The Anvil of Ice

by Michael Scott Rohan

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Military Sci-Fi

Synopsis

The chronicles of THE WINTER OF THE WORLD echo down the ages in half-remembered myth and song - tales of mysterious powers of the Mastersmiths, of the forging of great weapons, of the subterranean kingdoms of the duergar, of Gods who walked abroad, and of the Powers that struggled endlessly for dominion. In the Northlands, beleaguered by the ever-encroaching Ice and the marauding Ekwesh, a young cowherd, Alv, saved from the raiders by the mysterious Mastersmith, discovers in himself an uncanny power to shape metal - but it is a power that may easily be turned to evil ends, and on a dreadful night Alv flees the Mastersmith, and embarks on the quest to find both his own destiny, and a weapon that will let him stand against the Power of the Ice.

Release date: November 5, 2012

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 345

Sample

IT WAS THE CHILL before dawn that woke him, and the snuffling and stamping of the great bull in its stall. The dawns were always cold then, whatever the season, in the Long Winter of the Old World; in the dominion of the Ice. So the chronicles record, and though copied and recopied by many hands, the voice of one who has seen, and felt, speaks still from their pages. But now, on this day, it was newly; spring, and the keen air was making the great beast impatient to run free in the pastures among its cows. So the boy sprang out of his pile of skins, wincing at the air’s bite, and began scrambling into those of them that were garments. If he let the bull begin bellowing here so early, it would mean a beating. He swung the moth-eaten fur cloak round his shoulders and seized the long goad off the wall, the strange shapes and characters in the icy metal branding his fingers with unknown wisdom. The bull’s tossing head, with its horns as long as his body, was no more than a lighter patch in the blackness high above him, but with the ease of long practice he slipped along the stall wall, a slab split from a sandstone boulder, and quickly looped the goad through the carved ring in the bull’s nostrils. Instantly the outswept horns ceased goring the air, the great head drooped, and the bull stood docile while the boy undid its tethers and urged it out of the stall. It waited placidly while he untied the rest of the herd and shooed and bustled the huge beasts, white as soiled ice, out into the pallid air, their breath billowing in clouds as they lowed and snorted, their hooves crushing the half-frozen mud. Thus the day that was to change all days began, for him, like any other.

Nothing else was stirring in the little town called Asenby. The very houses seemed asleep, shuttered tight against the cold; even the wide-eyed faces painted in vivid red and black across their planks looked dazed and only half-awake. The boy scowled as they passed the Headman’s great house with the painted whales framing its porch, leaping four storeys to the rooftree. When he was a few strides further on he jerked the goad slightly; the bull snorted loudly in pained protest, awaking loud anxious lowings from the rest of the herd. But by the time the shutters slammed open he was already past, turning the corner towards the Landgate.

From the high old house on the corner light gleamed, warm and red as a breath of summer, running molten gold even into the cold puddles, and there came the low muttering of a chant. The boy scowled again, yet more darkly, and led the bull closer so he could peer in the open door as he passed. Yes, Hervar was there, his lean shadow dancing immense on the wall of the forge as he squatted over his anvil, crooning and tapping away at a flake of blackened metal. The new hoeheads that would be, new for the new-made virginity of the soil. In the working of the metal, in the quavering of the chant, lay potencies united by the power and craft of the smith to make the hoes potent in themselves – a virtue of fertility, for the fields and perhaps also the women who would till them. That much the boy knew, but no more, for all he wished to, for all he had tried to puzzle out the markings on the goad. The wizened old smith had always refused him knowledge, even the simplest instruction in signing and reading that he gave every child of the town. Now he was looking up, glaring through straggling sweat-plastered grey locks and waving the boy sharply away without missing a beat of the chant. His plump apprentice came bustling out, brandishing long iron tongs and shouting. “You keep off, Alv! Out to your work, or I’ll scratch your pale hide for you where it itches! Tinker’s brat!”

The boy sneered, twitched the goad around suddenly and set the wide horns tossing a foot’s span from the apprentice’s flattened nose. He retreated with a panic-stricken squeak, and the herd, moving close to the house, began to press against its walls and peer round-eyed and stupid into the smithy. Some beasts were actually scratching themselves against the timbers, till the house vibrated and the chant inside rose to a cracked screech. That might be too much. Hurriedly Alv called them off, back into the centre of the street, slapping at their grimy flanks with his hands and leaving the goad securely in the ring.

