"Here it comes. All-time ass-chewing for doing a stupid," I said.
She used Itaskian first. Most of us understood it. She changed languages for the Harish and a few others who didn't. We drifted toward the black tent.
From the heart of the meadow I could see the pattern of the fire pits. Each lay in one of the angles of a five-pointed star. A pentagram. This meadow was a live magical symbol.
"It'll only be a couple days till we get where we're heading. Maybe sooner. The boss says it's time to let you know what's happening. Just so you'll stay on your toes. The name of the place is Kammengarn." She grinned, exposing dirty teeth.
It took a while. The legend was old, and didn't get much notice outside Itaskia's northern provinces, where Rainheart is a folk hero.
Bellweather popped first. "You mean like the Kammengarn in the story of Rainheart slaying the Kammengarn Dragon?"
"You got it, Captain."
Most of us just put on stupid looks, the southerners more so than those of us who shared cultural roots with Itaskia. I don't think the Harish ever understood.
"Why? What's there?" Bellweather asked.
Fetch laughed. The sound was hard to describe. A little bit of cackle, of bray, and of tinkle all rolled into one astonishing noise. "The Kammengarn Dragon, idiot. Silcroscuar. Father of All Dragons. The big guy of the dragon world. The one who makes the ones you saw in the wars look like crippled chickens beside eagles."
"You're not making sense," Chenyth responded. "What's there? Bones? Rainheart killed the monster three or four hundred years ago."
Lord Hammer came from his tent. He stood behind Fetch, his arms folded. He remained as still, as lifeless, as a statue in clothes. We became less restive.
He was one spooky character. I felt my arm where he had caught me. It still tingled.
"Rainheart's successes were exaggerated," Fetch told us. She used her sarcastic tone. The one that blistered obstinate rocks and mules. "Mostly by Rainheart. The dragon lives. No mortal man can kill it. The gods willed that it be. It shall be, so long as the world endures. It is the Father of All Dragons. If it perishes, dragons perish. The world must have its dragons."
It was weird. The way she changed while she was talking. All of a sudden she wasn't Fetch anymore. I think we all sneaked peeks at Lord Hammer to see if he were doing some ventriloquist trick.
Maybe he was. He could be doing anything behind that iron mask.
I wasn't sure Lord Hammer was human anymore. He might be some unbanished devil left over from the great thaumaturgy confrontations of the wars.
"Lord Hammer is going to Kammengarn to obtain a cup of the immortal Dragon's blood."
Hammer ducked into his tent. Fetch was right behind him.
"What the hell?" Brandy demanded. "What kind of crap is this?
"Hammer don't lie," I replied.
"Not that we know of," Chenyth said.
"He's a plainspoken man, even if Fetch does his talking. He says the Kammengarn Dragon is alive, I believe him. He says we're going to kype a cup of its blood, there it is. I reckon we're going to try."
"Will . . . ."
I went and squatted by our fire. I needed a little more warming. The dead wood of the forest burned pretty ordinarily.
The men were quiet for a long time
What was there to say?
We had taken Lord Hammer's gold.
Even professional griper Brandy didn't say much by way of complaint.
Mikhail had been right. You went on even when the cause was a loser. It became a matter of honor.
Ormson killed the silence. His action was a minor thing characteristic of his race, but it divided the journey into different phases, now and then, and inspired the resolution of the rest of us.
He drew his sword, began whetting it.
The stone made a shing-shing sound along his blade For an instant it was the only sound to be heard.
We were old warriors. That sound spoke eloquently of battles beyond the dawn. I drew my sword . . . .
I had taken the gold. I was Lord Hammer's man.
VI
A metallic symphony played as stones sharpened swords and spearheads. Men tested bowstrings and thumped weathered shields. Old greaves clanked, leather armor, too long unoiled, squeaked.
Lord Hammer stepped from his tent. His mask bore no paint now. Only chance flickers of firelight revealed the existence of anything within his cowl.
When his gaze met mine I felt I was looking at a man who was smiling.
