A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2)

by J. V. Jones

It still hurt to mention Shor’s name. “Wed me, 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 Raina had 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? HalfBludd? 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 Raina 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 would never 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 Shor before he could claim either.

  Dagro, help me. Raina raised her gaze to meet Angus’s. 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 Oldwood, Raina found the words to say:

  “My husband must be removed. It’s time Blackhail had a new chief.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  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 clanhold 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 snowmelt 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 Effie woke she’d forget where she was, and she’d think to herself, I’ll beg some bone ends from Anwyn and head over to the dog cotes. Then her eyes would open and she’d find 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 wondrous 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. Effie 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 forgotten she was there at all and had begun 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’d last looked. Once, he ordered Effie from the wagon whilst he restowed the entire load. Effie had stayed close to the wagon, trying not to look much further than her feet. When Druss 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’d stopped to camp he’d complained about his back.

  Suddenly, the wagon lurched woozily as the ground 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 clo
th 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 the halt 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 a 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’s unfairness, Effie leant 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 Wolf from where she stood, but she could feel its icy spray, and smell the strange, aged-meat odor of its 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. Trap-rock boulders tumbled down toward the Wolf in a natural stair, and a daring pair of harlequin ducks were 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 toddler, she’d made Drey fetch a spade and dig it to a depth of four feet 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 undertows. 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 were 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 leant 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 goosepimply and unprotected. When something touched her shoulder she jumped.

  “Steady, lass,” Clewis said, tightening his fingers about her collarbone 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 whilst 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 mot
ion. 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’s 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 Tem 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.”