The town wall was a massive affair, circling the little knot of streets and running straight out into the sea on either flank of the little harbour, acting as a breakwater. As long as Alv could remember they had been rebuilding and strengthening it, thickening the broad drystone base, shoring up the double rows of mighty pine trunks above and adding, towers on the rampart that ran between them, so that constant watch could be maintained on both sea and land. The watchman in the gatetower ahead yawned when Alv hailed him, and made no haste about swinging the great bars up on their counterweights to open the narrow gate. The other herds weren’t even stirring yet, though that would have been no defence for him if he’d been late. The cattle filed through in pairs, no more, and the gate swung to again behind. Alv dimly remembered it as wide, and always open in daylight, but these were troubled days; few traders’ wagons ever rolled this way now. The cattle jostled and crowded on the uphill path, eager to get to their pastures, and when they reached the high meadows overlooking the town they broke and scattered, some clumsily skipping and bounding as if they were calves once more. Alv clambered up onto his favourite rock seat and deftly flipped the goad free from the ring. The bull stared at him an instant in baffled fury, then snorted violently and went lumbering away across the meadow. Alv settled down to eat the chunk of hard cornbread he had been given last night, and the strip of salt fish he had stolen to go with it. He looked out, far out across the sea to the horizon. Soon the sun would arise and bring him warmth; small birds were singing in the bushes, and the sky was filling with light that reddened the flanks of the cattle and the Wisps of smoke that rose over the wood-tiled rooftops below, as kitchen fires were kindled. But the sight kindled other fires in him; how often he had sat there and prayed, to powers he did not know, that the calm grey sea beyond might leave its rolling and rise in wrath to sweep those rooftops away!

He shivered. The breeze off the sea was growing strong, sending ragged banks of cloud scudding landward; in the growing light they cast weird rippling shadows on the waves. For a few minutes he amused himself watching them – and then he sprang to his feet. In those shadows under the clouds other, deeper, darknesses were slipping across the waves, long sleek shapes lancing in towards the shore. Four of them, low in the water where a watchman nearer sea level might easily miss them in this dim, hazy light.

Without thinking he cupped his hands and yelled. Nothing happened. If he was wrong they’d flay him alive. He yelled again, and saw the Landgate watchman look up and wave casually. “No!” he screamed, so loud his voice cracked. “Out there, you fool! Out there!” Alv stabbed his arm out seaward again and again. The watchman turned and seemed to cock his head and squint into the low light. Then he sprang up, grabbed the huge steerhorn that hung above the gate and blew a loud bellowing blast. The bull in the meadow echoed it, stamping the turf in challenge. Confused shouts rose up from below, and the rumble of feet on the ramparts; an instant later another horn blew from the sea wall, and a drum stuttered. All over the town shutters slammed open, voices squeaked and yammered, men and women charged half-dressed into the street, colliding with each other and tumbling down in the mud. Bright gleams moved more purposefully through the streets and up onto the ramparts, armoured men of the town guard marching to their posts, staring as Alv was, out to sea.

He could see the ships more clearly now, sails furled on their low masts, foam rising along their flanks as long lines of oars dipped and rose in a fast, thrusting rhythm. For an instant, cresting a wave, a long outthrust prow stood out, with a wide flat platform just behind it. Along the black hull beneath the platform was painted an animal head with long sharp-toothed jaws agape. Above the hubbub below, a single name rose, almost like a sign. “The Ekwesh! Ekwesh raiders!”

For an instant Alv stood transfixed, staring. The Ekwesh, this far down the coast? But then he remembered his own peril. He went bounding down the slope, forgetting the path, arms flailing wildly to keep his balance as he skidded through the grass. But as he circled the hillside towards the Landgate a solid thudding sound came echoing up to him, and he saw the Landgate quiver and resound as heavy logs were piled against it.

“Wait!” he screamed at the top of his voice, hearing it absurdly thin and childish against the wind. “Let me in! Open the gate! Wait –”

On the rampart opposite, only a little below him now, a burly figure in helm and mail turned and gestured sharply. “No time now, boy!” bellowed the Headman. “Should’ve got back at once! Get away, hide yourself out there somewhere – and have a mind to those cattle!”

