire and the exterior,
although damaged, was double-walled. There were worse places a man
could call his own. Vaylo just wished Dry had picked one closer to
Bludd.
Buckling his cloak,
Vaylo crossed to his horse. Most of the men were mounted now and
the horses were lively, shaking their heads and kicking. Odwin Two
Bear’s gelding reared and Odwin had to pull back the reins and ride
the animal off the court. The bairns were already mounted. Pasha
was sitting behind Nan on Nan’s white gelding, and Aaron was
trotting Mogo’s short-necked stallion in rings. Hammie was holding
Vaylo’s horse.
Dust kicked up by the
horses blurred the air. Vaylo could taste the copper in it. It
tasted of Dhoone. The dust at Bludd had tasted of baser metals, of
iron and nickel and lead. He recalled the time time his father had
beaten him on the redcourt in front of a dozen sworn clansmen.
“Swallow,” Gullit had roared as he pushed his booted foot into the
back of Vaylo’s head. “No bastard talks back to the
chief.”
Vaylo thought he
might have been ten at the time. Gullit had been preparing for a
boar hunt in the Tick Woods. As he walked from the stable with his
saddle, Gullit had caught sight of his youngest son. “Boy. Run in
the house and fetch my weapon.” Vaylo remembered bolting into the
Bluddhouse, pleased that his lord and father had set him an
important task and anxious to perform it swiftly. When he opened
Gullit’s weapon case in the chief’s chamber he’d been dazzled by
the rows of honed steel. No one opened Gullit’s case without his
sanction and to look upon the armaments amassed by Bludd chiefs was
a privilege. Longswords, broadswords, short swords, swan necks,
scimitars, knives and more knives hung by their hilts in individual
slots. The throwing spears were less carefully arrayed and had been
dumped into the door box like sticks in a jar. Vaylo picked the
last spear he’d seen his father use, closed and latched the case
and sprinted onto the court.
His first indication
that something was wrong was when his father did not extend his
hand to accept the spear. “What’s this, boy?” he’d demanded from
the saddle. “I said bring my sword.”
Even at ten Vaylo
knew not to contradict his father. His mistake had been more
damning than that. “But you’ll need a spear for the
boar.”
The Dog Lord winced
to think of it. There had been twelve men within earshot. Some had
laughed.
“Boy thinks you can’t
make a kill with a sword,” Dinny Hawks, Gullit’s favored drinking
companion, had quipped.
“You are getting
slower, Chief,” Roland Ingo had added. “Best put some distance
between you and the wild pigs.”
The comments were
typical warrior talk, the kind of jests men made before hunts to
relieve tension. Yet Gullit Bludd had not laughed. His mouth had
narrowed and he’d slid from his horse.
“You think me
incompetent, boy?”
“No,
sir.”
That was the moment
when Vaylo realized the beating would be a bad one. His father had
appraised the contrition in his eyes and found it
wanting.
“Get down on the
ground.” Gullit pointed to the dirt with his riding crop. “I’ll
grind that smirk off your face.”
Vaylo vividly
recalled the sting of false accusation—he had not smirked—but could
not recall speaking up to defend himself. Instead he had fought
back and that had only made the beating worse. Already he knew how
these things worked, yet his anger always overruled his sense. He
wasn’t that different from Gullit when it came down to
it.
He’d beaten his own
sons.
Vaylo put his foot in
the stirrup and mounted the stallion. Bludd was a hard clan and
Bluddsmen were hard men. Its dirt was hard and black—even in summer
when it was bone dry—but it had never killed anyone to swallow
it.
After the beating,
he’d pulled himself off the ground and watched as Gullit and his
best men had ridden south into the woods. Spitting out blood and
dust, he’d made his way back to the roundhouse. He was a Bluddsman
and this was home. There was nowhere else for him to
go.
Vaylo looked east
toward the black hills and forests of Bludd. He’d been away too
long. Dhoone, Ganmiddich, the Dhoonewall: between them he hadn’t
stood on Bludd dirt for close to a year. Now he and forty men were
heading home, and the only thing he expected for a certainty was
trouble. His eldest son, Quarro, had chiefed the clanhold through
three seasons and it wasn’t likely that he would welcome back his
father with open arms. Bludd didn’t have a fancy throne like Dhoone
and no kings had ever ruled there, yet it had things a man could
grow possessive over; silent forests of cedar and hemlock, creaking
forests of ancient oak and ash, the best boar hunting in the
clanholds, the Pipe Rapids on the Snarewater, the Garnet Room at
the heart of the Bluddhold. Vaylo knew how it felt to lord over
them. It was not likely his firstborn would relinquish them without
a fight.
