by J. V. Jones
Not all the people he cared about were far away.
Addie grumbled. Frowning at the cold-brewed tea, he settled himself on the fallen pine and said, “My father was a Fontsman at Wellhouse, companion to the chief. Back in the days when he hoped his son would would become a warrior like himself he told me something I never forgot.” Pausing, he patted down his waistcoat, locating his stash of smoked meat. After brushing off a piece of lint from a stick of jerky he took a bite and began to chew.
Raif waited. He knew that jerky. This was going to take a while.
It was getting dark and Addie was soon nothing more than a profile against the northern sky. He swallowed with force and then spoke. “My da told me that information protects a man better than any sword. It gives him an extra edge. And right now, as I see it, I’m not sufficiently armed. On a night like this, in wolf country, in land claimed by the Sull and within kissing distance of the Want, a man needs all the protection he can get. I need something to fight with. So start talking. Why are we keeping clear of the clanholds?”
Raif hunkered by the shore. He’d been expecting this. Addie knew why the Sull feared him—some of it—but little else. It was hardly surprising he was growing impatient. Unable to think of a good way to start, Raif said, “I’m wanted by Bludd.”
Addie’s profile registered no surprise.
“You’ve heard of the massacre on the Bluddroad?”
“Aye.”
“The Dog Lord’s grandchildren and the wives of his sons were slaughtered in cold blood by Hailsmen. I was there.” Raif waited for a reaction, but Addie held himself still. “Seven days later I defended Blackhail’s actions at Duff’s stovehouse. Four Bluddsmen died.”
There was no need to add, By my hand. Addie understood.
The trickle of water in the creek was the only noise in the darkness. Seconds passed. Addie said, “So you declared your part in the slaughter?”
“I’m the only the Hailsman Bludd knows for a certainty was there.”
“Sweet gods.” Addie sucked in breath. “I wouldn’t want the Dog Lord and all seven of his sons after me.”
Raif waited a beat. “I am condemned in Blackhail too.”
“Stillborn said you killed a sworn clansman at Black Hole.”
Suddenly Raif did not trust himself to speak. He moved a hand.
Addie was clan. It wouldn’t be difficult for him to imagine the horror of killing one of his own. The cragsman’s silence was knowing. He left it awhile and then changed the subject.
“What about the sword?”
Raif had not imagined he would ever be grateful to talk about Loss. “You saw me kill the . . . thing on the ledgerock the night Traggis Mole died?”
“Aye.”
“It took two swords to do it. The first one bent. The second went in only because it used the entry wound made by the first. There’s a limit to what normal weapons can kill, Addie. The creature was on the edge of that limit. And it’s not the worst. The worst’s to come.”
A fisher screeched a warning in the east. Wolf.
“The sword will make a difference?”
Raif shrugged. “It did thousands of years ago, the night before the lake was flooded. The man wielding it changed the course of the battle.”
“Will the Sull try and take it?”
Unable to contemplate the answer and sit still, Raif stood. “No,” he said quietly. “They will try and take me before I learn how to use it.”
“They track you?”
“I believe so.”
There had not been powdered guidestone at Addie’s waist in ten years, yet he touched the place where it had once hung from his belt. “Days darker than night lie ahead.”
The old words, spoken by storytellers around the hearth and clan chiefs in time of war, had weight to them. They didn’t blow away, and it wasn’t easy to speak into the silence as they sank. Addie made the effort. Upturning the cooking pot he said, “No fire, cold tea. I’m off to sleep. As Giddie Wellhouse used to say, may our enemies appear in nightmare, not flesh.”
Raif hiked upstream as Addie kicked together a mattress of pine needles. Giddie Wellhouse had borrowed those words from the Sull; Raif had heard Ark Veinsplitter say them to Ash. Addie had changed your to our.
The stars would not come out tonight, Raif decided. Clouds smothered the north. The world felt unsettled. It had moved once, it could move again. Out of habit, he tracked heartbeats in the darkness. The wolf trotted east, deep into Sull territory. A pair of ground owls with eggs in the nest waited for it to be gone before hunting. To the west an injured stag nosed milkweed from between rocks. Its heart was beating too quickly: it feared wolves and rivals were drawing close.
