The Dread Hammer by Linda Nagata Read Free Book Online

did he beat you? It makes me furious even to think on it!”
    She kissed his nose, his eyes. “Hush. Don’t be angry. I am Ketty of the Red Moon.”
    He laughed. “You’re a maddening woman, it’s true.”
    “Ha! But anyway, he wasn’t so angry when my mother still lived.”
    Smoke didn’t answer right away, so she kissed him. For a while. Finally, he spoke. “I didn’t have a mother.”
    “What?” She propped her head up on her hand and frowned. “What do you mean, no mother? Where did you come from? Out of a tree? Conjured from a fire?”
    “Cut out of a corpse.”
    She tensed, reminded again that he wasn’t quite human. But then she guessed the truth. “Your mother died in childbirth, right? Why don’t you just say it, instead of making it sound like you were born in evil? Women die giving birth. It’s a sad thing, but it happens.” Again, his answer was delayed. She said, “I heard of a boy once, whose mother died minutes after he was born. His father had four sons already. He cared nothing at all for a fifth. He claimed the infant was evil. He took it away from the breast of his sister, carried it into the forest, and left it there for the wolves.”
    Smoke sighed. “My father gave me no name.” Then his teeth flashed in a grin that banished his somber mood. “My sisters—they’re twins—they were only eight years old when I was born, but they decided they had to steal me away. I suppose they found some woman to nurse me, though I don’t remember it. I remember them though. They played with me like a doll. For ten years! They were the best mothers.”
    Ketty smiled too. “And did they finally grow tired of you? Or have babies of their own?”
    “No. My father came one day. He spoke to them gently, saying I was too old and they couldn’t play with me anymore. They were eighteen then, grown women, but they cried when he took me away.”
    “And did you cry?”
    Smoke snorted. “In front of my father? Ketty, even at ten, I was not that foolish.”
    “He made you become a warrior?”
    “Yes.”
    “Did you want to?”
    “It’s what we do.”
    She squeezed his hand, suddenly frightened. “So it’s at least twice you’ve almost died. First when you were born, and then when that soldier Nedgalvin cut your neck.”
    “He didn’t hurt me so much.”
    She shivered, squeezing closer to his warmth. “Liar.”
    Smoke chuckled.
    “He was trying to cut your throat, wasn’t he?”
    “Why do you want to talk about him?”
    “Because it makes me afraid when I think what could have been. Smoke, if he had killed you we would never—”
    “Shh…” He set his fingers against her mouth. “He didn’t kill me. I hate him though. And someday I’ll kill him.”
    Ketty went to sleep soon after that, but Smoke was left restless by her questions, remembering that night:

    He hadn’t been afraid, going in. He’d been in the field only eight days, but Chieftain Rennish’s irregulars had already raided two villages, both deeper in the borderlands than the one they would hit that night. No one anticipated much trouble.
    Most of the Koráyos soldiers waited with their horses in a hollow among the hills, but Smoke had gone ahead with Chieftain Rennish. As dusk came, they were crouched on a brush-covered hillside, watching as the villagers came in from the fields.
    The fields and the village were both well kept. Round houses had been laid out in neat, concentric rings split by a single straight lane. Where the lane passed through the center of the village there was a square, with a common hall on one side and a plank-walled church on the other.
    Scouts had reported Lutawan troops billeted at the village the night before. Smoke saw no sign of the troops now, but it didn’t matter. By the Trenchant’s command, any village that gave support or shelter to the southern army—willingly or not—would be burned to the ground.
    As the last of the villagers disappeared into their homes, Chieftain Rennish