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Book
Information:
Genre:
Epic Fantasy
Author:
J.V. Jones
Name: A
Fortress of Grey Ice
Series:
Sword of Shadows 2
======================
PROLOGUE
Diamonds and Ice
The diamond pipe was hot and stinking, and when the
water hit the walls the rock exploded, spraying the
diggers with a cloud of dust and steam. Scurvy Pine swore with venom. Hard
blisters of sweat rose on his forehead and he wiped them away with a greasy
rag. “Fires have only been out an hour. What do those bastards think we are?
Crabs to be steamed for the pot?”
Crope made no reply. He and Scurvy had been working the pipes together
for eight years, and they’d been scalded worse in
their time. A lot worse. Besides, speaking took up
space for remembering, and Crope had important things to remember today. “Don’t you go forgetting, giant man.
You be ready when I give the word.”
Placing the empty bucket down on the blue mud of the pipe floor, Crope
watched the rock wall as it continued to crack and pop. The fire set by the free
miners heated the rock, making it split and break. Water hauled up from the
“Pick to the wall, giant man. Don’t go giving me good reason to spread
my whip.”
Crope knew better than to look at the man who spoke. The guards in the
pipe were known as Bull Hands, on account of their
oiled and flame-hardened whips. Scurvy said they could take the hands off a man
before he even heard the sound of bullhide moving through air. Crope dreamed of
that sometimes; of hands not attached to any living man, clutching his neck and
face.
Diamond rock split and crumbled to nothing as Crope took his pick to
the wall. Water still warm from contact with the heated stone ran through the
cracks at his feet. Above, the pipe twisted up and up, its walls gashed by
stairs and pathways hewn from the live rock. Tunnels and caves pitted the
sides, marking seams long run dry or walls overmined to collapse. The entrances
to the older tunnels had been plugged with a makeshift
mortar of horsehair and clay, for there were some in the pipe who feared shadow
things rising from the depths.
Rope bridges spanned the pipe’s breadth, their wooden treads warped by
steam, their fibers ticking as the wind moved a thousand feet above. The sky
seemed far away, and the sun farther still. Even on a clear day in midwinter,
little light found its way into the pipe.
Down below, in the lower tier of the pipe, where a ring of pitch lamps
burned with white-hot flames, the hags were at work with their baskets and
claws. Scratch, scratch,
scratch, as
they raked the new-broke ground for the hard clear stone that was valued above
gold. The hags were slaves too, but they were old and weak, bent-backed and
stiff-fingered, and the Bull Hands did not fear to let them near the lode.
Crope thought he spied Hadda the Crone, in
line with the other clawed and sorted. Hadda scared
Crope. She had long, sunken breasts shaped like spades that she bared to any
digger who looked her way. Scurvy, Bitterbean and the rest looked her way
often, but Crope did not like Hadda, and he would not
look at her breasts.
When the lash came he was half expecting it.
The sting was cold, cold, and it took the breath from
him like a punch to the gut. The tip of the whip curled around his ear, licking
flesh hard with scars. Tears of blood welled in a line around his neck, and he
felt their hot-ness trickle down his shoulders to his back. The salt burn would
come later, when the gray crystals of sea salt that the Bull Hands soaked into
their whips worked their way into the wound.
“It’s not enough that they whip us,” Scurvy always said. “They have to
make us burn.”
“I can smell you, giant man.” The Bull Hand pulled back the whip with
practiced slowness, drawing the leather through his half-closed fist. He was a
big man, hardmouthed and fair-skinned, with broken veins in the whites of his
eyes and the shineless teeth of a diamond miner. Although Crope had seen him
many times, he couldn’t remember his name. That was
Scurvy’s job, the remembering. Scurvy knew the names of every man in
The Bull Hand thrust the whip into his belt. “You stink like the slop
pots when your mind’s not on the wall.”
Crope kept his head down and continued to break rock. He was aware of
many eyes upon him, of Bitterbean and Iron Toe and Soft Aggie down the line. And of Scurvy Pine beyond them, watching the Bull Hand, yet
not seeming to, his eyes so cold and hard they might have been mined in the
pipe.
Scurvy’s gaze flicked to the chains at Crope’s feet. Iron they were,
black with tar and dead skin, and they ran from ankle to ankle, from digger to
digger, joining every man in the line. “Don’t you go forgetting, giant man.
You be ready when I give the word.”
Crope felt Scurvy’s will working upon him, warning him to keep swinging
his ax. Eight years ago they’d met, in the tin pits
west of Trance Vor. Crope never wanted to go back there again. He hated the low
ceilings of the tin caves, the darkness, the stench of bad eggs, and the drip, drip, drip of the walls. Spineless, that’s
what everyone had called him, before Scurvy had made them stop. Scurvy had
picked no fight nor raised a weapon; he had simply told the other tin men how
it was going to be. “He carved the eyes out of an ice master who cheated him at
dice,” Bitterbean had once told Crope. “But that’s not the reason they ‘prisoned him.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Crope thought he saw Scurvy nod minutely
to Hadda the Crone.
Time passed. The diggers continued breaking the wall and the hags kept
sifting through the dust. Crope’s lash wound began to burn with the hot sting
of salt. Softly, so softly that he wasn’t even sure
when the sound began, Hadda the Crone began to sing. It was like no song Crope
had ever heard, high and wavering and strange to the
ear. It made the hairs around his wound stand upright. Other diggers felt it
too. At Crope’s side, Soft Aggie’s chains rattled as he stamped his feet in the
mud. Bitterbean and the others slowed their strikes, and the sound of breaking
rock lessened as Hadda’s song began to rise.
If she sang in words Crope did not recognize them, yet fear entered him
all the same. High and higher, her song rose, keening and wailing, her voice
disappearing for brief moments as she reached pitches that only dogs could
hear. Other hags joined in, chanting low where Hadda
soared high, rough where she was as clear as glass.
Crope felt a queer coldness steal into the pipe. He watched as the
shadow cast by .his ax lengthened and darkened, until the shadow seemed more
real than the ax. One of the pitch lamps blew out, and then another. And then one of the Bull Hands cracked his whip and shouted,
“Stop that fucking wailing, bitch.”
Crope risked a glance at Scurvy. Wait, his eyes said. Be ready when I give the word.
Hadda’s song turned shrill. The diamond drilled into her front tooth
was the only thing that glinted in the darkening pipe. Crope felt sweat slide
along his fingers as he raised his ax for another strike. A memory of a time
long ago possessed him, a night roaring with flames. People burning alive,
precious stones popping from their jewelry in the heat, smoke curling from
their mouths as they screamed. Bad memories, and Crope
did not want to think of them. Driving his ax deep into diamond rock, he sent
them smashing against the wall.
Two Bull Hands jumped down into the lower tier, where the hags squatted
as they sifted dust. A tongue of black leather came down upon a thigh, opening
skin stained blue with mud. A woman screamed. A basket full of rubble dropped
to the floor, sending stones the size of rat skulls bouncing into the hole at
the center of the pipe. “That’s where the diamonds come from, that hole,”
Scurvy had once told Crope, “leads right down to the center of the earth. And
the gods that live there shit them.”
Fear quieted the hags. Hadda’s song rose alone and defiant, beating
against the walls like a sparrow trapped in the pipe. As the Bull Hand moved
toward her, the Crone set down her basket, straightened her back and looked
into the blackness at the bottom of the pipe.
“Rath Maer!” she murmured, and although
Crope had no book learning or knowledge of foreign tongues, he felt the words
pull on the fluid in his eyes and groin, and he knew she was calling something
forth. “Rath Maer!
“RATH
MAER!”
One by one the pitch lamps blew out. Crope
smelled the dark, wet odor of night, caught a glimpse of something rising from
the center of the pipe . . . and then Scurvy Pine gave the word.
“To the wall!”
Men moved in the shadows with a great rattling of chains. Quickly, and
with perfect violence, Scurvy sent the tip of his pickax smashing into the
nearest Bull Hand’s face. The guard jerked fiercely as he dropped to the floor,
his jaw muscles clenching and unclenching as he worked on a scream that would never be heard. Bitterbean moved quickly to finish the
job off, the pale flesh on his arms and many chins quivering as he stamped the
life from the Bull Hand’s lungs.
In the lower tier of the pipe all was chaos.
The Bull Hands were lashing the hags, sending up sprays of blood and pipe water
to spatter against the wall. Hadda was still standing, but as Crope looked on,
a hard leather edge snapped against her temple, pulling off her cap, and
revealing her scarred and shaven scalp. A second edge found her robe, and
another found her legs, and the Bull Hands stripped her bare, and lashed her
sagging flesh.
All around, diggers were attacking Bull Hands and the few free miners
who remained in the pipe. Iron Toe had gotten hold of a whip and was forcing
the leather butt down a Bull Hand’s throat. The tiny cragsman was speaking to
the Bull Hand as he choked him, asking him, quite softly, how it felt to eat
the whip. Soft Aggie was sitting propped against a wall, blood sheeting down
his chest from a lash wound so deep that Crope could see the bones at the back
of Aggie’s throat. Jesiah Mump was kneeling at his side, his mud-caked fingers
sliding in his pipe brother’s blood as he struggled to close the wound. Down
the line, Sully Straw was frozen in place, unable to
move because of the tension in the chain that connected him to Jesiah Mump. Giant man!
Crope swung his head when he heard Scurvy’s call. A single tooth was embedded in the gore on Scurvy Pine’s ax, and he drove
it deep into the spine of a free miner as he screamed, “The chains! Break the
damn chains.”
Crope felt heat come to his face. “Don’t you go forgetting, giant man.
When we start attacking the Bull Hands it’s your job to brea’t the chains“
Putting all his-weight behind the drop of his ax, Crope severed the
links that connected him to Old Bone. Half-wit,
the bad voice said. Can’t even
remember to brea’t the chains. His was the only ax crowned with a blade broad
enough to chop metal; and his were the only shoulders capable of delivering
such a blow. Scurvy had made him practice on the iron staves that bound the
water buckets. “Chop, chop, chop,” he’d say. “Like you
did when you cut the leg-irons from Mannie Dun.“
Crope didn’t remember cutting any iron the day
that Mannie broke his back. He remembered only that Mannie was hurt and his
body was twitching and all the Bull Hands cared about was sealing the lode. It
was later, when Scurvy pulled him aside and told him that he, Crope, had broken
Mannie’s chains with his ax, that he realized what he
had done. “Say nothing, giant man,” Scurvy had warned. “The Hands are so busy
pissing themselves over the Red Eyes, that they don’t know who did what.”
Crope brought his ax down on another chain, splitting the iron as if it
were wood. Mannie was dead now. One of the free miners had given him some of
the black. The black was poison, Bitterbean said, and the free miner had given
it to Mannie as a mercy, for everyone knew that a
digger with a broken back was as good as dead.
Shaking off his leg-irons, Crope crossed to where Jesiah Mump was
speaking some last words to his pipe brother. Soft Aggie was already gone—Crope
had been around death often enough to read it on any man’s face—but Jesiah
spoke to him all the same, telling him how they’d raft up the Innerway in high
summer and gorge themselves stupid on raw leeks and fried trout. Crope severed
the chains that connected them, though he did not expect them to pull apart.
He knew what it was to love someone wholly.
“Here, giant man! Cut me free!”
Responding to Bitterbean’s voice, the giant digger moved along the
ranks, chopping metal. A blackness lay upon the pipe,
and men fought in the darkness, grunting and cursing, killing in violent
spurts, then leaning against the wall to catch their breath and hack up dust.
Crope watched as some diggers continued to beat the Bull Hands even after they
were dead. He understood little of their need, for dead was dead to him, yet he
made no effort to stay them. Men did what men would do, and he’d
learned long and hard that nothing good ever came from interference.
Keep
your eyes and hands to yourself, half-wit, for loo’ts start fights and touches
set women to screaming rape. The old words could raise the fear in him even
now. He was big and he was dangerous, and so he must make himself small and
unassuming in other ways.
He was careful as he stepped around the corpses.
As he raised his ax to break Scurvy Pine’s chains, the last glimmers of
light faded. The cold deepened, and the air began to move.
Crope felt it swelling against his back like icy water. Men ceased
fighting. Scurvy rattled his leg and hissed, “Cut the chains,” but Crope could
no longer see Scurvy and he feared to drop the ax lest he bite into Scurvy’s
leg.
A sound rose from the center of the pipe. Crope had heard the cries of
many beasts, of lambs torn apart by dogs and mares split open during foaling,
yet he’d never heard a call like this: cold and
wanting and alive with pain. The urge came upon him to flee, for he had lived
long and seen many things, and knew something of the darkness that lived within
the night. Not all things that cast man shadows were men.
One of the hags screamed. A great whumf of air shook the pipe, sending the rope bridges
creaking and lifting the hair on Crope’s scalp. Men began running; he couldn’t see them, but he heard the clatter of their chains
against the rock.
Scurvy pressed something sharp against Crope’s leg. “Cut me free, giant
man. I won’t be taken alive in this pipe.”
Crope heard the urgency in Scurvy’s voice. The Bull Hands had ways of
killing ringleaders. John Dram had been fed a meal of diamonds—chips and
splinters and gray and cloudy stones—and then he’d
been thrown alive into the crowd at
Crope listened for the chin’t of Scurvy’s chains before
dropping the ax. The digger grunted as he pulled his ankle free. “You bled me,
giant man,” he murmured. “Sweet blood, and I’ll hold
no grudges for it. Take my arm and let’s begone from this pipe.”
“But—”
“But what? There are others still in chains? Would you stay and
free their corpses once they’re dead?” A gleam of light caught Scurvy’s pale
gray eyes. “Nine of us came from the tin pits, that winter when the
Crope remembered Will. He was one who knew all the words to the old
songs, and could sleep standing up. It was hard to think of him as dead. He
said stubbornly, “I’m going to fetch Hadda.”
Scurvy seized Crope’s arm. “Forget her. She’s just a hag. There’s
nothing left to save.”
With gentle firmness, Crope broke free of Scurvy’s grip. He didn’t like
Hadda, but she had sung the song that brought the darkness. And without
darkness they’d still be in chains.
Scurvy cursed in disgust. He went to turn away, but something stopped
him. Reaching into his torn and ragged tunic, he muttered, “Let no man say
Scurvy Pine doesn’t pay his debts. Here. Take this.” He held out a small round
object. “Show it in any thieves’ den north of the mountains and you’ll find
protection in my name.”
Crope’s big fingers closed around a metal band, a ring, light and very
fine. Not a man’s ring, not even a woman’s, something made for a child. He
looked up to find Scurvy watching him.
“Take care of yourself, giant man. I’ll not forget who broke my
chains.” With that Scurvy was gone, slipping through the darkness and the snarl
of panicking men, a shadow amongst the shadows, moving swiftly toward the
light.
Crope carefully tucked the ring into the seam of his boot, and then
went looking for Hadda the Crone.
It was cold and dark in the diamond well, and no one human was moving.
The rock was sticky underfoot and the smell of blood rose from it. Crope went
unchallenged as he walked amongst the bodies. It was hard to tell the hags
apart. All their hair had been shaved so they’d have one less place to conceal
stones. He wouldn’t have recognized Hadda if it hadn’t been for the diamond in
her tooth. Bitter-bean said the pipe lord himself had given it to her the day
she found a stone as big as a wren.
Hadda was barely breathing, but he picked her up all the same. There
were wounds across her legs and belly, lash marks that ran straight and deep.
She was so light it was like carrying twigs for the fire, and he was overcome
with a sense of shame. Everyone who helped him ended up hurt. You’re good for nothing, you misshapen monster.
Should have been drowned at birth.
Crope shook the bad voice away. Something dark and full of shadow was moving
at the corner of his vision, and he knew it was time to leave. He heard the
blistering crackle of charged air, the swift snicf{
of something with an edge severing limbs. And screams; screams of diggers he
knew. It was hard to hear them, and harder still to turn his back. But he had
Hadda, and his chains were gone, and it was time to find the man who owned his
soul.
Sixteen years without his lord was too long.
Bearing the dying woman up through the pipe, Crope began to plan his
search.
The ice on the lake creaked and rumbled as it cooled, its surface
growing colder and drier as the quarter moon passed overhead. There was no
wind, yet the ancient hemlocks surrounding the lake moved, their limbs rising
and falling in air that was perfectly still. Meeda Longwalker had made camp on
a plate of shorefast ice, three foot thick and hard as iron. It was the coldest
night she could remember, so cold the shale oil in her lamp had frozen to thick
yellow grease and she had been forced to burn a candle for light. Smoke rising
from the candle’s flame cooled so quickly it floated back down to the ice, and
Meeda had to keep pushing it away with her gloved and mitted hands so it
wouldn’t accumulate and kill the light.
She should have returned to the Heart. It wasn’t a night to be out
alone on the ice, yet she had something in her that had always rebelled against
good sense. She was a Heartborn Daughter of the Sull, mother to He Who Leads,
and it seemed to her that any wisdom she had a claim to had come on nights such
as this.
Besides, she had her dogs; they would warn her of any danger. Warn, but
not protect. Meeda Longwalker was no fool. She wasn’t like some trappers who
drank themselves stupid on green elk milk turned sour and then passed out
around their darkfires, sure in the knowledge that their dogs would save them
if ...
If what? Meeda pulled her lynx cloak closer, wishing for a moment she
had bare hands so she could feel the sweet softness of the fur beneath her fingers.
Almost it was like touching a living thing, and Meeda Longwalker knew some men
who claimed it was better. Trappers knew little of women and a lot about
whores, and a scraped and combed lynx fur had a warmth to it that couldn’t be
bought in Hell’s Town for any amount of gold.
As she watched the fur ripple beneath her horsehair mitts a cry sounded
in the forest beyond the ice. Low and hollow, like the wind moving down a well
shaft, it made the skin on Meeda’s shoulders pucker and pull tight. The flame
above the candle dimmed from yellow to red, and then twitched upon its wick as
the sound passed into the ice. Meeda felt its vibrations in her old and rotted
bones. . . and knew then that the creature who made it was no living thing.
“Raaks!” she called. Dogs!
Meeda’s hand shot onto the ice to feel for her stick as she waited for
her terriers to heel. Damn dogs. She should never have let them go after that
elk cow. Yet they had smelled age and weakness and the festering of a wolf-made
wound, and such scents were irresistible to any animal trained to hunt. It was
either let them go or drive a stake into the ice and leash them to it. And much
though Meeda Longwalker hated to admit it this night, her hands had trouble
forming the shape needed to hold a hammer.
As her finger groped for her stick a new sound rose from the edge of
the ice. Fifty years she had coursed these headlands, fifty years of setting
traps, snapping necks and peeling skin, and not a day without a dog at her
heels. She had heard her terriers moan and yelp in childbirth and pain, heard
them scrap amongst themselves over the weeping remains of a skinned fox. Yet
never until now had she heard them scream.
High it was, high and terrible and so close to human that it might have
been children instead. Meeda’s fist closed around the three foot of icewood
that had been her walking stick for a hundred seasons. The wood was pale as
milk, and so smooth it ran with moonlight like live steel. Icewood, from the
heart of the tree; no earthly cold could warp it, and none but master Sull
craftsmen could shape it to their will. It dulled saws, people said. Made bows
so powerful that they defied air and wind. Only the Sull king and his mordreth, the twelve sworn men who guarded him and were known
as the Walking Dead, were allowed to carry bows of its making. A single tree
had to grow for a thousand years and its timber age for fifty more before a
master bowyer would dare cut a stave from the dann, the latewood that was laid down in the sacred months
of summer and late spring.
Meeda hefted the stick across her chest, taking comfort from its
familiar weight and hand. It was a hard life she had chosen to live, and she
had not reached such an age by being easily cowed. The night was alive with noises,
with black lynx and horned owls, moon snakes and old ghosts, and she had long
since realized that none of them liked the smell of living men. Rising to her
feet, she called once more to her dogs.
As she waited for them to respond, something crunched softly on the
frozen snow beyond the shoreline. Water swelled beneath the ice. The dogs fell
silent one by one.
Meeda bit off her outer mitts and spit them onto the ice. The sky was
dark, darker than it ought to be when a quarter of the moon hung there for all
to see. There were no stars, or if there were they shone black like volcanic
glass. Moon and night sky. No Sull prayer was complete without those words, and
Meeda found herself mouthing them as she stepped toward the shore.
Damn her eyes! Why couldn’t she see anything? Her hard old lenses were slow to focus in
the biting air, and she felt the anger come to her as quick as if it had been
hiding beneath her fear all along. She hated her old woman’s body with its
humps and slack pouches and dry bloodless bones. Some nights she dreamed Thay
Blackdragon, the Night King, came to her offering youth in return for her soul.
Some times she dreamed she said yes.
Frost smoke steamed above the ice margin, churning from blue to gray.
Meeda felt its coldness in her mouth, stinging her gums and numbing her tongue
until it felt like a piece of meat against her teeth. Underfoot the ice was
black and transparent, swept clean of snow by northern winds. It ticked as
Meeda’s weight came down upon it. As she stepped beyond the candle’s light,
something red broke through the trees, something broken and limping and not right. Meeda braced her stick with both hands, and then
recognized the bloody shape of one of her dogs. Marrow. Its rear left leg was
gone, and the skin on its rump and belly had been torn away, revealing
glistening muscle and coils of gut.
Meeda feared to call to it. She knew the look of wolf- and lynx-made
wounds. She knew what wolverines could do to creatures twice their size and
what a coven of moon snakes was capable of when they hadn’t fed in a week. Yet
this didn’t smell like wolf or cat or snake. This smelled like night.
The dog had caught its mistress’s scent, and it dragged its lower torso
across the ice to reach her, trailing blood and viscera from its great black
wound. Meeda barely breathed as she waited for the creature to heel. She did
not think, knew better than to think, just raised her stick to the height she
needed, waited to feel the push of the dog’s snout against her leg, then drove
the butt through its heart.
“Good dog,” she said quietly, as she pulled the stick free of its ribs.
Blood and bits of bone were already freezing to the wood by the time
she turned to face the shore. “Come for me, shadows,” she said, “for I stand
ready in the light of the moon.” The words were old and she did not know where
they came from, yet they were Sull words and she felt something fill her as she
spoke them. She thought at first it was courage, for her heart quickened and
her grip tightened, and something hard and excited came alive in her chest.
Then the ice around the shore began to crack. White splinters shot
along the surface in a footstep pattern toward where she stood. Crack}. Crack}. Crack}. The air rippled like water,
and suddenly it was cold enough to turn her breath to grains of ice. Meeda’s
hands ached as she adjusted her grip on her stick. Her eyes burned as she tried
to see. Something glinted. Moonlight
caught an edge and ran along its length. A man-shape shimmered into existence,
dark and silvered, like no man at all. Its eyes were two holes that held no
soul. Its hand gripped a blade that drank the light. Meeda watched as the
cutting edge came up and up, saw how moonlight outlined the thing’s arm and
mailed fist, yet found no purchase in the black and voided steel. It was like
looking at a distilled piece of night.
Meeda knew then that what she felt wasn’t courage. The fear was in her,
twisting her bowels, speaking to her in a voice that sounded like her own, warning
her to run for the thin ice at the lake’s center and find for herself an easy
painless death. Yet something older stopped her.
Not courage, she told herself; she would not lie about that.
Remembrance. The old memories were coming back.
Ice shattered and exploded as the thing came for her. Fracture lines
raced across the lake’s surface like lightning branching in a storm. Meeda saw
shadows and gleaming edges of light, smelled the dark odor of another world.
Eyes that held nothing met her own. She braced her stick to meet that cold
black blade. And then, as the sword hummed toward her, burning a mark in the
air that hung there long after the blade had passed, she noticed the shadow
man’s chest. Rising and falling like a living thing.
A heart lay somewhere within the darkly weighted substance of its
flesh. It was beating. And it made Meeda’s mouth water like a meal of ham and
wine.
Icewood and voided steel met with a crac’t that sounded the beginning of an age. White pain
shot up Meeda’s arms, and it took all she had to hold her ground. Three foot of
ice bowed under the mass of the shadowed thing. Yet still she did not loose her
footing. She was Sull. Every hair on her body and drop of blood in her veins
demanded that she fight.
CHAPTER
The Ice Fog Rises
They found blood on the trail on the seventh day, five spots, red
against the grey of old snow. It wasn’t new-spilt, but it might look like it to
someone who was unfamiliar with killing game in midwinter. Blood began darkening
to black the moment it left the body, thickening and distilling until there was
nothing but copper and iron left. It was different when the air crackled with
ice. Blood could freeze in perfect red drops in the time it took to drip from
an elk’s collarbone to the taiga below. Raif remembered how he and Drey would
scoop up frozen beads of elk blood after a kill and let them melt upon their
tongues; sweet as fresh grass and salty as sweat. The taste of winter and clan.
But this wasn’t elk’s blood before them.
Raif glanced ahead to the top of the rise, where towers of white smoke
rose straight in the still air. The trail had been rising all day and they
still hadn’t found the source of the smoke. The ground was hard and brittle
here, formed from basalt and black chert. Cliffs soared to the east, high and
straight as fortress walls, guarding knife-edged mountains beyond. To the west
lay the farthest tip of the Storm Margin, its rocky draws and moraines
disguised as rolling hills by a thick layer of snow. Beyond there lay the sea
ice, and beyond that lay the sea. Stormheads gathering on the westernmost
horizon had begun to silver the floes.
“What happened here?” asked Ash, who was standing above Raif as he
crouched over the blood. Her voice was clear, but there was too much space
between her words. “One of the Sull breathed a vein.”
“How can you be sure?”
Raif faked a shrug. “Even a clean kill leaves more blood.” He fingered
the red spots, remembering frozen carcasses, ice-bent blades, Tern Sevrance
laughing at his sons as they strained to push an elk kill down a slope only to
have it crash into the lake ice at the bottom and sink. When Raif continued
speaking his voice was low. “And the blood wasn’t sprayed. It dripped.”
“How do you know it’s human?”
Abruptly, Raif stood. He felt an irrational anger toward Ash and her
questions. They both knew the answer here. Why did she force him to speak it?
“Listen,” he said.
Standing side by side on the headland, their breath whitening in the freezing
air, Raif Sevrance and Ash March listened to the sound they had been heading
toward all day: a crackling hiss, as if lightning touched down upon water.
Raif counted the columns of smoke as he said, “They were here, Mai
Naysayer and Ark Veinsplitter, they heard what we hear. They saw the smoke.”
And knew it was something to be feared, so they let blood to still their gods.
Ash nodded, as if she had heard what he had not spoken. “Should we make
payment too?“
Raif shook his head and started forward. “This is not our land and not
our business. There are no debts here for us to pay.”
He hoped it was the truth.
They had been following the Sull warriors’ trail for nine days. It had
led them north and west from the Hollow River, across land Raif would never
have dared to cross if it hadn’t been for the telltale markings in the snow.
Horse casts buried shallow, human hair snagged on the bark of a dead pine, a
footprint stamped on new ice. The Sull had left “Such a trail as can be followed by a clansman” Raif’s shoulders stiffened as
he walked, aware of the insult in Ark Veinsplitter’s words. “We travel without leaving any trail” they boasted, “but will make effort to leave one for you.” Even as Raif had resented the
Sull’s arrogance, he knew to be thankful for their skills. No clansman would
cross a green-froze lake, nor scale an unknown ice sheet in the hope of finding
a pass.
The journey had not been easy. The days had been short and the nights
long and full of silence. What could he and Ash say to each other? Raif
wondered as he stripped bark for the watchfire each night. They could not talk
about the Cavern of Black Ice, nor what had happened later, when they emerged
from river and something, something, came with them. All Raif saw
was a shadow, but shadows don’t make pine needles crack beneath them . . . and
shadows can’t scream.
Raif shivered. Whatever it was, it was gone now. Fled. And even though
they had seen nothing since, it had changed everything.
Ten days ago, in the cavern beneath the frozen river, he and Ash had
spoken of returning to the clanholds, of finding Angus and journeying with him
to Hie Glaive and visiting the Broken Man one last time. Heritas Cant
had a promise to keep. “Return
safely from the Cavern ofBlac’t Ice and I will tell you the names of the beasts,” he had said. But now the word
safely seemed an impossibly high
standard to keep. They were not safe. Raif did not count himself a clansman
anymore, but the old instincts had not left him. He knew when to fear. A deep
unease had settled upon him, making him watchful and ready. The ice pick he
counted as his only weapon lay cooling the skin at his waist.
He could not say whose decision it was to follow the Sull north. It was
something else he and Ash didn’t speak of, the need to learn more. The two Sull
warriors knew what Ash was. She was a Reach, born to release the Endlords and
their Taken from their thousand-year confinement in the Blind. Ark Veinsplitter
and Mai Naysayer could provide proof that Ash had released her power safely,
leaving the Blindwall intact, and the Endlords imprisoned in their own breed of
hell. The Sull were the only ones who could tell them it was safe to return
home.
Home. Raif took a breath and held
it. He could not return to his birthclan. Raif Sevrance had been judged an
oathbreaker and traitor. There was no place for him at any hearth in the
clanholds. He had no family or home ... only Ash.
As he glanced toward her their gazes met. Eyes that had once been gray
regarded him levelly. Before he and Ash had reached the Cavern of Black Ice her
eyes had been the color of silver and hailstones. Now they were the color of
the sky at midnight. A perfect Sull blue. If he thought about it too long he knew
it would undo him. He and Ash had been through so much together. They had
journeyed long and far, learned the many different ways to live with fear and
weariness, and the only way to live with loss: simply to carry on. His arms
knew what it felt like to bear her weight. She had leaned on him countless
times, put her safekeeping willingly in his hands. Yet what she didn’t know was
that his safekeeping was in her hands. Ash March held the power to destroy him. All
his dreams about the future centered around her. When everything was done and
the nightmare that had become their lives had ended he hoped to take her
somewhere new and begin again.
Digging his heels into the snow, Raif began the slow climb toward the
ridge. Her eyes, that was the thing. Their blueness filled him with fear. Ash
March had changed, and a small, insistent voice inside him warned that things
could never be the same between them. A shift had taken place. Ash might be
pale, and too thin for a girl of seventeen winters, yet strength lay in the set
of her mouth and the determined tilt of her chin. Something new and vital had
come alive within her, and Raif found himself waking in the darkest, coldest
hours of each night, hoping that it wasn’t something Sull.
It took them an hour to top the rise. Ash pushed ahead, and Raif was
content to follow the shadow she cast against the full moon. Neither spoke as
they surveyed the valley below. Twelve geysers of steam erupted from the ice
and rubble of a dry glacier bed. A ring of blue fire blazed at the base of each
column, leaping up from a crater of ash and melted stone that had formed around
the burn. The roar was deafening: the crack of exploding rocks, the hiss of
melting snow, and the constant rip of igniting gas.
The quickening wind brought the stench of char and lightning to Raif.
He had no words for what he saw. To find fire and smoke here, at the frozen
edge of the Storm Margin, seemed as impossible as finding breath in a corpse.
“Is this where the trail leads?” Ash asked, turning her face toward
him.
He found he could not look into her eyes. “The trail cuts through the
valley, toward the coast.”
“So we must cross here?” As Ash spoke the ground moved beneath them,
and rocks and snow spewed forth as a new column of smoke rent the valley floor Thirteen, Raif counted, feeling the heat of the explosion
puff against his face. He remembered the tale of Murdo Blackhail, the Warrior
Chief, who had led his men to war across the Stairlands. On the final day of their
descent, the mountain had erupted above them, and a spray of molten rock burst
forth. Murdo had been riding at the head of the party, high atop his stallion,
Black Burr. His breastplate had burst into flame with the heat, and later when
his armsman pulled it from him, Murdo’s skin and muscle came with it. In the
two days it took him to die, Murdo Blackhail directed his men to victory over
Clan Thrall and took his wife to his bed, fathering their only son. Bessa, his
wife, was led to her husband blindfold and with plugs of wax within each
nostril, for the sight and stench of his burned flesh was said to be terrible
to behold.
Raif grimaced. “We travel through the valley,” he said.
The gas vents glowed blue in the failing light. Ash had little fear of
them and picked a path through their center, once drawing close enough to a
crater to drink water from its moat of melted snow. Raif spoke no word of
warning, though he saw the danger clear enough. The entire valley floor was
under pressure, its ancient rock buckled and twisted by whatever forces lay
below. It might have been beautiful, this corridor of burning gas and rising
smoke, but all the tales of hell he had listened to as a child had begun with
an approach such as this.
They walked well into the night, Raif postponing making camp until the
gas vents were far behind them. The next day the sun barely rose above the
horizon, and what light it gave could hardly be called daylight at all. The
following day was darker still, and the trail left by the Sull became more
difficult to follow. As the afternoon wore on Raif began to spot signs of other
men. Ice-bleached bones and sled tracks, dog fur and slicks of green whale oil
pitted the path. The snow itself was hard and frozen, the air so dry and clear
that even the finest specks of dust were revealed.
They came across the Whale Gate at some time during the long night.
Formed from the jawbone of a massive bow whale, the ancient archway rose as
high as two men and as wide as four. It stood alone on a headland of
frost-cracked rocks and graying weeds, marking entrance into the territory
beyond. Raif bit off his mitts and touched it with bare hands. The ivory was
stained and scaling, its edges jagged with the stumps of baleen combs. Designs
had been burned into the bone. Dolphins chasing stars had been seared atop an
older, darker design of beasts slaying men.
Raif took his hands away. In the sheltered valley below the gate, the
faintest possible lights twinkled, and above them a white haze of exhaled
breaths shifted in the air like sleeping ghosts.
“The trail ends here.” Raif couldn’t remember the last time he had
spoken, and his voice sounded strange and rough. He looked down upon the
village, if village were what it was. Stone mounds, rising mere feet above the
ground, formed a circle around a smoking firepit. The mounds were built of
obsidian and basalt and other black things, and their edges glowed faintly in
the starlight. They reminded Raif of the barrows of Dhoone’s Core. Twelve
thousand clansmen dead, each corpse interred in a stone tomb of its own. For
three thousand years they’d lain there, rotting to bone dust and hollow teeth.
Withy and Wellhouse kept no history of the massacre. Raif had once heard Inigar
Stoop name it “the Price of Settlement,” but warriors and chiefs gave it
another name, whispered around campfires in the deep of night. The Field of
Stone.
Suddenly Raif wanted very much to turn back, to grab Ash’s hand and
take her .. . where? No land that he knew of was
safe.
Abruptly, Ash stepped through
the gate, leaving Raif no choice but to follow her into the village below.
Dogs began barking as they approached. Yet even before the first growl
of warning caused lights to brighten and stir, a figure stood in waiting at the
first of the stone mounds. Raif recognized the pale bulk of Mai Naysayer, his
cloak of wolverine fur stirring in the wind, the haft of his great two-handed
longsword rising above his back. As Raif and Ash approached, the warrior stood
unmoving, silent and terrible against a field of burning stars.
“The Sull are not
our people and they do not fear us.” The old clan words came to Raif as he raised a
hand in greeting, yet they were old words and often said and men who knew
nothing about the Sull spoke them, and they fell from his mind when the warrior
began to kneel.
Mai Naysayer, Son of the Sull and chosen Far Rider, dropped to his
knees as they drew near. He held his position until Ash and Raif passed within
speaking distance and then laid himself down upon the snow.
Oh
gods. So it begins.
Muscles in the warrior’s back moved beneath his cloak as he spread his
arms wide to form a cross. Raif could see dozens of white letting scars on his
knuckles as he dug bare fingers into ice. Not for me, Raif knew with certainty. No Sull would prostrate himself before a clansman
without a clan.
Ash stood silent above the Sull, wrapped in lynx fur and boiled wool,
her hair lifting and falling in the changing air. Nothing showed on her face, not
exhaustion or fear ... or surprise. “Rise, Mai Naysayer of the Sull, for we are
old friends met in far lands and I would speak to your face, not your back.”
Raif felt a tremor pass through him as she spoke. How could I have come so far with her and not
realize she has been leading the way all along?
In silence, Mai Naysayer pulled himself to his feet. The silver chains
and brain hooks at his waist chimed softly as he brushed snow from his mouth.
Raif watched his eyes. Pale as ice and colder still, they spared no glance for
the clansman. The warrior looked ,
only at Ash.
“Snow burns,” he said.
A chill went through Raif ... and for one brief instant he almost knew
why. He saw thirteen columns of smoke rising from a valley thick with snow,
heard the old guide chanting a fragment of a cradle song, long forgot: Snow burns, the Age turns, and Lost Men shall wal’t
the earth.
Ash breathed deeply and did not speak.
Raif spotted a line of men coming toward them, bearing spears pointed
with volcanic glass and torches that burned with white-hot flames. Small and
dark-skinned, they moved in the fluid and soundless manner of men accustomed to
stalking large prey. Rib cages of walrus and seal were bound to their chests in
armored plates, riding over layer upon layer of skins and strange furs. Forming
a defensive half-circle behind the Naysayer, they thrust their spear butts deep
into the snow.
Raif watched them watch him. He supposed he should be grateful that they at least considered him more of a threat than Ash,
but the Sull’s words had stirred a fear within him, and he found little
satisfaction in the wariness of other men.
Their rank parted, and a tiny old man stepped forward. His skin was the
color and texture of cured wood, and his eyes were milky with snowblindness. On
either side of his face, aligned with cheekbones as sharp as crab claws, two
deep black scars bored into his skull in place of ears. A ruff of vulture
feathers warmed the broken flesh, their quills rising upright from a collar of
rolled bronze. Over his shoulders and across his back lay a coat of fur so dark
and lustrous it was as if the soul of the slain beast still lived there.
“Inuf{u sana
hanli’t” he
said in a voice thin with age. “The Listener of the Ice Trappers welcomes you
to this place.”
Ark Veinsplitter came to stand at the old man’s back, his face grim and
his eyes narrowing, as he translated the Listener’s words. He wore scale armor over
padded silk, with a heavy fur mantle thrown back over his shoulders. His left
arm was bared to the elbow,
and a trickle of blood circled his wrist. He could have stanched the letting wound before he
came to meet us, yet he wanted us to see the blood. Raif suddenly felt weary
enough to lie down in the snow and fall asleep. He didn’t want to greet this
old man, didn’t want to know who he was.
The Listener spoke again, and Raif realized that some shadow of sight
still survived behind his eyes, for he looked directly at Raif as he said, “Mor Drak^aT The wind rose, and the old man turned and walked
away. Gritty bits of ice flew into Raif’s face, stinging the raw flesh beneath
his nostrils where his breath continually froze and thawed. Without thought,
his hand rose to his throat, searching for the hard piece of raven that was his
lore. Nothing but cold skin and raw wool met his touch. He had forgotten he had
given it to Ash.
“The Listener bids you follow him.” Ark Veinsplitter stepped aside to
make a path. Raif watched the dark-haired warrior for a moment, noticing how
the skin at the base of his neck was the only part of him untouched by the
letting knife; and wondering why the Sull had chosen to translate the
Listener’s gesture, not his words. Raif did not know in what tongue the old man
spoke, but he knew his last words were meant for him. And they were not some
soft-spoken request to follow him home.
Ark Veinsplitter glowered at Raif as the two drew eye-to-eye. Something
in Raif made him slow his pace and exhale in the warrior’s face. Something else
made him lay a hand on Ash’s shoulder as they passed.
Almost, Ark Veinsplitter managed to hide his alarm at seeing the color
of Ash’s eyes. Muscles tensed beneath the uncut skin on his neck, and his gaze
sought and found his hass. Mai Naysayer’s shoulders bowed
once in acknowledgment. . . and Raif knew with certainty that the blue in Ash’s
eyes meant something to them.
He tightened his hold on her as they made their way to the farthest of
the stone mounds. Men in walrus-bone armor lined the route, naked thumbs
pressing against the kill notches on their spear shafts, faces dark with
mistrust. These men were not young, Raif noticed, recognizing a careful show of
force when he saw one.
Briefly, he glanced westward to the sea ice, wondering if the younger
warriors were upon it, hunting seal. ,
Light spilled from the entrance to the Listener’s mound, shining on
pits of ashen tar and frozen blood. The Listener stood in the shadows behind the
light, beckoning Raif forward with the curled black fingers of a corpse.
Raif had lived so long without warmth that the heat of the chamber
burned him. As he raised his head after passing through the opening, his vision
dimmed. A liquid queasiness in his stomach reminded him he had not eaten in two
days. The piglike smell of walrus meat nearly made him retch.
The Listener unclasped his fur and laid it upon a bench of plain black
stone. He gestured Ash and Raif to sit upon it, close to a little soapstone
lamp that was the only source of light. The walls glittered weirdly. Plugs of
hair and skin had been used to shore the chinks. When Raif found himself
wondering if the Listener’s missing ear-lobes had been stuffed between the
cracks, he realized he must be experiencing what clansmen called‘’come-in-from-the-cold madness.“ They waited in silence as Ark
Veinsplitter entered and sealed the door. A raven swung upside down on a
whalebone perch, making the soft chuffing noises of a bird whose vocal cords had
felt the heat of a throat-iron upon hatching. Spying Raif, it righted itself
and fixed him with its sharp black gaze. Unnerved, Raif found himself speaking
when he had not planned to.
“We’ll be on our way in the morning. We need to head east while the
calm still holds.“
“You do not know the way east, Clansman.” Ark Veinsplitter poured a
line of water under the door, sealing the chamber with ice.
Blood rose in Raif’s cheeks. The Sull warrior was right. No clansman
knew this territory or the ways to and from it. He hardly knew what had made
him say such a thing. Neither he nor Ash had spoken of what they would do once
they arrived here, and both of them needed time to rest.
Now all he wanted to do was be gone.
“You could share knowledge of the eastern trails, Far Rider,” Ash said,
and even though he was aware she had spoken to support him,
Raif was not glad to hear her speak. Some insane, heat-fevered part of
him wanted to believe that if she were quiet, barely moved, barely spoke, they
would not notice her. Or want her.
The Sull warrior rose heavily, revealing the brace of knives strapped
to his back. “Knowledge of Sull paths comes at great cost. Would you have me
give them freely, as if they were nothing more than deer tracks through a
wood?”
“I would have you tell me what’s happening here,” Raif fired back. “Why
did the Naysayer drop to the ground when he saw us? And why is there blood on
your wrists?”
“My blood is mine to spill, Clansman. Would you tell me when to piss and
shit?”
Raif sucked in air to reply, but the little man with no ears hissed a
word that could only mean Silence!
In the quiet that followed, the Listener of the Ice Trappers poured
steaming liquid into three horn bowls. Raif nodded thanks when the first was
handed to him. He smelled the sharpness of sea salt and fermented flesh,
watched as Ark Veinsplitter and Ash held bowl rims to their lips and sipped.
The old man arranged himself on the chamber floor and waited for Raif to drink.
The liquid scalded Raif’s tongue. It was thick with invisible threads
of sinew that floated between his teeth and then slid back into the bowl when
he was done. Strangely, the heat seemed to null the taste, and although he had
been expecting something acrid, he was left with only a vague sense of
fishiness and a whiff of lead.
The Listener refilled Raif’s bowl. “OolakJ‘
“Fermented sharkskin,” explained Ark Veinsplitter. “The Listener brews
it himself.”
Raif nodded. Bad homebrew was something he was familiar with. Tern’s
brew had been so bad that no one but blood kin would drink it. It had been a
point of honor with Raif and Drey, the enjoying of it, the laughing, the
one-upmanship as each tried to outdo the other in lavishing the foul brew with
praise. Tem would cuff them for their cockiness, then walk away grumbling about
how a father could have too many sons.
Smiling, Raif drank deeply. When the Listener filled his cup a third
time he drank more. He was hungry for its magic; the way it let him think of
the things he had lost without the pain of losing them. “Raif. Open the door
and let out the smoke.” Ash’s voice seemed to come from a very great distance.
As Raif lifted his head to look at her, he caught a glance passing between the
Listener and the Far Rider. Dimly, he realized many things—that Ark
Veinsplitter had not answered any of his questions, that it was the old man,
not the Far Rider, who held power here, and that it would serve a clansman well
to be cautious in this place—but there was a heaviness settling within him. The
fermented sharkskin and the lamp smoke and the heat had slowed his thinking
along with his blood. He knew things yet could not act.
Slowly, he rose to his feet. A rim of ice had formed around the
driftwood door, weeping where it touched the chamber’s heat. As he reached for
the pull ring, Ark’s hand came down upon his arm. “Mora irith. The ice fog rises this night.”
Raif pulled back. He knew about the ice fog, of how it had risen the
night Cormac HalfBludd, first son of the River chief, was standing vigil on the
banks of the Ebb, and how the old Croserman who found his body the next morning
thought he was looking at a river wraith’s corpse, so inhumanly blue was
Cormac’s skin.
Raif reclaimed his seat. The Listener refilled his bowl. As he accepted
the steaming liquid, Raif felt Ash’s hand touch his thigh. “Guard yourself,”
she murmured.
He watched her face, saw her desire to say more stifled by the nearness
of other men. She was beautiful in the lamplight, her skin flushed with warmth,
her eyes unnaturally bright. The oola’t
made it possible to believe that they were the only people present, and that
their lives had reverted to a simpler time. Just you and me, he wanted to say to her. Remember how it was that night in the abandoned
sheep farm near Ganmiddich?
Smiling, he recalled the rabbit he had killed and skinned for her. She
was a surlord’s daughter, accustomed to silver forks and embroidered table
linens, yet she had eaten that rabbit with her fingers; tearing the meat off
the bone with her teeth, and then holding her hand out for more.
“You take good care of me,” she had said when she was done. He had not
trusted himself to reply. Speak and he knew he would reveal too much. She had
been named a Reach by Heritas Cant, and although Raif could not begin to
understand what that meant he guessed it foretold a troubled life. Ash March
had battles to fight— battles she had not chosen and were not her own. Yet even
that night, when he knew that great dangers lay ahead and that to place himself
at Ash’s side meant standing in harm’s way, all he could think of was / have to stay with her.
He had sworn as much in the oath he gave her. “You’re not alone in this, Ash March. Know that. We
will make it to the Cavern of Blacky Ice, and we will bring an end to this
nightmare. I swear that on the faces of nine gods”
Now the terror of the Cavern of Black Ice was behind them he should
have felt that his duty was done, but uncertainty persisted. Ash had sealed the
prison walls of the Blind, confining the Endlords and their Unmade to their own
kind of hell. So why did his fears live on?
Thickheaded from the oolak^, Raif felt his thoughts begin
to float away from him. It was difficult to concentrate in the smoky haze of
the chamber, increasingly harder to discern what was important from what didn’t
matter at all. Unable to fight the lassitude, Raif raised his cup to his lips
and drank.
As he swallowed the final drop he became aware of Ash’s gaze upon him.
A single tear shivered in the corner of her eye. A distant warning sounded, a
dim light in the murkiness that filled his head. Ash’s features were perfectly
controlled, her breathing even. Yet when Raif’s gaze dropped to the cup she
held, he saw tiny ripples disrupting the surface of the oola’t. Quietly, almost imperceptibly, Ash March was
shaking.
He should have acted. The instinct was there, but it was becoming
impossible to retain his thoughts. A blink was all it took to return to the
murk. Time drifted. When it occured to Raif that his cup was empty he held it
out to be filled. The ice fog was rising and the door was sealed against it,
and a man could do worse than sit in the warmth and drink.
So that was what he did. Hours passed and the lamp smoke thickened and
sea ice beyond the chamber boomed and cracked. No one spoke. The Listener paid
attention to the lamp, tamping the wick ever lower into whale oil. Raif’s
shoulders sought the hard comfort of the chamber wall as his head grew heavy
with sleep. Soon it became increasingly hard to stay awake. And as his eyes
closed and he drifted toward oblivion, he saw the Far Rider watching him with
cold and knowing eyes.
“The Sull are not our people and they do not fear us.”
Raif heard the voice of his clan
and knew to be afraid ... but the alcohol was in him and sleep pulled hard upon
him.
And when he woke two days later Ash
was gone.
CHAPTER
The Widows’ Wall
The only way to drink mare’s urine was quickly, so Raina closed her
eyes, scrunched her face and downed it in one. It really was quite dreadful,
sweet and pungent, still steaming from the horse’s bladder, yet she’d sampled
worse in her time. Tern Sevrance’s homebrew, for one. And the taste of her own
fear.
Besides, it had to be better than sheep dung . .. that and ground-up
beetle parts set to stand in curdled milk. Anwyn Bird swore by sheep dung, but
she was a ewe farmer’s daughter and heavily biased toward sheep. No. Better to
be safe in this. The old family remedies were the best; the ones whispered by
sisters and cousins and mother and aunts. How best to prevent conception of a
child.
Letting the ladle drop to the bucket, Raina rose to her feet. She
needed to be gone from here. A pale dawn was breaking, and Eadie Callow and the
other dyers would be taking their places soon enough. A chief’s wife could not
be seen here, not alone, not with the newly delivered mare’s stale from the
horseblock. Eadie Callow might have the slow eyes and stained hands of a dyer,
but a sharpness lived behind her dull gaze, and the black ink on her fingers
concealed the pale white flesh of a Scarpe. All the dyers and fullers were
Scarpemen. They had ways with potash and urine and fuller’s earth that other
men lacked. It was said that no other clan in the clanholds could dye such a
perfect shade of black.
Mace had brought Scarpemen by the hundred to the Hailhold. Every day
more arrived; warriors mounted on Spire-bred horses, women pulled behind them
in poison-pine carts. The Scarpehold had been torched. The silent white-winter
warriors of Clan Orrl had sent a message of fire in the night, and flames from
the Scarpe-hold’s sod-and-timber roof had been seen throughout the North. By
many accounts only the stonework still stood, but even that had been cracked
and blackened, and returning Hailsmen whispered that sleeping there was like
spending a night in a scorched field. Stangs from the Scarpe Tree, the poison
pine that grew nowhere else in the clanholds except the hills surrounding
Scarpe, had been used in construction of the roof. Many of them were still
whole, but the deadly smoke given off during their charring caused more deaths
than the most fiercely burning oak.
Raina’s mouth tightened as she closed the dyehouse door. She could find
little sympathy for Scarpe.
Mace Blackhail’s birthclan was not her own. Yelma Scarpe, the Weasel
chief, had brought the torching upon herself. She had unleashed her sharp
little tongue upon Orrl, claiming land and strongwalls and hunting rights, and
then, never short of clever talk and clever schemes, she had set the might of
Blackhail upon them. Five warriors murdered in the frostbroken lands to the
west, one the Orrl chief’s grandson; a dozen more Orrl warriors slain during a
border skirmish when both Blackhail and Scarpe rode against them.
And then there was the killing of the Orrl chief himself.
Corbie Meese and his crew found the bodies, on the Old Dregg Trail, two
days west of Dhoone. Eleven white-winter warriors and Spynie Orrl, their bodies
clad in the strangely shifting cloth Orrl was known for, their heads forced so
far down into their chest cavities that the scout who first came upon them
thought the bodies beheaded. Corbie Meese knew the truth of it. Only a score of
hammermen in the North, himself included, were capable of striking such a blow.
Shivering, Raina made her way toward the widows’ hearth, which formed the
uppermost chamber of the roundhouse.
No one knew who had ordered the Orrl chief’s slaying. Spynie and his
men had been traveling a dangerous path between warring clans, and there were
some who whispered that the Orrl chief had been returning from a secret parley
with the Dog Lord at Dhoone. Raina set no store by that. She knew Spynie Orrl, had spent a summer at the Orrlhouse in
her youth, and even though he had no liking for the Hail Wolf, he would not
turn his back on his oath.
Old words and old loyalties ran deep here, in the westernmost reaches
of the clanholds. Clans were older, the living was harder, and for a thousand
winters the Hail chief had looked upon the Orrl chief as his man.
Yet the Hail chief was new to his name and clan. Raina could clearly
remember the time when Mace had first arrived from Scarpe. He was to be her
fostered son, a skinny youth mounted on a big-eared stallion trapped with the
weasel fur and black leathers of Scarpe. All that first year he had made a
point of calling himself a Scarpeman. He had continued to sheathe his longsword
in a braided scabbard—although he knew very well that Hailsmen considered such
a housing fussy and impractical—and had stuck stubbornly to Scarpe’s many other
peculiarities of dress. It had been a full eighteen months before Mace had
succumbed to clan pressure to cut his waist-length hair, and a year after that
before he finally exchanged his measure of powdered Scarpestone for one from
the Hailstone instead.
Raina sighed deeply as she took the stair leading up to the widows’
hearth. Too often these days she found herself wondering just where her
husband’s allegiances lay. He might have given his oath to Blackhail and
proclaimed himself its chief, but he continued to favor his birth clan over his
adopted one. Dagro would never have placed Scarpe above Orrl, or invited
dispossessed Scarpemen to rest their swords in his roundhouse.
Oh
gods. What does it matter, what Dagro would have done? Dagro was gone. Dead. And the
boy he had taken as a son was now married to his wife.
“Lady.”
Raina turned on the stair to see Lansa Tanner on the landing below. The
young girl bobbed her head, setting golden curls dancing. “The chief awaits you
in his chamber.”
Raina could still see the blush on her cheeks. Foolish child, to let a
conversation with Mace impress her so. “Tell my husband I will join him when my
business with the widows is done.”
The girl waited for more, lips prettily parted, bars of light from the
arrow slits slicing across her throat. No one dismissed a chief’s request out
of hand; there had to be an apology or explanation. When none came the girl’s
mouth closed and something less pretty happened to her face. Without another
word she turned and descended the stair.
What
is happening here?
Resting her weight against the sandstone wall, Raina watched the girl go. She
had woven birth cloths for all the Tanner girls, washed their soiled linens and
combed their tangled hair. How had Mace managed to steal their loyalty from
her?
The sounds and smells of early morning followed Raina as she climbed
the little stair to the widows’ hearth. The crackle of newly lit fires and the
sizzle of ham upon them competed with the clangor from the forge. Once her
mouth would have watered at the aroma of blackening fat, and her pace would
have quickened to meet the day, but here and now she felt nothing but the hard
sense of duty that had become her life.
She was chief’s wife, first woman of the clan, and Mace Blackhail could
not take that from her.
The door to the widows’ hearth was old and deeply carved, the wood a
silvery grey. The lightest touch of Raina’s hand was all it took to set the
quarter ton of rootwood in motion. The steady clack of looms greeted her as she
stepped into the room.
Merritt Ganlow, Biddie Byce and Moira Lull were at their frames,
weaving. Old Bessie Flapp, whose great dislike of her husband made her a widow
by choosing if not fact, was carding raw wool with her liver-spotted hands.
Others were at tables, sewing and embroidering, spinning, and stretching the
warps. The light was good here, and all the heat generated by the countless
hearths burning throughout the roundhouse rose through the timbers on its
journey toward the roof. The ceiling was low and barrel-vaulted, the bloodwood
stangs made bright by a wash of yellow ocher. As it always did when she entered
the chamber, Raina’s gaze fell upon the hearthstone.
The widows’ wall, it was called, and the brown stain upon it was said
to be Flora Blackhail’s blood. Wife to the Mole chief Mordrag Blackhail, Flora
had gone mad with grief upon receiving word of her husband’s death. A messenger
had arrived at the roundhouse in the dark of night, telling how Mordrag had
been crushed by a collapsing cave wall in the Iron Caves to the south. Frantic
and inconsolable, Flora had fled to the uppermost chamber of the roundhouse and
stabbed herself with her carding shears.
Stupid
woman, Raina
thought. For the messenger who brought word was a stranger to the clan, and
Mordrag still lived, though he had lost half a leg to gangrene. When news of
his wife’s death reached him, Mordrag mourned for thirty days, and then took
himself a new bride. And the chamber Flora died in became a home for the widows
of the clan.
“Raina!” Merritt Ganlow spoke from behind her loom, her hands never
losing contact with shuttle and thread. “Are you here as widow or wife?”
Raina nodded at the stout woolwife. “I’m here as friend, I hope.”
Merritt grunted. “Then as a friend I trust no words will find their way back to
the Wolf.”
The widows had little love for Mace Blackhail. No Scarpewomen ever
found their way to the widows’ wall, though there were plenty of widows amongst
them. They knew they were not welcome, could see that their tattooed widows’
weals set them apart. Scarpe widows did not cut themselves, as Blackhail widows
did, claiming the pain of loss was enough. Why should they cut their flesh and
pain themselves more?
Pushing back her sleeves so the raised skin around her wrists showed,
Raina said, “You and I both lost husbands in the Badlands, Merritt Ganlow.
Would that their deaths generated kinship, not distrust.”
“You found yourself a new husband quick enough.” Other women looked up
at Merritt’s words and nodded. Someone at the back whispered, “Quic’t as a bitch in heat!‘
Oh
Dagro. Why did you leave me alone to bear this? Steeling herself against emotion, Raina said,
“Life goes on, Merritt, and the clan needs strong women to guide it. Perhaps
your place is here, with the widows weaving cloth, but mine is not. I have been
too long at the fore of things to retire to a life of wool and stitching.
Losing a husband does not change who I am. And it’s not within me to claim the
widow’s privilege of sitting near the fire and growing old.”
The shuttle in Merritt’s hand slowed. “Aye, you always were a hard one,
Raina Blackhail.”
“Hardness in a man is called strength.”
“Aye, and strength, as you would have it, isn’t
solely the preserve of those who lead. There’s strength to be found here, in
the act of weaving quietly and carrying on.”
“I know it, Merritt. That is why I have come.” For the first time since
she had entered the widows’ hearth, Raina felt a lessening of the tension.
Slender and lovely Moira Lull cleared the space beside Merritt on the bench.
The women at the back returned to their tasks and Merritt took both hands from
her loom and turned to face Raina full on. “You’re looking thin,” she said.
Raina sat. “Food is scarce.”
“Not for a chief’s wife.”
“I’m busy.” Raina shrugged. “There’s little time to stop and eat.”
“Anwyn says you’re wearing yourself out.”
“Anwyn should look to herself.”
That got a smile from Merritt. No
one worked harder or longer than Anwyn Bird. When the grand matron of the
roundhouse wasn’t cooking-or butchering, she was down in the armory, tilling
bows.
Merritt pushed a flagon of sheep’s-milk ale Raina’s way. “So, what
brings you here this early?“
Raina drank from the jug, savoring the milky coolness and the bite of
malt liquor buried deep beneath the cream. As she wiped the froth from her
lips, she wondered how best to approach this. Guile failed her, so she came
straight to the point. “You have kin at the Orrlhouse?” Merritt’s nod was
guarded. “And your son travels back and forth, trading skins and winter meat?”
“Only Orrlsmen can bring home fresh meat from a deep-winter hunt.”
“Aye.” There wasn’t a Hailsman in the roundhouse who wasn’t in awe of
Orrl’s white-winter hunters. No one could track game across snow and ice like
the men of Orrl. “So your son must have knowledge of what’s happening at the
Orrlhouse?”
This time Merritt’s nod was slow in coming. Her clever hands tied off a
length of thread. “What’s it to you what my son knows, Raina Blackhail? Don’t
you learn enough of Orrl’s business abed with your husband at night?”
Careful, Raina cautioned herself. Thin’t what Dagro would have done here. “I learn only what Mace
chooses to tell me.”
Merritt sucked air between her teeth. “So you come here seeking what he
will not?”
“I come here seeking the truth.” Raina met and held Merritt’s gaze. “We
go back a long time, you and I. You and Meth danced swords at my first wedding,
and when Dagro went hunting that last time it was Meth who shared his tent. I
might be married to Mace Blackhail but my loyalty lies with this clan. You
might think I gained much upon marrying him, but you cannot know all I have
lost. What I’m asking for is information when you have it. I know the
steadfastness of this hearth. None here will go running to my husband with
tales of his wife’s deeds.”
“He watches you.” Ancient turkey-necked Bessie Flapp did not look up
from her carding as she spoke. Skeletal fingers combed and stretched, combed
and stretched, as a chill crept upon Raina. “Eyes everywhere. Little mice and
little telltales. Meetings by the dog cotes and the stoke holes. Squeak,
squeak, squeak. Who goes where? Who does what? Little mice with weasels’
tails.”
Raina took a breath. She had not known it was as bad as this.
“Biddie. Fetch Raina some of the griddle cakes from the hearth. And
bring honey to sweeten the ale.” There was mothering in Merritt’s voice and Raina
wondered what was showing on her face to change the woolwife so.
Biddie Byce’s long blond braids whipped the air as she went about
Merritt’s bidding. She was too young to be a widow, barely nineteen winters
old. Cull had wed her the spring before he was slain on Ban-nen Field. Now
Cull’s twin, Arlec, had begun to pay her court in small and unassuming ways.
After the taking of Ganmiddich he had returned home with a necklace strung with
green marble beads. Shyly, he had pressed it into Raina’s hands. “See Biddie
gets it. She need not know it’s from me.”
Raina smiled as Biddie returned with cake and honey. She didn’t want
the girl to see the envy stabbing softly in her chest. It was only a few months
past when Shor Gormalin had presented such a token to her. He had given her the
broken tip from his first sword, polished by his own hand, set with an uncut
garnet, and mounted as a broach. Thinking of it, Raina tried to hold her smile
but failed. “Wed me, Raina,” he had said. “And I’ll cherish you and keep you safe.”
Shor. Such a strong and thoughtful
man. He should have been her second husband and Blackhail’s chief.
Not Mace. Not the man who had raped her. “Here. Pull this round you.
Your skin’s as blue as Dhoone.” Mer-ritt arranged a fine wool shawl across
Raina’s shoulders, pulling it here and there until it covered all bare skin.
“Hatty. Bring one of the pieces you and your sisters are working on—Raina needs
to see it.”
Silent and big-boned Hatty Hare snapped a thread with her teeth. Slowly
she rose from her embroiderer’s stool to place a fist-sized panel in Raina’s
hand.
The Hail Wolf, worked in silver against a black ground. The Blackhail
badge—only no clansman since Ayan Blackhail had worn it.
“All the needlewomen have been set to work on them, under order of the
chief himself.” Merritt poured honey into the milk ale. “We were warned to sew
in silence and let none but the silversmiths know it, as they’re needed to
stretch the wire.”
Raina’s fingers traced the line of the wolf’s jaw, expertly worked in
silver wire so fine it moved as if it were thread. Almost she knew Merritt’s
next words before she spoke them, for it took a fool not to see what this
meant.
“This is how he keeps them loyal, this man whom it pleases you to call
husband. He gives our clansmen back their pride. Five hundred years ago in the
Tomb of the Dhoone Princes, all the chiefs in the clanholds met to strip
Blackhail of its badge. Ayan
Blackhail slew a king, they said. A
coward’s shot to the throat. No Hail chief has challenged that judgment since;
not Ornfel, or Mordrag, or Uthan ... not even Dagro himself. Yet along comes a
Scarpe-born fosterling, winning wars and gaining territory, daring to wear the
Hail Wolf at his breast. And that’s not all. He wants every warrior in the clan
to wear it; a whole army of Hailsmen bearing their badges with pride.
“He’s a subtle man, Mace Blackhail, I’ll give him that. And he knows
the value of small things. For five hundred years our warriors have ridden into
battle without badge or banner. We are women, and we cannot know the shame they
endured.”
Raina hung her head. She felt Mace’s cunning as a weight upon her. Was
there nothing he could not arrange? A chiefship. Loyalty.
Marriage.
Do not
thin’t of it, a
hard voice inside her warned. Put
the day in the Oldwood behind you. Hate is all it will bring, and hate is like
acid; it only burns the vessel that holds it. Raina raised her head. She would not be burned.
“I’ll be on my way now, but I thank you for your straight words. I’d
like to visit you from time to time, to talk and exchange news.” She waited for
Merritt to nod before standing. “It’s good to find a hearth free of my
husband’s sway.”
“Squeak, squeak, squeak,” croaked Bessie Flapp. “Little mice with
weasels’ tails.”
Merritt frowned at the old battle-ax. “Come,” she beckoned Raina, “I’ll
walk with you to the stair.” When they were out of earshot, she said, “What is
it you sought to know about Orrl?”
“Who is chief now? How are they coping with our hostilities?”
“Stallis stood Chief Watch ten days since. By all accounts he’s a sharp
one, Spynie’s sixth grandson, the white-winter warrior with the most kills.”
“Does he hold Blackhail in favor?”
Merritt made an odd sound, almost a laugh. “Come now, Raina. Do you
honestly think Stallis will forgive Mace for ordering his grandfather’s
slaying?”
“But—”
“But what? No one can say for certain who sent the hammer into Spynie
Orrl’s brain? Tis said in the Orrlhouse that the Scarpe hammerman Mansal Stygo
did the killing, and that the marks of Mansal’s hammer were stamped on Spynie’s
skull.” Raina went to speak, but Merritt forestalled her again. “And it is also
said that a burned-out campfire was found east of where the bodies lay, and
amidst the campfire’s ashes lay tokens of Blackhail and Scarpe.”
“Stone Gods.” Raina touched the horn of powdered guidestone at her
waist. She wanted to deny it, but it sounded like the truth. Orris-men were not
given to wild stories and swift conclusions. They were stoic men, preferring to
save their energies for hunting, not loose talk. “None of this looks good,
Raina. Orrl against Blackhail. War on more war.” Merritt Ganlow’s ice green
eyes studied her. “Best be gone now. Keep the shawl about you. It’s cold in
this roundhouse .. . and days darker than night lie ahead.”
Tiny hairs on Raina’s arms rose. Merritt’s words were old and she did
not know where they came from, but they stirred something within her. Unnerved,
she turned to go.
Merritt caught her wrist. “You are welcome in this hearth, Raina
Blackhail. Remember that when you return to your world of husbands and wives.”
Raina nodded. She could not speak to thank her. The journey down
through the roundhouse was long and tiring, and she found herself making stops
along the way. She saw the casual glances from charwomen and alewives
differently now. Were they watching her for him?
Lost in thought, she almost missed the broad and misshapen form of Corbie
Meese, crossing the entrance hall with enough firewood strapped to his back to
build or burn a house.
“Corbie.”
The soft word made the hammerman turn. A frown had started upon his
face, but upon seeing Raina he grinned. “Are ye mad woman? To halt a man whilst
he’s toting a ton of logs?” Bending his back as he spoke, he resettled the load
upon him. Leather straps whitened with the strain.
Raina grinned back at him. “That old load? Why there’s more air in
there than wood.”
Corbie laughed. “By the Stones, woman! You’d drive a man hard if ye
could.”
Now he had Raina laughing along with him, and it felt good. Good. It was suddenly difficult to talk of other things.
“Corbie. Can I ask something of you?”
“Aye. If I can ask something of you.”
“You can.”
Serious now, the hammerman put a hand against the stairwall to brace
the weight of his load. The great dint in his head where a training hammer had
clipped him as a boy showed up starkly in the torchlight. “It’s Sarolyn. She’s
near her time now ... and ...” His gaze dropped to his feet.
Raina nodded quickly, knowing full well what he meant to say and
knowing also that mannish reticence kept him from it. “I’ll watch her day and
night, Corbie. And both me and Anwyn will be there during her confinement.”
Relief showed itself plainly on Corbie’s face. “I thank you for that,
Raina Blackhail. It does a man’s heart good to know that his wife will be well
cared for whilst he’s riding far from home.”
Such a
good man. He does not speah^ of his own death, but the thought is there inside
him.
“Name what ye would have of me.”
She met Corbie’s light brown eyes, feeling as if she had trapped him.
“It’s said that only a dozen hammermen in the North are capable of the blow
that killed Spynie Orrl. Is Mansal Stygo one of them?”
Corbie’s whole body stiffened at the question. To ask a hammerman to
speak against a fellow hammerman, even one from a foreign clan, was calling for
blood. There was a close honor amongst them. Hammer and ax had been wielded in
the clanholds before the first sword blade was forged, before even there was
metal, just stone and wood and bone. And neither Corbie nor Raina could pretend
this was a casual question about a man’s skill.
The chief’s wife asked much of the hammerman, but the hammer-
man had given his word and he was bound by honor to answer her ... even
though he knew he named a murderer as he spoke. “Mansal trained for a season
with the Griefbringer, here in this house.”
Naznarri Drac. The Griefbringer. Exiled from the Far South, granted
asylum by Ewan Blackhail, victor of Middlegorge, trainer of Corbie Meese.
Naznarri was six years dead now, and the last man he’d trained was Bullhammer,
the strongest hammerman in the North. Knowing she had her answer, Raina bowed
her head. Corbie watched Raina for a moment, then shouldered his burden of
quartered logs, turned and walked away.
Raina stared at the great slate blocks that tiled the entrance hall,
letting the knowledge settle inside her. It was a complicated world, these
clanholds in which she lived, and when one clan was aggrieved it unsettled all.
Blackhail, Dhoone and Bludd might be the mightiest amongst the clans, but that
didn’t mean the lesser ones had no power. Orrl could turn on Blackhail and
declare itself for Dhoone, or ally with Dregg and Harkness and act in concert
to remove the Hail chief from power. It was the same with Bludd and Dhoone: no
mighty chief could afford to alienate his sworn clans. Yet by sanctioning the
murder of Spynie Orrl, Mace Blackhail had done just that.
With a tired shake of her head, Raina moved across the entrance hall.
Two meetings, both good and bad. Would that somehow she could avoid the third. There
was nothing for it, though. Mace Blackhail had summoned her and she would be a
fool to defy him. Gathering Merritt’s cloak about her, she made for the Hail
chief’s chamber.
The crooked stair was narrow and poorly lit. Once Raina had rushed down
the steps, eager to be with Dagro to talk about her day. Now she moved slowly,
noticing the mold on the walls and the defensive capstones overhead. Too soon
she was there. The tar coating the chief’s door seemed to ooze from the wood in
the torchlight, and she did not want to put a hand upon it. Mace saved her the
trouble by pushing from the other side.
“Wife,” he greeted her, a smile flashing oddly upon his face. “I had
expected you sooner.“
He did not make way to let her enter and she was forced to reply
standing at the door like a child. “Did the girl not tell you I had business
elsewhere?”
“She was sent to fetch you, not your excuses.”
“Then that’s her failing, not mine.”
Almost she thought that he would hit her. The anger was there in his
eyes, but it shifted as quickly as it was born, leaving nothing but the
hardness around his mouth. Turning, he bid her enter with a crook of his wrist.
She watched him move. The leathers he wore were as fluid as cloth and
they curved to his spine as he walked. Wolves’ eyeteeth had been mounted around
the hem of his greatcloak to weight it, and the fist-size brooch that held it
to his throat was fashioned as a wolf pup, carved and silvered and packed with
lead. Coming to stand behind the block of sandstone known as the Chief’s Cairn,
he bid her seal the door.
Even now, after fourteen weeks of marriage, she feared to be alone with
him. But she could not let him know that, so she closed the door and drew the
bolt.
“I see you have discovered one of my schemes.” He nodded toward her
left hand. “I take it you approve?”
Feeling like a fool, Raina glanced down at her hand. The badge. She had not realized she had brought it with her.
Feigning casual-ness, she tossed it onto the Chief’s Cairn. “A pretty plan.”
Mace’s strong, blade-bitten fingers closed around the badge. “I thought
so.” He observed her coolly, and she knew he had seen through her bluff.
She spoke to dampen the gleam of knowing in his yellow-black eyes. “So,
what would you have of me?”
“A wife.”
His words seemed to stop the air itself. Dust and heat and lamp smoke
ceased rising. Mace’s gaze held hers, and for the first time since he had
returned from the Badlands she saw the man behind the wolf.
“You were a partner to Dagro,” he murmured, reaching for her hand. “Be
one to me.”
Raina closed her eyes. Sweet
gods, how can he say this to me? Does he not remember what happened in the
Oldwood? Yet
she saw in his eyes that he did, and that, given chance, he would speak soft
words to reverse it. / was
desperate, I acted rashly, I thought you wanted it too. She shuddered, unable to find
her voice.
Mace watched her closely. When she made no reply he spoke again. “This
clan grows large, Raina. Dhoone is weak, and Bludd’s Dog Lord has bitten off
more than he can chew. There is much to be gained here. Blackhail can be remade
as something greater, and you and I can rule it. Think of it. The Scarpe
fosterling and the Dregg fosterling: the Lord of the Clans and his wife.”
As Raina listened to Mace speak she realized he still thought of
himself as an outsider. He’s
still nursing old hurts. What had the clan children called him when he first arrived here?
Weasel Boy, that was it. Ten years ago, and he hadn’t forgotten.
Some light of understanding must have been showing in her face, for
Mace lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I want you at my side, Raina.
Join me on the journey as my wife.”
It took all her concentration to keep standing. The smell of his sweat brought
back memories she could not bear. The Oldwood .. . his hand clamping over her
mouth as he drove her head into the snow ...
As she stood shaking quietly Mace waited. When he realized she would
not speak he released her hand. “I have my answer then.”
She drew in breath. There was no anger in her, just sickness. She
thought that she might faint. “I’ve done my duty by you.”
A hard sound issued from his throat, and suddenly he was beside her,
his hands on the small of her back. “Do you think I am grateful for your duties?” Sliding his fingers across her breast, he turned
the word into something obscene. “Don’t flatter yourself, Raina. There’s more
warmth to be had in the heart of the Want than in your bed.” Abruptly, he let
her go. “Have no fear, I shall make no call upon your duty again.“
Blood burned in her cheeks. She turned to leave.
But he had not done with her. Returning to his place behind the Chief’s
Cairn, he said, “We have matters yet to discuss.”
She kept moving toward the door. “Such as?”
“Such as what’s to be done with the Sevrance girl. All who saw her that
night by the dog cotes swear she’s witched.”
He knew he had her. She had to turn and face him.
Casually, Mace rested his hand upon the Clansword that was pegged low
upon the wall. Wielded by Murdo Blackhail and Mad Gregor before him, forged
from the crown of the Dhoone kings, and symbol of Blackhail power, the
unsheathed sword shone blackly in the torchlight.
“I’ve protected the girl as best I can, but tempers show little sign of
cooling. You know how superstitious the old clansmen are. Turby Flapp would see
her stoned. Gat Murdock thinks she should walk the coals. All seek her gone.”
Mace shrugged. “I cannot set aside the will of the clan.”
You
bring Scarpemen into this house, she wanted to say. No Hails-man wills that. She said, “Not all in the clan
condemn her. Orwin says the Moss woman deserved what she got, and that his dogs
attacked her of their own free will.”
“It’s hardly surprising that Orwin defends the girl. All know he does
so out of love and loyalty for Drey.”
Raina felt the net closing. He was too clever, this husband of hers;
she didn’t have the words to best him. Still, she could not let Effie go
undefended. “Cutty Moss was trying to kill her. No one can deny that. You’ve
seen her wounds.”
Mace sighed. “Yes, but there are those who whisper that Cutty only
sought to bring an end to her witching.”
“He stole her lore.”
“And look what she did to get it back.” Mace shook his head sadly.
“Come now, Raina, don’t let your love for the girl blind you. Even if she
didn’t witch those dogs into attacking the luntwoman and her son, most believe she did. I would change that if I could, but I’m
chief, not shaman. And as chief it is my duty to becalm the clan.”
He wanted Effie harmed, she could hear it in the softness of his voice.
Effie knew what he had done in the Oldwood . . . and possibly more. There was
no telling what the girl could learn through her lore.
Mace spread his ringers wide across the pocked surface of the Chief’s
Cairn. “She must be tried.”
Raina held herself still. She knew how such trials had ways of getting
out of hand, how supposedly sane and rational clansmen could flash to anger in
an instant, stoked by nothing more than their own ignorance and fears. Effie
Sevrance, with her watching eyes and silent ways, wouldn’t stand a hope against
them. Delay, that was the only thing to be done now. Delay.
“It would be wise to save your decision until her brother returns from
Gnash. Drey would not thank you for trying his sister in haste.” She saw she
had made him think. Drey Sevrance was a chief’s man. When the Ganmiddich
roundhouse needed to be held for the returning Crab chief, Mace had chosen Drey
to watch its high green walls. And when the Dhoone chief-in-exile had called
the Hail Wolf to a parley, it had been Drey whom Mace sent in his stead.
Indeed, Drey hadn’t set foot in the roundhouse for five weeks, and Raina found
herself wondering if his absence wasn’t what Mace had wanted all along. Mace
said, “Wait, and I risk the possibility that clansmen will take matters into
their own hands, and that’s something we both might regret.” He favored Raina
with a husband’s smile. “But I’ll see what I can do.“
It was no answer, and they both knew it. He would see Effie harmed
either by trial or delay. And that meant she was no longer safe in this
roundhouse. Raina pulled Merritt Ganlow’s shawl about her. Suddenly she wanted
very much to be gone.
“Be about your business,” he said, dismissing her. “And take comfort in
the fact that I’ll be keeping Effie close.”
His voice was so soft and reassuring it barely sounded like a threat.
CHAPTER
In the Tomb of the Dhoone Princes
The Tomb of the Dhoone Princes was located a hundred yards north of the
Dhoonehouse, sunk to a depth of eighty feet. A single passageway, cut out of
the hard blue sandstone on which Dhoone was built, connected the tomb to the
great barrel-vaulted guidehouse where kings and princes had once lain in state.
Vaylo Bludd walked that passageway now, his bulk heavy upon him, his sword clad
in dogskin at his thigh.
He told himself he was old and jaded and hard to impress, yet he
couldn’t help but marvel at the blue-gray light that shone upon him, filtered
down through man-size blocks of cyanide quartz sunk deep into the earth. Only
light the color of the Dhoone kings’ eyes was allowed entry into their grave.
A nice
fancy, Vaylo
thought. But it was probably just as well no one had ever thought to do such a
thing for Bludd, for the Bludd chiefs were a hard-drinking, hard-fighting lot
and their eyes always burned red. Vaylo grinned. Stone Gods! But the Bludd
chiefs were ugly! No one would have raised fancy tombs for them, that was for sure. Old Gullit’s nose had been
split so many times by brawling and hammer blows that it looked just like a
burst plum . . . and as for Thrago before him, well, men said it wasn’t for nothing
that he was known as the Horse Lord.
Vaylo’s smile faded as the corridor widened before him and he entered
the coldness of the vault. The same blue light that spotted the corridor lay
soft upon the standing tombs of Dhoone. They lined the great circle of the
vault wall, stone coffins the size of men, with the likenesses of kings carved
deep upon them, each one raised upright, as if they bore living, standing
flesh, not dust. It made Vaylo’s hair rise to see them. The clanholds had been
settled for three thousand years and the Dhoone kings had reigned for a third
of that. One thousand years of kings, sealed within the silence of stone.
Now, at last, he realized the weight of Ayan Blackhail’s sin. To bring
an end to this with a Hailish arrow, carelessly loosed to the throat.
The Dog Lord shook his grizzled head, feeling the weight of his braids
at his back. He wasn’t one for wonder, and could recall having felt it only
twice in his life. The first time was at Cedarlode, when the mist parted before
him to reveal the mounted might of the Sull.
The second was here, in this tomb.
The air was dry and it moved strangely in the lungs. Vaylo could taste
the age of it. It made him feel young and unimportant, a fish inside a whale.
There before him, dominating the center of the space, stood the stone table
that Jamie Roy had brought across the mountains during the Great Settlement. It
had taken an army of men to move it, had occupied ancient roundhouses that no
longer stood, spent a hundred years rotting at the bottom of the Flow, and now
it lived here, with the bones of the Dhoone kings. Vaylo had no desire to touch
it, yet his hand moved toward it all the same.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Dog Lord. Last I heard that table
was cursed.“
Vaylo stayed his hand and turned to face the man who had entered the
vault.
Angus Lok shrugged. “Of course, if you have a fancy for your hair
falling out and your manhood falling off, go ahead and stroke it. Just be sure to
step into the shadows if you do, as I imagine it’s not a pretty sight.“
Vaylo huffed .. . yet he did not touch the stone.
The ranger ignored him and began looking around the vault. “So these
are the famous standing tombs of Dhoone? I see a few of them have gone to their
knees.” It was true enough. Some of the older coffins had crumbled and fallen
open, revealing nothing but blackness inside.
Vaylo said, “Only your first time here, ranger? I’d have thought you’d
have skulked your way in before now.”
“Skulk?” Angus Lok showed his teeth. “That’s a fancy word, Dog Lord.
How long have you been saving it for?”
Vaylo showed teeth of his own. “Since I caught you and the clansman at
Ganmiddich.”
If Angus Lok was stirred by Vaylo’s anger he did not show it, merely
moved across the vault to inspect one of the more hideously carved tombs. The
eight weeks of his confinement had gone easy upon him, and he looked little
changed from the day Vaylo had seen him sealed in the pit cell beneath the chief’s
chamber at Ganmiddich. His kind always prospered. He had the gift of turning
enemies into friends, could coax extra rations from the most heartless of
jailers, draw information from the most tight-lipped of guards. Even when
Ganmiddich had been beset by Blackhail and retaken, the ranger had managed to
talk Hammie Faa, his jailer, into letting him take up a sword. Angus had given
his word that he would make no attempt to escape, merely defend himself against
attack. He had kept it too, Vaylo had to give him that. And Hammie swore that
the ranger had kept open the retreat at the Crab Gate, whilst the old Bludd
retainers rode through. Vaylo himself had seen none of it, though he never
doubted a Faa man’s word.
Now Angus was here, at the Dhoonehouse, held in one of the strange and
echoing mole holes under Dhoone. The Dog Lord had considered calling for him
many times, yet had only today decided firm.
Slapping his side in search of the small leather pouch that held his
chewing curd, he said, “Since we’re talking of words, Angus Lok, mayhap you can
help me with the meaning of one of them.”
If I can. The Dog Lord softened a cube of black curd in his fist. “You
can tell me what exactly it is that a ranger does.“
Angus was inspecting the stone likeness of some ancient and unknowable
king, and did not turn as he said, “A ranger ranges, Dog Lord. Surely you know that.” Admiring the
curve of the king’s intricately carved greatshield, he crouched and ran a
finger across the boss. “We ride wide and far, bearing messages and small goods
where we can, spinning tales for our supper and trading news for our keep. We
take day labor where we find it, trap game if we’re so inclined. I even knew
one man who made his living teaching clan-wives how to dance like city bawds.”
Angus straightened his spine. “As for myself, well I’m no dancer, and the last
thing I trapped with a wire was my own left foot, so I mostly rely on trade.”
An easy smile warmed the ranger’s handsome face. “Why, you wouldn’t happen
to have a proposition for me, Dog Lord?”
Indeed he did, but he’d be damned if he’d let this clever-spoken dog
trick him into speaking before he was ready. Crossing the vault, Vaylo made his
way toward the effigy of the Dark King, Burnie Dhoone.
The man who had destroyed Clan Morrow had been carved without eyes. The
stonework on his greathelm was so fine that Vaylo could see the join where the
nosepiece had been welded to the crown, yet on either side of the smoothly
planed stone, the carving gave way to sockets of jagged rock.
Vaylo touched the powdered guidestone at his waist. Who had ordered him
carved so, and why?
“The Thistle Blood ran thick within him,” murmured Angus, coming to
stand at the Dog Lord’s back. “It’s said that he got it from both sides.“
Vaylo had never heard such a thing before. “How so?”
“His mother was raped by her father, the king.”
“Stone Gods.” Vaylo suddenly wished for the
company of his dogs, yet they were close to the heart of the matter now: how a
ranger came to know more about the clanholds than a clan chief himself. So he
said, “I remember the summer I turned seventeen. It was hot enough to bake mud,
and the sky had that haze to it that only comes with long days of sun. I
couldna keep myself in the roundhouse, so hot and restless was I, so I’d ride
out every day at dawn to cool myself in the forests south of Bludd. There’s old
trees in that forest, and man-cut stones and ruins amongst them. When it got
too hot to hunt I’d take my stick and fish for trout. I was not a patient
fisherman, and doubtless scared more fishes than I caught, yet I liked it well
enough. There was green water, and it was cool, and some ancient bit of archway
shaded me, and one day when I came to my secret place I met a ranger there.”
Angus Lok didn’t stir, though Vaylo knew he had the man’s attention in
full. So he took his time with the telling; let no one say the Dog Lord
couldn’t spin a tale when he chose to.
“He called himself Hew Mallin, though I learned later he was known by
many names. Sitting right on my spot, he was. Bold as brass, with a line in the
water. Greeted me by my name, and told me that I’d best pick another hole next
time as I’d never pull anything bigger than sticklebacks from this. Why do you fish here then? I challenged him. And he
looked me right in the eye, cool as milk, and said, Because I’m here to hoo’t men, not fish.
“Well I was young and suspicious and hard to impress, yet I still felt
a thrill all the same. He knew about me, this man. Knew what kind of bastard I
was, and what kind of father had begot me. There’s no love for you in that roundhouse, he said. Come south with me and I’ll show you a place where
your strengths won’t go unrewarded. There are fights to be fought and a world
that needs watching, for even as we spea’t the enemy masses at the gateT Vaylo turned to face the ranger
full on. “Aye, Angus Lok. Your fine, secret brotherhood thought to have me in
their fold.”
A moment passed, and then Angus said quietly, “I can see why.” It was
not the response he had expected. He had been prepared for derision or
disbelief.. . but not grace. It lightened something within him to receive it.
Angus watched him closely. “How did you answer them?” Vaylo waved his
fist. “I told Hew that I might be a bastard but I was a Bluddsman to the core,
and that I’d shrivel and dry to nothing the moment I stepped on land that
wasn’t clan. Oh, don’t think I wasn’t tempted—bastards dream of little except
grabbing glory far from home—but the desire was already in me to make myself
Lord of the Clans.“ He shrugged. ”Besides, I had a small idea to steal the
Dhoonestone from Dhoone.“
Angus nodded. “Fishing will do that to a man—give him ideas.”
“Aye, I’ve learned so.”
Silence grew then, as the ranger waited for the clan chief to name the
terms of his deal. Vaylo did not fool himself about who was the cleverer man
here: Angus Lok had him pegged from the start. You could see it in the
blandness of his face. Old Ockish Bull had looked as bland as that, and no one
had ever risen early enough or stayed out late enough to put anything by him.
Outside it was growing dark, and the filtered light dimmed to the
deepest blue. Sull blue, Vaylo thought. Gone was the
light, grayish thistle-blue of Dhoone. The Dhoone kings were probably spinning
in their graves.
But if they were you couldn’t hear them.
Vaylo spoke into the silence they created. “You know Spynie Orrl was
killed after visiting me, here, in the Dhoonehouse.” A nod from Angus; no surprises
there. “And did you know what he came to tell me? This old man who was no one’s
fool, and knew exactly what he risked to come here?“
Angus did not nod this time, but Vaylo saw awareness in his copper
green eyes.
“He came to warn me. The Sull are preparing for war.” The words did not
rest easy in the Tomb of the Dhoone Princes; cold currents caught them and blew
them against the walls, creating sharp little echoes that hissed, Sull. Sull. Sull.
Vaylo sucked on his black and aching teeth. He could not rid himself of
Spynie Orrl. The old goat haunted him, he was sure of it, whispering words in
the black of night as if he hardly knew he was dead. There are outside forces at wor’t here, Bludd chief.
I know it. You know it. And the question that now remains is, are you content
to let it be?
Suddenly tired of games, Vaylo cried, “What is going on here,
ranger? There’s secrets beneath secrets, plots inside plots. I’m not a
scholar or a seer. I look at the sky and see only sky. How am I to protect my
clan against dangers I cannot see?“
“You already know the answer to that, Dog Lord,” Angus said, his voice
soft and dark as the shadows that gathered about him. “Return to Bludd and
marshal your forces and wait for the Long Night to come. Forget about Dhoone
and this roundhouse, and your fancy of naming yourself Lord of the Clans. Days
darker than night lie ahead, and no amount of land or titles will stop the
shadows when they come. Chiefs die as easily as pig herders, yet they’re
nowhere near as blameless. Men look to you to lead them. So lead. Leave this place, set aside your battles.” Angus’
gaze flicked to the fifty stone coffins lining the walls. “It’s all small
purchase in the end.”
Vaylo had his hand on the wire grip of his sword. Anger was hot within
him, and he thought of many things to say to this man, but in the end there was
only one. “I will not relinquish Dhoone.”
The ranger nodded. “Aye, I had an inkling you’d say that.”
The anger puffed out of Vaylo, leaving him feeling weary and very old.
By rights he should call Hammie Faa or Dry bone and have them take the ranger
away—and not gently at that. Yet he feared Angus Lok, feared the knowledge he
held and the counsels he kept. Feared them, and wanted them for himself.
Resting his weight against the
tomb wall, Vaylo said, “You know the Surlord offered a sow’s weight in gold for
your head?”
“What, only one of them?” Angus scratched the stubble on his jaw. “I’d
have thought the chin alone was worth more than two.”
Vaylo did not take the bait.
“And the Lord Rising of Morning Star sent one of his White Helms to bid for
you. I daresay I could make a pretty profit if I chose to, auctioning you off
for the highest price.”
“Yet you choose to do something else.” The
humor left Angus now, quick as if it had never been there at all. Vaylo
reminded himself that this man was one of the best longswordsmen in the North,
marksman and assassin, expert horseman and field surgeon. Friend of the Sull.
He thought carefully before speaking his next words. Pride was at stake
here, both the ranger’s and his own. “I choose to offer you a deal. The
Mountain Lords are no friends of mine, and if I thought so once then I was a
fool. I’m old enough now that I can admit my mistakes, but not so old that they
cannot shame me. The clanholds are at war, and I will not deny my part in that,
nor will I surrender my gains, but I canna say that I sleep well at night. I
have lived too long on the edge of things not to recognize when those edges change.
Bludd is a border clan and I am a border chief. You know our boast. We are Clan Bludd, chosen by the
Stone Gods to guard their borders. Death is our companion. A hard life long
lived is our reward.“
Vaylo looked carefully at Angus Lok. The moon was rising now, silvering
the standing tombs so they looked like men of ice. The ranger’s face was deeply
shadowed, and looked leaner and hungrier for it. He wants this, Vaylo thought, and so he spoke his deal.
“Help me guard my borders. I don’t need might or swords or
warriors—Bludd has them in numbers—I need knowledge from a man I can trust. I
know you will not name the brotherhood that claims you, and can guess well
enough what breed of oath they made you speak. Yet there is middleground here,
between a chief’s oath and a ranger’s oath, and though our wars may be
different our enemies may one day prove the same.”
Angus stood silent and unmoving, his weight held evenly between his
feet. Time passed, and then he said, “And in return?”
“I’ll see you released.”
The two watched each other, each mindful of what was at stake. Angus
Lok might be a clever and amiable prisoner, well able to coax information and
favors from any man who guarded him, yet he had to know that no Bluddsman would
ever set him free. Sixty days of captivity had taught him that.
“I know you travel these lands,” Vaylo said, “speaking with clansmen
and city men alike. What I ask is that you share your knowledge of the
clanholds with me.”
The ranger’s eyes glittered cold. Any other man and the deal would be
done by now, for talk was cheap and confidences easily betrayed. Yet Angus Lok
was not any man . .. and he had lived twenty years with the Phage. He said, “I
am no petty traitor, Dog Lord, and I go running to no man with news given to me
in confidence. Nor would I speak a word that endangered friends or kin.“ A
pause, while the ranger allowed Vaylo time to remember that the man standing
before him was kin to Raif Sevrance, murderer of Vaylo’s own grandchildren.
”Yet there are matters where our interests meet,“ a dangerous smile, ”not least
of which is setting me free.“
Vaylo inclined his head. The deal was done. Neither man would insult
the other by haggling over terms.
“So,” Angus continued briskly.
“You would have information from me. Well, much though I hate to come courting
with swords, I should warn you to watch your back.”
“Blackhail?”
“No. Dhoone.”
The word seemed to warm the vault, Vaylo swore it. All about stonework
creaked and settled, sending spores of blue sandstone to seed the air. “How
so?”
Angus shrugged. “The battle for the chiefship is coming to a head. On
one side you have Skinner Dhoone, brother to the slain chief Maggis. He names himself
chief-in-exile and gathers men about him at the Old Round outside of Gnash.”
“Aye.” The Dog Lord nodded. He had Skinner’s measure. The Dhoone
chief-in-exile put no fear into Vaylo Bludd. Skinner had a high temper and he
blew hard and long, but he had lived too many years in the shadow of his
brother and no longer had his jaw. Any other man would have tried to retake
Dhoone by now. A month ago he might have seized it if he’d had the balls, for
Vaylo and Drybone were housed at Ganmiddich, and the Dhoonehouse held by Pengo
Bludd. Vaylo snorted air. He had nothing but contempt for a man who had a
chance but failed to seize it.
“And on the other side you have Robbie Dhoone,” Angus continued. “The
golden boy of the Dhoone warriors, who claims chiefship through some
questionable second-cousining and the Thistle Blood through his dam.”
Vaylo pushed himself off from the wall with force. “A young pretender,
nothing more.”
“Not from what I’ve heard, Dog Lord.” Angus’ voice was strangely light.
“Then again, perhaps you have better intelligence than I. After all there’s
limits to what a man can hear in a cell.”
Put in his place, Vaylo had nothing to say other than “Go on.” They
both knew who was master of secrets here.
“Robbie Dhoone has the golden hair and fair eyes of the Dhoone kings,
and he knows how to cut a figure with them. They say he’s born to the sword,
but the weapon he draws in battle is the great ax, much loved of the old kings.
By all accounts the Thistle Blood runs true within him, and he can trace his
line back to Weeping Moira. And I’ve heard it said by more than one man that he
signs his name Dun Dhoone.“
Dun. “Thistle” in the Old Tongue,
the name the Dhoone kings took as their own.
Unease must have shown itself on Vaylo’s face, for Angus said, “Aye,
Dog Lord. You see the way the lake drains now. He’s young and ambitious and
well loved in Castlemilk, and he’s puffing himself up to be a king.”
“He quarters in Castlemilk?” Angus nodded. “He raises an army there.”
Vaylo turned his back on the
ranger to give himself time to think. The likenesses of the Dhoone kings
watched him, stone eyes alive with moonlight. The pretender will try to retake this place, he thought. That is the warning Angus Lo’t would have me heed.
All tal’t of kingship is hollow unless a king holds the land he claims.
Behind him, Vaylo heard the sound of Angus crossing to the far side of
the vault“. Shadows lay deep there, amongst the oldest of the standing tombs.
All edges had been worn to curves by nothing more than air. ”And there’s more,
Dog Lord.“ Angus said softly, causing Vaylo to turn. ”The border clans best
ready themselves against raids from the Mountain Lords.“
Vaylo grunted. There was always more. “The Surlord and the King on the
Lake have long had an eye for the green hills and black mines of Bannen and
Croser. Spring raids are nothing new. Heron Cutler led a sortie five years
back, and took a blade in the kidneys for his trouble.”
Angus squatted to inspect the cap stones surrounding the effigy of an
ancient and faceless king. As he spoke he ran a finger along the mortar lines,
testing. “If I were you, Dog Lord, I’d watch the clans nearer home. The Lord
Rising of Morning Star stands close enough to HalfBludd to smell the staleness
there.”
This was news. “Cawdor Burns plans to strike against the Blud-dsworn
clans?”
The ranger did not look up from inspecting the wall as he said, “Who
can say? The Lord Rising is no man’s fool. He’ll sit and watch the clanholds
crumble from the safe haven of his Burned Fortress, and as soon as he spies a
weakness he’ll move. HalfBludd is past her glory. She’s been in decline since
Thrago HalfBludd deserted his birthclan to name himself chief of Bludd.”
Vaylo found himself nodding. It was so. Thrago HalfBludd was his
grandfather, the Horse Lord who brought back glory to the Bluddhouse after the
defeat at Crumbling Wall. Yet whilst Thrago was in the field winning victories
for Bludd, his birthclan suffered for want of a strong chief, and Bludd’s gain
was HalfBludd’s loss. “I’ll send word to Quarro at the Bluddhouse, get him to
send a crew of hammermen to HalfBludd’s southern reach.”
“Do that. But be sure to keep your watch.”
Vaylo bristled. He did not care for advice from any man, let alone some
cocksure, trusty runner for the Phage. He was the Dog Lord, and he had lorded
his clan for thirty-five years, and a chief did not hold his place that long by
being anybody’s fool. Resting his hand on the hilt of his sword, he said, “When
I was seventeen my brothers drew their knives and tried to slay me. When I was
twenty-two Broddic Haddo crossed swords with me for the chief-ship of Bludd.
Five months back I took Dhoone by force, and twelve weeks later I fought for my
life on the banks of the Wolf. Every day I ask myself the question, ‘Which one
of my sons will betray me first?’ And every night I lie awake in the darkness
and watch the slaughter of my grandchildren by Hailsmen play out before my
eyes.
“Still I am here. I’ve won and lost more than you can imagine, ranger,
yet here I stand, lord and chief. Do you really think I need counsel from one
of my captives on how best to watch my back?”
Angus bowed his head in acknowledgment. “I’m sorry for that. The habit
of caution lies deep within me.”
“That is why you are a ranger, not a chief.” Once again, Angus nodded. They both knew that caution would take a man only so far.
“Get up,” Vaylo commanded him, suddenly wanting this meeting to be
done. “Go and present yourself to Drybone and tell him the nature of the deal
we have struck. He’ll return your arms and provision your drypack and see you
on your way.” Still Angus did not rise. “And my horse?”
The magnificent bay gelding. As soon as Vaylo had set eyes upon it he
had known it for a Sull horse. “It will be returned.”
“I thank you for that, Dog Lord.” The ranger stood and faced him. His
fingertips were white with mortar dust, and Angus saw Vaylo’s gaze upon them. “
‘Tis nothing,” he said with a small shrug. “I heard once that a tunnel led from
this tomb all the way north to the Copper Hills. It’s said that it was dug so
long ago that not even the Dhoonesmen can remember it.”
“Yet you and your brotherhood do.”
The ranger brushed the dust from his fingers. “We remember the old
words and the old rhymes, nothing more. In the Tomb of the Dhoone Princes there be, a bolt-hole for those who
canna loo/{ nor see.” He grimaced. “Poetry was never a Dhoonish art.”
“Nor patience a Bluddish one.”
Angus accepted the reprimand with a bow. “Well, I’d best be on my way.
Let no one say Angus Lok outstayed his welcome in the Dhoone-house.” He offered
the Dog Lord his arm, and after a moment Vaylo stepped forward to clasp it. “I
shall call back when I have more news. Expect me when the wind blows cold and
from the North.”
“That’s near every day in the clanholds.” Angus grinned. “Then I’ll be sure to pick an especially stormy one.“
Vaylo released his arm. “Aye, I’m sure you will.” He made himself wait
until the ranger was long gone before following him out of the tomb.
CHAPTER
The Beast Beneath the Ice
Raif pushed the sealskins from him and swung his feet onto the floor.
The band of ice sealing the door glowed blue and milky in the growing light.
The little soapstone lamp was dead, the whale oil in its chamber long congealed
to a wedge of fat. A fur of hoarfrost had grown on the ceiling above where he
had slept, each rising breath adding crystals to the mass. It was bitterly
cold. And he was alone.
Ash was gone.
He waited, but the panic didn’t come. He would go after her, that was
all. Wherever she was, wherever they had taken her, he would find her and bring
her back.
His head hurt when he moved his eyes, and the skin on his face was
tight and numb. Something dry and scaly coated his tongue, and he remembered
the oola’t the Listener had bid him drink.
Strong brew, and like a fool
I dran’t myself into oblivion. I should have known what Ar’t Veinsplitter
wanted. The truth was in his eyes.
Raif pressed his fingers into his face, trying to banish the numbness.
They’d had it all planned, the two Far Riders and the Ice Trapper. Make him
drink until he’d passed out and then steal away with Ash. From the look of the
hoarfrost over the bench, he’d slept longer than one night. . . and that meant
that Ash could be leagues away by now. No one could travel farther in white
weather than the Sull. But a clansman could always try.
Standing, Raif tested his body for aches. There seemed too many to
count, so he ignored them and concentrated on his thirst instead. A small
copper pot stood beside the lamp, its rim caked with caribou hairs and frozen
soot. Snapping surface ice with his knuckles, he discovered liquid water
beneath. The water was so cold it smoked from his mouth as he drank, and he
could feel it sliding down to his gut. The horn bowls and the stone warming
basin that had contained the oola’t were gone. The only evidence
that Ash had been here was the footsteps stamped in rime on the floor. How could I have let them take her?
A soft chuffing sound broke his thoughts. The raven. The Listener’s
great black bird stood to attention on its bone perch, its wings tucked and
folded, its sharp eyes upon Raif. Raif thought he would like to swipe it with
his fist, but seriously doubted if he was faster than the bird, and didn’t
think it would be dignified to miss. So he turned his back instead. He was sick
of ravens and their omens. And he didn’t want to think about his lore. Ash had
it, that was enough. The last time he’d seen the hard piece of bird ivory, it
had been suspended from twine at her throat.
Suddenly eager to be gone, Raif kicked the driftwood door. The ice seal
cracked, and the thick sea-salt-cured planking swung back to reveal a twilight
landscape of day-burning stars and ice. The sun was somewhere north of the
horizon, unseen, but sending out rays of red light that stretched across the
floes toward the sea. The air smelled of a coldness beyond frost. When Raif
exhaled his breath whitened so violently it seemed to ignite.
“Sila. Uta’t” The small hunched figure of the
Listener was heading toward him, leaning heavily on a staff of twisted horn as
he made his way across the cleared space at the center of the stone mounds. His
words sent a young girl racing off to do his bidding, and made two older
hunters who were hacking frozen meat by a cache hole stand alert.
Raif stepped forward to meet him. The man’s finery and tokens of power
were gone, replaced by grubby sealskin and stiff furs, yet he appeared no
smaller for it... and he did not look repentant.
Anger sparked within Raif. “Where have they taken Ash?”
Close now, the Listener shook off Raif’s question as if it were nothing
more than snow on his back. Coming to a halt, he repeated the words he had
spoken to Raif when first he saw him. “Mor Dra^a.”
Raif felt the same strange thrill, almost as if he were hearing a god
speak his name, yet he would not let himself be distracted. “The girl. Where is
she?”
The Listener crooked his mitted fist and turned. Slowly, he walked
away, heading for the hills and frost boils that rose sharply to the north of
the village. A low wind buffeted the snow and set the sea ice creaking. Raif
did not want to follow. He’d been trapped once in this place. How difficult
could a second entrapment be? He was a stranger here. An outsider, and without
warmth and food and knowledge of the land, he’d be a dead man within a day.
Reluctantly, he grabbed his Orrlsman’s cloak from the ground and
followed the Listener north. There were no choices at the edge of the world,
and a clansman would do well to remember that. The Stone Gods’ power was
stretched thin here; the earth and rock they lived in was buried deep beneath
the ice.
The Listener led him north across treacherous ground. Ice fog had
frozen the top snow to glass, and it shattered with tiny explosions underfoot.
The cold made Raif weary, and the bleak whiteness of the landscape drained the
willpower from him. It was hard to imagine journeying alone in this place.
Frost boils broke through the ground like shrunken volcanoes, their
stone rims too sharp and narrow to bear snow. The Listener stepped around them
with ease, prodding at drifts and suspect ice with his staff. When the land
began to rise he slowed his pace, yet Raif still found it difficult to keep up.
He could barely hide his relief when the old man came to a halt by the leeward
edge of a frost boil. Raif clambered up the slope to reach him.
“Turn around, Clansman. Tell me what you see.”
It took Raif a moment to realize that the Listener had spoken in Common
Tongue. How could this be? What had happened to the old man who had not
understood a word he’d said the other night, and needed Ark Veinsplitter as a translator?
Seeing Raif’s surprise, the Listener’s eyes glinted with satisfaction.
“Never assume you know your enemy until he is dead.”
Feeling heat come to his face, Raif said, “You can’t learn anything
from a corpse.”
“You can learn that only a dead man cannot surprise you.” Something
hard and ancient shifted behind the Listener’s eyes, and Raif knew he had been
told a truth worth remembering. Yet it didn’t mean he had to like him for it.
Turning to face the way they had come, Raif looked out across the Ice Trappers’
territory and the frozen sea. His gaze traveled to the stone grounds of the
village, then toward the shore, where a second village, built of wood and
whalebone and mounded earth, stood abandoned close to the ice.
“Our summer life,” said the Listener, following his gaze. “Soon it will
be eaten by the ice. A storm will move the sea, and the shore ice will break
its mooring and come crashing onto the beach. Much will be destroyed. So we
gathered our lamps and harnessed our dogs and took refuge in the old places.”
His eyes flicked to Raif. “It’s a foolish man who thinks he can stand in the
way of fate or moving ice.”
“How can you know this?”
“I listen while others sleep.” The Listener poked a mitted finger at the
remains of his left ear. “Gods and things older than gods whisper in the
darkness, telling the tale of what has been and what is to come. If you are
l.ucky you cannot hear them. You grow, you hunt, you enter a woman, and the
world you live in is a knowable place where a man can make his own way and find
his own death.
“If you are unlucky you learn more. Oh, men will honor you for it, send
the women with the best cuts of meat and their daughters with skins beaten till
they run through your fingers like grains of sand. And all the while they fear
you. And though they need the knowledge you bring them, they do not love you
for it. For you have heard whispers from the beginning of the world, and no man
can listen to those echoes and remain unchanged.”
The Listener rested his weight
on the yellow and twisted ivory of his staff. His face was dark and knowing,
lit by the farthest edge of the sun. When he spoke again there was anger in his
voice, and his breath crackled in air that was suddenly still. “Days darker
than night lie ahead; that is the truth here. That is the answer to your
question. The girl has gone and you cannot follow her. How can you track
someone in utter darkness? What good would it do to find her, when you can no
longer see her face?”
“Where have they taken her?” Raif heard the stubbornness in his voice.
He could not let this man’s words distract him. It was a trap, like the oolah^. Fine drink. Fine words. He just wished they
sounded less like the truth.
“Better ask why, not where, Clansman. Follow
me.” The Listener raised his staff to the hummock wall and began the final
ascent to the rim. He moved like a spider, light and skittering, stepping
sideways more often than forward. Raif envied his technique. The little
tribesman was full of surprises.
The frost boil was a crater of raised rock, forced upward by earth that
had expanded as it froze. Raif had seen its like in the Badlands. They were
good places to set camp by, and Tern said that clansmen used to fight duels in
their hollows, as they were reckoned a worthy place to die. When Raif gained
the rim he saw that the crater’s basin was filled with snow-crusted ice. Hard
black basalt ringed the core.
The Listener wagged his head toward the ice. “Drop down and scrape off
the snow.”
Raif had half a mind to tell the Listener to go to one of the nine
spiraling hells. He was getting tired of games. And he feared another trap.
“I am an old man,” snapped the Listener, “and the women tell me I must
save my strength for winter’s end. So if I had a mind to kill you I’d have done
so closer to home.” He bared tiny brown teeth. “Save myself the trouble of
hauling back your body for the dogs.”
Raif let out a breath. Why was it that all holymen thought they had a
right to taunt him? Inigar Stoop had been no different—but at least he was
clan. Laying a mitted hand on the crater’s rim, he vaulted onto the ice. He
landed hard, ten paces below the Listener, on a basin of ancient water that was
frozen to the core.
“Here. Use this.” The Listener dropped a flat-bladed knife onto the
ice. “Ulu. Woman’s knife. Should serve a
clansman well.”
Raif stabbed at the snow. The top layer was hard and brittle, but
softer grains lay beneath. The little knife, with its center tang, had been designed
for scraping skins, and it made good progress toward the ice. Raif decided it
wasn’t worth thinking about why he was being made to do this. The Listener
reminded him of one of those spiteful little imps who always guarded bridges in
crib tales; they’d never let you cross until they’d humbled you first.
Fumes rose from the ice as he worked, smoking blue in the clear air.
When he reached the final layer of snow, a chill went through him. Something
was casting a shadow on the ice. Turning, he looked up at the Listener and the
twilight sky beyond. Neither the sun nor the moon had risen high enough to cast
shadows. Yet it was there, a darkness upon the ice.
“Finish what you started, Clansman.” The Listener’s voice was thin and
hostile. “You wanted answers; dig for them.”
It occurred to Raif that he could kill the man standing above him. He
was armed now, and though the Listener possessed a wily sort of strength, he
would be no match for a fitter, younger man. A blow to the heart would finish him.
Not sure if he was comforted or unnerved by the thought, Raif turned back to
the ice and resumed scraping. The final layer of snow was hard and frozen,
stuck fast to the ice by frequent thaws. The knife blade bent as he worked, and
he could feel the sweat trickling between his shoulder blades as he put the
force of his body behind each blow. The area he was clearing was roughly
circular, the size of a man’s chest. When he’d chipped away enough of the
surface crust he set down the blade and brushed off the loosened snow.
Something deep inside his spine, the nerve that Tern said was the first
thing of a man’s to grow within the womb, sent him a warning of pure fear.
The darkness was not upon the ice, it was within it.
Instinctively, his hand rose to his waist. Only the tine containing his
measure of powdered guidestone wasn’t there. He experienced a moment of panic
as he slapped his hip, searching for the hardness of elk horn, before
remembering he had used his last portion on Ash. It had summoned the Sull for
her.
Oh gods.
Raif bit off his mitts and spat them away. Holding his hands to his
face, he blew warm air upon them. He was aware of the Listener standing above
him, perfectly still now, his breaths coming slow and silent. Raif put his
hands upon the ice. He felt the coldness leap toward his fingers, questing for
fluids to freeze. Quick ice fastened to his skin, but he pushed against it,
dragging his palms across the clearing, turning opaque ice transparent.
He saw the teeth first. A dark mouth gaped wide beneath the surface,
lips pulled back to reveal a jaw of broken teeth. Raif recoiled. Something lay
dead and frozen beneath him, something that could not be named a man.
Slowly, he returned his hands to the ice. He was shaking now, and there
was little heat in him, yet he had no choice but to carry on. He would not let
the Listener see his fear.
An eye socket was revealed next, the skin black and mummified, the
eyeball long exploded with the pressure of the ice. Evil was frozen in the
densely layered muscles of the face. The shadowy mass of the creature’s body
was buried deep beneath the surface, its shoulders and chest receding into
grotesquely twisted shapes. Raif told himself the distortions were due to
ripples in the ice; he almost believed it until the Listener spoke.
“ThaalSithu’t” the Listener said, his voice
soft with hunter’s awe. “From the War of Shadows. Xaluku of the Nine Fingers
killed it with a spear thrust to the heart.”
Raif struggled to find his voice. Beneath his fingers, the last portion
of darkness waited to be revealed beneath a crust of white snow. “How long has
it been here?”
“Five thousand years.”
Raif closed his eyes. The time seemed too vast to comprehend.
The Listener waited until Raif’s gaze returned to him before saying,
“There are many things more terrible hidden beneath the ice.”
/ don’t want to know, Raif thought. I just want to find Ash. “Men and kings, and weapons
they forged and cities they built and beasts they slew in the darkness. Ages
have passed and most think only the legends remain ... yet most never look
beyond the surface of the ice. All things that die fall upon the earth. The
musk ox is eaten by the wolf, the shored whale is plucked apart by gulls, the
warrior is found and burned or thrust deep within a tomb. Yet sometimes the ice
finds them before the hands of scavengers or men. Sometimes the ice claims them
and bears their bodies away.”
Raif pushed his hands across the snow, clearing the last of the crust.
He didn’t want to hear this. His fingers ached, and patches of skin around his
knuckles had started to yellow with frostbite. He wanted clan, and Drey and
Effie .. . and Ash. Yet even as he wanted them, he polished the ice before him
so he could see what lay beneath.
A hand, with thick black talons that ended in razor points, reached out
toward the light, its fist packed with ice. It was so close to the surface Raif
could see the fine dark hairs that ran along the skin. Suddenly cold, he said,
“Why are you showing me this?”
The Listener jabbed the point of his staff into the snow. “Because
telling the truth is seldom enough. A man must see it with his own eyes. The shadows
are rising, and beasts and taken men will walk this earth once more. Now is no
time to be chasing after things you cannot have. The girl has gone. The Sull
have taken her, and what the Sull take they never give back. She’s theirs now.
Let her be. Save your strength for the battles you can win. The Long Night has
come, and those who thrive in darkness must step forward to fight.” Raif felt
his face stiffen at the Listener’s words. He wanted to deny them, but the
little tribesman thrust out a hand to stay his reply. “Yes, Clansman. I know
who you are. I have seen the raven riding on your back. I have heard the sound
of footsteps at your heels. Death follows you. She named you. Watcher of the
Dead. Yes, you are cursed. But you are young and whole, and I am old and have
no ears and can find little sympathy for you. We cannot choose our skills. A
boy with a gift for nets and lines must fish. A man with a hunter’s eye must
hunt. If you’re born to the darkness, claim it. Find yourself a weapon and
fight.“
Raif pushed himself upright. He
was stirred, but didn’t want to be. This was not his world, this place of
shadows and darkness and beasts held in ice. He had no weapon, no training. How
could you banish shadows except with light? Kicking the mound of snow at his
feet, he scattered dry crystals across the clear and gleaming ice. “Why me?”
“Why not?” The Listener’s expression was hard. “Be glad of the gifts
you have been given. They will be needed, and there are many things worse in
life than being needed.”
Tired of the Listener’s scoldings, Raif forced the subject further.
“Why can I heart-kill, old man? Do your gods whisper the answer to that?”
A dangerous smile stretched skin on the Listener’s face. “Men stronger
and wiser than you have tried to force me to speak when I would not. None
suceeded. I speak only at my own choosing. And I choose to tell you this: Yours is a double-edged gift. You
can bring death, but you can also bring peace.”
Raif shook his head, frustrated. He would get nowhere with this.
And what did any of it matter with Ash gone? Where was she now? Had
they harmed her? Was she waiting for him to come?
He said simply, “Where are they taking her?”
The Listener watched him closely before answering. “They will carry her
east to the Heart of the Sull.”
“Then I’ll go east.”
“Men have died searching for the Heart of the Sull. The ways are long
and twisting, and there are forests where every tree looks the same. Some say
time itself is woven into the paths, but the Ice Trappers know little of that.
We know the legends, some of them. And I can tell you that although Bluddsmen
have been known to cross the borders of the Sull Racklands no clansman has ever
entered the Heart.”
“Then I’ll be the first.” The Listener seemed almost to smile. “You are
young, and your arrogance becomes you, so I won’t tell you all the reasons why
you are wrong. Know this. I have walked this land for a hundred years, from
Wrecking Sea to Endsea, from the Ice Horn to the Lake of Lost Men, and not once
in that time have I found the Sull ways. They ride for the mountains—I know
because I have watched them, even followed them in my youth—but as soon as they
pass into the foothills they cease to be. Now, your eyes may be good, but mine
were better, and I never discovered where they went.“
Raif bowed his head. He couldn’t argue with the Listener’s words; he
knew all about Sull ways. He wouldn’t be here if the two Far Riders hadn’t
deigned to leave a trail. Still. He could make his own way east. Softly, almost
to himself, he said, “I will find her.”
“What makes you think she wants to be found ?” Raif glanced up at the hard ice-tanned face of the Listener. What he saw made him wary. “She was taken against her will. Drugged, snatched away in the night, forced to ride east to gods know where. Of course she wants to be found.”
The Listener tapped snow from the tip of his staff. “Oolal{ is bitter and stringy, and stinks like dead fish.
Only men are fool enough to drink it.“
Again, Raif felt a stab of wariness. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Your friend was not drugged. She only took one sip of the oola’t.
She went of her own free will.“
“No.”
“They did not force her. She is the One with Reaching Arms. She knew
she had to go.“
Raif shook his head savagely. She wouldn’t leave him without saying a
word, not after all they’d been through. Not after the Cavern of Black Ice. He
said coldly, “You lie, old man.”
The Listener nodded. “Often, about many things. The kind of truths I
know destroy men. Mothers do not want to know that the child they carry will be
born dead, or that their sons will die before they do, and their husbands will
be maimed during the hunt. You cannot be a Listener without knowing how to
lie.” As he spoke, the old man reached into the soft inner furs that lay
beneath his sealskins and pulled something out. “But to you I speak the truth.”
Opening his fist, the Listener let something small and dark fall upon
the ice. “She asked me to return this.”
Raif stared at the object by his feet. Black and hooked, as long as a
child’s finger, with a hole bored through the bridge for threading string.
Raven lore. Here it is, Raif
Sevrance. One day you may be glad of it. No matter how hard he tried to lose it, it always
came back.
It changed everything, and both he and the Listener knew it.
“No.”
Quite suddenly he remembered the single tear in Ash’s eye. She had
known then that she was leaving him. Calmly, because there was nothing else to do,
Raif bent and picked up his lore. It felt thin and brittle, like something he
could crush in his fist. Instead he pulled a tie from the Orrl cloak around his
shoulders and fastened the lore to his throat. It was his and he would wear
it... and he would not think of what Ash had done.
“She made her choice,” the Listener said. “Now it’s time you made
yours.”
Raif found himself looking at the ice, at the dark and monstrous shape
rippling beneath him. Guard
yourself, she
had said, her last words. How could he do that when the things that cut the
deepest couldn’t be fought? After a moment he crossed to the crater wall and
began to pull himself up. His choice was made.
H A P T E R
Into the Fire
Effie Sevrance crouched behind the great copper distilling vat and
watched as Gat Murdock sampled the low wines. The low wines were the halfway
point in the distillation, Longhead said; too weak to be named a full malt, but
strong enough to send a man to his knees if he sampled too often and too long.
Effie wished Gat Murdock would drop to his knees .. . soon. It was hot and dark in the distilling well, and
vapors bubbling from the cauldron made everything clammy and damp. Effie could
feel the heavy wool of her dress sticking to her back like wet oats. Stupid thing. Why hadn’t she thought to wear her linen shift
instead ?
Gat Murdock closed the spill hole on the bell-shaped vat and held his
final sample up to the lamp. The seaglass cup glowed green, revealing liquid
still cloudy with dregs. Effie willed him to swallow and be done. She was on a
mission for Bullhammer and Grim Shank, and she didn’t want to disappoint them.
They’d chosen her to brew the iron juice. There
were a score of boys in the roundhouse, all doing nothing more than waiting
around the Great Hearth each day in the hope of sanding the rust from a
hammerman’s chains or mending the shearling that couched the hammer itself. Yet
when it came to the matter of the stain for the hammermen’s teeth, Bull-
hammer had decided that Effie Sevrance would do a better, quieter job
than every one of them.
“Effie’s your girl,” Bitty Shank had said to his older brother Grim,
last night as they stood in the dry and dusty shadows of the stable block.
“She’s clever with her hands, knows how to keep a secret, and she’s sister to a
hammerman herself.” Bullhammer and Grim had nodded gravely, the dim glow from
the safe lamp sparking strangely off their tarnished plate. A hammerman’s
sister was good enough for them.
Iron juice, Bullhammer had explained, was as black as the Stone Gods’
tears and only a little less likely to kill you. It had to be strong enough to
stain a hammerman’s teeth, and keep them good and black for a season. “It’s no
good using lampblack or ashes—the stain barely takes for a week. And as soon as
a man sets to frothing at the mouth his spittle’s likely to run black.” Effie
had nodded in understanding. If you were going to stain your teeth so you
looked fierce in battle then it would be better if the stain didn’t wash off
halfway through. Else you might end up looking foolish instead.
The problem was that Blackhail hammermen hadn’t stained their teeth
since Mad Gregor had led three hundred to their death in the fast-rising waters
of the Flow. All but a dozen of their number had been hammermen. Their bodies
had been dragged downstream b) the spring rush, across the rocky shallows known
as Dead Man‘: Ribs and over the towering, misty drop of Moon Falls. Effie hac
heard it said that the river rock had peeled the flesh from their bones and the
only things left for the widows to wrap were white skull with grinning black
teeth.
Effie frowned. It seemed to her that there were far too many clai
stories involving skulls and violent deaths. Still, it was interestin; how afterward no Blackhail hammerman
would stain his teeth fo fear of riling the gods, and the recipe for iron juice
had been lost.
“Sour as piss,” Gat Murdock pronounced to the now-empty sam pling cup.
“Good enough for a tied clansman—or his wife.” Satis fied, he upended the cup
onto a basswood rack and spat to clean h mouth. Like many older clansmen he was
missing fingers, yet r moved no slower for it, and sealed the taps and dimmed
the lamp ;
quick as if he had ten fingers, not eight. Effie watched as he moved to
leave then stopped himself short of the stair. Turning to face the very corner
that concealed her, he sent his gaze darting this way and that, checking if he
were being watched. Effie held her breath, imagining herself still as the very
stone the well was built from.
Long seconds passed before the clansman’s pale eyes passed her by.
Satisfied that no one was looking, Gat Murdock reached for the high shelf where
Anwyn Bird kept her twenty-year malt, and slipped one of the precious
wax-sealed flasks under his coat. Effie forgot she was being still as a stone
and let her mouth fall open in amazement. Anwyn’s twenty-year malt! Wasn’t
there a curse upon it? Anwyn swore that any clansman who drank her malt without
her blessing would find himself short of his man parts within a week. Effie
closed her mouth. She had learned all about man parts from Letty Shank. Any man
who lost them was bound to be sorely displeased.
Uttering a small grunt of satisfaction, Gat Murdock put his foot to the
stair and began the short climb from the well. Effie forced herself to listen
for the sound of his feet treading the floor above before emerging from her
place behind the vat.
Her arm was stiff and she rubbed it gently as she squeezed past copper
pipes. Other parts hurt too; places where Cutty Moss’ knife had sunk deep,
opening ragged hard-to-heal wounds that still wept water at night. She wouldn’t
think about those now, though. She was a clanswoman of nearly nine winters, and
men returning from the clanwars had worse hurts to bear.
She just wished Cutty’s knife had spared her face. Effie stopped her
treacherous hand from rising to touch her cheek. Wouldn’t have been a beauty even
without the scars, Mace Blackfiail said so.
Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t stop the memory of the day in
the Oldwood from forming in her head. It was just there, all of a sudden. Mace
on top of Raina, forcing her down into the snow. Effie wished very hard she
hadn’t seen them. What Mace had done was a bad thing, but when she tried to
tell that to her brother Drey he hadn’t understood. Instead he’d gone straight
to Mace to demand an explanation . . . and somehow Mace had twisted it all
around and made it seem as if she, Effie Sevrance, had made a childish mis The
clan chief had caused her a bit of trouble after that, sendin Cutty Moss to
harm her with his knife.
Effie attempted a scowl that very nearly worked. Swiftly, scanned her
brain for something to distract her. Clan Gray, that it! She was grateful she
hadn’t been born into that small, cursed c Half the newborns died within a
week, and the rest were held t disformed.
Unsure if that had actually helped, Effie quickly turned thoughts back
to iron juice. She needed good strong liquor to pr the potion. Anwyn’s
twenty-year malt was too mellow—and cursed. She needed something that could
burn a man’s gums, and p sibly his tooth enamel as well. Thoughtful, she
scanned the flasks the highest shelf. Will Hawk’s Dhooneshine in its odd
sparkly fk stood beside Dagro Blackhail’s Chief’s Malt, and Shor Gormali
Gutbreaker with its crossed swords burned into the wood. So ma dead men’s
brews. Then she saw it, in the darkest corner, its leath flask hairy with
cobwebs, its wood stopper near forced-out with a| Tem Sevrance’s Special Brew.
Da must have distilled it himself.
It was late and the roundhouse had grown quiet and Effie kne she’d
better hurry, yet she couldn’t seem to stop herself from read ing for Da’s
flask. It smelled like him, leathery and horsy. And whe she pulled the stopper
out she nearly laughed. This would do the jot It surely
couldn’t kill anyone, not after this long, and Da had been ;
hammerman himself. He’d help her with blackening his compan ions’
teeth.
Something behind Effie’s eyes began to hurt, and she recorked the flask
with a hard thump and began the short climb from the well.
It was an odd night in the roundhouse, dark and still with only half
the torches lit in preparation for the Feast of Breaking. It had seemed like a
good idea to gather the ingredients for the iron juice tonight, for few liked
to travel the halls on the night the Stone Gods walked the earth. Now, though,
as she wound her way through the roundhouse’s crumbling lower reaches, she
began to feel little prickles of unease. Her lore began to cool against her
skin.
The small granite stone was suspended around her neck once more,
heavy as a new-laid egg. Inigar Stoop had found it, clutched in a severed
hand. It had been the clan guide’s job to gather the remains of Cutty and Nelly
Moss. Back bent double against the wind, wicker basket in hand, he had pried
their frozen flesh from the snow. Effie had heard it whispered that nothing
whole remained, that the dogs had eaten Nelly’s eyes and tongue, and torn out
Cutty’s spleen. She supposed she was lucky no dog had swallowed her lore.
Inigar would not let her wear it at first. Instead he had taken the lore to the
guidehouse, where he’d spoken words of power over it, and then laid it atop the
guidestone, where it could draw strength and be renewed.
It felt different now. Older. Harder. Inigar said lores changed and
grew with their wearers; so did that mean she was older and harder too?
Nearing the oil-blackened stair that spiraled up to the clan forge,
Effie slowed her pace. Normally she liked this part of the roundhouse, with its
low ceilings and narrow ways. It was darker than normal, but she didn’t mind
that. No Sevrance had ever been afraid of the dark. Still. There was something
else , . . something watchful and waiting. And her lore didn’t move, didn’t
push, but something inside it shifted as if a drop of liquid mercury had
flash-hardened in its core. She stopped. Listened. Almost she heard something,
but it was probably just a fancy. You couldn’t hear the sound of a man holding his breath.
Go bact{, Effie, said a little voice inside her. Run to your room and
locf{ the door.
No. She was on a mission for Bullhammer and Grim Shank. And she
wouldn’t bolt like a rabbit every time she was afraid. Besides, things were
different now she was armed. Bitty Shank had given her a knife. A maiden’s
helper, he called it. “As nice a piece of flint as you’ll find strapped to a
goodwife’s thigh.” He taught her how to use it, too. It wasn’t like stabbing
someone with a sword. A flint knife’s strength was in its blade, not its tip,
and unless you fancied the tip breaking off as soon as you hit bone it was
wiser to slash than stab. Effie had practiced slashing moldy and worm-holed
sheepskins in the tannery, reducing the thick useless ram’s hides to strips.
The knife’s edge had been knapped to a sharpness beyond steel, so thin in parts
that light shone through the stone. It was spoils, Bitty said, seized from a
group of Ille Glaive trappers caught setting wires on Ganmiddich soil.
Effie touched her waist, feeling for the smooth horn sheath that held
her knife. She loved Bitty Shank. He and his brothers would hear no talk of her
being a witch.
Careful to let her thoughts go no farther, Effie started up the stair.
All was quiet except for the groaning of ancient timbers and stone. Normally
the clan forge was kept busy through the night, and although Brog Widdie,
master smith and exiled Dhoonesman, would allow no man without an oath to work
with hot iron, unsworn smiths and wireworkers would be busy socketing
arrowheads and riveting coats of mail.
Tonight was different, though. The Eve of Breaking. All clansmen, sworn
and unsworn, were gathered close around the Great Hearth, chanting the old
songs. The Breaking was sacred to the Stone Gods. If they were not given their
due this night they might send a frost so hard and so long that ice would grow
in the heart of all guidestones, and the clanholds would shatter to dust.
Castlemilk’s guidestone had taken the frost nearly two thousand years earlier,
and that ancient and venerable clan—which had once been great enough to
challenge Dhoone to the kingship—had been in decline ever since. Many tales of
the clanholds had been lost, even to Withy and Wellhouse, which kept the
histories, but the story of the Milkstone shattering, of how the Milkwives
gathered the broken shards in their skirts and carried them to a place their
menfolk would never know, sent chills down every clansman’s spine. All knew
that if the women hadn’t hidden the fragments the men would have used them to
cut out their own hearts.
Effie touched her little pouch of powdered guidestone, giving the Stone
Gods their due. Too much bad stuff had already happened to Blackhail. The clan
chief, Dagro, was dead, Da was dead: both killed in the Badlands by Bludd
raiders. Her brother Raif had been branded a traitor and forced to leave. Now
the only family she had left was Drey . . . and she didn’t think it would hurt
to touch her pouch a second time and ask the Stone Gods to keep him safe.
Beneath her feet the stone steps were slippery, greased by graphite and
calf’s-brain oil from the smiths’ feet. The air grew warm and dry, thick with
the stench of sweat and sulfur and smelted ore. Ahead, the great lead-plated
doors were drawn closed. Water casks stowed to either side of the threshold
told of the clan’s great fear of fire. The forge bulged out from the north face
of the roundhouse, shielded from the core stonework by a dark, airless tunnel
called the Dry Run. The main entrance to the forge was cut from the exterior
north wall, a towering arch as tall as two men, guarded by doors force-hardened
with saltwater, and studded with steel heads to turn blades. A clan’s forge was
its wealth and its strength. Raw metals were stored here, swords and arrowheads
were forged here, and war spoils awaiting refiring and refitting were piled in
great stacks along the walls.
Effie walked the length of the Dry Run then put her hand to the lead
door. It was neither locked nor bolted—she hadn’t expected it to be—and half a
ton of wood swung easily on hinges that Brog Wid-die had tooled himself. The
orange glow of the furnace lit the cavernous space of the forge. A circle of
anvils dominated the room; horned and blocked and mouseholed, they sent strange
shadows to flicker at Effie’s feet. Tempering baths filled with brine and
refined tallow stood warming close to the furnace. Beyond them lay the
worktables and work blocks piled with striking hammers and bow tongs and other
vicious-looking tools. Beyond those lay the stores: tubs of oil and slack and
pig’s blood, sacks of charcoal, sand and raw ore. Iron rods were stacked as
carefully as if they were gold, and cords of quartered lumber were piled like a
bonfire to the rafters.
Effie took a step forward, hesitated, then called softly, “Message for
Brog Widdie.” No one answered. Something in the far corner, next to the
redsmith bench where Mungo Kale worked copper and bronze, rustled and then was
still. Rat after tallow, she thought, feeling braver by
the minute. Letty Shank and Florrie Horn might scream at the very thought of
rodents, but Effie could find nothing within her that was afraid of things so
small. Quietly, she crossed the circle of anvils and headed toward the stores.
One of the tallow baths had claimed a rat. As the temperature from the furnace
dropped and the tallow congealed, the rodent had been set in fat. Tomorrow
morning one of the Scarpemen would likely scoop it up, roast it in the furnace,
and eat it. Everyone knew Scarpes feasted on rats.
As she passed one of the nail-punching benches, she paused to empty a
supply of nails from a brass bowl. As the little iron spikes tumbled onto the
wood she thought she heard something creak in the Dry Run behind her, but when
she turned to look all was still. Probably just a beam settling, yet she moved
a little quicker because of it.
The sacks of charcoal were easy to identify, as the pallet they were
set upon was furry with soot. The charcoal burner’s mark was a tree above a
flame; Effie noticed it as she unsheathed her knife and set flint to the hemp.
The sack split easily and a thick stream of charcoal spilled to the floor. She
moved quickly to catch the fine powder in the bowl, marveling at the richness
of the charcoal. .. surely the darkest, blackest thing that ever was. If this
didn’t stain the hammermen’s teeth then she might as well try to bottle the
night sky, for nothing else was darker.
When the bowl was half full she drew it back and let the sack spill
until it found its level. Her lore shifted uneasily against her skin, but she
was too excited to pay heed. What if she tested a potion now? Did iron juice
need iron? Or was it just a name? Yes, she probably needed acid to etch the
charcoal into the hammermen’s teeth, but it wouldn’t hurt to try without it
first.. . and it might save somebody’s gums. And, she thought, becoming even more excited, I’ll test it on one of the shanl^shounds tonight.
Old Scratch won’t mind. His teeth are so yellow and chipped that it really
might be an improvement.
Grinning at the thought of a dog with black-stained teeth, Effie set
down her knife. She pulled out Da’s flask, uncorked it, and then poured half its
measure into the bowl. Crouching by the charcoal sacks, she stirred the mixture
with a chip of wood she found on the floor. Da’s special brew darkened in an
instant, and a fine black dust rose from the bowl like the opposite of steam.
As she stirred she had visions of rank upon rank of Blackhail hammermen, armed
and mounted, their hammer chains rattling in a quickening wind, their lips
pulled back to reveal night-black teeth. Drey would be one of them too. And
perhaps if she made the iron juice dark enough and he looked fierce enough he
wouldn’t have to fight. Perhaps the Blud-dsmen would turn and flee rather than
raise their axes against him. The men seemed to come from nowhere. A harsh cry
raised Effie’s head, a lead door was sent cracking against a wall, and then
clansmen burst into the forge. Breathing hard, glittering with drawn steel,
they moved to circle the room. Effie had once witnessed a group of hunters
circling a wounded boar before a kill, and she recognized the same nervous
excitement; the sucked-in cheeks and wet lips. The fear of drawing too close to
their prey. “Stay your ground, witch.”
Effie recognized the speaker as Stanner Hawk, brother to Will and uncle
to Bron, who had both been slain in the snow outside of Duff’s. Tall and pale
like his brother, Stanner bore no love for anyone bearing the Sevrance name.
Something hardened within Effie as he looked upon her. Raif had fought to save
the lives of Will and Bron, yet that one fact had been twisted and ground down,
and now all that could be remembered about the night outside of Duffs was that
Raif Sevrance had spoken out against his clan. And been branded a traitor for
life.
Effie raised her chin. This was a coward before her. They all were. Two
dozen men to capture an unblooded girl. They didn’t even have the jaw to do it
in full daylight on open ground; instead they had watched and sneaked and
waited. Like weasels after eggs.
There was not a hammerman amongst them. No man who bore a hammer would
raise a hand to harm his own. Instead there were Mace Blackhail’s cronies: old
and hard Turby Flapp bearing a sword so badly weighted he couldn’t keep the
point off the floor, lean and dark Craw Bannering clad in the cured hides and
swan feathers of Clan Harkness, known as the Half Clan, his long tattooed
fingers resting easily on a blade. The longswordsmen Arlan Perch and Ichor Roe
moved with practiced stealth to take positions behind Effie’s back. Many of the
men were older Hailsmen, too long cooped up in a roundhouse at war and eager for
any kind of blood.
And then there were the Scarpemen. Uriah Scarpe and Wracker Fox and
others she did not know. Lean men, dressed in the black leatherwork and weasel
pelts of Scarpe, watching her as if they had something to fear. They really believe I’m a witch. The thought came quickly and
with it another: This trap
was carefully set.
No Shanks or hammermen had been told, no one who was friend to Drey.
“Stand up, witch.” Stanner Hawk’s voice was cold, and for the first
time Effie wondered if he had something more than capture on his mind. With his
sword fist he made a gesture to Craw Bannering. The dark bowman moved toward
the woodstack and selected a cord of wood.
“I said stand up, witch.” Stanner Hawk
lashed out with his foot, sending a tub of brine crashing to the floor.
Saltwater splashed Effie’s face.
Effie felt the calm leaving her. Her lore began to twitch against her
skin, and she noticed sharp-eyed Uriah Scarpe glance at the wool at her throat.
Looking away from him, her gaze came to rest on her flint knife, there on the
stone floor beside the pallet, only three paces away from her foot. Uriah
Scarpe was still watching her, so she quickly turned her gaze. Slowly she rose
to standing, setting the bowl of iron juice on the floor.
Craw Bannering had drawn on the thick cowhide gloves of a hot
metalworker. The cord of wood now lay unbound beside the furnace, and the
yearman was using both hands to pull back the cast-iron door that guarded the
charging hole. Heat from the furnace leapt into the room as air was sucked into
the hole. Craw fed the fire below it, choosing only the driest, densest wood.
Old men shifted their weights, whether with unease or excitement Effie
didn’t know. One of the Scarpemen said, “Pump the bellows, Crawman.”
Stanner Hawk’s eyes glinted orange in the growing blaze. “You are
charged with being a witch, Effie Sevrance. Confess now and receive the swift
judgment of my blade.”
Someone at her back whispered, “It’ll be a mercy for you, lass, in the
end.”
Twenty-four pairs of eyes
watched her. Turby Flapp took a hand from his poorly made sword to wipe the
saliva off his lips. Effie looked at every one of them, Hailsmen and Scarpemen
and strangers alike. She was shaking, and she couldn’t seem to speak, so all
she could do to show her innocence was look them in their faces and meet their
eyes. One or two had the decency to look away. Arlan Perch found something to
study on the knuckleguard of his sword.
“Speak, witch.” Stanner Hawk was playing to the room now, his back
turned toward her as he walked the circle of anvils. “I’ll hear something from
you before I put your feet to the fire.”
Effie heard the belch of popping mud bubbles as the mud trough
surrounding the furnace began to boil. Ridiculously, she thought of the
shankshounds. They made sounds like that whenever they were given greens
instead of meat. Thoughts of shankshounds helped, and she suddenly found her
voice. “Stanner Hawk, my da said you once cheated him out of a kill, swapping
his spear for yours so you could claim the she-bear as your own. My da never
lied, and nor will 1.1 am not a witch. The shankshounds saved me out of love
and loyalty, not sorcery. They’d do the same for their master Orwin Shank, just
as Mace Blackhail’s hellhounds would save him.”
Several grunts of agreement echoed around the forge. Many men here kept
hounds, and all took pride in their dogs’ fierceness and loyalty.
Stanner Hawk’s face had lost what little color it had been blessed
with. Two points of anger burned in his eyes, and Effie knew she had made a
mistake attacking his honor. He would see her burned for it.
In three quick strides he was before her, the point of his sword
pressing against the plump flesh of her lower lip. “Open your mouth, witch. Let
me see the tongue that lies so easily. I’d heard witches could charm the sword
from a man’s hand, but I never thought to see such a thing myself.” His last
words were directed at the gathered clansmen, and to a man they straightened
and raised their swords. No clever-speaking witch was going to fool them.
“Your father was a good man, Effie Sevrance,” cried hard-eyed Turby
Flapp. “You do him a disservice by defending yourself at his expense. What man
here hasn’t clashed with another over kills? It’s not something you bring home
to the women. Let them tend to their traps, not the hunt.”
Cries of “Aye!” circled the room. Turby Flapp
was old and shak-
ing, yet Effie could still see the triumph in his eyes. He’d insulted
her and her father, and fired the men with righteous rage.
Mace Blackhail had chosen well.
Oh, she knew why he wasn’t here, in this room. His hands must be seen
to be clean. When Drey came to him, as Drey certainly would, Mace
could say, Drey,
if I’d been there I would have stopped it. I was holding vigil around the Great
Hearth. I had no idea what these men would do.
Effie felt the bite of Stanner’s sword as it split her lip, sending a
line of blood trickling down her chin. Immediately a shift took place in the
room. Breaths came hard and fast as sweating palms made it necessary to alter
grips. Blood had been spilled. All hope of mercy was lost.
Stanner Hawk’s mouth tightened in satisfaction, and with a kingly
gesture he withdrew his sword. “Wracker,” he said to one of the Scarpe
swordsmen. “Feed the hound through the hole.”
Wracker Fox was powerful in the way Shor Gormalin had been powerful;
small and lean and so swift to movement that it was like watching a hare bolt
from a set. In an instant he was gone from the forge. What seemed like seconds
later he was back, something wrapped in a blanket held fast against his chest.
Effie thought her heart would stop when she heard the first frightened
whimper. They had caught and bound one of the shankshounds.
Wracker Fox dropped the dog onto the floor to free it from the blanket.
The dog’s legs and snout had been tightly hobbled with tarred rope, and the
creature landed badly on its side. Effie flinched. It was Old Scratch, the
gentle, dignified elder of the pack. Wounds around his eyes and jaw told he
hadn’t been taken without a fight.
Stanner Hawk said, “Put him in feet first, like we will the girl.”
A sound left Effie’s throat, a sound so soft and powerless that no man
in the room paid it heed ... but it was enough for Old Scratch to hear her and
know that she was there. Slowly and at great cost, he turned his large amber
eyes upon her.
Never, ever, if she lived for a thousand years would Effie Sevrance
forget that look. Terror and love touched her with such force it was as if she
were inside the dog’s head. Suddenly it was hard to breathe. The shankshounds
had saved her life.
“Stop,” she murmured to Stanner Hawk. “Set the dog free and I’ll give
you what you want.”
Stanner ran a pale hand over his dark beard, and then exchanged a small
satisfied glance with Turby Flapp. Turning his back on her once more, he said,
“So you admit you are a witch as charged. And that you aided Clan Bludd in the
attack upon Dagro Blackhail in the Badlands, and the assassination of Shor
Gormalin in the Wedge. You admit also that you helped your brother Raif
Sevrance desert this clan, and heard him confess that cowardice drove him from
the ambush on the Bluddroad. Lastly you confess that you bewitched Orwin
Shank’s hounds, and forced them to attack an innocent man and woman for no
other reason that you feared they knew you for a witch.” Stanner Hawk was
suddenly there, in front of her face, his smile so cold it chilled her. “Do you
admit these sins, Effie Sevrance, before the faces of nine gods?”
Da, I
didn’t do them.
Effie looked at Old Scratch, then quickly looked away. She found she couldn’t
face the dog and lie. Stanner Hawk was something different and she tilted her
chin and raised her gaze and looked him full in the eye. “I admit I am a witch
before the faces of nine gods.”
Breath was sucked in around the room. Some of the older clansmen
touched their tines. One man, ancient and stoop-backed, Ezan-der Straw, began
to name the nine gods. Ganolith,
Hammada, lone, Loss, Uthred, Oban, Larannyde, Malweg, Behathmus.
Flames from the furnace leapt high, sending waves of heat switching
wildly around the room. The mud in the trough boiled madly, slapping and
sucking as the water within it turned to steam. Stanner Hawk’s pale lips
twitched. His knuckles were white where they curled around his sword. Still
holding Effie’s gaze he said, “Craw, send the dog to the fire.”
“No,” she breathed. Then louder, “NO!”
“Yes,” he hissed. “I make no covenants with a witch.”
“But. . . you said. The dog . . .”
Turby Flapp stepped forward and slapped her face. “Hush, girl. ‘Chant
us no more with your lies.”
Frantic with terror and helplessness, Effie didn’t feel the pain of the
blow. She couldn’t find the words to save Old Scratch. They said. . . they said. . . Old Scratch isn’t used
to the heat. He’s afraid of lit candles. . . I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Da. Didn’t
have the words.
Craw Bannering hefted the dog against his chest. Air venting from the
charging hole shimmered with heat. The fire crackled and roared, releasing
showers of white-hot sparks. Twenty-four men fell silent. No one except the
bowman moved. The smith’s gloves reach as high as Craw’s upper arms, protecting
him from the flames as he fed the dog to the furnace.
The heat was so great in the smelting chamber that fire ignited from
dry air. Old Scratch screamed, thrashing and jerking, his eyes wide with terror
as he fought to buck himself free. When the first flames found his flesh he let
out a terrible moan. Effie watched, waited, knowing the dog’s gaze would come
to her, determined in every part of her that she would not look away.
