The thick plume of the greasy-looking black smoke rising from beyond the ridge was warning enough. Sander slipped off Rhin, crept up-slope, his mount padding behind him with the same caution. They had seen no campsite for days, and the provision bag, still knotted to the pad strapped about Rhin, was empty. Hunger was a discomfort within Sander. This land had been singularly empty of game for the past twenty-four hours. And a handful or two of barely ripe grain, pulled out of a straggle of stalks, was far from filling.
Five days ago Sander had passed the boundaries of the territory known to Jak's Mob. When he had ridden out of the ring of tents, blackly bitter at his treatment, he had swung due east, heading for the legendary sea. Then it had seemed possible that he could achieve his purpose—to find the ancient secrets whereby he could better forge the metal brought by Traders, so that, upon his return, he could confront Ibbets and the others and force from them an acknowledgment that he was not an apprentice of little worth, but a smith of the Old Learning. This long trek through a wilderness he did not know had taught him caution, though it had not yet dampened the inner core of his rebellion against Ibbets's belittling decision.
Now he wedged his shoulders between two rocks, pulling his hood well down over his face so that its gray color would blend well with the stones around him. Though he was no hunter by training, each member of the Mob was lessoned from childhood in the elements of hiding-out when confronted by the unusual. He would not move until he could make very sure there was no danger ahead.
Below lay a wide valley down which a river angled. And where that opened into a much larger bowl of water (of which he could see only one shoreline, the one into which the river cut), there stood a collection of buildings, a small village. Those log-walled shelters appeared to be permanent, unlike the hide tents of the Mob that were easily moved from one place to another. However, small sullen tongues of fire now showed here and there, threatening to destroy the buildings.
Even from this distance Sander sighted what could only be a huddle of bodies lying along the river bank. There had been a raid, he deduced. Maybe the dreaded Sea Sharks of the south had struck. He doubted there was any life left in that collection of huts.
The fire burned slowly, mainly along the river bank and the shoreline of the large body of water beyond. There were a few buildings seemingly still untouched. They would have been looted, of course. Still, there was a chance that not all of the provisions collected by those settled here had been carried away. And this was harvest season. His own people (or those whom he had believed to be his close kin—he grimaced at that thought) had been engaged in late season hunts and the drying of meat when he had ridden out.
Though the nomadic Mob roamed the wide inner lands, Sander had heard enough tales from the Traders to know that elsewhere men lived differently. In some places clans had settled permanently upon the land, planting and tending food which they grew. Here, in this near-destroyed settlement, they must also have fished. His stomach growled and he shifted a little, surveying the scene of the raid carefully to make sure that if he did go down he was not running into trouble.
Rhin whined deep in his throat, nudged Sander with his muzzle. His yellow-brown coat was already thickening with new winter growth. Now his jaws opened a little, his pointed tongue showed. His ears pricked as he watched the burning buildings with the same intense stare as Sander. But he betrayed no more than the common caution with which he approached all new situations.
His green eyes did not blink, nor did his brush of tail move. Instead he sat on his haunches as if it did not matter that his head rose well above the skyline, visible from the town. Sander accepted Rhin's verdict of no imminent danger—for the sly intelligence of his kind supplied information that no man, with his blunter senses, could hope to gain.
Though he got to his feet, Sander did not remount. Instead he slipped down the ridge, using every bit of cover. Rhin followed like a red-yellow ghost a step or two behind. Sander carried his dart thrower, a missile notched ready against its taut string and loosened his long knife in its leather scabbard.
As they drew closer to the looted town, Sander's nose wrinkled at the stench of burning and of other smells far worse. Rhin growled, sniffing. He liked that scent no better than Sander. But at least he seemed to have picked up no hint of enemies.
Sander circled away from the river bank where lay those blood-stained bundles, heading toward the seemingly unharmed buildings farther inland from the shore. He could hear the pounding of waves and smell a new odor, swept toward him by a rising wind—a strange, fresh scent. Was this indeed the sea, not just some larger lake?
As he approached the nearest building, he hesitated, something in him resisted making this intrusion. Only the need for food forced him into an alleyway so narrow that Rhin crowded him with a furry shoulder as they padded on together.
The walls of logs Sander saw were thick. The only openings were set very high, nearly masked by the overhanging eaves of the sharply-pitched roofs. He reached the end of the alley and turned right before he found the entrance door.
It had been fashioned of heavy planking. Now it hung crazily from a single hinge, scarred by forced entry. Rhin snarled, his tongue sweeping out over his lips. There was a body just within that broken door; between the shoulders was a splotch of clotted blood. The villager lay face downward and Sander had no desire to turn him over.
