Honour Among Thieves. David Chandler

He leapt out of the pit, releasing the panther skin and grabbing a mead jug to pour honey wine on his burns.

      The longhouse erupted in cheers and shouts. Hurlind led a tune of victory and bravery against all odds, an old kenning every man and woman in the longhouse knew. Even Mörgain joined in the refrain, Mörgain of whom it was said her iron ever did her singing for her.

      In the chaos, in the tumult, Mörget went to his father’s chair and knelt before him. In his hands he held his prize, the singed pelt. Orange coals still flecked its curling fur.

      “Great Chieftain,” Mörget said, addressing the older man as a warrior, not as a parent, “You hold sway over the hundred clans. They wait for your instructions. For ten years now you have kept them from each other’s throats. You have made peace in a land that only knew war.”

      Ten years, aye, in which no clan had feuded with another. Ten years without warfare, ten years of prosperity. For many of those gathered, ten years of boredom. Mörg had united the clans by being stronger than any man who opposed him, and by giving the chieftains that which they desired. Instead of making war on each other, as they had since time immemorial, the clans had worked together to hunt such game as the steppes provided and to raid the villages of the hillfolk in the north. Yet now there were murmurs in the camps that what every warrior wanted was not ten more years of peace but a new chance to test their mettle. Mörget had been instrumental in starting those murmurs but he had only fed a fire that was already kindled by restlessness. Eastern men, eastern chieftains, could not sit all day in their tents forever and dream of past victories. Eventually they needed to kill something, or they went mad.

      Mörg the Great, Mörg the Wise, had pushed them perhaps as far as he could. As he turned his head to look around at his chieftains, how many eyes did he meet that burned with this new desire for war? Now that the mountains lay open to them, how long could he hold them back?

      “All good things,” Mörg said, looking down at his son again, “should come to an end, it seems. Just as they say in Old Hrush. You’ve won the right to make your say. Tell me, Mörget, what you wish.”

      “Only to stand by your side when we march through this new pass into the west, and crush the decadent kingdom of Skrae beneath our feet.”

      “You lead many clans, chieftain. And I am not your king. You do not require my permission to raid the west.”

      It was true. It was law. Mörg was the Great Chieftain, but he ruled only by the consent of the clans. “I have the right, aye, to raid the west. But I don’t wish just to scare a few villagers and take their sheep,” Mörget explained. “For two hundred years that’s all we’ve done, ever since the Skraelings sealed off the mountain passes. Now there is a new pass. Once, long before any of us were born, our warriors spoke not of raiding but of conquest. Of far greater glories. I wish, Great Chieftain, to make war. To take every mile of Skrae for our people, as has always been their destiny!”

      Alone in that place, Mörg carried iron, in the form of a sword at his belt. All other weapons had been stacked outside, for no warrior would dare bring a blade into the house of the Great Chieftain. Should he desire it, if his wishes countered those of his son, Mörg could draw his sword and strike down Mörget this instant. No man there would gainsay him for it.

      They called him Mörg the Wise, sometimes, when they wished to flatter him. Behind his back, they called him Mörg the Merciful, which was a great slander among the people of the east. If he struck the blow now, perhaps those whispering tongues would be silenced. Or perhaps they would only grow into a chorus.

      The chieftains wanted this. They had made Mörget their spokesman, and sent him here tonight to gain this audience.

      And Mörg was no king, to thwart the will of his people for his own whims. That was the way of the decadent west. Here in the east men ruled through respect, or through fear, but always honestly—because the men who served them believed in them. Mörg was no stronger than the chieftains he’d united. He lived and died by their sufferance. If he did not give them what they wanted, they had their own recourse—they could replace him. And that could only be done over his dead body. Great Chieftains ruled for life, so murder was the sole method of their impeachment.

      On his knees, Mörget stared up at his father with eyes as clear and blue as a mountain stream. Eyes that never blinked.

      Mörg must decide, now. There was no discussion to be had, no council to call. He alone must make this decision. Every eye watched his face. Even Hurlind had fallen silent, waiting to hear what he would say.

      “You,” Mörg said, rising and pointing at a thrall standing by the door. “Fetch boughs of wet myrtle, and throw them on the fire. Let them make a great smoke, that all will see, and thereby know. Tomorrow we march through the mountains to the west. Tomorrow we make war!”

      CHAPTER TWO

      There was a mountain, and then there was no mountain.

      It had been called Cloudblade, for the way its sharp summit had once cut through the sky, and it had possessed a long and storied history. It stood at the eastern frontier of the kingdom of Skrae, tallest of the Whitewall Range. Beneath it, in centuries long gone, the dwarves had built a city they called the Place of Long Shadows. Later on, elves—the last of their kind—had moved into that hollow below the world. For eight hundred years they had hidden there, unknown to the humans above.

      Then five fools from the west came along and ruined everything.

      Cythera climbed up a high pile of rubble, picking her footholds carefully, testing each rock with her hands to make sure it was stable before she put her weight on it. She was sweating by the time she reached the top. There she could see the new valley that lay where Cloudblade once stood. It ran as wide as a road right through the Whitewall, and a constant chill wind coursed over the endless field of stones like a river of air. Over there to the east lay the great steppes where the barbarians ruled. Behind her, to the west, lay Skrae, the country of her birth.

      “How many years did Cloudblade stand? When we first saw it, I would have thought it could last forever,” Malden said, coming up behind her.

      She turned and saw the thief leaping from one rock to another as nimbly as a goat. She couldn’t help but smile at the ease with which he moved. He was a small man, and skinny as an alley cat, but he had an effortless grace that always made her gasp.

      “Cloudblade stood longer than you can imagine,” Cythera said. She was the daughter of a witch and thus privy to some of the secrets of the universe. She knew if she tried to explain to Malden just how long an eon was his eyes would simply glaze over. Which was not to say he was a simpleton. He was bright enough in his own way, if reckless. “Here,” she said, and held out a hand. He took it, holding her fingers as delicately as he might a bundle of flowers. When he had climbed up beside her he kissed her fingertips, one after another.

      “Don’t,” she said, though her heart wasn’t in it. She wanted to embrace him, to drag him down behind these rocks and … well. She had to be careful now, at least for a while. She took her hand back and turned to face the west. Down there below the foothills of the Whitewall she could still see the column of elves as they made their way toward a distant forest. They were on foot but they moved quickly, desperate to reach any shelter from the blue sky. They found the broad stretch of the heavens terrifying, for none of them had ever seen it before. “Do you think they’ll make it?” she asked. The forest they headed for was only the first stop on a long journey.

      “Their ancestors ruled this land before we came along and took it from them,” Malden pointed out. “They’re tougher than they look. And they have Slag to guide them.”

      Cythera nodded. She’d been sad to see the dwarf go, but the elfin queen wouldn’t have followed anyone else.

      “Croy will ride ahead of them for a while, to make sure they aren’t spotted,” Malden added. If any human authorities saw there were elves abroad in the kingdom again it could only end in bloodshed. There was a reason the elves had hidden so long under Cloudblade. “He told me he won’t be back until