by J. V. Jones
“Did Scunner Bone go to Withy?” Questions seemed the best way to deal with his feelings. Firing them off provided some relief.
“The Bone,” Gangaric repeated with annoying possessiveness and familiarity. “The old timer’s still at Bludd. What of it?”
Scunner Bone was an Otler-trained cowlman, a handful of years older than Vaylo Bludd. Old-timer was an insult to both of them. “Nothing of it. What are your numbers?”
“We’re a dozen hatchets in all.” Again, there was that snide glance at Drybone, this one specifically aimed at his sword. Hatchetmen—ax and hammer wielders—made no secret of their contempt for narrow blades. Vaylo wondered if Gangaric had ever had the pleasure of watching Drybone take off a man’s head. One sweep was all it took. Rather poetically he called it moon upon the water.
Aware that his thoughts were getting muddy, Vaylo took a moment to pace the width of the war terrace. The bit of sun that had sparkled earlier was gone, forced out by a conspiracy of clouds. He imagined it must be cold, but could not feel it. “You say Dun Dhoone’s garrisoning men at the Wellhouse? Is he there himself?”
“No. His second-in-command Duglas Oger commands the crews.”
That meant Robbie Dhoone himself would move to take Withy . . . and possibly Ganmiddich. “Where are Blackhail’s armies?”
“They move southeast from Bannen.”
It was, if you thought about it, a pretty steady queue. Nearly everybody in the clanholds—including Drybone and he himself—had possessed the Ganmiddich clanhold at some point in the past seven months. Bludd had it now, Blackhail was aching to retake it, and you could not rule out Dun Dhoone. The three giants of the north, one small but exquisitely placed roundhouse: someone would get crushed.
“There’s a new Crab chief. He’s housed at Croser.”
The politics of the clanholds could be labyrinthian, Vaylo decided. Croser was an eccentric, self-possessed clanhold that usually had the wisdom to avoid other people’s fights. “Married to one of the chief’s daughters?” Vaylo ventured.
Gangaric actually grinned. “We reckon so.”
Vaylo grinned back. Cluff Drybannock’s face remained still.
“How long will you stay?” Vaylo asked his third son.
“Today and tomorrow if you’ll permit it.”
It was probably foolishness to be pleased by the hesitancy in Gangaric’s voice. It probably meant he was getting softer as well as older. Just as he was about to give his son leave to stay as long as he and his men saw fit, Cluff Drybannock spoke up.
“You say the Sull are on our borders. What is their business?”
Vaylo felt a chill travel up his spine. He had not thought to ask any questions of the Sull.
Gangaric regarded his fostered brother with some suspicion, his eyes narrowing as he tried to find fault with the question. “They’re on the move. They use our paths, cross into our territory at will. Hell’s Town is teeming with them, the old Sull. The pure Sull. They’re leaving the Heart Fires and heading north.”
The wind picked up as Gangaric spoke, blowing hard against their faces and breaking against the walls of the fort. One of the massive copper sheets on the roof began to whumpf as air got under it. The sound hammered at Vaylo’s thoughts, made him think of the things Drybone had told him in the tower. Terrible, believable things.
“The Sull are not human,” Ockish Bull had told Vaylo the night thirty-five years ago after they’d encountered the Sull army in the woods east of Cedarlode. “Remember that and you will know something important.” It hadn’t seemed like much of a statement at the time and Vaylo had thought Ockish was being Ockish: inscrutable just for the sake of it. He should have known better. The times when Ockish Bull was making the least sense were the times when he spoke the hardest truths.
The silence created by Gangaric’s words wore on, gaining meaning. The Dog Lord knew he would have to be the one to break it—Gangaric had the look of a man who’d fallen in a hole and wasn’t sure how to get out, and Drybone would not speak a worthless word—yet he found it strangely difficult. Heartiness was beyond him. He kept seeing the Field of Graves and Swords in his mind’s eye.
Derek Blunt and his men dead.
Drybone standing at the north-facing window, keeping watch.