But I gave the alarm! I warned you! The boy stood there an instant with his eyes brimming at the unfairness of it, his fists clenched. But he knew well enough there was no use pleading; if the Headman wouldn’t risk opening the gate for his own precious cattle, why risk it for one young thrall? So the Headman would reason, and so his town. Why had he ever bothered to warn them? Wasn’t this the destruction he’d been praying for? Let them escape it if they could! As for himself – hide? Where, on these rolling hills? A little further up the slope, overlooking the seaward side of the town, was a clump of scrub. As well there as anywhere; at least he would have a good sight of the fun.

The ships were nearer now. They must have heard the alarm raised and were ploughing directly inshore to the attack, knowing that they could not now hope to land and take the town open and undefended, not without a long siege, which was seldom their way. Archers massed on the rampart, but they were not yet within bowshot, not quite. Alv was staring wide-eyed; he had never seen so powerful a force. Each ship bore at least thirty oars on each side, and there looked to be more than just rowers on board; behind the low gunwales he could see other figures squatting and raising gaudy shields to protect the rowers. Suddenly, obviously at command, every oar swung upright in a great rippling movement like the flick of a fish’s fin. In that moment Alv saw three outlandish figures step out onto the platforms. Then the oars swept down in a new, even faster rhythm, and a harsh thudding sound boomed across the water, like enormous drums. Harsh voices sounded in time to it, the ships surged forward and the figures whirled into a dance. Alv felt his mouth go dry. Even he had heard of the shamans of the Ekwesh. Garbed as the god-spirits of their clan they danced up war-craft before battle, to set a fire in the hearts of their own men and quench it in their adversaries. And if the rumours were true, the mightiest of them could do more than that.

Then he heard the sharp rattle of a drum from the town. Looking down to the harbour, he saw Hervar, draped in his guild robes and bearing his iron staff, go hobbling across the strip of shingle where the boats were drawn up. He too was chanting, swaying, beckoning. Suddenly he broke into a grotesque hopping, swaying dance that Alv had never seen before, thudding his staff into the gravel, splashing down into the shallows. Beyond him, at the gap in the sea wall, the incoming waves seemed to slow, collapse and break as they would around some underwater reef or rock. Hervar danced faster, hopping back and forth with little taut steps, working himself up into a frenzy of concentration. The water boiled, bubbled and broke in a hiss of spray over something that rose from the depths, caked with weedy growths like the back of some kraken-thing that had lain there for years uncounted. It was a huge, metal-bound tree trunk, cut into the likeness of a tall pillar, its capital a chunk of metalwork; from this a network of chains dangled, swinging wildly in the boiling sea. They drew taut suddenly, then slackened again as another pillar rose to left and right of them – a fourth, and then a fifth, rising upwards across the wide gap in the seaward wall and filling it with a many-stranded necklace of chain, studded with fine spikes and hooks, lethal to any ship that tried to pass it. Alv whistled with excitement; this was the Seagate, pride of the town, creation of generations of smiths and shielded by their craft from the sea’s decaying. He had seen it only once before, as a very young child, when it was used with great effect against a single corsair galley, dipping down to ensnare the hull and lift it out of the water, spilling out the crew.

From the Ekwesh ships a chorus of yells greeted this challenge, and for the first time Alv heard the sinister rasping song of spear against shield. Having missed their chance of surprise, the raiders would have to face the power of the Seagate, or go away empty-handed. But that, he knew, was not their way. The ships were so near now he could see the shamans clearly, stamping and whirling on the narrow platforms. The leaping figure was the Bear, a suit of fur with huge clawed paws and a long-jawed mask that snapped and bit at invisible fish as the figure leaped. To the right the gaunt ugly likeness of the Wasp cavorted, jabbing its stinger down into fallen foes. But in the lead ship, racing ahead of the others, the strangest figure of all swept out wide wings, far wider than the platform, under a mask with a curved beak and crest that each stood out a full arm’s length, matching the image painted on the boat’s flank – the Thunderbird. Straight in towards the rising logs the sharp bows came, and the marksmen’s arrows whined and skipped across the water. One plunged quivering into the side of the platform, but still the Thunderbird danced, faster and faster till the wings stood out and floated like an albatross’s, white against the grey clouds rolling overhead. A shout came from the wall, then the flat snap of bowstrings and a swarm of arrows buzzed down around the raiders, pattering like rain into the sea. Alv, springing up in excitement, saw a ceiling of shields whip up to meet them, saw the Bear duck down and the Waspman, struck through body and throat, topple sideways into the sea. But the Thunderbird stopped dead, the wings flew up and back like a stooping hawk’s, and the great mask split and fell away to reveal another, glittering hideous, distorted death’s head in blue steel. There was a flash, a deafening crackle, and from the grey cloud overhead a streak of glaring blue light came hammering down into the town. Straight onto the beach it smote, onto the twisting figure with the iron staff. A groundshaking roll of thunder drowned out the drum. Light seared along the beach and was gone. A blackened, beardless image of the old smith stood frozen in his place, the staff glowing molten in the rigid fingers. Then they crumbled, and the staff fell sizzling into the surf. Hervar’s body fell backwards, like a leaf blown from a bonfire, and lay stiffened on the shingle.