Old Scratch’s eyes were dimming when they found her, yet the same thing
she had seen before was there. Faith. He thought she could save him. Even now.
Effie felt tears run down her face as the last of the dog went to the
fire. Something hard and terrible was growing within her, and she felt the
first stirrings of rage. Eyes darting, she studied the men who formed a circle
around her. Their attention was given fully to the thrashing thing alive with
flames. Slowly, slowly, she moved two paces to the side, put her foot on
Bitty’s flint knife, and sent a hand down her leg to scratch her knee. In an
instant the knife was hers. Straightening, she checked the two Hailsmen behind
her; their gazes hadn’t shifted from the smelting chamber.
As the smell of singed fur and roasting meat filled the room, Effie
found her grip on the blade. Men were shifting now, rubbing their eyes as if
woken from a dream. When Stanner Hawk turned to face her she was ready.
“Witch. May the fire go no gentler on you.” He motioned to the two
Scarpemen, Uriah Scarpe and Wracker Fox. “Seize and bind her. Let her go awake
and repentant to the flames.”
As the two Scarpemen moved to flank her, Effie showed her knife.
Sweeping the blade in a circle before her, she spoke in a shaky voice. “Stay
back. You’ll not find me as defenseless as a dog.”
Someone close to the door snorted. Uriah Scarpe stretched thin weasel
lips to a smirk. Wracker Fox danced back in mock fright. “Well, well, my little
Blackhail hellcat. I see you’ve a fancy for a fight.” Stanner Hawk wasn’t
amused. “Burn her and be done.”
“Aye,” added Turby Flapp. “Allow her no chance to do more witchery this night.”
Effie felt her face burn. Stupid, stupid. How could she have thought they’d be afraid of a girl with a stone
knife? That was when she saw Uriah Scarpe’s gaze return to her lore. The
granite stone was twitching with force, moving the wool fabric of her dress.
She watched fear enlarge the Scarpeman’s pupils. .. and then she knew what she
must do.
Remember
they thin’t I’m a witch.
Still holding the knife firm, she swept down and grabbed the bowl of
iron juice from the floor. Before any clansman had chance to react she dipped
the blade of her knife into the swirling fluid. A thousand pores in the flint
soaked up the black. The blade emerged glistening and smoking, like a piece of
frozen night. Almost when she saw it she felt afraid herself, for the look of
it stirred memories within her that she did not know she had. But then Da’s
smell was upon it; the smell of barley too old and honey nearly off and peat
that had been burned, not smoked. It gave her strength and heart, and when she
spoke all fear was gone.
“This,” she said holding up the coated blade for all to see, “is dark
magic I distilled myself. One drop upon your skin and your soul is mine. Your
teeth will rot and your sword hands will wither, and your man seed will come
out black.” She paused, sending a silent prayer of thanks to Letty Shank for
inspiring that particular horror, and then
carried on, imagining Anwyn Bird in a rage over something to help her voice
come out right. “If you value your lives you’d best let me walk free from this
place, or I swear I’ll cast this bowl down and splash every one of you, and
take your souls with me to hell.“
Silence. Someone coughed. Turby Flapp went to speak then was still. Some
of the younger men began to edge back. Uriah Scarpe brought his swordhand down
to protect his man parts. Effie waited, knife in hand, bowl tucked into the
crook of her arm . . . and stared every one of them down.
Stanner Hawk’s face was a tight mask. Of the twenty-four men in the
room he was the only one who knew she was no witch. She saw him weigh all
possible outcomes. Call her a trickster and everything that had taken place
here was voided. She was either witch or trickster; she could not be both. To
speak up would be to contradict himself. And then there was the likely
possibility that they’d pay him no heed. Real fear lived in this room; if Effie
could see that so could he.
In the end his decision was taken for him. Wracker Fox stepped away from
her, saying to Stanner, “You take care of the Hailish bitch.
I’m not going to touch her.” As soon as he spoke, murmurs of agreement passed
through the room, and the four men securing the doorway moved aside. Other
clansmen stirred and within moments a path had cleared toward the door.
Something terrible must have been showing on her face when she walked
the clearing, for not one of them would meet her eye. Turby Flapp let his
poorly weighted sword clatter to the floor and grabbed the tine containing his
measure of powdered guidestone with both hands. The Scarpemen made gestures she
did not recognize, strange wardings in the shape of poison pines. When she
passed Stanner Hawk he whispered, “Never sleep in this roundhouse again, Effie
Sevrance, else my knife will find you the moment you shut your eyes.”
She said nothing in reply. She did not trust herself to speak.
Everything in her was intent on making it toward the door. Thoughts of Old
Scratch kept her hands steady and made her eyes blaze with their own kind of
fire.
Later she could remember nothing of the journey along the Dry Run and
out of the roundhouse. Two thoughts only held her: Old Scratch’s faith that she
could save him, and the dull and terrible certainty that the Stone Gods would send
ice into the heart of the Hailstone for the wrongs done by clansmen this night.
CHAPTER
Becoming Sull
They entered the mountain on the fourth day, and although it was
virtually impossible to tell in which direction they moved, Ash had a feeling
they were no longer traveling east.
“We head east to the Racklands then south to the Heart” had been all
Ark Veinsplitter had said about the journey. She had not questioned him. It had
been the morning of their departure, when the sun barely showed itself on the
eastern horizon and starlight lit the ice and turned it blue. There had been no
sleep for her the night before in the Listener’s ground, just terrible hours of
wakefulness, knowing that she would soon leave Raif, and knowing also that she
could not explain why. Speak to him of it and she would have been undone. He
would have argued, persuaded, changed her mind. And he would have done it
because he loved her. And it would have been a mistake.
She was Sull now; their battles were hers. Her flesh was rakhar dan, reachflesh. And it owed a debt for what it had
done.
She could not bring Raif with her on this journey. The Sull Far Riders
would not have it; they had no love for the man they called the Clansman. Yet
their reasons were not her reasons. She would not have
Raif because he had already done enough, risked enough, and she was traveling
into darkness ... and she would travel that road alone. She would not endanger
him. It was as simple and as complicated at that.
It was the fact that she had not said goodbye that hurt the most. She
had deceived him, knowing full well what the Far Riders intended and aiding
them in their plans to take her. Raif Sevrance had trusted her, and in
repayment she had encouraged him to drink while she stayed sober, and then
sneaked away in the night like a thief.
“You’re not alone in
this, Ash March”
Ash breathed in hard, remembering Raif’s oath. He had sworn to protect her when
all others were intent on causing her harm. She would never forget that night
in Ille Glaive, when Heritas Cant had revealed to her that she was a Reach.
Raif was the only one present who saw her as a person, not a resource to be
mined like gold.
“Enough” he had said to them, sending his
chair cracking against the wall. Heritas Cant had been speaking about her
future with relish, dwelling on the terrible harm that would befall her if she
did not release the power that was building within her. That was when she
realized just how deeply Raif’s feelings ran: when she saw he couldn’t bear to
hear about the possibility of her death.
All that night he had guarded her, ready to come to her defense. When
the time came for Heritas Cant to set wards around her body, Raif had watched
him like a hawk. Cant was a stranger, an acquaintance of his uncle Angus Lok,
and Raif had not trusted him with her safety. He had refused to leave her side
all night.
Oh, Raif, what have I done?
She knew he could not follow her. Ark Veinsplitter had only contempt
for clannish tracking. “Clansmen see only what is there. They do not see what
has been. Like children they look only at their feet. Does an eagle leave
footprints, or a squirrel as it leaps from tree to tree? No. They leave trails
that must be smelled and tasted and heard. Clansmen track with one sense, the
Sull use five.”
Ash slowed for a moment, weariness suddenly weighing her down. He cannot tracf^ me. The thought almost broke her heart. He’d protected
her for so long, carried her in his arms when she could no longer walk. Yet all
his strength and determination meant nothing in the face of the Sull. They’d
fooled him as easily as if he’d been a green boy .. . and they’d make sure he
could never find her again.
Ash breathed deeply, controlling the hurt. She just wished she could
stop herself looking for him whenever she first awoke.
Noticing that she had slowed her pace, Ark Veinsplitter slowed his own
to match. Nothing went unobserved by the Far Rider; she had to remember that
and guard herself closely. “How much farther before we make camp?”
Although they had been inside the mountain for a full day, Ark
Veinsplitter was still wearing pale milky scale armor beneath his wolverine
cloak. The armor gave off light, shimmering in the darkness of the mountain as
if it stored light from the moon. Ash had seen the armor up close when the
Veinsplitter cleansed himself with stone-heated water; it was warm to the touch
and strange rings of fire flickered within each scale. It was bone, that much
she guessed, sliced in cross sections so thin they should have been easy to
break. But when Ash had held one piece beneath her fingers she felt steel
hardness there.
Ark Veinsplitter turned to look at her, his scale armor rippling like
silk. His ice-tanned face picked up little light from the torch Mai Naysayer
bore several paces ahead, yet his eyes were plain to see. Something was hidden
there. “We journey late this night.”
What time was it? Ash couldn’t be sure. Her only guide was the sense of
hours passed walking beneath rock. The mountain muffled time and light. Narrow
tunnels twisted through the rock, winding down through granite and glistening
ores, past pools of standing water and caverns where small bulb-eyed creatures
scattered from the light. They moved down, always down. Sometimes the ways were
so low they had to double back to find a path for the horses. Other times the
Naysayer had to guide the mounts over stone bridges and crooked stairs. Echoes
followed them like shadows. No sound ever left the mountain; instead it circled
round, bouncing from wall to wall, growing lower and deeper and splitting into
fragments of itself. Once Ash had stopped and listened. She heard her own
voice,
eerily distorted, saying quite clearly, “I’ll take a piece of the
way-bread.” Words she had said half a day earlier, when they had stopped for
their midmorning meal.
Suddenly chill, Ash drew her cloak about her. Ahead, Mai Naysayer led
the horses through a natural archway stippled with quartz. The giant Sull
warrior hadn’t spoken in hours. It fell to him to find whatever path Ark
Veinsplitter sought, and to bear the torch that lit the way. His broad back was
split in two by the diagonal slash of his longsword, holstered across his
shoulders owing to its extraordinary length. He was cloaked in furs pieced
differently from his hass, but the armor beneath was the
same shimmering scale. On his left hand he bore a great leather mitt, like a
falconer’s glove, that saved his fingers and wrist from the spitting tar of the
torch. As if aware Ash’s gaze was upon him, the Naysayer turned. Always his ice
blue eyes were a shock. They pierced you. Knowledge and knowing burned within
them, and Ash wondered what tragedies had happened in his past.
“Is the path open?” Ark asked, moving forward to where the Naysayer
stood in the archway.
The great Sull warrior shook his head. “Nay. The rock ceiling lowers,
and there is uncertain ground ahead.”
Ark nodded, but not lightly. He regarded his hass with eyes that were almost black. Ash could see him
thinking. Five days ago they had left Ice Trapper territory, traveling through
ice storms and whiteouts, across black hackled ice and snowbound foothills, and
in all that time she had seen nothing but certainty on his face. Now there was
something else.
“Settle the horses. We go on alone.”
As the Naysayer pulled rope from one of the packs, Ash forced her way
through the arch and regarded the territory ahead. Shadows were deep, and
concealed much. A stair had been cut into the rock, but she could not see where
it led, only that it spiraled down into the mountain’s depths. A breeze lifted
the hair from her face, and she caught the unnerving scent of copper ore. Like blood. Suddenly uneasy, she returned to Ark Veinsplitter’s
side.
The Far Rider was studying markings tattooed into the archway’s vault.
Ash recognized Sull signs; full moons and half-moons and diagrams of night
skies. Everywhere that is
deep and lightless they have claimed. Ash shivered. She knew so little about the Sull.
How could she ever hope to become one ?
Ark must have seen the uncertainty on her face, for he drew close
enough so that she could see the letting scars on his cheekbones and ears and
jaw, and said, “The night’s journey will soon be done.”
“We’re not going to camp, are we?”
No.
Something warned her not to ask the next question. She studied the Far
Rider closely. He had the ability to be perfectly still, to stand unmoving and
unblinking, biding his time between breaths. Since they had left the Ice
Trappers’ territory little had been said between them. Talk had been of food
and weather and other small matters between travelers. Nothing had been
mentioned about the reason for the journey. Ark Veinsplitter had been biding
his time.
She surprised herself by saying, “The skin on your neck, below your
jaw, why are there no letting scars there?”
Muscles in Ark’s face shifted, and when his voice came it was so low
she had to strain to hear it. “Dras
Morthu. The
Last Cut.” He touched the unblemished flesh. “When it is time for me to depart
for the Far Shore I will cut the last great vein.”
“And if your life is taken by another?”
“Then my hass will not rest until he has
found me and made the Last Cut himself.”
Ash looked down. Something too private was showing in the Far Rider’s
eyes.
“The horses have been fed and watered. Let us go.” Mai Naysayer pulled
the torch from its mooring between two rocks. The Sull stallions and the
packhorse stood their ground. Tall and proud, they needed no hobbles to prevent
them from fleeing. Ash knew without question they would wait for their riders’
return. As she passed through the archway she scratched the gray’s nose. “Good
boy,” she whispered. “One day I’m going to find out your name.”
The going was slow and treacherous, the stairs wildly uneven and slick
with graphite. Ash slipped many times, and many times the Naysayer put out a
hand to steady her. The great Sull giant saw things that she could not—fissures
and slicks of oil and crumbling rock. She wondered if he needed the torch. The
rock was dark and grotesquely folded, and every chance it could it ate the
light. Shadows flickered and lengthened, and soon Ash could see no farther than
a few paces ahead. Yet the Naysayer never slowed.
His desire to return home was clear. Every night both Far Riders looked
to the east as the moon rose, murmuring strange prayers in Sull. Ash hadn’t
learned much of their language but she knew that their prayers began and ended
with the word mis. Home.
So why had they brought her to this place? The two men were bearing
light packs. A few days’ food, blankets and medicine, she guessed. At first she
thought they meant to pass through the mountain, a shortcut that would protect
them from the ice. Now she knew they had a specific location in mind, a place
nestled beneath a mountain of rock.
At first she could not quite believe it was getting warmer. Time passed
as they made their descent, and Ash became aware of a prickly film of sweat
above her lip. She brushed it away, and it came back. Soon she had to remove
her cloak and haul it over her back. And it wasn’t just growing warmer, she
realized, glancing at a rock beaded with moisture; it was getting damper too.
The two Sull warriors appeared impervious to the changes, yet they had to see
the tendrils of mist creeping up the stair to meet them. And they had to hear
the sound of dripping water.
Down they went, their footsteps muffled now, their echoes nearly
silent. The mist stayed low, washing around their ankles like foam. Every so
often Ash would see signs etched in the rock. Once she thought she saw a raven,
and didn’t know whether to be comforted or afraid. Exhaustion made her stumble,
and the Naysayer offered his arm for support. Leaning on him she reached the
bottom of the stairs and entered the mountain chamber.
The chamber was dark and alive with shadows and it stretched farther
than she could see. A pool of green water lay in its center, the source of the
smell and the mist. Great piers of glistening rock rose around its banks, their
bases barnacled with deposits of copper ore.
“Hass, light more torches.” Ark
Veinsplitter did not sound like a man happy to reach his destination. For some
reason she thought that he might open a vein and pay a toll, but he did not.
Instead he walked heavily toward the pool. The Naysayer made sure Ash was
steady on her feet and then went about the task of lighting sticks. Ash had
little choice but to follow Ark to the water.
By the time she reached the pool’s bank, the Far Rider had already laid
down a blanket for her. “Sit,” he said. “Rest.”
Ash did just that. This close to the pool the mist was stifling, and
she realized for the first time that she was sitting by a natural hot spring.
Suddenly she was taken with the desire to wade, fully clothed, into the water
and let its warm waters soothe her aches. They haven’t brought me here for a bath, she reminded herself, snuffing
the small piece of joy.
“Ash March, foundling. Drink this.” Ark Veinsplitter was holding out a
ram’s horn filled with clear liquid. When she didn’t immediately reach out to
take it, he said, “It will not make you sleep.”
They were both thinking of the night in the Listener’s ground, of the oola]^ that had rendered Raif senseless. She said, “Will
it harm me?”
“No. It will lend you strength.”
She took it but did not drink. The Naysayer was moving in a circle
around the pool, planting torches between rocks. This simple act woke fear in
Ash: Why did they need so much light? Because she was afraid she spoke. “Will
we have a fire? I could roast the last of the goat.”
Ark shook his head slowly, and for a moment she saw sadness in his
eyes. “We do not eat this night, Ash March. Tonight you become Sull.”
The words echoed once around the chamber, and then stopped. Ash felt as
if they entered her, like a knife. She found she was trembling. Liquid from the
horn splashed her leg, and she forced herself to be steady.
Ark Veinsplitter continued in his softly powerful voice. “We cannot
bring you to the Heart unless you are Sull. You are ra’thar dan and you are needed for the long night to come. We
are the only ones left who fight the darkness. Whilst clansmen and city men
feud amongst themselves over land once claimed by the Sull, we will ride out
and battle with the Endlords and their taken. Make no mistake, Ash March, I
offer you little in return for you soul. Maer Horn lies ahead, the Age of Darkness. It is not a good
day to become Sull. If we are lucky we will fight until we die; if we are not
we will be taken and our souls will walk lost into the grayness.
“Much I cannot say to you now. Such things that I know cannot be spoken
to an outlander and a stranger to our ways. Our secrets come at too great a
cost, like our blood, and whenever we speak them out loud we risk much.
“Know this, though. If you become Sull we will protect you and honor
you, and give our lives to spare you from harm. You are as precious to us as a
newborn, and like a newborn you bring us new hope.”
Ash let the Far Rider’s words work upon her. Seven torches flickered
around the pool, turning the water orange and green like the Gods’ Lights in
the northern sky. She could hear the torch resin crackling. . . and the
measured breaths of two men. Stirred, but unwilling to reveal it, she said, “So
you offer me a choice?”
If the Sull warrior noticed the shakiness in her voice he did not show
it, merely nodded.
“And if I refuse?”
“We will escort you from this chamber.”
“And then?”
She’d asked the question the Far Rider had hoped not to answer; she saw
it written clearly on his face. He and his hass exchanged a glance. The Naysayer moved from his
place on the far side of the pool. The grace and size of him struck her anew,
and as she looked into his ice blue eyes she knew without a doubt that she was
looking into the face of the man who would kill her.
He said softly, “I will take you without hurt.”
She believed him. It struck her that there were worse ways to die than
at the hand of a master swordsman; a man whose blade was so sharp that not even
a human hair could fall upon it without being cut. Strangely she found she was
calm. “I am a danger if I live.”
Ark Veinsplitter nodded, though she had asked him no question. For the
first time she saw the age of him, and realized that he was older than she had
ever thought. “If the Naysayer did not take you now, and we walked away from
this place and left you to find your way back to the Ice Trappers, others would
come after. We are the first to find you but we will not be the last. If you
are not with us you are against us, and as such no living, breathing Sull will
let you live.”
Ash let the chamber fall to silence rather than speak. If the Far Rider
spoke the truth, then these two men before her were offering a mercy that
future Sull would not. Something in the dark lines of Ark’s face and the way
his fingers curled around the chain that connected his letting knife to his
belt told her what his words would not: The Sull that came after him would tear
her limb from limb.
Seconds passed and the mist rose, and then she said, “What is it to be
Sull?”
“Sull is home,” said Mai Naysayer.
“Sull is heart and life and soul,” continued Ark. “The Heart Fires burn
for us and all the ancestors who have gone before. We have traveled far across
oceans and continents and places where time itself stretches thin. We are
beyond family and country, life and death—as you know it—and all our histories
and battles are carried within our blood. Our children are born with memories
of the Far Shore, and it is our one desire to return there. We are more ancient
than mankind, and have borne witness to the creation of mountains and the fall
of empires and the extinction of many living things. Our ancestors knew the Old
Ones who once walked this earth, and we can remember our own creatiori at the
hands of the First Gods.”
The Far Rider watched Ash, his great dark eyes pulling something from
her. Time passed, and then finally he added, “We are your brothers, Ash March,
and we would have you for our sister. Join us and become a daughter to the
Sull.”
Pain flared in the space behind Ash’s eyes. Am I that transparent, that he can see the desire
within me? She
had never been anyone’s daughter. Penthero Iss, her foster father, had called
her “my almost-daughter.” For sixteen years she had loved him and called him
“Father.” Yet almost was all she got in return. Almost meant nothing,
and she had been a fool not to see that sooner. A real father would not
have reared his child to use as a slave.
She said in a small voice, “You would have my soul ?”
“You cannot become Sull through flesh alone.”
“I don’t understand.”
Ark held her gaze levelly. “You were born to the race of Man, not Sull.
That means you must be remade to join us. Moms i’h shallar. Body and spirit.”
Struggling to find the meaning in his words, she said, “My life will
not go unused?”
“Maer Horn lies ahead. Your life will be
fulfilled.”
Ash nodded, close to understanding the grim promise of those words. She
was a Reach and she had forced a rift in the Blindwall; become Sull and
somehow, in some way, she must work to repair the damage she had wrought. What
that meant she would not think of now. Uncertainty had no place here.
I do
not go into this blindly. I just wish I knew more.
Ash gathered the breath within her. / am Ash March, foundling, left outside Vaingate to
die. As always
the words, her words, filled her with a
stubborn kind of strength. She was unwanted, abandoned by a mother she never
knew, fostered by a father who had forced her to flee the city that was her
home. Penthero Iss had known she was a Reach all along, she must never forget
that. He had consulted the ancient prophecies, learned that a newborn girl
abandoned outside the city’s southern gate would grow to be the next Reach, and
had taken action to secure her. She, Ash March, was that newborn. And Penthero
Iss had wanted her power for himself.
She had exactly nothing to lose. Yet the two Sull warriors would change
that. Sister, they called her. Not
almost-daughter, but simply daughter.
The two Sull warriors waited. The Naysayer stood tall and unmoving,
without so much as a hand upon a stone column to steady his great weight. A
torch flared to his side, but even its warmth and goldenness couldn’t reach the
ice in his eyes. Ark Vein-splitter sat on a carpet of night-blue silk, his
wolverine cloak draped over a rock, his sword and dagger and eating knife
fanned out behind him like a steel tail. Strange that both men’s reflections
glowed silver in the green pool.
She belonged with them. She had known it from the moment Mai Naysayer
prostrated himself in the snow before her, and spoke words for her ears alone. Welcome, sister. I have never seen a moon so bright
as the one that brought you to us. Ash held herself still as she remembered his
blessing. She was proud, like these men, and she would not cry. It was easy to
stand then, easy to meet their eyes and say, “Make me Sull.” In many ways that
counted she was already one of them.
The night changed then, grew smaller and darker as shadows surrounding
the pool merged to form a wall. Suddenly there was nothing but seven torches
and two men. Mist rose and fell, rose and fell, as she put the horn to her lips
and drank. The liquid was cool and sharp, and there was a sweet aftertaste to
it that reminded her of cloves. Her vision blurred for an instant and then
restored itself, and then Mai Naysayer was beside her, sending out a hand to
take the horn. Ash stood and let the sharpness of the liquid move through her.
Already things were falling away. Fear seemed some impossibly far object that
she could see but was unable to grasp. Time seemed even less, and Ark
Veinsplitter and the Naysayer appeared to move great distances in the time it
took to complete a blink.
Slowly, deliberately, she began to pull off her clothes; they were so
much unwanted weight on her back. Naked she faced them, her chin high, her hair
unpinned and brushing against her breasts. Mist coated her skin and collected
in the dimples at her throat and lower back. The two Far Riders had stripped to
their waists, revealing hard-used muscle and networks of scars. With an even,
much-practiced motion the Naysayer was drawing his white-metal letting knife
through his fist. At first Ash thought he was polishing it, and then she saw he
held a slice of whetstone between finger and thumb. Honing the blade.
I’ll
tal{e you without hurt.
Ark Veinsplitter was speaking, but Ash’s mind had to labor to make
sense of the words. “Nothing of worth can be won without peril. To be born Sull
you must first know death.”
“I will guard you, Ash March,” murmured the Naysayer. “You will not
walk alone to the world’s edge.”
The protectiveness in his voice reached her before his words, and she
heard herself say, “What do I risk here?”
“Your blood is not Sull blood. It must be drained so new blood can be
made.”
She nodded, comprehending at last what they meant to do. And I thought I’d taken the easier choice.
Pulling her hair behind her she turned and began to wade into the pool.
The water was hot and she saw her feet and then her legs turn pink. Copper
vapors sheathed her, spreading warmth and drowsiness as they curled around her
arms and throat. When the water reached her waist she spread her arms wide and
laid her hands on the green, still surface. Behind her she heard the Far Riders
entering the water, swift movements that roused the mist. She saw the glint of
silver sparking off the rocks, and felt a stab of fear. Knives were drawn. Then
hands were on her arms, forcing them behind her, twisting her wrists to the
light of the torches. Fingers encircled scalded flesh, probing for veins.
When the cuts came they made her gasp. She was glad she couldn’t see
the men who had made them, gladder still that she could not see the wounds.
Watching the torches and the shadows beyond, she listened for the sound of the
men withdrawing. Water moved, rising as high as her breasts, then all grew
quiet. Dimming. Lifting her feet from the pool bottom and tilting her spine,
she allowed her body to float to the surface. Dark blood bloomed in the water,
forming plumes like rare flowers. She smelled their sugary odor.
Dimming. The rock ceiling sparkling with hidden ores . . . red
spreading to the edges of the pool, sliding across the bones of her hips and into
the hollow of her navel, where it lapped in and out, in and out. So
tired ... so tired. The Naysayer was right. No hurt.
Darkness. Floating. Peace and warmth embraced her. This. This is what I want. No weight or worries, just
peace.
Let me
go.
The darkness shifted, thickened into shapes. Things moved within it,
ghost children bending to feed upon her soul. Someone laughed, a woman. A voice
soft and tinkling said, Welcome,
my daughter. I wondered how long it
would take you to come. Ash felt a touch so cold it burned. Pain sharpened her
awareness, and she knew with perfect clarity that she was not ready for this
place. Not yet. Turning, she fled. Tinkling laughter followed her.
The landscape was gray now, but ahead lay the first glimmering of
white. The Far Shore. And as soon as she said those words to herself, she felt
the first pang of longing. It
is our one desire to return there. Ash saw a sea so blue it was like a wholly new creation,
breaking softly on a curving shore. Tall trees grew beside moss-covered rocks
and glimmering pools, and beyond them a golden forest stretched to a horizon
where something secret and everlasting shimmered just beyond her ken. Ash
laughed with the sheer joy of seeing, watched as a yellow butterfly fed from a
flower dripping with dew. This is why they fight the darkness, she thought, because one day they will return
here and know perfect joy.
With that she turned again. She felt herself growing, filling up with a
new kind of strength. Memories sparked, and the first seeds of knowledge were
born within her. Overcome with a breathtaking sense of belonging, she cried
out.
Becoming Sull.
CHAPTER
An Arrow with a Name
The girl laid a hunk of bear meat before him. “Eat.” She giggled
nervously, covering her teeth with both hands, and then tried another
combination of the words he had taught her. “Good. Eat.”
Raif found himself smiling despite his mood. He was going to have to
teach her more words; either that or she’d drive him half mad pointing to
blankets, pots, lamps and strips of cured hide, saying either “Good.”
“Bad” or “Eat.” The blanket he was sitting on was “bad.” Something to do with flying birds and many feet; at least that was the best he could tell from her sign language. Suddenly inspired, he tugged at the corner of the blanket and pulled it high against his face. “Warm.” Rubbing the blanket against his cheek, he repeated himself. “Warm.”
The girl darted forward, lightly touched the blanket, then darted back.
“Warm.” He could see her thinking. A moment later she pulled a dark glossy fur
from a storage chest and ran a hand down its silken nap. “Warm.”
Raif nodded. To please her he took a knife to the meat. It was purple
and part frozen, having been boiled in a skin above the lamp for a time so
short it barely counted as cooking at all. He chewed the fibrous morsel,
attempted to swallow, then chewed again.
“Good,” the girl encouraged. But not “warm,” he added gently to himself.
They were sitting in the Listener’s ground, the whale lamp between them
casting the softest kind of light. As far as he could tell it was early
evening. The Listener had been gone for two days, for the hunters were out upon
the ice and they had spotted no seals in half a moon, and Sadaluk was needed to
listen for them. The old man had seemed pleased at the opportunity to leave
Raif alone, and had extracted a solemn promise that Raif would not leave until
he returned. Raif hadn’t understood the sly twinkle in the Listener’s eye, but
looking at the girl dressed in soft sealskins before him he thought he might
now. Her name was Sila, and she was plump and beautiful with waist-long hair
and black eyes.
Only a
dead man cannot surprise you. Raif made a sound in his throat. It seemed the
Listener made a habit out of such surprises.
The girl had brought him food for the past two nights, and had visited
many times to tend the lamp. The long wick needed to be carefully managed so it
didn’t die out or smoke, and Raif noticed there were many opportunities for
Sila to show off her plumpness, bending and crouching as she fed the little
wick-seeds to the oil. She was as unlike Ash as it was possible to be:
warm-skinned and warm-eyed, and ready with shy laughter. Ash is gone. Gone. So why couldn’t he smile at this girl and enjoy
her simple attentions without feeling as if every act of companionship were a
betrayal?
Sila took the tray of meat from him, observant of the fact that he had
little appetite for it. “Bad?” she asked, making a question of her newly
learned word. Dimples appeared like small blessings in her cheeks.
He tried to resent her, but could not. What was the Listener thinking,
to send her to him? Did he seek to make amends over his part in stealing Ash?
Or did he think that one girl could make Raif forget another?
Still waiting on her answer, Sila plucked at the golden fur around her
collar, all the while frowning doubtfully at the meat. This small sign of her
nervousness affected him, and suddenly he wanted to be kind. Patting his
stomach, he said, “Full.”
The girl was quick to mimic him, rubbing the swell of her belly with
one hand whilst covering her teeth with the other. “Full,” she said proudly.
“Full.”
They sat and looked at each other, shyly at first and then more boldly.
She was dressed in a close-fitting coat decorated with fishbone stitching and
musk-ox fur, its neck opening tied back to reveal a necklace of tattooed skin.
Raif saw her gaze alight on his frost-scarred hands, and then rise to the lore
at his throat. She surprised him by reaching out to touch it.
“Warm.”
He smelled her, and he could not speak. She smelled of seal oil and sea
salt and sweet heather, and it made the blood rise in him. Suddenly it was hard
to think. She leaned closer to inspect the lore, her breath condensing on the
down-facing planes of his face. He could see the back of her neck, where soft
baby hairs had worked free from her braids. And then she was kissing him,
gently, tentatively, her lips moist with seal oil. Raif thought he would lose
himself. He wanted to crush her to him, to feel her forehead grind against his.
Something desperate came alive within him, and with it the real fear that he
would hurt her. Not gently, he pushed her away.
She was breathing hard, and there was hurt in her eyes. She touched her
lips. “Good.”
Shame and need sent hot blood to his face. Seconds passed where he
fought to gain self-control. He didn’t know what he was doing anymore.
Ash,
why did you have to leave me?
The doubts came flooding in. Had she been using him all along, ever
since he and Angus had rescued her outside Vaingate ? Was protection the only thing
she had needed from him? A companion and defender on the journey to the Cavern
of Black Ice? No. It couldn’t be true. Ash March had left because she had no
choice; he had to believe that to remain sane.
Sila waited, watching him. When he made no move to pull her back she
unfastened the ties of her coat. Black eyes met his as she bared small brown
breasts and laid her hand upon her heart. “Full.”
Ridiculously, he felt himself close to tears. He had struggled for so
long for so little that he had forgotten what it was to receive a gift. He did
not deserve her ... but that knowledge did not stop him from wanting her. With
swift movements he pulled off his own borrowed coat, rough bearded-seal hide
that shed many hairs. Pushing the thing away he let her look at him; at the
great white scars the Bludd swordsmen had raised outside of Duffs, and the
weals and marks of torture he had received at the Dog Lord’s hand. Time and
healing had done little to prettify his flesh. Angus Lok’s thick black stitches,
which had been made with boiled horse mane, had long since gone—winkled out by
Angus’ diabolically sharp knife—yet their uneven tracks remained puckered in
his flesh.
Sila studied him. If he had thought to repulse her he was mistaken, for
she looked with curiosity and some knowledge of scarred flesh. When she reached
out to touch him he moved back.
“Bad,” he said, laying her hand on the center of his chest. Watcher of the Dead. Close to losing himself, he stood. His head was
light with confusion and he knew he couldn’t stay here any longer and not seize
her. Stumbling, he snatched his coat off the floor. Sila rose, understanding he
meant to leave and meaning to halt him. They stepped toward the entrance at the
same moment, and Raif felt her hand close around his arm. “No bad,” she
murmured.
Raif shook his head. She did not, could not, know him. Not gently, he lifted her hand away from
him and pushed passed her. Tucking his head low, he made his way into the
night.
The blinding cold could not cool him. He was too deeply roused and
shamed. Unable to bear his thoughts, he headed out toward the sea ice, drawn by
the terrible noise of it and the great glowing blue-ness of its mass. Starlight
lit a path. Mountains lay quiet in the north, marking territory no clansman had
ever seen. The Lake of Lost Men was out there, and beyond that the Breaking
Grounds and the pale endless ice of Endsea. Raif thought of Tern. He had taught
his sons and daughter about the land, making maps in the dirt and the snow. His
broad fingers would draw lines marking coasts and forests, and sometimes to
please Effie he would raise little dirt mounds to represent mountains. Always
he spoke of clan. This is
the Milk River that runs into the Flow; when clansmen first arrived on its
banks its waters ran milky with stone dust from the White Mines of the Sull. .
. . Here lie the Floating Isles; when Arlech Dregg, the Restless Chief, first
laid eyes upon them he set his men to making boats so he could see the isles
firsthand. Yet Dreggsmen are no watermen and the boats they built were green
and flawed, and halfway across the channel they scuttled and killed all hands..
. . Beyond these hills lies the part of the Badlands known as the Rift Valley;
the Maimed Men make their home there, and send their dead, eyeless, into the
Rift.
Raif stepped onto the hard plate of shore ice that rose like a stone
pier from the beach. The great body of ice created its own weather, and currents
spiraled around him, channeling up his legs with each step. For the first time
since leaving the Listener’s ground he felt the cold. Shocked by its depth and
fierceness, he hastily tied the fastenings on his coat. Part of the ice had
been hacked here, smashed and then picked out for use in the village. All salt
had long since drained from the topmost layers, leaving pure freshwater ice.
Raif supposed the sea beneath to be saltier for it; its waters concentrating
through the long winter to a stock of strongest brine.
It was time to leave this place. The worst of the white weather had
passed, and the unclouded sky promised stillness for the first time in many
days. Ash had a good head start on him; their paths were unlikely to cross. He
needed supplies, warm clothing. A weapon. Guidance to set him on the right
track. Too much to ask from strangers, yet he had no other choice. He could not
stay here. He had seen the way the Ice Trapper hunters looked at him; he needed
to find a place where men would not fear or distrust him.
He needed to be amongst clan.
“The Gods’ Lights burn this night.”
Raif turned at the sound of the voice and saw the Listener, well
wrapped in several shaggy furs, standing behind him on the ice.
“You look the wrong way, Clansman. The Gods’ Lights always show in the
north.”
Raif could find no answer to that, other than to turn his face north.
He didn’t see them at first, so slowly did they move, rising behind the
mountains like green smoke. Then the horizon itself began to glow. It was easy
to believe that a forest fire in some distant and unreachable valley raged to
give off such light. Even in the clan-holds, where the lights were rarely seen,
it was known that strange unclannish gods sent them at times of change. Raif
didn’t want to think of it. He said, “When did you return, Listener?”
“Last night.”
He should have been surprised, but wasn’t. The little old man was full
of tricks. “Did you listen for the seals?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“They did not come.” The Listener moved forward so he stood alongside
Raif. His hard, wrinkled face glowed green as the Gods’ Lights brightened.
“They swim west, away from the land, and the fish and krill go with them.”
Sensing an accusation there, Raif said, “I leave tomorrow.”
“Good.”
“I’ll need to be shown the path east.”
“You cannot follow her.”
“I know . .. but I also can’t return to my clan.”
“So you head to the Badlands?”
Raif nodded. “I go in search of the Maimed Men.”
The sea ice groaned and lifted, as the sea beneath swelled. Somewhere
far in the distance two plates ground together, making a sound like sawing
wood. It did not occur to Raif that the Listener had not heard of the Maimed
Men; the set of the old man’s jaw spoke for itself. The Maimed Men were
clansmen, most of them. Tern said they had “first come into being the year
Burnie Dhoone destroyed Clan Morrow out of jealousy for his wife, Fair Maida.
Hundreds of unhoused clansmen had nowhere to go, and no clan would take them in
for fear of the Dark King’s anger. They headed north, legend said, to the vast
bleak spaces of the Badlands, where time and hardness changed them. No man
amongst them was whole; the terrible dry cold and fierce Badlands predators saw
to that. Every clansman knew they had no honor, for they raided villages,
outlying farms, guard posts and hunt parties, and they had no guidestone to
offer shelter to the gods. The living was hard, and lit-
tie was known of them, and Raif thought they would suit him well enough.
Traitors and outcasts had few choices.
Raif thought the Listener would say something, some caution, but after
many minutes of silence he turned for home. “Come,” he said, “the lights burn
red and it disturbs an old man to stand beneath them.”
Raif hesitated.
“The girl has gone. I sent her home with the last of the meat.”
Oh
gods.
Remembering made him want her as strongly as before. His face heated as he
wondered how much the Listener knew.
The old man could read thoughts, Raif swore it, for he frowned deeply
and shook his head. Unspeaking, they returned to the warmth and the heat of the
Listener’s ground.
The first thing Raif noticed was that the mute raven had been returned
to its whalebone perch. The big black bird made a retching sound at Raif’s
entrance, throwing its head back and forward as if it were a jester playing
sick. Raif took it for an insult and scowled. Insolent bird. The soapstone lamp
Sila had diligently tended for two days was now smoking from lack of care. Raif
thought he would try and adjust it, but the Listener brushed him away. “Sit,”
he said, pointing to the bench against the wall. “Perhaps the next gifts I
offer will not be so willfully refused.”
The old man crouched in the center of the chamber and began pulling
away the blankets and grass mats that covered the floor. Clawlike hands pried
up four stones that concealed a cache hole. Out of honor Raif did not watch as
the Listener pulled out a long chest and struggled with metal latches. After a
minute of Raif watching shadows, the Listener complained to him, “Can you not
see when an old man needs your help?” Chastened, Raif moved quickly to aid him.
The chest was not Ice Trapper made. Fine wood had been carved and
steamed into curves, and filigreed ironwork protected the corners and was
mounted as latches on the lid. The latches were badly corroded, and Raif had to
take a knife to them to pry them apart. At once the smell of dust and age hit
him; old parchment, old metal and mold. The Listener drove his hands deep into
the opened chest, scat-
tering clumps of parched brown moss that had been used for packing and
keeping its contents dry. “Two things, Clansman. Tell me which is the greater,
the arrow or the sword?”
Raif replied without thinking, “The arrow. You can kill at distance
without endangering yourself or your companions.”
“So you do not want to look into the eyes of the man you kill?” Feeling
tricked, Raif said, “I would prefer not to kill at all.”
“A wistful sentiment from a man named Watcher of the Dead.” The Listener raised his gaze to meet Raif’s. “Do not look at me that way, Clansman. I’m old enough to have earned the right to speak my mind. You, on the other hand, are at an age when it would serve you well to listen, and speak not at all. Now, what if I were to tell you I have an arrow that would be wasted if you used it to kill a man?” The Listener did not wait for an answer. “You would ask what is it for. And I would give the only I answer I have: Not many arrows have names, no blacksmith toils months over their making, no jeweler mounts stones upon their hilts, and no fine clansman lovingly oils them each night. Swords have names—Daybreaker, Fear Me, Taker of Lives, Ghostfriend, other such foolishness as that. Arrows do not. Well, very few. I am in possession of one of them.”
The Listener’s hand closed around an object in the chest, drew it up
through the layers of moss. “Here she is: Divining Rod.”
Bright metal caught the light. Silver, Raif thought. No steel, or white gold force-hardened with arsenic and nickel
like the arrows loosed by
the Dhoone kings- Then he looked more closely, and saw he was wrong.
It was the hard, white-blue metal of the Sull. Clan did not know its name or where
to mine it. Some whispered that it fell from the stars in great rocks that had
to be cracked open like eggs. The arrowhead was three-bladed, slender as if for
hitting targets, not game, and held to the shaft not by thread or metal wire
like clannish arrows, but socketed by a banded ferrule so expertly tooled that
it made Raif’s breath catch to see it. A skeleton ferrule; he’d heard tell of
them from Bailie the Red, but never until now had he seen one. Such a socket
added stability and accuracy to the arrow, holding shaft and point more surely
than a bobbin’s worth of twine. Raif couldn’t help himself, he had to reach out
to touch it.
“Ha!” gloated the Listener, offering it up. “I see you are capable of
wanting something without guilt.”
Raif accepted the reprimand; he deserved it. He had acted like a fool
and treated Sila badly, and he wouldn’t blame her if she hated him. Yet he
hoped she didn’t. For reasons he couldn’t understand her good opinion was
important to him.
The Listener pressed the arrow into Raif’s palm. “Take it.”
The instincts of a bowman overtook Raif, and he weighed the arrow in
his hand, reading it for draw and height. It was surprisingly light; a
windcatcher, Bailie would say, needing little height to aim it. The shaft was
strangely made, bone it looked like, with the kind of inlay work Raif was
accustomed to seeing on bows, not arrows. Such tooling, if wrongly done, could
greatly affect the arrow’s flight, for any flaw in the shaft would create drag.
Yet when Raif ran his fingers over the bone he felt only perfect smoothness. It
had once been stained red, for traces of color hid within minute striations in
the bone. The arrow’s flights spiraled along the bottommost third of the shaft,
and as Raif traced their course he felt his excitement growing. A spinner. This arrow would rotate in flight, spinning the
moment it left the plate, and by its own spiraling motion protect itself
against random buffeting of air and the gradual curving of all thrown missiles.
He wanted to loose it now, set its point against the riser and release the
string. No arrow he’d ever held had been so exquisite.
“I see you’ve marked the spiral course of the flights,” the Listener
said in an unusually quiet voice. “Yet have you also marked their substance?”
Raif had not. Turning the arrow, he studied the pale, translucent hairs
that had been set into the bone and trimmed to an inch in length. “Ice-wolf
hair,” he guessed, then seeing the Listener still waiting, “lynx . .. snow
tiger.” Still the old man waited and as he did the answer came. “Human hair.”
“Not quite human, no, but close.” The old man studied Raif in the
silence that followed, seeming to judge his readiness . . . for what? With a
small shrug he finally spoke. “Have you heard tell of the Old Ones who once
walked this land before Men? Some say they were like us in that they had eyes
and mouths and stood on two feet, and were as beautiful in their way as the
Sull. This land wasn’t always hard-froze, you must remember that. In ages past
the Great Want was green with trees, and blue water flowed there along
riverbeds so broad and deep that entire villages could be tossed into their
centers and sink without a trace. The riverbeds are still there, if you know
where to look for them, and many other things lie abandoned too. There are
halls in the heart of the Want, raised from ancient timbers that take an Age to
rot. The Old Ones built them, and some say their skills grew at great cost to
their defenses, and they built a beautiful but flawed fortress where the Last
Battle was fought and lost. Ben
Horn, the Sull
call it. The Time Before. The Sull think they are the only ones who honor and
remember the Old Ones, but they can be blind in their arrogance and they forget
that old men such as me can hear many things that they cannot.“
Pride shone briefly in the Listener’s eyes and then was gone. Raif
turned the named arrow in his hand as Sadaluk continued speaking, and it seemed
as if the night turned too, spinning like the arrow in flight toward a point
the old man had long since set in his sights.
“Mor Drakfa, Watcher of the Dead, I name
you. I saw you long before you knew yourself and took your first life. The Sull
see you as a threat and a curse, for it is written that one day Mor Drakka will bring their doom. They are a proud and ancient
race and their numbers have been declining for ten thousand years, and they
fear you are the one who will watch their end. You live only because they need
as well as fear you. And because when you loose an arrow it finds a heart.
“No, do not foresay me, Clansman. You forget who I am.” Again, the
pride was there, flashing bright like lightning before dimming to nothing at
all. “Take this arrow named Divining Rod that has been fletched with the Old
Ones’ hair, take it and use it to find what you must. It seeks, what I cannot
tell you for the echoes from things so old are weak. I have guarded it for
sixty years and Lootavek for a hundred before me, and before him Kullahuk, and
before him the great Tungis himself. Many hands have touched it. None have set
it to a plate and drawn power behind it. Wait, they said. One day some-
one
will come and we will know from his hands and his spirit that he will use the
arrow well.“
The Listener returned his attention to the chest, pushing his hands
once again through the moss. “I cannot say I was glad to see you come here, and
I fear that even when you leave the seal will not return. Yet how can I change
such things? What choices do we have, you and I?”
Raif held the old man’s gaze. He felt sad and weary, and suddenly the
arrow seemed less like a treasure than a debt. Quietly, he slipped it into one
of the many game pouches sewn within the seal coat.
“Grow wide shoulders, Clansman. You’ll need them for all your burdens.”
The Listener pulled something forth from the chest, something heavy and long
and wrapped in old skins. The old man looked up, and there was a twinkle of
mischief newly come to his eyes. “You might think I’d give you a bow to match
that fine arrow of yours. You might think it, but you’d be wrong. I’m old and
contrary and have a fancy to give you a sword, and as there’s no one but gods
here to stop me, I will.” He handed it to Raif. “Unwrap it. It’s time you
learned how to kill someone and look them in the eye.”
Raif winced at the insult. He had a drawn a sword against men before
today. Three had died by his hand outside of Duff’s . . . and yet he had no
memory of that night; all his knowledge came secondhand from Angus Lok. Perhaps
the Listener was right: He had taken refuge behind the bow, distancing himself
from his heart-kills, and not allowing his enemies the simple grace of being
able to look into the eyes of the man who killed them. Ayan Blackhail had
learned that lesson at the loss of both hands. An arrow is no way to kill a king. You should have
used your sword or naught at all.
Raif unwrapped the sword. Could he heart-kill a man with this? And if
he did, would the death be more honorable for it?
The old man watched in silence as Raif inspected the sword. It was
foreign-made of fine blued steel, neither clannish or Sull-like in design. A
span short of a true longsword, double-edged with a hand-and-a-half grip, it
was forged for close combat on foot. Raif held up the weapon to the lamp,
watched as the patterning of the blade scattered the light. Taking the unpadded
wire grip in his hand he tested for the sword’s balance, then touched the
wooden chest with its point to proof its temper. The blade was well fitted and
sound, though its edges needed grinding. The sword’s hilt formed a plain cross,
and its pommel was surmounted by a faceted chunk of rock crystal as big as a
child’s eye. Holding it Raif thought of Tern, of Tern’s humble halfsword that
Drey had given him after Da’s death, and that had been taken by Cluff
Drybannock on the slopes of the Bitter Hills. Da would have loved this.
“You’ll have to make yourself a scabbard for it, find a skin to wrap
around the grip. It should serve you well enough until you find a better one.”
Raif looked up.
“What, Clansman? Did you really think this will be the sword that makes
you?“
“No. I ... I don’t know. . . .” Raif heard himself stumbling.
“Thank you. It is a fine sword.”
“It should be. I took it from a knight’s corpse. Don’t worry, I didn’t
kill him. Poor soul was on a pilgrimage to the Lake of Lost Men, got lost
himself and died.” The old man sealed the chest and then stood. “Quite useful
really, the Forsworn. At least one of them gets lost here each season. We Ice
Trappers depend upon it.” Pushing the chest back into the cache hole, he said,
“I’ll see you receive clothes and provisions in the morning. Tonight, I
promised a certain widow I would visit her for the benefit of our mutual
health. Sleep well and remember what I said: Learn to use your gift through the
sword. It will be better for you in the end.” With that he sealed the cache and
made his way toward the door. “I do not envy you, Clansman, though I find
myself wishing I could join you on your journey. I could eat many suppers on
the tales you will spin.” Raif bowed his head, unable to find words to reply.
The Listener took his leave, and Raif closed the door behind him. He found
himself hesitating to seal the cracks around the doorframe, though he did not
want to admit why. The sword lay on the stone bench and he picked it up and
began to polish it with a scrap of skin. The raven watched him, wings tucked
behind its back, mimicking the motion of a skater in time to Raif’s strokes.
Raif balled the skin in his fist and threw it at the bird. He was beginning to
hate the thing.
A sword, he learned, was poor company at night. He polished and waited,
yet Sila did not return. He told himself it was for the best, but his body was
restless with need and longing and dawn could not come too soon.
When morning finally came, he rose early and set off east in search of
the Maimed Men.
CHAPTER
The Thorn King
The forest south of Bludd was dark and ancient, with oaks slithery with
moss and basswoods roped with ivy, and great white willows grown weak by the
effort of surviving in stagnant water, eaten alive by spongy growths and
rotting slowly from the roots up. Ruins stood here: a pale footstone half sunk
into the loam, a section of standing wall protecting nothing but trees, a
crumbling arch grown over with rapevines, a stretch of man-laid road running
parallel to the path.
Bram noticed these things while most in the raiding party did not. Or
perhaps they saw but looked away; if a man had war and fighting on his mind it
was, better not to think too closely about those who had died before. Bram
could not help himself, though. His brother said he had been born in the wrong
place, and instead of being birthed amongst the thistle fields of Dhoone he should
have been brought into the world in the Far South, where a man could grow to be
a warrior monk or a soldier scribe. Robbie Dhoone liked to tell men what they
should be and where they should have been born, and although Bram was reluctant
to admit it his brother was often right. Take their great-uncle Skinner Dhoone.
Robbie said the man should have been born on Topaz Island in the Warm Sea,
where men owned slaves and kept concubines, for all Skinner was good for was
controlling loose women and men in chains. Skinner had been furious when the
insult had been relayed back to him, supposedly shaking so hard veins broke
open in his face. In response he had named Robbie the Thorn King, claiming
anyone who offered him loyalty would be torn to bloody shreds. Unfortunately
for Skinner, Robbie had taken a liking to the name and had since claimed it for
his own. And it hadn’t taken long for Skinner to realize the full breadth of
his mistake: He’d been the first man alive to name Robbie Dun Dhoone a king.
Robbie, riding at the head of the line on his fine honey stallion,
raised a fist and called a halt. Bram was torn between relief that he could
rest at last, and misquiet over making camp, however briefly, amidst these
quiet, twilight trees.
It was late in the day, and a red sun was sinking fast in the west. The
sky was clear and it was bearably cold, without a wisp of wind to stir the
thistles braided into the Dhoonesmen’s hair. A perfect night for a raid. I shouldn’t be surprised, Bram thought. Even nature herself can’t help but be charmed by
Robbie Dhoone.
Twelve days ago they had left Castlemilk and headed east toward Bludd.
Sixty warriors and two women, war-dressed and battle-mounted (except for the
elder woman whom everyone knew as Old Mother, and who stoutly refused to wear
anything thicker than boiled wool, or ride anything taller than her mule), they
had skirted the pathways and forest lines of Haddo, Frees and Bludd. On the
fifth day they forded the Flow on horseback, not trusting to use any of the
river crossings manned by Bludd-sworn clans. It had been an exercise that none
except the warhounds enjoyed, for armor and weapons and heavy leathers had to
be removed and floated across on makeshift rafts to prevent kanker. Bram
shivered to think of the coldness of the water rising against his thighs. This
far east the Flow was a league wide, disturbed by strong underpulls and sucking
pools, quite unlike the narrow stately river that flowed south of Dhoone.
‘Bram! Robbie says you’re to attend him—and quickly.“ The voice
belonged to Guy Morloch, a Castlemilk swordsman lately come to Robbie’s cause.
Like most of Robbie’s inner circle, he was handsomely mounted on a high-bred
stallion, and dressed in the finest clothes. Bram noticed that his cloak of
heavy, felted wool had been newly fitted with thistle clasps. Turning his mount
smartly, Guy headed back through the dry camp.
Bram hated to leave his horse without grooming, but he knew that Robbie
wouldn’t suffer waiting gladly, so he tethered the sweet-natured gelding to a
gorse bush and set off on foot for his brother’s tent.
All around Dhoonesmen were preparing to sit out part of the night. No
fires were to be lit, not this close to the Bluddhouse, and men had to content
themselves with drawing their cloaks close and eating cold fare. The big ugly
axman Duglas Oger had made himself comfortable on a fallen log and was
inspecting the head of his ax. Other men were wetting their swords with tung
oil, and reflections from the pure Dhoonish steel flickered coldly through the
trees. Water steel, it was called, owing to the shimmering waves of iron and
blistered steel that ran beneath the surface like lake water.
Bram had once hoped to own such a blade himself, for his father had
been the swordsman Mabb Cormac, and he had left two such swords for his sons
upon his death. Robbie had been sixteen at the time, ten years older than Bram,
and Bram thought that when his brother claimed both swords the night of Da’s
deathwatch, he did so with the intention of giving one to Bram when he reached
an age to use it. Bram was fifteen now . . . and still there was no sword.
“Damn you, Old Mother, go gentle with me! I swear you treat me worse
than your mule!” Robbie Dhoone sat on a wooden camp stool outside the only tent
in the camp, his legs stretched out before him, his booted feet resting upon an
ale cask, offering up his face to an old woman brandishing a needle as thick as
a nail.
As Bram looked on, the woman dredged the needle through the contents of
her hip flask, causing a coat of bluish powder to cling to needle and thread.
Unsmiling she brought the needle to Robbie’s eye and pierced the skin between
his eyelid and brow. Blood welled. Robbie, knowing the attention of several of
his companions was upon him, winked as if it hurt him not at all. Old Mother
drew the needle deep, depositing powder beneath his skin, making a mark that
would last as long as Robbie Dhoone’s life.
The blue tattoos: No Dhoonesman could call himself a warrior without
them. They took years, sometimes decades to finish, for no man could stand the
pain longer than two or three strokes. Yet here was his brother, choosing to
add to his warrior’s face in the middle of an armed camp, as calm as if he were
being shaved, not stitched. Bram shuddered. He had received his first warrior’s
mark at midwinter; the pain had kept him awake half a night.
“Bram.” Robbie finally noticed him. “Take a look at Oath’s hoof-irons
for me. I think he picked up a stone. You know he won’t give his hocks to
anyone but you and Flock.”
Bram kept his face still. Show no disappointment; Robbie has burdens enough. Nodding, he turned to leave.
“Oh, and Bram,” Robbie drew him back, turning brilliant blue-gray eyes
upon him. “Muffle your gelding’s bridle. You ride with me tonight.”
As Bram turned out a stone lodged in Oath’s hoof horn, he tried to
control his excitement. It was dark now, and half a moon had risen above the
trees. All about him Dhoonesmen were strapping on plate and adjusting ax harnesses:
making grim preparation for war. They looked fierce, his fellow clansmen, big
men with pale faces and yellow braids. Bram only had to look at his hands to
know he wasn’t one of them. Dark and small, like the rest of him, they hadn’t
been made for wielding an ax. Still, he was good with horses and other living
things, and people had told him he could ride well enough. And he was known to
have good eyes.
Even now in the half-flight, he could see what others could not. Old
Mother had walked from the camp for privacy’s sake and was relieving herself
behind a bush. Bram saw her eye whites glinting. He saw also that the clearing
Robbie had chosen for a campsite had been used countless times before, and had
once even been built on. Despite the snow cover, his eyes detected a ridge of
earth that ran too straight and narrow to be natural: the foundation for
something lay beneath. And then there were the trees themselves; limbs hacked
off at man height for firewood, a hoof mark stamped low on a white oak, a
series of marks splitting the papery bark of a gray birch, indicating where
some would-be archer had once practiced shots.
Sometimes Bram wished he could see less. To see was to think. He
couldn’t look at something without asking questions about it. Right now his
brother was sitting in the darkness of his tent, thinking the shadows concealed
him as well as any tent flap. They didn’t, at least not from Bram’s eyes.
Robbie was speaking with the woman warrior Thora Lamb, laughing softly, judging
from the tilt of his head, and resting his hand upon her thigh. Quickly, Bram
looked away.
Moments later Robbie emerged from the tent, and began to walk a circuit
of the camp. Men waited for him. Bram watched them form small groups, their
eyes following Robbie as they weighed their weapons in their grips. Robbie
spoke with every man, naming them, clasping fists, listening to advice from the
battle-seasoned warriors, and offering words of comfort to the green untested
boys. As Robbie walked among them, the mood in the camp changed, became charged
and vital and grave. Bram could see it on the faces of the men.
Robbie Dhoone gave them a cause.
“So, Bram,” Robbie said when he reached him. “Are you ready for your
first raid?”
Bram nodded. How could he expect Robbie to remember that this wasn’t
his first raid, that he’d ridden on one two months back, when Duglas Oger
struck a caravan of I lie Glaive merchants on the Lake Road, winning the very
horse that Guy Morloch sat this night? Bram’s hand rose to his face. He’d
earned his first warrior’s mark that night, though in truth he did little
except untether the horses and scare a little girl who’d taken refuge in one of
the trunks.
Eager to thank his brother for including him in the raid party, Bram
cleared his throat to speak.
Robbie Dhoone had already moved on.
Bram stood and waited a little while, then went to tend his horse.
Robbie was driven, Bram had to remember that. Eight months back Bludd
had seized the Dhoonehold and killed its chief. Skinner Dhoone had claimed the
vacant chiefship and fled. He had not attempted to retake the Dhoonehold, and
Robbie swore he never would. “Dhoone will be lost to us without swift action,”
Robbie had declared. “Chewed and swallowed by Bludd, and forsaken by its sworn
clans.”
As he fastened strips of felt to his gelding’s bit, he watched as
Robbie and his close companions held a war parley outside the tent. Bram didn’t
know what actions his brother planned to take this night. He thought at first
it would be a simple raid: striking farms for livestock or travelers for goods.
But there was too much risk here for that. They were in the heart of the
Bluddhold—dangerous territory that no Dhoonesman could claim to know. It seemed
madness to draw so close to the enemy, yet no one had openly questioned
Robbie’s judgment, and the morning they’d ridden forth from the Milkhouse there
had been a hundred more willing to come. Visibly moved, Robbie had shaken his
head at them. “It’s a small thing I ride to do and must risk the least possible
men.”
Bram wondered about those words now. It was surely no coincidence that
a week earlier Skinner Dhoone had forced the clan guide to declare Robbie and
his companions traitors to the clan. Everyone in Castlemilk had been expecting
Robbie to make a countermove, perhaps raid the Old Round outside of Gnash where
Skinner and his followers were quartered. Yet Robbie had been strangely
restrained on the subject, saying only, “First I must win back Dhoone’s heart.”
“Here, boy. Dull your face.” Old Mother’s rough voice cut into Bram’s
thoughts. The stout, big-breasted matron stood before him, thrusting a cloth of
lampblack into his hand. “Be sure to work some into the draft horses’ whites.”
Bram did as he was bid, smudging the dark powder along the white noses
and skirts of the four workhorses. Old Mother watched for a moment, satisfying
herself that boy and horses were now invisible to moonlight, then moved to the
next man. She had a curious hold over the Dhoone warriors, Bram noticed. She
never strategized or offered opinions on battle—though she had ridden on more
campaigns than most Dhoonesmen—but she was a powerful mascot to all. She had
been the first of the clan elders to declare herself for Robbie and his cause.
Bram thought she smelled strange, but he kept that opinion to himself.
“Bram!”
Spinning round, Bram saw Jess Blain heading toward him. Jess was Bram’s
age, though he was taller, stronger and fairer, and the considerable number of
battles he’d fought in showed themselves on the long tattoo spiraling across
his left cheek.
“There’s to be a split. I’m heading east with Iago Sake.” Jess drew his
sword and made imaginary strikes through the air. “We’re setting light to the
sacred wood where Thrago Half Bludd and all those other barbarian chiefs are
earthed. Robbie reckons they guard it day and night. Imagine that! It’s hardly
a proper tomb or anything, just a load of old trees.”
Bram thought Jess made too light of the sacred wood. Any ground where
chiefs were laid was hallowed; you could hardly blame a clan for having nothing
to match the fineness of the Tomb of the Dhoone Princes. Few did. Still, Bram’s
mind was already working on something else. “How far from the wood does the
Bluddhouselie?”
Jess shrugged. “A league or so.”
So
they’ll see the flames. Robbie means them to see the flames. “How many in your party?”
“A full score. We’re to be quick about it. The Nail says we ride in,
kill the guards, douse the trees with naphtha, torch them, then ride out.”
That explained the many barrels of fuel oil they’d brought. Bram was
quiet for a moment, thinking. “Who rides with you?”
Jess named the sworn warriors in a nonchalant voice, pretending to be
more interested in practicing his downstroke. “The Nail, of course. Ranald Vey,
Diddie Daw, Mangus Eel, Guy Morloch . . .”
Bram listened as Jess listed the twenty-four best horsemen in the
raiding party. When Jess had finished he asked casually, “Which way will you
make your retreat?”
Jess waved his sword to the east. “We’re to head east and north until
we come to the Hell’s Road, and then turn west for Milk.”
It’s a
distraction,
Bram thought with certainty. Robbie
doesn’t care about the sacred wood. The Nail’s party is meant to draw attention
away from . . . what? Surely not the Bluddhouse? No. They didn’t have I
the manpower to take it. Even with the Dog Lord housed at Dhoone, the
Bludd Gate was well defended. Quarro Bludd, Vaylo’s eldest son, was said to be a
hard and terrible warrior who meant to keep the Bluddhouse for his own.
“Jess, what’s Robbie’s party to do?”
The golden-haired boy looked at Bram with barely concealed superiority.
With an elegant gesture borrowed from Robbie Dhoone, he recouched his watered
steel. “Oh, Robbie’s only told his trusted companions what he plans to do. And we’re all sworn to secrecy.” With that, Jess Blain swung
his yellow braids behind him and headed off to find his horse.
Bram watched him go. Robbie
chose me to be in his party, he told himself. Me, not Jess.
Around him the camp was being dismantled in preparation for the raid.
Robbie’s tent had been leveled and stowed, feedbags removed from the horses,
and all the remaining supplies gathered in a pile to be bound once more upon
the draft mares’ backs. Bram thought he’d better start work on it. Moalish
Flock, the horsemaster, was already looking for him. Taking the first of the
four draft mares by the reins, Bram walked into the center of the camp and
began loading.
The horsemaster approached him and spat. “Nay. Don’t go loading any of
those drafts up, Robbie’s orders. What’s left here has to fit on the packmule.”
Bram glanced at the two mules standing by the makeshift horse post; the
fat white one was Old Mother’s mount, the little angry one had been brought
here tethered to the horsemaster’s reins. With four big workhorses in the
party, Bram had assumed it was merely a spare. Puzzled, he packed the animal
with as many of the supplies as the creature could possibly bear. When the mule
could take no more—letting its displeasure be knowing by braying and throwing
kicks—Bram decided to slip away and prepare himself for the raid.
He owned no ax, nor had he been trained to wield one, so his only
weapons were the sword Robbie had called his own before their father’s death
and the alien-looking twin-bladed katar he had earned for his part in the Ille
Glaive raid. The sword had been oiled and honed countless times during the
journey, yet Bram couldn’t help but inspect the blade one last time. His
stomach churned as he tested the edge. Robbie was right in a way; this was his first proper raid. At Ille Glaive he had just
been carried along by the other clansmen, drawing his weapon, yet not using it.
Tonight would be different. Tonight he would act like a man.
Excited and determined to ignore the twisting in his gut, Bram went to
take his place in Robbie’s crew.
Robbie was already mounted and giving orders. “Flock, take Old Mother
and the packmule and lead them west. Find that old paved path we crossed at
noon and wait there. I’ll send Bram for you when we’re done.” Moalish Flock,
who seldom had a good word to say to anyone and was known for finding fault
with the most flawless of things, nodded obediently and went on his way. Robbie
had that effect on men. He made you want to do your best. He should be chief, Bram thought with pride. “Duglas, you’re with me.
I want that wickedly sharp ax of yours as close to my neck as humanly
comfortable, though I’d take it for a blessing if you managed to stay downwind.
That raw onion you had for breakfast is just as deadly as any blade.”
Everyone laughed. Duglas Oger grinned, showing large broken teeth and
gums as pink as a baby’s. “Anything you say, Rab.”
Robbie bowed his head toward the big axman before sending his gaze over
the entire raiding party. “Men. Dhoonesmen, Castlemen, Wellmen, brothers to me
this night. We ride not for blood or killing, but for simple justice. The
Dhoonehouse is ours, and tonight we begin winning it back.”
“Aye!” breathed the party, stirred
by Robbie’s words yet conscious of the need for silence this close to the
Bluddhouse.
When the men had quieted to his liking, Robbie nodded and continued on.
“We’re small in number yet, and we’ll need more men and more sway before we’re
ready to claim Dhoone. But make no mistake, we will take it. We, the
companions. Not Skinner and his band of old men. Never forget that we’ve got what
Skinner hasn’t—”
“Blood of the Dhoone Kings!” cried the fierce little swordsman Diddie
Daw. “That Skinner’s only got chief’s blood pumping through him—and that runs
thin as piss. Our Robbie’s got kings in his veins!“
“Aye,” cried another. “Blood of kings!”
Robbie let the men go on, his eyes hard and glittering, his hand
resting princely upon the hilt of his sword. After a time he said, “Enough. We
must first win a war before we speak of kings.”
Bram sighed with relief. He didn’t like talk of kings.
“Tonight we begin the war. Here. Now, on
Bludd-cursed soil we make our first strike.” Robbie’s hand rose from his sword
to his neck, where his measure of powdered guidestone lay suspended in a copper
horn on a copper chain. Eyes closed, chest rising and falling, he brought the
horn to his lips and kissed it. “Stone Gods be with us!”
“Gods be with us!” came the reply from sixty men.
With that the raid party split into two groups, turning their horses
into ranks, fitting their greathelms and their hourglass gauntlets, closing
their visors and spreading their capes. Bram had only a pothelm and
boiled-leather gloves, but he hardly cared. Tonight we begin the war, Robbie had said. Excitement
and fear burned in him like a fever, and when Robbie drew his weapon, so did
he.
With shining eyes he watched Iago Sake’s party ride east. Robbie spoke
solemn words of farewell to the deathly pale axman known as the Nail. He called
Iago his “brother in all things save blood,” and Bram thought he saw the
sparkle of tears in the Nail’s hard, colorless eyes as he rode forth.
Quiet descended on the forty remaining men. Minutes passed as they
waited, giving Iago Sake the lead he needed. All eyes were upon Robbie. The
would-be chief sat high on his thistle-barded stallion, his blue wool cloak
trimmed with fisher fur spreading gently in the barest breeze. Bram couldn’t
help himself, and he worked his way up through the lines to be next to his
brother.
Robbie spotted him as he reached Oath’s withers. Bram saw his brother’s
forearm rise in welcome, watched as those famed Dhoone -blue eyes took him in.
And then Robbie hissed, “Sheath that sword, you fool. You’re not here to fight.
Get down the line and handle the drafts.”
Bram had no memory of riding back down the line. It seemed as if he was
suddenly there, by the horse post, receiving the driving reins for the four
fully harnessed draft mares from Moalish Flock. “Let them run ahead o‘ your
gelding, and keep ’em on a close rein. Ropes are on Milly’s back when you need
‘em.”
Bram could barely make sense of the words. He felt as if he’d been
stabbed.
Silently, he dismounted and formed the four mares into a team, checking
their traces and collars. They were good horses, gentle and eager to snuffle
Bram’s coat for treats. Bram spoke soft words to them, telling them that no, he
had no treats but he’d find apples for them later if he could. It was a
difficult task positioning the four drafts ahead of the gelding. The drafts
were massive creatures with deep chests and powerful shoulders, bred for
pulling carts. Bram feared they’d pull him clean from the gelding’s saddle if
he gave them an inch too much head. The gelding was wary of their closeness,
twitching its tail and showing teeth.
And then suddenly they were under way. Robbie’s cry came low and clear,
“North to Bludd!” and forty men and forty-four
horses rode out from the clearing toward the Bluddhouse. Tack jingled, hooves
thudded, and axes wielded in anticipation made snicking sounds as they cut air. Bram brought up the rear.
The path was narrow, and he immediately regretted forming the drafts into
double rather than single file. Still, they were moving well enough, and there
was little tension in the reins. He just wished he weren’t falling behind so
quickly. The main body of the party had already raced a quarter league ahead.
The forest was dark, fragrant with the odors of old trees. The loam
beneath the horses’ hooves was rich and black beneath the top layer of snow.
Bram felt sweat trickle along his neck. Holding the team made his shoulders
ache, and he kept searching the darkness ahead for lights, hoping to spy the
Bluddhouse.
He spied the fire first, the barest glow above the trees, hardly brighter
than starlight. Minutes passed, and then the cry came from ahead, “The Nail’s
fired the wood!” Dhoonesmen cheered. Digging steel into horseflesh the raid
party quickened their pace.
Other noises soon broke through the darkness: a horn blast, low and
chilling, coming from due north. Gears whirred. Something monstrously heavy
shook the earth as it moved, and then came the unmistakable rumble of many
horsemen riding forth . . . to
the east. Bluddsmen. Robbie’s luring them away.
Bram felt for his earlier fear but found it gone. Robbie had killed it.
He could smell the fire now, see the orange flames dancing high above
the canopy. Armed men were on the move, calling instructions to each other in their
thick Bluddish tongue. Bram could hear, but not see them. The forest was
thinning now, ancient sentinels giving way to man-planted maples, red pines,
smoke trees and scarlet oaks—trees chosen for the bloodred foliage. Suddenly
the path broadened and turned. And there, before him, rose the hideous bulk of
the Bluddhouse.
It was a massive, flaking cyst on the earth. A scab of stone, the
brown-red color of dried blood, rising four stories high and spreading
immeasurably wide. Seeing it, seeing its total lack of symmetry and grace, its
carbunkled outbuildings and blistered stonework, its strangely smoking gate
towers and misshapen archers’ roosts protruding from its roundwall like sores,
Bram knew why the Dog Lord wanted Dhoone. This place was not fit for a king.
Mounted Bluddsmen in their dull plate, rough leathers and sable cloaks
were racing across the roundhouse’s forecourt, heading east toward the fire
raging in the sacred wood. Chaos reigned. Bram’s good eyes saw it all.
Stablemen trotting out mounts tangled with armsmen bearing torches and youths
bearing steel to the sworn men. Women were screaming, and a line of children
and maids were running east with buckets and other vessels meant for filling
with water and dousing the flames. Someone, possibly the clan guide, was naming
the Stone Gods in a high, wavering voice.
Robbie’s
done a good job surprising them, Bram thought, feeling an unfamiliar bitterness
rising in his throat. It’s
as if we’d torched the heart of their clan.
Ahead, Robbie and his companions drew low in their saddles, water steel
and ax iron drawn and moving. The woman warrior Thora Lamb hefted the
hollow-tipped throwing spear she was known for, and sent her cool gaze ranging
ahead in search of game. Quietly, the war chant began, a drumbeat with two
notes. “Dun Dhoone! Dun
Dhoone! DUN DHOONE!”
Realization of the trap rippled through the Bluddsmen like a cold wind.
There was a moment where everything was still, where buckets hung suspended in
midswing and smoke ceased to rise from the torches. And then the cry went up.
“Close
the gate!”
Into the scrambling chaos of women, warriors, children and youths rode
Robbie Dhoone and his forty men. Oath had pulled thirty paces ahead of the
other horses and Robbie’s ax drew first blood. A yearman, poorly mounted on a
sunk-backed pony, had one of his hands hacked off. Encouraged by the sight of
spurting blood, the Dhoonesmen grew wild with fury, killing and slashing and
riding men down. Duglas Oger rode through the lines of retreating Bluddsmen
like a fallen god, savage and stinking, dealing death with his three-foot ax.
Beside him pulled Robbie Dun Dhoone, the Thorn King, fair as Duglas was dark,
graceful as his companion was barbaric, his plate armor and great helm black and
dripping, his braids whipping around him like golden chains. Together the two
men drove the remaining Bluddsmen back as others in the party scattered women
and children, axes and swords moving in and out of Bluddflesh to the rhythm of
the Dhoonish chant. “Dun
Dhoone! Dun Dhoone! DUN DHOONE!”
Bram watched as a horse slid in a pool of gore, crushing its rider and
breaking its own back. He felt a fine mist of blood spray across his face as
Duglas look a man’s head, smelled shit and urine and horse stale as men and
beasts lost themselves to fear. Something close to relief overcame him when the
Bludd Gate finally closed, its black iron hinges and pulleys straining as they
swung two tons of iron-studded bloodwood back into its frame. Women and
children and old men ran but did not make it, and as bars were drawn with the
force of crossbolts firing, they threw themselves against the wood, scratching
and pleading, tearing their nails.
Duglas Oger slowed his ax swing and looked to his leader. Robbie pulled
off his greathelm to reveal a face red with exertion and stained bloody around
the eyes. His braids were dark now, drenched with sweat. He seemed to wait
until everyone, even the panicking Bluddsfolk, stilled, and then said in a
clear voice, “No. Let no one say Robbie Dhoone kills innocent women and
children like the Hail Wolf. Let them run free to the woods.”
Duglas Oger nodded, grabbing a fistful of mane from his horse’s neck
and using it to clean his ax. All around Dhoonesmen lowered their weapons and
removed their helms, panting for breath.
Wary relief spread through the crowd gathering at the door. One
toothless old hag bobbed a curtsy to Robbie, calling him a clansman good and
true. Impatient, Robbie waved her away. Slowly, the Bluddsfolk stepped clear of
the door, eyes down, arms around the shoulders of small children, buckets still
in hand.
“No,” Robbie said suddenly, pointing to a red-haired boy of perhaps
twelve. “He carries a sword so is a man.”
Duglas dealt the youth a clean blow with his newly shined ax, cleaving
his chest from shoulder blade to heart, crushing a dozen bones. A woman
fainted. Children began to whimper. A group of maids broke free from the gate
and ran screaming through the Dhoone ranks. Thora Lamb amused herself by cracking
their knees with her spear. By the time the doorway was clear, five other
corpses lay on the ground. Three more youths and two old men.
An archer high up in one of the roosts began taking shots, and an arrow
glanced off Robbie’s plate. “Come, men,” he said abruptly, turning his horse.
“Let’s finish what we came here for. Bram! Bring the horses.”
Bram obeyed the order, struggling to set all five horses into motion at
once. The party moved west of the Bluddhouse, toward a series of outbuildings that
lay clustered around the banks of a small stream. Robbie rode ahead of the
group, searching. All the buildings looked the same to Bram, squat, red-stoned,
hastily built with neither mortar nor chinking, yet Robbie came to a halt
before one.
The moon broke through the clouds as Robbie waited for his companions
to draw abreast, and Bram saw that he had been wrong: Not all the shanties were
red. This one was pale, built from blue-gray stone.
And then Bram knew what his brother meant to do.
“Bram,” Robbie murmured, his voice dark with feeling. “Put the ropes on
the horses and tear this thing down.”
The Dhoone ranks parted to let Bram and the drafts through. Bram’s
hands shook as he fastened the wrist-thick ropes to the mares’ harnesses, surprised
by the strength of his emotion. All around men had dismounted and were
murmuring the names of the nine gods. Duglas Oger had tears in his black eyes,
and a fellow axman moved to lay a hand on the big man’s shoulders. Watching
them, Bram was overcome with an aching love for his clan. How can-Robbie not be chief after this? The sadness came slowly, as he
walked around the little stone shanty, pulling rope through his fist. / no longer love him as I did.
With his heart aching softly, Bram cracked the whip and set the four
massive draft horses in motion, bringing down the building that the Dog Lord
had raised thirty-five years ago from the rubble of the lost Dhoonestone.
CHAPTER
A Broken Stone
Raina Blackhail sat on the edge of the stone bed and bound her honey
brown hair. The tresses were soft and heavy, and the familiar movements of
weaving the long braid calmed her. Dagro had always loved her hair. Unbind it for me, he had whispered, that first night in the barley
field when they had come together as man and woman whilst his first wife lay
dying in this very chamber. Norala had wished it, knowing her husband needed
the comfort of a woman and wanting him to pick one worthy of being his new
wife. Still, Norala had died a week later, earlier than expected and in
terrible pain, and Raina knew it was the knowledge of their union that killed
her. Picking a new wife for your husband was one thing; living with the
knowledge that the new pair were in love and well matched was another, and the
pain had been too much to bear.
Sighing, Raina stood. It all seemed like a hundred years ago now, and
she had been such a child. How could she have ever believed that the world was
good, and that everyone within it wished her well?
Thrusting sharp silver combs into her hair, she coiled her braid around
her scalp. It wouldn’t do for her to be seen with it unbound or even hanging
down her back in a single plait. She was chief’s wife, and there were many
around her who were eager to find fault.
Already the whispers had begun. Mace no longer sleeps in her chamber. Ayla Perch
says she drove him out. Who can blame a man for looking elsewhere for favors
his wife won’t grant?
A hard little smile that Raina did not like on herself was showing when
she looked in the glass. Always
he twists and maneuvers, filling the truth. It was he who had walked out on their marriage
bed. Mace, not her. Gods knew she had not loved it, but she had found her capacity
for endurance was like a great hollow space inside herself, always able to
swallow a little more. Now Mace had let it be known that she had turned cold
and frigid, and had shut her door against him. Lies, all lies, but they sounded
so much like the truth.
And they weakened her position in the clan. The clanswomen were her
backbone and support; she birthed their sons, taught their daughters how to be
women, offered counsel when their marriages grew strained and mourning in times
of grief. Always it was said of her that she was a good woman and a loyal wife.
And now Mace Blackhail was taking that last thing from her.
If you refused to share your bed with your husband, it meant you were
no longer a loyal wife.
She was too proud to deny it, for she would not speak aloud what others
delighted to whisper, nor was she sure that such a denial would be believed.
She had always been cool to Mace, and the women had doubtless observed this, as
women always did, and the rumors would be easier to believe. After all, they would say, she’s never shown much love for him in the past. It
was only a matter of time before she drew away.
Frustrated, Raina tugged at the straw-filled mattress on the bed and
began shaking some air into it. She really should make a new one, for this one
had grown limp, and doubtless many small creatures had made their home within
it, and it no longer cushioned her spine against the hardness of the stone bed.
Stone,
stone, stone!
She was sick of Blackhail and its hardness, its dark oppressive roundhouse and
its corpses left to rot on open ground. Look at this chamber: stone bed,
undressed stone walls, stone flags worn thin where two thousand years of chiefs
had stepped upon them. Where was the lightness and the music? In Dregg there
had been dancing and mummery, the great hall gay with candlelight, the men with
their kilts a-skirling, the women with sprigs of rosemary in their hair. Just
to look at the walls made you glad; plastered smooth and painted umber, and
swaddled in homespun fabrics, they hardly looked like stone at all. Blackhail
had ten times the wealth of Dregg, so why did it have none of its joy?
Raina let the straw mattress drop to the bed. / am young yet, only thirty-three winters passed, yet
why does this roundhouse make me old?
It was a question she had no time for. Inigar Stoop had called her to
the guidehouse, and she did not want to go yet knew she must. Already she had
kept him waiting.
Her chamber was located high on the western wall of the roundhouse, as
far as it was possible to be from the guidestone and the guidehouse, and it
seemed today that the walk was especially long and tiring. Some of the Scarpe
women had set up a cook chamber in the old granary, where the damp had risen
too sharply to continue storing grain. Raina smelled the sharp, unfamiliar
scents of another clan’s cookery, and it made the gall rise in her. How do we stand it, this slow invasion by Scarpe? At that moment, she spied
Anwyn Bird crossing the entrance hall on her way to the kitchen. She thought of
stopping the older woman to ask her, but she noticed an unfamiliar stoop in the
clan matron’s shoulders and too many loose hairs pulled free from her bun. She suffers too, Raina thought, and wondered what it must be like
for Anwyn to have her clean, well-ordered domain overtaken by strangers. You
could fight and fight, but little was won in the end. Mace Blackhail would have
his way.
As soon as the thought escaped her she saw him. The man she called
husband entered the Hailhouse accompanied by two of his weaselings from Scarpe.
He almost didn’t see her, for she immediately dropped her head and hunched her
shoulders like a child trying to avoid notice. Yet just at that moment Biddie
Byce rushed toward her, loudly gushing her name.
“Raina! Raina!” cried the pretty blond widow. “I’ve been about all
morning looking for you. Arlec’s asked me to wed him. He thinks we should wait
a year to give Cull his due, and then swap our oaths next spring.”
“Hush, child,” Raina said, aware as she spoke that Mace had altered his
path to intercept her. “I’m glad for you, and Arlec will make a fine husband,
but a hallway is no place to announce a match.”
Biddie’s smile faltered. She was clothed in her best blue dress with
Arlec’s green marble necklace at her throat. “I thought you should be the first
to know . . . seeing as you were the one who brought me Arlec’s token.”
Reaching out, Raina brushed a stray hair from the girl’s face. How was
Biddie to know she had picked a bad time to share her news?
“Wife.”
And there he was, Mace Blackhail, his wolf-yellow eyes taking in every
detail of the scene before him. Raina forced a smile, then instantly regretted
it as she felt it stiffen into something unnatural on her face. Discomfort made
her speak. “Husband. So you’ve heard the good news about our Biddie?”
Mace nodded briefly at the young widow before turning toward his wife.
“A good marriage is a blessing all should share.”
Biddie looked confused. She was a sweet girl, and she didn’t deserve to
have her happiness ruined on such a day. “Go, Biddie,” Raina said. “I’ll come
to you later and you can tell me everything then.”
The girl had the sense not to argue. Careful not to make eye contact
with the Scarpemen, she dropped a curtsy to Mace and took her leave. Raina
watched her go. Was I really
that young once?
“Leave us.” Mace addressed the two Scarpe warriors who flanked him.
They were tall men, clad in leather boots and leather britches, and protected
from the elements by oiled greatcloaks trimmed with the soft underbelly fur of
weasels. Raina did not know their names. Once they were out of earshot she
asked Mace, “Why do you bring them here ?”
“Because I can,” Mace answered simply. She saw from his eyes that he
was aware she had spoken to distract him but had chosen to answer regardless.
“Scarpe is my birthclan. Their house has been destroyed by Orrlsmen and they’re
in need. Tell me you would not do the very same if it were Dregg.”
She could not deny it. Dregg was her birthclan. Its chiefs had sworn
fealty to Blackhail for forty generations, fought alongside dozens of Hail
chiefs, and stood ready to defend even more. Blackhail owed Dregg something in
return. “Is Yelma rebuilding her house?” she asked.
Mace’s narrow features displayed a brittle kind of amusement. “So many
questions, Raina. One might think you were taking a wifely interest in my
pursuits.” And then, after a beat, “Are you?”
For the briefest instant raw need showed plainly on his face. He wants me, gods know why. Raina took a breath to give
herself a moment before answering. He was young, she must not forget that. He
had never felt fully accepted here—even now, after he’d made chief. Oh, he
covered it well enough but deep down inside he knew he’d never be a Blackhail.
Just a Scarpe.
“Mace,” she said after a moment. “I am called to the guidehouse.”
He was quick to understand her. “Go,” he said coldly, dismissing her.
“But do not blame me if I begin to treat you as a hindrance, not a wife.”
Raina felt his gaze upon her as she walked the length of the hall.
Sometimes she wondered why she carried on.
As she approached the narrow tunnel that led out to the guide-house,
she smoothed her dress and checked her boots for mud. Foolishness, but she
could not help herself. There would be another battle here—she sensed it—and
she had long learned to fight with whatever weapons she had at hand. Inigar
would see her as chief’s wife, not some scared little maid he could bully and
cajole.
Pulling composure about her like a mask, she entered the Blackhail
guidehouse.
The cold struck her first, the sheer depth and deadness of it. How long
ago had the freeze set in? Ten days? Surely now it was passed. Just yesterday
she had watered Mercy at the Leak, and she was sure she had felt the first
whiff of spring. Yet here, in the guidehouse, time seemed to have stopped at
midwinter. Chilled, she rubbed her arms, wishing she had thought to bring a
shawl.
As her eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, the massive bulk of the
Hailstone emerged from the shadows like something conjured up from another
world. Its bulk and power humbled her, and despite her best attempts to
discipline her emotions she felt the old stirrings of awe.
Then she saw the stone was steaming.
Fear, instant and so concentrated she could taste the salt in it, leapt
from her throat to her mouth. The Hailstone was steaming like a side of frozen
meat.
“Yes, Raina Blackhail. Eagle lores always know when to fear.”
Startled by the clan guide’s voice, yet determined not to show it,
Raina straightened the curve of her back and said, “How long has it been like
this?”
Inigar Stoop stepped free from the shadows and smoke. He has aged, she thought as the two regarded each other. The
clan guide’s eyes were as black and hard as ever, but his body seemed shrunk
and dry, sucked clean of blood. She tried not to show her shock, but Inigar
Stoop was not an easy man to fool.
“You find me changed, Raina?” he said, his voice as sharp as ever.
“Then perhaps you should have come here before now.”
She made no reply. / am
chief’s wife and will offer no excuses to this man.
He knew what she thinking, she was sure of it, and for a moment the two
faced each other as adversaries; chief’s wife and clan guide, gazes locked and
bristling. Then, abruptly, Inigar shrugged. Strangely he pulled off the pigskin
gloves he had been wearing and held them out toward her. “Take them. Touch the
stone.”
Annoyed that she had lost control of the situation, but also affected
by the grimness in Inigar’s voice, she hesitated.
He offered the gloves once more. “You cannot touch the stone without
them. It would skin you.”
How
can it be? she
wanted to ask, but she feared that question more than touching the stone, so
she took the gloves from him and drew close to the guidestone’s eastern face.
Cold breath rose from the monolith, making her teeth chatter like a little
girl’s. This close she could see the living surface of the stone, the valleys
and fissures and weeping holes. Normally it was damp and oozing, but a frost
covered it like scale. Wary, she reached out and laid gloved fingers upon it.
Oh
gods. It was
like touching a dying man. Always when she had touched it before—at the end of
her girlhood, after both her weddings and Dagro’s death—its power had leapt
toward her fingers like heat. Now it was cold and all power had withdrawn from
the surface. She sensed it buried deep. As she took her hand away she felt a
faint stirring, as if something reached toward her . . . but failed.
The loss numbed her.
Inigar Stoop stood silent, watching. After a time he said, “The gods
send ice into the heart of the stone. It will shatter before the year’s out.”
Raina touched her measure of guidestone, held in an embroidered pouch
at her waist. She had heard the tales of guidestones cracking, but they had
always seemed like legends more than truth. Quietly she said, “The Eve of
Breaking?”
Inigar nodded. “The night Stanner Hawk sent a hound to the fire.”
She bowed her head. It was too much to see the weight of knowledge on
his face.
Slowly, she backed away, feeling for a wall to support her. The
guidehouse was in disarray, the smoke fire burned out, grit and ashes littering
the floor, chisels scattered like sticks. Even the clan guide’s clothes had
been neglected, and his once-fine pigskins were stained and torn. Suddenly she
felt pity for him, but knew better than to show it. “Have you told Mace?”
“You know I have not. What good would it do to strike fear amongst the
clan?”
“Yet you show no such scruples to me?”
“You are a woman and do not fight.”
She wanted to strike him for his arrogance. How dare he! She fought.
Gods knew how she fought for this clan. Shaking, she said, “I wonder why you
brought me here as it seems you think so little of me.” With that she turned to
leave.
“Stay,” he commanded, his voice calm with practiced authority. “I said
only that you do not fight, not that you hold no power.”
Tired of games, she threw the pigskin gloves onto the floor. “What
would you have of me? The stone is broken and I cannot fix it. I’d have to be a
god for that.”
Still he did not rise to her anger. Moving to pick up the gloves, he said,
“Do you know all stones have lives? Ask any farmer. Stones can appear in their
fields overnight, cast up by the restless earth. Mountains calf and move them,
rivers and glaciers carry them, and heat and ice destroy them when all else is
done. Whenever a stone dies a new one must be found to take its place.”
Inigar Stoop grew silent, and Raina found herself wondering when he had
ceased talking of stones and begun talking about himself.
“I want Effie Sevrance, Raina. Tell me where she is.” So this was what
he wanted. Effie. She should have guessed it. “You cannot protect her, Inigar.”
“I am clan guide. I watch over this clan, and will watch over her.”
Yet
you did not watch her the night Stanner Haw’t tried to burn her in the forge. And then the damning thought, None of us did. Anger at her own failing made her sharp. “You are
only one man, Inigar Stoop, one amongst thousands. Effie is no longer safe in
this clan.“
Inigar’s hawked nose whitened across the bridge. “She is needed. I
choose her to be the next guide.”
Raina stopped herself from replying sharply. Looking at the guidehouse,
at the smoke-blackened walls, stone troughs and stark benches, she knew Inigar
did not see this place as she did. Again the pity came. He is sicl{ and will one day die, and there is no
one to take his place. She said gently, “You must choose another, Inigar. Effie will soon be
gone from here; I’m sending her south to my sister at Dregg.” Cold anger burned
in the guide’s eyes. “So the girl is more important to you than clan?”
It was not a fair question, and she could not answer it. All she knew
was that when Bitty Shank came running to find her on the Eve of Breaking,
telling of how he’d found Effie outside in the dog cotes, shaking with cold and
fright, she thought her heart might break. No child had lost as much as Effie
Sevrance; Raina was determined she would lose no more.
Inigar spoke over her thoughts. “I have searched for five years for
someone to train as my replacement. Every time a boy was born I hoped. Whenever
a child took special interest in the guidehouse I watched and waited and
dreamt.. . but no new guide ever came. And then Effie began to come here, and
sit beneath that bench. No child has ever disturbed my dreams like she has. There’s
power in her, Raina. Power this clan can use. She is young yet, but she will
grow and learn more. I will teach her myself.
“I know you see only the bleakness of this guidehouse. Don’t deny it.
It’s plainly written on your face. What you don’t see is the life behind it.
When I stand here and take a chisel to the guidestone I deal in men’s souls.
Every man and woman in this clan holds steel fired by Brog Widdie and powdered
guidestone ground by me. Which is the most powerful, Raina? Tell me. That which
kills or grants grace?”
He paused, not for her to answer, but to allow her time to think. The
Hailstone smoked behind him, a giant slowly dying as it froze.
“It would not be a bad life for her. Sparse and solitary, yes, but
ordered and meaningful too. I think if you were honest you would say it would
suit her. She came here often enough of her own free will. You know she is
happiest in closed, dark spaces. Let me take her and teach her. She can sleep
on one of the benches, and take her meals with me.”
Almost he persuaded her for there was much truth and sense in his
words. Effie feared open spaces; gods knew how they would get her to Dregg. But
get her there they would. What Inigar offered was a kind of half-life, led
amidst darkness and quiet and smoke. Raina would not have it for her. She had
raised Effie as her own child, taught her how to speak and hold her spoon, and
she wanted simple happiness for her. She wanted her to dance at Dregg.
Inigar read it all on her face, and she was prepared for his anger, but
in the end there was only resignation. “Take her then,” he said. ‘No matter if
she ends up in Dregg or the farthest Badlands you cannot change her fate. She
was born to the stone, Raina Blackhail, she wears it around her neck. You’re an
eagle and can see clearly and know I speak the truth.“
She nodded, and there was nothing else to say, so she left him there in
the darkness, a broken man with a broken stone.
She couldn’t get out of the roundhouse quick enough. Running, she made her
way along the tunnel and out through the entrance hall. People saw and tried to
hail her, but she paid them no heed. She needed light and wind and freshness,
and she raced to the stables to saddle Mercy.
Sweet-faced Jebb Onnacre trotted out her mare. “I thought you might be
taking a run,” he said. “Be careful around Cold Lake, the ice is rotting
there.” As she took the reins from him their eyes met. “I’ll be telling anyone
who asks that you headed south to the Wedge.“
She thanked him, glad in her heart for the small kindness. Jebb was a
Shank by marriage, and their loyalty to Effie remained unchanged. Orwin Shank
knew where the girl was hidden, and Jebb had doubtless guessed that Raina was
on her way there. Well she was, but she’d lay a little ghost trail first. Mace
had her watched and she had to be careful.
Little mice with weasels’ tails.
Shaking off her unease, Raina gave
Mercy her head.
Oh, it was glorious to ride! To feel
the mare’s muscles beneath her, and the wind buffeting her chest. She grinned
with the joy of it, sending Mercy galloping over a series of hedgerows for no
good reason at all.
South first, must be careful, she counseled
herself, somehow afraid that her joy might make her careless. Turn west only when you reach
the trees.
They had tried to find Effie, of course. Mace and Stanner Hawk and
Turby Flapp. They suspected Raina and the Shanks had concealed her, but the
Shanks and the Blackhail hammermen had closed ranks: Effie was one of their
own, and no one was going to find her, so help them gods. Mace had questioned
Raina about it, casually asking why she’d ridden out so often these past ten
days, especially given the freeze. He knew she was lying, but could not press
her. After all, his interest in Effie had to be seen to be purely honorable, a
chief concerned for a little girl. He did not fool Raina. She knew whose hand
lay behind the burning of the hound. She had heard the threat herself.
Slowing her pace to a canter, Raina turned for Cold Lake. All about her
stone pines and black birch showed signs of the sudden freeze. Ten days back
the temperature had dropped so low so quickly that you could hear the trees
exploding. A thaw had begun a week earlier and the winter-starved trees had
begun drawing water. Longhead said that the freeze couldn’t have come at a
worse time, for the water in the pines turned to ice and split the trunks clean
open. Over five hundred mature trees had been lost in the Wedge alone, the
worst anyone could remember in a single season.
More
bad omens,
thought Raina grimly as she turned onto a little-used dogtrot to the lake. Two
hours passed as Mercy worked her way through a mire of half-frozen bulrushes
and mud. Raina found herself thinking longingly of the fine trail that led
directly from the roundhouse to the lakeshore and could be traveled in less
than a hour. Damn rushes! They tore her ankles to shreds, and gods only knew
whether firm ground or water lay beneath them. When she finally spied the ugly
little crannog extending out across the lake, she let out a great sigh of
relief.
Mad Binny was out upon the pier waiting for her, cool as if she’d known
all along Raina would come. The old clan spinster was dressed in black, and she
held a wooden mallet in her hands. “For the fishes,” she said in greeting,
seeing Raina’s gaze upon it. “They come up to the surface by the poles, and
they’re slow at this time of year.”
Raina could think of nothing to say to that, though she did notice that
several fair-sized bull trout lay skipping at the spinster’s feet. Dismounting,
she looked over the queer little crannog Mad Binny had claimed as her own.
Raised on stilts above the water, it commanded the southernmost shore
of the lake. It had been built by Ewan Blackhail in the time of the River Wars,
when every clan chief worth his guidestone was obsessed with running water and
the need to defend it. Looking around, Raina could not understand the crannog’s
position, for none of the streams that fed the lake looked wide enough to hold
a boat.
Still, men would be men, and if other clans were building defensive
crannogs then so, by gods, would Blackhail.
Trouble is, this one hadn’t been built well at all—Hailsmen not being
rivermen and so being unfamiliar with the challenges of building over water—and
forty years later it had fallen to ruin. The roof sagged and had been mended
here and there with bulrushes and animal hides, the window frames were rotten
and broken and an entire wall of outbuildings had half sunk into the lake. Gods
knew what lay beneath the water. It was a wonder the thing still stood.
“You’ll be wanting to see the bairn then?” Mad Binny squatted and hit
one of the skipping trout with the mallet. “She’s inside, learning how to make
a broth to boil a fish.”
Raina was growing accustomed to being speechless in this woman’s
presence. It was hard to believe that this strange, big-boned woman had once
been a great beauty, betrothed to Orwin Shank. Birna Lorn, her name was, and
some old men in the roundhouse could still recall the day Orwin and Will Hawk
fought for her hand in the graze. Not much later she had been named as a witch,
for she had correctly predicted that Norala’s unborn child would be born dead. If I ever turn into a prophet, Raina thought dryly, I’ll keep all the bad news to myself.
“You should learn how to kill a fish, Raina Blackhail,” Mad Binny said,
clubbing another trout. “It’s good practice for killing men.” Brilliant green
eyes caught the light, and Raina couldn’t decide if she saw madness or
cleverness in them.
“Take me to Effie.”
“Take yourself. Door’s right there, what’s left of it. I’ll be in when
I’ve headed the trout.”
Knowing that was one thing she definitely did not want to see, Raina
climbed the rickety ladder and made her way inside the crannog. The room she
entered was dim and warm, scented with the mulish odor of wet rot and lit by a
tiny iron stove. Effie stood by the stove with her back toward Raina, stirring
a little pot. She was singing as she did so, some song about the shankshounds
and how they had once saved a baby from the snow. Standing at the doorway,
watching her, Raina realized that she had never before heard Effie
Sevrance sing. When a board beneath Raina’s foot creaked, Effie jumped,
spilling the broth.
Fear changed to recognition in an instant, and Effie ran to her with
arms stretched. “Raina! I’ve been making broth! Did you know you put carrots
and onions in it, and then boil them till they nearly disappear?”
Raina nodded. She was still seeing Effie’s jump of fear in her mind and
her chest was too tight to speak.
“Binny says it won’t be done until she brings the trout and I boil
their heads in it. Is Drey back yet?”
Raina had visited Effie three times in nine days, and each time she did
so she was greeted with the same question: Where was Drey? Disentangling
herself from the girl’s embrace, she thought what best to say. It suits Mace to have Drey away at the moment while
he decides how best to deal with you. So he keeps coming up with things your
brother can do that will keep him far from home. No, that wouldn’t do. Aloud she said, “I heard
word from Paille Trotter’s son. He saw Drey seven days back at Gnash, and
thinks Drey will head home soon.”
Effie was not fooled by Raina’s forced optimism, and she returned
dispirited to her broth.
Raina wanted nothing more than to comfort her, but she knew better than
to speak lies to a child. “So, what has Mad Binny been teaching you?”
“Lots of things. Cooking. Herbs. Do you know that maggots can eat the
pus from a wound and make it heal faster? And that piles shrink when you put
vinegar on them?”
Raina laughed. In many ways the clan guide had been right: Effie needed
to learn. Suddenly tired, Raina sat on an old chicken crate, content simply to
watch Effie chop onions and stir broth. She had to believe she’d done the right
thing. The guidehouse was no place for this bright and lovely girl.
In this light you could hardly see the scars. Effie’s long lustrous
hair covered most of them, and the one on her cheek had been so expertly
stitched by Laida Moon that it looked as if a fine feather rested there. Some
would think it beautiful. Raina did.
“Here we are. Trout. Effie, put those heads in the pot. Yes, they have
eyes. Too bad they didn’t use them.” Mad Binny took command of the room,
detailing how the broth should be made and the fish cooked, directing Raina to
the woodpile for firewood, and Effie to the storage chest for hard liquor. It
was a relief to let someone else take charge for a change—even if she was a
madwoman—and Raina found herself surprisingly happy to be told what to do.
When they had eaten a good plain meal of trout in its own broth and
black rye bread smothered in honey, Mad Binny told Effie to go outside and try
her hand at stunning passing fish with the mallet. “But it’s nearly dark,”
Effie observed.
“Even better then. They’ll be half asleep already.”
Effie had no argument for that,
and she picked up the mallet and let herself out. Raina had her money on the
fish.
“So,” said Mad Binny, pouring a double measure of malt into Raina’s
cup. “Has that old sourpuss Inigar Stoop made a play for the girl yet?“
Raina couldn’t stop her eyes from widening.
“You needn’t look so pelt-shorn, Raina Blackhail. Why d’you think they
drove me to this mud bucket in the first place?”
“I ... well...”
“Aye. I’m either a madman or a witch. Possibly both.” Mad Binny slammed
the malt flask onto the table, flattening a fly. “I’ll tell you this, Raina,
that girl can’t stay in Blackhail. And if you don’t know that you’re a fool.”
Raina nodded, still reeling from the turn of the conversation. “I’m
planning to move her to Dregg.”
“When?”
“When her brother returns. She won’t leave without seeing him.”
Mad Binny raised the malt flask and studied the squashed fly. “Well,
she’ll be leaving soon then, as Drey Sevrance is on his way here this night.”
Raina felt a rush of pleasure and relief, then told herself she was a
fool. “You’re making it up.”
“Am I now? Well we’ll see about that. In the meantime I’m going to tell
you what you should do with that child, and you’re going to sit there and
listen.“ Mad Binny spoke with the calmness of one who had seldom been
contradicted. Raina supposed it was a benefit of living by oneself.
“Effie Sevrance should be delivered to the cloister at Owl’s Reach.
It’s in the mountains, east of Hound’s Mire—the locals can tell you where. They
teach the old lores; herb and animal, far-seeing and far speech, summonings and
compulsions and other ancient magics. She has the quickness for it, and I need
not tell you she has the power. The sisters there will value her, and she’ll
grow to become one of them, accepted for what she is.”
Raina stood. She was sick of people telling her what to do about Effie.
This was a child they spoke of, not some dangerous animal that must be either
trained or caged. “I’m not sending Effie to a place full of strangers who are
not clan. Who will love her? Not some cold-eyed sorceress who seeks to control
her. No. Dregg will be good for her. I was only a year older than she is now
when I was fostered from my birthclan; it will be no different for her. She’ll
make friends, and all this sorcery nonsense will be forgotten.” In her
agitation, Raina knocked over her cup.
Mad Binny caught it before it rolled to the floor. “It’s a pity to see
a woman as clever as you fool herself. Look at me. Thirty years alone here.
Would you want the same for the child?”
No, she would not. The two women looked at each other, the older one
calm, the younger shaking. Raina almost knew what Mad Binny would say next, and
she did not want to hear it.
“Dregg is a young clan,” Mad Binny said quietly. “Its warriors are
fierce and they wield the heavy swords with the broad blades. Its women are
held to be passing fair, and dress in bright clothes they weave with their own
hands. It’s said their chief is a good man, and their roundhouse is well set
and well built. All this is known, yet clan is still clan. Tell me, when was
the last time you were there, Raina? Ten years ago? Twenty?” The spinster’s
green eyes were knowing and there may have been pity in them. “Do you really
think they will treat Effie any differently than Blackhail once they know the
power of her lore ?”
Raina made a small gesture with her hand, pushing the words away. It will be better for her at Dregg, she told herself. There’s no Mace Blackhail there. Yet the thought gave her
little comfort, and she found her mind returning to the morning after Effie had
fled. In her haste to escape the roundhouse, the girl had dropped the bowl of
liquid she had used to threaten the men. It had landed on the great court, just
outside the clan door. Effie had since told Raina that the black liquid was
nothing more than charcoal mixed with malt liquor, and Raina believed her ...
yet it had burned the stone clean through.
Raina shivered. She was afraid, and she had run out of words to argue
with this woman.
“A child such as Effie Sevrance comes along once in ten lifetimes,” Mad
Binny said, running a finger slowly around the rim of the cup so it began to
sing a note. “She holds wisdom and power beyond her years. And she is young
yet; there’s no telling what she will become as she matures. Many will fear
her, more still will seek to use her, and if you do not see her safely placed then
fate will take you to task.
“Fate is fickle, chief’s wife, you know that. It can take a good life
and turn it into a battlefield overnight. It can snatch a child in the blink of
an eye, and drag her down to hell. The girl’s ripe for the taking. Cutty Moss
tried to kill her, your fine husband sought to feed her to the fire—even Inigar
Stoop has made a play for her. So you need to ask yourself this: Who else would
benefit from her power?” Mad Binny took her finger from the cup, killing the
note.
Raina looked away, uncomfortable with the question. Who could possibly
want Effie? And why? When Effie’s voice came from outside Raina was relieved. “Drey! Raina, it’s Drey!”
Mad Binny had the decency to look only slightly triumphant. Raina
Blackhail left her and went outside to greet Drey.
CHAPTER
Condemned Men
Penthero Iss stood on a stone platform cushioned with silk and horse
hides, waiting to sentence a grangelord to death. It was high treason the man
was charged with, and so rightly the trial and the execution should be held
within Mask Fortress, and the man’s head laid upon the obsidian block known as
Traitor’s Doom, but Iss, Sur-lord of Spire Vanis, Lord Commander of the Rive
Watch, Keeper of Mask Fortress and Master of the Four Gates, had thought to
assemble a larger crowd. You could fit only so many bystanders into the quad.
Whereas the Quartercourts spread out before him, with its circle of gibbets
know as the Dreading Ring, its baiting pits, statue garden, market stalls,
cattle folds, gaming courts and slave blocks, could accommodate half a city.
And today it nearly did. Even though the sky was steel grey and a high
wind was blowing off Mount Slain, the city had come out in numbers. Thousands
of merchants, apprentices, laborers, prostitutes, priests, pot boys,
mercenaries and lords milled in the great expanse of the square, growing
restless. They had eaten from the cook stalls, gamed at dice and sticks, drunk
beer and strong white liquor, inspected the corpses strung high on the gibbets,
watched the spec-
tacle of a hundred grangelords assembling themselves on the steps of
the Quartercourts, and now they were ready for blood.
Iss sympathized with them. John Rullion, the High Examiner, was reading
a list of the charges, and the man’s dour and powerful voice rose high above
the wind. “Maskill Boice, Lord of the Hunted Granges and Master of the River
Crossing at Stye, you are here today charged with high treason against the lord
of this city and its people. Knowingly you met with others at the Dog’s Head in
Alm-stown, and knowingly you plotted to assassinate the Surlord on the last day
of Mourns, as he made his progress through the city, bequeathing alms.
Seventeen days hence you made contract with Black Dan, master bowman of Ille
Glaive, and paid him ten gold rods for his service. Furthermore, on the same
day you reached agreement with the coarsehouse bawd Hester Fay, otherwise known
as Big Hetty, thereby allowing Black Dan use of her three-storied house on the
Spireway which overlooks the Surlord’s progress, in return for a payment of six
silver spoons. How say you?”
The crowd stilled, restless and ready for anger. Corpses on the gibbets
swung wildly in the rising wind as they waited to hear what the accused man
would say.
Maskill Boice stood at the foot
of the Quartercourts, an iron collar around his neck that ran chains down to
his wrists and ankles and forced him to keep his head up. Boice was a big man
turned fleshy, with the high color of one who drank too much and the
contemptuous sneer of a grangelord. He had been held in custody for the
accustomed twelve days, and Iss had made sure the man was well treated, even
going so far as having Caydis Zerbina deliver cooked pheasants, fortified wines
and hothouse plums to his cell. Caydis had also seen to his attire, ensuring
that of all the grangelord’s considerable wardrobe, it was the richest, finest
clothes he wore today. Rubies glittered on the grangelord’s doublet, and the
unmistakable opulence of ocelot could be seen lining his cloak.
It was an interesting picture he made, standing there below his fellow
grangelords. There could be no mistaking that Maskill Boice was one of them,
with his riches and arrogance displayed for all to see. Indeed if it weren’t
for the matter of his chains he might simply mount the steps and take his place
amongst them. And Penthero Iss sincerely doubted that this irony went unnoticed
by the crowd. They knew a rich lordling when they saw one.
By contrast Iss was dressed moderately, his robe of swansdown a stark
grey trimmed with executioner’s black. At his back, Marafice Eye was cloaked in
maroon leathers that had seen battle and hard travel in their day.
The Protector General of the Rive Watch had brought his men out in force
for the trial, and the deep red of their forge cloaks could be seen in numbers,
patrolling the crowd. Iss was gratified by their presence. The city had swelled
these past months, taking in mercenary companies, men-at-arms, knights,
footmen, sappers, engineers, armorers, and every farmer’s son in five hundred
leagues who thought to make his fortune seizing battle trove rather than sowing
grain.
Marafice Eye was doing as he promised at midwinter: raising an army to
invade the clanholds in late spring.
The timing was ripe. The clanholds were weak and distracted; Iss
allowed himself to feel a small measure of satisfaction over that. Those
foolish clansmen had been so easy to play. Even the great Dog Lord himself had
fallen prey to the Surlord of Spire Vanis. When Iss had approached Vaylo Bludd
with an offer to aid him in the seizing of the Dhoonehold, Vaylo Bludd had not
hesitated. The Dog Lord had been as easy to lead as a pup. It had never
occurred to him to question Iss’ motives, so anxious was he to get his paws on
Dhoone.
And
now that you have it, Dog Lord, where is the joy in it? Iss pulled on fine birdskin
gloves to protect his hands from the wind. By helping Bludd take Dhoone he had
destabilized the entire clanholds. Every clan from tiny cursed Clan Grey to
mighty Blackhail was scrambling to fill the power void left by Dhoone. When a
strike came from the south the clanholds would be caught unawares, and too busy
scrapping amongst themselves to mount a united defense.
Iss was well pleased with what his Knife had accomplished so far. Camps
had been established to the north of the city; makeshift towns where men lived
under canvas and spoiled the neighboring fields. Training was under way, with
large groups of men-at-arms being drilled on how to fight in formation with
shields and spears, and raids had been mounted as far east as the Hound’s Wall
for provisions and arms. Still, there was danger in having so many free lances
in the city. Danger also in those hundred grangelords assembled in costly
splendor upon the Quartercourts’ limestone steps. And a wise man could see
further danger in Marafice Eye and his redcloaks. All in all Spire Vanis was a
hazardous place to be in. And for no one was that more true than Maskill Boice.
The accused man looked defiant, rattling his chains as he declared himself
innocent of the charges. Iss felt Boice’s gaze come to rest upon him,
challenging him to meet his eye, but Iss was not about to engage in such
theatrics. It was time to move the proceedings along. He nodded once to John
Rullion.
“Bring forth the witnesses,” ordered the High Examiner in response.
Rullion was a hard man, not gently born, and he bore no love for the
grangelords. His arrogance came from his belief in the One God, and although he
had been High Examiner since the time of Borhis Horgo and had amassed vast
wealth over the past thirty years, he still dressed like a priest.
Two brothers-in-the-watch brought forth the whore, handling her with some
care as they knew her to be a favorite with the crowd. Hester Fay winked at
Marafice Eye as she passed him, drawing a great guffaw from the front ranks.
She was a large woman, dark and bejeweled like a gypsy, with hoops in her ears
and a bodice perilously laced. She had the audacity to call the High Examiner
by his first name and ask him how his gout was faring, as she’d heard he’d had
an attack at midwinter.
The High Examiner kept his dignity by ignoring her remarks and clearing
his throat. The crowd quieted in anticipation: a priest examining a whore. This
should be high sport.
“Hester Fay. Do you recognize this man before you?”
“I do.” A small adjustment to her bodice accompanied the words, bringing forth cheers of appreciation. “Used to come into my estab-
lishment every week, he did. Liked ‘em young. Willing to pay for ’em
too. And let me tell you, those kind don’t come cheap.“
“What about you,
Hetty?” cried
someone from the crowd.
Big Hetty thrust out her hips. “Darlin‘, you can have me for two silver
spoons!”
The crowd roared with laughter, pushing and jostling for positions
closer to the steps. Iss suppressed a smile. This was going very well. Who
could have guessed the whore would be so amusing?
“Quiet!” commanded the High Examiner. His authority was such that he
was immediately obeyed, and his voice soared into the growing silence. “Is it
true, Hester Fay, that Maskill Boice caused you to come to the Dog’s Head
seventeen days back, and there requested that you rent one of your upper rooms
to the bowman Black Dan?” The whore nodded. “That he did. Though I can’t say as
I knew Black Dan for a bowman at the time. Master Boice said he was a
carpenter, lately come from the Glaive, who had need of a small room.”
“And was Maskill Boice particular in his request for a room?”
“That he was. Wanted Kitty’s room, right at
the top o‘ the house, with the overlook to the Spire way.”
The crowd drew breath. All knew the Surlord was due to ride the length
of the Spireway the next morning.
The High Examiner, sensing triumph, moved quickly to finish Boice off.
“And when did you learn that Black Dan was indeed a bowman, not a carpenter as
reported ?”
Big Hetty looked contrite. She appealed to the crowd. “Well, you know how
it is when a stranger moves in. You don’t know him, you’re worried about your
girls. Has he got the means to pay? It’s only natural you’d want to inquire
into his finances. All I did was slip into his room when he was out taking his
supper—just a quick look through his effects.”
“And you found the crossbow?”
“Aye. A real big ‘un. All fancy with a hand crank and trigger. And ten
good quarrels with barbed heads.”
The crowd erupted into a frenzy, drawing weapons and stamping their
feet. Marafice Eye made a spreading gesture with his gloved hand, signaling a
thousand redcloaks to close ranks around the square. Right on cue the chant
began, and was quickly picked up by the masses, becoming a thunderous roar for
justice. “Kill Boicel Kill Boice!”
Iss kept himself still. It was a
nice touch, those ten barbed quarrels. The whore had earned her money well.
On the steps of the Quartercourts the grangelords grew pale with fury.
They were powerful in their granges—those vast ranging estates they held
outside the city—but when faced with an angry mob they were vulnerable. The
people loved them not, and from time to time it served a surlord well to remind
them of that fact.
Iss looked over their ranks. All the Great Houses were there: Crieff,
Stornoway, Mar, Gryphon, Pengaron. And Hews. There he was, that young
princeling Garric Hews with the badges of his granges surmounted on his
shoulder guards, and the sword named for his great-grandfather strapped to his
muscled thigh. The White-hog. He was the only one of the hundred who had the
forethought to wear armor this day.
Iss felt the familiar burn of resentment as he looked over the Lord of
the Eastern Granges, a mere boy of eighteen, untested in battle and stateship,
yet so certain of his own worth. House Hews was ancient, stretching back to the
time of the Quarterlords, when Harlech Hews bore the standard for the Bastard
Lord Torny Fyfe. Harlech had been granted lands along the Sheerway after the
Founding Wars, and his ancestors had been adding to their holdings ever since.
Rannock, Owaine, Haider, Connor, Harlech the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and
Sixth: All had massed wealth and titles for the house. And all had been surlord
before Iss. Now this arrogant son-of-the-Hewses thought it was his birthright
to take Iss’ place.
Raising his hand high, Iss brought the attention of half a city upon
himself. Watch very
carefully, Garric Hews. Maskill Boice’sfate might be yours one day.
“Grangelords!” Iss commanded the hundred men on the steps. “What is
your decision: freedom or sword?”
The grangelords stared at Iss with fury. They were trapped, and they
knew it. Only grangelords could stand in judgment of high treason, and here
they were forced to judge one of their own. They did not like it. Most surlords
would have taken justice into their own hands and had their attempted assassin
summarily executed. But not Iss. He would make a show out of this. The whole of
Spire Vanis would learn just what they risked if they lifted a finger against
him.
Ballon Troak, Lord of Almsgate, stepped forward from the grangelords’
ranks. Troak was grossly fat and dressed in sparkling green sammite. He held
one of the oldest granges within the city, and was not so easily intimidated by
angry mobs. “Surlord,” he said in his high, nasal voice. “Surely you know we
need more evidence before we condemn a man to the sword. Where is this bowman,
Black Dan? Bring him forth. Let him be examined before the city.”
Iss let his face no show no emotion. The crowd had grown settled again,
and the chant of Kill Boice! was nearly lost to the wind.
Pointedly, Iss let his gaze rise to the nearest of the six gibbets, where the
headless remains of a man were strung. “There’s your bowman, Lord of Almsgate.
Perhaps you should ask him how he lost his head.”
Uneasy laughter rippled through the crowd. Blood rushed to Ballon
Troak’s cheeks. “You dare to take—”
“I dare much,” Iss hissed, directing his voice solely to the
grangelords. “Be grateful I don’t dare more.” Then, to one of the pages. “Bring
the bowman’s weapon. Hold it up for all to see.”
The weapon, a fine crossbow made from costly limewood varnished to a
high sheen, drew murmurs of appreciation from the crowd. When a second page
lofted the arrows, they went wild. Ten deadly points, barbed and of Glaivish
design, just as the whore had said. Stronger than ever the chant was renewed. “Kill Boice! Kill Boice!”
He’s
mine now.
Satisfied but unsmiling, Iss returned his attention to the grangelords. “I ask
again. How find you? Freedom or sword?”
“Sword! Sword! Sword!” screamed the crowd.
The grangelords moved to form a rough circle on the steps. Fergus Hurd,
Lord of the Fire River Granges, and appointed Speaker, went from man to man,
collecting pieces of killhound bone from each. White for freedom. Red for the
sword. Iss could hear them rat-
tie in the Speaker’s silk pouch, watched as the Whitehog unclenched his
fist and added his bird bone to the tally. When the hundred lords had cast
their ballots, the Speaker descended the steps and came to stand before the
accused.
Maskill Boice’s head was high, but there was fear in his pale blue
eyes. The rubies set into his doublet glittered in time to the pumping of his
heart. Fergus Hurd was old and white-haired, yet he still had power in him . .
. and he would not look Maskill Boice in the eye.
As the Speaker shook the silk pouch the city stilled. The mob ceased
chanting and the dogs stopped barking. Even the wind died. Fergus Hurd spoke
into the silence, his voice sharp and bitter as he repeated the old words. “The
grangelords are servants of the Sur-lord, and the Surlord is servant of the
city. We speak in the voice of our forebears and we mete justice on behalf of
Spire Vanis.” With that he pulled the pouch open and cast its contents at the
prisoner’s feet. Bones rattled and jumped. The crowd pushed forward to see. “Look you, Maskill Boice,” directed the Speaker.
“Count the bones that speak your fate.”
Red, all red. Iss let out a heavy sigh of relief. Strange he had not
realized he had been holding his breath. He had known all along the grangelords
would not dare defy him before an angry and indignant mob. But still. You could
not be surlord in Spire Vanis without knowing uncertainty. It was a quicksilver
city, and its loyalties ran with the wind.
“Sword! Sword Sword!” shrieked the crowd.
Iss shivered. The triumph had gone out of him, and all that was left
was the need to see this thing through. “Examiner!” he commanded. “Bring forth
the mask.”
Hearing the command Maskill Boice began to scream. Awkwardly, with
movements hampered by his leg-irons, he kicked at the bones at his feet.
“Cowards!” he screamed at the grangelords. “Spineless fools! You’ll be next!”
Iss barely heard him. His eye had been caught by one of the bones that
Maskill had sent flying toward the Surlord’s platform. White, not red; it must
have been buried beneath the rest. Immediately Iss looked up to see Garric Hews
watching him. The man who named himself the Whitehog was dark and compact, with
hair cropped to a soldier’s shortness, and the unjeweled fingers of a man who
expected to use his sword at short notice. Almost the name did not fit him . .
. until you saw the craving in his small black eyes. With an elegant gesture,
he bowed low to the Surlord, acknowledging the white bone to be his.
So he
has declared himself against me. Iss returned the man’s gaze coolly, not bothering
to return the bow. Danger upon danger. First Marafice Eye, now the young
princeling: Both thought they could take his place. Was this how it was for
Borhis Horgo, that year before he was slain on the icy steps of the Horn?
Enemies closing rank around him. The thought chilled Iss. Fourteen years ago he
had stood on those same steps, and had looked at the aging surlord with the
same keen ambition. Anything was possible in this city of spires and Bastard
Lords, and a surlord had to remember that and give his rivals reason to fear.
John Rullion approached the platform, bearing the hideously carved
Killhound Mask beneath a sheet of plain white linen. The High Examiner retained
all the instincts of a priest and he knew how to awe a crowd. He held the mask
high, enabling all to see it, before pulling back the cloth. A collective
breath was drawn as the mask’s blackened metals caught the light. It was the
likeness of no living bird, warped and fanged and scaled like a dragon: the
Kill-hound of Spire Vanis.
It weighed as much as a child. Even though Iss had handled the mask
many times before, he was shocked anew by its heft and coldness. The last
killhound had fled Spire Vanis fifty years ago, and no one but madmen had seen
one since. Their likenesses were carved on gate arches and corbels around the
city, and the Surlord’s seal was a killhound rampant. It was said the great
bird of prey could kill an elk with its foot-long claws and bear it aloft to
its mountain eyrie. Iss thought of the creature’s power as he fitted the mask
over his face and felt the cold-forged iron encase his cheeks. Wearing it, Iss
knew what it would be like to be sealed inside a tomb.
It filled him with the desire to live. Raising his masked face to the
crowd, Iss pronounced sentence on the condemned man. “Maskill Boice, Lord of
the Hunted Granges and Master of the River Crossing at Stye, you have been
found guilty of high treason, and I hereby sentence you to death by the sword.
May the One True God forgive you.“
The crowd cheered. Priests in the viewers’ gallery made the sign of
redemption. A woman watching from one of the Quartercourts’ many balconies
fainted; by the dress and look of her, Iss guessed it to be Boice’s wife. Boice
himself now stood silent and unmoving, finding his dignity at last. Quite
unexpectedly Iss remembered that the man had two young sons. Too bad their
father had a liking for loose talk.
Boice had talked for years of assassinating the Surlord, always when in
his cups. It had been easy to conspire against him, create an offense from his
drunken boasting. Caydis Zerbina had seen to the details. Black Dan, the Ille
Glaive crossbow, the meeting at the Dog’s Head: all fiction. God only knew
whose corpse swung from the gibbet. The only thing real had been the whore. And
Caydis would slip poison into her milk ale tonight. A pity really, as she had
put on such an excellent show.
Iss gave the matter no more thought. The executioner—brought overland
from Hanatta in the Far South at great cost—was taking his place by the block.
The man’s skin was dark as night and his bared arms were wider than most men’s
thighs. Still, it wasn’t his strength that made him famous; it was the fact he
had no eyes. Bar-bossa Assati needed no executioner’s hood to shield him from
the sight of death. The exotic gods of the Far South had done that for him,
bringing him into the world with two empty sockets where most men had eyes.
Watching him, Iss wondered what Marafice Eye must be thinking. The Knife had
lost an eye himself, and surely upon seeing the hollow orbits dominating
Barbossa Assati’s striking face, he must value his one eye all the more.
Marafice Eye showed nothing but hard efficiency as he commanded his
guards to take charge of the prisoner and escort him to the block. Six
redcloaks flanked Maskill Boice, never once laying a hand upon him. Condemned
flesh was cursed, everyone in the city knew that.
Iss watched the Knife with interest. Marafice Eye was growing in
confidence. He had always commanded the respect of his redcloaks, but now he
was commanding the respect of the mob. The crowd deferred to him; edging back
when he stepped toward them, leaning forward when he spoke to better hear what
he had to say. He cut an imposing figure, Iss had to give him that.
Bull-shouldered and six foot tall, with fists the size of wolf skulls. If you
looked closely you could see the raw ambition in his eyes.
He
wants my place.
Iss suppressed a shiver as he recalled the agreement they had reached eight
weeks earlier in the Blackvault. In return for raising an army to invade the
clanholds, Iss had agreed to elevate Marafice Eye’s stature in the city, and
make it be known that he favored the Knife as his successor. They were playing
the great game of power, and Spire Vanis was the ultimate prize.
And punishment. You could control but not possess it. Stand still and
it would move from under you. Ille Glaive, Trance Vor, and Morning Star were
its rivals, but not its biggest threat. The greatest danger lay in the balance
of power within the city itself. A hundred grangelords vied for dominance, each
controlling his own private army. Ten thousand redcloaks mobilized on Marafice
Eye’s word, whilst John Rullion commanded the devout: The Surlord of Spire
Vanis ruled a city that rested on quicksand. The only way to hold on to power
was to weaken, destroy or distract one’s enemies.
Iss nodded softly to himself. Today he weakened the grangelords. In the
coming months he would distract Marafice Eye by sending him to make war on the
clanholds, and soon he would destroy the Whitehog by whatever means were
closest at hand.
Calmed by those thoughts, Iss turned his attention back to the
execution. Maskill Boice had been delivered to the block. The block was hewn
from a hundred-year oak, rectangular in shape and cut with a curved depression
for the laying of a head. As Iss looked on, some aging grange widow brought
forth a cloth of gold and draped it over the wood. When the prisoner drew close
she held out a hand and named him, “Son.”
The crowd was so quiet now, Iss could hear the breath wheeze in their
throats. Barbossa Assati had drawn his sword from its felt-
lined scabbard, and the sight of the heavy fern-curved blade sent a
ripple of excitement through all present.
Maskill Boice would not look at it, though he did press something—a
gold coin or jewel—into the executioner’s hands. “Take me in one stroke,” he
murmured.
Barbossa Assati spoke one word in his beautiful, strangely accented
voice. Iss thought it sounded like “Always.”
And then Boice knelt on the black-stained cobbles of the
Quarter-courts, and laid his head upon the block. As his hands reached out to
steady himself against the cloth-draped wood, his throat moved in prayer.
Grange ladies, viewing from the safe distance of the Quarter-courts’ balconies,
sighed at the tragedy of it all.
Barbossa Assati found his place and settled his weight evenly between
his legs. One powerful black hand came down to bare Maskill Boice’s neck, and
then the sword was raised with two hands, and dropped. Steel chunked into wood. Blood fountained. The head rolled, for
no one had thought to lay out a basket to catch it. The crowed aahed. Maskill Boice’s torso jerked once, then slumped at
the executioner’s feet. The great dark blindman spoke words over it before
hefting his sword free of the block.
Within his mask of black iron, Iss felt curiously removed from the
scene. He saw the looks of horror in the grangelords’ faces, watched as the
little beetlelike gallows master retrieved Boice’s head and dipped the stump
into a pan of salt before impaling it upon a pole. All around women were
wailing anr1 wringing their hands, yet the men in the crowd seemed
strangely restless, exchanging glances and short words as if they had expected
more.
Very
well. 1 shall give you one last thing.
Iss turned to face Marafice Eye and commanded, “Bring out the traitor’s
gravegoods and distribute them amongst the crowd.”
A huge cheer shook the crowd. They had not expected to share in the
grangelord’s wealth and this was unheard-of bounty. Jostling for positions
close to the front, they shouted Iss’ name in praise.
On the Knife’s word, four pages struggled down the steps of the
Quartercourts, bearing a heavy litter suspended between two poles. Armor and
jewels and fine silks were heaped upon it, glittering gold and crimson in the
failing afternoon light. Cries of outrage united the grangelords: How dare Iss
send a nobleman’s wealth to the crowd! It was unthinkable. Yet one look at the
front ranks of men, faces dark with greed, hands twitching in readiness to
seize bounty, was enough to know that it could not be stopped. Even before the
four pages had set down the litter, the crowd surged forward.
What happened next was ugly and bloody, as grown men fought tooth and
nail over scraps. People slid in Maskill Boice’s blood, kicking and screaming,
beating each other in their frenzy to grab gilt cups and bolts of cloth. One
man seized a sword and ran into the crowd, running through a small child in his
haste to get away. Iss stood above it all in the Killhound Mask, holding
everyone— Marafice Eye and his redcloaks, John Rullion, the priests in the
viewers’ gallery, the women on the balconies, and the Whitehog on the
Quartercourts’ steps—in their places. None could leave until he dismissed them,
and it suited him to have them watch.
He held power in this city, and as
the weeks wore on and he lost influence in other spheres, it was important to
demonstrate that power for all to see. Asarhia, his almost-daughter, had gone,
fled to the north and taken her Reach strength with her. The Nameless One was
growing weak and had withdrawn to the dark spaces inside himself where beatings
and isolation could not reach him. More and more it was growing harder to use
him, and Iss knew that the day was fast approaching when he would smother the
Nameless One with a soft cushion and take the life from him. A bound sorcerer
was only useful as long as he had strength to steal. And this one in his
weakness and madness was keeping every last drop for himself. It had been many
weeks since Iss had visited the twilight world of the Gray Marches, and he no
longer had sway over what happened there. Influence had been lost. Knowledge
had been denied him. He knew the Blindwall had been breached, but after that
nothing.
Iss took a breath. He had lost much since the beginning of winter.
There had been a time when anything looked possible; when his actions had tied
the clanholds in knots, when the Nameless One’s power rested like a honed sword
at his side, and the promise of Asarhia’s Reach strength lay spread before him
like a field of grain.
/ could have
commanded the clanholds, We Glaive, the entire Northern Territories. Now I must
fight to retain control of Spire Vanis.
If only the Nameless One hadn’t begun to fail. The bound sorcerer’s
skill had helped Bludd conquer Dhoone and made the slaughter of Dagro Blackhail
in the Badlands as easy as spearing eels in a tub. Such power was
intoxicating—a man could crush a continent so armed. Once one had wielded the
full force of a sorcerer’s craft it was hard to return to earthly means.
Iss straightened his shoulders. But that was what he must do.
The future was uncertain once more, and the only advantages he had left
were earthly ones. Today was a demonstration of those powers, and a warning to
his enemies. Dark times were coming and land would be lost and claimed, and
great lords and clan chiefs would fall and be made. Marafice Eye thought to
make himself surlord by winning success in the clanwars; Garric Hews thought to
do the same by treachery. Well, let them both look upon this ravenous mob . . .
and know who knew it best.
Stepping down from the platform, Iss walked into the heart of the
looting. Men ceased fighting as he passed, jeweled buckles and silver boxes in
hand. One old man bowed, and then another, and then the entire crowd fell to
their knees. Iss moved through them, feeling no fear. He was wearing the
Killhound of Spire Vanis and he was filled with the great bird’s power.
The mob closed around him as he made his return to Mask Fortress,
letting no one else through.
Deep down beneath a mountain, in a space carved and blasted two
thousand years before, a man awakes. This far below the surface, the cold of
the firmament gives way to the warmth of the earth’s core. It is humid, and
although the sky is sealed five thousand feet above, the man can remember times
when accumulated moisture has dropped like rain on his back. The memory brings
delight and pain, as do all his memories. It is a slow, hurtful process, this
reclaiming of his life.
Shifting in his iron pit, he seeks comfort that custom has long taught
him he will never find. Not here. He smells his own shit. The chains that
shackle him chafe his raw flesh, drawing lines of watery blood. He is less well
tended now, and has not been fed in several days. It has been even longer since
a hand tended his sores and cleaned his skin.
Sometimes he despairs, as it seems he has traded memory for life. What
good is owning a name when you are slowly starved?
Baralis, he mouths, using the word as a
charm to drive away the monsters in his thoughts. Once a continent turned upon my deeds. Or did I
dream it?
Uncertainty plagues him. It is difficult to tell where dreams end and truth
begins. Almost he has forgotten how to think. Eighteen years bound and broken. How can I be sure I am sane? Surprisingly the thought makes
him smile. He remembers someone once telling him that any man capable of asking
himself that question is already saner than most.
The man’s smile fades, and the loneliness returns with such force it is
like a dagger in his heart. Hours stretch ahead in the unchanging darkness.
Days pass and he does not know it. When will the Light Bearer come and bring
him food and touch and light? He sleeps and wakes, then sleeps again. Sometimes
caul flies eat their way through his skin, and crawl over his face in search of
light. They will not fly in the dark, he has noticed, and soon tire and die.
Sometimes he saves his strength by not moving, gathering power to him bit by
bit like beads upon a thread. When he has enough he looses himself, letting his
mind rise to a place where his body cannot follow.
Once it had been still in those gray places, like mist hanging above a
lake. But now dread creatures walk there, stirring the calm. When you are dying
it is difficult to be afraid of anything except death, yet still the man feels
fear. Those monstrous shadows know his name. Baralis, they call. Heart of Darkness. You are ours and we want you.
Wait for our touch.
The man shivers. He had done many terrible things in his life, but
cannot decide if that makes him evil. His past hardly seems to belong to him anymore;
can he still be judged by it? He recalls a sprawling castle peopled by kings
and queens. The touch of a child’s thigh. Poison slipped into red wine. And
fire, always fire, catching on the corner of his robe and igniting in front of
his face.
Still shivering, the man rests his head against cold iron. How long
before the creatures who own the voices come? What will he become if he allows
one to touch him? Already they lure him with promises of
revenge. Your
enemies are our enemies. Burn their hateful flesh. Such words are tempting to a helpless man, and he
does not know how long he can resist them. If it hadn’t been for one certainty
he might already have given in.
Someone, somewhere is searching for him.
How he knows this he cannot say. Where the knowledge comes from is
something he will never learn. He just knows that he is loved and searched for,
and it gives him the will to carry on. Slowly his eyes close and sleep takes
him, and he dreams he sends a message to the one who loves him. lam here. Come to me. And the one who loves him hears and comes.
CHAPTER
The Forsworn
Raif looked down through the blasted remains of a dying forest, down to
a lake where lines of charcoal had been laid upon the ice, and he knew that he
had entered the territory of living men. He had seen lines like that before.
Once during the Long Freeze, ten years back, when all running water in the
clanholds had frozen, clansmen had laid lines of soot upon the ice. The
darkness of the soot concentrated the sun’s meager rays and the ice beneath the
black lines had melted over several days, opening precious leads. Raif had not
expected to see such a thing here, only five days east of the mountains, and he
felt the first stirrings of fear.
No one was supposed to live in these pale twisted forests that bordered
the Western Want. Clansmen called them the White Wastes, and said that only elk
and caribou dared pass through on their way to the purple heather fields of
Dhoone.
Raif shouldered his pack, shifting the weight so it was borne evenly on
his back. It had taken him many days to cross the mountains—even with the help
of Sadaluk, who had directed him toward a pass. He counted himself lucky that
the weather had held, and that the only storm he’d been forced to sit out was
one that hit at an altitude just east of Trapper’s Pass. The wind had been his
greatest problem, for it blew continuously, stripping him of warmth and
strength. It blew now, rolling the edges of his Orrl cloak and raising the hair
from his scalp. The Listener had given him many precious gifts of dressed
skins, and three layers of seal hides protected his chest from the cold, yet
the biting deadness of the Want still got through.
It lay out there, to the north, stretching farther than any clansman
had ever seen, stretching as far as time itself, unknowable, uncross-able: the
Great Want. Raif shivered. Of all the maps Tern had ever drawn for his
children, not one had contained any details about the Want. It was a place of
ghosts, clan said, dead and freezing and dry as a desert, and not even the gods
knew what walked there.
From his position above the lake, Raif turned his gaze north. Since he
had left the mountains he had noticed the peculiar clarity of the landscape.
There was no dust or warmth to warp the air. Faraway trees and rocks looked
close enough to reach in half a day. But they weren’t. Distance was distorted
here, and Raif was beginning to realize that landmarks on the horizon might
take weeks, even months, to reach. When he’d first spotted the lake from a
position high in the pass, he thought he’d gain the shore by sunset. It had
taken nine days; six to clear the mountain’s skirts and a further three to
cross the tree line.
Now he was here he felt no satisfaction of a goal reached. The Great
Want disturbed him. It was too close, and too vast. League upon league of
nothingness, broken only by tortured rock formations, glacier tracks and
calderas.
And now there was evidence of strangers, lately been here, settled
enough to spread charcoal on lake ice for access to fresh water. Raif studied
the lake, scanning the shore and surrounding woods for further signs of life.
No smoke rose from the trees. No piers or boats were frozen into the ice. He
was too far away to spot footprints. Should he descend the slope and search for
them? Or should he turn south and move on ?
Uncertainty made him hesitate. He was beyond his bounds now, he knew it
plainly by the look of the trees. Nothing so dry and twisted could live in the
clanholds. One spark and they’d go up in flames. So who was down there? Not
Maimed Men; they lived closer to the clanholds, in the Badlands northeast of
Dhoone. Raif peered into the tree cover, deciding. It was growing late and he
could feel the willpower draining from his limbs. He had not rested since
mid-morning, and his knee joints ached with the constant strain of descent.
Drey had once told him that descending hills was more tiring than climbing
them, and he hadn’t believed it until now. Drey . ..
Abruptly, Raif started down the slope.
He told himself there was a good chance that whoever was down there had
already spotted him—a lone traveler on the rise above the lake—and he drew his
mitted hand inside his cloak, feeling for the makeshift sealskin scabbard that
held his sword. He’d scraped the rust from it as best he could, using the dull
gray emery stone that could be found freely in the high mountains. Without a
millstone he could do no better. And he found a grim kind of pleasure in
imagining that whilst the blade might enter a man well enough, it wouldn’t so
easily come out.
Resting his hand upon the grip, he wound his way down through the
trees. Pine needles and ice crystals crackled underfoot, and somewhere to the
south an owl called out at the approaching night. Darkness rose as slowly as
mist, hovering close to the ground while the sky still glowed red with the
fading sun. Stars winked into existence. First a few dozen, then thousands . .. more than Raif had ever seen in his life. The
wind dropped, and then suddenly it was quiet enough to hear the lake ice
groaning. Raif grew cautious, deciding against walking the open land at the
lake’s shore.
Silent now, he skirted the lake, keeping to the cover of the trees. He
was dimly aware of his hunger, sucking his insides tight. The air was perfectly
still. No tree limb moved. When he stepped on something warm he nearly cried
out. Fox, he told himself, rolling the
carcass over with his foot. Dead
less than a day.
Wetting dry lips, he walked on. When he reached the foot of an ancient dragon
pine, he spied two dead crows lying in the litter beneath its twisted lower
limbs. And then he saw the footsteps. Many pairs, some fresh from the look of
them, stamping a trail that led to and from the lake.
He was not aware of drawing his sword. It was there, in his fist,
its blade running silver in the starlight. Ahead, the trail widened
into a makeshift path, and there were signs of men and horses upon it: a thrown
hoof-iron, a mound of frozen dung, a piece of trail meat crooked like a finger.
Raif suddenly wished he weren’t so tired. Weeks of hard travel had taken their
toll, and it seemed as if his thoughts and his reflexes were moving a beat too
slow. He thought he smelled something, a coldness filled with potential, like
air charging before a storm.
The edge of a building loomed ahead. As he drew closer, Raif made out
the eerily pale form of a palisade raised from timber and then sprayed with
water to form a protective wall of ice. He’d seen such winter-built strongwalls
in the city holds, and admired their simplicity—the ice repelled fire and
rendered the wall almost unscalable—yet he had never known clan to build one.
Abruptly, the path rose, and he saw what lay beyond the palisade. A
rock and timber redoubt, square-shaped with a roof of hammered logs and the
rough beginnings of a battlement ringing its northern wall. No light showed
through the narrow, defensive windows. A lone shutter had come loose from its
mooring, and it creaked back and forth on rusted hinges. Raif smelled old fires
and cook oil. And then he saw the first body, lying facedown in a trench where
the palisade parted to make way for a gate.
Fear dried his mouth. Cautiously he approached the body. Already he
could see that the man was well armored, in a backplate of painted steel. Some
design had been beautifully worked in purple and gold. An eye. And then
suddenly Raif realized what he was looking at: a Forsworn knight, with the Eye
of God upon him.
The man had been slain in a single strike, run through with such force
and such an edge that both breastplate and backplate had cracked open. Turning
the body over, Raif saw where the jagged edges of the punctured breastplate had
been driven deep into the meat of the knight’s heart. He had never seen such an
entry wound before, not even that day . . . that day in the Badlands with Tern.
The flesh was black and seared, as if it had been cooked, and something black
oozed from the wounds.
Raif turned away. He thought he might be sick. The purge fluid stank of
the same alien odor he’d smelled earlier. The knight had been lying facedown,
and yet fluid had not drained off. It hung in his mouth like smoke.
Instinctively, Raif reached to touch the tine at his waist.. . and felt emptiness
instead. He would give his sword to have it now, the comfort of gods and clan.
Traitors
aren’t allowed to bear the stone. Bitterness welled up in him, and he was glad
because it shrank his fear.
Even without a measure of powdered guidestone, he knew he could not
leave the man before him unblessed. He was a Forsworn knight and so an enemy to
clan and clannish gods, but he had died alone and untended. Like Tern. Closing
his eyes and touching both lids, Raif murmured, “May your god take your soul
and keep it near him always.”
It was all he could do. Bending low, he tugged on the knight’s purple
cloak, freeing it from beneath the man’s shoulders and covering the face. The knight’s
eyes were open and the irises had rolled back in his head, showing nothing but
white. It was a relief not to look at them any longer.
Straightening, Raif inspected the gate. Unstripped logs, tarred and
bound, mounted on an X-shaped frame. The outpost had not been established long.
Everything about it had the look of something hastily erected. No clansman
would raise a defensive structure with raw timber. So why had these knights?
Raif considered what he knew about the Forsworn. They were wealthy, it
was said, with fortress-temples known as Shrineholds scattered throughout the
North. They called themselves the Eye of God and made war against heretics in
his name. The Listener said they made pilgrimages to the Lake of Lost Men, but
Raif did not know why. He didn’t know much, he realized. Clan had few dealings
with outsiders, and Blackhail fewer than most. Growing up clan meant learning
little of other men.
Raif dropped his pack and walked through the gate into the narrow,
packed-earth bailey beyond. His breath was doing strange things in his
windpipe, hurting his back as he breathed. He felt like a child carrying a
grown-up sword, and found he could not remember a single form Shor Gormalin had
taught him. The Listener was
right; I need to learn how to use this. But not tonight. Gods, not tonight.
He almost passed the second body, so deep where the shadows that
surrounded it. The redoubt had been built on a groundsill of rubble and timber
to keep it raised above the frozen tundra and protected from sinkage during
spring thaw. The first floor of the structure overhung the foundation pile,
creating a trap for shadows and moss. The body lay in two pieces beneath the
overhang, sheared through the gut so that only strings of sinew and intestines
joined the two halves. Raif retched. Be thankful for the shadows, he told himself, spitting to clean his mouth. Without them I’d see worse.
There was nothing to do but speak the same blessing over the dead
knight and cover his face.
Slowly, Raif mounted the quartered-log stairs leading to the redoubt’s
main door. Time and effort had been spent on the door, the timbers dressed and
sealed, the joints shod in lead. The Eye of God had been painted above the
arch, and someone had even brought gold leaf to burnish the pupil so it looked
as if God were gazing upon a golden field. Raif felt the Eye upon him as he put
a hand to the door and pushed.
Darkness and stillness waited on the other side. The stench of
accelerated rot and strangely charged air made him doubt that anyone within had
been left alive. Seconds passed as he stood on the threshold, letting his eyes
grow accustomed to the blackness. He appeared to be in a small defensive ward,
fashioned with louvered floorwork to slow an enemy’s charge. One wrong step and
a man’s foot would slip through the boards to the groundsill below, halting and
trapping him, and possibly breaking his leg. Who did they fear?
