Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

They hailed him loudly and enthusiastically, with the howls and shouts appropriate to a ready and dangerous host. Best of all, they dispersed swiftly and with an efficiency brought about by anticipation and forethought. Already they moved less like a bestial horde intent on momentary satisfaction and more like thinking beings who could plan, act, and triumph.

He turned, to approach the OldMother, but she had gone back inside her hall. Her door was shut. She had no need to interfere, after all. She had already made her pronouncement on the day she had allowed him to take a name: “Stronghand will rise or fall by his own efforts.”

He gestured, and Tenth Son came forward. “When our allies have all left the fjord, let the ones assigned as reavers go forth to harry in Moerin’s lands. Let them make sure that none of those who once gave allegiance to Nokvi still live. But let a few skiffs patrol the coast, and let some of our brothers, the quiet and wily ones, travel where they can. They must listen. It may even be that some who claim to be our allies now will talk against us. I must know who they are.”

“It will be done.” Tenth Son beckoned, and certain of his trusted lieutenants hurried forward to carry away Stronghand’s chair. “Are there any you trust less than the others?”

Stronghand considered. “Isa. Ardaneka’s chief, because he came only when he saw that all the others had allied with me. A Moerin pup will need to be found, to groom as chieftain over what remains of that tribe. But send on this expedition those who can walk with their eyes open.” A thought occurred, and he turned it over and around, examining it, before he spoke it out loud. “Let them take slaves with them, ones who are both strong and clever. There may be much that can be discovered from among the slaves of the other tribes.”

Of all his people, only Tenth Son had ceased being surprised when Stronghand made use of his slaves in unexpected ways. Tenth Son canted his head to one side, in the way of a dog listening, and looked thoughtful. “It will be done,” he agreed. “There is another way to look for the tree sorcerers. News of them must surely come to the merchants who sail from port to port. Although Bloodheart lost the city of Hundse—” What the humans called Gent. “—much treasure still came to our tribe by his efforts. Some of these treasures we could trade, and the ones who trade could listen and seek news in that way.”

The words afflicted him as mightily as would the sun’s brightness, shorn of cloud cover. He had not expected his brother to think so cleverly. “I must consider what you say.”

The SwiftDaughters moved away about their own errands, those things that mattered most: the continuation of the life of the tribe. No wonder that they left him to work alone, unremarked. In their eyes, such enterprises as raiding and plunder, fighting and conquest, were insignificant and trivial. In a thousand winters the rock would remain much as it always had, while his bones, and his efforts, would have long since been ground into dust.

With chieftain’s staff in hand, he took the long walk up to the fjall. Long halls gave way to abandoned slave pens, empty except for a few ragged slaves too stupid to leave their confines. Always, as he passed, he would first smell and then see a half dozen or more scraping mindlessly at the dirt or rocking from side to side in the ruins of their old shelters. The decrepit lean-to barracks in which the slaves had once wintered had been torn down and the wood and stone reused to build decent halls. Deacon Ursuline and her people had been industrious in the weeks since he had taken the chieftainship of Rikin.

Fields spread everywhere along the lower slopes, fenced in by low rock walls. The human slaves once owned by his vanquished brothers had been given a measure of freedom under the strict supervision of his own warriors and those of his slaves whom he trusted. Now they toiled to grow crops where crops were suited to the soil and drainage. Higher up, half-grown children shepherded flocks of sheep and goats and the herds of cattle on which the RockChildren depended. Slaves at work in field and pasture noticed him pass, but none were foolish enough to stop working or to stare.

Fields gave way to meadow and meadowlands to a sparse forest of spruce, pine, and birch. As the path banked higher, the forest opened up, shedding the other trees until only birch grew with a scattering of scrub and heather shorn flat by wind. The last of the stunted trees fell away as he emerged onto the high fjall, the land of rock and moss and scouring wind. The wind whipped at his staff, making the bones and iron rods tied to the crosspiece clack alarmingly. His braided hair rustled and twined along one shoulder, as if it retained a memory of the living hair grown by the merfolk.