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  No, Andras thought. I won’t be leaving. These men are why I came in the first place.

  Chapter Two

  Andras and Ruven took the dogs west of Valter’s farm. The farmer, already hustling to gather his family and lock down his livestock, probably thought that the ratter and his son were hoping to cross the road and climb toward the sword temple and seek sanctuary, or perhaps just find a ditch where they could cringe and hide and hope the dogs didn’t bark. Maybe even swim across the river to enter the deep forest on the far slope.

  Andras intended nothing of the kind. He and Ruven had scouted the area ahead of time and stashed their bedrolls, cooking gear, and a handful of other provisions not far from here. Only then had they approached the freehold and introduced themselves to Valter, who had admitted a certain problem with rats.

  Father and son crossed a pair of irrigation ditches that divided the man’s farm from the one above it, then climbed over an old wall of fieldstone, partially collapsed, with the dogs leaping over, one at a time. They scaled a small hillock, thick with wild blackberries. Down across a grassy swale where a pair of milk cows were chewing their cud—they’d be lucky if they weren’t served up as supper for the approaching riders—and then up a second hillock, this one thick with trees. It was the woodlot of Valter’s neighbor.

  At the edge of the woodlot, the hill overlooked the post road where it curved around the bend and followed the narrow canyon toward the heights. Down the road to the east lay a glimpse of the vast, shimmering plain, green now after good rains. He could hear the riders clearly, but they weren’t visible from this vantage.

  A fresh pall hung over the mountains to the south. One of the trio of volcanoes in that direction must be erupting. Fire demons, breaking through, although at the moment it seemed to be nothing more than a column of smoke and ash. If a serious eruption broke out, it would mean trouble for any villages on its slopes.

  Closer at hand, maybe a mile or so distant on the south side of the canyon, stood a pair of stone watchtowers poking their heads above the tops of the pine forest that scaled the mountainside. According to what Andras had learned from his master before setting into the mountains, the watchtowers could be used to locate the sword temple of the bladedancers—or, as they styled themselves, the Divine School of the Twinned Blades.

  Standoffish sorts. Dangerous to interlopers. No, lethal, he was warned. Yet critical to Lord Balint’s plans.

  The towers weren’t associated with the sword temple—those were relics of an earlier age, and had long ago fallen into ruin—but the temple’s lay fraters used the ancient mountain terraces at their base to grow food. There was a thin path, nearly hidden, that led into the woods on that side of the valley. Andras had been sent into the mountains to watch it. Now he knew why.

  Andras turned the brass ring on the middle finger of his right hand. On it was Lord Balint’s sigil: a crow with a war hammer in one talon. To wear it was an honor, and its weight reminded him of his duty.

  The dogs were whining, and he realized belatedly that he’d forgotten to grab one of the rat poles on their way out. Food for the dogs.

  “Should I feed them, Da?” Ruven asked. The boy was carrying a fistful of rats by their tails.

  “Well done,” Andras said, surprised. His son must have grabbed them up while he was pocketing the coin taken out of Valter’s reluctant hand.

  “It was all I could get, and Stretch can eat five or six by himself.”

  “It’s good enough for now. Should mellow them a bit—we don’t want them carrying on. But you’ll need to cut ’em up to make sure there’s some to go around.”

  Most of the dogs fell on their rats at once as Ruven tossed them over with whistled commands to stop any squabbling. There was a good deal of crunching of bones and tails disappearing down throats.

  Only Notch held back. She pinned a rat under a paw and growled at one of her boys when he sniffed over, but didn’t eat it, instead cocking her head and looking down at the road with her notched ear twitching as it turned to the sound of horse hooves.

  “Go ahead, girl,” Andras said. “There’s time.” He poked at the rat with his boot, and she set to it, perhaps concerned he’d take it back and give it to a more eager dog.

  The clomping hooves were growing louder, but the pace had slowed. The men were no longer riding hard.

