The Dread Hammer (3 page)

And yet for reasons no one understands, Smoke is not like us.

We are the Bidden. We are bound to the people of the Puzzle Lands by the threads laid on our family long ago by the Hauntén named Koráy.

The threads Koráy wove bound all her descendants for five generations—all, that is, except my brother, Smoke, whose heart was not entangled until that day on the forest road.

Ketty ran, not knowing if she was more afraid of her father’s wrath or of the mad Hauntén. She ran until her lungs burned, until she couldn’t take another step. Then she collapsed, rolling beneath the fine, trembling branches of a pale green bush, the better to hide herself. She lay on her back, her chest heaving, already unsure from what direction she’d come.

A minute passed and her breath quieted. Several more minutes went by and still she heard no sound of footsteps. Maybe she’d escaped? She hoped so. Truly. Although there
had
been something sweet about the mad Hauntén, despite his bluster . . . and something tantalizing in the scent of him as he lay against her in the ferns, something like sun on rocks, or dark red flowers . . .

But it wouldn’t do to think on that. She had to get to Nefión.

So Ketty gathered her courage and crept out from beneath the bush, moving as quietly as she could manage. She looked around—and gasped when she saw Smoke standing only a few feet away. He was leaning up against a tree trunk, his arms crossed in an attitude of patient waiting. As their eyes met he greeted her with a pleased smile. “I’m glad you changed your mind, Ketty. I thought you’d be more stubborn.”

Ketty leaped to her feet, regretting how she’d let her thoughts stray—but he couldn’t know, could he? “What do you mean?” she asked with a hammering heart.

“How did you know this was the way to my holding?”

“Is it?” Ketty looked about at the endless, undistinguished trees. “I didn’t know. And I don’t want to go to your holding! I was just running away from the forest road. I don’t dare set foot on it again, my father could return. Tell me please, is there some other way to Nefión?”

His cheerful aspect changed at once to something fearsome. His green eyes glittered with a dangerous light. “You still speak of Nefión?”

Ketty shivered. The thread of her life felt suddenly fragile, but she held onto her courage and answered, “I do. There
is
some other way, isn’t there?”

He scowled and shrugged exactly like a resentful boy. “There are countless ways if you make your own path.”

Again, Ketty looked around. Every direction seemed the same to her. “Won’t I become lost?”

“Yes, of course you will. Lost or eaten.”

“I won’t be lost if you show me the way.”

“And why would I do that?”

Making an effort, she put on her sweetest smile. “To show me your kind heart.”

“I don’t have a kind heart, and nor do I lie, as you do.”

“Oh, rot it!” She bent to pick up her staff. “Just tell me which way the forest road lies. I’ll take my chances there.”

“It lies back the way you came!”

“Right! Of course it does. And, well—”An embarrassed flush warmed her cheeks. “Which way is that?”

He turned his gaze briefly skyward, as if imploring the Dread Hammer for an extra share of patience. Then he fixed his green eyes on her again. His anger had faded, leaving him perplexed and maybe a little hurt. “Ketty, why do you pretend not to like me? Why do you play at running way?”

Her treacherous heart wondered the same thing, but she defied it, and him. Thumping her staff against the ground, she said, “You are the most astonishing creature! So utterly spoiled. Look at you—pouting!—because I have not agreed to take you out of the blue as my husband.”

“You only refuse because you’re stubborn. You want me. I know you do. You’re just too proud to admit it.”

“That is not true.”

“And you should be flattered that I want you.”

“You are so vain!”

“So? I have good cause. I’m beautiful. My sisters always said so.” He licked his lips and spoke more softly. “You think so too. I can hear your heart beating faster when you look at me.”

“That’s because I’m afraid!”

“You even like the way I smell, don’t you?”

She blushed. “You are impossible! You will drive me to distraction! Even if you are beautiful—and I’m not saying that you are!—I don’t even know you.”

“You know me. You’ve named me.”

“Smoke? What kind of a name is that? That’s not a man’s name, but then you’re not a man are you? You’re a forest spirit. One of the Hauntén.”

This was too much for him. He drew back, affronted. “How have I harmed you, that you take such delight in insulting me? Of course I’m a man. How could I fancy you otherwise?”

“Today you fancy me, but what of tomorrow, next month, next year? What will become of me when your sudden fancy turns to someone else?”

“And who should it turn to?” He looked around, his arms spread wide, palms up in a helpless gesture. “Who else is here to distract me?”

Ketty was stunned. “You live alone in the Wild Wood?”

“I told you I am but one and I am alone. Don’t you pay attention to anything I say? Ketty, you must cease this argument and yield to me now. There’s no good reason for you to decline.”

“Oh, yes there is! I don’t fancy
you
.”

For a moment he appeared too stunned to speak. Had he never considered such a possibility? But a moment later a bright smile chased his doubt away. “Ketty, you are such a liar.”

