Glen Cook - Filed Teeth

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FILED TEETH
Glen Cook
I
Our first glimpse of the plain was one of Heaven. The snow and treacherous passes had claimed two
men and five animals.
Two days later we all wished we were back in the mountains.
The ice storm came by night. An inch covered the ground. And still it came down, stinging my face,
frosting the heads and shoulders of my companions. The footing was impossible. We had to finish
two broken-legged mules before noon.
Lord Hammer remained unperturbed, unvanquishable. He remained stiffly upright on that red-eyed
stallion, implacably drawing us northeastward. Ice clung to his cowl, shoulders, and the tail of
his robe where it lay across his beast's rump. Seldom did even Nature break the total blackness of
his apparel.
The wind hurtled against us, biting and clawing like a million mocking imps. It burned sliding
into the lungs.
The inalterable, horizon-to-horizon bleakness of the world gnawed the roots of our souls. Even
Fetch and irrepressible Chenyth dogged Lord Hammer in a desperate silence.
"We're becoming an army of ghosts," I muttered at my brother. "Hammer is rubbing off on us. How're
the Harish taking this?" I didn't glance back. My concentration was devoted to taking each next
step forward.
Chenyth muttered something I didn't hear. The kid was starting to understand that adventures were
more fun when you were looking back and telling tall tales.
A mule slipped. She went down kicking and braying. She caught old Toamas a couple of good ones. He
skittered across the ice and down an embankment into a shallow pool not yet frozen.
Lord Hammer stopped. He didn't look back, but he knew exactly what had happened. Fetch fluttered
round him nervously. Then she scooted toward Toamas.
"Better help, Will," Chenyth muttered.
I was after him already.
Why Toamas joined Lord Hammer's expedition I don't know. He was over sixty. Men his age are
supposed to spend winter telling the grandkids lies about the El Murid, Civil, and Great Eastern
Wars. But Toamas was telling us his stories and trying to prove something to himself.
He was a tough buzzard. He had taken the Dragon's Teeth more easily than most, and those are the
roughest mountains the gods ever raised.
"Toamas. You okay?" I asked. Chenyth hunkered down beside me. Fetch scooted up, laid a hand on
each of our shoulders. Brandy and Russ and the other Kaveliners came over too. Our little army
clumped itself into national groups.
"Think it's my ribs, Will. She got me in the ribs." He spoke in little gasps. I checked his mouth.
"No blood. Good. Lungs should be okay."
"You clowns going to talk about it all week?" Fetch snapped. "Help the man, Will."
"You got such a sweet-talking way, Fetch. We should get married. Let's get him up, Chenyth. Maybe
he's just winded."
"It's my ribs, Will. They're broke, sure."
"Maybe. Come on, you old woods-runner. Let's try."
"Lord Hammer says carry him if you have to. We've still got to cover eight miles today. More, if
the circle isn't alive." Fetch's voice went squeaky and dull, like an old iron hinge that hadn't
been oiled for a lifetime. She scurried back to her master.
"I think I'm in love," Chenyth chirped.
"Eight miles," Brandy grumbled. "What the hell? Bastard's trying to kill us."
Chenyth laughed. It was a ghost of his normal tinkle. "You didn't have to sign up, Brandy. He
warned us it would be tough."
Brandy wandered away.
"Go easy, Chenyth. He's the kind of guy you got to worry when he stops bitching."
"Wish he'd give it a rest, Will. I haven't heard him say one good word since we met him."
"You meet all kinds in this business. Okay, Toamas?" I asked. We had the old man on his feet.
Chenyth brushed water off him. It froze on his hand.
"I'll manage. We got to get moving. I'll freeze." He stumbled toward the column. Chenyth stayed
close, ready to catch him if he fell.
The non-Kaveliners watched apathetically. Not that they didn't care. Toamas was a favorite, a
confidant, adviser, and teacher to most. They were just too tired to move except when they had to.
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Men and animals looked vague and slumped through the ice rain.
Brandy gave Toamas a spear to lean on. We lined up. Fetch took her place at Lord Hammer's left
stirrup. Our ragged little army of thirty-eight homeless bits of war-flotsam started moving again.
II
Lord Hammer was a little spooky... What am I saying? He scared hell out of us. He was damned near
seven feet tall. His stallion was a monster. He never spoke. He had Fetch do all his talking.
