by J. V. Jones
It was a yes. Bram swallowed. “I have spoken an oath to Castlemilk.”
“Break it. The gods are dead, and what remains is here to destroy, not judge us.”
But the stones. Ogmore said the gods’ presence could be read in the stones. Close to panic now, Bram thought about Ogmore waiting in the guidehouse, of Dalhousie training in the Churn Hall with Mabb’s sword, of Wrayan Castlemilk standing in the water and saying, Now you are a Castleman for a year.
“My sword?”
“Swords kill. As long as a blade is sharp one will do as well as another.”
Bram breathed in great gouts of air. The snow was dazzling him it was so full of light. He should not have come, that was his mistake. Should have walked right past Hew Mallin and taken the door-within-the-door.
Wrayan Castlemilk knew, Bram realized quite suddenly. She had only come to deliver Robbie’s greetings and gift him with Guy Morloch’s horse after the ranger had made the crossing.
But Dalhousie had not known. Nor had Drouse Ogmore.
And what of Robbie?
Did he send any message?
No.
A muscle pulled deep within Bram’s chest. Hawk and spider, knowledge and sword: here was everything he wanted . . . and more. Meeting Hew Mallin’s yellow-green gaze he gave the ranger his answer and broke First Oath.
By nightfall Bram Cormac had started a new life.
THIRTY-EIGHT
A Pox Upon the Heart
Raif Sevrance was awoken by a mule lipping his ear. Through sleepy, focusing eyes he saw many big teeth and a ridge of pink gums. Wet lips tickled him, and a little push of air revealed stupendously bad breath. Raif thought it would be a good idea to move, tried to move, but somehow could not roll off his stomach onto his back. Islands of pain—that’s what they felt like, lumps of hurt sticking out above water level—emerged from the fog of sleep. His left shoulder was throbbing. The midsection of his left arm, but not the top, was so tender that the weight of the blanket resting upon it was excruciating.
He was in a tent and blotches of light were coming through the uneven canvas overhead. The mule walked a few feet and began crunching on quartered onions that had been placed on a wooden board. A second animal stood some distance behind the mule; a white horse with a long, fountainlike tail. Its brown-blue eye watched Raif with both interest and caution.
Voices were coming from outside the tent and Raif was relieved to hear Addie Gunn say quite clearly, “I think we’ve seen the end of the snow.”
Raif croaked Addie’s name. Even the mule didn’t look up.
The blanket that was pulled up to his chin felt like sandpaper, and he tried to push it down with a motion of his right shoulder. Something wasn’t right with his back. Something was there. Like a growth.
“Addie,” he cried. “Addie.”
“Whoa, laddie,” the cragsman responded from outside the tent. “I hear you. I’m coming.”
Footfalls followed. Onion wedges dropped from the mule’s mouth as it turned to look at the person entering the tent. Addie came into view. His eyes were very gray and bright. Quickly squatting by Raif’s pillow, the cragsman said, “It’s good . . . good to see you awake.”
“It’s good to be awake.”
Addie Gunn seemed to find some wisdom in this. “Aye,” he agreed softly. “It usually is.”
The cragsman left him briefly to fetch water from a tin canteen insulated with mouse fur. “D’you think you can get up to drink it?” he said frowning from the canteen to Raif and back again.
Raif tried to roll onto his back.
“No,” Addie said in a dither, setting down the canteen and rushing forward. “You can’t put weight on your back. The thing’s there.”
“What thing?” Raif heard the panic in his voice, and forced some movement from his spine.
“The pox—on your heart.” Kneeling, Addie helped Raif to execute a half roll onto his side, and then clamped him around the head and heaved him into a sitting position.
“I hope you were gentler with your sheep,” Raif said, dizzy with pain and seeing red splotches before his eyes. He could feel it now, something sticking out from his back, sucked hard against his skin. Rotating his neck as far as it would go, he saw something moving in a place where there should have been fresh air. Raif’s right hand came up to swat it away, but the cragsman’s hand was faster.
Gripping Raif’s wrist so hard it shook, the cragsman said, “It’s a poultice of leeches and right now it’s the only thing keeping you alive. That piece of shadow is pushing against your heart and those leeches—gods bless their black little souls—are sucking the other way.”