It would be bloody.
Quarro would need to be beaten and turfed. The Dog Lord didn’t much
like the thought of it. All dealings with his natural sons left him
cold.
Shortening the reins,
Vaylo turned his horse to look back at the gate and Cluff
Drybannock, his eighth and fostered son. The only one he had never
beaten. The only one he had ever loved.
Dry’s gaze met his
through the dust. Pride burned in Dry’s methane blue eyes. Seeing
it, Vaylo realized that they would not bid one another farewell.
Dry would not move from the gate and he, Vaylo, would not cross the
thirty feet to Dry’s position.
They understood each
other. In this.
Vaylo did not think
he would ever understand what it meant to be Sull.
Dry’s gaze was level,
his face still. Vaylo acknowledged him with the smallest possible
movement of his head. Twenty days ago an offer had been extended
and refused. The Dog Lord respected Dry’s choice, but a chief did
not speak words of comfort to a man who had opted not to follow
him. Banking the stallion, Vaylo whistled for his
dogs.
“East to Bludd!” he
bellowed to the forming line.
One by one the dogs
fell in behind him as he took up his position in the fore. The wolf
dog came last, tail down. Every few steps it halted and looked back
at Drybone. Vaylo ignored it. Nan was trying to catch his eye to
give him one of her gentle smiles. He ignored her
also.
Best to focus on the
journey. Forty men now depended upon him for their welfare. All had
volunteered to make the journey home to Bludd. They were Cluff
Drybannock’s men and that meant they used swords, not hatchets.
Some carried hammers and axes out of custom and a handful were
proficient at wielding them, but Vaylo knew he stood alone as an
avowed hammerman. It made him feel like a killhound or an aurochs:
creatures that had once thrived in the north and were now dying
out.
“Charge to the first
hill!” he bellowed, kicking heels into horseflesh. He needed to put
some space between himself and his thoughts. “Last man gets latrine
duty.”
Hammie, Gods love
him, knew the jig so well by now that he got the best start of the
lot of them. The others caught on quickly enough but not before
Vaylo and his armsman had pulled ahead. The dogs howled in
excitement and sprinted after the horses. Well, three of them did.
The wolf dog was subdued and when Vaylo glanced over his shoulder
he saw the creature falling behind. It moved through the space
between the column and the fort, a lone wolf padding through the
dust.
Vaylo filled his
lungs with air and concentrated on reaching the hill. Hammie had
passed him and he could hear others at his heels. The topsoil was
finally dry after the thaw and the horses threw powder as they
charged. Big Borro was riding one of Ockish Bull’s stallions and
the creature was a wonder to watch. It almost didn’t hurt to have
it pass you. When he got back to Bludd, Vaylo reckoned he’d buy
himself a horse from the Bull stables. Something that wouldn’t beat
his tailbone black and blue.
As the land began to
rise, Vaylo’s stallion slowed and no amount of thigh squeezing
would cajole it. A handful of men with superior mounts passed
Vaylo, and he found himself struggling to keep ahead of the pack.
He felt out of sorts, bothered by his visit with the injured boy,
regretful of not having spoken farewell to Dry.
It was a relief to
reach the hill. A rocky bluff provided a natural finish line and
Vaylo counted seven men assembled ahead of him. From the way he was
joking and preening, Big Borro looked to be the winner. The men
cheered when their chief made it. Vaylo acknowledged their goodwill
with a grunt. He was sore and out of breath. Then his stallion went
and embarrassed him by lowering its head and pulling up a thicket
of grass.
“Some racehorse you
have there, Chief,” Big Borro said. “Five minutes from home and
it’s ready to feed.”
Men laughed, and
suddenly Vaylo understood how Gullit must have felt that day on the
redcourt. His father would have been getting old by then. Over
fifty, and that famous Bludd vigor would have been in decline.
Perhaps he’d just discovered he could no longer stay ahead of his
men. Perhaps the incident with the spear had touched a
nerve.
Vaylo patted the
stallion’s neck and forced himself into good humor. “He’s a
soldier’s horse. Stuffs himself whenever he can.”
