The Complete Soldier Son Trilogy. Robin Hobb

year until they covered the foothills like stones beside a watercourse. We raided far, but for honour and treasures rather than sustenance, for we had a home that yielded all we needed. The Kidona were a mighty people, content with our blessings and a glory to our gods. All that, all that, was taken from us by the Dappled Ones and we were doomed to become nomads, herders of the dust storms, planting only bodies and reaping only death.’

      He dropped his hand to his side. He bowed his bird’s head, expressing a sorrow beyond words and stared with longing across the divide.

      ‘What befell your people?’ I asked at last, when it was plain he intended to say no more.

      He heaved a great sigh. ‘In those days, we lived far to the west, in the foothills of what Gernians call the Barrier Mountains. A foolish name. They are not a barrier, but a bridge. The mountains are full of game and rich with trees bearing flowers, fruit and running with sweet sap. Their thick forests are shady and cool in the heat of summer. When the storms of winter blow, the tree canopies are shelter from deep snow and the sweep of the wind. The forests gave us everything we needed. The streams that run down from the high snows teem with fish, frogs, and turtles. Once, they were ours, our land to hunt and forage, and we were a wealthy people. In the forests, we hunted and harvested the same lands as the Dappled Folk. But we also ventured out onto the plains, standing out in the full sun, as they did not dare to do, for their eyes and skin cannot tolerate the full brightness of day. They are creatures of the shadows and twilight times. On the plains at the foot of the mountains, the Kidona kept our herds and flocks in the summer. There we built our towns and cities, our monuments and roads. In the winters, our herdsmen took our beasts up into the shelter of the forest. We prospered. Our herds increased. Our women were thriving, our men full of vigour and so many children were born to us that yearly we had to build new rearing temples to house them.

      ‘All would have been well, save for the Dappled Folk who infested the mountain forests above us. They resented the increase of our herds, and strove to prevent our expansion of our grazing lands and our taking of timber for our towns. They said that our sheep and our kine ate too much, and that our taldi trampled the winding forest paths into wide roads. They complained of the land that we cleared for fields and mourned every tree that fell to our axes. They claimed the forest as their own, and wanted it to remain as if no man had ever trod there. We wished only to be allowed to have our children, to hunt and harvest as our fathers and grandfathers had done before us. We argued with the Dappled Folk. And eventually, we fought with them.

      ‘The Dappled Folk are a loathsome race, sly and slick as yellow and black salamanders under a rotting log. We did not seek a grievance with them. We were willing to exchange goods with them, but when we traded with them, they cheated us. Their women are lustful as war chiefs, but will not keep to one man’s bed nor acquire cattle and manage wealth as befits a woman. They ruined our young warriors with random bedding and children they could not know were truly theirs. They set our warriors to fighting amongst themselves. The Dappled men are worse than their women. They would not fight warrior to warrior with swannecks and spears, but struck from a distance, with arrows and stones, so that the souls of the warriors they killed did not reach the territory of the gods, but fell unaware, disgraced as slain prey, like rabbits and grouse, no more than meat. We did not seek grievance with the Dappled Folk but when they forced it upon us, we did not shrink from it. When we rode through their villages and slew all those who did not flee, they vowed revenge on us. The winds of death they sent to us, so that men died coughing, huddled in their own filth. They orphaned our children and left them to die instead of taking them into their families. They set disease on us like dogs on wounded deer. Such deaths end a man completely; there is no after life for men who are betrayed by their own bodies.’

      Dewara fell silent, but his feathered chest surged with his emotion. It was the brooding, seething silence of a man who hates and hates without hope of satisfaction. Then he spoke softly, saying, ‘The warriors of your people are on the edges of the mountain forests claimed by the Dappled Folk. Your warriors are strong. They defeated the Kidona, when no other plainspeople could stand against us. I speak to you of our ancient defeat by the Dappled Folk. I reveal to you this shame of my people, so that you may understand that the Dappled Ones deserve none of your good god’s mercy. You should show them the same sword’s edge you showed us. Use your iron weapons, to slay them from a distance, and never go near their people or their homes, or they will work their sorcery upon you. They should be trampled underfoot like dung-worms. No humiliation is undeserved by them, no atrocity too vicious to inflict on them. Do not ever regret anything your folk do to them, for behold what they did to my people. They severed our bridge to the dream world.’ His hands fell to his sides. ‘When I die, my being will end. There is no passage for me to the birth lands of the spirits of my people.

      ‘When I was a young man, before our war with your people, I vowed I would reopen this passage. I made my vow before my people and my gods. I captured and shed the blood of a hawk to bind me to it. And so I am bound.’ He gestured at his bird form. ‘Twice I attempted this passage. I crossed and did battle with the terrible guardian they have set upon our way. Twice, I was defeated. But I did not surrender, nor did I give up. Not until your father shot me with his iron, not until he sank the magic of your people deep into my chest, crippling my Kidona magic, did I know that I could not do this myself. I thought I had failed.’

      He paused in his account and shook his beaked head. ‘I had no hope. I knew I was condemned to the torment of the oath-breaker when I died. But then the gods revealed to me their way. This is why they allowed your people to make war upon us and conquer us. This is why they showed up the power of your iron magic. This is why your father sought me out and gave you to me. The gods sent me my weapon. I have trained you and taught you. The iron magic belongs to you, and you belong to me. I send you to open the way for the Kidona. It has taken all the strength of the feeble magic that remains in me to bring you this far. I can go no further. I redeem my oath in you and bring great glory to my name forever. You will slay their guardian with the cold iron magic. Go now. Open the way.’

      ‘I have no weapon,’ I said. My own words made me a coward in my eyes.

      ‘I will show you how, now. This is how you summon your weapon to you.’

      He stooped impatiently and dragged his finger in a crescent in the dust. It left a line. He stooped, and blew upon the dusty stone, and as the dust flew away from his breath, a shining bronze swanneck was revealed. He gestured at it proudly. Then he lifted it from the ground; its outline remained in the stone of the cliffs, like the imprint of an animal’s hoof near a streambed. With a powerful blow, he drove the gleaming blade into the blue stone at our feet. ‘There. That will hold this end of the bridge for the Kidona people. Now, you must summon your own weapon, to use against the guardian. I cannot call iron.’

      I pushed my doubts away. I stooped and in the dust, I drew an image I knew well. It was an image I had idly drawn a thousand times in my boyhood. I drew a cavalla sword, proud and straight, with a sturdy haft and dangling tassel. As my fingers traced it against the stone, I suddenly hungered for the weapon to be within my hand again. And when I stooped and blew my breath across the dusty stone, the sword I had left at Dewara’s campsite was suddenly there at my feet. Triumphant, yet wondering, I lifted the blade from the earth. Its imprint remained behind beside the swanneck’s. When I proudly flourished it aloft, Dewara shrank from it, lifting his arm-wing to shield himself from the steel in my hand.

      ‘Take it and go!’ he hissed, his arms lifted to mimic the aggressive stance of a bird. ‘Slay the guardian. But bear it away from me before it can weaken the magic that holds us here. Go. My swanneck anchors this end. Your iron will hold the other.’

      I had become so much his creature that I could not think of any alternative to doing what he had commanded. In that time and place and uncertain light, there was no room for me to think of disobeying him. So I turned from him and walked along the stone ledge to the cliff’s edge. The rocky chasm gaped bottomlessly before me. The standing hoodoos of stone and the flimsy bridges that connected them were my only possible passage to the other side. My destination was faded by distance, as if smoke or fog hung in the air and curtained it. I could see no detail of it. The sculpted pinnacles varied in size; the tops of some were no bigger than tables, whilst others could have supported