Vaylo exited the west hall, plucked a rushlight from a wall sconce, and took the stair up to the highest floor in the hillfort. Nan had made herself a solar there, and it was the time of night when she'd be done with her kitchen chores, and hopefully would have left the cleanup to the men. With Nan you could never be sure. She might stay and talk with the young ones. She had a way with them, a calmness that settled them and made them want to do things for her. Just this morning she'd had them stuffing mattresses with dried sedge and straw. Vaylo had caught mem all in the stables, laughing as they'd stuffed one particular mattress with scratchy burrs. "For Hammie," young Midge Pool had declared, beaming. "We're taking bets on how long it'll take him to notice."
Poor Hammie, Vaylo had thought, waving them on. It was good to see them doing something lighthearted, good to know also that his own lady, Nan Culldayis, had set them on the path toward it.
One of these days he was going to have to marry her. He was no fool. He knew that of the two of them she was the one with all the admirers. And the teeth.
The upper level of the hillfort was an oddly disjointed place, filled with tiny slant-ceilinged rooms that led from one another like jammed-in boxes. Corridors as such ceased to exist. To get to a room you had to walk through a room. The only spaces that were remotely private where those that abutted exterior walls — and most of them were running with damp. Vaylo sincerely hoped that the man who had designed this place had been forced to live in it. Between the deeply flawed roof and this dungeon-like maze it was about the most ill-planned, ill-formed lump of stone he'd ever had the misfortune to stay in. Made the Bluddhouse look like a palace. Made it look very good indeed.
The Dog Lord made his way across the floor, walking from room to room. Most of them were empty, but if you weren't careful you might surprise some poor sod on a chamber pot, or give someone who'd just fallen asleep the fright of his life. Vaylo made a lot of noise.
Trouble with Gangaric's visit was that it hadn't just unsettled the boy. It had unsettled him as well. Bludd was being run into the ground, its defenses neglected. Gangaric had said that Quarro had grown lazy and distracted—claims Vaylo found easy to believe. Out of the seven of them Quarro had always been the one with the greatest sense of entitlement. First born, first sworn, first to get his own roundhouse—none of it through any effort of his own. The only reason why he'd ended up with the Bluddhouse was because his fool of a father had decided to head west and conquer Dhoone. Quarro had never had to fight or struggle for anything in his entire life. And what was beginning to make less and less sense was why he, Vaylo Bludd, was stuck in this godforsaken mold heap in the middle of nowhere while Quarro was sleeping with whores and digging bear pits at Bludd.
It had been different when he thought all was well there. The Bluddhouse secure in the hands of his eldest son was something he could live with. For a certainty he would not set Bluddsmen against Bluddsmen for the sake of claiming a house. Yet what if he was needed? What if all Gangaric's words were true and Bludd was vulnerable and known to be vulnerable? Quarro Bludd was not the Bludd chief.
The Dog Lord was.
Big Borro's wife was there. Mogo Salt's mother and his two sisters. All sorts of Faas and HalfFaas, Nan's older sister with the beautiful name, Irilana, Scunner Bone, Odwin Two Bear's large and sprawling family, who always made a point of having two of something in their names, the fine and ancient family of Bulls … the list went on. Clan was there, in the Bluddhouse, and if Quarro was not watching over it then something had to be done.
So what was keeping him here?
Vaylo took the door to Nan's solar, and as he passed in to the light and the warmth he knew the answer was his fostered son.
"Granda, where's the wolf dog? You said you were going to bring him." Pasha Bludd, nine years old and bossy as a general, scrambled from the sheepskin rug by the hearth to accost him, arms folded. "The others are waiting."
It was true enough. He did remember telling his granddaughter a few hours ago that he was going to fetch the wolf dog, but then he'd had men to see and Hammie to check on, and between the sun setting and Hammie s remark about Burning River he'd clean forgot about the dog. "He'll be with Dry, in the tower" The wolf dog and Cluff Drybannock had always been close.
Pasha marched toward him. "I'll go and fetch him then." "No you won't."
People remarked that Pasha Bludd looked like her granda when she frowned. He certainly hoped it wasn't true. He didn't think it would be becoming for a chief to look so delightful. "Sit. Play with the other dogs. Rub my feet."
She tried to hold the frown, but it crumpled on her at the mention of his feet and she barked out a laugh. "Rather rub pickled eggs."
This statement left him speechless. The three dogs lying by the fire did not bestir themselves. The big black-and-orange bitch was on her back, all four legs splayed like sticks in a jar. The other two were more decently arranged, but one of them was smelling bad. "Where's Nan?"
Pasha shrugged. "She came and went."
Vaylo unhooked his cloak and headed toward the fire. Somehow Nan had managed to turn this damp room with its single south-facing window, its hole-in-the-wall fireplace and its uneven floor into the brightest place in the hillfort. As the room was small the fire had some real effect; green mold had been banished entirely and the black mold, while not gone, was at least dry. Nan had scattered the floor with hay and laid sheepskins on top. A simple but graceful table made from sheet copper hammered over fox pine had been set beneath the window. When it turned up out of the blue ten days back, Vaylo had asked Nan about it and received a surprising reply. "Cluff made it for me. He remembered me telling him how I didn't like to leave things on the floor overnight." Nan was the only person who ever called Drybone "Cluff."
Vaylo pushed one of the dogs out of the way and squatted close to the hearth. Heat made blood rush to his face. Pasha brought him a cup of water and a thumb cup of malt. The liquor had been a gift from Gangaric, carried all the way from Bludd. It was such a treasure that Vaylo thought he'd be quite happy never to drink it; just uncork the flask once a day and inhale.
"Why you being so good to me?" he said, his eyes narrowing at his granddaughter. "You think I'm going to forget about the foot rub?"
It was then as he rolled onto the rug and made a great show of pulling off his left boot that all three dogs stood. Ears moving, they tracked a noise the Dog Lord could not hear. Immediately Vaylo pulled himself to his feet. Fear jumped so quickly in his heart it must have been there all along.
The bitch began to growl, a terrible low whirring that sounded like the moving of gears on a war machine.
"With me," he told her. To the other two he said, "Guard my granddaughter." His voice was so fearsome they shrank away from it.
Pasha's black eyes were bright. Her features moved through several uncertain states as she stepped toward him. "Granda"
"Stay here!" he roared, his voice harder than it had been with the dogs. "Draw the bolt when I have gone and let only those you know in."
The girl's bladder gave way and uringtshot down her dress, splashing at her feetfihe stood still, and pressed her liljjSrcogether very tightly. Her jaw and teeth started doing something behind them, like gnawing, but he did not have the time to comfort her.
The black-and-orange bitch pushed her head into his thigh as she followed him from the solar. The last thing he saw as he closed the door was the remaining two dogs moving to flank his granddaughter. He waited until he heard the charge of the bolt before he and the hound made their way downstairs.