From the harbour mouth came a sudden ominous creaking, and Alv saw the Seagate sway violently, its chains flailing and tangling. The defenders on the wall rushed to reach out pikes, spears, anything that might snag chains or pillars and somehow hold them upright. On one side they caught the chain to the nearest pillar and hauled on it; on the pillar at the other side they sank long pole-axes into the wood. But then a new wavecrest struck, the whole mass swayed once more, and with a relentless grinding of iron the central pillar went toppling forward and pulled the others with it. One fell straight downward, plucking the axemen down into the churning water; the other swung violently in the direction it was being pulled and came smashing down on the wall itself. The logs split, the rampart splintered, armoured bodies fell thrashing into the grey waters; the pillar rolled down onto them as they struggled, and blotted them from sight. For an instant its weed-snared base reared up to the light, and then everything was gone. Over the frothing gap rode the leading ship, the Thunderbird dancer sprawled flat on the platform. The black and white bows ground into the harbour gravel, bounced once on the swell, and then the Ekwesh warriors were rising from beside the oars and spilling over into the shallows. But instead of rushing ahead, they stopped at the waterline and knelt down in the shelter of their shields. Then, as the defenders came clamouring down off the walls and from between the houses, the oarsmen rose from their benches with bows in their hands, and the long Ekwesh arrows went whistling out. The first townsmen fell, the others hesitated, and the kneeling warriors leaped up and charged as the other two ships came sailing in through the Seagate. The few remaining archers on the seaward wall died as they loosed their own shafts, and then it was hand-to-hand battle on the shingle. The black clouds opened and spilled dark rain over the scene.

To Alv, watching from the heights, everything seemed to dwindle and retreat behind the rain-curtain, to become a scurrying mass of figures through the winding streets. Groups would meet and merge in violent action, but who was who, and who had the upper hand, he could never make out. Only when the groups fell away and the action ceased he could see shapes that lay writhing or motionless in the mud. But he quenched the horror of it with cold laughter, telling himself he cared not who slew whom. Tinker’s brat, they’d called him! Well, maybe; as well be child to one of those poor wandering wretches without craft or art, as to any in Asenby town now. Why should he care which of them lived or died there below? They were no kin of his; his skin spared him that, and his brown hair and lean hard features, wholly unlike their straight black hair and rounded coppery complexions. He had never seen anyone else who looked like him, though traders had said there were paler folk far in the south. A southerner let him be, then; he cared little for his unknown parents since they’d abandoned him at the gate here – here, where he was named Alv, the goblin, the changeling. The Headman had taken him in and raised him, less from kindness than an eye for a cheap thrall; from his earliest memories he had laboured, in the kitchen or the fields with the women, and with the cattle since his ninth summer, some three or four past. And yet all that time he had remained an outsider, taunted and despised by other children, unable to forget what was embodied in his very name. Alv! He slapped the goad down into his palm. It was no name he called himself. And the malice in it rang true, for he had learned to repay them with a hundred little irritations, the only defence he had. Why should he suffer for them now, or mourn? He watched, and did his best to laugh. And when the cloudburst passed, and the sunlight sparkled in clear clean air, it was all over.

