Ansker bowed with great gravity. "We are honored, good sir. But as it happens we have thought of some repayment you can make now, high though the cost may seem."
Kermorvan looked guarded. "What might that be?"
"A hand in this venture of yours. That you let us share its hazards and its success. We also came from the east, many long ages before you men. The roads we took lie now under the Ice; as well we should find some new ones, and learn how the Eastlands now stand."
"What he means," snorted Ils, "is that if we want the crackbrained thing to get anywhere, we'd damn well better take a part in it!"
"You already have!" protested Elof. "Where would we be without you?"
"Toasting on an Ekwesh fire, I've no doubt," said Ils,
with a certain relish. "But we won't be so easily at hand in the black bowels of Aithen the Great, not unless we come along. Or one of us, at least."
"You?" cried Elof in delight. "But I thought you could suffer men no longer!"
Ils squirmed slightly. "Not the city mob, indeed. But this crew of yours is not so bad, though rough. I'll endure them."
Kermorvan held his features as impassive as ever, but Elof almost laughed aloud to see how delight and dismay chased across them. "My lady," began the warrior with strangled formality, "you would be welcome, most welcome… But the, the unknown, the dangers…"
Ils made a ferocious face, and thrust out her buxom breast aggressively. "Are you implying—my lord—that I did less than my part in our last little jaunt together?" She ran a speculative finger along the silver-inlaid axe blade at her belt. "Because if you are…"
"I believe that is settled, then," said Ansker smoothly.
Elof looked at him. "It is no small treasure you send with us, my master."
"Treasure!" snorted Ils corrosively. "Little enough loss to those stuffy caverns, when there's real work for the duergar in the wide world."
"I fear she is corrupted," said Ansker with mock severity. "She grows more human every day. Well that she has a chance to weary of it. But in all seriousness," he added, a little sadly, "I feel as she does. We have remained hidden too long, retreating before the changes of the world. We cannot retreat forever. Our numbers dwindle, our young folk can look forward to nothing new. Even our smithcraft grows weaker in our eyes, when such as yours, Elof, burgeons now among men. Something must change, and perhaps this journey is its beginning. Few of us are more able than Ils, and fond enough of men and their daylight to share in it." He smiled. "I shall miss her, yes. But I would not hold her back from it… even if I could!" He turned and embraced her, briefly as it would seem to men. But both these creatures were old, far older than most men, and Elof guessed at the flood of feeling behind their light manner, flowing as deep and strong under its calm surface as their dark waters beneath the stone.
"We will take every care of her!" he said, dodging the blow she aimed at his midriff.
"I know!" said Ansker, and took his hand, and Kermorvan's. "Farewell then, my lord! May your high ancestors guard and guide you in their paths. And farewell, my journeyman. Strive still for mastery; of what, you know full well. But have a care, study the gentler skills as well as you have the fiercer, if what I hear is true. Anvils are expensive!" He laughed, but Elof bowed his head. "Now the sun rises, to hammer hotly on our poor brainpans! Come, my duergar, the mountains call us! It is time we were away!"
And as the travelers watched and waved, the duergar warriors drew their hoods over their heads and wrapped their cloaks tight about them. Then they bowed, once, with stiff courtesy, and seemed almost to dissolve among the shadows of the wood, so silent was their going. But Ils looked up at Elof, and smiled.
He smiled back, uneasily. "You had some other reasons for leaving the city, that you would not say…"
"Oh, those!" Ils shrugged. "As bad away as near, I found. That's all."
Elof understood only that she would say no more, and changed the subject. "Ansker said the duergar also came from the east. When was that?"
Ils' reply was stark. "When the first men set foot on its shores. We fled you, as you the Ice."
Going among the ponies as they made ready to depart, stooping to check a loosened girth, Elof heard a voice he recognized as the corsair Borhi's. "Not such bad little tykes, them, eh?"
"Have them, for me!" said a harsh voice that could only be Kasse's. "If you'd been a hunter like me, you'd know. There's more than one thing walks the woods in a human shape. Some you steer clear of, some… well, you can treat with 'em. But duergar, they're uncanny wights, and good riddance to 'em, say I!"
"What about the lady?" That was the coxwain Dervhas, with his coarse chuckle. "Her shape not human enough for you?"