Chenyth fidgeted with his gear. Then, "I'm going to see what Jamal's doing."
He sheathed the battered sword I had given him and wandered off. He didn't cut much of a figure as a warrior. He was just a skinny blond kid who looked like a gust of wind would blow him away, or a willing woman turn him into jelly.
Eyes followed him. Pain filled some. We had all been there once. Now we were here.
He was our talisman against our mortality.
I started wondering what the Harish were up to myself. I followed Chenyth. They were almost civil while he was around.
They were ships without compasses, those four, more lost than the rest of us. They were religious fanatics who had sworn themselves to a dead cause. They were El Murid's Chosen Ones, his most devoted followers, a dedicated cult of assassins. The Great Eastern Wars had thrown their master into eclipse. His once vast empire had collapsed. Now, according to rumor, El Murid was nothing but a fat, decrepit opium addict commanding a few bandits in the south desert hills of Hammad al Nakir. He spent his days pulling on his pipe and dreaming about an impossible restoration. These four brother assassins were refugees from the vengeance of the new order . . . .
Defeat had left them with nothing but one another and their blades. About what victory had given us.
Harish took no wives. They devoted themselves totally to the mysteries of their brotherhood, and to fulfilling the commands of their master.
No one gave them orders anymore. Yet they had sworn to devote their lives to their master's needs.
They were waiting. And while they waited, they survived by selling what they had given El Murid freely.
Like the rest of us, they were what history had made them. Bladesmen.
They formed a cross, facing their fire. Chenyth knelt beside Jamal. They talked in low tones. The others watched with stony faces partially concealed by thin veils and long, heavy black beards. Foud, the oldest, dyed his to keep the color. They were all solid, tough men. Killers unfamiliar with remorse.
All four held ornate silver daggers.
I stopped, amazed.
They were permitting Chenyth to watch the consecration of Harish kill-daggers. It was one of the high mysteries of their cult.
They sensed my presence, but went on removing the enameled names of their last victims from amidst the engraved symbols on the flats of their blades. Those blades were a quarter-inch thick near the hilt. The flat ran half the twelve-inch length. Each blade was an inch wide at its base.
They seemed heavy, clumsy, but the Harish used them with terrifying efficiency.
One by one, oldest to youngest, they thrust their daggers into the fire to extinguish the last gossamer of past victims' souls still clinging to the deadly engraving. Then they laid their blades across their hearts, beneath the palms of their left hands. Foud spoke a word.
Chenyth later told me the ritual was couched in the language of ancient Ilkazar. It was an odd tongue they used, like nothing else I've heard.
Foud chanted. The others answered.
Fifteen minutes passed. When they finished even a dullard like myself could feel the Power hovering round the Harish fire.
Lord Hammer came out of his tent. He peered our way briefly, then returned.
The four plunged their blades into the fire again.
Then they joined the ritual everyone else had been pursuing. They produced their whetstones.
I considered Foud's blade. Nearly two inches were missing from its le
ngth. It had been honed till it had narrowed a quarter. The engraving was almost invisible. He had served El Murid long and effectively.
His gaze met mine. For an instant a smile flickered behind his veil.
This was the first any of them had even admitted my existence.
A moment later Jamal said something to Chenyth. The younger Harish was the only one who admitted to understanding Itaskian, though we all knew the others did too. Chenyth nodded and rose.
"They're going to name their daggers. We have to go."
Times change. Only a few years ago men like these had tried to kill Kavelin's Queen. Now we were allies.
The glint in Foud's eye told me that things might be different now if he had been the man sent then.
The Harish believed. In their master, in themselves. Every assassin who consecrated a blade was as sure of himself as was Foud.
"What're they doing here?" I muttered at Chenyth. I knew. The same as me. Doing what they knew. Surviving the only way they knew. Still . . . . The Harish revered their Cause, even though it was lost.
They wanted to bring the Disciple's salvation to the whole word, using every means at their disposal.