The Eye was here too, painted huge upon the walls. Only now it was not
something watchful and benevolent, it was an angry eye, fearsome, shot with red
veins. Raif found himself discomforted beneath it, and felt a pang of guilt at
being so easily awed by a foreign god.
Carefully, mindful of his steps, he crossed the ward and entered the
main chamber of the fort. The inner door had been torn from its hinges and two
dead knights lay to either side of it, swords drawn and visors down: They’d had
more warning than those outside. But it had not saved them. Beautifully worked
scale armor made one man’s corpse glitter like a faceted jewel. He bore the
spiked collar of a penitent, and all his metalwork had been greased with
reddish brown bone oil. The weapon that had killed him had struck so deeply
Raif could see the floorboards beneath his chest; they had been ripped up and
splintered as the weapon was pulled free. Raif shuddered. What creature could
break down a strongdoor and do this to a man? Bullhammer, the most powerful man
Raif had ever known, had never torn the middle from an enemy in a single strike.
Raif spoke blessings to both men and moved on. The main hall of the
redoubt made him sad, for he recognized the pain these knights had taken to
honor their One God. The only local resources were timber and rock, and they
had used both to raise a massive altar block that had been draped with cloth of
purple. Here the Eye was not a crude wall painting but a crystal set into an
almond-shaped mounting of pure gold. Seeing it, Raif felt the sword move in his
hand. Of course, a knight’s
blade. The rock
crystal surmounted on the pommel seemed to pulse in time with the Eye.
Light poured in from a window high in the hammer-vaulted roof as the
moon rose overhead. Raif saw crudely carved chairs and box pallets, prayer mats
woven from coltgrass, oak coffers lining the far wall, a rope ladder leading to
the external battlements, and an ancient book laid open on a dragon-pine stand.
They had not been here long, these men, and he could not understand what had
brought them to this place.
More knights had fallen in the farthest reach of the hall, defending,
it seemed to Raif, the small Eye-carved portal beyond. Seven men dead. Seven
blessings given. All of the knights’ eyes were open and rolled back, and all
had the same black fluids oozing from their skull cavities and wounds.
Breathing thinly, Raif made his way through the Eye portal and into the
small chamber beyond. In the same way that the Hailstone was heart of clan,
this chamber was the heart of the fort. Raif felt its power. The timber walls
had been stained white, and in their center a font hewn from speckled granite
held a pool of water in an eye-
shaped bowl. Instinctively, Raif kept his gaze from alighting too long
upon the water. Something told him he didn’t want to see his own face reflected
there.
A soft noise made him start. Spinning, he raised his sword.
“Morgo?” came a weak murmur. “Is that you?”
Raif peered into the shadows in the corner behind the portal. Someone,
a knight, lay fallen in a pool of blood. He saw immediately that the man was
not dressed like other knights, in fine armor and cloth of purple, but was
unarmored and mantled in a cloak of skin. Dimly, Raif remembered that as the
Forsworn rose through the ranks they cast more and more of their worldly
possessions aside, until they were left with nothing more than their swords and
what clothes they could stitch with their own hands. That meant this man lying
before him was of a high order, possibly the commander of the fort.
Raif dropped to his knees by the knight. The man’s wounds were terrible
to see. His left hand was gone and his left thigh had been laid open by a
series of chopping blows. His skull had taken a slicing cut, and part of his
right ear hung from a flap of skin. The same purge fluids that leaked from the
other knights’ wounds leaked from his, mingling darkly with his blood. On his
right side lay a sword not unlike Raif’s but of finer make, with a bluish
crystal surmounted on the pommel. The sword’s edge was warped and blackened, as
if it had been held to a flame and burned.
The knight’s face was gray. His lips were parched, and bits of skin
flaked from them as he spoke. “Morgo?”
“Hush,” Raif sajd, not gently, stripping off his inner coat of seal fur
and bundling it to form a pillow for the knight’s head. “I’ll bring water.”
“No,” murmured the knight, suddenly agitated. “Don’t leave me.”
He had once been powerful, Raif saw, with the lean muscle of one who
fights rather than trains. He was not young, for there was much gray in his close-cropped
hair, but his strength of will persisted. Gods alone knew how he still lived.
Raif tore a strip from the soft rabbit fleece he wore next to his throat.
Almost he did not know where to begin to tend this man, but he could not leave
him like this.
The knight, seeing what Raif meant to do, waved him away. “No.” He
paused for breath. “You cannot save me, not this way.”
Gray eyes dull with pain met Raif’s, and Raif found he could speak no
lie. Silently, he let the rabbit strip fall to the floor. “What happened here
?”
“Evil walked amongst us... broke down our door.”
“How many attacked?”
The knight’s eyes clouded. His fist clenched and unclenched. After a
time he repeated, “Morgo?”
Raif folded his own fist around the knight’s, forcing his flesh to be
still. Helplessness roughened his voice. He was clan, and every clansman knew
what was owed to a fatally wounded man. “No. Not Morgo. A friend.”
“Then why do you have Morgo’s sword ?”
Raif felt the world switch beneath him. He glanced at the sword Sadaluk
had given him, resting now on the plank floor, well clear of the knight’s
blood.
The knight’s gaze sharpened. “Tell me you did not kill him.”
“I did not.” Raif thought quickly. “Morgo lost his way on his journey
to the Lake of Lost Men. The Ice Trappers found his body, and gave me his
sword.” He had no idea how long the Listener had held the sword, but he’d
imagined it lying in that foreign-made chest for decades. He asked, because he
could not help himself, “Who is Morgo?”
The knight’s throat began working but words took long to come. “. . .
took the Lost Trail. A boy . . . only fifteen. I told him to wait. Wait.”
Something in the knight’s voice made Raif say, “He was your brother.”
“Dead now, long dead.”
Forty
years dead,
Raif guessed, feeling weary and suddenly old. “Rest now,” he murmured. “I’ll
watch you.”
Time passed as the knight slept. Raif crouched by his body, thirsty and
hungry, but unwilling to move away. The font in the center of the room cast a
shadow that circled the chamber as the night passed. Sometimes the water
rippled and plinked, though Raif could detect no
breeze. The knight rested fitfully, jerking and shivering, each breath gurgling
wetly in his throat. He awakened before dawn, and Raif could see the livid
fever lines spreading up his neck.
“Only one,” the knight rasped. “A shadow that was not a shadow, bearing
a sword as black as night.”
Raif felt his gooseflesh rise. The knight was answering his question
from earlier, and the words of Heritas Cant sounded in his head. They ride the earth every thousand years to claim
more men for their armies. When a man or woman is touched by them they become
Unmade. Not dead, never dead, but something different, cold and craving. The
shadows enter them, snuffing the light from their eyes and the warmth from
their hearts . . . Blood and skin and bone is lost, changed into something the
Sull call maer
dan: shadowflesh.
Slowly Raif’s hand rose to his lore. When he looked up he saw the
knight watching him.
“Take me,” he said. “Before the shadows can.”
Raif breathed and did not speak. Although he had not wanted to see it,
he knew that the purge fluids had collected in the knight’s wounds, sending
tendrils of darkness smoking across his skin. Oh gods. The other knights are lost.
But not this one, not yet. Raif found his strength and his voice. “Tell
me one thing. Why did you build this place?”
The knight raised his curled fist. “We search.”
“For what?”
“The city of the Old Ones. The Fortress of Grey Ice.”
Raif felt himself begin to shake, not strongly but intensely as if
something within .him were vibrating. As he looked on, a wisp of shadowy fluid
rolled over the knight’s eye, and he knew it was time to reach for his sword.
The knight knew it too, and drew himself up a fraction against Raif’s
coat. Raif hefted the sword, testing its weight. Drying blood sucked at the
soles of his boots as he took his position above the knight. He was still
shaking, but he didn’t think it was from weakness or fright. Gravely, he raised
the point of his sword to the knight’s chest. The knight’s eyes were open, and
they were clear and shining, and Raif found a measure of understanding there.
Kill
an army for me, Raif Sevrance.
Putting the weight of his body behind the blow, Raif thrust his sword
through the heart.
He must have lost time after that, for he could not remember freeing
the sword from the knight’s flesh, or closing the man’s eyes, or entering the
main hall and taking the purple cloth from the altar and laying it over the
knight’s corpse. He remembered only a feeling of terrible weariness and, as he
stumbled over a pallet in the main hall, deciding then and there he needed
rest. He remembered the luxury of curling up in wool blankets, and then nothing
but the deadness of sleep.
When he woke many hours later sunlight was streaming down on his face.
For a long moment he did not open his eyes, merely lay and enjoyed the play of
light and warmth on his eyelids. How had he not noticed such a beautiful thing
before? Hunger and the need to relieve himself eventually roused him, and he
swung his feet onto the floor and looked out across the hall.
All that remained of the bodies were skeletons and gristle. Long bones
were darkly stained, and the tendons still attached at their heads curled
strangely in the freezing air. Wisps of smoke rose from the rib cages like
fumes. Seeing them Raif thought he must be the greatest fool in the North. How
could he have fallen asleep here? It was madness. And for some reason he found
himself thinking of Angus. His uncle had once told him that the best way to
stay alive in a hostile city was to walk through its busiest streets jerking
your arms and muttering wildly to yourself. No one would interfere with a
madman. Perhaps not even fate.
Feeling strangely light-headed, Raif skirted the knights’ remains and
made his way outside.
Retrieving his pack near the gate, he decided to walk the short
distance to the trees. The sun was low and weak, but it felt good on his back.
It felt good also to drink the meaty-tasting water from his seal bladder, and
to feast on the Ice Trappers’ peculiar idea of travel rood. There were cakes of
caribou marrow streaked red with berries, rolled strips of seal tongue, and the
last of the boiled auks. He sat down amidst the pale gray needles of the dragon
pines and ate and rested and did not think. Overhead the sky was the rich blue
of twi-
light, though it was barely midday. An osprey was rising on ther-mals
channeled by the lake, and the warning cries of small birds pierced the calm.
Raif packed and stowed his provisions. He was feeling the lack of his inner
coat now as the bitter cold sank against his chest. He didn’t want to return to
the redoubt and had no intention of retrieving his seal coat from its position
beneath the dead knight’s head, but he had to know if the knight had been saved
the fate of his companions. And he had to bear witness for them all.
In the low light that passed for day the redoubt looked little more
than a fortified cabin. Eight men had crossed hundreds of leagues to build
here, and now they lay dead. What had the knight said last night? We search. Raif felt the sadness of those words. And the
hope. Grimly, he crossed the defensive ward and reentered the main hall.
The cold, otherworldly odor his slumbering body had grown accustomed to
rose to meet him anew. It was subtly changed now, staler and less concentrated,
like smoke dissipating after a fire. The knights’ remains had stained the
timber flooring in dark, man-shaped patches. Raif thought he would like to
torch this place, but the knights were not clan and he did not know if such an
act would honor or further defile them. The marrow had been sucked from their
bones, and their skulls were hollow except for the black liquid trickling from
their teeth and eye sockets. It was hard to believe these men had been dead
less than a day. Raif thought about the blessings he’d spoken over them, and
then quickly turned away. I
arrived too late.
The knights’ souls were already gone. Taken.
Crossing to the stone and timber altar, he raised a hand to touch the
Eye of God. Its price was unimaginable, so heavy and pure was the gold that
surrounded it, yet it seemed to Raif that it would be safe here. It would cost
a man much to walk through this hall and steal it in sight of the dead. The
crystal in the Eye’s center sparkled so brilliantly Raif wondered if it might
be a diamond, but he had little knowledge of gems and doubted if something the
size of a sparrow’s egg could be anything other than rock crystal. Hesitating
at the last instant to touch it, Raif stepped back. He already knew what it
would feel like: ice.
His gaze found the carved wood of the dragon-pine stand, and the book
laid open upon it. The book was very old, bound in animal hide that been
inexpertly tanned so that a nap of fine hair remained. The pages were yellow
and warped, and their edges had been darkened by countless generations of
fingerprints. The book was opened to a charcoal drawing of an ice-bound
mountain and a passage of ornately rendered script. Meg Sevrance had taught
both her sons to read, but Raif still had difficulty deciphering the words.
They were set down in High Hand, an archaic written form of Common, and they
bore little resemblance to anything he’d learned at his mother’s knee. Mountain, he thought he recognized, and the phrase North of the Rift, but the script was too stylized to read much more.
Frowning, he turned his attention to the drawing. It was of no peak he had ever
seen, craggy and spiraling, with nothing green or living upon it.
He thought about turning the pages and seeing what else the book held,
then decided against it. It seemed to him that while he stood here, first at
the altar, now at the bookstand, the hall was changing around him, settling
into the silent deadness of a tomb. This place should be sealed.
Suddenly eager to be gone, he went
to fulfill his final obligation.
The small chamber the head knight
had fallen in was so cold Raif’s breath whitened as he entered. The water in
the font should have been frozen, but it wasn’t. Raif worked to keep his gaze
from settling upon the gently rippling liquid. He did not want to see what it
showed.
The knight lay where Raif had left
him, his body wholly covered by the altar cloth. Taking the corner of the cloth
in his fist, Raif began naming the Stone Gods. Ganolith, Hammada, lone, Loss,
Uthred, Oban, Larannyde, Malweg, Behathmus. Please may this man be whole.
A sharp tug on the cloth was all it took to reveal the knight. The
livid pink flesh of a frozen corpse met his eye. Plump flesh, whole and at rest.
Raif closed his eyes. He could find no words to give thanks, and as he
let the cloth float to the ground, something wound tight inside his chest
relaxed.
/ have done no harm here.
It was a comfort he took with him as passed through the redoubt and
continued his journey east.
CHAPTER
Fair Trade
“You’d better move faster next time, you big ox, or I’ll take the legs
right off you.”
Crope cowered by the roadside, waiting for the wagon train to pass. The
head drayman had a whip, and Crope’s gaze stayed upon the six-foot curl of
leather until it was nothing more than a line in the distance, and the mud
flung up by the wagons’ wheels had settled once more upon the road. He did not
like whips, or the men who wielded them, and the dread beat hard in his chest.
It was morning and it was icy cold, and he had thought to enter the
next town and trade his goods for warm soup and crusty bread, but the drayman
and his wagon train were headed in the same direction, and Crope feared to have
that whip raised against him. Stupid,
thickheaded fool. I always said you had no guts. The bad voice made him climb from the ditch and
brush the mud and twigs from his coat. A waystone marked a fork in the road
ahead and as he could think of nothing better to do he headed toward it.
His feet hurt, for although diamond boots were made sturdy and tipped
with bronze to deflect glancing blows with an ax, they were not meant to be
walked in. Yet he had walked in them now for many days—exactly how many he
could not say, for the numbers kept getting muddled in his head. Very long, it
seemed. Past frozen lakes boiling with mist and queer little villages where men
armed with pitchforks and cudgels had lined up along the roadside until he’d
passed. Always the mountains followed him, a world of peaks rising sharply to
the south. It was cold in the shadow of their snowy slopes, and the wind
blowing off them shrieked like pack wolves at night. He did not like to sleep
anymore. He took shelter in ditches and abandoned farm buildings and once in
the rubble-filled shaft of a dry well, but he could never get warm or feel
safe. The bad voice always told him he’d picked a poor place to rest and as
soon as he closed his eyes the slavers would come and chain him.
Crope shivered. He missed being in the pipe. Men knew him there, and no
one looked at him with mean eyes and shouted bad things. He was giant man, and
when a hard wall needed breaking everyone knew to call upon him. Now there were
no walls to break, and after seventeen years of wielding an ax—first in search
of tin, then diamonds—he did not know what he was good for anymore.
Arriving at the waystone, he knelt on the roadside and brushed the snow
from the worn, thumb-shaped marker. He could not read the words scored into the
stone’s surface, but he recognized the arrows and signs. One arrow pointed due
north, and there was a number with several slashes marking a great many leagues
by it, and a seven-pointed star atop that. Morning Star, Crope thought, a small flush of satisfaction
rising up his neck. Bitterbean said that Morning Star was two weeks west of the
pipe. Now he was north of it... which meant he’d traveled quite a way. The
second arrow pointed southwest, and the number alongside it was even longer
than the first. A dog’s head surmounted the point, and Crope tested the image
against his knowledge of the land. Dog... Dog Lord. . . Clan Bludd. No, all clans lived to the north, everyone knew
that. Wolf.. . Wolf River. No, Bitterbean said that was
north too.
Suet
for brains. Wouldn’t remember your own name if it didn’t rhyme with “rope” Crope’s shoulders sank. The bad
voice always knew what he was thinking. It made him feel small, but it also
made him try harder, and he frowned and concentrated as fiercely as he could. Dog. . . pup. . . hound. Hound’s Mire! That was it. Hound’s Mire.
Slapping a hand upon the waystone, he raised his great weight from the
road. His back ached in the deep soft places where his ribs met his spine.
Diamond back, Bitterbean called it. Said that once a man had dug for the white
stones his bones knew it for life.
Turning slowly, he surveyed the surrounding land. Ploughed fields lay
to the north, their furrows tilled for onion and turnip planting come spring. A
small flock of black-face sheep were nosing through the snow close to the road.
The town lay to the west, its buildings raised from timbers and undressed
stone. Most of the houses had thatched roofs, but one or two were tiled with
slate or costly lead. Crope had traveled enough with his lord to know that
money lay beneath such roofs, money and comfort and hot food. His stomach
rumbled. The last thing he had eaten was a meal of six stolen eggs. He felt bad
about that—though the farmer he had taken them from didn’t know enough about
hens to cut off their wattles and combs in such a climate. Some of the hens had
gotten frostbite, for they were tender in those unfeathered fleshy parts, and
Crope feared the black rot might set in. He would have liked to stay and tend
them, but he could not ignore the call of his lord.
Come
to me, he
commanded, his once beautiful voice cracked and raw. He was trapped in a dark
place, broken and hurting, and he needed his sworn man to save him. How Crope
knew this he could not say. He dreamed the night in the dry well, a strong and
terrible dream where flies -broke free from his living flesh and shackles
circled his wrists. Suddenly there was iron, not stone, beneath him and the
darkness was so deep and black it felt like cold water upon his skin. He woke
up shivering, and as he blinked and worked to still his racing heart his lord’s
voice sounded along the nerve that joined his ears to his throat. Come to me, it said. And Crope knew he must. Eighteen years
had passed since the day in the mountains when his lord’s burned body was taken
from him by men wielding red blades. Unhand him, a cold voice had commanded. If you fight you’ll die. Crope remembered the man’s pale eyes and the
hairless shine of his skin. Baralis’ body was bound to the mule, his bandages
wet and stinking. The fever was upon him and he had not spoken in three days.
The left side of his face was burned and his hair and eyebrows were gone. Crope
feared for his lord’s life, and doubted his ability to save him. It was one
thing to heal creatures. Another to heal a man. The rider with pale eyes
commanded his red blades to circle the mule, and then spoke again to Crope. Your lord’s so close to death I can smell it. Fight
and the struggle will kill him—don’t
make the mistake of guarding a corpse.
But Crope had fought anyway, for he could not abandon his lord. He
remembered the pain of many cuts, the laughter of the red blades, and the taste
of blood in his mouth. Still he fought, and he hurt many men, dashing their
bodies onto the rocks and ripping their arms from their sockets. He could see
the fear grow in them. They had thought him simple, but they did not know that
a simple man with one thought in his head and one loyalty in his heart could be
transformed into a force of nature. Crope felt his own strength burn like a
white light within him, and when a mounted red blade charged him, he stood his
ground, waited until horse breath puffed against his eyes, fixed his hands upon
the stallion’s neck and wrested the creature to the earth.
All fell silent after that. The
red blades fell back. The man with pale eyes reined his mount, his face
thoughtful, a gloved hand grazing his chin.
Crope dropped to his knees by the downed stallion. Its rider was pinned
beneath the beast, his scalp torn open and showing bone. The man was struggling
for breath, and a froth of bile and blood was bubbling from his mouth. Crope
only had eyes for the horse. The creature was jerking horribly, its hoofs
clattering against the rocks, its eyes rolled back in its head. Crope felt
shame pierce him. Fool!
Look^ what you have done! Told you to look, not touch. Shoulders sinking along with
his rage, Crope reached over to where the red blade’s sword had fallen upon the
ground. He did not like swords, and never used them, but he knew what to do to
kill a horse. Gently, he comforted the creature, whispering soft words that
only animals could understand. Sorry,
sorry, sorry,
he murmured as he opened the stallion’s throat.
The first arrow pierced him high
in the shoulder, and the pain and surprise of it winded him. He fell forward
into the horse’s blood. More arrows hit. One entered the meat of his upper arm,
another grazed the tendons of his neck, and a third pierced the flank of muscle
beneath his ribs, puncturing his kidney with its tip: all shot from behind, at
the order of the pale-eyed man.
A day later when he awoke to find himself in a gully halfway down the
mountain, the red blades long gone along with the mule bearing his lord, he
realized it was the stallion’s blood that had saved him. He was drenched in it
from head to foot, and it did not take a clever man to see that the red blades
had mistaken it for his own. They thought they had mortally wounded him, and
had simply rolled his body down the mountain to be rid of it. They did not know
that Crope had the ancient blood of giants in his veins, and it would take more
than four arrows to kill him.
Abruptly, Crope started down the road to the town. He would not think
of what came later—not here, out in the open, with the selfsame mountains so
close. All that mattered for now was following those mountains west, to the
slopes where his lord had been taken and the place where the red blades lived.
The road was well traveled by carts and cattle, and a season’s worth of
cart oil and dung had been trampled into the snow. The sheep grazing by the
wayside scattered as Crope approached, and he saw that many were ready to lamb.
This small sign of approaching springtime warmed him, and he picked up his pace
and began to sing one of the old mining songs:
“O
Digger John was a bad seed and he carried a big bad ax Digger John was a bad
seed and he kept all his grudges in sacks One day he came upon a seam, made his
eyes gleam And he hit it with a whac’t, a whac’t. Yes, he hit it with a whac’t“
By the time he got to the third verse where he couldn’t remember all
the words, just the bit about Digger John’s toe falling off, he’d arrived at
the town’s outer wall. Many of the towns and larger villages that he’d passed
along the way had sections of earthwork and masonry defending them. This wall
was mostly mounded dirt, with a trench behind it filled with dirty water that
had hardened to brown ice. Crope was relieved to see there was no gate, for he
had a fear of gatekeepers and their suspicions and clever words. As he stood
inspecting the earthwork, an old man wheeling a handcart passed him by. Crope
immediately looked away, for he knew how easy it was for lone men to fear him,
and he had no wish to cause a stir. The old man was dressed in the bright
clothes of a tinker, with a red woolen coat held together by a great deal of
showy lacing, and patched green-and-yellow hose. Crope was surprised when the
man didn’t alter his path as he approached. More surprised when the man
addressed him.
“You. Yes, you busy pretending not to see me.” The tinker waited until
Crope met his eye, and then motioned to the town with a finger gloved in
sparrow skin with the feathers still attached. “I wouldn’t go there if I were
you. Sweet Mother, I would not! They’re an ill bunch, these goatheads, and they
don’t take kindly to outsiders. Think they’d welcome a bit of trade, stuck out
here in the hinterlands with only goats and groundchuck for company. The women
are still dressing in stiff corsets for heaven’s sake! But would they look at
my nice lace collars—all the rage in the Vor? No, they would not, thank you
very much. ‘Fraid of looking like whores, they said. Whores, I ask you, with this stitching?” The old man pulled something white and
frilly from beneath the tarp on his cart and thrust it toward Crope’s face.
“See the openwork. Finest to be had in the North.”
Crope politely inspected the lace thing. It seemed a bit flimsy, but he
didn’t say so as he wasn’t quite sure what it was for.
The old man took Crope’s silence for agreement. “You’re a man with an
eye, I see. Wouldn’t care for a pair yourself? Gift your lady mother and your
... er ... lady.”
Crope shook his head.
“A fellow trader, I perceive. How about the pair for the price of one?”
Feeling a little overwhelmed, Crope continued to shake his head. “A
more wily negotiator I have never met! Very well, out of respect for your
obvious discernment I’ll give three for the price of one. Just five silver
pieces. There! The deal’s done.“ The little man held out his open palm,
twitching his fingers for payment.
Crope began to feel the first stirrings of panic. Somehow it seemed as
if he’d agreed to this without speaking a word. He felt hot blood rush to his
neck, and he swung his head back and forth looking for escape.
The old man’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you be looking to run out on a
lawful agreement. You owe me five silver pieces, and I’ll take you to a
magistrate if you don’t pay up this instant.”
The word magistrate struck more fear into Crope
than the sight of a dozen drawn blades. Magistrates meant jail and chains, and
cells with iron doors. It meant being locked up and never let out. In full
panic now, he put his hands upon the tinker’s handcart and turned it over.
Ribbons and lace goods and all manner of twinkly things went crashing into the
snow. The wheel axle snapped and a wheel went bouncing down the slope toward
the ditch. Crope felt his chest squeeze tight. hoo’t what you’ve done! Told you not to touch. The old man was gabbling on,
pointing at the cart and hopping up and down in rage. Crope looked around
wildly. He had to get away, but he didn’t know what he feared more: an open
road where bad men could ride him down and hurt him, or a town full of
strangers who could ‘prison him.
His mind was made up for him when a pig farmer and his boy appeared on
the road driving six winter-thinned sows before them. The way back was blocked.
The tinker would call to the pig farmer for help, and the pig farmer would be
glad to, and a cry would go up and more men would come and circle him and beat
him with sticks. Crope knew how these things went. Seventeen years in the mines
wasn’t long enough to forget.
Crushing wood beads and painted brass trinkets beneath his feet, he
fled toward the town. Behind him he heard the tinker shout, “Stop! Come back
here!” But Crope didn’t stop, he ran with his head low and his shoulders
hunched forward as if he were about to break down a door.
People stared at him as he entered the shadows of the streets. A
goodwife dragged her two children into the nearest doorway to avoid his path. A
handsome youth in a pointed hat shouted out to no one in particular, “I’ll be
damned! Is it man or bear or both?” A scrawny white dog with a black mark over
her eye came racing from a dung heap, yipping and wagging its tail like a mad
thing, as it chased after Crope’s heels. Crope felt his face redden with shame
and exertion. Everyone was looking and laughing. He had to get off the main
thoroughfare, find somewhere dark where he could catch his breath and think.
Taking turns at random, kicking up clods of muddy snow and skidding on
patches of ice, he wove his way in toward the oldest part of town. The
buildings here were low and in ill repair, their cross-timbers greasy with rot,
the iron ore in their stonework bleeding rust. An old woman on a street corner
was boiling horse hoofs in a pot. The caustic stench brought tears to Crope’s
eyes, and its afterwhiff of meatiness made him feel at once both hungry and
queasy.
Panting, he slowed his pace to a walk and spat out a wad of streaky
black phlegm. Digger juice. Bitterbean said it was the mine’s way of striking
back: You entered the mine, the mine entered you. Realizing that the scrawny
dog was still following him, Crope turned and told it to shoo. The dog sat
expectantly, thumping its tail against the cobbles and cocking its pointy ears.
“I said go.” Crope raced at the dog, raising his hands and stamping his
feet.
The dog skipped back, yipped in excitement, then launched an attack on
Crope’s diamond boots. Crope pushed the creature away, but just as quickly it
came back, dancing and pouncing, delighted with this new game. Crope frowned.
His back and neck were sticky with sweat, and he suddenly wished for the
comfort of a closed room and a hot bath. Deep down in the underlevel of the tin
mines, below the shaft the tin men called Devil’s Throat, there were caverns
filled with steaming hot water. Once you got used to the bad egg smell, you
could soak in the pools until your fingertips wrinkled and your back muscles
relaxed like jelly. Crope knew better than to wish himself there—life in the
tin mines was dark and crippling and the life of a digger was worth less than
an ax—but there had been good things along with the bad. Food. Songs.
Fellowship. Now there was nothing, just running and hiding and fear.
Spying a tar-stained door with the sign of the rooster hung above it,
he turned his back on the dog and made his way across the road. The rooster
door was set in a squat structure that bore the marks of recent fire upon it.
The stonework was blistered with soot, and great cracks in its mortar had
opened up where the heat of flames had touched upon it. Timbers framing the
door were charred and crumbling, and a stang of green wood had been hammered
into place to prevent collapse. As he approached, Crope felt the old wariness
grow within him. The sign of the rooster marked an alehouse where men came to
trade. He needed to trade. Badly. He had no food or coinage, and a chicken tarp
instead of a cloak. Yet trading meant dealing with men, and Crope could recall
few times in his life where men had treated him kindly. They either feared or
despised him. Often both.
Letting out a slow breath, he shrank himself, curving his back and
slumping his shoulders and bending his legs at the knee. He lost perhaps half a
foot that way, but it was enough to give him courage to push open the door.
The alehouse was a one-room tavern reeking of goat tallow. Gobs of fat
in the lanterns hissed and sputtered, giving off musty green smoke. Tables and
stools hewn from unmilled timber were crowded around a copper cook stove. Old
men in goat fleeces and pieced skins turned to look at Crope as he made his way
toward the front. A big man in a leather apron shouted, “No dogs!” and it took
Crope a moment to realize that the white dog had followed him indoors. Crope
didn’t have the courage to explain that the dog wasn’t his, so he simply turned
around, picked up the dog and deposited the creature outside. By the time he
shut the door everyone’s attention was upon him, and it took all his willpower
not to turn and run. One of the old goatmen made a warding sign as he passed, and
the man with the leather apron folded his great meaty arms and spread his
weight evenly between his legs as if bracing himself for a fight. Eye signals
passed between him and a young bravo standing at the ale counter.
“What’s your business, stranger?” The man in the leather apron, the
tavern-keep, looked Crope up and down, his gaze lingering on the bird lime that
spotted Crope’s cloak, and the raised white scars on his neck. “If it’s trouble
you’re after I’ll see you get it, and if it’s ale and warmth I’ll weigh your
money first.”
Crope felt the blood rise in his face. He didn’t like being the object
of so much attention, and he had a fear of speaking in case he tied himself up
in knots. As he thought what to do, he noticed the bravo at the counter casually
reaching for his knife.
“Trade,” Crope said softly. “Come to trade.”
Again, glances passed between the tavern-keep and the bravo. “Come back
here then,” said the older man. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Crope was glad to get away from the goatmen and the heat of the stove.
He was sweating and the the ceiling was so low he had to further bend his knees
to pass under it. The young bravo moved alongside him as he approached the
counter, pulling too close for comfort. Crope edged away only to find the man
with the leather apron on the other side of him.
“Right,” said the tavern-keep. “Show us your goods.”
Crope touched the hem of his tunic, checking for the one thing he had
to trade. The smell of meat and gravy simmering on the stove filled his mouth
with saliva, and he swallowed several times. The bravo saw this and followed
Crope’s gaze to the black pot on the stove.
“Reckon he’s hungry, Sham. Reckon he’s willing to trade for a bowl of
meat and a hunk of bread.”
The one named Sham refolded his arms with vigor. “He’s getting nothing
from my stove until I see the measure of his goods.”
The bravo began picking dirt from his nails with the tip of his fancy
quillioned knife. Dressed in felted wool and finely napped suede, he shrugged
without making a sound. “I don’t know about that, Sham. I’d bring him a bowl. A
man’s better able to bargain on a full stomach.”
The two men stared at each other a moment, and then Sham gave way and
went to fill a bowl with stew. The bravo watched Crope watching the food. “Come
a long way, have you?”
Crope shook his head. He knew enough not to give this man any
information about himself.
“Seems you’ve taken a good few whippings in your time.” The bravo’s
eyes were knowing. Abruptly, he sheathed the knife. “I don’t think this would
be much use against a fellow like you. Reckon you can take care of yourself.”
Crope was relieved of the need to reply by the tavern-keep returning with
the stew. It was rich with blood and fat, and smelled strongly of goat. He felt
the eyes of both men upon him as he drank from the bowl. The stew was finished
too soon, and seemed to leave him more hungry than before. His eyes strayed
back to the pot, and the bravo, seeing this, smiled knowingly at the
tavern-keep.
“So,” said the bravo, leaning forward. “I’m sure you’ll agree we’ve
shown goodwill by feeding you. And I daresay Sham would be happy to fetch you a
second bowl when our business is done. What say you, Sham?”
Sham eyed Crope with displeasure. “If the trade warrants it.” Crope’s
stomach rumbled. He was trapped between hunger and obligation, and he couldn’t
think was else to do other than show the men his trade. With a slow and
ponderous movement he plucked the item from his coat hem, tearing half a seam
away in the process. Raising his closed fist to the counter, he was aware of
both Sham and the bravo leaning forward in expectation. Crope thought his fist
looked huge, big as an aurochs skull, and he was anxious to remove it from
sight. Quickly, he opened his hand.
The diamond seemed to capture every beam of light in the alehouse,
sucking it in like a pump and using it to burn as cold and blue as the stars.
Sham’s leather apron creaked as his chest expanded to draw breath. The bravo
was silent and unmoving, yet his eyes glittered with the reflected brilliance
of the stone.
Hadda’s diamond. The Crone Stone, Bitterbean called it, chipped from
her front tooth as the life and warmth drained from her body where it lay at
the top of the pipe. The gem was the size of a baby’s fingernail, table-cut and
clear as water; a fitting reward for the woman who had found the biggest
diamond ever to be mined west of Drowned Lake. Crope had not wanted to take it,
yet Hadda had grasped his buckskin pants as he set her down on the wet, muddy
ground above the pipe. “Take the stone from me, giant man,” she murmured,
gasping for breath. “If you don’t they
will. And I won’t have the first Bull Hand who finds me break my face in his
haste to get it.”
Crope had shaken his head. He didn’t want a dying gift from Hadda the
Crone. Hadda sang strange songs... and had summoned the darkness into the pipe.
Any gift she gave would be cursed.
The crone had become agitated then, her hands clenching and unclenching
as she fought the death closing upon her. “Take it. You earned it... you bore
me from the pipe.”
So Crope had taken it, using the blunt of his ax to knock out the tooth
and winkling the stone free from its enamel mounting. The Bull Hands had loosed
the hounds by then, and Crope could hear the fearful sound of their howling.
Pushing the diamond into his mouth for safekeeping, he ran for the refuge of
the trees. The last sound he heard before entering the dark and tangled silence
of Minewood was the ripping and sucking of hounds upon prey.
Now the stone lay twinkling in the palm of his hand, and two men stood
above it, silent and unmoving as if the diamond had cast a spell upon them.
Crope had a sudden wish to close his hand and flee, but Sham reached out and
plucked the stone from him.
“How do we know it’s real?” said the tavern-keep, squeezing the diamond
between finger and thumb as if he meant to crush it. “Could be rock crystal or
glass.”
Crope shook his head vigorously. No one was going to tell him the stone
wasn’t real. He’d mined diamonds for eight years; he knew gems from glass. As
he gathered breath for a heated denial, the bravo put a hand on his arm.
“Why don’t you bite it, Sham,” he offered. “If it breaks a tooth it’s
real.”
The tavern-keep looked suspiciously from the bravo to Crope. After a
moment, he raised the diamond to his lips, opened his jaw to bite down, and
then thought better of it. Offering the stone to the bravo, he said, “Seems
you’re so knowledgeable, Kenner, why don’t you test it.”
The bravo nudged the older man’s hand away. “Because I’m not a damn
fool, and know genuine goods when I see them. Why don’t you set that stone
down, and fetch me and my friend here a drink.”
Sham’s cheeks reddened in indignation, but Kenner ignored him and began
speaking to Crope, leaving the tavern-keep little choice but to do as the bravo
said. Sham did not go quietly, slamming the flat of his hand on the counter as
he deposited the stone, and muttering peeved curses. Minutes later a
tired-looking alewife dressed in a man’s tunic belted with a length of rope
brought a jug of ale and two wood cups. She would not look at Crope, and
addressed her words to Kenner. “Sham says the ale’s to come out o‘ your share.”
Kenner nodded, dismissing her. Pouring two cups of ale, he continued
speaking to Crope. “I hear the snow at Drowned Lake’s been passing light this
year. Too cold for it, they say. Have to keep setting fires on the ice to keep
the lake from freezing.”
Crope nodded. He was beginning to relax now that he was alone with
Kenner, and it didn’t occur to him to wonder how the bravo had managed to
pinpoint his place of origin. The ale was delicious, warm and nutty, with swirly
bits of egg yolk, and he could feel it loosening his tongue. “We had bother
drawing the water ‘cos of the frost. Had to bring me up to man the pumps.”
Pride made his ears glow pink. “Said no one could get them moving, only me.”
Kenner poured Crope a second cup of ale. “I can see that, big strong
man like you. Free miner, are you?”
Crope shook his head without thinking. “Miners don’t pump water. That’s
diggers’ work.” As soon as he spoke, he knew he had said too much. Bitterbean
had warned him to tell no one who he was and what he did. Slave hunters will come and get you, giant man.
Chain you, and haul you bac{for the bounty. And the pipe lord’ll be so pleased
to see you he’ll give you an iron ‘tiss that rips out your tongue, and caress
you real nice with his branding iron. Oh, make no mistake you’ll still be able
to dig when he’s done, but you’ll never break rock without pain again. And the
terrors’ll wake you every night.
Quickly, Crope glanced at Kenner. The bravo was skimming froth from his
ale, and his expression was relaxed and pleasant. Not the face of a man who
would deal with slavers. Even so Crope couldn’t quite stop the fear from
rising. Fool, chided the bad voice. Told you to keep your great mouth shut. Nervously, he glanced at the
door, checking to see that no one had moved to block his escape. Slavers and
slave hunters were everywhere, with their whips and chains and purses full of
coin. They could hunt you down in a town full of taverns, circle and whip you,
and then chain you to the axles of their wagons . . . and drag you under if you
didn’t keep up.
“Whoa, big man. Settle down.” The bravo’s voice seemed to come from a
very great distance. Only when his hand touched Crope’s arm, gently restraining
him, did Crope realize he had stepped toward the door. “What’s your hurry, big
man? We haven’t finished our business here yet.” The bravo’s voice sharpened.
“And lest you forget, you owe a debt of ale and vittles to this tavern.”
Crope let himself be drawn back to the counter. His heart was pumping
wildly, and it was suddenly hard to think. Kenner said he was in debt. Debt. Debt meant magistrates and jail. Locked up
and never let out. The overwhelming urge came upon him to flee. But everyone
was looking at him, and all the goatmen had mean eyes and leather stock whips. Great stupid chicken-head, gone and got yourself
trapped. He
was gulping so much air, he could barely make sense of what the bravo was
saying.
“Now I see the problem, big man. What you’ve got there is contraband.
Mighty troublesome stuff is contraband. Sooner gotten rid of the better.”
Crope didn’t know what contraband was, but he seized upon the last
thing the bravo said—Sooner
gotten rid of the better—and nodded fiercely in agreement.
Kenner’s gray eyes gleamed with satisfaction for an instant, but just
as quickly his expression changed to one of serious thought. Leaning forward,
he lowered his voice to a whisper. “This stone is trouble. Trouble for you.
Trouble for me. I take it off your hands and suddenly the very same people who
are looking for you start looking for me. I know, I know, we won’t name them
here and now. Best thing we can do is get this trade over and done with
quickly, and go our separate ways. Now I’m willing to keep quiet about where you’ve
been and what you’ve done, but that silence is a risk. It’ll cost me dear, and
that cost must be factored in to the trade.“
Crope was trying hard to understand what Kenner said, but there were
big words here, and it was easier to focus upon the smaller ones he knew. Risf{. Silence. Trouble. Hadda’s diamond twinkled on
the counter, attracting a lone moth who mistook it for a light. Looking at it,
Crope was overcome with a powerful urge to be free of the thing, and he put his
thumb upon the stone and pushed it toward the bravo. Kenner became very still.
His gaze met Crope’s and his eyebrows lifted in question. Are you sure? Even before Crope finished nodding the diamond was
gone, pocketed away in a compartment concealed beneath the bravo’s gear belt.
Crope felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. For a
moment he forgot to stoop, and his head bumped against the rafters. He grinned
at his own foolishness, and Kenner grinned too, and suddenly it was easy to
speak.
“Trade?” Crope prompted, nodding toward the bravo’s gear belt. Seeing
the blank look on Kenner’s face, he elaborated, “Trade, like you said . . . for
the stone.”
Kenner made a minute gesture to the tavern-keep, who stood watching by
the stove. A rustle of movement disturbed the room. Goatmen shifted forward in
their seats. Someone let the tail of a whip drop against the floor. The bravo
pushed himself away from the counter. “Look, stranger. We don’t want no trouble
here. The door’s there. Use it.”
Crope was confused. Kenner’s voice had changed, and he was acting as if
they weren’t friends. “Trade,” he repeated uncertainly, “for the stone.”
“Get out!” shouted the tavern-keep, sliding an iron poker from the
stove. “Won’t have no dirty freaks in my alehouse.”
Crope looked to Kenner, but the
bravo had already moved away. The tavern-keep took advantage of his momentary
distraction by lunging forward with the poker and stabbing Crope’s shoulder
with the smoldering point. Crope yelped in pain. Wheeling around, he lashed out
at the thing that hurt him. He caught only the tip of the poker, but his weight
and momentum was enough to send it flying from the tavern-keep’s hand and
clattering into the huddle of goat-men sitting about the stove. The tavern-keep
cried out in fury, nursing his twisted wrist. One of the goatmen, a scrawny
herder in a fleece hat, rose from his seat, the tail of his stock whip bunched
in his fist. Others followed his lead, edging forward, careful not to step
within the turning circle of Crope’s massive seven-foot arm span. The bravo
watched from a safe position behind the counter, his fancy quillioned knife
nowhere to be seen. Crope looked and looked, but Kenner wouldn’t meet his eye.
Crac’t. A whip came down at Crope’s
feet, its leather tail slithering on the floorboards before its handler snapped
it back. Suddenly Crope was back at the pipe, and the Bull Hands were closing
about him. Fear came so quickly he could taste it. It tasted of leather and
salt. Through a haze of rising panic he spied the tavern door. The oblong of
light seeping in around its frame looked like the sky overhead in the pipe. It
meant escape. A second whip lashed his foot, and another licked the hamstring
at the back of his calf. Raising his hands to protect his face, he barreled
toward the door. If the goatmen had been carrying man whips instead of the
shorter, finer stock whips they could have stopped him. For the man whips were
twelve-footers, their leather cured to the hardness of steel ribbons, and once
they curled twice around a man’s leg their handlers could bring that man to the
ground. But the stock whips didn’t have the length for it, and they snaked
Crope’s ankles but didn’t catch.
Crope fixed his sights on the door. When a goatman failed to move out of
his path quickly enough, Crope blasted into him, flooring the man instantly.
Ribs in the goatman’s chest snapped with wet, explosive cracks as Crope tramped
over his torso to reach the light. The delicate slot-and-groove mechanism of
the door latch proved too much for Crope’s big, shaking hands and he smashed
that too in his haste to be gone.
Finally the door swung open. Cool mountain air touched his cheeks.
Sunlight dazzled him and he blinked many times; his miner’s eyes weak in the
face of sudden light. It seemed impossible that it should only be midday while
so much had passed in the tavern. A pain in his chest from the place where his
breaths came from made him press a hand against his rib cage. He would have
liked to sit down right there, upon the tavern’s stoop, and rest until he
caught his breath and all the trouble had passed. But the goatmen in their
greasy skins and fleeces were driving him on with the crack of their whips.
“Get off with you, you filthy monster.”
“Go back to your hell cave where you belong.”
Crope put his hands over his ears to stop from hearing. Hadda’s diamond
gone. Fool, taunted the bad voice. Suet for brains. One day someone will tal’t you into
walking off a cliff. Angry at himself, he lashed out at the air. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
As he wheeled around he saw the goatmen watching him from inside the tavern.
Something about the way they had gathered in a half-circle to watch him, their
lips splitting in ugly leers, their fingers stroking the tails of their whips,
shifted the anger in him. They weren’t slavers or Bull Hands. They were men who
herded goats.
The first stirrings of white rage moved within him, and he felt the
skin across his back tighten and the blood pump into his eyes. The white rage
was bad, he knew that, but it was hard to remember why when the pressure pushed
all thoughts from your head. He had to act. Nasty men had stolen Hadda’s
diamond. Nasty, laughing men.
As he sprung toward the tavern door, the leers on the goatmen’s face
faltered. The herder in the fleece hat stepped back. Crope recognized the man’s
fear, but took no satisfaction from it. People had been afraid of him all his
life.
The desire was in him to run the goatmen back into the tavern and rip
the whip arms from them, but an old warning pierced the haze of his rage. Use it. Don’t let it use you. It was his lord’s voice, rich
and beautiful, as calming as water dripping into a deep pool. His lord was the
wisest of men. He got angry too, but he rarely let that anger rule him. He
would never storm a tavern when outnumbered many to one. No. His lord would
bide his time, watching and waiting, only striking out when his enemies least
expected it and could be taken unawares.
Thinking of his lord cleared a space in Crope’s mind. The white rage
still burned, contracting his muscles and making him fever-hot,
but now there was a pocket of air. Abruptly, his gaze alighted on the
stang of green wood that was bracing the charred and rotten timbers above the
door. The stang was taller than he, a fifteen-year growth of black spruce,
three foot round and oozing pitch, and looking at it Crope knew what he must
do. Wrapping his arms around the gray and papery bark, he hugged the stang fast
against his chest. The men inside the tavern, realizing what he meant to do,
began shouting and cracking their whips. Crope barely felt the leather lick his
skin. It was like the day when he’d brought down the horse: Once the white rage
was upon him he could not be stopped.
Deep down he reached, beyond the caverns of his five-chambered heart,
deep into the blood that looked as red as any man’s but would burn like fuel
when set alight, down into the muscle meat where the memories of his giant
ancestors waited to be sparked. A tremor of power charged the great saddles of
muscle in his shoulder and lower back. His lungs pulled in enough air for six
men. Tendons whitened. A dozen tiny capillaries forked like lightning in his
eyes. He heaved the stang to him, hearing the creak of unstable timber as half
a ton of wood moved like an oiled crankshaft in his hands. Men were quiet now,
backing off into the dim smoky recesses of the tavern, their whips flaccid by
their sides. Flakes of charred matter fell on Crope’s head as he yanked the
stang free of the doorframe.
The stang dropped to the ground with a mighty crac’t. The entire building shivered. Timbers framing the
door, badly weakened by fire and then rotted by water, groaned under the strain
of masonry above. A strange whirring noise, like the sound of an arrow
in flight, rose higher and higher, until something deep within the masonry
snapped. And then the entire front wall of the tavern began to collapse.
Crope did not stay to watch the destruction. Turning on his heels, he traced
his steps out of town. The scrawny dog with the black eye caught up with him
along the way, and after Crope tried many times to shoo it, he gave up and
named it Town Dog, and together they made their way east toward the shelter of
the mountains and the trees.
CHAPTER
Blue Dhoone Lake
Blue Dhoone Lake lay a quarter league due south of the Dhoonehold,
within sight of the chief’s chamber and the two gate towers known as the Horns.
It was a large and glassy body of water, some said artificially dug and filled
by order of the first Dhoone king. Others said huge chunks of lodestone, rich
with copper ore, had been dragged south from the Copper Hills and sunk into the
lake’s depths so that the minerals bleeding from them would turn the lake water
a vivid, unearthly blue. The Dog Lord didn’t know about that, though he had to
admit the waters of Blue Dhoone Lake were passing queer. They never froze,
glowed a strange and milky hue when the moonlight caught them just right, and
nothing but albino eels and the prey they hunted swam there.
Disgusting things, those eels. Scunner Bone had netted one, last month
before the deep frost. Pale as wax it was, and a full five foot in length. Old
Scunner had thought to honor his chief by offering him the head. Vaylo could
still see the monstrosity now: the pink eye, the half-circle of teeth, the
wolfish band of muscle around the throat. Vaylo chuckled, remembering the look
on his grandchildren’s faces as they inspected this oddity. “You’re not going
to eat that are you,
Granda?“ his grandson had exclaimed. ”Of course he is, stupid,“ his
granddaughter had contradicted with all the authority of someone eight years
old speaking to someone just four. ”It’s the food of the Dhoone kings. And if
it’s good enough for them it’s good enough for our granda.“
Vaylo found he could not shrink in the face of such fierce pride, and
he had eaten the eel, teeth and all.
He was sure it was still within him, thirty days later, its teeth
fastened to his gut wall like a leech on skin, as he rode a circuit of Blue
Dhoone Lake at sunset with the wolf dog trotting at his heels.
The sun was red and engorged, its edges wavering in response to some
faraway dust; a Blood Sun, Ockish Bull used to call it. Said it meant that change
was coming, and swiftly at that. Watching it sink below the heathered slopes
and thistle fields of eastern Dhoone, firing the lake surface in its descent,
Vaylo reined in his mount. Would this land ever be home to him? Would the
brittle satisfaction of acquisition ever give way to something deeper?
The Dog Lord sighed deeply, his breath whitening in the cracking air.
He did not love this land, with its neatly tilled oatfields and walled-in
grazes and tracts of cleared brush. Just yesterday he’d rode out to the sloping
plains north of the Flow. What had once been an old-growth forest, with ancient
oaks, horse chestnuts and elms, was now a field of stumps, their timber felled
for either fuel or defense. It looked like a graveyard, and it made Vaylo hunger
for Bludd. No forests in the clanholds could match Bludd’s. A man could ride
north or south for a week and still find no end of them. And there was no
telling what he might glimpse in the quiet glades; lynxes, ice wolves, ancient
woodsmen long forsaken by their clans, deep fishing holes, Sull arrows still
vibrating in tree trunks, spotted mushrooms as big as hammer heads and just as
deadly, ancient ruins smothered by vines, and dim caves alive with bats,
eyeless crickets, and ghosts. Bludd was a border clan. It shared edges with the
Sull. Fear came with that, Vaylo could not deny it, but alongside fear lay
wonder and excitement. No man could ride in the forests east of Bludd and not
feel the thrill of being alive in such a place. Looking out across the vast
expanse of the Dhoonehold, with its man-planted thorn beds and ploughed fields,
Vaylo doubted he would ever feel such a thrill riding here.
Suddenly impatient with himself, he tossed his steel gray braids behind
him and dug his heels into horsemeat. Too much thinking would turn him soft. He
had possession of Dhoone, that was enough. Childhood fantasies about ancient
forests and mysterious glades had no business in the mind of a man who had
lived out five decades and more.
As he turned the dog horse for home, he spied Cluff Drybannock on his
big charcoal stallion, riding out from the Dhoonehouse to meet him. From this
distance it was impossible to make out the expression on Drybone’s face, but
Vaylo felt a stab of misgiving all the same. Unlike the seven sons of Vaylo’s
blood, Cluff Drybannock was not a man to seek out his chief for idle gossip or
self-advancement.
Speaking a word of command, Vaylo brought the wolf dog to heel and rode
clear from the slushy banks of the lake. “Dry,” he called, his voice hoarse
from the cold and lack of use. “What brings you?”
Ever since he had taken the Ganmiddich roundhouse with a troop of only
two hundred swordsmen, Cluff Drybannock had taken to braiding his waist-length
hair with rings of opal. It was a small thing, one of those countless little
rituals that warriors used to mark their progress, yet it had not gone
unnoticed. Some in the roundhouse whispered that he was showing his true nature
at last, and that pride and ambition could be read in the hollow, pearly rings.
Vaylo didn’t believe it for an instant. Yet seeing Dry now, watching as his
blue-black braids .lifted in the rising wind and the pieces of opal woven
amongst them glimmered like slices of moon, he wondered if there wasn’t some
truth to the whispers after all. Not the part about pride and ambition—Vaylo
knew he had Dry’s loyalty for life—but rather the part about his true nature. Moon and night sky. Discreetly, perhaps unconsciously, Cluff
Drybannock was taking on the colors of the Sull.
“Word’s arrived from the Bluddhouse.” Drybone reined his mount, and the
two horses halted head-to-head, nostrils steaming. “Quarro sent Cuss Maddan.
Dhoone raiders attacked the Bludd-
house fourteen days back. Torched the Chief’s Grove, and slew twenty
men. They struck at night with no warning, and retreated as quickly as they
came. Quarro mounted a pursuit, but the mist rose and they slipped away.“
“Stone Gods.” Vaylo touched the oxblood leather pouch containing his
measure of powdered guidestone. His father’s bones lay in that grove, sealed in
a skin of lead that had been poured like molten wax onto his still-warm corpse.
It was the way all Bludd chiefs met their gods. One day Vaylo knew his own
flesh would be cremated by the white-hot metal and then set to cool beneath the
black and loamy earth. He shivered. “Who took loss?”
Drybone named the men. Some were old retainers, well past the age of
bearing arms. One was a boy of eleven.
The Dog Lord dismounted. He could not hear such news and remain seated.
“Did we take any of their number?”
Drybone swung down from his own mount. “Two men were unhorsed in the
Chief’s Grove. Quarro spiked them both.”
It sounded right. Quarro was his eldest son, the fiercest swordsman of
the seven, and the one Vaylo judged most likely to claim the chiefship when he
was gone. Vaylo had ceded him command of the Bluddhold in his absence, and
Quarro had doubtless acquired a liking for playing chief during the seven
months his father had been at Dhoone. He’d had it easy until now. Vaylo reached
for the cloth bag that held his chewing curd as he looked out upon the
darkening glass of the lake. Behind him, he heard Dry squat to rub the wolf
dog’s neck.
“Your sons ride forth to meet you,” Dry said, and Vaylo looked up to
see three horsemen closing distance from the Horns.
Pengo Bludd, hammerman, bearer of the shrike lore, and second amongst
Vaylo’s sons, was the first to reach his father. Unlike Drybone, he did not dismount
when faced with his standing chief. Instead he pulled the bit deep into his
stallion’s mouth and forced the great warhorse to stillness. The Dog Horse, who
had been quietly nosing through thistle grass at the end of its tether, took
offense at the stallion’s closeness, and spun to bite the creature’s neck.
Pengo was flung back in his saddle as he battled his rearing mount.
“For gods’ sake,” he cried to Vaylo. “Can’t you control that beast?”
Vaylo looked coolly at his son. Pengo was past thirty years of age, big
and powerful with the flushed skin of an ale drinker and his mother’s striking
eyes. As usual he had taken little care with his appearance, and his braids
were plastered with horsehair and congealed grease. He was not dressed for war,
though his spiked and lead-weighted hammer was cradled and chained at his back.
Forced to retreat to a safe distance from Vaylo’s horse, he scowled at his
father. “I suppose he” a dismissive snap of his head
indicated Cluff Drybannock, “has told you the news from Bludd.”
“Some of it.” Vaylo pushed a cube of black curd between his lips. He
did not love his sons, and wondered what kind of father that made him. Other
men, he knew, looked at their sons with pride and affection. Vaylo looked, but
saw nothing other than seven men who had taken from him all his life. And still
wanted more. He waited until Gangaric and Thrago rode abreast of their elder
brother, before adding, “Dry has told me enough to ice my blood. Is Cuss sure
the raiders were Dhoone?”
Gangaric, Vaylo’s third son and the sole axman of the seven, brought
his gelding to a banking halt, sending clumps of soft mud flying through the
air. “They were Dhoone for a certainty. Faces inked like savages and the blue
steel upon them.”
Pengo, already growing restless, waved a gloved fist toward the
Dhoonehouse. “It’s retaliation for this. If Skinner Dhoone thinks—”
“It wasn’t Skinner,” Drybone said quietly. “It was his nephew Robbie
Dhoone.”
Pengo glared at Drybone, furious at being contradicted. He looked to
his two brothers to gainsay Cluff Drybannock, but both men held their tongues.
Drybone watched Pengo dispassionately, infuriating him more. Finally, Pengo
exploded, “Go back to the roundhouse, bastard. This is Bludd business, not
yours.”
“Son,” Vaylo said, deceptively calm. “If it’s bastards we’re sending
back to the roundhouse then mayhap I should ride right along with Dry and leave
you and your brothers to fight amongst yourselves.”
Pengo’s face reddened. Not with shame, Vaylo knew, but with anger he
didn’t dare let out. Gangaric, who had styled himself a HalfBludd in memory of
his great-grandfather and had taken to wearing a collar of woodrat skins in the
manner of HalfBludd axmen, regarded his father with open dislike. Only Thrago,
Vaylo’s fifth son, the one who was the mirror image of Gullit Bludd, had the
decency to look ashamed. Yes,
Thrago. Your father is a bastard. So what does that make you?
Vaylo spat out the wad of chewing curd, its bitter burned-cheese taste
suddenly sickening in his mouth. Usually he knew better than to dwell upon the
failings of his sons—it gained him nothing but a stabbing tightness in his
chest—but tonight his feelings were harder to set aside. He turned his back on
the company while he mastered his thoughts. Someone was lighting torches inside
the Dhoonehouse, and windows set deep into the sandstone began to glow with
orange light. The sun had gone, and a full moon was pulling at the waters of the
lake, raising ripples that traveled west. Vaylo let the moon breeze cool his
skin, and after a time he said, “Is there anything else I need to know about
this raid?”
Leather creaked behind his back as his sons shifted in their saddles.
Cluff Drybannock moved alongside him and murmured, “They brought draft horses
to tear down the blue shanty.”
Vaylo closed his eyes. So this was it. This raid hadn’t been some
daring spur-of-the-moment strike. Robbie Dhoone had ridden to Bludd with one
purpose: to destroy the building erected from the remains of the stolen
Dhoonestone. No matter that what he pulled down was nothing more than
quarry-bought rubble, and that the real Dhoonestone lay at the bottom of this
very lake. No one knew that except the fifty Bludd warriors who had stolen
it—and half of them were dead. No. Robbie Dun Dhoone had struck a blow for
Dhoonish pride. He didn’t have the manpower yet for all-out battle, but that
would change soon enough. Skinner would lose ground when word of Robbie’s feat
got out. Few clansmen could resist the lure of such reckless and prideful
bravado. Vaylo knew that. It was the reason he’d stolen the cursed Dhoonestone
in the first place. Clansmen loved jaw. Robbie Dhoone had it, and Skinner
Dhoone did not.
It was just as Angus Lok had said. The golden boy was puffing himself
up to be a king. He warned
me about Robbie Dhoone, and I did not heed him. Vaylo was suddenly overcome with a deep
posses-siveness for the very land he had earlier dismissed. He might not love
Dhoone, but he would not relinquish it. He was the Dog Lord, and once he
fastened his jaws upon an object he’d never let it go. They’d have to kill him
first.
And even then he might come back to haunt them. He had given up much to
gain this clanhold—signed a contract with the devil himself, Penthero Iss.
Vaylo could not think of the man’s name without forming a fist. The Surlord had
made play with the clanholds, setting Blackhail against Bludd, and Bludd
against Dhoone. It was Iss’ men who had killed the Hail chief in the Badlands,
Vaylo was sure of it; Iss’ men who had made it look like the work of Clan
Bludd.
I
should have denied it. Vaylo closed his eyes as he fought the pain. Seventeen grandchildren
dead, killed by Hailsmen in retaliation for the slaughter of their chief.
Penthero Iss had gotten his money’s worth out of that. After that Bludd had no
choice but to make war on Blackhail—what sort of clan chief would let the death
of his grandchildren go unavenged? Not one any self-respecting warrior would
follow for long.
Turning to face his sons, Vaylo said, “We must not be caught unawares
again.“
Gangaric nodded his large and part-shaved head. He was all axman now,
sure and powerful in his heavy crimson cloak, the weight of his broadax straining
the leather harness at his breast. Thrago, named for his great-grandfather yet
the least self-willed of the three, followed Gangaric’s lead and sat ready on
his mount. Pengo met Vaylo’s gaze, his ungloved hand smoothing his horse’s
mane. “So, Father. What would you have us do?”
Vaylo chose to ignore the arrogance in his second son’s voice. He
shifted his position slightly to include Cluff Drybannock in the circle. “We
must increase our watch. Success at the Bluddhouse will leave Dhoone thirsting
for more. They’ll strike again. And soon. Robbie Dhoone’s eager to make a name
for himself. He’s after his uncle’s sworn men.”
“The Bluddhouse more like,” contested Pengo. “We’ve claimed his
clanhold, now he’s after claiming ours.”
Vaylo shook his head, growing impatient. “Robbie Dhoone had no
intention of taking the Bluddhouse. He didn’t have the men for it. Aye, it was
doubtless pleasing to see the sacred grove go up in flames, but this raid was
more about Dhoone than Bludd. The young pretender’s sending a message to the
Dhoone warriors at Gnash. Come,
join me. Leave Skinner. He’s an old man with an old man’s ways, and he doesn’t
have the jaw to retake Dhoone.”
Pengo’s face twisted. The scar on his cheek, caused when he’d fallen
through a trapdoor at Withy, stretched to an ugly white line. “If you’re such
an expert on what the Dhoonesman thinks, how come you didn’t think to guard our
roundhouse against him?”
The wolf dog, perceiving an insult to his master, began to growl very
softly from behind a screen of withered bulrushes. Vaylo, seeing something
familiar and disturbing in the hard lines of his son’s face, lashed out. “Get
off your horse. I am your chief. Don’t you dare speak down to me from the high
comfort of your saddle like some grand city lord. I’ve led this clan for
thirty-five years—and I can’t remember one of them when you’ve performed any
service to earn your keep.”
Pengo’s nostrils flared. His eyes burned with a force that made him
shake. Vaylo saw him look to his brothers for support, but both Thrago and
Gangaric managed to be occupied with stilling their jittery mounts. Pengo
snatched up his reins and pulled back his horse’s head.
“Ride away now,” Vaylo warned, “and you forfeit your say in this clan.”
As he spoke he knew it was a mistake—give a man no way to back down and you
either lose or humiliate him—but the unsettling vision of seeing his dead
wife’s features living beneath Pengo’s own made him angry, not wise.
Pengo turned the great gray warhorse, forcing a path between his
brothers. As he put spurs to his mount, his gaze alighted on Cluff Drybannock,
who stood tall and unmoving by the water’s edge. With a sudden heft of his
weight, Pengo swung his horse to charge him. The two men, one mounted and one
afoot, stared at each other for the scant seconds it took the horse to cross
the distance between them. The Dog Lord held his breath. There was a moment,
when something ancient and fearless sparked in Drybone’s eyes, when Vaylo
realized how little he knew of his fostered son. Cluff Dryban-nock was not his
real name. He had been called it by Molo Bean, who had laughed as the young and
starving orphan had stuffed himself with dry bread at Molo’s table. Who Dry
was, what he’d seen and done before coming to Clan Bludd, was unknown. The one
and only time he’d spoken of his father was that first day, when he claimed the
man was a Bluddsman so Bludd must take him in. His mother was a Trenchlander
... and Trenchlanders were Sull. Vaylo saw that Sull in him now, and was
overcome with the sudden certainty that if Dry chose to, he had ways within his
power to halt the horse.
Yet he did not. At the final instant, Cluff Drybannock moved aside.
Lake water seeped around his boots as he stepped onto a floating bed of mallow
grass at the lake’s edge. Pengo’s horse entered the water with a great splash,
quickly rearing back at the shock of its coldness. Pengo easily gained control
of the beast and turned it back onto the shore.
“Aye,” he said to Drybone. “It’d suit you well enough if I rode away.”
Abruptly, he dismounted. “But I don’t think I’ll give you the satisfaction of
taking my place just yet.”
Drybone did not speak. After a moment he turned his back on Pengo and
bent to collect water from the lake. Vaylo watched as Dry released cupped hands
above his forehead and let the dark, oily water run down his scalp. He stopped Pengo from losing face, yet he needn’t
have. Why?
When the answer came it made Vaylo feel old. For me, just for me.
Pengo raised his voice to his brothers. “Gangaric. Thrago. You lazy
mother-of-bitches. Get down from your saddles. I’ll be damned if I’ll stand
here alone.”
Vaylo looked on with distaste as his two younger sons did Pengo’s
bidding. Sometimes he wondered if he hadn’t brought the curse of his sons upon
himself. / married my
half-sister. No man can come that close to trespass and remain unpunished. Stone Gods! But Angarad was
fair then! The color of her skin, the way her eyes crinkled when she laughed.
Old Gullit Bludd had adored her. He’d grunt at his sons, ignore his bastard,
and shower his daughter with gifts. The only time Vaylo could recall seeing his
father pay coin for anything was when a Far South trader had shown him a sea
pearl as black as night. Angarad was thirteen then, more lovely than a thousand
pearls, and when she’d held the jewel to her hair it disappeared, so closely
were the two matched in sheen and hue. Gullit had bought the jewel on the spot,
and named it for her. Angarad had worn it till her death. Vaylo had it now, yet
he’d never once looked upon it in the nine years she’d been gone. Strange how
he had once thought it beautiful. Now he knew it for the dark omen it was: No
girl of thirteen should be given a black jewel.
She had not wanted him. How could she? She was fifteen, in the fullness
of her beauty, and the man who claimed her had slain the father she loved.
Worse than that somehow was Vaylo’s bastardy. Angarad was her father’s
daughter: She had grown up believing in his word. She had seen firsthand how
Vaylo was treated, and that seeing darkened her feelings for the rest of her
life.
The Dog Lord sighed deeply. He could not blame her. She was proud, as a
Bluddswoman should be, and she had borne him seven healthy sons. Toward the
end, during the last few months of her life, when she insisted on being carried
out to the Bluddcourt each morning in her wicker chair, there had been a
softening. All she had to do was show him one small sign of affection to steal
the heart from his chest. He had wanted to love her all along.
It was an effort to drag his mind from the past.
To Thrago he said, “Take a crew of thirty south to Withy. Warn Hanro of
what passed at the Bluddhouse. Tell him to double watches on all borders—especially
in the east where the Withy hunt runs cross into the Ruinwoods. You’ll stay
with Hanro until I call you back. And before you say it I’ll hear no argument
about which of you is to take command of the Withyhouse. Hanro has it. He’s
been there for ninety days, and he should know how best to defend it by now.“
Vaylo couldn’t resist a gibe at his second son. ”And be sure to watch your
step, else you’ll fall through a trapdoor and end up with a hole through your
head.“ Pengo scowled.
Thrago nodded. “I’ll leave on the morrow.”
“Good.” Vaylo turned to Gangaric. His mind was fully engaged now. Angus Lok had warned him that Robbie Dhoone was cunning and hungry. Vaylo had been cunning and hungry himself once; it shouldn’t be difficult to put himself in the Dhoonesman’s place. “Gangaric. I want you back at the Bluddhouse. Take a small crew with you. No more than two dozen, spearmen and bowmen. You’ll be working with Quarro to secure the Bluddhold. I want three hundred yards of timber cleared around the roundhouse. And take Scunner Bone with you. He’s old, but he’s devious, and he knows how to lay horse traps and strangle lines.” And it’ll stop him from catching any more damned eels for me to eat. “Send him to Withy when he’s done.” Gangaric was not so pleased with his assignment. He had styled himself a HalfBludd axman, and had plans to travel south to the Halfhouse and take up arms there. Now his father was commanding him east, and at the head of a crew of archers and spearmen, no less. Every axman Vaylo had ever met had nothing but contempt for weapons that relied on piercing, not chopping, blades. Gangaric fought his dissatisfaction. Deeply scarred and blistered hands flung back his braids. “Aye. I’ll go east. Though I’ll be taking a half-score of axmen as escort.”
Vaylo forced himself not to object. Six axmen were neither here nor
there. If it pleased his third son’s vanity to have them, then it came at a
small price. “Well enough. I’d have you leave at dawn. All in the Bluddhouse
must know our hearts are with them.”
Gangaric bowed his head, a strangely courtly gesture that lay at odds
with his manner and dress. He’s
learning grace from the Half-Bludds, Vaylo thought, pleased despite himself. HalfBludd axmen
were renowned for two things: their reckless joy on the battlefield, and their
gallantry with clan maids off it. It certainly wouldn’t hurt Gangaric to pick
up a few manners whilst learning how best to chop off a man’s head.
Vaulting into his saddle, Gangaric said, “I’d best get back. There’s
much to settle if I’m to be gone by first light.”
Thrago followed after him, and the two rode at gallop to the
Dhoonehouse. The moon was high now, silvering the thistle fields and moving
deep within the lake. The wind carried the scent of resin from the western
pines, a smell that reminded the Dog Lord of surgeons’ tents and wound
dressings. Underfoot the first dew of nightfall was crisping to ice.
Vaylo was aware of the silence that grew between the three remaining
men. Cluff Drybannock and Pengo Bludd seldom had much to say to each other, but
tonight the hostility running between them crackled in the air.
“Pengo,” Vaylo said eventually. “I want you to take a company of a
hundred men north. Ride overnight to the Dhoonewall and secure—”
“No,” Pengo hissed. “I’m not leaving this roundhouse while he’s still
in it.” He snapped his wrist in Drybone’s direction. “Send him to those blasted rocks—he’s not one of us. He won’t
be missed.”
“Silence!” Vaylo roared, taking a step
toward his son. Fifty-three years old he was, yet Pengo still flinched before
him. “Cluff Drybannock is your brother by fosterage and a warrior of this clan.
You will show him due respect, or as the gods are my witness I’ll beat you
where you stand.”
Pengo took a step back, his face flushing with blood. “That bastard
thinks he’s as good as a chief since he took Ganmiddich. But what good did it
do us? He held it for less than a month.”
Cluff Drybannock regarded Pengo with such a depth of coldness it made
hairs rise on Vaylo’s neck. It was not Dry’s fault Ganmiddich had been
lost—Vaylo knew that blame lay with himself for sending Dry north to Dhoone
when they were already undermanned—yet Dry did not speak up in his own defense.
His pride allowed for no excuses.
Addressing himself to Vaylo, Dry said, “I will take command of the
Dhoonewall.”
“No you will not!” Vaylo replied hotly. “That charge falls to my second
son.”
“Let him take it, Father,” urged Pengo, sensing an advantage. “He’s
unwed. He has no wife to drag north for his comfort.”
Vaylo halted for a moment as he made sense of what his son said. Pengo
couldn’t be thinking of taking his new wife to the Dhoonewall. The Dhoonewall
was a defensive rampart spanning two major passes in the Copper Hills. It had
lain unused since the time of the River Wars—and then manned only briefly.
Built by Hawker Dhoone, it had once been a source of Dhoonish pride; a means of
protecting the Dhoonehold and Dhoone’s precious copper mines from Maimed Men
raiders, and preventing hostile clans from mounting northern attacks. Now the
copper mines were mostly sealed. Iron had long since taken over as the metal of
choice for forging weapons, and the number of Maimed Men had been declining for
decades. As far as Vaylo knew, only one of the original hillforts was livable,
and that was a broken-down tower of crumbling mortar and mossy stones. No woman
could be taken there. Especially one as heavy with child as Pengo’s wife.
Vaylo heard his voice fall dangerously low as he said, “You will man the Dhoonewall and you will not take your
wife.”
“I don’t think so, Father. You may command the Dhoonehold, but /
command my wife.” Pengo flicked a piece of straw from one of his braids. “And
while I think on it, I’ll have her bring the bairns along as well. They’ve been
so long in your care they think they’ve an old man for a father.“
Vaylo wanted to strike him. Pengo’s two children were his sole
remaining grandchildren. To even speak of putting them in danger was
unthinkable. It made Vaylo see spots of red rage before his eyes. “Your wife
stays here. She’s with child. You can’t drag her and the bairns to some broken
piece of rock wall. I forbid it.”
“She. She. You don’t even know her name,
do you? All Shanna is to you is a means of restocking your grandchildren. A
brood mare. Well, start looking for someone else to do your rutting, Dog Lord,
for if you send me north to the Dhoonewall you’ll never see Shanna or the
bairns again.“
Gods
help me not to kjll him. Vaylo grabbed his braids in his fist and tried not to grind his
teeth. There was truth in what his son said,
he could not deny it. He couldn’t remember the name of Pengo’s new
wife, though she had been a daughter of the clan for twenty years. Oh he knew
her well enough by sight—a striking girl with the dark skin and black eyes of
her sister, Pengo’s first wife—yet the only time he’d spoken to her was when
she became visibly heavy with child. It had been the same with all his sons’
wives: He valued them, but only as mothers of his grandchildren. Now Pengo’s
wife was six months pregnant, soon to bring forth the clan’s first newborn
since the massacre on the Bluddroad. Every effort must be taken to keep her
safe. Vaylo wanted that child.
“So, Father. What’s it to be? Do you send a wifeless bastard from the
roundhouse, or me?”
Vaylo looked to Cluff Drybannock. Since he’d taken his final oath six
years back Dry had gathered a troop of loyal swordsmen about him. His skill
with the longsword was unmatched in the clan-holds, and no swordsman could
watch him in battle and remain unmoved. He was Vaylo’s right hand, silent and
uncomplaining, and he would fight to the death to protect his chief. Yet I have given him so little: a sword, a bed,
brotherhood in a hostile clan. I should have formally taken him as my son,
spilt my blood over his. Yet he never asked for it, and I always thought
there’d be time enough for such sentimental fussing when all wars and conflicts
were done.
The Dog Lord’s hand closed around his measure of guidestone, weighing
the gray powder in his fist. He wanted Dry here, with him. When an attack came,
and he knew one would, he would fight easier knowing Dry was at his back. Pengo
was a fierce warrior and he rode with a fierce crew, but he lacked loyalty and
obedience . . . and something else that Vaylo couldn’t name. Perhaps the cold
and deadly grace of the Sull.
Drybone’s gaze rose to meet his chief’s. Moonlight sheened his hair and
ran along the sharply defined bones of his face. He was wearing a cloak of
auburn wool, its hem weighted with bronze chains so it would not move with the
wind: a gift from Ockish Bull upon his deathbed.
Dry, I
love you like a son.
But I
love my grandchildren more.
The Dog Lord turned to his son. “You will stay here at the roundhouse
with your crew. You’ll take charge of securing the perimeter. I want a station
on the Flow to the south, and one on Lost Clan Field to the east. Plan for
ranging parties to ride as far west as the Muzzle, and make sure every scout’s
equipped with fire arrows and horns.” Pengo stood straighten “Aye.”
Vaylo was glad he said no more. Glad that his second son chose not to
gloat, for he didn’t think he could have borne it. Weariness stole over him,
and suddenly he wanted very much to be with Nan. Glancing over at where Drybone
stood facing the lake, his beautiful long fingers resting gently upon the wolf
dog’s neck, he knew he wasn’t done.
“Pengo. Go now.”
He meant to say more, to warn Pengo of the importance of his task, and
advise him to learn the lay of the land, for Robbie Dhoone knew it only too
well. Also he knew he should force a reconciliation between him and Dry, make
them clasp hands and speak hollow words so at least a semblance of unity could
be maintained. But he didn’t have the strength for it.
Pengo waited, and when no further words were forthcoming he grunted in
dissatisfaction and led his horse from the lake.
He wanted to stay, Vaylo knew. Listen to what he and Dry said to each
other, like a jealous husband monitoring his wife. Vaylo waited until horse and
rider reached the torchlight and cobbled stone of the Dhoone greatcourt before
turning to face Cluff Drybannock. “Dry. I’m—”
“Don’t say it.” Dry’s voice was quiet, but there was no comfort in it.
“I’ll take a hundred north. We’ll leave at dusk tomorrow.”
“Take the full two hundred—at least until you make the hillfort
livable.”
“No. I would leave half at your command.”
So
much to say to each other yet we can only spea’t the language of fighting men. “If you must leave some, leave
only twenty. If you judge the post a folly send word and I’ll call you back.”
Drybone nodded, once. “Chief,” he said, and Vaylo recognized the
finality in it. The word was both an acknowledgment and a farewell. Dry clicked
his tongue to beckon his horse and before Vaylo knew it he was on his way.
Vaylo watched him leave. The wolf dog, torn between staying with its
master and trotting alongside Drybone, raced back and forth in the growing
distance between them. Time passed, and eventually the great orange and black
hound came to heel. As Vaylo scratched and pinched its ears, he saw the lake
was glowing. It reminded him of the chorus to an old clannish lament.
Give
me a maid at full moon, and on the banks of the Blue Dhoone we’ll dally as if
it were day.
With a heavy heart the Dog Lord turned for home.
CHAPTER
Awakening
Light pulsed against her eyelids, a breeze rippled across her face. Somewhere
far in the distance a bird chirped, and then someone said, “She’s coming
awake.” Am I? she thought lazily. / really don’t thinly I want to. It’s so much easier
to sleep. The
voice wouldn’t let her go, though. It called her name, and there was a force
behind that one word seemed to propel her straight from her dreams.
“Ash.”
She opened her eyes. Weak dawn light shrank her irises, and sunspots
floated across her field of visions like bubbles in water. A face loomed over
her. Dark eyes inspected her, and warm rough hands probed the pulse points in
her neck. “Welcome home, daughter. I thank the gods for sending you back.”
They were the most beautiful words Ash March had ever heard.. She tried
to reply, but her head felt woolly and her throat was so dry it hurt.
“Hass, bring water.”
Water was brought, and a thin line of it trickled into her mouth. She
swallowed. Hands slid under her, raising her head and slipping something soft
under her back. She saw two faces now, both stark and subtly alien, the plates
of bone beneath their cheeks somehow different from her own. Ark Veinsplitter
and Mai Naysayer. She was pleased when the names came to her. It meant she
wasn’t mad.
She found her voice, and grimaced when it cracked and squeaked like a
boy’s as he came into manhood. “How long have I been asleep?”
The two Sull warriors exchanged a glance. “Many days,” said Ark
Veinsplitter.
Oh. Ash couldn’t think why she
wasn’t more surprised. She glanced around. A crown of peaks surrounded her,
purple and blue, jagged as split bone and heavily freighted with ice. She felt
as if she were floating amongst them like a cloud. A fuzzy, aching cloud.
Directly ahead lay the trappings of a well-laid camp: a tent stretched on
poles, a horse corral, firepit, even a line suspended above the flames for
thawing game and drying clothes. It should be cold, she thought abruptly. This high in the mountains, at dawn. Yet she did not feel cold, she
felt numbed and protected. Only the gentlest breezes got through.
“There was a cave,” she said as she took in the saddle of rock they
were camped upon; the tufts of yellow goatgrass growing from chinks in the
boulders, the rippling course of a dry streambed, the ledge that sheared away
into thin air. “You took me there, into the mountain ... I...”
“We bled you.”
With those three words she remembered everything. The pool. The razor
on her wrist. Blood dyeing the water red. She shivered. Her arms lay beneath
heavy white fox pelts and she labored to free them. They were thinner now, the
veins showing like gray wire beneath her skin. Slowly she turned her palms to
the sky. Oh god. The scars. Bands of livid pink scar
tissue bisected her wrists.
“Hass, breathe the blue.”
Mai Naysayer rose and walked toward the horse corral. Ash saw the
bright glint of metal as he drew his letting knife. She did not want to see as
he knelt before the breathtaking blue stallion and sliced open the skin above
its coffin bone, but she found she couldn’t look away. Horse blood bubbled from
the gash, and the Sull warrior moved swiftly to catch it in a copper bowl.
Mai’s hands were gentle upon the horse’s calf as he massaged the vein to keep
it open. Ash couldn’t believe how still and calm the horse was; its great
sculpted head held as steady as if it were being shoed. The bowl filled
quickly, and Mai set it down whilst he stanched and then greased the wound.
Before retrieving the bowl, his lips moved as he spoke words of thanks or
blessing.
Ash wasn’t surprised when he brought her the bowl. “Drink,” he said, in
his low-timbred voice. “Grow your blood.”
Ash took the steaming bowl in both hands, smelling the sugary, grassy
odor of horse. She did not want to drink it, and had a brief desire to tell Mai
that she hadn’t agreed to have her lifeblood drained for it to be replaced with
horse blood. Yet when she brought the warm liquid to her lips a terrible
craving overcame her, and she drank greedily, letting rivulets of blood spill
down her chin in her haste. Only when she’d drained the bowl did her normal
senses return. Sheepishly, she offered the empty vessel to the Naysayer. “It is
the iron,” he explained. “Your body thirsts for it.”
“You must sleep now,” Ark said, standing. “We will speak when you are rested.“
But I
don’t want to rest, Ash protested. But just as quickly she felt a wave of lethargy pass
over her, weighing her eyelids and making her exhale. The horse blood was a
delicious heaviness in her stomach, the fox pelts as soft as breath against her
skin. She slept.
When she woke the sun was gone. The glow from the fire created a cave
of light around the camp. Mai Naysayer was butchering a carcass, a huge
bird-shaped thing, skinned and slick with blood. He used a broad cleaver to
smash open the skull and hack off the feet. Ark Veinsplitter was a short
distance from the camp, sitting upon the ledge that jutted out into the dark
mountain night, a woven rug pulled like a cloak around his shoulders, his gaze
directed northward to the great white star.
/ do not know these
men. The
thought bit through Ash’s sleepiness, making her suddenly long for home.
Honeyed pastries and warm cider, crisp linens on the bed, Katia giggling as she
picked out a dress for her lady to wear . . . Stop it! Ash warned herself. It was a fiction. Her life in
Mask Fortress had always been a lie. Her foster father had never loved her.
Marafice Eye had tried to rape her, and Katia was dead—killed by Iss. There was
exactly nothing to return to, and the sooner she accepted that the better.
Her future lay here, with these men. She was Sull now, and their
homeland was her homeland. “Territory Unknown,”
that was how cartographers marked the vast eastern sweep of the continent that
belonged to the Sull. She, Asarhia March, was heading there, and it was surely
better to move forward into the unknown than dwell in a past built on lies.
Ash rose cautiously, testing her legs before allowing them to bear her
weight. She felt she had sponge for muscle, and it was really just as well she
was light as a feather, as a feather seemed to be the limit of what they could
lift. Mai Naysayer paused in his butchering to indicate a rocky depression
screened by oilbushes to the rear of the camp. The jacks. Ash found she had no
embarrassment within her, and calmly found a place to urinate. She wore no
small clothes, just a shift of coarse wool and the fox pelts, and it was easy
to pull up her skirts and pee. When she was done she returned to Mai Naysayer,
and received a beaker of water and a flatcake crusted with seeds. She ate in
silence, watching Mai smash individual bird vertebrae to get at the pink
marrow.
“Walk now,” he said, after a time. “Work your legs before we eat.”
She knew a dismissal when she heard one, and stood and looked around.
There didn’t appear to be anywhere particular to walk to, as the camp was sited
hard against the mountain face, and boulders and dark crevasses formed natural
boundaries, limiting the number of paths a girl could take. Overhead, clouds
sailed silently between the stars. The moon was somewhere, cloaked from view,
close to full judging by the diffused and silvery light that backlit the sky.
Ash began walking a circuit of the camp, heading first for the corral to greet
the horses. It occurred to her that she could now feel the cold when earlier
she could not. Sull sorcery? she wondered, remembering how
once she had seen Sarga Veys push back the mist on the Black Spill. Had Ark or
the Naysayer pushed back the cold to keep her warm?
She decided she didn’t want to know, and let her mind fill instead with
the warmth and companionship of the three Sull horses. They had woken from
sleep to greet her, and now pushed their warm dark noses forward for her to
touch. It was good to stand there, by the canvas-hung posts, and speak nonsense
horsy stuff to three enormous beasts. It healed a little of the strangeness
that had become her life.
When she was ready she made her way to Ark Veinsplitter. The ledge was
a pointed spar of granite jutting out from the mountain, and when Ash stepped
upon it she could see nothing else before her, only sky. A dizzying sense of
displacement made her lean toward the edge.
“Sit,” warned Ark Veinsplitter, without looking around. “I do not think
you are ready to lean into the wind just yet.”
Ash sat, a safe distance from the edge, her heart beating strongly.
“What do you mean?”
“There are some I have known who consider it a rite of manhood to stand
upon a ledge such as this and wait until the updrafts rise. When they feel the
warm air upon their cheeks they lean into it, and let the wind push them back
to standing.”
“That doesn’t sound like such a good idea.”
“We have lost some that way,” Ark conceded.
“So it’s a test of being Sull?”
Ark shook his head. “No. Of being alive.” She noticed for the first
time there was gray in his sable hair. “The moon burns full this night. Soon it
will show itself and we will begin.”
A speck of fear moved in Ash’s chest. She wanted no more cutting.
The Far Rider must have sensed her fear, for he said, “Tonight you
begin learning the ways of the Sull.“ For the first time he looked at her, his
dark eyes appraising. “What? Did you think the dreams they sent you were all
there is?“
How did he know about the dreams when she barely remembered them
herself? The images were fleeting, blurred. A silver shore. A land lit by
moonlight. Flashes of battles so strange and horrific they could not belong in
this world. Chilled, Ash gathered the fox pelts close. The stars suddenly
seemed cold and bright.
The two sat in silence, watching them, and after a time the scent of
roasting gamebird drifted across on threads of smoke. Ash swallowed. She had a
sense that she was moving through the sky, that the clouds were static and she
was passing beneath them. Dimly she became aware that the moon was revealing
itself, its rays sliding like fingers across her face.
“Light the flame.”
Ash was drawn back by Ark’s words. It took her a moment to understand
that he was speaking to Mai Naysayer, not her, and that the Naysayer had joined
them on the ledge and was crouching a short distance behind them. Ash felt a
small thrill of unease. She had not heard him come.
Mai turned the key on a strangely shaped pewter lantern, releasing a
hiss of what sounded like gas. He held an ember from the firepit above the
lamp’s chimney, and a strong yellow flame burst into life. As Ash watched, Mai
adjusted the valve at the chimney’s base and the nature of the flame changed.
It blued, growing smaller and fiercer, sissing softly like the wind. Ash could see halos of color
within it, pale lilacs and vivid blues. Only the outer corona was yellow now.
“Sull is the heart of the flame,” Ark Veinsplitter said softly. “The
cold blue center that gives rise to light and heat.” As Ark spoke, the Naysayer
settled the lamp upon the stone ledge and pushed up the sleeve of his silvery
hornmail and the padded silk tunic beneath. “Fear is the enemy that will
destroy us. It lessens and distracts us, clouding our judgment and losing our
battles before the first blow is struck. To fight we must cleanse ourselves of
fear, find the stillness that lives within us. The search for this stillness is
called Saer Rkal, the Way of the Flame. Just as
the flame blows hot and uncertain so do we. Yet every flame ever struck has
blue in its heart, and it is this we strive to reach.
“Mas Rhal. The perfect state of
fearlessness. The flame at the center of all things.”
As Ark said “Mas
Rhal” Mai
Naysayer raised his left hand to the flame. Slowly, steadily he slid his living
flesh into the pale blue radiance. Ash forced herself to watch as held it
there, unmoving,
unblinking, the flame shimmering around his fingers for long seconds
after Ark fell silent.
In his own time he took his hand away. Ash looked into his dark,
ice-tanned face searching for signs of pain. He surprised her by offering his
hand for her inspection. Ash almost feared to touch it, yet when she did the
skin was cool and unmarked, the muscles and veins hard. Gingerly, she raised
her own hand toward the flame, but even the air surrounding the lamp was
searing and she quickly snatched it back.
The two Sull warriors watched her impassively. Ark said, “The air is
hot, but the core of the flame will not burn you. Losing fear takes many
things. Trust is one of them.”
“So am I to trust you? Thrust my hand through the hot air in the hope
you’re right?”
“Not this day.” Mai killed the flame.
Perversely, Ash felt disappointed. She knew herself well enough to
realize how hungry she was to be included. Daughter, they had called her. She wanted to hear that word
more.
Mai Naysayer was the one who read the disappointment on her face. “Nay,
Ash March, we are not finished with you yet. Come. Stand.”
Ash did as she was bid, and the two Far Riders stood also, Mai
collecting the lamp and stepping clear of the ledge and onto the safe ground of
the camp, and Ark taking the few steps necessary to put himself at the very tip
of the ledge. Ash joined Mai, eager to put a safe distance between herself and
the sheer drop. The Naysayer handed her a strip of silk, three foot long and a
hand length wide. “Tie it over your eyes.”
Her hands shook as she laid the smooth black silk over her eyelids and
secured it with a knot behind her head. She felt Mai’s hands come down upon her
shoulders, turning and positioning her. Facing her out toward the ledge. A
bubble of panic worked its way toward her heart. No. It can’t be. . . .
“Walk toward Ark. He will guide you.” Ash shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Ash March, I have journeyed with you twice. I know what you can do.”
A gust of cool air brushed against her face. She could see nothing but
blackness, utterly flat and without depth.
“Seek the flame. Trust yourself and trust Ark. He will not let you
fall.” With that Mai Naysayer stepped away from Ash, stripping her of her
bearings. She listened, but was unable to tell the direction in which he left.
An instant later she realized she had moved her head to track him, and now she
was no longer sure if she had moved her body as well. Which way was she facing?
She made what she thought was the correct adjustment, but her foot settled upon
a raised lip of granite. That
wasn’t there before, was it? Where’s Ark? Why doesn’t he say something? Again, she listened, but not
even the wind was moving now. Without realizing it, her body had begun to sway,
and it was only when the blackness before her eyes began to spin did she spread
her arms wide to steady herself. Fright had made her rigid.
Calm.
I need to be calm.
She had to be facing in the general direction of the ledge—she hadn’t moved
that much. If only the wind would come again. That way she would know for
certain. See’t the flame, Mai had said. But it was too
new a concept and she didn’t know where to look.
Taking a shallow breath, she stepped forward. Nothing bad happened, no
roots tripped her, no previously unseen crevice swallowed her up. Emboldened by
this small success she took another step and then another. During the third
step, she noticed the granite smoothing out beneath her. Did this mean she’d
reached the ledge? What if she was off track by even a few feet? She was
suddenly overcome with the fear that she’d veered dangerously far from her
path, and was now headed for the shallowest part of the overhang, not the
promontory where Ark now stood. One step and she could be over the edge.
Afraid to move, she tried to calm herself. The Naysayer had told her
Ark would not let her fall. She had to believe that. He had called her
daughter; what kind of father would risk his child?
One
named Penthero Iss. Ash hardened herself against thoughts of her foster father. He had
not loved her. Oh, he’d said it and she’d believed it. But that made him a liar
and her a fool. She was nothing to him but a means to more power.
Anger and hurt made her take unplanned steps. And then she felt it: the
updraft rising along her body, billowing her skirt and lifting her hair. I’m on the edge. Her heart froze. Muscles inside her body
slackened, and she was suddenly glad she had emptied her bladder earlier. Where
was Ark? Why didn’t he speak?
She couldn’t move. Her mind showed her the long drop down the mountain,
the jagged edges of rock that would skin her legs as she fell, and the dark and
quiet place where she would land. No man or Sull would ever find her. She
shivered violently. I should
have touched the flame. It would have been easier. You’d have thought I would
have learned by now that when the Sull give you a second choice it’s always
worse than the first.
Strangely, madly, she found herself smiling. She was Sull herself now;
her own blood drained to nothing to make way for theirs. See’t the flame.
How? They had not told her where to find it. The updraft swelled
against her chest, rocking her back. The stars were out there, burning beyond
the ledge, and she was taken with the idea she could feel them. They danced
like blue raindrops upon her skin. She could imagine that blueness now, not on
the silk pressed against her eyes, but deep within her, in the caverns where
her Sull blood now pumped. It was a tiny flickering, a beacon lit to guide the
way. Slowly, gradually, her heart relaxed, finding a rhythm close to sleep.
/ have nothing to
fear. Ar’t will save me if I fall.
Just like Raif had once done.
And with that she took a step. For one brief instant the world fell
away beneath her and she knew how it would be when she met her death, and then
Ark’s strong hands were upon her, his arms fastening around her waist, catching
and pulling her back. She hugged him fiercely, joy and exhilaration coursing
through her blood. He smelled good, like horses and woodsmoke, and that faint
alien pungency that meant Sull.
“Daughter,” he said. “I have never met a Sull warrior with a worse
sense of direction than you.”
She laughed giddily, pulling the silk from her eyes to discover how true
his words were. She had missed the ledge’s point completely, and had come to
stand upon the shallowest lip as she’d feared. The speed with which Ark must
have moved from his position to intercept her defied thought.
He smiled grimly as he carried her to the safety of the camp. “Hass,” he called to the Naysayer. “We must begin
teaching this warrior the path lores, for I fear we’ll lose her if we do not.”
He settled Ash down upon a soft blue rug before the firepit, and Mai
Naysayer, the great ice-eyed warrior with the face of stone, winked at her and
said, “Nay. Ash March knew where she stepped. She had a mind to test the
reflexes of an old man like you.”
Ark Veinsplitter chuckled softly. “You conspire against me, Naysayer.
I’ll not forget it next time I draw steel in your defense.”
“Then I’ll be sure to fight with two blades. One for my enemy and one
for you.”
The words had the cadence of old and much-repeated banter, and the two
Far Riders contemplated each other with lively sternness. “So,” Ark said,
conceding victory to Mai for outstaring him, “do you propose to feed us some of
that mountain duck you brought down ? Or just torment us with the smell?”
“Golden eagle,” corrected the Naysayer with dignity. “This Sull has not
heard of such a thing as mountain duck.”
Ash had to push her lips together to stop herself from grinning. She
was shaking with relief. The death her mind had shown her was so real she
wondered if the world hadn’t split in two, and one Ash died while the other lived.
The Naysayer handed her a bowl of broth and bird meat, a mildly affronted look
on his face. The broth was delicious, strong and dark and flavored with
cardamom and seed-pods. The leg meat was lean and gamy, with a sharpness that
reminded Ash of wild boar. She ate all of it, and held her bowl out for more.
As she ate her second helping, Ark spoke.
“Do you know why we made you do it?” Ash shook her head. “Walking
blindfold on the edge is how the Sull make war. We battle in darkness, with the
abyss beneath us, and every step we take is uncertain. War against the Endlords
is a dance with doom. Battle men, and we risk our lives. Battle the Endlords,
and we risk our souls.“
“And race,” added the Naysayer quietly.
“It is so.” Strong emotion weighed Ark’s face. He shifted his position
near the firepit, rising to sit upright so that firelight and shadows flickered
across his face. “Ash March, you are Sull now. Rules of men no longer apply.
You must learn a new way of being; how to walk the farthest edge and not
falter, and live within your Rhal. Forces are awakening within
you, and it is our job as Mayji to guide and teach you.“
Ash traced a finger around the rim of the bowl. It was a thing of
beauty, glaze layered over glaze until the color had such a depth and
translucence to it that it was like looking at the night sky. “Mayji?” she asked, preferring to deal with this small
detail rather than the greater truths he had told her.
“Men have no word for it. You may think of it as master or elder.”
“Why didn’t you help me on the ledge? The Naysayer said you would guide me.“
“Perhaps I did, and you did not hear.”
Ash closed her mouth, silenced. All her earlier triumph at stepping
from the ledge and being caught drained from her, and she now feared that she
had been reckless, not brave.
Ark Veinsplitter saw all in her face and spoke no words to deny it. He
began laying logs in the firepit, banking the fire for the long winter night.
“There is much to learn and little time. Tomorrow we resume our journey east.
The wind is rising in the Want, and these lands are no longer safe. Sleep and
gather your strength. We wake before dawn.“
Ash felt dismissed. She rolled one of the fox pelts into a pillow, and
settled down to sleep. Through half-closed eyes she watched the two Far Riders
rise and walk a short distance from the camp. They spoke briefly, their voices
low. Once, Ark turned to look at her, and she knew they spoke of her. After a
time, the Naysayer returned to the firepit, settled himself into a crouching
position facing out from the fire, and unsheathed his sword.
The blade shone with the purest light. Meteor steel, she recalled it
was named, as the iron and trace metals it was forged from came from rocks that
fell from the stars. When Mai noticed her sleepy gaze upon it, he brought out a
squirrel skin and a pot of tung oil and began greasing the edge. Ash saw it for
the deception it was. He guarded against an enemy so swift and invisible that
he feared to lose even a moment to unsheathing his sword. He stood ready to
fight, yet went through the motions of tending his blade.
Ash turned to see what had become of Ark Veinsplitter. It took a moment
for her eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness beyond the firepit, and even
longer to make out the figure of the Sull warrior, moving silently around the
camp. He held something weighty in a cloth pouch, and every few seconds he
halted his circuit, drew something small and pale from the bag and laid it on
the ground. As he worked, Ash was struck with the sense that it was growing
warmer and calmer in the camp, as when she’d first awakened that morning. Wards. Unease pricked the base of her spine. Two men,
neither sleeping, both taking actions to secure the camp.
Against what? Ash knew she could not think about it and sleep. Slowly,
she let her mind drift. She wondered where Raif was that night. Was he on his
way home to the clanholds? Did he hate her for what she had done? She tossed in
the fox pelts, sweating. When her dreams came they were murky and fleeting, and
offered no peace.
Ark Veinsplitter woke her in the layered darkness of predawn. Already,
the camp had been dismantled and the spare horse packed with supplies. It was
bitterly cold once more, and tendrils of mist slid across the rocks. Mai
Naysayer was nowhere to be seen. “He scouts ahead,” Ark said, handing her a
bowl of steaming broth. “We’ll follow his trail and meet him at noon. He can
move more swiftly in the mountains afoot.”
Ash accepted this, unsure of what it meant. She thought Ark looked ill
rested, and said, “Those things you laid last night, what are they ?”
The look he gave her was not friendly. He stood. “Your travel clothes
are warming by the fire. Be ready by the time I’ve fed the horses.“
Ash felt his shortness as a slight. It hurt her to realize there were
some secrets the Sull warrior wasn’t ready to tell. Raising the bowl, she let
the steam rise across her face. Somewhere on the slopes below, a snowcock was
whistling in the dawn. The wind was restless, and rising, and there was a
wetness to it that promised sleet.
Standing, she worked the stiffness from her muscles and tried to decide
if she felt stronger than she had the day before. A bit, perhaps. Her gaze
traveled to the pile of furs and clothing warming atop the remains of the
kicked-in fire.
Something bright and silvery flashed atop her woolen dress. A hair
ring. Ash moved quickly to retrieve it. The metal was white and gleaming,
smooth as a wedding band and cool as ice. She had seen the same kind of rings
in the Far Riders’ hair, and marked how they flashed more brightly in moonlight
than sunlight. Now one had been given to her. She searched her belongings for a
comb, eager to dress her hair. As she threaded the thumb-sized ring through her
pale locks, Ark approached, leading the horses.
He was dressed in full armor beneath a wolverine cloak, his weapons
arrayed, ready for drawing, in a many-chaneled harness upon his back. Ash counted
two swords, a recurve longbow, a dagger and a hatchet. A six-foot spear was
mounted on the blue’s saddle strap, its butt secured in a shoe of yellow horn.
Motioning toward the hair ring, he said, “The Naysayer thought to make you a
gift. He wanted you to know that after the First Gods created the moon they
made this metal to catch its light.”
Moved, Ash molded the soft ring around her ponytail. “It disappears in
your hair.” Ark’s voice was low. Abruptly he mounted the blue. “I’ll await you
at the streambed.”
Ash dressed quickly, and packed the Naysayer’s exquisite gray stallion
with her blankets and meager supplies. Buckles on the gray’s bardings shone
bright as mirrors, and Ash caught a glimpse of herself in one of them. She
started. Why had no one told her that her eyes were now blue ?
Dawn light was showing on the horizon as she and Ark broke camp. The
path led them east and then south down the mountain, past frozen gullies,
matted ground willow and meadows of ice-killed grass. To Ash’s eyes the trail
was all but invisible, yet Ark told her the Naysayer had freshened it, and
directed her to look for his sign in the hoarfrost. Ash looked at the
underbellies of granite boulders and the boles of dead trees, but saw nothing.
Just when she was growing impatient with the game, she spied something—a pale
thumbprint, barely perceptible and easily mistaken for a natural variation in
the frost—pressed into the north-pointing branch of a prostrate pine. Ark
nodded, pleased. “He tells us there is running water to the north if we choose
to break the trail.”
Ash was intent on guiding the gray down a difficult rock stair, yet she
still managed to throw Ark a disbelieving look.
The Far Rider saw it and grew cold. “The path lores make us vulnerable.
If an enemy learned to read them he could track us. Ways known only to us would
be revealed to him; sacred sites and way-stones, paths laid down by the first Mayji and the Old Ones in the Time Before. When I show
you the most basic workings of the lore it may seem a small thing, but small
things can grow quickly and become much. Once I teach you the inner workings of
the path lores I arm you with a weapon to destroy us.
“We are Sull, Ash March, and we have lost much. Once we ranged all the lands
Men call the Northern Territories, from the Night Sea to the Wrecking Sea, from
the Sea of Souls to the Great White Ocean of the North. Now we hold only the
east. When we reach the Heart Fires you will understand the sanctity of what
remains . . . and why we would lay down our souls to protect it.”
Ash bowed her head, chastened. Ark rode on ahead of her, his spine
stiff with Sull pride. She knew better than to draw abreast with him, and
instead settled into place at the rear. She felt she was no closer to knowing
these people than she was when she first encountered them . . . but she would
learn and grow wiser. And become one of them.
The morning passed slowly, as mist gave way to sleet, and gray
stormhght darkened the snow. Ash only realized it was midday when Ark called a
halt. They were riding through a narrow valley that sheltered the first upright
trees they’d seen all day, and Ark rested the horses while he waited for the
Naysayer to join them. They lit no fire and cut no meat, and Ash was forced to
search her pack for waybread. She was hungry and tired, and her thighs ached
from sitting astride the gray. The Far Rider barely noticed her. He walked the
length of the valley, his gaze traveling along the tree line, his cloak of gray
wolverine shedding sleet.
Time passed, and still there was no sign of the Naysayer. Ash felt
rather than saw Ark Veinsplitter’s growing apprehension. The Far Rider stood
still now, a booted foot resting on a spur of basalt, his hands clasped around
the six-foot spear he used as a staff. When a dark shape broke through the tree
line, Ark hefted the spear from the snow. There was a moment when Ash thought
he would loose it, but he recognized his hass and let the butt drop to the ground.
The Naysayer moved swiftly through the swirling sleet. Ash saw he’d
drawn the longsword with its raven-head pommel, and she knew something was
wrong. When Ark stepped forward to meet him so did she. The Naysayer’s ice-cold
eyes looked only at his hass. “We must take another path
east. A maeraith guarded the entrance to the
Rift Road.“
Ash glanced at his sword, and saw something black as night trickle down
the edge and drop like acid into the snow.
CHAPTER
Stillborn
Raif crouched behind the ridgewall and picked out his prey. It was
midmorning, dry and bitterly cold, with a wind blowing that sucked all the
moisture from the snow and sent it sweeping across the tundra as dry as salt.
He was lucky to encounter a herd here this late in the season. Luckier still
that he had spent the night three days back whittling a spear. The spear was a
six-footer, cut from white holly he’d found growing in the shelter of a dry
canyon, its point hardened by fire. Clansmen called such spears “whore sticks,”
as they were only good for one shot and if you missed you’d go to bed starved.
Raif wasn’t starved yet, but he was weary of dried seal tongue and rendered
lard. He was hungry for fresh meat.
And even hungrier for the hunt. He’d traveled too long without a kill.
East, always east, along the hard, rocky margin that lay between the
Badlands and the Want. This was canyon country, east of Black-hail and north of
the Copper Hills. The land had been hideously buckled by some ancient calamity,
raised into rocky bluffs and windswept ridges, and sunk deep into dry
riverbeds, canyons and things deeper than canyons. All sharp and desolate and
shimmering with a layer of hoarfrost that collected on everything like
limescale.
Raif had no firsthand knowledge of this land, and little but sparse
rumor to go on. Dhoonesmen mounted longhunts here in autumn to claim their
portion of the vast herds of elk and moose that moved south with winter. From
where he crouched on the ridge, Raif could see the Copper Hills rise to the
south, their bald peaks hazy with distance and purple with heather, their
slopes scored with dark lines that might mark game tracks or the ancient
masonry of the Dhoonewall.
Raif had lost count of the days he had traveled. He did not like to
think about what had happened at the Forsworn redoubt, and his memories of the
days after were not good ones. Passing through the Blackhail Badlands was not a
thing he ever wished to do again. He had tried to avoid the campsite, had
walked leagues out of his way, swerving northward into the great ice desert of
the Want, yet he had still known when he passed it. The place his father died.
He seldom slept well now, and woke from dreams unsettled and ill
rested. His pace had slowed, and he knew he was riding the ragged edge of
energy—swinging between moments of extreme alertness and complete lapses of
thought—that came with lack of sleep.
He was alert now, focused upon the herd as it snuffled for pine bark
and willow in the gorge below. Elk, sixty head of them, led by an ancient and
scarred bull with a rack of antlers as wide and darkly stained as a hangman’s
gibbet. They were moving north, and some of the cows were heavy with calf.
Others were old and ribby, their cheeks hollow and their coats fouled by
running wounds. Raif picked a young dun cow, barely out of her calf spots, who
had found a fallen trunk to strip bare and lingered behind the herd. The wind
was with him, driving his man scent east. The bull was almost directly below
the ridge, lipping bark from the log.
Raif eased his pack to the ground, freeing his hands to loft the spear.
The dead man’s cloak lay flat across his back like a layer of virgin snow.
Orrlsmen were white-winter hunters without peer, and their cloaks were things
of wonder in the clanholds. Some said they were cut from the tanned hides of
rare white aurochs, their leather lacquered with a secret glaze that shifted
color with the wind.
Strange that he’d possessed one for so long and yet never hunted
beneath it until now.
The head bull lowed as he began the climb out of the gorge, warning
stragglers to pick up their pace. The little dun hesitated. Raif began his move
forward, pouring over the ridgetop, mimicking the movement of sliding snow. The
dun raised her head, alerted by the sound of a single tumbling piece of scree.
Raif stilled. He felt a breeze pass over his Orrl cloak, watched as the dun’s
gaze passed over it too, her dark eye focusing instead upon the stone he’d
dislodged in his descent. Seconds passed. The dun finished chewing the strip of
bark she’d pulled from the log. Raif waited. Wary now, the dun didn’t return to
the log and instead turned to the north to check the progress of the herd. Raif
moved as she turned, rippling down the ridge face like the wind. Almost without
thought, his eyes focused on the dun’s breast, searching out the pale underfur
that concealed the ribs.
As the dun’s ears twitched in response to some subhuman sound, Raif
locked on to her heart. Bigger than a man’s and beating more quickly, the dun’s
heart filled his sights like a torch held to his face. Elk heat enveloped him,
and knowledge of her fear took his breath.
The dun bolted. Raif sprang. The downslope sped his acceleration, and
for a brief moment he found himself moving faster than the deer. He hefted the
spear, leapt. Air passed beneath him as he closed the distance between man and
beast. The spear tip found the space between the third and fourth rib, and with
eyes focused on a point beyond seeing, he drove the spear home. To the heart.
The elk dropped, and he tumbled forward with her, the spear cracking in
two as his weight came down upon it. Blood fountained over his face. The herd
panicked, tramping up the north face of the gorge, raising bushes and tumbling
rocks. A cloud of snow and dust rose about their hooves. Raif slumped over the
dun, exhaustion hitting him hard. For several minutes all he could do was
breathe. There was a tang of metal in his mouth, but he didn’t have the
strength to spit.
Eventually his breathing calmed, and he lifted himself up from the dun.
His furs and cloak were soaked in blood that was rapidly cooling. He felt
light-headed and not at all ready to butcher a three-
hundred-pound carcass, but he heard his father’s voice issue an old
warning—If you kill it and don’t
eat it, then it’s a shameful waste of life—and his hunter’s instincts took over.
In no mood to preserve the hide, he made a cut from throat to groin to
spill the guts. The heart slid out atop the lungs, a hunk of muscle with his
spear tip still attached. Raif tried not to look at it as he freed the liver
and dragged the carcass away from the offal.
Glancing up at the gorge wall, he knew he didn’t have the energy to
carry the elk to the ridge, so he decided to follow the dry riverbed south until
he found a protected area to camp. He ate the liver as he worked, unable to
find the usual hunter’s joy in savoring the bloody and highly flavored flesh.
When he came upon a crop of rocks choking what had once been a tributary to the
dead river, he halted. This would do.
It was noon, and the sun was low and very small, almost white in a bone
pale sky. Raif collected firewood with haste, not bothering to search out
finer-burning deadwood when greenwood was closer to hand. He knew he shouldn’t
be making camp so early, but he told himself it made sense. There was a carcass
to quarter and meat to cook and cure; slowing himself down for half a day would
make little difference.
His knight’s sword made short work of the butchering, though it lacked
the fineness to winkle meat from between ribs and was as good as useless for
skinning. Once he’d built a makeshift firepit of mounded stones, he laid a leg
on the fire to roast, and hung strips of meat on willow poles downwind to catch
the smoke. That done, he found he had a mind to drink something other than
plain water, and filled his only pot with scraps of birch bark, dried berries
and spring-water and set it upon a warming stone to steep.
Next he set to cleaning his sword. The rituals of hunting were familiar
and oddly comforting. Kill. Butcher. Clean. He had carried them out so often he
could do them without thought, and that suited him. Or at least he thought it
did until his mind began wandering back to other hunts. He remembered the
summer when Dagro Blackhail and his ten best men had ridden south on the rumor
of a thirty-stone sow and her sixteen piglets. It was a giant among boars,
they said, marked black and silver like the Hailstone itself. Raif
grinned at the memory of he and Drey riding concealed in the hunt party’s wake,
determined not to miss out on the excitement of bringing down such a beast, and
thinking themselves undetectable. By the Stones! They caused mayhem when the
sow was finally flushed. Dagro himself drove the beast. . . straight toward the
very spot where he and Drey were hiding in the wood. Raif learned more curse
words that day than in an entire year at his father’s hearth. Both of their
horses bolted, but Drey, all of twelve and still awaiting his man growth, had
the presence of mind to fling his spear.
That spear saved their hides. For a mercy it found the sow’s throat,
and the pain of impact and the shock of bolting horses drove the creature back
the way she’d come.
Later when the kill was made, and the great quantity of boar’s blood
turned the forest loam into mud, Drey and Raif were called into the chief’s
presence. Raif could still remember Dagro Blackhail’s fearsome face, the way
the skin on his nose was bubbled with sun blisters and sweat. “Which of you
threw this spear?” he demanded, putting his foot to the sow’s neck and yanking
the Sevrance-marked shaft from boar flesh. “Speak,” he roared, when no answer
was forthcoming. “If the truth’s not given freely I’ll whip it from you.” Raif
clearly recalled Drey touching him then, a brush of fingers against his hip, a
warning to stay silent come what may. Then Drey stepped forward.
“Lord Chief,” he said, his thin boyish voice making the words sound
oddly formal, “the spear was thrown by two hands. My brother’s and mine.”
Dagro’s eyes had narrowed. A full minute passed, and then he grunted.
“Aye. ‘Tis well said, lad. Here. Take my knife. Cut you and your brother the
hunter’s portion.”
Raif realized many things as he watched Dagro Blackhail watch Drey open
the carcass. Dagro knew Drey had thrown the spear, and
he also knew that Drey had shared the credit to prevent any punishment falling
on his younger brother. Drey had won himself immunity from the terrible act of
interfering with the chief’s hunt. But Raif had not. The full force of Dagro’s
wrath would have fallen upon him if Drey had not protected him. And Dagro saw
that act of protection and was moved by it.
The sow’s liver was the sweetest thing Raif had ever eaten. He could
still taste it now; the taste of sugar and acorns and love.
Raif felt a prick of pain in the exact center of his spine. Hairs on
his scalp rose as a voice said, “Hm. Leg meat. I think I’ll have me some of
that. Cut me a portion, boy, and cut it slow as your mam squatting for a leak.”
The voice was rough and soft, and it came with a breath foul with salt
meat. The sun was in Raif’s face, and the man stood behind him so Raif didn’t
have the benefit of a shadow to gauge his size. He had approached from behind, doubtless
drawn by the smoke and scent of fresh meat roasting on the fire. Raif cursed
himself for a fool. He’d been so caught up in thinking about Drey he’d lost
himself in the past and forgotten that he camped alone in a place on the
farthest edge of clan. Even so, he had ears. And any man who could move along a
dry gorge bed and draw a weapon without sound was dangerous.
Still looking dead ahead, Raif said, “Stranger, why don’t you put your
weapon down and join me? I’d be glad to share my food.”
He felt the point of a sword touch his backbone. “So the wee clansman
would be glad to share, would he? After he’s taken down one of me own elk and
scared the rest so witless that they won’t come back in a month. Well excuse me
while I piss myself with gratitude. Now cut, boy, before I get tired of holding
my sword just so and decide to run you through instead.”
Raif leaned forward slowly, his mind racing. The stranger had been
watching him take down the elk. He sounded like a clansman. Almost. But no sane
clansman would lay claim to a herd of elk; they ranged too widely and traveled
too swiftly for anyone to own them. At least he was alone. / can’t let him master me. “Not the sword, Clansman. Use
your knife.” Raif’s hand hovered above the rock crystal pommel of his sword. “I
don’t own a knife.”
“Well that’s a pretty state of affairs. A fine cloak, a fine sword, and
no knife. Why’s that, I wonder? Haven’t had chance to rob one yet?“
“No. I lost it in a man’s throat.” With that Raif grabbed the sword and
spun to standing. He found himself facing the ugliest man he had ever seen.
Middle height, but grossly broad, with thick shoulders and a fat neck. His
upper arms were so wide they stood out from his body like sacks of grain. He
was dressed in armor cobbled together from metal pieces and once-living things.
Turtle and oyster shells were mounted alongside steel disks and copper rings on
a coat of boiled hide. His lower arms were squeezed like sausages into
spiral-ing bullhorns, and his legs were clad in fleece pants beneath a fleece
kilt.
But it was his face that made him who he was. He had very black hair,
and it was shocking to see it growing in a line down the middle of his face.
The tissue of his forehead, nose and left cheek was deeply folded, and scalp
hair and lumps of flesh grew from the face-length cleft.
“What’s the matter, pretty boy? Never seen a Maimed Man before?” The
man touched blades with him, a lightning-fast ring of steel that for some
reason made him grin. “Oh. Oh. Oh,” he cried, stepping back. “You did rob that
sword, I knew it! Damn! I should have put coin on it.” He parried forward
effortlessly, matching Raif cut for cut.
Raif realized he’d made a mistake. The sword wasn’t his weapon of
choice, and whilst Drey and his fellow yearmen had spent hours every day on the
practice court drilling with master swordsman Shor Gor-malin, Raif had
practiced only for the bare minimum. Shor Gormalin had warned Raif that once
he’d taken his yearman’s oath, he’d expect Raif to report to the drillcourt
every morning at dawn. But Shor Gormalin was dead. And Raif Sevrance was a
traitor to his oath.
The stranger mounted a series of rolling attacks, moving his blade in
ever-decreasing circles around Raif’s sword. When Raif stepped back, dropping
his sword against his body in readiness for a vertical cut, the stranger
performed a dancelike move and was suddenly at Raif’s blade side, slashing
Raif’s knuckles and stealing the momentum from his attack. Angry, Raif struck
wide. The stranger danced easily away, only to return with breathtaking
quickness and apply his point to Raif’s chest.
Bloodied
twice. What am I doing? Raif turned a jolting attack,
both blades touching in their sweet points to produce a strange moaning
sound and a handful of sparks.
“Nice blade,” commented the stranger, showing no sign of strain. “I
think I’ll take it in payment for the elk.” Exploding into motion, the stranger
executed a double turn that drove him sideways and backward into Raif’s
unprotected left side, striking Raif with enough force to take the wind from
his lungs and drop him to one knee. As Raif rolled back for a counterattack,
the stranger drove forward with his sword, opening a hairline cut in Raif’s arm
and smashing his sword’s basket guard into Raif’s elegant and unprotected
crosshilt. The momentum of the strike sent Raif’s blade flying from his grip.
Shor
would kill me for losing my weapon.
Before he could make a grab for the weapon, the stranger hooked the tip
with his sword edge and sent it skittering over the rocks. Raif looked wildly
around in the free second this gave him. A chunk of unburned log protruded from
the firepit. One leap and his hand was upon it. The wood was hot enough to make
him wince, and it ignited pain in the old frostbite scars on his palm. The far
end of the log was red and smoking, and the stranger looked less happy to see
it than if it were just another blade.
The two circled each other. Raif felt light-headed from lack of sleep,
and he could smell the elk blood on him, making him stink like something
already dead. When the stranger struck, Raif was ready, barreling forward with
no finesse whatsoever, trusting that the man’s fear of fire and scorching would
force him into stepping back. He was right. Sort of. The stranger did step away
. . . but sideways, managing to score a glancing touch on Raif’s shoulder as he
danced past the smoldering log. Stung with pain and frustration, Raif resisted
the urge to lash out. Thin’t
of the ell{.
His gaze met and held the
stranger’s eyes. They were hazel, fine and clear as two drops of rain; it was
unnerving to see them in such a face. Deliberately, Raif dropped his gaze,
skimming past the strange growths on the man’s forehead and cheek, down along
his throat... to the heart.
The strength of the man’s life-force was staggering. Raif felt it hit
him like a blow to the gut, forcing him to fling out an arm to steady himself.
He’d forgotten what it was to heart-kill a man.
Metallic saliva squirted across his tongue. Things became known to him,
strange things that he could barely understand. The scar on the stranger’s face
was just the start. Organs and blood vessels were warped and displaced, the
lungs mismatched and the spleen elongated like a fish. The heart was large and
beating strongly, but it was scarred above the valve, as if an old wound had
healed over. And it bulged gently to one side.
Raif calmed himself. However misshapen, the heart was his. Settling the
smoldering log in a two-handed grip, he charged. He saw the stranger’s eyes
widen, saw him raise his basket-hilt sword in defense. An instant passed when
Raif smelled scorching leather and he knew he had him, but bright pain exploded
in his head, and then he knew nothing but diminishing circles of light as he
fell.
He awoke retching, and turned his head to vomit. The sight of
regurgitated pieces of liver made him vomit again. His head throbbed, and his
eyesight was strangely slow; he could feel muscles in his irises working to
focus his gaze. It was sunset, and the cook fire he’d built earlier was still
burning, but now there was nothing but a gnawed bone upon it.
“Don’t make me feel bad now,” came the voice of the stranger. “You’re
hardly in a fit state to eat.”
Raif blinked. He couldn’t understand why one of them wasn’t dead.
“I did save a splash of the berry tea. Even took it upon myself to
improve it with a bit of hard liquor.” The stranger moved into Raif’s line of
sight. He was holding Raif’s sword up to the firelight, inspecting the edge for
dents. “It’s over there if you want it. ‘Course, it’s a coin toss whether you
should drink it or rub it on that lump. I’d sod it if I were you. Drink the
whole damn lot and find myself a hat.“ He looked thoughtful for a moment. ”One
of those furry ones made from beaver with the tail still attached.“
Raif felt too queasy to speak. The stranger’s face looked hideous in
the firelight, the deep cleft swallowing shadows and bristling with coarse
black hairs. Raif looked away. He put all his strength into levering himself
into a sitting position. Muscles that had lain upon cold stone for several
hours were stiff and unresponsive, and his left calf threw a violent cramp.
The stranger did not seem displeased by Raif’s pain. Nor did he offer
to help. The pot containing the tea was well within his reach, yet he made no
effort to pass it. “Nasty things, blows to the head. I’ve seen men walk about
as frisky as spring lambs right after them, only to keel over and die the next day.”
Raif could think of nothing to say to that. He looked around. His pack
had been rifled through and the contents scattered. The Listener’s arrow had
been unpacked, handled, judged unworthy, and thrown on the lumber pile ready to
be burned. Raif’s sealskin blanket was currently unrolled by the fire, and it
had the rumpled look of recent use. The stranger’s own pack stood close to the
fire, and a weapon stand containing a bewildering array of cloth-bound shapes
stood beyond it. A stout hill pony was pin-hobbled to a cleft in a boulder, and
was contentedly browsing on mash. Overhead, the sky was rapidly darkening and
the first stars were coming to life. The wind was restless with coming night,
channeling along the gorge in sudden bursts only to die as quickly as it came.
The gorge itself glowed red, revealing layers of bcher and blood marble
deposited within its walls. Raif said suddenly, “What did you do to me?” The
stranger grinned, showing surprisingly even teeth. “That’s for me to know and
you to bribe from me. Though as I already own your most valuable possession I
don’t think you’ve got much to work with. ‘Course I could take that fancy
cloak. But I’ll have to insist on you washing it first. A great dirty
bloodstain tends to spoil the look.” He continued to study Raif’s sword. “I’ll
have to say, though, you’re pretty fierce with a burning log. God-awful with a
sword, but a real demon with raw timber. What are you? The last living member
of some clannish woodsmen’s cult? As you’re no knight, that’s for sure.“
“How come you’re so sure I’m clan?”
“Can smell it on you, boy. Clan turned sour. Stinks like all the hells
I went through as a bairn.”
“So you’re clan, too?”
The stranger raised an eyebrow, and for just one moment Raif found
himself forgetting about the scars. “There you go again. Asking when you should
be bribing.” Abruptly, he turned the sword point down and thrust its tip into
his pack. “Does it have a name?”
“The sword? No.”
“Good. That means I can give it one.” His eyes narrowed as he ran his
fingers across the hilt, looking for inspiration. After a moment he glanced
thoughtfully at Raif. “I think I’ll call it Finger.”
Raif found his temper coming back as his queasiness subsided. “What
makes you so certain you can keep it?”
“I’m not,” said the stranger softly. “I saw what you did to that cow. A
man capable of such a thing can certainly manage to win back a sword when he
has a mind to. The game is seeing when and how.”
The stranger sat, the cobbled armor of plate and turtle shells chinking
softly as he bent at the waist. He retrieved the little iron pot containing the
fortified tea, and drank deeply. He did not pass it to Raif when he was done.
“So,” he said, wiping his mouth. “Let’s see if I can guess your story. Orrlsman
by the look of that cloak— though I wouldn’t put it past you to have killed and
robbed one. As we’ve seen today you’re no swordsman, and you ain’t got the arms
of a hatchetman, so I’d say by the look of those callused fingers you’re a
bowman good and true.”
The stranger looked to Raif for confirmation, but didn’t seem in the
least put out when all Raif did was frown. “So, bowman. Now you’ll excuse me
for saying so but you look soddin‘ rough. Oh, you’re pretty enough under that
beard and muck, but you ain’t had the attentions of a good clanwife in quite a
while, I can tell.”
“You don’t look too good yourself.”
The stranger put a palm to his chest. “Me? Not look good? So I take it
the love charm hasn’t worked. Sod it! That witch swore I’d attract half the
young maids in the clanholds. Or was it half the men? I forget.“
“I hope for both our sakes it’s the maids.”
The stranger laughed, throwing back his head in delight. Raif saw
evidence of a second band of misshapen flesh, curling down his neck and
disappearing beneath his collar. Something white and pearly like a tooth grew
just below his ear. Raif shivered. The stranger saw this and his smile ended.
“Oh, you’re clan all right. Never seen nothing that wasn’t perfect before,
eh? Everyone pretty as girls and whole. Gods forbid that a bairn like me could
be born amongst you. Little evil troll must have fucked my mother, for no fine
clansmen could have fathered me.”
Raif dropped his head. Nothing was happening how it should. This man
before him should be dead, not shaming him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. The world’s a hard place, and not once in my life have I known it to be fair. Only thing that’s even between men is death; we all get our share of that in the end. Me, I’m lucky to be alive, lucky that this god-ugly face inspired guilt as well as revulsion in me mam. Guilt saved me when me father would not. He was all for setting me on a rock and letting the vultures peck me, yet mam wouldn’t let him. Oh, she wanted to, make no mistake about that. She wanted her teats to dry up quick so she could make another bairn and forget the first one ever existed. But she was gutless when it came to it. Didn’t want the stain on her conscience. She would have been glad if me father had stolen me from my crib in the dead of night and murdered me, but he chose to make her party to the deal. And that she couldn’t have. Sent me out to the woods to be fostered. Right from one hell into another.”
Full night had risen while the stranger spoke, and only the dimming
fire provided light. Grains of salt from the earlier cookery ignited every so
often, turning the flames green. “What clan are you from?” Raif asked. The
stranger shook his head. “Ah. Ah. Ah. No questions,
remember?“
“Fair enough. So how about a trade? Your name for mine?” The stranger
considered this. He wasn’t as old as Raif first thought, and there was
something vaguely familiar in the set of his jaw. Just as quickly as Raif was
seized with the idea, it fled, and he saw nothing but a stranger before him.
“You go first,” replied the stranger. “First name only. And if I like
the sound of it I’ll trade mine.”
“Raif.”
The stranger opened and closed his mouth, almost as if he had bitten
the name from the air and was tasting it. “Raif. Rhymes with safe, and it’s
good and short and not a bit fancy. I’ll take it.”
Strangely, Raif felt pleased by this odd pronouncement. No one had ever
said anything—good or bad—about his name before.
“Goods for goods, then. I’m Stillborn.” The stranger stilled, awaiting
a reaction. Raif thought the name suited him, and said so. Stillborn suddenly
looked dangerous. “A monstrous name for a monstrous man?”
“No. A strong name. Not easy to forget.”
Stillborn thought on Raif’s words a long time, and then nodded. “It’ll
do.”
Raif held out his arm and Stillborn leaned over to clasp it.
“So,” Stillborn said, straightening up. “You’ll be wanting the last of
the tea?” Raif nodded. The bullhorns clasped around Stillborn’s forearms
gleamed wickedly as he deposited the pot by Raif’s feet. “Drink deep. Remember
what I said about head blows; tomorrow you might be dead.”
Raif drank. The liquor was very strong and bore little resemblance to
any kind of tea. It stripped the lining from his throat as it went down.
Stillborn watched approvingly, and then reached out toward the timber
pile to load more logs on the flames. When Raif saw his hand close around the
arrow Divining Rod he put down the pot. “Don’t burn that. It’s very old. It was
a gift from . . . from a friend.”
“A gift, eh?” Stillborn inspected the arrow, running a finger along the
flights. “I’ll keep it then.” He shoved it in his pack, and resumed loading
logs on the fire. “I suppose you’re out here looking for Maimed Men?”
Raif didn’t answer straight away. The liquor had passed swiftly into
his blood, and he reminded himself to be cautious. Tentatively, he felt for the
source of pain on the side of his head. A lump, hard and exquisitely tender,
made him suck in his breath. “And if I were?”
“Well, you’d need to know a few things first.”
“Such as?”
“Maimed Men is what clansmen call us. And if we hear those words on
your lips we’d likely kill you for it. We name ourselves Rift Brothers, and
you’d be a fool to think we’re just another clan.”
“I didn’t.”
“Good.” Stillborn pried Raif’s sword from his pack and began to oil it
with a bit of rag. “The Rift’s no pretty clanhold with fine oat-fields and
clipped grazes. And men harder than clan chiefs rule there. We get the
throwaways and the bastards and the oathbreak-ers—and not just from the clans.
We get them all; foreigners, city men, pot boys, whores. They all come north in
the end. It’s a desperate man who’ll travel to the far ends of the earth in
search of shelter, and desperate men don’t make good friends.”
Raif met Stillborn’s gaze levelly. The warning had been given ... and
received. The fire was crackling fiercely now, as a new green branch went to
the flames. The wind had calmed with the onset of night, and now it blew the
smoke through the space between the two men.
“I wouldn’t expect much of a welcome if I were you. No one’s gonna
light a fire for one more clansman. They’ll want to know what you can bring
them, and as I’ve already taken your one decent possession you’re going to have
to think fast about your answer. Oh, and another thing. You’re too whole.”
There was a light in Stillborn’s eyes that made Raif wary. “What do you
mean?“
“You know what I mean. Pretty boy like you. All your fingers and toes,
and that fine whole nose. The first thing the brothers will do is hold you down
and maim you.”
“No one’s ever called me pretty before. I’ve taken my share of scars.“
“Maybe so. But they won’t see that. They’ll just see a whole clansman.
Nothing missing, nothing bent out of place, and they’ll hate you for it.
They’ll have you pinned and under a knife before you can say God help me. And that’s one place you definitely don’t want to
be. I’ve seen them take an arm off a man in their frenzy. Hands. Earlobes.
Eyes. Depends whether the raiding’s been good. Good season, plenty of spoils,
everyone happy and drinking themselves soft, and they might let you off with a
toe. Poor season and they’ll take a hand. And I’m sorry to tell you this, Raif,
but winter’s been a long, dry season.“
Raif watched Stillborn’s eyes as he spoke, searching for signs of
deception. The Maimed Man’s face was hard, but there was nothing hidden within it.
“You have to decide how much it’s worth, becoming one of us. Can you go
back ? Accept penalty for whatever trespass brought you here, and live a
different kind of life? Because if you can, do. There’s nothing noble or heroic about being a
Maimed Man. The only reason to be here is because you’ve got no options left.”
Raif almost smiled. Bitterly. He wanted to ask Stillborn what brought
and kept him here, but he was learning the ways of the Maimed Men already: no
questions about a man’s past. He said, “If I returned to my clan they would
kill me. I have nowhere to go and no one to turn to. I’d say I have no options
left.”
Stillborn nodded slowly, weighing the resolution in Raif’s eyes.
Abruptly he seemed to come to some decision and stood. “Drink the rest of the
brew. It’ll go easier on you that way.”
Raif read the intent in Stillborn’s eyes, and it almost made him bolt.
/ made my choice when Ash
left me. If this is the price, then so be it. He cupped the pot in his hands, but in the end decided
not to drink. Stillborn was drawing close with the sword, and Raif wanted to
savor the blood throbbing through him. He wanted to remember for always what it
felt like to be whole.
CHAPTER
Leaving Blackhail
Effie spotted a fly buzzing in the rafters and set her gaze upon it.
Mad Binny was naked and she didn’t know where else to look. Of course that
treacherous fly would go and start flitting past Binny’s head ... and oh dear no ... it landed on Binny’s shoulder. And that meant
she had to look at those breasts. Effie tried to keep her face from reacting,
but it wasn’t easy and she felt distinctly wooden as she listened to Mad Binny
speak. All she could think of was: / hope I don’t grow any of those.
Mad Binny was sitting in a copper bath with only the shallowest depth
of water to cover her, cleaning herself with soapweed and a cloth. She’d filled
the bath for Effie, but Effie had refused to use it— she wasn’t about to be
naked while Mad Binny stood over her and watched—so Mad Binny had called her a
fool and took to the water herself. Now she was working up a lather on her
neck, talking all the while about various herbs and potions that could be added
to a person’s bathwater to make them sleepy or refreshed.
“Then there’s the curatives,” advised Mad Binny. “Some of the finest
skin cures are best taken in the bath. Let me see now. . . .” Mad Binny soaped
a deep and extremely hairy armpit while she thought. Effie felt an
uncomfortable mix of repulsion and fascination. Once she’d started looking she
couldn’t seem to stop. In theory she knew about all the changes a girl went
through to become a woman; Letty Shank and Florrie Horn had drawn pictures in
the dirt, placing little burrs of thistle where the hair was supposed to grow.
But the reality was so much more unsettling. Mad Binny was a large woman and
line drawings didn’t do justice to all the squelchy flesh and bristly hair.
Effie frowned. She was quite sure Raina wouldn’t look like that. Raina would be
beautiful, and quite bald except for her head.
“... and then there’s pokeroot. Toss a few hands of the rootflesh in a
tub, let it steep a while, and you’ll have a bath for curing scabies. Now
this,” Mad Binny leaned over the side of the bath and snatched up a handful of
fragrant dried flowers, “is for nothing other than making a woman feel like a
girl. Sweet lavender. Raises the spirits and makes you unaccountably attractive
to men.” Crushing the dried stalks in her fist, she scattered them into the
bathwater, releasing a light and pointy scent. “I may steal Drey away from you
yet.” Effie was immdediately attentive. “Drey’s coming?”
“Oh, yes. Didn’t I say? That’s what the bath was for. Today’s the day you leave for Dregg.”
No she had not said, and she knew very well she hadn’t. Mad Binny was
like that: sly and contrary. She liked to keep her visitors in a perpetual
state of confusion. Effie knew better than to let her irritation show: She would have taken a bath if only Mad Binny had told her
the truth. She’d only seen Drey once since he’d returned to the roundhouse, and
that was only for a few minutes as he feared to stay too long and run the risk
of discovery by Mace Blackhail.
“Hand me the drying cloth, Effie. And you needn’t look so crab-appled.
Not my fault you weren’t listening when I explained about today.”
Effie handed Mad Binny the cloth. She was beginning to realize there
were advantages to being considered mad. No one could take you to task. You
could say whatever you liked, tell lies till your face turned blue, and
everyone would dismiss it with an “Aah well, Mad Binny is mad.” Effie didn’t think Mad Binny was mad at all.
Effie thought Mad Binny was one of the cleverest people she had ever met.
She lived exactly how she wanted to, got clansfolk to traipse leagues
through the snow to bring her fresh meat and supplies in return for one of her
cures, and she had no responsibilities whatsoever and no one but herself to
care for. Effie glanced around the crannog’s main hall, looking admiringly at
the low ceilings, the blackened beams and damp-warped walls. And Mad Binny got somewhere wonderfully cavelike to
live in.
“I haven’t made you a pack for the journey,” Mad Binny warned,
thankfully pulling on a dress. “I’m not your mother, you know. If Raina doesn’t
bring anything then you’re on your own. No one’s paid me for your keep, and I
can’t recall as anyone’s thanked me either.“
“Thank you, Binny,” Effie said innocently.
“Oh you’re a devilish minx, that’s for sure. Run outside and watch for
Drey—and stun me some pike while you’re at it.”
Effie was glad to do as she was told. Outside, on the little rotting
pier that stretched over Cold Lake, you could see for leagues in all
directions. It was midmorning, and a light wind blew off the lake, thinning the
last of the mist. The lake’s surface was a battleground of wet and breaking
ice, with hackled plates riding atop each other and free ice floating against
the wind in stretches of open water. Effie liked the sounds the ice made as it disintegrated;
the snapping of plates and the fizzing of bubbles as air escaped to the
surface. Almost it wasn’t bad to be outside. She was aware of her heart beating
a fraction more strongly than usual, but that was all. She was close to the
crannog and to safety, could run back any time she chose, and, more important,
Drey was on his way.
She missed her brothers fiercely. Nothing had been the same since Da
was killed in the Badlands. They had been four then; she, Da, Drey and Raif.
Now they were down to two.
Soon
to be one,
said a little voice inside her. After today you’re on your own.
Effie picked up the mallet and wished for fish. It would have been good
to hit something just then. Now she didn’t know whether to look forward to
Drey’s arrival or not. She was going to Dregg. Dregg. A stranger’s clan, leagues to the south, with a
roundhouse built from birdseye limestone, and the words We fight as easily as we dance as their boast. Oh, Raina said
it was a fine place and Xander Dregg a fair chief, but it wasn’t home, and the
shankshounds weren’t there, and there’d be no Drey to look out for her. Effie
ran thin fingers over the mallet head. What was it Raif used to say about Drey?
He always waited, that was it. Now there’d be no one for him to wait for
anymore.
Feeling something stinging behind her eyes, she smashed at the lake
water with the mallet—just in case there were fish below the surface.
As she rubbed droplets of icy water from her sleeve, she spied a
mounted man approaching from the southeast. Crouching very still, she waited
until she could be sure it was Drey.
“Effie,” he called, when she rose to standing. “I swear you’ve grown as
tall as this horse.”
He reined in his mount and dismounted, and Effie dashed down the pier
to hug him. He smelled of neat’s-foot oil and tanned leather, and he remembered
she didn’t like to be kissed and hugged her double hard instead. When he pulled
back and held her at arm’s length to study her, she studied him as well. He looked older now, more like Da. His
chestnut hair was braided into a warrior’s queue, and it was woven with silver
wire. His plate armor was old but well made, its glancing surfaces free of
embellishment, its rolled edges lightly silvered to ward off kanker. Da’s
elkskin greatcoat lay well on his shoulders, the large felted collar brushed
and gleaming. Seeing him like this, war-dressed and fully armed, it struck her
for the first time that her eldest brother was a grown man, not unpleasing to
look at, and sure to attract attention from clan maids. An unworthy stab of
possesiveness made her want to drive the imaginary girls away. Drey was hers,
not the property of some silly and fluttering maid.
He took her hand, and she felt the calluses and scars there. He glanced
at the sun still rising in the east and then at the door to the crannog. Effie
could see a decision being made on his face. “Little one,” he said finally,
sitting down on one of the pier posts so he could be at eye level with her,
“you don’t have to go to Dregg, not if you don’t want to. Tell me now, and I’ll
put you on Fox’s back and we’ll ride straight home. No one will hurt you, I
swear it, even if I have to camp outside your chamber every night.“
It was a lot of words for Drey, and he didn’t speak them easily. The
sons of Tem Sevrance had never been good with words. Even so she knew what it
cost him to speak them. He was a Blackhail hammerman, a sworn warrior of eight
seasons, celebrated for saving Arlec Byce on Bannen Field and holding the
Ganmiddich roundhouse with a force of just eleven. Now he sat before her,
proposing to tie himself to the roundhouse like an old man—for they both knew
that he could not be absent for as much as one night and hope to keep her safe.
Mace Blackhail would not allow it.
Drey reached for her hair, curling one of the auburn strands around his
finger. “You and me, little one. Just you and me.”
Effie looked down at her feet. She couldn’t look at him or speak. He
felt it too: the loss of Raif and Da. They were the only two left, and she’d
been a selfish ninny to think that their parting would affect only her. A
sudden memory filled her: the sight of Drey striding through the greatdoor on
his return from Bannen. Men surrounded him, pulling him this way and that,
wanting his opinion on wounded men and damaged blades, yet he had stopped in
the midst of it all, his gaze sweeping across the entrance hall... in search of
her.
Effie breathed deeply. She knew with unshakable certainty that she must
be strong. She could not allow him to halve his life because of her. “I’m
looking forward to going to Dregg,” she said, aware that the words were coming
out a little too fast but unable to stop them. “Raina’s told me all about the
dancing and the bones. And she said that after a few months all the fuss would
die down, and then you can come and bring me home, and everyone would have
forgotten what happened to Cutty and Nelly Moss, and everything will be all
right.“
Drey’s steady gaze almost undid her. He looked as if he knew just how
little it would take to make her cry. “I was ten when our mother died,” he said
quietly. “It happened suddenly. No one was expecting it. She carried you well
and high, and everyone guessed you’d be a girl, and when she went into labor we
didn’t know to be afraid. Then what should have taken hours turned into half a
day, and Anwyn came out to speak to Da. That’s when I snuck in to see her. She
was so pale, Effie, and scared. There was no blood, not then, but she knew she
was failing. She smiled when she saw me, and you know what she said?“
Effie shook her head.
“She said, Drey,
you’re the eldest and that means you’ve had the most love. This little one I’m
carrying will have the least. Make up for it. hove her for me when I’m gone.” Drey was very still for a
moment; the only thing moving was a muscle deep within his neck. “The loving is
the easy thing, Effie. It’s knowing how best to look after those you love
that’s hard.” He looked at her knowingly. “Now, I realize I’m your slightly
slow-witted elder brother, and you’ve probably fooled me many times. But not in
this. Bones? You’re excited about going to Dregg because of bones?”
Effie smiled; it was a bit shaky but still counted. “Fossils, Drey. They have this pit outside the Dregghouse
that started out as a defensive trench, but they kept finding old bones and
treasures in it, and now it’s as deep as a mine.”
“Mm.”
Drey didn’t say anything else, and his silence made her speak the
truth. “I don’t mind going to Dregg, not really. I’ll be frightened a bit at
first, but Raina said her sister and the chief’s wife will look after me, and I
won’t have to worry about anyone hurting me.”
Drey nodded slowly. All the while they’d been speaking he had been curling
a strand of her hair around his finger, and now he let it go. “I know you’ll be
safer there, little one. That’s why I agreed to let Raina arrange it. It
doesn’t mean I have to like it, though. And it doesn’t mean that I can’t ride
to Dregg any day I choose and bring you back.” He stood. “Come on. Let’s say
your farewells to Mad Binny.”
Effie followed him down the pier. She’d won, but it didn’t feel like
much of a victory.
The interior of the crannog smelled like flowers. Mad Binny was cooking
up a love potion, either that or a batch of pollen butter. Effie hoped it was
the butter. She didn’t believe the love potions worked, of course, but that
didn’t mean she wanted Mad Binny using one on Drey. Thankfully, Drey seemed
unaffacted. He bowed his head respectfully to Mad Binny, and thanked her for
taking care of his sister. His thanks were accepted a lot more
graciously than hers, Effie noticed. Mad Binny was a different person when
there was a man about, and even went so far as to serve Drey a cup of best malt
with her own two hands. She surprised Effie even further by handing her a full
measure of the honey-colored liquid. “Down it in one, girl. For the journey.”
Effie knew a command when she heard one, and threw the liquid into the
back of her mouth. It smoked on her windpipe, its vapors rising straight to her
head and releasing a tension that she hardly knew was there. As she went to
fetch her cloak and meager bundle, Drey and Mad Binny exchanged a knowing
glance.
“What’s couchgrass good for?” Mad Binny asked as Effie came to stand by
the door.
“For the kidneys and anything to do with making water. You boil the
root to make a tincture.”
Mad Binny folded her arms across her chest. “Good enough.” Despite the
gruffness of her voice she seemed pleased. “You’ve a memory like a Withyman,
Effie Sevrance, I’ll give you that. Now. See that cloth bag on the peg. That’s
yours to take. No food, mind. Just a few herbs and simples for doctoring. I’ve
heard you can’t gather much except dandelions around Dregg.” She sniffed her
disapproval. “Well, best be gone now. I won’t wish you a good journey, as we
both know you’re not likely to have one.” With that Mad Binny ushered Effie and
Drey out the door.
By the time Effie had thought of a reply the door was closed behind
her. Drey took her hand. “Best pull up your hood. There’s clouds moving south
from the Want.” Effie stuffed the little cloth bag containing the herbs into
her pack and let Drey lead her to his horse.
The malt liquor had been a clever trick, she thought as she clung to
Drey’s waist whilst he galloped Orwin Shank’s fine black stallion south across
the Wedge. She was outside with the open spaces of the clanhold spread for
leagues around her, and she knew she should be feeling the first stirrings of
panic—the nearest building was now an hour’s ride to the north, and that meant
terrible things could happen and she wouldn’t be able to run for shelter—but
all she could feel was a sort of sleepy concern. She hiccuped. Outside wasn’t
really so bad, not when you were on a horse and your brother’s head was
blocking the forward view. Couldn’t really see much from the sides, either,
with your hood up.
When she heard Drey say, “Slide down, little one. We’re here,” she
could hardly believe they’d arrived at the farthest edge of the Oldwood. Drey
grinned and told her she’d been asleep, but she didn’t believe that for one
second. Effie Sevrance never slept outside.