Oh gods. Raif relaxed the tension in his wrist and Addie released his grip. He thought he might be sick. “What’s keeping them back there?”
Addie shrugged. “They gorge, they drop off. Old Flawless sticks another one right in place. He’s built up plaster around the wound so they can’t crawl away and find a better spot. Had to cut into your skin to give the plaster something to bind on to, so I’m telling you now I ain’t fetching no mirror.” Addie paused to let the full meaning of this sink in. His gaze was frank and unflinching. “Here. Drink water. Be glad you’re alive.”
Raif took the canteen with his left hand, testing. The muscles were sore in the same way they would be if he’d chopped wood all day. And all night. Aware that Addie was waiting for some response from him, some sign that everything was all right with Raif Sevrance, he said, “Water’s good.”
It was enough to satisfy Addie Gunn, and Raif could see something physically easing in the cragsman, a softening around the shoulders.
“Old Flawless adds a pinch of soda to it. Who’d a thought to do such a thing?” He appeared genuinely impressed. “That Trenchlander’s full o’ tricks.”
Addie’s accent got thicker when he was distressed or relieved, Raif realized for the first time. “How long have I been out?”
“Three days.”
Raif understood then the worry he had caused his friend. “I’m sorry, Addie.”
Throwing a hand out, the cragsman rose to standing. “A man can hardly go apologizing for dropping clean dead. And even if he did it’d take a hard sort of nutgall to accept it.” Again, the eyes were bright.
From the back of the tent, the Sull horse made a wicking noise and threw back its beautiful elongated head.
“Easy, lady,” Addie said, using his sheep voice. He walked over and gently knuckled her nose. The animal pushed against him, calmed.
“What happened?” Raif asked.
Addie sighed. “You fell. Just crumpled clean at the knees right by the drying rack. Me and Gordo upped and ran straight for you. Neither of us knew what the hell to do. I set my ear to your chest—you were gone. Clean gone. That’s when old Flawless gets there. Didn’t run—he’s not the sort—but he gets to it soon enough, starts pumping your ribs like they were bellows. All the while he’s speaking in Sull, ordering Gordo to fetch this and that, telling me in Common to stop casting my shadow in his way. Sit, he tells me. I see to the boy. Next thing I know your legs start jerking, a noise comes from your throat like you’re being strangled. Gordo’s bringing all kind of medicines—leaves and tiny bottles and potions. Flawless pulls out his hunting knife, slices off your tunic as if it’s a deerhide he fancies mounting for a trophy, and tells me to boil some water for the herbs. It all happened so fast I could barely track it. A minute later you’re half naked on a horseblanket, being rolled onto your stomach so Flawless can have a look at the puncture wound.”
Addie patted the horse’s head. Noticing her nose band had ridden up, he automatically pulled it back in place. “Flawless asked what was up with you and I couldn’t see a way around it so I told him everything: the piece of shadow that was lodged in your shoulder, the thing Yiselle No Knife said about it stopping your heart. Too damned shaken to lie. Too afraid that if I didn’t speak the truth you just might die there in front of that bloody skinned bear.”
Recalling the hollowed out eyes of the bear skull, Raif shivered. He could feel the leeches sucking on his back, feel hundreds of tiny teeth clamped to his flesh. “Who is this Flawless?”
“Some old trapper coot. Been around awhile, knows some stuff. Flawless isn’t his real name, but it’s as close as these old gums can get to it. He doesna seem to mind—specially after I explained to him what it meant. That will be my new name, he says. He’s quite a one. He’ll be in soon to check on your, you know . . . back.”
Raif tried to control his revulsion. They were moving, that was the thing, their slimy bellies contracting as they pumped in blood. Motioning to the Sull horse, he asked, “Is that his?”
Addie understood this question. “Aye. Flawless has some Sull in him, more than Gordo that’s for sure. Don’t think he has much love for them though. I get the feeling the Sull aren’t too happy about him trapping bears.” Lowering his voice, the cragsman returned to Raif’s side. “Know that trap I sprung the other day by the fallen cedar?” Raif nodded. “Gordo finds it yesterday, tells Flawless, who’s convinced it was the Sull that did it.”