Toamas was awake and chipper when we got back. "I ever tell about the time I was with King Bragi, during the El Murid Wars, when he was just another blank shield? It was a town in Altea . . . ."
I guess that kept us going, too. Maybe one mercenary in fifty thousand made it big. I guess we all had some core of hope, or belief in ourselves, too.
VII
"All right, you goat-lovers! Drag your dead asses out. We got some hiking to do today."
Fetch had a way with words like no lady I've ever known. I slithered out of my blankets, scuttled to the fire, tumbled some wood on, and slid back into the wool. That circle may have been springish, but there was a nip in the air.
Chenyth rolled over. He muttered something about eyes in the night.
"Come on. Roll out. We got a long walk ahead."
Chenyth sat up. "Phew! One of these days we've got to take time off for baths. Hey. Toamas. Wake up." He shook the old man. "Oh."
"What's the matter?"
"I think he's dead, Will."
"Toamas? Nah. He just don't want to get up." I shook him.
Chenyth was right.
I jumped out of there so fast I knocked the tent down on Chenyth. "Fetch. The old man's dead. Toamas."
She kicked a foot sticking out of another tent, gave me a puzzled look. Then she scurried into the black tent.
I tried to look inside. But there were inside flaps too.
Lord Hammer appeared a moment later. His mask was paintless. His gaze swept the horizon, then the camp. Fetch popped out as he started toward our tent.
Chenyth came up cussing. "Damnit, Will, what the hell you . . . ." His jaw dropped. He scrambled out of Lord Hammer's path.
Fetch whipped past and started hauling tent away. Lord Hammer knelt, hand over Toamas's heart. He moved it to the grass. Then he walked to the gap we thought of as a gate.
"What's he doing?" Chenyth asked.
"Wait," Fetch told him.
Lord Hammer halted, faced left, began pacing the perimeter. He paused several times. We resumed our morning chores. Brandy cussed the gods both on Toamas's behalf and because he faced another miserable breakfast. You couldn't tell which mattered more to him. Brandy bitched about everything equally.
His true feelings surfaced when he was the first to volunteer to dig the old man's grave.
Toamas had saved his life in the mountains.
"We Kaveliners got to stick together," he muttered to me. "Way it's always been. Way it'll always be."
"Yeah."
His family and Toamas's lived in the same area. They had been on opposite sides in the civil war with which Kavelin had amused itself during the interim between the El Murid and Great Eastern Wars.
It was one of the few serious remarks I had ever heard from Brandy.
Lord Hammer chose the grave site. It butted against the wall. Toamas went down sitting upright, facing the forest.
"That's where I saw the thing last night," Chenyth told me.
"What thing?"
"When I had guard duty. All I could see was its eyes." He dropped a handful of dirt into the old man's lap. The others did the same. Except Foud. The Harish Elder dropped onto his belly, placed a small silver dagger under Toamas's folded hands.
We Kaveliners bowed to Foud. This was a major gesture by the Harish. Their second highest honor, given a man who had been their enemy all his life.
I wondered why Foud had done it.
"Why did he die?" Chenyth asked Fetch. "I thought Lord Hammer fixed him."
"He did. Chenyth, the circle took Toamas."
"I don't understand."
"Neither do I."
I wondered some more. Ignorance and Lord Hammer seemed poles apart.
Maybe he had known. But I couldn't hate him. The way Fetch talked, thirty-seven of us were alive because Toamas had died. The circle certainly was more merciful than the forest.
Lord Hammer gestured. Fetch ran to him. Then he ducked into his tent while she talked.
"Get with it. We've got a long way to go. We'll have to travel fast. Lord Hammer doesn't want to spend any more lives. He wants to leave the forest before nightfall."
We moved. Our packs were trailing odds and ends when we started. Our stomachs weren't full. But those were considerations less important than enduring the protection of another circle.
As we were leaving I noticed a flower blooming in the soft earth where we had put Toamas down. There were dozens of flowers along the wall. The few places where they were missing were the spots where Lord Hammer had paused in his circuit of the wall.