Vaylo looked from his flesh-and-blood son to the son he had chosen, and realized he would soon have to make a choice. Gangaric had not ridden hundreds of miles out of his way for a cozy visit with Da.
“Come,” Vaylo said to both his sons, “let us go inside and get fed by Nan. We will all be Bluddsmen this night.”
Gangaric searched his father’s eyes, and then bowed his head with gallantry learned from the HalfBludds. “As you wish.” Vaylo imagined he was considering his crew of eleven men.
Drybone observed this, his head level, his nostrils moving as they drew in cool air. “Father,” he said quietly, “send Nan my respects. This warrior must keep the watch tonight.”
The old pain in Vaylo’s heart deepened. Of course Dry could not eat with Gangaric—the man had carelessly mentioned Trench whores. Cluff Drybannock nodded a brief farewell to Gangaric and moved inside the fort.
He took something essential with him. Vaylo felt its loss, but could not put into words what it was.
Gangaric seemed relieved to have him gone. “I forgot to tell you,” he said, coming forward to escort his father inside, “you are a grandfather again. Pengo’s wife has had the baby.”
Shanna. Pengo had gotten her pregnant before his first wife was slain, but Vaylo cared little of that. “Is it healthy?” he asked, allowing his son to guide him through the double doors.
“Aye. She sucks so much they call her Milkweed.”
Vaylo laughed, though in truth what he was feeling was fear. Fear for Drybone, fear for his new granddaughter, fear for all of Bludd.
Milkweed. Quite suddenly he remembered the reason for having more children. He had hoped to have a girl.
THIRTY-FOUR
Yiselle No Knife
On the third day the land began to change. The slopes south of the Rift grew greener as the grasses and heathers were replaced with stone pines, blue cedar and hemlock. The hills themselves shifted into rolling valleys, forested hummocks and ridges and rocky bluffs. On the north side of the Rift the Craglands had begun, and spear-shaped hunks of rock towered over dwarfed pines and bushy black spruce. The Rift was perhaps fifty feet across now, and if they had wanted to they could have climbed into it and made the crossing to the clanholds. Boulders as big as barns, and entire dead trees, complete with boughs and root balls, choked the crack. Colonies of ptarmigan nested amid the rocks, and saxifrage and lousewort grew in mats from the Rift’s buckled walls. Raif wondered what existed beneath the debris and boulders. Did the Rift still lead to the abyss?
“That’s Bludd territory over there,” Addie said, wagging his chin south. “See that stand of big red pines on the ridge, that’s their marker. Anything east and south from now on is theirs.”
Raif had wondered about those trees. In a sea of black, green and blue their rust-colored trunks stood out like a warning. A pair of eagles had made their nest at the top of the tallest pine, building a black ring around the point.
“How far to the Racklands?” Raif asked, working out a sudden twinge of pain in his left shoulder.
The little fair-haired cragsman shrugged. “Depends upon the path.”
It was an uncharacteristically vague answer for Addie Gunn, and Raif wondered if they had reached the edge of his knowledge. The cragsman hailed from a Dhoone-sworn clan, and perhaps he had avoided grazing his sheep in territory claimed by Bludd. Raif glanced over at Addie. The cragsman had tied a band of rabbit fur around his ears; it looked as if he was wearing a bandage. Goat grease on his nose and lips made them shine. “Best keep moving,” he said. “It’s too cold to stop.”
Raif followed him along the deer path that wound between the rocks and shrunken pines. The snow underfoot wasn’t deep, but it was all i
ce and it did not yield to the foot. The temperature had been dropping for the past two days—ever since the new snow—and even though it was midday the air was still several degrees below freezing. The Ice Trapper sealskins helped keep Raif warm. Earlier he’d slathered his ears, nose, and lips with bow wax, and imagined it made for an unlovely sight. Bow wax turned opaque when it cooled.
