His instinct was to order her out, but she had been right about the need for a special sword. Perhaps she was supposed to be here. She lifted an eyebrow as she met his glare, and took Aelfrix’s place on the log.
“Does the work go well?” she asked pleasantly.
“The work does
not
go well—” He grasped one end of the bar with the tongs and lifted it. It was glowing a soft red, but the surface was unchanged. He scowled, resenting the compulsion to try to explain. It was hard enough to talk about his work when he knew what he was doing.
“Are the coals hotter than the crucible? Could you perhaps get it started if you put the iron directly into the fire?” she asked.
It was even worse when the person you were talking to started to offer suggestions, especially when you had no better ideas.
“Maybe . . .” he said aloud. “Maybe I can break it if it’s hotter. Smaller pieces will melt, I think . . .” He took a deep breath to focus his energies, checked the color of the coals, and reached for the tongs once more.
“Lady, bless the work—” he whispered. Gripping the iron at both ends, he lowered it carefully into the forge. Then he set the largest of his granite hammers in the warm ashes at the edge. Hammers had been known to break when hot metal met cold stone.
He banked the coals around the bar and turned to face her. “I told you, I never worked with iron like this before. If I succeed it is mercy of the goddess, not my skill.”
“Then I will pray to Her—”
“You do that,” he snarled. “You are the one with visions. You want your king to have an iron sword, you ask your gods how I make it!”
“It is the gods who want that, not I—” she replied, flushing in turn. “I never asked for a vision. It cost the life of a man I loved.”
Velantos winced. Anyone who looked at Tirilan could see how fair a man her father must have been. Of course Anderle would have no interest in a soot-stained, muscle-bound smith who barely spoke her tongue . . . and thank the gods for that. The woman was a sly, managing bitch, even worse than Queen Naxomene. But he must not say so. He saw Aelfrix watching them wide-eyed as he continued to work the bellows, and took a deep breath.
“Then blame the gods, not me! I never ask to be carried from my home to this wretched cold country for a cause not even my own!”
“Not even for Mikantor?” she asked softly.
“If not for Mikantor I would be dead,” he replied.
And maybe better so
.
“And he would be dead, if not for you—” she retorted. “In this, the gods command us all.”
He closed his eyes, shaken even by the memory of terror he had felt when he saw the boy struck down.
“Should the iron be doing that?” Aelfrix asked.
Velantos whirled. The coals were white-hot, and sparks were spitting from the lump of metal in the forge. He grabbed for the tongs, tried to grip the iron, missed, caught and swung it across to the anvil, trailing fire as it had when it first fell from the stars. The iron itself was burning—he had to put out those sparks—he dared not lose any more! Shifting the tongs to his left hand, he took up the hammer. It seemed to rise of itself, propelled by his fear.
Before he could plan the stroke the hammer was descending. Sparks fountained upward as it hit, and the iron seemed to explode. There must have been an air pocket within. Velantos yelled as a flying shard seared his shoulder. Another came to rest sizzling at the hem of Anderle’s gown. Aelfrix had ducked the one that was now smoldering by the wall. The boy leaped up to sweep it back with the broom.
Shaking with fear and fury, Velantos turned on Anderle, the hammer still swinging in his hand.
“Out!” His roar shook the smithy. “This is not your magic!”
“I am the Lady of Avalon and I go where I will!” She rose, drawing her skirts away from the smoking shard.
The hammer whipped around. With the last of his control he changed its direction and sent it crashing through the smithy wall. As a final bit of plaster fell, they stood staring, their harsh breathing the only sound.
“Then I leave! Before
I
kill you.” His voice hissed with the effort it took to form the words. “I will make another forge. The elder folk will help. If the gods will, I make the Sword, but I want no help from you!”
Her face went white, then red, but he had silenced her. Skirts flaring, she grabbed her cape and strode through the door.
Still shaking, Velantos began to search for the scattered pieces of iron.