Smoke rose from some of the rooftops, but not through the chimneys, and no man moved to put it out. Three Ekwesh ships were drawn up on the beach, and the tall warriors went to and from them unhindered, unhurried, carrying great bulky loads. He could see the paintings on the black hulls clearly now, and they were very like the ones on the walls that now seared and blackened in the heat. The Ekwesh were close kin to the peoples of the north, the same cast of face and body, but save for a few words their tongues were different, and they were no simple farmers or traders. They came out of the west over returned. Rumour had it that their land matched their hearts – flinty, pitiless, blazing or chill with the changing seasons, the shifting passion. They were great sailors and great warriors, but they respected nothing that was not theirs, not land, property or life itself. And rumour whispered things darker yet –

Behind him the bush rustled. He half rose, turned and caught a glimpse of black armour, copper skin – then a great weight thumped down on him and ground his face into the earth. Winded, blinded, he was only half aware that his hands were being tied behind him. Then a hard hand twisted in his hair, hauled him upright and sent him staggering off down the path he could hardly see. He remembered, then, that there had been four ships; one must have landed down the coast, to cut off messengers or fugitives. By the time the mud cleared from his eyes he was in the town, stumbling along the streets he had left so short a time before.

A nightmare had settled on the place. The air was warm and hung with curtains of stinking smoke, and it was no sun that crimsoned the puddles. The painted walls were scorched or smashed, and the people who had lived behind them lay stark and cold in their shadow. At the first house a man in mail lay curled up below a window, embracing the arrow that transfixed him; on the step a woman sprawled with twisted limbs in a red-brown pool, and in the mud at the centre of the street a young child lay with a single bootprint the length of its body, still twitching faintly. Alv was made to step over it, and almost stumbled. These were people he had known, had seen the day before; he remembered the child’s birth, the feasting when even he had found a place and a full stomach. So it was throughout the streets, and each sight worse than the last, a vision that shook the boy with pity and horror beyond his understanding.

They came to the Headman’s house, many of the household dead about it. The burly man lay there under the crackling rafters of his own proud porch, his body made a spilt shell by broad stabbing spears and his head half hewn from the trunk. Staring at the ruin, Alv grasped vainly at all the hatred he had once felt, but it fled from him now. A harsh, unkind man the Headman had been, there were few warmer moments to remember him by, but he had done no great evil, nothing worthy of such an end. What he was paled before what had been done to him. To Alv, staring at the ruin, the destruction he had once wished upon the place seemed a childish thing indeed, and he thrust it violently aside in his mind, bitterly regretting his laughter.

His captors dragged him to the square by the town’s main well. To his surprise he saw that there were other townsfolk alive there, mostly younger women and children. Many of the Ekwesh were gathered there to guard them, and he had his first clear sight of them. They were tall men for the most part, and dressed much alike in rough leather kilts and stiff jerkins and helmets of heavier leather, studded with metal and painted with the same black and white designs as their boats – sailors’ armour, light enough not to drag them down. Their arms and hair jingled with ornaments, often of amber and precious metals, but their faces belied the richness – set, scowling masks with cold eyes, and all seamed with great scars, even the youngest. In the centre, near the well, stood a stooped figure in a long dark robe and broad-brimmed hat, leaning on a thick white stick and barking commands that sent the warriors scurrying left and right, occasionally with a crack of the stick on bare head or shoulder. Two Ekwesh were dragging a captive up to him, a middle-aged woman Alv recognised as wife of the town’s sugarbaker. They flung her down on her knees before the man’s feet; the hat bent over her an instant, then he gave a curt dismissive gesture. One of her captors dashed his spear-butt into the back of her head where it met the neck, the other flung her aside and passed his spear through her body, the broad blade eviscerating her; the huddled knot of captives set up a terrible wail. Then it was Alv’s turn to be hurried forward, and the leathery hand clamped the back of his neck, forcing him to his knees. The face that bent over him, shadowed by the hat, was lean and hard, scarred like the rest but made even more terrible by its eyes, yellow and catlike under wrinkled brows, seeming to scan and weigh everything in their path.

The sight made him kick out in fury, afraid above all of being slaughtered like a goat where he knelt. The grip tore loose, the rawhide on his wrists snapped, and before he knew it he was on his feet, panting.

