Vaylo saddled the black stallion. The beast was skittish and eager; it nipped his hand as he fastened the nose piece. Behind him, he was aware of men disappointed, of grumblings, and hay-kicking. A slammed door. Do not rush to your own destruction, Vaylo wanted to tell them. If Angus Lok was right they stood at the sunset of the long night. There'd be time enough to get killed in the years of darkness to come.
"Bludd!" Vaylo hollered as he swung himself atop the horse. "We are chosen by the Stone Gods to guard their borders. Death is our companion. A life long-lived is our reward." Raising his hammer high in the air, Vaylo led the charge from the west ward.
Hooves clattered behind him. Men shouted, "Bludd! Bludd! Bluddl" Harness leather creaked and sawed. The cold night air snapped at Vaylo's skin, bringing hair upright and raising hard white mounds of gooseflesh. Cawdo's hammer felt a couple of pounds too light and about half a foot too short. Its balance was off-center and the head swung like a seesaw. Vaylo wondered if it hadn't been designed for throwing.
Gods, but it was raw. The snow underfoot crackled as if it held a charge. Pressure was dropping and the air had that loose changeable feeling that meant something was coming in. Big Borro had probably been right about snow.
Vaylo headed north into the valley, the bitch at his horse's hoofs. The land was open here, without trees or tall shrubs to break the view. All was blue. Overhead clouds held streaks of light. Dry rode close to his back, his lean and sinewy stallion effortlessly keeping pace. He had not drawn his sword yet, though others in the line had. When Vaylo turned his neck to get a better look at his fostered son he saw someone who looked wholly Sull.
"West of the Field of Graves and Swords," he said, seeing movements in the dark blueness that Vaylo did not.
Tightening his left rein, Vaylo made the shift in course. The snow hit as they rode out of the north wall of the valley and up to the headland. Flakes the size and shape offish lures began to fall.
Vaylo spotted the horsemen as he topped the ride. Nine, as Dry had said. They rode horses of black oil whose bodies rippled on the edge between solid and liquid like something seen through thickly distorted glass. The men, if you could call them men, were armed with blades that killed air. Snowflakes were sucked in, and nothing came out The men's calls were high and terrible birdlike screeches that raked the nerves like knives. Their bodies existed on a plain where shadow could support weight. Their feces were no longer recognizable as human. Skin and features were black and sucked inward, distorted by dark hungers Wrong about the hammer too. For he could bash the shadow men with it but could not stop them. One fell from its horse and continued fighting afoot, its blade of voided steel mercilessly hacking horseflesh. Vaylo dropped the hammer. "Dry," he called out to the man who had never left his side during the battle. "Fetch me that sword."
It was a sword dropped by a young Bluddsmen who would never again use it. A good plain weapon that had not once found shad-owflesh; the blade was perfectly silver.
"My lord and father," Dry said, presenting his mighty six feet longsword to Vaylo Bludd.
"No," Vaylo said softly. Cluff Drybannock was holding the blunt of the blade in his fist, offering the crosshilts. As a beast horse charged them, Dry thrust the sword into his father's hand.
Vaylo took it and wrested it into jerking motion. He had forgotten all it took—the balance, the space, the wrist and arm coordination—to wield such a blade. Gamely, he drove his horse forward. Dry must be shielded while he found himself a weapon.
It was hell. The oily black forms of the horses— The screeches. The snarling of the wolf dog and the bitch as they danced around the only two people they cared about in the melee, tearing shadowflesh, launching themselves at throats, shaking their heads like the insane. Snow was everywhere, in Vaylo's eyes, on his sword blade, jammed in the cavities between his bared teeth.
When one of the dark riders made a lunge for Drybone, Vaylo punched his sword forward and twisted it into shadowflesh. It was possibly the ugliest move ever made with a longsword, more suited to knife brawls than swordcraft, but somehow the tip entered at exactly the right angle to slide the blade into the heart.
"Chosen!" Vaylo screamed, suddenly filled with mad joy. "We are Bludd."
Dry came to his side, now armed with a sword a foot and a half shorter than his old one, and the two men swapped glances through the chaos and the snow. Cluff Drybannock rarely smiled, and he did not smile now, but later when Vaylo recalled this moment he believed he saw something close to contentment on his fostered son's face. This was what he wanted most in life. Not just to fight shadows, but to fight them at his father's side.
The old soft pain sounded in Vaylo's heart. He loved Dry so much and so completely he thought it might break. Already his decision was made.
Vaylo never knew how long the battle lasted. Time ceased to pass at normal rate, rhythms were found, a longsword mastered, men died, hearts imploded, voided steel burned sword-shapes in the ground snow. Finally there was a time when the dark riders were dead and Drybone was the only man still fighting. Chasing down the last of the beast horses, he slew it in the Field of Graves and Swords.
Vaylo dismounted. His legs were shaking like leaves. The bitch came over and pushed against him, mewling and anxious, her tail down. The wolf dog was with Dry in the field. Unclasping his sable cloak, the Dog Lord went to aid the Bluddsman who had fallen Others helped him in this, but it fell to the Bludd chief to take those whose injuries were fatal. He kissed the men on the foreheads, brushed snow from their cheeks, named them Bluddsmen and sons. Cluff Drybannock's sword was a blessing, its perfect sharpness. Vaylo's eyes were dry, his chest tight.
When he was done he cleaned his sword in the snow and waited for Drybone to join him. When he drew close, Cluff Drybannock dismounted. He would never sit a horse while his chief stood. Snowflakes whirled between them. The wolf dog began to howl.
It knew.
And then Drybone knew. Nothing changed in his stance or face, but Vaylo knew his son.
"Dry," he said. "I leave for Bludd tomorrow. Come with me." A moment passed where Vaylo was filled with reckless hope, and then Cluff Drybannock shook his head. "I cannot, my father. I am Bludd and I am Sull. This is where I choose to make my stand." The wolf dog keened in the darkness. Its sound broke Vaylo's heart.
FORTY-FIVE The Red Ice
It was the eye of the storm and they were heading toward it, the peace at the center of a vast and unsettled underworld of clouds. Hail blasted their faces, coming at them head-on. Wind howled, ripping off tree limbs weakened lftdays of frost and sending them flying through the air. They walked bent forward against the onslaught, face masks pulled up to their eyes, mitted hands snatching their cloaks taut across their bodies. If the wind got under them it could tear the cloth off their backs. The flap of Raifs daypack made a sound like a whumpfing of a large bird taking flight.
Lightning shot though the darkness in massive gridlike forks. The entire north smelled like something just ignited. The membranes in Raif's ears began popping as air pressure switched back and forth and thunder rumbled.
He wondered if one of the definitions of insanity could be "anyone who talks to leeches." That was what he was doing, muttering words that were not intended for either Addie or himself. Give me another hour, another hour, another night. The leech was with him, a good strong biter on his back. A parasite feeding on his blood.
The attack by the Unmade at the stand of red pines had altered the position of the claw next to his heart. Shadow homed to shadow. Something felt different; there was the smallest possible delay in the completion of a beat of his heart. It was muscle, he knew that. He of all people knew that. And it contracted in rhythm and that rhythm had been changed.