IT WAS STILL RAINING. Mikantor wiped away the water that had crept in beneath his hood and peered at the track they were following. Beyond the edging of trees the meadows were flooded by the brown waters of the Sabren. By now he had hoped to be safe with Pelicar’s people in Ilifen, but on such muddy roads no one could travel fast. It had been a risk to take this route, so close to the eastern Ai-Ushen clanholds, but with the river running this strongly, surely King Eltan’s men would keep close to their own hearths.
He turned as Pelicar came splashing back down the line.
“There’s a village a little ways up the road. I think we should make for it. It’s early to stop, but this will be our best chance to sleep dry.”
Mikantor nodded. “Send someone ahead to ask their hospitality. We all need hot food. We can share our supplies if they will share their fires.”
At the beginning of this journey he would have begged shelter for the women, but it had become clear that despite her apparent fragility, Tirilan could outmarch
him.
She was at the end of the line now with the men who were carrying Tegues, whose wounded leg was going bad. Pelicar had his arm in a sling, and Mikantor himself was still limping. There was not a man among them who was not marked somewhere, and they were the ones who could still march. He had been forced to leave four of his Companions and nearly a quarter of those who had fought for him at the White Horse Vale. And they were better off than those who had been burned in the great pyre on the battlefield.
He slid on a patch of mud and forced his attention back to the road. Pelicar was approaching again, followed by an old fellow who must be from the village. He began to chatter in the local dialect before they had even reached the column.
“He says they are a small place,” translated Pelicar. “They will help as they can, but it has rained so much their stocks of wood are low.”
“Then we will go into the woods and gather more,” said Mikantor.
When I have rested a little,
he admitted as they forded a swollen stream and trudged up the track, his leg muscles trembling from the effort of slogging through mud all day. The rain had started up again.
The village was called Three Alders, a cluster of roundhouses and out-buildings built along a ridge of higher ground above the flood plain where another river joined the Sabren. It was a flooded plain now. To one who had grown up in the Lake Village the expanse of gleaming water broken by clumps of trees seemed almost like home. Mikantor found himself missing Grebe, sent home to recover from a slash across the shoulder.
Despite their guide’s warning, the villagers found shelter for everyone, for the junction of the rivers brought trade, and they often had visitors. Mikantor found himself being treated with a mixture of anxiety and respect that would have concerned him if hot food and warmth of the house had left him with the energy to do anything but doze by the fire. Tirilan was still on her feet, conferring with the chieftain’s wife about herbs to treat a sick child. He only realized that he had fallen asleep when he was roused by shouting at the door.
“We’re not the only travelers caught by this storm—” Pelicar squatted by his side. “Men are stranded between the rivers. Their boat capsized crossing the Sabren. The waters are rising, and the second stream is too rapid for them to get through. The chieftain here is organizing the men to try a rescue.”
“Do they need our help?” Mikantor rubbed his eyes, momentarily diz zied as the prickle of danger warred with his fatigue.
“They mean to send men into the river. I think they can use everyone who is fit.”
“All right then—give me your shoulder—” He gripped Pelicar’s arm and heaved himself upright.
“Are
you
fit, my lord?” Pelicar steadied him.
“I will be,” grunted Mikantor, avoiding Tirilan’s anxious gaze. As Pelicar went to find his leather cape, he took a deep breath and then another, drawing on the disciplines he had learned at Avalon. By the time the other man returned, his head was clear, and his warmed limbs seemed willing to obey him again.
The first blast of rain as they emerged from the roundhouse nearly sent him back inside again. But the others were slogging down the village street and he was ashamed not to follow them. And then he saw the surging waters glinting in the light of the torches, and in the need of the moment all other awareness fell aside. A line of trees showed him the other bank of the river, though most of it was already underwater. Several men were clinging to the lower branches. They waved as they saw the light.
“They cannot try a boat—the river runs too fast—but a line of men on a rope may be able to cross without being swept away,” Pelicar shouted in his ear. The villagers were already fastening a heavy length of braided hemp around a tree a little way upstream.
