by J. V. Jones
Reach, mistressss, pretty mistressss. Reach.
Ash twisted again, saw the cavern of black ice ahead. No. Not there. She twisted back, felt shadows slide across her face, cold as water from the deepest darkest well. Things moved in the periphery, wet and twitching like skinned beasts. Ground shifted beneath her feet, and suddenly the cavern was below her, its entrance a vast hole blasted into sea ice, an ocean of black tar rolling beneath. Ash backed away. She wouldn’t go there, wouldn’t take that last step.
Reach, mistressss. Reach.
Wet fingers clawed at her arms, drawing them up and up and up. Ash fought to keep them from rising, but it was like trying to bend her knees backward: the joints would only work one way.
Reach! Reach!
No. She shook her head, tried to twist away. Nothing moved except her arms, which continued to rise until they drew level with her shoulders. Shadows pushed from all sides, eyes flickering like serpent’s tongues.
REACH!
Ash didn’t reach, she pushed. Palms falling flat against something that shone pale like ice, she thrust herself away from that place. A white-hot needle of pain raced along her arms to her heart. She felt something deep within her tear, heard a great weight of ice shatter as it hit hard ground, then staggered back and back and back . . .
She opened her eyes to a world dulled by pain. Belly down upon the bed, sheets bunched around her waist, she lay for a long moment without moving. Her hands were stretched high above her head, reaching for the nearest wall. Even as she worked muscles to pull them in, she knew something was wrong. The hot, angry pain that came with skin burns flared in her palms, making her wince. One palm was open, the finger and thumb pads red. Burned. Ash dragged her other hand into view. It was closed, the fingers stiff and set in place. She opened it slowly, aware of something hard pulling at her skin. When the fingers had curled halfway, a drop of clear liquid slid along her wrist. Shivering, she forced the fingers back all the way.
Ice. A chunk of ice slid from her palm onto the bed.
Iceborn. Katia’s word was the first thought she had, before shock or fear or the need for explanations set in. The burns had been caused by ice, not fire.
The ice was wedge shaped, blue as frost, and stippled with the kind of pressure lines that Ash had seen on rocks dug from the base of Mount Slain. As she watched, the patch of damp beneath it spread.
Abruptly she looked away. What time was it? How long had she slept? Late afternoon light made everything in the chamber seem gray. No lamps had been lit, but the little charcoal brazier was still burning, giving off a puttering last-breath sort of light. Ash brought her burning hands to her face and blew on them. After a moment she braced herself and began to rise from the bed.
That was when she felt it. Halting on the spot, halfway up from the bed, her weight borne by one elbow and one knee, she reached down with her right hand, pushing through skirt fabric and linen. Seconds passed before her fingers found the right place. Ash tensed. Wetness, warm this time, between her legs. Slowly, as if she were moving through water, not air, she brought her hand back. She didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see, but matters were too far gone now, and of all the changes that lay ahead, surely this one would be the easiest to bear?
Dark blood rolled across her fingers like treacle. Menses. Ash breathed deeply, trying to recall the calmness she had felt earlier when confronting Katia and Caydis Zerbina. She needed it more than ever now. Time passed and still her hand shook, and she realized that this was as calm as she was likely to get.
Moving slowly, she brought her thighs together to prevent any more blood from staining her clothes, held her wet hand clear of the bed, and shuffled to her feet. Once she was satisfied there were no bloodstains on the sheets, she stripped bare, isolating her underskirt and underdrawers, which were the only items stained, then picked up the small fruit knife from the dresser and began to hack away at the linen. This took time. The knife was almost blunt and her hands persisted in shaking, and the linen was winter weave, so doubly thick. All the while, she pressed her thighs together and held something deep inside her clenched.
Well before she was satisfied with the smallness of the linen pieces, she began to feed them into the brazier. The charcoal took a lot of stirring and blowing before it produced a decent flame, but eventually the fire got under way. The linen pieces burned quickly, crisping to nothing within seconds. There was a great deal of smoke, and Ash supposed she should open the shutters and fan it out, but she had a lot of other things to do and even more things to think about, and she would get around to it soon enough.