The stallion was jet. Even its hooves were black. Lord Hammer dressed to match. His hands remained
gloved all the time. None of us ever saw an inch of skin. He wore no trinkets. His very
colorlessness inspired dread.
Even his face he kept concealed. Or, perhaps, especially his face...
He always rode point, staring ahead. Opportunities to peek into his cowl were scant. All you would
see, anyway, was a blackened iron mask resembling a handsome man with strong features. For all we
knew, there was no one inside. The mask had almost imperceptible eye, nose, and mouth slits. You
couldn't see a thing through them.
Sometimes the mask broke the colorless boredom of Lord Hammer. Some mornings, before leaving his
tent, he or Fetch decorated it. The few designs I saw were never repeated.
Lord Hammer was a mystery. We knew nothing of his origins and were ignorant of his goals. He
wouldn't talk, and Fetch wouldn't say. But he paid well, and a lot up front. He took care of us.
Our real bitch was the time of year chosen for his journey.
Fetch said winter was the best time. She wouldn't expand.
She claimed Lord Hammer was a mighty, famous sorcerer.
So why hadn't any of us heard of him?
Fetch was a curiosity herself. She was small, cranky, longhaired, homely. She walked more mannish
than a man. She was totally devoted to Hammer despite being inclined to curse him constantly.
Guessing her age was impossible. For all I could tell, she could have been anywhere between twenty
and two hundred.
She wouldn't mess with the men.
By then that little gnome was looking good.
Sigurd Ormson, our half-tame Trolledyngjan, was the only guy who had had nerve enough to really go
after her. The rest of us followed his suit with a mixture of shame and hope.
The night Ormson tried his big move Lord Hammer strolled from his tent and just stood behind
Fetch. Sigurd seemed to shrivel to about half normal size.
You couldn't see Lord Hammer's eyes, but when his gaze turned your way the whole universe ground
to a halt. You felt whole new dimensions of cold. They made winter seem balmy.
Trudge. Trudge. Trudge. The wind giggled and bit. Chenyth and I supported Toamas between us. He
kept muttering, "It's my ribs, boys. My ribs." Maybe the mule had scrambled his head, too.
"Holy Hagard's Golden Turds!" Sigurd bellowed. The northman had ice in his hair and beard. He
looked like one of the frost giants of his native legends.
He thrust an arm eastward.
The rainfall masked them momentarily. But they were coming closer. Nearly two hundred horsemen.
The nearer they got, the nastier they looked. They carried heads on lances. They wore necklaces of
human fingerbones. They had rings in their ears and noses. Their faces were painted. They looked
grimy and mean.
They weren't planning a friendly visit.
Lord Hammer faced them. For the first time that morning I glimpsed his mask paint.
White. Stylized. Undeniably the skullface of Death.
He stared. Then, slowly, his stallion paced toward the nomads.
Bellweather, the Itaskian commanding us, started yelling. We grabbed weapons and shields and
formed a ragged-assed line. The nomads probably laughed. We were scruffier than they were.
"Gonna go through us like salts through a goose," Toamas complained. He couldn't get his shield
up. His spear seemed too heavy. But he took his place in the line.
Fetch and the Harish collected the animals behind us.
Lord Hammer plodded toward the nomads, head high, as if there were nothing in the universe he
feared. He lifted his left hand, palm toward the riders.
A nimbus formed round him. It was like a shadow cast every way at once.
The nomads reined in abruptly.
I had seen high sorcery during the Great Eastern Wars. I had witnessed both the thaumaturgies of
the Brotherhood and the Tervola of Shinsan. Most of us had. Lord Hammer's act didn't overwhelm us.
But it did dispel doubts about his being what Fetch claimed.
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"Oh!" Chenyth gasped. "Will. Look."
"I see."
Chenyth was disappointed by my reaction. But he was only seventeen. He had spent the Great Eastern
Wars with our mother, hiding in the forests while the legions of the Dread Empire rolled across
our land. This was his first venture at arms.
The nomads decided not to bother us after all. They milled around briefly, then rode away.
Soon Chenyth asked, "Will, if he can do that, why'd he bring us?"
"Been wondering myself. But you can't do everything with the Power."
We were helping Toamas again. He was getting weaker. He croaked, "Don't get no wrong notions,
Chenyth lad. They didn't have to leave. They could've took us slicker than greased owl shit. They
just didn't want to pay the price Lord Hammer would've made them pay."
III
Lord Hammer stopped.