  That settled it. Definitely here for the temple, or they’d have kept pounding up the road. But who were they? And why had they come?

  “Da?” Ruven wore a troubled look.

  “Don’t worry,” Andras said. “The dogs know how to be quiet if we tell them.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “You mean what that thief said? His insults and threats? Don’t worry about that, either. Valter’s like the rest of them—he’ll take advantage if he can. But we know our worth, we know who we are.” Andras saw something in the boy’s worried expression and couldn’t help himself. “You look like your mother right now.”

  “I do?”

  “She was a clever woman. A good woman, and a handsome one, too.”

  “I know. I remember.”

  A sort of scrunched-up look came over the boy’s face, his brow turned downward, and his lips pinched in. Andras’s heart felt ready to break, and he fought to keep his own expression from mirroring his son’s. That would do neither of them any good. Instead, he picked away a bit of dried mud from his son’s cheek, the only bit of affection he could afford at the moment.

  Ruven was a strong boy, and the pain faded from his expression as he turned his attention back to the road to wait for the riders. “You think we’re safe up here, Da?”

  “They’re not looking for us.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “We’re ratters, not soldiers. So long as we stay out of their way, they’ll have nothing to do with us.”

  Father and son were both filthy, and the stench of manure hung around them, mingling with the smell of wet dog. Once he figured out what was going on, he’d take them all down to the stream to wash up. Probably should wash their clothes, too, and hope the rain held off long enough to dry them, before going down to the village to buy provisions. They’d get better prices that way.

  “But what if it’s brigands?” Ruven said. “What if it’s the same men?”

  “It’s not the same men,” he said firmly.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Think about it—you’d know better than I do,” Andras said. “What were Lord Balint’s men doing when they carried you out of the brigand camp?”

  “Still fighting.”

  “Balint rode into the hills with fifty men. There were only twenty of the brigands to begin with, and I don’t expect that the lord’s men left one of them alive by the time he was done.”

  “Some of them ran away.”

  “Balint has his own lurchers of a sort. Long, lean men who ride down runners. Give them a good stretching. Trust me, none of those brutes survived.”

  Ruven looked more confident at this.

  What Andras didn’t tell his son, who was only ten, after all, and should be sheltered from these things, was that Balint himself, returning beneath a flock of crows, and swearing that Ruven was only a mile or so behind, unharmed, had showed Andras the head of the chief brigand. The brigand had red hair and a thick, curly beard, and was easily recognizable in death even though his forehead had been caved in with a mace. Andras had clenched his teeth and nodded that yes, this was the one. Balint gave him a grim nod in response and rested a mailed hand on his servant’s shoulder.

  “Small comfort, friend, but we wiped out the whole villainous lot of them.”

  “Yes, milord.”

  “Killed twelve in the fighting,” Balint continued. “The rest surrendered and screamed for mercy. I gave them the same mercy they showed your wife. The crows ate well.”

  Small comfort, indeed.

  When Andras closed his eyes, he could still remember the brigand’s sneer as he knocke
d Terezia to the ground for daring to defy him, then stabbed two of the dogs to death when they attacked to protect their mistress. Three men held Andras down while the others kicked his wife to death and set fire to his home and kennels, and it took a fourth to restrain him when they threw his screaming child over one man’s saddle and rode off, laughing.

  Two years ago. His stomach still churned to think about it. He’d nearly lost everything. But Andras’s liege had recovered one precious thing, at least. His son had been returned, unharmed. At least physically.

  “Here they come,” Ruven said in a low voice.

  The first riders appeared below them on the road. Their horses, slick with sweat, hung their heads, looking dazed. As well they would be, if they’d been ridden hard at these heights. The riders were alert; some had drawn swords, or held spears at the ready. But they carried the dust of the road, and even from this distance, their exhaustion was evident on their faces.

