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 hub-bub 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 toward 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 plowing 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 rumors 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 harbor, 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 seawall, 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 upward 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 emptyhanded. 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 toward 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 gray 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 gray 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 backward, like a leaf blown from a bonfire, and lay stiffened on the shingle.
From the harbor 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 poleaxes 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, armored bodies fell thrashing into the gray 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 harbor 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 clamoring 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 labored, 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 defense 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 sea, no man knew whence, they took and they returned. Rumor 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 rumor whispered things darker yet-Behind him the bush rustled. He half rose, turned and caught a glimpse of black armor, 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 center 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 house-hold dead about it. The burly man lay there under the crackling rafters of his own proud porch, his body made a spilled 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.