Raif knew how it felt. Briefly, he considered stringing his bow and stalking it. He didn’t need meat though, and he was wary of the impulse to heart-kill. Was it stronger now? Had he always felt that spike of anticipation in his gut?
He headed back, tired but sure he would not sleep. The camp was dark and he edged his way around the fallen pine and into the undercut. Once he’d placed Traggis Mole’s longknife and the Sull bow within arm’s reach, Raif closed his eyes and tried to stop his thoughts. The pain in his chest felt like heartache, and it was difficult not to think of Effie and Drey and Ash. He must have dreamed, for he felt Ash put her lips to his ear and whisper the words she’d said to him before she’d left to join the Sull.
Guard yourself.
In an instant he was awake. The darkness spun as he oriented himself within it. Usually he had a sense of how much time had passed while he slept, but that instinct failed him in the moonless, starless night. His raven lore was pressed against his throat; it felt as if it were taking a bite. Thumbing its cord, he pulled it loose. With his other hand he reached for the Sull bow. The arrows were still suspended across his chest in their suede case; they rose as he did.
In the quiet of absolute blackness every noise was amplified. As he scooped up Traggis Mole’s longknife, the crunch of his fingertips pushing sand sounded like footsteps. Addie did not wake. Raif left him there and ducked out of the cave.
Something moved to the south. Raif perceived it as a ripple in the darkness. The air it displaced touched his cheek. It smelled like smoking ice. Raif turned his head before inhaling. He did not want to breathe it in. What had been made in this world, had fed and grown and felt sunlight upon its back, had been unmade by the Endlords. Flesh and blood had been replaced with something other. The Sull called it maer dan—shadowflesh—but Raif did not think the word sufficient. It was as if the blackness between stars had been condensed and forced into human and inhuman remains. It had weight and density and purpose. And just like living flesh it required a pumping heart to sustain it.
Raif tracked the heart as it swung across the creek downstream. Experience warned him not to let it settle too long in his sights. It would suck him in. His own heart was racing, pushing blood at pressure through the arteries close to his skin. His fingers jumped against the belly of the bow.
The night’s frost had killed the creek. Raif stepped into the dry bed, brought an arrow to the plate, and waited. Anything that came at him would have to clear the rocky banks. Seconds passed. All was still. Raif’s eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. He had lost track of the unmade being, and resisted the temptation to focus on its last position. From the brief glimpse he’d had, its form was subhuman. No telling how fast it could move
Wind trilled the pines. Raif smelled something, and before he could put a name to it the earth moved. A wave of sound rolled along the creek. The ground shuddered into motion. Rock buckled and popped. A tree cracked. Stones bounced down the bank. Raif braced himself. Something hit him in the back and he swung around. Nothing. Probably a stone. The earth jerked wildly, throwing his weight forward. Sheets of scree rolled into the creek. Raif could not track all the movement.
By the time he sensed the heart the creature was nearly upon him. Its black form poured down the bank. Big and massively broad,
it was missing some essential proportion that was common to all humans. Voided steel purred in its grip.
Possible actions flashed across Raif’s sights. It was too late to draw and aim the bow. Turn and run to get some distance and he risked being impaled. Traggis Mole’s longknife was only two feet long from pommel to tip, but it was sharp and it would have to do.
Springing to his left he flung the Sull bow in the opposite direction. The creature’s head whipped around as the bow skidded to a halt on the far side of the creek, providing a fraction of a moment for Raif to use. Feinting backward he slid the arrowcase from around his shoulder and launched it straight at the thing’s chest. As the creature raised its free hand to its rib cage, Raif sprang forward. Moving inside the edge of voided steel, he stabbed the creature’s hand, ramming the blade toward the heart. Thick iron armor chewed up the knife and Raif had to use the heel of his left hand to punch in the point.
