A Thief in the Night

chapter Twenty-four

“Please,” Herward said, “let me show you what meager hospitality remains in my power.” The hermit started walking away without another word. Malden got his jennet moving to follow, but when he looked back he realized he was the only one to do so. He looked at the others, wondering what was going on.

Cythera moved her horse near to Croy’s courser and whispered something in his ear. He nodded, and the two of them cut away from the group, heading up the hill rather than following the holy man. Mörget had taken up a position near the head of the trail, where he could watch their rear, as if he expected the shire reeve and an army of knights to come after them. Slag stared up at the entrance to the Vincularium, perhaps impatient to get inside after so long on the road.

“Come along,” Malden said to the dwarf, and with a curse or two the dwarf followed where the hermit led. He left Mörget to his own business.

The thief and the dwarf headed back down the hillside a way, then up another slope where the horses had trouble finding solid footing. The hermit climbed over the rocks like a mountain goat, never looking back. As they neared the top of the hill, Malden expected to see a crumbling shack or perhaps a simple monastic cell, just big enough for one hermit to crouch inside.

He was not expecting to find a fortress up there.

Not that it was such a grand thing, really. The structure could have been dropped into the Market Square of Ness and fit easily. It was not so large as a castle, nor so well made. Its walls were of unmortared stone piled together in thick sloping walls. It showed signs of immense age, one whole wall having been smothered by clinging vines, its stones bleached white by centuries of sun. Yet it looked strong enough to withstand a cavalry charge, or even a siege if it came to that. It had towers at two of its corners, though one had collapsed into a pile of rubble. A massive iron gate stood rusting at its front.

A hundred men could have barracked inside its walls. From that position they could hold off a small army. They also had a perfect view of the entrance to the Vincularium, and with longbows they could hold off anyone who attempted to enter the tomb, or leave it.

“Was this place built before the Vincularium was sealed?” Malden asked.

“Oh, no. After,” Herward assured him. “A hundred men waited here, for a hundred years, to make sure the door stayed sealed.”

“They must have feared the elves greatly,” Malden said, as the hermit shoved on the creaking iron gate and gestured for them to ride inside.

“Oh, the Elders were deadly warriors,” Herward agreed. “Every man of that race was skilled with a blade. Their archers could outshoot any man now living. Worse still, they didn’t fight like honest men. They would come out of the trees just long enough to slaughter a few of us, then slip back into the forest again where we could never find them.”

“The Elders?” Malden asked.

Slag explained. “That’s what the elves called themselves. They believed that dwarves, humans, goblins, and the rest were all descended from them. That we were all degenerate sports of their master race.”

“They had some terrible magic as well,” Herward went on. “They could butcher a man in his sleep from a hundred miles away, if they only had a hair from his head or a piece of cloth he’d once worn. Why, just giving an elf your name was enough. They could use it, gain power over you. You understand why we had to kill them all.”

Malden climbed down from the jennet and tied her to a post in the yard of the fortress. The place was a husk, he saw, nothing but a few walls still standing after so much time. A ruin.

“The war lasted for twenty years. Half a man’s life, but the blink of an eye to them. Here. Let me show you something I’ve found,” Herward said, his face lighting up with joy. He rushed through what had been a doorway—now it was just a hole in one wall—and busied himself in the shadowy room beyond. “Come in, come in!” he called. “Come see the prizes of my collection.”

Malden approached, and then stopped when he smelled the place. It must be where Herward lived, he thought, though it was also possible he used it as his privy. Maybe both. “So you collect things?”

“Yes! Come see!”

“You don’t collect your own droppings, though?” Malden asked, just to be sure.

The hermit poked his head out through the empty doorway again. “What are you talking about?”

“Your, ah—your . . . Slag?”

The dwarf dropped from the back of his colt with a thud. “He’s asking if you save your own shit. To throw at folks, or some other barmy purpose.”

“Shit,” Herward said, as if he’d only heard the word once, many years before. “Shit. Oh, no. I don’t defecate.”