The stranger was not wearing the leather and furs of a Mobsman, rather a coarsely woven overtunic dyed a nut brown. His legs were encased in baggy trousers of the same material, with laced hide boots on his feet. For a long moment Sander hesitated before he stepped gingerly around the dead man into an interior that showed both search and wanton destruction.
There was another huddle of twisted body and stained clothing in the corner. After a single glance, Sander kept his eyes resolutely from it. Smashed and nearly destroyed as the contents of this room were, he could still see that the town dwellers had possessed more worldly goods than any Mobsman. That was only sensible in their way of life. One could not cart chairs, tables, and chests about the land when one was ever traveling to follow the herds. He stopped to pick up a broken bowl, intrigued by the design across its side. Its few dark lines against the clear brown of the pottery made him envision birds in flight.
He made his way quickly to the food bins, wanting no more of this chamber of the dead. Rhin whined from without. Sander caught the uneasiness of his companion, the need to be gone. But he forced himself to examine what was left.
There was a measure of grain flour mixed with chopped and powdered nut meats. Using the broken bowl for a scoop he packed it into his provision bag. He found two dried fish wedged in another over-turned bin. But the rest had been deliberately wasted or wantonly befouled. Sickened by the signs of relentless hatred, he hurried out to join Rhin.
Yet Sander made himself approach the next building. No corpse blocked the forced door this time. However, one glance at what lay inside made him gag and turn hastily away. He could not go any nearer to that. It seemed that the raiders, whoever they might have been, had not been content to kill, but had also taken time to amuse themselves in a beastly fashion. Sander kept swallowing to control his nausea as he backed out into the way that fronted the unfired buildings.
There was one other place he must search for—in spite of his growing terror. There must have been a smith's forge somewhere in this ravaged village. He slapped his hands against the bag of tools that was lashed to the back of Rhin's riding pad. What he carried there was all he had from his father. Ibbets would have liked to have claimed those, as he claimed the office of smith with the Mob, but custom had supported Sander to that extent.
Two major hammers and chisels had been buried with his father, Dullan, of course. A man's main tools of trade were filled with his own powers and must so be laid away in the earth when he no longer could use them. But there were some smaller things that a son could rightfully claim, and no one could deny him those. However, Sander needed more, much more, if he were to realize his dream. He longed to find the place wherein those masses of congealed metal, which the traders brought to the Mobs, were concealed and to learn the secret of the alloys which now baffled smiths.
Resolutely he started on, dodging a charred wall that had fallen outward, closing his mind to everything but his search, holding his nose against the stink. Rhin continued to whine and growl. Sander was well aware that his companion wanted none of this place of death and followed him under protest. Yet because of the brotherhood between them, Rhin would continue.
Rhin's people and those of the Mob were entwined in mutual service. That companionship began during the Dark Time. Legends Sander had heard recited by the Rememberers said that Rhin's people had once been much smaller, yet always clever and quick to adapt to change. "Koyots" they were called in the old tongue.
There had been many animals, and more men than one could count, who had perished when the Earth danced and the Dark Time had begun. Mountains of fire had burst through the skin of the world, belching flame, smoke, and molten rock. The sea had rolled inward with waves near as high as those same mountains, hammering the land into nothingness in some places, in others deserting the beds over which it had lain for untold ages. Cold followed and great choking clouds of evil air that killed.
Here and there a handful of men or animals survived. But when the skies cleared once again, there were changes. Some animals grew larger generation by generation, just as distant species of men were rumored to be now twice the size of Sander's own people. That information came from Traders' tales, however, and it was well known that Traders like to spread such stories to keep other men away from any rich finds. They would invent all manner of monsters to be faced were a man to try to track them back to their own places.
Sander stopped, picked up a spear, gruesomely stained, and prodded with that into the ashes of a small building. He swiftly uncovered what could only be an anvil—a good one fashioned from iron, but far too heavy to be transported. Finding that, a sure sign he had found the smithy, he scratched with more vigor.
His delving uncovered a fine stone hammerhead, with the haft near burned away, but the best part remaining. That and another of a lesser weight were all that remained. There were also some traces of metal—copper he was sure—puddled from the heat.
He raised his hand and recited the secret smith words. If the owner, who might lie farther back under the debris at the rear, was still spirit-tied, as men who died quickly and violently sometimes were, he would know by those words that one of his own craft was present. He would not, Sander was sure, begrudge that his possessions be used again, carefully, and to a purpose that might in the end benefit all men.
Sander fitted the two hammerheads in among the tools he carried. He would hunt no farther. Let the dead smith keep all else as grave-hold. But such hammers he did not have and he needed them.
