A Sword from Red Ice

Truth was they were all hungry and short-tempered. Rabbits alone did not make a meal. If you ate too much they gave you the runs and if you didn't eat enough you starved. It was, as Ockish Bull would have said, a choice between the ugly and the just plain bad. Nan and the bairns got the best of it. The organ meat could stay with you for half a day, but the muscle meat, which Vaylo and Hammie enjoyed, only hung around long enough to bid a fond farewell to your gut The dogs didnt mind it, but then what did dogs know about decent food? Vaylo was grateful for what they caught, but after fifteen days of jackrabbit, woodrat and opossum his gratitude was wearing thin.

It was turning out to be a hard journey, harder than he had imagined when he'd first decided its course the night they escaped from the Tomb of the Dhoone Princes, The distances invoked were longer than he'd anticipated and the hardships more wearing than he could have foreseen. Nothing to eat except lean meat, no clothes except what lay on their hacks, no weapons except a kitchen knife, a longknife and a maidens helper. Until yesterday when they finally entered hill country, they hadn't even been able to cook the meat brought down by the dogs, so wary was Vaylo of lighting a fire. Man hunters were out in the Dhoonehold, searching for the Dog Lord and his party, and all it would take for them to spy their prey was a lone line of smoke on the horizon or a flickering orange glow amidst the trees. Twice now Vaylo had spied mounted men in the distance and each time he'd known they had Dog meat on their minds. Man hunters had a look to them: lightly armored, finely horsed, hungry. Vaylo feared them, for he very much doubted whether Robbie Dun Dhoone cared if his enemy was taken dead or alive. The man hunters carried crossbows and would shoot at distance, and there were nights when Vaylo could not sleep for the thought of Pasha and Aaron being shot in the back.

Yesterday had brought an easing of his fears. The Copper Hills were a no-man's-land of bleak moors, wind-stunted pine forests, heather fields and rocky peaks. They had seen no sign of habitation in over two days and last night Vaylo had finally judged it safe to build a cookfire. They had been weary, but merry enough, and for a wonder Hammie had produced a small wedge of red cheese. "The laddie from Dhoone gave it to me," he said by way of explanation, "and I was saving it for the right moment." They had all taken a bite, though Aaron had spit his out, declaring it tasted like chicken wattles, and that had caused a huge scrap amongst the dogs. While three of them fought over Aaron's chewed-up leftovers, the wolf dog had sneaked in and stolen the rabbit from the fire.

Vaylo had roared at all of them then, the bairns included, and ordered everyone except Hammie to go to sleep. His nerves were not what they had been, he realized later as he lay atop his cloak and looked out at the dim, starless night The loss of forty good men at the Dhoonehouse followed by the rigors of a fifteen-day journey had worn him thin. How old was he now? Fifty-three, fifty-four? Too old to be starting from scratch, yet what choice did he have? Last night, before beginning his watch, Hammie had said to him, "Chief, we're living through bad times."

Vaylo had not replied, though he knew well enough what his response should have been: "Hammie, I created them."

Gullit Bludd had not taught: his bastard son much, but by default Vaylo had learned certain things at his father's hearth. The first amongst them was that no one would look out for him save himself. The second was that if he made a botch-up of things—be it letting the dogs out when one of the bitches was in heat, forgetting to haul the warriors' leathers in from the rain, or failing to skin a deer carcass before it froze—it was no one's responsibility but his own. Break it, you fix it or get a bearing. That was the way Gullit's hearth had worked.

It had not been a bad lesson all in all, though It had come back to haunt him in recent months. He, the Dog Lord, had brought the clan-holds to its knees, and Vaylo had the uncomfortable feeling that there was no one to set it to rights only him. Gods, why had he ever accepted Penthero Iss' offer of aid? He should have taken the Dhoonehouse alone. The invasion was damned from the start, from the very first moment when Vaylo had said to Iss' emissary, "Do what you must, halfman. Just spare me the details so I can deny them."