Tying a linen strip between her thighs, she crossed back to the bed. The ice was gone, melted to a dark puddle shaped like an eye. Within an hour even that would be gone, and soon there would be nothing left to prove that it had ever existed. Ash contemplated the drying stain. That’s what she needed to do: melt away without a trace.
THIRTEEN
The Bluddroad
Red fog surrounded them like the haze rising from a vat of boiling blood. The air was bitterly cold and so still that the sound of lake ice cracking under tension could be heard five leagues away. It was dawn, and Raif supposed the sun was somewhere, rising over the tops of the Copper Hills, casting its strange and bloody light upon the road. Raif grimaced. He couldn’t see anything beyond the two riders directly ahead of him.
Frost had warped his boiled leather cuirass, making it chaff against his neck. He had not slept well. No one had slept well. A cold camp raised along the northeastern edge of the Dhoonehold was no place for a Hailsman to rest.
“All halt!” Corbie Meese’s hiss blew through the mist like a draft of cold air. His voice, which had been formed by the Stone Gods to do the one thing necessary to all hammermen as they fought—bellow at the tops of their lungs—did not sound right forming whispers. It was like listening to a dog meow.
Still, everyone was quick to obey him, reining horses within a space of twenty paces. Metal on all bridles had been bandaged to prevent frostbite to the horses, so there was little noise. Even the hammermen had rubbed oat flour into their chains to prevent them from rattling and betraying a position. Sharp winds two nights earlier had dumped the snow into drifts, and Raif’s borrowed filly was up to her hocks in dry white powder.
The raid party formed a loose circle on the sparsely wooded slope, their mounts tightly reined, breath venting in white bursts, eyes dark as coals beneath their fox hoods. Ballic the Red had freed his bow from its case and was busy warming the waxed string between his fingers. Drey and several other hammermen adjusted the straps on their hammer slings for ease of draw.
Corbie Meese pulled back his hood so all could see his face. Jabbing his chin southeast, he said, “Road’s below us, just beyond those stone pines. Should be plenty of cover, but with this piss-thick mist about us it’s hard to tell a molehill from a moose. We’ll know better when Rory gets back. Last time I rode here there were trees to either side of the road, but that was ten years back, and times have changed since then. The Dog Lord’s no fool—you’d do well to remember that.” A brief glance included Raif and some of the other younger yearmen. “And he knows a likely ambush site when he sees one. According to Mace, he’s ordered the felling of all trees along the Bluddroad. ’Course, unless he’s got an army of woodsmen hidden up his dogskin draws, he won’t be reaching here anytime soon. But that isn’t the point: The Dog Lord knows the dangers. You can bet your bowfingers that any man of his traveling this road will be armed to the teeth, nervous as a wench squatting in a bush, and ready to attack at the first sound of an arrow knocking wood.
“Now the mist’s in our favor, but don’t let it make you lazy. There’ll be foreriders in the Bludd party, and when they can’t see their own horses’ heads afore ’em, they’ll stop looking and listen instead. So keep your horses on tight rein and no moving or drawing steel once you’re in position. Right?”
Raif nodded along with the rest. His mouth was so dry he could feel the ridges on his teeth. At
some point while Corbie Meese was speaking, the fact of what they were planning to do had sunk in. He had never shot a man before, never set his sights on anything larger than a snagcat. But he knew, in that deep part of himself where the shots came from and the arrows passed through on their way to their targets, that he would be good at shooting men.
“’Course you’ll need to keep an eye to the mist. If the wind picks up, it’ll be gone afore you’ve had chance to shift your arses in the saddle.” Corbie Meese looked grim. The hammer dent in his head was filled in with a wedge of red fog. “More than likely we’re in for a wait. The Bludd party could pass here any time between noon and nightfall, and we need to be ready when they come. So I’ll have no man leaving his mount.”
“Aye,” chipped in Ballic the Red. “So piss now or hold it in.”
When no one in the party moved, Toady Walker raised an eyebrow and said, “No pissing over the horses’ backs, gentlemen. Riles ’em something rotten.”
Everyone laughed in the quick, reflexive way that owed more to tension than to humor. While most in the party were busy making last minute adjustments to their weapons’ casings, Drey trotted his black stallion over to Raif. Keeping his hood up so only those who were directly in front of him could see his face, Drey leaned close to his brother and murmured, “Whatever the split, you come with me.” Before Raif could answer, he turned away.