That got Mörget’s attention. The barbarian had stopped just inside the gate, perhaps expecting a trap. “Every man shits,” he said.

Herward shrugs. “I don’t eat, you see. The Lady sustains me on black mead. No, I haven’t tasted food in nearly a year. So I don’t defecate. I do urinate quite often.” He gestured again. “Now, please, come here!”

Malden and Slag approached the doorway but didn’t step inside. The room beyond was hard to see, but it must have been an arsenal at some point. Bundles of swords and spears filled all the available space. Suits of armor hung from the ceiling, as if knights of old were sleeping up there in net hammocks. The armor looked subtly wrong to Malden, until he realized that the breastplates were far too slender for a human rib cage, and the helmets too long.

Moreover, all of the weapons and armor gleamed like gold.

“There was a battle here, long ago. The Elders fought a running retreat all the way to the entrance of the House of Chains, with the combined army of our king and all his bannermen hounding their heels. Many died on both sides. Now, so long hence, I still find their things here out among the rocks. When I find a good piece, I bring it back here to polish it and bang out the dents with a hammer.” Herward squinted at them. “Not sure why I do it. Maybe to help pass the time. Look at this.”

He handed Malden a shortsword with a square tip. The blade was notched and quite dull, but had not rusted to pieces like an iron sword would. It didn’t feel quite as heavy as he’d expected, though.

“Bronze,” Slag said.

“Are you sure?” Malden asked. It had occurred to him that Herward had so many golden swords he might not notice if one went missing. “It’s not gold?”

“I’m a f*cking dwarf. I know my metals. That’s bronze.”

Herward nodded happily. “The Elders wouldn’t touch iron. Supposedly it interfered with their magic. Everything they made was of copper or bronze or brass.”

Malden made a pass through the air with the sword. “Well, that explains how we were able to beat them, eh? We had iron weapons. Clearly superior.”

“Bronze is as strong as iron, and carries just as sharp an edge,” Slag told him. “Also—it never rusts. It gets a nice patina, but it never corrodes. You come back here in a thousand years, these swords will be just as strong.”

“There has to be something wrong with bronze,” Malden pointed out, “since we won with our iron.”

“It’s more expensive, is your main downside.”

“Then we . . . we won because we were . . . our hearts were pure, or some such,” Malden said, trying to remember old stories he’d heard as a child. “Because our cause was just?”

“You beat them by outbreeding them,” Slag said. “An elf lived near on a century, and never had more than one child. You lot bred like rats when you came over here.”

Malden frowned. He wasn’t sure what that meant. “What do you mean, when we came over here? We’ve always lived on this land.”

Herward clucked his tongue.

“Wrong again,” Slag explained. “A thousand years ago this whole country was covered in a thick forest, right? All those fields of wheat were so many trees. Nobody ever cut them down, so they grew thick. My people, the dwarves, lived under the ground, and we had no use for that much wood. The elves lived in the forest, aboveground. Then the humans came, from the south. First they were just explorers. Looking for new lands to name after themselves. The elves laughed at the idea, but they didn’t drive you off, because they didn’t know what was coming. We barely even knew you were here, because you didn’t dig deep enough to disturb us. Should have paid more attention. It was missionaries, what came next. Then traders, and trappers, and then followed the f*cking settlers. They had families that had to be fed. Every generation of humans chopped down more trees, to make more room for their fields. Finally the elves started noticing what you were doing to their homeland.”

“What happened then?” Malden asked.

Slag flicked the sword with his fingers to make it ring, a high piercing note like two blades coming together. “You weren’t the kind to leave peaceful like, not once you had your sodding big paws on a piece of earth. So it came down to you or the elves. This is where you finally wiped them out.”

Malden looked out through the gates of the fort, at the entrance to the Vincularium on the opposite slope. Though he could read and write and do figures, he’d never had any formal education. Certainly no one had ever told him this dark secret of his own history.