Overhead the sky was a deep sapphire blue. Lines of high serrated clouds moved from the north. Ice sparkled at groundlevel, coating pine cones and sedge leaves, and the bases of the limestone crags. They had been on the path at dawn and had not stopped except to swig from their water bladders and pee. This was the fourth day of traveling and Raif found he enjoyed the simple hardness of camp life. It was good to go to bed each night bone tired and aching, and satisfying to hike onto a high ledge and see how far you’d come in a day. The cold did not bother him much. Both he and Addie were from northern clans; they were used to the shock of spring frosts.
Addie was a fine traveling companion, able to build fires, skin hares, find running water, sniff out eggs, follow game tracks and cook. He had an eye for the simplest route. Natural stairs leading up cliff faces, dry creekbeds, fallen logs spanning gorges: the cragsman spied things that Raif would have missed. Every evening since they had left the city, Addie had located a sheltered place to camp, and every day he had found something worth bagging for the pot. Last night he had brought down a fat brown rabbit, and today there had been more eggs. Raif was grateful for his presence. There wasn’t much talking between them, but silence was different—better—when it was shared.
They had decided to continue east for another day and then gradually move north from the Rift. Addie said the Craglands appeared to ease to the north and they would need to do less climbing. He did not question Raif’s destination, and that seemed no small blessing. In his former life Addie Gunn had kept a herd of sheep on the move in the highlands, only staying in one place during spring lambing. He was a man who didn’t need to know where he was going to spend the next night.
Raif did not give much though to the Red Ice. East, Thomas Argola had said. That was all, but it was also enough. It made things simple. They would head more or less east, switching directions as the land dictated, and see what they could find. If Tallal of the lamb brothers was right and a great battle had taken place in the Valley of Cold Mists then some evidence somewhere must exist.
Glancing north, Raif wondered where the lamb brothers were this day. Were they in the Want drifting east?
“Some smoke ahead.” Addie’s voice seemed to come from a great distance. A pause followed while the cragsman figured the ways. “We could turn north now. Rock’s looking a mite splintery but if we we keep our feet lively we’ll manage.”
Raif could neither smell nor see smoke, but he did not doubt Addie’s word. The cragsman slowed his pace as he waited for instruction. Breath ice caught in his eyebrows had frozen previously invisible hairs, rendering them white. “It would,” he said, “be timely to do a spot of trade for some tea.”
Surprised by this, Raif took a moment to sort his thoughts. He had assumed Addie would feel the same way he did, and want to avoid encounters with strangers. Yet how would they learn anything without speaking to people? Was Addie gently pushing him forward, forcing him to hold true to his oath? Raif puffed air through his lips. Maybe he just wanted tea.
“If they are Bluddsmen we cannot stop.”
It was Addie’s turn to be surprised. The cragsman thought a while, frowning so hard he dislodged ice from his eyebrows. He had to want to know the reason behind Raif’s caution. “It’ll be tricky,” he conceded eventually. “I read animal tracks not woodsmoke. One man’s fire smells like the next to me. By the time we get close enough to see who it is it might be too late.”
Raif nodded, grateful for not being questioned. He could not explain to Addie what had happened on the Bluddroad and how he was damned in both Blackhail and Bludd for it. Damned in Blackhail for deserting his clan on the field. Damned in Bludd for slaughtering the Dog Lord’s grandchildren. “If it is clansmen do not use my name.”
More ice was lost from Addie’s eyebrows. “It might be easier to nip north.”
Raif grinned maniacally. “Let’s go get some tea.”
Deer had been on the path recently—there was scat above the snow—and as they made their way east Raif distracted himself by hunting for game. Once he detected movement on the Rift floor itself, a young buck grazing on saxifrage, but decided not to shoot. The time needed to butcher an animal that large was too great. Besides he no longer had the stomach for the blood.
He’d just smelled the smoke.
Let them not be clansmen.
The tents were north of the Rift. There were two of them, raised in tandem, back-to-back. The tent hides were white auroch skins, the color of snow. Raif recognized their form, the point of stiffened fabric on the roof line and the heavy skirting to prevent drafts. Be careful what you wish for, he chided himself. These were not clannish tents. These tents belonged to the Sull.
