A Sword from Red Ice

Drybone followed his gaze. "No. It is the Field Of Grave and Swords. I have walked there. Most swords no longer stand. Those that do are rusted and no longer have their points. A myth made true. As a boy Vaylo had heard of the Field of Graves and Swords, a graveyard where warriors were buried with their swords sticking up through the soil. He had thought it a fine thing, for the field was said to form the first line of defense for a legendary fortress— even in death the warriors guarded the fastness. It was strange to learn that this small hillfort was the site of such a legend.

"What happened to the nine missing men?" Vaylo asked, no longer sure if he even changed the subject.

Cluff Drybannock touched the container made of bone at his waist. "I sent them on a sortie northeast They never returned."

"What was their purpose?"

"To gather intelligence on the Maimed Men, and hunt freely if they so chose."

"You rode out to find them?"

Silence, and then as if by prearrangement both men moved out from the window and turned to look at each other full-on. Dry's brick-colored face was grave. "I headed a search party. Their tracks were not hard to follow and we found" He struggled for a word, "their remains within the day."

Vaylo touched his container of powdered guidestone. "Who died?"

Cluff Drybannock listed their names in perfect formal ranking beginning with the longest-serving sworn clansmen, Derek Blunt, and ending with the yearman, Will Pool, brother to Midge, who had taken his first oath seven months back. Vaylo knew them all. "Gods keep them."

Knowing he had no choice but to press on, he said, "Their horses?"

"Also gone."

"Dead or taken?"

Dry's nostrils flared. "Both. This warrior does not know a word to describe what was left of the men and their horses. Their shadows were left behind, burned into the grass."

Oh gods. "How long ago did this happen?"

"Sunset will mark the eleventh day."

Vaylo had to walk, and began to circle the vaulted room. His brain twitched as shocks ran through it. Bluddsmen dead. Derek Blunt had been forty-three, an experienced headman and an expert mounted swordsman. How could a heavily armed party come upon him without warning? "Was there sign of the enemy?"

"Big Borro found something close by, a sword-shaped hole cut into the turf. We dug and tried to find what had caused it. Six feet down we hit rock, but the sword-shaped object had burned through it and could not be reached.

Halting by the pile of roof debris, Vaylo turned over a rotten timber with the toe of his boot. Wood lice scuttled away from the light. "What s happening, Dry? What is the threat we are facing?"

Cluff Drybannock stood to attention, shoulders straight and chin high. "I fear the worst, my lord and father. In the days before I came to Bludd I heard things. The Trenchlands are full of whispers. Some say the trees start them. I was a boy and much ignored. Men and women would talk freely in the tavern where I served them. They did not believe a boy of seven had ears. Most were Sull or part Sull, and sometimes when the hour grew late their talk would turn to the threat growing in the darkness. They spoke of Ben Horo, the Time Before, and Maer Horn, the Age of Darkness. War had visited them in the past and would again. Most agreed the auguries were bad. Xalla a'mar, night is rising, they would say. Lisha mat i'scaras. We must grease our swords.

"The words pulled the iron in my blood like a magnet. Why, I cannot say. A thousand years have passed since the shadows last rose, and the Sull believe they are due to rise again. I fear those shadows, my father. I fear our clansmen died by hands that were formed from maer dan, shadowflesh. I fear we stand at the closing of an Age and if we are not vigilant and fail to fight, the Age will see an end to the Stone Gods and to clan."

Vaylo breathed steadily and showed no reaction to his fostered son's words. Many things struck him at once, yet in the silence that followed it was sadness that took hold and grew. It had been unsettling to hear Dry speak those Sull words with such casual precision. Twenty-five years in clan yet it Semed the language of his birth was undiminished. Unsettling also to hear him speak for the first time about those years before he came to Bludd. Vaylo had known nothing about Dry's boyhood in the Trenchlands, save that when he arrived at the Bluddhouse he was badly beaten and close to starving. Yet even unsettled Vaylo had been stirred with pride. Cluff Drybannock was a man worthy of respect. My eighth son. And much though Vaylo wanted him to be clan, he was not. A divide stood between them and if Vaylo looked for-ward he saw a parting in the distance, a dark line on the horizon. Like the Rift. Not realizing he was massaging the pain beneath his heart, Vaylo said, "Tell me what killed my men, Dry. If we encounter them again we must understand what we fight."