She bridled. “How dare you speak—” But just then a cloud shifted, sliding from the face of the sun. A brighter light reached through the leaves to flicker over his handsome features: his pretty, golden-honey hair, his fine nose, his white teeth, his sparkling green eyes. The scar on his neck was cast into shadow. Ketty blinked, her heart racing and her throat gone dry. “It’s just . . . I planned to go to Nefión.”

Smoke stepped closer. He held his hand out to her. “It’s better here. No one comes here. It’s a hidden place. Your father will never find you, and I’ll share it only with you.”

She thought it over. To go with this creature was surely a mad thing to do, and yet her treacherous heart was urging her to give in, if only for the present. “I am very tired,” she conceded. “Maybe I could stay at your house tonight before I go on to Nefión?”

Smoke took his hand back. He lifted his chin. “You’re as nervous as a she-wolf just out of the den.”

“Well, if you don’t want me to come—”

He bared his teeth. “Oh, I want you. Very much.”

She shivered, but when he turned to go she yielded and followed meekly after him. What choice did she have? Better to go with the mad Hauntén than wait for the wolves to find her.

The Wild Wood was an old, old forest. Perhaps as old as the world, though Smoke rarely paused to consider such things. Bright green ferns grew in the gloom beneath the trees, their fronds hiding a clutter of fallen branches. Looking less happy than the ferns, azaleas and berry bushes bided against the day a storm might bring down an elder tree and open their dim world to light.

It would not be this day. Above a scaffolding of old branches the trees still held on to their summer leaf. The canopy shuffled and swayed, sending random glints of light tumbling to the forest floor. The glittering was quenched occasionally when clouds passed over the sun, but it was still a fine day, one of the last of summer. Smoke thought there might be a fog that night and rain tomorrow, but he didn’t fret on it. Tomorrow would take care of itself. Today, his only concern was to bring Ketty to his holding.

Of course they had to go on foot and this annoyed him. He hated walking. Why bother with it when he could slide with great speed along the threads beneath the world? But Ketty couldn’t follow him on that path so he was forced to walk with her.

It was a very long way. He hadn’t realized how long, since he’d never walked it before. The farther they went, the farther it seemed they still had to go and so, frustrated, Smoke went ever faster. He was sure that as soon as he brought Ketty to his holding, as soon as she saw the pretty cottage he had built, the last of her doubts would be chased away and she would confess that she did indeed love him.

“Smoke!”

Her distant cry startled him. He looked back to find that she had fallen behind yet again, and so again, he waited for her. He was already carrying her sack. She’d been willing to let him do that, though she insisted on keeping her staff.

“You should be better at walking than I am,” he said as she came huffing up.

Her temper flashed. “You are taller than me, and you haven’t been walking for two nights and a day without rest,
and
you are Hauntén.”

“I am a man.”

“How much farther?”

He thought on it, feeling the pull and stretch of the threads. “Some while yet. But there’s a brook not far from here. It’s a good place to rest.”

Far off through the trees there came the sweet wail of a wolf’s howl. Another answered it, and then many took up the song. It was a misty sound, floating down from the tree tops. Smoke closed his eyes, the better to listen, until he felt Ketty clutch his hand. She was trembling. “Are you afraid?” he asked with an amused smile.

“They are wolves!”

“Of course they’re wolves. I like to follow them sometimes when I’m hunting.” He laughed. “It annoys them when I take the fawn they wanted for their own dinner.”

“They do not hunt you?”

“Why would I let them?”

She looked up at him with her dark eyes. Such pretty eyes. “And the bears?” she asked. “Are you afraid of them?”

“No, nor the lions. And you don’t need to be afraid either while you’re with me. Now come.” His hand tightened on hers. “The brook isn’t far, and you’ll feel better in the sunlight.”

But to his exasperation she shook off his hand, and insisted she would follow two paces behind.

In unnumbered spring floods the brook had polished clean a field of smooth gray stone that now, at summer’s end, flanked its glistening water. Ketty lay back, her head pillowed against her sack and her eyes closed as she basked in the golden light of afternoon.

Smoke stood gazing at the pretty turn of her face. He did fancy her. He truly did. Never before had he felt this way about any woman. But he was discouraged. Why would she not admit that she cared for him too?

The song of wolves reached them again. Ketty stiffened. After a moment she spoke without opening her eyes. “Is there anything in the Wild Wood that can cause you harm?”

“Don’t worry on it. We’re nowhere near the dark heart.”

Ketty opened her eyes, raising her hand to shade them from the brilliance of the sky. “Then there is something you fear?”

“The Hauntén live in the dark heart of the forest, but I don’t go there.” For as long as he could remember he’d felt a dread of the Hauntén and their fastness deep in the Wild Wood. But he did not tell this to Ketty. “My holding is hidden, and safe. No one even knows it exists, and I’ll kill anyone who learns it.”

Ketty sat up. “So you really would have killed my father, if I’d let you?”

“It would have been better. Less risk.”

“You speak as if you’ve killed men before.”