The camp was situated on a ledge overhanging the ravine, and Raif realized the tent poles must have been driven into rock. Brush had been cleared at the rear for a distance of twenty feet. A horse corral raised from green moose bones contained at least one horse; Raif could see its beautiful sculpted head sticking out from above the windbreaker. As he and Addie drew closer something shrieked in the sky high above them. A glossy gray gyrfalcon circled them once, beat its wings, and then descended toward the tents. Two leather thongs hung with silver disks swung from its legs. Jesses.
“I warned you that by the time we got here it would be too late,” Addie remarked. Raif could hear the edge of fear in his voice.
As they hiked on the ledge, one of the tent flaps opened and a man dressed in lynx fur stepped out. For an instant Raif thought it might be the Far Rider Ark Veinsplitter, and his heart leapt. Ash. Here. But then the man’s head came up revealing different bone structure and facial features, and Raif felt foolish for having allowed himself that hope.
The Sull warrior walked to the center of the ledge and waited. He was tall and lean with long limbs and a long neck. His cheekbones were cut like diamonds and his skin was the color of mercury. He did not draw his sword. He didn’t need to. The massive two feet handle rising above his right shoulder was warning enough. He watched Raif with cool gray eyes, barely sparing a glance for the cragsman.
When he was close enough to see the bloodletting scars on the man’s neck, Raif spoke. “Tharo a’zabo.” Greetings, my friend.
Addie Gunn’s mouth fell open. The Sull warrior blinked eyelids so narrow they might have belonged to a wolf.
“Tharo, xanani,” he replied. Greetings, stranger.
The two stared at each other. Dimly Raif was aware of the shabbiness of his clothes and weapons; the wax on his nose and ears, the foot of limp fabric at the end of his sword sheath, the rawhide strips holding back his hair. Yet the warrior’s gaze barely registered them. He looked at only three things: the Orrl cloak, the Sull bow and Raif’s eyes.
“Haxi’ma,” he said finally.
Hearing the word Raif felt longing. Clansman. Maybe in another life he would be so again.
He shook his head. “Nij,” he said, reaching the limit of his Sull. “We are Rift Brothers.”
The switch into Common made the Sull warrior easier, as if it somehow lessened the threat, and he relaxed his weight, allowing his heels to make full contact with the rock.
“I’m Addie Gunn,” Addie said, stepping abreast of Raif. “And this is my friend Deerhunter. I wish you well this day and hope we may do some trade.”
How much does the cragsman know? Raif wondered.
Enough not to use any of Raif Sevrance’s many names. Addie waited, chin up, toe tapping, eyebrows like frozen brambles.
The Sull warrior’s mouth twitched once, and then he executed a bow with perfect animal grace. “I am Ilya Spinebreaker, and I welcome you to the camp of Yiselle
No Knife. Come, let us take shelter. A quarter-moon rises this night.” He did not wait on a response, simply turned and headed across the ledge to the farthest tent.
Raif and Addie exchanged a glance. “I’ll bet they’ll have some fine tea herbs,” the cragsman said.
Three horses in the corral, Raif corrected himself as he followed the Sull warrior and Addie at a slower pace. A set of fresh tracks led northeast, the snow around the edges crumbly, not smooth like the other older tracks. One away then. A firewell had been built at the center of the ledge and sharpened staves thrust between the rocks held a bear carcass, skinned and drained of blood. Raif shivered, wished he and Addie had gone north.
The heat of the tent was dizzying and Raif immediately felt the blood rush to his head. His instinct was to strip off his cloak and sealskins and throw cold water over his face and neck, but this was not the place for that. Here he would have to burn.
Yiselle No Knife rose from her position of sitting, cross-legged on a prayer mat woven from indigo silk. She was slender and tall, with long hands and a narrow waist. Her skin was so pale it looked almost blue. Night-black hair was pulled back from her face, revealing the flawless features of a head carved in stone. She could have been sixty years old or less than thirty, so little did the smooth blue surface give away. The gyrfalcon that had inspected them earlier sat on a suede gauntlet at her wrist. Its claws had not been blunted and formed a row of six knives on the glove.