Satisfied, Ockish had continued. Even at that young age he'd had a way with spinning tales, "The new Bludd chief Mannangler Bludd had no choice but to ride his armies south to meet Wardwir. When a Bluddsworn clan is invaded, he told his men, so is Bludd. Wardwir assembled his host on a field south of the Wolf and waited for Mannangler to make the crossing. Mannangler had been camped south of Broddic and arrived with many rafts and boats. The crossing was made in the dead of night. Five hundred Bluddsmen were on the river when it ignited. Wardwir had been waiting for him and had ordered naptha floated on the water. When he gave the signal his crossbowmen loosed a thousand arrows primed with bone phosphor. The fire of hell erupted. Flames as tall as towers lit up the night as if it were day. Bluddsmen burned on the river. When they threw themselves in the water to douse the flames they still burned. Some made it to the other side and cooked within their armor as they fought. Mannangler himself boiled so intensely in his full plate he exploded. The Bluddsmen who were still awaiting crossing heard the terrible cries of the clansmen and many took to the water, knowing they too would be burned but unable to stand by and watch their brothers die. Hundreds of Bluddsmen lost their lives that night, their weapons and armor melted to their skin, their bodies crisped to husks."
Even now, forty-five years later, Vaylo could remember the silence that had followed Ockish's tale. It had weight and meaning. Many took to the water, those were the words Vaylo had cherished the most. That was what it meant to be Bludd. Or so he had thought back then.
Now he wondered about other things in the tale. How could Wardwir have taken HalfBludd so easily? Both the Wolf and the Lonewater guarded its clanhold, and the HalfBludd roundhouse was not known for nothing as "the Siegebreaker." And what was the Night of Wralls anyway? At first Vaylo had assumed Ockish meant to say 'Walls" but he had heard variations on the tale many times since then and although several details changed from telling to telling that word remained the same. Wralls.
Vaylo shivered. "Hammie," he said, "why did you have to go and get me thinking about Burning River?"
Hammie knew when an apology was called for even when he wasn't exactly sure about the nature of his trespass. "Sorry, Chief." Vaylo wagged his head. "You should be. Keep watch." "Aye." Hammie Faa stood to attention. He was dressed in his new maroon cloak, and Vaylo could see that at some point in the past few days it had been tailored to fit him more precisely. Nan Culldayis had been busy with a needle. That woman had a giant soft spot for anyone whose named ended in Faa.
Thinking about Nan made him want to see her, and he took the short walk along the western rampart that led to the stairs. The sunset was fading to purples and dried-blood reds and black. Thicker, more serious clouds were heading in from the northeast. Old compacted snow that had been around for several weeks felt like stone underfoot. Part of the rampart wall had collapsed decades earlier leaving an exposed gap where a man could simply walk off into thin air. Vaylo considered why he had been here for nearly thirty days and not given the order to have it timbered. Nan was busy fixing things. Why wasn't he?
Waving a hand in farewell to Hammie, Vaylo took the stairs. Someone had thought to salt here and the steps were less treacherous than the rampart. The wind was beginning to pick up and he could hear it warping the sheet copper on the roof.
The blond swordsman Big Borro was heading up as Vaylo was heading down. "Snow?" Vaylo asked as Borro backed against the stairwell to make room for his chief to pass.
Borro had an apple pinned between his teeth and it made a sucking noise as he dislodged it. "Aye. Storm's brewing to the east."
Over Bludd. The Dog Lord nodded. He noticed Borro had a basic shortbow clipped to a brain hook on his shoulder belt "Taking the watch from Hammie?"
"Joining him. Drybone says on the nights when the clouds cover the moon we need to mount a double guard."
It was the first Vaylo had ever heard of such an order. But he did not let Barro know it. "Don't stand still. You might freeze."
"I know it," Big Borro said, nodding toward the cloak, face mask, and overmitts he had rolled in a loose pile and tucked under his left arm. "Got some spare for Hammie. Some of… Der's old stuff."
Vaylo met Marcus Borro's dark blue eyes. Der was Derek Blunt. And Derek Blunt was dead, attacked by only the gods knew what. If the Dog Lord remembered rightly Big Borro and Derek had married sisters. Pretty dark-haired girls who were waiting back at the Bluddhouse. "Derek was a fine warrior. One of the best men I ever saw wield a sword from the saddle."
Muscles in Borro's large fleshy face tightened. He was a big man, wide as well as tall, with some hard fat at his gut and the beginnings of a third chin. "Makes it harder to figure how he could have been taken while mounted."
Few replies possible to that and Vaylo did not attempt any. The two parted in silence, exchanging blunt and knowing nods.
Vaylo found himself little warmed when he entered the hillfort. Fires were burning somewhere, but not here in the west ward, in the hall above the temporary stables. There was a fireplace—a vast black cavity the size of a beer cellar topped with a stone mantle carved with thistles and fisher heads—feat the cook irons had gone, and an omi-| nous split in the flue wall, running from the mantel all the way to the roof, perhaps provided the reason why. At least the cold had killed off some of the molds. The green ones, if Vaylo wasn't mistaken. The black ones could probably live on the moon.
Even without the warmth of the fire some men still barracked here, and untidy rows of makeshift stretcher-beds, rush mats, burlap sacking and weapons gear lined three of the five walls. A few men were sleeping. Some were engaged in a tense game of knucklebones. Little Aaron was sitting beside Mogo Salt, watching with keen interest as Mogo rubbed yellow tung oil into Cawdo's peel-bladed Morning Star hammerhead. Aaron looked up as his grandfather passed, but the lure of such an exotic piece of weaponry was too great and he bared his bottom teeth in a hopeful grimace that meant something like, Sorry, Granda, don't be mad, but this is better than spending time with you.
Vaylo glared at him. Keep the boy on his toes.
It had been sobering to see how quickly his grandson had been won over by Gangaric. The boy's uncle had stayed at the hillfort for only three days, but by the second day Aaron was following Gangaric around like a puppy. "What's it like at HalfBludd? Do they eat slugs? Is Quarro Bludd chief now? Which hammer did Da wield at the Crab Gate? If we hold Withy why cant Granda be king? Where are you going? Can I come?" The questions had been relentless, and in fairness to Gangaric he had dealt with them with patience and some tact. He'd had twin boys himself, Ferrin and Yago, and he knew something about how to deal with bairns. He also knew, Vaylo was sure, what an impression he was making upon the boy. Aaron was seven, and easily swayed. Gangaric had wooed him with tales of the Bluddhouse, of Pengo's brilliance on Ganmiddich Field, of the importance of wielding a hammer, not a sword.
"Why don't you have a hammer, Granda?" the boy had actually asked yesterday.
"Because I lost it in a Dhoonesman's chest," he had replied, surprised by how sharply the question touched him. "And I never it got it back." And it happened because your father, the supposed hero of Canmiddich Pengo Bludd, deserted the Dhoonehouse leaving behind a crew of forty men. Forty. And you, my grandson, are one of the handful of people inside the house that night who escaped alive. He had come so close to saying, those words that if Aaron had been older he could have read them on his granda's face. As it was the boy had left him, his shoulders drooping, his skinny arms hugging his skinny chest. Gangaric and his crew were well gone now. They had ridden south to Withy eight days back, but damage had been done. Little Aaron's head was filled with tales of his father's and his uncles' bravery, and he had begun asking Nan when they were going back. Even Nan wasn't sure where he meant by this. It could be Dhoone, Ganmiddich or Bludd. Certainly in the past year Aaron had seen more of Dhoone than any other clanhold. He'd been barely six when they left Bludd, and could hardly be expected to remember it.