  It was a large group of men, perhaps eighty or a hundred in all. They weren’t brigands, that much was clear; these were all men in their twenties and thirties, with brown capes of a kind, and armed with swords or spears of good ash wood. Well-kept boots and saddles. Fine horses, too, not the sure-footed ponies favored by men who needed to slip into the rocky hill country to hide.

  “Da?” Ruven said in a low voice. “Does that mean they’re crowlord men?”

  “Aye, they must be. Not ours. Balint wouldn’t risk it, even if he thought the bladedancers were going to play us false.”

  “Then they’re enemies?”

  “Yes.”

  But who? Balint Stronghand had two main rivals. The first was Lady Damanja. She wasn’t the most rapacious of the crowlords, but she had a reputation for treachery. Several years ago, she’d stolen one of Balint’s estates through a combination of marriage and murder—the victim being her own husband and Balint’s vassal. The short war that followed had been inconclusive, and Damanja remained in possession of the land in question.

  Would she risk angering the bladedancer temple to get her hands on what Balint had contracted and paid for? Unlikely. It was risky, and she was a more cautious sort.

  That left Lord Zoltan. The man made no secret his desire to force every last crowlord of the plains to submit to his will and pay him tribute as Master Lord. He’d put pressure on Balint’s southern border for years, starting numerous skirmishes that forced his rival into expensive mobilizations. He’d paid off brigands to raid and burn, and may have been behind the attack that murdered Andras’s wife and burned their village.

  What’s more, Zoltan’s fiefdom lay just beyond the mouth of the canyon. Andras and Ruven had spent four days crossing the man’s land before reaching the post road and supposedly neutral territory.

  Zoltan was currently embroiled in a separate fight, however. Something had provoked Damanja on their shared border, and she’d pushed back. That particular fight was more than a skirmish—actual war had broken out. It was hard to imagine that the crowlord would risk a war to his north at the same time he was currently fighting to his south. Not to mention incur the wrath of the bladedancers.

  It was said that the master sohn of the bladedancers was an old man—older, in fact, than Andras’s father, who was lame and could no longer walk without a staff—but that didn’t mean he was helpless, either. He had his fraters, his elders, and other, younger sohns, themselves lethal warriors.

  Andras cast a glance skyward. “There are no crows following, so there’s no crowlord present. But with that many men, there must be a captain. There will be someone important leading them.”

  This was more to himself than to Ruven. A reminder that he was here to watch and discover.

  He told Ruven to stay with the dogs, then moved on his belly to the edge of the woods to get a better vantage of the post road. The riders had come to a stop, and two men dismounted. They searched the edge of the road and shortly discovered the same footpath that the ratters had picked out earlier. After a short, urgent conversation, the pair moved quietly through the company of men, giving orders. It was nothing Andras could pick out from his position atop the hill.

  As the pair passed through the company, men slid out of their saddles in response. They unsheathed swords and untied spears and shields from their saddles. One of the leaders held a massive two-handed sword that could only have been built by the warbrand temple, deep in the mountains. Like the bladedancers and the firewalkers, the warbrands jealously guarded the best weapons, but this looked like one of the masterpieces they occasionally sold to the crowlords at great cost and under strict restrictions.

  Even one of their secondary falchions was a thing of great power and beauty, and only to be put into the hands of a great warrior. This man must be one of them. So what was he doing? What were they all doing, approaching the bladedancer temple armed? A nervous tickle worked at Andras’s belly.

  A dog barked wildly to the west. Not one of his, thank the demigods. Notch and Stretch were both disciplined, and if told to be quiet, would nip and growl any other, more restless dog into silence.

  Sheep were bleating in that direction, as if someone was driving them unexpectedly from their pasture. A woman shouted, her voice shrill and worried.

  Someone banged at a pot. Another banging responded, even more distant. They sounded like warnings, one farmhouse to the next.

  So the freeholds along the post road had realized the dangerous presence of armed men. Like Valter, they would be rushing to protect their families and livestock. If any of the temple fraters were down in the valley, the temple itself would soon be alerted.