“Our warriors are heavier than most of these folk,” said Mikantor. “We had better help them.” Pelicar and Ulansi and the others fell in behind him as he made his way toward the tree. An inner voice questioned why he should take this risk for people he did not even know, but if his combat with the King Stag meant anything, it was that whether they knew it or not, these
were
his people.
The villagers began to uncoil the rope and the men got into line. The stranded travelers had seen them and answered the chieftain’s hail. At the words, Ulansi hissed suddenly and gripped Pelicar’s arm. “Ask them where these people are from!”
“From the hills to the west, the chieftain says—” Pelicar’s voice faded as Ulansi dropped the rope and stepped away.
“Ai-Ushen!” exclaimed the Ai-Zir man. “I thought I recognized their lying tongues.”
He should have known, thought Mikantor, his own grip loosening. If they were coming from the other side of the river, what else could they be? Ai-Ushen, who with Galid had made him an orphan and a wanderer, wild folk from the hills, always at war with the other tribes. Most of his own men had as much reason to hate the Ai-Ushen as he did. One by one they dropped the rope and stepped aside. The village men stopped in confusion, looking at Mikantor.
He peered across the heaving waters at the wretched figures clinging to the trees. They did not look like enemies.
“They are men—” he said at last. “And death by water is as evil as death by fire. If I need to kill them, I will do it when they can face me with a sword in hand. I am going to pick up the rope, follow me who will.”
One by one all except Ulansi took up the rope once more.
The shock of the cold water sent a shudder through his limbs as he edged in, one arm wrapped around the rope while the other gripped it. Two of the local men were ahead of him, his own men mixed with the villagers behind him. He felt for footing, swaying as the current slammed against him. Inevitably they were carried downstream, but that had been expected, and even at an angle the rope was long enough to reach the trees. As they reached the bank the first man fell to his knees, clinging to an outthrust root, then pulled himself upright and worked his way back again, taking up the slack by getting the end around one of the sturdier trunks, and making a riverman’s knot that would hold.
Mikantor began to believe they could actually bring it off as the tree allowed them to put some of their weight on the rope instead of having to support it against the current. The stranded travelers were working their way down through the tangled trunks. One by one they reached their rescuers, who braced themselves against the current and passed them along the upstream side of the rope to the other side. Eight men in all were saved. Three had been carried away earlier, and during the rescue a fourth lost his grip and was washed away.
It was not until morning that Mikantor learned that one of the survivors was Tanecar, son of the Ai-Ushen queen and King Eltan’s nephew and heir.
“IF YOU KNEW WHO I was, would you have gone in the river to help me?”
Mikantor considered the young man who had hunkered down beside him, cradling a beaker of steaming tea. Tanecar looked to be a few years younger than himself, shorter, but sturdily built, with a shock of dark brown hair.
“If I had known that this morning I was going to feel like a clout that the laundress has been beating against rocks in the stream, I would not have left this fire,” he replied.
“Prince of the Ai-Zir, that does not answer my question . . .” Tanecar smiled carefully. At some point he had hit his head against a tree and the side of his face was bruised.
Mikantor sighed. “I knew you were Ai-Ushen, but you looked pretty pitiful, hanging on to those trees. I would not leave any man to drown.”
“My uncle was Galid’s ally . . .” The Ai-Ushen prince sipped some tea and set the beaker down. “But my mother says it is time for that to end. She says that the other tribes have turned against us because of him.”
“Your mother is a wise woman . . .” With an effort, Mikantor kept his tone even.
“I was on my way to visit Pelicar’s people in hopes of a marriage alliance,” Tanecar went on. “That’s off for now, of course—all the gifts were lost in the stream. I’ll have to go back home once the floods go down. Come with me, Mikantor. I think it is time for the Wolf and the Bull to be friends.”
“I am not the Bull of the Ai-Zir,” Mikantor said soberly. “That title belongs to whoever my cousin, if she ever has her rights, may choose. I started out to bring Galid to justice, but now—I have run with the deer, if that means anything to you . . .”