We had come to a forest. Scattered, ice-rimed trees stood across our path. They were gnarled,
stunted things that looked a little like old apple trees.
Fetch came down the line, speaking to each little band in its own language. She told us
Kaveliners, "Don't ever leave the trail once we pass the first tree. It could be worth your life.
This's a fey, fell land." Her dusky little face was as somber as ever I had seen it.
"Why? Where are we? What's happening?" Chenyth asked.
She frowned. Then a smile broke through. "Don't you ever stop asking?" She was almost pretty when
she smiled.
"Give him a break," I said. "He's a kid."
She smiled a little at me, then, before turning back to Chenyth. I think she liked the kid.
Everybody did. Even the Harish tolerated him. They hardly acknowledged the existence of anyone
else but Fetch, and she only as the mouth of the man who paid them.
Fetch was a sorceress in her own right. She knew how to use the magic of her smiles. The genuine
article just sort of melted you inside.
"The forest isn't what it seems," she explained. "Those trees haven't died for the winter. They're
alive, Chenyth. They're wicked, and they're waiting for you to make a mistake. All you have to do
is wander past one and you'll be lost. Unless Lord Hammer can save you. He might let you go. As an
object lesson."
"Come on, Fetch. How'd you get that name, anyway? That's not a real name. Look. The trees are
fifty feet apart..."
"Chenyth." I tapped his shoulder. He subsided. Lord Hammer was always right. When Fetch gave us a
glimmer of fact, we listened.
"Bellweather named me Fetch. Because I run for Lord Hammer. And maybe because he thinks I'm a
little spooky. He's clever that way. You couldn't pronounce my real name, anyway."
"Which you'd never reveal," I remarked.
She smiled. "That's right. One man with a hold on me is enough."
"What about Lord Hammer?" Chenyth demanded. When one of his questions was answered, he always
found another.
"Oh, he chose his own name. It's a joke. But you'll never understand it. You're too young." She
moved on down the line.
Chenyth smiled to himself. He had won a little more.
His value to us all was his ability to charm Fetch into revealing just a little more than she had
been instructed. Maybe Chenyth could have gotten into her.
His charm came of youth and innocence. He was fourteen years younger than Jamal, child of the
Harish and youngest veteran. We were all into our thirties and forties. Soldiering had been our
way of life for so long we had forgotten there were others. Some of us had been enemies back when.
The Harish bore their defeat like the banner of a holy martyr...
Chenyth had come after the wars. Chenyth was a baby. He had no hatreds, no prejudices. He retained
that bubbling, youthful optimism that had been burned from the rest of us in the crucible of war.
We both loved and envied him for it, and tried to get a little to rub off. Chenyth was a talisman.
One last hope that the world wasn't inalterably cruel.
Fetch returned to Lord Hammer's stirrup. The man in black proceeded.
I studied the trees.
There was something repulsive about them. Something frightening. They were so widely spaced it
seemed they couldn't stand one another. There were no saplings. Most were half dead, hollow, or
down and rotting. They were arranged in neat, long rows, a stark orchard of death...
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The day was about to die without a whimper when Lord Hammer halted again.
It hadn't seemed possible that our morale could sink. Not after the mountains and the ice storm.
But that weird forest depressed us till we scarcely cared if we lived or died. The band would have
disintegrated had it not become so much an extension of Lord Hammer's will.
We massed behind our fell captain.
Before him lay a meadow circumscribed by a tumbled wall of field stone. The wall hadn't been
mended in ages. And yet...
It still performed its function.
"Sorcery!" Brandy hissed.
Others took it up.
"What'd you expect?" Chenyth countered. He nodded toward Lord Hammer.
It took no training to sense the wizardry.
Ice-free, lush grass crowded the circle of stone. Wildflowers fluttered their petals in the
breeze.
We Kaveliners crowded Fetch. Chenyth tickled her sides. She yelped. "Stop it!" She was extremely
ticklish. Anyone else she would have slapped silly. She told him, "It's still alive. Lord Hammer
was afraid it might have died."
Remarkable. She said nothing conversational to anyone else, ever.
Lord Hammer turned slightly. Fetch devoted her attention to him. He moved an elbow, twitched a
finger. I didn't see anything else pass between them.
Fetch turned to us. "Listen up! These are the rules for guys who want to stay healthy. Follow Lord
Hammer like his shadow. Don't climb over the wall. Don't even touch it. You'll get dead if you
do."