What would happen when all the grave sites were full?
Maybe Lord Hammer knew. But Hammer didn't have much to say.
We passed another circle about noon. It was dead.
The day was warmer, the sky clear. The ice began melting. We made good time. Lord Hammer seemed pleased.
I stared straight ahead, at Russ's back, all morning. If I looked at a tree I could hear it calling. The pull was terrifying
Chenyth seized my arm. "Stop!"
I almost trampled Russ. "What's up?" Lord Hammer had stopped.
"I don't know."
Fetch was dancing around like a barefoot burglar on a floor covered with tacks. Lord Hammer and his steed might have been some parkland pigeon roost, so still were they. We shuffled round so we could see without leaving the safety of the trail.
We had come to a clearing. It was a quarter mile across. What looked like a mud-dauber's nest, the kind with just one hole, lay at the middle of the clearing. It was big. Like two hundred yards long, fifty feet wide, and thirty feet high. A sense of immense menace radiated from it.
"What is it?" we asked one another. Neither Lord Hammer nor Fetch answered us.
Lord Hammer slowly raised his left arm till it thrust straight out from his shoulder. He lifted his forearm vertically, turning the edge of a stiffened hand toward the structure. Then he raised his right arm, laying his forearm parallel with his eyeslits. Then he stiffened his hand, facing the structure with its edge.
"Let's go!" Fetch snapped. "Follow me." She started running.
We whipped the mules into a trot, ran. We weren't gentle with the balky ones.
We had to go right along the side of that thing. As we approached, I glanced back. Lord Hammer was coming, his mount pacing slowly. Hammer himself remained frozen in the position he had assumed. He was almost indiscernible inside a black nimbus.
His mask glowed like the sun. The face of an animal seemed to peep through the golden light.
I glanced into the dark entry to that mound. Menace, backed by rage and frustration, slammed into me.
Lord Hammer halted directly in front of the hole. The rest of us raced for the forest behind the barrow.
Fetch was scared, but not scared enough to pass the fir
st tree. She stopped. We waited.
And Lord Hammer came.
Never have I seen a horse run as beautifully, or as fast. It may have been my imagination, or the way the sun hit its breath in the cold, but fire seemed to play round its nostrils. Lord Hammer rode as if he were part of the beast.
The earth shuddered. A basso profundo rumble came from the mound.
Lord Hammer swept past, slowing, and we pursued him. No one thought to look back, to see what the earth brought forth. It was too late once we passed that first tree.
"Will," Chenyth panted. "Did you see that horse run? What kind of horse runs like that, Will?"
What could I tell him? "Sorcerer's horse, Chenyth. Hell horse. But we knew that already, didn't we?"
Some of us did. Chenyth never really believed it till then. He figured we were giving him more war stories.
He never understood that we couldn't exaggerate what had happened during the Great Eastern Wars. That we told toned-down stories because there was so much we wanted to forget.
Chenyth couldn't take anything at face value. He worked his way up the column so he could pump Fetch. He didn't get anything from her, either. Lord Hammer led. We followed. For Fetch that was the natural order of life.
VIII
We passed another dead circle in the afternoon. Lord Hammer glanced at the sun and increased the pace.
An hour later Fetch passed the word that we would have to stop at the next circle—unless it were dead.
Dread sandpapered the ends of our nerves. The men who had stood sentry last night had seen too much of the things that roamed the forest by dark. And Hammer's reluctance to face the night. . . . It made the price of a circle almost attractive.
Even thirty-seven to one aren't good odds when my life is on the line. I've been risking it since I was Chenyth's age, but I like having some choice, some control . . . .
The next circle was alive.
Darkness was close when we reached it. We could hear big things moving behind us, beyond the trees. Hungry things. We zipped into the circle and pitched camp in record time.
I stood sentry that night. I saw what Chenyth had seen. It didn't bother me much. I was a veteran of the Great Eastern Wars.