Still, she yawned unaccountably when Raina came forward to help her
from the horse. “Your cheeks are flushed,” she said. “And you smell of hard
liquor. What’s that madwoman been doing to you?”
Effie shrugged. She wasn’t sure she liked Mad Binny, but she wasn’t
about to rat on her either.
Raina’s gray eyes looked especially dark and flinty, and Effie suddenly
realized she had spoken sharply because she was worried. Looking around the
timbered bank, Effie saw two men standing by a covered wagon hitched to a pair
of matched ponies. The smaller of the two men she recognized as Druss Ganlow,
Merritt Ganlow’s son, and the second had the look of an Orrlsman, if his pale
cloak and antler bow were anything to go by. Druss saw Effie watching him and
raised a hand in greeting. He was a stoutly built man with the beginnings of a
belly, and a baby fluff of fine red hair. Effie did not think he’d given his
oath to the clan, nor was he likely to. Druss Ganlow was known as a trader.
When Drey walked over to meet him, Druss clasped his arm and the two men fell
into easy conversation. Of
course. Drey was at the Badlands when Druss’ father died. Sometimes it was easy to
forget the deep and silent connections that bound Blackhail as a clan.
“There’s food and blankets and spare clothes in the wagon,” Raina said
to Effie. “I thought the journey would go easier on you if you had a roof
overhead. Of course, you don’t have to stay in the wagon if you don’t want to.
You can always ride up front with Druss and Clewis Reed. The journey will be
pretty slow by pony cart. Druss reckons that with good weather he’ll have you
there in under a week. He’s a good man, Effie, and he needn’t have done this
for us.
He’s got a nice little run heading west to Orrl for fresh meat, and the
last thing he needs is a dogleg to Dregg this time of year. Be nice to him. And
pray the weather holds.“
Effie nodded. She was beginning to feel a bit sick. Raina saw this and
smiled—her first since Effie had arrived. “Oh dear,” she said, brushing hair
from Effie’s face. “Whatever you do, don’t throw up in the back of the wagon.
We don’t want to try Druss’s goodness that
far.”
They both laughed, and all three men turned to look at them. Raina put
an arm around Effie and guided her toward them. “Come on. I don’t believe
you’ve met Clewis yet.”
Drey watched Raina approach, and
there was something in his watching that gave Effie a small thrill of
realization. He’d dressed in his finest clothes for Raina Blackhail.
“Have you told Drey about the Maimed Man at Black Hole?” Raina asked
Druss as she came to a halt by the wagon. If she had noticed Drey’s attention,
she did not show it, merely put her foot upon the mounting step and gave her
attention to Druss Ganlow.
Druss shrugged. “Nothing to tell except I heard that one of the miners
spied a lone horseman on the ridge east of the pit. Said he was riding one of
those shaggy little ponies the Maimed Men are known for.“
Drey was immediately serious. Black Hole was the last open silver mine
in the clanholds. Blackhail had mined silver in the balds for two thousand
years, and the clan’s wealth had once been dependent upon it. Mordrag
Blackhail, the Mole chief, had dug the first foot of earth from Black Hole with
his own two hands and used the first nugget of silver mined to forge a bracelet
for his child bride. The trouble with the silver mines was their location, in
the balds far north of Blackhail. They were three days’ hard ride from home.
Effie didn’t know much about Black Hole, for the men who lived there kept
themselves separate from the rest of the clan. They lived in queer little
shanties with sparkly lodestone walls and only a few of them had oaths. The
miners came to the roundhouse twice a year, trading cartloads of raw ore for
supplies. “Did the miners give chase?” Drey asked.
Again Druss shrugged. He was dressed strangely for a Hailsman, with no
colors or badges to show his clan, just a short cloak of brown greasewool and a
set of bleached leathers beneath. “Can’t say. I only heard the story briefly.”
His green eyes, so like his mother’s, twinkled brightly, and for a moment Effie
was reminded of her uncle Angus Lok. “Probably nothing to worry about. No one’s
going to make raid on Black Hole. Only thing they’d come away with is a
wagonload of raw ore. No smelting gets done up there.”
Effie watched Drey nod in agreement, and wondered why he couldn’t see
what was obvious to her: Druss Ganlow wasn’t speaking the truth.
“Still,” Drey said. “I’ll speak to Mace about it. Get him to run a
patrol from the northern border hold. Check on the miners every few days.”
Druss nodded. “That’s as well.” He rubbed his nose with the back of his
hand. “I think we’d best be off. Clewis doesn’t like the look of those clouds.
What d’you call ‘em, Clew? Dark horses. Says there’s no way of telling what
they’ll bring and when they’ll bring it.” Scratching the stubble on his chin,
Druss looked to the Orrlsman for confirmation.
Clewis Reed had positioned himself to the rear of the wagon, and from
the way he stood and the manner in which he held his horn bow, Effie guessed he
was standing guard. His Orrl cloak was pale as mist, softly shadowed with the
color of storm clouds and old snow. Clewis himself was tall and gaunt, and he
carried the longest bow Effie had ever seen. It was a good foot taller than he
was, backed with clarified calf’s hide that let the greenish tint of the horn
show through. He nodded mournfully toward the sky. “Day’s half done. Be lucky
if we can put two leagues of road behind us afore dark.”
Druss smiled easily at Drey as he swung himself up onto the driver’s
seat. “An Orrlsman has spoken, and you learn quickly to ignore them at your
peril. Effie. Be a good lass and squeeze yourself in the back. I knocked
together a little pallet for you to sit on. Should be good and snug as long as
you watch for nails.”
Effie looked to Raina and then Drey. It was happening too quickly.
There had to be something more before she left.
Raina guided her toward the back of the wagon, finding little excuses
to touch her hair, her arm, her cheek. “I’ll come and visit when all the fuss
dies down. I’ll be there by spring thaw, just you wait and see.“
Raina wasn’t speaking the truth either, just saying wishes out loud.
Effie looked down at her feet. The wagon’s wheels had gouged tracks in the soft
mud bank, and some enterprising blackbird was scouting the ruts for worms.
Strange how she didn’t feel sick anymore, just sort of heavy and achy in the
head. Wintergreen leaves
boiled in water would cure that, she thought inanely.
“Take care. And give my love to my sister.”
Effie nodded. She didn’t look up. After a long moment Raina squeezed
her shoulder and walked away.
“So, little one,” came Drey’s voice. “Are you going to promise you
won’t forget me?”
More nodding. The blackbird was pulling a worm from the mud.
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever told you how much you look like our
mother.”
That made her look up.
Drey smiled, but it was a serious thing, quickly done. “What I remember
most is her hair. The exact same color as yours.”
He looked at her and waited.
He was good at waiting and this time he won, for she couldn’t bear the
quiet and the stillness, and broke it by rushing forward to hug him.
“Just you and me,” he murmured before he pulled away.
And then Clewis Reed’s hands were upon her waist, hefting her into the
back of the wagon, and pulling the oiled canvas closed behind her. In the
sudden darkness she could see nothing and smell much. Men had pissed here once,
and the air was scratchy with hay spores and sawdust. She smelled the food
Raina had packed for her before her eyes could make out the shape of the pack.
Honey cakes, roast goose and fresh bread. A supper fit for a chief, not a
child.
It was a shock when Druss cracked the whip and the wagon lurched into
motion. Everything except her and her packs had been tied down, and Effie
scrambled for something secure to hold on to.
She could feel the wagon turning, hear Druss’ voice as he coaxed a
better pace from the ponies. Wheel axles squealed underfoot, and everywhere
wood creaked and shuddered as the wagon rolled down the bank.
As her eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, Effie leaned forward to
push back the canvas flap. Then something stopped her. She knew what she’d see
if she looked out and knew how it would make her feel. Better to go like this.
Knowing Drey was standing at the top of the bank, waiting until the wagon
passed beyond sight was one thing. Seeing it was something else.
Settling herself on the pallet Druss had constructed, she gave herself
time to grow accustomed to the motion of the wagon. Looking down the length of
the wagon bed, she saw she wasn’t the only cargo Druss was hauling south.
Sealed crates and lidded wicker baskets were stowed to the ribbing. Idly, she
tried to open one of the baskets but found it bound with knotted rope. She
sniffed it. No smell. Lacking anything better to do she untied the cloth bag
Mad Binny had given her. Inside she found comfrey, woundheal, lily of the
valley, cowslip, barberry, witch hazel and willow; all tied neatly into little
sprigs. Effie smiled. Mad Binny had given her the basics of a healer’s chest.
The day wore on, and the wagon turned on to a flat trail and the ride
eased enough for Effie to feel hungry. She ate three honey cakes and one goose
wing—in that order. Afterward she felt thirsty but she couldn’t find any water,
and felt shy about calling out to Druss or Clewis Reed. Pulling Raina’s
blankets about her, she settled down to sleep.
It was growing dark, and the gentle rolling of the wagon made her
drowsy. Effie thought about what Drey had said as she drifted into sleep. If
she looked like Mam and Drey looked like Da. Then who did Raif look like? And
why did she and Raif have special gifts while Drey had none at all?
Her dreams had no answers, and when she woke later to the sudden
stilling of the wagon, she’d forgotten even asking the questions.
CHAPTER
Maimed Men
“How about a trade?” Raif said to Stillborn as they walked the little
black pony down a steep gorge. “You tell me something I want to know and I’ll
tell you something in return.”
Stillborn thought carefully on this. It was something Raif had come to
appreciate about the Maimed Man during the three days they’d been traveling
together: Stillborn was one of the few men he’d ever met who actually thought about what you said and then thought some more
about his answer. After a time, Stillborn nodded. “I get to ask first. And I
don’t guarantee an answer if I don’t like the sound of your question.”
Raif nodded gfavely, as if he’d considered the counteroffer carefully.
They both knew he had no bargaining power here, but there were rules of form to
be maintained. “Go ahead.”
Stillborn was quiet for some time as he led the pony down a slope of
crumbling shale. It was midmorning, or close to it, and a tide of dark clouds
hid the sun. Sharp little winds gusted along the gorge wall, rolling scree and
uprooting weeds. They were close to the bottom of the gorge, and there was
little to see except cliffs of rock rising in warped lines above them. There
had been water here once, Raif guessed, for the lower rocks were smooth and the
scree at the bottom had been rounded into pebbles. Overhead, the cliffs were
rougher and the making of the world was exposed. Tiers of stone, minerals,
sand, fossils and ancient lava flows could be read like history within the
rock.
When they reached a level platform just above the detritus-filled
trough at the bottom of the gorge, Stillborn turned to eye Raif. As always
there was the shock of seeing the man’s face, the flesh stretched and seamed as
if someone had cut a strip out of his face and sewn together the remains.
Stillborn saw Raif’s reaction, and a hard sort of weariness showed briefly in
his eyes.
He surprised Raif by asking, “Do you have brothers?”
Raif nodded. “One.”
“And do you love him?” Something else was now lighting Still-born’s
eyes, but Raif couldn’t tell what. Hunger, perhaps. But that made no sense.
Raif thought of Drey. He said quietly, “Yes.”
“And have you ever hurt him, this brother who you love?”
Here was the question Raif was trading for; he could see it in the way
Stillborn put his hand on the pony. There was too much tension in the fingers
for a man patting a horse. But what to say about Drey? What brothers didn’t
hurt each other growing up? Fights and irritation were the other side of love.
Still, Raif knew what Stillborn meant by the question and it wasn’t to hear if
Raif had bruised Drey’s shins or called him names in anger. No. It was the
larger thing Stillborn was concerned with: Have you betrayed his love and
trust? Raif recalled Drey that day on the greatcourt, stepping forward to
second his brother’s oath. The old pain moved like a sword tip in his chest.
“I’ve hurt him. Yes.”
Stillborn nodded very slowly, as if Raif had given him an answer to a
problem he had considered for years. “Yes, that’s how it is” was all he said.
Reaching inside one of the pony’s saddlebags, he took out the last of the
roasted elk. The tenderloin was lean and bloody, and Stillborn bit into it like
a sausage. “Well,” he said through red teeth. “Claim your debt.”
Raif considered his question. Strange how he no longer thought he’d got
a bargain anymore. “How did you stop me,” he said, “when I went for your . ..
chest... with the log? Your sword was too far back, and I was moving too fast.“
The Maimed Man grinned. “Hold this,” he said, thrusting the tenderloin
into Raif’s right hand. With a lightning-fast movement he pulled a small
round-faced hammer from his belt. “This beauty did the damage.” Stillborn
nodded toward Raif’s head. “Can draw her faster than a Sull draws his sword—and
with me left hand no less. Soon as you reached for the log I smelled trouble.
You had that mad look in your eye, you know, the one that says You’re mine, bastard. So I drew the old bone-cracker and had it moving
by the time you charged. Your fault you looked only to the sword. ‘Course it’s
only to be expected. Clansmen never imagine a man will fight two-handed. Now
the Sull are another thing. Sword and longknife, that’s how they fight in a
bind. Beautiful it is to look at. Blade and shield. The tricky part is knowing
which weapon is playing the part of the blade and which is the shield. And when
you’ve got that figured they go and switch it on you—right in the middle of a
fight. Right unsporting it is.“
Raif looked at the hammer. It looked like something Longhead would use
to knock nails.
“You’re right. It’s no pretty longknife, that’s for sure. But I find
nothing works better when it comes to breaking a man’s head.” Stillborn’s gaze
was almost loving as he returned the hammer to his belt. “I’m renaming it in
your honor, by the way. I think I’ll call it Skull.“
Raif couldn’t quite manage to look honored. For the first time since
they started down the gorge wall the pain of his missing finger threatened to
unman him. It flared white-hot where Stillborn had cut with the Forsworn sword.
Raif sucked in breath. Don’t
loo/{, he
warned himself. Nothing to
see but bandages and fresh air. But still he looked, down at his left hand, where
the smallest of his fingers had been halved. It had stopped bleeding sometime
during the second night, but fluid still wept from the stitches and the
bandages were damp. Stillborn had been careful with the skin, making his first
incision just below the nail and then rolling back the skin to the middle
knuckle so there was enough to cover the bone stump. Raif had not been
conscious during the stitching. Blinding pain had robbed him of his wits. He
awoke later in the night from a nightmare where his hand was being eaten by the
monster the Listener had shown him beneath the ice.
Reality was worse. That first night the knuckle swelled to the size of
a kidney, so full of blood the skin seemed almost black. Now the skin was black, necrotizing around the edges of the cut.
Raif hadn’t slept through the night in three days. And he did not expect to sleep
through this one when it came.
Stillborn saw the whiteness of his face. “Had to do it, Raif. Either
that or let them take you for an arm.”
With an effort of will Raif mastered the pain. “I sec you’re whole.”
“Me? I’m fuck ugly. That counts as a missing leg.” There was nothing Raif could say to that, and he handed the tenderloin back to Stillborn to free up his hand for the waterskin. Raif drank while the Maimed Man ate. They’d filled the waterskins at a small rill they’d found emptying into the gorge. The water was salty and left him just as thirsty as before. “When do we get to the Rift?” Stillborn wagged his head at the cliff wall. “This is the Rift. Beginnings of it, anyway. Land splits in two. This trench keeps getting deeper and deeper until there’s no end to it. Goes right down to hell, they say, and the abyss that lies beneath.”
Raif glanced down at the gorge floor with its house-deep litter of
scree, petrified trees, elk antlers, bones and rocks. “Shouldn’t we be heading
up then?”
“No. We’re on the right path. Be there before dark.” Stillborn smacked
the pony’s rump. “Come on, girl. You know the way from here.”
The little party moved forward, and Raif realized that they were indeed
on some sort of path. At first he thought it was just a natural staggering of
the cliff, but when they rounded a projection and he saw the path curving
eastward for leagues, keeping its level while the gorge dropped beneath, he
began to wonder. Could this have been cut by man? For some reason he thought of
the Listener, and the people he had spoke of. The Old Ones.
The path was narrow, but it didn’t seem important until the drop grew
deep enough to kill. Raif felt the updrafts rising, drying his face and setting
his damaged hand on fire. He was walking behind Stillborn and the pony, and he
found himself hugging the cliff. After an hour’s trekking the drop became so
deep and sheer that Raif could no longer see where it ended. Shadows had taken
the place of the gorge floor. A
man wouldn’t just be killed if he fell now, he thought. He’d be lost.
Stillborn and the pony seemed unaffected by the danger. The Maimed Man
had stripped off his makepiece armor and now walked in felted tunic and kilt.
The Forsworn sword hung at his waist, the chunk of rock crystal mounted on its
pommel gleaming darkly in the grey light. He was eating again, this time some
of the crackling he’d built a special hot fire to fry last night. The matched
bullhorns encircling his forearms had been oiled with the leftover grease, and
the black horn looked rich and newly taken. Raif watched him. He knew Stillborn
was a strong man, and quick, but he still wasn’t sure how the Maimed Man had
managed to best him. Never before had Raif had a heart-kill thwarted. He’d
thought, foolishly perhaps, that once he had a man’s heart in his sights that
was it. Now he knew different. He wasn’t as invincible as he’d thought.
Unsure how that made him feel, Raif trekked the next few hours in
silence, his head low, his thoughts circling around his past.
Afternoon darkened into dusk, and what little moisture the air held
began condensing on lone weeds that grew from cracks in the path. Scents
deepened with the coming of night, and Raif could smell metal ores bleeding
salts into the rock. When the wind changed he detected pitchsmoke. The scent
deepened as the path rose and swung out to accommodate a great bulge in the
Rift Wall. Raif felt vulnerable in the darkness, too exposed to the Eye of God
in this place where the continent split. Even Stillborn seemed to feel
something, for his steps were less hearty and his hand went often to the pony
for comfort.
The sky was alive with stars, thousands upon thousands, teeming like
ants across the night. Raif watched them, noticing what he had never seen
before: Not all shone blue-white. Some were red as blood.
i
When the small party rounded the curve in the Rift Wall, Raif was not prepared
for what he saw. Hundreds of torches burned in a city honeycombed into the
cliff. Immediately Raif thought of the time he’d broken into a termite mound
with Bitty Shank, recalling how the dust rose like smoke as swarms of white
insects poured from the break. He remembered the cross section he’d broken into
with the pine log, the warren of passageways and cells that riddled the mound
like mineshafts. That’s what the city looked like: the inside of that mound.
The Rift Wall was tiered into vast ledges hewn from live rock. Scores
of caverns pocked the cliff wall, their interiors dark as pits, their outer
orbits cratered and flaking. The ledges and caverns were accessed by a
shambling web of stone stairs, cane ladders, rope bridges and hoists. Great
portions of the city had caved into rubble, and farther to the east an entire
tier had collapsed, creating boulders the size of barns. Cracks ran and forked
through the remaining structures like fault lines, black as the Rift itself.
Raif’s gaze traveled across deep-set halls and stone arcades. Nothing
he had ever seen, not even the city of Spire Vanis, was less like clan than
this place.
“Aye. It’s pretty in the torchlight,” Stillborn said, continuing
forward.
Raif had little choice but to follow him. As they drew nearer he saw
Stillborn was heading toward a cleared space in the middle terrace where a
massive bonfire burned, and men flickered in and out of darkness as they moved
around the flames.
Suddenly a sharp report sounded on the path ahead, a crack like
shattering glass. Fire flared into existence twenty paces ahead of the pony.
Stillborn shouted something at the top of his voice as he worked furiously to
calm the little horse. Raif stood his ground. He guessed that whatever substance
had been dropped or fired had been done so expertly, to both warn and
illuminate the intruders. During the brief seconds when heat and light touched
his face he knew he was being watched.
The fire quickly died, and the pony danced warily over the smok-
ing rock. Stillborn was not happy. The scar on his face pulsed
ominously. “It’s that fat bastard Yustaffa. Knows it is me. Yet sends his
cronies to scare the life out of the pony.”
“Where did the shot come from?”
Stillborn waved an impatient hand. “Above. Above. There’s lookouts on
the cliff.” As angry as he was he spoke soft words to the pony, ushering the
little creature forward at a careful pace. “I warned you, Clansman,” he said,
turning on Raif quite suddenly. “Whatever comes of this don’t say you weren’t
warned.”
Raif tucked his head low. There was nothing to do but carry on.
A meet party gathered around the bonfire as they approached. Live steel
glowed orange, and hammers and weapons stranger than hammers cast eerie shadows
across the rock floor. All present were silent, waiting. A few were armored,
but most were cloaked and wrapped in skins against the coldness of the night.
You couldn’t see that none of them were whole, for the flickering light cut
pieces from them all. Raif found his attention drawn to one man, a small wiry
figure who stood away from the main body of men yet still managed to be its
center.
“Stillborn!” came a high male voice. “I heard your pony got a firing.
Too bad you didn’t make yourself known sooner.” A fat man dressed in beaver fur
stepped forward. “Could have saved a little hoof.”
Someone snorted. A few near the back laughed. The slight figure in the
shadows did not move.
Stillborn stared at the fat man, and in his own good time looked away.
“Unload the meat,” he said to Raif.
Raif was glad of something to do. The attention of the Maimed Men was
making him sweat. Now he was close enough to them to see their imperfections: a
missing hand, a clubfoot, a broken and badly reset jaw, cheek flesh eaten away
by the bite, a humped and twisted back. The pain in Raif’s missing finger
flared hotly as he unpacked the sides of frozen elk he and Stillborn had cached
from his kill. There was a lot of meat, even considering he and the Maimed Man
had roasted whatever they fancied and been none too A lUKlKtSS U
careful with what was left. The pony was glad to be relieved of her
load, and began bucking and shaking her head. She’d need to be scrubbed to get
rid of the smell.
Stillborn stood silent whilst the elk was unloaded at his feet. His
face was hard and his gaze never left one man: the figure waiting in the
shadows. When all the pieces of iced-over carcass had been arrayed, he dropped
his fist toward them. “I bring meat, new-killed. Enough for sixty men. What
have you brought since I’ve been gone, TraggisMole?”
The Maimed Men around the fire grew very still. The fat man in beaver
fur opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it. All eyes turned to
the figure in the shadows. Uncloaked and seen in silhouette, Traggis Mole
seemed whole. Light from the flames did not touch him as he said, “I don’t make
account of myself to any man, Stillborn. And if you ask that question again
I’ll see you dead for it.”
Tension lit the crowd. Men shifted weight between their feet, sword
hands twitching and tongues flicking out to wet dry lips. The fat man drew a
sword breaker—a foot and a half of spike-toothed steel forged to trap and break
a longsword—and suddenly he didn’t look fat anymore. “Will you take the floor
with me, Stillborn?” he asked in his high, musical voice. “I see you found a
new sword for me to kill.”
Stillborn’s gaze flickered from the fat man’s face to his weapon. Raif had
only seen one other sword breaker in his life: the treasure of the Gnash chief,
Nairry Gnash. Clan did not possess the knowledge to make them. They were said
to be forged only in the city of Hanatta in the Far South, by a guild of smiths
who guarded the secret of their unbreakable teeth as if they were hoarding
gold. Stillborn’s face was controlled, but the weapon made him wary, Raif could
tell.
“Put it away, Yustaffa,” he said. “You step too quickly into this
fight. Anyone would think the Robber Chief couldn’t speak for himself.”
The fat man smiled as if Stillborn had said something amusing. He did a
little dance, surprising Raif with his speed and grace, and in the space of an
eyeblink the sword breaker was gone. “It’ll be a sad day when you go to the
Rift, Stillborn. Who will make me laugh when you’re gone?”
Stillborn made no response, save to let his gaze return to the Robber
Chief, Traggis Mole.
The man in the shadows bided his time. He had the ability to be very
still, Raif noticed, like a hunter coaxing game to draw nearer so he could get
a better shot. He waited until a pile of logs in the fire stack collapsed,
creating a wall of heat and sparks, before he spoke. “Stillborn,” he warned in
a hard, rough voice. “Your tongue’s this close to being added to that meat.”
Suddenly there was a blur of motion. Raif tried to follow it, but waves
of heat from the fire distorted the air ... and Traggis Mole moved inhumanly
fast. When Raif’s vision cleared, he saw two things: Traggis Mole had a knife
at Stillborn’s throat.
And the Robber Chief was not whole.
Brown leather straps formed a V across his forehead and slashed
diagonally across both cheeks. .. holding a wooden nose in place. Traggis Mole
breathed, letting the knife rise with his chest until it pressed against the
apple of Stillborn’s throat. The Robber Chief’s face had once been handsome,
with a finely shaped brow and cheekbones, and absolutely black eyes. He was
small in the way cragsmen were small; hard and flinty as the crags they walked,
with nothing spare to slow them. His eyes flicked once to Raif, saw all, then
looked away.
“Do you yield this meat to me, Stillborn?” he said, gaze dropping to
the cache of frozen elk.
Stillborn’s hand was on the wooden handle of the hammer hooked to his
belt. Muscles in his arms were so tense that flesh bulged between the
bullhorns. He breathed lightly, for to do otherwise would be to push his own
throat against the knife. Raif glanced around. More Maimed Men had come to the
fire, and a group of women had gathered near the rear. Their faces were hungry
and pitiless, and Raif wondered what they wanted most: meat or blood. He cursed
his own lack of a weapon. No one here would step forward to defend Stillborn.
You could see it in their eyes.
Just as Traggis Mole began pulling the knife blade against Stillborn’s
skin, Stillborn spoke. “I yield the meat,” he said quietly.
Traggis Mole bared his teeth, and for a moment Raif thought he would
make Stillborn repeat his words—louder this time so all gathered could hear.
Yet the Robber Chief took his pound of flesh another way, opening Stillborn’s
throat with an expert hand. Blood quickly filmed the length of the foot-long
hunting knife, and Traggis wiped it clean on Stillborn’s shoulder.
“Rift Brothers!” he cried, turning to his men. “I bring meat. Let the
women come forward and put it on the fire.”
A cheer went up. The fat man started a chant, and others quickly joined
him. “Mole! Mole! Mole!” Someone hammered a wedge into
a barrel, and ale began to flow. Within seconds the atmosphere around the
blazing fire changed as women scrambled forward to hack at meat, torches were
dipped and lighted, and a little club-footed child began plucking a tune from a
string board.
Stillborn did not move. The hairline slit on his throat was already
drying, so shallow was the cut Traggis Mole had made. His scars were twitching
with the effort it took to master himself, and Raif could clearly see the
toothlike thing growing from the side of his neck moving in some hideous
imitation of a bite. When he noticed Raif watching him, Stillborn tilted his
head back fractionally, warning Raif to keep his place in the background.
But Traggis Mole was watching, and even though his nose was wooden it
twitched as if he’d sniffed something out. Wholly black eyes came to rest upon
Raif.
“I’m taking him as my hunt partner,” Stillborn said casually.
“Orrlsman. Found him in Grass Gorge, heading this way. He’s a fair hunter.
He’ll earn his keep.”
“Will he now?” Traggis Mole looked Raif up and down. “I see you took
half a finger from him, Stillborn. Thought to rob me of the pleasure of taking
a full hand?”
“I thought to leave a man with what he needs to hunt.” Stillborn’s
voice was dangerous now, all attempts at sounding casual gone. “Or are you so
afraid of anyone with four limbs that you’d see a man made useless rather than
risk raising a rival to your chiefship?”
Traggis Mole laughed, a hard, short crow that had nothing to do with
joy. “A rival? To this maggots’ nest on the edge of nowhere? If someone wanted
it enough to put a point through my brain don’t think I wouldn’t welcome it.
We’re all damned here. The frosts eat us alive and the shadows are rising. Show
me a man with balls enough to take me and I’ll go willingly into the Rift.”
As he spoke, the wind began to rise along the cliff wall, whipping at
the hems of men’s cloaks and beating a fierce heat from the fire. Raif looked out
toward the edge and saw little but blackness. The land fell away to nothing,
and the distance between the north wall of the Rift and the south one seemed as
cold and empty as the space between stars.
“I know you hate me, Stillborn,” came the Robber Chief’s voice, cutting
through the wind, “but you don’t quite hate me enough. How long have you been
here? Fifteen years? Yet you still haven’t learned how to stab a man in the
back. Look at Yustaffa. Calls me his liege lord and makes my fights his, yet I
wouldn’t trust him near me with a knife. All the men here tonight, every last
broken one of them, dream of slitting my throat while I lie abed with my whore
atop me. Fear stops them . .. but it’s not what stops you, is it?” The Robber
Chief looked shrewdly at Stillborn, the shadow of his wooden nose lying black
against his cheek. “That last dram of clannish honor is always the hardest to
lose.”
Stillborn shook his head slowly and heavily, yet he spoke no words to
deny it. Instead he let his gaze travel to the base of the bonfire, where men
were reaching in with bare hands to grab at the half-cooked meat. “The Rift
Brothers are hungry, Traggis. If I were you I’d set my mind on that. Send men
out to hunt, not raid. A coffer full of gold is worth nothing to a starving
man. There’s elk three days west of here, and if you were any kind of chief
you’d mount a hunt party and bring down as many as you could. And if you were
any judge of men you’d bring this lad along with you, for no other reason than
I say so.”
Others in the crowd heard what Stillborn said and stopped to listen.
Some drew nearer. One man with frost-rotted cheeks was quick to nod at the
mention of elk. Traggis’ black eyes saw all.
“If you had any love for your life, Stillborn, you’d keep your notions
to yourself. I’m lord of this hole in the earth. Not some bull-horned gargoyle
who was born dead and should have stayed that way.” Quick as a flash, Traggis
Mole’s finger and thumb were on Stillborn’s chin, squeezing the flesh till it
whitened. “And I tell you something else, my scarred friend. That Orrlsman’s
mine until he’s proven himself. He’s brought no weapons, no goods. Whatever he
eats and sups he robs from the mouth of a Rift Brother. And I’ll take my own
eyes if you can find one man here tonight who’ll welcome him for it.”
No one spoke. All the Maimed Men were listening now, hands and mouths
greasy with elk juice, the firelight making masks of their faces. Raif felt
their hostility like a drying wind against his skin. Traggis Mole had easily
directed all their hunger and frustration onto him, an outsider, and Raif knew
he’d been trapped by a master.
Traggis Mole broke his hold on Stillborn, but continued to maintain eye
contact for long seconds afterward. When he was satisfied that whatever silent
warning he’d issued had been received, he turned his attention to Raif.
“Orrlsman. What skills do you claim?”
Raif was careful not to make the mistake of looking to Stillborn before
answering. “I’m a white-winter warrior. Bowman. Longbow and shortbow. I once
brought down a dozen kills in one night.”
A ripple of interest passed through the crowd, but the Robber Chief was
unmoved. “You’re young for a white-winter warrior. Last I heard it takes ten
years to make one.”
Something in Raif rose to the challenge of those hard black eyes. “Then
you heard wrong.”
Interest moved briefly across Traggis Mole’s face. “Yet you have no
bow, and from the looks of it Stillborn didn’t relieve you of one.”
“He broke it in two in his rush to get my sword.”
A titter of amusement rippled through the crowd, and Raif knew he had
read Stillborn true. The great bull-horned Maimed Man was no bowman; his arms
were built for wielding steel, not firing wood. And if the large number of weapons
in his weapon stand was anything to go by, he was a collector of steel too. The
Forsworn sword,
even sheathed as it was with only its crosshilt and pommel showing, was
clearly a treasure to be hoarded.
Raif felt relief yet did not show it. Looking into Traggis Mole’s small
and fatally flawed face, he got the distinct impression that he had fooled
everyone in the crowd except him.
Yet for reasons of his own Traggis Mole kept the truth to himself. He
said only, “Well, Orrlsman. What are we to do to test your claims?“
Raif held the man’s gaze and said nothing. He knew the second trap was
about to be sprung.
“I’ve an idea,” offered the fat man, pausing in the business of sucking
marrow from a chunk of thigh bone.
“Speak it.”
Yustaffa waived airily with the bone. He had the copper skin and almond
eye whites of a Far Southerner, and although his beaver furs were finely
dressed and gleaming he did not sit well in them. He looked like a man dressing
up as a bear. “Let him shoot against Tanjo Ten Arrow or whatever he’s calling
himself these days. Archer against archer. Bow against bow. Could be quite
amusing. Certainly better than watching this rabble throw another dead man to
the Rift. I said only this morning—”
“Enough,” warned Traggis. “Find Tanjo and arrange the match for first
light. And you,” he said, addressing a frost-eaten swordsman dressed in the rod
and slat armor of a seafarer. “Take this Orrlsman to the caves, and hold him
overnight. Feed him naught but dirt and water, and make sure he”—a quick glance to Stillborn— “doesn’t get by you.
Bring the Orrlsman to the High Mantle at dawn.“
The swordsman nodded brusquely, and Raif felt an ungentle hand upon his
arm. He was not given the chance to speak a word to Stillborn before he was led
away.
CHAPTER
The Tower on the Milk
The five Dhoone warriors entered the old riverhouse under heavy guard.
Iago Sake’s face was white in the starlight, his dread half-moon ax drawn and
ready. He and Diddie Daw escorted the five warriors through the strange
roofless arcade that formed the entrance to the broken tower at Castlemilk.
Bram was surprised to see the five men still armed, and wondered why
his brother Robbie had not given the order for their weapons to be ransomed. Water
steel flashed at their backs and thighs, making riverlike ripples upon the
blued surface of their breast- and back-plates. The tattoos on their faces
showed them to be veterans of many campaigns. One of their number, who Bram
recognized as the master axman Mauger Loy, had whorls of ink so densely sewn
across his cheeks that you could not see the color of his skin. Even his
eyelids were blue. All five had the fair hair of the Dhoones, and Bram realized
that even amongst men who were sworn to Skinner Dhoone and so were his enemies,
he was one of only a handful of men with dark eyes and dark hair.
“Couch your ax, Iago,” came Robbie’s Dhoone’s voice from the tower’s
vast circular chamber. “These men are our brothers. They’ll offer no fight.”
Iago Sake, the deathly pale axman known as the Nail, nodded but did not
speak. He and Mauger had been companions of the ax before the slaying of the
old Dhoone chief, yet all the years spent training and campaigning meant
nothing to Iago when compared with his loyalty to Robbie Dhoone. Iago thrust
the three-foot ax under his gear belt rather than couch it against his back as
ordered. Bram knew other men might mistake his lack of obedience as defiance,
but Bram knew it was done out of love and protection for Robbie. If weapons
were drawn Iago Sake would get to his first.
The five Skinner Dhoone—sworn warriors could not hide their interest as
they stepped into the principal chamber of the broken tower. It had once risen
thirty stories above the Milk, legend said, higher even than the tower on the
Ganmiddich Inch. But the living was harder here in the northern
clanholds—storms could rage for weeks and frosts had been known to last for
half a year—and the tower had long since fallen. All that was left were a few lower
stories, and all but the ground one were broken. Even that let in moonlight and
rain, and if Bram looked up he could see great cracks and absences of stone. If
he looked down he could see a pool of water as large as a fish pond that had
formed in a pocket of sunken flooring. The water had been frozen when they’d
first occupied the tower ten days back, but it was thawing now under the
sufferance of torchlight and man heat. Once or twice Bram had seen things
flitting beneath the glaze of ice, and had wondered briefly how fish had made
their way in here.
Few had answers to questions concerning the tower, not even the
Castlemen who had lived with its closeness all their lives. The Milk-house was
barely a league to the west, its rounded walls and domed roof constructed for
the most part from stone quarried from the tower. When the first clan settlers
had come upon the ruins north of the river, they had named the pale,
pearlescent blocks they were built from milkstone. Centuries later, when the
first roundhouse was raised in the shadow of the tower, the clan chief had
forsaken his old name and called himself Castlemilk instead.
The Milk River still ran white each spring, when rushing water and
thawing ice ate away at the remaining deposits of milkstone that lay in a
series of open quarries upstream. Bram had once heard said that the quarries
were now overrun by forest and pokebrush, and were near impossible for anyone
but cragsmen to find.
Even now, after months of living in Castlemilk where milkstone was
plentiful and many structures were built from it, Bram still found the pale
rock beautiful. It glowed like teeth in firelight.
The five warriors crossed the round chamber to where Robbie was sitting
at the head of a camp table. Robbie was uncloaked and unarmored, dressed in a
fine wool shirt and linen vest, his moleskin pants tucked into high leather
boots, and a heavy belt of beaten copper plates circling his waist. His hair
had been recently washed and braided, and wet strands still clung to his neck.
Another man might look disarrayed in such a state, but Robbie Dun Dhoone looked
like a king.
He watched the five men gravely, his hands resting on the leather-bound
armrests of his chair. “Mauger. Berold. Harris. Jordie. Roy,” he named and
greeted them, clearly surprising them by this feat of memory. “Come. Sit. It’s
a hard ride from Gnash, and the riverbanks are mired in mud. Have your horses
been fed and watered?”
Mauger and his companions exchanged glances. They were not men easy
with such courtesy. “Aye,” Mauger said gruffly after a moment. “ ‘Tis well
done. A stableman took our mounts.”
Robbie made a small gesture with his hand. “Good. Now warm yourselves
by the brazier. Bram. Bring bread and ale. And be sure to tell Old Mother who
has come. She would not thank us if these men came and left and she’d missed
the chance to greet them.”
“Old Mother is here?” Mauger asked, turning his head to look for her.
“Yes. Out by the river. She gave us her blessing three months back when
she came to join our cause.”
“We thought her dead.” Mauger was clearly perplexed. “She went missing
with that sorry mule of hers, and Skinner said she’d rode out to the Ruinwoods
to die.”
Robbie raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, leaving the five warriors
to name Skinner Dhoone a liar for themselves. Bram loaded nutbread and a flagon
of black ale onto a wood platter, and carried it to the camp table. A cloth map
of the clanholds was spread across the length of the table, and Robbie nodded
impatiently when Bram hesitated to set a tray upon it. As Bram poured ale into
drinking horns, the five warriors reluctantly sat.
“So you are no longer quartered at the Milkhouse,” Mauger said to Robbie,
glancing around the tower chamber. “A pity, as it’s a fine fortress.“
“We grew too big for it.” Robbie took the first horn of ale for
himself. “Wrayan asked me to stay, but a man would be a fool to overburden his
host.“
Mauger grunted his agreement. He was a big man, with all his strength
in his shoulders, and a stubble of white-blond hair poking through the blue
skin on his neck. Bram saw him take note of the men gathered around the cook
fires sanding their armor, fixing pieces of tack, or turning out damp clothing
to dry. More men squatted by the doorless entry way, playing knucklebones and
taking bets, and others still formed small groups around the chamber, speaking
softly amongst themselves. Bram took pride in their numbers. Not a day had gone
by since the raid on Bludd when a man or small company didn’t present
themselves to Robbie for service. His fame was growing, and the name Skinner
Dhoone had coined for him was known throughout the clans. The Thorn King.
“Count if your master bids it, Mauger,” Robbie said lightly, stretching
his legs. “But don’t expect an accurate tally, as you’re seeing less than half
of us here tonight.”
It was a lie, but it was well done. Bram marveled at the calmness of his
brother’s face. Strange that I never realized before how good Robbie is at deceit.
Mauger colored hotly.
The man named Berold spoke to cover his companion’s discomfort. “We
bear messages from Skinner. Will you hear us now, or would you prefer to parley
in private?”
It was a challenge and Robbie rose to it. “I hide nothing from my
companions. Speak up, man, so others can hear.”
Berold glanced at Mauger. “It was agreed my brother would speak for
all.”
Bram looked anew at Mauger and Berold, and saw what he had failed to earlier:
the same features occupied both faces. My brother, Berold had said. The words pricked something in
Bram, but he did not know what or why.
Mauger held his horn out to be refilled before speaking. “First.
Skinner demands that you no longer name him uncle. He has looked into your
bloodline and found you no cousin to a chief. You are nephew to him by neither
blood nor marriage, and any claims you stake are false.”
Whilst Mauger was speaking, men around the chamber turned to listen.
Many bristled at this insult to their chief. The big axman Duglas Oger bared a
mouth of broken teeth, and came to stand at Robbie’s back. Even in the company
of other axmen, Duglas had no rivals for strength or bulk, and his presence at
the camp table caused the five visitors to exchange wary glances. Duglas Oger
saw this and casually reached behind his back for his ax.
Robbie gentled him with a hand to his arm as he addressed himself to
Mauger. “I take no umbrage. I know the words you speak are not your own. I can’t
say I’m surprised by Skinner. It pleased him to call me nephew when it suited
him, now it pleases him not to. A nice trick. A pity he’s never tried it on his
wife.”
Laughter rippled around the chamber. Duglas Oger chortled; it sounded
as if someone were trying to strangle him. The visitors were less easy with
this jest at their chief’s expense, and all but one of them kept their faces
guarded. Young, white-eyebrowed Jordie Sar-son couldn’t quite manage to keep
the grin from his lips.
Robbie’s
won him, Bram
knew with certainty. So far his brother had done everything right; disarming
the visitors with courtesy, impressing them with his coolheadedness, and now
refusing to take insult where it was most definitely intended. Bram felt a wave
of pride rising, and with it the familiar sinking sensation in his chest. How can I feel so proud of him, and yet not want him
to succeed} It
was disloyalty of the worst kind, and Bram knew it shamed him. With an effort
of will he set his mind away from it and concentrated instead upon the simple
task of keeping the visitors’ horns topped with ale.
“Is there more?” Robbie asked.
Mauger shifted uneasily. “Aye. Concerning the kingship.” He downed more
ale to give himself courage. “Skinner says your mam was a whore, and if every
man who’s seen the inside of her cunt claimed kingship from it then a good half
of the clanholds should be crowned.”
Robbie’s blue-grey eyes turned cold. “No,” he said quietly to Duglas
Oger, who was in the process of raising his ax. Across the room Iago Sake
stalked the visitors, his deathly pale skin and winter furs rendering him
almost invisible against the milkstone walls. Robbie stood. “No,” he repeated
again, this time to all the men in the chamber. “Don’t send our brothers back to
Gnash thinking we don’t know a lie when we hear one. All here knew and honored
my mother Margret. Everything fair and golden lay within her, and she went to
her death with the grace of the Dhoone queens. The words of a scared man cannot
change that. Skinner Dhoone is growing desperate, and he sinks to new depths.
Does he think me a dog to fight at his command? Insult my lady mother and I’ll
froth at the muzzle and strike out without a plan?” Robbie shook his head.
“Don’t mistake me, Dhoonesmen. I won’t forget this insult, but I won’t drag one
extra sword into this fight. This is between me and Skinner, and it’ll be
settled between two men, no more.”
Many in the crowd nodded. Iago Sake rested his ax. Robbie was right.
Only a son could defend his mother’s honor, no matter how keenly that son’s
companions felt the insult. Bram found he could look no one in the eye. None
had looked at him since the visitors had entered, and he did not want to invite
their scrutiny now.
Margret Cormac nee Dhoone was not his mother. The golden hair and blue
eyes she possessed went solely to her first and only son, along with a
well-documented claim to the Thistle Blood. Even before the old Dhoone chief
was slain by Bluddsmen, Robbie had forsaken his father’s name and started
calling himself Dhoone instead. Bram could still remember hearing the name
Robbie Dhoone for the first time, and thinking how much grander it sounded than
Rab Cormac. He had been six. “Can
I call myself Dhoone, too, Rab?” he had asked on the weapons court as Robbie
cleaned pig blood from his sword with a fist of hay. ‘Wo, Bram“ Robbie had said, squinting down the length of his
sword blade to check for trueness. ”We share the same father, but not the same mam. My mother was a great
lady with ancestors stretching bacf( to Weeping Moira. Your mother’s just a
rabbit trapper from Gnash.“
Bram rested his hand on the camp table for a moment. He told himself
Robbie had meant no insult, that his words were just the thoughtlessness of a
sixteen-year-old boy. Yet Bram was fifteen himself now, and he knew he wouldn’t
have spoken the same words in Robbie’s place.
Mauger was speaking, but it took a moment for Bram to understand him.
“Skinner’s tired of the wait,” said the seasoned warrior. “He calls for a
meeting with swords, to settle the matter of the chief-ship once and for all.”
The call to swords stirred the men. They had taken part in little but
raids since the attack on Bludd, and they were hungry for battle. It mattered
little that Skinner Dhoone’s forces outmanned them, for success at Bludd had
made them bold, and their faith in Robbie’s leadership was unshakable. Bram saw
and understood all, and he also saw the glint of calculation pass across his
brother’s face.
Still standing, Robbie made a gesture to quiet the men. “Brothers.
Companions,” he said quietly. “I’ll not meet Skinner Dhoone on a field of his
choosing. He may be willing to set Dhoonesmen against Dhoonesmen, but I am not.
Who here tonight can cast eyes upon our visitors and not know them for our
clansmen? Kill them and we kill ourselves. Every Dhoonesman dead is one less
man to fight against Bludd. Tell me, whose blood is better served on our
blades? Dhoone’s or Bludd’s?”
Silence settled on the tower chamber like a spell. Light from the
torches hissed and dimmed as the first mists of evening stole through cracks in
the tower. The Milk lay less than thirty feet to the south, and river ice could
be heard fracturing as air cooled above the surface. Inside the chamber all
Dhoonesmen had grown grave. Duglas Oger raised the copper horn containing his
measure of powdered guidestone to his lips. Others followed. Iago Sake bowed
his head, and began speaking the names of the Stone Gods. Robbie joined him,
and by the time the third god was named the entire room was chanting them in
prayer.
. . . lone, Loss,
Uthred, Oban, Larannyde, Malweg, Behathmus. The words brought tears to men’s eyes, for Robbie
had somehow reminded them that Dhoone was the beloved second son of the gods.
Gnash, Withy, Bannen, Ganmiddich, Castlemilk, Wellhouse: all fine old clans who
had spoken oaths to Dhoone. The Dhoonehold was the richest, most fertile land
in the clanholds, its history the longest, its traditions the deepest. This was
a clan worth fighting for, and by speaking the names of the gods Robbie brought
the greatness of Dhoone to mind.
The visiting clansmen chanted along with Robbie’s men, and Bram
wondered how many would return to Skinner at Gnash. Jordie Sarson would not,
for his eyes seldom left Robbie and there was a light of devotion within them.
The bald and big-knuckled spearman Roy Cox, known as Spineback, also looked as
if he might succumb to mutiny, for there was a troubled look on his thin, bony
face and his gaze traveled around the tower chamber as if assessing it as a
potential home.
Mauger and Berold also looked troubled, but Bram did not think they
would entertain the thought of switching sides. Loyalty and honor ran too deep
within them, and just as they were cautious of Robbie’s courtesy, they were
cautious of his well-spoken words as well.
Mauger broke the silence by asking, “Have you any message to send to my
chief?”
Robbie reached behind his neck to handle his braids. Bram doubted he
was unaware of the figure he cut, the length of muscle in his arm and
shoulders, the fine long fingers, unbitten by any ax. “I have no message for
Skinner. Any man who would set clansman against clansman is not worthy of my
respect. I would speak only to those who follow him. And I would tell them
this: All are welcome here as brothers. What has been done and said in the past
is forgotten. Join me, and we’ll return in force to our clanhold and reclaim
Dhoone.”
Mauger nodded brusquely and quickly, as if wary of the effect of
Robbie’s words on his four companions. “A fine speech, but I’ll not do your
campaigning for you, Rab Cormac. If you have no message for our chief, then you
have none for us.” He turned to his companions. “Come, men. We need to cross
the Milk afore moonset.” Mauger bowed his head in farewell to Robbie and Duglas
Oger, and then crossed the chamber. Berold and the three others followed him,
but not before Robbie had made eye contact with Jordie Sarson and Roy Cox.
Only when those two men had turned away from him did Robbie allow the
anger to show on his face. He had ill-liked being called Rab Cormac. Bram had
once witnessed him beating Jesiah Shamble bloody when the simpleminded luntman
had forgotten Robbie’s new name and called him by the old one instead. No one
had dared name Robbie a Cormac since, and no one but Duglas Oger ever called
him Rab. Yet it was clear from Mauger’s remark that they were calling him both
at Gnash.
Bram Cormac slipped out of the tower unnoticed. He had no wish to
witness his brother’s anger over the name their father had
given them.
The mist had risen to man height on the riverbank, and there was a deep
chill to it that penetrated every layer of Bram’s clothing and then lay wetly against
his skin. Hunching his shoulders, he made his way toward the mossy bank where
Old Mother kept a tent and fire. She would not sleep or take meals in the
broken tower, and would enter it only at Robbie’s command.
The smell of woodsmoke guided him through the mist. The land east of
the Milkhouse was wild and heavily forested, and Guy Mor-loch said that if a
man built a hunt lodge among the trees and left it unattended for a year then
he’d never be able to find it again. The forest would destroy it. Castlemilk’s
farmland and grazes were to the north and west, leaving the land that bordered
Bludd-sworn Frees free to create a thick and impenetrable barrier to keep
enemies at bay. Even here, only a league west of the Milkhouse, the forest
claimed every space it could, and willows and bog oak sent bare limbs out
across the river as if they could claim the very water itself.
Old Mother was sitting on a tree stump by a green log fire, warm-
ing sotted oats in an iron pot helm and chewing on a stalk of rue. Her
only greeting was “Does Robbie call me?”
Bram wondered if she knew his name. Her teeth were yellow from the rue,
and she smelled unpleasant, like river water trapped too long in a hole.
“Robbie said to let you know that Mauger and others from Gnash are here. He
thought you might want to greet them before they leave. They’re out by the
horse tent. I’ll take you to them if you want.” Bram didn’t truly believe the
offer, made in courtesy, still held, but Robbie had not gainsaid it so he decided
it was worth the risk.
“Mauger was a colicky baby,” Old Mother said, rising stiffly. “Bald as
a vulture that first year and screaming up a storm every night.“
Bram couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so he nodded. Old
Mother was strange, but he had come to understand that she knew things that
others did not. Mostly it was tales about how grown clansmen were as babes and
the scrapes they got into as boys, but sometimes she said things that made you
think. The day that Robbie had proposed moving from the Milkhouse to the broken
tower, she’d been dead set against it, and had flatly refused to sleep there.
“Sull stones, Sull bones,” she had murmured, shaking her large, fleshy head.
“The smell of it will draw them like flies.”
Bram found he didn’t like to think about who they were, but there was something in the words that
excited him. Every clansman knew that the land between the Bitter Hills and the
Copper Hills had once belonged to the Sull, but no one spoke of it. It was a
mystery. If the Sull were the fierce and death-stalking warriors everyone held
them to be, then how had the settling clansmen managed to best them? Bram
frowned. Withy and Wellhouse kept the histories: One day he’d travel to both
roundhouses and discover the answer for himself. Holding his arm out for Old
Mother to take, he guided her back along the bank. For no discernible reason
the mist had begun to fail, and Bram found he could see through the retreating
wisps. Ahead, the Sull tower sat strange and unlovely upon the riverbank like a
broken tooth. At its highest point only four stories remained, at its lowest
less than one.
Out of the corner of his eye Bram spotted the five visiting Dhoonesmen
grouped in a circle about their horses, engaged in last-minute preparations for
the ford across the river. The horses were irritable, and would not stand easy
while their riders greased their flanks against the cold water. The warriors
should have stayed overnight and rested them, but Bram knew Mauger was eager to
get away. He had seen and heard for himself how seductive Robbie Dhoone could
be, and he feared to test the loyalty of his men.
Mauger was tightening his mount’s girth when he saw Bram and Old Mother
approach. His smile was genuine upon recognizing the old woman, but there were
signs of weariness around his eyes. “So it’s true, Old Mother. You have left us
... and now we must fight alone.” He bent to lay a kiss on her forehead, and
then seemed to force himself to speak lightly. “In truth, I’m glad that you and
that ugly mule of yours are still alive.”
Old Mother accepted the kiss as her due, with her arms folded over the
great barrel that was her chest and her mouth pressed into a line. She showed
so little emotion that Bram wondered why she had come. Then she said, “He’ll
use Skinner. He canna help it, it’s just the way he is.”
Mauger’s gaze flicked to his companions, checking they could not be
overhead. “How will he use him?”
It was telling that no one mentioned Robbie by name.
Old Mother wagged her head. “Ride on his back, that’s how. Have Skinner
for a workhorse, and himself for its master. He always was a canny child, quick
to get others to do his bidding. Year of the long drought he had Duglas and his
crew dam the Fly. Stayed away all day practicing with his ax, then came and
took the credit when it was done.”
Mauger frowned. He did not look comfortable with Old Mother’s
ramblings. “If you cannot say anything clearer, Old Mother, then best speak
naught at all.” He thrust a foot into a stirrup and hefted his bulk over his
stallion’s back. His companions did likewise, and began trotting close to hear
what Old Mother had to say.
“Be careful you and Skinner don’t fight his fights for him, Mauger Loy.
Else I’ll be laying heather on your cairn afore we’re done.”
Bram bowed his head. He wished he had not brought her, for she had
picked the worst possible moment to lay a doom upon Mauger— when his brother
and three companions could hear.
Mauger breathed hard, his bronzed and ax-dented breastplate rising
along with his chest. With a short rein he turned his horse. “Brother. Men.
West to Gnash!” Kicking spurs into horsemeat, he forced a starting gallop from
his stallion and led his party west along the Milk.
Bram watched him disappear into the swirling, unsettled mist. Brother, he had said again, and for the second time that
evening Bram felt something inside him freeze at the word. Brother. And then, quite suddenly, he understood. It had
been over a year since Robbie had said that word to him.
Bram blinked. At his side he was aware of Old Mother watching him, her
arms still folded across her chest. An anger that surprised him made him say,
“You didn’t have to do that to Mauger. He’s a good man.”
“So you’d have him go unwarned?” asked Old Mother placidly, not rising
to his anger.
She had answered him with his own argument, but Bram was unwilling to
let go of his anger. He didn’t want to think why. “Why did you have to come to
us? Why not stay with Skinner at Gnash?”
“You know the answer to that, lad,” she replied, unperturbed. Something
in her voice made Bram turn to look at her. Her face was bland and old-womanly,
but her eyes were the purest Dhoone blue he had ever seen, with the violet ring
around the irises that revealed a high concentration of Thistle Blood. Only
direct descendants of kings had those eyes.
“I’ve never known Robbie not to win,” she said.
CHAPTER
City on the Edge of an Abyss
Raif awoke to the sensation of cold water dripping upon his face. He
opened his eyes, and it took a moment for him to understand that a man was
standing above him, slowly wringing drops of water from a damp and twisted rag.
The man smiled pleasantly, displaying little demon teeth in a brown and fleshy
face. Yustaffa.
“Morning, archer boy,” he said gaily, wringing more drops from the rag.
“You failed the test, you know. If you were a prince good and true you’d wake
after the first drop.” With an elaborate sigh, he twisted the rag with all his
might, sending a torrent of freezing water over Raif’s face. “Let’s hope you do
better with the second test of the day.”
Raif sat up, furiously shaking his head. The cliff cave was dark and
freezing, and the portion that opened to the sky showed a world still black as
night. “It’s not dawn yet. Go away.”
Yustaffa shuddered theatrically. “Orders! And from a master archer, no
less. I quake in fear, I really do.”
“I’m a bowman, not an archer.” Raif didn’t know why he said this, but
the fat man was beginning to annoy him. His shirt was soaking, and he was cold
and tired, and his bandaged finger was throbbing. The missing tip and knuckle
still felt as if they were there, and the sight of the shortness, the vacant
air where flesh and bone should be, made him feel like he might be sick. With
an effort he forced his mind elsewhere. Stretching his legs, he began working
the stiffness from his limbs.
“Well, bowman” Yustaffa said pointedly,
looking for somewhere to sit. “Perhaps you’d like to tell me something about
yourself, seems we find ourselves with a few minutes alone.” Unable to find
anywhere that was not naked rock, the fat man settled on shrugging off his
beaver-fur collar, rolling it into a ball and sitting cross-legged upon it. A
tiny sniff of discomfort let Raif know what he thought of his surroundings.
Raif wondered why he had come. Recalling his exchanges with Stillborn,
he said, “I’ll trade you for information.”
Yustaffa raised an eyebrow. “My, you learn fast for a clansman. And
here was I thinking you’d be willing to trade for food.” The fat man pulled a
soft package from his black beaver coat and laid it on the floor by his feet.
With exaggerated delicacy he unfolded it with his fingertips, revealing squares
of fresh-baked bannock, oatcakes wrapped in bacon, a wedge of crumbly white
cheese, three heads of butter-braised leeks, and a tiny stoppered pot known in
the clan-holds as a tonicker because it held just enough malt to revive a man’s
spirits without rendering him drunk.
“Clan food. Coarse, but strangely appealing.” Yustaffa bit the head of
a leek. “Now where were we? Yes, information. How about we start with your name
and clan?”
Raif tried not to look at the food. He wouldn’t allow Yustaffa the
satisfaction of knowing how much he wanted it. “You know my clan. And my name’s
no secret, it’s Raif.”
Yustaffa nodded as he poured a measure of malt into the hollow stopper.
“Orrlsman, yes. Yet you haven’t that look about you.” He downed the malt and then
looked Raif directly in the eye. “As long as you shoot like one I suppose it
doesn’t really matter either way.”
Raif forced himself to return the fat man’s gaze steadily. “I do.”
Yustaffa bowed his head in acknowledgment of Raif’s confidence. He
seemed pleased, and raised the remaining dram of malt in toast. “To Raif. May I
share in the excitement of your life, but never the danger.“ Again, the fat man
did his trick of throwing the malt down his throat and then snapping his gaze
back to Raif. ”You know in my country the word raif means stranger?“
A drop of cold water slid down Raif’s spine. He willed himself not to
react, but Yustaffa was quick and saw something in Raif’s face that made him
smile.
Cheek fat pushed against Yustaffa’s eyes. “I see you haven’t heard of
the legend of Azziah rün
Raif, the
Stranger from the South who spent his life searching for heaven only to find
the Gates to Hell instead? A sad tale with a sad end, but then most tales from
my country are like that. We’re a strange race, we Mangali, we’d rather weep
than laugh.”
Raif dropped his gaze to the food; he found he could look at it now
without desire. For seventeen years he had owned his name, and somewhere in the
back of his mind he had always known it wasn’t clan: No one but himself was
named it. Still. . . Stranger
from the South.
It made no sense, and Raif cautioned himself to be wary of what the fat man
said. Maimed Men did not make good friends.
Abruptly, he said, “How about repaying the debt, Yustaffa? A question
for a question.”
The glint in Yustaffa’s eyes was knowing. “In my country it is
considered the height of good manners to shift the topic of conversation from
oneself to one’s guest.” He waved a fleshy arm with surprising grace. “So,
please. Go ahead.”
“Why come all the way from the Far South to join the Maimed Men when
you are whole?”
Yustaffa’s laughter was high and tinkling. “Me? Whole? Dear boy you
flatter me.” With a quick little hop the fat man was on his feet, bunching the
hem of his beaver coat and tunic in his fists. Unceremoniously, he raised both
garments to the waist and bared his loins. His cock was intact, but there was a
thick white scar where his scrotum had once been.
Raif tried not to shudder as he looked away. Letting the coat and silk
tunic drop, Yustaffa said, “My Song Master cut me when I was a boy. It was my
very bad luck to have a voice like a nightingale, and my unforgivable weakness
to be proud of it. I’d still be whole today if only I’d learned enough modesty
to step back and lower my voice. Fool that I was I thought only of the praise
and rewards . . . nothing of the price. Oh they drugged me, of course, and I
woke four days later with a splitting headache in my groin and an unbearable
lightness where my balls had once been.“ Something cold and angry
flash-hardened muscles in Yustaffa’s face, but just as quickly it was gone. ”I
never sang again. As far as revenge goes it was a petty one, but it was all I
could think of at the time—I was only eleven after all. Later I
thought of more.“
Raif followed Yustaffa’s gaze down to his gear belt, where the sword
breaker and a curved scimitar were sheathed and hung.
“They called me the Dancer later. Do you know why?” Raif shook his head.
“Because when they found the bodies of the Song Master and his surgeon a man’s
footsteps were stamped in the surrounding gore. To all who saw the footsteps it
looked as if the killer had danced in their blood. He had. And I did. And my
only regret is that I didn’t dance longer and kill more.”
It was a warning then, this tale Yustaffa told. Raif felt better for
knowing the reason behind it: One man warning another that he was not to be
fooled with was something he understood.
“All of us here are missing something,” Yustaffa said, squatting to
collect the leftover food in the cloth. “We may not look it but we are. Traggis
Mole had his nose ripped from him by a Vorlander armed with a plate-piercing
spike, but that’s not what makes him a Maimed Man. His scars run deeper than
that. You’d do well to remember that, Azziah rün Raif. And perhaps next time when a man owes you a debt you won’t w.aste it
on foolish questions.”
Raif nodded, accepting the reprimand. In truth he didn’t think his
question wasted, but he wasn’t about to argue. Yustaffa was too clever for
that.
Outside, the patch of sky above the cliff cave was lightening from
black to charcoal and the stars were fading from it. The air in the cave was
switching and unsettled, and Raif detected the subtle freshness of dawn.
Restless, he stood and walked to the cave entrance. The same frost-eaten
swordsman who had brought him here last night stood at the head of the tunnel,
barring the way out. When he saw Raif he motioned toward the sky. “Best get
ready. Traggis’ll be expecting you good and soon.”
Raif almost smiled. Ready? He had no weapon or armor to
prepare. All he had to do was put on his cloak and piss.
“I’ll be wishing you well, then,” Yustaffa said, straightening up. “I
enjoyed our little talk so much I think I’ll give you some free advice. Tan jo
Ten Arrow loves a bet. Wager for something you want and if the gods are willing
you’ll get it.”
“And if they’re not?”
Yustaffa tutted as he walked through the tunnel and away from Raif.
“And here I was hoping to leave on a high note. Dear boy, if you lose the
contest you die. You don’t really think Traggis would allow an outsider to lie
to him in public and live? Traggis Mole is as good as a king in the Rift, and a
king’s pride is a terrible thing. You’ve told him you’re a white-winter
hunter—so hunt. I’ll be watching from the toeline, and I’m sure it’ll ease your
mind to know I’m rooting for you.” Yustaffa turned at the cave entrance and
bowed low to Raif. “Until later.”
Raif made no reply except to run a hand across his face. Oh gods. What had possessed him to tell Traggis Mole all
those lies? Last night it had seemed a simple choice: Appear strong or die. Now
he knew better. The Robber Chief had been leading him all the way. Traggis
would gain much by today’s spectacle. He’d unite the Maimed Men in hatred of an
outsider, and prove to Stillborn once and for all who was chief.
Resting his weight against the cave wall, Raif exhaled deeply. It was
difficult to fight off the idea that coming here had been a mistake.
Ash.
Why did you have to leave me}
When the swordsman with the frost-eaten nose and cheeks came for him a
few minutes later he was ready. His Orrlsman’s cloak was fastened at his throat
and his hair had been freshly smoothed and braided. Water had been left for him
in a cattle trough, and he’d used it to drink his fill and wet his face. Birds
were calling now,
crowing and chittering at the increase in light. The sky was the color
of deep water, and rays from the rising sun picked out ice crystals suspended
in the air and made them sparkle like tiny fish.
As soon as Raif straightened his spine after exiting the tunnel, he
read the wind. The headwind blew south, steady and persistent, at a speed to
raise the braid off his back. Nothing unusual there. It was updrafts rising
from the Rift that worried him. They’d give an arrow lift, but he lacked the
experience to judge them. He could feel them now, pushing at the hem of his
cloak as the swordsman led him across a barren, rocky ledge. Spreading the
fingers on his undamaged right hand, he let the air pass through them. The
updrafts were a few degrees warmer than the surrounding air, and they buffeted
wildly, blowing and then dropping to nothing in the blink of an eye. As he
watched, a kittihawk rose on them, only to have to flap its wings furiously to
maintain height when the thermal fell away.
Raif grimaced. Bailie the Red had names for winds like that and all of
them were curses. Land where warm air and cold air met was no place for a
bowman to shoot from.
“Up here,” came the gruff voice of the frost-eaten swordsman,
indicating a rope-and-cane ladder that dropped from the ledge above. The man
thought himself nobody’s fool, and waited for Raif to start the climb before
putting foot to the ladder himself. Raif dimly recalled making the descent last
night on his way to the cliff cave, but it had been pitch black and calm, and
he hadn’t quite realized his closeness to the Rift.
The great black chasm in the earth lay below him as he climbed, and
though he did,not look at it his mind kept playing tricks on his eyes. He could
see the sheer face of it, the way
it ran deep and shadowed to a place where living earth ended and molten core
began. Pockets of mist hung like vertical pools in the pitted clefts of its
faces. Somewhere deep and profoundly quiet, in the oldest and most inaccessible
cracks, steam was venting. The sulfur and ash smell of it rose to Raif’s nose,
where it pushed through blood and membranes to enter his brain. Raif’s grip
loosened on the cane rung. Azziah rün Raif . . . spent his life searching for heaven only to find the
Gates to Hell instead.
Blinking as if he’d woken from a dream, Raif forced his fist to hold
steady on the rung. Two-thirds of the climb was done, but he found he had no
memory of the ascent. A stitch on his halved finger had split and clear fluid
leaked through the yellow bandage down to the web of skin that joined his
fingers. He ignored the pain of it as he finished the climb.
As he levered himself up onto the ledge, he saw the smoking remains of
last night’s bonfire ahead of him. The circle of ground surrounding the burn
was black with tar, and small children darted in and out of the still-hot
timbers playing a game of dare. One child, a brown-eyed girl with a halo of
wiry hair, found a charred joint of meat amongst the embers, and with the kind
of furtive side glances that were a child’s idea of stealth, she slipped it
beneath her tunic and ran away.
Raif glanced around the honeycombed city as he waited for his handler
to top the ledge. Ejfie
would have loved this. The entire cliff face was mined with caves. Some of the chambers were
closed off by stretched oilskins or cane screens, but most were left open to
the wind. The lower dwellings looked hard-used, their ledges piled with refuse
and stained black by countless fires. Many of the higher caves were sealed off
by giant boulders, and many more still had collapsed. Raif wondered how long it
had taken to create such a place. It must have taken some kind of inspired
madness to build a city on the edge of an abyss.
The frost-eaten swordsman followed Raif’s gaze. “No one lives up high
since the east face collapsed,” he said, nodding toward the buckled and contorted
terraces in the far east of the city. “We lost two hundred that day.”
Raif nodded slowly. He would have liked to ask about their numbers now,
for it was impossible to gauge how many Maimed Men lived here, but he judged
his chances of getting an answer as low. Stillborn had warned him you never got
anything from a Maimed Man unless you gave him something first.
In silence they crossed the main terrace of the city, heading for a stone
stair that led to the level above. Raif was aware of many gazes upon him as he
walked. Old men watched him from the shade. Hard-
ened warriors stepped out of their caves to stare him down, and groups
of tired-looking women paused by their cook fires as he passed. By the time
he’d reached the stair he’d gathered quite a following. Children mostly, a band
of sullen-faced youths who bounced stones in their fists, and a handful of
young girls who thought it amusing to dart forward and poke him and then run
away.
With a sizable crew at his back, the swordsman judged it safe to take
the lead up the winding stair. Raif followed him. As the stair spiraled through
the cliff face he got a spectacular view across the Rift. Birds swooped in
flight two hundred feet below him. The purple mounds of the Copper Hills
shimmered on the horizon against a sky blushed pink with dawn. The clanholds.
Strange that he could be so close to them yet feel farther away than he had in
the land of the Ice Trappers. The Rift was probably seven hundred paces across
at its widest point, yet it might as well have been a thousand leagues, so
absolutely did the crack in the continent separate the clanholds from the
Badlands in this place.
The Lost Clan lay directly to the south, what was left of it. The
clanhold itself had been claimed by Dhoone, then contested by Bludd and
Wellhouse in the War of the Three Clans. Raif wasn’t sure how the borders sat
now, but Tern had once told him that no clan who claimed the territory of extinct
Clan Morrow got any joy from it. The lands and forests surrounding the razed
roundhouse would yield neither crops nor game.
Raif raised his hand to his throat and touched his lore. No clansman could
name Clan Morrow—even in his thoughts—without showing due respect.
“Take your hand from your lore.”
Raif looked up at the sound of the voice to see Stillborn awaiting him
at the top of the stair. The Maimed Man looked well rested, and had changed
from his travel clothes into dressed skins edged with rat fur and a
rat-and-coon-fur kilt. The Forsworn sword hung from his waist, and if the gleam
of its crosshilt was anything to be judged by the weapon had been expertly
ground and polished. Even the grip had been remounted, and the piece of rough
sealskin Raif had wrapped around the hilt had been replaced by oiled and cross-
hatched leather. Seeing the hiltwork so splendidly finished, Raif
thought he’d like to have the sword back. Right about now any weapon would have been a relief.
Maimed Men had gathered in numbers to watch the contest. The High
Mantle was a massive ledge of pale green rimrock, stretching from the west of
the city to the caved-in terraces in the east, and extending out over the cliff
face thirty feet. The crowd was double what it had been last night, and still
growing, as men lowered themselves on ropes and hoists and crossed swaying
bridges to join it. The central lane of the ledge was clear of people, and a
series of man-high wooden beehives had been placed along the lane at various
lengths. Targets. Raif forced his gaze to travel away from them without
reacting. A little beyond the targets and closer to the cliff face, a second,
smaller group of people had gathered around a stacked cook fire. A whole hog,
snout, hooves and all, was spitted above the flames.
It was to be a festival then. With him as the mummers’ show.
“I said take your hand off your lore.
They won’t love you for reminding them that you’re clan and they’re not.”
Raif obeyed Stillborn’s hissed order, but not before a few sharp eyes
in the crowd had seen the blackened piece of bird ivory that was his raven
lore.
The frost-eaten swordsman began leading Raif forward, but Stillborn put
out a muscled forearm to halt him. “I’ll take it from here, Wex.” Without
waiting for the man to agree, Stillborn guided Raif away from the stair and led
him toward the cleared lane where a small body of men waited.
“Right,” Stillborn said as soon as he and Raif were out of earshot.
“This ain’t gonna be pretty. Tanjo’s the best archer amongst us, but he’s
arrogant and liable to underjudge an opponent. Play possum if you can, make him
think he doesn’t have to try too hard to beat you.” Stillborn gave Raif a quick
appraisal. “It’s probably your best chance.”
Raif could find little to be heartened by in this statement, but
Stillborn was looking at him expectantly, so he nodded.
“And another thing.” Stillborn lowered his voice as they approached the
meet party. “You’ll be offered a choice of bows. Pick careful now, as that fat
bastard Yustaffa laid them out. And the only thing you need to know about him
is that he’d stick out a foot to trip his own mother if he thought he’d get
away with it.“ The Maimed Man began moving away from him. ”Shoot true. And
mayhap the touch of the Stone Gods’ll reach out across the Rift.“
Raif shivered. He did not welcome the touch of any god.
“Aah. Here he is, Raif Twelve Kill. Is he a white-winter warrior as he
claims, or just an impostor with a quick tongue and no bow?” Yustaffa, newly
resplendent in a tunic of bronzed leather inset with panels of saffron-dyed
fleece, heralded Raif’s arrival to the crowd. “Only the test of arrows will
tell. An arrow cannot lie. A bow will break if it’s bent too fast. If our
visitor speaks true then the proof will be found in the distance between his
arrows and the bull. If he speaks false may he go to the Rift.”
The crowd murmured restlessly as Raif walked through them. They were
dressed in a strange motley of dressed skins, foreign-made armaments and city
finery. The men wore mismatched pieces of armor: wooden knuckle mitts,
articulated steel greaves, hornmail, ringmail, pothelms, spikehelms, metal
plate, boiled leather, coats of shell and bone. One man wore a fantastic spiked
and hooded great-cloak that clicked as it rose in the breeze. Some of the women
were armored too, but most wore furs or skins over shabby woolen skirts. Trade
in women’s dresses must be slow.
A low-breasted hag near the front hissed at him. Raif ignored her, but
found his attention drawn to the young woman she was standing next to. The girl
was heavily pregnant. A slab of slate had been strapped high on. her belly,
pressing upon the bulge that was her unborn child. Latening. Raif shivered. He’d heard of the practice of
slowing an unborn child’s development by bringing weight to bear upon the
fetus, but he’d never thought to see it until now. Clan had done it at one
time, it was said, during the Great Settlement when no mother wanted to bring a
child into the world whilst the Wars of Apportionment were being fought.
The woman cursed him as he passed. Raif accepted her words without
reacting: He didn’t know what else to do.
Yustaffa smiled gaily as Raif approached the clearing. “Hope you like
the name,“ he confided. ”I thought of it myself. More numbers than Tanjo—it’s
sure to get him riled.“
Raif let Yustaffa’s words slide over him. Already something was
changing within him, responding to the hostility of the crowd and the challenge
that was to come. He would not let these people affect him.
Standing some way back, close to the crowd yet set apart, stood the
small, dark figure of Traggis Mole. In the light of day Raif could see the
drill holes in his wooden nose. The Robber Chief watched the proceedings in
silence, holding himself uncannily still, only moving what it took to breathe
and see. All felt his presence, Raif was sure of it, for the Maimed Men seemed
to turn around him like a wheel around its axis. Traggis was aware of Raif’s
attention from the moment Raif’s gaze swung toward him, and his own gaze
snapped back with such force that Raif almost flinched. For a moment he knew
what it would be like to have Traggis Mole attack him, saw blood spraying from
his nose and eyes at the blinding speed of the Robber Chief’s first strike.
Suddenly the crowd began to cheer, and the image fled. Raif hoped never
to see it again.
“Here he comes!” Yustaffa proclaimed in a voice pitched to soar above
the crowd. “The finest archer ever to loose an arrow in the Rift. Once shield
to the Emperor of Sankang across the Unholy Sea, youngest man ever to send an
arrow through the Eye of Mount Somi, slayer of two hundred on Blue Yak Field,
archer-assassin of Isalora Mokko, the Glittering Whore, and taker of first
blood from the Great Gray Wolf of the Rift: Tanjo Ten Arrow!”
Maimed Men roared. The crowd peeled apart to let the archer pass, and
Tanjo Ten Arrow walked into the clearing.
CHAPTER
A Test of Arrows
Burned was Raif’s first thought. Tanjo Ten Arrow’s face
was mottled pink and tan, inhumanly smooth in parts and hideously seamed in
others. The whole left side of his brow was stretched and shiny, the scalp
oddly puckered and out of alignment. Patches of missing hair revealed ring
scars where blood blisters had once formed.
Raif recalled the old Hailsman Audie Stroon. Drunk one night in the
Great Hearth and bickering with his wife, Audie had reached for a jug of ale on
the mantel but had seized upon a pitcher of lamp oil instead. As he raised the
pitcher to his mouth, a spark from the fire caught him and lamp oil ignited in
his face. Clansmen had rushed to smother him with bear hides, and the flames
were snuffed within seconds. But later, when time came to pull the hides away,
Audie’s skin peeled right off with them. Heat had fused it to the hides. Audie
lived for a year, but by all accounts it wasn’t a happy one, for when he wasn’t
in pain from the burns, he was suffering the revulsion of the clan.
Revulsion. That had to be part of Tanjo Ten Arrow’s story,
but not all of it. A master archer did not end up in a place like this unless
he’d run out of choices.
Raif glanced quickly at Yustaffa, who was presenting Tanjo Ten Arrow to
the crowd with the oily glee of a pimp displaying his whore. How much of what
he said could be trusted? Raif had never heard of Sankang or Mount Somi. Clan
had no knowledge of what lay beyond the Unholy Sea, and what little Raif knew
had come from Angus Lok.
Tanjo Ten Arrow himself was slender and finely boned, with the spare
muscle of a man who knew shooting sticks was as much about concentration as
strength. The unburned portions of his skin were a color somewhere between
copper and olive, and they gleamed from a combination of hairlessness and
rubbed oil. His scalp hair was black and straight, and his eyes were the color
of dark plums. They were striking, his eyes, elegant and elongated, with the
cool and focused gaze of a bird of prey.
Coming to stand in the clearing he bowed low from the waist, never once
taking his eyes off Raif. Ten arrows were inserted into the stiff silk sash
that was bound high around his chest and rib cage, making it seem as if he had
been shot in the back many times. Snow-goose feathers fletched all ten arrows,
and the shafts had been expertly tapered toward the nock and then lacquered to
a brilliant red. Grass cords dyed the same color bound Tanjo’s topknot into fat
beads of hair. No effort had been taken to disguise the burned portions of his
scalp, and strands of black hair lay taut over scalded flesh.
Raif bowed to him. For a moment they were alone, an island of unmoving
calm in the noisy and restless sea of the crowd. Seconds earlier, Raif had
doubted the claims Yustaffa had made on Tanjo Ten Arrow’s behalf, but now he
wasn’t so sure. This man before him stood with the poise and self-assurance of
someone who had achieved great things.
“Archers,” Yustaffa said, bowing his head first to Tanjo and then to
Raif. “To your bows, and let the contest begin.”
Raif was the first to break eye contact. Tanjo Ten Arrow’s gaze was
steady and piercing, and Raif recognized the man’s will to win even in the matter
of outstaring his opponent. It should have been a small thing to concede, but
it felt like more. First
round to Tanjo Ten Arrow.
Yustaffa beckoned imperiously, signaling a young boy to come forward
wheeling a cloth-covered cart. The crowd quieted in anticipation as Yustaffa’s
chubby fingers descended upon the stained yellow oilcloth. “Raif Twelve Kill
comes to us with neither bow nor the means to beget one. Therefore, / have
agreed to supply him with a choice of three.” There was a pause while Yustaffa
accepted the gratitude of the crowd. Then, “Choose well, Orrlsman, for while a
good bow cannot make an archer, a bad bow can destroy one.”
With great flourish, Yustaffa pulled back the cloth.
Three bows, already strung, lay side by side on oaken boards. A Far
South recurve. A clan yew wood. An elm flatbow. One built, and two self. The
recurve was built, made of horn and sinew glued onto a wood frame. The other
two were self bows, cut from single staves. The clan yew drew Raif’s eye first.
Drey had one similar; kiln-dried and hand-tillered, cut whip-thin to bend like
a whalebone in the hand. The last time Raif could recall seeing it was the day
Tern died. Abruptly, he switched his gaze to the elm flatbow. The elm was thick
and sturdy, board-cut, and a few hands short of a true longbow. It was the
weapon of cragsmen and herdsmen; reliable and unlikely to break, capable of
firing an arrow with enough heft to stop a rushing wolf in its tracks. But it
was not a bow made for distance. The Far South recurve was. Light and wickedly curved, its oxhorn belly was
dimpled in the center to form the shape known as “two hills.” Raif recalled
Bailie the Red once saying that such bows were used by the warrior hordes who’d
invaded the vast grasslands of the Far South. Bailie had never been one for
lauding foreigners, but he had respect for the men who drew two-hill recurves.
“They know how to make an arrow fly,” he’d said once, grudgingly. For him it
was high praise.
Which to choose? Flatbow, longbow, or recurve?
Raif glanced quickly at Yustaffa. The fat man was ready for him, his
palms raised skyward in a showy pantomime of / can’t possibly give anything away.
A second glance at Tanjo Ten Arrow showed the burned man accepting
charge of his own weapon from a small child who had the look of his son. The
boy bowed formally as he offered the six-foot longbow to his father on a
cushion of tasseled and embroidered sil He was beautiful, the child,
smooth-skinned and somber-face with the large watchful eyes of someone eager to
learn. His rig earlobe had been expertly excised, leaving a half-moon scar in
tl place where jaw met skull. Raif recognized the scar for what it wa a mercy
cut. If a father didn’t take a pound of flesh from his soi someone else might
take more later. You couldn’t trust a Maime Man around a whole child.
All thoughts fled Raif’s mind as he set eyes upon Tanjo Te Arrow’s bow.
The weapon was built, made of wafer-thin layers o wood and horn laid down in
alternating strips. Thin as a reed an< barely recurved, it had the slightest
suggestion of ears as the tip flared outward to accept the string. Its belly
was stained deep blue and designs in a milky shade of silver had been stamped
below the riser.
A Sull bow.
Raif felt an odd fluttering in his stomach. He wanted that bow. It was
finer and more beautifully worked than the one Angus Lok had given him, the one
he’d lost on the southern slopes of the Bitter Hills. Almost he knew how it
would feel to draw it, the extreme tension in the string, the tick of wood and
horn as the belly flexed within his grip. For a brief moment he imagined
setting the arrow Divining Rod against its plate and releasing the string....
A dizzying sense of displacement made him stagger forward, and he had
to thrust a hand against the cart yoke to stop himself from falling. Pain from
his halved finger cut through his thoughts. Something, a sense of knowledge
almost gained or a future almost glimpsed, fled from him like a small animal at
night.
Behind him, Maimed Men were drawing breaths and murmuring softly. All
had seen him falter, and Raif could not tell if this pleased or disgusted them,
just that it excited them in the way that the first drop of blood excited a
hunter. The Orrlsman was on the run.
Ignoring them, he focused his attention on the three bows. Flatbow.
Longbow. Recurve. The yew longbow was the obvious choice; Yustaffa had to know
that as a clansman it would be the one he was drawn to first. The recurve was
the most valuable and showy, and would probably be the favorite of the crowd,
but Raif didn’t like the look of the memory marks on the wood backing. Some
looked deep enough to split. That left the elm flatbow. A workhorse, but
nothing to excite a distance shooter. Reluctantly, Raif moved his hand toward
it.
As he did so, he became aware of Yustaffa stilling at his side. The fat man’s dark eyes glittered as
his breath hung, unexhaled, in his mouth.
He
wants me to pic’t it, Raif knew with sudden certainty. He guessed how my mind would wor’t, and betted Yd
reject the two superior bows.
Raif let his hand hover above the flatbow as he studied the wood.
Smooth, well-oiled elm met his gaze. But there. A sunken knot on the back of
the bow, partially concealed by the skin-wrapped grip. Bailie the Red called
such knots doom holes and said any bow made with such flawed wood would break
sooner or later. Looking at it, Raif thought he detected a series of tiny
indents around the edge of the knot. Yustaffa had been busy with a needle.
Smoothly Raif pushed his hand from the flatbow and let it fall upon the
yew longbow instead. The slight shrinking of the fat man’s lips told Raif all
he needed to know. Beat you,
Yustaffa.
Now all he had to do was beat Tanjo Ten Arrow.
“The choice is made!” Yustaffa proclaimed, easily regaining his good
humor as he motioned for the cart to be redrawn. “Archers. Prepare to take
practice shots.”
Tanjo Ten Arrow’s son moved behind his father, drawing back Tanjo’s
short archer’s cape and fastening it so that it lay flat against his back like
a beetle’s wings. Tanjo ran two fingers down the Sull bowstring, warming the
twine and checking its tension. Two rabbits’ tails had been fastened to the
twine to silence recoil.
Raif unhooked his own cloak, noticing as he did so the brief flash of
interest in Tanjo Ten Arrow’s cool, alien eyes. Always the Orris-man’s cloak
made men look. Thoughtful, Raif tested the bend of the yew longbow. He was
relieved when a bowcase containing five dozen arrows was placed at his feet by
a tiny, ancient bowman who caused Yustaffa to frown. Good. That meant the fat
man had not been given a chance to interfere with the arrows.
While Raif was making last-minute preparations, the meet party edged
back, giving both contestants room to draw. Yustaffa was last to go, directing
a young boy to snap the chalk line that would form the starting mark.
All was quiet except for the wind. Raif and Tanjo Ten Arrow stood eight
feet apart, bowcases at their feet, bows rising like ship’s masts at their
sides. The rising sun sent shadows slanting westward over the Rift. Light shone
on the wooden beehives, illuminating the red bull’s-eyes painted at the height
of human hearts. Yustaffa was addressing the crowd, explaining how the contest
would proceed, but Raif had little patience for his words. Fear and
anticipation mingled in his blood, making him quiver with nervous force. His
stomach sucked against his spine as he filled his lungs with air. How am I going to do this?
“Archers. Take your practice shots.”
Even before Raif slid his first arrow from the case, Tanjo Ten Arrow
was already firing. The burned man was a blur of movement, pulling the
decorated arrows from his sash one by one and firing them high into the air. As
Raif knocked his first arrow the count began:
“One!” chanted the crowd.
“Two!”
“Three!”
By the time the crowd called “Four!” Raif realized how Tanjo Ten Arrow
had won his name. He meant to send all ten arrows into the air before the first
one landed. And he was going to do it, too. Raif had never seen anyone shoot so
fast in his life. Tanjo’s arms dropped and pulled, dropped and pulled, with the
speed and efficiency of a war engine. The arrows cut air, whistling softly as
they shot toward the target. Tanjo had taken the headwind into account, and
angled his arrows slightly northwest of the first beehive, letting the strong
southern current correct their flights. The updraft from the Rift aided him,
for he had chosen a moment when the thermals were rising and they buoyed each
arrow, keeping it in the air for precious seconds longer.
“Eight!”
“Nine!”
“Ten!”
Thun’t. The first arrow hit the
beehive as the tenth cleared the riser. The crowd erupted into a frenzy of
cheering and stamping their feet. Thun’t, thun’t, thun’t... It went on as each of the remaining arrows
pierced wood.
Tanjo Ten Arrow stood very still, his bow edge resting against the
rimrock, his burned head held high and his gaze upon the target. He heard the
appreciation of the crowd but in no way responded to it. The only sign that he
had pushed his body hard was the fierce flaring of his nostrils as he expelled
air.
Raif watched as the last of the arrows entered the wooden beehive. None
of them had hit the bull’s-eye or even the inner circle, but that wasn’t really
the point. Undermining your opponent’s confidence was. No bowman could watch
such a display of shooting and remain unaffected. There was true skill here.
Tanjo Ten Arrow had been touched by a god.
Perhaps that was why he’d been burned.
As the crowd quieted and Yustaffa heaped ever more fantastic praises
upon Tanjo Ten Arrow’s head, Raif drew the yew longbow. Pain in his little
finger sounded sharply as he braced the bow with his damaged left hand and
pulled the string to his cheek with his right. It didn’t matter. It was as if
he had never stopped firing arrows at all, so quickly did the discipline of eye
and hand return to him. How long had it been? Half a winter ago? Yet it felt
like no time at all. The muscles in his shoulders felt stiff, but it was a good
stiffness, a reminder that they were the source of the bow’s power and though
they hadn’t been used in many months they hadn’t forgotten their role.
Then everything fell away. Raif’s eye fixed on the target, the red
bull’s-eye as big as an apple a hundred paces to the west. It was the heart.
All archery targets were the heart. They might be circles or crosses or even
cabbages lined up on a fence: To a bowman they were always the heart.
Raif did not attempt to call
the target to him. It was dead wood and there was nothing but fresh air and
then a second target a hundred paces behind it; there was no life or heart to
respond to his call. Instead he forced his mind to focus on the target, sending
an invisible thread from the hole in his eye to dead center of the bull. A
fisherman casting a line. The circle came into sharp relief, and when the
redness filled his vision he released the string.
The soft thwang of the recoil was all he heard
for a moment. Unlike Tanjo Ten Arrow, he hadn’t made a large adjustment for the
wind. His arrow traveled close to the ground, where the worst of the headwind
couldn’t catch it. The thermals were another matter, and lacking the ability to
judge them he had simply waited until there was a break in the updraft.
Besides, he told himself stubbornly, this was just a practice shot: It
didn’t really matter either way.
Thun’t. The arrow hit. Speckled hawk
feathers blew wildly as the arrow shaft vibrated. The iron head had sunk deep
into the pitch-soaked pine of the beehive .. . incredibly, miraculously,
grazing the edge of the bull.
Maimed Men jeered. Yustaffa started up again, fluting praises to the
lone Orrlsman, Raif Twelve Kill. Raif would have liked to punch him. Far beyond
the target lane, two women began to turn the iron spit that suspended the whole
hog above the cook fire. Raif smelled the fatty, meaty aroma of roasting pork
as he accepted the hostility of the crowd. Like Tanjo Ten Arrow before him, he
willed himself not to react. He didn’t want to betray his own amazement at the
practice shot. Let them think he placed arrows like that every day.
Two men on the fringes of the crowd were watching him intently. Raif
turned his head minutely and met gazes with Stillborn. The great, thick-necked
Maimed Man nodded enthusiastically, his eyebrows up and working. Briefly, Raif
wondered what had possessed Stillborn to befriend him. True, he had stolen
Raif’s kill, his sword and his named arrow, yet Raif still thought of the
Maimed Man as a friend. He was the only man here who wanted to see him win.
Traggis Mole did not.
The Robber Chief was the second man watching Raif intently. He hadn’t
seemed to move all the time Raif had stood on the rim-rock, yet something
behind his eyes had changed. He had not liked Raif’s shot, but there was more.
Out of a crowd of perhaps eight hundred, he was the only one who saw it for
what it was. A lucky hit. Do
it again, Orrlsman, his eyes seemed to say. / dare you.
Raif swallowed, then looked away. The crowd had grown quiet again as
Tanjo Ten Arrow prepared for his first official shot. The same boy who’d
wheeled the handcart was kneeling before the beehive, tugging the practice
arrows from the face of the target. Pitch oozed from the holes.
“You have killed wolf.”
Raif’s head turned at the sound of Tanjo Ten Arrow’s voice. The burned
man spoke in low tones, fired as expertly as his arrows. The words were for
Raif’s ears alone. And they were not a question.
Righting his gaze on the targets once more, Raif asked, “What makes you
say such a thing?”
Tanjo slid an arrow from his bowcase and knocked it. “Your eyes. The
wolf is in them.”
Raif thought of the great ice wolf, Pack Leader, spitted on a willow
staff that had sundered its heart. He closed his eyes for a moment, reliving
that final, desperate blow. Ash’s life had depended upon it.
“Kill a wolf, and the gods look up.” Tanjo Ten Arrow released the
string, sending a lacquered arrow high into the air. Snow-goose feathers caught
glacial winds blowing south from the Want, and used them to bend the flight of
the arrow as surely as if they were still attached to the bird. Thun’t. The arrow landed in the bull, a fraction short of
dead center. “Kill a wolf with a blow to the heart, and the gods make play with
your fate.”
Raif kept his face still. Words, just words. The burned man was trying
to throw his concentration. He took several deep breaths, then slid his own
arrow from its case. As he fitted the string into the arrow’s nock, he
remembered something Yustaffa had said. Not taking his eye from the bull he
murmured, “How about a wager, Tanjo? Just you and me ?”
Tanjo Ten Arrow was silent. Raif could not see him, but he felt the
burned man’s interest. After a moment, Tanjo said, “Name what you would have.”
“Your bow.”
Two words, and Raif knew he had spoken them too quickly and given away
exactly how deeply he desired the Sull bow. At his side, Tanjo Ten Arrow was
very still. Seconds passed. Raif gripped both arrow and string and pulled the
yew longbow to fall draw. Only when he reached full tension did Tanjo speak.
Raif was prepared for it and held his draw. Let the burned man try to distract
him. Let him try.
“What do you offer in return?” Tanjo Ten Arrow spoke Common with the
solemn precision of someone who had learned it as a second tongue, and it was
hard for Raif to gauge the level of his interest.
Dancing
ice. That’s
what Angus called it when his horse carried Ash to safety over the frozen
waters of the Black Spill. Raif felt he was doing the same here, negotiating
with Tanjo Ten Arrow. It was a dance, and timing was everything. The
negotiation must be completed before he released his first shot, while Tanjo’s
arrow was the only one in the bull. The burned man would not risk wagering his
bow if he thought there was a chance he could lose it.
“The Orrl cloak.” Raif made a brief motion with his head, indicating
the cleared area behind him where the iridescent blue-white cloak lay fanned
out upon the rimrock. It was a worthy prize, a treasure for any man who hunted
in snow and ice. But for a bowman, nothing was more precious than his bow.
It was hard to hold the draw while he waited to hear Tanjo’s response.
Raif’s shoulder muscles began to quiver and his thumb and bowfinger whitened as
the pressure drove blood out. Tanjo saw this, and Raif swore the burned man
counted to a hundred before declaring, “Done.”
Raif released the string.
The arrow shot from the plate, delivering a recoil that sent the bow
snapping against his bandaged finger. Wincing, he did not see where his arrow
landed. The pain was so fierce he hardly cared.
The crowd told him what his eyes did not. The women hissed, and the men
muttered in dissatisfaction. Yustaffa issued a throaty sigh, enjoying himself
immensely. Raif’s arrow was in the bull. This was starting to get interesting.
As the cart boy ran forward to measure and retrieve the arrows, Raif
glanced at Tanjo Ten Arrow. The man showed only his profile to Raif, his gaze
cast far in the distance. Burned skin twitched once, then was still.
When the cart boy was finished with the measuring stick he signaled to
Yustaffa.
“Raif Twelve Kill has it!”
pronounced the fat man, his face reddening with excitement. “He wins first shot
by a margin of—what, boy?”
The boy held the measuring stick above his head. Made of a hollow reed
and seared with marks at short intervals, the stick resembled a flute. Grubby
fingers marked the spot. “Two notches.”
Raif did not expect what happened next. Tanjo Ten Arrow turned to him
and bowed so low that the tail of his topknot touched rimrock. When he
straightened his spine Raif saw he was smiling. Like a shark. “And now we will
see who the true master is.”
Raif could prevent his muscles from reacting, but he had no power over
the blood leaving his face. He’d been so pleased at foiling Yustaffa’s attempt
to trick him that he’d not realized he was being tricked by someone else. Tanjo
Ten Arrow’s first shot had been a fake.
Tanjo seemed well satisfied. In a single, elegant sweep he slid an
arrow from his bowcase and fitted it to his bow. Barely waiting for the cart
boy to clear the target, Tanjo let his arrow fly. Thun’t. Dead center of the bull.
Oh
gods. Raif
barely registered the cheering of the crowd. At the far edge of his vision he
saw Traggis Mole move. A small motion, executed with enough speed to defy the
eye, delivered his right hand to the hilt of his knife. / won’t see the blow that trills me.
Raif nocked his second arrow. He felt his concentration alight like a
fly upon the bow. The slightest thing would send it elsewhere. Best be done
with the shot quickly, while the bull was in his sights and before his arms
began to shake.
The moment his fingers released the string he knew he’d made a mistake.
The bow recoiled dully, the twine flapping loosely against the riser. A puff of
wind on the underside of his chin told him the updrafts were rising, and his
arrow was lofted into the path of the southern headwinds. Raif dropped his
gaze. Turbulence was making the arrowshaft wobble, and he didn’t need to see it
complete its flight to know it was going wide.
Thun’t. Cheering erupted for Tanjo Ten
Arrow. Raif stared at the rimrock beneath his feet, waiting to hear the sound
of the cart boy pulling arrows from the beehive. The next shot would be the
final one at this target. Winning the first round was not vital to winning the
contest, but Raif had watched enough archery contests to know that once you
started losing it was hard to stop. He breathed hard, trying to settle his
thoughts. At his side he was aware of Tanjo Ten Arrow scratching an imagined
defect from his bow with fingernails as long as waxed beans.
The third arrow Tanjo fired entered the hole made by his second. Pitch
sprayed into the air, spattering rimrock and trickling down the target like
cold syrup. Raif set his sights on the white snow-goose feathers, protruding
from the center of the bull. The updrafts rose and dropped, and then Raif
released the string.
The shot was good, and the arrow landed within the bull, but it was
wide of dead center where Tanjo’s arrow stood upright like a needle on a sundial.
Maimed Men cheered as Yustaffa pronounced the burned man the winner of the
first round. A handful of small children rushed into the archery lane to help
wheel off the first beehive, clearing the way to the second target. The second
beehive was set at a distance of two hundred paces, the bull nothing more than
a dot in Raif’s sights.
Clay pots of beer and trays piled high with greasy oatcakes and whole
roast onions were distributed amongst the crowd during the lull. Women around
the hog fire rolled up their sleeves and loosened the strings on their bodices
as the heat from the flames made them sweat. The hog was black now, its outer
skin cracked and flaking. When one of the women pierced its belly with a
pitchfork a fountain of juices spurted forth. Raif looked away. The festivities
left him cold. He was anxious to begin the second round, and every extra minute
he had to wait was torture. Nervously, he ran a hand down the yew longbow. At a
hundred paces an archer could shoot straight.
At two hundred paces he needed height. There’d be no avoiding the
headwind this time.
“Archers. Take your practice shots.”
Raif was ready with his arrow, and he didn’t wait to see if Tanjo was about
to launch another ten-shot spectacle. Quickly, he fired an exploratory arrow
high into the air. The wind caught it and gently curved its flight southward,
sending the head into the far edge of the beehive, a good two hands wide of the
bull. Raif exhaled in relief. At
least I didn’t miss.
Tanjo Ten Arrow chose to launch only one practice arrow, expertly
pitched to exploit the wind. Even from two hundred paces Raif heard the
satisfying thun’t of an arrow piercing the hollow
center of the bull.
“I think I will enjoy wearing your cloak, Clansman,” Tanjo said as he
relaxed his grip on the Sull bow. “It should bring me much luck in the hunt.”
Raif had no reply for him. He was running out of shots and time. He
knew he was a good bowman, but it would take a master archer like Bailie the
Red to match arrows with the burned man. He’d thought the extra hundred paces
might even things out between them, but Tanjo’s last shot had proved him wrong.
His only hope now was blind luck.
Tanjo made his next shot easily, placing his arrow a fraction high of
dead center. Raif almost matched him, and hawk feathers and snow-goose feathers
scissored together the arrows landed so close. Yustaffa did a little dance of
glee as he waited for the cart boy to make the call. Raif wondered how much the
fat man had wagered on Tanjo’s head.
The next two shots went quickly. Both Raif’s arrows placed well—one
firmly in the bull and the other grazing its rim—but Tanjo’s arrows were
better.
By now the crowd was going wild. “Tan-Jo!” they shrieked. “Tan-Jo! Tan-Jo!” Much ale had been drunk, and Maimed Men were
pressing close on all sides. Raif could smell them and see their weapons. The
pregnant woman with the slate bound to her chest looked at him and sneered. “Be
a long, cold night in the Rift.”
The
Gate to Hell.
Raif shuddered as Yustaffa’s words came back to him. From where he stood,
twenty paces from the edge of the rim-rock, he couldn’t see the vast gap in the
earth. The sky above was a clear and perfect blue, and the only sign that the
world wasn’t right here was the sun. It shone too pale and small, and all its
warmth and half its light was swallowed by the Rift. Why send men over the
edge? Dead or alive, what good did it do?
Raif barely heard the sound of the second beehive being wheeled away.
The third and final beehive was the largest of the three. Built from
pine boards, it was drum-shaped and tall as a horse. It had to be. At three
hundred paces few archers sought to strike a man. Most would be happy to clip a
rider’s mount. Still, the bull’s-eye was there, a red circle at the height of a
stallion’s heart.
Beyond the target, the hog fire roared as pork fat fueled the flames.
Raif found it hard to center himself on the bull. Archery contests were all
about the final round. Win here, and he could steal a victory from Tanjo. It
wasn’t going to be easy, though. The headwind was gusting now, and more
difficult to gauge for it. The distance between archer and target was so great
that the bull was the merest fleck of red in the distance. Raif glanced at
Tanjo. The burned man was keenly focused on the target, the damaged skin around
his eyes pulling taut as he squinted.
Practice shots were taken, and for the first time Raif got the sense
that Tanjo’s arrow was exploring, rather than homing. The burned man fired his
arrow a few degrees short of vertical, and the headwinds fought its arc and
robbed power from it. The arrow landed on the face of the target, a good three
foot below the bull. The crowd murmured their surprise. Tanjo’s shot had fallen
short. Raif was quick to correct Tanjo’s error, and angled his bow lower and
drew more power behind it, straining the twine until it hummed. His arrow
landed high, making a solid thun’t as it entered the beehive, demonstrating
it still had power to spare. Someone in the crowd cheered. Probably Stillborn.
Raif almost grinned. It took jaw to cheer a hated man. The next shot
went better for Tanjo, but in his eagerness to counter his opponent’s show of
strength, he overpowered his arrow,
blasting it from the plate. Like Raif’s arrow seconds earlier, Tanjo’s
landed high, missing the bull by a handspan. For a shot taken at three hundred
paces it was remarkable, but Tanjo Ten Arrow took no joy from it. The burned man
clenched his fist and sent a look of cold hatred to Raif.
Raif thought he was probably going mad, for that look filled him with
hope. With an easy hand he drew his bow, squinting to set the faraway target in
his sights. Lightly, he released the string, and watched as his arrow battled
headwinds and updrafts to land on the rim of the bull.
Malign energy rippled through the Maimed Men like a storm-cloud passing
overhead. Raif felt their dark looks and ill mutterings like mosquitoes landing
to feed. They would have harmed him then and there if it hadn’t been for the
unmoving presence of Traggis Mole. The Robber Chief seemed to control the crowd
by the act of stillness. No one wanted to be the first to make him move.
“First shot to Raif Twelve Kill!” cried Yustaffa, breaking the tension
by fanning a chubby hand beneath his chin as if the air had suddenly become
very hot. “Two more shots left. May the gods help me survive them.”
Tanjo Ten Arrow ignored the fat man’s theatrics, and slowly pulled his
bow. He’d won the first two rounds, but the third counted for more. If Raif
were to win here there’d be a tie, and a fourth target would be set. Waiting
for a break in the wind, Tanjo held the Sull recurve at full draw as easily as
if it were a child’s first bow. The jade bowring he used to protect his long
fingernails glinted in the rising sun. When the release came it was so quiet on
the rimrock you could hear the arrow fly. Raif knew straightaway the shot was
good, but he didn’t realize how good until his eyes far-focused on the
target... and saw the arrow enter the red territory of the bull. It wasn’t dead
center, but it was close enough to send gasps of amazement through the crowd.
Raif forced a calmness he did not feel upon his face. Any man who could
make a shot like that was worthy of respect, but he knew he couldn’t afford to
admire Tanjo Ten Arrow. You had to hate a man who had the power to deprive you
of life. Raif plucked an arrow from his bowcase. A pulse had started throbbing
in his neck, and it seemed to him that there were too many calls upon his
thoughts. As he sighted his arrow he waited for the calm to come. Strangely,
all winds had dropped and for the first time since he had awakened he heard the
sound of the city itself. It groaned. Deep within its hand-hewn caverns bedrock
was moving. Low wails and barely audible creaks rose from the hollow orbits of
its many caves, making a sound like something tearing open.
A memory came to Raif unbidden, the gas geysers exploding as he and Ash
approached Ice Trapper territory. The earth he walked on wasn’t stable anymore.
With the briefest kiss, he released the string. As he braced against
the recoil he realized he had held his draw too long and relaxed the tension
unwittingly, and the arrow sped forth underpowered. Angry at himself, he
watched as the arrow flew too low and reached its zenith too soon. Lazily, it
dropped to the foot of the target, barely carrying enough speed to pierce wood.
“Second shot to Tanjo Ten Arrow!”
A small satisfied smile briefly stretched the pink and tan skin of
Tanjo’s face. He did not look at Yustaffa or the cheering crowd, only Raif.
“Did you think I would let you win this, Clansman?” He lifted the Sull bow so
that it caught the light, causing the dyed horn to ripple like molten glass.
Silvery markings, which had shown only as faint lines earlier, suddenly leapt
into sharp relief: moon and stars. And a raven. A raven screaming at the night.
“I would die first.”
With that Tanjo Ten Arrow took his final shot. The arrow moved in the
exact same arc as his last one, almost as if it were following a trail. The
only difference was a fraction of extra pull to the right that guided the iron
head even closer to the center of bull.
Raif flinched as the arrow hit. Maimed Men began stamping rock with the
butts of their weapons and booted feet, chanting a word that it took him a
moment to understand. For an instant he thought they were calling his name and
he wondered what had happened to change their allegiance, but then he realized
they were speaking his death sentence instead.
“Rift! Rift! Rift!”
Grimly, Raif knocked his arrow. A sort of dark calm was descending upon
him, and the pulse in his neck began beating with the quiet force of a second
heart. He knew Death. He’d met her. Did they think they could scare him by
threatening to send him back?
The arrow flew hard from the plate. Whatever force had possessed Raif’s
body had transferred to the bow, and the recoil lashed against his hand. The pain
barely registered. He’d sent his arrow too high, and all its power was being
wasted as it climbed almost vertically toward the sky. Raif cursed himself. It
was all over. Arrows like that peaked and then fell. They were good for taking
an enemy’s eye out on the field, but not for hitting targets. Already the
Maimed Men were closing on him, their chant rising as the arrow dropped.
“Rift!
Rift! Rift!”
And then the updrafts rose. Suddenly the air moved, lifting cloak hems
and scalp hair and filling the women’s skirts until they puffed like bells.
Raif felt a drying warmth upon his eyeballs, and then his warrior’s queue
lifted from his shoulders like a pennant.
Invisible columns of force rose from the hole in the earth, making the
air ripple as if it were melting, and catching in the flight feathers of Raif’s
arrow. It happened in less than an instant, but to Raif it seemed as if he
watched the path of his arrow change over minutes. Air buoyed the shaft and
nudged the point upward, shifting the flight from a sheer drop to an arcing
fall. All was quiet for a moment as the arrow traveled westward on the
thermals. Eight hundred faces turned skyward. Breath was held. The updrafts
blew steadily for perhaps another second, and then died.
The arrow dropped with the wind.
Thun’t. Dead center of the bull.
Silence. A stillness possessed the Maimed Men. It was as if no one
wanted to be the first to move or speak into the void created by the receding
wind.
Defiantly, Raif rested his bow, causing the wood to tap against the
rock. He couldn’t understand what had just happened, but he sensed danger, and
he knew he would be a fool to show these men his fear. Steadying himself, he
turned to Yustaffa. “Announce the victor.”
All animation had drained from Yustaffa, leaving him looking fat and
charmless. His tunic strained at the seams, and grease in his overcoiffed hair
had attracted stray filaments from the arrows’ flight feathers. He cleared his
throat, and Raif did not miss the glance he sent to Traggis Mole before daring
to open his mouth. “Third and final round goes to Raif Twelve Kill.”
The crowd surged forward, mouths shrinking, fingers closing around air.
Someone threw a stone.
Yustaffa raised his palms skyward and rushed on, his voice almost
squeaking. “Now, Rift Brothers, we mustn’t be hasty. The contest isn’t done
yet. In the event of a tie we fall back on that most glorious and perilous
tradition: sudden death. Yes, my friends. Sudden death. One target, one shot
per man. Best shot wins.” Yustaffa swung his head back and forth, looking for
an appropriate target. Clearly, none had been arranged. No one had thought the
outsider could win.
Raif looked away. For some reason he found himself thinking of Ash.
Where was she this moment? Did she ever wonder if leaving him had been a
mistake? “Let them shoot the hog.”
The sharp, rough-edged voice of Traggis Mole brought him back. Raif
looked up to see the Robber Chief’s black gaze upon him, and he was almost glad
of it. Glad because it took his mind away from Ash.
Charged silence followed Traggis Mole’s words. Maimed Men eased back,
but did not appear eased. Their chief’s voice stirred them, and Raif could see
the need for violence in their eyes. They’re not clan. He’d been told it by Tern and Angus and a dozen other people he knew.
Three nights ago Stillborn had told him the same. Yet he’d listened without
truly hearing them. Now he knew they were right. The Maimed Men looked and
sounded like clan, most of them, but there were no gods living in this stone
city and there was nothing but shared desperation to bind it.
“I yield first shot to the clansman.” Tanjo Ten Arrow bowed to Raif as
he spoke, his face a mask of politeness as his shoulder blades sliced air.
Raif did not return the courtesy. It was a sham. The hog was perhaps
three hundred and fifty paces away, far wide of the central lane,
suspended above a snakepit of flames. Heat distorted the air, and smoke
clouded it. Tanjo had not relinquished first shot out of kindness. No practice
shots were allowed in sudden death. The man who loosed his arrow first would be
shooting blind. How much pull and height would be needed? Was the heat of the
fire great enough to affect the arrow’s flight? Any experienced bowman was capable
of making such judgments, but the decisions were that much easier when you
could learn by someone else’s mistakes. Tanjo had decided to stand back and let
Raif make some.
There was nothing to be done but shoot. Raif flexed the longbow and
waited for the women to clear the cook fire. The hog had been turned to present
its flank to the archers, and although the animal was large it was
winter-starved and bony. Raif wondered where it had come from, for Stillborn
had said the Maimed Men were short of meat. Did raid parties ride south and
seize livestock from tied clansmen? How did they cross the Rift?
He fitted an arrow to the longbow. The carcass was hideous. Heat had
shrunk the tendons, and all four limbs were raised and contracted. The tail
looked stiff enough for a child to swing on. The snout had split and split
again, and glimpses of steamed pink flesh could be seen beneath the char. Raif
tried not to shudder as he focused his gaze upon the flank.
Dead. Something deep inside him, in
the place where his brain fused with his spine, sparked darkly like a single
beam of moonlight moving across black water. Saliva whetted Raif’s mouth. The
cooked grey chambers of the hog’s heart sucked him in. Suddenly he couldn’t
breathe. He was surrounded by reeking flesh. Nothing of life remained here,
just a spongy mass of exploded cells, and arteries choked with boiled with
blood. Dead. And even though it was hot
inside the chamber, an immense and merciless coldness lay beneath. Waiting.
Fear squeezed Raif’s stomach. He had to get out of here. Now. Death was
moving closer, its tendrils uncurling like drifts of smoke as it reached out to
touch his mind. The Gate to
Hell. He could
feel it pulling him in; the sucking blackness of swamp water, the fumes and
taint of death. There was no bottom to the swamp, just a lifeless, eternal
void. Once he went under he’d never stop falling.
It wouldn’t let go. The hog’s heart was a sprung trap. He should never
have entered. A pumping heart was a force of nature. A still one was a portal
to death. And it pulled, itpulled him. Roaring filled his ears,
and his thoughts began to twist around themselves as the tow grew stronger. The
smell of cooked flesh faded, replaced by the sparkling blue odor of ice.
Shadows moved in the periphery of his vision. Something sighed. The weight of
corrupted flesh, soft and liquid with rot, bore him down.
Yet his mouth still watered, and deep within his brain stem something
quickened. He could feel his retinas dilating. This territory was known to him.
Coming here was like coming home.
Afterward he could not remember releasing the string. He recalled only
the shock of emerging from the darkness and the dizzying confusion of feeling
sunlight on his face. His breaths were coming hard and fast, and he felt the
iciness of the wind as keenly as if he were naked. He blinked like a man shaken
suddenly awake, and his eyes showed him a sight it took his mind several
moments to understand. A crowd of people, so still and silent they might have
been clothed statues, were staring beyond him to the spitted carcass. An arrow—
his arrow—was plunged deep into the
creature’s heart. The force of impact had split the crisped hide in a starburst
pattern, and flaps of black flesh blew in the breeze, curling back to reveal
the fatty hoops of the rib cage and a fist of shattered bone. It looked as if
someone had taken a hammer to the ribs that lay directly above the heart and
smashed them like pieces of pottery. The steaming grey mound of the hog’s heart
could be glimpsed beneath the shards. It had been split clean in two.
Raif swallowed. A sour taste was in his mouth. The yew longbow stood
upright in his grip like a staff, yet he had no memory of resting it. He
thought he should perhaps act—force Yustaffa to pronounce the shot good,
acknowledge the fearful quiet of the crowd with an easy wave of his hand, bow
smartly to Tanjo Ten Arrow and say, Your shot, I believe. Yet he couldn’t move.
Strangely, he recalled a tale Angus had once told him, of how the people
who wandered the hard, red desert of the Far South named their sons. The father
would choose a name, but tell no one, not even his wife, of his decision, and
the child would grow to manhood never knowing what his father had named him.
The son’s mother and siblings would call him by pet names until he became a man
strong enough and brave enough to challenge his father to a fight. The fights
were bloody, Angus said, for the pride of the desert men was a terrible thing,
and no father wanted to lose a fight to his son. To win the son must be
merciless and beat his father to the ground. Standing over his father, he must
say, / claim my name. Give
me what is mine.
And the name is spoken, and the son walks away leaving his father on the desert
floor for the women to tend to, and departs the camp to hunt. There is magic
that first night, Angus said, and animals will throw themselves onto the son’s
spear and the gods send visions to guide him.
Raif did not expect visions or animals lining up for the honor of being
killed by him. But still. / claim
my name.
Looking at the carcass, at the arrow splitting the cooked heart, Raif
knew that somehow he had claimed his name. Mor Dralfia. Watcher of the Dead. How many arrows had he sent
into beating hearts? He didn’t know. But this.. . this was the first arrow he’d
sent into a dead one.
He looked away, gazing down at the rimrock without seeing it. From what
seemed like a very great distance, he heard Yustaffa speak. “Well. A shot, a shot,
certainly a shot. Leaves a few less bones for Old Bessie to carve.” He made an
odd hiccuping sound. “Well. I suppose we’d better write an end to this. Tanjo.
When you’re ready.”
The crowd began stirring as Tanjo prepared to take his shot. Maimed Men
murmured, their leathers and metalwork creaking as they stretched numbed limbs
and worked cricks from their necks. Raif heard an arrow being fitted against
the plate, and looked up in time to see Tanjo draw his bow. Tanjo Ten Arrow’s
burned face was made golden by the morning light. The Sull bow shimmered with
power as it curved in his hands. Tanjo breathed once against the string and
then lifted the jade bowring clear of the bow.
The shot was beautiful, Raif would remember that for always: Tanjo’s release,
his perfect stance, the particular sound—the trill of the discharged arrow—that
said the shot was flawless. It flew high and then dropped like a hawk onto the
carcass. Almost it matched Raif’s arrow. Three hundred and fifty paces through
smoke and warped air, and it landed in the bulb-shaped aorta that exited the
hog’s heart.
Even before the Maimed Men had chance to react, Tanjo Ten Arrow turned
to Raif and bowed. Pride kept his face muscles taut as he straightened his
spine and held out the Sull bow. Out of the corner of his vision, Raif saw
Tanjo’s son weaving through the front row of the crowd, moving urgently toward
his father. Someone, a big fair-haired hunchback, put out a hand to halt him.
The boy kicked and fought, but the hunchback held him firm. An old hag near the
front handed the hunchback her wool cloak and bid him cover the child’s face.
Raif knew Tanjo Ten Arrow had to be aware of what was happening to his
son, but the burned man in no way reacted. His gaze held steady on Raif. “Take
the bow. It has served me well.”
Yustaffa had begun speaking, his voice rising in high drama, but Raif
did not hear the words. The Sull bow was no longer something he wanted, yet he
moved his hand toward it all the same. / claim my name. And now it seemed to him that he understood why
the sons of the desert men walked away and left their beaten fathers on the
ground. Shame burned both men, yet neither could let it show. Raif met Tanjo’s
pride with pride of his own, and their hands touched briefly on the belly of
the bow.
I owe
you respect,
Raif wanted to say. You are
the greater bowman. Yet the words would never be said. Instead Raif bowed low as he took
possession of the bow, and pretended not to see the darkly moving shadow of Traggis
Mole sliding toward them, and the brief flicker of fear in Tanjo Ten Arrow’s
eyes.
‘Rift! Rift! Rift!“ the chant began as Traggis
Mole pulled his knife from its sheath of fossilized wood. Tanjo straightened
his spine and turned to face him. The fear was gone now, and the pride that
remained made the women weep.
“Unhood my son.”
As Raif heard those words he felt a hand touch his shoulder. “Come on,
lad. Step away. Best give them chance to forget you.” Stillborn gripped his arm
and tugged him back. Raif thought for a moment he would fight him, but Tanjo’s
son now stood quiet and free from restraint, his face uncovered, his small body
quaking with the effort of matching his father’s pride. The child was younger
than Effie, and Raif let Stillborn draw him back.
“Rift! Rift! Rift!”
The cry of the crowd rose to a frenzy as Traggis Mole descended upon
Tanjo Ten Arrow. There was a movement too quick to follow with the eye, and
then the Robber Chief yanked Tanjo to his chest. A violent wrench broke bones
in Tanjo’s neck and spine, and then two streams of blood jetted across the
rimrock as Traggis Mole’s knife took the lids from Tanjo’s eyes. The burned
man’s body slackened and twitched in Traggis’ grip. The white globes of his
eyeballs rolled forward, the corneas sheeting with blood. Raif’s hand dropped
to his waist, searching for a measure of powdered guide-stone that wasn’t
there. Please gods take him
now. But the
Robber Chief had broken only the bones needed to paralyze, not kill, and when
the crowd surged forward to take possession of the body, Raif clearly saw
Tanjo’s gaze focusing upon his son.
The Maimed Men fell upon him. Raif had once seen a man torn apart by a
pair of horses at Gnash, and the same forces that worked to rip limbs from
sockets and the pelvis from the spine came to bear on the burned man’s body.
The mob pulled him apart. They dragged him to the edge of the rimrock, heaved
him high on to many shoulders and then threw him violently over the brink.
Tanjo Ten Arrow’s eyes were open and no sound ever came from his fall.
Raif shivered and walked away.
CHAPTER
The Nine Safe Steps
“A longsword is no weapon for a girl. You could train for a year and
still not grow the muscle to use it.” Ark Veinsplitter held out his hand. He
wanted his longsword back. Ash had slid it from his weapons holster while he
was busy covering the fire. The fire had burned through the night, and like
most fires started by the Far Riders it had barely smoked, and produced
scarcely enough soot to stain the snow. Now that Ark was done with it Ash
couldn’t detect the exact patch of ground where it had been. For some reason
this annoyed her, and she decided she wasn’t about to give up the sword. Ark
was right: It was too heavy for her—and long,
too. About three foot too long. And the weight of it seemed to shift from tip
to pommel as she tilted it this way and that, as if it had something liquid in
its core. It was so very beautiful, though, shining as brilliantly as a mirror
so that sometimes you couldn’t see it, just the things it reflected, like
mountains and sky. Ash’s arms began to wobble with the weight of it, so she
rested the tip in the snow. “Mai said he would begin teaching me how to defend
myself today.”
She expected Ark to be irritated by her refusal to give up the sword,
but instead he nodded gravely. “The Naysayer is right. Sometimes I forget you
were not always Sull.”
She nodded quickly, not wanting him to know how much she valued his
words. Tell me how much you
love me, Asarhia.
The old request came to her unbidden, spoken as always in her foster father’s
voice. It was a warning, that request, for when you let someone know how much
you loved and wanted to belong to them, they could hurt you and shut you out.
Casually, she tugged the Sull blade from the snow and handed it, grip first, to
Ark Veinsplitter.
He watched her for a moment, and then recouched his steel.
Ash had to look away. There was too much understanding in Ark’s face.
Somehow he saw the truth about her foster father. Somehow he knew how she hurt.
Dawn light slid across the ice fields, revealing melt holes and pockets
of gravel frozen just below the surface. Overhead the sky was deep blue,
streaked with high clouds that were heading out. Ash shivered as a low wind set
her lynx fur rippling like a field of grass. She did not know where she was. To
the west lay the shimmering phantoms of the Coastal Ranges, white peaks that
floated weight-lessly above the horizon as if they were no longer anchored to the
earth. In every other direction there was nothing she knew or recognized. The
land was flat, almost featureless except for the steaming beds of ice that
surrounded her. Sometimes she thought she saw shapes—ridges and rock forms in
the distance—but if they existed they lay at the far edge of her perception and
she could not trust her eyes to show the truth.
Mai Naysayer had left the camp sometime in the long night. The Far
Rider was often away. Ash imagined him scouting for landmarks and drinkable water,
standing on raised ground and peering into the territory ahead. She did not
want to think about the black substance on his sword that day in the high
valley, the way the liquid smoked as it melted snow. No. Better to imagine Mai
surveying, rather than protecting. Safe, not in harm’s way.
“Ash March. I would take upon myself the promise my hass made you.”
Ash looked over to see Ark Veinsplitter coming toward her. He had left
his packs by the horses and shrugged off his heavy furs, and was bearing a
small arms case covered with blue silk. When he placed the case on the ice at
her feet rather than directly into her hand Ash realized he was making a formal
gift of the case and its contents. It was the Sull way. They were sensitive
abouts gifts, she’d noticed, adhering to rules she didn’t quite understand.
“Take them out,” Ark said. “Tell me how they feel in your hand.” Ash
knelt on the ice. The case was the length of her forearm, made of cured hide
judging by its stiffness, softened by an outer shell of padded silk. Someone
with a fine hand had woven tiny silver threads around the clasp. Inside,
resting on a pillow of down, was a slim dagger the length of the case, and a
small, sickle-shaped weapon with a chain attached. The chain was the thickness
of her middle finger, forged from smoke gray steel so finely worked that she
could not see the joins between the links. It looked as if it should be heavy,
but when she took it in her hand she was surprised by its fluid lightness. It
was nine feet long, and a glittering weight shaped like a giant teardrop was
attached to the farthest link, giving the chain heft. Ash ran fingers over the
weight, wondering at its substance. Metals had been violently fused in its
making, leaving some parts smooth and others cankered, and the entire surface
rainbowed with smelt lines. Strangely faceted peridots glowing weirdly like
cat’s eyes studded its outer face. To Ash’s fingertips they felt as hard and
sharp as diamonds, and she found herself imagining what they could do to a
man’s face.
“Take the sickle in your left hand and whirl the chain with your right.”
The grip of the sickle fitted her palm perfectly and for the first time
she realized this was not a weapon forged for a man. Letting out three foot of chain
she began whirling the weight overhead. The metal whumped as it gathered speed, passing from a solid object
into a blur. The metal teardrop spun so swiftly that the peridots drew a ring
of green fire in the air.
‘Good. Now let it slow. Hold your arm straight. Move only the wrist.“
Ash did as she was told, watching as the the chain slackened and
dropped. The weight descended rapidly, and she cried out in surprise as it hit the
soft underflesh of her upper arm and the chain coiled around her forearm like a
snake. Her eyes watered with the sting of impact, and when Ark stepped toward
her she stepped back in fright. He was too quick for her, and in an instant he
had disarmed her and taken the sickle into his own hand. A quick tug on the
chain and he floored her, wrenching her trapped arm down toward the earth. Even
before she had time to register surprise he was upon her, applying the sickle
blade to the roof of her jaw. Blood was drawn, squirting hotly against her
skin.
The Sull Far Rider dropped the sickle and the chain’s slack upon the
ice. “Rise,” he commanded.
Ash sat up but did not stand. She was shaking, and she felt betrayed.
Raising her hand to her jaw she went to stanch the flow of blood.
“No,” he warned her. “Let it run. It is Dras Xaxu. The First Cut.” She touched her jaw and brought
bloody fingers to the light. “I’ve been bled before.”
“Not with Sull blood.”
He offered his hand, and after she’d made him wait a moment she took it
and let him pull her to standing. Ice crystals shed from her furs floated
between them like dust. “Why did you do that?” she demanded.
“We are Sull, and we stand ready to fight. Before a child comes to
manhood or womanhood blood must be drawn in friendly combat. We wound ourselves
so that we might deprive our enemies of the satisfaction of delivering the
First Cut.”
Ash frowned at the Far Rider. She wanted to know why he’d chosen now to
cut her. Who did he fear might cut her first? But his face was hard and his
eyes issued a warning from their deep wells of bone. Do not aslk me more.
Reluctantly, she picked up the sickle and chain. Her arm was sore and
blood was trickling down her throat, and she thought for a moment she might
like to scream at him. Why
do you hold so much back? You made me Sull—trust me.
As she whirled the chain overhead Ark Veinsplitter moved to where the
horses were feeding on oiled millet and pulled one of the birchwood corral
posts from the ice. Planting the post closer to Ash, he bid her strike it with
the chain. Tendons in Ash’s wrist strained like guide ropes as she fought the
torque. She cast the chain a beat too late, and the metal teardrop skimmed wide
of the post and swung violently back toward her. The weight struck her spine,
punching air from her lungs and gouging out a wedge of lynx fur.
Ark Veinsplitter watched coolly as she struggled to catch her breath.
“Cast the chain properly and you can trap an enemy’s arm, his weapon, his
horse’s leg. The weight can kill a man if struck with enough force in the
temple or throat. And when the chain itself is held taut between two hands it
becomes a shield, able to deflect an oncoming blade.”
The Far Rider approached Ash and took the weight from her. Stepping
backward, he reeled out the length of the chain until it was fully extended
between them, and then dropped the weight onto the ice. “Watch,” he directed,
drawing his sword. Close to six foot of Sull steel struck like lightning before
her face as he wielded the blade from the distance created by the chain. Strike
followed strike so swiftly the space crackled with discharging energy, and the
gashes carved out by the blade left afterimages hanging in the air. Yet the
edge did not touch her.
“It is Naza Thani. The Nine Safe Steps. Keep the
length of the chain between you and your enemy and their swords cannot reach
you.”
Ash nodded stiffly, unable to take her gaze from Ark’s sword. The point
of the blade moved so close to her eye she could see the crystallized X where
the edges met. The Far Rider wanted her afraid. It was a test, and she feared
failure more than getting hurt. She was Ash March, foundling. She’d been
abandoned once. She wouldn’t give this man before her reason to walk away.
Tilting her chin upward she stood unmoving and unblinking under Ark
Vein-splitter’s onslaught.
Ark’s eyes narrowed, and he executed a series of forward thrusts,
shearing off stray hairs that had risen around her face. Abruptly he halted and
recouched his sword. He was breathing hard, and when his voice came it was not
gentle. “You should have stepped back. When I thrust forward I took a step
toward you. Naza Thani was breached. My sword could
have taken your head.”
Ash felt her cheeks burn. She’d mistaken the nature of the test. And
failed.
The Far Rider’s ice-tanned face remained cold as he turned toward the
corral. “Practice striking the post while I break camp.”
She watched him saddle the grey and tighten its cinches. The wind skirled
around the stallion’s forelegs, raising whirlwinds of ice that would have
chilled another horse to the bone. Not the grey, though. It was protected by
deep feathering that fanned out from its knees in long, silky skirts. Ash
pulled her arms around her chest, suddenly cold. She didn’t want to pick up the
sickle and chain and start again. She wanted to run to the grey and nuzzle him
and slip bare hands beneath his mane to feel the warmth hidden there.
By the time the Far Rider had stowed the corral and equipped and
watered both horses Ash had mastered striking the post. It was easy really, as
long as you didn’t loose the chain too late. Once the chain was spinning
rapidly it coiled around anything thrown in its path. The noise the links made
as they wrapped around the birchwood post made hairs rise on Ash’s neck. It was
the sound of a snake rustling through grass. And then the weight fell with the
soft thun’t of a sprung trap, locking the
chain into place. Aware that Ark’s gaze was now upon her, Ash grabbed the chain
in both hands and ripped the trapped post from the ice.
The Far Rider nodded, once. “Clean the chain and sheath it. We need to
be gone from this place.”
Telling herself she didn’t really expect praise, Ash did his bidding.
The sun was rising swiftly now, bouncing rainbows of light off the ice. The
frozen surface beneath her feet cracked and popped like firewood just set
alight. Last night Ark had explained that the rock underlying the ice field was
black chert, the same stone they napped flints from, and its hard glassy core
provided poor drainage for standing water. Pockets of ice melted during the day
and refroze at night, as the entire valley held water like a bowl. It wasn’t
drinkable, for the water was old and grey, and poisons leached up from the
rock. Looking down at the ice, at the withered things suspende just below the
surface—the ancient pine needles where trees n longer stood, the claw of a
predator, yellow and segmented like maggot, the slivers of flint scattered like
fish scales on a beach—As suddenly knew where she was. The Great Want.
She thought she might shiver, but the bones inside her spin locked into
place. The Great Want. The vast nothingness that lay £ the top of all maps of
the Northern Territories. No one knew ho’t far it stretched, only that no man
who had gone in search of its em ever returned. Audlin Crieff, twenty-third
surlord of Spire Vani and Forsworn knight, had been lost here. He’d been taken
by mad ness while on pilgrimage to the Lake of Lost Men, and had simpl; left
his tent one morning and walked east. They searched for him fo ten days and ten
nights but his body was never found.
Ash sat the Sull horse that was her mount when the Naysayer wa away on
the blue, and turned her thoughts elsewhere. The whiti gelding was a few hands
shorter than Ark’s grey, with a deep girtl and muscular legs. Panniers mounted
on its rump and shoulders hek tent felts, ropes and poles, and the many other
items required foi raising camp. It was a heavy load, and Ash worried about
being ar added burden to the gentle beast. “Sorry, boy,” she murmured, rubbing
its nose.
“He was bred to bear aurochs home from the hunt,” Ark said surprising
her by swinging the grey alongside the white. “Your weight will not trouble
him.”
Ash nodded uneasily. The Far Rider was always watching her.
“Reach down under his stifle.”
Puzzled, she obeyed, running her hand along the horse’s belly until it
met the muscled ramp of its thigh. A leather trace ran the length of its torso,
a harness of some kind, and she wondered at its purpose.
“Do you feel the buckle?”
She found it, yet it felt wrong to her fingers, lumpy and unguarded,
and there was an extra piece of leather sticking out.
“If we are pursued pull the strap.” The Far Rider looked ahead as he
spoke, as if what he said wasn’t as important as the task of crossing the ice.
Ash wasn’t fooled. She could hear the intensity in his voice. “If the Naysayer
or I are engaged in combat pull the strap. It will release the horse’s burdens
and allow you to flee at speed. He has been maygi-spoke. He will carry you to safety and only return on my
say.
“And what if you can no longer ‘say’?” The words were out before she
could stop them, and her first instinct was to soften them with an apology or
more words. Yet she thought of her foster father and didn’t.
Time passed and then the Far Rider said, “Then you must continue east
and find the Heart Fires by yourself.” He held his head high and with great
dignity, and watching him she learned something new: She had the ability to
wound him.
Sobered, she asked, “What is a maeraith?”
“A beast of shadow.” High clouds passed over the sun. The Far Rider’s wolverine-fur-wrapped
fingers did not tighten on the reins, yet some measure of tension must have
passed from rider to mount, as the great Sull horse lowered its ears and
twitched its tail.
Ash felt her own mount lose its rhythm. “And that was what Mai killed
that day in the mountains?”
Ark nodded. “The Naysayer believes it was a sentinel, set to watch the
Rift Road. It has started. Where there is one there will be others. We must be
careful.”
It has
started. She
felt a soft stab of pain beneath her jaw, in the place where Ark had drawn
blood. “Is that why we’re traveling through the Want?”
He turned to look at her. “What do you know of the Great Want, Ash
March?”
“I know we’re within it—and heading deeper.”
“Look behind. Tell me what you see.”
Ash twisted in the saddle. She saw mountains and ice and sky, and said
so.
“So you see the Coastal Ranges?” She nodded, and he continued, his
voice strangely controlled. “And you think it possible to stand within the Want
and look out upon a landmark you know? You think it possible to say to yourself
I am in the Want and if I
turn west toward those mountains I can head out whenever I choose?“ He paused waiting for an
answer. She had none for him.
The Far Rider stretched the silence until she questioned her
assumptions on many things. Satisfied by the uncertainty he had created, he
resumed more gently. “We head along the edges of the Want, the margins where
the land is solid and unchanging, and the stars may be trusted at night. Make no
mistake, Ash March: Ride north for half a day and you would be lost. Any
mountains you saw then could not be trusted. Ride toward them and they could
lead you in circles until your palms crack open from dryness and your horse
falls lame beneath you. You do not travel through the Want, you are set adrift.
We call it Glor Stalks. Land of Fallen Sky. Landmarks
that seem solid drift like clouds. A moon appears and sheds light, and then a
second looms on the horizon and you cannot know which is real and which is
false. Light bends. It scatters and creates, and even the Sull cannot tell a
light-made landscape from a god-made one until we touch it with our hands and
say, Here is air or Here is soil.”
Ark’s words were hypnotic, spoken to the rhythmic bunching of the
muscles in his horse’s shoulders, and Ash knew she was hearing things that no
clansman or city man had ever heard.
“We follow the path laid out by the Naysayer. He rides ahead and around
us, searching for waymarkers and holding us upon the edge. It is not a simple
task, this holding, for the edges of Glor Skallis are fluid in places and a tracker must be vigilant or risk loss.”
The Far Rider spoke a word to his horse, increasing a walk to a trot.
Ash saw some tension in his face, and realized his thoughts were with his hass. She said, “He’s not just tracking though, is he?
He’s watching for them.”
Lines around Ark’s mouth tightened and he kicked the grey into a
canter. Watching the space open up between them Ash suddenly feared to be left
behind and scrambled to catch up. She’d pushed him too far. The Sull never
spoke their fears out loud.
Morning passed quickly into midday. Freezing winds numbed Ash’s ears
and sucked the moisture from her lips, leaving ridges that felt like scars. The
sky greyed and after a time so did the ice. Boulders and the crumbled remains
of petrified trees littered the path. The high clouds fled west, and a cold
haze set in like the thinnest of fogs. They rode in single file, with the Far
Rider taking the lead, and although Ash couldn’t see his face she sensed his
constant vigilance from the stiffness of his back.
// has started.
She closed her eyes for a moment and breathed in the dark. The gift of
weapons, the drawing of first blood ... even the instruction on how to release
the gelding’s panniers: They were all measures taken for her protection. The
Far Riders expected something to come after them, and planned for her survival
if they died.
/ can’t thin’t of it. Opening her eyes, she let the
harsh light pierce her. She hated this place. The Naysayer had chosen it as an
alternate route to the Rift Road, but any fool could see it wasn’t safe. They’d
be better traveling through warring clanholds than this desert of mist and ice.
Anger warmed her, and took away some of the fear, but it took too much energy
to sustain and she felt her shoulders slump and her spine bend as day moved
toward night. Inside her mitts, her fingers had stiffened into hooks, and she
knew she needed to work them to prevent the sickening numbness of frostbite.
Reaching down into her lynx fur, she searched out the hide pouch that
contained her waybread. She wasn’t hungry, but it gave her hands something to
do.
When she looked up she saw a mounted figure on the path ahead. She stiffened,
and then recognized the shape of Mai Naysayer. It was twilight and not yet full
dark, and Ash couldn’t understand where he’d come from. The way ahead had been
clear moments earlier.
The Naysayer trotted the blue forward, and then fell in step with his hass. Ash heard the two Far Riders exchange words, and
then the Naysayer swung the blue north, indicating a change in their path. Ash
followed. She wondered why they were heading deeper into the Want, but didn’t
think she’d get an answer if she asked. The Naysayer was a hard man to read,
but she thought she detected some urgency in the way he handled his horse.
They rode at canter into the darkness. There was an instant when Ash thought
she heard something, a low howl that seemed to carry through the ice, but the
combined noise of twelve hooves drumming against frozen earth soon drowned it
out.
Night came swiftly, bringing a depth of blackness so great Ash could no
longer see the head of her horse. It was strange, riding in the darkness, and
she found it difficult to relinquish control to the gelding. Underfoot, the
ground became rougher as ice gave way to permafrost. It had been cold before,
but it had been a passive coldness, the kind that layers of clothing and
willpower could fight. Now it went beyond that. It hurt to breathe, and when
the air was inside your lungs you could feel it moving toward your heart.
How much time passed before the Naysayer finally signaled a halt, Ash
would never know. At some point she had fallen into a trancelike state, driven
into herself by the cold and the darkness like an animal sleeping out winter.
The gelding halted of its own accord, and Ash felt strong arms lift her from
the saddle. She looked up to see Mai Naysayer’s hard and beautiful face close
to her own. His scale armor was shimmering softly, casting an eerie light under
his jaw.
As he set her down, her legs buckled, and he signaled his hass to bring a blanket. “Drink this,” he said, after
she’d been wrapped in soft rugs and laid upon the ground.
Ash took the small silver flask from him, and then didn’t have the
strength to pull the cork. Her muscles were tight and close to cramping, and
her mind floated lazily from thought to thought. The next thing she knew, the
Naysayer was kneeling before her, forcing the neck of the flask between her
teeth. Liquid as warm as her own body filled her mouth. It tasted sweet and
metallic, like honey ground with metal filings, and it immediately cleared her
head.
“Manshae” the Naysayer explained. “You
would call it ghostmeal. It will help replenish your strength.” With that he
recorked the flask and left her to see to the camp.
Ash wiped a hand across her mouth; the ghostmeal had a bitter
aftertaste. She looked around, and it took her a moment to realize that
although it was still dark she could now see. They were in a shallow depression
surrounded by low-lying rock walls and dragon pines. Living trees in the Want?
She dropped a hand to the ground to touch the dry, scaly grass that lay beneath
her. She couldn’t quite believe it was there.
“It is an ice oasis.”
Ark Veinsplitter laid a rug next to her and sat. “There are many such
places in the Want if you know where to look for them, places where the frost
and darkness are held back.”
By
what? she
wanted to ask but didn’t. She realized it was warmer here, as well as lighter,
and she stretched her legs out in front of her and took a deep gulp of air.
“Will we be able to get back?”
He nodded. “The Naysayer marked the path.”
She watched Mai brushing down her horse on the far side of the hollow.
“There’ll be no fire tonight.”
“No.”
“They’ve found us, haven’t they?”
Ark looked at her for a long time without speaking. Finally he asked,
“What did you see?”
Four words and Ash felt her understanding of the world change. Here it
was, the reason these men had made her Sull. What did you see? How could she have been so stupid not to realize
why they wanted her. They hadn’t hidden it. They had told her she was needed
and must fight. She just hadn’t understood what her role would be. She still
didn’t... but she was learning.
What
did you see?
Ark Veinsplitter was very still as he waited for her reply. His hands
were bare, and she could see the tracework of letting scars around his
fingernails.
“I didn’t see anything,” she said. “I heard something—a howl. It never
came again.” She watched him visibly relax, and wondered if he knew he’d given
himself away.
Perhaps he did, for he rose abruptly and told her to get some
sleep—there were only a few hours left before dawn.
Ash smoothed one of the rugs into a sleeping mat and rolled a fox pelt
into a pillow to support her head. She felt strange, weary but abnormally
alert. Her mind was racing with what she’d learned. They believe I can sense them, the shadow beasts,
see them before they do. Is that what a Reach is, a finder of shadows? The thought unsettled her, and
she tossed and turned looking for answers that didn’t come. Time passed, and
she drifted into an uneasy sleep.
Animal calls disturbed her dreams. Something howled to the south, and
after the beat of a few seconds something else answered. Ash opened her eyes.
Her skin was cold and tingling, and she could still hear the last traces of the
answering howl ringing in her ears. Turning her head, she searched for the
figure of Ark Veinsplitter. He was there, as always, crouching at the edge of
the camp, facing out. His sword was sheathed. He was standing guard, but not on
alert. If the calls had been real he had not heard them.
Telling herself it was just a dream, that they were safe here in the
Want, she settled back in her blankets and tried to force herself to sleep.
That didn’t work. Thoughts kept floating around her head. What else could
Reaches do besides find shadows? What other things had the Far Riders left
unsaid? And then, quiet simply, she found herself missing Raif. The Sull
protected her for a reason—she was valuable to them in the same way a mighty
warrior is valuable to a clan chief—whilst Raif had protected her solely
because he wanted to.
The thought set her heart racing, and drove sleep even farther away.
Hours passed, and through the dark night she lay awake, remembering Raif whilst
she listened for the sound of maeraiths.
CHAPTER
Treason
Raina held out the chunk of rock salt for the cow to lick on. The
creature lipped at her palm in its eagerness, tickling her and slobbering her
fingers with saliva. After checking to make sure that only she and Anwyn Bird
were in the cattle shed, she laughed out loud. Cows had no manners.
“Don’t you go upsetting my beauties, Raina Blackhail,” Anwyn warned.
“There’s little enough butter in their milk as it is.”
Raina quieted herself and regarded Anwyn. The clan matron was looking
old. The thick rope of hair pinned in a circle around her scalp was completely
grey. When had the gold gone out of it? Raina could still remember her first sight
of Anwyn Bird, that summer when she’d arrived at the Hailhouse from Dregg.
All the clanwives had come out onto the greatcourt to inspect her. Her
uncle had arranged the fosterage, her second in under three years, and although
he was a genial and well-meaning man he had a weakness for red malt. And when
he was drunk he was prone to boast. He must have gotten drunk the day he
visited Blackhail to purchase her fosterage, for later that evening he’d told a
chamber full of clansmen that his niece was not only beautiful, but more
graceful than Weeping Moira herself and as smart as Hoggie Dhoone. Raina still
flushed at the thought of it. Naturally, when she’d arrived the clanwives were
inclined to dislike her. Thirteen, she was, and already in possession of her
full height and a woman’s fullness. The fact that she wasn’t as graceful as Weeping Moira quickly became
apparent when she dismounted her little gray pony and slipped in the mud. But
still. Her uncle’s words had done their damage and Lally Horn, the woman who’d
accepted a milk cow and its calf in payment for Raina’s keep, turned around and
refused to take her The Dregg girl was a temptress, she said, who’d woo suitors
away from her daughters. Lally Horn had been deceived! And though she might
very well return the cow, she’d keep the calf for her trouble.
That was when Anwyn stepped in.
Only Raina hadn’t known her name then. She saw a stout-buill woman with
aggressively plain features and a curtain of golden hail falling thick and
heavy past her waist. Anwyn had been about tc braid it when she’d heard the
commotion on the court. The clan matron had quickly taken charge of the
situation, telling Raina she could stay in the kitchen with her, and informing
Lally Horn thai she was off to feed the wee visitor, and when she returned
she’d expect to see a cow and a calf on the greatcourt, or so
help her gods she’d break Lally’s nose and lock Laida Moon in a wet cell so the
healer couldn’t set it for a week.
The strategy worked. Lally was known to be proud of her short, perfect
nose, and Anwyn Bird was a genius with threats.
Raina dropped the rock salt into a pouch in her apron. “Remember Lally
Horn,” she said to Anwyn, suddenly needing to talk about the past.
Anwyn was in the process of greasing a sick cow’s shrunken teats, yet
something in Raina’s voice caused her to halt her doctoring and look up. She
studied Raina’s face for a moment. “Aye. It’s a shame. No one in the clan could
set soap quite like her. Used to grind strawberry blossoms in that little
pestle of hers and add the oils to the ashes. All the maids would beg for a
wedge whenever they went courting. Made them smell like summer fruit.”
Raina nodded, feeling small and mean. Trust Anwyn to remember the good
over the bad. Lally had been dead these nine years.
taken in childbirth at an age when most women had long withdrawn from
their husband’s beds. Yet her husband had wanted a son, and Lally had been so
desperate to give him one she’d risked her life ... and given him another daughter
instead.
So
many deaths. When will it end? Crossing over to Anwyn’s milk stool, Raina laid a
kiss on the clan matron’s head, right in the middle of the grey.