The black horseman circled the ragged wall to a gap where a gate might once have stood. He turned
in and rode to the heart of the meadow.
Fetch scampered after him, her big brown eyes locked on him.
How Lord Hammer communicated with her I don't know. A finger-twitch, a slight movement of hand or
head, and she would talk-talk-talk. We didn't speculate much aloud. He was a sorcerer. You avoid
things that might irritate his kind.
She proclaimed, "We need a tent behind each fire pit. Five on the outer circle, five on the inner.
The rest here in the middle. Keep your fires burning all night. Sentinels wil be posted."
"Yeah?" Brandy grumbled. "What the hell do we do for wood? Plant acorns and wait?"
"Out there are two trees that are down. Take wood off them.
Pick up any fallen branches this side of the others. It'll be wet, but it's the best we can do. Do
not go past a live tree. Lord Hammer isn't sure he can project his protection that far."
I didn't pay much attention. Nobody did. It was warm there. I shed my pack and flung myself to the
ground. I rolled around on the grass, grabbing handfuls and inhaling the newly mown hay scent.
There had to be some dread sorceries animating that circle. Nobody cared. The place was as cozy as
journey's end.
There is always a price. That's how magic works.
Old Toamas lay back on his pack and smiled in pure joy. He closed his eyes and slept. Even Brandy
said nothing about making him do his share.
Lord Hammer let the euphoria bubble for ten minutes.
Fetch started round the troop. "Brandy. You and Russ and Little, put your tent on that point.
Will, Chenyth, Toamas, yours goes here. Kelpie..." And so on. When everyone was assigned, she
erected her master's black tent. All the while Lord Hammer sat his ruby-eyed stallion and stared
northeastward. He showed the intensity of deep concentration. Was he reading the trail?
Nothing seemed to catch him off guard.
Where was he leading us? Why? What for? We didn't know. Not a whit. Maybe even Fetch didn't.
Chenyth couldn't charm a hint from her.
We knew two things. Lord Hammer paid well. And, within restrictions known only to himself, he took
care of his followers. In a way I can't articulate, he had won our loyalties.
His being what he was was ample proof we faced something grim, yet he had won us to the point
where we felt we had a stake in it too. We wanted him to succeed. We wanted to help him succeed.
Odd. Very odd.
I have taken his gold, I thought, briefly remembering a man I had known a long time ago. He had
been a member of the White Company of the Mercenaries Guild. They were a monastic order of
soldiers with what, then, 1 had thought of as the strangest concept of honor...
What made me think of Mikhail? I wondered.
IV
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Lord Hammer suddenly dismounted and strode toward Chenyth and me. I thought, thunderhead! Huge,
black, irresistible.
I'm no coward. I endured the slaughterhouse battles of the Great Eastern Wars without flinching. I
stood fast at Second Baxendala while the Tervola sent the savan dalage ravening amongst us night
after night. I maintained my courage after Dichiara, which was our worst defeat. And I persevered
at Palmisano, though the bodies piled into little mountains and so many men died that the savants
later declared there could be no more war for generations. For three years I had faced the
majestic, terrible hammer of Shinsan's might without quelling.
But when Lord Hammer bore down on me, that grim death mask coming like an arrowhead engraved with
my name, I slunk aside like a whipped dog.
He had that air. You knew he was as mighty as any force of Nature, as cruel as Death Herself.
Cowering was instinctive.
He looked me in the eye. I couldn't see anything through his mask. But a coldness hit me. It made
the cold of that land seem summery.
He looked at Chenyth, too. Baby brother didn't flinch.
I guess he was too innocent. He didn't know when to be scared.
Lord Hammer dropped to one knee beside Toamas.
Gloved hands probed the old man's ribs. Toamas cringed. Then his terror gave way to a beatific
smile.
Lord Hammer strode back to where Fetch pursued her regular evening ritual of battling to erect
their tent.
"You're a damned idiot, girl," she muttered. "You could've picked something you could handle. But
no, you had to have a canvas palace. You knew the boys would just fall in love and stumble all
over themselves to help. Then you hired lunks with the chivalry of tomcats. You're a real genius,
you are, girl."
The euphoria had reached her too. Usually she was louder and crustier.
Chenyth volunteered. Leaving me to battle with ours.
That little woman could shame or cajole a man into doing anything.
I checked Toamas. He was sleeping. His smile said he was feeling no pain. "Thanks," I threw Lord
Hammer's way, softly. No one heard, but he probably knew. Nothing escaped him.
