Filed Teeth Read online

  Filed Teeth

  Glen Cook

  Glen Cook

  Filed Teeth

  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. 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 fo
rmed 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.

  "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...

  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

  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.