Smoke laughed. “Did you truly wonder? Of course I’ve killed men before. It’s nothing and I don’t care about it.” He walked down to the water’s edge where he knelt, gazing at the shapes of fishes swimming at the bottom of a deep, calm pool.

I don’t care about it
.

Without warning, a sick heat stirred in his belly. He grimaced, and then he heard himself speaking in a soft voice that hardly seemed his own, “I don’t like to kill women or their children.”

The words were hardly out when the feeling passed. Why had he spoken at all? “Don’t think on it,” he told himself in a whisper. He stood up again and in a firmer voice he said, “Come, Ketty. The days have grown shorter, and we still have some long way to go.”

He turned, and was surprised to find Ketty already on her feet, her sack slung over her shoulder, and her staff raised against him as fear and fury waged in her eyes. “You’ve murdered children?”

He was taken by surprise and his own temper flashed. “They weren’t your people! And anyway, it was a war. The Trenchant commanded it.”

She was aghast. “The Trenchant? You’re a Koráyos warrior? From the Puzzle Lands?”

“Ketty, will there never be an end to your questions? You try my patience!”

“Answer me, Smoke! Are you a Koráyos warrior?”

“I was, but no longer. Now can we go?”

“No.” Ketty took a step back. “I don’t want to go any farther with a bloody-handed servant of the Bidden.”

Smoke’s hands squeezed into fists. A flush heated his neck and cheeks. Ketty must have sensed his perilous mood. She gasped, stumbling away as if expecting him to come after her with his sword. He wondered if he should.

Then again, the wolves were hunting.

“Go on!” he told her. “Go on your way. I’m young yet. I’ll find another woman.” He turned his back on her and walked on, so used to walking now that in the tumult of his thoughts he forgot there was another way.

Leaving the sun-warmed rock, he slipped into the shadows of the forest. That was when Ketty called after him in a tentative voice, “Smoke?”

He ignored her.

She called him again. “Smoke!”

He berated himself.
You
’
re being a fool!
He knew he should go back and kill her. It wasn’t likely that she could evade the wolves and find her way out of the forest, but it wasn’t impossible either. And if she escaped? If she spoke of him? If word of his presence got back to the Puzzle Lands? He couldn’t risk it!

So turn around and kill her!

He only walked faster until she cried out after him, “Smoke,
wait!
”

Her command stopped him short. It wasn’t something he willed. His lip curled in frustration. He told himself to walk on, walk on, but he stood rooted in place. Curse the prayers of women! He was bidden by them, especially when it was one woman alone and in need.

Ketty’s boots rustled thoughtlessly in the leaf litter as she bounded after him. “Smoke.”

To his surprise she caught his hand again. She looked up at him with a glint of tears in her dark eyes. But he shook his head. “You’re too difficult, Ketty.”

“I know I am, but it’s because I was born wrong. My mother said I was born under the red moon. Its spirit crept inside me, and that’s why I am like I am. My brothers and sisters are all good and obedient, but I’m not. I’m stubborn, and lazy, and pig-headed too—and I always argue.”

“Ketty of the Red Moon,” he said with disdain. Then he reclaimed his hand and set off again. But he wasn’t thinking anymore of killing her. He knew he couldn’t do it. He’d have to rely on the wolves no matter the risk.

But she wasn’t cooperating at all. Instead of going on her way, she was trotting alongside him. “Smoke, would you . . . really find another woman?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve given up then?”

“Yes.”

“But I think we’re bound together.”

He stopped again and glared down at her.

She blinked hard as tears threatened to spill over. She spoke in a choked voice. “I . . . I was thinking that maybe—if you’re done with murdering—that maybe you’re better company than wolves.”

His smile blossomed. He couldn’t help himself. “That’s
not
what you were thinking.” He touched her soft cheek and to his delight she actually leaned into his hand. “You were thinking how much you’d like to spend tonight in my bed.”

That spoiled it. She drew back, wide eyed. “No! Well, sort of . . . but I don’t like it that I have no choice!”

“You had a choice between me and the widower, between me and the wolves. I don’t have any choice at all.”

“I’m supposed to feel sorry for you?”

He shrugged.

“You’re impossible!”

“Kiss me anyway.”

“Or go to the wolves?”

“You already have the soul of a sharp-toothed wolf. Don’t deny it! You’re a wild thing.”

“All right then.” She set her hand on his left shoulder—but her attention was immediately caught by the deep scar on his neck. “Did you get that in battle?”

“That was from a Lutawan officer named Nedgalvin. I’ll find him and kill him someday.”

“It looks like your head was almost cut off!”

“It almost was. Now kiss me.”

He was awash in her presence. Ketty must have felt the same way, because she needed no more encouragement. Standing on her toes she stretched up to press her lips against his—

And Smoke chuckled deep in his throat. “You don’t know how to kiss, do you?”

She drew back. “And what do you expect? I’ve never kissed anyone before.”

“I have, and it’s done softly. Like this.” He bent, and brushed his lips against hers, and then he went deeper, and as he tasted her mouth he felt a mesh of binding threads weaving tight between them.