Raif thought about this. “We’re in Sull territory?”
“Just about. Apparently the borders are a little hazy around the top of Bludd.”
“Help me up,” Raif said, planting his palms on the tent floor.
“You can’t get up,” Addie protested, stepping back. “You need to lie there and rest.”
“I need,” Raif said, gritting his teeth as he leveraged his weight forward, “to find the Red Ice.”
“Traggis Mole is dead. What does it matter when you find the damn sword?”
Pain shot along Raif’s left arm as he pushed himself to standing. The tent spun and he stumbled as he tried to orientate himself. Light floated sideways and blurred. Addie’s hand clamped on to his right arm. “Steady now.”
Braced against Addie’s weight, Raif waited for the tent to stop spinning. He felt a small loosening on his back. Something moved. A leech dropped to the floor. Addie kicked it away with the side of his boot, but not before Raif had seen something brown and bloody, like a piece of liver.
“Addie, I have to go. I need to find the sword.” Swear to me you will fetch the sword that can stop them. Swear it. “I spoke an oath. I intend to keep it.”
He had meant to say more, to tell Addie that he had broken his word so many times that there was now nothing solid beneath anything he said, that his fate was to wield the sword named Loss and slay the creatures that could be destroyed only with such a blade, and that every day he spent in territory claimed by the Sull he risked both his own life and Addie’s. Yet he stopped himself. At the end of everything it was the oath to Traggis Mole that counted.
Addie had trained to be a Wellhouse warrior and then deserted his clan in favor of a life herding sheep. When Raif had asked him about it all those months ago in the Rift, the cragsman had said only one thing in his defense. I never took the oath. Those words defined Addie Gunn’s life.
The cragsman guided Raif to one of the tent’s vertical support poles. “Set here,” he said, handing him off to the unstripped birch log. “I’ll fetch Flawless.”
Raif held on to the pole as he watched the little fair-haired cragsman slip between the tent flaps. He didn’t think he had ever met a better man.
The mule wandered over to inspect the blankets Raif had been lying on. A piece of onion was stuck against its nose. The Sull horse moved forward a few steps and then stopped. Raif wondered if she had watched him while he slept.
“Sick man go back to bed,” came a voice from the far side of the tent wall. A moment later two small brown hands parted the canvas and the man named Flawless stepped through.
It looked as if he had been hammered from bronze. He was tiny and his skin was darkly burnished. His cheekbones were high and angular and the rest of his face seemed to hang from them. His eyes were startlingly blue. “Bed now,” he said jabbing his finger accusingly at Raif. “A pox upon the heart.”
Shaking his head, Raif hung on grimly to the pole. “How long will it work for, the poultice?”
The little man put his hands on his hips. He was dressed in hunter’s greens with many belts and pouches strapped and slung around his waist and chest. A silver bar as thick as a child’s finger pierced the cartilage of his right upper ear. “No leeches. No work. Bed.”
Raif realized he didn’t even know what time of day it was. The light seeping in through the canvas had been diffused by thick cloud. Stubbornly he said, “I’m leaving today. So do whatever you need to”—he jerked his head backward—“with that to keep me going awhile.”
Flawless hissed a few soft words in Sull. It sounded like he was cursing. Pulling a glass jar from the large rawhide pouch at his waist, he said, “Need another leech. Need at least twelve a day.” As he unwrapped the twine holding the cloth lid in place, Raif saw the jaw was full of black squirming worms. Leeches. “Have thirty left.”
Raif made the calculation.
“Turn,” Flawless commanded, plucking a long wet leech from the jar. The creature’s three-lobed mouth was open and it wriggled in the old man’s grip, trying to attach itself to his thumb.
Raif turned. Forehead pressing against the tent canvas he waited. Flawless started whistling. Raif felt a light touch close to the center of his back, and then the suckers bit into his skin.
“Bad back there,” the Trenchlander said. “Keep clean.”
Raif unclenched his jaw. Deciding it was time he got dressed, he released his grip on the pole. His legs felt like wet sticks, and he willed his knees to firmness as he stepped toward the blankets.