Raif stared at the back of his brother’s head. A split? This was the first he’d heard that the ambush party would be divided. Uneasy, he reached inside his oilskin and felt for his lore. It was the first time he had touched it in nearly a week—ever since the day Shor Gormalin’s horse had brought its master home. Raif took a breath and held it in. The hurt of Shor’s death had not passed. He could still remember the dark look in Shor’s eyes as he left the Great Hearth, still see him flinch the moment Raina Blackhail admitted joining with Mace. Abruptly Raif dropped the lore. Watcher of the Dead. How many deaths would he watch today?
Snow crunched ahead, somewhere deep within the fog curtain. Ballic aimed his bow. Corbie Meese called softly, “Rory?”
“Aye! ’Tis me. Don’t shoot, Ballic,” came the reply.
Raif couldn’t help but smile. From his position well below them, Rory Cleet couldn’t possibly see Ballic the Red, yet he knew enough about the red-haired bowman to guess that he’d already drawn his bow.
Seconds passed, and then blue-eyed Rory Cleet rode into view, his hood pushed back, his sheepskin mitts caked in sap and pine needles, and his boiled-leather halfcoat weighted with clods of frozen snow. He wasted neither breath nor time. “Road’s clear. No sign of horse or cartage since last snow. Five dozen or more stone pines have been newly felled on the road’s south verge, but whoever was set to the task got bored or cold or sent to another section before he could finish the job. As it is, the area around first choice has been poorly balded, but three hundred paces beyond that there’s an area of newgrowth above the road. The pine crowns are at a height to conceal mounted men, and directly across from them there’s a copse of dogwood and ash. Between the two, there’s enough cover to conceal thirty men.”
Corbie Meese nodded. “Aye. Well done, lad.”
Rory Cleet tried but couldn’t quite stop his face from coloring with pleasure. Not for the first time, Raif found himself regretting the incident at the Great Hearth door when he’d forced Rory from his post.
“Right,” Corbie said. “Ballic. You head the southern party. I’ll take the north. We’ll count a dozen men apiece, and the remaining five will form a rear guard, quarter league east of the ambush site, to block Bludd’s retreat and pick off runaways.” Corbie scanned the ambush party, his light brown eyes hard as flint, a muscle in his right cheek pumping. After a while his gaze settled on Drey. “Do you think you can handle the lead in the rear?”
Drey pushed back his hood. His hair was plastered against his head, sweat and six days of grease making it appear darker than the chestnut brown it normally was. His face was pale, and Raif was struck by how much older he looked than the day they had shot ice hares by the lick. It was never Drey’s way to speak without thinking, and when he stripped off his glove and turned down his elkskin collar, Raif guessed he was reaching for his bear lore. Raif had always envied him the bear. Tem had been a bear, like his father before him and his uncle before that. Every generation of Sevrances produced a bear.
Watching as he weighed the bear claw in his fist, Raif realized why Corbie Meese had chosen him. Drey was solid, dependable, and he possessed none of the rash cockiness that took most yearmen five or more years to overcome. Raif felt his chest ache with envy and pride. One day, he thought. One day Drey will make a fine chief.
“I can handle the rear guard.” Drey’s voice was level. He slipped the bear lore beneath his softskins.
Corbie Meese and Ballic the Red exchanged a glance, and Raif knew that Drey had done right in their eyes by taking time to weigh his lore. Corbie beckoned him closer. “Right, lad. Here’s the cut. If all goes to plan, there shouldn’t be much for you to do. The Bludd party will pass you a good three minutes afore they reach us, so your job is to stay back from the road, high up beyond the tree line, and keep your men silent as corpses. There’ll be no signaling done. I don’t want to hear one clever owl hoot or loon call. Nothing. The only time you move from your positions is after you hear us attack. Then your job is to get onto the road as fast as you can, and take down any Bluddsmen who attempt to retreat. Understood?”
Hearing Corbie speak, Raif began to understand why the hammerman had given the command to Drey when there were full clansmen available to take it. The real danger and the real fighting would fall upon the two attack parties: It would be they who risked their lives, they who fought at close range. Corbie Meese wanted all the seasoned clansmen with him. Raif could not fault him for that. The retreat party would be there as a fail-safe to pick off any runners or stragglers.