The joke was an old
one, but the men needed it. He needed
it. Gullit Bludd’s ghost had to be exorcised, lest the son end up
as bitter as the father. Spying Nan and Pasha bringing up the rear
with the sword horse, Vaylo found a genuine smile.
“You said last
man,” Nan told him calmly. “That
wouldn’t be me.”
The warriors laughed
again, this time with genuine warmth. Nan Culldayis was their lady.
For the past two months she had cooked and cared for them, listened
to their private fears about absent loved ones and worrying
ailments, and given sensible advice on everything from the best way
to clean brass belt buckles to the wording of messages sent by
bird. They loved her, Vaylo realized with pride. And that was
something his father had never possessed: a woman as fine as
Nan.
“Who,” Vaylo bellowed
above the stamping and panting of horses, “in this sorry crew of
warriors came last?”
“Wull did,” cried
Odwin Two Bear.
“No, I didn’t,”
replied the lanky, tattooed former Castleman. “It was
Midge.”
Midge Pool’s eyebrows
disappeared beneath his thatch of red hair. “Not me. I got here
ahead of Wull.”
“You blind, boy,”
countered Wull Rudge, who at twenty-eight was a good ten years
older than Midge. “I had time to groom my horse, dismount and take
a piss afore you got here.”
“But I—”
“Silence!” Vaylo roared at the lot of them.
“Bluddsmen don’t squabble like little girls. If no one is prepared
to come forward and admit the rear then all will be on half rations
tonight.”
Shamed, the warriors
hung their heads. They were whelps, Vaylo decided. He had
twenty-five years on the eldest, Marcus Borro. How was he going to
take back the Bluddhouse with a crew of forty boys?
“I was last,” Midge
Pool murmured, gaze on the ground.
“No. It was me,”
Odwin Two Bear corrected him. “In all the dust I failed to see I
was bringing up the rear.”
Big dark-haired Wull
Rudge gulped. “Chief, it was me. I was last.”
Vaylo glowered at
them as he waited to see if anyone else would claim the rear. When
no one else spoke, he said, “All three of you, latrine duty—and no
rations tonight. When I ask a question I expect it answered
promptly and with truth.”
Turning the stallion
smartly, he headed east along the bluff. Nan and Hammie fell in
behind him and others followed. Wind sent the heather rippling.
Vaylo smelled stag musk. The dogs were ahead of him, following a
scent trail uphill. Uncharacteristically, the wolf dog lagged
behind. A whiff of deer was usually enough to drive it
wild.
Vaylo made himself
look ahead. Behind him the column was quiet. Forty men had just
realized that they were no longer under the command of Cluff
Drybannock. Six months back they had headed north from Dhoone with
Dry as their leader. Now here they were, riding east to Bludd,
under direct command of their chief. Vaylo knew he had to be hard
on them. Dry had commanded quietly, by example. But Dry had never
had to set Bluddsmen against Bluddsmen. By the end of the
fifteen-day journey the forty had to be ready to obey him without
thought, as a reflex. Fifteen days was not nearly
enough.
Vaylo rode in
silence. Clouds marched the length of the sky. A goshawk spied a
grouse and made a dive. The horses lathered as they climbed the
steep slopes. At midday, the column rested and took a cold mess of
bread and cheese. Midge, Odwin and Wull did not eat. And although
he had not specifically forbidden them a daytime meal, Vaylo was
satisfied.
“Form up!” he cried
when he judged the horses restored. “We ride until
dark.”
They did just that.
The ground was good, so they maintained a fair pace. After a couple
of hours Aaron was handed off from Mogo Salt to Hammie, and Vaylo
received possession of Pasha. The girl insisted on taking the reins
and after a few minutes of supervision he left her to it. Her hair
smelled nice. He liked the way she didn’t look over her shoulder
for guidance when faced with problem terrain. She had the sense not
to speak much either, though Nan may have primed her on
that.
The height of the
hills made for a short day. The sun disappeared behind a knife-edge
ridge leaving a metallic sheen in the sky. Vaylo sent scouts ahead
to check for a suitable campsite, and they returned after the light
failed. As they led the way south to a high moor, Vaylo questioned
them quietly about Dhoone.
“No sign of
Dhoonesmen in the hills,” Rufus Black, the eldest scout,
answered.
Vaylo nodded. This
part of the clanholds was windblown and remote and the only folk
who who used it regularly were cragsmen. Even so, Vaylo found
himself cautious and ordered watches in all quadrants. Suspecting
he would not sleep he elected to take the southern watch himself.
