explanation was that feuds could be exacerbated, friendships and alliances sometimes strained, if a man whose opinion mattered were seen to be mourning openly for the enemy of a friend or ally; while at the same time, some conflicting rule of conduct might require him to do so. A mask allowed its wearer's identity to be ignored by those who did not wish to know it, even if it were not really kept a secret.
The masked man was somewhat on the short side, and well enough dressed in simple clothing. And Mala thought that he was young. 'What has happened, Mala?' His voice, close to her ear, was almost a whisper.
He knew her; so he was most likely some distant relative of Jord's. Or, thought Mala, noting the short sword at his belt, he might even be some minor lord or knight, one who had perhaps at some time been served by Jord as smith or armorer.
And the masked man must have come here from some distance, and must have just arrived, not to know already what had happened. In the face of such ignorance Mala stumbled over words, not so much trying to repeat the story as she had heard it as trying to find some reasonable explanation of the horror. But an explanation was hard to find.
She tried: 'They… all six of them… they were called by a god to go up on the mountain. Then… '
'Which god's call did they follow?' The quiet voice was not surprised by talk of gods; it wanted to nail down the facts.
One of the men who had been standing in front of Mala, unintentionally blocking her path to Jord, turned round at that. 'They answered Vulcan's call. No doubt about it, the god chose them himself. I heard him — so did half the village — more than half. Vulcan himself came down here from the mountain in the night and called the six men out by name. The rest of us just lay low in our beds, I can tell you. Next day, when none of the six had come back yet, we gathered here in the hall and wondered. The women kept egging us on to find out what had happened, and eventually some of us started climbing… it wasn't pretty, what we found there, I can tell you.'
'And what,' the masked man asked, 'if they had chosen not to follow Vulcans call?' The light in the hall was too uncertain, the shadows too heavy, for Mala to be able to tell if his hands looked like those of a worker or of a man highborn. The hair emerging from his jacket's cowl was dark, with a hint of curl, giving no clue about his station. Perhaps it was this very indeterminateness in his appearance that first raised in Mala's mind a suspicion that seemed to come out of nowhere: I wonder if this could be the Duke himself. Mala had never actually seen the Duke, but like thousands of his other subjects who had not seen him either she knew, or thought she knew, certain things about him. One of the most intriguing of these things was that he was supposed to go out in disguise from time to time, adventuring and spying among his people. According to other information, he was still a relatively young man; and it was also said that he was physically rather small.
Jord, Mala thought, might have worked for the Duke at one time. Or some of the dead men on the biers might have. That could explain why the Duke had shown up here tonight… she told herself that she was making things up, but still… there were some stories told about the Duke's cruelty, on occasion, but then, Mala supposed, such stories were told about almost all powerful folk. Even if they were true, she thought, they didn't preclude the possibility that Duke Fraktin might sometimes take a benevolent interest in these poor outlying villages of his domain.
The solid citizen who had turned round to speak was plainly not entertaining any such exalted idea of the masked man's identity. Instead, he was looking him over as if not much impressed with what he saw, small sword or not. The citizen snorted lightly at the masked man's question, and shook his head. 'When a god calls, who's going to stop and argue? If you want to know more about it, better ask Jord.'
Jord had not noticed Mala yet. The brawny, youngold man with one arm and one bandaged stump still sat on his chair where ritual had placed him, almost as if he were one of the dead himself.
Mala heard the solid citizen saying: 'His arm's still up there on the mountain, but he brought his pay for it back with him.' Without trying to understand what this might mean, she pushed her way between the intervening bodies and ran to Jord. Inside the slow ring of dancers, Mala went down on one knee before the man she had pledged to marry, clutching at his one hand and at his knees, trying to explain how sorry she was for what had happened to him, and how she had come to him as quickly as she could when the news of the horror reached her.
