Yet Sander made himself approach the next building. No corpse blocked the forced door this time. However, one glance at what lay inside made him gag and turn hastily away. He could not go any nearer to that. It seemed that the raiders, whoever they might have been, had not been content to kill, but had also taken time to amuse themselves in a beastly fashion. Sander kept swallowing to control his nausea as he backed out into the way that fronted the unfired buildings.
There was one other place he must search for—in spite of his growing terror. There must have been a smith’s forge somewhere in this ravaged village. He slapped his hands against the bag of tools that was lashed to the back of Rhin’s riding pad. What he carried there was all he had from his father. Ibbets would have liked to have claimed those, as he claimed the office of smith with the Mob, but custom had supported Sander to that extent.
Two major hammers and chisels had been buried with his father, Dullan, of course. A man’s main tools of trade were filled with his own powers and must so be laid away in the earth when he no longer could use them. But there were some smaller things that a son could rightfully claim, and no one could deny him those. However, Sander needed more, much more, if he were to realize his dream. He longed to find the place wherein those masses of congealed metal, which the traders brought to the Mobs, were concealed and to learn the secret of the alloys which now baffled smiths.
Resolutely he started on, dodging a charred wall that had fallen outward, closing his mind to everything but his search, holding his nose against the stink. Rhin continued to whine and growl. Sander was well aware that his companion wanted none of this place of death and followed him under protest. Yet because of the brotherhood between them, Rhin would continue.
Rhin’s people and those of the Mob were entwined in mutual service. That companionship began during the Dark Time. Legends Sander had heard recited by the Rememberers said that Rhin’s people had once been much smaller, yet always clever and quick to adapt to change. “Koyots” they were called in the old tongue.
There had been many animals, and more men than one could count, who had perished when the Earth danced and the Dark Time had begun. Mountains of fire had burst through the skin of the world, belching flame, smoke, and molten rock. The sea had rolled inward with waves near as high as those same mountains, hammering the land into nothingness in some places, in others deserting the beds over which it had lain for untold ages. Cold followed and great choking clouds of evil air that killed.
Here and there a handful of men or animals survived. But when the skies cleared once again, there were changes. Some animals grew larger generation by generation, just as distant species of men were rumored to be now twice the size of Sander’s own people. That information came from Traders’ tales, however, and it was well known that Traders like to spread such stories to keep other men away from any rich finds. They would invent all manner of monsters to be faced were a man to try to track them back to their own places.
Sander stopped, picked up a spear, gruesomely stained, and prodded with that into the ashes of a small building. He swiftly uncovered what could only be an anvil—a good one fashioned from iron, but far too heavy to be transported. Finding that, a sure sign he had found the smithy, he scratched with more vigor.
His delving uncovered a fine stone hammerhead, with the haft near burned away, but the best part remaining. That and another of a lesser weight were all that remained. There were also some traces of metal—copper he was sure—puddled from the heat.
He raised his hand and recited the secret smith words. If the owner, who might lie farther back under the debris at the rear, was still spirit-tied, as men who died quickly and violently sometimes were, he would know by those words that one of his own craft was present. He would not, Sander was sure, begrudge that his possessions be used again, carefully, and to a purpose that might in the end benefit all men.
Sander fitted the two hammerheads in among the tools he carried. He would hunt no farther. Let the dead smith keep all else as grave-hold. But such hammers he did not have and he needed them.
He wanted no more of this nameless village wherein death stank and spirits might be tied to their destroyed homes. Rhin sensed that decision, greeting it with a yelp of approval. However, Sander was not minded to leave the shore of the sea—if sea this was. Rather he passed as quickly as he could among the smoldering buildings, refusing to look at the bodies he passed, to reach the slippery sand of the shore.
To prove that he might have reached one of his objectives, he advanced to where the small waves ended in foam upon the sand. There he dipped a finger into the water and licked it. Salt! Yes, he had found the sea.
However it was not the sea alone that he sought, but rather the heart of the old legends around it. Along the shore of the sea had once stood many great cities of old. Sander’s father had often speculated about the secrets that lay in those cities.
It was certain that men before the Dark Time had possessed such knowledge that they lived as the spirits of the upper air did, with unseen servants and all manner of labor-saving tools. Yet that learning had been lost. Sander did not know the number of years that lay between him and that time. But his father had said that the sum was more than the lifetimes of many, many men, each a generation behind the other.
At the death of his father from the coughing sickness, Ibbets, his father’s younger brother, had denied Sander the smith-right, saying he was only an untried boy and unfit to serve the Mob. Then Sander knew he must prove himself, not only to the people whom he had believed kin-blood, but to himself. He must become such a worker of metal that his own number of years—or lack of them—would mean nothing, only what could be wrought by his design and his skill. Thus, when Ibbets would have bound him to a new apprenticeship, he had instead claimed go-forth rights, and the Mob had been forced to grant him that choice of exile.
Now he was kinless by his own hard decision. And he burned with the need to know that he was a better smith, or would be, than Ibbets claimed. To do that he must learn. And he was sure that such knowledge lay near the original source of the lumps of congealed metal that the traders brought.
Some of the metal could be worked by strength of arm and hammer alone. Other kinds must be heated, run into molds, or struck when hot to form the needed tool or weapon. But there were some metals that defied all attempts to work them. And it was the secret of those that had fascinated Sander from childhood.
He had found the sea; now he could go north or south along its shore. There had been great changes in the land, he knew. Perhaps such cities as he sought were long since buried under the wash of the waves, or else so overturned by earth-shaking that little remained. Yet somewhere the Traders found their metal, so somewhere such sources existed—and those he could seek.
It was close to nightfall, and he did not wish to camp close to the half-destroyed town. He pushed on northward. Above, sea birds wheeled and screamed hoarsely, and the steady roll of the waves made a low accompaniment to their cries.
Rhin’s head swung around twice toward their back trail. He growled, and his uneasiness gripped Sander in turn. Though it seemed the town was wholly given over to the dead, it was true that Sander had not delved too deeply in the ruins. What if some survivor, perhaps shaken out of his wits by the terror of the raid, lurked there, had seen Sander and Rhin come and go? They might now be hunted by such.
Climbing on the top of a dune, along the sides of which grew tough sea grass, Sander studied the still-smoking buildings. Nothing moved save the birds. He did not, however, discount Rhin’s uneasiness, knowing he could depend upon the koyot’s acute senses to give him fair warning if they were followed.
He would have liked to have ridden, but the slippery sand gave such uncertain footing that he kept on as they were. He angled away from the wave line now, for there lay drifts of wood which might entrap the unwary. Now and then a shell lay exposed in the damp sand. Sander eyed their fantastic forms with amazement. They delighted him like bright bird’s feathers or tumble-smoothed stones, so he dropped some into his left pouch. Momentarily he dreamed of setting shells in bands of copper, a metal that easily responded to the skill he had learned, and make such articles of adornment as the Mob had never seen.