“While you’re handing out kisses, Raina Blackhail, how about saving one
for me?“
Raina looked up to see Angus Lok standing in the entrance to the
tunnelway, the deep black passage that ran from the cattle sheds down to the
fold. She had not heard him come. The ranger was dressed in layered buckskins
the color of wheat. Water stains ringed the hem and cuffs of his coat, and his
soft riding boots were spattered with mud. Sliding back his otter-fur-trimmed
hood, he bowed to her as if she were a great city lady, and then bowed again to
Anwyn. “Mistress Bird. I see you’re expecting me. Got your hands all nice and
greasy to salve my chin.” The ranger ran a hand along his jaw. “Well get
moving, woman. Wind’s near chapped it to the bone.”
Anwyn frowned with force. “The only thing about you that needs curing,
Angus Lok, is your tongue. Anything that stricken needs pulling out.”
Angus laughed heartily, surprising Anwyn by leaping over to her and
catching her up in a huge bear hug. The clan matron protested, throwing her
hands wide to avoid smearing the ranger with grease, all the while shuffling
backward with her feet.
Angus winked at the sick cow before releasing her. “Sorry, Daisy. I
tried, but I couldna keep her off you a minute longer.”
“Her name’s not Daisy,” Anwyn said, awkwardly brushing hair from her
face with her forearm. “It’s Birchwood. And I’ll thank you to leave us both in
peace.”
Angus stepped back in mock obedience, but not before slipping a small,
slim package beneath Anwyn’s belt. Anwyn ignored it and settled herself down on
the stool to finish her doctoring.
The ranger turned to Raina. “Will you walk with me awhile?” he asked.
Raina lifted her eyebrows in mild surprise, but nodded her agreement.
As she stepped toward the shed’s double doors, he spoke to halt her. “It’s a mite
cold on the greatcourt for a thinblood like me. What say we take the low road
instead?”
It was midday and unseasonably mild out, but she didn’t contradict him,
and let herself be led across the cattle shed to the tunnel-way. The cows
bellowed as she passed them, sensing the retreat of the salt. The giant stone
trough that ran the length of all seven cattle sheds and tapped into the Leak
south of the roundhouse was brimming with icy water. Raina spied the speckly
froth of frogspawn floating upon it, and thought, / must tell Effie; we’re rearing frogs in the cattle
shed! And then
remembered Effie was no longer here.
The tunnelway was dark and unpleasant-smelling. It had been dug to
evacuate livestock from the vulnerable timber-roofed outbuildings to the safety
of the underground fold in the event of sudden attack. Some ancient clan chief
or other had commissioned it. Obviously a man who cared more about cows than
the people who tended them, Raina thought hotly, for the incline was sharp and
she stumbled several times. Angus offered her his arm, but she refused it. She
couldn’t afford to be seen holding a man who wasn’t her husband. Little mice with weasels’ tails.
Shivering, she put a hand on the wall to steady herself. When had she
begun to let Mace Blackhail rule her life?
The air soured as they descended. Thawing mud oozed through cracks in
the masonry, and entire sections of tunnel wall had buckled inward from the
pressure of moving earth. Black-shelled beetles battled in the rubble, their
mandibles clicking as they fought over the putrefied remains of a drowned
mouse. Raina increased her pace. She hated the dark, rotting underspaces of the
roundhouse. They stood empty and unrepaired for decades, waiting for war.
The Blackhail fold was the largest standing hall in the clanholds,
capable of holding five thousand head of livestock in times of siege. Giant
bloodwood stangs with girths so wide it would take three men to circle them
rose from floor to ceiling like a forest of charred trees. The ceiling was
deeply groined and barrel-vaulted, cantilevered in part by the foundation wall
that braced the perimeter, and by a huge central stone shaft. The entire weight
of the roundhouse rested upon the walls and stangs of the fold, and every craftsman
who had ever hammered a nail in the clanholds held nothing but awe for the men
who had raised it.
It had been several weeks since Raina was last down here, and she was
shocked to see that it had become a campground for tied clansman and their
meager stocks. Makeshift tents were pitched against the stangs, and rickety
cattle corrals of wicker and woven bark held lone calves and ribby sows. Dung
fires smoked heavily, giving off the sickly sweet odor of partially digested
grass. The air was so thick with soot it made Raina’s throat itch to breathe
it, and her first instinct was to rush to the nearest shutters and throw them
open. But there were no windows this far below ground, and little ventilation
to be had. What were these people doing here? Surely there was space enough
above ?
“Not a Scarpe amongst them.”
Raina turned her head sharply as Angus spoke. She had almost forgotten
he was beside her. Why had he come? Tern was dead, Raif and Effie were gone,
and Drey had been sent south to Ganmid-dich. The ranger had no kin left here.
So why make Blackhail business his own ?
“What’s it to you who’s down here, Angus Lok?” she challenged. “Last I
heard you live in a city, not a clan.”
The ranger stopped to look at her. His face was deeply tanned and
lined, and the blood vessels in his eyes were feathered with fatigue. He was a
fine-looking man, she had always thought so, but she did not envy his wife.
Angus Lok reminded her of a treader fly, one of those spindly brown insects
that settled on the surface of the stew ponds around Dregg. You wondered how
they could stand on water, until you looked very closely and saw their legs:
ten times as long as their bodies, thinner than threads of silk, probing wide
in all directions, their tiny hairs bristling in response to the slightest
change in current.
What change in current had brought him here? Raina wondered. / must be cautious, she counseled herself, speak little and listen much.
Angus watched her a moment longer—his copper eyes taking in such depth
of detail that she had to suppress the urge to smooth back her hair and
straighten her dress—before turning his attention to the campground.
“What’s it to me if tied Hailsmen raise their tents belowground, whilst
sworn Scarpemen sit in the comfort of stone chambers above? You know what it
is, Raina Blackhail. It’s unbalance. Even a Hails-man without oath should be
given precedence over an outsider in his home clan.”
She could not disagree with him. She thought the same thing every day,
when she came across Scarpe women using the dyeing vats to blacken their
husbands’ fronts, Scarpe children sneaking into the cold stores to raid the
apple barrels, and Scarpe men eyeing her with insolence whenever she entered
the Great Hearth. She said, “And is that why you’re here, Angus, to address
that unbalance?”
He smiled at her then, a genuine showing of warmth mellowed by
weariness. “Come now, Raina. When a man asks you to dance do you stride into
the middle of the floor and place his hands upon you? Or do you at least allow
him the pleasure of leading you forward? We’re sensitive fellows, we men, and
though we know very well we’re not in charge of much we like it when you
pretend that we are.”
She had to smile. He’d pinned her precisely. She was mistaking
defensiveness for caution. Spreading her arm before her, she invited him to
walk a circuit of the fold. Angus Lok was a man who liked to be courted, and at
one time long ago she had been good at courting. Dagro used to tease her about
it, but Dagro was gone now. And she could barely remember the woman she used to
be. With an effort she sent her smile into her voice and inquired about his
wife.
“Darra.” Need darkened his eyes for an instant and then he blinked and
it was gone. “She’s well, I hope. I haven’t been home since midwinter. I’ve
been, as they say, unavoidably detained. The Dog Lord took a fancy to me and
decided to keep me in his cellars along with his favorite malt and cheese. I
wouldna have minded normally, but the cheese tasted like foot fungus and the
malt ran out after a week.”
So the rumors were true: The Bludd chief had held the ranger prisoner.
“Longhead says the weather will break any day now. You should head home while
you can.”
Angus shook his head. “Not to be. I’ve fallen a wee bit behind in my
affairs.”
She knew better than to ask what those affairs were. Angus Lok would
doubtless give a charming answer that hid more than it revealed. Play his game, she reminded herself. We’re two old friends chewing the cud. “How did you find the
clanholds on your journey west?”
“Troubled. Gnash is slaughtering its breeding stock, and the black rot
has spoiled the grain stores at Dregg.”
“You’ve been at Dregg?”
“Ten days back. They were
burning the meal on the court; great hills of it, giving off the blackest
smoke. Xander had to mount a guard to stop the tied clansmen from rioting.”
Raina kept her face impassive; she was getting good at that, she’d
noticed. “Does Xander expect more trouble?”
“Don’t all the chiefs?”
Hope was like breath, she thought, when it left your body it made you
slump. Dregg was her birthclan; its future was part of her own. When her work
and duties at Blackhail were done, when she was an old widow with wispy hair
and no teeth, she’d pay one of the tied clansmen to take her to the Dregghold
in a cart. She’d be an elder at Dregg, cousin to the chief, and the clan maids
would rush to bring her hot apple possets and the inner loins of meat. Someone
would offer a shawl for her shoulders, spun with as much air as wool. And she’d
sit in the finest painted hall in the clanholds and watch the young ones dance.
“Here, chief’s wife. Wet your lips with this.”
Raina turned her head to see a tiny, hard-faced clanwife holding out a
horn of ale. The woman had the look of the wild clan from Blackhail’s far west,
and Raina did not know her by sight or name. Still, she took the cup and drank.
A chief’s wife learned early never to refuse humble courtesies—you could never
be sure when an insult might be taken. The ale was mead thinned with pond water
and tasted brackish and flat, but she finished it down to the skim. The
clanwife watched her swallow, and when Raina offered back the cup she shook her
head.
“Nay. Keep it, chief’s wife. Give it to your husband—save him seizing
it for hisself.”
The thin voice carried far across the stone vault, and dozens of heads
turned toward it. The woman straightened her spine, waiting until silence had
passed from man to man, then spat at Raina’s feet. With a hard, satisfied nod
of her jaw, she turned to make her way back to her camp. Small dark-skinned
men, her sons by the look of them, made space for her around the fire.
Raina felt the blood rise to her face. Spittle trickled from her skirt
hem to her boot, and she scraped it away awkwardly against the floor.
“Here,” Angus said quietly, holding his hand toward the cup. “Let me
take that from you.”
Raina shook her head with a snap. “Nay, Angus Lok. It is my clan and my
cup, and I’ll keep it as she said.” Her fingers trembled as she threaded a
silver hook through the horn cup’s rimhole and hooked it onto her belt. When
the task was done she took a deep breath and raised her head. Every tied clansman
in the fold was watching her, and her instinct was to hunker down and flee.
There were currents here she didn’t fully understand. But she was wife to two
chiefs, first woman in the clan, and she could live with much worse than
hostile stares.
“Angus,” she said a little too loudly. “Let me show you the north wall.
The builders of the fold set a block of moonstone into the masonry and carved
their kin marks upon it. The sandstone blocks are strong, but their faces
quickly wear, and the builders wanted to be sure to name themselves for
posterity.”
Angus was all attention. “Indeed,” he said, as if he’d just learned the
most interesting fact in all the clanholds. “Lead on.”
She heard him fall into place behind her, and thanked him silently for his
understanding. Holding her shoulders square and looking directly ahead, she
crossed the length of the fold, defying the tied clansmen to find fault.
The moonstone glowed in the darkness like a ghost trapped in the wall.
Raina reached out to touch it, aware that the noise level was slowly returning
to normal. She and Angus were alone here, separated from the open space of the
great hall by a bloodwood stang as wide as a smoke tower. Angus made a show of
squinting to interpret the kin marks carved deep into the stone. Someone had
once rubbed silver leaf into the carvings, and odd lines and curves reflected
light. The ranger halted when his gaze fell upon the mark of the armed bear.
“Sevrance,” he said quietly. “Tern’s ancestors helped build this?”
Raina nodded. “The Sevrances are one of the oldest families in the
clanholds. Ned Sevrance was a table bearer for Jamie Roy.”
He nodded with interest, though Raina would bet coin on him having known
that fact before. Making a tiny gesture to the fold behind her, she said, “Do
you know what all that was about?”
He continued studying the kin marks, keeping his face toward the wall.
“I’m sure you heard Mace sent outriders to the western farms a few months back,
urging all tied clansmen to take shelter in the Hailhold. Well, it seems a few
of the outriders were a wee bit overenthusiastic about their task. Let’s call
them Scarpes. Not only did these ‘Scrapes’ claim Mace had ordered a full-scale evacuation
to the hold, but they . .. how should I put it? ... aided in the evacuation process. Took horses, livestock,
belt buckles, sacks of grain— anything they could rope or heft. Told the poor
farmers all goods would be returned to them at the Hailhold. Only nothing but
carcasses and empty sacks were returned. Now there’s a rumor going around that
the farms themselves are being overrun, and that Scarpes are moving into the
empty crofts and settling down for spring.”
“Does Mace know about this?”
Angus turned to look at her. “What do you think ?”
“He wouldn’t dare sanction it.”
“Aye. But knowing about something and choosing to look the other way is
much the same in the end.”
Catching a spark of green within Angus’ coppery eyes, she wondered if
this was the reason he’d brought her here.
He executed a kind of half-bow in acknowledgment of the understanding
gleaning on her face. “Small things like dispossessed crofters have a nasty
habit of bringing clans to their knees.”
He was right. Tied clansmen—farmers, woodsmen, traders, miners—might
not swear to die for their clans, but they brought goods to the table in return
for their defense. It was a fact no warrior cared to admit, but a clan could
survive longer without swords than scythes. Even so. It occurred to Raina that
she shouldn’t have to listen to such wisdom from an outsider.
But Angus Lok wasn’t done yet. “And another thing. There’s too many
outsiders in this roundhouse. Mace is allying himself so closely with the
Weasel chief that Blackhail’s other sworn clans are beginning to resent it.
Orrl has already cast aside its oath. Dregg and Harkness may be next. Mace
should be working to shore up relations with his sworn clans, not inviting a
full third of Scarpe to live here. Tell me, Raina, how many Scarpemen are
housed here? Two hundred. Three? Four?”
“There is only so much of the Scarpehold that is livable. Many need a
home while the Weasel chief rebuilds.” Hearing the falseness in her voice,
Raina made to leave. She’d had about as much lecturing as she could take.
Pulling away from the wall, she said, “I’ll be sure to speak to my husband when
you’re gone.”
Angus’ fingers snapped around her wrist. And she did not think, did not
stop to wonder why the entire surface of her skin erupted into violently cold
gooseflesh. She simply reacted. Twisting her arm against his grip, she pulled
down with enough force to send the ranger stumbling forward. As her trapped
hand broke free, the other came up to strike him. Angus righted himself in an
instant, but he was not quick enough to stop her open hand from striking. The
impact made a dry crack, stinging her palm and raising an immediate welt on
Angus’ jaw. His gaze jumped to her face, and he did not retaliate, did not move
at all.
Raina let her hand fall
awkwardly to her waist. Her heart was racing, and the gooseflesh on her arms
and chest was so extreme the entire surface of her skin felt tight. An image
came to her of a woman lying amidst the sword ferns and blue gorse of the Old-wood.
Raina could feel the snow melting beneath the woman’s but-
tocks, hear the ragged gasps of breath as the man above her held down
her wrists and thrust her legs apart with his knee. . . .
“Raina. Raina?”
Angus’ voice was gently questioning. She knew she should respond to it,
wanted to respond, but there was the
woman in the Oldwood. Hurting. Alone.
After a time she heard her voice say, “Angus. Forgive me. I don’t know
what came over me.”
The ranger tapped his jaw lightly. “Why, this? Was nothing. My own wife
warned me about my tongue. Angus, she said, when you attack a woman’s good name
always be sure to duck.”
Raina nodded stiffly. She was aware that Angus was speaking loudly for
a reason, and that many ears were listening to what he said, but she couldn’t
find the strength to play his game.
She wanted to run away.
“Here.” A rabbit-fur-covered flask was pressed into her hand. “Drink
deep.”
She did as she was told, filling her mouth with sweet scalding alcohol
so pure it barely registered as fluid at all. When the liquor hit her brain it
made the woman in the Oldwood recede into the distance, and she was finally
free to think. Sweat drenched her back and buttocks, cold as melted snow.
“Let’s go,” she murmured, making for the stairs. She had thought the
past was behind her—had
forced it
behind her—so why had it all come flooding back? A strange, high sound left her
lips as she ran from the fold. Gods,
don’t let it ruin me now.
She found herself in the great stone dome of the entrance hall,
possessing no memory of climbing the many ramps and stairs that rose toward
ground level. Angus was close behind, flanking her. Biddie Byce rushed by, a
basket of winter grown carrots pressed against her chest. A group of new-sworn
yearmen, Perches and Murdocks and Lyes, was sitting against the stairwall
disassembling their gear belts and scabbards for cleaning. When they spotted
their chief’s wife they slowed their labors to watch her. Raina ignored them.
Her gaze fell on the iron-banded clan door, and she had to fight the urge to
run outside. She wanted desperately to be alone.
“Angus Lok.”
Mace. She didn’t need to turn toward
the stair that led down to the chief’s chamber to know who stood upon it.
“Wife.”
He made her turn anyway, for he would not be ignored in front of clan.
Mace Blackhail was dressed in an elk-suede tunic dyed black, collared with a
heavy mantle of ice-wolf fur that still had the tail and leg sheaths attached.
His beard and mustache had been newly trimmed, shaved narrow to match the long
planes of his face. Climbing the last remaining steps to the entrance hall, he
addressed himself to the ranger. “My scouts informed me you entered the
Hail-hold two nights back, yet you did not see fit to present yourself at my
hearth?”
Angus stood his ground behind Raina, his face bland. “Aye, well Hail
Lord, if I’d have known you had a hankering to see me wild pigs couldna have
kept me away.”
Mace’s mouth tightened. He suspected he was being made light of, and
Raina knew he could not allow that in such a public place as the entrance hall.
“Ranger. Enter my clanhold one more time without my knowledge and be forewarned
to watch your back. Blackhail is at war, and any intruder on my soil must be
judged enemy rather than friend.”
The yearmen by the stairwall stopped all pretense of cleaning. They
were chief’s men, all of them. Red-necked Elcho Murdock had just been betrothed
to some hollow-cheeked niece of Yelma Scarpe.
Angus nodded, the blandness in his face holding firm. “I’ll be sure to
remember that, Hail Lord. Watch my back. A pity no one offered such a warning
to Shor Gormalin. Now that I recall, didn’t he take two quarrels in the back of
his head?”
Raina heard one of the yearman gasp. Foolish child. Had no one taught
him to school his reactions?
Mace ignored the outburst, his attention solely upon Angus Lok. The two
men were matched in height and build, though Angus carried a bit more fat. They
were both swordsmen too. And as that thought occurred to her she realized both
men’s sword hands were resting on the hilts of their sheathed blades. Silently,
she cursed Angus. What madness had possessed him to mention Shor Gorma-lin’s
name?
A second or two, no longer, was all it took for Mace Blackhail to weigh
all possible outcomes. He was a clever swordsman, but he had to know that Angus
Lok might better him—wasn’t he rumored to have spent two years with the Sull?
And besides, what would a duel win Mace? It would only add credibility to the
ranger’s outrageous claim. Shor Gormalin had been killed by a Bludd-sworn
cowlman. Everyone in the clan knew it.
Holding his gaze upon Angus Lok, Mace Blackhail commanded his yearmen.
“John. Elcho. Stiggie. Graig. Escort this city man from the Hailhold and
deposit him on the border. His welcome here just ran out.”
The four yearmen scrambled to strap on their gear belts and weapon
cradles. Young Graig Lye, cousin to Bludd-slain Banron, buckled his sword
harness so ferociously he struck sparks. Others had entered the hall whilst the
two men were speaking—a gaggle of clan maids wheeling a laundry barrow and two
ancient oasters from the brewhouse who stank of yeast—and all eased back
against the walls, sensing the tension in the entryway as livestock sensed a
storm. At her side, Raina was aware of Angus breathing evenly, even as he
shifted his weight forward onto the balls of his feet.
Please
do not fight,
she willed him. You may win
one-on-one, but after that you’ll die. .. and I don’t thinks I can take any
more blows today.
Perhaps Angus Lok read minds, for slowly he eased his weight back down
upon his heels. He bowed his head once toward Mace, and then to the four
yearmen. “Gentlemen,” he said, “lead on.”
Raina slumped forward with relief and a terrible kind of
disappointment. She had wished Angus not to fight, but now that he had backed
down and she saw how her husband’s lips came together in a cold, triumphant
smile, she could only think, Is
there no one in the clanholds who can stop him? She had no time for answers, for Angus was
addressing her as “lady” and bidding her a nonchalant farewell. She bowed her
head toward him wordlessly, and watched as the four yearmen moved to flank him
as he he made his exit. Once the clan door closed behind him, a brisk draft
circled the entryway and died.
No one moved. One of the clan maids who’d been dragging the laundry
barrow hiccuped nervously. Mace’s black-and-yellow eyes found his wife.
“Raina,” he said, his voice strangely gentle. “I’m sorry you had to witness
that. I know he’s kin to the Sevrances, but it was necessary to remove him from
the clan.”
She couldn’t understand his gentleness. Was it an act of husbandly
solicitude for the benefit of onlookers? Or was there something showing on her
face that genuinely worried him? You were a partner to Dagro. Be one to me. The memory of his words in the
chief’s chamber made her shudder, and for a moment she thought she saw that
same desire writ plainly on his face. Suddenly it was all too much for her, and
she made a break for the door.
Mace’s demeanor abruptly changed, and he put out a hand to stop her.
Don’t
touch me. Don’t you dare touch me. She swerved to avoid him, and perhaps aware that
he’d look foolish trying to grapple with his wife he let her pass. That tiny
victory gave her courage, and she found words springing to her mouth that she
had not planned.
“I’m going to see Angus off. His wife embroidered a tunic especially
for Drey, and I’m not letting him come all this way and not deliver it.” She
hardly knew where the lies came from, but as soon as she spoke them she felt
their Tightness. Let him try to challenge her on them. Let him try.
Mace watched her carefully a moment, aware that he too was being
watched. “There’s no need for you to go to the stables. One of the girls can
retrieve it.”
But she was ready for him. “I don’t think so, husband,” she said
briskly, her hands already pushing the quarter-ton clan door into motion.
“Darra Lok’s embroidery is known throughout the north, and I’m not going to
have it passed from hand to hand without giving proper thanks.”
The clan maids, bless them, nodded in agreement and understanding.
There wasn’t a woman in the clanholds who didn’t value beautiful needlework.
Mace saw this and must have realized he was in danger of looking foolish. A
clan chief never concerned himself with women’s affairs.
He waved a hand toward the door. “Go then.” She finished pulling the
oak door in its oiled track, all the time knowing what he would say next and
waiting to hear it.
“But, wife,” he warned when the door’s motion was complete. “Such a
piece of work as this tunic ... I’d like to see it for myself. Bring it to me
when you’re done.”
She stepped outside. “I’ll be happy to—tomorrow when it’s been properly
pressed and aired.” And once
I’ve raced upstairs to the widows’ hearth and begged Merritt Ganlow and her
widow-wives to stay up all night embroidering something for me. Thank the gods Mace was a
typical clansman and wouldn’t be able to tell clan-sewn pieces from city ones.
Almost dizzy with satisfaction, Raina hurried to the stables. She had
to caution herself not to skip like a girl.
By the time the short walk was complete, the euphoria had drained away,
leaving her feeling vulnerable and shaky. The early sunshine had gone, closed
off by swift-moving clouds, and the air was misty with rotting ice. Spikes of
new greenery, snowdrops by the look of them, had pushed through the slush piled
to either side of the stable’s double doors. Raina supposed that meant spring
was here, and could find nothing in her that was glad.
Inside the stable all was dim and warm, the air kept well above
freezing by Jebb Onnacre’s carefully tended safe lamps. It was easy to tell
which box held Angus Lok’s mount, for six men were gathered around the
half-gate, admiring the beast within. Four were the yearmen sent to escort the
ranger off Blackhail territory, and the others were Angus himself and Orwin
Shank.
The wealthy clan overlord was speaking, a red and ax-bitten hand
resting on the horse’s neck. “Aye, it’s a pity he’s gelded. Could have charged
the gods’ own eyeballs for stud.”
“I heard the Sull cut any horse that leaves their Heart Fires,” sniped
Elcho Murdock. “Won’t have outsiders breeding down their stock.”
“Is that so,” Angus said mildly. “An expert in our midst and I didn’t
know it.”
Elcho, who was small-eyed and bulb-nosed like his grandfather,
suspected an insult but couldn’t prove it, and scowled childishly. Young Graig
Lye, who was brighter by far but no more self-restrained, sniggered at him
under his breath.
“Gentlemen,” Angus said, ignoring the obvious signs of their youth. “I
wonder if you’d do me the honor of waiting for me outside whilst I talk to your
fair chief’s wife?”
Until he spoke, Raina had thought her entrance had passed unmarked. She
should have known better. It was the treader fly again, sensing the slightest
ripple on the water.
Elcho puffed out a disbelieving breath. “I don’t think so, ranger. What
if you mount your horse and escape us ?”
“Then I’d be off your hands and away from your clanhold just as your
chief commanded.”
Raina had to smile at the befuddled looks on the yearmen’s faces. Angus
was tying them up in knots. Luckily, Orwin Shank stepped in before the poor
lads could be sold a dead horse. “You boys run along outside. I’ll stand second
to the ranger’s word.”
Orwin Shank was father to four living sons and one daughter. He was the
greatest landholder in the clan and keeper of the most gold. He kept a stable
of thirty horses and more sheep than there were days in winter. He’d fought at
the Griefbringer’s back at Middle-gorge and lost two grown sons to Bludd: No
man in the clan was worthy of more respect. Even young, untested yearmen knew
better than to doubt him.
Raina smiled her thanks at the aging axman as the four yearmen filed
out of the stable door.
‘ ’Twas nothing, Raina,“ he replied brusquely. ”If two people can’t
speak in private without watchers then what sort of clan are we making?“ His
hazel eyes seemed to challenge her. ”I’ll be waiting over there by the pump.
Speak quiet now, for there’s no such thing as trying not to overhear.“
She watched him cross to the far side of the stable wall, and begin
drawing water to wet his face from the crank pump. Behind her, she was aware of
Angus breathing lightly, waiting for her to speak. Now that she was here and
had her way, she was no longer sure of her motives.
First things first. “Angus,” she said, turning to him. “You must give
me a package, one large enough to hold a man’s tunic.”
He did not ask for an explanation, merely leaned forward to search his
leather saddlebags, which had been hooked over the stall door. The beautiful
Sull horse, his coat as dark and glossy as tree syrup, popped his head over the
half-gate to watch. Raina scratched him gently on the nose as Angus laid a
smooth, linen-wrapped package at her feet.
She did not thank him. Quite suddenly she knew they were about to speak
treason of the chief. She took a breath. “Why did you infer Mace had something
to do with Shor Gormalin’s death? Everyone knows he was killed by a Bludd
cowlman.”
It still hurt to mention Shor’s name. “Wedme, Raina” he had said, the night before she rode west with
Effie to the Oldwood. “I
know it’s too soon after Dagro’s death, but I would not see you unprotected.
I... I would not expect to share your bed, but in time I hope you’ll come to
love me as I love you.”
And she had not answered him. Fool that she was, she’d made him wait,
though in her heart she’d already said yes. And by the next day it was too late
... and Shor had ridden to his death thinking she’d rejected him for Mace.
Angus cleared his throat. “Raina, what if I were to tell you that Bludd
has not raised one cowlman these past thirty-five years? That the Dog Lord has
little patience for the sort of wars where trained assassins bivouacked in the
snow can terrorize an entire clan? I know him, and he’s not that sort of man.”
Hay crunched beneath Raina’s feet as she shifted her weight. “What of a
cowlman gone wild? They live in the field for years, often with little or no
contact with their chiefs. Isolation drives men insane.
The ranger nodded. “You speak the truth, but the only living cowlman in
Bludd is over sixty. His name is Scunner Bone and he’s afflicted with an
arthritic right hand, and he fishes and raises chickens for his keep.“
The truth of Shor’s death was there to see in the ranger’s steady gaze,
but she couldn’t face it just yet. “And what of another clan? Dhoone? Half
Bludd? Gnash?”
“Gnash has cowlmen, that’s for sure, some of the best in the North.
HalfBludd .. . well, if you’re undersized in HalfBludd and can’t raise one of
their giant war axes shame might well turn you to stealth. As for Dhoone. Well,
I’m sure once young Robbie takes over they’ll have them by the cartload. He’s
the kind who’ll need assassins.”
Gods,
what doesn’t he know about the clanholds? Suddenly she wanted very much for this to be over.
“Have you any proof Mace was involved in Shor’s death?”
“I’ve handled the two quarrels he was shot with. Beneath the new red
paint I saw the work of Anwyn Bird.”
Many things went through her mind at once. Who had shown him the
arrows? Why had they even been kept?
Angus was looking at her closely. “Anwyn’s workshop was ransacked a
week before the shooting. Several items were stolen, including a set of a dozen
quarrels she’d made especially for the Lowdraw.” Raina put a hand against the
half-gate to steady herself, and as she did so she began to realize how deep
Angus’ connections ran in this clan. Others had aided him in this. She was
aware of her body cooling, despite the warmth of the mica-covered safe lamps.
Shor had been killed by his own clansmen.
Oh, Mace’s hand never would have loosed the arrow. He was too clever
for that. Always he used others for his dirty work; meetings by the dog cotes
and stoke holes, words whispered in a willing ear, denials ready on his lips.
Shor had been a threat to him, both for the chiefship and Raina’s hand. So Mace
had spoken soft words and loosed an assassin, and killed him before he could
claim either.
Dagro,
help me. Raina
raised her gaze to meet Angus‘. In Dregg she had been taught that hell was a
place without stone or earth to stand on, that souls sent there drifted for
eternity, in search of a place to rest their feet. Until this moment it had
always seemed a pleasant concept, that floating. Now she knew that to float was
to be powerless. A man or woman could do nothing without their feet upon the
ground. There was a choice here: Float with the rest of the clan, following the
current created by Mace Blackhail. Or plant two feet on the earth and take a
stand.
Angus read the decision on her face almost the moment she made it. His
nod was barely perceptible ... and it made her shiver with fear.
She knew he would leave her to speak first. Although he had led her
this far, with this one goal in mind, the treason must be hers.
Letting her thoughts come to rest upon the woman in the Old-wood, she
found the words to say.
“My husband must be removed. It’s time Blackhail had a new chief.“
CHAPTER
Hauling Stones
Effie had a feeling Druss wasn’t taking her to Dregg. Back at Blackhail
he’d promised Raina and Drey he’d have her in the clan-hold within a week. Well
seventeen days had gone by since then, and Effie was pretty sure that if Druss
Ganlow wanted to reach Dregg he should have turned east by now.
Rising upright, she hooked a hand through one of the bale rings to
steady herself against the wagon’s motion, and peeked out through the canvas
flap at the farthest southern reaches of the clanholds.
It was all very confusing.
Rain was falling in slushy spits, and the wet-dog odor of snow-melt
rose from the earth like steam. The land rose all around in forested ridges.
Ancient stands of hemlock and stone pines grew tall and lush on the southern
exposures, and there—far behind them now—rose the strange purplish canopies of
Scarpe’s poison pines. Somewhere far ahead, water was rushing and crashing
through rocks. The Wolf River, Effie guessed, newly swollen with the first of
the spring thaw.
She sealed the flap and sat down on an empty chicken crate. So. They
were south of Scarpe and just north of the Wolf. Certainly nowhere near Dregg.
Frowning, Effie Sevrance settled down to think.
The journey hadn’t been nearly as bad as she’d expected. It was the
covered wagon, of course. It was dark and cozy, and whoever had oiled the
canvas last for weatherproofing had used beeswax instead of elk lard and it
made the interior of the wagon smell like Longhead’s carpentry workshop. And that made it smell like the roundhouse. Sometimes when
she woke she forgot where she was, and she thought to herself, I’ll beg some bone ends from Anwyn and head over to
the dog cotes.
Then her eyes opened and she found herself looking up at the wooden ribs of the
wagon. Remembering was the worst. Even if she were back at the roundhouse and
Anwyn were to give her bone ends, Old Scratch couldn’t eat them. A burned and
dead dog was bone ends.
A queer, unhappy laugh jerked her shoulders. Enough, she told herself sternly. Time to eat.
Food had been good and plentiful since leaving home. Druss Ganlow was
fond of saying he couldn’t cook a sausage on a stick, but the Orrl marksman
Clewis Reed was wondrously good with herbs and spices, rubbing the plucked skin
of pheasants with yellow mustard and cracked peppercorns, and stuffing the neck
cavity with leeks. Clewis Reed was nearly as good as Raif with his bow, so
there was always fresh rabbit and fowl. Reaching down to the wagon floor, Effie
sorted through her cloth bag. Finding a cold pheasant wing from last night’s
supper and the last of the honeyed hazelnuts, she settled down for her morning
meal.
Druss and Clewis had eaten already. Men did that, she concluded, ate as
soon as their eyes were open. They needed their strength to shave.
If she pushed the empty chicken crate to the front wall of the wagon
and stood on it, she could peek over the break in the canvas and see Druss and
Clewis on the driver’s seat. Sometimes Druss was peering back. She wondered
about that, the watching. She didn’t think Druss was interested in her at all.
Sometimes he forgot her name and called her Eadie, and once he’d clean forgot
she was there at all and began eating her share of meat and oats, and Clewis
had to elbow his ribs to make him stop. No. Druss Ganlow was concerned solely
with his load.
He often came back to check on it, tightening ropes and cinches that
hadn’t slackened a bit since he last looked. Once, he ordered Effie from the
wagon while he restowed the entire load. Effie had stayed close to the wagon,
trying not to look much farther than her feet. When he was done and she was
allowed to return she saw that the lidded baskets had been moved to the back
and the chicken crates stacked all around them. Druss had sweated for hours
afterward, and later that day when they stopped to camp he’d complained about
his back.
Suddenly, the wagon lurched woozily as the terrain beneath the wheels
changed from hard dirt to a swampy mire of mud and melting snow. Hazelnuts
bounced from Effie’s hand, pinging like hailstones as they scattered across the
floor. Quickly, she wrapped the wing bone in a cloth and fell to her knees to
retrieve them. Druss wouldn’t like nuts loose in the wagon bed; he’d yelled at
her once for spilling ale.
Late-morning light filtered through the front canvas flap, too weak to
be any help at all. Down on the floor the shadows were deep, and Effie had to
squint to see the nuts. When she found the first one she brushed it against her
sleeve and ate it. The next got crushed beneath her boots and she didn’t fancy
eating that at all. Others had fallen between the crates and she had to wait
for the motion of the wagon to roll them out. One particularly pesky nut had
lodged itself between the crates and the lidded baskets at the back. She tried
pushing the front crate to the side to reach it, but the cargo was too heavy to
budge.
Must
be hauling stones.
Effie decided she’d leave the hazelnut where it was. If Druss were to turn
around in the driver’s seat and see her unsettling his cargo he’d be mad.
Besides, perhaps a mouse might eat it. Da had once told her vermin could live
anywhere— even boats.
Thinking of a mouse on a boat made her smile, and she hardly noticed
the wagon was slowing. It was funny though, the way your body could do things
without asking your mind, for by the time the wheels had creaked to a halt, her
hand was on her lore. Checking. It wasn’t usual to stop before midday.
The small, ear-shaped chunk of granite was still except for a faint...
aliveness. There was no other word that would do. It was like finding eggs in
the chicken yard; you could tell straightaway which one held chicks and which
were just yolks and white. The ones with the chicks had a special heaviness, a
way of lying in your hand, perfectly still, yet not passive. Her lore was like
that now. Alive. Aware.
In the quiet that followed she heard Druss curse to all the gods. “Damn
river. Moving faster than a spooked herd. Only thing crossing that today is
birds.”
Clewis Reed’s deep, mournful voice was slow to respond. “Then we’ll
have to set camp and wait.”
“Wait? Wait? With a cargo in the back and
that girl ten days late to Dregg? I say we head upriver to the Bridge of Boats.
See if they’ve crossed there.”
Effie sensed slow shaking of the Orrl marksman’s head. “Bannen will
have beached its rafts. Anything left to ride water will have broken its
mooring and be halfway to the Wrecking Sea by now.”
Druss let out a frustrated growl. “I told you that girl would slow us.
Stung by Druss’ unfairness,
Effie leaned forward to hear Clewis Reed defend her, but the Orrl marksman
merely pointed out that the river had been running high and fast for several
days and that any delay would not have mattered.
“Hell and high water,” Druss proclaimed loudly, losing his anger.
“Stone gods save me from both.”
Effie heard the thud of his feet hitting ground as he vaulted from the
driver’s seat. When he had walked a fair distance from the wagon, Clewis Reed
added softly to himself, “Gods save me from hell alone. A man can drown but
once in high water.”
Effie let her lore drop against her chest. It was growing cold. The
wagon shuddered as the Orrlsman alighted, and Effie stepped to the back of the wagon
to peer out. She couldn’t see the river from where she stood, but she could
feel its icy spray, and smell the strange, aged-meat odor of the water. The two
men were talking, but their voices didn’t carry above the rush. Druss had
halted the wagon on a muddy bank high above the water, and the first wild oats
of spring were sprouting in the snowmelt. Traprock boulders tumbled down toward
the Wolf in a natural stair, and a daring pair of harlequin ducks was heading
for a swim.
Wanting very much to see the ducks enter the water, Effie took a deep
breath and pushed herself through the canvas slit. As always when she ventured
outside somewhere unknown there was that dizzying sense of falling. The ground
was solid, she knew it was solid—once as a toddie she’d
made Drey fetch a spade and dig it to a depth of four foot so she could be
sure—but somehow it never felt quite substantial enough to hold her. It was as
if there were pockets of air—traps—lurking just below the surface. Oh she knew
she was a pelt-shorn fool, told herself that all the time, yet it seemed to
Effie there was always a battle going on between things you knew and things you
imagined. And things you imagined were stronger.
She was careful where she put her feet as she rounded the side of the
wagon. When she was sure she was facing the river full-on, she slid her gaze
from her toes to the water twenty paces below.
The Wolf was churning and roiling, its waters so dirty with mud that
not even the crests frothed white. Branches and chunks of ice tossed wildly on
the surface, and below, in the gravy-colored murk, the bloated green mass of a
stag carcass floated eerily on the crosstows. Far upstream, in the bottomlands
east of Croser, forty thousand elk were said to cross the Wolf each spring,
heading due north to the Summer Steppes and the vast unending forest of the
Boreal Sway. Effie remembered Da telling her that Jamie Roy himself had named
the Wolf. He’d camped for a whole season on its northern bank, and in that time
he’d counted more than a hundred carcasses passing downstream. Others in the
party had wanted to name the river the Greenwater in memory of the old
homeland, but Jamie had shaken his head and said, No. We must name this river for itself, not in
memory of a place that no longer exists. I name it the Lone Wolf for it claims
more prey than any man and heads west when all other rivers flow east.
Effie shivered. The gusts rising from the water were sharp and
drenching, and she felt her hair and cloak quickly soak through. Below her, the
pair of mated ducks was gauging the current from a slimy ledge overhanging the
water. When a fast-moving swell crashed against the ledge, it buoyed the plain
brown hen and she let it carry her into the current. Her showy blue-and-green
mate honked in excitement and then dove in straight after her. Effie leaned
forward, trying to track them, but the water’s surface was a mountain range of
foam and the pair were soon lost from sight.
“They’ll live,” Clewis Reed said, surprising Effie with his nearness.
“Queer birds, harlequins. If they were men they’d be berserkers.”
Effie turned to face him. The Orrlsman’s face was pale and gaunt, and
about as long as a person’s face could possibly be. His hair and beard were
silver and wavy, both worn loose in the old-fashioned style of the Western Clan
Lords. His Orrl cloak was old-fashioned too, cut long to brush grass as he
walked and pieced so narrowly it dropped straight from his shoulders without
flaring. The whole thing served to emphasize his height, and Effie felt like a
mushroom beside him.
She couldn’t think of anything to say. Awareness of being outside, far
from any stone shelter or familiar landmark, was slowly taking command of her
thoughts. It was like the water soaking through her cloak, making her feel
goose-pimply and unprotected. When something touched her shoulder she jumped.
“Steady, lass,” Clewis said, tightening his fingers about her bone and
guiding her firmly away from the bank. “You wouldn’t want to be following those
ducks downstream.”
No she would not. How had she got so close to the edge? Had she taken a
step and not known it? To cover her agitation, she asked, “What are
berserkers?”
Clewis Reed studied her for a moment. “Head back to the wagon, lass.
Heat yourself some ale. I imagine we’ll be here quite a time, and if I’m
setting to tell a tale I’d rather my listeners be warm and dry.”
She searched for humor in his face, but saw only graveness. Suddenly
she missed Drey and Raif so much it made her stomach hurt.
“Get along, lass. I’ll be in to shake my cloak soon enough.”
Effie did as she was told. It was hard not to break into a run.
Her hands shook as she unhooked the little safe lamp from its bale hook
and lit the wick with a flint and striker. The interior of the wagon had grown
damp while she’d been outside and the flame fizzed and shrank. Druss feared
fire in the wagon above all things, and had insisted that Effie place the lamp
on a slate tile and keep the flame covered at all times. She wasn’t allowed to
light it for warmth or illumination, only to heat ale and broth; and never when
the wagon was in motion. As she sifted oats into the smoky brown ale to thicken
it, she thought about the wagon. It was well made compared to other wagons
she’d seen. The curved lasts that formed the ribbing for the canvas were as
smooth as table legs, and so expertly steamed that you might have thought the
trees had grown that way. And then there was the canvas itself; woven as close
as a chief’s own field tent, and proofed against the finest rain with beeswax.
Such things came at a price, Effie knew, and she wondered how Druss and Clewis
Reed could afford them.
Just as the ale began to shimmer with heat, Clewis’ large gloved hands
parted the canvas. Stepping into the wagon he brought the rain with him, for
the coating of his Orrl cloak shed water as quickly as the smoothest glass.
Nodding toward the copper pan above the heat, he indicated he was ready to take
a cup of ale. Effie poured a large measure into a turned wooden cup, hoping he
wouldn’t see how nervous she’d suddenly become. This was the first time she’d
been alone with him in the wagon. Normally he and Druss slept outside, under
cover of a small tent rigged to the side of the wagon. They took their meals outside
too, around a stone-ringed cook fire like elk hunters.
The Orrlsman sat on the empty chicken crate, his spine straight and his
free hand spread wide upon his knee, and drank deeply. The apple in his throat
moved once like a pump as he swallowed. “It’s well made,” he said when he was
done.
Effie felt her cheeks flush. “It’s the toasted oats and the nutmeg, and
the . . .” She hesitated, wondering if she should mention the dram of Mad
Binny’s rubbing alcohol she’d dumped into the pot on impulse. “The heat,” she
finished lamely.
Clewis looked at her as if he saw all she had not said. “So you’re
Sevrance-born, daughter to Tern and granddaughter to Shann and
great-granddaughter to Moag the Hammer?” He paused, waiting for her to nod, and
then continued in his deep, methodical voice, “It’s a strong line. A warrior’s
line. I fought at Shann’s side during the River Wars, at the Battle of Shaking
Bridge.”
Effie could only blink at him. She had never known her grandfather and
knew next to nothing about him. The River Wars were fifty years in the past;
most of the men who’d fought in them were dead.
“Shann was lamed as he held the center. A Dhoone lance unhorsed him,
and his foot became caught in his mount’s trappings as he fell. The beast panicked
and trampled his free leg. I don’t believe Shann felt the ankle break, though
we all heard the cracking of the bone. The battle frenzy was upon him, and he
fought his way back onto the stallion and held that line until sundown. It took
three of us to pull him from his horse. His foot and ankle were swollen like
water bladders, and we had to saw off his boot. His toes were as black as
plums, and the bone had shattered into so many pieces that the surgeon had to
keep the wound poulticed for nine days. Every night Corrie Moon would remove
the poultice, and there, embedded in the moss, would be a dozen tiny slivers of
bone.”
Effie hardly dared to move, less she distract the Orrlsman from his
tale. She had never heard anyone tell of her grandfather being a hero—Da never
bragged about his kin. Da hardly talked at all. And then there were the
interesting details of the wound. She wondered what Laida Moon’s father had
spread on the moss to draw out the bones. Mad Binny said honey would draw out
splinters, and purified meat jelly seasoned heavily with salt. If Effie closed
her eyes she could almost see the splinters oozing out.
“Well, pour me some more ale, lass. In Orrl, we knew to keep our bards’
throats oiled.”
Shamed by her lack of manners, she hastened to do his bidding.
Clewis Reed drank deep a second time, yet the strong brew did not relax
him, and his back remained stiff as he spoke. “Shann was carried home after
nine days, and though I never saw him again I heard tell of him from time to
time. He learned to walk with a stick,
and by all accounts could ride well enough to be useful in the training
of hammermen. He took up woodworking, fathered a son, and died a few years later
in his sleep. Not a bad life. He never took to the field again, yet that hardly
mattered after Shaking Bridge.
“Blackhail and Orrl won victory that day over Dhoone, and you’ll not
find a man in the clanholds who won’t give Shann Sevrance his due. Without him
Dhoone would have routed us. They were so close to the bridge they could see
the splinters on the rail. Yet Shann fought them like a man possessed, I know
because I watched him with my own two eyes. It was cold that day, yet the air
around him rippled. It was like watching a man underwater. The distortion, as
if you were seeing everything he did a moment after he did it.”
The Orrlsman halted in his telling to look Effie full on. His eyes had
the washed-out color of a man in his sixties, yet his gaze had a force that
pinned you. A marksman’s gaze. “Your grandfather turned berserker that day at
Shaking Bridge. He fought like a Stone God, unseating Dhoonesmen, smashing the
weapons from their hands. All you had to do to make a kill was fight in his
wake, for the men he matched hammers with were left dazed and bleeding. I was
fourteen, a self-annointed swordsman for the day. I’d seen so little of battle
until then that I thought that what Shann did . . . what he became was normal.
Time has taught me otherwise.”
Effie had to look away. For no good reason she felt guilty, as if he’d
caught her in a deception. To distract herself she studied Clewis’ hands. Thick
bowman’s calluses had misshapen all the fingers of his drawing hand, and his
knuckles were blotched with liver spots.
“Shann’s sister was with him, that morning in the tent. Breeda, a plain
lass, but devoted to her brother. We were waiting outside for him. We were a
small company, all Orrlsman—none of us had made white-winter warrior yet and we
were divvied up at the Hail Lord’s pleasure. When Shann and Breeda came out,
Breeda kissed him full on the lips and wished him well. I’ve remembered that
kiss for fifty years, yet to this day I hardly know why.”
Effie shifted uncomfortably. Outside, the rain had turned heavy, and it
drummed against the canvas roof. The tent flap hadn’t been secured, and the
curled edges of the canvas began to funnel water into the bed of the wagon.
Effie turned up the wick on the safe lamp—Druss wouldn’t be pleased about that
at all—and heard herself ask, “What was Breeda’s lore?”
Clewis leant forward to adjust the tent flap, so he wasn’t looking at
her as he said, “I can’t say as I remember. As far as I know all you Sevrances
are bears.”
How do
grown-ups do it?
she wondered. Lie so badly
and get away with it? He had led her this far, hinting at things she could hardly imagine,
and now he was leaving her stranded. Well, she wouldn’t let him. Grabbing hold
of her lore, she held it out toward him. “Did she wear a stone like this?”
The Orrlsman breathed deeply, and after a time nodded. “Aye, she may
have done.”
Effie let the stone drop against her breastbone. She had won an
admission from him, but it didn’t feel much like a victory. She could see from
the faint drawing in of his long dignified face that she had overstepped
herself. Here was a subject to be fished for, not hunted. He stood.
“I’ll be off to check on the ponies.”
She dropped her head in something like a nod, and then listened as he
left. Confused guilt made her quick to snuff the lamp.
“Effie Sevrance.”
She looked up, and there was Clewis Reed again at the tent flap,
peering in, returned after less than a minute. His expression was somber and
resigned.
“There’s one last thing you should know about your grandfather. Shann
took to the field that day a young man, his warrior’s oath new-spoken, his
shoulders so thick with muscle that his plate had to be held on with horse
straps. By the first light next morning he was someone else. His muscles were
gone. Burned up. His skin rested loose on his face and neck, and his fingers
were curled like an old man’s. He’d aged twenty years. I’ve never seen the like
before. It was as if the battle at Shaking Bridge had consumed him.”
Sorcery. There it was, the unspoken
word between them. Effie understood his reticence now. Clansmen could not—would
not— talk of such things out loud. Clewis was telling her in his round-
about way that Shann Sevrance had traded his youth for skill in battle.
Only telling wasn’t the right word for it. Warning was a better one. Questions
jumped into her throat, but she closed her lips to stop them coming out. Clewis
Reed would not be hunted. Instead, she busied herself with the lamp, scraping
hot soot from the vents with her thumbnail, and waited.
She felt the Orrlsman hesitate, heard him clear his throat. “The old
stories, they need passing on. Time may come when we need them, and how will we
survive if we’ve forgotten how to fight?”
He left her then, carefully sealing the tent flap behind him, shutting
out the rain and the light.
Effie pushed the lamp away, and set her bottom on the warm spot it had
created. Her thumbnail was black and gummy, and for a brief moment she wished
she were back at the roundhouse so she could go running to Letty Shank and
Florrie Horn and tell them her thumb was gangrenous and would soon be falling
off. The thought of their screams made her smile for a bit, but it wasn’t
enough to make her forget about Clewis Reed.
Why
tell me? That
was the question she wanted to ask him.
Her hand found her lore and weighed it. Hauling stones, that’s what it
felt like to wear it. Both she and Breeda Sevrance had hauled stones. It should
have made her feel better to learn she wasn’t the only one to bear the stone
lore, but it didn’t. Breeda had been strange— that was something else Clewis
Reed had managed to convey without actually coming out and saying it—and that
meant she, Effie Sevrance, was strange as well. She didn’t want to be strange.
She wanted to be like Letty Shank and Florrie Horn, pretty and careless and
afraid of normal things like mice and gangrenous fingers.
That made her snort and come to her
senses. She didn’t really want to be afraid of gangrenous fingers. It was
just... the weight of everything, that was all. Longhead once said that the
trouble with carrying stones was they never got any lighter, just heavier and
heavier the longer you carried one. He should know, he’d spent forty years
hauling stones around the roundhouse for repairs. Today Effie knew what he
meant. Her lore had just got heavier. Somehow the weight of Clewis Reed’s story
was now resting upon it.
Well she wasn’t going to think about it. Standing, she began to tidy
the bed of the wagon. Her chicken crate and sleeping pallet were shoved noisily
to the side, and the lamp was set to cool on its bale hook. She slid the slate
into place between the lidded baskets, and then began sopping up the puddle of
rainwater that had collected below the tent flap. As she leaned out the wagon
to wring the rag, Druss Ganlow called to her.
“Girl. You best not have spilled more ale.”
He was standing by the back wheel, kicking a chock into place. Rain had
plastered his hair to his scalp, collapsing his normal baby fluff and revealing
all the bald bits in between. His ale belly shuddered as he drove the cedar
wedge into the mud. “I’ll tell you now if you’ve wet one of those baskets I’ll
see you tanned for it.”
“It’s nothing. Just a few drops of rainwater, that’s all.”
Druss huffed at her. “You best get your arse down here. We’re setting
to stay the night and I need to check the load.”
Effie grabbed her cloak. She’d come to realize that Druss Ganlow was
one of those men who looked soft on the outside but was all hard stuff within.
And he lied. He’d lied to Raina about the trip to the Dregg, and to Drey about
Black Hole. As she passed him on the wagon step some contrary bit of wickedness
made her ask, “Did Raina pay you to take me to Dregg?”
He drew back his hand to show he was ready to smack her. “Let’s get
this straight, girl. I took no coin for you. It was a widows’ favor, set between
my mam and Raina. You should be grateful you got out that roundhouse alive, not
stirring up the piss in the pot. And I’ll tell you another thing. Once we get
to Dregg: First word of this dogleg leaks to Raina, and I’ll haul you back to
the Hailhold so fast Stanner Hawk won’t have time to fire the forge.”
Effie frowned as he pushed past her to enter the wagon. “So we are
going to get there then ? ”
She heard him growl as she ran away. Fear was a strange thing, she’d
noticed. Your head could only hold so much of it at once, and there just wasn’t
enough room left to be afraid of Druss’ threats.
The rain had begun to ease, but she still had to pull up her hood to
keep from getting soaked. Clewis Reed was nowhere to be seen, so Effie checked
the driver’s seat to see if he’d taken his bow. The long, waxed leather
bowsleeve lay as limp as a shed snakeskin on the boards. So he’d gone hunting
then. In the rain. Which was a bit strange, really, as everyone knew you
couldn’t bag any game in a downpour. Still. / suppose he could shoot the ducks. Somehow she didn’t think he
would, though. Harlequins were berserkers, he’d said so. They’d only carry on
swimming if they were shot.
Not wanting to move far from the wagon, Effie went to see the ponies.
The hitch was still in place though the traces had been loosened to allow the
pair to feed, and both animals were busy cropping the new green oats. They
lifted their heads in interest when she approached, and let her scratch behind
their ears and try to guess their names. Bacon and Eggs. Hammer and Nail.
Just as she decided upon Killer and Outlaw, Clewis Reed came running
from the trees. The tall Orrlsman was holding his six-foot longbow aloft like a
spear, and moving without a sound. He spotted Effie straightaway, and put a
hand to his lips to silence her.
“Tighten the traces,” he ordered, as he neared the wagon. He was
breathing hard, and his hand went briefly to his heart. Sliding an arrow from
his bowcase, he turned to face the trees. “Where’s Druss?”
“Inside the wagon,” Effie whispered, stretching over Killer’s haunch to tighten his waist cinch. Clewis Reed had to be an old man—he’d fought in the River Wars—yet he didn’t move like one. And he didn’t panic either. Not taking his gaze from the trees, the Orrlsman issued a high-pitched whistle, managing to sound just like a grouse marking its territory. Druss emerged from the wagon immediately. His face was red with exertion, but his eyes were sharp with comprehension, and he’d drawn his city-made longknife. His gaze followed Clewis’ to the trees, but there was nothing to be seen but rain-weighted boughs of hemlock, too heavy to move in the wind.
When he turned back to the wagon and saw Effie, his expression
hardened. “You. Inside,” he hissed, kicking the chock clear of the wheel.
Feeling the final buckle snap into place beneath her fingers, Effie
moved clear of the ponies. Druss was already mounting the driver’s seat, the
reins pulled taut in his fist. “What did you see?” he asked Clewis.
The Orrlsman held his position at the rear of the wagon, his green
antler bow part-drawn, an iron-headed arrow trained upon the trees. “City men.
Trappers like as not, caught in the clanholds by the thaw. Had some fine horses
though, for skin men. Swords, too.”
Druss clicked the ponies to attention, and began guiding them through
the delicate half-turn needed to steer clear of the riverbank. Effie got the
feeling that both men had gone through this before. There was urgency without
alarm; a mutual understanding that one man’s job was to move the wagon—the
other’s to protect it.
As she raced to catch up with the back of the wagon, she heard Druss
ask, “How many?”
“Five. Quarter league downstream.”
“Have they spotted us?”
“Only the gods know that.”
Effie leaped onto the step just as the wagon turned onto the path.
Clewis was sidestepping with his bow, losing distance to the wagon as he
covered its retreat. Wagging his head at Effie, he encouraged her to move
inside the canvas, leaving the step clear for him. She would have liked to stay
put, but knew better than to ignore a clansman, and pushed forward into the dim
interior. The wagon was picking up speed, and the load creaked and shifted, but
Effie was more interested in watching Clewis Reed mount the step. He had to run
to match the wagon’s pace, but even then he didn’t relax his part-draw until
the moment before he jumped. Swiftly, with his back turned to Effie, he
fastened a guide rope around his waist, anchoring his torso to the wagon. Within
seconds he had his bow back at part-draw, and his gaze trained once more on the
receding tree line.
Effie observed him through the canvas flap. His fine silvery hair was
floating on the breeze, revealing the flesh at the back of his neck. Engorged
veins had turned the skin grey. He must have sensed her attention, for he
turned toward her briefly and said, “Sit down, girl. Nothing to see but an old
man with a bent stick.”
Reluctantly she moved back. The wagon was traveling over a rocky path,
and the wooden ribs began to sway wildly from side to side. The lamp clattered
noisily against the bale hook, and the chicken crate she normally sat on kept
sliding backward and forward like something not battened down on a boat. It
made her feel a bit sick. Crouching in the corner, she tried to settle the
rolling in her belly.
Minutes passed and there was still no sign of pursuit. Effie thought it
strange that clansmen in their own territory had reason to fear city men, but
then she knew little about the border clans. Perhaps Bannen was more dangerous
than Blackhail.
Suddenly, she heard Druss Whoa!
the ponies, and the entire wagon lurched massively to the left. Effie was
thrown forward as the ponies pulled to a halt. Leather whined, then snapped.
One of the lidded baskets broke free from its mooring and fell with a heavy
thud by Effie’s head.
“Are you in one piece back there?” came Clewis Reed’s voice through the
canvas.
Effie groaned an affirmation. She was lying facedown on the bed of the
wagon and her left ear was on fire.
“Standing water on the road,” he said. “Nothing more. We’ll be taking a
turn for the trees now anyway. I’d say we’ve seen the last of the trappers.” He
shouted ahead to Druss, and the wagon jerked into motion once more.
Effie raised a hand to her ear and winced. The basket had clipped her
as it fell, and her earlobe felt strange and swollen. As she lifted her head
from the floor she noticed a flickering yellow light on the canvas. Blinking
slowly, she tried to work out its source. It was beautiful, warm as sunshine.
Magical in its brilliance. Perhaps she’d been knocked out and this was a dream.
Only ears didn’t throb in dreams, she was pretty sure of that. Turning her head
slowly she checked to see if the canvas flap was gaping, letting in light.
That was when she saw it. The lidded basket had burst open, and five
rods of metal had slid out.
Gold.
CHAPTER
A Surlord’s Progress
“We can reach the clanholds in twenty-four days, weather permitting. A good
scout can halve that.”
“Not at this time of year, with the floods.” Penthero Iss halted in his
progress of Spire Vanis’ northern wall to look Marafice Eye in the face. The
Protector General of Spire Vanis was clothed in the red leather cloak of his
office, with the great lead killhound brooch at his throat, and his black iron
birdhelm crooked in his left arm. His one small eye was squinting against the
whiteness of the morning mist and the strange disembodied rays of sunlight that
shot through it like enemy fire. Marafice Eye ill liked being contradicted, but
they were alone here, upon the limestone, and the Knife was learning to school
his responses. Any man who sought to be surlord had to choose his battles
carefully.
Iss watched him drop his shoulders with an effort. “The dark-cloaks I
sent out at Atonement should be back any day now. I’ll have better intelligence
then.”
The word “I” sounded a warning to Iss. It was a tug on the reins of
power. Marafice Eye was demonstrating his influence, now grown diverse enough
to command companies of notoriously volatile darkcloaks, and gather
intelligence from sources far beyond the city. But not far enough. With the
minutest stretching of his lips, Iss turned smartly on his heels and continued
his progress, leaving the Knife no choice but to follow him. Later he will see just how much farther a surlord
must reach.
The Almsgate progress had begun before dawn. From high atop Spire
Vanis’ northern wall it was possible to look out upon the vast tent city
erected to accommodate Spire Vanis’ ever-growing army. A ragged patchwork of
hide and canvas tents spread wide and unlovely across the Vale of Spires below,
turning furrowed fields to lakes of mud and crushing the first new grasses of
spring. The stench of horse manure, unwashed bodies and woodsmoke rose like
marsh gas from the encampment, and there was at least one grangelord in the
progress who held a scented pomander to his nose to void the stink. The
progress had been requested by Marafice Eye so he might show his surlord the
full breadth of the army he was massing. It had been intended as a small
affair—ranking generals, masters-of-arms, and a select few grangelords who were
not wholly unsympathetic to the Knife—but word had spread, as word was wont to
do, and half the grangelords in the city had turned up.
Marafice Eye was furious. And he’d made the mistake of showing it. Iss
was an old hand at these things; he knew all about the delicate egos that vied
for influence in the city, and knew to expect greater numbers. Any attempt to
exclude powerful grangelords from a public procession was doomed to fail from
the start. The Knife would have been better served inviting them all along from
the beginning—the progress would never have taken on its air of secrecy and
exclusivity and hardly anyone would have bothered to turn up—but then the Knife
had much to learn.
Iss was conscious of a falling in his spirits as he headed toward the
great iron edifice of Almsgate. The wall was fifteen foot deep here, swelling
to accommodate the gate towers. Lead-capped merlons and roofed archer’s roosts
protected the walkway, yet Iss did not feel fully protected. At his back, at a
carefully gauged distance of three foot, walked the Knife, and behind him, out
of earshot as custom demanded, walked the eighty or so grangelords and generals
that formed the remainder of the progress. Lisereth Hews was in atten-
dance, mother to the Whitehog and the only woman in the party. Iss had
spied her earlier, dressed in the white and silver of House Hews, her ermine
cloak paler than the limestone she walked on, her ungloved fingers glittering
with a dozen surlords’ rings. She had been daughter to the surlord Rannock Hews
and now fancied being mother to one too. Many counted her a beauty, with her
pale green eyes and unlined skin. Iss counted her dangerous. Her father had
been slain before her eyes in Hound’s Mire. She knew what it took to make a
surlord.
It was only a matter of time before she sent her assassins out.
Briefly, Iss turned his head and acknowledged her with a small bow. She
returned the gesture in kind, her own bow displaying the proper degree of
genuflection even though her gaze never dropped once from his. House Hews was
ever subtle in its defiance.
“Lady of the Eastern Granges,” he addressed her on a whim. “Walk with
us.” Turning his back, he did not wait to hear her acknowledgment. The brisk
swishing of her silks and furs told him how eager she was to be included in the
Surlord’s party.
Marafice Eye was not gentle around women, and he made no courtly show
of welcome, nor did he give up his place for her, forcing the lady to walk
around him to draw abreast of the Surlord. She was a little breathless when she
reached him. The morning light shone directly on her face, showing Iss that
while her many admirers had been wrong about her unlined complexion, they were
right about her eyes. They were green like a cat’s.
“I trust Garric is well?” he said. “I notice he’s not among us this
morning.”
She made a small gesture toward the encampment. “My son has duties with
his hideclads. He leads the cavalry drills at dawn.”
Her pride was unmistakable. Iss chose to inflame it. “I’ve heard he’s
begun styling himself the Whitehog, after his greatgrandfather. It’s gratifying
to see a young man honor his ancestors. Let us hope their fates do not befall
him.”
Lisereth Hews stiffened. Diamonds woven into her hair veil threw
sparks. “My ancestors’ fates have never been less than glorious. House Hews has
given rise to forty-seven surlords. And you are mistaken, Surlord, if you
imagine I would discourage my son from following them.“
Iss raised an eyebrow. Lisereth Hews was a clever woman, but she had
the unhappy habit of turning shrill when defending her son, and it was
remarkably easy to goad her. “My dear lady. I make no mistakes regarding your
ambitions, you can depend upon it.” With a flick of his wrist he dismissed her,
walking briskly forward with the Knife so that she stood alone on the limestone
until the larger company met her.
Almost it was a relief to have her intentions out in the open.
Ahead lay the first of the northern gate towers, drum-shaped donjons
built to house a hundred men. The wall was five stories high here, but the
towers were higher by another three stories, and they dwarfed the gate they
warded. Almsgate was cast from pure clannish iron, and no device had ever been
built that could raise it. Manpower was needed. Two hundred
brothers-in-the-watch raised it every morning on ropes as thick as a child’s
thigh. When it was dropped at night, the sound of iron hitting iron could be
heard as far as the Quartercourts. Whores timed their shifts to it, and young
men tested their manhood beneath it, standing in the gate trough until the very
moment the warden called the drop. A gold coin left in the trough as the gate
fell would be flattened to the thinness of parchment and stamped with the
impressions of gate bolts. It was legal tender, and highly regarded, and many
contracts within the city stipulated payment by Almsgold.
Iss thought the gate ugly and barbaric, ill fitted to the creamy
limestone walls it was set within. Still, he had to admit its efficacy. Not
once in the thousand years since its forging had an invading army breached it.
Pausing by the entrance to the
western donjon, Iss made a show of
asking his Knife questions regarding the army arrayed below, allowing Marafice
Eye the chance to point and gesture and demonstrate his command. It was part of
their deal. Lead an army for
me, Iss had
said at midwinter in the Blackvault. And in return I’ll name you as my successor. It was far too early for such
a reckless declaration—even Marafice Eye would admit that—yet small things such
as this parley led toward it. Eighty of the most powerful men in the city stood
watch as the Surlord paid deference to his Knife.
Marafice Eye was aware of it, but his mind was a soldier’s mind, and he
was soon engrossed in the details of wagon trains and supplies. “We’ll need
provisions along the way,” he said, his huge dog hands pushing northward. “The
northern granges are wary of our passage. I’ve had Ballon Troak and Mallister
Gryphon raising hell over it, threatening to withdraw their hideclads if we
pass through either of their granges. Mothers of bitches. They fight me at
every turn.”
They’re
playing a game with you, Iss thought to say but didn’t. This is about compensation, nothing more. Gold would
solve it; that or the promise of first spoils on some lesser roundhouse like
Hardness. It
was an unusual thing, this raising of a surlord, and Iss was unsure how to
accomplish it. There were benefits; he could not deny it. Marafice Eye was the
most feared man in Spire Vanis, his name spoken with awe on the streets and
outrage in the granges. If a man counted on being surlord for life he needed
such a second at his back. But there were dangers too. How long would Marafice
Eye be content to wait for his prize? Butcher-bred in Hoargate, he had the kind
of hard, practical ambition that seldom overlooked chances. He’d move at the
first smell of blood. They all would. Lisereth Hews and her son the Whitehog,
the Forsworn who’d been expelled from the city since Borhis Horgo’s death, John
Rullion and his hard-liners, and the ancient houses of Crieff, Gryphon, Stornoway,
Pengaron and Mar.
Iss shuddered, though, cloaked as he was in velvet-lined vair, the
winds from the mountain barely touched him. It moved a man strangely to
contemplate his own death. The absurdity of favoring one candidate for murder
over another did not diminish the fear.
“You must be sure the might of Spire Vanis is seen by Hie Glaive,” he
said to the Knife.
Marafice Eye was quick to nod. “I know it, Surlord. Threavish Cutler
may be closer to the clanholds, but the Glaive Lord will not steal a march on
me.”
Iss was surprised at the Knife’s insight but did not show it. A
weakened clanhold was a temptation to all the cities of the north, bu none more
so than Ille Glaive. As things stood now it was Blackhail held Ganmiddich that was
most vulnerable amongst the clans. Ane Ganmiddich was but a stone’s throw from
Threavish Cutler‘ fortress on the lake. Mayhap in the future I will make an ally of th<
Glaive Lord, but for now it suits me to have him as a wild card, threat ening
both the Knife’s and the Whitehog’s backs.
As Iss took the final steps toward the gate he felt the old ange:
coming back. Asarhia, why
did you have to run away? He woulc never have harmed her; she had to know that. He would have
hon ored and treasured her, protecting her from the outside world in ;
sumptuous chamber locked with a key. Everything would have beer so much easier
if she had stayed. Instead of spending his day: arranging the fall of his
rivals he could have used her power to chal lenge a continent.
His very own Reach, and he had lost her.
Nodding to the gate warden, Iss indicated his intent to enter the
donjon. Asarhia might have fled, but that didn’t mean he could b( counted out.
Against all odds he had made himself surlord, expellee the Forsworn from the
city, and set all the clanholds at each others throats. What he had started
could not be stopped. Events mighi move more slowly, and goals might take
longer to achieve but he would dominate the continent. In good time.
Nodding to the gate warden, Iss indicated his intent to enter the
donjon. From his years’ service in the Rive Watch he knew the city’s gate
towers well. They were damp and cold, the stairs and ways built narrow to
exclude the passage of more than one man. The grangelords would have to pick up
their heavy cloaks and travel in single file. Let them wonder, as they rounded
dark corners, if an assassin was waiting in the shadows on the other side. That
would be the closest most would get to becoming surlord, that knowledge of a
surlord’s fear.
Marafice Eye commanded the gate towers and knew all about their
dangers. Without waiting for his surlord’s permission, he stepped to the head
of the party, his sword hand descending to the hilt of his red blade, his voice
barking a command to the warden. The warden took possession of the Knife’s
blackened birdhelm, then ran ahead to arrange the firing of torches.
Shouted calls to order accompanied the Surlord’s entrance. Inside the
donjon the temperature and light level dropped. The smell of old rankness, of
fluids spilled by torture and cog grease long soured, sweated from the stones
like groundwater. Iss descended swiftly, the anxious murmurs of grangelords
falling soft upon his ears.
When he reached ground level Marafice Eye stood waiting by the donjon’s
sole entrance, a doorway so narrow that a large man like the Knife had to face
side-on to enter. A sept of sworn brothers flanked him.
“Surlord,” he said formally, his gaze flicking over Iss’ shoulder to
check that they were alone and that the rest of the party still straggled far
behind. “I present your personal guard. Good men, picked by my own hand. Sworn
to protect you in my absence.”
A
personal guard? What mischief is this? Iss knew better than to show surprise. Coolly, he
inspected the sept, taking his time to note their weapons and their faces. They
were big men, cloaked in black rather than their dress reds, their killhound
brooches set with ruby eyes denoting ten-year service. Iss recognized two of
them. Axal Foss was known as the Knighthunter, for the great number of Forsworn
he’d slaughtered during—and after—the Expulsions. He was a veteran of twenty
years, and had risen to the rank of Captain Protector. The other man was Styven
Dalway, blond and handsome and much admired by grange-bred ladies. Iss had
recruited him in Almstown sixteen years earlier after seeing him fight
single-handed against the King of Pimps and two of his cronies. Apparently,
Dalway’s sister was a seasoned whore who’d failed to pay her cut to Edo Shrike,
the self-styled King of Pimps, and the King of Pimps had seen her flogged for
it. Dalway killed him on the Street of the Five Traitors with half of Almstown
watching.
Hearing the footfalls of the remainder of the progress approaching, Iss
ordered the sworn brothers at ease. “Knife,” he commanded, slipping through the
portal and into the gate court beyond. “Attend me.”
Almstown was famous for its markets, and the open area south of the
gate was bustling with activity as merchants set down tables and rolled out
canvas for the day’s business. Brazier men were lighting their grills, setting
sausages and knuckles of pork to char in their own fat. A steady stream of
mule-drawn carts was passing beneath the gate, bearing staples of grain and
winter roots from the northern granges, while dark-skinned acolytes of the Bone
Temple hefted baskets of forced plums and honey melons from the temple’s heated
garden. All slowed their labors to watch the Surlord and the Knife.
“So you’d see me thrice-guarded whilst you attend the clans?” Iss
turned on Marafice Eye, caring little if his voice rose. “I already possess an
honor guard of sworn brothers and a company of dark-cloaks. Tell me, would you
set guards to watch my guards?”
The Knife shrugged his massive shoulders. “I would see you alive on my
return, Surlord. No more.”
Iss breathed deeply. The Knife spoke hard and true. The worst that
could happen for Marafice Eye would be an assassination in his absence. Spire
Vanis would not wait on his return. By the time word reached him in the
clanholds a new surlord would be made. What then for the Knife? New surlords
were full of fear; they must move to smash their rivals. The Knife would find
himself shut out of the city. Or worse. He might never make it back to Spire
Vanis alive.
Iss stepped farther into the market square, making space for the crush
of grangelords and brothers-in-the-watch that was rapidly assembling behind
him. On his movement the sept of sworn brothers rushed forward into the crowd,
clearing a space of fifty feet around their charge. Iss almost smiled. So the
Knife would keep his surlord alive until he was ready to kill him. Absurdity heaped on
absurdity. But then what would one expect from a city founded by bastard lords?
“The sons of many granges ride north with you,” Iss said as the Knife
drew level with him. “It is a good thing to take one’s rivals to war.”
Marafice Eye grunted. “Good for both of us, Surlord.”
Iss could not deny it. Looking south across the city toward the boiling
mists of Mount Slain, he said, “Keep the Whitehog close on the journey.”
“I plan to.” Marafice Eye ran a hand across the hollow socket that was
his left eye. It pained him some, Iss had heard, yet he refused to take
anything for it. “I’d sooner watch the son than the dam.”
Then
you are a fool,
Iss thought with some satisfaction. Marafice Eye was a butcher’s son, bred in
the stinking shanties of Hoargate. His taste in women ran low. He was comfortable
amongst maids, whores and alewives. He didn’t know how to act around
grange-bred beauties. And he didn’t know how to gauge them. Iss knew the son to
be more dangerous than the mother: Lisereth Hews ran hot and cold and seldom
hid her emotions; Garric Hews ran only cold. Yet the Knife could not see that.
He saw Lisereth Hews’ arrogance and finery and knife-edged tongue. He saw, and
felt threatened by them.
“Knife,” Iss commanded, feeling at last a lightening in his spirits.
“Send for the horses. This progress has ended.”
While he waited for the horses to be led into the gate court, Iss
called for his Master of Purse. Behind him he was aware of the grangelords
growing agitated and impatient. They couldn’t send for their own mounts until
the Surlord was under way, and they felt their lack of dignity keenly.
Mallister Gryphon, Lord of the Spire Granges, was fuming. He’d tried to move
forward out of the crush, only to have Axal Foss restrain him with an unarmed
hand. Lisereth Hews had managed to spirit five of her personal hideclads into
the fray, and though she wasn’t unwise enough to have them escort her from the
gate, she used them to clear the area immediately before her, so that she stood
arrayed in all her House Hews finery for every merchant in Almsgate to behold.
Iss admired her nerve. Taking a bag of mixed coin from his Master of
Purse, he stole the merchants’ attention from her.
“Gentlemen traders,” he addressed them, using the skills of voice he’d
honed under Borhis Horgo. “I’ve heard tell the goods sold in Almsgate Market
are the best to be had in the city. I would sample such excellence myself.
Ready a basket of you finest wares, and my Master of Purse will purchase them
in my name and bear them south to the fortress.“
An excited murmur rippled through the marketplace as merchants and
traders reckoned the profit from this unexpected boon. Iss loosed the purse’s
drawstring, allowing the gold and silver coin to catch the light.
“And you’ll pay us fair value?” shouted a suspicious vintner near the
front.
“A silver over,” Iss replied, throwing the purse back to its master.
It was delicious to ride through Almsgate to the accompaniment of so
much cheering. At his side, mounted on his massive black destrier trapped with
Rive Watch red, Marafice Eye watched and learned. As they turned their horses
onto the wide expanse of the Spireway, he said, “That was nicely done, Surlord.
They’ll love you better for buying their wares than they would if you’d given
them charity.”
Iss nodded. Sometimes he didn’t know if he was teaching the Knife or
warning him.
The Spireway was the widest thoroughfare in the city, running north to
south from Almsgate to the Quartercourts. In the time of the Bastard Lords it
was known as the Street of Spikes, for traitors and petty thieves alike were
impaled on iron shafts along its three-league length. Later surlords had
enlarged and improved it, commissioning decorative arches and stone statues and
private limestone palaces to house their whores, their bastards, their gold.
Theric Hews had excavated the great stone warrior’s pit that lay at the halfway
mark, and Haider the Provider had built a folly of mock canals and sunken
gardens that froze to an ice sheet every year until spring. Still. Not even he had dared remove the spikes. The Impaled Beasts
were the war badge of Spire Vanis. This city had been built on stakes and
spikes and poles.
Iss counted the iron shafts absently as he rode. Black and ugly, they
were, some broken by frost and rust, others tied with the red ribbons of
marriage banns, announcing to anyone who cared to look that a marriage between
two parties was taking place, and any objec-
tions or prior claims should be lodged with the officiating priest. It
was a popular outing on holy days to travel from spike to spike, reading the
ribbons. Every betrothed couple in the city had to publish banns, and it was
counted a fine game to judge highborn marriages from lowborn solely on the
quality of ribbon used.
Shifting in his saddle so he could look at Marafice Eye, Iss said,
“It’s time you were wed, Knife. The man who would be surlord needs a grange.“
Marafice Eye made a noise. Iss took it as a sign he would listen. “You
cannot hope to rule this city without the grangelords. Yes, you could take the
power, but could you keep it? The grangelords control the trade routes. They
grow the grain and raise the livestock. You could fling open the gates but
nothing would come in. The city would starve. Then where would your brothers-in-the-watch
be? You could send them out against the granges, but they’d be fighting
hideclads on their home ground. And whilst you’re waiting to hear news of
battles and sieges, Almstown and Hoargate would riot. And would they riot
against the grangelords? No. Because the grangelords would be holed up in their
granges, well out of the city.”
Reaching the end of the Spireway, Iss guided his gelding east along the
muddy course of wells and mineral springs that bubbled up from Mount Slain and
was known as Water Street. An uneasy mix of bathhouses, tanneries and
slaughterhouses made use of the natural springs, and the sept of sworn brothers
swept wide as Iss and Knife rode through. The rising sun was just passing
behind Mount Slain as it did every morning in winter, providing a false dusk
for the short time it took to clear the peak. Iss tugged soft deerskin gloves
from his belt and slid them on.
“You need to control a grange, Knife. And the only way to do so is to
marry into one. Wed a grangelord’s daughter and you become one of them. Fight
them from the inside. That way they’ll respect as well as fear you.“
The Knife’s nostrils flared as he breathed and thought. “So it’s about
respect, is it, Surlord?“
“You know it is.” Then you must know that marrying a grangelord’s daughter will not make me a grangelord. Those
bastards have their estates and titles bound up tighter than a bathhouse
whipping boy. It would take an Act of Ascendancy to allow me to inherit the
title of grangelord on my father-in-law’s death.“
“Then you shall have one.”
Marafice Eye turned to look at him at last. The hollow eye socket was
full of shadow, a hole with nothing coming out. “I have your word on it?” Iss
nodded. “Speak it.”
“You have my word on it.” Iss felt his anger rising, but tamped it. He
wasn’t done here yet. Increasing his gelding’s pace to a trot, he said, “I’ve
been giving mind to whom you might wed. Suitable candidates are few and far
between, but I believe I’ve found one willing to have you. Katrina Mallion of
the Needlewood Granges is in need of a husband. She’s an only child, heir to
her father’s estates, and her first husband died without issue.”
Iss waited for the Knife’s response. Seconds passed. A flock of snow
geese soared overhead. Marafice Eye made a gesture to Styven Dalway, ordering
the sworn brother to flank the Surlord as they entered the bustling expanse of
Pengaron Square.
Just as Iss was ready to explode, Marafice Eye put a hand to his chin
and said, “Needlewoods. Aren’t those the trees that grow in swamps?“
Iss was having trouble containing his anger. “They may be. I hardly see
that it matters. The Needlewood Granges lie at the western foot of the
mountain, near Loon Lake. A portion of the holding may lie in marshland. What
of it? Katrina Mallion is young, noble, and willing. And her father has need of
hard cash.”
“So you’ve approached him?”
“Tentatively. Yes.” It was more than that, but Iss knew better than to
admit it. He’d been working for over a month toward this match. Edward Mallion
was a drinker and gambler, a wastrel who’d run his inheritance into the ground.
The Needlewood Granges produced reeds, fowl and turf. Only production had been
dropping these past ten years and now the granges barely paid for themselves. Mallion
had already accepted a hundredcount of Almsgold from the Sur-lord’s coffers. In
return, he’d given his word that he’d seek no further suitors for his daughter.
Iss judged the match a good one. The Needlewood Granges were a minor holding in
decline: They would suit his purposes well.
Iss said, “Katrina Mallion attended the Winter Feast at the fortress.
Even dressed in the black of mourning she turned many heads.”
Marafice Eye grunted. “You have given no promises?”
“No,” Iss lied.
“Good,” the Knife said, digging steel spurs into horsemeat. “As I’ve
given my word elsewhere.”
Iss felt the world turn out of focus. The jewelers, silversmiths,
redsmiths, blacksmiths, armorers and wiremakers whose market stalls filled
Pengaron Square became a blur of light and movement. Almost Iss could feel the
knives at his back. This is
what I will know the moment of my death; this revelation of betrayal.
With an effort of will he forced his mind from that dark place. The sun
had emerged from behind Mount Slain and was sliding its rays across the square.
A table piled with pewter bowls and cook pots flashed like treasure as the
sunlight touched it. Ahead, Iss saw the Knife in conversation with Axal Foss.
The other six men in the sept had drawn close around their surlord, reacting to
the slowing of his mount and the slight stiffening of his face.
Iss was aware of his heart as a living, moving weight in his chest. I have been duped. Tilting his chin upward he sent a sworn brother to
purchase a jeweled cup from the nearest stall. He did not want it, would never
even handle it, but he would not let the Knife know what his words had done.
Let him think his surlord slowed to inspect silverware, nothing more.
He’d
move at the first smell of blood.
Trotting his mount forward, Iss joined the Knife and they turned onto
the great white-paved promenade that led south to Mask Fortress.
“So,” Iss said after a time. “Who is the lucky maid?”
“Liona Stornoway.”
Stornoway. Stornoway. One of the five Great Houses
of Spire Vanis. Roland Stornoway could trace his ancestors back to the Bastard
Lords. His family had birthed a dozen surlords and countless Masters of Purse,
High Examiners, Protector Generals and warlords. The Stornoway holdings were
vast. They owned lands so far east they bordered on Hound’s Mire, and their
coffers were rumored to be brimming with Sull gold.
Iss kept a tight reign on his features. “A good match.”
Marafice Eye lifted the massive bulk of his shoulders in his version of
a shrug. “I think so. The bitch is well seasoned and not quite right in the
head, but I daresay she’ll suit me well enough. I’ll keep away from her and
she’ll keep away from me, and once we’ve fucked to seal the match we’ll be done.”
“Such romance.”
Marafice Eye barked a laugh.
Iss wondered how he had done it. True, Stornoway and Hews were longtime
rivals, and the Knife might have gained much by promising that Garric Hews
would never make surlord. But still. Stornoway was a proud house. How had they
agreed to marry one of their own to a son of Hoargate? Then he remembered.
“Liona you say ?”
“Aye. And if you’re thinking is she the one who got caught straddling
the bookbinder’s son, then you’d be right.”
“Quite a scandal as I recall.”
Marafice Eye executed another one of his shrugs. “Her scandal is my
gain. Roland Stornoway has been wanting to be rid of her for months. No decent
man would have her.” Stretching his lips into a savage smile, he added, “That’s
where I come in.”
He was clever in low ways, the Knife; you could never forget that. This
was a clever trick he’d pulled off, taking on the unwanted slattern of one of
the city’s finest houses. Roland Stornoway must be pissing himself laughing.
But then Roland Stornoway was a shortsighted fool. His death warrant had just
been signed.
“Refresh my memory,” Iss said, his voice casual. “Liona is one of three
daughters ?”
“The eldest. And there’s a son. Also named Roland.”
“Sickly?”
“He will be.”
Iss nodded. So many fools here, and he himself was one of them. Not an
hour earlier he’d given his word to pass an Act of Ascendancy, allowing the
Knife to inherit his wife’s titles and holdings. Once father and son were out
of the way the Knife would find himself Lord of the High Granges, Lord of the
Highland Passes, and Lord of the Rapeseed Granges. Not a bad tally for a
butcher’s son. Not bad at all, considering that the current Surlord of Spire
Vanis was heir solely to the Sundered Granges.
Something sour began to burn in Iss’ stomach. He said, “And when shall
I expect the happy event?”
“Soon. Afore I ride north. John Rullion’s agreed to wed us. Said we can
exchange bread and vows at the Shrine of the Sister ‘neath the Quartercourts.”
The
High Examiner fyiows of this? And has agreed to wed them? Iss could barely keep the
surprise from his face. John Rullion was in alliance with the Knife? No. Surely
not. More likely the great dour man of God was playing all sides. Hadn’t he
burned the amber for Garric Hews’ Affirmation? And didn’t he teach Mallister
Gryphon’s two young sons their Pieties? As a man of Holy Orders, John Rullion
could never be surlord, but that did not stop him from wielding power. His
first priority was keeping the Forsworn out of the city: He would tolerate no
rival for men’s souls.
Such thoughts calmed Iss. The Knife hadn’t been especially singled out
by John Rullion. No. That wasn’t the issue here. The issue was that the Knife
had suddenly grown crafty and devious enough to pose a real threat to his
surlord’s power.
Iss shot Marafice Eye a sideways glance. The Protector General of Spire
Vanis was picking a deer tic from his stallion’s neck. His thumbnail was the
size of an arrowhead, and he used it to lance the tic like a boil.
“I’ll have to think of a suitable gift.”
The Knife wiped his fingers on his sheepskin numnah. “There’s one you
can give.”
“And that would be?”
“I would have you host the wedding feast at the fortress.” So all the
grangelords and men of influence in the city would be bound to attend. It was
one thing to refuse an invitation from the Protector General, another thing
entirely to refuse one from the Lord Commander of Spire Vanis. “It shall be
done.”
“I thank you for it.”
For the first time Iss heard a hint of relief in the Knife’s voice. He hadn’t been so sure of me after all.
Horns sounded, first one and then a chorus, as sentries positioned high
on the Mask Wall spied their surlord approaching. The northern edifice of Mask
Fortress lay directly ahead, a walled city within a walled city, its four
ill-matched towers spiking the sky. The winds from Mount Slain hadn’t started
up yet, and the killhound banners flying from the ramparts sagged listlessly
against their poles.
As Iss neared the stable gate a company of sworn brothers rode out to
escort him into the fortress. Marafice Eye fell in step with one of them,
falling back from his position now that the Surlord was safely delivered.
“Knife,” Iss commanded as he passed beneath the mud-coated iron teeth
of the portcullis. “Attend me in the Horn.”
Not waiting on the Protector General’s response, he headed to the
stables to dismount.
It was cold in the fortress, and mist still swirled in the quad. Great
cracks in the paving stones had opened during the thaw and the odor of
mountains escaped from them. Iss was approached by several supplicants as he
headed toward the Horn. Every tenday the fortress was thrown open to those
seeking boons or justice from the Surlord, and dozens of tradesmen and lesser
folk had been kept waiting in the quad while the Surlord completed his
progress. Iss shook them away. Later he would see that the jeweled cup he’d
purchased in Pengaron Square went to one of the paupers who’d waited patiently
in place whilst he passed. The rest would get naught.
The Horn, at two hundred feet, was the second-tallest of the four
towers in the fortress. It was a strange construction, flat-sided where the
other three towers were rounded, its stonework clad in an intricate grille of
metalwork and sheeted lead. It had been built after the Cask but before the
Bight, and it suited no purpose well. Theron Hews had intended the Horn to combine
both defensiveness and beauty, but had sadly fallen
short of both. Iss leased the lower stories to ranking grangelords, for it was
ever fashionable to claim apartments in the fortress, and the income helped
cover repairs.
The upper two chambers and the walled roof enclosure he kept for
himself. After climbing the worn, shallow stairs, he headed for the roof. By
the time he’d reached the halfway mark he could hear the flawing of the rooks.
Passing through the hatchery and game room, Iss emerged onto the stone
landing of the roof. An area the size of a dance circle was carefully
constructed with settling posts, wicker cages and walls of wooden cubbies.
Everywhere along the ramparts the big crows known as rooks danced in mock
battles and shows of bravado, bobbing their heads aggressively and spreading
their dirty-black wings. The noise was deafening. The Master of the Rookery had
just brought out a bucket of maggots, farmed from a decomposing deer corpse
kept in the game room, and the rooks were starting to flock. A few rogue birds
took to the air, and began swooping perilously close to the master’s head. None
swooped upon Iss. They could smell the faint tinge of sorcery upon him—even now
after he’d not drawn power in many days.
Corwick Mools, Master of the Rookery, dug his hand deep into the bucket
and brought out a fist of squirming maggots. Flinging his arm out, he scattered
the fat, white larvae wide, and the rooks fell upon them like locusts. Contests
were fought. Eyes were pecked out, and feet were bloodied as questing beaks
speared maggots from between clawed toes.
Into this feeding frenzy walked the Knife.
Iss knew straightaway he was nervous, for he hung back close to the door
and would not join his surlord in the center of the circle. Iss let him stew.
For sport, Corwick Mools threw a handful of maggots high into the air and the
swiftest rooks caught them on the wing. Marafice Eye ducked his head unhappily,
cursing under his breath. When he could take it no longer he said, “You wanted
me, Surlord?”
“You know the keeping of birds is sacred in Spire Vanis,” Iss said conversationally, ignoring the question. “Three of the four towers house hatcheries. I keep my hawks in the mews atop the Bight, and the Splinter was once home to a family of killhounds. They perched on the spire and laid their eggs in the roof vault. It must have been quite a sight to see them, gliding above the fortress. Their wingspans were as long as thirty paces, did you know?”
Marafice Eye took a swipe at a crow that got too close. “I did not.”
Iss nodded. “Only surlords were allowed to eat their eggs.”
“Say what you would have of me, Surlord,” roared the Knife, goaded at
last to anger and growing increasingly nervous of the crows’ razor beaks around
his one remaining eye.
Iss exchanged a knowing glance with Corwick Mools. It was remarkable
how easily birds could unman one. “It’s not what I’d have of you, Knife. Rather
what you need from me.”
“And that would be.”
Iss signaled to Corwick Mools to bring the bird that had homed this
morning from the clanholds. “Intelligence.”
Corwick Mools cut the bundle from the bird’s leg in full sight of his
surlord. The message had been rolled in a lamb’s bladder to protect against
water and sealed with a pinprick of red wax. Iss’ hands were well practiced in
the handling of such things and were quick to unravel the thin strip of pigskin
that bore the message. He read it, nodded once, then fed it to a big male crow.
Banishing Corwick Mools with the words “Leave us,” he turned to face
the Knife.
Now
you will see just how far a true surlord must reach.
“You must ready the army to leave within the tenday. The Wolf is
cresting early this year. By the time you reach it the flooding will have
passed and you’ll be guaranteed easy crossing into the clan-holds. A flat barge
awaits to give you crossing at Mare’s Rock.”
All the Knife could do was nod.
CHAPTER
Spilling Sand
“No. No. No. No. Don’t bother with all that pretty stuff. Hack the wee
lassie to pieces.”
Raif wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his sword hand
and bent his legs at the knee, waiting to see which way Stillborn would swing
the quintain. Even though he was prepared for it, the dummy came hurling toward
him with force. It was an odd construction, torso-shaped and filled with wet
sand, armored in consecutive layers of felted wool, boiled leather and
ringmail, and armed like a porcupine with spikes. Heavy as hell, it hung from a
thick chain anchored to the rock ceiling. Stillborn controlled its movement
from a ledge just above Raif’s head. The Maimed Man could send it in lazy
circles around Raif or he could shove it toward him with enough force to knock
him off his feet.
Raif rolled to the side to avoid being smashed, but as he spun back to
strike he felt the telltale sting of the quintain’s body spikes rake his arm.
“You’re dead, archer boy.” Stillborn smiled with satisfaction as he reeled
in the guide rope, causing the quintain to rise toward him. “It’s a sad state
of affairs when a dummy—and a female one at that—can beat the crap out of a
living breathing man.”
Raif thought of many things to say, but his arm was stinging and he was
out of breath. Briefly he wondered what manner of irritant had been applied to
the spikes. Salt, lye, ground glass—something to bring tears to his eyes.
Resting the flat of his borrowed sword against his thigh, he nodded toward the
quintain. “That’s female?”
Stillborn chuckled. He was dressed in his rat-and-coon-fur kilt,
rawbuck pants and a tunic made from two whole sheepskins. A leather belt with a
square-shaped pewter buckle was the only thing upon him that didn’t look as if
it had been dragged straight off a carcass. “Can you not see her dugs? Stuffed
them myself, I did.” Wrapping his thick fingers around the quintain’s waist, he
kissed the stump where its neck ended. “She’s a feisty lass. I think I’ll call
her Yelma.”
“After anyone you know?”
Stillborn raised an eyebrow. “Maybe.”
“The Scarpe chief is named Yelma.”
“Is she now?” Stillborn’s clear, hazel eyes glittered in the darkness
of the cave. With a lightning-quick movement he thrust the quintain at Raif.
Raif was ready for it this time, and slashed the torso with a sideways
cut as he cleared its path. The sword contact slowed the quintain’s backswing,
and Raif risked diving forward to thrust at its belly on the return. He knew it
was a mistake the moment he struck. The quintain was moving in the same
direction as his sword, robbing momentum from the blow, and his sword tip
entered with an awkward jab, catching in the dummy’s ringmail. It took a
twisting wrench to free it, and Raif didn’t even need to look at the blade to know
how badly he’d damaged it. Shor Gormalin would have skinned his knuckles for
less.
“It’ll have to go to Bledso for a firing,” Stillborn said amicably,
nodding toward the sword. “No harm done. It was a piece of whore’s steel to
begin with.” He stilled the quintain with the guide rope and vaulted down from
the ledge. Drawing the Forsworn sword, he waved Raif out of the fight circle.
“You have to learn to spill the sand, boy. Go for the guts. You’re so
busy weaving and ducking and remembering whatever pretty steps your swordmaster
taught you that you forget the whole point of the game. Kill ugly and kill
fast.“
Suddenly Stillborn exploded into motion, kicking the quintain from him
with all his might. The suspension chain creaked as the armored dummy swung
away, halted for the briefest instant, and then came barreling back. Instead of
sidestepping the dummy’s path, Stillborn spread his weight and stepped forward
to meet it. Wrapping the haft of the sword in an overlapping two-handed grip,
he raised its point to the dummy’s gut and ran the quintain through. The
dummy’s forward momentum brought it right up the sword-blade to the crosshilt,
and its spikes squealed against the tempered steel as it came to a grinding
halt. Stillborn didn’t blink. In one easy movement he slid the blade free,
barely causing the quintain to stir. Globs of dark, wet sand oozed from
entrance and exit holes.
Turning to Raif, Stillborn executed a self-satisfied bow. “Ugly and
fast. Introducing a man’s intestines to his spine is the best way invented to
win a fight.”
Raif ran his thumb over the chewed-up tip of his borrowed sword. “Not
the heart?”
Stillborn gave him a quick look. “No. Path to the heart’s guarded by
the ribs and the heaviest armor. The belly’s vulnerable. There’s skin”—he
punched his gut, making it ripple—“and fat and precious little else. Few men
have the money or patience for full plate. Most would rather bend at the waist.
Oh, they cover their bellies with hard leather and ringmail and enough hinged pieces
to tile a roof. But that’s nothing to a longsword. One good thrust below the
ribs and you’re done.” Stillborn smiled lovingly at the Forsworn sword and then
sheathed it.
Shadows were deepening in the cliff cave with approaching night. The
sunset had turned bloody and the granite walls sparkled with flecks of red
garnet. The chamber was long and low, its ceiling mined to a height
uncomfortably low to most men. Only the fight circle and the cave’s entrance
were vaulted. Outside, in the vast space where the continent split, the wind
piped and wailed. Stillborn called it Rift Music, and had lit a fire against
it, like a woodsman warding against wolves. He tended the fire now, feeding
goat chips and closed fir cones to the flames. The fuel hissed and cracked,
competing with the wind.
Stillborn settled down against the cave wall, took a piece of brown bun
from his pack and began eating it. In between crushing nuts with his teeth, he
said, “It’s time we took you raiding. Traggis has his nose set on you. Watches
you like a flea in his curlies, and unless you’re doing something useful he’ll
set you a bastard’s task instead. You’re new here, and so far you’ve done
naught but split a hog’s heart in two, and cause a brother’s death. Some are
saying you’re bad luck. And bad luck best go to the Rift.”
Raif ran a hand through his hair. He had no argument to counter
Stillborn’s words, so instead he said, “Take me raiding then.”
Stillborn nodded as if Raif had spoken wisely. Pushing the last of the
brown bun in his mouth, he asked, “Have you a head for heights?”
Raif thought about crossing the Ranges, about the heart-stopping
altitude of Trapper’s Pass. “I manage,” he said.
“Good.” Stillborn stood. The seam of flesh that ran down the center of
his face was black with shadows and grizzled hair. “I’ll see you at dawn on the
rim. Best if you stay here tonight. There’s not much fuel for the fire—so burn
sparely. And if it’s food you’re wanting you’ll have to fend for yourself. Just
be sure to keep your distance from the Mole.”
Raif watched him collect his pack and climb the rough-hewn stair to the
cave entrance. Just before he disappeared from sight, he waved a hand toward
the quintain. “And a few extra rounds with Yelma wouldn’t hurt.”
Raif raised his damaged sword in salute. He had been with the Maimed
Men for nine days now, yet he wasn’t any closer to understanding them. Mostly
Stillborn kept him in the background, making him sleep in the lower tiers of
the city and spend his days in the caved-in eastern quarter, out of sight and
out of mind of Traggis Mole. So far Stillborn had kept him busy caring for his
equipment; sanding armor, oiling steel, repairing tack. Sometimes he shared his
food. Sometimes not. Always they would spend the sunset hours training. Raif’s
deficiencies with a sword made Stillborn nervous.
Idly, Raif crossed over to the quintain and set it swinging. The
missing portion of his ringer was aching tonight, and he grimaced as his hands closed
around the haft of the sword. If he tired himself out perhaps he would sleep.
The cave darkened as he fought the quintain. Strike followed strike,
and after a time he found his rhythm and it became easy to thrust his sword
between the spikes. There was a numbness to the combat he welcomed. The
quintain had no heart. It made things simple. Purer. This is how other men fight. Encouraged, he began a new
barrage of sword thrusts, tracking the quintain as it swung around the fight
circle. He discovered that Stillborn was right. There was a lot to be said for
stepping into your opponent’s strike. It
turned fear into action, met aggression with aggression. It was not what Shor
Gormalin had taught.. . but then Shor Gormalin had never been a Maimed Man.
Time passed and the Rift Music
rose from the divide. Cold winds skirled around the cave but he barely felt
them. Within her triple coat of armor, Yelma sagged. She was losing sand from a
dozen holes and her ringmail looked as if it had been chewed by dogs. Raif
abandoned her tattered belly, and began work on her throat. Tomorrow he would
have to stitch and restuff her, but for now it felt good to imagine the spot
where the great red arteries rose toward her brain. Imagine and destroy them.
Just as he was finishing her off, a high-pitched cough echoed from the
cave entrance. Raif slowed, sending out his sword to slow Yelma.
“Don’t stop on my account, Twelve Kill,” came Yustaffa’s piping voice.
“I can’t speak for anyone else, but personally I never pass up the chance to
watch a man beat a bag of sand.”
Raif halted, and stilled Yelma. His breaths were coming hard. Sweat
plinked from the tip of his nose.
“What? No welcome. And here I came all this way to invite you to a little
supper. I’ve quail eggs, you know. But I see you have no appetite for them.
Well, never let it be said that Yustaffa the Dancer stays where he’s not
wanted. Two’s company and all that. You and the dummy make a lovely couple, by
the way.”
Raif heard silk rustle and the pad of soft-shoed feet. He took a
breath. “Wait.” The feet ceased padding. “I’ll come with you.”
Yustaffa resumed climbing the stair. “Well, hurry up then. I’m passing
fond of quail’s eggs and I can’t guarantee there’ll be any left unless you’re
there when I divvy them up.”
Raif grabbed his Orrl cloak from the ledge and followed Yustaffa from
the cave.
The night air stung his skin. It was black in the Rift after sundown,
the stars shedding the barest memory of light. Smoke drifted in grey patches,
forming shadow terraces that lay above the real ones like ghosts. The Rift was
quiet now, the wind strangely becalmed, the stench of underworld metals rising
in its place.
Yustaffa held a mica lamp on a pole for illumination and moved swiftly
through the city, climbing stairs with ease and hoisting his considerable
weight one-handed up rope ladders. Raif struggled to keep up.
Maimed Men were gathering in small groups, cooking and drinking around
bonfires, fortifying themselves for the night’s business. Many fell silent and
stared as Raif passed, and he could feel the accusations in their eyes. He
wanted to shout at them / did
not kill Tanjo Ten Arrow, but somehow it didn’t feel like the truth. Less than ten days in a
foreign city and already they knew what he was.
When they reached the western edge of the highest terrace, Yustaffa
slipped between a gap in the rock wall. The stench of sulfur assaulted Raif’s
senses as he followed the fat man through. Steam curled forward to meet him,
and it took some time to adjust to the dimness and the haze. A stone grotto
cratered with hot springs and lit by green-burning lanterns lay before him. The
rock floor was wildly uneven, creating ridges and crevices and stone chimneys
that rose like ancient, deformed oaks to the roof. Men and women languished
naked in small pools, their deformities and missing limbs cloaked by the water
and the steam. No one spoke. Water gurgled and sloshed. After the cold dryness
of the Rift, Raif found it difficult to breathe.
“This way.” Yustaffa beckoned him to a plank gangway that led over the
rock floor and between the pools.
As they moved deeper into the cavern, the pools became fewer and more
secluded as the rock floor warped to create half-walls and hollows and
closed-off rooms. Yustaffa left the gangway and ducked beneath a low arch.
“Here we are. My own private little steam bath. Strip off and take a dip.
You’ve been hanging around with Stillborn far too long—picking up his habits
and his fleas.”
Raif glanced around the small closed-off chamber. A narrow ledge
circling the pool was the only place to stand. Steam peeling off the water made
him drowsy, and for a brief instant he was reminded of the Listener’s ground,
of the oola/{ he’d drunk there.
Yustaffa shed his furs and silks and slipped naked into the bubbling
water. Raif followed him, throwing his clothes against the wall, and sucking in
his breath as the scalding liquid enveloped him. Almost immediately, all the
aches and stings of swordfight floated away. He found a ledge beneath the water
and sat on it, tilting back his head against the rock.
“Good, eh?” prompted Yustaffa, seeming pleased.
Raif nodded. “Good.”
Yustaffa reached out a fat, scalded arm and slid a package from his
furs. “The quail’s eggs. I think we’ll have them cooked.” One by one he lowered
the small, speckled eggs into the water, resting them deep below the surface.
Raif plunged his head under water, emerged, and then slicked back his
wet hair. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so good. Now he could sleep. Right here, buoyed by the water.
Sleep and not dream of Tanjo Ten Arrow ... or the bodies of the Forsworn.
Stretching out his arms, he closed his eyes and let the hot water ease him.
He must have drifted off for a moment, for when he opened his eyes
again he saw Yustaffa was watching him. Steam had sprung the Maimed Man’s hair
into tight curls.
Yustaffa stirred the water. “I never finished telling you about Azz-iah rün Raif, the Stranger from the South, did I ?” He looked at
Raif for a moment, not waiting for a reply or expecting one, and then
continued, turning the quail’s eggs as he spoke.
“Azziah rün Raif came to the Mangali in the year
of the Burning Tree. The gods had not sent rain for many seasons, and the frogs
had dug themselves into the mud at the bottom of the dry lake. Scorpions
tormented us, for they alone can live on dust. We were hungry when he came, yet
the women took him in, for he was fair to them, tall and pale, with god-touched
eyes. His feet were blistered and his back bore the mark of the whip. We told
him he was a fool to come here for there was nothing but death and scorpions
waiting in the sand. And he said, ‘The scorpion’s kiss cannot kill me for my soul is already dead.
“We Mangali know of such things, and the women wept for his soul. ‘I search,’ he said. And we knew he searched for heaven and
the loved ones he’d lost in a faraway war.
“We gave him our best guide. Mehembo, He with Little Teeth. Mehembo was
wise and knew all the best places where heaven might be. He took the stranger
into the baking heat of the Glass Desert, into the darkness of the Cave of
Bats, and up the sheer face of Goat Mountain. Years passed and Mehembo died of
heat sickness, and still heaven wasn’t found.
“That was when the stranger began to turn. He demanded another guide
from us, a girl, Illalo, She of the Fair Voice. And when she failed to find
heaven after one year, he wrapped his fingers around her neck and cried, ‘head me there, Illalo, for I send you on your way.’ Illalo died by his hand and
found heaven, but he could no longer follow where she led.
“He left us after that. Years passed and in time his story returned to
us. He’d headed north, across the Soft Lands and the mountains, farther than
any man had ever trod. A siren called to him, they said, promising him the
afterlife he’d earned. Eventually he came to a land that was as empty as the
sky. Great gaps had opened up in the earth, and he knew he was close to the
world’s end. The day finally came when he spied a lone mountain in the waste,
and although he was weary beyond knowing he climbed it. Above him he saw a
shining gate. All day he climbed toward it, his heart breaking with joy. He
reached the gate at sunset, and he could hardly bear to look upon it, so golden
it was in the failing light.
“He put his hand upon the gate as the sun sank beneath the earth.
I die and am glad,‘ he said, as the gate began to
swing. And in that moment the last rays of sunlight died and the gate grew
blacker than the blackest night. He screamed but it was too late, and the Gates
of Hell opened and sucked him in.“
Raif shivered, rippling the water.
Yustaffa smiled showing little, demon teeth. “As I said, a sad tale. They
say it marked the beginning of the War of Blood and Shadows, but we Mangali
don’t know about that. Quail’s eggs?”
Raif woke before dawn, his hair stiff with mineral salts, his mouth
gluey with the taste of eggs. The hot water from the springs had loosened the
bandage he kept around his halved finger and he was forced to look at the livid
stump as he rewound it. After he and Yustaffa had eaten last night, Yustaffa
had lent him use of the lamp to find his way back through the city. Raif had
been so exhausted he’d fallen asleep in the fight circle, with Yelma floating
above him like a bubble. The quintain creaked on her chain as he sat upright,
moving with the wind.
He had not dreamed; that seemed like something to be thankful for. And he
stood and went in search of his pack.
Tanjo Ten Arrow’s bow was wrapped in cloth beside his belongings.
Stillborn had leant him a knife and a sword, but somehow they weren’t enough.
They left him vulnerable. He needed the certainty of a bow.
He splashed his face with water, scrubbed his teeth with sand and
braced the Sull recurve. The old man who had brought him arrows for the contest
had let him keep them, and Raif rigged a makeshift bowcase and quiver for his
back. By the time he was done, the weak light of dawn filled the cave. A low
mist washed over the rock floor, and he stirred it as he left.
Outside all was quiet. A young boy with a stump where his left hand
should have been was quietly moving from cave mouth to cave mouth, raiding the burnt-out
fires for usable fuel. When he spied Raif he flattened his body against the
Rift Wall and made the sign of the evil eye. Frowning, Raif continued the climb
toward the Rim.
The raid party was already assembling on the easternmost ledge of the city
when he topped the stair. A ragged band of men, unmounted and in motley armor,
stood stamping their feet against the cold. Raif recognized few of them. The
rangy spearman in Glaive plate was one of Yustaffa’s cronies, and the little
cragsman in the horsehair-crested helm got drunk with Stillborn every night.
Neither man acknowledged him as he approached.
“Raif. Over here, boy.” Stillborn stepped away from a huddle of men to
beckon him over. “I brought you a sword to replace the one you damaged. Nice
and quick, she is. Took the spleen from a Hails-man once.”
Raif felt blood drain from his face. How could he have lived here ten
days and avoided the fact that these men killed clan? A moment must have passed
while he controlled himself, for when his vision cleared he saw that all in the
raid party were watching him. He stepped forward and took the sword from
Stillborn’s hand. It was a single-edged footsword, hollow-bladed and light.
Stillborn’s hazel eyes tracked him as he took the expected practice blows,
cutting air to test the blade. Only when Raif had praised its quickness did the
hazel eyes turn elsewhere.
“Here. Swallow this.”
Raif spun around to see the little cragsman holding out a leather
flask. He took a mouthful and tasted the sweet black treacle of Rift-brewed
mead. As he wiped his mouth clean, Stillborn gave the call to march out.
The Rim ended abruptly in a tumble of collapsed rock, and Raif didn’t
spot the path threading east through the rubble until the first man in the party
stepped upon it. The way was treacherous, littered with slabs that rocked
underfoot and mounds of loosely piled stone. A broken arch led to a ramp and
soon they were climbing to the very edge of the abyss. Fragrant smoke drifted
from the way ahead, and as the path turned sharply an old hag squatting by a
fire came into view. Stillborn tossed her a carved trinket as he passed, and
bid her pray for them. The hag cackled, revealing a mouth with no tongue, and
threw the trinket on the fire.
Raif tucked his head low and kept to the rear. Thick clouds blanketed
the sky, and Raif could feel the air pressing down on him. South across the
Rift the clanholds floated in a sea of blue mist.
The leather flask was passed from hand to hand as they followed the path
along the edge. The Maimed Men had lost all fear of the drop, and took pride in
walking along the brink. One man, a big southerner with a bald head, struck up
a dirge for them to march by. Raif couldn’t catch the sense of it, but at the
end of every chorus the entire raid party echoed the words, Gods take my eyes before I go to the Rift.
As the song continued Raif became aware of something, a quiet pulsing
in his temples like the beginning of a headache. Ahead a lean-to had been
rigged to a rocky outcropping and Raif saw a man leading out ponies; hill
garons, with stout legs and short tails.
“There’s no picking ponies for the new man,” Stillborn said, falling in
with Raif as they approached the lean-to. “You’ll get what the others don’t
want.”
Raif counted the men in the raid
party. Fifteen, including himself. He said, “Why stable the mounts here?”
Stillborn tapped his nose knowingly. “Because this is where we cross
the Rift.”
A quarter hour of activity followed as men chose mounts and hefted
saddles from the lean-to. The stableman had a clubfoot and was slow about his
business. He gave Raif an agitated mare with a scarred flank, and a saddle that
was too small. As Raif buckled the pony’s belly strap, he saw an olive-skinned
outlander detach himself from the raid party and approach the edge. Wind lifted
the man’s black hair and billowed his wool cloak. He was lean and long-limbed
and appeared whole. Others noticed the outlander’s movements and fell silent.
One man touched the space below his hip where his portion of powdered
guidestone had once hung. Clan.
The pulse in Raif’s temples deepened. The earth fell away at the
outlander’s feet, leaving nothing but grey sky. Six hundred paces in the
distance the southern face of the Rift towered like the wall of a giant
fortress. Steel flashed as the outlander drew his knife. His lips were moving,
chanting, but the words belonged to no tongue Raif had ever heard. Something
creaked. The air at the outlander’s feet rippled. All the Maimed Men were quiet
now, still as stones.
The outlander raised the knife point to his eye. His voice rose as he
spoke a command, and the smell of blood metals, of iron and copper and sodium,
puffed from his mouth like smoke. The updrafts died. Time hung. Something
vented deep within the Rift, like the sighing of a child. And then, with the
tip of the knife touching the center of his eye, the outlander stepped into the
Rift.
And did not fall.
Air thickened at his feet, spooling out in a line across the Rift, and
then a substance that was not air or mist or daylight parted, and a bridge came
into view.
Raif blinked. How could he have not seen it before? The bridge was a
rickety construction of tarred rope and wooden lats, suspended from iron posts
sunk deep into the cliff wall. It creaked in the breeze. The outlander turned
to face the raid party, and Raif realized that his pupil was so enlarged you
could see what lay behind it. The man swayed. Stillborn moved swiftly onto the
bridge to steady him. “Make way, lads,” he said as he guided the outlander
back. “Our brother needs rest.”
The outlander raised his gaze to Raif as he passed him. Blood slid
across the white of his eye.
“He will not come with us?” Raif asked the cragsman, as Stillborn led
the outlander into the lean-to.
The cragsman shook his head. “He’d be naught but a burden. He’ll wait,
though, if he knows what’s good for him. Uncover the bridge when we return.”
Raif heard the distaste in the cragsman’s voice. Another clansman. He
said, “How long has this bridge been here?”
The cragsman spit. His saliva was streaky with mead. “We don’t keep no
fancy histories in the Rift.”
Stillborn called the men into file. As they were forming up, he thrust
a length of brown wool into Raif’s hand. “For the pony,” he said, responding to
Raif’s puzzlement. “No horse will take the bridge unless its blinkered.”
Raif watched the other Maimed Men fashioning makeshift blinkers from pieces
of leather and felt. Following their lead, he bunched and tucked the length of
wool around the mare’s cheek straps until she was allowed only a limited field
of view. The mare fought him as he led her forward, her stout little legs
locking at the knees, and he had to slap her hard on the rump to get her going.
In single file, the Maimed Men led their ponies across the Rift. Later
that night, Raif would think of the dizzying height, the black drop beneath
him, and the awful swaying of the bridge. Later he would think of it and his
heart would knock in his chest. For now he managed to stay calm, as much for
the pony’s sake as his own, and put one foot in front of the other until he was
done. His legs shook as he stepped onto the hard rock of the clanholds.
Stillborn grinned at him and punched him in the back. “I’ll win coin on
you tonight. Addie had you down as a jumper.”
Addie was the name of the cragsman, Raif recalled. “Men jump from there
?”
Stillborn nodded merrily. Now that they had completed the crossing, the
Maimed Men were pleased with themselves and showing it. One man took out his
cock and pissed into the Rift. “Aye. Mostly green boys like you. Takes them in
the middle. They start looking down, and the next thing you know they’re
hearing the Rift Music . .. and it’s all downhill after that. And never was
there a more considerable way downhill than jumping into the Rift.”
The Maimed Men laughed as they mounted their ponies. Raif made himself
as comfortable as it was possible to be on a saddle that was too small, and
looked around. The badlands were narrow here, the flat plains warping gently
into the Copper Hills. Heather clung to the rocks, and whitebark pines growing
low to the earth provided nurseries for ironweed and mistletoe. Glint lakes and
muskegs shone silver in the morning light, telling of a recent thaw. It was a
different world than on the north side. Alive. Changing. Raif felt as if he’d
emerged from a tomb.
As they rode south for the hills, Stillborn explained that they were
heading to a village of free clansmen, lately settled in the woods northeast of
the Lost Clan. By rights it was Dhoone territory, but Dhoone was no longer
around to defend her turf. Settlements of free clansmen often sprang up in
times of war. A settlement could grow quickly into a village, attract more
people, and in time might declare itself a clan. Clan Harkness had begun that
way, and Oder, and the tiny Dhoone-sworn Clan Croog. Raif remembered Tern
telling him that it was a natural cycle of the clanholds. “Clans rise and fall. Some fail, some are lost and
some are cursed. New ones must be born to take their place.” Clan Innis had failed, and
Morrow had been lost, and everyone knew Gray was cursed. Perhaps one day this
settlement would grow to take Morrow’s place.
But
today I go to rob it. Raif pushed the thought down. Inigar Stoop had cut his heart from the
Hailstone: Raif Sevrance was no longer clan.
They rode east of the Dhoone hills, entering instead the highlands of
Morrow. Smoke had been spotted coming from the old fort that defended the
Dhoonewall, and pitched battles with armed clansmen was not the Maimed Men’s
way. At midday they stopped in the hills to rest and water the horses.
Stillborn joined Raif by the tiny stream that cascaded down from the hilltop.
“Gods! This water is cold,” he declared, scooping up two hand-fuls and
splashing it over his face. “Tastes good though. Clean, like nothing in the
Rift.” He glanced around, checking that they were out of earshot of other men,
and said, “Stay close to me when we hit the village. First time out’s always
hard—especially for a clansman. Just don’t do anything stupid, and don’t run
scared. See the black-beard over there, the one with the pretty cloak?”
Raif nodded. He’d noticed the man earlier.
“He’s Linden Moodie, Traggis’ spy. You can’t so much as take a leak
without him knowing. Now as far as raid’s go this’ll be a dull one. I’m running
the show, so there’ll be no unusual punishment, if you get my drift. We go in.
Seize the grain stores and livestock. And ride out. Everyone here’s ridden with
me before. They know I won’t waste time breaking into strongchests and chasing
down women in fields. It’s food we need, not trouble. And I aim to get the
first and avoid the other. Is that clear?“
Raif nodded again. He could feel the quail’s eggs resisting digestion
in his stomach. Searching for a safe place to send his thoughts, he asked,
“Don’t your arms get cold, wearing nothing but the bullhorns?”
Stillborn raised a hairy forearm to the sky, letting light gleam along
the wickedly curved horn, and laughed. “Nay, lad. If your mam’s intent on
setting you on a rock in the dead of winter, you learn early on how to make
your own heat.” The Maimed Man stood. “Now let’s get moving and head east.”
The Copper Hills were losing their snow. The ground was softening, and
in the deepest valleys, below translucent crusts of ice, bogs were forming.
Uprooted saplings and newly churned-up rocks littered the slopes. The hill
ponies made short work of the terrain, and the cragsman Addie Gunn knew the
ways. Within half a day they were on the southern slopes, descending into the
farthest reaches of the Lost Clan. The tree cover deepened as they passed into
the foothills, and day gave way to night.
Raif’s breath whitened in plumes. Addie Gunn slowed the party as they
approached another of the little streams that veined the hills. “We follow this
south,” he whispered to Stillborn. “Let the noise of the water mask us.”
Without a single command spoken the Maimed Men drew their weapons. Raif
slid from his mount, and led the pony forward. As he yanked his new sword from
its sheath he was aware of someone watching him. Linden Moodie’s gaze was like
a finger on his spine. Traggis Mole’s spy had a full black beard that almost
hid the garrote scar that circled his throat. His rich, plum-colored cloak
swished against his body armor as he drew his broadblade.
Somewhere close by a lamb blatted. Stillborn extended his arm, slowing
the raid party, and looked to Addie Gunn.
A cragsman’s business was sheep. “There’ll be a dog,” Addie warned.
Stillborn nodded. He turned to Raif. “Go with Addie and shoot it. Leave
your pony here.”
Raif felt Linden Moodie’s gaze upon him as he slid the Sull bow free of
the pony’s saddle strap. Addie Gunn grabbed his arm, guiding him away from the
raid party. “You do naught but silence the dog. I’ll take care of the sheep.”
Raif pulled an arrow from his makeshift quiver. It was dark amidst the
pines, the rising moon barely silvering their trunks. Addie moved swiftly along
a path only he could see. Dry needles that crunched beneath Raif’s feet, barely
whispered beneath the cragsman’s. When a second lamb cry sounded, Addie
signaled a slow down. Directly ahead the established pines gave way to scruffy
brush of black-rotted saplings and berry canes. Something in the shadows moved.
Raif halted and drew his bow.
“Ewe,” Addie hissed. “Cover me while I hog-tie her.” Raif held his
draw.
Addie navigated through the brush, a little man in a big crested helm.
He must have spoken some sort of sheep talk, for the ewe did not shy from him
as he approached. She was heavy with lamb and burdened with a shaggy winter
coat. Addie cooed, and then in a flash he was upon her, felling her with a body
blow and pinning her to the ground as he wound rope around her legs. And then
two things happened at once.
A dog streaked from the brush toward Addie, its hackles raised in
spikes and its lips pulled back to its gums. Yet even as Raif tracked it, a
twig snapped to his left and a man called, “Drop the bow.”
Raif froze. The dog reached Addie and sank its teeth into his leg. The
ewe bucked furiously, squealing in panic. Addie released his hold on her,
letting the rope spool through his fist. He snatched off his crested helm and
slammed it into the dog. The dog yelped and sprang back, and then immediately
pounced forward for more. The ewe was free of Addie now, but its back legs were
hobbled and it thrashed through the berry canes in panic.
Raif saw this and felt nothing. He couldn’t see the stranger in the
shadows, hadn’t even turned his head toward him, but already he’d marked the
man’s heart. Fear jolted Raif’s chest. . . but he didn’t think it was his own. Herdsmen carry bows. They need them to shoot wolves. Chances were the stranger had
an arrowhead trained upon Raif. Chances were that arrow would be loosed the
instant Raif made a move. Raif knew he’d be lucky to get in a single shot. Man
or dog? “Drop the bowl”
Raif dropped along with his bow, rolling onto his side so that the bow
fell parallel to his body and the ground. His weight came down on his bracing
hand, and he struggled to hold the entire length of the six-foot bow free of
the earth. He managed an awkward twisting half-draw. And chose his heart.
The arrow loosed with a noisy twang, crossing paths with the arrow
released by the herdsman. The herdsman’s arrow whistled over Raif’s head and
stabbed the earth behind him.
Raif’s arrow shot through the brush ... and entered the sheep’s heart.
The ewe stiffened for an instant, blood jetting from the entry wound
between its ribs, and then collapsed into the canes. The dog hesitated for that
same instant, giving Addie long enough to drive his crested helm deep into its
snout. The herdsman let out a terrible cry and rushed toward the ewe.
Raif dug his heel into the ground and spun his body around to face him.
He could barely manage a half-draw this time because his trapped arm was
shaking so badly. Yet even so the man’s heart was his. Raif felt its galloping
beat, felt it catch in terror as the herdsman realized his mistake. Even as the
man halted and drew his bow, Raif let his arrow fly.
It was a poor shot, but it still floored its target, passing through
the upper inch of the herdsman’s shoulder, gouging out a flap of muscle as it
continued its flight to a point far beyond the clearing. Grunting, the herdsman
fell.
Raif let the bow drop from his grip and rested his head against the
earth. All of him was shaking now. His body felt fevered, cold with sweat. He
spat the taste of metal from his mouth and then braced himself to stand.
Addie was already on his feet, his left leg bloody at the shin, his
doeskin pants torn through. The dog was on its belly, whimpering as it crawled
toward its master. Part of its nostril slid from Addie’s helm. Addie’s chest
was rising and falling rapidly. The look he gave Raif was full of rage, but
when he spoke his voice was quiet. “She was wi‘ lamb.”
Raif nodded. A lactating ewe and her lamb would be worth much in the
Rift. Now she’d have to be butchered and hauled back as meat.
In the distance another sheep blatted.
Addie hesitated, his gaze hard on Raif. He looked weary. Blood seeping
from the dog bites on his leg was collecting in his boot. Reluctantly he
reached a decision. “Take care of the herdsman and the dog. I have to find the
other sheep.”
“Should I butcher the ewe?”
“No. That’s my job.” Addie Gunn turned in the direction where the
lamb’s cry had sounded. “I’ll be back later to open her up.”
Raif dragged a hand across his face. He left the Sull bow on the ground
and drew his sword.
The herdsman had fallen on a pine sapling, bending the immature tree in
two. The dog had reached its master and was sniffing at the arrow wound. As
Raif approached, the dog shrank back onto its haunches, saliva leaking in
strings from its ruined jaw. The herdsman’s eyes were open, blue as Dhoone and
focused on Raif’s sword.
Raif killed the dog with a single strike through the larynx. Spilling
sand. He turned to the herdsman. “Get up.”
The man didn’t move.
Raif kicked his leg. “I saidgrf up!”
As the herdsman struggled to his feet, Raif pulled a shammy from his
waist pack. He waited until the herdsman had dragged himself to his knees, and
then shoved the shammy in the man’s mouth and gagged him. Needing something to
tie the man’s wrists, he slid the blunt edge of the sword against the
herdsman’s belly and cut his belt. The belt fell away from the man’s gut,
sending his horn of powdered guidestone thudding to the earth. The horn was
yellow and chipped. Its neck was sealed with a silver cap.
The remains of the quail’s eggs curdled in Raif’s gut. “Where did you get
this?”
The man shook his head, unable to answer the question with a gag in his
mouth.
“Is it Hailstone?”
The herdsman widened his eyes, confused.
Raif grabbed him by the arms and shook him. He couldn’t understand
where his anger came from, but he couldn’t stop it either. “Does the horn
contain powdered Hailstone?”
Understanding dawned on the herdsman’s face. He gargled a denial
through the gag, and then attempted a word that sounded like “ith.”
“Withy?”
The man nodded furiously. Raif let him go, and he slumped back to the
ground with a groan of pain.
Not a Hailsman then. Thank gods not a Hailsman.
Raif closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again he secured
the man’s wrists and helped him to his feet. “Go,” he said. The man was
wounded, gagged and tied: He could issue no warning or pose no threat. Addie
had ordered Raif to take care of him, and Raif told himself it was done. He
watched for a while as the herdsman lumbered south through the brush, and then
turned to join the raid party.
A cloaked figure was heading away through the trees.
Raif plucked the Sull bow from the loam. How long had Linden Moodie
been watching? Had he seen Raif angle his bow away from the herdsman’s heart? Had he seen him let the
man go? A tremor of fear altered rhythms in Raif’s chest. Had he heard the word
Black-hail spoken?
Thoughts dark with foreboding, Raif went to join the raid.
CHAPTER
Spire Vanis
Town Dog was digging for field mice. Crope would have liked to carry on
walking until midday, but a mouse was a mouse, and he wasn’t in any position to
turn down food. The little dog dug furiously, kicking up dirt. Crope could tell
when she found the first mouse, for Town Dog had a special noise that she made,
like the squeaking of a bat. It wasn’t a very doggy noise, but then Town Dog
wasn’t a very doggy dog.
Crope sat on a fallen spruce log and waited for Town Dog to bring him
the mouse. It was sunny in the foothills, the sky as clear as a diamond, and
you could almost believe it was warm. There was a bit of shade under the great
firs, and the kuk.-kuk-kuk of a hairy woodpecker sounded
over the rise. Ahead lay the shimmering phantom of a city, all pale walls and high
spires, like cities in legends. It was his city. The bad place. The site where his lord was
being held.
Dutifully, Crope took the mouse from Town Dog’s jaw, and shook it clean
of dirt. The little dog looked expectantly at his master, her tail thumping the
mat of spruce needles that carpeted the slope. Crope looked at the dog and the
dog looked back. With an elaborate sigh Crope threw the dazed mouse into the
trees, sending Town Dog tearing after it with tail-wagging joy. It was easier
stealing eggs, he reckoned. By the time Town Dog was through with the mouse
there’d be little but the head left. And mouse brains were passing small.
Still, he couldn’t help grinning as he watched the little dog dive into
a bush. It was good to have a companion, and mostly it felt better being hungry
than alone.
Crope stretched out his legs and groaned. His feet were hurting, and he
was tempted to pull off his boots and thrust his toes into the cool loam of fir
needles and melted snow. He’d never get his boots back on again,
though—experience had taught him that—and he had to get to the city by sundown.
He could not fail his lord.
Come
to me. The
words echoed in Crope’s dreams, softer now, losing their strength a little each
day. His lord’s voice was more beautiful than he remembered; softer, more
complex. There had always been wisdom and command within it, but now you could
hear other things as well. Crope knew he wasn’t good at words, but the one he
kept returning to was loss.
Abruptly, Crope stood. Some things he could not bear thinking about.
Like when the slavers cornered him on a slope like this one, how they had
driven him hard against the rocks and cast a rope net over him, and how his
feet had tangled in the lines and the slavers had laughed as he stumbled and
fell. His ankles still bore the marks of their ropes. They had driven him east
in their wagon train, getting drunk on pure grain alcohol, and congratulating
themselves over their catch. He’s
as big as three men, they had said of him. He’ll fetch a fine price in the mines.
Crope’s chest began to heave. You entered the mine, the mine entered you. He spat out the black phlegm,
and felt better after a while.
Town Dog had returned with the mouse and now sat patiently at Crope’s
feet. Crope bent slowly at the waist and pocketed the limp brown rodent. Town
Dog nosed his hand, and Crope scratched her ears and tussled with her until he
was ready to carry on.
After the incident at the alehouse, Crope had kept far away from
settled land. When he spied a village he walked leagues out of his path to
avoid it, and when he smelled the woodsmoke of mountain R
men he quietly altered his course. The journey went easier, having Town
Dog. Longer, but easier. Worrying about Town Dog stopped him worrying about
himself. Town Dog wasn’t a very accomplished hunter. The one time she’d flushed
something worthy from the brush, she’d been so startled that she let the
raccoon hotfoot up a tree and get away. Crope tried to be fair about it—it was an unusually big coon—but visions of sweet roasted
meat made him eye Town Dog accusingly for several days.
The storms were the worst. The mountains bred them, whipping up winds
and clouds, sending sleet driving into his face and blinding him with swirling
snow. He’d lost some days to fever, holed up in a depression banked with snow
south of Hound’s Mire. The only way he knew later that time had passed was by
the number and assortment of small rodents that Town Dog had brought to him
while he slept.
Things were bad for a while after that. His chest was weak—Bit-terbean
said that diggers had lungs like sea sponges soaked in tar— and the going was
slow for many days. He and Town Dog had descended from the mountains into the
foothills. It was riskier here—bad men and slavers might find you—but at least
it was easier to breathe. One morning he’d walked past a birch sapling as
straight as a spear and cut himself a staff. It was good having something to
lean on, and even when he regained his health and strength he decided not to
lay it aside. Travelers in illustrated books carried staffs. He knew this
because his lord had once possessed many tomes. It gave a man something to do,
Crope discovered; good for prodding snow to test its depth and ice to test its
fastness. And he had never learned to love blades. It was comforting to have a
weapon on hand that relied on strength instead of edge.
Crope felt his heartbeat quicken as he and Town Dog wound down the
slope. Part of him wished that he and his dog could just carry on walking,
watching the season warm into spring and listening to the mayflies buzz around
his face. Back in the diamond pipe, he’d dreamed of owning the perfect length
of land. Just enough for a man to cross on foot in the hours between sunrise
and sunset on a summer day. He’d grow wheat and radishes, and seed a meadow for
sheep, and perhaps later lay a hard standing for milch cows. Sometimes the
details changed .. . but the length never did. Long enough for a man to walk in
a day.
But that was a dream for another life. In this one he belonged to his
lord.
Crope could no longer count how many years he’d known Baralis, but he’d
never forgotten that first meeting, a continent away in the Far South. It was
burned in his memory the way his slave brand was burned into his flesh.
Baralis had spied him on Green Spinster Street in Silbur, being
stick-whipped by a gang of youths. A stallholder had accused him of stealing a
bolt of wool, and raised a hue and cry. A mob formed quickly, as mobs did when
he was about, and he was chased through the market and into the street. He was
hurting badly when Baralis approached, his nose broken and bleeding and his
right eye swollen shut. Gaol was a certainty, for he could never find the words
to defend himself. Baralis was walking along the street, dressed in scholar’s
black, a tall young man with an arrogant face. Crope called out to him, though
he could not say why, and instead of passing by Baralis stopped. And that was
when the miracle happened. Somehow the man who would become his lord brought an
end to the beating—with nothing more than words. He never raised his voice,
never drew a weapon, yet he turned Crope’s attackers cold.
All his life, until that very point, Crope had never known anyone to
defend him. He’d been attacked and gaoled, hunted down and tormented, made
scapegoat for a dozen different crimes. He’d been thrown into the baiting pits
of Lynch Town and made to fight bears. He’d been used as a pack animal to carry
baskets of damp salt from the Dead Shores. He’d dug graves, logged forests,
performed as a curiosity with a troop of black-skinned mummers, and lain down
on surgeons’ mats while physicians tapped his blood. He’d slept in holes, caves
and locked cells, lived on rats and chicken bones and the tics off his own
skin.
When Baralis turned to him on Green Spinster Street and murmured, Come, follow me home, he became Crope’s savior, his protector, his lord.
Baralis was owed his soul.
Crope dug his staff into the earth and rested his weight a moment. Town
Dog was ranging far ahead, and her skinny tail was the only part of her visible
above the scrub.
The city was mere leagues away now. Crope could see the grey haze of
smoke and mist it created, and the way it sprang from the base of the mountain
like a newborn peak. To the north lay rolling grassy plains, dotted with
villages and crossed with roads. Close to the city’s north wall he could just
make out the flapping brown edges of a camp town. Here in the east, entire
hillsides had been clear-cut for timber. Somewhere not far below him, Crope
could hear the whir of pit saws, and he remembered
how it was to be the man standing below in the pit, how the sawdust rained on
your face and shoulders every time you pulled down the saw.
Bitterbean said a man’s past was like a ghost, and it would haunt you
if you let it. Crope had thought about that a lot on his journey, and sometimes
he thought Bitterbean was right, yet mostly he hoped he was wrong. Once, one
summer when the pumps had failed, Crope had been hauled up from the pipe to
unclog them. As he disassembled the crank on the lakeshore, a bass fisherman
nearby launched his boat. Crope remembered glancing at the boat as he went
about his work, watching as it slowly pulled away. That was what he hoped the past was like ... a boat
sailing away as you stood upon the shore.
Suddenly anxious to be moving, Crope called Town Dog to him, and
together they headed down toward the land of men.
They passed the logging camp at
midday, and by late afternoon they joined the road leading west to the city’s
walls. Farmers, drovers and wagon trains jostled for space on the road.
Occasionally horns would ring out and everyone would clear the center while
troops of men-at-arms rode through. Crope fell in behind a high-sided wagon
ricked with hay, content to let the height and breadth of the load conceal him.
Bits of straw and hayseeds floating down from the bales made him sneeze from
time to time, but he didn’t really mind it. Town Dog grew tired as they neared
the gate, so he picked her up and tucked her under his cloak.
The gate seemed a very fine thing to Crope, tall enough for five men
standing on each other’s shoulders to pass through. It was carved from giant
blocks of granite, the kind that Scurvy Pine said he’d quarried before they set
him to tin.
There was a great stirring in the city, Crope learned, as he waited in
the crush of people petitioning for entry. Someone high and mighty had been wed
that very day, and now there was to be a feast and dancing in some important
fortress. The driver of the hay wagon was made much of, for his load was due to
be delivered to the stables of that very place. Crope listened for a while, but
he couldn’t keep up with all the unfamiliar accents and long names.
So far no one had challenged him or even stared too hard, but that
didn’t stop him from feeling anxious. In his mind he rehearsed what he would
say to the gate-keep. It was only a few words, but he worried he’d get in a
muddle and they’d come out wrong. As the line shortened he experimented with
his staff, trying for a pose that seemed unthreatening. Tucked under his belt
or mounted on his back it seemed too much like a weapon ready to be drawn, and
in the end he settled on holding it in his hand as if it were a flagpole.
Just as he was about to reconsider the flag hold, the hay wagon
trundled under the gate, and a voice called out, “Next.”
Crope moved forward into the shadow of the gate tower, glad of Town
Dog’s warmth near his heart. A man-at-arms cloaked in red leather with a bird
brooch at his throat presented his spear.
“Name?”
“Crope of Drowned Lake.”
The guard had to tilt his head to look at Crope’s face. His grey eyes
glanced over the ragged beard that had grown on Crope’s face since he’d left
the pipe, and the thick scars on his ears and neck. He said tersely, “Trade?”
Crope could no longer stand the scrutiny. “Free miner,” he replied,
looking down.
“You’re too late for sapping. Army’s moving out within the week.”
Crope didn’t understand what he meant. Slowly the panic began to rise.
The guard was losing patience. He lowered his spear. “On your way, big
man. The Spire’s been closed to freebooters and mercenaries since yesterday at
noon, under order from the Surlord himself.”
Knew
you had suet for brains. Crope struggled to make sense of the guard’s words, but it was
difficult with the bad voice speaking in his head.
Someone in the queue behind him shouted, “Stop holding up the line.”
The guard turned toward the sentry post to summon more men. As he took
a breath to make the call, Crope mumbled, “Not mercenary. Not here to fight.”
The guard hesitated. “What are you here for then?” This was the question
Crope had practiced for. Although he didn’t much want to, he raised his head.
“Here to visit with the priests in the Bone Temple.”
Something behind the guard’s grey eyes changed. He raised the spear.
“Best get going, then,” he said quietly, stepping aside.
Relief made Crope’s ears glow with heat. Half a century later and the
words taught to him by the black-skinned mummers of the Ivory Plains still
worked like magic. Learn
them,
long-limbed Swal-
habi had commanded. There
is not a city in the Known World that does not possess a Bone Temple. And when
we travel north to new places and pale men bar our way, we spea’t these words
and watch the pale men step aside. Bone Temples house powerful magic, and no
man, pale or dar’t, will ris’t that magic being turned against him.
Every night for thirty days Swalhabi had made Crope repeat the words
until they soaked into the fabric of his brain. Swalhabi had sold him half a
year later to the salt mines, but Crope had never blamed him for it. Once the
giant-slaying masque had grown old there were no more parts for him to play.
Mumbling his thanks to Swalhabi and the other mummers, Crope entered
the city of Spire Vanis.
It vibrated with the presence of his lord. Hundreds of miles west, over
mountains, frozen lakes and tilled fields, and somehow the journey had
overshadowed what he sought. He hadn’t meant to let it, but the world above the
diamond pipe was unknown to him, terrible and fraught with danger, and he’d
drop to the ground exhausted at night and barely spare a thought for his lord.
Tears of shame filled Crope’s eyes.
Come
to me, his
lord had commanded. And now, at last, he had. An early dusk was setting in
behind the walls. Candles were being lit within buildings, filling the blank
squares of windows with golden light. Ahead, the driver of the hay wagon had
stopped to light his driver’s lamp. Crope watched the careful precautions the
man took before striking his flint, using his body to shield the load from
stray sparks. By the time the job was done and the horn guard was secured over
the flame, Crope had caught up with the rear of the wagon, deciding to follow
in its wake for a while.
The city was very large and grand. It seemed more orderly than most
he’d known, and the ways traveled by the hay wagon were wide and open. Mounds
of slush were melting along the roadsides, sending little streams of water
spiraling down drains. The air was still between the high buildings, and mist
was beginning to spore.
Town Dog grew restless and wriggled against Crope’s chest until he set
her down. As they followed the wagon west and then south, he was overcome with
the conviction that he was drawing closer to his lord. It had been the same
with Mannie Dun, who always knew the best place to dig for diamonds. Crope had
asked him once how he did it, and Mannie had tapped the bridge of his nose and
said he felt them in his bones. That was how it was for Crope: Baralis was in
his bones.
The wagon seemed to be heading toward the massive, high-walled
structure that dominated the south of the city. The fortress. Torches burned
from the ramparts and the wailing of horns blasted from the walls. The streets
grew busier, and it seemed to Crope that everyone was moving in the same
direction as the wagon. The bad voice began to whisper to him, telling him that
he’d better be careful or he’d make some thickheaded mistake and fail. Crope
curved his neck and shrank his shoulders, praying for something he’d never
known in his life: obscurity in a crowd.
He was so close to his lord now he could shut his eyes and see him.
His lord was in the dark place ... and he hurt. Crope could not bear to
think about how he hurt.
“Make way! Delivery for the stable!” The driver of the hay wagon stood
on the running board and cracked his whip. He’d arrived at a gate in the
fortress wall, but couldn’t approach it owing to the press of revelers who were
standing in front of the lowered portcullis.
One of the men-at-arms manning the wall shouted a reply. Six heavily
armed redcloaks emerged from the gate station and began moving back the crowd.
Come
to me.
Crope suddenly knew he had to be inside the fortress. While everyone
else was moving back, he moved forward. Grabbing hold of the wagon’s ring hook,
he hoisted himself onto the tailgate that ran along the rear.
The wagon lurched forward, traveled a few paces, and then halted.
Booted footsteps sounded. Someone called, “Check the hay,” and a series of
sharp crunching noises followed as one of the red-cloaks stabbed the bales.
Crope kept very still, but he knew it was only seconds before he was spotted.
A spear blade passed close to his knee. Town Dog growled.
A man’s voice called, “Driver! Is this your man?”
Crope heard the driver shout, “Ain’t no one pitching hay but me,” and
then a spear tip jabbed the back of his neck.
“You’d best step down, hay man. And while you’re at it you can tell me
what business you intended in the fortress.”
Knew
you wouldn’t get it right. Crope raised his arms and turned slowly to face
the redcloak. His ears were hot, and he couldn’t think of any words.
Two other redcloaks joined the one with the spear, and all three men
kept their weapons raised as Crope jumped from the step. The revelers were
quiet now, sensing entertainment. The driver of the wagon peered around the
back wheel to get a look.
The redcloak with the spear said, “Do you want to spend the night in
gaol?”
Crope shook his head.
Someone in the crowd piped up, “He came to try his chances with the
bride!”
Laughter spread in an ugly wave. A woman shouted, “He’s almost as
handsome as the Knife.“
Crope felt the color rise up his neck.
“Enough!” fired one of the redcloaks. And then, to Crope, “Speak up for
yourself, man.”
“Wedding. Come to see the
wedding.”
The redcloak rolled his eyes. “You’re too late for that. Wedding took
place this morning. It’s the feasting tonight.”
As the redcloak finished speaking, horns blared within the fortress,
sounding a call to attention. Crope looked up along with everyone else, and saw
the heralds in all their finery atop the wall. Torches blazed around the
flat-sided tower closest to the gate, throwing light and shadows across the
stonework. At the halfway point of the tower an embrasured balcony had been
draped with a silk cloth that showed a fearsome red bird on a silver ground. As
Crope watched, two heralds stepped onto the balcony and sounded a fanfare
before stepping aside. A moment passed and then a man and woman came into view,
and the crowd began cheering and stamping their feet.
The woman was dressed in stiff red silk that glittered with
diamonds—even from a distance Crope knew them for real. She was black-haired
and pale, and she did not smile. The man standing at her side was large and
broad, and when he took her hand in his it was like watching a wolf eat a
chick. One of his eyes was gone, and he wore no device to conceal it.
The pair stood uncomfortably, and suffered the attention of the crowd.
After perhaps a minute had passed, another man stepped into the light... and
robbed the very breath from Crope’s throat.
It was the pale-eyed man, the one who had taken his lord. Eighteen
years later and Crope knew him as surely as if he’d looked into the man’s face
every night. His lord’s captor. His enemy. The man who had left him to die.
The pale-eyed man drew renewed cheers from the crowd. He was dressed in
quiet finery of subtle hues; butter-soft suedes in grey and maroon, all edged
with bands of gold. He was carrying something heavy in a small cloth-of-gold
sack, and when he shifted it to ease the weight the crowd cheered. The
pale-eyed man smiled but did not show his teeth. His gaze swept down to the
gate, taking in the great crush of revelers. Instinctively Crope stepped into
the shadow of the wagon. He saw the pale-eyed man’s gaze track the movement,
saw him peer into the shadow, and then look away.
The pale-eyed man appeared to lose a beat of concentration before
leaning forward to lay a kiss on the bride’s lips. The cloth-of-gold sack had
passed into the bride’s keep, and she seemed to gain some color now that her
hand was no longer in her husband’s grip. As she untied the sack’s drawstring
and reached inside, the crowd began a singsong chant.
“Fair bride,
share your bounty. Cast the grain.”
The bride took a handful of something gold out of the sack, and
showered it on the crowd. Crope felt little pellets, like hailstones, ping off his shoulders and bounce to the ground. He caught
a glimpse of one as it fell at his feet: a tiny nugget of gold cast into the
shape of a wheat germ. The crowd surged forward and a cry went up from the
redcloaks, and Crope found himself in the middle of a feeding frenzy.
When he looked up next the pale-eyed man had gone. The bride cast one
more handful of golden grain and then withdrew into the tower with her husband.