At first Jord said nothing in return, but only looked at Mala as if from a great distance. Gradually more life returned to his face and in a little while he spoke. Later Mala was never able to remember exactly what either of them said in this first exchange, but afterwards Jord could weep for his friends' lives and his own loss, and Mala was able to comfort him. Meanwhile the dancing and feverish festivity went on, punctuated only by outbursts of grief. Looking back toward the entrance from her place near the center of the hall, Mala caught one more glimpse, between bodies, of the man in the tooled leather mask.
'All will be well yet, lass,' Jord was able to say at last. 'Gods, but it's good to have you here to hug!' And as Mala stood beside him he gripped her fiercely around the hips with a huge, one-armed blacksmith's hug. 'I'm not yet destroyed. I've been thinking it out. I'll sell the smithy here and buy a mill elsewhere. There's one in Arin I can get… if I hire a helper or two, I can run a mill with one hand.'
Mala said things expressing agreement, trying to sound encouraging. Closing her eyes, she hoped devoutly that it would be so. She told herself that when Jord healed he'd be a young man again, and he'd regain some part of his old strength. Being wed to a onearmed man would not be so bad if he were still a man of property… and now two small children, widower Jord's by his previous marriage, came out of the crowd to lean possessively against their father's legs, and distract Mala from her other cares by staring at her.
The hands of the small boy, Kenn, began to play absently with the rough cloth wrapping a long, thin object that stood leaning against his father's chair. Mala, without really giving it thought, had assumed this object was some kind of aid provided for the crippled man, a crutch or possibly a stretcher. Now that she really looked at the bundle she could see that it was certainly not long enough for either. Nor was there any obvious reason for a crutch or a stretcher to be wrapped up; nor, for that matter, did it appear that Jord would be likely to benefit from either one.
Jord saw what she was looking at. 'My pay,' he said. Gently he eased his son's small hands from the wrapped thing. 'Not yours yet, Kenn. In time, in time. Not yours to have to worry about, Marian.' And with a huge finger he brushed his tiny daughter's cheek. Then he grabbed the upper end of the bundle firmly in his large fist, and raised it in the air and shook it, so that the rough wrappings fell free except where his grip had caught them. People on all sides were turning to look. The blade was a full meter long, and straight as an arrow, with lightly fluted sides. Both edges keened down to perfect lines, invisibly sharp.
'What? Who?… ' Mala could only stumble helplessly.
'Vulcan's own handiwork.' Jord's voice was rough and bitter. 'This is for me, and for my son after me. This is my pay.'
Mala marveled silently. In the version of the story that she had heard in her own village, an obviously incomplete version, there had been nothing about a sword… Jord's pay? Even in the comparatively dim candlelight the steel had a polished look. Mala's keen eyes could pick out a fine, faint mottled patterning along the flat of the blade, a pattern that seemed to lead deep into the metal though the surface was flawlessly smooth.
The chain of dancers had slowed almost to a stop. Their faces wore a variety of expressions, but all were turned, like many in the crowd beyond, to look at the blade.
'My pay,' said Jord again, in the same harsh voice, that carried through the sudden relative quiet. 'So Vulcan told me, when he had taken off my arm.' He shook the sword in his inexpert hand. 'My arm, for this. So the god said. He called this 'Townsaver.'' The bitterness in Jord's voice was great, but still impersonal, the kind of anger a man might express against a thunderstorm that had destroyed his crops. His hand was beginning to quiver with his weakness now, and he lowered the sword and started trying to wrap it up again, a job in which he needed Mala's help.
'I must get something finer than this cloth to keep it in,' he muttered.
Mala still didn't know what to say or think. The sword bewildered her, she couldn't guess what it might mean. Jord's pay, from Vulcan? Pay for what? Why should the god have wanted a man's right arm? And why a sword? What would a blacksmith, or any commoner, have to do with such a weapon?
She would have to discuss it all with Jord later, in detail. Now was not the time or place. Now the dance and the noise around them had picked up again, though at a lesser level of energy.
'Mala?' Jord's voice held a new and different note.
'Yes?'