Shrieking, the creature swung its sword. Raif yanked out the knife and leapt sideways. The point had touched the heart but hadn’t homed and the black insubstance of unmade flesh smoked through the hole. The creature rippled, re-formed, and struck with inhuman speed. Raif had time only to raise the crudest block—a diagonal across his chest—and the creature’s downstroke drove right through it. As the voided steel slid downblade it sheared the edge from the longknife. Curls of live steel were sucked into the void.
Raif danced back, ducked. Voided steel ripped down his side, slicing the Orrl cloak and his deerhide pants. If skin opened he didn’t feel it.
He didn’t even know if the earth had stopped shaking.
The thing was fast and it was watching his eyes. When Raif moved to the left it moved right along with him, cracking its sword into air barely cleared by Raif’s leg.
If you are killed by voided steel you are taken. Unmade. If you die later from your wounds you are also unmade. Angus Lok’s words kept running through Raif’s head. They didn’t help. With sword and arm length combined the creature’s reach was nearly twice his own. That wasn’t what worried him the most, though. It was the ways in which the creature was different from other Unmade that chilled him: calculating, intelligent, prepared to wait. The others struck with no thought for self-preservation. This thing intended to survive.
Even injured, it was ferociously fast. It forced Raif back along the creek. Stones slick with ice provided no traction and Raif had to dig in with his heels. Traggis Mole’s longknife took a beating as he blocked blows; the only thing it would be good for later was staking a tent. He snatched glimpses of the creature’s heart, but couldn’t move quickly enough to act on them. That was the thing about heart-killing at distance with a longbow—you had the luxury of time.
“Argh.”
Raif sucked in breath as voided steel opened his knife arm from elbow to wrist. Hot blood welled to the surface.
The creature hissed. It lowered its strange, streamlined head and launched itself straight at the weak spot. Raif circled the longknife counterclockwise, protecting his arm as he edged backward. Blows forced him down onto the bank. Rolling downstream, he tried to move clear of the creature’s range. Stones crunched against his back. Voided steel slid into his shoulder muscle. Pain whitened his vision. He lost a second. The creature rippled above him, an armored shadow with holes for eyes. Raif saw the absence that was voided steel arc toward his heart.
In that instant he knew what his victims felt: the loosening of gut as panic gave way to a single word.
No.
His heart contracted. He saw Da.
Hailsmen do not close our eyes when we die.
Raif opened his eyes, saw something his mind could not immediately translate. Two figures stood where there had been one. The shadow had a shadow . . . and they were connected by something. A bright silver ribbon spooled from the hand of the second shadow and seemed to float through the chest of the Unmade. The ribbon glowed with moonlight—yet where was the moon?
Raif blinked. He felt pleasantly tired. It was good to be lying down.
Suddenly the second shadow pulled back the ribbon and the Unmade stumbled. Its high-pitched scream made Raif’s neck hair stand on end. Crumpling to its knees it seemed to shrink. It rocked for a long moment and then collapsed. The voided steel made a queer buzzing sound as it hit the creekbed and Raif watched as it began to sink through the loosely piled stones. The sharp, grassy odor of burning rock made him retch.
“Take my hand. You must stand.”
The remaining shadow spoke and Raif obeyed, clasping the hand that was thrust at his face.
All kinds of pain had to be endured as he was yanked to his feet. Hold steady, he reminded himself as the shadow withdrew support. Soaked in his own blood, Raif felt shivery and sick. Wanting to put some distance between himself and the voided steel, he took a few steps. These took him to the opposite bank where he was faced with the task of climbing out of the creek. It was too much and he picked a rock and sat on it.
“Drink.”
Again something was thrust in his face. This time he realized that the words that accompanied the gesture were not Common. He had translated them. They were Sull.
Fear woke his brain. A Sull warrior stood above him, holding out a flask wrapped in snakeskin. Raif recognized him as Ilya Spinebreaker, one of Yiselle No Knife’s men. All became clear. No Knife had tracked them to the creek and sent out a warrior to slay the Unmade that Raif Sevrance, Mor Drakka, could not slay himself. The silver ribbon was Spinebreaker’s six-foot longsword.
Spinebreaker acknowledged the realization on Raif’s face with a cold bow of his head. “Drink,” he repeated.