He wanted no more of this nameless village wherein death stank and spirits might be tied to their destroyed homes. Rhin sensed that decision, greeting it with a yelp of approval. However, Sander was not minded to leave the shore of the sea—if sea this was. Rather he passed as quickly as he could among the smoldering buildings, refusing to look at the bodies he passed, to reach the slippery sand of the shore.
To prove that he might have reached one of his objectives, he advanced to where the small waves ended in foam upon the sand. There he dipped a finger into the water and licked it. Salt! Yes, he had found the sea.
However it was not the sea alone that he sought, but rather the heart of the old legends around it. Along the shore of the sea had once stood many great cities of old. Sander's father had often speculated about the secrets that lay in those cities.
It was certain that men before the Dark Time had possessed such knowledge that they lived as the spirits of the upper air did, with unseen servants and all manner of labor-saving tools. Yet that learning had been lost. Sander did not know the number of years that lay between him and that time. But his father had said that the sum was more than the lifetimes of many, many men, each a generation behind the other.
At the death of his father from the coughing sickness, Ibbets, his father's younger brother, had denied Sander the smith-right, saying he was only an untried boy and unfit to serve the Mob. Then Sander knew he must prove himself, not only to the people whom he had believed kin-blood, but to himself. He must become such a worker of metal that his own number of years—or lack of them—would mean nothing, only what could be wrought by his design and his skill. Thus, when Ibbets would have bound him to a new apprenticeship, he had instead claimed go-forth rights, and the Mob had been forced to grant him that choice of exile.
Now he was kinless by his own hard decision. And he burned with the need to know that he was a better smith, or would be, than Ibbets claimed. To do that he must learn. And he was sure that such knowledge lay near the original source of the lumps of congealed metal that the traders brought.
Some of the metal could be worked by strength of arm and hammer alone. Other kinds must be heated, run into molds, or struck when hot to form the needed tool or weapon. But there were some metals that defied all attempts to work them. And it was the secret of those that had fascinated Sander from childhood.
He had found the sea; now he could go north or south along its shore. There had been great changes in the land, he knew. Perhaps such cities as he sought were long since buried under the wash of the waves, or else so overturned by earth-shaking that little remained. Yet somewhere the Traders found their metal, so somewhere such sources existed—and those he could seek.
It was close to nightfall, and he did not wish to camp close to the half-destroyed town. He pushed on northward. Above, sea birds wheeled and screamed hoarsely, and the steady roll of the waves made a low accompaniment to their cries.
Rhin's head swung around twice toward their back trail. He growled, and his uneasiness gripped Sander in turn. Though it seemed the town was wholly given over to the dead, it was true that Sander had not delved too deeply in the ruins. What if some survivor, perhaps shaken out of his wits by the terror of the raid, lurked there, had seen Sander and Rhin come and go? They might now be hunted by such.
Climbing on the top of a dune, along the sides of which grew tough sea grass, Sander studied the still-smoking buildings. Nothing moved save the birds. He did not, however, discount Rhin's uneasiness, knowing he could depend upon the koyot's acute senses to give him fair warning if they were followed.
He would have liked to have ridden, but the slippery sand gave such uncertain footing that he kept on as they were. He angled away from the wave line now, for there lay drifts of wood which might entrap the unwary. Now and then a shell lay exposed in the damp sand. Sander eyed their fantastic forms with amazement. They delighted him like bright bird's feathers or tumble-smoothed stones, so he dropped some into his left pouch. Momentarily he dreamed of setting shells in bands of copper, a metal that easily responded to the skill he had learned, and make such articles of adornment as the Mob had never seen.
The sand became covered with coarse grass, which in turn changed to meadowland. But Sander disliked this too-open country. He could see a dark line across the horizon that marked the beginning of wooded land. While his people were of the open plains to the west, they also knew northern woods, and he recognized the value of finding cover.
However, he was enough a judge of travelers' distances to be sure he could not reach that forest before nightfall. What he wanted now was a defensible camp site, if Rhin's instinct was proven correct and they were to face some danger out of the dark.
He would not dare a fire tonight, wanting no beacon that might draw anyone—or anything—that prowled this country. So at last he settled on a stand of rocks, huddled together as if the stones themselves had drawn close for comfort in an hour of need.
Jerking up handfuls of grass, he arranged it into a nest. Then he brought out the dried fish and shared with Rhin. Ordinarily, the koyot would have gone off hunting on his own. But it would seem that this night he was not about to leave Sander.
As the young man watched the twilight draw in, felt the chill of the night winds which bore strange scents from the sea, his weariness grew. He could hear nothing save the wash of the waves and the sounds of birds. And although Rhin pricked up his ears to listen with all his might, he did not yet show any signs of real alarm.