  The speed with which the riders were dismounting and gathering weapons and shields told Andras that they were aware of the risk and anxious to move before they were caught out. They slipped into the woods on the north side of the road, following the footpath at a stealthy trot as they vanished, one after another.

  Soon, there were only a half dozen men left behind to keep hold of the horses of the entire company. These gathered up reins and tied them to saddles to link the animals together, then led them back down the post road. Whether the riders intended to stay or meant to flee down the road once their task was done, the men who’d stayed behind would be looking to get the horses to water.

  The easiest path for that was the dike separating Valter’s rice paddies from his pasture, which led straight to the river. Plenty of tempting forage along that path, too. Not just grass, but tender rice plants.

  Andras winced to think how Valter would soon have greater worries than how many rats were eating his stores and how much money he owed the man, boy, and dogs who’d cleared them out.

  Meanwhile, the bladedancer temple might shortly be facing its own problems, if the way the armed men were disappearing into the woods meant anything. He had only a vague idea of what happened at their forges and shrines and gardens, but imagined them working, unarmed, and most likely caught by surprise.

  Which didn’t mean they were helpless. Far from it. But neither were they invincible.

  Either way, there would be trouble. That much was sure.

  Chapter Three

  Narina swung a hammer against the anvil shelf with her left hand, while holding and turning a piece of glowing red steel in tongs with her right. She didn’t strike the hot steel, only kept time against the anvil itself. Clink, clink, clink.

  The actual hammering was done by her student, an earnest, curly-headed youth named Gyorgy. He struck the hot metal between her beats. It was the soft sword core, and they were in the process of hammering and folding. That would infuse auras into the heart of the sword.

  “Your sowen is slipping,” she warned as she handed over the tongs for the boy to return the block of steel to the fire. She pumped the bellows with her newly freed hand. “Disperse it into the steel with each blow, then regather between.”

  Gyorgy wiped the sweat from his face with the crook of his arm. “I’m having a hard time meditating, teacher. My concentration slips.”

/>   “You can’t rest, and you can’t wash. Obviously. That means work meditation is the only way to maintain your sowen. Listen to the rhythm of my hammer—it sets your tempo. Your blows are like heartbeats. Mine are like the breath drawn into your lungs. The heartbeat is the laying of your sowen into the core of the sword. But it’s the breath between blows when you reshape what’s inside you.”

  These were lessons her student already knew, but mastering them was a process of years. Of constant reminder and repetition. And that was only the sowen—the gathering of the auras around them—not the actual craft of making the blade core. That was a separate skill entirely.

  Even at sixteen, Gyorgy could have bested a master blacksmith of the lowlands in anything but strength. He’d started working the bellows at five, learned how to make charcoal at seven, and at eight, had learned how to make simple utensils, but it was all Narina could do not to wince at the inexpert way his hammer was flailing around at the moment.

  When the steel was heated again, she took the tongs back and returned it to the anvil for another round. Narina resumed her steady clinking against the anvil. She turned the steel while Gyorgy flailed away.

  “Your breathing is too ragged,” she said. “Stop gasping and keep it even. That will help your muscle control.”

  “I’m tired. My arm feels like it’s going to fall off.”

  “Of course it does,” she said gently. “And you will grow more exhausted before we finish.”

  She never raised her voice in these sessions with her students, never made biting remarks. The time for more serious corrections might come at a later time, maybe gentle teasing, like she’d done the time Gyorgy had set his sleeve on fire, but work at the forge was always to be done in as close to a meditative state as possible, whether one was hammering steel, quenching it, pumping the bellows, or even marking time with a hammer while another worked.

  Narina’s own greatest challenge as an apprentice, when her father, the temple master, had taught these same lessons, had been self-deprecation. A little criticism, coupled with humorous thoughts, which begged to be spoken aloud. Observation and chatter, perfectly acceptable when chopping wood or cooking porridge, but problematic during the long, often tedious hours needed to complete any one of a dozen different steps in producing a weapon.