Flawless folded his arms and watched him. He was still holding the open jar in his fist.
“Need go Hell’s Town,” he said in his sharp, biting voice. “See healers in Maggot Quarter. Cut it out.”
Raif nodded. He could not see his clothes, and remembered that Addie had said his tunic was cut into strips. The stormglass.
“Friend has belongings,” the Trenchlander said, batting the mule away as it came to investigate the jar. “You know where you go?”
“Maggot Quarter.”
“No. Red Ice. Friend tell you where?”
Raif kept his face calm. He did not blink. “You tell me.”
“Red Ice not far north. Many bears. Maygi hide it. Do not know where going, won’t find it. Bluddsmen ride past, never see. On border. Half Sull. Half Bludd. North.”
The man’s ice blue eyes burned intensely as he spoke and Raif realized there were things here he did not fully understand. Histories and betrayals, hurts and resentments. Trenchlander versus Sull; and all that went along with being second best. Raif thought about Yiselle No Knife and the Spinebreaker and before them Ark Veinsplitter and Mal Naysayer: prideful people not easy to like.
Something cold in Raif thought, My gain. And he switched his thoughts elsewhere. “What is the Sull word for cloud?”
The little man did not appear surprised by the question. “Mish.”
Raif had thought it was. The two stood facing each other as the leeches tried to squirm their way out of the jar, wriggling on top of each other and arching their bellies into hoops.
“Take,” Flawless said eventually, holding the jar out to Raif. “Friend knows what to do.”
Raif did not thank him. They were beyond such things now. A jar of leeches. A betrayal of one’s people. A pox upon the heart.
The little man left, the skin on the back of his neck flashing like sheet metal as he ducked between the tent flaps. Flawless the Bear Trapper was nearly pure Sull. And he had spilled Sull secrets to a man who could destroy his people.
Raif set down the jar of leeches, dragged a blanket from the tent floor, and covered his bare chest. The woolen fabric dragged against the thing on his back and he realized he would have to be careful with clothing from now on. Holes would need to be cut. That made him smile. Grimly.
For some reason then he thought of Mallia Argola. Perhaps it was
something to do with the careful way she had mended his Orrl cloak. He imagined the curve between her waist and hips, and the way the fabric of both her dresses had strained across her breasts. Shaking himself, he took a drink from the canteen and then went over to take a look at the Sull horse.
No partition separated the animal space from the human space, though the ground here had been spread with pine boughs. Raif imagined that when the animals soiled, the trappers merely brushed out the branches and spread new ones. A makeshift trough had been dug out of a halved log. The Sull horse kept her head level as he approached but her tail was high and twitching. Raif raised a hand so she could smell it and watched as her delicate black-and-pink nostrils twitched. “Easy, girl.” She did not make any move toward him, and he did not force it. After a moment he let his hand drop.
It was time to go.
Addie came a few minutes later, bringing several folded items and two small sacks. Raif found his boots and Orrl cloak in good order, but his tunic, pants and undershirt were not there.
“Weren’t worth the mending,” Addie said smartly, about to take no fuss. “Here. These were Gordo’s. Good skins. Just a bit stiff, is all.”
Raif barely looked at them. “Where’s the small brown pouch that was in my tunic?”
“You mean this?” Addie said, fishing into his underarm pack. He pulled out the sleeve containing the stormglass and handed it to Raif. “I didna look to see what was inside.”
Raif had not thought for one moment he would. An odd silence followed and Raif tried to understand what, if anything, was happening. The cragsman left the sacks on the ground and went to look at something on the other side of the tent. He might have been checking on blankets.
Suddenly it dawned on Raif. “What do I owe you, Addie?” All the medicines and attention, the shelter, leeches, clothes. The price of Flawless’ betrayal of the Sull.
The cragsman stared hard at the blankets piled against the support pole. “You owe me nothing, lad.”
“I don’t believe that.” Raif was surprised by the emotion in his voice. Surprised by how quickly this had become serious between them. Addie had thought Raif had nothing of value, but now he knew the object in the pouch was worth something. And it upset him. Raif remembered back to the negotiation by the campfire, the meager clink of coins in Addie’s sock. “How did you pay for all this?”