When the tents were up Fetch chose wood-gathers. I was one of the losers.
"Goddamned, ain't fair, Brandy," I muttered as we hit the ice. "Them sumbitches get to sit on
their asses back there..."
He laughed at me. He was that kind of guy. No empathy. And no sympathy even for himself.
Some lessons have to be learned the hard way.
The circle had turned me lazy. Malingering is a fine art among veterans. I decided to get the wood-
gathering over with.
What I did was go after a prime-looking dead branch laying just past the first standing tree. I
mean, how hard could it be to find your way back when all you had to do was turn around?
I whacked and hacked the branch out of the ice. All the while Brandy and the others were cussing
and fussing behind me as they wooled a dead tree.
I turned to go back.
Nothing.
I couldn't see a damned thing but ice, those gnarled old trees, and more ice. No circle. No
woodcutters.
The only sound was the ice cracking on branches as the wind teased through the forest.
I yelled.
Chips of ice tinkled off the nearest tree. The damned thing was laughing! I could feel it. It was
telling me that it had me, but it was going to play with me a while.
I even felt the envy of neighboring trees, the hatred of a brother, who had scored...
I didn't panic. I whirled this way and that, moving a few steps each direction, without
surrendering to terror. Once a man has faced the legions of the Dread Empire, and has survived
nights haunted by the unkillable savan dalage, there isn't much left to fear.
I could hear the others perfectly when I turned my back. They were yelling at me, each other, and
Lord Hammer. They thought I had gone crazy.
"Will," Brandy called. "How come you're jumping around like that?"
"Tree," I said, "you're going to lose this round."
It laughed in my mind.
I started backing up. Dragging my branch. Feeling for any trace of footsteps I had left coming
here.
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Good thinking. But not good enough. The tree hadn't exhausted its arsenal.
A branch fell. A big one. I dodged. My feet slipped on the ice. I cracked my head good. I wasn't
thinking when I got up. I started walking. Probably the wrong way.
I heard Brandy yelling. "Will, you stupid bastard, stand still!"
And Russ, "Get a rope, somebody. We'll lasso him."
I didn't understand. My feet kept shuffling.
Then came the crackle of flames and stench of oily smoke. It caught my attention. I stopped,
turned.
My captor had become a pillar of fire. It screamed in my mind.
Nothing should burn that fast, that hot. Not in that weather. But the damned thing went up like an
explosion.
The smell of sorcery fouled the air.
The flames peaked, began dying. I could see through.
The circle and my friends glimmered before me. Facing the tree, a few yards beyond, stood Lord
Hammer. He held one arm outstretched, fingers in a King's X.
He stared at me. I peered into his eye slots and felt him calling. I took a step.
It was a long, long journey. I had to round some kink in the corridor of time before I got my feet
onto the straight line path to safety.
I made it.
Still dragging that damned branch.
I stumbled. Lord Hammer's arm fell. He caught me. His touch was as gentle as a lover's caress, yet
I felt it to my bones. I had the feeling that there was nothing more absolute.
I got hold of myself. He released me.
His shoulders slumped slightly as he wheeled and stalked back to the circle. It was the first sign
of weariness he had ever shown.
I glanced back.
That damned tree stood there looking like it hadn't been touched. I felt its bitterness, its rage,
its loss.. .And its siren call.
I scooted back inside the circle like a kid running home after getting caught pulling a prank.
V
"Chenyth, it was on fire. I saw it with my own eyes."
"I saw what happened, Will. Lord Hammer just stood there with his arm out. You stopped acting
goofy and came back."
The campfires cast enough light to limn the nearest trees. I glanced at the one that had had me. I
shuddered. "Chenyth, I couldn't get back."
"Will..."
"You listen to me. When Lord Hammer says do something, do it. Mom would kill me if I didn't bring
you home."
She was going to get nasty anyway. I had taken Chenyth off after she had sworn seven ways from
Sunday that he wasn't going to go. It had been a brutal scene. Chenyth pleading, Mom screaming, me
ducking epithets and pots.
My mother had had a husband and eight sons. When the dust of the Great Eastern Wars settled, she
had me and little Chenyth, and she hadn't seen me but once since then.
Then I came back with my story about signing on with Lord Hammer. And Chenyth, who had been
feeding on her stories about Dad and the rest of us being heroes in the wars, decided he wanted to
go too.
She told him no, and meant it. It was too late to do anything about me, but her last child wasn't
going to be a soldier.