Crope stood for a moment, watching the space the pale-eyed man had
vacated, and then turned away. The redcloak who had challenged him waved him
along with his spear. In the madness of the grab for gold he had more important
matters on his mind. Crope whistled for Town Dog, and worried like a mother
until the little dog appeared. Taking no chances, he scooped her up and tucked her
under his chicken cloak. Ducking his head low, he pushed gently through the
crowd.
Come
to me, his
lord had commanded. Now he had arrived he must figure out how.
CHAPTER
The Rift
The infant’s body was laid on a board, and the Maimed Women crouched
beside it and washed it with spirits. The mother stood apart, her belly
distended, her bodice stained dark with seeping milk. A Maimed Man was oiling
the crude winch fixed to the edge of the rimrock, hunching his shoulders
against the swirling snow.
Raif stood beside the cragsman Addie Gunn and watched as Traggis Mole
approached the newborn’s corpse. The infant’s eyes had already been removed,
and the eyelids sewn shut with black thread. Traggis Mole scattered the women
with the briefest movement of his wrist, and knelt alone beside the board.
Gently, and with great care, the Robber Chief lifted the newborn’s head. The
baby’s scalp was covered with a fine down of auburn hair, and Traggis Mole ran
his fingers through it before reaching for the hood. The Robber Chief’s face
was dark. At the left side of his temple Raif could see the pressure line where
the straps that held his wooden nose in place had dug into his skin.
Charms had been sewn into the little woolen hood, glass beads and
drilled coins and sprigs of dried touch-me-nots. As Traggis Mole pulled the
hood over the infant’s face, all who had gathered became quiet. The Robber
Chief nodded to the man with the winch, signaling for him to come forward and
take possession of the board. As the winchman secured the board to the cable
rope, the Maimed Women began to keen. Raif felt hairs rise on the back of his
neck. He had never heard such a sound made by humans; a deep and joyless
howling, as if the wind itself blew through them.
When Traggis Mole gave the word, the winchman began turning the crank,
and the board holding the stillborn infant was lowered into the Rift.
The mother did not move as the barrel turned. She was no longer young,
and Addie Gunn whispered that this bairn would likely be her last. A boy
stepped forward and handed Traggis Mole a burning torch, and the Robber Chief
moved to the edge of the rimrock. It was late morning, and a cold snap had
brought the high white clouds bearing snow. Snowflakes danced on the Rift’s updrafts,
swooping and soaring; hissing into nothingness if they strayed too close to the
Robber Chief’s flame.
“Poor thing,” Addie Gunn said quietly, dropping his head in respect.
“Wasn’t whole enough to live.”
As the winchman cranked the barrel, Traggis Mole touched the cable rope
with the torch. The rope’s tightly bound fibers crackled and charred, and then
hot yellow flames caught light. The winchman continued cranking, and the
burning section of rope dropped from sight as the infant was lowered deeper
into the abyss. The Maimed Women bellowed, their song growing stranger and more
terrible until the moment the tension left the rope.
The mother jerked forward as the rope sprang back. Traggis Mole called
out in a harsh voice and the Maimed Women rushed forward to steady her. As the
Robber Chief turned away, his gaze met Raif’s. Traggis Mole’s eyes were black
and haunted, and there was such a force behind them Raif fought the desire to
step back. Harm us and die, the Robber Chief warned him,
and then swept his gaze away.
Raif breathed softly and held himself still. The crowd was beginning to
break up. The winchman wound back the rope to the burned stump and cut off the
blackened portion with a knife. An old woman the size of a child led the mother
away. Someone on the upper terrace began roasting lamb, and the aroma of meat
juices drifted down.
“One of ours,” Addie said, with a look that might have been pride.
Raif made himself nod. The raid had been a success: three ewes, two with
lamb, a newborn, an old pollard good for mutton, plus grain and rendered elk
fat, salt, horsemeat, cheese, two dozen bantams, and a keg of young malt.
Stillborn had commanded the raid with an iron hand, driving the
villagers into the sheep pen whilst the looting was under way. Some villagers
had taken wounds. One of them was dead. Raif had watched as Linden Moodie rode
him down; a big aging Dhoones-man trained to the ax. The Dhoonesman had made
the mistake of organizing a defense, perhaps imagining that Maimed Men on hill
ponies were no match for full-mounted clansmen. He had not counted on the
Maimed Men’s complete disdain for horses. Horses had no currency in the Rift.
They could not be made to cross the swing bridge, would not take to the heights,
sudden drops and rocky stairs of the cliff city, and needed absurd amounts of
feed to sustain them. A hill pony lived on what he could tug from the cliffs
and scrounge from the grain stores, and hill ponies suited the Maimed Men well
enough.
Raif and a second archer, a city man with spider-veined hands, had been
commanded to target the horses. They shot the clansmen’s mounts from beneath
them, and then Linden Moodie and his crew rode the clansmen to ground. Moodie’s
crew possessed self-control enough to stay their hands when the Dhoonesman and
his companions surrendered, but Linden Moodie himself had passed beyond reason
to rage.
“Thought you could best us, eh?” he screamed, closing in on the
Dhoonesman with his broadblade. “We’re not clan like you. Not perfect. Not
whole. Well let’s see how you fare when I cut something from
you. See if you can put up a fight.”
Linden Moodie had hacked off the man’s arm at the shoulder before
Stillborn and the other Maimed Men could restrain him. Stillborn gripped Moodie
in a mighty bear hug, squeezing the breath and anger from him. As he gradually
eased his hold, Stillborn commanded Raif to escort the remaining villagers to
the sheep pen. When Raif hesitated, his gaze flicking to the wounded
Dhoonesman, Stillborn snapped in a harsh voice, “Him. He’s already dead.” It
was true, Raif knew it—the Dhoonesman was losing too much blood—but there was
something else here. Stillborn never rebuked Linden Moodie for his violence,
and as Raif led the clansmen to the pen, he heard Stillborn call for the liquor
flask, shouting that a Rift Brother had need.
The rest of the night had passed swiftly. The clansman’s stone cottages
were looted, the grain cellars pried open, the coops emptied. The horses were
slaughtered for meat. Raif butchered a gelding and caged the bantams. By the
time dawn came he was shaking with exhaustion. The penned clansfolk were quiet,
some sleeping. There were not many really, perhaps six families in all. Raif
had taken his turn guarding them, along with every other man in the raid party.
He walked circuits of the stone-walled enclosure, his borrowed sword ill
balanced in his hand, a band of muscle in his chest strangely tight.
Stupidly, he had thought the villagers would know him for clan. Yet when
he looked into their eyes he saw fear and contempt.
He was just another Maimed Man.
It was daylight when his watch ended and the raid party broke camp and
headed for the hills. The return journey took two days, the ponies were so
heavily laden. Linden Moodie and his crew got drunk the last night on young
malt. They’d made camp amidst the bald hummocks and sedge barrens that formed
the northernmost swell of the Copper Hills. The first wave of blackflies had
hatched from the snowmelt and the ponies were under assault. The Maimed Men
huddled around the longfire for protection, passing the sheep’s bladder from
hand to hand. Linden Moodie drank deep and often. The thick black beard that
covered his lower face was a trap for flakes of food and ash, and he raked his
knuckles through it as his gaze fell on Raif.
“To clan,” he said, raising the flaccid sheep’s bladder above the fire.
“Gods damn the lot of them.”
Releasing his grip, he let the sheep’s bladder fall to the fire. The
small quantity of alcohol remaining ignited instantly, whumpfing as it shot up a ball of violet flame. Addie Gunn,
Stillborn and the rest of the Maimed Men nodded tersely, their faces
grotesquely lit by the pure-burning alcohol. Stillborn murmured, “Gods damn
them all,” and after a moment others echoed him.
Raif felt the blood come to his face. He wanted suddenly to run, to
escape these men who were not whole in ways he was just beginning to
understand. But he didn’t. He sat and stared into the fire, and knew with cold
certainty that if any man tried to push him just then that he’d go straight for
their heart.
Perhaps Stillborn saw the intent in his eyes, for he drew attention to
himself by plucking a blood sausage from the heart of the fire and dancing the scorching
offal between his fingers like a hotcake. Soon the Maimed Men were laughing and
making jest, and the subject of clans was dropped or forgotten. Only Linden
Moodie remembered. He sat and watched Raif from the far side of the fire, his
fingers rubbing the garrote scar that circled his throat.
Raif pulled his Orrl cloak close as he walked the length of the
rim-rock with Addie Gunn. They’d made it across the Rift by sundown the
following day, and a feast had been planned for tonight to spread the bounty.
Stillborn would be celebrated. He informed Raif the salt would be divvied up—a
thimbleful for each man, woman and child—and the horsemeat would be smoked and
portioned. Raif, as a member of the raid party, was entitled to more, but he
knew better than to accept it. An outsider shouldn’t take more than his share.
“I set a piece of that ewe to roast this morning,” Addie said to him.
“There’s enough for two.”
Raif started to shake his head, but stopped himself. Addie Gunn had
once been clan. “That sounds good.”
He let the small, dark cragsman lead the way to his fire. Addie slept
close to the collapsed east wall, high on the cliff where eagles made their
eyries and winds from the Want smoothed the edge of the rimrock into glassy
waves. By the time they’d completed the ascent the snow had stopped falling,
and Raif’s heart was pumping hard.
“Aye,” the cragsman said, noticing Raif’s shortness of breath with
satisfaction. “It takes newcomers that way.”
Addie kicked a handful of loose stones out of his path as he headed for
the fire that burned low at the entrance to his stone cell. They were close to
the edge here, and Raif could see white cranes in flight below him, turning
great circles in the Rift as they paused on their journey north. Addie squatted
by the fire and started turning over the embers with a moose bone. A shoulder
of mutton, covered in a creamy skein of fat, sat upon a little iron trivet
above the flames. Addie took a handful of dried leaves in his fist and crumbled
them over the meat. Almost immediately the sharp fragrance of mint rose with
the smoke. Addie looked expectantly to Raif, and Raif showed his appreciation
with a solemn nod. He was beginning to understand that many things were rare in
the Rift, and when a man crumbled herbs into a dish you would share that man
did you honor.
Taking a chance, Raif leant against the cliff and asked, “Were you from
Wellhouse?”
Addie said nothing, merely prodded the meat joint with his moose bone,
testing for doneness. Pink juices hissed into the flames. Just as Raif thought
he’d made a mistake—asking a Maimed Man about his past—the cragsman said, “Is
it the ears that gave me away ?”
“They are big,” Raif conceded, grinning. “And the eyes, too,” he added
hastily, not wanting to insult Addie further. “Like Dhoone’s, only greyer.”
Addie nodded. Wellhouse had been sworn to Dhoone for fifteen hundred
years, and intermarriage had bred likeness between them. Wellhouse called
itself Dhoone’s Hand, and its boast was, Our past bears witness to our glory. The future is
ours to write.
They kept the histories of the Great Settlement and the age before it, when
clans lived in the Soft Lands to the south. Rumors told of a great, lead-lined
strongroom sunk so deep into the bedrock below the Wellhold that groundwater
now surrounded it, sealing it shut for the past hundred years. The Wellhold had
been built around an ancient stone well known as the Kings Fount, for every
Dhoone king ever made had been lathed in its water before crowning. The Kings
Fount was said to hold the purest water in the clanholds, and in the dark times
following the Wars of Apportionment, when clan upon clan fell victim to river
fever, only Wellhouse pulled through without loss. Tern always said that
Wellmen brewed the best malt in the clanholds because of that water.
“It was a long time ago,” Addie said, spearing the meat joint with his
hand knife and lifting it from the fire. “And I never took the oath.“
Raif recognized the pride in the cragsman’s words. / might have deserted my clan, he said, but I broke no oath. Even a Maimed Man had his self-respect. Raif
exhaled softly. He knew what that made him.
“I was never one for clans and clannish business,” Addie continued.
“Rooms with closed doors were too much like prisons to me. Was always drawn to
the heights, to the uplands and the bluffs. Would rather spend the night camped
on a rock with nothing but a green-burning fire to protect me, than sleep
within four walls. Everyone said I was moon-touched, and my da tried to beat it
from me. He was a fountsman, one of the ten best warriors in the clan, and gods
help him if his middle son was going to turn into a herder of sheep. He got his
way, o‘ course—my da always did—and I was trained to the ax.” Addie snorted. “A
short-arsed fool like me! ’Course, when it came time to take the oath my mind
was set. Ran away the night before my swearing. Ran for the hills and never
looked back.”
As he was speaking Addie had been shaving the fat off the joint,
revealing the tender grey-pink mutton beneath. He sliced deeply against the
bone, freeing a wedge of meat. “Here,” he said, offering it to Raif with his
knife. “Best eating to be had in the Rift.”
Raif came forward to take it. Kneeling by the fire, he tore a piece
from the mutton and pushed it in his mouth. The meat melted on his tongue,
shedding the strong pungency of mint and sheep. “It’s good.” Addie nodded,
unsmiling but pleased.
“Did you stay in the clanhold,” Raif asked, “after you ran away?”
“Mostly. Cragsmen live by the oldest laws in the clanholds, the Sheep
Laws. We move through the territory of every clan, following our flocks. If our
flocks graze in a foreign clan for over nine days then we owe that clan a
sheep—that’s why we’re always on the move. ‘Course if you’re herding the
bighorns like me, you favor the high country. And in the high country there’s
few to tell whose toes you’re treading on and whose heather your sheep are
grazing. There’s freedom, or something like it. You’re close enough to know
you’re clan, yet not so close as to be ruled by it.“
“Then why did you leave?”
Addie set down the joint. His fingers were coated in grease and he
wiped them against his tunic as he spoke. “Leave? Leave? No one leaves the clanholds. You’re either driven
out or shunned. Look at Stillborn. Finest swordsman in his clan—but did they
love him for it? No. They saw a monster, not a man. Me, I caught the bone fever
the winter the Flow froze over. A pair of Blackhail cragsmen stole my sheep
while I was passed out in the snow. When you get the bone fever real bad it
takes years to rebuild your strength. You shake. There’s days when your vision
shrinks to dots. And your legs, your damn legs, are like twigs soaked in water
beneath you. And every time you take a step you fall, and every time you think
to yourself I’m going to get
the bastards who stole my sheep you make it as far as the first hill and your
vision turns dark and your legs set to wobbling, and you might as well be
dead.”
Addie stopped and took a breath. When he spoke again his voice was
softer, almost puzzled. “I wasn’t driven out so much as... disregarded. A
cragsman who loses his hill legs is about as much use as a pitchfork with no
tines, at least that’s what you’re told. I drifted around for a few years;
spring lambing at Wellhouse, husbanding at the Dhoone Fair. But there’d be
lapses, and my legs would go, and it wasn’t long afore no one would hire me for
daywork.
“That was the autumn I had my worst lapse. Walking east of Wellhouse,
in the home of the Lost Clan. A fair name, I suppose, as I was lost myself.
Woke up to find I’d been carted north to the Rift and left for dead. They call
it a Cragsman’s Farewell. If you’re old, sick, or injured they cart you there
and leave you. They give you a day’s food, and a choice. Either throw yourself
in the Rift or cross it and become a Maimed Man.”
Addie stood and faced the Rift. The white cranes were forming up for
the flight north, and their mournful whoops filled the air. The cragsman didn’t
seem to hear them. His attention was set upon the grey mists and stony peaks of
the clanholds. He was quiet for a long time, and Raif waited, knowing he wasn’t
done.
“And you know what was the worst thing?” Addie said when he was ready.
“The worst thing was that I actually believed I should jump. I cracked open my
horn of guidestone and walked to the edge. Drew the circle, named the gods, and
.. .” He snorted softly. “I couldn’t do it. Thought myself a coward at the
time, but not anymore. I survived. And it seems to me that when you judge a
man’s worth his ability to survive should be no small part of it.”
Addie turned to face Raif. The cragsman looked worn and strangely
vulnerable, but the pride was back in his eyes. “In the clanholds Stillborn was
a monster and I was a fever-addled weakling. But look at us, look at every man,
woman and child in the Rift. We not only endure, we thrive.”
Raif felt the cragsman’s words stir him, but he didn’t want them to. / am clan, he wanted to cry. For the first time since Tanjo
Ten Arrow’s death he touched his lore. The raven ivory was smooth and warm,
lighter than he remembered. The lightness frightened him. What had been lost?
Addie saw what Raif held in his fist. He said, “Clan is just one way of
being. They have their warriors and guidestones—all manner of fine things—and
if you grow up one of them it’s hard to believe that anything else can compare
to it. But ask yourself this: Is clan better or worse for Stillborn’s loss ...
my loss . . . yours?”
Raif tried to shrug but found he couldn’t. Addie’s sharp grey gaze
wouldn’t let him. Raif squeezed his lore, and then let it drop against the
hollow of his throat. “You and Stillborn would be an asset to any clan,” he
said, knowing it for the truth.
“And you?”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know you outshot Tanjo Ten Arrow when your life depended on it. I
watched with my own eyes as you made a choice between three targets, and though
you killed a fine ewe we’re both here to tell of it. I’d say that makes you a
survivor.”
Did it? Raif thought of Duff’s stovehouse. Six men dead . . . but not
him. And the Badlands. Tern dead, a chief dead, thirteen others dead. Yet he
and Drey had survived. Raif stood. Cold drafts from the Rift had stiffened his
joints and he had to put a hand on the cliff wall to steady himself. Air
switched against his eardrums as pressure built for another snowfall.
“You mourn your clan, I can see that,” Addie said. “But does your clan
mourn you?”
Raif searched desperately for a reason not to shake his head. Drey. Only Drey.
“Set it aside. Take what you’ve learned and move forward. A clansman
can never be anything other than clan. We can be more.”
How could that be possible on the edge of the world, with no kin, no
guidestone, no gods? Men came here because they’d run out of choices, not
because they sought something more. Addie’s words were self-deception. Yet why
didn’t they sound like it? And why, after Stillborn had warned him that Maimed
Men didn’t make good friends, had Stillborn acted as a friend to Linden Moodie?
Raif took a breath to still himself. He needed answers.
“Why was the newborn lowered into the Rift?”
“It’s our way.”
“And Tanjo Ten Arrow?”
“That is also our way.”
Raif recognized the stubbornness in Addie’s voice, and was glad of it.
It gave him something to fight. “Why were his eyelids taken from him?”
“So that he would see his own end.”
“And the newborn? Her eyelids were sewn shut.”
“She was innocent. She shouldn’t have to—” Addie stopped himself.
“Shouldn’t have to what?” Raif pressed. “See? What’s down there, Addie? What are the Rift
Brothers afraid of?”
The cragsman looked Raif straight in the eye. “You don’t want to know.”
“Don’t I?” Raif heard the coldness enter his voice. He plucked his lore
from his throat and held it out for the cragsman to see. “My clan named me
Watcher of the Dead. My father and chief were slain in the Badlands. I broke an
oath to my brother, and abandoned my sister. And you’d be a fool to think I
have anything left to lose.“
Addie stepped back a fraction. The large chunk of cartilage that formed
the apple of his throat quivered as he studied Raif carefully. After a few
moments he seemed to come to some decision.
“You know Wellhouse keeps the histories?”
Raif nodded.
“In the Wellhold you grow up hearing the old songs, the ones everyone
else has forgotten. If your father’s a fountsman, then you have access to the
Kenning Hall, where many old scrolls and documents are kept. It gets inside
you, knowledge. Even if you’ve a brain as holey as an old fleece some portion
of it sticks. You canna help it. You learn things despite yourself. Our old
clan guide was Rury Wellhouse, uncle to the chief, and the most learned man in
the clan-holds. Rury was a canny man. He knew how to wake a boy’s mind. He’d
tell us stories of the great chiefs, of battles and treaties, and fierce duels
where neither opponent was left standing. He slipped the histories into our
heads and we never even knew it. At night, after the hunt, he’d lead the
singing. Such a fair voice, he had, mellow and filled with knowing.”
Addie halted, remembering. Snow had begun to fall whilst he spoke, big
white flakes that seesawed down like feathers. Raif wondered what had become of
the cranes.
“It’s funny how songs stay in your head,” Addie said. “You can forget
the name of your first herd dog, and the color of your mother’s eyes, but some
piece of nonsense from forty years ago stays with you like it’s been scribed
into your skin.”
Raif heard himself ask, “What have you remembered?”
Addie hesitated. He was standing close to the fire, and the rising heat
formed a shield around him, warding off snow. “Something. A fragment of an old
song.”
“About me?”
“Perhaps.” Addie shrugged, discomforted. “It was what you said, put me
in mind of it.” 1 ell me.
“I’m not much of a singer. I—”
“Say the words.”
“Aye.” The cragsman pushed at the air testily. “I see you’ll not rest
till you’ve had your fill.” Letting out a breath he calmed himself, and then
began to speak in his rough, smoky voice.
“Though
walls may crumble and earth may break He will forsake Though night may fall and
shadows rise He will be wise Though seals may shatter and evil grow He will
draw his bow Though a fortress may fall and darkness ride through the gate He
will lie in wait And when the Demon emerges and all hopes depart He must take
its heart“
The snowfall thickened in the silence following the cragsman’s verse.
Raif was aware of icy flakes catching in his hair and in the collar of his Orrl
cloak, but he was numb to their coldness. He felt made of stone. They’re just words, he told himself, but he knew it wasn’t the truth,
and the echo came back to him. My
words.
He understood what they meant. Almost. They lay on the edge of his
perception, like a high-pitched birdcall that began within normal range then
passed beyond hearing. And they sent charges along his nerves, firing off
scraps of memory and making images flicker behind his eyes: Drey pressing the
swearstone into his fist; Sadaluk holding out an arrow; the Forsworn knight
murmuring, We search.
Raif blinked and the images fled. He was aware of the cragsman,
watching him and waiting, an expression that was half fear and half resignation
lying heavy on his face.
Abruptly Raif moved, shrugging off snow. “Tell me about the Rift,
Addie.”
The cragsman nodded, acknowledging the inevitability of the question.
Glancing around, he assured himself that they wouldn’t be overheard before
speaking. “The earth’s thin here. The Want, the Badlands, the Rift: They lie on
rotting crust. There’s canyons, frost ?.
boils, gas geysers, hot springs. All flaws. And the Rift is the
greatest flaw of them all. It’s deep, deep,
and there are those who say it’s too deep, that it bores down to the place
where worlds meet. The grey place, where life and death are separated by a
lamb’s breath. Well-house knows some of it, but most of the old knowledge has
been forgotten or sealed away. And it’s the same with the Rift brothers: They
know just enough to be afraid.“
Addie paused, his worn hands reaching out to steady himself against the
cliff face. “We don’t speak of it. We’re like clan that way, always burying the
old troubles deep. I’m hardly the man to ask. I herded sheep for my living, now
I thieve them. What do I know of the dark days ahead?”
He looked at Raif, and Raif met his gaze without flinching. Addie blew
air from his mouth, beaten. “You asked why the brothers send their dead to the
Rift, that I can tell you. They’re trying to seal it. They believe that if they
throw enough bodies down there, and enough blood is shed, they can stop the
Rift from tearing open. What’s down there I canna say. Innocents like the
newborn are allowed the privilege of never finding out. Their eyes are bound
closed so they never have to see what awaits them. Now Tanjo, he dishonored
Traggis Mole. He was supposed to win the duel of arrows and make a liar of you.
‘Course it didn’t play out that way, and the crowd was all riled up for a
killing. Traggis had no choice but to send him to the Rift. It’s a hard land we
live in and the Maimed Men respect a hard man. Traggis dealt Tanjo Ten Arrow
the worst death in the Rift. Sent him down there alive, without eyelids to shut
out the horrors that bide there.” Addie’s hand went to his waist, questing for
a portion of powdered guidestone that was no longer there.
Raif pretended not to notice. Some things were between a man and his
gods.
He asked, “What do the brothers believe will come through the rent if
the Rift tears?”
Addie snorted softly. “Imagine your worst nightmare, then reckon it
tenfold. That’d be a start.”
Raif nodded. The cragsman was speaking a language he understood. “The
Rift isn’t a fortress, though,” he said.
“Aye,” Addie replied, knowing immediately what Raif meant. “The song
was most particular about that.”
“You said there are other flaws?”
“The Want is riddled with them. Just because the Rift’s the greatest
doesn’t mean it will be the first to give.”
“Just the worst.”
Addie chuckled grimly, not disagreeing.
Ash. It all began with Ash. Raif tilted his head back and let the snow
fall on his face. They had failed, both of them, and now the darkness was
forcing its way out. Addie’s verse hinted that it could be slowed or delayed,
but that would mean finding the fault most likely to give. We search, the Forsworn knight had said. Could it be for the
same thing?
Raising his hand, Raif scrubbed his face clean of snow. The skin around
his eyes was beginning to numb. He was clan. He didn’t have the book learning of the knights or
the tracking skills of the Sull. What made Addie think he was the one to do it?
We can
be more. Raif
shook the cragsman’s words away from him. He didn’t want them to be true.
Hearing footfalls on the stair below, Raif calmed himself. Later. He
would think about it later, after dark.
Addie moved back to the fire, and began fussing with his joint of meat.
Motioning for Raif to join him, he spoke in a voice intended for overhearing.
“Will you be taking a little tea before you go?”
As Raif shook his head, a call came from below.
“Addie! Is Twelve Kill up there with you?” Stillborn.
“Aye,” Addie cried back, relaxing imperceptibly. “Come and join us.
We’re sharing a spot of supper.”
Stillborn’s big, ruined face came into view at the far end of the
ledge. He was sweating and out of breath. “Haven’t got time, Addie. The Robber
Chief’s got me running errands like a girl.” He turned to Raif. “I don’t know
what you’ve done this time, lad, but I’m betting it’s nothing good. You’re to
come to the chief’s cave at midnight. Traggis Mole wants to see you alone.”
CHAPTER
Dealing in the Milkhouse
The Milkhouse was a strange place, Bram concluded as he walked through
its lower corridors bearing a heavy, covered platter. Parts of it were hardly
like a roundhouse at all. Where most other roundhouses had large vaulted halls
accessed by wide walkways and stairs, the Milkhouse was built like a maze.
Leagues of white-walled corridors spooled off in countless directions, each one
looking the same as the last. You had to look carefully to figure it out.
Milkstone was impervious to mold, soot, damp or decay, so although
parts of the Milkhouse had been standing for three thousand years, it had an
ageless look about it. No rooms or vaults existed belowground. Bram had
wondered about that until Guy Morloch had explained Castlemilk’s strategy for
defense. The Milkhouse lay in a shallow depression, two hundred yards north of
the river. A system of ancient pumps and cisterns built by the great Milk chief
Huxlo Castlemilk allowed the ground floor of the roundhouse to be flooded in
times of war. The milkstone held water, Guy confided, and all of the principal
rooms of the roundhouse were located in the upper two stories. The clan would
move upward for safety, an invading force would be thwarted, and the water
pumped out when the threat had passed.
Bram thought it was a clever idea, but he wondered about Guy Morloch’s
willingness to tell it. Guy was a Castlemilk swordsman, newly come to Robbie’s
cause. How had Robbie managed to command his loyalty so completely?
It was a question Bram wasn’t sure he wanted answered. Besides, there
wasn’t time for it now. He’d already fallen behind the others, and he didn’t
want to risk losing sight of them. Robbie was on edge at the prospect of this
meeting, and his temper would likely flare if everything didn’t go to plan.
Only a handful of men had been chosen to accompany Robbie Dun Dhoone on
his visit to the Milk chief: Iago Sake, Duglas Oger, Guy Morloch, and the
swordsman newly deserted from Skinner Dhoone’s camp, Jordie Sarson. Bram and
Jess Blain brought up the rear as pages.
It was sunset and the failing light somehow found its way into the
roundhouse, casting long, complicated shadows, and rippling like fluid within
the milkstone. Guy Morloch led the way. He and Robbie were the only ones not
bearing goods. Bram didn’t know what lay within the various sacks and baskets
the others bore, but he could guess their purpose. Bribery. Robbie Dhoone wanted
something from the Milk chief.
As they wound their way higher through the roundhouse, Bran noticed
that the milkstone began to be supplemented with sandstone. The two didn’t lie
easy together, and pale, uniform walls gave way to a checkered mismatch of
light and dark stone. Bronze torches had been hammered into the softer
sandstone, and a Castlemilk luntman was busy filling their fuel reservoirs with
pure-burning rapeseed oil.
At this time of day clansmen were at their hearths, supping ale and
taking their supper, and they passed few people on their way to the Brume Hall.
Guy Morloch set a brisk pace. Like all of Robbie’s chosen companions he wore a
floor-length cloak of heavy Dhoone -blue wool fitted with thistle clasps.
Robbie wore one too, only his cloak was edged in gold-and-black fisher fur,
like the mantles of the Dhoone kings.
After climbing a steep cantilevered stair they arrived at a pair of
doors guarded by two Castlemilk spearmen. The spearmen crossed their weapons
barring the way. “Who comes here, and on what business?” demanded the elder of
the two.
Guy Morloch stepped forward to speak, but Robbie put a hand on his
shoulder, halting him. “Robbie Dun Dhoone comes here,” Robbie said. “On the
business of kings and chiefs.”
The exchange was a formality—the meeting had already been set between
Robbie and the Milk chief, and the Castlemilk guards had to know that—but
Robbie’s words made it more. Only eight weeks earlier he had camped on the
ground floor of this very roundhouse, a guest and supplicant of the Milk chief.
Now he stood by the great Oyster Doors to the Brume Hall, demanding to see the
chief on equal footing.
Bram watched as the two guards drew to attention, unconsciously
responding to the authority in Robbie’s voice. The elder spearman rapped
against the door with the butt of his spear. “Open up! Robbie Dun Dhoone to see
the chief.” The double doors swept back on his command and the party moved
forward into the Brume Hall.
Like the Tomb of the Dhoone Princes, the Brume Hall at Castlemilk was
held to be one of the wonders of the clanholds. Situated at the very top of the
roundhouse, it occupied the dome at the apex. The chamber was built entirely
from the finest grade of milkstone, known as brume. Brume, Bram recalled being told, was the old clan word
for mist. And that’s what it looked like to him as he entered behind Jess
Blain: as if he were walking into a chamber walled and roofed with mist. Almost
you could see outside, observe the darkening sky and pale globe of the rising
moon. As he looked up, he saw a shadow pass over the roof. A night hawk, flying
south to its hunting grounds along the Milk. Bram was filled with wonder. The
stone blocks forming the great dome of the roof had to be at least three foot thick,
yet it was like looking through a sheet of cloudy glass.
“The Builder Chief, Hanratty Castlemilk, spent a lifetime fitting the
dome. It took him ten years alone to develop the mortar.”
Wrayan Castlemilk, the Milk chief, raised herself from the Oyster Chair
and moved forward to greet her guests. A rank of swordsmen flanked her. She was
dressed plainly but finely in a robe of pale blue wool, letting the
silver-and-russet braid she was known for fall straight down the front like a
chain. Now that Spynie Orrl was dead, she was the second-longest-reigning chief
in the clanholds. Only the Dog Lord himself had held his chiefdom longer.
“Robbie,” she said, inclining her head. “Welcome. I see you’ve brought
Guy back to see me.”
Robbie grinned almost sheepishly. “He was homesick.”
Wrayan Castlemilk threw back her head and laughed. It was a good sound,
vigorous and throaty, and it broke the tension in the Brume Hall. “Duglas.
Iago. Bram.”
Bram wondered how she knew his name. He bowed formally at the neck, as
his father had taught him, and for some reason this pleased her and lengthened
the duration of her smile.
“I saw you admiring the dome,” she said to him. “Hanratty may have
fitted it, but truth be told it wasn’t really his own work.”
“TheSull?”
She nodded. “You’ve a smart brother here, Robbie. I see why you keep
him close.”
Bram felt hot blood flush his face. Quickly he glanced at his brother,
and saw that Robbie was unsure how to react. By the time he’d settled on a bland
smile, Wrayan Castlemilk had already registered his discomfort and moved on.
“The dome was found in pieces in the heart of the Ruinwoods,” she said
to Bram. “It had fallen from a structure we think may have been a temple. Of
course there’s nothing left of it now. The forest’s broken it down and
swallowed it up.” For a moment Wrayan Castlemilk’s deep brown eyes held Bram’s,
appraising him, before turning her attention to other things.
With a few brief commands, she relieved the party’s burdens, arranged
for sufficient chairs to be assembled around the chamber’s central firepit, and
ordered the fetching of ale and milk and the tamping of the fire so that they
could parley more easily across the firewell. Such arrangements could have been
made earlier, Bram realized, but then Wrayan Castlemilk would not have had the
advantage of command.
When all was settled fifteen chairs circled the firewell, the camps
almost evenly divided. Yet again Wrayan Castlemilk had surprised Bram by
providing chairs for him and Jess Blain. As a clanwife passed from man-to-man,
pouring the traditional dram of milk into their ale horns, Wrayan leaned back
in her chair and addressed Robbie.
“So, Robbie Dhoone. What would you have of me?”
Robbie was ready for this. Placing his hands on his knees, he breathed
deeply and easily. “I need to retake Dhoone.”
Wrayan Castlemilk did not react. She had been a clan chief for nearly
thirty years, and Bram reckoned she must have reached the point where little
surprised her.
“It’s time Bludd was driven out,” Robbie continued. “They hold too much
power, and the clanholds are collapsing around them. Without Dhoone there is no
center. No heart. The clanholds are vulnerable, and none more so than the
middle clans. Wellhouse, Withy, Gnash, Croser—” He halted to look the Milk
chief in the eye. “Castlemilk.”
Wrayan pressed her lips together in a gesture that might, or might not
be, agreement. “Go on.”
Robbie leaned forward in his chair. “Power must be returned to the Dhooneseat,
you know that, Wrayan. When was the last time you slept through the night,
knowing that Bludd sat at your door?”
The Milk chief’s smile was surprisingly gentle. “You’re young, Robbie,
else you’d know that a clan chief rarely sleeps through the night. As for Bludd
sitting at my door, you forget that Castlemilk is well guarded to the north. We
have the Flow and the gorges to protect us. And”—a quick, knowing glance at Guy
Morloch—“as I’m sure you’ve heard, the Milkhouse itself has never been taken.”
Guy Morloch colored hotly. Robbie, on the other hand, remained calm,
amused even. He shrugged winningly. “It’s my duty to gather intelligence where
I can.”
“And it’s my duty to protect my clan.”
It was a warning, Bram realized, and Robbie was wise enough to accept
it. He took a moment and used it to still himself, his blue-tattooed face
settling in grave lines. When he spoke his voice was urgent. “I need your help,
Wrayan. You were a friend to me when I broke relations with Skinner and needed
a base to rally support. You lent your house, your protection, your
blessing___and you must know I have wondered why.“
The hall was very quiet. Heat rising from the tamped embers warped the
air between Robbie and the chief. The men in Wrayan’s party were hard-bitten
warriors, powerful and greying, in the late years of their prime. Bram saw that
one of them had a glass vial suspended from his sword belt. Grey liquid rocked
gently within the vial as the man breathed. So it was true, then. The head warrior
of Castlemilk carried his measure of powdered guidestone suspended in water, so
he might drink it before he rode to war or died.
Wrayan Castlemilk looked to the head warrior, and the two exchanged a
brief, telling glance. Squaring her shoulders, Wrayan said, “Robbie, this clan
has helped you because we believe Dhoone must have a strong leader if she is to
win back her house. Skinner is not that man. I myself provided intelligence to
him when the Bludd chief and his forces moved south to occupy Ganmiddich. The
Dhoonehouse was left vulnerable for fifteen days, yet Skinner chose not to act.
That, I will never forgive him for. I have led this clan for thirty years, and
time has taught me many hard things. And none harder than this: A chief who
hesitates kills his clan.”
Of
course, Bram
thought. She’s speaking of
Middlegorge.
Blackhail slew five hundred Castlemilk warriors that day. And all because the
old chief Alban Castlemilk, Wrayan’s brother, delayed choosing his ground.
Bram saw that Wrayan was watching him, registering the understanding on
his face. Quickly he looked away. For some reason he didn’t want Robbie to see
her interest.
Robbie raised a hand to his throat and unhooked the thistle clasps,
letting his cloak drop to the back of his chair. He said, “When the time comes
you need not worry that I will hesitate, lady. I am young, yes, and some might
say untested. But know this. I will retake Dhoone. The Dhooneseat
is mine, and I would sit her sooner with your help. If you refuse, you only
slow, not stop me.”
As Robbie spoke a subtle change took place in the Brume Hall. Iago Sake
and the rest of Robbie’s party sat straighter, stiffening their spines and
raising their jaws. The giant axman Duglas Oger actually nodded when Robbie had
finished and murmured roughly, “Aye.”
Wrayan Castlemilk betrayed no sign of having heard him. Her warriors
shifted uncomfortably in their seats, and for the first time Bram realized why
she had allowed no younger men to attend this meeting. It was hard for a
fighting man to resist Robbie’s confidence. Every word he spoke promised glory.
Robbie eased himself back in his chair, taking time to arrange the
cuffs of his shirt. As a self-named chief, he was the only one of the Dhoone
party who had been allowed the privilege of bearing arms in the Brume Hall, and
his hand came to rest on the crosshilt of his sword as he waited for the Milk
chief to speak. Watching his brother, Bram suddenly understood that Wrayan
Castlemilk had little choice here. Guy Morloch and a score of other Castlemen
had already deserted their clan for Robbie’s cause, and it wouldn’t take much
to lure away more.
Wrayan Castlemilk must have understood it too, for there was an edge to
her voice when she said, “So. What would you have of me?”
“I need two hundred hatchetmen—either hammer or ax—and double that
number of swords.”
Wrayan’s warriors stirred uneasily. Six hundred men. It was unheard of.
Even Robbie’s chosen companions were surprised. Duglas Oger’s mouth fell open,
and Guy Morloch looked positively stunned. Only Wrayan Castlemilk and Robbie
Dun Dhoone remained calm, appraising each other across the fire like rival
swordsmen.
The Milk chief shook her head. “Can’t be done, Robbie. Ask again.”
“I think it can, and I think you’d be wise to grant it.”
“How so?”
Robbie leaned forward in his seat. “You grant me the men I need, here,
now, and I’ll accept them under the Liege Laws. Under these laws, as you know, the
men will be mine to command only for a limited time, their oaths to Castlemilk
will remain intact, and they’ll return to your house when the campaign has
ended.” A draft circling the room stirred the embers into flames, and suddenly
Bram could see the coldness in Robbie’s Dhoone-blue eyes. “Refuse, and you
leave me no choice but to take men as they come, bind them to me with oaths and
make Dhoonesmen from them. They’ll never see Castlemilk again.“
Wrayan Castlemilk stood, sending her chair scraping against the stone
floor. “You play with fire, Robbie Dhoone.”
“I must to win back my house.”
She nodded slowly, acknowledging the truth of his words. “I take it you
have already spoken to some of my men?”
Robbie’s smile charmed but did not warm. “You know me well, lady. I
admit I’ve taken promises from perhaps a hundred. But don’t damn them for it.
They’re young. They want to fight.”
Wrayan’s hand found the tail of her braid. There, wound tightly to the
leather fastening, hung the broken tip of an antler. Elk lore. She weighed it
as she thought. Bram wondered how much of what Robbie said was true. Could it
be possible that a hundred Castlemen were willing to forsake their oaths to
join him?
With a heavy sigh, Wrayan dropped her lore. “What do you offer in
return?”
Robbie stood. “Jess. Bram. Bring forth the gifts. We must show this
chief how highly we value her.”
Bram felt Wrayan’s gaze upon his back as crossed to the wall where the
packages had been stowed. Robbie and Iago Sake had packed the sacks and baskets
in secret, selecting items from the great war chests that had been removed from
the Dhoonehouse the night of the Bludd strike. They were heavy, Bram knew that
much, and he prayed to the Stone Gods that he wouldn’t make a fool of himself
by dropping them. Jess Blain seemed to have a sixth sense concerning weight,
for he managed to choose the packages that could be lifted with ease, leaving
Bram with the ones that felt like rocks.
When all had been brought forward into the firewell, Robbie dismissed
Bram and Jess with a nod. And then he drew his sword. In an instant the
Castlemen stood and drew their weapons, but Robbie was already raising his arms
in no-contest.
“For the packages,” he said. “The ties must be cut.”
The Castlemen returned to their seats, their faces.dark and
disgruntled. Robbie had made them look foolish—his first mistake,
Bram realized—and now he moved quickly to put it behind him. With a
single movement he sliced the length of the first sack, letting bolts of
cloth-of-gold, crimson damask, silver tissue, and amber sammite spill out. The
clanwife who had served them their ale and milk and now stood in waiting close
to the door gasped. Robbie turned to her and smiled. “For the ladies of the
clan.”
Bram recognized some of the cloth from the raid Duglas Oger had led
along the Lake Road. Such materials, made with silk and gold thread, could not
be woven in the Northern Territories and had to be carted all the way from the
Far South. Their value was beyond reckoning in the clanholds. The next sack
contained exquisite furs; whole lynx pelts, brushes of blue foxes, mink, vair,
ocelot, ermine, miniver and sable. The platter Bram had carried from the tower
held three dozen bear gall bladders, preserved in layers of salt. Another held
copper breastpins, cloakpins, warrior tores and wrist guards set with
sapphires, moonstones, diamonds, and blue topaz. One basket held a suit of
armor packed in delicate gauze. Robbie held the breastplate up for the Milk
chief’s inspection, so she could see the honeycombed metal, the silvering and
engraving, and the raised thistle device that circled the neck.
Wrayan Castlemilk’s manner was still cool, but Bram could see the light
of desire in her eyes. That armor had been made for a queen. And not any queen,
but the great Weeping Moira herself. She had fought in it a thousand years
earlier at the Hill of Flies, and clan no longer knew the art of honeycombing
metal so that it was lightweight, but hard as stone.
But still Robbie wasn’t finished. The last basket was long and shallow,
so heavy that to move it Bram had been forced to drag it across the Brume Hall
floor. Robbie paused before slitting the cloth that covered it, and addressed
the seven warriors who protected Wrayan Castlemilk.
“I have offered gifts to your clanwives, your healers, your old men,
and your chief. And now I offer the gift of swords to you.”
Robbie slit and pulled back the canvas, revealing a stash of twenty
swords, unsheathed and laid point-to-hilt. Their edges rippled, throwing sparks
of blue light. Every man in the room grew still.
Water steel. Dhoone kings wielded it, warriors had killed for it, and
only one man in the clanholds knew the secret of its forging.
Bram stared at the swords, transfixed. He did not understand how Robbie
had managed to lay his hands on so many. No man who owned one would willingly
give it up. And then he saw it, close to the top of the pile, the pommel shaped
like a rabbit’s foot, cast from lattern and blued steel. His father’s sword.
The one Mabb Cormac had ordered refitted to honor his second wife, Margret.
Twin to the blade that Robbie now held in his fist. Bram blinked. That sword
was his.
“I see the rumors are true then,” Wrayan said to Robbie. “You did relieve Skinner of some of his war chests when you
fled his camp.”
Robbie shrugged. “I prefer to call it taking what’s rightfully mine.”
Wrayan laughed, but this time her laugher was brittle and quickly done.
She glanced at her warriors; their attentions were still rapt upon the swords.
“You’ve brought some pleasing trinkets, I’ll allow you that much.”
“Water steel is no trinket, lady.”
“What is easily acquired is easily given.”
“Then you refuse them?” Robbie’s voice was dangerously light.
“No. I’ll accept them. But I want something more.”
“Lady, I have no more riches to give. If you would only—”
Wrayan waved a hand to silence him. “Spare me your protests. Another sword
means nothing to me.”
“Then what would you have?”
As Bram waited for Wrayan to speak, he was taken with the idea that
everything had been leading to this. Robbie was clever, but this was his first
time at the negotiating table, while Wrayan Castlemilk had been striking deals
for thirty years. Outside, the moon shone through a thin veil of cloud, making
the entire dome glow. Its light was cold and alien, and everyone sitting
beneath it looked made of stone. Bram shivered, though instantly he wished he
had not, for the Milk chief’s gaze fell upon him.
“I’ll take your brother, Robbie Dun Dhoone, to foster here at this
clan.”
CHAPTER
The Robber Chief
It was strange the way the snow here seemed to hold no water, just
crystals of parched ice. Raif felt it crunch beneath his boots like chalk as he
walked the length of rimrock, waiting for midnight to fall.
The Rift Music had started, and hundreds of fires blazed against it,
one at the entrance to every inhabited cave in the city. With so many fires
burning it should have been light, but it wasn’t. The Rift vented darkness like
a volcano venting steam. Raif grinned at his own fancy. Mostly he felt old
inside, as if the things he’d seen and done had aged him, but tonight he felt
strangely light. Mad. Lost. Addie’s song had spread a path for him, and he knew
he wasn’t fit to take it. But if he didn’t, who would?
Raif knew the answer; he could hear it in the Rift Music.
No one.
Sobered, he turned away from the rim, and let the dry smoky air cool
him until he felt ready to face the Robber Chief, Traggis Mole.
Raif had never been close to the chief’s cave before, but he knew where
it was. Most Maimed Men chose to live in the upper terraces, closer to the sun
and stars, yet Traggis Mole had made his home low. The lower terraces were the
oldest part of the city, and the walls and stairs were roughly mined and
crumbling. Bird lime had bleached the outcroppings, and some trace of
phosphoresence made random edges glow. Raif followed a stair where the stone
steps were so badly deteriorated that oak boards had been laid over the powdery
rock. Below, he could see the ten-foot longfire that burned at the mouth of the
chief’s cave.
No one stood guard by the entrance, and as Raif crossed the ledge
toward the fire he wondered what he should do. The longfire was burning
fiercely, completely sealing off the mouth of the cave. Glare from the flames
prevented him from seeing inside. Just as he was about to call out, a stone
flag was thrown over the coals, flattening a section of the flames and creating
a narrow bridge through the center of the fire. Raif moved forward. He still
couldn’t see beyond the flames, but the message was clear. Enter.
He stepped onto the stone flag, hearing coals pop beneath him. For a
moment his ears roared with heat and he smelled the singeing of his own hair,
and then he was safe on the other side. Quickly, he ran a hand over his scalp,
checking that he wasn’t actually on fire. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a
shape move inside the cave.
“It’s a true Orrl cloak then,” came Traggis Mole’s rough, quiet voice.
“The flames touched it, but it didn’t char.”
Raif was angry at being watched. He made no reply, using the few
moments this bought him to take in his surroundings. The chief’s cave was
narrow and twisting, its gallery sloping downward, boring deep into the cliff.
The walls were painted, and Raif could see traces of color peeking through the
scale of soot and lichen that coated the rock. Crosscurrents touched his face,
and he realized that the chief’s cave must lead to other caves and tunnels that
he could not see. The living quarters were sparse and orderly; the pallet bed
pushed against a flat stretch of rock wall, its fur coverlet pulled straight. A
second fur lay on the floor, close to a cast-iron brazier and two leather camp
chairs. A hog-backed chest stood at the foot of the bed, and a weapons stand
holding both live and guarded steel stood at its head.
“Step aside,” Traggis Mole commanded.
The moment Raif did so, Traggis Mole tugged on a length of rope,
dragging the stone flag off the coals. Flames leapt up immediately, blocking
the way in. Or out.
The Robber Chief moved close to Raif, and sniffed him. The bore holes
in his wooden nose made a sharp little piping noise as he inhaled. He was
dressed richly but with little regard, like Orwin Shank at the Dhoone
Fair—aware that he must display his wealth, but careless of how he went about
it. Raif recognized the finery of several clans on his back. The heavily
embroidered tunic was pure Wellhouse, its design picked out in all the colors
that heather could be. The double-woven cloak trimmed with swan feathers had
once belonged to a Harkness warrior, and the hareskin pants were the type made
by the Hailwives each summer when the hares ran wild in the Wedge. Other
items—tooled leather boots, a metalwork sword belt, and a linen undershirt
gathered at the neck and cuffs— were city-made and foreign to Raif.
“Not all Orrl cloaks are created equal,” Traggis Mole said, his black
eyes looking steadily at Raif. “Only a very few are proofed against flames.
Cloaks made for chiefs and the sons of chiefs. But then you know all about
that.”
Raif held the Robber Chief’s gaze and did not speak.
Traggis Mole’s finely shaped lips curled, then he was gone. Raif saw
him settle down on one of the camp chairs, and wondered how he moved so fast.
“How old are you?” the Robber Chief asked.
“I passed my eighteenth name day this winter.”
“When?”
It was a question Raif didn’t want to answer . .. because he’d never be
entirely sure. “Recently.”
Traggis Mole let the silence lie there until Raif felt compelled to
fill it.
“Da always said I was born on Lambing Night, in the last month of
winter. But when I was a bairn I remember my mother celebrating my name day
earlier, at Winter Fest.”
As soon as he spoke he’d regretted it. Never before had he mentioned this
to anyone, not even Drey. He’d always used the day Tern had given. But even a
child of four can remember things, and he distinctly recalled his mother giving
him a tiny wooden boat to sail on the Leak. It was at Winter Fest, he knew, for
as he watched his toy boat bob along the icy stream, he remembered the clan
maids in their winter whites, singing to lone, pleading with the Stone Goddess
to find them a mate before Lambing Night.
Traggis Mole sat perfectly still, watching him. Raif was aware of his
power, the potential for absolute violence that charged his body like a drawn
bow.
“The Vorlanders say that if you lose an eye in battle it is a good
thing, for that eye will go ahead of you to heaven, and will send you glimpses
of other worlds. Me, I lost a nose, and I’ve come to believe that if I sniff
very hard I can scent a lie.” The Robber Chief paused, gauging Raif’s reaction.
“Now I will ask you one question, and if you lie to me I will kill you. Do you
understand?”
Raif nodded slowly. He feared this man.
The Robber Chief waited, choosing his moment before speaking. His eyes
were black as night, and you could not see his soul through them. “The Orrl
cloak. Did you kill the man who owned it?”
The question was so surprising it took Raif a moment to make sense of
it. The Orrl cloak? He met Traggis Mole’s gaze. “No.”
Time passed, how much Raif was unable to tell. Everything was still and
quiet, except the breath piping in and out of the Robber Chief’s wooden nose.
Suddenly he moved, stood and crossed toward the weapons stand. Again there was
that quickness, as if Traggis Mole knew a way to shrink space. “So how did you
come by it?”
Raif hoped his relief didn’t show. “I took it from a dead man’s back. I
came across five bodies in the wastelands west of Orrl. I needed clothes.” He
wasn’t proud of it, but Traggis Mole had asked for the truth.
“And did you know who they were?”
“No. Orrlsmen, nothing more.”
“Then you’d be surprised to learn that one of them was grandson to an
old friend of mine, Spynie Orrl?”
Raif shook his head, knowing he’d fallen into a trap.
The Robber Chief selected a sheathed longknife from the weapons stand.
“You’re not what you claim, are you, Raif Twelve Kill? Not a white-winter
warrior, not even an Orrlsman.”
“No.”
The word stilled the Robber Chief’s hand. He looked from the longknife
to Raif. “Linden Moodie says you’re a Hailsman, is he right?”
Raif felt sweat prickle along his hairline. “Yes.”
Immediately Traggis Mole was there, at his back, the longknife drawn
from its sheath, its point touching the apple of Raif’s throat. “Who are you
protecting, yourself or your clan?”
The pressure of the knife made Raif gag. He didn’t understand any of
this. What did Traggis Mole want from him? “I—I don’t know.”
Just as quickly as the knife was raised, it was taken back. The Robber
Chief released him, and Raif stumbled forward, his hand rising to his throat.
His fingers slid across wetness, and whatever it was—sweat or blood—he wiped it
away without looking at it.
Traggis leaned against the cave wall and studied him. The longknife was
sheathed once more, and only its tortoiseshell grip now showed. “Linden Moodie
says you endangered the raid party by letting a sheep herder run free.”
“He says a lot. Not all of it is true. The sheep herder was gagged and
tied. He was in no state to give warning.”
The Robber Chief accepted this with a taut nod. “What if he’d been a
Hailsman?”
Suddenly Raif needed to sit. Being in Traggis Mole’s presence drained
him. He felt as if he’d been awake, guarding against monsters, all night.
Without waiting for an invitation Raif sat on the closest camp chair. “I can’t
answer that.”
“Well you’re going to have to. Here, for me.” Traggis Mole pushed
himself off from the cave wall. “This is the Rift, not the clanholds, and
you’re with the Maimed Men now. The journey is one-way. No one goes back. We
can’t. We might wish it, might dream about it every night, tasting the warm
buttermilk on our tongues and feeling the spring grasses whip our shins. But we
know it’s just a dream. We’re marked, every one of us. And no one’s pining our
loss.“
As Traggis finished speaking a tremor passed through the cave. Rock
settled deep in the earth’s crust with a long, bass groan. Flames in the
longfire and brazier greened as gas escaped through fault
lines. Dust smoked from the cave walls in the stillness that followed.
The Robber Chief pulled his wooden nose a fraction away from his face,
letting air travel directly into the bridgeless hole beneath. His eyes dared
Raif to look away. When the dust thinned he plugged his wooden nose back in
place.
“This may be a rotting wormhole, but I’m king of it. That might not
mean much to you, with your fancy cloak and clannish honor, but it’s everything
to me. Men stay here at my sufferance. You’re here at my sufferance, and I tell you now, Twelve
Kill, I don’t like what I see. Oh, I know you’re handy with that bow of yours
and you’ve a talent for coming out on top, but to me you’re a liability—a man
whose loyalty still lies with his clan.”
Traggis Mole’s small well-shaped hands twitched, as if they wanted
something to do. His gaze pinned Raif. “Many men here hate me. Some think they
can take my place. That’s fine with me—I can watch my back. But not everyone
can. There are fools here who still trust men, fools like Addie Gunn and
Stillborn and a hundred others like them. And perhaps they should never have
come here, perhaps they should have stayed in their roundhouses and cities and
took whatever tyranny came their way. But they didn’t, they came here. And that
makes them mine.
“And no one harms what is mine, only me.” Raif looked down; his boots were
covered in a film of dust. He understood now what the Robber Chief wanted from
him, but he didn’t know if he could give it.
“There’s a choice here,” Traggis said quietly. “Either become one of us
or leave. I need to know that when I send you on a raid you’ll put your Rift
Brothers first. They’re a mangy ill-bred lot, but they look to me for
protection, and that means I have to watch for those who’d do them harm.“ His
black eyes glittered in the firelight. ”Will you do them harm ?“
“No.”
“Would you slay a Hailsman to save a Maimed Man’s life?”
Here it was, the question everything had been leading up to ... and he
didn’t have an answer. Inigar Stoop had cut his heart from the guidestone: Raif
Sevrance was no longer clan. But it was hard not to be clan. How could you turn
your back on all you’d known and loved?
Raif ran a hand over his face. He missed Effie. What did she always say
to him? You can hug me, but
no kiss. Gods,
he’d been so lucky and he didn’t even know it.
But this was his luck now. A Maimed Man. Looking Traggis Mole straight
in the eye, he said, “I can slay a Hailsman.” Mace Blackhail. For Effie, and Drey, and Tern.
The Robber Chief studied him, pulling air through his wooden nose.
Minutes passed. Raif felt his face drawing tight like a mask, but he didn’t
drop his gaze. When Traggis Mole spoke he could barely hear him.
“We shall see.”
Raif closed his eyes for a moment, resting them.
“You’ve been taking lessons in swordcraft from Stillborn?”
“Yes. I practice twice a day.”
Traggis Mole seemed to reach a decision. “Follow me,” he said,
disappearing into the gloom at the back of the cave.
Raif stood. He was glad Traggis wasn’t watching him, for his legs
wobbled as they took his weight. Forcing them into obedience, he headed deep
into the Robber Chief’s cave.
The crosscurrents grew stronger as the light dimmed. The soot from the
fires hadn’t drifted this far back, and Raif could make out the paintings on
the walls. Some of the pigments must have been made by grinding down the
phosphorescence in the rock, for parts of the design glowed. A landscape was
grafted onto the stone. Vast grasslands were shown yellowing in the sun. Elk
and aurochs grazed rolling plains, and killhounds and birds bigger than kill-
hounds wheeled above them, sighting prey. A river snaked and bow-curved
through the lowlands, a line of silvery phosphorescence that glinted like real
water. When the light faded to black Raif could still see its course.
“Here,” Traggis Mole called, striking a spark with a flint and lighting
a tallow-smeared torch. Ahead, the gallery forked into two passages, and the
Robber Chief waited at the mouth of the west fork for Raif to catch up.
At some point while they’d been without light the painting on the walls
had changed. The river still flowed, but the landscape it cut through was laid
to waste. Hillsides were brown, their grasses dead or dying. Carcasses rotted
on the plains and bird skeletons littered the riverbank like baskets.
Raif pulled his cloak around his shoulders, suddenly cold.
Traggis led him through the passage and into a small, star-shaped
chamber. The elk tallow in the torch burned red and smoky, throwing jittery
shadows across the painted rock. The river was here as well, circling the cave,
but now its floodplains were dry and frozen. Bare rock and frost was all that
remained.
“Hold this.” The Robber Chief handed Raif the torch. Nail-head chests,
iron-banded coffers, and chained crates covered most of the cave floor. The
chief’s stash, Raif guessed, watching as Traggis slid a key from his metalwork
sword belt and knelt by a leather-upholstered chest. The lock turned with ease.
Dust slid from the chest’s lid as it was opened.
The Robber Chief took something out, something the size of a hand
knife, wrapped in brown cloth. Without turning to look at Raif, he asked, “How
well do you know your clan?”
“As well as most.”
“Have you ever visited the silver mine, Black Hole?”
A spark from the torch touched Raif’s wrist like a warning. “I’ve been
there. It’s past the Muzzle, where the balds meet the Copper Hills.”
Traggis swung round to face him. “Oh, I know where it is.” Rising to
his feet, he pushed aside the cloth. “What I’d like to know is how long has it
been yielding this?”
It was a rod of gold, so bright and yellow it barely seemed real.
Traggis held it out for Raif to take, eyeing him carefully.
Raif had handled little gold before; a ring that had belonged to his
mother, and a case for carrying powdered guidestone that Orwin Shank used on
feast days. It was heavy, he knew that, and coveted by everyone in the North.
He took the rod, and knew immediately by its heft it was gold. Nothing, not
even iron, was heavier.
He handed it back to the Robber Chief. “It can’t be from Black-hail.”
“Really? And yet it was seized from a cart leaving the mine, along with
others still warm from the furnace.”
“There are no furnaces at Black Hole. The raw ore is carted to the roundhouse.”
Traggis Mole raised an eyebrow. “It’s an easy business, setting up a
furnace. All you need is a pair of bellows and a pit.”
Raif shook his head. “Gold’s never been found in the clanholds.”
“Well they found it at Black Hole, and they’re keeping it to
themselves.”
The Robber chief wrapped the rod in its cloth and returned it to the
chest. As he turned the lock, Raif glanced at the wall painting above his head.
The silver river bow-curved past a lone peak. Something about the shape of the
mountain, the way it rose from the ground like a drum of twisted rock, made him
pause. Where had he seen it before ?
“I’ve been having Black Hole watched,” Traggis said, snapping Raif
back. “They pour the gold into rods, then stockpile them. Every other month at
the dark of the moon they’re carted south.”
Raif said, “Why are you telling me this?”
“I want that gold.” The Robber Chief’s voice was dangerously soft. “And
you’re going to help me get it.”
“You don’t need me for this.”
“I think I do. You know the land, the clansmen. And if you’re spotted
at the mine shanty no one’s the wiser.”
A slow creeping dread made Raif’s fingertips tingle . . . even the one
that was no longer there. “Why don’t you attack the cart? There’s no need
te> go near the mine.”
Traggis threw his hand toward the chest containing the gold rod “Where
do you think I got that? A bungled raid on the cart, that’s where.
They’ll be expecting another strike on the cart. It’ll be guarded, possibly
by bowmen. Men could get shot.”
Raif tried to think of a counterargument, his gaze resting on the lone
mountain in the wall painting. How could he return to Black-hail as a thief?
“You’ve a sword?”
“Stillborn lends me one.”
“Good.” The Robber Chief crossed to the chamber’s entrance “Bring it
with you tomorrow. The raid party heads west at first light.”
Raif bowed his head.
Traggis turned to look at him. “I’ll be watching you, Twelve Kill
Endanger anything of mine, and you’ll live to regret it.” He was
gone before Raif could raise his head.
CHAPTER
Pursuit
Ash rucked up her skirt and rubbed wolf grease into her saddle sores.
The grease stung at first, and you could smell the gamey whiff of it, but then
it melted into your skin like butter. Ash groaned with relief. According to Mai
Naysayer, wolves well fed enough to render fat were rare—especially in
winter—and they were lucky to have found this one in the Want. That made Ash grin. Whenever she’d had cuts and grazes
in Mask Fortress her foster father would send Caydis Zerbina to her with a box
of myrrh and scented ambergris. She’d come quite a way since then. And she felt
about a million years older.
Now all I have to be is wiser.
She glanced over at the camp, where Mai Naysayer and Ark Vein-splitter
were sitting close to the smoking fire, quietly breaking their fast. Ark looked
tired. He had taken the late watch while she and the Naysayer slept. The Sull
were stronger than men, with a greater capacity for endurance, and it worried
Ash to see them weary. Slapping down her skirt, she went to join them.
It was a Sull warrior’s idea of dawn—dark as night, but with a band of
something that could not yet be called light showing grey on the eastern
horizon. Any city man waking at such a time would take one look and go straight
back to sleep. Ash had felt the same way at first, but slowly she was beginning
to change.
She wondered about that sometimes, the changing, wondered if it were
just a case of settling into new habits. Or did it go deeper ... to her blood?
/ won’t thin’t about
that now, she
told herself, kneeling by one of the saddlebags and taking out a pouch of stock
that had frozen overnight into a ball of yellow ice. Normally they’d only drink
stock after they’d set camp for the night, once the body heat from the horses
had melted it. But looking at the deep lines on Ark’s face and the grey circles
under his eyes, she wanted to do something to cheer him.
Using a chunk of rock pried from the permafrost, she hammered the stock
into pieces and then dumped it into the pot. As it spat and sizzled, stubbornly
refusing to melt, Ash sat between the two Sull Far Riders and waited for the
dawn to come.
They’d made camp on the edge of the Want, holding its border as Ark
said. She’d lost count of the days they’d been traveling this strange, nowhere
land. One day was the same as the next. The land was mostly flat, sometimes
rocky or scored by long-retreated glaciers, but always dead. The only thing
that changed was the sky. Clouds did peculiar things here, she’d noticed. They
massed on the horizon, mimicking mountains, or boiled upward in vast towers, or
settled into elongated tracts, like plow lines. They never shed their moisture,
and the days were cold and dry, stirred by sharp winds that smelled of ice.
The Want wore you down. Walking across It was like walking through
water. The sameness of the landscape provided no relief for the spirit, and it
seemed each step took you nowhere. The frozen earth punished your body,
stealing strength, raising calluses and tearing muscle.
Ash felt bruised and battered. Walking, riding: it was hard to decide
which hurt the most. At least she got to sleep at night, unlike
the Far Riders, who took turns standing watch. She’d wanted to do her share. It
had taken her several days to work up the courage to ask if she could take her
turn standing watch. She’d feared Ark’s laugh-
ter, or worse, his contempt. But she needn’t have. Ark Veinsplitter was
no Penthero Iss. His face was serious as he’d listened to her, and he nodded
once or twice. He wouldn’t let her do it, of course, but his reasons were ones
she could accept: She must first master both her weapons, and learn more about
the Way of the Flame.
Mas
Rhal. The
prefect state of fearlessness. Mai Naysayer had not brought out the silver lamp
that burned with a blue flame since that first evening in the mountains, but
every day he and Ark set her small tasks toward it. She had learned to
visualize the flame, see it burning against a black ground. Mai urged her to
picture it glowing in the center of her mind, in the place where her thoughts
first seeded. It was hard, though. A single flame seemed too small a thing to
burn away the fear.
There had been tests, and she had failed many of them. Five days back
they had come across a stone cairn at the head of a barren plain. The two Far
Riders dismounted, and she watched as they bared their forearms to let blood.
It was a place of loss, Ark explained. Sull had died here many centuries
earlier in a fierce battle against the night. Ark and the Naysayer had stood
for several minutes, silent and grave, their hearts pumping blood onto the
frozen battlefield, paying their toll to the dead. It was only later, after
they’d set camp for the night, did she realize she should have joined them and
breathed a vein.
And that had not been her only failure. On most days the Naysayer rode
ahead, blazing the trail. Ark tracked him. One day Ark had pulled back the grey
and given the lead to Ash. She had learned much about the path lores—where to
look for the Naysayer’s marks and how to read them, how to identify Sull
markers sunk into the permafrost like stones, how to tell if the path had been
recently traveled, and if the surrounding landscape had been disturbed—and she
was confident she could do the task. The morning went well. She developed a
headache from leaning over her horse’s neck and squinting for long hours at the
ground . . . but she didn’t lose the trail. Then, about midday, she came across
some markings that confused her. The Naysayer’s mark indicated that they should
bear south out of the Want, yet his own trail continued east. Quickly, she
looked to Ark for help, yet he wouldn’t meet her eye. It was a test, she
realized, and she decided to play it safe and head south out of the Want.
By sunset she was free of the Want and lost. There was no sign of the
Naysayer and she drifted east in search of him. When night fell she panicked, increasing
her pace and bending back toward the Want. That was when Ark finally broke his
silence, commanding her to fall back. He resumed the lead, and she spent the
next hour staring at the stiff set of his spine in the starlight, knowing she
had failed him.
She had missed markers, stumbled upon a Sull path bearing southeast and
then drifted away from it. And worse, she had panicked. Ark told her she should
have stayed on the Sull path and had faith that the Naysayer would find her.
Never, ever, was she to head into the Want
unguided.
The tone of his voice still stung her. He was a hard man to fail.
Other tests had gone better. One night the Naysayer had taken the
blindfold from his saddlebag and bid her tie it over her eyes. She was commanded
to sit in silence and imagine the flame until he spoke her name. At first she
listened to the sounds of Ark and Mai setting up the camp; the hammering of
posts and tearing of canvas, and the snic’t
of a flint as a spark was struck to start the fire. She smelled roasting ice
hare and saliva filled her mouth. Later, she detected the pungent reek of horse
stale, and the mineral whiff of tung oil as one of the Far Riders cleaned his
weapons. After that she began to lose things: hearing and smell. And time.
The flame burned strong. It was beautiful, perfectly blue with a faint
gold corona shimmering at its tip.
When she heard her name called she snapped awake. It was dawn. She had
been sitting wearing the blindfold all night.
She smiled, remembering. Her joints had been stiff and her hands and
feet were cold, but apart from that she felt rested. It was the morning she
began to think of herself as Sull.
Noticing the stock had finally melted, she stirred in some dried
seedpods and a chunk of hare fat. The sun was rising now, throwing pale orange
light onto the clouds and revealing the land surrounding the camp. A breeze had
started up, and feathers and uprooted willows rolled across the frozen plains.
In the distance, to the southeast, Ash spied a speckling of dark smudges that
she could not recall seeing the previous night. Trees, they looked like. Real
ones, not phantoms conjured up by the clouds.
“Drink this,” she said to Ark, filling his drinking horn with liquid.
He looked at her a moment, and then took the horn from her. The stock must have
been scalding hot, yet he took a mouthful anyway.
“It is good,” he said quietly, and then after a beat, “daughter.”
Ash made herself busy filling a second horn for Mai. She didn’t trust
herself to meet Ark’s eyes.
The Naysayer finished his drink in one gulp. His tongue steamed as he
thanked her, pronouncing himself much restored by it. She loved them, she
realized as she watched Mai saddle his mount and Ark begin breaking camp. She
had become Sull because she was a Reach and there seemed little choice, but she
wanted to stay Sull because of these two men.
After the Naysayer departed camp to blaze the trail, Ash helped Ark
roll the tent canvas and dig out the posts. They fell into an easy routine: Ash
performing the lighter tasks—killing the fire and sorting through the food
packs to plan the day’s rations—while Ark packed the horses and hefted water.
When everything was done, and all obvious traces of the camp were erased, Ash
took out her sickle and chain and began weapons practice.
She had a better feel for the weapon now, and she could have the chain
up and swinging above her head within seconds. Today Ark made her practice
trapping his sword. He wore full furs and armor, and articulated hornmail
gloves. His “sword” was a tent post cut to size. Trapping a horizontal object
involved altering the pitch of the chain’s spin, and Ash struggled with
lowering her arm while the chain was in motion. When the metal teardrop studded
with peridots swung within a finger’s length of her eye, she panicked and
released her grip too soon. Ark made her do it again and again, until she’d
lost her fear.
By the time they were done her arm muscles were aching and her cheeks
felt red hot. Ark’s lynx cloak was missing chunks of fur, and he frowned as he
inspected the bald patches. “You must learn to move back when you are attacked
by a swordsman. You allowed me to get too close.”
“Naza
Thani?”
He nodded. “The Nine Safe Steps. We will practice them as we ride.”
She wondered how he intended to do that. When they were mounted and
turning out from the camp he told her. “We will ride in single file, with you
taking the rear. At all times you will keep the head of your horse exactly nine
paces behind the grey’s tail.”
Ash frowned. This was too simple; there had to be something more.
They set off at a trot, the morning sun shining bright in their faces.
The land was flat and strewn with limestone boulders, and from time to time
they’d encounter the peculiar patches of vagueness that she’d come to expect in the Want. Things
shimmered in those patches, and from a distance they took the shape of hills or
cities or woods, and then you drew close and saw nothing but mist. Ash felt
cheated every time.
Once she’d established a distance of nine paces between the grey and
her own mount, she was determined to maintain it. When Ark increased the pace
to a canter, she realized it wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d thought. The
grey had longer legs and a more fluid motion than the white, and she had to
push the gelding into a gallop every few seconds to keep up. The concentration
it took was exhausting, and the white soon grew agitated by all the minute
adjustments in pace. When Ark reined the grey abruptly, it sent her scrambling
to shorten her reins. And just when she’d managed to get everything under
control, the Far Rider pulled something new from his hat. The grey had a fifth
gait; a showy high-stepping amble that fell between a trot and a canter. The poor
white had nothing quite like it in its repertoire, and Ash had to alternate
between a trot and a gallop to keep up.
Ark kept up this pace for the better part of an hour. Ash’s neck felt
stiff as a board, and she began to suspect that the distance of nine paces was
now irrevocably seared into her brain. She quite expected to see Naza Thani outlined in chalk in her dreams. Which was exactly
the point, she realized.
And then she realized something else. Naza Thani was the limit of her safety: the distance at which
she could remain safe and still strike. Yet if she just wanted to be safe she
could fall back farther. This was about more than her ability to judge
distance, it was a lesson in keeping herself alive.
Immediately she reined in the white. A moment or two passed whilst Ark
sped ahead of her before he realized what she had done. Twisting in the saddle,
he turned to look at her. His expression was hard, and for a moment she thought
she’d made a mistake . . . and then he nodded, just once.
She’d passed the test.
She grinned at the back of his head. The sun had long since disappeared
behind a thick bank of cloud, but somehow she felt its warmth. She blew kisses
at the white’s neck, and promised never to treat him so badly again. Then she
remembered seeing an old winter-dried carrot in the bottom of one of the packs.
Horse treat! Leaning back awkwardly in the saddle, she unbuckled the lid of the
nearest pannier.
As she thrust her fist past the tent canvas she heard something howl. The
sound felt like ice against her skin, cold and hollow, and filled with dark
craving. For a moment she froze, transfixed. Her fingertips started to prickle
as blood left the tips. Quickly she glanced at Ark. He was holding his pace,
undisturbed.
She called his name; it came out as a croak. He turned, and his whole
being changed when he saw her face.
He spoke a word in Sull, the name of the First God, and asked her only
one thing: “How close?”
Ash had to take a breath. With those two words he had acknowledged her
as a Reach, and suddenly she didn’t want to be one. She wanted to be Sull. Only
Sull. Yet there was no choice here; there never had been. With an effort she
found her voice. “I heard a call, to the west. It sounded far in the distance.”
The Far Rider relaxed imperceptibly. He glanced at the sky, gauging the
time of day. “We will make haste,” he said, kicking the grey into a canter.
Ash followed, and they fled east. Midday passed, and they began
descending from the high plains. The terrain grew rougher, and once or twice
Ash spotted glint lakes to the south. Overhead, the clouds were on the move,
carrying a newborn storm to the clanholds. Ash watched them, listening all the
while for sounds of pursuit. No more calls came, but she felt something hunting her, something that wished her
harm.
After the night in the ice oasis she had been watchful, but days had
passed without incident and she had allowed herself to believe the danger had
passed. It was a child’s mistake, and she was angry at herself for making it.
Ark and the Naysayer had been vigilant as ever: They hadn’t forgotten the
reason they were here.
She was too tired to sustain anger for long. Ark set a hard pace, and
would not halt to rest the horses. Ahead, she saw the speckled patches of
darkness she’d spotted at dawn. They were drawing closer, and now she was sure
they were trees. Had they reached the end of the Want? She wasn’t sure what lay
to the east. Forests, she’d heard, vast bodies of timber that stretched over an
entire continent. Her foster father owned onionskin scrolls that mapped them—
beautifully worked illustrations, keyed in High Hand and gilded like prayer
books. Even as a child Ash hadn’t believed them. They filled the Racklands with
dangers: dragons and molten lava floes, ice sheets and poisoned swamps.
Her foster father had congratulated her on her skepticism. A strange
thing to find pleasing in a child.
Ash turned her thoughts elsewhere. She couldn’t afford to think of Iss
now. Her mount was showing signs of weariness; his tail had dropped and his
neck was badly lathered. She worried about the extra weight he was carrying,
and remembered the release strap under his belly. If we are pursued pull the strap. It didn’t feel right to do that
now, but she called out to Ark to slacken the pace.
Strangely, he heeded her and they slowed to a trot. Ark’s stallion was
glossy with sweat, but his tail and ears were up and he looked ready for
another run. The Far Rider leaned forward and wiped the mucus from its eyes.
“Is the Naysayer ahead?” she asked him.
“He awaits us in the trees.”
Ash felt better for hearing that. Weariness had begun to creep over
her, and as the sun descended behind the cloud cover she slumped forward in the
saddle. Ark passed her a silver flask, and bid her drink. It was the ghostmeal,
she recognized it from its scent. The last fluid she’d drunk had been a cup of
water before dawn, and she discovered she had a terrible thirst. Even so, she
was cautious with the ghostmeal, and took just enough to fill her mouth. It
sent bad dreams, she remembered. A fee for giving strength.
As the light faded they reached the first of the trees. They were
stunted, their limbs pale and swollen with fistulas. Rusts fed on their
needles, and beetles had girdled their trunks. Deadwoods. Ash recalled the name from the map. That placed
them north of Clan Bludd.
Ark slowed the grey to a walk as the woods grew thicker. The moon
hadn’t risen yet and there was little light. Mist began to slither around the
horses’ coffin bones, and Ash smelled damp earth for the first time in many
weeks. The ghostmeal had alerted her senses, and she detected complicated
layers of decay beneath the damp. Her night vision improved—apparently ghostmeal
was better than carrots for helping you see in the dark—and she saw that many
trees grew in clusters, nursing their sickly saplings in protective rings.
She was the first to spot the Naysayer. He stood on a small rise,
watching their approach, his horse tethered to a tree beneath him. The bulk of
his furs made him huge, like a god, and there was live steel in his hands. He
did not make himself known until they drew close.
“Hass.” The word was many things: a
greeting, an expression of relief . . . and a question.
Ark repeated the word back to him, and for a moment Ash was excluded.
These two men had ridden side by side for twenty years.
“We are hunted,” Ark said.
Mai nodded; he already knew.
When Ash dismounted her knees buckled, and Mai rushed forward to put a
hand about her waist until she got her land legs. He smelled familiar, and the
absolute certainty of his strength was reassuring. He had picked a small
clearing as their campsite, and Ash saw he’d raised a fire but had not lit it.
A raccoon carcass lay skinned and quartered close by.
The two Far Riders spoke quietly while Ash found a sheltered spot to
inspect her saddle sores and pee. A decision was made, and Ark knelt to light the
fire while Mai began unloading the packhorse. By the time the horses had been
brushed and watered, and a makeshift camp raised, the raccoon pieces were crisp
and golden. Mai and Ash crouched by the fire, drinking boiled water, as Ark
circled the clearing, planting wards every few paces. It was something he
hadn’t done since the first night in the mountains, and it made Ash afraid.
They ate in silence. Ash chewed and swallowed, but did not taste. She
wished she could stop herself from listening.
Sometimes she thought she heard something, a soft inhalation of breath, like a
pause. But she couldn’t be sure. No more calls came, and eventually she rested
her head on her knees and watched the flames. It was a dark night, she
realized. No moonlight or starlight could break through the clouds.
Sometime later, Ark touched her head. “Sleep.”
Even in the firelight she could see the fatigue on his face. “Only if
you will.”
His smile was so fleeting she almost missed it. “Perhaps I may. The
Naysayer stands watch.”
He fetched blankets for both of them, and they settled around the fire.
The Naysayer crossed over to the horses, detached their feed-bags, and
resaddled them in readiness for a quick escape.
Ash felt herself becoming drowsy. She watched as Mai took up position
on the rise. His sword glowed as blue as the missing stars, and it made her
feel safe. Protected. Closing her eyes, she passed into sleep, and dreamed of
nothing for a while.
Suddenly she came awake. All was still. The midsection of the moon was
showing through a break in the clouds. Something is wrong, she thought, but felt no alarm, only a tingling
sense of alertness. They
have come.
Slowly, she drew herself up to sitting. Ark lay asleep on the opposite
side of the fire, his fully-armored body wrapped in furs. Ash looked for Mai
Naysayer, but could not see him on the rise. She knew that sometimes in the
night the Far Riders would walk wide circuits of the camp, as much to keep
their muscles from cramping and their minds alert as to guard against
intruders. Peering into the darkness, she strove to find him.
Something moved on the edge of the camp. Moonlight caught an edge and
ran along the length of a man’s arm.
“Mai,” she whispered. “Mai?”
A soft crunching noise broke the stillness. A bough of rotted pine
snapped with the force of a blow. Behind her back, one of the horses snorted.
Ash found her weapon and rose to her feet. A cool breeze worked her
skin as the blankets and furs fell away. Seef{ the flame, the Naysayer had told her, and she imagined it
igniting with a gentle thuc in her mind.
In the gloom beneath the pines a shadow stirred. She watched it,
fascinated, marveling at how it rippled and gleamed, passing in and out of
sight.
“Maeraith.” Ark’s voice gave the shadow a
name. Quick as lightning the Sull warrior was at her side, his furs shed, five
foot of meteor steel balanced in his hand.
“Behind me,” he commanded.
Ash found it hard to take her eyes from the shadow, harder still to
move on Ark’s word. The thing was revealing itself as the shape of a man. Two
red eyes glinted to life, burning mist with an electric crackle. Slowly, and
with an immovable sense of purpose, the maeraith’t gaze sought Ash March. Ash felt the calmness leave
her. She’d learned enough of the Sull tongue to know that maer meant shadow, but this thing that stood in the
trees beyond the camp was no wraith of air and shade. Its mass occupied space,
and when it took a step on a prostrate pine the entire tree shattered like
glass.
A queer sound reached her ears, a low humming, almost like the sizzle
of lightning searing air.
The thing had drawn a sword.
Naza
Thani.
Remembering her lessons, Ash stepped back. “Do shadows cast shadows?” she had
once asked her foster father, smiling up at him with a child’s guile as she
spoke, secure in the knowledge she had stumped him. She had been wrong. “Only
in nightmares,” he had replied.
Ash felt as if she were in a nightmare now. The maeraith’s sword was forged from an absence of light. There
was a gleaming around the edge, a bending of moonlight before it was sucked
into the blade.
Voided steel.
The thing lurched forward. Ash’s gaze rose from the black abyss of its blade
to its red and burning eyes . . . and saw that it had found what it sought.
Onward it came, crunching branches and pine needles, moving swiftly and
heavily, a thing that could no longer be named a man.
Ark Veinsplitter raised his sword. He was speaking in his own tongue,
his voice filled with an emotion she could not name. His face was dark and his
teeth were bared, and the letting scars on his neck glowed white.
Meteor steel met voided steel with a shrill screech that hurt her ears.
Glittering darkness sprayed from the blades like the opposite of sparks. The
Far Rider took a hard breath, and Ash saw his sword arm bend. Shifting his grip
on the midnight leather hilt, he made space for his second hand. The thing
turned its blade, and suddenly Ash could see the edge—a switching, shimmering
insubstance like the space between stars. Watching it, she realized she’d lost
the image of the flame. The maeraith had snuffed it.
Swords rang as the blows fell. Ark stepped back, forward, back, falling
into the rhythm he called Ahl
Halla, the
Great Game. The maeraith met him blow for blow. It was
armored in black iron bossed with cabochons of onyx. Massive and untiring, it
gave no ground.
A furious rain of blows forced Ark’s sword against his chest. The Sull
warrior lost his footing, stumbled . . . and suddenly a gash opened up on his
wrist. Blood streamed onto the forest floor. Ark spoke a word, “Hass,” and Ash knew he was calling to his blood brother
in the language of maygi and Sull.
Ark regained his footing, but not his strength. The shadow was
relentless, never slackening its offense. If Ark had opened its flesh, it did
not bleed. If battle had tired it, it did now slow and make it known. As it
forced the Sull warrior to his knees, the diseased pines rustled on the edge of
the clearing. A figure emerged from the darkness, every bit as terrible as the maeraith itself.
Mai Naysayer, Son of the Sull and chosen Far Rider, drew his sword. “Kall’a maer. Rath’a madi ann’ath Xaras,” Mai whispered. Come for me,
shadows, for I stand ready in the light of the moon.
And the maeraith did, turning from Ark
Veinsplitter to the man who stood waiting in a patch of silver radiance.
Afterward Ash would remember many things about the battle—-the way
Mai’s sword arced and circled and never stopped moving, how his face was grim
but his eyes blazed with a savage joy, and how the plates of his horn armor
snapped like snakes as he cut into the thing’s flesh—but for now she could only
wonder that Mai had summoned the shadow, and that the shadow had come.
The Naysayer found a heart where she thought none had existed. He
pressed the point of his six-foot longsword against armor older than the
clanholds, put the weight of his body upon the crossguards and slid his blade
into the vast, pumping darkness of the creature’s heart.
A howl sounded and the maeraith fell, black liquid spraying
from the tear in its plate. Ash felt its wetness burn her face. It wasn’t blood
and it wasn’t warm, yet it tasted familiar all the same.
The Naysayer pressed a foot against the corpse to free his sword. The
light had left his eyes, and Ash could see that his hands and neck were cut and
weeping blood. Behind his back, at the edge of the tree line, she spied a wolf
carcass in the loam. Mai had been away defending the camp.
Ash felt a terrible weakness take her, and the sickle and chain fell
from her grip. Ark had been in danger and she had made no move to aid him.
The Naysayer spoke her name. He was breathing hard and his face was
blistered with sweat. Gobs of smoking darkness clung to his sword. “Fear is the
enemy that will destroy us,” he said. “You must always seek the flame.”
Ash nodded. She thought of things to say, of how flames weren’t always
enough to snuff shadows and how the darkest shadows were cast by the brightest
light, but she looked into Mai’s eyes and saw that she would only be telling
him things he knew. Smiling weakly, she said, “I’ll try better next time.”
He looked at her for a long hard moment, and then turned to tend to his
hass.
CHAPTER
A Storm Building
The Dog Lord crouched on the Queens Court at Dhoone and tussled with
his dogs. The wolf dog was on its back, trying to nip his fingers, his tail
wagging madly, while the others ran in circles, hoping to be picked next. They
made Vaylo laugh out loud. Their joy and eagerness lightened his heart. Thirty
years ago his rivals had sought to insult him by naming him the Dog Lord, but
he’d always thought they’d made a mistake. Dogs were loyal, and fierce in
defense of what was theirs, and Vaylo couldn’t think of another creature he’d
rather be named for.
His joints creaked as he rose to standing. Damn, but the wind was
strong. Even in the walled enclosure of the Queens Court, it snapped back his
cloak and set his braids clicking. And the sky! Dark as Blackhail and boiling
up a storm. The charged air excited the dogs, for there was something primal
about a storm building. It made you feel as if you had nothing to lose.
Vaylo called his dogs to heel and leashed them. One of the bitches
pissed against a dormant rosebush, and then all the rest had to do the same.
Vaylo frowned at the pruned stump. Not much chance of that one flowering come spring.
It was a queer place, the Queens Court, not really clannish at all.
With its paved walkways, limestone statues and rosebushes it lookec as
if it had been transported, flowers and all, from Spire Vanis Well. .. almost.
For the statues were half-eaten by birdlime anc some of their heads had been
knocked off, and since no one hac tended this place in over half a year,
heather and wild oats had begur to seed amidst the cracks. And as for the
little man-made stoci pond: Vaylo pitied the fish that wintered there, for some
poisonou: bright green slime floated on the surface like vomit.
Still. It was an interesting place, built for some long-dead queer by
the king who had loved her. Dhoone was strange like that. It hac romances,
legends. Ancient white-haired scholars in Withy and Wellhouse recorded all the
details and the names.
Not so with Bludd. Oh, it had its stories, tales of brave chiefs
winning battles and reckless ones losing them. But there was no continuity.
Entire centuries had been lost. Even the boast—We are Clan Bludd, chosen by the Stone Gods to guard
their borders. Death is our companion. A hard life long lived is our reward—had lost its meaning. The Dog
Lord wondered about those borders sometimes, wondered about their limits. Did
the borders end at Clan Bludd, or did they extend farther, to every last corner
of the clanholds?
Vaylo let the wind blow away his misgivings. Too much these days his
thoughts were turning inward, when by rights they should be dealing in the here
and now. Clan Bludd was divided, its warriors scattered over the eastern
clanholds. Quarro and Gangaric were at the Bluddhouse, sitting as uneasily
together as vinegar and oil, and nursing their mutual dislike. Both had crews
of Bludd warriors at their command. Quarro’s numbers were substantial, and he
counted many older veterans in his ranks. Vaylo didn’t place high odds on ever
being welcomed back there again.
Thrago and Hanro were at Withy, feuding over command of the house. The
little clanhold was notoriously vulnerable, and with Skinner Dhoone only four
days’ ride away at Gnash, and Blackhail-held Ganmiddich even closer, Withy was
a sitting duck.
Vaylo puffed out a great breath. His other sons were similarly
scattered; Otto had taken the oath at Frees, and gods only knew where Morkir
was. Only Pengo was at Dhoone. He commanded a mixed crew of hammermen and
spearmen, and had been charged with securing the Dhoonehold.
Only the Dog Lord didn’t feel secure. He had less men under his direct command
that at any other time in his thirty-five-year chief-ship. His sons had formed
factions and split, taking their forces with them. And now there were two extra
houses to secure: Withy and Dhoone. Not to mention the Bludd-sworn border
clans, who grew nervous of the Mountain Cities, and resentful of Vaylo Bludd.
Vaylo’s teeth hurt just to think of it all. Sometimes he wished he’d
followed his childhood fancy and become a Maimed Man. Ruling a hole in the
earth would surely be easier than ruling a clan.
Barking an order to his dogs, he headed for the gate. The clouds had
begun to spit, and Nan would have his guts for bowstrings if he ruined the good
cloak she’d made him.
Hunching his shoulders against the wind, he took the sandstone path
that circled the roundhouse. The dogs whupped with excitement as the rain began
to lash down, and he had to shorten their leashes to control them. Lightning
forked over Blue Dhoone Lake and they howled like wolves, unafraid. The great
rumble of thunder that followed shook the ground beneath Vaylo’s feet, and
Vaylo grunted and quickened his pace.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw something move by the nearest gate
tower. The wolf dog growled. Vaylo put a hand out to calm him. Now he drew
closer he saw that the shape was a man, mounted on a horse. Waiting.
Expect
me when the wind blows cold and from the North.
Angus Lok.
Vaylo didn’t bother asking himself how the ranger had managed to penetrate
their defenses. He was canny, and probably knew the Dhoonehold as well as any
Dhoone. And whenever stealth failed him there was always his tongue. Angus Lok
had spent eight weeks at the Dog Lord’s pleasure, and he had used the time
wisely, making friends.
Angus Lok raised a hand in greeting. Unlike most men faced with the
prospect of meeting Vaylo’s dogs for the first time, the ranger looked relaxed.
Even the storm didn’t throw him, and he managed to sit his horse as equably as
if it were a mild summer da Vaylo couldn’t imagine how he managed to keep that
ridiculoi otter-trimmed hat from blowing off.
Feeling he’d been caught at a disadvantage, Vaylo let some of h
aggression bleed over into his dogs. He wasn’t sure how he did thi just that it
had served him well through the years. The wolf do began to growl again, and
soon all of them were fighting the leash.
Vaylo was gratified to see a slight adjustment in the ranger stance.
“Angus Lok,” he cried. “I see freedom agrees with you.” The ranger
acknowledged the compliment with a measured bov of his head. “It has its uses.”
Unhappy with having to shout above the storm, Vaylo said “You’d better
follow me inside. I’ll send a boy to tend your horse.”
Inside the Dhoonehouse all was calm. Nan and the other Bludd-wives did
a good job of keeping the key rooms well lit and comfortable. The blue
sandstone walls could be cold to the eye, and they had hung them with
tapestries and other fancies. Fires roared in every hearth the Dog Lord might
happen to pass, and all corridors leading to the chief’s chamber were kept
clean of cobwebs and dust. Vaylo handed his cloak to a boy at the door and bid
him run it straight to Nan for an airing. Another boy was sent in search of
food and malt, and commanded to bring it to his chief at the Dhooneseat.
The walk to the chief’s chamber was a brief one, involving the climbing
of a single flight of stairs. There were grander places in the roundhouse,
chambers where great blocks of cyanide quartz formed alters and platforms for
kings, but recent chiefs had lost their taste for them and power had reverted
to the chief’s chamber once more. Vaylo liked it well enough. It was
comfortable and the isinglass windows let in light, and the primitive lines of
the Dhooneseat pleased him. This was a chair made by men who had never heard of
kings.
The Dog Lord chose not to sit in it. Instead he crossed to the fire and
leashed the dogs to the rat hooks. Lightning flashed through the chamber as he
stirred the embers. When he was ready he turned to look at Angus Lok.
The ranger had made himself comfortable on the wooden chair behind the
chief’s table. He had shrugged off his outer layers, and was now running a hand
through his hair. His copper green eyes were just as Vaylo remembered them:
guarded.
“Have you traveled far?” Vaylo asked him.
The ranger nodded. “That is my fate it seems.”
A moment ticked by in silence, and then Vaylo asked, “Why are you
here?”
Before Angus Lok could answer a knock came at the door. Nan herself had
brought the food and malt, borne on her best pewter tray. The ranger was off
his chair before Vaylo had chance to react. Walking forward, he took the tray
from Nan and thanked her. He inquired of her sister, whom Vaylo knew to be ill
with lung fever, and complimented Nan on the fine embroidery at the hem and
neck of her dress. Vaylo was torn between pride and amazement. Was there no end
to the ranger’s connections ?
Nan was gracious, and slipped quickly away. Vaylo could tell she had
been pleased.
The ranger deposited the tray on the chief’s table. “Shall I?” he
asked, indicating the jug of malt and two wooden thumb cups laid there. Vaylo
nodded, and watched as Angus Lok poured the sweet golden liquor Dhoone was
known for. They struck cups, and downed their measures in one.
Angus smacked his lips in appreciation. “A pity you don’t serve that in
your holding cells. A prisoner might never want to leave.”
“But you did leave,” Vaylo said, “at my pleasure and in my debt.”
“I know it, Dog Lord. That is
why I have come.”
Vaylo did not like the strange lightness in the ranger’s voice. “What
is it? Is Robbie Dhoone about to pound on my door?”
Angus Lok rested his booted feet on the chief’s table. “He might be.
Though I imagine he’s still a few men short of an invading force . .. unless,
of course, Castlemilk has been generous with her manpower.”
“He’s asked the Milk chief for warriors?”
“That’s what I’d do if I were him.”
The Dog Lord let that sink in. He’d learned to ignore Angus Lok’s
assessments at his peril. He said, “Do you have any more intelligence on Robbie
Dhoone?”
The ranger shrugged. “Skinner’s losing men to him. He’s moved out of
the Milkhouse and into the broken tower, supposedly to accommodate his greater
numbers. His men ride as far south as Ille Glaive on raid parties, and he’s
developed a fancy for wearing fisher fur like a king.”
Something in the ranger’s manner disquieted Vaylo. He took a deep
breath. “None of this is the reason why you are here.”
It was not a question, and Angus Lok didn’t bother to nod. He swung his
feet down from the table and said, “An army left Spire Vanis two days ago.
They’re heading north, to the clans.”
Thunder boomed through the chamber, making the flames in the hearth
shiver and the dogs jump. Vaylo touched the pouch of powdered Bluddstone at his
waist. Oh gods. And to
thin’t I imagined I had troubles enough. Out loud, he said, “What are their numbers?”
“Eleven thousand. They were assembled in haste. Mercenaries.
Grangelords. Hideclads. A mixed bunch.”
The Dog Lord nodded, his mind engaged. “Who leads them?”
“Marafice Eye, the one they call the Knife.” That gave Vaylo pause. He had met Marafice Eye, looked into his face and seen a hard man capable of hard things. He had been well respected by his men. “What is the purpose of this army?”
The ranger poured himself another measure of malt. The Dog Lord
declined a second cup. “Well, that’s the unclear thing. Have you ever heard the
legend of the Leper King?” Vaylo shook his head, impatient.
“Well,” Angus Lok continued, unruffled. “The Leper King was a great
ruler in the Far South, brilliant and greedy for more land. He set out on a
campaign to annex the surrounding states, and he was successful for many years.
Then one day he learned he’d contracted leprosy. That was when the campaign
became something else. He still fought, but his motives had changed. He blamed
the opposing armies for his illness and punished them for it. And he feared
that his declining health made him vulnerable to members of his family who
sought to overthrow him. So he sent his sons and brothers to fight in the van,
and then ordered a sudden withdrawal to cut them off.“ The ranger smiled. ”They
were all killed. Horribly, I believe. And the Leper King went on to rule his
empire for many years.“
Vaylo thrust a cube of black curd into his mouth as he thought on this.
He didn’t like legends. They were all warnings in disguise.
Angus Lok stood and moved toward the fire. “What I’m trying to say is
that while Penthero Iss may have planned to take control of the clanholds, his
priorities have since shifted.”
“I know what you’re saying, ranger. I’m not a fool.”
The ranger turned to look at him. “I never thought you were.”
The Dog Lord tried hard to detect signs of mockery in Angus Lok’s face,
but could not find any. “So,” he said after a moment. “Iss is sending his
rivals to war.”
Angus nodded. “At least three that I can count. Marafice Eye. Garric
Hews. Harald Crieff. Not to mention every grangelord’s son old enough to know
one end of a sword from another. Spire Vanis is a cold-blooded city. Surlords
rarely die of old age.”
“So Iss is worried?”
“Living in Mask Fortress, surrounded by statues of slain surlords: It’s
enough to make anyone aware of their mortality.”
Vaylo crossed over to his dogs. Although he had been in the same room
with them, in plain sight all the while, they strained their leashes to greet
him. “You’re telling me this army might not be well supported?”
“Exactly. They have fair numbers, but they’re not a cohesive force. And
they have a long trek north in foul weather. My bet is that Iss will wait and
see. If things are looking good—a few roundhouses sacked, riverways taken—he’ll
keep the supply lines open and bask in all the glory. If things turn soft he’ll
withdraw his support and leave them high and dry—all the while praying to the
spirits of the Bastard Lords that his rivals get slain by you clannish fiends.”
Vaylo barked a laugh. Angus Lok was nothing if not succinct. He sobered
quickly when he thought on what all this meant to his border clans. Haddo,
HalfBludd, Frees and Grey were all vulnerable. Even Withy. The northern giants
were safe, at least for the time being, but that could all change if the
campaign was a success. Thinking out loud, he said, “They’ll strike Ganmiddich
first.”
“Why do you say that?”
It was gratifying to have Angus Lok ask a question of him for a change. “Because Marafice Eye knows its
layout and defenses. He’s been there. He came to claim the girl, Asarhia
March.”
Something happened to the ranger’s face when the girl’s name was
spoken. The guard dropped from his eyes, and Vaylo Bludd saw a pain he
recognized there. A moment later the guard was back up, and a question asked to
redirect Vaylo’s attention.
“Do you think it can be taken?”
Vaylo nodded, though he wasn’t yet ready to put the subject of Asarhia
March aside. “I heard Marafice Eye ran into trouble in the Bitter Hills. All
his men died. Do you know what became of the girl?”
Angus Lok shook his head slowly, in a movement that meant Don’t as’t me to speal{ of it.
Vaylo knew something of the grief he’d glimpsed briefly in the ranger’s
eyes, so he said no more. He poured two more measures of malt, and placed one
in the ranger’s hand.
“Will you go to Blackhail with this intelligence?”
“I must warn those at the Crabhouse. My nephew is amongst the Hailsmen
who defend it.”
“Drey Sevrance?” Vaylo didn’t bother to hide the venom in his voice. A
Sevrance had slaughtered his grandchildren. That name would always be damned.
The ranger nodded. “You’d do well to warn Haddo and HalfBludd.”
“Aye.” But there lay trouble of its own. Once word got out that an army
was on the move every Bludd warrior in the roundhouse would be chafing at the
bit to ride south and meet them. Vaylo almost smiled. To think he’d wanted to
be Lord of the Clans!
Just at that moment voices
sounded at the door. A child’s voice cried, “Da!,” and another one said, “Da’s
listening at the door!” A male voice shushed
them angrily.
The Dog Lord and the ranger exchanged a glance. The ranger inclined his
head toward the door. “Company?” he asked, barely able to keep the smile from
his lips.
Annoyed, Vaylo crossed to the door and threw it open. His two
grandchildren stood there, grinning up at him, while their father slunk away.
“Pengo!” Vaylo roared. “Get back here!” And then, to his grandchildren,
“You two. Over to the hearth. And place yourselves in the custody of my dogs.”
He tried his best to look stern, but Pasha had him figured out and her grin
just got wider. Grabbing her younger brother by the wrist, she dragged him
toward the hearth. The collective sound of five dogs groaning very nearly made
Vaylo laugh out loud.
Then he was faced with his second son. Pengo’s cheeks were so red it
was a wonder they didn’t steam. His eyes were unrepentant.
“You’d better come in,” Vaylo said.
Pengo snarled. Striding past his father he placed himself in the
ranger’s view. “Is it true? Is Spire Vanis coming to destroy us?”
Angus glanced at the children, who were busy attempting to tie five
dogs’ tails into one big knot. When he spoke his voice was very low. “An army
has left the city. Yes. Is it a danger to this clanhold? I don’t believe so,
not in the immediate future.”
“Immediate future!” Pengo mocked. “Save your fancy phrases for my
father—I have no use for them. An army’s heading north, and you say it’s not a
danger. What would you know of dangers, ranger man? You just ride that fancy
horse from one clanhold to another, gossiping with our women, and living off
our fare. And I tell you something else—”
“Enough!” cried Vaylo, shaking with
fury. “You will be civil to my guest or leave this chamber.”
Pengo’s lip curled. “ ‘Civil to my guest’! Gods, he got you speaking
his citified tongue. He’s no guest. He’s a parasite, feeding off the trouble he
stirs. And if he thinks I’m going to sit on my arse and do nothing while an
army attacks our Bludd-sworn clans then he’s a fool. I’ll have a force raised
and on the move before he can wipe that knowing smirk off his face. Spire Vanis
won’t find Bludd absent from this war.“ Finished, Pengo snapped around, sending
his blad braids fanning out from his skull, and strode toward the door.
The Dog Lord thought of halting him, but didn’t. As the dooi slammed he
closed his eyes. It was a cruel trick the gods had played reincarnating Gullit
Bludd in the bodies of his grandsons.
Vaylo calmed himself. The children were pale and quiet at the hearth,
the dogs forgotten. Sitting himself on the Dhoonechair, he called them to him.
He could feel their bodies shaking as he crushed them to his chest.
Angus Lok stayed silent through this. He resumed his seat by the
chief’s table, and after a time he pulled something brightly colored from his
buckskin tunic and began to manipulate it. Glass beads and tiny wooden blocks knocked
together with little chinas.
Pasha and Arran raised their heads from their grandfather’s chest,
curious. Angus continued toying with the thing, a puzzle by the look of it, one
of those ingenious playthings they made in the Far South. Without looking up,
he said, “You can come and take a look at if you like.”
The children looked at their granda, and their granda nodded. Sliding
off the Dhoonechair, they went to investigate. Angus was good with them. He
showed them how the puzzle worked, informed them there was no way possible to
break it, and then told them they could keep it—but only if they agreed to
share. Pasha and Arran nodded fiercely, already half in love with him, and
carried the thing toward the hearth with all the ceremony and gravity of high
priests bearing a crown. The giggles started not much later, as the dogs pushed
their noses in for a sniff.
“Thank you,” Vaylo said simply.
Angus shrugged. “It’s nothing, just a bit of wood and tat. I got it for
my youngest, but I can pick something else up along the way.”
“So you’re heading home?”
“After I’ve stopped off at Ganmiddich, yes.” The ranger’s copper eyes
far-focused for a moment. “It’s been a long time.”
The two men sat in silence and nodded. Outside the storm was passing
overhead and rain beat against the isinglass windows. Light-
ning flashed, and thunder hit straight after like a hammer blast.
Absorbed with their new playing, the bairns barely noticed.
“I’ll be heading out,” Angus said, rising. “I’ll come again in late
spring.
They clasped hands. “I’m grateful for the warning,” Vaylo told him.
“I’ll have to keep an eye to that damn son of mine, make sure he doesn’t march
south with half my men.”
Again, Angus Lok was succinct. “Do as you must,” he said.
CHAPTER
The Game Room
Raina moved around the Great Hearth, making sure that the returning
warriors had hot food and ale. Anwyn Bird had arranged for trays of bannock and
blood sausages soaked in heavy gravy to be brought upstairs. Hearty food for
weary men. Warriors had returned from Ganmiddich and they were weary and soaked
to their skins. When the heat of the Great Hearth reached them, their cloaks
and furs steamed.
Bailie the Red was amongst them, his stout archer’s legs bowed from
hours in the saddle, his hands busy setting out arrows and bowstrings at a
careful distance from the hearth. They must be dried out, but slowly, else the
wood warp and the twine stiffen. He accepted a jug of ale from Raina, taking a
moment from his task to smile his thanks.
“Did Drey stay at Ganmiddich?” she asked him.
Bailie grunted. His beard was so overgrown that you could no longer see
his lips. “Aye. He must. He defends it for the Crab chief now.”
Raina nodded, wanting to ask more but halting herself. Mace had been
informed that warriors had returned and some were wounded. He would be here any
minute.
“It’s not as bad as you might think,” Bailie said, reading her face. “There’s
a few skirmishes, usually with crews out of Gnash. But we’re holding. Drey
Sevrance is seeing to that.”
“Did he send word to Effie?”
Bailie looked her straight in the eye. “Doesn’t he always?”
Raina felt her stomach squeeze tight. A swift courier had arrived from
Dregg two days back, bearing messages from Xander Dregg to the Hail chief.
Raina had taken the boy aside and questioned him. No cart bearing Effie
Sevrance had ever reached the Dregghouse. Raina had tried to rationalize it—the
weather had been bad, Druss Ganlow might have taken a detour—but she was struck
with the sense that she should never have sent the girl to Dregg. Effie was
gone. Lost. And I’m
responsible. Gods help me when I have to tell Drey.
“Raina,” Bailie said, cutting into her thoughts. “You worry too much.”
She smiled at him. Bailie the Red had once spent an entire summer
protecting her and Dagro as they rode the length of the clan-hold, visiting
every farm, village and stovehouse in Blackhail. He had earned the right to
scold her.
Just as she was about to scold him back, Mace Blackhail entered the
room. She stiffened, feeling her smile collapse despite her best efforts to
maintain it. Mace had the ability to single her out in a crowd, and his
wolf-yellow gaze swept toward her. Wife,
he mouthed, and she couldn’t tell if it was a greeting or a threat. Her
instinct was to run, but she forced herself to turn her back and go about the
business of serving ale.
Mace had someone with him, a great beast of a Scarpeman with a hammer
on his back. He followed at Mace’s heels like a trained dog. Some of the
Hailsmen greeted him. Turby Flapp hugged him as if he were a long-lost son.
Raina strained to catch his name, but between the roar of the fire and the
lashing of the storm she could hear little.
It was late afternoon, and the storm was busy shortening the last
remaining hour of daylight. Raina had been busy since dawn, moving livestock
and clearing space for shelter. Storms brought hundreds of extra people to the
roundhouse, and they all needed food and a place to sleep. The work involved
was staggering, and the strain on food stores already run low preyed constantly
on her mind. In the past she would have gone to Dagro and they would have
discussed the best way to cope. Now she had no one to rely on but herself, and
some days it seemed as if the entire responsibility for the running of the
clanhold fell on her.
Mace cared only about Mace. He had let Blackhail become overrun with
Scarpes, making their feuds his own. He had actually sent out crews to raid
Orrl! Dagro Blackhail would no longer have recognized his clan.
So
what are you going to do about it? Raina halted for a moment by the fire, and let the
tall flames heat her face. It had seemed so simple while Angus Lok was here:
The clan must be rid of its chief. Mace had raped and murdered his way into the
chiefship, and he was turning Blackhail into a den for Scarpes. Yet he had
stolen Ganmiddich from under the Dog Lord’s nose, and taken a pledge of loyalty
from its chief. And the latest rumor from the south had it that Bannen was set
to turn. Dhoone was doing little to keep its war-sworn clans in line, and Mace
was ever one to spot a weakness and use it. He had always been a wolf.
Raina sighed heavily. The truth was Mace Blackhail won things for his
clan.
Studying the ale jug in her hand, she decided quite suddenly to pour
herself a drink. It was warm and good. Anwyn enriched it with egg and other odd
things that Raina didn’t know about, and it was almost like drinking a meal.
She watched as her husband spoke with the returning clansmen. One of
the provisions of the treaty struck between Blackhail and Ganmiddich gave
Blackhail the right to garrison two hundred men in the Crabhouse for Ganmiddich’s
protection. That meant crews of Hailsmen were constantly traveling to and from
the Crabhold. It was a dangerous run that took them close to the Dhoone
stronghold at Gnash, and within sight of Bludd-held Withy. Until recently
Dhoone had been an ally in kind to Blackhail, but with the stealing of
Dhoone-sworn Ganmiddich all had changed.
Hailsmen making the Ganmiddich run were regularly attacked by Skinner’s
men. They were frustrated, Raina supposed, since their leader had yet to make a
move to retake Dhoone. Hailsmen had been slain, and Raina could name every one
of them. It fell to her to inform their kin.
As she listened, Bailie told Mace that a crew of Bluddsmen out of Withy
had given them chase. Young Stiggie Perch had taken an ax blow to his spine and
fallen from his horse. They had not gone back to collect the body.
For a long moment everyone in the Great Hearth was silent. Some men
touched their measures of powdered guidestone. Mace Black-hail touched his
sword. “Inigar will cut his bones from the guide-stone,” he said.
Men nodded. It was Blackhail’s way.
Orwin Shank entered the room, and rushed to where his youngest living
son sat propped against the roundwall. A broken-off arrow shaft jutted from the
meat of Bev Shank’s upper arm. Laida Moon was tending him. The boy had been
wearing ringmail when he was hit, and Raina could see where a portion of the
metal had been driven into the wound. Laida was all business, sending Rory
Cleet to the forge for wire cutters, and Anwyn Bird to the distillery for hard
liquor.
Raina went over and put a hand on Orwin’s shoulder. The big, aging
hammerman had tears in his eyes. He had lost two sons to the clanwars: He could
not afford to lose more.
“Come away,” she said. “Let Laida do her job.”
The tiny, dark-skinned surgeon sent Raina a look of gratitude. Worried
fathers only hindered her work.
Gently, Raina guided Orwin toward the fire. It was full dark now and
the luntman was lighting the last of the torches. Outside, the storm was raging,
and the wind wailed as it hit the roundhouse. To take Orwin’s mind off Bev she
inquired about his other sons.
“Mull’s at Ganmiddich, and Grim’s waiting to head out. Bitty—” Orwin shook
his head. “He’s been sent north to protect the mine. Maimed Men were spotted at
the shanty.”
As Raina nodded, Bev Shank screamed in pain. Laida Moon had taken
possession of the wire cutters, and was now trimming the ringmail around the
wound. Raina grabbed Orwin’s arm. It was time to take the axman for a walk.
They made it as far as the great double doors before Mace caught up
with them. “Wife,” he said, halting her. “I don’t believe you’ve met the latest
addition to our clan. Mansal Stygo. He’s given us his oath for a year.”
The massive, black-haired Scarpeman stepped forward and bowed at the
waist. The hammer cradled to his back was the size of a child. His gaze traced
the curve of Raina’s hips and breasts as he straightened his spine. “Lady.”
Raina was aware that Mace was watching her closely, and she forced her
features to calmness. This man standing before her had murdered a chief, and
now he was to become one of the clan? Barely managing to stop a shudder from
forming, she inclined her head. “You’ve been here before,” she told him, “and
trained with Naznarri Drac.”
“I’m flattered my lady has heard of me.”
The slyness in his voice made her bristle. She took a breath, meaning to
tell him she knew a lot more than that, when she felt Orwin’s fingers press
hard against her arm. Sobered, she smiled stiffly and said nothing.
“Orwin,” Mace said. “I believe you two know each other.”
“Aye,” Orwin said levelly. “You trained at the same time as my eldest.”
Mansal Stygo nodded at the aging red-faced clansman, his eyes cold. The
two men stared at each other for longer than what was proper; Mansal was the
first to look away.
Before anything else could be said, Raina stepped in and informed Mace
that she had to take Orwin for a walk—surgeon’s orders.
He let her go, but she could feel him watching her as she and Orwin
passed through the doorway.
The roundhouse was warm and muggy, crowded with tied clansmen who had
taken up places on the stairs. One Scarpeman had ripped a torch from the wall
and was using it to brown a chunk of meat. It was a wonder he hadn’t set the
entire roundhouse alight.
Raina thought of reprimanding him, then decided against it. Let Mace
deal with his own.
As soon as they were out of earshot of the Great Hearth, Orwin said to
her, “You nearly made a grave mistake.”
Raina absorbed this for a moment, slowly coming to understand its
implications. She glanced at Orwin. He had first made himself a fierce warrior,
and then a wealthy man. Dagro had relied upon many clansmen for advice, but
none more so than Orwin Shank. Yet Orwin had supported Mace’s bid for chiefdom
. . . and that made Raina cautious.
As they reached the entrance hall she said to him, “What do you know of
Mansal Sty go?”
Orwin stopped to rest for a moment. His hands were swollen with
arthritis—the bane of all men who trained with hammer and ax from an early
age—and he massaged his enlarged knuckles as he spoke. “I’m not a man for
intrigue, Raina, and I have turned my back on many dread things. I tell myself
I am old and have no business interfering with the ways of clan. I should look
to my sons and my land and be content with my lot. Yet I find myself waking in
the middle of the night, stirred by the need for change.”
Tiny hairs along the back of Raina’s neck lifted. Easy, she cautioned herself. You cannot afford to make a mistake.
Quickly she glanced around. Entire families were camped in the entrance
hall, and dogs and chickens were running loose. One woman was milking a goat. A
couple of children had pilfered a head of cabbage and were playing a game of
throw. It was too crowded—everywhere was teeming this night. She needed a place
that would be quiet, yet she could not take him to her chamber or any other
woman’s place. It would arouse too much suspicion. Little mice with weasels’ tails.
The only place tied clansmen and Scarpes were firmly barred from was
Anwyn’s kitchen. It would have to do. Pitching her voice to carry a fraction
farther than normal, she said, “Orwin. You must eat. Let me warm you a bowl of
sotted oats.”
He nodded once. “Lead on.”
Raina forced a path through the crowd. Her heart was beating with
force, and she felt reckless and powerfully excited. If Mace were to spot her
now, just one look at her face and he’d know.
The kitchen was an island of calm. Clanwives had just finished laying
out tomorrow’s bake, and every flat surface in the chamber was covered with
trays of rising bread dough. The beer-keg stench of yeast was overpowering. A
bank of vast stone ovens shaped like bells ran along the exterior wall, and a
stoker with a long-handled shovel was busy raising the heat. At the sight of
Orwin Shank, a fully sworn clansman no less, clanwives dressed in baker’s white
rushed to clear a space at the nearest table. Whenever a Blackhail warrior was
hungry he was fed.
For appearances Raina accepted a bowl of oats and a jug of ale along
with Orwin. They ate in silence for a while, giving the kitchen helpers time to
fall back into their routines. Pots needed to be scrubbed and sanded, sheep’s
blood boiled down for puddings, and onions quartered to season everything from
sausages to stew. Out of the corner of her eye Raina spotted pretty Lansa
Tanner, her cheeks dusted with flour, fussily chopping carrots. Raina smiled a
greeting, but Lansa merely pinched in her mouth. She’d given her loyalty to
Mace.
Somehow the snub gave Raina strength. In a low voice she said to Orwin,
“Mansal Stygo murdered the Orrl chief in cold blood.”
He nodded. “Every hatchetman in the clan knows it. It was one thing
while he stayed at Scarpe, but now he’s given Mace his oath....” Orwin shook
his head, letting the thought trail off. He was not easy in the kitchen, and
kept glancing from side to side. Raina wondered if she’d made a mistake.
“Raina! Orwin! I’ve been looking everywhere for you two.” Out of
nowhere Anwyn Bird came striding toward them, her long grey braid whipping at
her neck. “Raina. Have you forgotten you were to help me take stock in the game
room? And you, Orwin Shank. You promised to take a look at the hung mutton—tell
me whether it’s spoiled.”
Raina and Orwin exchanged a glance. Anwyn stood before them,
hands on hips, her brown eyes challenging them to contradict her. They
did what everyone in the clan did when faced with Anwyn Bird: They obeyed her.
The night was growing stranger by the moment, Raina thought, as they
filed through the kitchen toward the warren of stock rooms, stillrooms, larders
and game rooms that constituted Anwyn’s domain. The light level dropped and the
heat of the kitchens fell away. No one spoke. They didn’t need to. They knew
their purpose here.
The game room was kept under lock and key. It hadn’t always been that
way, but since Scarpes had started inhabiting the roundhouse food had a habit
of disappearing. Anwyn opened the door and bid them mind the steps. The room
had been built belowground, hard against the northern wall. Even in high summer
it was cold. Raina took the steps carefully, her breath whitening, and her nose
pulling in the strong bloodless scent of aged meat.
The chamber was long and low. A thick woodwork lattice was suspended
just below the ceiling, and the meat hung there from iron brain hooks. Whole,
gutted animal carcasses swayed in the ventilating breeze. Sides of beef, black
as if they had been burned, lined an entire wall. Pheasants and ptarmigans had
been hung from their feet like bats, and hams and flitches of bacon—dipped in
honey to encourage mold—had been packed into curing cubbies like brood hens.
At first glance it seemed like a wealth of meat, but Raina could recall
the time when the entire fifty-foot length of the room had been packed from
floor to rafter with fresh kills. Now only the sides of beef reached back that
far, and everything else occupied the first fifteen feet.
Anwyn led them past the carcasses to an old table she used for
trussing. She lit a mica safe lamp, and then went back to close the door. Raina
sat on a little milkstool, leaving the only proper chair for Orwin. Anwyn
didn’t need a seat; the clan matron rarely sat.
An awkward moment passed where no one spoke. Orwin clasped and
unclasped his hands, working out the painful stiffness. Anwyn frowned at the
table. Looking at them, Raina suddenly realized they were waiting for her to begin.
She took a breath. “Mace Blackhail is no longer my chief. He ordered
the murders of Shor Gormalin and Spynie Orrl. He fills thi roundhouse with
Scarpes, and turns a blind eye when our tied clans men are dispossessed of
their farms. He is waging war with ou staunchest ally, Orrl. And I have come to
believe that he had fore knowledge of the attack in the Badlands where my
husband anc your two sons, Orwin, met their deaths.“
There. She had done it. She was shaking uncontrollably, but sh< met
Orwin’s gaze and then Anwyn’s, and she was filled with a sense of her own
power. To make things happen you just had to do them Why had it taken her thirty-three years to
figure that out?
Orwin looked at her hard and long. Signs of strain were showing in his
face, and Raina reminded herself that his youngest son lay in the Great Hearth,
badly wounded. “What makes you believe Mace had foreknowledge of the Badlands
attack?”
It was telling that he had not questioned her statement about Shor
Gormalin. The subject of the Badlands massacre had to be dealt with carefully.
Not until this moment had she dared to speak her thoughts on it out loud. “Remember
the day Raif and Drey Sevrance rode home, after everyone thought them dead?”
Both Orwin and Anwyn nodded. “Well, I think back on that now and I see things
we missed. Remember the first thing Raif Sevrance did? He named Mace a
traitor.”
Orwin shook his head. “That lad’s always been trouble, Raina.”
“He drew a guide circle for your sons, Orwin. He and Drey took care of the dead.”
The axman sighed. “Aye. I know it. He’s a decent lad, but headstrong.
Impulsive.”
Raina was quick to agree. “Yes, Orwin, he is decent. No matter what is said about him he stood
up in that stovehouse at Duff’s and went to fight with his clansmen.”
“Many don’t see it like that.”
“Then many should learn to think for themselves.” Realizing she had
strayed too far from her subject, she started again. “Orwin. Raif Sevrance said
things that day that directly contradicted Mace’s version of event. He said the attack took place at noon, not dawn as
Mace insisted, and that he and Drey saw no sign of Clan Bludd.
And remember how Mace gave that
touching speech, about finding Dagro’s body by the horse posts? Raif Sevrance
swore that he and Drey found Dagro by the meat rack, and that Dagro had been
butchering a carcass when the raiders came.“
Orwin looked unconvinced.
But she wasn’t done. “Who benefited from that raid, Orwin? Mace
Blackhail or Raif Sevrance? Who rode back on a chief’s horse and named himself
a chief?”
The axman had no answer for that, and Raina let the silence last. You
couldn’t force a man to believe in something. He had to arrive at it himself.
At last Orwin nodded, slowly, reluctantly, and Raina knew she had
wounded him deeply. To lose two sons to Clan Bludd was a terrible thing, but
there was honor in it. To lose two sons to some scheme of a would-be chief held
no honor at all.
From somewhere Anwyn produced a small glazed jar of her special malt.
She had been quiet all this time, but watching her pull three tiny cups from a
knitted bag she wore at her waist, Raina wondered if Anwyn Bird hadn’t been the
instigator all along. Malt and three cups? Had she been the one who
told Orwin the truth about Shor’s death? She was certainly close with Angus
Lok; he had brought her a gift, Raina recalled.
Anwyn Bird’s twenty-year malt was a thing to be savored. It tasted like
summer smoke. Raina raised the cup to her face and inhaled—the fumes alone were
enough to make you giddy. Last time she had drunk it had been the day Mace
Blackhail had stood Chief’s Watch. The twenty-year malt was always a marker of
change.
Raina set down her cup. Small, coin-sized holes had been drilled into
the game room’s exterior wall for ventilation—you could not age meat without
moving air—and she could hear rain trickling outside as the storm used itself
up. It was time to get to the point.
“If we make a move who will be with us?”
“This cannot be done quickly, Raina,” Orwin said. “It could take many
months, even years.”
This was not what she wanted to hear. “Will the hammermen follow us?”
“They must be given time. Yes, they have their doubts about Mace—he
tried to put a hammerman’s sister to the fire—but a war is being fought and
hammermen are men of war.” Orwin placed his elbows on the table and leaned
forward. “The moment’s not right, Raina. Mace might have many faults, but he’s
proven himself a warlord. Give him time. Let him fail.”
Reluctantly, Raina nodded. Dagro had valued this man’s advice, and she
was beginning to understand why. He was right. In times of war men were less
discriminating about their leaders. They needed someone strong, little more.
She let out a deep breath. Was this how they were meant to leave it? With a
simple “wait and see”?
Then Anwyn spoke. She was looking at her cup, tracing a finger around
its rim. “If we are to be serious about treason we need a chief. Someone we can
rally to when the time is right, someone to take Mace’s place.”
Raina felt a roaring in her ears. She said, “Orwin?”
He was already shaking his head. “Nay, Raina. I’m too old and
irresponsible for chiefdom.”
She searched her mind. Shor Gormalin should have been chief, but Shor
Gormalin was dead. “Corbie Meese? Bailie the Red? Drey?”
“All good men,” Orwin agreed. “Fine warriors. In time Drey Sevrance may
grow what it takes to make a chief, but he’s too young for now.”
Then who?
They were waiting, both of them. And she couldn’t believe what they
wanted. It was madness, total madness. The roaring in her ears was so deafening
she could barely think.
But she could speak, and she said what she
had to. “I will be chief.”
CHAPTER
A Walk on the Edge
The storm had slowed them. They were five days out of the Rift, but the
last two had been little more than a struggle against driving wind and ice.
Raif tried not to look south, tried not to imagine how the exact same storm
would play out in the clanholds. How there would be rain instead of ice, and
flashes of brilliant lightning instead of the oppressive sameness of a sky the
color of lead.
Tempers had flared, and already the small party had fallen into two
camps: Linden Moodie’s and Stillborn’s. Yustaffa was the wild card, moving
between the two with all the glee of a matchmaker in reverse. Raif watched him
now—a fat man on a little horse—as he pushed past Addie Gunn to get to Moodie.
Moodie had assumed the lead—another fight there—and Yustaffa had taken it upon
himself to inform the leader of his followers’s dissent.
Raif heard the words “. . . and you’ll never believe what Stillborn said.. .” quickly followed by “Addie Gunn swore you’d have us lost by midday ...” before turning his thoughts
elsewhere.
They were traveling along the rim of a canyon in single file. The storm
had scaled everything with frost, and even the dead bushes on the canyon floor
glittered like crystal. The way was slippery, but Raif was used to that, and he
kept a short rein on his pony. It was hard to accept he was heading west. In
all his mad fantasies about returning to Blackhail, he had never imagined this.
Lowering his head against the wind, Raif thrust the thought aside and
rode on. He had chosen a position at the rear, only to have Linden Moodie order
him forward. It was almost certain that Traggis Mole had charged Moodie with
keeping an eye on Raif Twelve Kill, and just as certain that Moodie was
relishing the job.
They were a small party, eleven in all and three extra horses. Raif
didn’t know all the men. He was glad Addie and Stillborn were along, but he was
less sure about the olive-skinned outlander, the one who had revealed the
bridge that spanned the Rift. The man didn’t look much like a fighter, more a
priest. He kept to himself, and did not eat the meat Stillborn cooked at the
campfire each night.
Raif slowed to guide his mount over a bank of scree, assuring himself
that it was stable before giving the pony its head. The wind funneled through
the canyon, raising spirals of ice and dust. The storm had died out in the
night, but it had left the land ravaged and the air curiously unsettled. Even
though they were not at altitude, Raif’s ears ached with the changing pressure.
He was focused so intently on guiding the pony across the scree that he
didn’t notice at first that Moodie had called a halt. Only when the pony’s
hooves rang out on hard rock did he risk looking up. Linden Moodie and Yustaffa
had dismounted farther along the path. Moodie had flung back his heavy scarlet
cloak trimmed with fox fur and was crouched on the ground, inspecting
something. As Raif drew closer he realized why the two Maimed Men had stopped.
A giant gash in the rock blocked the way ahead.
Raif slid off the back of his pony and went to join them. The fissure
ran all the way down to the canyon floor forty feet below, and Raif could smell
the newness of it, the stench of burned rock and exposed roots. The walls of
the fissure were dark and jeweled with minerals, in stark contrast to the
surrounding rock that had been weathered to a dull grey.
Yustaffa sighed with barely contained relish. He was dressed in a tunic
made up of bands of alternating vole fur. Raif recognized the pelts of
lemmings, meadow voles and giant hispid rats all layered into stripes. Yustaffa
had paired this with glazed leather pantaloons bloused into his boots, and a
cloak of dyed and shaved shearling. As the rest of the party drew abreast, he
tutted and shook his head. “I knew we should have turned north at
Grass Gorge!”
Everyone ignored him. Air rising from the fissure stirred hair and
beards. On the other side of the gash, Raif could clearly see the path rising
along the canyon wall and continuing west.
“This was not here last time I took this path,” Moodie said stubbornly.
“And when might that have been?” Stillborn asked, coming to stand
beside Raif. “Last I heard you prefer staying closer to home.”
Moodie flashed Stillborn a dark look. “It wasn’t here a month ago, I
tell you.”
“He’s right.”
Everyone turned to look at the man who’d spoken. The olive-skinned outlander
stepped forward. He was dressed in loose robes of drab green, covered by a
plain grey cloak. The cold had turned the skin on his face ashy, and his left
eye had blood in it. “It’s not Linden’s fault,” he continued, calmly. “This
crack has just opened.”
Stillborn raised his eyebrows. “And who made you an expert?”
For some reason the outlander looked at Raif as he replied, “You don’t
need to be an expert to know that the earth is warping. Something down there is
forcing its way out.”
The Maimed Men shifted uncomfortably. Addie Gunn took a withered apple
from his pack and bit it. Stillborn wandered back toward the scree bank,
looking for an alternate path. The outlander continued to stare at Raif. After
a few seconds Raif decided he’d had enough, and went to check his pony’s mouth.
As he ran a finger between the pony’s bit and its gums, feeling for sores, he
sensed the outlander still watching him.
A heated argument soon started up about the best way to circumvent the
gash. Yustaffa suggested they should try and jump it—with Linden Moodie going
first. Moodie’s plan was for them to descend to the canyon floor and follow it
west. Not many in the party liked that idea. The canyon wall was steep granite
mounded with scree. A fall could break a man’s leg. Someone else suggested they
climb toward the headland, but even Raif could see there was no feasible ascent
and the idea was quickly abandoned.
Addie Gunn ate his apple and said nothing. When he was done he fed the
core to his pony. Voices had been raised by then, and Linden Moodie’s garrote
scar had flushed red. “We’re going down!” he cried. “And gods damn the lot of
you!”
Heated protests followed, and in the middle of it all, Addie spoke a
word. “Gentlemen.”
The Maimed Men turned to look at him, and he waited patiently, his hand
on his pony’s nose, until they fell silent to a man.
“An hour back we passed a goat trail that led northwest. Follow it and
I’d say we’ll make the headland afore dark.” His hand slid around his pony’s nose
strap. “Come on, girl. Time we were heading back.”
The Maimed Men stared at him, half indignant and half relieved. No one
doubted him: Addie Gunn was a cragsman, and canyon country was filled with
crags. Stillborn was the first to follow him, leading his stout little pony
through a tight circle on the ledge. Seeing the other men in the party ready to
abandon him, Linden Moodie hastily ordered a turnabout.
As Raif led his pony back across the scree, he found himself thinking
about Addie Gunn. The cragsman had established a place here, amongst these men.
They respected him for what he knew. Raif had been on two expeditions with him
and both times men had deferred to his judgment. It seemed incredible to think
it, but Addie had been treated better by the Maimed Men than by his own
clansmen. Raif frowned, not liking what that said about clan.
“I see you’ve caught the interest of our failed priest,” Yustaffa said,
breaking into his thoughts. The fat man was back on his horse, riding directly
behind Raif. When Raif made no reply he explained himself. “The outlander,
Thomas Argola, I saw him watching you before. A tiresome man, but useful, very
useful. Of course the others can’t abide him. Can’t think why. He hardly eats
but two beans a day, and would rather die than pick a fight.”
Raif put his foot in the stirrup and mounted his pony. “Why is he here
then?”
“Good question.” Yustaffa trotted his pony ahead of Raif’s. The entire
party was back on the path now, and Addie Gunn was leading the way east. “He
does have a few tricks up his sleeve. Confusion to the enemy and all that.”
“He’s a magic user?”
“Not a very good one.” Yustaffa sniffed. “It half kills him to reveal
the bridge. He’s not fit to stand in a Mangali shaman’s shadow. One of them in your party and you can trot right up to a
strongroom, whip your drawers off and steal everything in sight before anyone
knows you’re there.”
A gust of wind blew out Yustaffa’s shearling cloak, and Raif caught
sight of the sword breaker strapped to the fat man’s thigh. He said, testing,
“Why would he be watching me?”
Yustaffa’s laughter was high and tinkling. “Raif Twelve Kill, dear boy.
He’s watching you for the same reason Traggis Mole is watching you. Because
things have a nasty habit of happening around you, and someone usually ends up
dead.” Still laughing, Yustaffa rode on.
Raif pulled on his reins, falling back. He’d asked for that... but it
didn’t make hearing it any easier.
Deciding it was better not to think, he hunkered down in the saddle and
continued falling back until he reached the rear. Linden Moodie was breathing
down Addie’s neck, waiting impatiently to resume the lead. He didn’t notice
that Raif was keeping company with the packhorses.
The day wore on and they found Addie’s goat path and followed it up
toward the headland. Whatever force had caused the gash in the canyon wall had
sent rocks tumbling into unstable piles and opened up hairline cracks in the
earth. Addie had an eye for the dangers, and would signal slowdowns from time
to time where everyone would dismount and lead their ponies.
By the time they reached the headland it was growing dark. Addie wanted
to halt and make camp, but Moodie wouldn’t hear of it. “We have to be at the
mine by black of the moon—that’s when they shift the gold. Now the weather’s
calmed some we need to make up for lost time.”
No one argued with him. A half-moon had risen, but the cloud cover was
too thick to let through much light. The headland was flat, swept clean by hard
winds, and the ground underfoot was little more than rock. Hairy weeds grew in
the leeward shelter of boulders, and every now and then Raif would catch the
eyeshine of tundra foxes.
Slowly, the desire grew in him to hunt. It had been half a year since he’d
last tracked game by night, and he found himself searching out targets. Things
besides foxes lived here, small creatures with rapidly beating hearts. Mice.
Voles. Nothing worth loosing an arrow for, yet he tracked them anyway.
Something inside him needed to.
“Unless you plan on flinging that arrow at Linden Moodie, I’d slip it
back in your pack.” It was Stillborn, riding abreast of him, and it took Raif a
moment to understand what he meant.
There was an arrow in his fist, but Raif could find no recollection of
drawing it from his pack. Feeling foolish, he shoved it back in the bowcase
mounted on his saddlehorn.
“Dark night,” Stillborn said. “Moodie’s taking us pretty close to the
edge.”
Raif hadn’t noticed. He’d been looking north at the flat stretch of
tundra, not south at the rim. Following Stillborn’s gaze he saw that the goat
path had wound back toward the canyon, and they were once again descending.
Addie called a slowdown when they hit the first patch of loose stone.
“Shall we?” Stillborn asked Raif, and they both dismounted.
Ahead, Moodie and the cragsman were exchanging words. Addie wanted to
raise camp—the going was becoming too dangerous for night travel—but Moodie
wouldn’t hear of it. Raif didn’t agree with Moodie’s urgency, but he understood
it. Behind Moodie’s impatience lay fear of Traggis Mole.
In the end it was decided to continue at a slower pace on foot. Raif
and Stillborn kept to the rear, walking side by side. Stillborn produced a
silver flask from the tanned elkskin slung over his shoulder and took a swig.
“You best be careful when we reach the mine,” he said. “You’re a Maimed Man
now.”
So even Stillborn was giving him warnings. Raif found he had nothing to
say to him, and they fell into silence.
Gradually the path began to wind down from the headland, and within an
hour they were back against the canyon wall with the black drop below them.
Loose rocks littered the way, and Raif spent much of his time watching his
footing. He could feel the canyon’s updrafts on the underside of his chin, and
fear kept him alert.
Most of the party had cleared the scree bank when the rocks began to
slide. Raif felt a puff of air on his cheek and heard the deep thunder-rumble
of grinding earth. The rocks mounded against the canyon wall jerked forward
violently, and Raif found himself scrambling for footing amid rolling scree.
Directly ahead, the pack horses bucked in terror. They were tethered in line
and when one of them went over the drop, it dragged the others along with it.
Raif fought furiously against the momentum of the sliding rocks. A
stone struck his spine with the force of a punch, knocking the wind from his
lungs. Something pounded his knee, and suddenly he was struggling to stay
upright. The pony’s halter reeled through his fingers, leaving him clutching
air.
A thud sounded from behind as Stillborn was knocked from his feet. Raif
sent out an empty hand toward him, but found nothing. Then the force of the
slide yanked him down and around and suddenly Stillborn’s fingers poked hard
against the center of Raif’s palm. Raif closed his fist, catching them.
Immediately Raif felt his entire body jerk forward as Stillborn went
over the edge. Hot pain sent his vision flashing red and white as his arm
wrenched against its socket. The slide was slowing, but the weight of
Stillborn’s body sent Raif hurtling toward the edge. Desperate, he thrust his
heels through the scree, searching for a foothold. He kicked and kicked. And
then his right toe felt a lip of rock that didn’t move.
As his arm was sucked over the edge, he dug his heel into the
depression in the bedrock. He came to a wrenching halt. His jaw was clamped so
tightly he could feel the pressure on the roots of his teeth. His arm was
shaking violently, and the muscles in his side and shoulder were popped out and
close to tearing. Below him he could just make out the top of Stillborn’s head.
Swinging in the black.
“Help me up,” Stillborn cried.
Raif felt drunk on pain. He only had a few more seconds of thi: before
they both went over. Separating his jaw took real effort. “Still born. I want
my arrow back.”
A disbelieving croak came from below.
Raif’s right leg—the one that braced both their weights—begar to
wobble. Absurdly he found himself filled with a madman’s calm “The arrow,
Divining Rod. Do you yield it?”
“I yield,” Stillborn screamed. “Now get me out of here.”
It was all pain and no calm after that. Linden Moodie and Addit Gunn scrambled
over the unstable scree to hoist Stillborn back ontc the ledge. Raif was
shaking uncontrollably by the time they finalh hauled him to safety. Moodie
left Raif where he’d fallen, and tha seemed fine to Raif. The clouds had
thinned and he could see tht moon. When Stillborn had been helped across the
scree Moodi( came back for him.
He offered Raif his hand. “Come on, lad. You’d better get up.‘ His
voice was gruff, but there was something in it that had not beer there before.
A kind of grudging respect. ”You held on to that bi^ bastard for dear life.
It’s a wonder you didn’t split in two.“
“It feels like I have.” Raif tried for dignity as he came to his legs
but his knees were having none of it and he swayed like a drunker man. Moodie
clamped his arm around him, and together the} walked across the scree.
A makeshift camp had been raised on the ledge. Torches had beer lit and
a fire was burning with meat above it. They had no tents; th( Maimed Men simply
formed a circle of bedrolls around the fire eacr night. The seal on a keg of
mead had been broken, and the Maimec Men cheered and raised their drinking
horns as Raif stumblec toward the camp.
Stillborn had already told the tale of the negotiation for the arrow
and somehow that raised Raif’s reputation with the Maimed Men He had saved
Stillborn—and struck a bargain to boot! A Rifi Brother couldn’t hope for a
better outcome. They welcomed hirr into the fire circle and thrust a horn
filled with thick black mead intc his hands. Dignity failed Raif again when he
tried to drink it, anc half of the fermented honey ended up running down the
front of hi:
tunic. His hands were shaking badly, and he couldn’t taste anything but
rock dust.
He sat on a pile of horse blankets and concentrated on not passing out.
Yustaffa had produced a stringboard from somewhere and was plucking at chords
as he experimented with the opening lines of a new song. “The canyon was blac’t and the night was chill, and
when the roc’ts began to slide so did Twelve Kill.”
Raif didn’t think it sounded too
bad at all—which was a sure sign he was no longer sane. Blinking, he held the
horn on his lap. Addie came and slapped him on his shoulder, told him that even
a cragsman could have done no better when it came to riding the rockslide.
Others came and said things and went away. Time passed and the celebration went
on, and the Maimed Men got roaring drunk.
Most of them. At some point Raif became aware that the out-lander
Thomas Argola had slid into place next to him. Things had quieted down by then,
and men were dozing or eating, or gaming in small groups. Occasionally someone
would propose a toast to Raif or Stillborn, and the Maimed Men would rouse
themselves to grunt their support. The outlander waited until everyone’s attention
had strayed from Raif before speaking.
“You know why the rocks slid?” he asked. Raif tentatively tested his
neck muscles by a shake of the head. “They’re coming out. The Taken. Already
some of the strongest have forced themselves through the cracks. Pressure is
building ... and something must give. Soon. The Endlords will send out one of
their servants. Shatan Maer, the most powerful creatures
that ever lived. The Shatan alone have the strength to
blast a hole in the Blindwall. And one stirs this night, I can feel it.”
Raif floated above his fear. He said, “Are you one of them? The Phage?”
“I have had dealings with them.”
It was not a direct answer, but Raif let it pass. He was still
floating. “When will this happen?”
“I do not know.”
“And you don’t know where either?”
“No. The place where the earth’s crust is thinnest.”
Raif heard himself make a sound, like a hard laugh. “Why tell me then?”
The outlander shifted his position so he was looking straight at Raif.
His left eye was full of blood. “Because you’re the one who can halt it.”
“Though
a stronghold may fall and darkness ride through the gate, He will forsake.”
The outlander shook his head, puzzled at what Raif had said. For some
reason this pleased Raif. It meant the Phage didn’t know everything. Clan had
its sources too.
“So you can offer me no help,” he said, hearing the heat in his voice
and realizing he was no longer floating. The outlander had brought him to
ground.
A moment passed. Someone threw a pile of bird bones on the fire, and
the outlander watched the black smoke rise. “Remember the bridge, how it is
revealed?” Raif nodded, and the outlander continued speaking in his softly
accented voice. “The bridge itself is crude? Yes. Most people who see it for
the first time are disappointed. They make the mistake of assuming the secret
lies in the bridge itself. It does not. It lies in the strip of space that
connects the clanholds to the Rift. Build anything there and it will lapse into
unseeing. That is the nature of the Old Ones’ power. Things constructed by
their mages live on.
“The Want and the Rift are littered with their ruins. Some we can see,
and some are concealed. When you search for the place the Shatan Maer will emerge you must look hard, and then look
again.”
Raif was suddenly weary. The muscles in his back and shoulder were
aching, and it seemed as if the outlander had told him nothing useful at all,
just laid another weight upon him. Sorcerers and holy men had a way of doing
that to him, he’d noticed.
Massaging his shoulder, he said, “Why tell me about the Old Ones now?
It’s the breach that needs finding, not some long-forgotten ruin.”
All around the camp men were making preparations to sleep.
Torches were snuffed, ale dregs emptied from horns and blankets bunched
into pillows. Yustaffa began plucking a lullaby from his strings.
The outlander stood to leave. “The Old Ones were not that different
from you and I. They knew terror. We send bodies to the Rift, seeking to block
it. They built a city there hoping to do the same. Look to their ruins to guide
you to the place they most feared.”
Raif watched him cross the camp, and then lay down on his blanket and
slept.
CHAPTER
At the Sign of the Blind Crow
Crope was hungry and his feet were sore. He’d tried to sell his boots
for coin, but the shrill, big-breasted bidwife he’d approached just pointed at
his feet and laughed at him. “I’d have more chance selling milk to a dairymaid
than selling boots the size of those.” Her sharp gaze had moved a fraction to
the left. “But I’ll give you two coppers for the dog. I can have it sold to a
pie house within the hour.”
Town Dog made into pie! It didn’t bear thinking about, and it very
nearly made him never want to eat pie again. That was three days back, though,
and right about now the prospect of any kind of pie made his mouth water so
violently he had to swallow.
Trouble was, there was no foraging to be done in a city. You couldn’t
steal from any of the street vendors, because the magistrate might catch and
‘prison you. Any place where there were scraps to be had was violently defended
by men and women who had declared that particular cranny their territory and
were prepared to kill for it. Even Town Dog was having trouble with the cats.
They were mean here. Skinny as squirrels and not a bit afraid of dogs.
Shuddering with feeling, Crope pulled the chicken cloak over his head
and continued his circuit of Mask Fortress. A light drizzle had started, and he
worried about his boots shrinking. It was difficult to set his mind to studying
the fortress for a while, but he concentrated hard and by the time he’d passed
the second gate he’d forgotten everything else.
The light surrounding the fortress was queer and silvery; there was
rain but also sun. You could see a lot of details that weren’t normally
revealed. For the first time Crope spied a guard station set three stories
above the gate. Last time he’d looked he’d just seen a stone grille and had
assumed it was some kind of vent. But now, with the late-afternoon sun striking
the gate tower just so, he could see flashes of movement behind the grille.
That meant that although the gate was secured and patrolled by redcloaks at
ground level, someone above was overseeing.
It wasn’t good news. Days were passing and he still hadn’t found a way
in.
Mask Fortress was zealously guarded. Every wagon was checked—some of
them stripped down to the bare beds—every load of soft goods was spiked with spears,
every barrel was tapped to confirm fullness and every unknown applicant at the
gate was subjected to vigorous examination. The lord who ruled here lived in
fear.
Crope rested his weight on his birch staff for a moment. He had not
imagined that his journey to his lord could be so easily halted. He had
carefully considered running through the gate when the portcullis was raised to
admit wagons. The gate was patrolled by units of four men, one of whom stayed
permanently in the guard station to control the movement of the portcullis.
That meant three men would likely chase him. Three men with spears and swords.
It was worrying and there were risks, but he reckoned he had a fair chance of
making it past them. The trouble would come when the alarm was raised. And now,
seeing as the gate was overseen by a second station, that alarm would come
earlier than he’d thought.
Slowly, methodically, Crope ran the movements through his head one more
time . . . but nothing new came out. He needed to gain entry without drawing
the attention of the guards. Bitterbean would have said it was time for
stealth.
Frowning, he headed west toward the pointy tower where his lord was
being held. Rainwater sluicing from the fortress walls made the grease shine on
the streets. Town Dog halted to drink from a puddle, and Crope paused until she
was done. The streets grew quieter as they headed away from the gate. They
passed a deserted courtyard ornamented with oversize statues of knights.
Pigeons flocked under the knights’ stone skirts, sheltering from the rain. Town
Dog was up for chasing them, but Crope called her to heel.
Something was happening to his chest. The closer he drew to the pointy
tower, the harder his rib cage squeezed. He had come here every day since entering
the city, trying to make contact with his lord.