Drey nodded slowly. “What makeup?”
“Yourself, another hammerman, two bowmen, and a swordsman. Remember that everyone in the Bludd party’ll be a trained warrior. More than likely they’ll be spearmen or hammermen. They fight fierce and their weapons are weighted, so unless you fancy a hammer notch to match mine, give them a wide berth.” Corbie Meese poked his dent with a gloved finger. “Keep your bowmen above the road, and have them shoot from cover.”
Party members were picked by Corbie and Ballic. When Ballic suggested that Raif go with Corbie in the north party, Drey spoke up. “I want him with me. Take Banron Lye instead.”
Corbie Meese looked at Drey a moment, perhaps waiting for the yearman to explain himself, but when Drey said nothing further, he nodded once. “It’s your party. The say is yours. The lad goes with you.”
Minutes later they set off. Winding their way through paper birches as pale as wax candles, they headed east along the slope, high above the road. The horses’ mouths had been soft bound with sheepskin to prevent them from blowing and whickering as they moved. Raif had braced his bow, and it was now balanced across his cantle. He rode with an arrow in his fist.
Overhead, the sky was the color of rotting plums. The fog had begun to thin, and much to Raif’s disgust it had turned from red to pink. Slowly, gradually, one tree and sandstone crag at a time, the taiga northeast of Clan Dhoone was beginning to emerge from the mist. The land was a mineshaft of drops, cut banks, and jutting rocks. Pine roots burrowed deep into the soft blue sandstone, pulverizing bedrock as they grew, making for treacherous ground. Small ponds, deep and dark as wells, beaded the creases between slopes. All of them should have been frozen, but they weren’t, and Raif could only guess mineral salts or mineral oil as the reason.
No one spoke. Raif doubted if there was saliva enough in his mouth to roll his tongue, let alone utter a word. All five of them were yearmen: Bullhammer, Bitty Shank, Craw Bannering, Drey, and himself. Craw was the second bowman. Raif hardly knew him; he was older than Drey, dark skinned, with a clever face and long, tattooed
fingers. He might have been betrothed to Lansa Tanner, Raif wasn’t sure. Bullhammer was Bullhammer, a great big bear of a man with bristles for eyebrows and the most frightening smile the clanholds had ever beheld. Everyone loved him; it was impossible not to love a man who could uproot a five-year-old foxtail pine with a single mighty hug.
Bitty Shank was the swordsman. Like all the Shanks, he had a face that looked cooked. Although he was the same age as Drey, his fair hair had already started to thin. Bitty swung between tarring down his hair to prevent further loss and vigorously tugging at what little remained to show how little he cared. He was in the devil-may-care frame of mind at the moment, but come spring and wenching season, there’d be tar in his waxing pouch again.
When the mist cleared enough to allow snatched glimpses of the Bluddroad, Drey raised an arm, gesturing all behind to slow. The path he chose became more elaborate, involving great doglegs and double-backs as he worked to bring them down the slope out of view of the road. Oldgrowth paper birches, with their long branch-less trunks and high crowns, didn’t provide the best cover, and bushes and ground birch were scant.
As Drey guided them toward a cluster of newgrowth two hundred feet above the road, Raif’s stomach muscles began to clench. The two main parties would be in place now, waiting just off the road to ambush Clan Bludd. Raif had grown up listening to tales of Clan Bludd—their fierceness in battle, their swords cut with a central groove for channeling their enemies’ blood, their terrible deafening war cries, and their weapons so heavily leaded that no non-Bluddsman could raise them—yet he had never seen a Bluddsman up close. To him they were the stuff of legend, like the people who were said to live in whalebone huts in the frozen North, or the Maimed Men who ranged across in the Want and were scarred by terrible beasts and crippling frosts.
Drey called halt so softly it was like listening to a thought. Raif reined his horse along with the others. Beckoning everyone close, Drey positioned the entire party behind a dense growth of yearling pines. The Bluddroad lay below them, dark and straight like a fault in the earth. Raif looked west but could see no sign of the other parties. Ballic and his team must have doubled back before crossing, to prevent hoofprints and scent on the road.