The old Ekwesh barked a word, and a spear stopped just short of Alv’s throat. The man thrust his head forward like some ancient lizard, looked Alv up and down and smiled, revealing a row of carefully pointed and serrated teeth. “Strong,” he said in a guttural accent, nodding to himself with satisfaction. “Sothran? Thrall here? So. Good thrall for us. You live.”

Alv’s anger boiled over onto his tongue. “Amicac swallow that!” he shouted, and spat mud onto the soiled robe. “Keep your mercy, eater of men’s entrails! I know what comes of your thralls! Better dead I am than living a short life as your cattle –”

He was flung violently on his back, staring up at the spear that would tear out his belly. But there came a sharp command in another voice, and it did not fall.

Alv twisted round to see who had spoken. Over by the well, lowering the dipper from his lips, was another robed man. But he was no Ekwesh, though they fell back as he strode forward. He was the first man Alv had ever seen with skin much like his own. His robes were the colour of ripe corn, with a rich pattern worked into them that shimmered in the clear light. He looked down at the boy for a moment, and then said “Get up!” in a brisk, neutral tone. Alv climbed awkwardly to his feet, uncomfortably aware of the spears still levelled at him. The newcomer looked him up and down, examined his hands as one might the hooves of an animal, and then jerked the boy’s head round and stared hard into his eyes. The man’s own eyes were dark and piercing, though the sunlight seemed to strike a cold white light in them. “A strange thrall!” he said, in the same clear, colourless voice. “Your name? Your parents?”

“Alv. I was a foundling –”

“A well-spoken foundling.” The stranger sniffed fastidiously. “A cowherd, that’s obvious. Yet you were educated? Worked in the smithy?”

“Never! The old smith, he wouldn’t –”

The man gave a cool laugh. “No. He would not favour someone he could sense might soon excel him. Well, boy, I am no man-eater, and I keep no thralls. I am a man of your own land, a Master of the Guild of Smiths, one of those allowed by its rules to treat with the Ekwesh, to buy back goods they have looted. I have been away many long months; I go back now to my own new household, and I will need helpers in the years ahead – those who are like me, having no ties to family or folk to turn their hearts elsewhere. You have that in you that makes a smith, I can tell – but how much of one, only the tempering of time will show.” He glanced lightly around. “Nothing remains for you here, if anything there ever was. If you will serve me, I will take you as one of my apprentices, for as long as you show promise. If that fails, you may find a place in my forge, or go your own way. Or shall I let these creatures do as they Will?”

Alv blinked, unable to form words. He stared at this stranger who was offering him life, a new life, as casually as a drink from the dipper in his hand. He cut an impressive figure, though his face glistened with sweat as if he had lately run a race. His skin was like Alv’s but swarthier; his long jet-black curls were plastered over his brow, but hung free around a face regular and unlined, betraying no particular age, with a long heavy nose over thin lips and a strong chin. It was an easy face to accept, to believe in – and what else was there, indeed, beyond the blades that quivered at the corner of his eye? “Yes!” he choked out. The man raised a sardonic eyebrow, and Alv realised what he had said. “I mean … yes, I will be your apprentice. I want to be – very, very much!”

The man nodded evenly, clapped him on the shoulder, and spoke a few words to the old Ekwesh. The old man took two short steps forward, robes rustling, the white stick whistled out before Alv could move and caught him hard across the cheek, splitting the skin open. Alv staggered but did not fall; the old man spat copiously in his bleeding face and turned away to bellow at his soldiers.

“A pleasant people,” murmured the smith, and gestured at the bucket balanced on the well rim. “Wash yourself. I would as soon be spat on by a rattlesnake. When , make your way down to the beach and find my servant there – an old man, of our kind. Tell him my things are to be loaded into the ships, and help him. I fear we must endure the company of the Ekwesh for a day or two longer, as by treaty they carry back what I have recovered.”

Alv looked at him a little dazedly, but he had long since learned not to question openly. “Yes … master.”

“Mastersmith. My name is Mylio, but I prefer the title.” As Alv wiped his face on his cloak his eyes strayed to the captive women, mostly slumped in apathy in the mud. The Mastersmith caught his shoulder. “Leave them. There is nothing you can do for them – and if I read you aright, you owe them nothing. No particular sweetheart?” He wiped his hand. “Hardly. We must find you some better garb. Go, then.”

Alv nodded. “Yes – Mastersmith.”

It was strange