The tower was pale, and so high that the upper stories disappeared into
the rainclouds. It smoked like frozen meat, as if it were high above the
snowline on the mountain, not here at its base. Crope rubbed his palm on his
buckskin pants before touching it. As his fingers neared the icy limestone he
felt the tower’s pull, an attracting force like a magnet. The smoothly polished
stone sucked the heat from skin, and his instinct was to snatch back his hand,
but he pressed harder instead, his fingertips slowly whitening. The cold he
could live with, but not the silence.
Time passed, and the sun sank beneath the city walls and a grey dusk
set in. Crope’s fingers grew numb, and he pushed harder and harder, trying to
force his way in.
Nothing.
Then, just as he pulled his fingertips away, there was a faint
stirring, a reaching out. . . . come to me. . .
The words sounded within Crope’s bones, and they were no longer a
command. They were a plea. His lord’s voice was powerless, nearly gone. Chicken-headed fool. Are you going
to let him die? Crope slammed his fist into the tower. Limestone fractured
with a puff of dust, and Town Dog hunkered down in fright.
Crope stepped back. There was blood on his knuckles and his fingers
were beginning to swell. He needed to think. Thinly. Force would do no good here. He was strong but he
could not bring down a tower. This was no way to save his lord. Then how? He
was not Bitterbean with his clever tricks or Scurvy Pine with his way of making
men do as he wished. He was giant man, good for breaking walls and mending
pumps.
And severing chains. You
be ready when I give the word. Crope blinked as something occurred to him.
Perhaps there was someone in the city who could lend a hand. A plan forming in
his head, Crope turned his back on the tower.
Soon, he promised his lord silently.
Soon.
It was full dark by the time he left the wide roads and dressed stone
of the Fortress Quarter. Night came quickly to Spire Vanis, bringing with it a
shock of cold that caused the rain to thicken into sleet. Crope passed men and
women huddled warmly in thick woolens and furs. Some had purchased roasted
chestnuts or fat, grill-split sausages from the street vendors, but Crope tried
not to think about that. Brazier men had set up their grill irons on every
street corner, and the glow of hot coals and the aroma of sizzling fat drew
circles of people about them. Business was being conducted. Crope saw silver
coins flash from one man’s hand to another’s, and then smallgoods returned in
exchange. On one busy street a troop of mummers had set up a makeshift stage,
and were performing a masque that involved saying the word “bottom” a lot.
Swalhabi was not amongst them. Swalhabi would never deign to perform in a
street. Crope felt sympathy with the mummers dressed as girls. It was a cold
night to be wearing so little.
He was putting it off, he knew, tarrying to watch the mummers, and he
scolded himself for his cowardice. What was his fear compared to the misery of
his lord? Nothing, that’s what it was, and he set his jaw forward and moved on.
Trouble was, he didn’t exactly know what he was looking for. Not just
any alehouse or inn would do. He needed to find one that looked right, but he
was hard-pressed to say what that meant. Certainly not the place across from
the mummers’ stage, for some of the people entering wore silky furs the color
of honey and toast and he knew such things only came with wealth. No. He needed
a lesser place, somewhere where the patrons didn’t stand outside supping clear
ale from pewter tankards while young boys bearing torches warmed them.
He headed farther south. Town Dog trotted off every so often, drawn by
the irresistible scent of rat. Crope had been wandering the city for several
days but he had never strayed far from the fortress until now, and this part of
the city was unknown to him. The streets grew shabbier, and fewer people set
lamps in their windows. The brazier men were still out selling sausages, but
when they cut them with their big knives you could see they were nearly all
fat. Men gambled beneath makeshift rawhide shelters, and women dressed as
scantily as the mummers shivered in doorways and called out to passersby.
Crope kept an eye to the alehouses, interpreting the signs above their
doors. A hammer and block meant that farriers and blacksmiths drank there.
Scissors and a spool of thread meant tailors. Crossed swords could mean two
things, either weapon makers or mercenaries. He passed establishments for
chandlers, mercers, goldsmiths, grocers, and surgeons—the finest sign yet, a
man whose leg had been hacked off at the knee with an ax—when he came upon a
sign he didn’t immediately understand. It was a magpie with a blindfold
covering its eyes. The Sign of the Blind Crow.
Crope stopped to study it. He was in a street that was quiet and very
dark. The few men that walked here kept their collars up and their heads down.
No one lingered. A dead cat was floating in a pool runoff, its paws and tail
burned.
Birds were something Crope knew quite a bit about. He had spent hours
watching them on the poorhouse courtyard as a boy, and much later his lord had
lent him books filled with wondrous drawings of every living thing. He could
name every bird he saw or heard; he knew their habits, their plumage, their
calls. . . and he knew magpies loved to steal. They could not pass by anything
shiny without thinking This
would loo’tfine in my nest.
Crope frowned in concentration. A blindfolded man could not see. If the
blindfolded magpie was really a thief, then he was a thief who could tell no
tales.
Heaving a great sigh of relief that his brain had actually worked for a
change, Crope scooped up Town Dog and headed for the inn door. This was exactly
the kind of place he’d been looking for.
Inside it was dark and cool, and Crope felt his good humor slide away,
replaced by the usual fear: How would these people react to him? He shrank
himself, and tried not to think about what had happened the last time he’d set
foot in a tavern.
The room was quiet, and lit by only two baleen lamps. A fire stood
against the far wall, but a heavy iron guard suppressed the light. Half-walls
divided the room into small sections, creating private nooks where men sat
head-to-head and spoke in low voices. A few people turned their heads at
Crope’s entrance, but after a brief assessment returned to their business.
Relief flooded through Crope as he realized they weren’t interested in him one
bit. A counter consisting of varnished pine boards topped with hammered copper
was set to the side of the fire, and Crope made his way toward it.
As he settled himself in place, Town Dog squirmed free of his tunic and
landed with a thump on the floor. She’d got whiff of another dog behind one of
the half-walls and was off to pay her respects.
“Bitter night,” said the man standing by the side of the counter in way
of greeting. Stocky with a big belly and thick neck, he looked like a pit
fighter gone to seed. Crope saw interest in his eyes, but no fear. “What’s your
fare?”
Crope shook his head, anxious not to have a drink poured that he could
not pay for.
The pit fighter accepted this with a mild shrug, refilling his own
tankard of ale from a glazed jug on the counter. “What’s your business then?”
The question was lightly asked, but there was an edge to it that meant
Do not waste my time. Crope felt his heartbeat
quicken. What if he had made a mistake? The pit fighter folded his arms over
his chest, making muscles the size of possums spring to life.
Crope bent and slid a hand down the side of his diamond boot. There, in
the place where the leather had separated from the lining, was the thing he
needed. Straightening up, he placed the object on the counter and said, “Friend
of Scurvy Pine.”
Tendons in the pit fighter’s neck twitched at the mention of Scurvy’s
name. Watching Crope closely, he reached for the ring. It was made from the
white metal that was rarer than silver, and was as fine and delicate as a lock
of hair. Words circled the inner band, but Crope had never learned what they
said. The pit fighter held it toward the baleen light to inspect it. His lips
moved as he read the words.
Abruptly he put it down, and slid it back toward Crope. “Where did you
get this—and don’t lie to me. I won’t take a lie.”
Crope was already desperately shaking his head. “No lie. Was given in
the diamond mines. Scurvy gave it. Was told to keep it. Keep it. Use when I had need.”
The pit fighter raised a hand. “Calm down, calm down now, big man. No
one’s calling you a liar. You’ve got the scars of a diamond miner, that’s for
sure.” And then, to a man sitting in the shadows at one of the nooks, “Quill.
Over here. You need to hear this.”
Crope felt close to panic—speaking with strangers always did that to
him. But this was getting worse. The man emerging from the shadows looked mean,
there were no two ways about it. He had little eyes and a hooked-down mouth,
and he commanded the biggest dog Crope had ever seen. The dog followed the man
as he walked to the counter, and Town Dog followed the dog.
“Quill, this gentleman here’s a friend of Scurvy’s. Met him in the
mines.”
Quill’s eyes narrowed to quarter-moons. He smelled of cellars and
beeswax and dog. His hair was dark and greasy and his clothes weren’t much
better than rags, but he wore a gold earpiece and several fine rings.
The pit fighter nodded at Crope. “Show him the ring.”
Crope slid the ring toward Quill, and as he inspected it the pit
fighter told him what had been said. After an appraisal worthy of a master
jeweler, Quill put down the ring and faced Crope.
“So are the rumors true,” he asked briskly. “Did Scurvy Pine escape ?”
Crope nodded.
“When?”
This one was harder. To answer Crope thought back to how the weather
was the day they broke free of the mine. “Midwinter.”
“You came straight here?” Crope nodded. “Is Scurvy with you?” Crope shook his head.
That made Quill pause and think. After a moment his gaze strayed back
toward the ring. “Do you know what this is?” he asked, barely waiting for Crope
to shake his head. “It’s the ring he took from the finger of his dead child.
Katherine, her name was. Used to call her Kat. And the man who raped and killed
her never imagined he was signing the death sentence of his entire family and
each and every one of his associates. It was the worst bloodbath the city of
Trance Vor has ever known, and it was the reason they sent Scurvy to the
mines.” Quill took up the ring again, and leaned over the counter toward Crope.
“So what I’d like to know is: Why would he give it to you ?”
Crope looked down at his feet. Shifting his staff between his hands he
said in a soft voice, “I broke the chains.”
“Scurvy’s chains?”
Crope nodded. “Shared chains for ten years.” Quill and the pit fighter
exchanged a glance. “So you’re telling me you were in the mines with Scurvy for
ten years, and you’re the one responsible for his escape?”
“Helped.” Crope could not forget about Hadda the Crone. Hadda had sang
the song that brought the darkness.
“Broadie,” Quill said to the pit fighter. “You’d better bring this man
‘ere some food and ale. We’ll be sitting at my table for a while.”
“Aye, guv.” Broadie went swiftly about his business, apparently well satisfied that matters had been settled.
Quill held out his arm to Crope. “I’m Quillan Moxley, and my dog ‘ere
is Big Mox. Any friend of Scurvy’s is a friend of mine.”
Crope took the man’s arm and clasped it, careful not to grip too hard.
Quill didn’t smile and he still looked mean, but the meanness was no longer
directed toward Crope. And that suited Crope just fine.
Quill led the way back to his table, and they sat in silence as they
waited for Broadie to bring the food. Town Dog and Big Mox, hav-
ing sniffed each other’s rears at some length, trotted off to tour the
room as Broadie returned with a tray bearing bread, cheese, cured sausage and a
jug of ale. Crope tried hard not to stare, but something must have given him
away, for Quill said, “Go on. Eat your fill. We don’t wait on ceremony at the
Sign of the Blind Crow.”
Crope ate. It was the best, most delicious meal he had ever had. He had
forgotten the way cheese clung to your teeth when you bit into it, and the way
the crust on fresh bread crunched into flakes. Quill sat back on his hard
wooden chair, keeping his counsel until Crope was done. Occasionally the inn
door would open and Quill would turn his head a fraction and assess whoever walked
in.
When the last of the sausage disappeared down Crope’s throat, Quill
said, “So. What can I do for you?”
Those were the very words Crope had hoped of hearing when he remembered
Scurvy’s ring, but now that he was face-to-face with a man who could help him
he was unable to find the words. He could not speak of his lord.
Quill looked at him thoughtfully, the gold rings on his fingers
glittering as he rubbed a hand across his jaw. “I can find you a place to bed,
probably set you up in a tavern or a coarsehouse keeping order. You’d certainly
put a damper on the fights. But I’ve got a feeling you want something else. Am
I right?”
Miserable, Crope nodded. What he wanted was so fantastic that he might
as well ask for a flying pig.
“Say it,” Quill insisted. “I’m a man of various means.”
Crope took a big breath . . . come to me ... In all the years Crope had known his lord he had never heard him
beg until today. “Need to break into the fortress. Need to save my lord.”
Quill’s eyebrows lifted, and a light of interest entered his cool grey
eyes. “That’s a new one. So. If I understand you rightly you need to enter the
fortress and rescue your master who is being held there?”
Crope nodded. He was relieved at how quickly Quill understood him.
“This lord of yours. Do you know if he’s been held below the Cask or
under the quad ?”
Puzzled Crope said, “Below the pointy tower, the white one.”
“The Splinter.” Quill considered this information for a moment.
“Someone once told me there was a deep chasm beneath there that housed a
chamber lined with iron—I took an ear from him for his perjury. Seems I may
have been hasty.”
Crope nodded. Hasty he understood.
Quill leant forward. “I can’t help you gain entry to the Splinter—
that’s been locked down and sealed shut for years—but I can help you get inside
the fortress.”
“How?” Crope’s heart was beating very fast in anticipation of a grand
scheme. In a way Quill reminded him of his lord; both were clever and capable
men.
Yet when Quill spoke Crope was puzzled, not amazed, for he said very
simply, “You’re going to walk right in.”
Crope listened as the thief explained.
CHAPTER
Harlequins
Effie was growing pretty accustomed to the wagon. It was beginning to
feel as if she’d lived here her whole life. Dregg had begun to seem like one of
those places in bairn’s tales: somewhere you dreamed of but never got to go.
And the thing was she wasn’t sorry one bit. This life of camping and traveling
and waiting for the men who should have picked up the gold half a month back
had become her life, Effie Sevrance’s. She had things she was responsible for:
feeding and brushing down the horses, warming the ale, cooking all food that
didn’t involve meat—roasting game was Clewis Reed’s territory—keeping the wagon
bed clean, doctoring any cuts or grazes, and sometimes even acting as lookout
for the gold men.
Neither Clewis Reed nor Druss Ganlow had spent much time around
children, Effie guessed, for they didn’t treat her like adults usually treated
a child. She was given no special consideration, not fussed over at all, and
that was something she’d grown very much to like. They barked orders at her in
the exact same voices they used for each other. She was a member of the crew
now.
As she scrubbed the black stuff from the base of the cooking pot, she
checked on the positions of Clewis Reed and Druss Ganlow.
Druss was doing man’s business behind a bush close to the river
cliff—she could just see the top of his head—and Clewis was a quarter league
farther to the north, walking the tree line, keeping watch.
They’d been camping these past few days amongst the slate crags and
fire pines of western Ganmiddich, holing up for the storm. The storm had been
quite splendid, Effie decided. So much better when you were out in the middle
of it with only the tree canopies and a stretch of canvas to cover you, than in
a roundhouse all protected by stone. She’d been scared at first, but the inside
of the wagon was so snug, like a cave, and it had already started to feel like
home, and after a while the fear had slipped away of its own accord. As long as
she was inside nothing could hurt her.
Lightning had brought down a tree. The shell was still smoking beyond
the tree line, sending up a line of black smoke that rose vertically in the
calm air. Even though the storm had passed two days earlier, Clewis and Druss
had judged the going too soft for the wagon so far. Even now, runoff was still
spilling down toward the river, the water stained brown with tannin from the
trees.
The river itself was moving swift and high, its waters the color of
mud. Somewhere upstream a saturated bank must have collapsed, for huge chunks
of earth and whole trees complete with root balls sped by from time to time.
The river made Druss and Clewis frown: It was the cause of all their problems
and the reason they had to wait here in the borderlands, unable to return home.
Effie had learned the truth of everything pretty soon after she’d
discovered the gold. Druss Ganlow had been against telling her at first, but
Clewis had pointed out in his slow, rational way that now Effie had seen the
gold with her own two eyes they could either murder or inform her. And since
he, Clewis Reed, could not allow the murdering of a child in circumstances such
as these, that meant they might as well tell Effie enough to ease her mind.
Druss Ganlow hadn’t liked this one bit. After inventing several new combinations
of curse words, he had made Effie swear a dire oath. / will not mention the gold to any
other person, alive or dead, even if tortured with blades and hot coals, and
vow to take this knowledge to
my grave. I do swear this on the lives of Drey and Raina,
and the souls of
Mother and Da.
He had even taken a spoonful of her blood.
The gold, it turned out, had been mined from Blackhail’s own Black
Hole. Two years earlier the miners had been reworking one of the oldest seams,
a full league beneath the balds, at the head of a tunnel called Dark Maiden.
For weeks they had been finding crystals of yellow metal fused to the silver in
the wall of quartz they were breaking. They were just flakes at first, a
scattering of specks, but then the Lode Master ordered a collapse. When the
miners reentered Dark Maiden after the water blast they thought they’d stepped
into another world. Gold, a reef of it three foot wide, stippled the newly
exposed quartz.
The Lode Master had called a meeting. The miners were already in the
business of operating a stone mill and a furnace without Blackhail’s knowledge,
and it was a simple thing for them to refine the gold. Clan need never know. As
Druss Ganlow had already been in business with the miners, carting contraband
silver south to the city holds, he was the man they called upon to turn the
excess gold into goods.
Two years later and the reef had still not run its course. All the tied
miners had stashes of gold. A few had drifted south to spend it, but most simply
hoarded it in cache holes in the shanty. The miners were cautious men, Clewis
said, and their faces showed something close to relief whenever he and Druss
turned up to unburden them of the newly poured rods.
Druss and Clewis were due back there in twelve days, but it did not
look as if they would make it. The city traders who took the gold from them in
return for goods and money on account in Ille Glaive had failed to make the
appointed meeting, and now Druss and Clewis were stuck. The gold men had not
come, and there was little to do but wait and see.
The Wolf River had been running high for fifteen days. Just when it had
looked set to fall the storm hit, and now it was high again. None of the river crossings
were open, and the barges were all beached. Bannen’s Bridge of Boats, which
Effie had learned to her disappointment was little more than a collection of
skiffs and punts roped into a line with boards run across them, had not been
afloat in a month. The gold men had been unable to make the crossing into the
clanholds.
It was all very worrying. Clewis Reed insisted they moved camp every
few days for caution’s sake, for a wagon bearing nine stone of gold was as good
as a sitting duck.
When Effie had first heard Druss mention the weight she had been
impressed. Anwyn Bird had weighed Effie last year on her meat scales and
pronounced her just over four stone. That meant there was enough gold in the
wagon to make two of her. She’d been disappointed when she finally saw it laid
out. Just twenty-four rods the thickness of tapered candles and half their
length. That was all the gold it took to make two Effie Sevrances.
The other things in the baskets were just lading. There was some raw
ore, its lode of silver still entombed in chunks of quartz, a few sacks of
powdered antimony used for making hellfire, and a dozen bars of lead. These
were mostly diversions, Clewis said. They gave the gold something to hide
behind.
Done with scrubbing the breakfast pot, Effie stood. Her knees had
gotten stiff after being so long on the damp earth and they made noises like
cracked knuckles as they locked into place. Druss was done with his man’s
business and was now poking the ground with a long stick. Every so often he
would squint downriver and then look up at the sky. The day seemed fine to
Effie; the grasses and ferns freshly scrubbed by the storm, the sky covered by
the kind of high clouds that seldom meant rain, and the grounded ducks clashing
noisily. Only the harlequins entered the water. The berserkers of the river
birds.
After a time Druss appeared to reach a decision and headed back toward
the wagon. Effie heard him make a high-pitched whistle to summon Clewis from
the trees.
Quickly, she gathered up the breakfast things and the ground tarp and
hauled them to the back of the wagon. Then she returned and set her attention
to the fire. Should she put it out or shouldn’t she? Would they be traveling
downriver or staying put?
Druss told her nothing, but it didn’t look good. Fresh mud had splashed
over the crown of his boots. “Fed the horses their mash yet?” he snapped.
She nodded. No one was going to catch Effie Sevrance not doing her fair
share.
“And the scrape on Boe’s heel?”
“Done.” It had been a keen disappointment to learn that the two matched
ponies who pulled the cart weren’t named Killer and Outlaw after all, but
rather Jigger and Boe.
Druss Ganlow grunted. He tried to think of some other way to catch her
slacking, but couldn’t come up with one, and settled on grunting some more. The
damp air had turned his hair into pale wisps, and he reminded Effie of a plump
and disgruntled baby. His skin was smooth and he had fat-apple cheeks, and if
it hadn’t been for his sharp green eyes the effect of his face might have been
jovial. He hailed Clewis as the Orrlsman approached, and walked forward a few
paces to meet him.
“Any trouble?” he asked.
Clewis Reed shook his head. He had his green antler bow in his fist and
was wearing the long, narrow Orrl cloak that somehow drew its color from the
sky and surrounding landscape. Today it looked a sort of pale, dove grey. Which
was funny because when she’d first seen it in Blackhail she could have sworn it
was almost white. He said, “Are we off then?”
“Mud’s bad. The rain flushed out the last of the snow.”
“We’ve been here four days. That’s too long, especially with a fire
burning to mark our place.”
Druss nodded reluctantly. He always deferred to the Orrlsman on matters
of safety. “We’ll give it a go.
See how the road lies.”
Effie found her hand had gone to her lore as the men spoke. The little
chunk of granite had shifted against her chest. It didn’t feel like a bad
thing, not a warning exactly, more an affirmation of what Clewis said. Best to
be on the road. Away. Quickly she looked at the stand of fire pines that marked
the forest border, knowing as she did so that a man more experienced than her
had just been doing the very same thing and had pronounced it safe. She saw nothing,
and forced her mind to other things. The fire needed to be snuffed.
They worked as a team to get the wagon ready and the horses hitched.
When Effie had completed her tasks she found she had a spare few minutes
outside as Druss secured the load, and Clewis Reed stretched a line of damp
arrows beneath the canvas to dry. Careful not to stray too far from the wagon,
she circled the immediate border of the camp, kicking up mud, squashing down
hot ashes and horse pats: concealing signs of their occupation. It was just a
precaution, she told herself. Nothing more.
When the wagon finally shuddered into motion an entire flock of wood
ducks took off in fright. Watching them through the canvas flap, Effie took
their flight as a sign. You knew you’d been somewhere too long when the ducks
had mistaken your wagon for a landmark and were shocked when it started to
move.
The going was slow. Runoff had turned the road into mud. The wagon
would lurch forward, rock to a halt as the mud sucked at the wheels, roll back
a bit and then move forward once more as Druss cracked his whip.
Clewis had chosen to sit up front with Druss on the driver’s seat, his
braced bow lying across both men’s laps. He was worried about his arrows, Effie
could tell. In stormy weather the damp got into them no matter what you did to
protect them, and a damp arrow must be delicately dried. Clewis said it was
better to shoot with a damp arrow than one that had been warped by too much
heat. Damp meant loss of power. Warped meant loss of accuracy. It wasn’t a hard
choice. The bow was different, he explained; that was waxed and glazed.
Effie had thought about this for a moment, and then asked, “Why don’t
you wax your arrow shafts then?”
He had looked at her for a very long time, his old dignified face
perfectly still, and then replied in a pondering voice, “Do you know, I don’t
believe anyone’s thought of that before.”
Effie had been stupidly pleased. She grinned now, just thinking about it,
letting her imagination spin out a life where she passed from swordsman to
hammerman, from woodsman to stone mason, from pig farmer to head cook, making
insightful observations on their crafts. Effie the Wise. Effie of the Keen Eye.
Deep Horse Sense Effie. That made her giggle out loud, and
she had a picture of herself wearing a horse’s head wandering from clan to
clan. Perhaps Anwyn could make her one, once she told the clan matron how to
vastly improve the texture of her bannock and brown buns.
Once she’d started giggling she couldn’t stop. Anwyn would kill her.
The hammerman would kill her. She’d have to be Effie of the Flight Foot before
she even thought of being wise.
As she hugged her sore stomach, her lore jumped. It was such a
deliberate movement, an actual moving away from her skin and then a dropping
back, that it made a knocking sound as it hit her breastbone.
Effie felt her skin tighten all at once. She stood, and then was
immediately thrown back into her seat by the wagon lurching to a halt. As she
stood a second time she felt the wagon list as its front wheels sank deep into
the mud. “Clewis!” she cried. “Clewis!”
He turned to look at her through the break in the canvas behind the driver’s
seat. “Everything’s fine, Effie. We’re just stuck in the mud.”
She shook her head at him. “No. No.”
Druss spun around. “Effie. Stop your jabbering. There’s work to be done
here.” With that he pushed himself off from the driver’s seat and landed in the
mud.
Clewis Reed looked at her a long moment, his pale eyes making a
judgment. After a few seconds he nodded once, gravely, terribly, and then went
to join Druss to inspect the damage.
Effie dashed to the back of the wagon to check the trees. They’d only
traveled a few leagues, and the terrain had not changed much. The tree line had
crept nearer to the riverbank, and the river cliffs were lower and had broken
down into flaky banks of slate. She looked hard but could see no movement in the
trees.
Unable to bear it any longer, Effie pushed the tent flap apart and
stepped out.
Clewis and Druss were standing by the right front wheel. Druss was
looking down, hands on hips, shaking his head. The wheel had sunk a full foot
and a half into the mud. Clewis was not looking at the wheel. His gaze was on
the trees. He held his long, elegant bow in his left hand, his bracing hand,
and there was tension in his cal-lused fingers. There was an arrow in his
right, and his arrowcase was mounted high on his back, level with his left
shoulder, so that the flights of his arrows brushed against his silvery hair. Ease of draw. Effie had grown up around enough bowmen to know
that.
Without looking at her, he said, “Effie, we’re going to need plenty of rocks
to sink into the mud above that wheel. Why don’t you head down the cliff to the
water’s edge and pick some. The best slate’s to be had there.”
“Water’s edge!” Druss exclaimed. “There’s rocks enough on top.”
“Then fetch them,” Clewis replied with absolute calm. “Effie has her task. You have yours.”
Druss Ganlow’s green eyes looked from Clewis to Effie and back, picking
up the thread of tension between them. Effie saw him take in the exact same
things as she had done seconds earlier: Clewis’ fingers, his arrow, his bow.
Abruptly, he nodded. “We’ll be out of here in a quarter. Don’t stray
too far, girl. I want you back the minute you’re called.”
Effie held his green gaze for half a moment, nodded, and then he was
gone. She saw him draw his longknife as he walked away.
“Go on, Effie,” Clewis said to her when Druss was out of earshot. “Go
and pick some slate and watch the harlequins. If you keep your head very low
and stay very still they’ll come to you. Remember that. Low and still.”
Effie’s throat began to ache. Both of them—one man she hadn’t liked
very much and one she suddenly realized she cared for deeply— were making sure
she was safe. She couldn’t speak, knew she didn’t dare speak. Clewis Reed was
from a different age. His beard, his hair, the style of his cloak were
unchanged from the time of the River Wars. He was a man of dignity. And she
suddenly knew what she must do. She bowed to him, inclining her head and neck
from a point in her upper spine. Like the maidens of Clan Orrl.
As he watched her a quiet sadness passed over his face. He bowed back
to her deeply, from the waist. “Lady.”
She turned then. If she had not she would have failed him. And she did
not want to fail Clewis Reed. She wanted very much to be worthy of him.
The climb down to the river was a blur. Her body worked without her
mind; her feet choosing ledges of their own accord and her hands dutifully
following. Even as she reached the watermark and the first frothy wave lapped
across the bridge of her boot, she heard the unmistakable thunder of hooves.
Druss shouted something. One of the horses, either Jigger or Boe,
whinnied nervously and pulled against his hitch. Effie strained for more,
cursing the river for its noise. Her stupid body was shaking uncontrollably.
Spray gusted over her in a wet slap, instantly soaking her cloak and dress. The
drumming of hooves had changed its pattern, separating from a unified gallop
into many separate gaits. Effie saw what was happening in her mind’s eye: The
raiders had broken free of the trees and reached the river strand, and were now
spreading wide to flank the wagon. Clewis would be standing there, close to the
sunken wheel, his bow drawn, choosing his target.
He is calm, for a bowman must always be calm. His arrows are damp, and
this means that he must delay release of the string. He waits for the perfect
moment. Thuc. One of the raiders down. That
makes some of the raiders rein in their mounts. They had not counted on a
master bowman. Even as they reevaluate the old man by the wagon, Clewis picks
off another member of their company. This angers the head raider, a
pale-skinned man with a half-moon ax.
With cold, pale eyes he watches as Clewis picks another target, waited
until Clewis’ gaze and attention are fully focused upon that one man before
galloping forward with breathtaking speed and chopping off Clewis’ head.
Blood, so much blood, pumping more powerfully than the river. The pale
man with the half-moon ax smirks, even as he and his horse are sprayed with
blood. He makes the mistake of letting his ax rest, for he cannot see behind
the wagon, where Druss Ganlow waits with his long knife. Just as the pale man
had chosen his moment, Druss Ganlow chooses his. The pale man turns his horse
to greet his company and accept their accolades—and that is when Druss Ganlow
strikes.
Even from here Effie hears his call.
BLACKHAIL!
The pale man reads the danger in the eyes of his companions, but he is
too late. The knife slides in, through the ribs, through the left lung, through
the diaphragm to the spleen. The pale man twists in the saddle, gasping,
surprised. He is a Dhoonesman, Effie realizes quite suddenly. And Druss looks
at him and smiles.
We are Blackhail, first amongst clans. And we will not
cower and we will not hide. And we will have our revenge.
Those are his last words, and as the remaining company of Dhoonesmen
descend upon him and cut him apart, Effie thinks, / must live to tell his tale to my clan.
So she clings to the rocks and bears witness, and the river, which
should feel cold, warms her as the harlequins speed by.
CHAPTER
The Racklands
“Today we enter the Racklands,” Ark had said as they broke camp that morning,
yet as the day wore on Ash could detect little change in the forest. It was alive here, that much she knew, for she’d heard streams
bubbling and loons calling, and the deep-belly groans of blue bears. Somehow
over the past seven days the Deadwoods had turned into livewoods, and Ash was
inclined to believe that the live-ness had a lot to do with its distance from
the Want.
Snow was still on the ground here, a crisp white blanket littered with
pine needles and cones. When the horses’ hooves cracked it, they punched
perfect holes that held their edge. Overhead the sky was a brilliant
late-winter blue. A horned moon showed low in the south, so pale that you had
to look for it. The sun was up and rising, its warmth nearly undetectable by
Ash but sufficient to coax the sharp scent of resin from the pines.
It was, Ash thought, the most beautiful day she could remember since
passing through the clanholds with Raif.
Raif. She had no sense of him, she
realized with a small shock. No sense that he was out there, living any sort of
life.
Breathing deeply, she filled her lungs with cold sparkling air, held it
for a moment, and then let it and Raif go. She was Sull now.
As the morning wore on, the forest floor began to rise. Ash spotted a
stand of silver firs on a ridgetop, giant trees as tall as thirty men, with
their boughs spreading as wide as buildings. Other trees began to appear—blue
spruce and lacebark pine and white hemlock—and gradually the colors of the
forest changed from browns and greens to cool silvery blues. When a needle-thin
creek cut across their path, Ark and Mai dismounted. Both men stripped off
their heavy gloves, knelt on the creek bank and drew water over their faces. We’re here, Ash thought, sensing some shift in her bearings
that she could put no name to. We’re
in land held by the Sull.
She jumped from her horse and led it to drink. The earth felt solid
beneath her booted feet. The creek carried a little breeze with it, and Ash let
it lift the hair from her shoulders and cool the riding blisters on her palms.
Below her, the water ran so perfectly clear that she could count the rocks in
the creekbed. It was good to be here.
The creek was only a few feet wide, and Ash was suddenly determined to
jump it. So she did just that, taking a little run and landing in the hackled
snow on the other side. The horses looked at her as if she were mad. Ark
Veinsplitter frowned, keeping his dignity. Mai Naysayer put a foot to the
stirrup and mounted the blue, and after trotting the stallion back a few paces,
he jumped the creek on horseback. He didn’t once break a smile, but there was
crinkling around his ice blue eyes.
Turning to look at his hass, he said, “There is no shame in
wading if you are afraid.“
Ash pushed her lips together to stop herself from giggling. Ark stood
on the far bank and frowned at them. Unhurriedly, he turned to Ash’s white and
slapped it firmly on the rump, directing the horse across the creek. He did the
same with his grey, and then—bunching his great wolverine cloak in his fists
until it was raised as high as his boots—he waded solemnly across the creek.
“My feet are much cooled” was the only thing he said to them before
mounting his horse.
He made them ride like fiends to catch up with him.
By the time they slowed Ash’s
jaw ached from grinning. She was out of breath—and the less thought given to
her saddle sores the bet-
ter—but she was perfectly content. These were her men. And she would
ride with them forever if they would let her.
Yet she had made no move to help
Ark when he’d been driven to his knees by the maeraith. Ash glanced at Ark’s left wrist, and felt her good
spirits float away. He had not yet pulled his gloves back on, and the bandage
showed. She had wound it herself this morning, boiling strips torn from her
linen shift to use as dressing. The strips had been spotless five hours ago,
but now there was a dark stain above the cut. She worried about that. The
Naysayer had taken some gashes, but they were shallow and the skin was already
knitting together as it healed. Ark had taken a cut to the head of his ulna
where it met his wrist. Bone had been exposed. Ark shrugged it off. His hand
was stiff but he used it. If there had been a loss of articulation he covered
it. Yet he couldn’t cover the dark fluid leaking from the unhealed cut, and Mai
Naysayer couldn’t cover the fact that he had refused to stitch it. Ash knew of
only two reasons why a surgeon would not close a wound, and neither eased her
mind. Infection, or bone fragments lodged in the flesh.
Yet Ark’s spirits seemed good, especially since they had crossed the
border into the Racklands. Ash thought of asking him about the wound, but
decided to wait until later. She didn’t want to break the mood.
Pulling alongside him, she said, “Will we see Sull settlements soon?”
He shook his head. “We travel the northern forests, and some amongst us
make homes along the Greenwater and Innerway to the north, and others still
live in remote places we will not pass, but no Sull lives in this land. We
claim and defend it, but others who are not wholly Sull make homes here.”
Hearing the censure in his voice, she said, “Trenchlanders?”
“It is so.” He held his head perfectly level and continued to look
straight ahead. She thought he wouldn’t say any more, but after a moment he
continued. “In a few days we will pass into the lowlands they are named for.
The earth is soft there, and the river clans name the Flow has changed its
course many times. All the ancient course changes may still be read in the
land, and from Hell’s Town one may look upon them. Some hold they look like
trenches.”
Somehow this offended his pride, but Ash wasn’t sure why. She made an
adjustment with the reins to guide the white around a thick hump of rootwood
poking through the snow. “What do you
believe they look like?”
“The Sull named the lowlands Glor AraJ^ü, Land of Changing Rivers.”
Here it was, the source of his pride. The Sull had named the land one
thing, yet the Trenchlanders had moved in and named it something else. “And the
Flow?”
Ark sat his horse stiffly. “The Sull named it Kith Masaeri, River of Many Ways.”
They had names for all the lands they’d passed through between here and
the Storm Margin, she realized. It had all been theirs, the entire Northern
Territories, and now they had only the Racklands left. She didn’t understand
how they had lost so much. Everyone in the city holds and clanholds feared
them. She had seen with her own eyes how fiercely they fought, how they had
knowledge and equipment superior to those of any other people in the North.
Their horses, their swords, even their strength and stamina were unmatched. Yet
somehow they had been losing ground for centuries—longer even. Thousands upon
thousands of years.
Ash looked up. The sun had
fallen below the tree canopy, but the sky was still a deep, cloudless blue. On
a rise in the distance she could see a break in the forest, a thick tract of
burned stumps and charred tree skeletons that stretched beyond the horizon. She
had so many questions for Ark Veinsplitter and Mai Naysayer it was hard to know
where to start.
Nodding her head toward the tract of scorched land, she asked, “What
happened there?”
He did not follow her gaze, but said in a harsh voice, “Trench-landers
burn the forest. It is their way. Their hunters set fires to flush game. If
they are lucky the wind aids them, and the animals flee toward their spears. If
they are unlucky the wind forms a storm and the fire escapes their control.
Tens of thousands of trees and animals are destroyed. Hunters die. Only the
cindermen profit, for it is their task to walk the smoking earth and claim
carcasses.” His nostrils flared in anger. “Often beneath a charred pelt the
meat is good.”
Ash shuddered. “Why do you put up with them on your land?” At last he
turned to look at her, his sable eyes hard. “Because they are Sull, part of
them. We share ties of history and blood. And even one drop of Trenchlander
blood is worth more than a sea of clan or city blood.”
They fell into silence as the low boughs of a silver fir forced them to
duck. Ash felt icy-cold needles tickle the back of her neck. Mai had ridden on
ahead while they were speaking, drawing his bow from the marten-fur case slung
over the blue’s rump. He braced it now as Ash watched, and then pulled an arrow
from a hard-sided cylinder attached to his gear belt. Turning in the saddle, he
raised the arrow in signal to his hass.
He was off to hunt.
“Are the Trenchlands dangerous?” Ash asked, her eyes following the
Naysayer’s blue as it effortlessly accelerated to a gallop, its hooves churning
up clouds of snow.
“Daughter,” Ark Veinsplitter said, cutting in to her thoughts. “Every
land we walk in is unsafe.”
The day cooled quickly as the sun began to set. Ash heard unfamiliar
animal calls come from deep within the forest. The trees creaked, and sometimes
vibrations from the horses’ hooves made them shed their load of snow. Ark
seemed to be heading for a particular place to camp, for he had ceased
following Mai’s path and had taken a sharp turn north between two massive
paired spruce. After a short climb they crested a ridge and the trees began to
thin. Ash caught a glimpse of standing water, and then Ark led the way into a
clearing and called a halt.
Lacebark pines, their trunks a patchwork of flaking silver and gray
bark, ringed a gently sloping glade. The snow had shrunk back into islands, exposing
patches of velvety moss and dark ferns. Tiny plants with leaves like needles
had forced their heads through the snow; most were in bud, but a few had opened
to reveal violet flowers shaped like stars. Ash’s gaze was drawn toward the far
side of the clearing where a length of broken wall, not much higher than her
waist, rose starkly from the snow.
Ark dismounted, and walked toward the wall. The light was fading
quickly now, and the snow was glowing blue. The Sull warrior raised his arm, in
readiness to touch the stone. He had his back toward her so she couldn’t see
his face, but for a moment his shoulders were very still. Muscles in his neck
moved as he spoke a word. Ash thought he might open a vein, but his silver
letting knife remained at his waist, its chain glimmering softly as he
breathed.
Abruptly he turned and walked back, and soon they were busy stripping
branches for the fire and raising the corral for the horses. The Naysayer
returned not much later, leading the blue. An eviscerated whitetail deer fawn
was laid over the horse’s back. When Ark came forward to help with the
quartering, Mai crossed over to the broken wall.
Watching them, Ash made a decision, and before both Far Riders could
get their hands bloody with the butchering, she said, “The wards, the night in
the Dead woods. Why did they fail?”
Ark and the Naysayer exchanged a glance. Ash knew her voice had been a
bit too loud, but she pressed her lips together and stuck by it, looking from
man to man. They owed her answers. And she was going to get some. Pointedly,
she sat on a rug by the fire and waited.
They left the deer carcass in the snow and drew near the fire. Ark
crouched on the opposite side of the fire, but the Naysayer chose to stand.
“Ash March,” Ark said, reaching beneath his cloak. “No fail-safe exists
to ward against the creatures of the Blind. When the maeraith broke the circle I awakened. This Sull gives thanks
to the First Gods for that.” He pulled out the cloth pouch that held the wards,
and handed it above the flames to Ash.
As she took the pouch, Ash caught a glimpse of Ark’s bandaged wrist.
The stain had spread, separating into rings of color that bled from black to
red.
The pouch was made of soft shammy, and was surprisingly heavy. When she
emptied the contents onto the rug she was disappointed to see little chips of
grey rock run through with white veins. They felt like rock, too, rough and
inert. Ark watched her turn them in her hand, hold them to her ear, and rub
them together like flints before finally speaking.
“All the pieces come from the same wellstone. A maygi shattered it, and when the pieces are separated the
memory of their wholeness remains. Yet they are stone and cannot move. Place
them at a distance from each other and you may feel their attraction.“
Ash took the two biggest pieces and placed one to either side of her,
then passed her hand through the space separating them. Something, a faint
tingling like the beginning of numbness, traveled across her palm ... and then
was gone. It was so tenuous a sensation that she doubted she’d felt anything at
all, and tried it again. This time, even though she knew what to expect, she
barely registered the weak prickle along her skin. She looked at Ark. “Do you
feel this, when the space is broken?”
He shook his head. “Only when I complete a circle with the stones.” She
looked from Ark to the Naysayer as she gathered the fragments and emptied them
back into the bag. They had revealed one of their secrets, but she wondered quite
suddenly if it had been a distraction, to lure her away from all the others.
Abruptly, she let the bag drop. “What happened to the body of the maeraith ? It was there when I finally slept, but had
disappeared when I awoke.”
Again there was that glance exchanged between the Far Riders. Ash had
seen the stain the thing’s body had left on the frost, the outline of itself
drawn in mottled black, and the deep trench burned by its sword. Ark said, “The
Naysayer dragged the remains away to a place where it would not disturb you.
When a creature of shadow is slain its flesh is consumed by flames. Shadowflesh
burns cold, one cell at at time, from the inside out. The flames consume the
interior, but never the shell, the skin. After maer dan is burned the outer shell fades over time. Every
sunrise robs substance from it until it becomes nothing more a shadow on the
earth.”
“And the sword?” Ark’s eyes showed surprise.
“I saw the trench,” Ash insisted. “The voided steel burned a foot of
earth.”
It was the Naysayer who answered her. “Voided steel is forged from an
absence of matter and light. Its potency continues after its wielder is slain.
It burns through the earth, sinking deep like gold in a furnace. How long it
continues sinking before its power fades is something this Sull does not know.
I took the sword from the soft earth it had fallen on and set it to rest on a
saddle of hard rock. This Sull cannot do more than that.“
Ash found she had to look away from Mai Naysayer’s ice blue eyes. There
was something she hadn’t seen before within them, and it unsettled her. He
didn’t possess the infallible strength and knowledge her imagination had
bestowed upon him. He had limits. . . and he knew it. Both the Far Riders were
vulnerable, and she wished with all her heart they were not.
They had done so much for her. Mai surely hadn’t slept that night in
the Deadwoods. He had stood watch, slain the maeraith, and then dragged away the body so she wouldn’t
have to look upon it when she awoke. And Ark. Ark had been the one who had
asked Mai to do it. Take it
from this place,
hass, she could hear him say. Our
daughter has been through enough this night.
Ash looked beyond the Far Riders to the clearing. It was full dark now,
and the stars were out, silvering the trees and the edges of the standing wall.
A snowy owl was marking its territory with a deep three-note call. Who-who-who. She had a choice here, she decided. She could
leave the subject of the maeraith, or she could force them to
tell her more. There was something about being here, this first night in the
Racklands, that had freed the Far Riders from normal constraints. She did not
know if this would last, so she hardened herself against her feelings and
spoke.
“What killed the maeraith} I saw it take many blows from
Ark without slowing . . . and yet...”
“The Naysayer put steel through its heart,” Ark finished for her. “Only
that will halt them.”
Oh
god. Raif. Ash
could still see him, that night in the Copper Hills. Three Bluddsmen heart-killed.
And then there was the day she had first set eyes upon him, outside Vaingate.
Four brothers-in-the-watch slain with arrows to their hearts. She felt her own
heart racing as she thought on it. How calm he had been, how it seemed as if he
had been born for it. Slowly, her understanding of events began to turn, like a
great stone wheel grinding on its axle. Raif.
Almost she could make sense of it, but the harder she tried to grab
hold of it the more it turned away from her, and she was left with little but
the certainty that Raif had a part to play in this thing she had started.
Ark and the Naysayer were quiet, watching her. The deer carcass had
bled out while they’d been speaking, dyeing the surrounding snow black.
“What is happening?” she asked them. “I need to know more.” Ark nodded,
heavily. The time had come. “You are Mas Rahkar, the Reach. You were born to break the boundary between worlds. We
first heard of your existence from He Who Listens, but we had been expecting
you for many years. Every thousand years the shadows rise and the long night
descends. Ice caps grow and recede, oceans rise and fall, lands dry to deserts
and others sink beneath the sea. All things lie in balance, and all must
change. We have lived through ten hundred years of light, and now dusk falls.
“As Sull we know and accept this, and stand ready to fight. But we grow
few. Our lands diminish. Four thousand years ago every blade of grass in the
Northern Territories was ours. We could ride for months in any direction and
see no end to our bounty. And before that we held the Soft Lands to the south,
and twenty thousand years before that everything between the Horn of Little
Hope and Time’s End was ours. Man was young then, and we did not deign to
notice him. We let him claim the places we did not need—the deserts and edges
and mountains—and let him drink the water we judged unclear and hunt the beasts
we held unsound. Some say we should have known better, for we are Sull, the
oldest of living races, and nothing is new in our history.”
Ark paused for a moment, to stir the fire. Five paces behind him stood
the Naysayer, proud and unmoving, lit solely by starlight. When Ark’s voice
came again the pride was woven with sadness.
“The First Gods birthed us to fight the darkness. That is our destiny
and our curse. The Old Ones in the Time Before had fought and failed, and even
as we launched our ships from the Far Shore they lay wasted. As we prospered
they grew weak, and we moved into the lands they abandoned and took on their
battles as our own.
“Yet we are just one people, and the darkness grows ever stronger.
Every new assault is more terrible than the last. More and more souls are added
to their reckoning, and the armies of the Endlords swell. They have taken our
kings and queens and our greatest warriors, and each morning we pray to the God
of Creatures Hunted that today we may not meet our ancestors in battle.
“The maeraith who attacked the night in the
Deadwoods had once been a mighty knight, but he was not Sull, and for that we
give thanks.”
Ash realized Ark had a small carving in his hands, a chunk of rock
crystal with smooth edges that he warmed in his fists as he spoke. It was one
of the talismans they laid about the fire each night.
“Ash March,” Ark said, looking her straight in the eye. “When we found
you in the Storm Margin we knew what you were. We had a choice: Kill or save
you. You were not Sull and you were not bound to us, but we knew you searched
for the Cavern of Black Ice, and I asked the Naysayer if we should put steel to
your throat and he said Nay.
She tries to discharge her power safely. Let us aid her. And so we did. We feared many
things at that time, but we did not think to fear that the worst had already
happened. The Blindwall had been cracked prior to our meeting. You had
discharged your power earlier. Perhaps it was nothing to you, a simple lashing
out, but it was enough to weaken the substance of the wall.
“Creatures worked upon that flaw and work upon it still. Already what
was a hair-thin split has been forced wider. The Taken can force their way
through one by one ... but things are stirring in the Blind, dread creatures
who once walked the earth and possess the power to tear it open.
“Not all things in the Blind are men or Sull. The Endlords have existed
as long as the gods, and together they have overseen many ages. Dragons,
giants, igols, behemoths, basilisks, krakens, shadow-changers, wralls. .. and
the Shatan. The Shatan when they are unmade become Shatan Maer. They lose nothing of their shape or strength, and
we fear one moves toward the flaw.”
Ash felt her mouth go dry. Had she heard accusation in Ark’s voice? She
couldn’t be sure. “What will happen if one breaks through?”
Ark’s smile was sweet and bitter all at once. “Ash March, this Sul]
believes you ask the wrong question. It is not if but when.”
“When then?” she heard the tremor in her voice. “When they break through the
number of unmade creatures escaping from the Blind will increase. Each
successive passing will tear the rent wider until whole armies can march
through the breach.”
“And the Endlords?”
“There are nine Endlords, and though we know their names we will not
speak them. Never, in the history of all
our battles, have all nine ever ridden out from the Blind. We believe it would
mean the end of the world if they did.”
“But—”
“Nay, Ash March,” cautioned the Naysayer, the first time he had spoken
to her since entering the glade. “Some things are best not said. To speak of
the Endlords draws their attention, and that I would not wish upon any here
this night.”
“Are we not safe here in the Racklands?” Although she had asked almost
the same question earlier of Ark Veinsplitter, she couldn’t help herself. But
straightaway, she regretted it, for Mai Naysayer only ever gave one answer to
any question ever asked.
Nay.
She waited, but he said no more.
The night had cooled and deepened, and the stars were turning above
them. The little sliver of moon was back, and Ash watched it for awhile.
Finally, she looked to Ark Veinsplitter. She had one question left, but she was
almost afraid to speak it. “The touch of an Endlord is enough to make a man
unmade?” Ark nodded. “Then how do the maeraith
unmake one ?”
He did not look at his wrist. “If we are killed by voided steel we are
unmade.”
“And if one is wounded?”
Again came that bittersweet smile. “One fights.” He stood to quarter
the carcass, and the conversation was done.
CHAPTER
Chief-in-Exile
Bram sometimes thought he was going mad. He had been bought and sold to
Castlemilk, but was now heading west to Gnash—at the head of his own company, no
less. It was all Robbie’s idea, of course. Who better to send a message to
Skinner Dhoone than the Thorn King’s own flesh and blood?
The company was a small one, and Bram didn’t fool himself that he was
anything but its token leader. Guy Morloch and Diddie Daw and two other swift
horsemen rode with him, and Bram seriously doubted that they’d listen to him if
he shouted “Bluddsmen on the
road!,” let
alone issued an order.
Guy Morloch rode at the fore, his Dhoone-blue cloak spreading wide in
the rising wind. They had been on the road for over two days and had just
crossed bounds into the Gnashhold. A well-traveled road ran between Castlemilk
and Gnash, and once the Milk was forded they’d made good time. The land here
was lightly forested with old hardwoods—a good hunting ground for deer and
boar—and every so often they caught glimpses of the River Gloze as it ran east
to join the Flow. The storm that had shaken the clanholds ten days back had
left everything green and moist. New grasses had sprung up overnight and
bluebells were in flower around the feet of ancient oaks.
Even the sun was attempting to shine, though truly it was bitterly
cold. Bram’s cheeks were hot from riding at gallop into the wind. He was glad
of the cold and the haste, glad of the long days in the saddle and the dry,
six-hour camps, glad because it left him too exhausted to think.
Here,
Bram. Take this. I had Old Mother weave it for you.
No. He wouldn’t think of Robbie. Yet even as he tried to push his
brother from him, he could still see Robbie’s hands on the cloak. Dhoone blue
it was, just like Guy Morloch’s, only a little bit shorter and shabbier. No
fisher fur, or thistle clasps. Bram had held it to his face and smelled it; it
smelled of Old Mother’s sweat and Robbie’s guilt.
What was the point of giving a Dhoone cloak to someone who had been
sold to another clan? Don’t
worry, Robbie
had said to him that night after the negotiation with Wrayan Castlemilk was
completed. / told her she
can’t have you till Dhoone is won, and who knows what may happen between now
and then.
Robbie had cuffed him then, grinned one of his charming grins, and walked away.
Two days later there came the cloak.
Bram frowned, trying hard not to give in to weariness. He knew Guy
Morloch and the others had not expected him to keep up with them, and had been
surprised by his skill in the saddle. Part of Bram had discovered he liked
surprising people, and he was determined he wouldn’t fall back.
Ahead, Guy raised his arm, signaling a slowdown and a slight change in
course. The Gnashhouse lay half a day’s ride directly west, but they were
heading to the Old Round, and that lay nearer, along the Gloze. The company
turned north until it hit the riverbank and then followed its course due west.
Many songs had been written
about the Gloze. It was said to be the most beautiful river in the clanholds,
its water green and clear, and its banks gently sloping and grown over with
moss. Old willows tapped into its waters, and it fed countless pools where
water lilies bloomed and kingfishers hunted. Bram knew many of the ballads, sad
songs where maids and clansmen met and parted, or where pitched battles were
fought “On the rolling banks
of the GlozeT Thinking
of the songs made him wish for his stringboard. It had been lost the night
Bludd invaded the Dhoonehold .. . such a small loss amongst so many that he had
never mentioned it to anyone. Algis Gillow had taught him how to play, how to
find and finger the chords. Old Algis had never tired of telling anyone who
listened that in his day it was proper for a Dhoonesman to play at least one of
three things: the strings, the drums or the pipes. Bram hadn’t seen Algis
Gillow in half a year, and it wouldn’t surprise him if the old man was dead.
“Bram. Where’s your new cloak?”
Bram looked over to see Diddie Daw drawing abreast of him. The fierce
little swordsman was dark-skinned and golden-eyed, and people said his mother
had slept with the forest folk. When Bram didn’t immediately answer, he said,
“Best draw it on. We’re charged to make a good showing at the Round.”
Diddie paced ahead, leaving Bram to bring up the rear. Four men ahead
of him now, every one of them in fine blue cloaks.
Here,
Bram. Take this. I had Old Mother weave it for you.
Bran let out an soft breath. Even Robbie’s gifts had thorns. It wasn’t
just guilt that had given rise to the cloak, there was self-interest too. This
was the first company Robbie had ever sent to meet with Skinner Dhoone, and
that company must befit a king. Robbie Dun Dhoone couldn’t very well send out
his brother looking less stately than one of his sworn men. His pride wouldn’t
allow it.
Turning in the saddle, Bram reached back to pull the thing from his
gelding’s pannier. The cloak was creased, and three days of sitting in damp
leather above the horse’s rump had done little to improve its smell. Bram
grimaced as he shook it out. He used his father’s old cloakpin to secure it,
and then carefully folded his old cloak away. When the visit was done he’d want
it back.
The company was moving at a brisk trot now, and the mid-afternoon sun
shone in their faces. The trees had begun to thin, and sheep and cattle were
out amongst the grazes. Gnash was a large and wealthy clanhold, with many thousands
of acres of rich black soil. Three rivers served them, the Flow, the Gloze and
the Tarrel. Bram had been here many times when Maggis Dhoone was alive and
chief, yet he had never seen or visited the Old Round.
It was the old Gnash roundhouse, he knew that much, abandoned a
thousand years earlier after Blackhail had torched it. Some violent dispute
over Gnash’s northwestern reach had resulted in a fire that legend held could
be seen from as far away as the Dhoonehouse. Bram didn’t believe that, but he
did wonder about the fire. Stone buildings were hard to torch: They would often
blacken but stand. The Scarpehouse had been doused with oil by Orrl marksmen
shooting bladder arrows before it was set alight, but by all accounts it had
still made a poor fire. The collapse had come two days later when one of the
crucial supporting timbers had given way. Somehow the draft created by the
collapse made the fire spring back to life, and this time it burned inside as
well as out.
Bram wondered about the Old Round. Gnash had not rebuilt it, and
instead had chosen to relocate their roundhouse seven leagues to the west, on
the southern banks of the Tarrel. It could be defensive, he supposed, for a
full three rivers now stood between Blackhail and Gnash.
Often Bram found himself thinking of such things, working out
strategies in his head. He liked to know the reason behind events, and
sometimes wished he had been born in Withy or Wellhouse where the histories and
sum of clan knowledge was kept. A little voice inside him said Too bad Robbie never sold you there. Instantly, Bram regretted it
but the voice was hard to set aside.
As the company emerged from a copse of water oaks they were greeted by
the sight of nine armed and helmed Dhoonesmen riding at canter toward them. Big
men, with blond braids whipping clear of their thornhelms and the blue steel
drawn but held at rest, crossed the length of pitched graze, scattering sheep.
“Easy,” commanded Guy Morloch, slowing to a walk. “Bram. Trot ahead and
give the sign of no-contest.”
Bram nodded and drew his sword, kicking his stallion forward as the
other four men fell back. It was proper in situations like this for the leader
of a company to draw fire away from his men by raising his sword above his
head—one hand on the grip, the other closed around the point—indicating no
contest. But there was more at work here, Bram knew. It was galling for
seasoned warriors to appear so vulnerable, especially when three of the four
would be yielding to their own clansmen. And Bram knew he was small for his
age. Fifteen, and not much taller than a child. Guy Morloch was counting on
that smallness to give the Dhoonesmen pause.
The point of Bram’s blade had been ground less than five days back, on
the swordmill at Castlemilk, and he could feel it biting through his
boiled-leather gloves. His heart felt big and out of place, and he thanked the
Stone Gods that his gelding was easy beneath him and not taking advantage of
the slack reins. The head Dhoones-man sent out a fist, slowing his men. Bram
could not see his eyes through the thornhelm.
Coming to a banking halt a hundred paces away, the head Dhoonesman
cried out, “In the name of the Dhoone chief, who comes here ?”
Bram hoped that from this distance the man couldn’t see his sword
shake. He concentrated on holding it level as he spoke. “Bram Cormac, Robbie
Dhoone’s brother, come to treat with the chief-in-exile, Skinner Dhoone.”
The head warrior pulled off his helm and shook out his braids. His face
was flushed with trapped heat and sweat, and his skin was thickly laid with
tattoos. Bram watched his gaze travel to Guy Morloch, Diddie Daw, and the other
two swordsmen. Bram felt for Jordie Sarson as the man’s gaze rested upon him
and his lip tightened in contempt. Just six weeks earlier Jordie Sarson had
counted himself amongst Skinner’s men, but he had defected to Robbie Dhoone on
the Milk, and now had returned as a member of Robbie’s company. Jordie kept his
face impassive, but his skin was the pale kind that showed every change beneath
it, and Bram saw spots of color rising on his neck.
“Take me to Skinner Dhoone,” Bram was surprised to hear himself say.
“My message will not wait upon custom.” With that he low-
i
ered and sheathed his sword, and stared levelly at the head warrior
until he had forced the man to blink.
The head warrior exchanged glances with his men. Most had followed
their leader’s example and pulled off their helms, and Bram found himself recognizing
several faces. Turning his horse, the head warrior addressed his men. “Ransom
their weapons, and accompany them at canter to the Round.” He kicked spurs into
horseflesh and started back at gallop across the graze.
Guy Morloch hissed something under his breath. Diddie Daw muttered, “No
sense fighting it, man,” and unhooked his scabbard from his sword belt and let
it fall upon the earth. Bram did the same, and Jordie and Mangus Eel followed
suit. Guy Morloch relinquished last. No warrior liked to have his weapons
ransomed, but only a fool would travel to a warring clan and not expect it. At
least the Dhoonesmen didn’t further insult them by searching their bodies for
hand knives and other weapons, and one of their number simply dismounted and
collected the swords.
When the formalities were done, the Dhoonesmen arranged themselves in
point around the visitors, and led the way back to the Round.
Somehow Bram found himself maintaining his place at the head of the
company. The land was rich here, and soon graze gave way to ploughed fields.
Crofters’ stone-built cottages nestled in little valleys surrounded by
hedgerows.
The sun was very low now, beaming straight into Bram’s eyes, and he
found it difficult to see the Old Round at first. He had expected something
broken and charred, but had not counted on the force of nature. Exactly half of
the old roundhouse still stood, forming the shape of a half-moon. The part that
had collapsed was gone, stone and all, but the outline of its foundation could
still be read beneath the gravel court that had replaced it. The standing half
had retained its dome, but the roof had ceded to nature. Turf and ground willow
grew there in thick mats, and Bram knew enough about their root systems to
realize that pulling them up was no longer an option. If forced, they would
break the stone.
It was an extraordinary sight, the shaggy half-moon dome set on a bank
above the Gloze. Newly constructed lean-tos had been set against the flat
endwall, and horses and men trotted back and forth between makeshift stables
and the Round.
The Dhoonesmen accelerated for the short climb, and then brought the
visitors to a halt upon the half-circle court. Grooms came out to take their
horses, and already Bram could tell that word had spread. Interest was high
amongst Skinner Dhoone’s men, and Bram found himself treated with a queer mix
of distrust and respect.
Stupidly, he found himself staring at the women. Almost he had
forgotten that Dhoone had any, and to see them here, carrying oats for the
horses and pails from the well, was a shock. He couldn’t stop staring. The
older ones stared back, hostile, but the younger ones regarded him with frank
interest. Once he heard one whisper, “That’s Robbie’s brother, Bram.”
Taking quick stock of himself and his four companions, he had to admit
that Robbie had been right about the cloaks. They set them apart, and endowed
them with something long missing from Dhoone: the courtliness of an older age.
Strangely, Bram felt his confidence growing. If one good thing had come from
the meeting with the Milk chief, it had been the fact that Robbie had been
forced to reappraise him. Wrayan Castlemilk was no fool. If she had asked for
Bram Cormac it was for good reason.
At least that’s what Robbie reckoned. Bram managed a wiry smile. He
suspected the fosterage was just a game to Wrayan Castlemilk, something to
throw Robbie Dhoone off guard ... but he kept that thought to himself.
“Follow me.”
Bram and his four companions were bidden follow a Dhoone warrior
through a break in the endwall, passing from the blaze of a red sunset into the
dank shadows of the Old Round. The half-dome had been braced with bloodwood
stangs a hundred feet tall, and buttressed with rock pylons. The ground
underfoot was little more than mud at first, with slabs of slate laid across it
like stepping-stones. Deeper into the building greater effort had been made to
render the place habitable. Gravel had been scattered to cover the mud, and
fragrant woods burned to mask the stagnant-well stench of the stone. Some old
corridors were still in place, and Bram could see where the women had been at
work, laying down rushes and lime-washing walls. The warrior led them up a
partial stair to a chamber that lay ten paces above ground level.
After the dimness of the entrance Bram had to hood his eyes to stop the
light from dazzling them. A large seven-sided chamber stood before him, and
torches spaced at foot-long intervals ringed the walls. There had to be at
least two hundred, Bram figured, yet even combined with the fires burning
against three of the seven walls, they didn’t create sufficient light or heat
to drive away the atmosphere of decay.
Skinner Dhoone sat on a big ugly chair carved with thistle barbs for
armrests. He has aged, Bram realized. His braids were
lank and greying, and his face had the florid puffed-up look of someone who
drank too hard on a weak liver. His eyes were pure Dhoone, and all the
arrogance of chiefs and kings lived there. Looking Bram up and down, he said,
“I know you. You’re Mabb Cormac’s boy—you’ve even less claim to the Thistle
Blood than your brother Rab.”
Bram nodded; he had not been charged to argue with Skinner Dhoone. All
around Dhoonesmen stood in silence and watched him. The chamber was full of
them, all armed, many armored. Bram recognized the brothers Mauger and Berold
Loy. Mauger acknowledged him with a grim nod.
Skinner had been expecting Bram to be provoked by his statement, and
Bram’s agreement confounded him. Curling his fingers around the carved wooden
barbs, he said, “So you do not deny your brother has no claim on king or
chiefship?”
Behind him, Bram heard Guy Morloch hiss something in response.
“What say you?” demanded Skinner, seizing upon this. “Step forward, Milkman, and speak your mind.”
Guy Morloch laid a hand on Bram’s shoulder to push past him, but Bram
snapped his head around and said, “Guy. You speak out of turn. / was charged to
treat with the chief-in-exile. No one else.”
For a wonder, Guy Morloch fell back. Or perhaps Diddie Daw or Mangus
Eel grabbed and held him. Bram would never know. He had turned to face Skinner
Dhoone once more, his heart racing. This must be done right.
“Answer the question, rabbit boy.”
Bram stilled himself. His mother had trapped many creatures: coatis,
and ringtails, and foxes. She had not trapped rabbits alone, though even she
would have admitted they were her favorites. A rabbit is good eating and spinning, she would say. Try putting a weasel in a pot.
Feeling calmer, Bram said, “Robbie Dhoone relinquishes the chiefship to
you.”
Gasps circled the chamber. Dhoonesmen stirred. Mauger Loy crossed to
the thistle chair and whispered two words in Skinner’s ear. Bram’s good eyes
saw and read them. Be cautious.
Skinner Dhoone roused himself from the chair, and stood. His boots were
deerskin and very fine, but the mud of the Old Round still clung to them.
Approaching Bram, he said, “And what has brought about this change in Rab
Cormac nee Dhoone?”
Bram concentrated on looking at the drink-puffed skin on Skinner’s
nose; the Dhoone-blue eyes were too much for him. “It is not a change as Robbie
sees it. He has been constant in his wish to see Dhoone united.”
Behind him, Diddie Daw, Mangus Eel and the rest grunted their
agreement. Even a few of Skinner’s own men nodded their heads. They had heard
the messages Robbie had sent through Mauger Loy.
Skinner Dhoone rocked back onto the heels of his boots and snorted. “So
Robbie’s been constant, has he?” Rocking suddenly forward, he locked gazes with
Jordie Sarson. “And what would you say to that, Jordie Treason?”
Jordie swallowed. He’s
not much older than I am, Bram realized. Tilting his chin up a fraction, Jordie said, “I’d say
Robbie is an honorable man, who loves Dhoone more than his own life.”
Bram made his face a mask. Jordie believed what he said, that was evident, and there was
something about Jordie Sarson—the fairness of his skin and hair, his youth and
fine looks and clear blue eyes—
that spoke to Dhoonesmen. Any man here would be proud of such a son.
Robbie had calculated well. It had been a risk sending Jordie with the
company, and another risk not to let him in on the plan. But both risks had
paid off. Jordie’s conviction was priceless.
Skinner lost a beat of concentration. His blue eyes weren’t as clear as
Bram thought; there was water in them. “Am I to hear Rab Cor-mac’s plan?” he
challenged.
Bram stepped forward to draw attention away from Jordie and back to
himself. “Robbie has a deal to propose.”
“Does he now,” Skinner said quietly, unsurprised. “Go on.”
“Robbie has men who are sworn to him, and he will not force them to break their oaths to return to you.”
Skinner let out a gasp of foul air. “The arrogance of the bastard! He
stole those men in the first place and now refuses to give them back!” The
chief-in-exile shook his head, but Bram didn’t think it was with genuine
amazement, more the show of it for his men. “And what else does Rab propose?”
Bram attempted to make a show of his own: reluctance. Because he had
seen it work so well with Jordie Sarson, he swallowed. “Robbie is willing to
cede Dhoone to you. As long as you agree not to interfere with his taking of
Withy, he will not interfere with your reclaiming of Dhoone.”
It took a moment for this statement to sink in. Skinner’s eyes blanked
for a moment, and then focused sharply as all the implications occurred to him.
“Withy?” he repeated and this time his
amazement was unfeigned. “You are telling me Rab Cormac intends to take the
Withyhouse?”
Bram nodded. Only one final piece to say; relief gave him confidence.
“We have made plans. Robbie believes it can be taken. It’s vulnerable, and the
Dog Lord’s sons fail in their vigilance. Robbie will have a clanhold.” He looked Skinner Dhoone straight
in the eye. “And he’s judged Dhoone impossible to retake.”
Skinner shook his head, clearly agitated by Bram’s words. His lips
moved, muttering something, and though he turned before Bram could catch it
all, Bram recognized part of the Withy boast.
We are the clan who makes kings.
When Skinner turned back his face was changed, and some of the water
had left his eyes. “If I agree to these terms, when will Rab take Withy?”
“Within the month. I can say no more than that.”
Skinner nodded, as if he had been expecting just such an answer.
Drawing himself up to his full height, he said, “Go now. I must think on this.
I will send Rab Cormac my word within the tenday.”
They were dismissed, and as Bram made his way from the chamber he was
struck by the fact that when cunning was showing on the faces of a Dhoone they
all looked much the same.
CHAPTER
Raid on the Shanty
They halted when they saw smoke in the distance. Two bald hills
separated them from the shanty, a distance of perhaps five leagues. Raif had
led the party this last day, and it was he who called the halt. They were in
Blackhail territory now, and he knew how easy it was to spot any sort of
movement on the balds. They would make a dry camp until sunset, and then move
under cover of dark.
Raif could hardly believe it was happening. Seventeen days west and he
was here, where he never thought to return. Ride five days southwest at a fair
pace and he’d be back at the roundhouse, back with Effie and Drey and Corbie
and Anwyn, and Bitty and all of the Shanks.
Home. He mouthed the word, feeling
nothing.
He knew these hills, knew how the wind scoured anything that dared grow
higher than a stalk of heather, knew where to look to find springs and old
mineshafts, and the best place to flush out rabbits. He had taken down his
first major kill not far from here, a big lone moose that had strayed south.
Abruptly, he turned his mind to the arrangement of the camp. Some instinct
involved with preserving his sanity warned him: Do not think-
They were not far from Dhoone here, but already the Copper Hills had
deflated into the humps and bluffs of the balds. Five days earlier they had made
the crossing from the Badlands into the clan-holds. The weather had been with
them, and in a way so had the clanwars. They met no hunters on the road. The
stout ponies favored by the Maimed Men were not bred for speed, and once they
were past the worst of canyon country the journey had been almost restful. The
lengthening days of spring and the clear weather meant they’d easily made up
for days lost during the storm. The moon had shrunk a bit every night and now
there was nothing of it left.
Tonight would be completely dark.
Raif bandaged his pony’s hocks. The poor creature had just missed going
over the cliff in the landslide, and its legs had been cut up by rocks. At
least he still had a mount. Stillborn’s gentle black
mare had been lost, along with the three packhorses and the gear they’d been
hauling. Now they were eleven men and ten mounts. Few were happy about this,
especially Addie and the outlander, Thomas Argola. Having been judged the
lightest of the group, they had been forced to share Yustaffa’s powerful garon.
Yustaffa in turn had set his sizable rump upon the outlander’s mount, and
Stillborn had taken Addie’s pony. So far no more horses were dead, but many
tempers had been lost. Raif had made a point of walking part of each day so he
could offer Addie use of his mount. Mostly Addie just walked right alongside
him, glad to be in full command of his hill legs.
Addie had some knowledge of this part of the clanholds, and Raif didn’t
doubt that he could have led the raid party to the mine without him. Already
the cragsman had located a spring and a tender stretch of saxifrage for the
horses.
Raif decided that was something else he didn’t want to think on: why
Linden Moodie had given him the lead. Quickly, he trimmed the pony’s bandages
and stood. The sun was hanging above a bank of streaky clouds, still an hour or
so from setting. Some of the Rift Brothers were gnawing on ptarmigan bones to
fill the time, others speaking in low voices, or seeing to their mounts.
Stillborn was oiling his weapons.
The big Maimed Man had lost a considerable portion of his col-
lection in the fall. An assortment of swords, longknives, katars and
other more fantastically bladed weapons had gone over the cliff never to be
seen again. All Stillborn had managed to save was the sword, longknife, and
nail hammer he kept permanently hooked to his gear belt, and a number of items
kept in a stiffly tanned elkskin that had been slung across his back at the
time of the slide.
Raif had a strange feeling about
that. Two of Stillborn’s three packs had fallen into the canyon along with his
horse, yet the arrow Divining Rod had not been lost. Stillborn had found it
wrapped in a stained length of linen, safe and sound in the elkskin pack. When
pressed he said he did remember placing it there—it
being so light and all—but it was the only thing in his daypack that he could
claim no practical use for.
Sometimes Raif wondered how many of the Maimed Men—wittingly or
unwittingly—conspired to push him toward a certain point. Stillborn, Yustaffa,
Addie, the outlander, even Traggis Mole himself, seemed to be propelling him
forward onto a course he barely understood himself.
Enough. Glancing over at the smoke
rising above the hills, he forced all unfinished matters from his mind, and
went to speak with Stillborn.
“How will it happen?” he heard himself ask.
The Maimed Man was working linseed oil into the Forsworn sword with a
bit of a rag, and he slowed a fraction as he answered. “Smoothly if all goes to
plan. The cooled gold is kept in a locked room just below the mouth of the
mine. It’s guarded by one sleepy miner or other, sometimes the Lode Master. Any
hot gold is set to cool near the furnace which is just upwind of the mine. We
close in on the shanty after dark, wait until lights out, and then move in and
seize the gold. If there’s scuffles we’ll keep them short and quiet.”
Raif nodded. “How do you know so much about the layout of the mine?”
“How d’you think? The Mole had it watched.”
“Why isn’t the watcher in the raid party?”
Stillborn set down his rag. For good measure he had worked linseed oil
into his matched bullhorns and they now shone wickedly black. “Stop asking
questions you already know the answer to, Raif. Save us both some time.
Watcher’s dead, picked off by an arrow from the mine.”
Traggis Mole hadn’t mentioned that, but it fit in more with what Raif
knew about tied miners. They were hard men, and they relied on their clan for
little, including defense. If they had endured one attack by the Maimed Men and
found another man snooping, then things were hardly going to run as smoothly as
Stillborn claimed. Raif looked at Stillborn and Stillborn stared back, his
warning still in effect. No
more questions you know the answer to.
There was nothing for Raif to do but make preparations for the raid.
Camp had been made in the leeward base of the hill. Some old sheep run
had once been dug into the soil and lined with rocks, and now water was
tricking along it like a streambed. Raif jumped down into the trench, and
scooped up a handful of muddy silt. Scouring it across his face and over the
back of his hands, he shrouded himself for the night. The mud tingled as it
dried, pulling his skin tight.
Across camp, Linden Moodie watched him. Something in his deep-set eyes,
a certainty that he knew exactly what kind of man Raif Twelve Kill was, gave
Raif pause. Moodie had already dismissed what happened on the canyon cliff as a
fluke. I’ll be watching you
this night, he
mouthed, clearly, precisely, for Raif’s eyes alone.
Raif let his expression harden along with the mud. In a voice pitched
to carry, he called the Maimed Men to him, and then spent the next quarter
digging out handfuls of mud from the old sheep run and passing them up to each
man. Anything that might catch a beam of torchlight was darkened, even the
horses’ stars and socks. Yustaffa alone demurred the mud, claiming that when
the Scorpion God made his skin He cast the color just right. “He ran out of dye
by the time He got to you lot,” Yustaffa explained airily. “And didn’t think
you were the worth the trouble of mixing up a new batch.”
Maimed Men grunted at this. Already, tension was mounting. A few men
were squatted around their packs, casting blocks. Gam-
bling was normally serious business for the Maimed Men, and disputes
and fighting common, but this time the gamblers were subdued, their gazes
flicking to the setting sun more often than the faces of the wooden blocks.
Stillborn and Addie were speaking quietly, Addie gesturing northward with his
fist. Moodie had folded and stowed his scarlet cloak, and was fixing a plain
gray one about his throat. A mine was no place for finery.
“Tonicker?”
Raif looked over his shoulder to see Yustaffa walking toward him
holding out the hollow stopper of a jug. The fat man’s eyes were twinkling. The
very things that made other men nervous seemed to delight him. Raif shook his
head; he wanted no malt.
“Your loss.” Yustaffa held the stopper to his lips and drank. “Quite a
bite.” He sent a hand questing inside his pieced-fur tunic. “How about
something to eat instead? I’ve some bannock—stale as stones sadly but you can
always nibble around the blue bits—a little pot of sotted oats, and a few wilting
leeks.”
“Nothing.”
The word had a hard edge, and Yustaffa ceased searching his tunic for
items they both knew weren’t there. Reciting the names of clan foods was just
another of the fat man’s taunts. Yustaffa smiled, sending cheek fat up to eclipse
his eyes. “You’ll be hungry later.”
“I’ll be many things later. Hungry isn’t one of them.”
Yustaffa beamed at this as he walked away. “Remember, Azziah rün Raif. It’s the excitement I wish to share, not the
danger.”
Oh
gods. Sometimes
Raif felt like a joint of meat on the fire; men kept prodding him to test for
doneness.
As the sun sank below the cloud cover he loaded and saddled the pony.
It was going to be one of those showy sunsets where the sky turned orange and
pink. The wind was picking up. He stood by his pony’s head and let its coolness
numb him As the sun set the sky flared red like a fire and the Maimed Men
gathered in a group to watch it; and as soon as the light failed they mounted
their horses and rode west.
Raif led the way. He knew of a
game track here, yet had decided against taking it. All known tracks were a
risk, and the guarantee of a smooth ride didn’t mean as much when the snow had
shrunk back and you could search the ground for yourself.
The wind brought them sounds from the shanty well before they
approached it. A hammer striking stone rang clear, and ‘thtsnicf{ of a latch sounded as something was bolted away for
the night. Raif could smell the smoke now, a pitchy, mineral scent that did not
come from wood. Timber fit for burning did not grow in the balds, and the
miners burned fuelstone or turf.
The same wind which brought the scents and smells of the shanty toward
the Maimed Men drove away signs of their own approach. When they reached the
second hill, Raif decided to hold their course and keep the wind in their
faces. He was calm except for a murmur in his heart that sounded between beats.
The lack of cover worried him, and with every step he climbed, he expected to
hear a warning cry of discovery.
Just before they crested the second hill, Raif slowed them. The shanty
lay in the valley beyond and they had to decide how best to approach it. Even
in the darkness Raif could see the telltale signs of mining: the sunken,
undermined slopes, the heaps of slag, the exposed earth where pumped mud and
water had stripped away the grass.
When the last of the Maimed Men had gathered about him, Raif said,
“We’ll work our way down and around. Cresting the hill’s too big a risk. If I
was the Lode Master I’d have an archer train his arrow on that ridge.” He had
expected a fight—he was asking them to travel an extra league out of their
way—but the Maimed Men merely nodded their assent, and he wasn’t sure how this
made him feel. “The Bluey’s down there,” he continued, nodding toward the mine
valley. “We’ll skirt its banks and approach the shanty from the west. They
won’t be expecting anyone from that direction.”
“The wind’ll no longer be in our favor if we move west,” Moodie said.
“Then we’ll have to be quiet.”
“And not fart,” Stillborn added.
Raif threw him a look of gratitude. It might have been a poor joke, but
it was an endorsement. In a choice
between keeping the wind and cresting the hill, or losing it for the chance of
taking the miners by surprise, Stillborn was with Raif Sevrance.
The roundabout descent took an hour. At the halfway point the shanty
and the mine lake became visible below them. The shanty was a collection of squat
stone cottages built a short walk east of the mine. Orwin Shank used to say
they were so small and ill-constructed they looked like outhouses. Which was
strange, really, Raif considered, as the miners had to possess considerable
skill when it came to stone. They knew how to cut, brace and move it, yet lived
in unmortared, poorly chinked shanties.
Some of the cottages were lit, others not. Tracks worn in the soft mud
led to and from the entrance to the mine. Black Hole was just that: a hole in
the hillside braced with squared-off timbers. The mouth was about six foot high
and the same wide; sufficient for ponies and their muck carts to pass through.
Two lamps burned at either side of the mouth, and a third, more diffuse source
of light came from a vent shaft located a few feet farther up the hill.
The Bluey was a lake wholly created by pumped mine water. It was too
dark to see its color now, but Raif and Drey and the two youngest Shank
brothers used to marvel at its unnatural hue. Its waters were the same vivid
blue-green you saw on weathered copper. No animal would drink from it, and any
birds that landed on its surface soon took off for fairer waters. It was, as
far as young boys from Blackhail were concerned, a splendid place to swim.
Raif thought about that now as he led his party around its southern
shore. Between drinking Tern’s homebrew and swimming in the Bluey it was a
wonder he and Drey weren’t dead.
He ended his smile before it could warm him. Memories of Drey had no
place here tonight.
The wind was blowing from behind them now, and they slowed their pace
as a precaution. The mud helped, muffling hoofbeats, but bridle fittings could
not be jounced. Addie was already on his feet, his shared mount abandoned. The
outlander had fallen back about thirty paces, and no one seemed concerned with
hurrying him up.
As they neared Black Hole more lights went out in the shanty.
Raif slid Tanjo Ten Arrow’s Sull bow from its makeshift case of coarse
sacking. The varnished wood felt cool and glassy. His gaze swept in a quarter
circle back and forth, from shanty to mine, mine to shanty. When he perceived a
heart beating in the darkness he did not hesitate, and put metal to the riser
and released. The arrow sped east like a night hawk, silent and deadly. Even
before the rest of the raid party realized what had happened a miner lay dead.
“Raif?” questioned Stillborn.
Raif spat to remove the taste of sorcery from his mouth. He could not
explain to Stillborn, Addie and the rest that he had perceived a heart, not a
man. Nor could he explain that the heart’s rhythm had undergone a swift change,
accelerating from a steady pulse to a jerky gallop as he spied a movement along
the lake. Raif’s arrow had cut off the miner’s cry of warning . . . but he
couldn’t explain that either. “I saw eye whites” was all he said.
Stillborn delayed his answering nod long enough for Raif to know that
the Maimed Man suspected more.
Raif spoke hastily to head off Stillborn’s thoughts. “There’s a dead man
at the mouth of the mine. We’d better get started before he’s found.”
You could tell the Maimed Men weren’t clan, for they accepted this
without question and drew weapons. Stillborn released the Forsworn sword from
its sheath, its edge glimmering softly. Addie slung a thick, eweman’s flatbow
across his back, leaving his weapon hand free for his longknife. Moodie
brandished a bell-bladed ax, the kind meant for throwing. Raif left his
borrowed blade where it was, choosing to keep his hand on his bow. Divining Rod
lay with his other arrows in his makeshift quiver, but he knew he wouldn’t be
nocking it this night. Kicking the pony forward he set his sights on Black
Hole.
All was quiet. Mist had begun to peel from the lake and was moving east
with the wind. Something about it struck Raif as strange, but he couldn’t
decide what and he dismissed it from his mind. The murmur was still sounding
between his heartbeats, and he was aware of the need to think only in the now.
When the cry came he was almost expecting it.
“Raiders! Raiders at the mine!”
As the raid party mounted a charge on Black Hole, Raif loosed another
arrow. It occurred to him that Traggis Mole must have known all along that this
raid could not be completed with stealth. The Robber Chief had dealt lives
hoping for a return in gold.
Ahead lights were being struck in the shanty. Shouts sounded. An arrow
whistled past Raif’s ears. Two miners ran down the mud track running between
Black Hole and the cottages. Addie Gunn picked one off with a shot to the
thigh; Raif took the other with a shot to the heart.
Stillborn and the other bladesmen in the party bore down on Black Hole;
Raif and Addie covered them. Raif slid down from his pony. The mist was rapidly
thickening, and he could see Addie squinting into it to close a shot on a miner
who was running down the hillside toward the mine. Addie released the string,
but his eyes had failed him and the arrow went wide. He doesn’t know it, Raif realized with a thrill of fear, as he watched
the little cragsman nod to himself and move on to another target.
The mist. Addie couldn’t see through the mist—none of them could. Raif
couldn’t. He couldn’t see men or landmarks ... but he could perceive hearts. He
hadn’t seen the miner escape Addie’s shot, he just knew that the miner’s
heartbeat had continued on uninterrupted.
Raif took a breath, made a decision. “I’m going into the mine.” He
hardly cared if Addie heard him. He simply knew that he couldn’t continue to stand
here and pick off men through the mist. Three dead so far by his hand. Miners, he told himself. Miners.
Stillborn and five other Maimed Men were battling to gain entry to the
mine. Miners, the skin on their faces rutted with huge pores, the breath wheezing
in their throats, had formed a defensive line around the mouth. They wielded
pickaxes and hammers and had claimed the high ground of slag that had been heaped against the entrance.
Raif slid the Sull bow into the case on his back and drew his sword. It’s time you learned how to /(ill someone and loo’t
them in the eye.
The Listener’s words tumbled crazily in his head as he joined the
Maimed Men. The fighting at the mouth was savage and ungainly. Although the
miners had the superior ground their weapons were not suited to close quarters.
Stillborn was leading the assault, his seamed face red with fury, the pearly
tooth at the base of his neck snapping as if to bite. The Forsworn sword
screeched as it slid along the poll of an ax. Raif thought he saw the curl of
iron as the sword shaved the ax blade. Other Maimed Men were following
Stillborn’s lead, fired by his aggression. Linden Moodie threw his ax and it
sank deep into a miner’s face, cutting his mouth and nose in two. As he fell he
caused disorder in the line as some miners moved to catch him and others shoved
him aside to fight.
Raif spotted an opening. Springing forward, he raised his borrowed
sword and, guiding it through a space just vacated by a miner’s hammer, thrust
the point hard into a man’s hand. The man had been helping Moodie’s victim to
the floor, and he dropped the body and shrieked in pain. Seconds of chaos
followed as one dying man and one wounded man blocked the miners’ line.
The murmur in Raif’s heart was deafening now. When a rock hammer swung
toward his neck he did not hear it coming, and only Linden Moodie’s newly drawn
sword stopped him from taking a mortal blow. Moodie’s weapon was an
old-fashioned broadsword with a single edge, black as iron and heavy as a log.
It bent as it absorbed the hammer blow, but did not break.
The miners were losing ground. Not one of them could stand against
Stillborn. His fury was relentless, and while his sword was in motion he raged
at them. “Come on, pretty boys! Here’s your chance to take me, big ugly bastard
that I am.”
Once he’d started spotting openings, Raif couldn’t stop. In a way it
was like watching Stillborn’s quintain, Yelma, waiting to see where she’d
swing. The miners’ line was crumbling, and there was dead air between the men.
Raif moved in and out of it, spiking elbows and knees and necks. Fighting
miners wasn’t the same as fighting sworn clansmen. The battle fury wasn’t
there. One wound was enough to discourage them.
Finally the line broke, and the miners began to scatter. Behind him,
Raif was aware of Addie picking a few of them off with his bow. Stillborn
chased one man down and put a sword through his guts, and the sight of that
made the other Maimed Men sober up. Breathing hard they lowered their weapons,
some bending to wipe the blades on the bodies of dead miners. Half a minute
passed while they gained their wind. One Rift Brother, a big Southerner with a
bald head, had a nasty-looking gash in his forearm where the edge of a pickax
had fallen. The hole was full of blood.
Raif wiped sweat from his eyes, and his palm came back black with mud.
His heart would not calm. He wondered where the out-lander was, for he had not
seen him during the fighting. Yustaffa was there, but he had kept to the edge,
claiming something about the miners possessing no swords for him to break.
Still, there was blood on his curved scimitar, and his chest and belly heaved
as he pulled in air.
The mist had turned stringy and was receding. Raif could see all the
way back to the shanty now. All was quieTas miners returned home to nurse their
wounds.
“Right,” Linden Moodie said. “First things first.” He held his bent
sword blade up to the lamplight. “Anyone got a spare?”
The Maimed Men managed a kind of groaning laugh. Stillborn held out his
longknife by the blade for Moodie to take.
“Gully. Kye. Hold the entrance. Rest of us’ll take a look inside. If
one of those miners as much as looks at you the wrong way, holler like you’re
on a hot spit. D’you understand?” Moodie paused to let the two Maimed Men nod.
Satisfied, he told Addie to fetch one of the lamps hanging from a nail on the
upright bracing timbers, and then led the way into Black Hole.
CHAPTER
Black Hole
The smell of bad eggs was the first thing that got you, not strong
exactly but persistent. You couldn’t turn your head away from it because it was
carried on the up-mine breeze. Raif was aware of it, but not in the same way as
the other Maimed Men who were blowing air through their nostrils and grimacing.
Something was turning around in his head, and he didn’t know what it was.
Something about the moment he entered the mine, something about the
light. . . He shook his head, unable to push his mind through the black spot.
It was probably nothing.
But it unnerved him.
The entrance tunnel to Black Hole was braced with square-set timbers
and its roof was lagged with heavy planks. Sections of the floor were also
lagged, and from time to time the Maimed Men’s footfalls would ring out,
marking a hollow space below. Ladders led down. Wheeled muck carts had been
lined up against one wall, some still heaped with ore. All was cool and still.
Addie carried the lamp as steadily as if it were a candle floating in oil.
They had already come thirty feet, and still there was no sign of the
locked room where the gold was reportedly held. No one doubted its
presence—miners had lost lives attempting to bar them from this place—but it
appeared Traggis Mole’s information was slightly off. Once Linden Moodie started
grumbling, others followed. The Maimed Men lived in a city facing south and
open to the elements; mines made them uneasy.
Stillborn had not sheathed his sword. After another ten foot, he sent
Raif to poke his head down one of the ladders. Raif had noticed they’d passed
an unlit safe lamp a short way back and ran to fetch it. Addie gave him a
light.
The nearest ladder led down through the mine floor and into the first
underlevel. All looked pretty much the same as above, except the entire surface
of the floor was lagged and the tunnel was noticeably narrower. Just as he was
about to shout “Nothing here!” he heard a cry from above. Racing up the ladder,
he emerged in time to see Stillborn raise his sword to the chest of a miner.
The tunnel branched into a crossroad directly ahead of him, and Stillborn must
have flushed the miner out of the shadows. “Where’s the gold, pretty boy?”
The miner shook his head. He was young and dirty, dressed in pieced
hides with thick buckskin gloves tucked under his belt. His fingers were closed
around a silver-handled dagger, but no-one had bothered to tell him that
holding a single-edged knife with its blade down, instead of up, was a mistake.
The same nameless anxiety that had struck Raif upon entering the mine
reasserted itself. Something was turning over in his mind. The lamp shining outside the mines, the halo of
amber light it created . ..
“Don’t know about no gold,” the miner cried, breaking through Raif’s
thoughts. “We dig silver here. Silver!”
Stillborn nodded reasonably. The point of the Forsworn sword dropped
from the miner’s sternum to the little dimple in the man’s hide shirt that
marked the location of his navel. Stillborn made a show of thinking. “So if
it’s only silver you have here then, you’d better tell me where the rare yellow
kind is. You know, the kind that a man like me might kill for.”
“Where is it, dirt shoveler?” Moodie hissed, impatient. Stillborn
tutted; it was unclear at whom. “Best tell me where that special yellow silver is,
boy.”
The miner’s eyes darted between Moodie and Stillborn. Black mud
streaked both men’s faces, crusting in the scar tissue, and bleeding out like
the spokes of a wheel around their eyes. The knife wobbled in the miner’s grip.
He let out a breath and Raif could see his chest deflating. “It’s down the
north fork, locked in the old stope room, ‘bout sixty paces on the left.”
Stillborn nodded. “Interesting. Now lead the way.”
The Maimed Men followed the miner down an inclined tunnel leading north
from the mouth. The walls were hewn rock braced with cross timbers, and they
narrowed sharply after the ten-foot mark. A pale light shone in the distance,
and the miner headed toward it. He still held the knife, but loosely, without
intent. Raif spied a rough plank door set into the mine wall, fixed with a
large shield lock, the kind clan had to trade city men for.
Stillborn waved a halt. “Anyone in there?” he asked the miner.
The miner shook his head. “I just left.”
“Then you’ll have the key.” Stillborn held out his hand, palm up,
fingers twitching. When the miner didn’t move, he wagged his head toward
Yustaffa and said, “See that fat man over there? He could pick his way out of
the nine spiraling hells if he had a mind for it. And he may have to do just
that, seems he’s currently considering killing a man in cold blood.”
Yustaffa obligingly raised his scimitar and smiled.
“So the way I see it, while you’re just saving us time by handing over the key, you’re actually
saving yourself from a considerable shortness of breath.”
The matter-of-fact tone of Stillborn’s voice seemed to calm the miner.
“You swear you won’t kill me?”
Stillborn’s gaze was clear and true. “I swear. Now hand over that key.”
Raif watched as the miner pulled the key from a slit in his belt, and
Stillborn unlocked the plank door. Raif’s apprehension was growing, but he
hardly knew why. His eyes were developing the same black spots as his thoughts,
places where his perception couldn’t go, details that his gaze jumped over. Amber light, spilling across the ground . . .
He switched back into the present as Stillborn opened the door. A lamp
was burning low, outlining the stark lines of the room. It was small, no more
than eight paces across, with timber cribbing bracing the walls and a floor of
chiseled quartz. Two lead troughs lay against the far wall. The first contained
rusted shovel heads, a disembodied pickax handle, chisels, an ancient windlass
missing its rope, a pair of moldy boots, and a safe lamp with a cracked guard.
The second trough was covered with an oiled tarp.
“Gentlemen,” Yustaffa said, pushing past Stillborn and Moodie to reach
the tarp. “Step aside. I believe a little flourish is called for.” Using the
point of his scimitar to hook the tarp, he uncovered the contents of the
trough. “Gold,” he pronounced, beaming. “I could smell it across the room.”
The Maimed Men stood speechless. The trough was filled with perfectly
shaped rods of gold, lined up like the pipes of a flute, all shining with
dazzling brilliance. Addie Gunn swallowed. Moodie’s hand rose to his garrote
scar and massaged it gently. Stillborn’s hand closed around the miner’s arm.
“You’re wi‘ me, boy, till I decide otherwise.”
Moodie shook himself. “Let’s get loading it on the ponies.”
Yustaffa did a little jig as the Maimed Men began to organize
themselves. The big wounded Southerner was sent to bring the ponies to the
mouth of the mine, while Moodie and Stillborn argued over the best way to carry
the gold to the surface. Addie lifted one of the bars and sniffed it. “It’s
heavy enough,” he said to no one in particular.
Raif felt nothing at seeing the gold. The black spot in his mind was
like a sinkhole; it was a struggle to pull anything out. His body felt lit by tension,
pulled in opposing ways . . . but ready. Ready.
When Yustaffa touched his arm, he jumped.
The fat man raised his hands in mock fright. “On my mother’s grave I
promise not to take more than my fair share.”
Raif said nothing. Trading barbs with Yustaffa seemed a feat far beyond
his resources. It was all he could do to understand the words.
Yustaffa moved close enough to breathe on him. “Did you enjoy the mist,
eh?” Noting Raif’s confusion with a tiny smile of satisfac-
tion, he continued. “Argola’s pissmaker. You did know it wasn’t real?
Conjured it out of the lake, he did. I warned him it might harm as much as help
us, but he wouldn’t have any of it. Said that there were some amongst us who’d
be able to see right through it.” A sly glance. “I really can’t say what he
meant.”
“Go away,” Raif said to him.
Yustaffa closed his mouth. He waited a moment, perhaps hoping for
something more, but when it became obvious that Raif was done speaking, he
turned smartly on his heels and walked away. A few seconds passed, and then
Raif heard him tutting loudly as he began passing on fictional details of their
conversation.
Light
on the ground near the entrance to the mine. Something glinting ...
“Raif.”
Raif felt a hard object being thrust into his hands. Stillborn stood
before him, holding out one of the rusted shovel blades from the first trough.
“Take this. Load it with gold, then move out the tunnel sharpish. Take the
lamp. See what’s happened to Jake. Make the outlander get a move on wi‘ the
horses.”
Raif nodded. The shovel blade was large and bowed; it took two hands to
hold it. As he crossed to where Addie was waiting to load him up with gold,
Stillborn placed a hand on his arm and said one last thing.
“You did good tonight, lad.”
The words were sucked into the black spot.
Gold rods chinked softly as Addie laid them on the flat of the shovel.
Light reflecting up from them made the cragsman’s face glow like a painting.
Addie kept tally of the number; out of habit he said, like with sheep. The
shovel grew heavier, and Raif settled it against his chest. When Addie judged
the weight sufficient, he hooked the lamp over the shovel’s tang. “You’re done.
Don’t be long now. You’re leaving six of us here and one lamp.”
The incline leading from the stope room seemed sharper than Raif
remembered, and his thigh muscles had to work to pull up the gold. The lamp
swung loosely with each step, sending crazy flashes of light along the walls.
Now that he was alone the black spot wa< growing strangely fluid, expanding
then contracting, allowing glimpses of something, then snatching them back.
As he approached the crossroad the up-mine wind raised hairs or the back
of his neck. Something
glinting by the entrance to the mine, a sword fallen from a man’s hand .. .
“So it is you,” came a familiar voice. “I thought it, but I didn’i want
to believe my eyes.”
Bitty Shank stepped out from the shadows. He was heavil) armored in
iron plate fitted with chain webbing at the arm and neck holes, and he held a
thick-bladed shortsword in his hand. He hac lost the tip of two of his sword
fingers to the ‘bite, but Orwin Shank bred strong sons, and Raif could see
where muscle had grown large on the saddle of his thumb and the rise of his
wrist to compensate He wore no helm, and his fine blond hair was caught in a
single-knot braid. As his gaze passed over the gold rods in Raif’s grip, hi;
mouth twisted in contempt.
Raif felt the shame burn him.
“You killed Darren Cleet, Rory’s brother. It was his first time oui as
a sworn yearman. He’d just taken over my watch when you shol him.”
An
armored corpse glowing pale in the lamplight, an arrow growing from its chest.
A sworn clansman.
Raif breathed in and out, in and out, keeping his body still. The black
spot was still there, warning him not to think.
A sworn clansman.
Bitty Shank watched him, the knuckles on his sword hand softl) flexing.
He had matured since Raif had seen him last, and carriec himself with measured
confidence. The blood drying on his sword had to belong to Maimed Men.
“The miners are Hailsmen, too.”
Raif closed his eyes, receiving the blow. He knew it, had known it
before he’d let the first arrow fly. His eyes has seen their lores, the horns
of powdered guidestone at their waists, the black thread woven into their hair.
His ears had heard their voices, the same as his own. The miner Stillborn had
gutted had died speaking the name of his clan.
What
have I done?
“Set the gold down, Raif. I won’t kill an unarmed man.”
Raif shook his head. “No, Bitty. Go.”
“I can’t, Raif. I can’t.”
He couldn’t, Raif knew that. Clansmen had been killed here, and a Shank
could not let that go.
Kill
an army for me, Raif Sevrance.
Raif bent at the knee and lowered the shovel containing the gold onto
the mine floor. The lamp was heavy with oil and it wobbled onto its side, and
as a reflex he righted it. Bitty’s face was grim and beautiful in the
lamplight, and the contempt had gone. Raif would be forever thankful for that.
Bitty Shank moved forward with a clansman’s grace. Even if he won here
he would die, he accepted that—he had waited for Raif to draw his sword knowing
it. Raif turned aside his first strike, letting Bitty’s blade slide down the
flat of his sword. Bitty stepped into Raif’s deflection, bringing his weight to
bear on his shortsword. The impact jarred Raif, and caused a dangerous bending
of his elbow. As he rolled back onto one knee to recenter his weight, Bitty’s
sword tip drew a line across his knuckles.
Raif sucked in breath through his teeth. Hot wetness trickled down
between his fingers and over the grip of the sword. Instead of parrying to
nurse the pain, he sprang forward. His blood made a sound like the first drops
of a rainfall as it splashed against Bitty’s armor. His blade made contact with
an expertly rolled glancing edge, and slid away from Bitty’s organs with a
speed and efficiency that would have made an armorer weep.
Bitty took a breath to pace himself. Quick as lightning he swung to the
side, creating a massive shift in his body weight that he channeled into his
sword. Raif raised his own blade vertically in defense, but his feet were still
working to find their balance, and he didn’t have the rigidity to brace it. He
nearly lost his sword. The ball of his foot twisted strangely and he had to
pull himself back with his toes. Bitty stepped into his retreat.
Kill
ugly and kill fast. Stillborn’s words caused a kind of pain in Raif’s head. As Bitty
stepped toward him, he stepped toward Bitty. A moment
passed where the sword points slid against each other. An oily squeak sounded
as the sword points found their level— heavy on the bottom, light on the
top—and then Bitty’s sword slid down as Raif’s angled up.
The clansman’s heart was his.
In the blade went, puncturing the armor with a hiss. A whiffle of air
was sucked through the tear as Bitty’s heart and lungs contracted. Bitty’s blue
eyes widened. His sword clattered to the earth. Raif stepped forward to embrace
him, yanking his sword free, and falling to one knee as he took Bitty’s weight.
Raif Sevrance looked Bitty Shank in the eye as he died.
Gently, he laid the clansman on the ground. Bitty’s sword had many
men’s blood on it, and Raif placed it back with the body. Bitty’s hands were
soft, and Raif couldn’t get the fingers to close around the grip. He tried, but
they kept falling limp. After a time he gave up. Bitty Shank had carried his
measure of powdered guide-stone in the coiled horn of a bighorn sheep. It was
heavy, and it took a lot of powder to fill it, and the thin cap of silver that
sealed it had to be punched through.
Raif stood and walked the circle for Bitty Shank. He would not name
gods he had forsaken, but he would lay his clansman to rest... just as he had
for Bitty’s brothers another lifetime before. Even as he completed the last
quarter and the circle was joined, he was aware of the sound of footsteps
coming from the direction of the stope room.
Picking up the lamp, he turned to face them. It was Stillborn, of
course, it had to be Stillborn. There was a matter of a sword unresolved
between them.
Stillborn slowed as he neared the light. His face twitched as he took
in the scene; the body, the blood, the gold. When his voice came it was almost
soft. “You all right, lad?”
Raif shook his head. Bitty was dead. Rory’s brother was dead. Raif
Sevrance was all wrong.
He raised the lamp high. “I want my sword, Stillborn.”
Stillborn nodded, reading the intent on Raif’s face. “Fucking me again,
are you, lad?” He spoke with more resignation than anger.
“And the miner,” Raif said. “Let him live.”
Something like hurt shone in Stillborn’s hazel eyes. “You do me a
disservice, lad.”
“I have to be sure.”
Stillborn grunted. Crouching down, he sent the Forsworn sword
skittering over the mine floor to Raif.
Without taking his gaze from the Maimed Man, Raif moved forward to claim
it. When he had it in his scabbard he set down the lamp. Oil sloshed heavily in
the reservoir.
“Will you come back?” Stillborn asked.
Raif had no answer. Away, his mind was screaming. Away.
Stillborn made a small gesture that took in the lamp and the sword.
“This here. This is just between me and you.”
Raif nodded—he had to. Stillborn was exercising a clansman’s grace.
“How do you live with it?” he heard himself ask. “Being clan ... and ...”
“You find a way, Raif. You find a way.”
Tears sparkled in both men’s eyes as Raif turned toward the surface and
headed out of Black Hole.
CHAPTER
Fighting One-Handed
Penthero Iss walked across the quad followed by two members of his
personal guard, Axal Foss and Styven Dalway. Iss had taken to calling them Eye
Men, and for more reason than one. They were Marafice Eye’s cohorts, elite
members of the Rive Watch charged with their surlord’s protection. Their job
was to keep Iss alive, but Iss felt less than gratified by their attention.
They watched him for Marafice Eye, they shielded him for Marafice Eye: Given
keys and locks and a bucket for the slops and they really could have passed as
jailers.
And that made Mask Fortress a kind of prison. Crossing from the north
gallery toward the Cask, Iss contemplated making a detour to the stables. It
was a fine day on the mountain, one of those rarities where the cloud had drawn
back to the reveal the peak, still white with snow, and within an hour he could
be beyond the tree line and climbing toward it. He wouldn’t reach it, of
course, but he might make it as far as the Cloud Shrine before sunset, and then
he could turn his horse in the darkness and look down upon the city he owned.
Iss took shallow breaths as he contemplated this. The path he and his horse
stood on would be another thing entirely. The most easterly of Mount Slain’s
passes and the paths leading toward them would soon be in possession of the
Knife.
That rankled. The wealth Marafice Eye had married into was
mind-boggling. He was a butcher’s son now turned into a landholder and man of
means. When he returned from the clanholds all it would take was the slightest
outreaching to make himself a grange-lord. Only two men lay between the Knife
and his lordship, and the day of his wedding the Knife had named them father
and brother. Roland Stornoway and his son, also named Roland. Two murders
amongst so many were nothing to the Knife. He had slain a surlord, what were
the deaths of others after that?
Iss quickened his pace; behind him the two brothers-in-the-watch
quickened theirs. The flagstones of the quad were greening as moss sunk its
taps into the frost-corroded stone and muck from the horses fed them. The
massive chunk of obsidian known as Traitor’s Doom that dominated the central
court of Mask Fortress stood gleaming and unbroken, save for the nicks cut out
of its upper face due to the falling of the executioner’s sword. Male
jackrabbits were using it as a platform to box their rivals, and they bounded
away as the Surlord and his Eye Men drew close. Styven Dalway drew his sword
and speared one, and a little jet of blood was flung over the flagstones as
Dalway shook the creature from his sword. It was a pastime for
brothers-in-the-watch, spearing the rabbits that lived in the quad; a casual
test of speed.
“Leave me,” Iss commanded Dalway and Foss as they neared the entrance
to the Cask. The two men waited for an explanation but he gave none, and they
stood uncomfortably for a moment, shifting their weight until Axal Foss
conceded with a nod.
Blond and handsome Dalway leant against the curved wall of the Cask as
if he meant to stay there awhile. “We await you, Surlord,” he said.
Iss flung back the gate and then pushed the heavy red oak door into
motion. “Why don’t you run along and clean the rabbit’s blood from your sword
instead?”
He didn’t bother to wait upon a response. Dalway had been one of his
recruits, and Axal Foss one of his captains when he’d held the position of
Protector General. Iss knew these men. They were loyal solely to the Watch and
the man who commanded it. Once that man had been Penthero Iss, now it was
Marafice Eye. Iss knew better than to take their insolence personally. He knew,
but didn’t like it.
Inside the great rotunda of the Cask more of their kind patrolled the
entrances to the principal chambers. South led the way to his private quarters
and the Bastard Walk lined with stone statues of the Founding Quarterlords, but
for now Iss chose to head toward the Blackvault. A wide flight of stairs led
down, each step perfectly graded to be a fraction darker than the last. The
Cask was built from light-colored limestone, and rather than shock the senses
with an abrupt transition from white to black, the stonemasons had chosen to
pave the way with all the shades of grey in between. Iss’ soft-soled boots hit
dove and slate and charcoal before touching the raven marble the vault was
named for. Legend had it that Harlaw Pengaron had burned his brother alive
here, and later ordered the charred walls painted. Lime wash and then strong
lead pigments had been used to mask the burn, yet nothing ever quite succeeded.
A month would pass and then the soot would suddenly start to reappear, rising
up from the base stone like damp. Harlaw Pengaron had eventually ordered the
vault’s complete refitting with black marble, but he never lived to see the
results.
Someone
probably killed him, Iss thought as he entered the Black-vault. It was the way most
surlords’ stories ended.
The chamber was chilly and dim. Earlier that morning he’d bid Caydis
Zerbina light a fire beneath the closest mantel and set candles burning about
it, but black marble was ever a challenge to heat and light. The Blackvault
stretched long beneath the fortress, its roof braced at its center by a line of
arches that ran the entire two-hundred-foot length of the room. The High
Examiner was supposed to walk the archway before investing a new surlord with
the Killhound Seal, but no one had bothered with that for ninety years.
Iss crossed to the fire. He had expected to feel some kind of relief to
be finally alone, but he was strangely agitated. Events had started, a world
was turning, and here was he boxed in by walls and men.
The armies of the Spire were moving north. Last he’d heard they were
raising camp on the east shore of the Spill. His darkcloaks sent birds to mark
their progress, loosing a rook from the back of the wagon train each night. The
progress had been beset by delays. The storm, the thick muds of spring thaw,
and cresting rivers. Only thirteen days out and already there was illness in
the ranks. The flux, doubtless brought on by men shitting where they ate. Not
an illness likely to take grangelords and commanders, more’s the pity. Iss
managed a wiry smile. He envied none of them, he must remember that. A surlord
who valued his life sent armies, not led them.
“Master.”
Iss turned from the fire to see Caydis Zerbina standing at the
chamber’s entrance. Caydis had been his personal servant for seventeen years,
and Iss had long grown accustomed to the fact that one never heard him
approach. Caydis was tall and striking, his skin the color and texture of
polished cherrywood. His neck was long enough for two men, and he could do
things with it, bend the bones in a certain way, rotate it a degree past
normal, that reminded Iss of a gazelle. He wore plain, undyed linens, and
sheathed his arms in bone bracelets that announced to all who looked that he
worshipped with the priests in the Bone Temple.
“A guest is here,” he announced softly.
“Bring him to me. Help him down the steps if he needs it.”
The elder Roland Stornoway entered the Blackvault with a dry tapping of
his cane, and a wheeze that conveyed both the level of his exertions and his
annoyance. He had refused Caydis’ offer of assistance, but Caydis knew a
dodderer when he saw one, and hung close in case of sudden need.
“An ill place for a meet, Surlord,” Stornoway shot from the entrance,
ever determined to have the first and last word. “You insult me with the
setting.”
“It is marble,” Iss said evenly.
“Pah!” Stornoway raised his cane and took a swipe at the air. “I won’t
play your games, Surlord. Find me a seat and speak.”
Iss gestured to Caydis, who brought forth a gilded, rack-backed chair with
a red cushion on the seat, and then left. The Lord of the High Granges, Lord of
the Highland Passes, and Lord of the Rape-
seed Granges looked at the cushion as if it were a serpent, shoved it
onto the floor with the butt of his cane, and then sat. “I’ll give you no more
backing for the war,” he said with some spirit, as if Iss had just pleaded with
him to do that very thing.
A hard old nutgall, that was what Borhis Horgo used to call him. He was
massively rich, but never took any joy from it—unless you counted the
entertaining he did with scandalously young whores— and just grew more joyless
and worse-dressed with age.
“I could raise a battle levy if I need to,” Iss pointed out.
“Raise all you like. I won’t pay it.”
Iss accepted this with surface equanimity. Money was always a problem,
but that was not why he had brought the grangelord here today. Guiding the
subject toward his objective, he said, “Am I to take it you have no interest in
your son-in-law’s success?”
“Ha!” Stornoway snapped. “I knew it. The Knife’s up your arse and
twisting.”
Iss hid his distaste. “I’d be more worried if I were you, old man,” he
said lightly, coldly. “Marafice Eye needs a grange before he can take my
place.”
Roland Stornoway in no way acknowledged this as a fact, but he had to
know it. “My granges go to my son.”
“You know I passed an Act of Ascendancy?”
Stornoway nodded harshly. “A more fool thing I have never seen in all
my sixty years.”
He was right, of course, but Stornoway wasn’t the only one who could
refuse to give. “Well it is done. Watch your back.”
“And while I do I’m watching yours as well, eh?” Stornoway’s little
shrunken eyes were almost gleeful. “You tell me nothing new, Surlord. Do you
take me for a complete fool? I know Marafice Eye would like me dead. My own son
and half my enemies would like me dead. Yet I’m not dead, I’m here, and I’ve a
fancy to stay.”
Iss felt some measure of relief. Marafice Eye had miscalculated here if
he thought Roland Stornoway would lie easy under his knife. Iss said, because
he was genuinely interested, “It was your choice to marry him to your
daughter.”
Stornoway actually chuckled, a thin, hiccuping wheeze that sounded as
if it might kill him more readily than Marafice Eye. “Well I’ll have the last
laugh there.”
“What do you mean?”
“The girl’s four months gone with child. By the time the Knife’s back
from the wars she will have presented him with her bastard.”
It explained so much. The scandal involving the bookbinder’s son was
damaging but not ruinous. A bastard out of wedlock was. “And he doesn’t know it?”
“He will when he sees the babbie. The bookbinder and his son both have
six fingers on each hand.” Stornoway slapped his thigh with the sheer
deliciousness of the deceit he had practiced upon the Knife. “Who will they say
is the fool then?”
Probably
still you, Iss
thought, but didn’t say it. He wouldn’t want to be in the room when the Knife
discovered what the old bastard had pulled on him.
“I’ll let you go now,” Iss said, somehow unsatisfied with the meeting
despite the fact it had lifted some fear. He really didn’t care for Roland
Stornoway; his harshness was arrogance in disguise. All the grangelords had it,
that arrogance. Iss had been dealing with it most of his life.
“So I’m dismissed am I?” Stornoway grumbled, shifting weakly in his
chair. “Well help me up then.”
Iss ignored him and left the chamber.
He passed his servant on the stairs, and bid him fetch some warm honey
from the kitchen. Caydis Zerbina looked pointedly toward the Blackvault. “Leave
him,” Iss said. “Fetch the honey and meet me by the Killdoor.”
Passing patrols of brothers-in-the-watch, Iss headed in the direction
of his private quarters. As always, the Bastard Walk, with its hugely curving
walls and grotesquely hewn statues, calmed him. This was his domain, and his
alone. Only he and the fortress servants ever walked here. Drawing to halt by
the steel-plated door that led to the unused east gallery, he unhooked one of
the three keys he kept in a pouch sewn to the inside of his silk robe.
As he waited for Caydis to arrive with the honey he studied the door.
The Killhound standing rampant above the Splinter had been stamped into all
eight of its metal plates. It had been some time since he’d last opened it,
weeks, perhaps even months. What was the use of entering an empty storeroom?
The Bound One was failing, useless. If it hadn’t been for the occasional
ministrations of Caydis Zerbina he would already be dead.
Still. Still. Iss was loath to give him up.
A bound sorcerer was not something one disposed of lightly. Their value was
high . . . and there were risks.
Iss turned the key. With Sarga Veys gone—the devil knew where—and the
Bound One unresponsive, Iss had lost options. Sorcery wasn’t power in itself,
but it did provide means to achieve it. Iss likened it to one of the light and
deadly sickle-knives used by Caydis Zerbina’s people. The blades were specially
constructed to be used in the left hand. You could fight without one, using
just your sword, but you lost the ability to surprise your opponent. And why
wield one blade when you could wield two?
Sorcery had always been the weapon in Iss’ left hand, yet for months
now he had been fighting one-handed. Oh, there were the darkcloaks—the
Surlord’s special force, his spies—but they hadn’t consciously drawn sorcery in
centuries, and though they used the remnants of it they did so without
acknowledging the source. They threw birds into the sky, waited in alleyways
and listened outside doors, poisoned, bribed, procured, fought with live steel
when they had to, and silenced loose tongues with knives: all the while
throwing the suggestion of shadows around themselves, a fluttering, an
inconsistency of light that could not withstand a hard stare from an onlooker.
It was how they got their name: darkcloaks. They had magic, but it was as
insubstantial as the shadows they drew around themselves to enhance their
stealth. It was a pretty trick, no more.
Skills such as Sarga Veys and the Bound One possessed were something
else entirely. They had the power to hold back nature. There were a dozen
things they could do with mist. They could compel wild animals to spy for them,
looking out through the uncomprehending eyes of a rabbit or a fox; they could
steal into a man’s body and snap his ureter so his urine drained into his
pelvic girdle, not his bladder; they could throw a false landscape across hills
and plains to confuse a traveler; they could aid or obstruct healing, command
shadows, defend themselves with a single thought, and track others of their
kind like hounds. Necromancers could hold a man’s soul in his corpse while it
rotted. Spellbinders could cast a spell on an object that lasted for thousands
of years. Archmages could cloak fortresses, men and armies. And the Sull maygi could stir time.
This was what Iss wanted. All of it. Yet though many men and women were
born with traces of the Old Skills—Iss could name at least ten people in the
fortress who had some small measure, Cor-wick Mools and Caydis Zerbina amongst
them—very few were born with enough to make sorcerer.
And Iss knew he was not one of them. That was why he’d bound one to
him, a chained sorcerer who would do his bidding.
For nearly two decades he had enjoyed the advantages access to such
power brought. Nearly fourteen years ago, when the day came to storm the
fortress and overthrow the aging and sickly Borhis Horgo, the Bound One had
thrown a shadow over the entire city. And later, during the ten bloody days of
the Expulsions, it had been the Bound One who had tracked down the Forsworn
knights in their lairs so Iss could send redcloaks to slay them. And so it had
continued on over the years; compulsions, far-speaking, ensorcell-ments. Iss
was in little doubt that he would have made surlord without the Bound One’s
aid, but it had accelerated his rise, and fortified his position in a hundred
different ways.
The Bound One had ever been Iss’ sickle-knife, but now the left-handed
blade had grown dull.
Iss sighed as he watched Caydis Zerbina approach holding a cloth tit of
honey, a pewter flask and a tiny guarded lamp. “Wrap them for me,” he
commanded, and waited as his servant detached a length of fabric from his linen
kilt and fashioned his surlord a makeshift pouch.
Caydis’ hands were finely shaped, the fingers elongated and capped with
startlingly white nails. When he was done, Iss said, “The Eye Men, the ones who
follow me day and night. I would prefer to see less of them.”
“Master.” Caydis bent his long, gazelle’s neck.
“A little illness in the ranks would be sufficient.” Iss considered his
options. “The flux perhaps.”
Again, there was another bending of the neck. It would be done.
Iss took the linen pack and the
lamp, and passed beyond the steel-plated door and into the unused east gallery.
It was dark here, the windows bordered, the torches unlit for over ten years.
Pigeons warbled in the roof groins. A fine dust of dried birdlime and crumbled
masonry crackled beneath Iss’ feet. Once the air had held a charge that grew
stronger as one approached the interior doorway of the Splinter, but it had
weakened to almost nothing over the past six months. Now all Iss felt was a
sense of settling, of things drawing to a close.
The door to the Splinter was set in a wall carved with stone
relief-work. The Impaled Beasts of Spire Vanis sat with surprising triumph upon
poles, and as always Iss was glad to put the sight of them behind him. Once
within the Splinter he adjusted the flame on the lamp. He had forgotten how
cold and utterly dark the oldest of Mask Fortress’ four towers could be. Even
now, with spring showing in the city as budding trees and thawed lakes, winter
held here. Hoarfrost plated the walls just as surely as steel plated the
Killdoor. Seven thousand feet below the snowline on Mount Slain, yet the
temperature and conditions were the same. Just as lightning rods drew
lightning, the Splinter drew ice.
Iss shivered, moved quickly to the underspace below the stairway where
the entrance to the Inverted Spire could be found.
Speaking a word of command he revealed the portal, its gate rumbling
back to display a descending flight of stairs. He took them with some haste,
not wishing to dwell on the weakness he experienced performing a single small
act of sorcerery.
The Inverted Spire was calm this day, its winds barely stirring. The
small lamp Iss carried lacked the power to illuminate the great chasm as its
center. Down the stairway wound, past walls ground with lenses of ice and
veined with hairline cracks. Have
they been here all this time? Iss wondered. These flaws forcing through the stone?
By the time he’d finally descended into the first of the round chambers
Iss was weary. The thought of having to climb back up disheartened him, and he
wished suddenly he had not come. Steeling himself, he passed through the
Inverted Spire’s upper two chambers and into the dark well below.
The Bound One stank, not of the foulness of human waste, but of the
sharp sourness of old men close to death. He lay in his iron cradle, his arms
and feet drawn up close to his belly, his chains wrapped like an umbilical cord
around him. He did not move, yet he seemed to for a moment as the lamplight
incited the caul flies crawling upon his body to take to flight.
Iss moved closer. The Bound One’s skin had a grey-yellow cast to it,
the kind that came with a drawing-inward of the blood. The chafe marks on his wrists
were no longer red, but black, and that same blackness had spread like welts
around his pressure sores. Iss knelt to touch him, his heart aching softly in
his chest. There had always been love between them; some deep, needful breed of
it born out of dependency and isolation and the terrible act of Binding. For
eighteen years the Bound One had drawn toward his master’s touch, had sought it
like a dog seeks affection from its owner. And Iss had always felt the
corresponding pull. He felt it now, as he touched the Bound One gently on his
cheek.
Nothing. Not even a tremor of acknowledgment or recognition. Iss let
the linen pack containing the water and the honey drop to the floor, out of
reach. Great sadness filled him. An end was drawing near, but it was surely
better this way, letting the Bound One weaken gradually over many days and
weeks. Less dangerous. Only a very great fool would forget who lay here. And
only a greater one would attempt to end that life by other means.
Iss leant over and laid a kiss on the Bound One’s head. It was over
between them. Eighteen years, now this.
With a heavy heart Iss departed the iron chamber, closed the door and
drew the bolt.
ing air in and out of his lungs in small degrees as he listens to the
Light Bringer retreat.
He knows he is failing, and sometimes that fills him with such despair
that he begs the darkness to take him. Surely he has endured enough. When do
you give in, and say This
life is too painful, let me end it}
Not
yet, comes the
answering reply, surprising him with its heat. Not yet, Light Bringer. Not yet.
So he waits and gathers his power about him, and sometimes the moisture
in the chamber condenses and rains down upon him and he open his lips and lets
its sweetness fall on his swollen tongue.
Not
yet.
He waits, waits. Such a small and terrible thing to wait, such a
relinquishing of self. Yet wait he must, and he concentrates on mov-
CHAPTER
Desertion
The earth tremor in the night had left the dogs uneasy, and the Dog
Lord found himself impatient with their fussiness. They had not eaten the horse
liver he’d cut up for them this morning, and they’d fought their leashes as he
pulled them outside. Damn fool dogs. So what if the earth was shaking? Did they
think themselves safer in the roundhouse, chained to their rat hooks, than here
under the open sky? Briefly, Vaylo wondered why no man had invented a dog
whip—they worked passing well for horses, by the gods!
“It’s just beyond the basswoods,” Hammie Faa said, leading the way from
the Dhoonehouse. “You’ll see it in just a bit.”
Vaylo huffed. Hammie Faa was getting fat. Some people did that, he’d
noticed, grew into their names as they matured. Molo Bean had been the same
way. His head had started out a normal shape, but somewhere along the way it
had developed a certain off-centeredness, a bulbous forehead and a bulbous chin
and a concavity in between. Bean-shaped, no doubt about it. The Dog Lord
wondered what that meant for him. Quickly deciding it didn’t bear worrying
about, he kicked some speed from his dogs and followed Hammie Faa through the
trees.
The day was a fine one, despite the violent shakeup in the night.
There were clouds, but they didn’t mean anything, just some puffed-up
sheep shapes in the sky. The sun was pale and still rising, and there was a
tickler of a wind. The bare branches of the basswoods clicked together as they
swayed; a dozen of them had been planted too closely and were now competing for
the same space. If Vaylo had his way he’d chop them all down and be done with
it. The basswood was a Blackhail tree. They hollowed them out and laid their
dead in them—perhaps he’d have them felled and sent there as a gift. As always,
thinking of Blackhail made the pressure build in his head. Seventeen
grandchildren slain. And they had not paid for it. Vaylo woke every morning
into a world where Blackhail had not paid.
Breathing out heavily, he yanked on his dogs’ leashes to bring them
into line. Some things a man could not think of and remain sane.
Ahead, Hammie Faa had drawn to a halt by the curiosity he had brought
his chief to see. There had been a well at the center of the grove, but Vaylo
did not know what it could be called now. The entire bricked wellshaft had
popped out of the ground like a cork forced from a bottle.
The Dog Lord felt a chill take him. We are Clan Bludd, chosen by the Stone Gods to guard
their borders.
Hammie wagged his pink face toward the queer cylinder of stone.
“Happened in the night. Tremor did it.”
The dogs would not go near it. They were already spooked enough. Aware
that Hammie was watching him expectantly, Vaylo kept his face bluff. “Well
that’s one less place to draw water from, eh? We can always use the bricks to build
another outhouse—you can never have too many of those.”
Hammie had been hoping to astound his chief, and Vaylo could tell he
was disappointed. Faa men had never learned to rule their faces; that was
partly why Vaylo trusted them. Masgro, Hammie’s father, had been a devil of a
man, a gambler, a wencher and straight to the hilt.
Vaylo made an effort. “It’s a sight, Hammie, I’ll give you that. Has
anyone else seen it?”
“I told Pengo where it was. He said to fetch you first thing to take a
look at it.”
Something about this statement struck the Dog Lord as odd. An instinct
he didn’t fully understand made him glance in the direction of the Dhoonehouse.
He and Hammie had come about half a league east, and the trees and the slight
rise in the land prevented him from seeing the domed and gated structure. “I
think we’ll head back, Hammie,” he said, crouching to release the dogs from
their tethers. “Go!” he commanded them. “Home!”
The dogs raced off eagerly, and Hammie and his chief followed at a
brisk pace. Vaylo noted the presence of a knife and sword slung from Hammie’s
gear belt. Good. But he’d wished they’d thought to bring horses.
What had been a moderate walk downhill was a climb on the way back,
Vaylo swore it. His old Bludd heart was beating harder than it should, and he
felt a weariness that wasn’t solely due to lack of sleep. True, he had been
woken at midnight along with everyone else in the Dhoonehold—probably the
entire North—as the earth shook and the roundhouse ground and rolled above him.
But there weren’t many times when he slept through the night. His body was
accustomed to hard use. No. This was something else. An accumulation of worry.
Angus Lok’s visit had added to the tally, and now it had reached the point
where he could find no restful place in his mind. And when that happened the
body suffered.
He saw one of his worries made real as he and Hammie gained the rise.
The Horns and the two-story stable gate had been thrown open and an army of
Bluddsmen were assembling there. Grooms and boys were bringing out horses,
spears were being thrust into saddle shoes, hammer chains fastened, wagons
loaded, plate strapped across chests, barrels rolled over the court, chickens
chased, swords oiled, bows braced, helms lowered, and sable greatcloaks
fastened at throats. It was a sight to stir a Bluddsman’s heart, and Vaylo knew
with a certainty he had no power to control it. A call to arms was mother’s
milk to Clan Bludd. Hammie swore, taking the words right from Vaylo’s mouth.
Pengo Bludd stood in the center of the field of men, high atop his great grey
warhorse, allowing a young boy elevated on a mounting stool to fasten his
hammer chains about him as if he were a chief. When he spied his father
approaching, he raised a hand in greeting, his eyes triumphant.
He had planned it well, Vaylo had to give him that. Frowning grimly,
the Dog Lord approached the Horns.
Pengo had the audacity to ignore him at first, finding himself much
occupied with cradling his spiked hammer just so. Men milling around him had
the decency to look shamefaced in their defiance, and none had the nerve to
ignore their chief. They opened a space for him, nudging back their mounts to
grant him space. “Son,” Vaylo said quietly. “I see your spine still bends both
ways.” Color flushed to Pengo’s cheeks, and he made his stallion rear to cover
it. “I’ve raised an army, Dog Lord. Time was when you would have done the
same.”
Silence spread through the men like a ripple on a pond. At that moment
Vaylo would have given his soul for a horse. He made his gaze move from face to
face, taking tally, recalling names. Many here were Pengo’s men, but others
were not. Cuss Madden, Ranald Weir, the three Grubber boys, Cawdo Salt, Trew
Danhro . . . and so the list went on. Even the smith Tiny Croda was geared and
mounted.
It was pointless asking how this was done. Bluddsmen prided themselves
on their ability to ride to war at short notice. Jaw depended on swift,
decisive action, not meticulous planning. Perhaps Pengo was right: Thirty years
ago he may have done the same. But
that was a different time and there was less to lose, he told himself, but he wasn’t
so sure he was right. Maybe there was always a lot to lose, but the young
didn’t know it.
“Where do you ride?” he asked.
Pengo looked as if he couldn’t quite believe his father wasn’t giving
him a fight. “South to Withy,” he said bullishly.
Vaylo nodded. It was a flexible position. From Withy Pengo could
monitor the Spire’s armies, move swiftly east to Haddo and Half-Bludd, or
strike against Blackhail at Ganmiddich. He probably hadn’t made up his mind
which.
The Dog Lord motioned to the wagons. “I see you’re taking a fair cut of
my supplies?”
“What would you have us do, Father? Starve?”
You, son,
in a minute.
“And women, too?”
Pengo shrugged, growing more confident. “A warrior must have other
comforts beside food.”
Vaylo sprang forward and grabbed his son’s booted foot, twisting hard.
Pengo rose in his saddle, his eyes widening in shock and indignation. Vaylo
thrust up. Somewhere in his son’s knee, bone cracked.
“Listen to me, boy. Take the men, take the women, take the food. But
take my grandchildren and die.” Another thrust upward. “Do you understand ?”
Pengo winced. One hand had gone to his horse’s neck to balance himself
and the other had gone to his knee. His gaze flicked nervously from side to
side. Men were looking at their feet, their pommels, their fingernails:
anywhere but at Pengo Bludd.
“I said do you understand?”
He nodded.
“Good.” Vaylo didn’t release his hold, though he slackened the upward
pressure. “Now I’m going to send Hammie to that cart over there, and he’s going
to take the bairns back inside. Aren’t you, Hammie?”
“Yes, Chief.”
“And you and I are going to stay here until he’s done it.”
Hammie moved with the speed of a Stone God, and his task was completed
in under two minutes. Vaylo got a good long look at his second son during that
time, and decided he very much disliked him. Pengo just got to look ridiculous,
and that suited Vaylo well enough. When he was ready he released him.
Pengo swung his weight back into his saddle. He was shaking with rage,
and might have charged his horse if it hadn’t been for the five dogs moving to circle
his father. He settled on sharply whipping its head toward the Dhoonehouse. “I
hope you die there,” he said to his father.
Vaylo wanted suddenly to be gone. Ignoring his son, he addressed his
clan. “Bludd!” he cried. “A hard life long lived to us all!”
Men cheered, and the army began to move out on his call. Pengo sent
daggers to his father, and then shoved and bullied his way to the head of the
train lest anyone forget who was its leader.
Vaylo stood on the tower court and watched his clansmen trot south
along Blue Dhoone Lake. The wagons churned the shore to mud, and a plot of
yellow spring flowers Vaylo had admired that very morning was beheaded, crushed
and finally driven beneath the dirt. It took Pengo’s army the better part of an
hour to leave the court, with many warriors and wagons lagging behind. Someone
had failed to catch all the chickens, and the stupid creatures flapped and
fretted, declining to take advantage of their chance for escape. The dogs
wanted at them, but Vaylo wasn’t sure yet how badly the Dhoone stores had been
raided and he thought he might just need them himself.
Already there had been waste: barrels split and leaking beer—it’d be a
boon night for snails—sagging grain sacks discarded, a crock of butter smashed
and oozing yellow grease onto the court. As Vaylo looked on, a handful of women
came forward to begin the clearing up. They were nervous of him, wary of
drawing too close or meeting his eye; Nan had probably sent them. Sighing
heavily, he left his dogs to lick up the butter, and crossed into the
Dhoonehouse.
Loyal men were awaiting him inside the great blue entrance hall. Hammie
and Samlo Faa, Oddo Bull, Glen Carvo and more stood in a half-circle and
greeted their chief with silent, telling nods. Most were warriors past their
prime. Like me, Vaylo thought with a stab of
black humor. I’ve been left
in charge of an army of old men.
Nothing for it but to send the young ones to do the legwork. “Hammie.
Do the rounds and take a head count. I want every green boy and maid reckoned
for, and weapons found for all of them. Samlo. I need you to ride out to the
guard posts along the borders. There should be at least twenty swordsmen
between here and the Flow. Bring them in.”
Hammie and his younger, bigger brother nodded. Already some of the
tension in their faces had eased: The Dog Lord would not fail them.
As they rushed off to do his bidding, Vaylo sent Oddo Bull to inspect
the Dhoonehouse’s defenses and report back to him that night. Oddo was greying but
still hard. He’d been cousin to Ockish, and could play the pipes; a good man to
have around.
“Glen,” Vaylo said to Strom Carvo’s brother when he was done with
setting tasks. “You’re with me.”
They went to see Nan first. The Dhoonehouse was quiet and strangely
echoing. Torches had gone out and no one had thought to relight them. In the
tunnel leading down toward the kitchens Vaylo saw boot prints stamped in
something sticky like honey. Flies were just getting interested.
The Dhoone kitchens were a series of high-ceilinged chambers clustered
together on the west wall of the roundhouse. Kitchens was perhaps too simple a name for them, for some of
the chambers contained granaries and butteries, game rooms and brewhouses, a
mews for poultry and stock tanks for fish. The kitchens were a lot grander here
than in Bludd, and Vaylo found himself wondering where a lad might go to beg
scraps and fancies from the cook. He didn’t have to wonder long, as Nan came
out to meet him and guide him and Glen toward the proper part of the kitchens,
where things were actually cooked.
Nan’s movements were serene, her lovely sea-grey braid smooth as woven
corn. “They waited until I’d left to help with the lambing,” she said, almost
managing to keep the same serenity in her voice.
Vaylo nodded, though he needed no explanation from her. Nan Culldayis’
loyalty had never been a question in his mind. She had loved both of them, that
was the wondrous thing, first his wife and then him. Nan had been with Angarad
the day she died, had held her like a sister as she spoke of the old times when
they’d been girls together in Bludd. Nan had been a fair maid in her youth,
with long chestnut hair and eyes to match . . . but Vaylo had never thought
anything of her. Only Angarad had stirred his heart. Now, nearly forty years
later, things had changed between them. Nan’s husband had been killed during a
raid on Croser the year following Angarad’s death. Shared grief had brought
some comfort and healing.
The proper kitchen, as Vaylo decided to call it, was in the process of
being cleared up. At some point Nan had run out of women to command, and had
set a stableboy and the two bairns to cleaning. A lot of sweeping was being
done, but Vaylo doubted its effectiveness. The stableboy would sweep one way,
and Pasha and Arran would sweep the dirt right back at him. Vaylo had half a
mind to pick up a broom and show them how it was done—he’d swept out his share
of stables and yards over the years—but he suspected cleanliness wasn’t the point
here. Nan was doing exactly the same thing with the grandchildren as he was
doing with his men: keeping them busy.
“So, Nan,” he said to her. “What have they left us?”
“Some livestock. A little grain.” She grinned at him. “All of the
eels.”
Vaylo barked a laugh, and instantly felt better than he had all day.
His grandchildren were here. Nan was here. His dogs were on the court, making
themselves sick. At his side Glen Carvo’s face was like stone. Glen and his
late brother had been much alike: strong warriors, and loyal but serious men.
Vaylo missed Strom every day. He missed every Bluddsman who’d died since he’d
made chief.
“Is there enough to make do?” Vaylo asked Nan.
“There’ll be enough. I’ll see to that.”
Vaylo nodded, understanding all she had not said. Nan Culldayis was
claiming this worry for her own; she would not let him share in it. “I’ll be in
the stables if needed,” he said to her. And then to the stableboy: “If you’re
coming with Glen and me you’d better get a move on, lad.”
The stableboy couldn’t quite believe his luck. He looked hopefully at
Nan, who nodded her consent and told him to leave the broom against the wall.
The small party of three left the kitchens and headed west through the
darkening corridors of Dhoone. Hammie hadn’t yet returned with a head count,
but Vaylo could tell it wasn’t going to be good. He was taken with the feeling
that he, Glen and the stableboy were rattling around in an abandoned ship.
Still. He couldn’t blame the clansmen who rode south; they were following their
hearts more than Pengo Bludd. They simply wanted to fight.
/ waited too long to
punish Blackhail. I held on to Dhoone when I should have been visiting the
gods’ own vengeance upon every Hails-man in the North. Vaylo puffed out a great
quantity of air. Glancing around, he noticed they were passing through the
Kings Quarter of the Dhoonehouse. He could find little to like in its cavernous
halls and meeting chambers long-stripped of furnishings and other comforts.
Some ancient blue velvet curtains hung on a wall with neither windows nor
doors, and that seemed to sum this place up. Faded finery without purpose.
Yet it was his. And he must keep it, else it make a mockery of his
life. He had traded part of his soul to gain this place, and if he lost it
there was no getting any of that missing soul back.
Last night’s tremor had released great quantities of dust, and Vaylo
roused clouds of grey powder as he quickened his pace. That was another thing
that preyed upon him: why the earth had shaken. Vaylo recalled one summer
nearly a lifetime ago when he and Ock-ish Bull had laid a wall. It was
punishment for some misdemeanor or other, and Gullit had sent them both to
Gamber Hench to do his hackwork for a month. Gamber was old, but still the best
mason in the clan, and he had taught Vaylo and Ockish some things worth
knowing. Vaylo had learned that a drywall could never be laid quickly; stones
needed time to settle. Gamber held the earth they walked on was much the same
as one of his walls in progress, still settling. That had made sense to Vaylo,
and ever since then, whenever he’d felt a slight shift in the land beneath him,
he’d think of Gamber Hench and be satisfied there was no reason for fear. Yet
what happened last night had seemed the opposite of that. An un settling. And Vaylo was unsettled.
Yet what could he do about it? He wasn’t a Stone God, just a chief.
By the time he reached the stables his mood had darkened, and it was an
effort to keep the blackness from his men. First things first. “How many horses
are still boxed?”
The stablemaster had ridden south, but one of the grooms had already
taken the initiative and was busy walking the remaining horses to stalls closer
to the doors. “Pengo ordered all the boxes to be cleared,” the youth said,
gulping. “But the master wouldn’t do it.”
A kind
of loyalty there,
Vaylo thought, even though the man had deserted him. “And how many did the
master leave us?”
“Three dozen, not counting the ponies.”
Oh gods.
“They didn’t take Dog Horse,” the groom added quickly, catching sight
of Vaylo’s expression.
No one would, unless they fancied a swift kick to the vitals. Seeing
the groom still watching him, half anxious and half hopeful, Vaylo made an
effort. “You’ve done well, lad. Just be sure to keep these beasts well tended.”
The groom nodded. “And for now Glen’ll be needing his mount.”
As the groom went to fetch and saddle the swordsman’s horse, Vaylo
turned to Glen Carvo.
“I need you to ride at haste to the Dhoonewall. Cluff Drybannock stands
there with a hundred and eighty men. We need them home.”
Glen left within the quarter, the only man in Dhoone that day heading
north. Vaylo watched him leave. It was going to be a long eight days until he
returned.
CHAPTER
Into the Want
The frozen earth was weeping. The small, white Badlands sun had warmed
its skin, and now the first half-foot of ice was melting. Water oozed around
the pony’s hooves, and then sank back when the weight was lifted. Blackflies
hovered in great clouds above the tundra, and Raif couldn’t see anything else
for them to feed on but him and his horse.
As best he could figure out he was in the Badlands northeast of
Blackhail. It was a bleak place, ridged and boiled, seeded with plants that
looked as lifeless as dry bones. Ground willow, spike grass and feverthorns
grew in treacherous clumps along the elk path. Every stone he passed was
crusted with lichen or salt, and sometimes when the pony stepped onto one it
crumbled like chalk.
The pony was hurting. Its legs hadn’t healed properly from the bashing
they’d taken at the rockslide, and some of the cuts were still open. The stout
little creature soldiered on, but Raif had noticed a slight hesitancy in her
step the past few days and guessed walking was causing her some pain. She ate
whatever lay close at hand— thorns, grass, some of the wild sorrel and sage
that sprang up overnight in the damp shores of muskegs—and wasn’t at all fussy
about her water. Raif could see why the Maimed Men valued these horses. A clan
stallion would have been showing its nerves by now.
They were close to the edge, Raif felt it. Close to the place where the
Great Want leaked into the Badlands. No clansman would come this far north for
fear of being lost. Raif had looked into himself to find the same fear, but
there were some dead spots in his emotions now, and though he retained fear of
many things the Want wasn’t one of them.
To be lost, to wander forever north into the great white vastness that
covered half a continent. .. there were worse things. Raif Sevrance could name
them.
His lips stretched into something. It couldn’t have been a smile
because it hurt. The skin on his face was absolutely dry, covered with winter
scale. His knuckles ached deeply where Bitty’s sword had cut. At first the
wound had been a straight line, bridging the highest three bones, but the edges
had dried and curled now, the scar tissue pulling them apart, and now the cut was
shaped like an oak leaf. It was not infected; trust Bitty to use a clean blade.
Bitty Shank had fought fairly. The question was, had Raif?
He needed the answer to be Yes,
but he found his memory wasn’t clear. Had he heart-killed Bitty? Or had he
simply placed the sword well? It seemed something he would never resolve. He
couldn’t go back and tear the moment apart until it gave him what he needed.
That would be using Bitty’s memory to relieve his guilt.
And he hadn’t sunk that low yet.
Tell
that to Blackhail,
snapped a hard voice inside him, and though it was cold Raif felt the shame
heat burn him. How many days had passed since the raid? Three? Four? Someone
with a swift horse and little need for sleep could be at the roundhouse by now.
It was, quite simply, an unbearable thought.
He could not bear it.
What had the Listener said to him ? Grow wide shoulders, Clansman. He had, but they were not wide
enough. Just to imagine Drey’s face as he heard the words Your brother has turned Maimed Man caused a stab in his heart.
This time there were no excuses, no mis-
understandings. Raif Sevrance had killed members of his own clan. The
blackest of all evils, and he had done it.
Gently, Raif guided the pony up a bluff littered with rocks. Scratching
the soft skin behind her ears, he encouraged her to place her feet. Blackflies
were bothering both of them, and there were pinpricks of blood on the pony’s
neck, and corresponding stings on his own. If they were lucky the wind might
pick up and drive the pests away; he wished it more for the horse than himself.
The day was halfway through, and the sky was open but pale. When they
reached the crest of the bluff, a sea of drowned grass spread wide before them.
The top ice had melted for leagues, and just stood there unable to drain. Raif
grimaced and eased the pony toward it.
He had nearly not brought her. After he’d left Stillborn and emerged
from Black Hole he’d had little thought except to get away. Some things had
been sharp in his mind, others not. / have my sword, my bow, and Divining Rod, he remembered thinking. All three things had been
in his possession as he left the tunnel; he could not recall taking stock of
any other need. Yet here he was with the pony and a fair portion of supplies.
It had been the outlander’s doing, not his own. “Mor Draftfa,” he had called from the shadows by the lake. “Do
not walk into the darkness unprepared.”
Raif remembered the voice quite specifically. Something in its pitch had
halted him at a time when he had been determined not to be halted. It made his
skin crawl even now, that feeling of being gripped.
The outlander’s eyes had been strangely bright, and blood was leaking
from one of them. Now that the mist had gone the night was clear and the wind
raised snake tracks on the water. “Take the pony,” the outlander said, pulling
the reins and making the little horse trot out in front of Raif. “It’s a hard
journey north.”
Raif had not questioned him. In a night full of terrors it had seemed
such a minor one: that anticipation of his purpose. Now Raif knew it for the
cold-blooded horror that it was. The outlander had loaded the pony with fresh
water, blankets, a flint and striker, hoof grease, a quarter weight of oiled grain,
and the sum of his own food ‘t rations for the past fifteen
days. The raid party had consumed the last of the cheese during the storm, yet
there was cheese. They’d run out of honey by the fifth day, yet there was a
pouch of it wrapped in greased hide in Raif’s pack. Lardcake, raw pheasants’
eggs, even dried and roasted chestnuts; these were all things the raid party
had eaten with haste and to hell with planning—there was always hardtack and
dried meat for the journey back. Yet someone had planned ahead. Someone had set
his rations aside for another purpose. The outlander had known all along where
Raif was headed. Laying his aching hand on the pony’s neck, Raif took comfort
in her living, breathing warmth. Had the slaying of his own clansman been part
of the outlander’s plan? Had the outlander raised the mist hoping to add to
Raif’s confusion? And if so, what did it change?
Nothing was the answer, and Raif tried to push the subject aside. The outlander
was just like Heritas Cant in Ille Glaive; not interested in people for what
they were, just how they fit into long-laid plans. Cant had been Phage too.
Having reached the shallow sea of standing water, Raif dismounted.
Water oozed over the top of his boots as he led the pony forward. Ahead the
land ran flat and uninterrupted for leagues. It would take them hours to cross
this place. Raif took some lardcake from his pack and split a portion between
himself and the pony. The pony lipped against Raif’s palm to get at the last of
the goodness. More blackflies were hatching from the water, rising up in a
buzzing mist. The pony swiped them with her tail, and Raif batted them away
with the back of his hand. His toes were beginning to tingle. The top ice might
have melted, but the water temperature was only a beat above freezing.
What was he doing here? Only a part deep within him knew. He had to
flee the mine, he’d been sure of that, and his only option had seemed north.
Raif shook his head a bit, scorning the hollowness of that last excuse. It took
too much effort to lie to yourself in this place. He had come north because he chose to. He was here because from the moment Ash March
had left him his life had been leading toward this moment and place.