Raif pushed away the flask. Blood sheeted down his arm. “Where is Addie?”
“He is ours.”
The words, spoken in Common, chilled Raif. He stood and immediately his knees buckled. Rings of green light floated across his vision as he slumped back down on the rock.
Spinebreaker’s nostrils flared in contempt. He was uncloaked and armored in iridescent hornmail that reflected the colors of deep water at night. His sword and knife holsters were made from leather that had been silvered and then burnished so they glinted like iron bars. A series of opal clasps cinched his waist-long braid and pulled back the hair from his face. Small tattoos of the moon in all its phases ringed his hairline.
“Take me to Addie,” Raif said. His voice seemed to come from a distance. Weak echoes repeated in his head. Take me. Take. Take.
“You are being unmade, Clansman. I would make no demands of this Sull if I were you.”
Smoke slithered across Raif’s forearm as Spinebreaker sheathed his sword and headed upstream. Raif tried to brush away the smoke, but his fingers passed right through it and it would not disperse. It joined with a second curl and pooled above the open wound. Raif imagined it tapping a weakened vein and being sucked toward his heart.
“Help me,” he cried.
The Sull warrior was already too far away to hear him and the only answer came from the echoes in his head.
Take. Take.
Taken.
CHAPTER 6
Wolf Dog
“NAN, YOU’VE DONE enough. Leave him.” The Dog Lord knew he sounded hard, but he could not think of any way to soften his words. Nan was nursing a sick clansman when she should be readying herself and the bairns for the journey. “We depart within the hour.”
Nodding, Nan turned back to her patient, the young swordsman Yuan Bryce who had been injured during the battle with the Unmade. He was lying on a matress raised off the floor by a wooden pallet. Cluff Drybannock had built the pallet and four more like it. Only Yuan’s was now in use. The four other men wounded on the Field of Graves and Swords were dead.
He, Vaylo Bludd, had killed them.
The Dog Lord crossed to the pallet and laid his hand on Yuan’s shoulder. The skin was cool. Blood of poppy glazed his eyes. He was a boy, Vaylo reckoned. Nineteen. He’d spoken three yearman’s oaths. Next winter he would have taken his full oath, sw
earing himself to Bludd for life. His back was broken though, and he could not move his legs. For twenty days Nan had nursed him, hoping that function would return. It had not. Cluff Drybannock had built a wheeled cart and furnished it with a padded seat. It stood on the far side of the sickroom door, out of sight. The one time Yuan had seen it he had become so agitated Nan and Cluff had been forced to restrain him. You could still see the bruise on Nan’s face.
“Gods watch over you,” Vaylo said quietly.
“They do not.”
Vaylo had not expected the boy to reply. Nan caught Vaylo’s gaze.
Careful, she warned.
The boy’s pupils were so large Vaylo could not tell the color of his eyes. They watched him though, waiting upon a response. Vaylo did not have one. You could not tell a warrior “be glad you are alive” when he could no longer wield a sword. Could one say “be glad your injuries came from being thrown from your horse and not from voided steel”? Five men had been carried from the battlefield on stretchers that night. If Vaylo had been a betting man he would have named Yuan most likely to die. The boy’s injuries had seemed the worst—not enough to invite mercy killing, but sufficient to make a favorable outcome unlikely. The other men had various hurts; cuts, slashes, piercing, tears. Nothing, Vaylo judged, that would not heal if the wounds were cleaned and properly tended.
Nan Culldayis and Jud Meeks had stitched and tended those wounds, and Vaylo did not think any two people could have done a better job. Washed with alcohol, poulticed with mud and herbs, stitched with cat gut, painted with silver, monitored day and night: the wounds should have healed. Yet they didn’t. Infection had set in. Tissue had not swollen, pus has not formed, yet bodies had been eaten alive. Something had leaked between the stitches. Something black and smoky that smelled like frozen earth.
When it became apparent the men were not recovering, Cluff Drybannock, Vaylo’s fostered son, broke open his horn of powdered guidestone and drew a guide circle around the sickroom. “Xha vul,” he murmured. “They are being taken.”