"Bouncing prow on 'er!" agreed Borhi enthusiastically. "What's ado, Kasse, feared of 'er axe? Aye, and she can swing it, by 'counts!"
"I'll bed a human woman or none!" growled Kasse, displeased. "My sires'd slaughter any duergar vermin they found, and string 'em up to dry on the trees. Leave that bitch to the northerner, the tinker boy. He's near as uncanny, him…"
They moved off down the line, leaving Elof boiling with rage. It was as well, perhaps, that Kermorvan gave the signal to move off just then. Yet even as they emerged into the Open Lands, Elof had no eye for the view, no taste for the fresh breezes. He walked by himself at the back of the train, and neither Tenvar nor Bure dared disturb him. In the corsair's coarse words he found no harm, and even a certain admiration; but every word of Kasse's he longed to ram back down his throat, and his teeth after. He embodied the sothran's worst prejudices; he had a mind of mud and filth, that man, despising those who had come to help him, reducing Elof's friendship and affection for Ils to the lowest level, and to him the most obscene. As if it could be so! For a moment Elof lost himself in a hazy distance, a waking dream of Kara, Kara slender amid peril and moonlight, the gleam of her dark gaze, the last agony of loss. Then other dark eyes rose in his mind, another thought, a stealthy intruder, tore him out of his dream all unprepared, undefended. What he felt for Ils he knew, indeed; but what might Ils feel for him?
The idea clawed at him. She was not even of his race, she was older by a lifetime than he and much wiser in the world's ways, with all the might and craft of her ancient race at her back. And she knew of Kara, had glimpsed her, perhaps, in the Tower. What could she ever feel for
him
, young, rootless, homeless both in body and in spirit?
Even his name was of his own bestowing. Impossible, and yet… He looked at her now, laughing and joking with Arvhes and Ermahal up ahead, never so much as glancing back at him who walked silent and alone. Elof lashed the thought from his mind. The very idea was absurd.
It was nine days' march through the Open Lands, and the mountains lay far behind them before they came in sight of the largest lake in the long chain so far, and knew it for their goal. On the map Ansker had given Kermorvan the jagged duergar script named it the Spearhead, for its shape, but high up as they were, they could see no more than its southern shores, its northern expanse lost beyond the horizon. The slaty waters lifted in the wind, flecked by a sweeping cloudburst; reeds hissed and bowed around the western shore, but all along its eastern flank a dark blur dipped and swayed. This was the wall of the true Forest, Aithen the Great, and its foliage shimmered under the clouds.
"You're not telling me we've got to cross that?" shuddered Bure.
"No, indeed!" smiled Kermorvan. "Only the river south of it, and there are fords and islets enough on Ansker's map; it will not be too arduous. But we must turn loose our ponies."
"And after that?" asked Eysdan bluntly. "We have provender enough yet, with what the small folk gave us, but we cannot bear it all on our backs."
"Strong servants await us there on the far bank," answered Kermorvan calmly. "Strong enough they look to bear not only our provisions but ourselves, for many long leagues on our way."
"What do you mean?" asked the others eagerly, seeing that he had some scheme in mind.
"I mean the currents, and the trees. We have in our baggage tools and tackle to fashion strong rafts, such as you northern foresters use for your timber. I had wit enough to foresee that need, at least! But first comes foremost; we must seek out our crossing. Come!"
By midday they had found the first of their fords. The Westflood here flowed from the lake in many narrow channels which merged and separated and merged again, creating a patternless marshy maze a mile or more across. But Ansker's map led them straight and true; by evening they found themselves on a narrow wooded islet no more than a bowshot from the eastern bank, and the walls of the true Forest.
"But the wall is breached!" said Kermorvan. "See that wide channel there, that crooks away from the others, past the islet about a mile downriver? Thenceforth the trees hide it. For that is our outflow, the river that flows deep among the trees."
They made camp there among the trees that night, and even with water as their chiefest sentinel they kept their fires small and sheltered, and set a watch. Elof took the first hour, watching the faint fire glimmer on the long bare trunks of the firs around him, listening to the rush and swirl of the wind in their greater kin beyond. Even when Ermahal had come to relieve him, he lay long awake in his blanket by the fire, listening to the corsair skipper humming some slow chantey over the embers, wondering what other songs might be sung beyond that wall.