Sometimes I was ashamed of sneaking him out. She would be dying still, in tiny bits each day. But
Chenyth had to grow up sometime...
"Hey! Listen up!" Fetch yelled. "Hey! I said knock off the tongue music. Got a little proclamation
from the boss."
"Here it comes. All time ass-chewing for doing a stupid," I said.
She used Itaskian first. Most of us understood it. She changed languages for the Harish and a few
others who didn't. We drifted toward the black tent.
From the heart of the meadow I could see the pattern of the fire pits. Each lay in one of the
angles of a five-pointed star.
A pentagram. This meadow was a live magical symbol.
"It'll only be a couple days till we get where we're heading. Maybe sooner. The boss says it's
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time to let you know what's happening. Just so you'll stay on your toes. The name of the place is
Kammengarn." She grinned, exposing dirty teeth.
It took a while. The legend was old, and didn't get much notice outside Itaskia's northern
provinces, where Rainheart is a folk hero.
Bellweather popped first. "You mean like the Kammengarn in the story about Rainheart slaying the
Kammengarn Dragon?"
"You got it, Captain."
Most of us just put on stupid looks, the southerners more so than those of us who shared cultural
roots with Itaskia. I don't think the Harish ever understood.
"Why? What's there?" Bellweather asked.
Fetch laughed. The sound was hard to describe. A little bit of cackle, of bray, and of tinkle all
rolled into one astonishing noise. "The Kammengarn Dragon, idiot. Silcroscuar. Father of All
Dragons. The big guy of the dragon world. The one who makes the ones you saw in the wars look like
crippled chickens beside eagles."
"You're not making sense," Chenyth responded. "What's there? Bones? Rainheart killed the monster
three or four hundred years ago."
Lord Hammer came from his tent. He stood behind Fetch, his arms folded. He remained as still, as
lifeless, as a statue in clothes. We became less restive.
He was one spooky character. I felt my arm where he had caught me. It still tingled.
"Rainheart's successes were exaggerated," Fetch told us. She used her sarcastic tone. The one that
blistered obstinate rocks and mules. "Mostly by Rainheart. The dragon lives. No mortal man can
kill it. The gods willed that it be. It shall be, so long as the world endures. It is the Father
of All Dragons. If it perishes, dragons perish. The world must have its dragons."
It was weird, the way she changed while she was talking. All of a sudden she wasn't Fetch anymore.
I think we all sneaked peeks at Lord Hammer to see if he were doing some ventriloquist trick.
Maybe he was. He could be doing anything behind that iron mask.
I wasn't sure Lord Hammer was human anymore. He might be some unbanished devil left over from the
great thaumaturgic confrontations of the wars.
"Lord Hammer is going to Kammengarn to obtain a cup of the immortal Dragon's blood."
Hammer ducked into his tent. Fetch was right behind him.
"What the hell?" Brandy demanded. "What kind of crap is this?"
"Hammer don't lie," I replied.
"Not that we know of," Chenyth said.
"He's a plainspoken man, even if Fetch does his talking. He says the Kammengarn Dragon is alive, I
believe him. He says we're going to kype a cup of its blood, there it is. I reckon we're going to
try."
"Will..."
I went and squatted by our fire. I needed a little more warming. The dead wood of the forest
burned pretty ordinarily.
The men were quiet for a long time.
What was there to say?
We had taken Hammer's gold.
Even professional griper Brandy didn't say much by way of complaint.
Mikhail had been right. You went on even when the cause was a loser. It became a matter of honor.
Ormson killed the silence. His action was a minor thing, characteristic of his race, but it
divided the journey into different phases, now and then, and inspired the resolution of the rest
of us.
He drew his sword, began whetting it.
The stone made a shing-shing sound along his blade. For an instant it was the only sound to be
heard.
We were old warriors. That sound spoke eloquently of battles beyond the dawn. I drew my sword...
I had taken the gold. I was Lord Hammer's man.
VI
A metallic symphony played as stones sharpened swords and spearheads. Men tested bowstrings and
thumped weathered shields. Old greaves clanked. Leather armor, too long unoiled, squeaked.
Lord Hammer stepped from his tent. His mask bore no paint now. Only chance flickers of firelight
revealed the existence of anything within his cowl.
When his gaze met mine I felt I was looking at a man who was smiling.
Chenyth fidgeted with his gear. Then, "I'm going to see what Jamal's doing."
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