A Fortress of Grey Ice (Book 2)

by J. V. Jones

  It was an island in the ice. A hummock of earth about forty paces across and 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 Bluddroad. 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 gray, and there was nothing but mist below him and the pony. They could have been on the top of a mountain or on 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 drank 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 was heading. 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. Raif had been walking beside the pony ever since they’d left the island, but the sudden clearing of the 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 mid-morning, 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 sink 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 in the earth’s crust 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.

  FORTY-THREE

  A Severed Head

  I ago Sake was laid to rest in accordance with the ancient death rites of Clan Dhoone. Robbie Dhoone had asked for 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 lay 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 had returned with the body. They had borne it north on a stripped wagon drawn by two matched ponies. The men were ragged with lack of sleep, their cloaks stiff with dried mud. One had swayed in his saddle, and Diddie 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 had gone. 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 ten days. Robbie had smiled, well pleased.

  Darkness had fallen quickly after that. Robbie had rushed out to the river shore, 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 had 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 censured.

  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 northern 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 transfering 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 Dhoonesmen 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 bade Iago’s clansmen each to 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 Bram picked a stone he could see 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, Ione, 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 ribcage 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 oiled settled as he continued to pour.

  The guide’s 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 ghostly 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 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 ribcage was pinned against his spine, and he had to suck hard to inflate his lungs. The pit was an oblong of white fire, the air above it shimmering 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 in the hot gusts.

  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 was sleeping on such a 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 bank. He was dressed with all the trappings of a king, with fisher fur and steel plate on his back, and a bronze torc 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 Bram 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 river 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, war-dressed and mounted. An ax and a longsword we
re crossholstered across his back, making an X. When he noticed Bram he called out for him to hurry and saddle his horse. Old Mother was at Robbie’s left, sitting astride her mean white mule. Someone had brought her an antlered helm which she wore with a self-satisfied air. 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 galvanising 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 press 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 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.”