The next day Kermorvan, who had taken the last watch, roused them all at the first trace of light, and set the company in a flurry of activity. The ponies were loaded at once, and, stumbling in the gloom, the company made its way down to a stand of huge old willows on the bank that marked the last ford. It was a poor ford; a slip on the weed-slimed rocks meant a plunge waist-deep into chill water and a strong current. The sure-footed ponies fared better than their masters, who had often to catch hold of their traces to avoid a ducking. The corsairs, hardened by colder ocean, would have laughed at the others' discomfort, save that the looming rampart of trees cast a shadow in their hearts; nobody felt eager to make much noise, and they even cried out and cursed in whispers. But when at last they reached the far bank the dawn glowed behind the trees, with a welcome promise of warmth. It was easier to remember then that the lowering wall was, after all, only trees, and not some sinister fortress.
Kermorvan, wringing out his cloak, seemed well pleased, despite the others' complaints. "We need every moment of daylight for our toil. It must needs make noise, and attract attention. By day, and at the Forest's edge, I guess the risk is not so great. But when night falls I would sooner be far from here." Then, shivering with more than cold, the others agreed.
The strongest and most practiced of the party, himself included, Kermorvan set to seeking out and felling suitable trees. They did not need to search far; even at the Forest wall there were many of good height. Though the giant redwoods of the coastlands were rarer among them, there were firs and cedars and spruces aplenty that seemed to burgeon in their absence. Elof touched the furrowed gray bark of the first fir, gazing up at it. "These are noble trees. I wish we did not have to fell them."
Kermorvan, stripping off his tunic and hefting an axe, nodded with some regret. "I feel as you do. I would kill no living thing I did not have to."
"Tree's a tree," said Gise the forester, faintly surprised. "Some fall, others come up in their place. The Forest's the thing. Look at it that-wise, fell sparingly and far apart as you can. Don't wound the wood too grievous and you won't turn it 'gainst you."
"I have heard similar counsels of kingship," said Kermorvan, amused, and struck a well-placed blow that made the tall tree quiver from stem to crown. Small birds fluttered scolding from the leaves; a large squirrel bounded to a neighboring branch and clung chittering with rage. But Gise's blows followed Kermorvan's and a low cut chopped out the wedge. On the tree's far side Roc and Elof, under their direction, began to cut the notch that would determine its fall. The pungent reek of resin flooded stingingly into nose and eye. Not far away another treetop jerked and sprang at the bite of axes as Eysdan and Ils, aided by Dervhas and Kasse, set to their task with equal vigor. Elof found time to wonder amusedly if Ils had also shed tunic and shirt for her labor; that, if anything, might alter Kasse's view of her humanity.
So hard did Kermorvan drive the felling parties that by the sunny mid-morning five tall trees lay by the bank, and a sixth trembled on its half-hewn stump. It was just as the sun reached its zenith that the tenth tree dropped along the line of its own short shadow, and the fellers let go their blunted axes and collapsed into the shade. Only Kermorvan stayed afoot, goading on the others of the company whose task it was to trim branch and root and, with the ponies, to drag the trunks to the river. Though his lean frame ran with sweat and his voice had thinned to a croak, his endurance seemed endless. An hour or two later he came striding back from the riverside with a leather wa-terbag, and splashed it over the exhausted fellers. "Come and marvel!" he called cheerfully, in his normal ringing voice. "You will have days ahead to lie idle!"
Groaning and cursing, they struggled up and shuffled after him. But when Elof reached the bank, he was indeed surprised that so much had been done in so short a time. There, bobbing high in the current, two long rafts were tethered; the others of the company were toiling with hammer and nail, cord and chain, fastening the second together. Ils came along to join him, curls straggling from a refreshing douse in the river; he noticed she was fastening her tunic. "Look solid enough, don't they?" she laughed. "Four good trunks for each, with the half of a fifth on either side, and both longer than that little courier boat of ours. And see what the northern lad's about!" On the completed raft Tenvar was even putting together a makeshift canopy, roofed with leafy branches. "We'll ride like lords!"