Raif slid the Listener’s arrow from the pouch rigged atop his bow-case.
Take this arrow named
Divining Rod that has been fletched with the Old Ones’ hair, take it and use it
to find what you must. The arrow always surprised Raif with its lightness, the sense that
the slightest draft of air could carry it for leagues. Raif believed now it had
been inevitable that he would win it back from Stillborn. Perhaps even
Stillborn’s claiming of it had been inevitable. A delay, until Raif was ready
to do what he must. The same with the Forsworn sword; Raif had not been
prepared to wield it until now.
The sword’s weight felt good lying in its sealskin scabbard against his
thigh. Right. Natural in a way it had not felt before. The chunk of rock
crystal set in its pommel flickered with brilliant light. For a moment, Raif
wondered what had become of its brother-sword, the one held by the head knight.
Its edge had been blackened and warped, he remembered, as if something stronger
than acid had burned it. He hoped no one had dared enter the knights’ redoubt
and taken it. A man could lose his soul by such an act.
We
search, the
knight had said. For the
city of the Old Ones. The Fortress of Grey Ice.
Raif returned the arrow to its case. Suddenly it seemed there were too
many things he didn’t fully understand. The answers were like objects balancing
on the edge of his thoughts; the slightest turning of his mind toward them was
enough to send them plummeting into an abyss. If he could just sneak up on
them, that was the thing. Sneak up on his own thoughts.
That was why the gods had invented dreaming, he supposed.
Glancing over his shoulder Raif calculated how far he’d come across the
shallow sea. Farther than he’d imagined, for he could no longer see the lip of
rock marking bluff. His trail had gone, of course, sucked away by the standing
water. The sky and sea stretched endlessly in all directions.
A chill went through Raif, and he pulled the Orrl cloak tight across
his chest. Tern Sevrance had been the best tracker and huntsman in the clan; he
had taught his sons and daughter to navigate through grasslands, forests and
high country, how to follow and blaze trails, how to read winds and the moss on
trees, and how to watch the sun and stars for bearing. Yet for the first time
in fifteen years Raif was no longer sure where true north lay. It had to be
ahead, for the sun lay behind him, but there were many ways ahead, many subtle
degrees of difference. And now he found it impossible to gauge the movement of the
sun. It hung there, cool and lifeless, a silver disk in a silver sky. Raif
stood and watched it, guarding his eyes with his hand. Its light scorched ghost
rings into his retinas that he saw even when he blinked.
The thing didn’t move. Raif grinned insanely at that. Of course it
moved ... it just wasn’t letting him know it. Turning his back, he took careful
note of the alignment of his pony’s head. She hadn’t moved all the time he’d
been standing here, working things out, and now she was the sole indicator of
the direction in which he’d been traveling.
“Good girl,” he said softly, leading her forward. “This means you’ll
get chestnuts tonight.”
It was getting colder, he realized. For the first time that day his
breath whitened as it left his body. After an hour or so had passed he noticed
the shallow sea was quickening, its waters growing turgid and losing their
ability to mirror light. Almost as a reflex action, he bent at the knee and ran
his hands along the surface. Its temperature was shocking. When he brought his
fingers to his lips and licked them, he tasted the brackishness of dissolved
salts.
On he walked, with the sun like a fixed point behind him. When he
calculated it was close to the time when light began to fail he monitored the sun’s
reflection on the sea. The disk skimmed over the freezing surface, and then
suddenly the water clouded and the image was gone. Light dimmed. Raif slowed
but did not halt. He wasn’t sure he wanted to look over his shoulder again.
Curiosity got the better of him after a while and he stole a glance. Grey
clouds now covered a third of the sky, masking the sun and any path it cared to
take toward the horizon.
Not wholly satisfied, Raif turned back . . . and saw that the way ahead
had subtly changed. Confused, he swept his gaze in a half-circle. Something
about the shallow sea was different, and even as he tried to discern exactly
what had changed, the pony’s hooves made a cracking noise as they hit the first
of the ice. The water had frozen. Thin blades of spike grass jutted through the
hard surface, trapped.
“Easy now,” Raif said to the pony, wondering if the words were wholly
for the horse.
Quite suddenly he realized that the blackflies had gone, and he
couldn’t recall when he’d last been aware of them. Now the only thing hatching
was mist. Threads of its rose delicately from the ice, grazing the pony’s
hooves and sliding along the salt stains on his boots. Watching it, Raif
decided it was best to keep moving forward and not think too much.
Some measure of light still held, and he and the pony struck a fair
pace. It was easier now the water had gone.
Time passed, and the new moon appeared in a quarter of the sky he would
not have expected. The light stretched on. A handful of stars winked into
existence, and Raif was relieved to see he recognized their formation. He fed a
handful of chestnuts to the pony, and by the time she’d swallowed them the
light had gone. To reassure himself Raif looked again for the known stars, the
formation known as the Hammer. Something else now shone in its place.
He couldn’t say he was surprised. He had realized some time back he’d
entered the Great Want.
No
going bac’t,
he told himself. Tern had once told him that the way you entered the Want was
never the same as the way you left it. You either found another way out or died
trying.
A strangled laugh escaped Raif’s throat. He was in the hands of the Old
Ones now.
In a way night was less challenging than day. Losing your way in
darkness was to be expected. It was easier to relinquish control. Raif found he
wasn’t so particular about the pony’s heading anymore, and let her wander where
she chose. Sometimes she stopped to sniff the frozen grass. Once she tried it,
but found it little to her liking and let it fall from her mouth in torn bits.
When she increased her pace with no prompting from Raif, he guessed she’d
caught a whiff of something worth investigating.
It was an island in the ice. A hummock of earth about forty paces
across crowned with clusters of ground willow rose above the frozen sea. The
pony slowed as they neared it, letting out a low whiffle that Raif took to mean
Here. This is where we’ll
spend the night.
He followed her as she found a path up the shore. It was a good place,
bitterly cold and exposed to the wind, but mercifully above the mist. Some of
the ground willow had died on the root, and it made fine wood for a fire. Salts
crusted on the bark fired colors into the flames as it kindled. Raif brushed
down the pony and emptied out a careful measure of oiled grain on the hard
earth before settling down to rest and eat. He doubled up his blanket to make a
rug, and then sat and stared into the fire.
Bitty Shank had been with him and Drey that day on the Bludd-road. They’d
all been scared together, but no one had shown it. Funny how it seemed a
lifetime ago now. They had all been so young and not even known it.
Raif laid his head on the blanket and fell into a fitful sleep.
When he awoke the world was pearl grey, and there was nothing but mist
below him and the pony. They could have been on the top of a mountain or a rock
in the middle of the sea. The wound across Raif’s knuckles was throbbing, and
he felt stiff and ill rested. Terrible things had happened in his dreams.
The fire had gone out, and he quickly decided against relighting it. He
drank some water from the skin, and then poured some into the cook pot for the
pony. As she took her fill, he removed her blanket and rubbed down her legs.
One of the cuts on her heel looked in a bad way, and he greased and bandaged
it. Worrying about the pony stopped him worrying about his dreams. Bitty Shank
had been alive in them, walking with Raif’s sword through his heart.
Raif broke camp and set off through the mist. All bearings had been
lost in the night and it was impossible to say in which direction he headed.
For all he knew it might not even have been dawn.
The mist moved like ice on a lake, subject to currents other than the
wind. It lingered for hours after true daylight had come, and then drained away
in the space of a quarter hour. Raif had been walking beside the pony ever
since they’d left the island, but the sudden clearing of air made him eager to
ride. The pony seemed willing enough, and set her own pace at a trot.
The landscape was stark, like the face of the moon. The ice underfoot
had turned rocky, and they had to be careful of narrow draws and sudden drops
in the tundra floor. The sky was white and filled with clouds, and there was no
sign of the sun. They crossed a great trench at what Raif judged to be
midmorning, and then a second one later in the day. As they climbed from the
second basin something the Listener had said came back to Raif. In ages past, the Great Want was green with trees,
and blue water flowed there along riverbeds so broad and deep that entire
villages could be tossed into their centers and sin’t without a trace.
Raif glanced back at the trench. Could a river have run here? Abruptly,
he turned the pony and headed down again. This time he saw things he had not
noticed before. Stones with rounded edges, flow ripples on the walls of the
trench. It was a dry riverbed, and he had crossed it at two points. Raif jumped
down from the pony, stirred but unsure why. Something mattered here. Crouching
he grabbed a handful of small stones and litter from the riverbed and let them
sift through his fingers as he thought. A river . . . and he had cut through
its path twice. One thing was certain: It was the river’s path that had bow-curved,
not his own. He might no longer know in what direction he was headed, but he
still knew how to hold a course.
A bow-curved river. A memory was balancing on the edge of his
thoughts... a silver line on a cave wall. As the image plummeted into the abyss
he caught a glimpse of Traggis Mole’s face.
Raif stood. The Robber Chief’s cave. The wall painting. A river flowing
through a land that started out green and finished dead. A lone mountain upon
its banks ...
We search.
Raif took a quick breath as all the answers that had eluded him fell
into place. The Forsworn knights had been searching for the same thing he was
searching for now: the fault most likely to give. That was why they’d a built a
redoubt in the Badlands on the edge of the Want: because this was where they
needed to be. They had known much more than he did, had possessed a book to
guide them.
Raif could still see its yellow pages laid open to show a massive spire
of rock.
The mountain in the cave and the one in the book were the same.
Clicking his tongue to call the pony, Raif headed upstream along the
trench. The river would show him the way.
CHAPTER
A Severed Head
Iago Sake was laid to rest in accordance with the ancient death rites
of Clan Dhoone. Robbie Dhoone had asked and received a special dispensation
from the Milk chief, allowing him to name this twenty-foot stretch of the
Milkshore as the Dhoonehold in absentia. Three guide circles had been drawn around
the pit, the first using Iago Sake’s own portion, the second using powder from
the Dhoone king’s horn, and the third using earth from the Dhoonehold. Iago
Sake’s body had been stripped and cleaned, and the great axman laid naked on
the grass.
Bram found it difficult to look at the body. Iago Sake had been pale in
life, but in death strange colors had invaded his skin. The undersides of his
thighs and buttocks had turned a deep wine red, while his hands and feet had
yellowed, and his face and chest had taken on the chalky blue color of veins.
The wound that had killed him seemed such a small thing, not even visible now
the death crew had laid Iago on his back. A single puncture through the ribs
was all it had taken to claim Iago Sake’s life. One well-placed stab with a
knife.
Robbie had wept when the small raid party returned with the body. They
had borne it north on a stripped wagon driven by two I
matched ponies. The men were ragged with lack of sleep, their cloaks
stiff with dried mud. One had swayed in his saddle, and Did-die Daw had rushed
forward to steady him. Bram had just returned from his meeting with Skinner
Dhoone, and Robbie had been questioning him closely on how it went. When the
commotion broke out beyond the walls of the broken tower, Bram had just told
Robbie that Skinner had promised to give his answer within in ten days. Robbie
had smiled, well pleased.
Darkness had fallen quickly after that. Robbie had rushed out to the
rivershore, Bram following. You could read death on someone’s face, Bram
realized that evening, as he watched Ranald Vey sit weary on his horse, his
gaze finding and holding only one man: Robbie Dun Dhoone, his king and chief.
Robbie had taken swift and silent count of the raid party, and then
said two words, “The Nail?”
Ranald Vey had dipped his head in defeat. He was the eldest warrior in
Robbie’s camp, one of the first to disavow Skinner and declare himself for Dun
Dhoone. His skills at horse were unmatched in the clan. “A Hailsman took him,”
he said.
Robbie’s face tightened. “And the others?”
“Taken by an Orrl bowman.”
It hadn’t made much sense at the time. Bram didn’t think it made much
more now. Two men defending a wagon, showing no colors or ornaments of clan,
had somehow managed to slay three Dhoone warriors. The raid party had mistaken
them for Glaivish traders and attacked without due caution. Dhoonesmen had died
in the charge, and later Iago Sake had been taken by surprise. Bram had
listened to Ranald Vey tell the story several times, and it seemed to him that
Iago had been at fault. He should have made it his business to learn the nature
and number of men in the wagon before launching an attack. No one said that,
not out loud. When a great warrior like Iago Sake died he was to be honored,
not condemned.
His death had brought wealth to the clan. Gold, twenty-four rods of it,
found in the back of the wagon along with a heap of old stones. Everyone in the
broken tower had been curious about it. Copper was Dhoone’s metal, the tawny
ore that striped the north-
ern hills, but copper had lost its worth over the centuries, overtaken
by hard steel. Gold was worth . . . Bram struggled for a suitable reckoning... its
weight in gold. Robbie had ordered it removed from the wagon and taken to a
secret place of his choosing. Bram did not know where.
“Lower the body,” commanded the Castlemilk guide, his voice breaking
through Bram’s thoughts. Dhoone’s own guide was at the Old Round, ministering
to Skinner and his men, and Robbie had asked the Castlemilk guide to summon the
gods in his place.
Robbie, Mangus Eel, Diddie Daw and Ranald Vey crouched by the body to
lift it. Their faces were grave, and their shoulders shook as they performed
the awkward task of transferring Iago Sake’s body into the three-foot-deep pit.
Ropes should have been used, Bram realized, but this rite had not been
performed for many decades and practicalities had been lost. In the end Ranald Vey
actually jumped down into the pit and raised his arms to accept Iago’s head and
chest. Wet mud oozing from the pit walls brushed as high as Ranald’s waist as
he slid the body to the floor.
Already the river water was seeping in. The pit had been dug on a level
bank twenty paces from the shore. A shallow sluice running between the two was
blocked with a plug of loose stones. The Milk’s waters ran along the sluice and
then swirled idly as they encountered the plug. Beneath the surface trickles
spilled through.
The clan guide was dressed in a pigskin mantle that had been polished
with pumice and white lead in the Castlemilk way, but to honor Dhoone he had
drawn a collar of blue wool across his shoulders and closed copper bands around
his wrists. When he lifted Iago Sake’s half-moon ax from the warrior pile
containing Iago’s belongings all present fell silent. There was not a man in
the Castlehold who did not know that ax.
Bram glanced around the watchers as the guide knelt over the pit and
laid the ax on Iago’s chest. Hundreds of Castlemen and Dhoones-men had gathered
on the shore. As soon as Robbie had announced he would “float the oil” for
Iago’s death, word had spread quickly between the clans. Withy and Wellhouse
kept the histories, but some things were remembered by all clansmen, and the
death rites of Dhoone warriors in the time before the River Wars were known and
held in awe throughout the North. Bram did not think it chance that Robbie had
decided to go ahead with such a spectacle this day.
The morning light was hazy on the Milk. The sun was still low in the
east, rising over the pine forests of Castlemilk, as the clan guide bid Iago’s
clansmen to each pick a stone from the sluice. Bram joined the line. He had
reverted to wearing his old brown cloak, and was one of the few Dhoonesmen not
clad in dress blue. As he crouched by the head of the sluice to take a stone
from the plug, the point of his sword scraped in the mud. Everyone here today
was armed and clad in field armor, including Bram. He didn’t possess mail or
plate but had donned a boiled leather chestguard and heavy gloves.
Even as he picked a stone he could see that the sluice had started to
run. The Dhoonesmen who’d gone before him had cleared a passage for the river’s
course, and the body in the pit had begun to rise. Bram backed away, the stone
like a chip of ice in his fist. He didn’t want to watch Iago Sake’s corpse
slowly float to the top of the pit, but he couldn’t seem to look away.
Weapon hooks jangled and metal plate chinked as the gathered clansmen
breathed heavily and shifted their weight. The guide stood at the head of the
pit, naming the Stone Gods in a voice hard and terrible, as a clan guide’s must
be. Ganolith, Hammada, lone,
Loss, Uthred, Oban, Larannyde, Malweg, Behathmus.
The sky darkened and a wind picked up along the riverway. The guide
knelt again, and this time his apprentice rolled a great black churn toward
him. As Iago Sake’s body rose, the guide floated shale oil on the water’s
surface. The clear oil lapped over Iago’s chest, closing around the eye of his
ax, and spilling like heavy syrup down along his rib cage to the water that
buoyed him. The two liquids stirred uneasily at the meet level, oil swirling
down and bubbles of water rising up, but the guide had a steady hand and the
oil settled as he continued to pour.
His timing was good, for the river water in the pit found its level and
ceased rising as the last drops of oil slid from the churn. The guide rolled
the container across the muddy grass and his apprentice carried it away. All
was silent on the shore. Iago’s body hung pale and inhuman in the pit, trapped
between water and shale oil.
The clan guide rose to his feet and took several steps back.
“Behathmus!” he shouted, flinging his arms wide. “Dark Brother and Bringer of
Death. This warrior died in your service. He has earned his place in the Stone
Halls, and we command that you to take him there.”
Something happened then, a spark, and Bram couldn’t say where it came
from. The oil ignited with a low roar, and the air was sucked from Bram’s
chest. The front of his rib cage was pressing against spine, and he had to suck
hard to inflate his lungs. The pit was an oblong of white fire, the air above
it molten with heat. Bram felt his eyeballs dry. The heat drew the wind off the
river and sent it rolling over the shore, and the cloaks of the Dhoonesmen and
Castlemen snapped.
No one moved. Minutes passed, and then the water in the pit began to
boil. The mud walls buckled, turning liquid. A soft gulp sounded as mud
collapsed, and the pit water flooded into the sluice. Iago Sake’s body was
borne on the rush, sliding toward the river, a nightmare of flames.
Bram looked away then. He heard the terrible hiss of heat hitting cold
water, felt the steam puff through his hair. For a moment he didn’t breathe;
the smell of burning was too much. Dhoonesmen had gone to their gods this way
for centuries, their bodies burning like wreckage as they floated along the
Flow. Sometimes the pit didn’t give and the walls collapsed inward and buried
the corpse. It was said Behathmus, god of slain warriors, had chosen to sleep
that day.
Slowly, men’s gazes shifted from the hollow burned-out shell of the pit
to Robbie Dun Dhoone, who stood at the head of the shore. He was dressed with
all the trappings of a king, with fisher fur and steel plate on his back, and a
bronze tore set with blue topaz protecting the vulnerable hollow of his throat.
His shoulder-length golden hair was braided with copper wire, and Bram could
see redness on his left cheekbone where his latest blue tattoo had not yet
healed.
“Men,” he said quietly, knowing there was no need to raise his voice.
“Prepare yourselves. We ride to war within the hour.”
He turned and left them, walking to the broken tower alone. None dared
follow him for a while.
Bram couldn’t seem to move. He hardly knew what he felt. Sometimes he
didn’t know if he would ever make a Dhoonesman. “Are you the boy?”
Looking up, Bram saw the Castlemilk guide watching him from across the
pit. Two large patches of mud stained his cloak where he had knelt on the
ground. Seeing Bram’s puzzlement he spoke again. “I said are you the boy, Bram
Cormac? The one who’s coming to us?”
Bram felt his face tingle with shock. How could he have forgotten?
Robbie had sold him to Castlemilk. Stupid. Stupid. Why had he thought that riding to the Old Round
and meeting with Skinner Dhoone would change things? Because I felt like a Dhoonesman that day.
“You’re a quiet one, Wrayan said as much,” the guide said, eyeing him
carefully. He was a small man, but powerfully built, with dense black hair that
stood upright from his skull. “Thought I might be able to teach you some
things. Thought I might find a place for you at my hearth.”
“You have an apprentice.”
The guide lifted a thick black eyebrow. “So you do have a tongue.
That’s good to know.” Bram colored.
“And adequate circulation.” The guide started back in the direction of
the Milkhouse. “When your brother wins back Dhoone come and see me. The future
might not be as dire as you think.”
Bram watched him go. It was hard not to think about what he said.
The shore was clearing now, as men headed off to collect their horses
and supplies. The ground around the pit had sunk and was steaming slightly. The
smell of cooked turf rose from it. Bram glanced up at the sun. Time was
passing, and there were things to do. Activity around the broken tower was
intense, and as Bram approached he could see Robbie in the center of it,
mounted on his big stallion, Oath. An ax and a longsword were cross-holstered
across his back, making a figure X. When he noticed Bram he called out for him
to hurry and saddle his horse. Old Mother was at Robbie’s left, sitting her
mean white mule. Someone had brought her an antlered helm which she wore with
complacence. Once Bram had saddled and mounted his gelding, she trotted forward
to take a look at him.
“Brambles need thorns,” she said firmly, after inspecting him at some
length. “Else the birds’ll pick off the berries afore they’re ripe.”
Bram just looked at her. One of them was mad, he was pretty sure of
that.
“Riders! From the west!” came a call, instantly charging the war party.
Relieved at having an excuse to ignore Old Mother, Bram turned his horse west
along with eight hundred other men. Two mounted figures were riding at speed
from the direction of the Milkhouse and the Milkroad that lay beyond. Bram
recognized the giant red warhorse of Duglas Oger. The axman and a small crew
had been absent from the broken tower for twenty days. Bram had assumed he was
raiding; Duglas excelled at that.
“Make way!” cried the second rider, another Dhoone axman, as the two
approached the tower at full gallop. “Urgent message for the king!”
Bram glanced at his brother. Robbie’s expression remained unchanged. He
kicked his honey stallion forward a few paces so he was free of the swell of
men.
“Rab!” called Duglas Oger, as he brought his horse to a hard halt. “I
brought you a wee gift.” His tone was light, but his breath was labored and the
neck of his tunic was black with sweat. His horse was so badly lathered its
coat was scummed in rings around its withers.
“Duglas,” Robbie said in greeting, and then to the second man: “Gill.”
Now he had stopped, Duglas Oger took a moment to absorb the sight of
hundreds of men assembled on the hard standing of the broken tower. “Got here
in time to claim my place then,” he said, his chest pumping.
Robbie waited a beat before replying. “What have you for me, Duglas?”
Something in Duglas Oger’s big flushed face fell, but he recovered
himself quickly. A coarse brown sack hung from his saddlehorn, and he thrust
his hand down to the bottom of it. “Something to keep you warm at night—a
Bluddsman’s head.”
He pulled out something small and waxy, with sunken eyes and white
lips, and shockingly glossy hair. With a grin, Duglas threw it toward Robbie.
Robbie caught it in both hands, and turned it to face him.
“Who is it?”
Duglas and his companion shared a glance. “Messenger. Found him one day
north of Dhoone. Sent to bring Cluff Drybannock’s forces back from the
Dhoonewall.”
Robbie glanced swiftly at Duglas. “How do you know this?”
Duglas made a shrugging gesture, causing the head of his great war ax
to rise above his shoulder. “Who used to skin all your kills, Rab?” he asked
gently.
Bram shivered. They had tortured the Bluddsman.
Robbie relaxed a fraction, turning the head’s face away from him and
resting it against the head of his horse. “So the Dog Lord is getting worried.”
“Better than that.” Again, Duglas shared a glance with his companion.
“His men have deserted him, and headed south.”
A murmur of disbelief rippled through the war party. “How so?” Robbie
asked. “Skinner couldn’t have mounted an attack so soon.
“Oh, it’s not Skinner who’s drawing men away from the Dhoone -house.
It’s the armies of Spire Vanis.”
Robbie looked to Duglas’ companion. “Gill?”
The man nodded. “He’s right.
Spire armies are heading for the border, and the Bluddsmen are riding south,
first to Withy and then on to the Wolf to meet them.”
Robbie tilted back his head and laughed. “The Bludd forces have gone to
Withy. Withy! Now we know for certain the
Stone Gods are with us.”
Mangus Eel started to laugh, and soon Guy Morloch and others joined in.
“I pity Skinner when he turns up there looking for an easy fight,”
Diddie Daw said. “He’ll be cursing us all to his grave.”
Diddie’s words seemed to sober
Robbie. “Let’s not forget he commands Dhoonesmen.”
Men were quick to nod and the laughing stopped. Send word, Bram thought, but didn’t speak it. If you want to save Dhoonesmen’s lives, send a
message to Skinner, and admit that the deal you offered him was a ruse designed
to make him attack Withy. A strike upon Withy would force the Dog Lord to send an army to
defend it, leaving the Bluddhouse vulnerable to an attack from Robbie Dun
Dhoone. That was the plan, and it looked as if Skinner had taken the bait. His
chief’s pride would not allow for the possibility that Robbie might win a
roundhouse for his own, especially one with the boast, We are the clan who makes kings. Now there would be a massacre
at Withy if Skinner attacked.
Robbie knew that. All the fine words he’d spoken to Mauger Loy that
night in the broken tower were hollow, Bram realized. It would take nothing to
send a boy east with a message, but Robbie chose to do nothing.
“Duglas,” he said, throwing the head back at the axman. “Get yourself
clean and kitted. And find a place for the head.”
As Duglas and Gill trotted toward the tower, Robbie stood in his
stirrups and addressed the war party. “Dhoonesmen. Castlemen. Today we ride north
to Dhoone. Home for some of us, and for others a place to find glory. We are
one now, joined in purpose, and the Stone Gods have blessed us with good
fortune. We are Dhoone, clan
kings and clan warriors alike. War is our mother. Steel is our father. And
peace is but a thorn in our side.”
Hearing the Dhoone boast, men started to rap the butts of their spears
against the earth. One man started up the chant “Dun Dhoone! Dun Dhoone! Dun
Dhoone!” and others quickly joined him, and soon the noise was deafening.
Bram’s,at in his saddle and listened to the roar. One of the Castlemilk
warlords looked to Robbie, and then ordered his troops to turn out. Hundreds of
men began to move toward the Milkroad on his say. Robbie waited in the center
for the Castlemen to clear the area east of the broken tower, allowing the
warlord the honor of leading out the army.
When he was ready Robbie drew Mabb Cormac’s sword and cried, “North to
Dhoone!”
Bram watched him, and when the time came he kicked his horse into a
trot. He was no longer sure what he’d be fighting for, but that didn’t change
the fact that he must fight.
CHAPTER
To Catch a Fish
Fish, Effie decided, were stupid. Which was just as well really, as she
wasn’t that clever herself and it wouldn’t have taken much to better her. A pig
could have done it easily. Pigs were smart. Jebb Onnacre had once taught her a
song about a pig. A pig and a twig. When she’d told it to Letty Shank, Letty
had gone and repeated it to everyone—and it had been Effie who’d got the
beating for it. She was still mad about that.
Even so. It had been a good song.
Suddenly disheartened and not a bit sure why, she rocked her bottom
back onto the bank and took her hands from the pool. They were a strange color,
like ham. They were a bit numb, too. The water was cold. There were still some
fish floating in the pool, but she decided three was enough. She could always
come back for more.
Rubbing her hands against her cloak, Effie stood. The noise from the
waterfall was deafening, and its spray spattered her face. All sorts of
interesting rocks lay around, battered into round shapes by the force of the
fall. It had been a long while since she’d had time to consider rocks, and she
was a bit rusty. Granite over there, even though it was red and looked like
sandstone. Or was it traprock?
The fact that she didn’t know upset her. Effie Sevrance wasn’t good for
much but she’d always known her rocks.
Noticing her hands were still tingling a bit, she crossed her arms high
and thrust them in her armpits. The spray wasn’t helping, making her feel
goose-pimply all over, but now she’d found this place she didn’t want to leave
it. It was a little rocky draw, like an inlet, set deep into the cliffs and
back from the river. A stream overhead dropped in a sheer fall, crashing into
the pool, before running down through the rocks to the Wolf. It was sheltered
on all sides, and that seemed good enough reason to stay. Up there, on the
headland, nowhere was sheltered. When someone attacked there was no place to
hide.
The harlequins had led her here. After .. . the thing happened, she had
clung to the cliff for hours, not daring to move. The raiders had taken a long
time with the wagon, and it had been dark before they’d left. Even after she
heard the wagon creaking into motion she waited. Just because the raiders
hadn’t shown any caution didn’t mean Effie Sevrance needn’t. Da always said
that ability to wait was what set the best hunters apart from the rest. Never
think of it as waiting, he told her. Think of it as learning.
So she learned in the darkness. No sound came for the longest while
after the raiders had ridden off, and then much later the howl of a wolf scenting
blood had reached her. The wolf’s howl told Effie all she needed to know: No
live men around. Wolves were particular about that.
The climb up was the worst part. Her legs were all shaky and she
couldn’t feel one of her feet. When she made it to the top of the cliff she had
to grab the hem of her dress and wring it out like washing. Letty Shank once
told her that moss grew on anything left damp overnight, and Effie definitely
didn’t want that.
It was funny how your brain was scared of things that it shouldn’t
really be scared of at all, and then not afraid of others that it should. The
bodies were in pieces. A wolf was trotting away in the direction of the trees
with a man’s hand in his jaw. Effie saw this and wasn’t afraid. It was the
wagon that bothered her, and the fact it had gone. There was no longer any
place to be inside.
The raiders had hacked off the wagon’s canvas and the ribbing, and big
hoops of wood lay on the ground like dragon bones. Other things lay there too;
baskets filled with ore, empty chicken crates, a smashed lamp, the string of
arrows Clewis Reed had hung from the ribbing to dry. Bits of body were littered
amongst them. Effie swallowed. She’d watched Da butcher kills for as long as
she could remember—she wouldn’t allow herself to be squeamish now.
Thinking of Da helped. Da was a hunter. Da would take what he needed
and move away from this place. Blood
draws predators,
he always said. Both ‘tinds:
man and beast.
So she had run to the wagon site, loaded one of the baskets with whatever she
could find that might prove useful, and then run back to the cliffs where she
felt safe. The bodies she wouldn’t think about. Clewis Reed and Druss Ganlow
had ceased to exist. Clewis was too big of a man to be reduced to such small parts.
The basket had a leather strap attached so she could carry it slung
across her back. That was important during the climb down the cliffs. She chose
a different place to make the descent, a little upriver where it looked more .
. . lumpy. The cliff wasn’t as sheer, and there were places for a girl to rest.
She found a small space between two big rocks, curled up with the wagon canvas
around her and slept.
The next morning she had known she wouldn’t climb up to the headland
again. It was better here, between the river and the cliffs. More like inside.
She hadn’t found much food during her forage of the wagon site—Clewis usually
shot game for them each day—but she scavenged some grain and a few other
things. The barley meant for the horses nearly broke her teeth until she’d
figured out you had to soak it. It was pretty tasteless too, but she was now in
possession of Clewis Reed’s small but effective spice collection, and she’d
found an interesting red powder that made everything taste better. It caused
heartburn of the tongue later, but Da said everything good came at a price.
Later that day she’d set off upriver along the cliffside. It was much
like mountaineering, she supposed. Or caving. The rocks were slick and there
wasn’t always an obvious path, but if you stopped for a bit and waited—learned—you could usually see a way to carry on. After a
while trees started invading her territory, dry old water oaks growing right
out of the cliff. Their roots were slowly pulverizing the stone, and other plants
had taken advantage of the grey, powdery scree they had created. Bushy things
mostly, and some spectacularly thorny-looking weeds. It made things harder, but
it was still better than the alternative: up there with no place to hide.
A day had passed and then another, and she hadn’t got very far at all.
The barley was growing scarce, and she was contemplating living on spice alone.
At some point the trees had begun to choke the way ahead, and now all she could
see before her were tree canopies and swirling river water. The Wolf had
widened and it was suddenly difficult to perceive it as a whole. Below her a
rocky shore curved inward and then was lost in a dense coppice of bushes. It
was midday so she stopped to eat the last of the barley. Some of it was
sprouting where the damp from the river had wetted it; you didn’t have to soak
those bits for as long.
She watched the river as she ate. Its level had dropped in the past few
days, and its water was clearer and more settled. Great currents moved across
it, creating crosshatching ripples and powerful tows. Close to its middle water
was turning in a huge spiral; Effie couldn’t understand why. She could wait and learn, though, and she sat and studied the
kingfishers who dove down through its cold surface and emerged with wriggling
fish; the treader flies who skimmed over the slack water at the shore; and the
pair of fat-tailed beavers who were constructing a damn across a small channel
separated from the main body of the river by a wall of rocks.
Then she spied the harlequins, a mated pair. They had emerged from
beneath the coppice, swimming on a channel that passed beneath the ash bushes.
Effie looked hard at the coppice. She hadn’t even noticed the water running
there.
The harlequins swam the rapids for a bit, the big handsome male
performing all sorts of crosscurrent hopping to impress his mate. The dun hen
followed him effortlessly, her tail feathers moving like a tiller. When she’d
had enough of her mate’s posturing she made her way across the eddies and swam
under the channel cloaked by bushes. Effie waited, but they didn’t come out.
After a time she looked at the sky. Perhaps an hour or more had passed. It was
time to follow the ducks.
The way down was treacherous, and the thorny weeds tore holes in her
skirt. By the time she’d reached the coppice she just knew bruises were forming. Crawling through the shallow
channel under the bushes was positively, absolutely the worst thing ever. Every
part of her got soaked—and not a caught-in-the-rain sort of soaked either. No.
A genuine fallen-in-the-river sort of soaked. Her teeth were chattering like a
whole lot of crickets when she finally pushed her way through to the other
side.
The first thing she heard was the territorial honking of the male
harlequin, and then she became aware of the crashing of water. Quite suddenly
she realized the noise had been there all along, running alongside the roar of
the river. She had entered a kind of draw in the cliffs, a little pocket
screened from the river by bushes and rock walls. A waterfall streamed from the
cliffs above, and the force of its drop had hollowed out a bowl in the rocks.
The harlequins had made their nest there, beneath a birch bush.
It was the perfect place to hide. Straightaway she had stripped down to
her small linens and laid her clothes over the rocks to dry. The ducks watched
her warily, the male charging her if she drew too close to the nest. Must have eggs, she thought.
The idea of eggs made her mouth water—the red spice would taste most
delicious on raw duck eggs—but her eye had already been drawn to a second, if
slightly less appealing, food source.
Fish. They came over the waterfall, dropping right along with the water,
and landing so hard when they hit the pool they were temporarily stunned.
Watching them was as good as watching a puppet show at the Dhoone Fair. The
noise they made when they slapped into the standing water was like . . . like
the sound of a wet fish. Effie didn’t know the names of many fish, but she
reckoned these were mostly shiners. Their scales were quite glinty, and they
were silver and pink. When she got one and crushed it with a rock, its insides
were full of bones. She tried a a piece raw. Tried another, this time with the
application of a great deal of the red spice. Her eyes watered as she
swallowed. It was definitely time to build a fire.
The woody bushes provided good burning timber, but between the
waterfall and the river everything was a bit wet. She broke off the most likely
looking branches, using her foot to stamp them free, and hauled them to the
driest place she could find. Even here, on a flattish rock in the middle of the
clearing, the drift from the waterfall still sprinkled them. Effie frowned as
big wet blobs fell on her tinder pile. There was exactly nothing she could do
about that.
Kindling, that’s what she needed. Turning a critical gaze around the
inlet she searched for something dry and crackly. Raif could start a fire with
almost anything, that’s what Da always said. Pity he wasn’t here now. Him and
Drey.
No. No. No, Effie warned herself. Absolutely no feeling sorry for yourself. Sevrances had never been
cowards or complainers.
Warmed a little by her anger, she ran over the rocks and around the
pool for no good reason at all. Letty Shank and Florrie Horn would be
scandalized. Running around in her small clothes! Did she think she was a
child, not a maid of nearly nine?
The running scared the ducks, and sent them fleeing from the nest to
the safety of the water. Effie slowed to a halt and watched them. Good time to steal eggs, said a little voice inside
her. No. They were berserkers; it wouldn’t be right. At least not until she got
really sick of fish.
Still. Something beneath the birch bush drew her eye, and she crossed
over and knelt beside it. The nest was perched on a platform of pebbles that
kept it high and dry above the riverwater. It was protected from the waterfall by
the canopy of the bush. Seven pale green eggs lay in a thick matting of straw,
down, twigs and moss. Kindling. Effie reached in, carefully nudged the eggs to
one side, and then tore off a big chunk of the nest.
She giggled on the way back. It was probably the first time ever in the
history of nest-raiding that someone had taken the nest, not the eggs. As she
stuffed the kindling around the firewood, the male harlequin returned to the
bush to investigate. Effie tried not to move too much as he poked nervously
around the nest. She’d caused him enough anxiety for one day.
The fire was not nearly as easy to light as she’d imagined. She had
taken possession of Clewis Reed’s flint and its iron striker, and it made good
sparks, but catching them on the kindling was difficult. They were fickle
things, and sometimes the wind helped and sometimes it didn’t. It took at least
three hundred goes to start the kindling burning, and it had grown dark by then
and the knuckles on her striking hand were bleeding.
Once the flames had gotten
started on the wood, she went to fetch her clothes and basket. Her skirt and
cloak were still pretty damp, and she tried to formulate a way to dry them. The
whole fire business had left her exhausted, and she couldn’t think of anything
cleverer than putting on her dress and using herself as a drying rack. It was a
horrible thing, to pull on something wet, and it started her teeth chattering
all over again. Steeling herself, she settled down to cook fish.
Ten days had passed since then. Every morning she awoke and thought, Perhaps I might get going today. But she didn’t. Here, in the
inlet, she was safe and protected. Cliff walls surrounded her on three sides.
The space was small and contained, about the size of the guidehouse, only rocky
and a lot wetter. There were fish and water, and the fire didn’t go out every day. True, her clothes were never entirely dry, and
sometimes she felt a bit lonely at night, but it had to be better than being in
the wide-open spaces of the headland. Just thinking of them made her shiver.
No. She’d stay here for a while longer. Her lore would warn her of any
danger, and there hadn’t been a peep out of it in days.
Besides, the harlequin eggs might hatch at any moment. The ducks were
fat and glossy now—Effie supposed she wasn’t the only one to benefit from the
stunned fish—and one of them attended the nest at all times. They’d grown quite
accustomed to Effie, and only honked when she was especially close. She even
talked to them sometimes, not that they listened, of course. It was more about
hearing the sound of a human voice . . . even if it was just her own.
Feeling the sensation returning to her fingers, Effie pulled her hands
from her armpits and wondered what to do next. Firewood, she supposed. Not much fun but it has to be done, that was what Jebb Onnacre
used to say about clearing the stables of horseshit. Effie grinned as she
walked toward the bushes. Collecting firewood had to be better than that.
The waterfall made it feel as if it were raining every day. It was
pretty, she had to give it that, but rainy and noisy counted a lot more than
looks, and she fervently believed the inlet would be much improved without it.
Water droplets spattered her back as she yanked off ash and birch branches.
Her hands began to return to a more normal color as she worked, and it
made her wonder what the rest of her must look like. Absently she ran her
fingers through her hair. She knew she wasn’t supposed to be vain about it, but
Raif, Drey, Da and Raina had all said they loved her hair. Even Letty Shank had
once admitted it was pretty enough, if you liked things the color of tree bark.
It was, Effie thought rather disdainfully, a stupid thing to say. Tree bark
came in all sorts of different colors, depending on the tree. Letty Shank
wouldn’t know that because Letty Shank couldn’t tell a turnip from a pinecone.
Effie grimaced. Her hair felt like straw and there were things in it. Leaving the firewood where it was, she
crossed to the fire and sat on the pallet of wagon canvas and heaped twigs
she’d made to keep her bottom off the cold rocks when she ate. Using her
fingers like the teeth of a comb she worked on her hair, pulling out feathers
and burrs, and rubbing dried-on mud until it disintegrated. It took a long
time; Effie Sevrance had a lot of hair.
When she noticed the fire was burning perilously low she took a rest
and went to fetch some of the firewood. It was getting dark, and she hadn’t
cooked her three fish yet. As she bent to pick up a heavy branch of white birch
she heard a shout from the east. Stilling herself, she listened. After a few
seconds the shout came again, only this time it sounded south of her.
Carefully, Effie laid the branch on the ground, and then brought her hand to
her lore. The little ear-shaped chunk of granite was vibrating, but with little
force.
She held it, thinking. A shout to the east and then the south. Men were
calling each other from across the river. The gold men! She stood. Perhaps the
city traders who were meant to take the gold from Druss and Clewis were finally
making their crossing. Perhaps they’d arranged for a bargeman on this side of
the river to bring them across.
Effie paced, agitated, unsure what to do. What did she owe the gold men? Nothing. What had she to give them? Only the information about Druss’ and Clewis’ death. The manner in which they had died was worthy of telling, but would city men value the knowledge in the same way clansmen would? What was her responsibility here? She owed nothing to the gold men, but what did she owe to Druss Ganlow and Clewis Reed?
Glancing at the bushes, she made her decision. She owed Druss and
Clewis her life. The least she could do for them was go and take a look at the
river and see who was crossing. Perhaps when she saw whoever it was she’d know
what to do.
Quickly, she grabbed her basket and cloak. Already her skin was
breaking out in gooseflesh at the mere thought of entering the channel again.
Uncle Angus had once told her that the men who lived beyond the Topaz Sea used
water as a means of torture. Boiling? she’d asked him. No, he’d said. Cold. One drop at a time.
Effie snorted. They must have very delicate constitutions beyond the
Topaz Sea, for her body was about to take a whole lot of cold droplets—and
without even speaking a word.
Not
much fun but it has to be done. Gritting her teeth she knelt by the bushes and
entered the water. By keeping her head low and pushing forward with her toes
she managed to avoid the overhanging branches. She could feel the icy water
seizing her chest, but thoughts of the Topaz Sea men kept her going. Ragged
stones along the channel bottom scraped her knees as she cleared the coppice.
She could see nothing at first, just blackness where the river flowed.
It was a dark night, the sky thick with clouds. Even when her eyes grew
accustomed to the light level she still couldn’t make much out. The river
glinted, a little bit, and she followed the glint east to see if she could
determine the origin of the first call.
Nothing, but then, farther in the distance than she’d imagined, she saw
the pale red glow of a turned-down lamp. A thrill of fear made hairs rise on
Effie’s neck—even the wet ones. She’d been right; someone was making a
crossing. Two ferrymen were pulling one of the large flat barges used for
transporting cattle and horses. The barge was rigged to thick guide ropes that
traversed the river, and both men were working cranks mounted to either side of
the vessel. After a time the noise of the cranks drifted downriver and Effie
could hear the swift whir of well-oiled wheels.
A crossing at night. Instinct made Effie keep very still. The gold men
were likely to make a crossing at night, but surely a few city traders wouldn’t
need so big a barge?
Her gaze tracked the barge as it labored across the river. As it neared
the south bank she spied a movement on the shore. Yet it didn’t make any sense;
it was a kind of rippling, like a wheatfield in a wind ... or thousands of ants
moving on a hill.
Effie felt a blade of cold fear enter her heart as she realized what
she was seeing. Not gold men, not smugglers. An entire army waiting to gain
passage to the clanholds.
It would take them from now until dawn to cross the river.
The barge beached with a violent thrust, and one of the ferrymen rushed
to anchor it, while the other removed the lamp from its post. Effie felt the
world tilt on its axis as the lamp passed close to the man’s face.
She knew him.
It was one of the Scarpemen who had been in the forge the night Old
Scratch went to the fire. What was his name? Uriah Scarpe. The Scarpe chief’s
son.
Even before she could let out a breath of disbelief, Effie felt a cold
hand clamp across her nose and mouth. A powerful arm yanked her back and down.
She smelled horses and a sharp green fragrance she couldn’t place. Her hands
flew out to find a hold beneath the water, but the owner of the arm jerked her
violently back.
“Keep your silence, girl,” came a low, shrewd voice. “I’ve come to take
you to your future. This war’s not for you.” His speech had a wildness to it
that was barely recognizable as clan.
As he dragged her back through the bushes she wondered two things: Who
was this strange-sounding clansman? And how had he managed to outsmart her
lore?
CHAPTER
Fixing Things
Town Dog wasn’t happy at all. She was squirming in her little cloth
pouch beneath Crope’s new wool cloak. The pouch was slung crosswise over Crope’s
shoulder, and Town Dog was housed just below his left armpit. He squeezed down
gently with his arm, hoping he was calming, not smothering her.
Truth was, he didn’t feel too good himself, but Quill’s words circled
in his thoughts, black as vultures. Unease kills thieves. So he had to pretend that he was calm, like the
mummers pretended they were ladies when they were actually boys.
His new clothes helped. Quill had chosen the fabric and cut himself.
Crope had always nursed a liking for the color orange, but Quill said no, that
wouldn’t do. “You need to be forgettable, overlookable, and harmless.” He’d
glanced critically at Crope. “We’re going to need a lot of help.”
The tailor Quill brought in was tiny and fierce. If you as much as
looked at him while he was measuring you up, he stuck you with his pins. He and
Quill had consulted at some length. Drab-looking fabrics were held up to the
light, a calender was reviewed. Coin changed hands. A different fabric was held
to the light, still drab, but odd-looking. More coin changed hands, and the
tailor left, satis-
fied. Five days later a cloak, a pair of leggings, a tunic and an
undershirt arrived at the Sign of the Blind Crow. There had been no time for
boots. According to the tailor, no cobbler in the city had lasts the size of
Crope’s feet. Special ones would have to be carved, and special meant money and
time.
Crope had taken a bath before he donned his new clothes, his second in
under five days. Baths felt unbelievably good to him, warm and floaty, and he
stayed there until the water cooled and the soap scummed up around the rim.
Quill thought it funny when he caught Crope scrubbing out the bath when he was
done. The thief said that was what servants were for, and Crope agreed and carried
on scrubbing.
His new clothes fit very well, and they were only a bit scratchy around
his neck. Quill brought a glass for Crope to look at himself, but Crope
declined. He did not like to see himself. Besides if Quill said he looked
‘ceptable that was good enough for him.
Quill had made him wear the clothes every day since then, “to work up
some creases and a shade of dirt.” Crope was mortified at the thought of
soiling such riches and wasn’t properly happy about it even when Quill had
explained. “Anything too old or too new draws the eye. If your aim is to be
forgettable your clothes must fall between the two.”
It was a lot to think about. And there was something to remember, too.
The cloak was the special kind that you could wear turned inside out.
Double-faced, the tailor called it. Quill was most insistent that Crope
remember this. “Grey for day,” he had recited. “Brown for sundown.”
Crope mouthed the words now as he waited in line at the fortress gate.
A queue of close to two hundred men and women had formed, and Crope was about
midway in line. It was early morning, crisp and bright, with a breeze snapping
the red-and-silver pennants standing out from the fortress wall.
Quill had wanted him to take a knife concealed in his boot, but Crope
had shaken his head with quiet determination. No blades. His staff would do.
Strangely enough Quill had accepted this. “A man’s weapon is a particular
thing,” he had said. “By the time he’s devel-
oped a preference it’s usually too late to change it.“ Quill’s own
preference was a knuckle knife; a band that fit around your knuckles with a
long spike protruding between the second and third fingers. Crope knew this
because he’d seen Quill yield it in the back of the Blind Crow. No blood had
been shed, but coin had changed hands. Crope knew how such things worked from
his time in the mine. Bitter bean used to do it for extra food.
Thinking about the diamond mine made Crope sad. He missed Mannie Dun
and Will. If Will were here he’d probably be taking a nap; he was the only man
Crope had ever met who could sleep standing up.
Crope thought of some of Will’s songs for a while and was calmed. Even
Town Dog settled a bit, and when the portcullis finally clunked and shivered
into motion both of them were a little surprised.
“All here for the Surlord’s Justice say ‘Aye’!” shouted a big, gruff
redcloak, coming to stand in the center of the gate, placing one booted foot to
either side of the gate trench.
A loud chorus of “Aye!” sounded as nearly everyone at the gate replied.
Just as Quill had told him, Crope nodded but didn’t speak.
The redcloak’s gaze passed over the crowd, not much interested. A
second man came out, this one wearing a fancy long mantle with glittery bands
around the edges. The glittery man said something to the redcloak and the
redcloak nodded, and then the glittery man walked away.
“Right!” shouted the redcloak, addressing the crowd. “The Sur-lord will
see a hundred count today.”
A murmur of dissatisfaction stirred the crowd. One man behind Crope
told the guard exactly what he thought of the Surlord, and two redcloaks came
and escorted him away. The crowd was quiet after that. Crope tried to keep calm
as the head redcloak walked the line, choosing the hundred he would allow
through the gate.
“Surlord’s Justice, it’s called,” Quill had explained. “Every tenday
the fortress is opened to any man or woman in the city with a grievance. It’s a
tradition from way back, when Spire Vanis was little more than a fort and you
could count all the people in it on thirty hands. Surlords were different then.
Less high-and-mighty. They didn’t just pass laws; they enforced them. Land, coin, titles: They dealt it all. Now
they just pass out a few coins and listen to fishwives complain about their
rivals, and bakers accuse millers of gritting the chaff. Still. It’s custom and
they’re bound to do it. They may take a scalding hot bath afterward but they
know better than to shun it. The Spire’s a vicious city, and no surlord fancies
a vicious end.“
Crope had been quietly amazed at these facts. Not disbelieving, for he
trusted Quill completely, but taken aback by the thought that a powerful man
might make himself so vulnerable. He’d said as much to Quill.
“Redcloaks search anyone entering the fortress,” Quill had replied.
“And they watch ‘em like hawks once they’re in.”
“You. Go ahead,” the redcloak said to an old woman ten paces ahead of
Crope. “Report to the brother by the watch station. Do as he says.” The woman
nodded and then made a dash for the gate, not giving the redcloak any time to
change his mind.
Crope slipped the coin from his gear belt. “Silver,” Quill had decided.
“Gold will just make you memorable.” Crope hoped very much not to be memorable
as the redcloak approached him. The urge to shrink himself was great and he had
to fight the desire to bend his knees and curve his spine. Unease kills thieves, he told himself. Unease kills thieves.
As the redcloak’s gaze passed over him, Crope raised his hand away from
his body, just as Quill had shown him; fingers open to reveal the coin. The
redcloak didn’t appear to see the coin, and Crope felt the first stirrings of
panic. Quill had said the redcloak would take the coin. Just as Crope was about
to swing his arm wider, the redcloak passed him and Crope felt hard fingers
delve into his palm. And just like that the coin was gone.
“You,” the redcloak said to him. “Inside.”
Crope was so relieved he forgot Quill’s instructions to stay calm and
bolted for the gate just like the old woman before him. Heart thudding against
Town Dog’s head like a hammer, he entered Mask Fortress.
His master was here, he could feel it. The stone flags beneath rang as
if there were hollow spaces beneath. The men and women chosen to petition for
Surlord’s Justice waited in a huddle by the watch station that contained the
mechanism for the raising and lowering of the gate. Four redcloaks had them
under guard. One of them approached Crope, his eyes narrowing. “Big bastard,
eh?” he said, as he drew the point of his spear along the inside of Crope’s
side and over his ribs, prodding every few seconds to test for the hardness of
a concealed weapon. He prodded Town Dog, but the little white dog kept her
silence, and as she didn’t feel like steel or iron the redcloak passed over
her. When he was done he looked critically at Crope’s staff. “I’m going to have
to take that.”
“Need it to walk,” Crope said.
The redcloak’s gaze passed over the bulge in Crope’s cloak where Town
Dog was concealed. “Deformity?” he asked.
Crope nodded. This hadn’t been amongst the contingencies Quill had
planned for, but Crope figured it was covered by the general rule: Don’t rile the redcloaks.
The redcloak seemed satisfied with Crope’s nod and moved on to the next
petitioner. Crope watched him, turning the word deformity around in his head. Yes, he was deformed.
When the portcullis was lowered and the gate closed, the four redcloaks
marched the petitioners along a high-walled alleyway and into an open space as
long and wide as a tourney field. “Form a line by Traitor’s Doom,” one of the
guards ordered. “And keep yourselves well ordered.”
Crope moved along with everyone else, careful not to drift too far behind.
It was colder here than outside, and the wind hardly moved. Quill had explained
that Traitor’s Doom was a stone block where people lost their heads. Crope
worried about that. Even before the line was fully formed people started to
grumble. The old woman who’d been allowed in before Crope turned to him and
complained, “We’ll be here for hours. ‘Is Lordship won’t be out afore noon.”
Crope nodded solemnly; it was just as Quill had said.
They waited. The sun rose, disappeared behind the mountain, and then
rose again. Crope’s feet began to ache, and he wished he had some lasts. He
wasn’t sure what they were, but knew you needed them for new boots.
Occasionally some grand-looking man or lady crossed the quad, and the crowd
ogled them. At the far end, close to the pointy tower, some mounted redcloaks
were playing a game of charge. Crope watched the stables. It was a large stone
building covering almost an entire wing of the fortress, with big double doors
flung open onto the quad. Grooms trotted out horses for exercise and grooming.
When they were done they brought their mounts to a great lead-lined trough and
pumped fresh water for the beasts to drink.
After what Crope judged to be nearly three hours of waiting, liveried
servants entered the quad carrying rolled carpets and a big chair. More
servants raised a canopy constructed of red silk and gilded poles. When the
flurry of activity was finished the big chair sat atop plush patterned carpets,
shielded from sun and rain by a silk roof.
The petitioners pushed forward a little, their hopes high. Another hour
passed. Everyone except the redcloaks stared at the empty chair. Crope was
growing anxious, and he drew up the hood on his cloak. Surely Quill’s plan
should have gone into action by now? He glanced at the stables. Nothing.
Suddenly there was a blast of horns from the fat tower shaped like a
beer barrel. The redcloaks stood to attention. Another surge forward amongst
the petitioners forced Crope to gently push back. Mustn’t get too close to the chair. Must be
forgettable.
The pale-eyed man who’d taken his lord strode out from the fat tower,
flanked by two big men, one fair, one dark. He was dressed more plainly than
the other grand people they’d seen that day, but he was wearing a thick chain
of office across his shoulders and he walked in the measured, unhurried way of
a man certain of his power. Crope looked down. Unease kills thieves.
And then, even as the Surlord approached the big chair, it happened.
The pump in the stables started to creak. The hand crank jerked up violently,
and water began to gush from around the seal. Almost immediately the lead
trough filled and fluid spilled in sheets to the floor of the quad. Everyone,
including the Surlord, turned to look. The groom nearest the trough tried to
force the handle down, but he just created more pressure and the water spurted
higher. A horse by the stable door shied. Another one tried to buck its rider.
Someone called for the stablemaster. The stablemaster, a big man wearing a leather
apron, rushed out to take a look. Water was rushing over toward Traitor’s Doom
now, and the fancy patterned carpets placed nearby.
The stablemaster shook his head, took a nervous look at the Sur-lord,
who was nearly at his chair. “Anyone here know pumps?” he shouted, slightly
hysterically to the crowd.
It was Crope’s cue. Stepping out from the line of petitioners he said
in a soft voice, “Master, I know the pumps.”
The stablemaster looked him up and down. Crope could tell he didn’t like
what he saw, but his pump seal had broken and the Sur-lord was watching and he
didn’t have much of a choice. Beckoning Crope impatiently, he said, “Well come
forward then. See to it.”
Crope did just that, and for an instant as he left the other petitioners
behind, he felt the pressure of the Surlord’s attention on his back. It chilled
him down through his new clothes to his skin.
When he arrived at the flooding pump he began to feel better. Pumps he
knew. Kneeling, he set his big hands on the pump shaft and twisted, pulling the
entire cranking mechanism from the ground. Straightaway the pressure abated,
and once he’d drawn the seven-foot plunger shaft from the wellhole, the flow
fell off to a manageable run.
The stablemaster sighed in relief. Horses calmed. One of the grooms
standing close to the trough winked once at Crope and then was gone. Quill’s
man in the fortress.
Crope was soaked, but so intent on saying his next line properly that
he barely noticed. “Needs tow and clay—for the seal.”
The stablemaster looked at his grooms. None moved. “Well go and fetch
what the man needs,” he ordered them. “And you. Get him a towel.”
The excitement was over. Grooms drifted away, walking their horses into
the stables, and fetching brooms to manage the water spill. Over by Traitor’s
Doom, Surlord’s Justice was called into ses-
sion, and the first petitioner moved forward to kneel on the
patterned—and only very slightly dampened—carpets.
Crope reached in his cloak and scratched Town Dog’s ears, hunkering
down for a long wait. By the time the groom came back with a pot of tow and a
hunk of clay wrapped in a wet cloth, the Surlord had seen over two dozen
petitioners. The man was quick, Crope had to give him that.
Accepting the tow, Crope made a point of squinting hard at the clay
just as Quill had advised. “If they bring red clay ask for gray,” he’d said.
“If they bring grey ask for red. That’ll keep ‘em busy for a while.”
“Needs red,” Crope said gently.
The groom, a stick of a boy with big lips and a big nose, sneered at
him. “ ‘Sno difference.”
“Needs red,” Crope insisted.
The groom rolled his eyes.
“He wants red,” ordered the stablemaster, coming to stand at the head
of the trough. “Get him red.”
The groom huffed and went off in search of more clay. The stablemaster
watched Crope for a moment, shook his head with feeling and then walked away.
Crope waited again. The line of petitioners was dwindling now, as the
redcloaks guarding the Surlord ordered a limit on the length of all
applications. Every so often, the Surlord would turn to his Master of Purse and
command coin to be dispensed to a petitioner. Gradually, the quad began to
darken. Braziers were brought out to illuminate Traitor’s Doom, and safe lamps were
lit within the stables.
Still the groom didn’t return. Crope’s stomach rumbled as the Surlord
heard the final petition. Checking that no one was paying attention to either
him or the pump, Crope quickly reversed his cloak, raised the hood, and leant
back into the shadows behind the trough. Grey for day. Brown for sundown. This side of the cloak was a
bit strange, shimmery like water, and Crope decided he liked the other side
much better.
Finally, the Surlord’s Justice was done and the Surlord stood and made
his way back to the fat tower. As the servants came to disas-
semble the canopy and roll carpets, the groom returned with a square of
red clay. He appeared to have some difficulty seeing Crope at first, and when
he finally spotted him he was not pleased. “Had to go all the way to Potter’s
Walk for it,” he complained, letting the clay drop at Crope’s feet. “You best
be done soon, else you’ll be locked in for the night.”
Crope took the clay and began to knead it. Kneading was calming. It
made time pass. When the stable’s double doors rolled closed he kept kneading.
When the stablemaster came out, peered into the shadows by the trough and said
to himself, “He’s upped and gone,” Crope kept kneading. Unease kills thieves.
The fortress fell into quiet and darkness around him. When he judged it
safe he stood. Muscles in his legs that hadn’t moved for hours threw cramps,
and he had to rest his weight on his staff for a moment.
Come
to me, his
lord had commanded. And now at last he could.
Crossing the quad, he headed for the boarded-up gallery that ran
opposite to the stables and bordered the pointy tower. Quill had warned him
that he was on his own once darkness came. “Thieves may help other thieves,” he
had said. “But the act of thievery must be committed alone.” Crope understood
that. A man could only rely on himself past a certain point.
A boarded-up window at cellar level collapsed inward as he kicked it
hard with his foot. Wood splintered and there was a sharp crack as the board
hit the floor, but Crope couldn’t say he much cared. His lord was very close
and very weak, and Crope had waited patiently long enough.
The drop down wasn’t as bad as he feared, and he rolled out of it
without harm. Releasing Town Dog from her pouch, he went in search of stairs.
His eyes had already grown accustomed to darkness in the quad and he
found his bearings quickly. The chamber ran the length of the gallery with
stairs at either end. Crope headed in the direction of the tower and climbed.
By the time he emerged at ground level his heart was racing in strange and
painful ways. A great sense of urgency filled him, and when he saw the wooden
door to the pointy tower he ran toward it with all his might.
Crack} The door jumped in its frame but
did not give. He went at it again, and again, ramming his shoulders into the
wood. On the fourth assault it gave, and the noise it made was deafening.
Crope and Town Dog stepped into the cold darkness of the Splinter. A
chill mist curled up around them, and for the first time in eighteen years
Crope could feel the living, breathing essence of his lord. It nearly drove him
insane.
As he moved toward the staircase a soft clicks sounded, and a section of wall began to swing
inward. Come to me.
Shivers passed along Crope’s spine as he descended into the underworld.
He could not see, Town Dog could not see, but somehow they were guided. Down
they went, the chasm below them roaring with wind, the first sounds of alert
echoing from above.
By the time they reached the first chamber, Crope was taking four
stairs at a time. Wildly, he swung his head in great half-circles, searching
for his lord. Farther down.
Crope could not take the final stairs fast enough. A door bolted from
the outside halted him. The horror of that one little thing, what it said about
the man who’d taken his lord, made the white rage fork behind his eyes. Wedging
his fingers behind the bolt, he tore off the entire plate. Locked up and never let out. Crope knew all about that.
And then, quite suddenly, he was in the presence of his lord. Tears
sprung in Crope’s eyes as he knelt by the hideous iron cell and touched the man
who was his life. Gently, carefully, he lifted him, trying hard not to think
about the terrible lightness, the diminish-ment of his lord. Chains tugged against him so he broke them like twigs. He
wished for more. Suddenly there were not enough things in the world to break.
His lord weighed so little it was like carrying a young child. Almost
he could not bear it, the thought of what his lord had borne.
As he carried Baralis up through the large chamber and into the chasm,
he heard Town Dog growl.
A figure with a lamp standing halfway down the great spiraling stair
halted. The Surlord. The pale-eyed man.
Something for Crope to break.
“Come to me!” he roared, charging toward him. “COME TO ME!”
The figure turned and began to reclimb the stairs. White rage filled
Crope, gushing through his body like water from the pump. His eyesight sharpened,
muscles engorged, and he was filled with the strength of ten men. Cradling his
lord with one arm, he hoisted his staff over his shoulder and let it fly.
The staff punctured the Surlord’s chest like a sword, impaling him from
behind and knocking him forward onto the steps. Crope was upon him in a matter
of seconds, not caring if he was alive or dead, and heaved his jerking,
bleeding body into the abyss.
That was when the first rumble started, a deep bellowing of rock
followed by a high-pitched creak. The tower shook. Stone facings popped from
the walls. Crope hurried to bring his lord to the surface.
A great black crack opened up, running forks along the curtain wall.
Something gave with the force of snapped rock. The tower heaved. Masonry flew
past Crope’s head. Dust bloomed, thick and acrid, and when Crope rubbed it from
his eyes he saw two figures barring the way out.
Redcloaks, the ones who had accompanied the Surlord to and from the fat
tower. One fair, one dark.
Without a staff he had no weapon ... and they were big men. Crope had
no choice but to meet them. The redcloaks drew swords and waited.
The stairway was buckling now, and capstones and risers were flying
from it with small explosions. Crope climbed the final stairs. Hunching his
shoulders to protect his lord, he received their blows. The redcloaks were
wary, surprised. One of them looked ill. Sticking him with their swords they
opened deep cuts on his arms and shoulders. Pain came, but it wasn’t much
really. It would not stop him. He was calm now, the white rage gone. The cuts
of the red-
cloaks’ swords stung and he could feel his own blood, running slow and
unnaturally hot over his skin.
When the tower lurched violently to the side, one of the redcloaks lost
his footing and went screaming into the chasm. Crope pushed passed the
remaining man, the dark-haired one, receiving stabs to the liver and buttocks.
At some point the man ceased, perhaps to save himself. Crope continued to
climb. He and his lord could feel the breeze now. A new beginning was in sight.
The tallest tower in the North collapsed, sending debris across a
quarter of the city, as Crope and his lord escaped.
CHAPTER
The hour before dawn was a strange time on the dry riverbed. Noises
echoed softly across the trench. Raif heard the sound of water splashing and
the low moan of a great blue heron as he lay bunched within his blanket,
emerging from sleep. When he opened his eyes the sounds fled, and it was easy
to believe he’d never heard anything at all. The mist was different. Just
before dawn it filled the trench and began flowing like a river, moving with
muscular force. The first time it had happened Raif and the pony were sleeping
in the center of the riverbed and the mist river had rolled over them. It had
been the only time the little pony had abandoned him, her ears down and her
eyes wide in panic as she fled the trench. He made sure neither of them slept
there again.
For the past few days they had climbed from the riverbed each night,
and made camp on the raised bank. The Want was full of ghosts. Sometimes when
Raif looked up at the misplaced stars, he wondered if he wasn’t seeing them how
they had once appeared in a different age.
Whole days had passed where Raif believed the Want was leading him in
circles, where every bend of the river and outcropping of rock looked familiar.
One morning he had scratched his mark in a flat slab of granite embedded in the
river wall, imagining that here was a way to know if he crossed this point
again. Raif sucked in his breath, half smiling at his own lack of insight.
Nothing was that straightforward in the Want. Within an hour he had passed a
second slab of granite so similar to the first one that he began to wonder if
some man or ghost had purposely erased his mark. Within two hours he began to
doubt that he’d actually made a mark, that perhaps he had
intended to, or dreamt he had, but never actually gone ahead with scribing a
raven’s likeness in the stone.
That was the secret of the Want,
Raif had discovered. It made you doubt yourself. It was better not to worry
that the river trench was taking you nowhere. Even if that were true there was
exactly nothing you could do about it. The Want took you wherever it chose to.
Raif did the things he could; kept the pony’s wounds greased and her
coat well tended, rationed his food, watched for clean ice that could be melted
for water. The rest he could not control.
Even the days themselves were hard to track. Raif thought perhaps he had
spent seven nights here, but he could not be certain. The food stash was down
to hardtack, dry meat, the last few lardcakes and the oiled grain for the pony.
That seemed as good a gauge of time as anything else here, how much food you
ate on the journey.
The earth moved every day, he knew that much. Small tremors, that set
the river litter bouncing and sent loose stones rolling down the banks. The
middle of the trench was the best place to be then. Two days back there had
been a sustained shaking that had opened cracks in the riverbed. Raif had
dropped to his knees while rocks crashed from the trench walls and a storm of
dust whirled around him. When the dust settled, he saw boulders the size of
haystacks had moved, and the river’s crust had split for leagues. Shatan Maer, Raif thought with a shiver. Time grows short.
Shrugging off his blanket, he rose to his feet. The mist river had
passed, and dawn was showing pink on two opposite horizons. He ignored them
both and went to rub down the pony.
The cut on her heel looked a
little better, drier and scabbed, and she didn’t shy when he greased it. She
knew the routine now— greasing, brushing, bandaging her hocks, and then a
treat—and took it all with stout resignation. Every day Raif sent silent thanks
to the outlander for forcing her upon him. She made the journey bearable. They
were two, not one. And Raif found it
frighteningly easy to imagine what would become of one man alone in the Want.
As they broke camp and set back down the slope toward the river trench,
Raif decided it was time she had a name. He thought for a moment, and then a
band of muscle began to tighten slowly around his chest. Every part of his mind
held traps and this was one of them. Moose, that was the name of his last horse,
given to him by Orwin Shank. Bitty’s da.
Raif dragged a hand across his face, pressing hard against his eyes and
teeth. That was the thing with clan, all those connections. You injured one,
you injured them all.
What
have I turned into? But he knew the answers, they were all in his names. Twelve Kill.
Watcher of the Dead. Mor
Dral^a.
There was nothing to do but carry on down the river, not knowing if he
was heading east or west. After a time he rested his hand on the pony’s neck, and
some time after that it all became bearable again. That was when the pony’s
name came to him. Bear—with all its connections, just like clan.
It wasn’t an especially feminine name, but it suited her, and that’s
what counted. Raif called her it a few times and she flicked her ears and
seemed to take to it. She was walking better now, not resting her injured leg
as much. It was a good day for a name.
Bear. Raif breathed in deeply, feeling his lungs push against the last
traces of tightness in his chest. He’d always wanted the bear lore, like Drey
and Da; now he had the bear horse instead.
Morning passed, or perhaps it didn’t. The light changed, turning the
sky a shade of blue he’d only ever seen before in deep, algae-covered water.
Clouds were in their usual place, around the sun. A day moon showed for a
while, and then was snuffed. The problem with walking in a trench was that
there was little to look at but the sky. During the day Raif barely caught a
glimpse of the headland. Sometimes he saw the needle peaks of basalt spires, or
long barrows of mounded rocks. Once he’d seen a fully petrified tree, its main
branches all preserved. Mostly, he looked at the river walls.
The trench varied in width and depth, but even at its narrowest point
Raif judged it to be a third of a league wide. Its landscape of rock, calcified
litter, tumbled stones and frozen earth changed as he walked. Seams of fossils
were exposed in some places, revealing the forms of creatures Raif did not
know. In other sections he saw where the force of the river had worn hard
granite smooth, and in others where softer rock had been broken into sand. At
midday he spotted something that made the hairs rise on his neck. Steps, a
flight of them cut into the bank. He slowed Bear and they went to investigate.
The steps ended at a point partway down the river terrace, and to reach
them they had to climb a wall of traprock. Bear was surefooted, but Raif found
himself making mistakes and stumbling. This was the first sign of civilization
he had seen since entering the Want. Someone had cut these steps, perhaps so
they could wash clothes in the river or bathe. Steps meant a settlement. Close.
As Raif reached the first square-cut ledge, a reflex action made him
check the sky—it was how he’d come to measure the Want, to gauge its temper.
All changes in the Great Want were foreshadowed by the sky.
Clouds were on the move, rolling toward him in waves, and the colors in
the sky were changing. The Gods’ Lights had begun to burn.
It was time.
Bear sniffed the step at some length before she put a hoof upon it.
Raif knew exactly how she felt. After so many days of walking on rough rock,
the hewn stone felt strange beneath his feet. The steps were low but wide, each
one about ten paces in length. People could have sat upon them, talking whilst
they cooled their feet in the river. Raif tried to imagine what the Old Ones
had looked like, but his mind was strangely blank. The Listener had told him so
little about them, and Heritas Cant even less. Their age had long passed, he
knew that. In a way these steps were like the fossils he’d seen earlier: a sign
of life lost.
Thirty-five steps in all, Raif counted, and by the time he reached the
seventeenth he could see its peak in the distance. The mountain of rock he’d
come for. The one painted on the cave wall in the Rift, and drawn in the book
of the Forsworn. The fault most likely to give.
Raif rushed up the last steps to better see it. Its shape, the way the
rock was twisted and buckled, as if by some terrible calamity, was just how he
imagined it would be. Two things surprised him, though. He had not been
prepared for its size; its massive, towering bulk. Valleys, ridges, and cliffs
circled its skirts, and dry rivers flowed from its peak. Thousands of feet high
and thousands wide: It was a monstrous wasteland of stone.
And he had not expected it to be sheathed in ice. As he and Bear took
their first steps on the headland toward it, the wind brought its coldness to
them. The temperature dropped, and the scent of dry ice, of glaciers turned
grey with age and compression and frost smoking off freezing lakes, made Raif
want to turn back. He had not bargained on this. It was another trick thrown up
by the Want.
“Bear,” he said. “What are we doing here?”
No
more questions you know the answer to, warned Stillborn in his head. Managing something
like a shrug, Raif continued walking.
The land surrounding the mountain was deeply flawed, but it wasn’t
until he reached higher ground that Raif realized there was a pattern to the
canyons, fault lines and dry riverbeds: They radiated outward from the mountain
like the spokes of a wheel. The mountain formed the absolute center of
destruction, and even as he thought this the earth shuddered.
Bear shied, snapping against her reins. Tiny stones jumped around
Raif’s feet. The mountain shivered, and deep within its folds the ice fields
ground and squealed. It was over in a handful of seconds. Roused ice crystals
floated upward, forming a sparkling mist that ringed the peak. Some drifted on
the breeze toward Raif and Bear, landing on their shoulders and backs like a
fine snow. When one landed on Raif’s lips he put out his tongue and tasted it.
Nothing. He couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.
The wind was picking up now, gusting back and forth with no consistent
direction. Overhead the clouds had rolled in, almost covering the sky. The
Gods’ Lights lit them from behind, sending out red flares that glowed like
embers. Inigar Stoop had once said that whenever a sky turned red somewhere a
Stone God was bleeding. Raif found he didn’t care. Let them bleed.
Guiding the pony into a shallow canyon, he set a straight course for
the mountain. As they drew closer, he began to doubt himself. The mountain was
huge; it would take days just to circle its base. And what was he looking for?
A fault line? Hundreds of them cracked the earth here: He and Bear stood in one
now. Did it mean they’d have to search every one of them, looking for the
deepest? The Rift was the deepest fault in the North, Addie said. But it didn’t
mean it would be the first to give. So how could he be sure of picking the
right one?
Raif glanced up at the mountain. The ice was grey and old, weathered
over centuries so that it reflected no light. From here he could see that its
surface was brittle and crevassed. Surely he and Bear didn’t have to climb it?
One misplaced step and they’d be dead.
Nothing seemed certain or right. Raif drew on his gloves, wincing as
the goat hide tugged against his wounded knuckles. It was getting colder. He
took Bear’s blanket from the saddlebag and laid it over her back. Ahead the
land began to rise, and he knew it was time to climb out of the canyon before
the walls grew too deep.
Another tremor shook the earth as they emerged on the raised plain of
the mountain. As he braced himself against the rolling motion, Raif thought of
what the outlander had said about the Shatan Maer. One stirs this night, I can feel it.
Grimly, Raif waited for stillness and marched on. It wasn’t long before
the ground turned to hard granite beneath them, as the mountain showed its
roots. Slowly, they were ascending, and the path began to grow rocky and
uneven. Raif scanned the lower slopes, looking for ... something. He didn’t know what.
The light held as they climbed, and the wind funneled along the fault
lines toward the mountain. After a few hours they arrived at its base, and Raif
stopped to rest the pony and eat. They split the last lardcake and drank melted
ice that tasted faintly of salt. Raif restowed the pack for a heavy climb,
choosing to leave the cookpot and the pony’s saddle beside a rock. When he was
finished he sat on the rock and looked up. Now he was here he wasn’t sure what
to do next.
We
search. What
would the Forsworn knights have done here? Had they known something he didn’t?
He tried to recall exactly what the dying knight had said. Had he mentioned the
Old Ones? A cold thrill prickled the skin on his arms as a memory returned to
him.
We search.
For what?
The city of the Old Ones. The Fortress of Grey Ice.
Raif stood. Understanding lay there on the edge of his thoughts. Think.
Think-
Fortress. One was mentioned in Addie’s verse. Though a fortress may fall and darkness ride through
the gate. Raif
frowned. Did it mean that the darkness would emerge in the fortress first? What
had the outlander said ? Look
to their ruins to guide you to the place they most feared. The Old Ones had feared the
Rift and built a city there. Had they built a city on this mountain as well? If
so there was no sign of it now, just ice and frozen rock.
Raif let out a long breath, his head aching. People had lived here, he knew that much. Someone had carved
those steps. Yet how could he hope to find a city on the mountain? A search
could take weeks, even months. And then there was the danger of the ice ...
The Fortress of Grey Ice. What did the name mean? Was the fortress beneath the ice?
Raif crossed over to the pony and began scratching her ears. The
Listener, the knight, Addie, and the outlander had all told him fragments of
things, scraps that didn’t add up. He wasn’t a mage or a wiseman. He wasn’t
anything anymore.
This was all he had, this search, the hope that he might hinder the
darkness. It wasn’t much, but it was more than Bitty Shank had.
Steeled by that thought, Raif began to walk the length of the slope,
watching the mountain and running through everything again in his head. The
answer was here; he just had to dig for it.
His breath whitened in the freezing air as the temperature continued to
drop. Something about the ice on the mountain bothered him.
It had been so unexpected. The Want was arid. Frozen but dry. Surely that
much ice would have melted and evaporated over the years? What held it there?
Another small thrill goose-pimpled his skin.
The bridge over the Rift. The Old Ones had created something spanning
the Rift that still held to this day. The outlander had said as much. Things constructed by their mages
live on.
Could the ice be a construction? Raif raised his hand to his throat and
closed his gloved fingers around the hard piece of raven ivory that was his
lore. If the ice was a construction, then how to
blast it away ?
We search.
It seeks.
Raif opened his fist and let his lore drop. Suddenly he knew what he
must do.
He walked to the pony and took two things off her back. The Sull bow,
and the arrow Divining Rod.
Take this arrow named Divining Rod that has been fletched
with the Old Ones’ hair, take it and use it to find what you must. It seeks,
what I cannot tell you for the echoes from things so old are weak-
The Listener was right; the echoes were weak, but he had finally heard them. Stupidly he
had imagined he would need the arrow to slay the thing that came through the
breach—even though the Listener had warned him it would be wasted if he used it
to kill. Raif stripped off his gloves and ran a hand down the arrow shaft. The workmanship
humbled him. The skeleton ferrule that bound the head to the shaft must have
taken someone days, even weeks, to forge. Each band of metal had to be
painstakingly fired and hammered, and constant adjustments made for fit. The
fletchings, bound and glued in spiral form to make the arrow spin in flight,
represented further days of work. Someone had spent as much time and effort
making this arrow as it took to make a sword.
And they had named it Divining Rod.
Raif braced the Sull bow and drew the arrow to the plate. As he set his
sights on the mountain he let all conscious thoughts fall away. The mountain
was a dark form, dead and immense; a tower of icy rock. No heart pumped within
it for him to find; it did not matter. The Sull, the Old Ones and clan stood
here. A bow, an arrow and a man. It was enough. Being here with these things
was enough.
He picked a target, drew his bow and waited for the wind.
When the time came he released the string, and the arrow shot from the
bow. A sweet humming reached his ears as the arrow began to spin. The Old Ones’
hair channeled the wind, using it to propel the arrow high and true to the
center of the ice.
He didn’t hear the impact. The humming rilled his thoughts, pulling at memories
and things beyond memories that no clansman should ever have. Suddenly he knew
the age of the arrow, and the age of the mountain, and then the age of the
earth itself. Seconds passed where knowledge was revealed to him; ancient
histories and battles, the pain of birth and loss. He looked into faces that
were neither human nor Sull. . . and he found beauty and understanding there.
He strained to see more, to know more, but abruptly the humming ceased. A
moment of absolute stillness followed, where the wind died and the Gods’ Lights
raged like a fire in sky.
And then the mountain began to move. The ground trembled. Rock sawed
against rock. Snow so ancient and dry it had become a substance beyond ice
shook free from the highest slopes. As the first cold glitters landed in Raif’s
hair, the ice began to crack. Like lightning, a flaw flashed into existence and
forked into many more. The fissures split and split again, until the entire
face of the mountain was a web of darkly glowing flaws. Raif had long lost
sight of his arrow, but he knew it was there, in the heart of the ice, still
spinning, drilling deep, destroying all it touched. He felt no wonder, only a
sense of a task completed. He and Bear had come here; now there was one less
thing for them to do.
The crack of sundered worlds split the air. Raif’s eardrums pulsed, and
he felt a sharp, sickening pain. His grip tightened on the bow as the ice face
shattered and began sliding toward the earth.
The pale ghost of a city emerged from the chaos. Massive slabs of ice
fell away like rotting tiles, revealing rock shaped by a living hand. Vast
bulwarks of grey granite were hewn from the mountain wall, rising as sheer as
any cliff to support the fortress that stood above.
KahlBarranon. He knew its name now. The city
of the Old Ones. .
Raif’s breath cooled in his lungs. Almost he could taste the rock the
fortress was built on. It was cold and raw and bitter as the winter itself. The
ice face may have fallen away but another kind of ice lived beneath. Spires of
grey quartz reached for the sky, slender and transparent as icicles. Great
halls lay below them, their high arching roofs clad in frost-colored lead. And
below them lay the curtain wall, where quartz fused with granite to form the
ramparts. Everything shone grey and silver, and Raif imagined that if a city
could be carved from the heart of a glacier then it would look much like the
Fortress of Grey Ice.
What
did they fear?
Raif wondered, and then: How
could the race who built this be lost?
He had no answers. He wasn’t sure he wanted them.
Calling softly to the pony, he began the climb. He’d already seen a
path.
CHAPTER
A Bolt-Hole
At sundown the Dog Lord gave up his watch. Glen Carvo had not arrived
back. Not today. As he turned, Dog Horse on the great northern graze of Dhoone,
he kept his jaw and shoulders high. Behind him stood a small company of men,
and he could not let them know his fear. Cluff Drybannock, his fostered son and
the best longswordsman in the clanholds, had not returned with his hundred and
eighty men.
“Back to Dhoone!” Vaylo hailed his company, kicking a starting gallop
from his old, ornery stallion. “First man to the Horns wins a keg of
Dhooneshine!”
Vaylo heard them whup and holler as he left them in the dust. Gods! But
it was good to run! The wind in his face, the black soil of Dhoone beneath his
horse’s hooves, and the sky as clear as a lake above him: What chief could want
for more? At full gallop the Dog Horse gave just about the worst ride a man
could endure, but that troubled Vaylo not at all. It was a winning gallop, that’s what counted.
Behind him, he heard his company gaining, as men bent low over the
horses’ necks and hooves dug divots from the turf. They were shouting back and
forth to each other, goading with good humor and placing their own bets. Hammie
Faa waged one of his mother’s highly dubious love potions against Nevel
Drango’s city-embroidered small clothes.
Vaylo listened and felt joy. In a way being here in the Dhoonehold with
only forty warriors at his command was like being young again, at Bludd. It was
few against many, and to hell with the odds. Oddo Bull felt it, too. He was the
only one of the forty who had ridden with Vaylo that day, nearly thirty-six years
ago now, when he’d stolen the Dhoonestone from Dhoone. Oddo knew what it was to
ride in a small company and love every man within it like a brother. Armies
were good for many things, but you could not know the strengths and weaknesses
of every warrior, and you could not be brother to them all.
Hearing someone gaining on him, Vaylo swerved into the rider’s path and
beat some more speed from Dog Horse. He would win this race, dammit. He might be
old and a fool, but he could still outride anyone in the clan.
Nearing the northern wall of the roundhouse, Vaylo cut west, knowing
the others would take the easier eastern path. The west had jumps—ditches and
dog cotes and water pumps—but it was shorter. The others would have to ride
clear of the stable block. Dog Horse hadn’t jumped in a while and was nasty
about it, but was too proud an animal to refuse. He battered Vaylo’s bones ...
but he jumped.
By the time they rounded the final quarter of the roundhouse and caught
sight of the Horns, Vaylo was aching in all the places a man hated most to
ache. He could barely breathe, either, but the Horns were his. Reaching them an
instant before Nevel Drango, he laughed at the sheer bloody-minded exhilaration
of it all. Once he started, everyone joined in, and soon there were eight men
at the gate, all sitting tenderly in their saddles and laughing like fools.
Nan Culldayis brought them to order. “Clansmen,” she said, striding
toward them. “Much though I hate to break up your sewing circle, Samlo’s
waiting to seal the gate.”
They sobered after that. It was full dark now and the moon hadn’t
risen. Blue Dhoone Lake was black, and the wind made it slap against the shore.
“Who watches this night?” Vaylo asked Nevel Drango.
Nevel commanded the twenty swordsmen Cluff Drybannock had stationed at
the Dhoonehouse. He had some of the wild blood of Clan Grey in him, and he
fought with an executioner’s blade. Nevel named seven men, and Vaylo nodded.
“Put one on the roof.”
It has
come to this,
Vaylo thought as he dismounted. Forty men were not enough to secure a
roundhouse, let alone an entire hold. None could be spared for border patrols.
All must be at the house.
Resting an arm around Nan’s waist, he walked inside. When a girl came
to take away his riding cloak, he bid her send a keg of Dhooneshine to those at
the gate. He doubted they would drink it, but that wasn’t really the point.
Nan had supper waiting for him in the chief’s chamber, and they sat by
the hearth and shared a simple meal of bread and melted cheese. Afterward, Nan
blew out the candles and came to him by the fire. She knew he was worried—he
could could not hide such things from her—and laid kisses on his neck and
temples as she gently kneaded his shoulders. Her long, silky braid tickled him
where it brushed against his arm, and he pulled out its ties and worked the
hair loose with his fingers. She laughed then, a gently throaty laugh that he
had come to love. When he kissed her she tasted of honey, and her need was the
same as his own. It was a blessing, this love come so late, and Vaylo thanked
the Stone Gods every day for it.
Later, when they were finished, Nan sat up and combed her hair and
Vaylo watched her, content. She was beautiful in the firelight, proud and
serene, her hair falling down to her buttocks.
The alarm sounded as he was pulling on the last of his clothes. Two
great blasts of the war horn. Dudaaaal
Dudaaaa! Vaylo
fastened his sword belt around him, looked to Nan. “Get the bairns. Bring them
here and bar the door. Open to no one but me.”
She nodded. He loved that she showed no fear.
They’d said all they needed to by the fire, and Vaylo left her knowing she
would take good care of herself and his grandchildren. It was enough to settle
his mind.
Dudaaaal
Dudaaaa! The
horn sounded again as he rushed toward the gate. Hammie and Samlo Faa, Oddo
Bull, Nevel Drango and others were already gathered in the entrance hall,
strapping on their armor and weapons’ chains. Vaylo beckoned a boy to fasten
his back- and chestplates about him as he drew on armored gloves with leather
palms. Already he could hear them.
“Dun
Dhoonel Dun Dhoonel DUNDHOONE!”
“How many?” he asked a spearman running down from the East Horn.
“Hundreds. They’re swarming around the lake.”
“I’ve three men out there,” Nevel Drango said. “And one on the roof.”
Vaylo nodded, grim. They could not raise the gate. “They gave us warning,”
he said.
An explosion rocked the gate. An eerie, white light flashed in the hall
and then was gone. Hellfire. Vaylo hadn’t seen it used in forty years. Naphtha,
lead and antimony: It burned hot and long, and only sand could snuff it. He
turned to Samlo. “Will the gate hold?”
Samlo was a Faa man: He didn’t know how to lie. “I can’t say, Chief.
It’s armored. It’ll take more than fire to break it.”
Vaylo looked to the spearmen and bowmen. “To me.” He took the stairs to
the East Horn three at a time, his heart drumming against his plate.
At five stories high the Horns were the tallest structures in the
clanhold. The East Horn boasted archers’ roosts and lookout slits, and Vaylo
commanded his warriors to man them and fire at will. Taking the topmost
embrasure for himself, he put an eye to the slit and looked out upon the army
massing on the northern shore of Blue Dhoone Lake.
“Dun
Dhoone! Dun Dhoone! DUN DHOONE!”
Hundreds of Dhoonesmen and Castlemen, war-dressed and mounted, were
forming themselves at the gate. Their mantles rose in the wind, and the torches
they held trailed white flames. A war drum was leading the chant, and as Vaylo
looked on a standard was raised: the Bloody Blue Thistle of Dhoone. Vaylo
searched for a leader, but could not discern any particular warrior that the
others deferred to. That worried him. The Dhoonehouse was huge and sprawling
and he did not know all its ways. Quickly, he gauged their numbers, and then
made his way back to the entrance hall.
Another explosion rocked the gate as he took the last stairs. The sharp
stench of smelted lead made his eyes burn. “Oddo. Where are the weaknesses?”
Oddo Bull stood ready by the gate, his red hammer chained and in his
hand. On the Dog Lord’s orders he had taken count of the Dhoonehouse’s defenses
and if anyone amongst them knew this place it was him. “Stables and kitchens.
Both have doors leading in. I’ve sent crews to cover them.”
Vaylo nodded. He didn’t want to ask the next question, and he breathed
deep for a second or two to put the moment off. “Did the grooms have time to
pull in the horses?”
Oddo Bull shook his head.
Dog
Horse. “Did
they bar the doors?” Aye.
Vaylo left it at that. They both knew the external stable doors were
great flimsy wooden things that wouldn’t withstand an assault. Horses were
brought into the roundhouse’s fold during a strike, and all stables abandoned
as indefensible. You needed adequate warning for such a strategy, and without
manpower to watch your borders you were undone. Vaylo ran a hand through his
braids. It is my failing.
Out loud he said, “I won’t have them burn the horses, Oddo.”
“Aye, Chief.” Oddo understood what this meant; they had to unseal the
internal door and bring them inside.
Vaylo accepted his war hammer from the same boy who’d fastened his
plate. “Fetch the dogs,” he bid him. “They’re in the kitchen chained to the
hearth. Bring them to me at the stable door.” Vaylo looked at the boy a moment.
No more than eleven or twelve, he was wearing a motley of unmatched armored
pieces and carrying a kitchen knife as a weapon. “What’s your name, lad?”
“Brandin.”
“Here,” the Dog Lord said, pulling his four-foot longsword free from
its hound’s-tail scabbard. “Take this for the journey.”
The boy hesitated, his eyes wide.
Vaylo glowered at him; sometimes it was better to scare the young ones.
“It’s a swap, lad. I take the knife, you take the sword. Now quick about it.”
For some reason the idea of a swap made sense to the boy, and he came
forward and took the sword. His mouth fell open as he inspected the patterned
steel edge.
“Go,” Vaylo commanded him, claiming
the kitchen knife.
The boy ran. He knew how to hold a sword; that was something.
Vaylo turned to the company of men in the hall. “Oddo. Nevel. You’re
with me.”
As they made their way to the stable run, a great thud sounded from
behind. Vaylo and Oddo exchanged a glance: The Dhoones were ramming the gate.
Vaylo quickened the pace.
The eastern quarter of the roundhouse was little used and poorly lit.
Leagues of tunnels were accessed by ramps, not stairs. Probably for the horses, Vaylo concluded. The place
felt like a tomb. He didn’t like the way his footsteps echoed. There was too
much empty space here. And not enough men.
Seven swordsmen stood watch by the stable door, more of Cluff
Drybannock’s twenty by the look of them. Their faces were tense, their weapons
drawn. Vaylo felt for them. Waiting was always worse than fighting. It gave a
man’s fear time to come to the boil.
The door linking the roundhouse to the stables was tall and strangely
shaped, narrow with a bulb-shaped top like a keyhole. Three iron bars guarded
it, held in place by iron cuplets bolted into the stone walls. Vaylo motioned
toward the door with his head. “Any word?” he asked the swordsmen.
“Banging a few minutes back,” one of them replied.
“We’ve been smelling smoke awhile,” said another.
Vaylo looked long and carefully at his men. Ten here, including
himself. Eight swordsmen and two hammermen. By rights he shouldn’t even be considering opening this door. But being Clan Bludd meant
something. It had to, and perhaps he’d forgotten that these past few months,
sitting as cozy as a king at Dhoone. Perhaps he’d thought too much and done too
little, and perhaps Pengo was right: He should have moved to raise an army
before now.
Taking a breath to steady himself, the Dog Lord made his decision.
“Unbar the door. We’re going in to fetch the horses.”
Every one of them, from the oldest, Oddo Bull, to the youngest, a slip
of a swordsman not much older than seventeen, nodded without hesitation. Vaylo
felt the pain and beauty of it deep inside his heart. As Nevel Drango drew back
the bars, Vaylo spoke the boast. “We are Clan Bludd, chosen by the Stone Gods to guard their borders.
Death is our companion. A hard life long lived is our reward.”
“Bludd! Bludd! BLUDD!” the nine shouted in response,
raising their weapons, and then the door was opened and the chaos began.
Air was sucked through the door with such force that Vaylo felt it lift
his braids. All was darkness. Black smoke churned in noxious clouds, making it
impossible to see. A few safe lamps were lit, glowing yellow like cats’ eyes,
doing nothing to illuminate the murk. Vaylo took a breath, his lungs filling
with hot foulness. Acid tears sprang to his eyes.
The horses were screaming, kicking at their boxes, mad with fear. Wood
splintered with a deafening crack as one of them broke free. Vaylo moved
forward with his men, his sense of resignation growing. The horses would not
come into the house in such a state. Their terror was too great. These were
Bludd horses: None had passed through the internal door before. They did not
know it, and when a horse was panicked it needed the comfort of things it knew.
Vaylo squinted into the darkness, trying to discover the source of the
smoke. He couldn’t see any flames, and decided that either the roof or the
front of the double doors was afire. Possibly both.
“Unbolt the boxes,” he ordered, keeping his position close to the door.
The younger ones had better eyes than him, and that was a fact he could do
nothing about. “Give the horses plenty of space. Stay close to the walls.”
The sharp retorts of drawn bolts followed, like the firing of quarrels.
Men coughed and hacked. Horses sprang out, bucking and rearing, blinded by fear
and black smoke. One swordsman screamed as a panicked horse kicked out at him.
Vaylo damned Dhoone. They had turned the stables into a hot, choking hell.
“Nevel. Oddo,” he commanded, the moment the bolts ceased firing. “To
the double doors, one aside. Everyone else, behind me.”
Madness, that’s what this was. Then I am mad and my clan is mad. . . and that seemed just about
right. As seven swordsmen formed up at the internal door behind him, Vaylo gave
the word for Nevel and Oddo to drop the bar on the great double stable doors of
Dhoone.
Wind howled through the stables as the two Bludd warriors set the doors
in motion. Smoke funneled around itself, forming a vortex that was sucked
through the opening. Flames sprang to life, spilling along the edges of the
doors, dripping onto the hay-strewn floor, and shooting out fountains of
sparks. As Oddo and Nevel ran back, the horses of Clan Bludd charged through
the double doors. In the crush of horses, Vaylo made out the hard black form of
Dog Horse, his head low and his ears pinned: He’d trample some Dhoonesmen along
the way. When Oddo and Nevel were behind him, Vaylo called the retreat. The
horses were on their own now. Stone Gods save their souls.
Almost they made it to the internal door before the first Dhoonesmen
rode in. Five, there were, with the thornhelms turning their heads into
grotesque shapes and the blue axes of Dhoone upon them. Vaylo set his
three-stone hammer in motion, and stepped forward to meet them.
“BLUDD!”
Horseblood sprayed in Vaylo’s face as his hammer blasted into the first
Dhoonesman’s mount, making contact deep in its chest. The horse reared and fell
back, and the Dhoonesman lost his saddle and was unseated. Vaylo whipped his
hammer back, circled it once to gain momentum, and then sent it flying into the
Dhoonesman’s guarded face. The thornhelm crumpled inward, and the man fell to
his knees, vomit spewing from his mouth hole. Vaylo swung his hammer into
motion and picked another target. His men were fanning out around him, forming
a protective wedge around the door. The advantage was theirs, Vaylo realized,
at least until the Dhoones-men’s eyes grew accustomed to the dimness and the
smoke.
At his left Oddo Bull was matching his hammer against a Dhoonesman’s
sickle-bladed ax. No weapon could match the hammer for strength, but it had a
short reach and needed space to be properly swung. The Dhoonesman knew this,
and was forcing Oddo back. Vaylo was torn between aiding Oddo and saving
himself from a newly arrived Dhoonesman with a longsword of blue steel.
Swinging his hammer above his head, he loosened his grip on the hammer loop,
and let the hammer fly. It smashed into the longswordsman’s chest with the
force of a battering ram, sending the man flying backward in the saddle. As he
fell into the line of Dhoonesmen behind him, Vaylo took the kitchen knife from
his belt.
“To the door!” he screamed, springing toward the axman engaging Oddo.
Sometimes a small knife was best, he thought, as he rammed the blade into the
axman’s kneecap. “Oddo. Back,” he commanded, as he yanked the knife free of
bone. Ahead of him the seventeen-year-old had fallen, his shoulder cleaved off
by another blue ax. Vaylo shuddered, stepped back.
Seeing that his chief was no longer in possession of his war hammer,
Nevel Drango stepped forward to cover him on the retreat. Nevel’s sword was an
ugly bastard, no doubt about it. Black and curved, with six separate fullers
running like plowlines down the blade. It had one purpose—chopping heads—and
Vaylo saw the Dhoonesemen shy away from meeting it. Covered, Vaylo risked a
backward glance at the door. All but he and Nevel were through.
“On my word, Nevel,” he cried, his voice hoarse. “Now!”
They stepped backward together in a strange sort of dance. An ax was
loosed and chunked into the doorframe. Nevel swept
his executioner’s sword in a half-circle as Vaylo edged toward the opening.
Shooting out a hand, he grabbed Nevel’s gear belt and dragged the swordsman
through the door.
Then, mercifully, the door was closed, six men throwing their weight
against it as the bars were drawn. It would not hold. Vaylo knew it would not hold,
but it would give them precious minutes to rally and re-form.
Turning to his men, he wiped the film of sweat and blood from his face.
Two of them were gone, forever lost on the other side of the door. Oddo had
taken an ax slice to the side of his jaw, and his ear-lobe was hanging off.
Another man’s face was deathly pale, and Vaylo looked down to see the man’s
fist digging into a hole in his armor. Blood pooled around his fingers. Sweet
gods, he’d taken a longsword to the gut. Vaylo put his arm out for him, and the
man came to him. “You’re a brave lad,” Vaylo said as he drove the kitchen knife
through the man’s armor to his heart.
The six remaining warriors stood in silence, their breath coming hard,
sweat dripping from their chins and noses. They knew all about the different
ways to die, knew that wounds to the gut were amongst the worst of them.
There was no time to think or grieve. The battery on the stable door
had begun.
Vaylo glanced around. Surely there was some way to seal this section
off? A wooden door standing between you and your enemies didn’t rank highly on
anyone’s list of defenses. He noticed he was pressing the flat of his hand
against his chest, and stopped himself. Some pain there. Probably indigestion.
Even before he could decide the next course of action, a cry came from west of
him.
“Dhoonesmen in the roundhouse!”
The Dog Lord looked to his men. This night was turning from one kind of
hell into another. He could ask no man to stay here and guard this door—it was
certain death for little reward—but it turned out he didn’t have to. Oddo Bull
and a small, fair-haired swordsman stepped forward.
Vaylo suddenly felt old and damned, but he could not let them know it.
In silence, he clasped both men’s arms. Oddo Bull wished him a life long lived,
but Vaylo could not say it back to him. Their fingers held for a moment. Vaylo
found his voice. “Tell the bastards we sank their guidestone.”
Oddo smiled. It was enough, it had to be.
Vaylo turned and made his way west through the roundhouse, a crew of
four swordsmen flanking him.
The main gate still held but fighting was under way in the entrance
hall. Hammie Faa ran to meet them. A door in the kitchen had been breached.
Dhoonesmen were forcing their way in by the dozen. Bluddsmen were dead. Samlo
was dead, Vaylo could see that for himself. Hammie’s younger, bigger brother
lay in a bloody pool by the stairs to the East Horn.
“He stopped a Dhoonesman from raising the gate,” Hammie said.
“He was a strong fighter,” Vaylo murmured, touching his pouch of
powdered guidestone. “Just like his father before him.”
Hammie’s shoulders began to shake. Vaylo vowed then to kill his second
son. Pengo would die for this; it was a simple as that.
“Hammie,” he commanded. “You’re with me. Nevel. Lead the crew to the
kitchen, see if it can be sealed. Protect the women. You know what to do if it
comes to it.”
Nevel Drango nodded: Kill the women rather than let the Dhoonesmen
despoil them first and kill them later at their leisure. “Chief.”
The word was a farewell. Vaylo knew in his heart he would never see
Nevel or the other three men ever again. We have been routed. Vaylo put his arm around Hammie’s shoulder, and
headed north to the chief’s chamber.
They met only one invader along the way, a Castleman who looked like he
didn’t know where he was going or where he’d come from. Hammie was armed with a
nine-foot spear, and saw him off with a vicious blow to the lower gut. The
spearhead smelled of shit when Hammie yanked it free.
Vaylo pounded on the chief’s door when they reached it. “Nan! Let me
in.”
Nan Culldayis opened the door, holding a two-foot maiden’s helper in
her hand. It made Vaylo proud to see it.
“Nan. Get the bairns. Quick now.”
She moved swiftly, asking no questions of him. Tension lines drawn in
her forehead made her look older than her forty-eight years, but to Vaylo she
had never seemed more beautiful. She would have killed herself and his
grandchildren rather than let the Dhoonesmen have their way with them. This was a woman worth loving.
The two bairns clung to her skirts, and Vaylo crouched down for a
moment to talk to them. “We must all be quiet and swift. Like foxes. Can you do
that, for your old granda? Be quiet and swift?”
Pasha nodded, pale and frightened. The youngest made no reply.
Vaylo had no time for more. He stood. “Hammie. You’re in the lead. I’ll
bring up the rear.”
“Where we going, Chief?”
It was a good question. “To the Tomb of the Dhoone Princes.”
Hammie accepted this as if it were perfectly sane and logical; Vaylo
loved him for that. “Lead on.”
The entrance to the tomb lay farther north of them, in the great barrel-vaulted
guidehouse. It was a short walk, but Vaylo knew luck wasn’t with him this
night. When two helmed Dhoonesmen appeared on the path in front of him,
blocking the entrance to the guidehouse, he couldn’t say he was surprised.
“Bludd Lord,” came a voice through the thornhelm. “All your men lie
dead and dying. I’d say it was time you yielded this house.”
Vaylo scanned the man’s weapons and battle dress. Fisher fur, a fine
blue longsword, plate bossed with copper: It was the Thorn King himself, Robbie
Dun Dhoone.
“Yes,” Robbie said, reading the knowledge on Vaylo’s face. “The king
has returned.”
Vaylo heard something then that quickened his blood and gave him hope.
“Hammie,” he murmured. “Forward on my say.” To Nan he sent a look that said, Easy. To the Dhoone king, he said, “You got my name
wrong, Robbie Dun Dhoone, I’m not the Bludd Lord, I’m the Dog Lord.”
And then his dogs rushed in. “Hammie! To the tomb,” he screamed, as
five hounds, part wolf, part dog, streaked past him in a single body of bunched
snouts, bared teeth and flattened ears to get at the men who threatened their
master. Straightaway they brought the Dhoone king’s companion to ground, one
bitch springing as high as the man’s neck, sinking her teeth into his carotid artery,
whilst another fastened its mighty jaw around his ankle. Robbie Dun Dhoone
stepped away, his expression hidden by the thornhelm, his blue sword sweeping a
protective circle around him.
Hammie rushed up to him, pinning him at a distance with his nine-foot
spear whilst Nan, Vaylo and the grandchildren moved through. Hammie and the
dogs held the Dhoone king there whilst Vaylo rushed into the guidehouse and
pulled on the great iron ring that lifted the entrance flag to the tomb.
Cold, still air rose to meet him as the stone flag fell back. “Down!”
he commanded Nan and the bairns. “Hammie. To me!”
Two of the dogs were tearing the Dhoone king’s companion limb from
limb, and the other three were snapping at the king’s heels, feinting and
snarling, their eyes shrunken to dots. Hammie lowered his spear and ran for the
tunnel. Vaylo heaved the great stone flag on its end, so the face with the ring
was now facing down, lowered himself into place and then called for his dogs.
The dogs, hearing a tone in their master’s voice they had never heard before,
obeyed instantly, breaking contact and hurling themselves toward the tomb.
Vaylo felt their dog heat as they passed him.
Grabbing hold of the ring, he heaved the stone flag back into place,
plunging them all into darkness. “Hammie. Your spear.” Vaylo could hear the
Dhoone king rushing forward, his feet pounding against the stone. Feeling his
way in the blackness, Vaylo thrust Hammie’s spear through the ring, securing
the entrance. It would hold for now—it was awkward enough to lift a sunken flag
of stone without a handle, let alone one that was jammed in place with a
spear—but it would not hold for long.
For a moment of perhaps six seconds, Vaylo did nothing but sit on the
step and breathe. He was worn out. Now that his eyes had grown accustomed to
the darkness he could see moonlight spilling in ahead. The tunnel passed under
the roundhouse’s walls, leading north to the tomb, and blocks of quartz in the
ceiling let in light.
“Come on,” he said, his voice weary. “Down we go to pay our respects to
the dead kings.”
Everyone, including the dogs, rose at once. Vaylo felt Nan’s hand
gently touch his arm. He had to push it away. His grief was too raw.
The dogs understood what his lady did not, and followed him at a
careful distance, their tails down. The wolf dog whimpered softly.
Little Arran began to sob. Vaylo had no comfort to give, not yet, and
led the way to the tomb in silence.
The Tomb of the Dhoone Princes was much as he remembered it; stale and
haunted by memories of past glories. The standing tombs glowed pale in the
moonlight, sentinels guarding the underworld. Vaylo shivered, and realized
quite suddenly he was terribly cold.
“Hammie. Nan. Pasha. Arran,” he addressed his small party. “If we’re
ever to get out of here we have to think. Last time I was here the ranger Angus
Lok told me there was a tunnel leading north from this very chamber. Said it
was so old that even Dhoone had forgotten it. Right now that tunnel’s our only
hope. So what I need all of you to do is push, prod, knock and shove every bit
of stone in this place to find the opening mechanism.” It sounded insane even
as he said it, but all four of them accepted it calmly, and began to spread out
around the tomb.
Vaylo frowned for a minute,
trying to recall the little rhyme Angus Lok had said. How did it go now? “In the Tomb of the Dhoone Princes there be, a
bolt-hole for those who canna loo’t nor see”
Everyone turned to look at him. “Is that the clue, Granda?” Pasha
whispered excitedly.
“Aye. It’s the clue,” he told her, not wanting to disappoint. The rhyme
said as good as nothing, and the black thoughts circling his mind settled into
place. First Arran, then Pasha, Hammie, Nan, and then himself. The order he
would take them in seemed important, and he asked the Stone Gods for the
courage to see it through. The Dhoone king had talked of yielding, but Vaylo
had seen the truth of it in the pale, blue eyes beneath the thornhelm. Robbie
Dun Dhoone was not a man to be held to his word.
And time was running out.
“Granda! Why does this man have no eyes?” came Arran’s high voice. The
boy was too young to be afraid of death and all its trappings, and was swinging
from the effigy of the Dark King, Burnie Dhoone.
Vaylo shrugged. “The masons never got around to it.”
Pasha was kneeling by one of the fallen tombs. Coming to her feet, she
said matter-of-factly, “That means he canna look nor see.”
Vaylo felt the gooseflesh prickle along his arms. Quick glances to Nan
and Hammie told him they’d both felt it too. From the mouths of babes . ..
All three of them walked toward the stone likeness of Burnie Dhoone.
Pasha joined them, smug as can be. “It has to be the eyes, Granda. That’s why the
masons never finished them.” With that she hiked up onto Burnie Dhoone’s feet,
and pressed both fingers into the rough globes of stone that were his eyes.
Something deep inside the chamber rumbled. Damp, fetid air wafted in as
an entire section of wall swung inward. The dogs shrank back on their haunches,
frightened. Arran ran across to the opening, delighted. Pasha stepped down from
Burnie Dhoone’s feet, and said, “Well, I think we’d better hurry then.”
Vaylo stared at the opening on the opposite wall. It was black and
lifeless, entirely unwelcoming, but to him it looked like hope.
Calling his dogs about him, he led the way north out of Dhoone.
CHAPTER
The Stand at Floating Bridge
“Here,” Ark Veinsplitter said to Ash. “This is the last ice-spur of
winter.” The Sull Far Rider handed her a delicate white flower as large as her
fist. The petals shimmered with silver veins, and in the center its featherlike
anthers glowed deep, midnight blue. “You crush them,” Ark explained. “And they
will give you their scent.”
Ash pressed the anthers between her fingers, smelled nothing, and then
a moment later the scent of winter—fresh snow, cinnamon, evergreens, apples,
and woodsmoke, all of them rendered sweeter, fairer—possessed her completely.
It made her remember things: falling in the snow as a child, so thickly wrapped
up that she could not right herself; getting tipsy on mulled cider with Katia,
both of them hiccuping and feeling a bit sick; running across the quad, eager
to see the Winter Candles that were lit each year in the great circular dancing
hall in the Bight. Ash breathed deeply. She hadn’t thought about those candles
for years.
Ark was watching her carefully, his dark brown eyes searching her own.
“This Sull believes that sometimes when you look back you may see things you
have missed.”
Ash nodded slowly, her understanding growing. He was right.
She had missed things. Her life at Mask
Fortress had been terrible in many ways, but there had been moments of real
joy, silliness, anticipation—times when she lived the carefree existence of a
child. The icespur had showed them to her.
“You are daughter to us now,” Ark said. “You have nothing to fear from
the past.”
Ash looked down at the flower, unable to hold his gaze. How did he know
so much about her ?
“The Daughters of the Sull weave icespurs in their hair when they ride
into battle.” He thought for moment. “Also when they choose a mate. Sometimes
this confuses the Sons.”
Ash grinned, feeling big tears well up in her eyes.
“Eventually the Sons learn, though. We know much about our Daughters’
hearts.”
Tears plinked into the snow.
“Come. We must ride long hours this day.”
Ash looked up as the Far Rider moved away. “Thank you,” she murmured.
“For the flower.”
He bowed in acknowledgment and went to tend to his horse. Ash watched
him crouch down by the grey’s forelegs and rub grease into the hooves. The
bandage on his hand, which she had wrapped only an hour earlier, was already
spotted with dark blood. Fixing the ice-spur in her hair, Ash went to help him
break camp.
They were in the Trenchlands now, a day’s ride east of the Bludd
border, camped in a dense forest of towering trees. Five-hundred-year-old
cedars circled the clearing, giant trees with drooping branches, their needles
blue as smoke. Somewhere close water was splashing over rocks, and the raucous
calls of ravens at a kill broke the calm. Yesterday they had ridden through a
tract of burned forest that had taken them from noon to sundown to cross. Once
or twice Ash had spied log cabins and hide tents raised at the edge of the
burnline. She had smelled smoke, heard dogs bark, but seen no men. Ark
Veinsplitter and Mai Naysayer had set a hard pace, choosing to ride over the
burned forests to save time. They had no love of the Trenchlanders, and would
ride on swiftly whenever they encountered signs of settlement. The Naysayer had
not hunted in two days,
and contented himself with bringing down ice hares and rabbits from the
saddle with his bola. There seemed no weapon invented he could not use.
The weather had held so far, but glancing up at the sky as she headed
for the stream, she thought they might not be so lucky today. White clouds
meant snow. It was just the right temperature for it too; cold but not icy.
She shivered as she passed through the cedars. The stream followed the
course of the land, falling in tiers as the forest floor dropped into a hollow.
Pine needles had dammed it in places, sending water sheeting wide over rocks.
The water tasted of resin. Ash cupped it to her face and scrubbed. As she
rubbed it from her eyes she spied a movement between the trees on the far bank.
Ever since the night in the Deadwoods, Ash carried her sickle and chain with
her at all times, and she pulled it from the squirrel-fur pouch she had
fashioned for it. Light was dim amongst the cedars. “Who goes there?” she
challenged, settling the sickle’s weight in her hand.
A tree rustled, and a figure sprinted away, heading deep into the
forest. Trenchlander.
Ash found she had to sit down for a minute, her legs shaking. The
sickle glinted, its wickedly hooked blade looking starkly alien when set upon a
mat of cedar needles. The Trenchlander had been afraid—of her. She didn’t know what to make of that. After a time
she decided it was good. Very good. Nodding to herself, she filled the
waterskins and headed back to the camp.
“I saw a Trenchlander,” she said to the Naysayer as she dumped the
heavy skins at his feet. “I scared him off.”
The Naysayer raised an eyebrow; she’d never seen him do that before. “A
settlement stands close.”
“Is that why you were away this morning, scouting it?” It seemed the
confidence had gone to her head, for she’d never had the nerve to question the
Naysayer’s movements before. The Naysayer did whatever he chose to, and not
even his hass forestalled him.
“Nay, Ash March. This Sull scouted no Trenchland settlement this day.”
His ice blue eyes regarded her levelly, but there was no invitation for further
questions written there.
Ash nodded in response to what he didn’t need to say. Some things she
could not question. Not yet. Determined to take no offense, she went to went to
brush and pack her horse.
Snow began falling as she strapped the last of the saddlebags in place.
While she’d been gathering tent canvas and poles, the two Sull Far Riders had
walked off to the far edge of the clearing. They spoke quietly at some length, and
Ash couldn’t stop herself from glancing at them from time to time. At some
point the Naysayer brought a package from his furs, something wrapped in faded
red silk. Ark stripped off the bandage around his hand, and held out his
wounded wrist toward the Naysayer. The Naysayer unwrapped the silk and took out
a small bulb-shaped container. He unstoppered it, and then poured a few drops
of its contents straight into Ark’s wound. Ark stiffened, grasping his forearm.
His lips whitened as he held a grimace, and then slowly regained their color as
he relaxed. Mai rested one of his huge, ice-tanned hands on his hass’s shoulder for a moment, and then went into the trees
to open a vein. Ash knew that was his intention: She saw him reach for his silver
letting knife before the cedars cloaked him.
Suddenly cold, Ash thrust her hands into her lynx fur. Medicine. The
Naysayer had gone off this morning in search of medicine for his hass.
She had a bad feeling about the day after that. Once the snow had begun
it grew rapidly thicker. No wind stirred, and the flakes fell heavy and
straight as they left the clearing. Visibility was poor. The path between the
cedars was narrow and twisting, and icy boughs slapped against Ash’s legs. The
Naysayer did not ride ahead as usual, and instead took the lead on the blue. No
one spoke. The breadth of the Naysayer’s back as he sat his saddle seemed to
Ash as wide as two men.
At midday they halted briefly to feed and water the horses. The
forested ridge they stood upon rose over the valley they would cross later that
day. Leaving her horse to its snufflebag, Ash hiked to the edge to take a look.
A vast river flowed below, its surface the color of rust. Spring thaw had
caused it to swell its banks, and its waters had spilled over into the
surrounding forests and fields, creating leagues of shallow lakes. In the
distance stood a city masked by mist.
“Hell’s Town,” Ark said, coming to stand beside her. “It is the time of
the flood. All the trenches are filled.”
She risked a quick glance at him. The Far Rider’s skin looked pale and
dry. “This is the Easterly Flow?”
He nodded. “It swells. Many rivers drain into it.”
“Kith
Masaen.”
Ark seemed pleased that she had remembered its Sull name. “The River of
Many Ways, that is what we named it.”
Ash felt stupidly glad to have pleased him. Scanning the bloated length
of the river, she asked, “How do we cross it?”
“The Floating Bridge.”
Something in his voice made her turn toward him.
“Once we cross it we are home.”
Ash thought of the Naysayer’s hand resting upon Ark’s shoulders, and
suddenly she wanted to do the same. Just rest her hand there for a while. But
she didn’t. She heard the longing and weariness in his voice, brought her hand
up to touch him and then let it drop. She’d lost her nerve.
“Let us go,” he said. “If we make good time we will arrive at the
bridge before dark.”
They didn’t make good time. The snow turned slushy in the river valley,
and the ground underfoot became a bog of freezing mud. The Naysayer chose a
path that led them west of Hell’s Town, but even so they soon began passing
people on the road. Filthy children and tired-looking women gave the Sull Far
Riders a wide berth, often stepping off the path while they rode through. One
man abandoned his cart in the middle of the road, and returned to reclaim it
only once the Far Riders had passed. Ark and Mai seemed indifferent to the stir
they caused, and rode with their heads high, looking straight ahead. Ash wished
she could have done the same. She felt the Trenchlanders’ gazes upon her, and
found herself flicking her hair back and making unnecessary adjustments to the
reins. Did she look like Sull to them? Or did they know her for the impostor
she was?
It was a question she couldn’t answer. She saw heads turn to track her
silver-blond hair and appraise the golden richness of her lynx fur, but she
couldn’t tell what they were thinking.
As the day wore on they passed Trenchlander settlements set amongst the
trees; muddy villages of log cabins wreathed in woodsmoke, surrounded by
barrels for the curing of hides. They even passed an inn. But the Far Riders
did not halt. Ash felt their anx-iousness, their desire to be upon land they
named wholly their own.
By sunset they had still not
reached the river. It grew dark early amidst the tall trees, and the road began
to empty. The snow firmed as the temperature dropped, and showed no sign of
stopping. Ash huddled in her furs, watching her breath whiten as she exhaled.
The smell of cedar and woodsmoke made her drowsy, and she found herself
slumping forward in the saddle. She’d just fallen into a sleepy daze when she
heard a wolf howl. Blinking, she turned her head, listened. Nothing. Probably a
dream.
It was an effort to keep her eyes open. The road was passing through
thick forest now, the trees forming a wall around the road. Stars were out, and
there was a faint red tinge to the sky. Gods’ Lights. When the road made a
sharp turn, Ash saw the glimmering waters of the river ahead of her . .. and
then heard the wolf howl again.
Straightaway she snapped awake. It was a wolf—she had heard them often
enough on Mount Slain—but it was something other as well. Cold tingles passed
up her spine, making her shoulders jerk. Another call came, this one pitched
higher. Wolves. And they were unmade.
“Ark!” she cried, and he turned in the saddle to look at her. “They
have come.”
“To the bridge!” he called, falling into place behind her, awaiting her
gallop before beginning his own. “To the bridge!”
Ash’s mount sprang to life beneath her, and suddenly cold air and
snowflakes were rushing into her face. Cedars shivered as she passed, dropping
their loads of snow. All she could hear was the drumming of hooves and the beat
of her own heart. Ahead, Mai Naysayer led the way to the bridge. Ash saw the
river draw closer, saw the ripples of currents on the surface, and then she saw
Floating Bridge.
Sull
have made this,
she knew with absolute certainty. It had to be made of wood, but it was blue
and lustrous, and it came from no tree she knew. The fixed span at the
shoreline swept down toward the surface in a series of reducing arches, while
the movable spans floated like a ribbon of silver on the water, buoyed by pontoons
shaped like great whales. The entire bridge seemed to breathe, rising and
falling with the river’s swells. It was beautiful, but Ash didn’t see how it
could save them from the Unmade.
The howls were becoming louder, hungrier. Ash could hear the saliva
snorting in the wolves’ throats as they breathed. She fell low in the saddle,
digging her heels into the packhorse’s ribs. A mad desire to know seized her
and she turned her head, and saw three wolves made into nightmares break from
the trees.
Gasping, she faced ahead, knowing she had lost a crucial beat of speed
by the simple act of turning. Directly behind her, the tent poles rattled in
their casings, and the saddlebags squeaked and sawed as they bounced against
the horse’s rump. It occurred to her that Ark and the Naysayer should be
pulling ahead—the two Sull stallions could not be matched for speed at full
gallop—but they were keeping pace with her.
If we
are pursued pull the strap. How could she have forgotten?
Stripping her fingers from the reins took an effort; they just didn’t
want to let go. The cold had made them numb, and when she thrust her hand along
the horse’s belly she couldn’t feel a thing. Where was it? She found the trace
and slid her fingers along it, working by pressure more than touch. There.
Something stuck out. Grabbing onto it she pulled down hard. A series of snaps
sounded, like the cracking of whips, and then everything fell away except the
horse’s saddle and harness. Ash heard tent poles and cook pots tumble onto the
road behind her, heard Ark’s stallion jumping them so lightly he never lost his
pace.
Her own horse suddenly found new speed and sprinted forward,
passing Mai’s blue. The Floating Bridge was so close now she could see
the spillway in its center. Kicking her mount frantically, she headed straight
for it.
The two Sull Far Riders had stopped keeping pace with her, she realized
as she reached the boarded ramp at the shore. Turning in the saddle, she called
to Ark.
“Go on!” he cried. Behind him she
could see a wolf shape closing distance, see the fluid ripple of shadowflesh as
muscles bunched and unbunched around its neck. Its eyes burned red like coals,
and its teeth were black ivory set in wholly black gums. Howling eerily high,
it sprang upon Ark’s horse.
The Sull stallion reared its back legs, trying to buck the wolf off its
rump, but the creature’s fangs had sunk deep and its jaw was locked, and Ark
Veinsplitter drew his sword. Meteor steel slid into shadowflesh with the sizzle
of hot metal entering cold water. The wolf’s jaw sprang apart, and just like
the packhorse’s saddlebags, the beast fell away.
Ash breathed, realized she hadn’t done that in minutes. Her horse had
led her onto the fixed span of the bridge and was now trotting forward. Hollow
wood rang out beneath its hooves. Ash could feel river breezes working her
skin. More wolves were breaking from the trees. Two. Three. Five. Oh god.
“GO ON!” screamed Ark, motioning at the
bridge with his sword. The gray’s rump was washed in blood, but it held its
head high and showed no fear.
The Naysayer gained the ramp to the bridge, drew his mighty six-foot
sword, and turned to face the Unmade.
Feeling a fluid buoyancy beneath her, Ash realized she had passed onto
the floating span of the bridge. She reined in her horse, reached within her
furs for her sickle blade. She’d run long enough. It was time for this Daughter
of the Sull to make a stand.
She quested for the flame, sucking air between her teeth as if somehow
that would ignite it. Quite suddenly it was there. Tiny as a baby’s tooth. But
there. Sliding from her horse’s back, Ash March searched for a wolf to kill.
A battle was being waged at the ramp. Mai Naysayer stood there like the
gatekeeper to hell, a fearsome sword in constant motion in his hands. As Ash
stepped forward, Ark rode past him and onto the bridge. A thrill of fear made
her shiver as he reined his horse and dismounted. Ark and the Naysayer weren’t
like her: They didn’t need to dismount to wield their weapons. Perhaps in time she wouldn’t need to ... but she hadn’t learned that
lesson yet. Suddenly Ark crouched down by the edge of the fixed span, his hands
reaching for something. Had he dropped his sword? No. It was there, laid across
his knees.
Ash took the chain in her hands and began to spin the weight. She could
not count the wolves now, and still more were tearing from the trees. They
bayed and howled, snapping at Mai Naysayer with breathtaking speed. As he
plunged his sword into one creature’s chest, another streaked past him and onto
the bridge. Ash thought, This
one will do.
The chain and its weight were thrumming over her head, moving so
quickly nothing but the green halo scribed by the peridots could be seen.
Her wolf was leaping toward Ark’s throat. Ash saw the flame, blue and
cool. / cannot miss here. Adjusting the chain’s torque,
she waited a tiny portion of a second, and then released. The chain flew
forward, reeling through her fist like a fishing line, and snaked around the
throat of the wolf. Ash yanked with all her might, heaving back and out, and
whipped the unmade creature into the water. As it crashed through the surface,
she twisted sideways with her wrist, unreeling to reclaim the chain. The weight
shot back toward her like an arrow, and she lost the flame for a moment when
she thought it was going to hit her. A hasty bit of sidestepping was called
for.
When she recovered her footing, she saw Ark Veinsplitter watching her,
his eyes shining. “Daughter,” he said. “You make this Sull proud.”
She wished with all her might she had laid her hand on his shoulder
then ... for she never got the chance to do so again. Not in this world.
Ark had something in his hand, something he had pulled from the board
of the bridge. A linchpin, long and deep, and even as she realized what it was
she began to float away from him. Ark Vein-splitter had set the Floating Bridge
adrift.
There was a moment when she might have jumped the distance between
them. That was something she would hold with her for the rest of her life. That
moment, its passing. And then the distance was too great and the swift black
water opened up between them, and Ark Veinsplitter rose to fight. His hass battled alone, and he must join him.
If there was a nightmare so terrible as watching the people you love
battle for their lives, unable to help them, Ash March never heard of it. She
had to watch, it was the only currency she had to pay with: Watch and bear witness
to the Stand at Floating Bridge. The night was long and the battle dread, and
when it was over no wolves and only man was left standing. And still the
horrors weren’t done, for the Naysayer knelt by his hass and took him in his arms and screamed terrible
words to his gods. When his anger was gone he kissed Ark’s eyes and took a
knife to Ark’s throat and performed Dras Morthu.
The Last Cut.
Ark Veinsplitter went to the Far Shores that night. Ash March knew this
because she watched his soul depart.
CHAPTER
The Gates to Hell
The fortress glowed red beneath the Gods’ Lights, like something built
from frozen blood. Raif led Bear toward it feeling a strange sense of calm. It
should have been dark in the Want by now, yet light persisted. The clouds had
withdrawn and the sky was clear, and the stars turning within it were clustered
into giant constellations shaped like wolves. Raif did not know these stars; he
wasn’t even sure what world he was walking on anymore.
Ahead lay the curtain wall, rising sheer from the mountain’s face. It
towered before them, casting a shadow so absolutely black it looked like a hole
in the earth. The path leading toward it had been hewn from live rock, the
granite expertly finished to be smooth yet still provide traction for
travelers. A series of tiered steps elevated the path every hundred paces or
so. The climb was not difficult, but Raif took it slowly. He was in no hurry to
reach the fortress. The light would hold, he was sure of that. Light did
whatever it chose to in this place.
Massive plates of ice lay strewn across the valleys like wreckage from
a hurricane. One piece was as big as roundhouses, and it took them minutes to
pass it. Chunks of granite were suspended in the ice like flies in amber. Raif
was glad he had enough water with him to last a day or two. The last thing he
wanted to do was melt and drink this ice.
As they rounded a curve in the path Raif saw the gates to the city.
Rising as tall as ten men and wrought from silvered iron, they commanded a
break in the curtain wall. Iron dragons stood rampant to either side of them
like sentinels, protecting the entrance to the city with hooked talons and
razored jaws. The Gates to
Hell.
Raif shivered, looked back. The mist had risen along with him, and he
could no longer see the path leading down. The Want was playing tricks,
reminding him that he could not leave the way he came in. Shaking his head
softly, he continued on. He had to think of Bitty, that was the thing. Even
this kind of life was better than no life at all.
Bear grew uncharacteristically reluctant the nearer they drew to the
gates, slowing her pace and then tugging against the reins. Raif halted to look
at her. The little dun pony lowered her head, and regarded him with wariness.
It was time to go on alone. They were passing through a field of smashed ice
and granite boulders, and he led her a little way off the path to where an
outcropping of rock offered some protection from the wind. Pouring out a
portion of oiled grain on the rock face, he told her not to worry. He’d be back
to fetch her in a while.
It was hard to leave her there. Not wanting to see her disappear into
the mist, he did not look back.
The curtain wall stretched ahead of him, a rampart of unscalable stone
studded with deadly reefs of quartz. Nothing moved upon it. This city was dead.
Drawing the Forsworn sword from its sheath, Raif headed for the gates.
The earth shook as he approached them, a single violent rolling motion
that made the iron posts grind together with a piercing squeal. Something deep
within the city smashed with the force of an explosion. Raif flinched. As he
waited for stillness he glanced down at his sword. It seemed too small a thing
to protect him here. The Gods’ Lights burned green as he put his hand on the
gate within the gate. The smaller gate was inset into the larger one, mimicking
its dragon design precisely. It wasn’t secured in any way, and swung back when
Raif pushed it. It didn’t even creak.
Raif swallowed, his earlier calmness gone. If he were Sull he would
open a vein before entering this place. If he were clan he’d draw a guide
circle and call upon the Stone Gods. He didn’t know what a Maimed Man would do,
so he did nothing at all. Holding his sword in one hand and his raven lore in
the other, Raif Sevrance entered the Fortress of Grey Ice.
It smelled of ages long past and glaciers, and it was like no other
place Raif had ever seen. It looked spun from molten glass. Translucent spires,
hundreds of them, reached skyward, no two the exact same height. Bridges as
delicate as ropes of pearl spanned the summits, creating a spider’s web of
passageways and stairs. Lower down arched and domed roofs capped vast,
windowless halls, and lower still the mountain thrust its bedrock through the
ground in vast primitive humps that formed the base of all buildings. It was as
if the city had been savagely fused onto the face of the mountain.
Raif found himself in the gateyard, a vast circular space flagged in
darkly glimmering schist. Mountain rock broke through in places, forming
graceless saddles of stone. Raif’s footsteps echoed sharply, and some caution
he didn’t understand made him place his feet with care. The Forsworn sword felt
heavy and lifeless, and he couldn’t find its balance. Looking ahead he saw many
paths he could take, stairways and arches, doorways and passages. Choosing one
at random, he headed inward.
The light was shifting, favoring blue and grey tones, and dimming
slightly. Raif watched his shadow circle his body and then come to rest behind
him. Nothing seemed fixed here. His sword’s weight felt in flux, and the tones
of his footfalls lengthened and shortened. Who had lived here? It didn’t merely
feel abandoned, it felt... lost. He walked past an empty arena circled with
stone benches that showed no wear. A fountain hewn from speckled limestone had
no water or moss stains around its bowl. What had the Listener said? This was
the final fortress built by the Old Ones. They may have built it but they can’t have lived
here. Not long.
Raif picked a building to enter, a great hall with arched columns of
stone. A floor tiled in black and white marble stretched across empty space.
The walls were bare except for one at the opposite end of the hall that had
been painted. He crossed over to inspect it. It was a rendering of the mountain
and the surrounding landscape done in miniature. Water flowed through the river,
and green plains stretched wide in all directions. Raif couldn’t see the
fortress depicted on the mountain, so he leaned in for a closer look. Then
froze. The artist had painted a vast gap in the mountain, right at the point
where the fortress now stood. And something was coming out of it.
Raif turned away. The outlander had been right; the Old Ones had built
this fortress out of fear, fusing it to the mountain’s core as if by doing so
they could seal the gap. Perhaps they had sealed it... but all seals were meant
to be broken.
As Raif moved to leave, the entire building shuddered. The floor
warped, sending mortar dust spewing upward. Raif ran. A stone headpiece from
the ceilings fell as he passed beneath it, crashing onto the tile right behind
him. This city had been preserved in sorcerer’s ice for thousands of years, and
now it was ready to come down.
Raif ran until he was winded, not caring what route he took. His lungs
felt itchy with dust, and no amount of coughing could clean them. Crouching on
his haunches he caught his breath. One of the quartz spires must have fallen
here, for the ground was littered with shards of crystal. Looking up, he
decided he needed to be somewhere else. He didn’t fancy being impaled if
another went. It was time to find the center of the city. He was done with
looking around.
A wide avenue led him past open arcades and a series of lead-domed
buildings. The stonework was becoming more ornate, mounted with reliefwork
dragons and other, stranger beasts. Stone columns had been shaped into tightly
coiled serpents’ tails and likenesses of creatures changing from one form into
another. Raif felt the temperature dropping. The fortress was in continual
motion now, swaying and jittering. His sword, which had seemed heavy ever since
he passed through the gate, suddenly felt too light.
When he came to a circular building, intricately wrought with statues
set deep into stone hoods he knew he’d found the heart of the fortress. The
statues were half shadow, half man: They were in the process of being unmade.
Raif took a breath, waited to see if his body would stop shaking.
It didn’t. For some reason he thought of Addie Gunn as he entered the
temple. We can be more.
The shifting in things that had begun outside
was accelerated in the temple. The air was unstill, blooming patches of
darkness like blood dropped in water. Raif’s sword became liquid in his hands,
its weight running from one end to another as he lifted it. And something else
was stirring, something he had no name for. He went to take a step and as he
took it, it felt sharply familiar, as if the step had already been taken. Time,
he supposed. Time was stirring.
The temple had no windows, yet some kind of light drifted in. The round
walls were fused onto a crater of mountain rock. The violence of their binding
could be read in the scorch lines that blazed along the join. Great force had
come to bear here. Someone had wanted to make sure nothing got out. A central
altar dominated the space, and Raif moved slowly toward it. He could already
see the dark space beneath the capstone, knew it could be lifted off.
The altar was hewn from black quartz threaded with gold, and touching
it was like touching ice. Raif felt his skin cleave to it, felt the chill of it
travel inward to his heart. He waited for the moment to lift it as he had
waited for the wind to rise before loosing Divining Rod. Just as wind shifted
on the mountain, weight shifted in this place. When he felt his sword lighten
he set it down, placed both hands on the capstone and pushed up with all his
might. The stone cracked in two as it slid to the floor. Raif heard himself
make a sound, something halfway between a laugh and a sob. No going back now.
There never had been.
A narrow flight of stairs led down from through the altar, and he
picked up his sword and took them. He could smell the inside of the mountain
now, the iron and sulfur and dampness. As he reached the final stairs the earth
began to shake. A low and terrible howling sounded. Raif’s fingers tightened
around the hilt of his sword. The chamber was rolling like a ship in uncalm
seas. Patches of darkness deepened, holes within the black. A shadow form came
into view, faded.
Raif felt his mouth go dry. Shatan Maer, the outlander had named it. The most powerful creature that ever
lived. Strange how you could be told something, listen, and still not hear it.
But wasn’t that exactly what the outlander had counted on? Who would come here
with full knowledge? No one. One glimpse, and it was enough to know all. One
sword wasn’t enough. One man wasn’t enough. The outlander should have sent an
army . . . but the outlander didn’t have an army to send.
So he’d sent a fool instead.
Raif found he was baring his teeth, like a wolf. The madness was there
below him, just another hole in the black. Kill an army for me, Raif Sevrance. Wasn’t that exactly what he
was doing—one Hails-man at a time ?
He laughed then, bitterly, as he imagined his life stretching on. More
deaths. More friends betrayed. Three people in this world he loved, yet he’d
never get to see them again. Drey. Effie. Ash. What good was life without those you loved? It was
a shadow, and perhaps the outlander had seen this in him, and sent one shadow
to battle another.
Raif took the final step into the chamber, and immediately felt as if
he’d taken it seconds earlier. All things were in flux here. The chamber itself
was strangely ill defined, its walls fluid. Part of the floor was tiled in
intricate mosaics depicting beasts changing into other beasts, dragons becoming
shadows, and serpents lapsing into unseeing, but most was bare rock. This was
where the fortress ended and the mountain began, and as Raif moved across the
floor he heard the ring of unspeakable hollowness beneath him. The mountain was
cleaved in two here. Raif Sevrance knew with certainty that he now stood upon
the fault most likely to give.
The patches of darkness were quickening. Something dread thrashed in
the shadows, howled and then faded away. The chamber was a blur of movement and
shifting time now, the floor buckling like wet wood. Dimly Raif was aware of
great crashing sounds filtering down from above as the spires of the fortress
fell.
Taking a two-handed grip on the Forsworn sword, he began to chant.
“Though
walls may crumble and earth may brea’t He will forsake.“
The Shatan Maer rippled into existence, held,
and then melted to black. Deep within the mountain rock began to tear.
“Though
night may fall and shadows rise He will be wise“
Time echoed the word wise back to Raif. A crack opened up
in the floor, and the smell of another world came through it. All the shadows
and patches of blackness in the chamber began to coalesce on a single point.
“Though
seals may shatter and evil grow He will draw his bow.“
The crack widened and Raif felt the cold breezes of hell. The single
point of darkness was engorging, shaping itself into a portal. The Shatan Maer stood behind it, thrashing and flailing, a
monstrous beast beating against its chains. Imagine your worst nightmare, then reckon it tenfold. Who would have thought a
cragsman would be so good with words? Teeth bared, Raif moved into position.
“Though
a fortress may fall and darkness ride through the gate He will lie in wait“
A violent wrench shook the chamber. Something integral to the nature of
time and being snapped, and in that instant Raif saw things that no man should
ever see. A hundredfold of nightmares, a thousand lifetimes’ worth of horrors:
all moving forward;pushing to get out. And riding amongst
them were the nine horsemen. The Endlords on their black stallions, their
swords forged from an absence of all things, the substance of souls ground to
hold an edge. They felt Raif’s attention upon them, and turned slowly to meet
his gaze. Their eyes were holes leading to a place beyond hell, and they pulled
their lips back and smiled at him.
Soon, they promised. Soon.
In that instant the Shatan
Maer stepped
through the breach. A monster from another age, born in shadow form. Raif
adjusted his sword, searched the black void of the creature’s body for some
semblance of a heart. . . and found one. An immense primitive pump that moved
the shadowblood around its body, keeping it unmade.
Raif felt its powerful suction pull him in, and fought against it. He
could not afford to lose himself in this muscular blackness. It was the second
gate to hell, lying in wait.
“And when
the Demon emerges and all hopes depart He must take its heart.“
Raif lunged forward, touched shadowflesh with the point of his sword,
heard it hiss. A deep roar sounded. The Shatan Maer moved. Raif did not see the blow that felled him.
He lost time. Blinking awake he saw a faint shadow of himself being felled. He
reached for his sword. Where
was the sword?
As he sent his hand scrambling over rocks, the Shatan Maer turned toward him. Its eyes were forked with black
veins, and they were filled with hateful yearning. Raif pushed himself back
with his heels. Suddenly he wanted very much to live.
As he regained his feet, he saw another faint glimmering of himself
finding the sword, and just as his glimmer self raised it, the Shatan Maer fell upon him. Raif saw his own death there, saw
his leg torn off like a twig. He grinned insanely. At least he knew where his
sword was now.
Probably not a good time to fetch it, either. He still had the Sull bow
and some arrows on his back, and he slid them off as he walked backward away
from the Shatan Maer. For some reason the sight of
the bow agitated the creature and it sprang straight forward. Raif rolled back,
cracked his head on a rock. Rolled back, cracked his head on a rock again. Time
was splitting. As he came to his feet he drew the bow, released the string. The
arrow bounced off the monster’s thick, flaking hide.
The Shatan Maer howled in rage. Raif caught
sight of his sword, waited a beat to see if time was warping around it. No
shadow selves claimed it and were killed. That was good. As he lunged toward
it, the Shatan Maer struck. Raif felt claws
puncture his jaw and rake down his neck. Blood filled his mouth. The terrible
cold odor of the monster filled his nostrils, like a small taste of death. Before
he could move, another blow struck. His head snapped back, and he swallowed his
own blood. Time spooled, showing him many outcomes— too many to track. The Shatan Maer struck again. Raif scrambled, felt icy claws pierce
deep into the meat of his shoulder. Pain bloomed, but he was too confused to
translate it properly and he thought it felt pleasantly hot.
The sword was his. The last blow had propelled him toward it, and as
the Shatan Maer moved in for its final strike
his hand closed around the hilt.
The heart was his.
“For Bitty!” he screamed, as he drove the
sword up through the back of the Shatan Maer% rib cage to the heart.
Noooooooooo . . .
Deep down in the place where worlds met creatures howled. An Endlord
rode up to the shrinking portal and laughed without making a sound. A rushing
noise filled the chamber as the darkness was sucked out. The portal collapsed
into nothing, leaving only a memory scorched in thin air.
Raif lost time. Shadows selves piled on top of him, slowly sinking in.
The Shatan Maer lay collapsed across his chest,
and Raif didn’t know if he possessed the strength to move it. Each time he
exhaled, the weight of the beast robbed a fraction more space from his lungs.
Shadowblood soaked into his shirt, burning like acid. All things considered, he
felt pretty good.
We can
be more, Addie
had said, and Addie was right. Pity he wasn’t here right now; he could have
helped lift this great monstrosity off his chest.
More time lost. He really needed to get going now. Experimentally, he
tried shifting his weight to the side. Straightaway things began hurting that
hadn’t hurt before. Grimacing he made an effort. Sometimes the pain was worth
it. The pain meant you were alive, and right now that seemed precious to him.
With a mighty heave, he rolled the Shatan Maer off him.
It was time to fetch Bear, and find himself a better sort of life.
Outside the sun was shining, of course. You had to give it to the Want:
It had no end of tricks. Bear came running up to greet him as he reached the
gate, and together they headed east. Or was it south? With the Want you could
never be sure.
EPILOGUE
A Trail of Flowers
Angus Lok stopped off at the Three Villages to purchase some spring flowers.
He knew it was a fool thing to do, what with Darra having a whole garden’s
worth of flowers at her disposal, but he felt in a courting mood. The sun was
high and it might have even been a bit warm—it was difficult to tell with all
his layers on. Lambs were in the fields, and the sight of them darting under
their mothers’ skirts as he cantered past on the bay made him smile. We were
all so young and frightened once.
His smile fell when he thought of Darra and the girls alone for the
lambing. They were good girls, hard working, but lambing was a man’s job. Too
many things could go wrong, and though he knew for a certainty his wife was a
more able person than he would ever be, he wished he could spare her the
distress of it. He wished a lot of things recently, none of them for himself.
The little market held every tenday in the village square was winding
down as he approached. All the sorry-looking vegetables were left; green beans
with black spots, loose cabbage heads, and some remarkably slimy leeks. Anyone
venturing into the Ewe’s Feet for a noonday meal had a good chance of seeing
those leeks again. They might even be able to walk there on their own.
Spying a young girl holding a big basket of snowdrops and sweet peas,
Angus reined his horse and hailed her. “How much?” he asked her as she came
running toward him.
“A copper a bunch.”
“No. For the lot.”
Her eyes went wide. Angus guessed she was younger than Cassy but a bit older
than Beth. A pretty lass. But not as pretty as his girls. His request had sent
her into a confusion of risky mental calculations and uncertainty, so he solved
it by handing her a gold piece. “Tie the basket to the saddlebags with some
fancy ribbon and we’ll call it done.”
She had the sense not to argue. Her hands, he noticed, were rough and
callused, the skin toughened by farm work. “What’s your name?” he asked when
she’d finished securing the basket.
“Bronnie.”
“Split the gold piece before you go home, Bronnie,” he told her. “Take
half home to your da, and buy yourself some fancies with the rest. No one but
me and you ever need know the price you got for the basket.” He rode away,
knowing from the worry in her face she wouldn’t do it.
Shrugging gently, Angus kicked the bay into motion. Home. He could
smell it, he was quite sure of that. Smell rabbit in Darra’s cook pot, and some
sticky honey monstrosity cooked up by Beth on the hearth. Gods, but you knew a
man was a fool and in love when he ate his women’s burned cooking!
He couldn’t get there soon enough. Caution demanded that he work his
way around the oldgrowths and the stream, but caution could go to the nine
spiraling hells. He’d been cautious for too long. It was time to get to his
family by the quickest, shortest route.
Some quantity of flowers were lost in the gallop, and he grinned
imagining the trail he left. Some poor fool might follow it believing there
must be a princess at the end of such a scattering of blooms. He’d get an ugly
middle-aged borderman instead. Angus slapped his thigh. He hoped there wouldn’t
be kissing.
His grin fell a bit as he left the main path and took the little horse
trail that led to the Lok farm. No smoke. Darra must be cleaning out the hearth.
A shiver of anxiety passed down through his shoulders into his spine. This
trail hadn’t been walked on for months. The grass was thick and untrodden. And
the apple trees in the east orchard—they hadn’t been cut back since before
winter. Darra usually tended them like babies.
Angus Lok’s mouth went dry.
As the trail wound around a low mound of blackberry bushes, he caught
his first sight of the house. Burned. The walls were black and the roof had
partially collapsed. Even before the horror of it hit him, there was a part of
his brain that took in the details. This had not been recently done. There was
no odor of char in the air, and the blackening on the walls had been crazily
streaked by many rains.
“They have got away,” he said out loud, hardly knowing that he did it.
“They must have got away.”
But he’d been a member of the Phage too long to fool himself with false
hope. For twenty years he’d been trained for the worst.
And now it was finally here.
The Sull horse knew, he ‘tnew, and
he slowed to let his rider dismount. Angus’ feet touched earth, and he made a
bargain with his gods. “Take me now,” he murmured. “Bring them back and take me
instead.”
The gods didn’t answer. The gods were dead.
Angus took a breath to steady himself, and then walked into his house.
About the Author
is the author of the bestselling Book of Words trilogy, The Barbed Coil, and A Cavern of Blacky Ice, the first
book of the Sword
of Shadows series. Born in England, she now makes her home in San Diego,
California, where she’s working on the third Sword of Shadows novel, A Sword from Red Ice. Jones has worked as the marketing director for an
interactive software company, run her own export business, and worked behind
the bar in an English pub.