Tired though Sander was from the day's journeying, he could not sleep. Over him arched the sky sparkling with the eyes of the night. The Rememberers said those were other suns, very far away, and around them perhaps moved worlds like their own. But to Sander they had always seemed like the eyes of strange, aloof creatures, who watched the short lives of men with more indifference than interest. He tried to think about the star eyes, but his mind kept returning to the horrors of the raided village. What would it be like, he wondered with a shiver, to be suddenly set upon by men out of the sea who wanted to slay, to destroy, to dip their hands in blood?
The Mob had fought for their lives, but only once, in Sander's memory, against their kind. That had been when a terrifying people with light skin and wild pale eyes had come down to raid their herd. Mainly their struggle was against cold and famine and sickness, warring against a hard land rather than mankind. Their smiths forged the weapons and the tools for that struggle, not many of the kinds meant to drink man-blood.
Sander had heard tales of the sea slavers. Sometimes he had thought that those, too, were inventions of the Traders, who created fearsome horrors to fill the land they did not want others to explore. For the Traders were notoriously tight-fisted when it came to their own profits. But after this day he could believe that man was more ruthless than a full winter storm. Now he shivered a little, not from the touch of the sea breeze, but because of what his imagination suggested might exist in this wilderness so unknown to him.
Sander put out a hand for the reassuring touch of Rhin's furry hide. At the same moment the koyot leaped to his feet and growled in warning. Rhin faced not the sea, but inland. Plainly the animal had decided that there was some menace slinking through the night.
With so little visibility, the dart thrower was no good. Sander drew his long belt knife, which was really a short sword. He crouched upon one knee with the rocks a firm wall at his back, and listened. There seemed to be a slight shuffling ahead. Rhin growled again. Now Sander caught a trace of musky odor. He thought he had seen a shadow, moving so swiftly its shape blurred.
A hissing out of the dark became a loud snarl. Rhin advanced a step, stiff-legged, plainly alert against attack. Sander desperately regretted the fire he had not lit. To face such an unknown menace kindled one of mankind's age-old fears.
Yet the thing did not attack as Sander expected it to do. He heard that challenging hiss, and he judged from Rhin's reaction that the koyot thought this unknown to be a formidable opponent. Still, whatever it was stayed beyond the boundaries where Sander might sight it against the lighter rocks. A shrill whistle came out of the night, followed by a flash of light. It shone straight into Sander's eyes, dazzling him, though he flung up his arm in an involuntary gesture to ward off the blinding glare.
Under the shadow of his hand he watched an animal glide forward, a sinuous body seeming more like a snake than a furred species. It arose upon its haunches, still hissing, until its head was nearly level with his own. Behind it a smaller edition of itself, much darker in color, hugged the ground. Neither of that pair carried the light.
"Stand—" The command from behind the source of the light was an emphatic order. Another followed: "Drop your knife!"
Sander was sure only the will of the speaker held the threatening animals in check, but he shook his head in refusal.
"I do not obey the orders of unknown who skulk in the dark," he returned. "I am not a hunter or harmer of men."
"Blood cries for blood, stranger," snapped the voice. "Behind you streams blood—kin-blood. If there is an accounting, then it is mine, seeing that no one else lives in Padford now—"
"I came to a town of the dead," Sander returned. "If you seek blood for blood, look elsewhere, stranger. When I rode from the south, there were only the dead within half-burned walls."
The light held steady on him and no answer came forth. But that the stranger had been willing to speak without immediate attack was, Sander believed, in his favor.
"It is true that you are no Sea Shark," the voice observed slowly.
Sander could understand the words. But the accent with which they were spoken differed both from that of the Mob and that of the Traders.
"Who are you?" Now the voice sharpened in a new demand.
"I am Sander, once of Jak's Mob, and I am a smith."
"Soooo?" The voice drawled that as if not quite believing. "And where tents your Mob this night, smith?"
"Westward."
"Yet you travel east. Smiths are not wanderers, stranger. Or is there blood guilt and kin-death lying in your back trail?"
"No. My father, who was smith, died, and they would have it that I was not skilled enough to take his place. Thus I took out-rights—" He was growing irritated. That he must patiently answer this quizzing out of the dark stirred his anger. Now he boldly asked in return:
"Who are you?"
"One not to meddle with, stranger!" snapped that other. "But it seems you speak the truth and so are not meat for us this night."
The light snapped out instantly. He could hear a stirring in the dark. Rhin whined in relief. Though the koyot could be a formidable fighter when he wished, it was plain he preferred the absence of those animals and whoever controlled them to their presence.
Sander himself felt tension seep away. The voice was gone, taking with it the strange hounds of its hunting. He settled back, and after a while he slept.