Rufus volunteered to second him, but Vaylo turned him down. “I have
the dogs,” he replied.
In truth he was glad
to be alone. Hiking south as the camp was raised, he ate a dry
supper of trail meat and pickled quail eggs. Nan had snuck him one
of her fancy honeycakes but he fed it to the nearest dog. His mind
wouldn’t settle. He’d volunteered to take the most likely watch
himself, but now he wondered if he should be looking north, not
south.
Like
Dry.
It was the boast, the
damned boast. Chosen by the Stone Gods to
guard their borders. What borders? Bludd borders? Or those
encircling the entire clanholds? And guard them from
what?
Vaylo sunk to his
haunches and whistled for the dogs. They’d been ranging back and
forth in search of game and they did not heel immediately. Settling
down to wait, Vaylo tried to push aside his unease. He had men to
lead and a roundhouse to retake, and it didn’t do much good to
dwell on Dry and his hundred men guarding the Dhoonewall. Did even
less good to imagine that it was Dry, not he, the Bludd chief, who
was upholding the promise of the boast.
Chief first. Boast
later. Once he’d taken possession of the Bluddhouse, he’d have all
the time in the world to figure out mystery of the
boast.
Plucking a wad of
chewing curd from his belt pouch, Vaylo made himself comfortable
for the watch. The stars were out, some of them, and a half-moon
was shining through thinning clouds. Vaylo sat and did not think
for a while.
The dogs came to him
in their own good time. At first he didn’t realize that the wolf
dog hadn’t homed. It could be willful at times and reluctant to
obey a summons if it was closing on a kill. Vaylo whistled again,
waited. Oddly enough, it had been Gullit who had given him his
first pup. It was a sight hound, the runt of the litter. With
irregular vertebrae in its tail and an infection in its right eye
Gullit had judged it unworthy to be reared for the hunt. “Take it,”
his father had said to him, “but you’ll to have to wean it yourself
as I won’t waste a teat.” Vaylo had done just that, dipping a
shammy in pig’s milk so the pup could suckle on the hour. After a
week he’d taken her to Mogo Salt’s grandfather, the field surgeon
Roagie Salt. Roagie had been the one who’d tended him after the
worst of Gullit’s beatings; the dislocated arm, the broken
collarbone, the punctured spleen. Roagie had given Vaylo drops for
the pup’s eye and advised him to grind bonemeal into her milk to
make her strong.
“She’ll never run
straight with that kettle tail,” Roagie had said, “but she’ll sure
sprint a fast curve.”
Moya, Vaylo had
called her, after the legendary chief’s wife who defended the
Bluddhouse from Dhoone’s armies while her husband was
away.
Moya, the dog, turned
out to be a brawler. Vaylo grinned thinking about her. Fierce and
scrappy, she would lunge at anyone who looked at him the wrong way.
He’d never been without a dog since. They had made him who he was.
A boy with a dog at his heels was no longer alone. He had someone
to back him up in a fight, an extra set of eyes and ears to keep
watch, and something warm—and smelly—to sleep next to through the
long winter nights. Vaylo had lost count of all the dogs he had
owned. Hundreds, certainly. At some point he had stopped giving
them names. It didn’t seem necessary. They were part of him like an
arm or a leg. Might as well have called them Vaylo.
The wolf dog had been
different though. Its dam had gone missing four summers back and
Vaylo thought he’d never see her again. Fifty days later she’d
turned up, fat and pleased with herself, trotting in from the
north. When she’d given birth a month later it became apparent she
had mated with a wolf. Right from the start, the wolf dog held
itself apart from its siblings. More wolf than dog, it was the
largest of the litter and suckled the hardest. It sucked its dam
dry, depriving its brothers of milk. Its sisters lived, but there
was never any doubt over who was top dog. Vaylo had taken the wolf
dog in hand, but he realized early on that it could not be wholly
tamed. Part of its soul lived in the north beyond the clanholds. On
icy nights lit by stars no latch or tether could hold it . . . but
it had always returned.
Until
now.
The old pain in
Vaylo’s chest knifed him. Ignoring it, he stood and headed south.
He had a watch to keep. Three dogs ghosted at his side, serious and
alert. To the north, Cluff Drybannock would be mounting his own
watch, looking not to the clanholds but to the Rift. Vaylo wondered
how long it would take the wolf dog to reach him.
The dog had chosen a
new master. It would not be coming back.