by J. V. Jones
“Duff. You’ve grown fatter and uglier. By the Stones, man! That neck hair needs a shearing. If I was your wife, I’d bind your arse to that stove and shave you.”
Duff’s laugh was his second wonder. Rich and hearty, it rolled up from his chest like breaking waves. “If you were my wife, Angus, I’d bind myself to the stove and light it.”
Raif grinned, suddenly feeling better than he had all day. He had forgotten how much he liked Duff. The two men continued on, railing each other with such unabashed relish and affection, it was obvious they were old, old friends. A few heads turned at the laughter, but no one took longer than they should paying heed to the stovemaster and his guest.
As he took a draft of bitter foamy beer, Raif spent a moment studying those people who had not caught his attention when he had first walked through the door. A small party of trappers kept to themselves in the far corner, chewing on long strips of birch bark as they mended the wires for their traps. An old Orrlsman, his eyes milky with snow blindness, sat close to the stove with his dog. Across the way, a woman wearing the gray leathers and moose felt of Bannen was busy finishing her supper of fried onions and elk meat. Like all women from Bannen, she carried a longsword of black steel on her back. Two men sat in the shadows directly opposite Raif, nursing half-empty tankards between gloved hands. They were clansmen, but their hoods were up and they were dressed in dark oilskins and Raif could not place them. There were no Bluddsmen. Which, considering a circle of Dhoonesmen commanded the room, was lucky for patrons, staff, and stove laws alike.
Raif knew that everyone in the room saw him as a Hailsman. Blackhail was the most austere and least given to show of all the clans. It had been stripped of its badge five hundred years earlier when Ayan Blackhail took the life of the last Clan King, and no one had worn the Hail Wolf since. Even so, the silver cap on Raif’s tine, the beaten silver strip that tied his hair, and the black leather of his belts, scabbards, and fronts placed him from Blackhail as surely as the blue tattoos on the Dhoonesmen’s faces named them Dhoone. Blackhail was the only clanhold where silver was mined, and the metal was worked into the hilts of all handknives and swords. Tem’s halfsword had a layer of silver wire wrapped around the grip, and the leather scabbard it was housed in was dyed black to match the graphite lesions in the Hailstone.
“You won’t mind keeping your own company for a while, Raif,” Angus said, slapping a hand on his shoulder. “Duff’s going to take me in the back so I can pick a length of cloth for my wife.”
“Aye,” Duff said. “Me poor wife hates to show herself once she’s plaited her hair for bed.”
Raif nodded to both men. He thought they spoke a little too casually, but it was no concern of his. Angus shrugged off his coat and packs and followed Duff to a small door in the back of the room. Raif watched them go. Did Angus greet the trappers along the way?
“Raif Sevrance.”
Turning, Raif came face-to-face with the two men who had been sitting in the shadows wearing oilskins. They were Hailsmen: Will Hawk and his son, Bron, who had been fostered to Dhoone for a season. Bron was the one who had brought news of Dhoone’s defeat to the clan. Raif was immediately on his guard. He gave back greetings but did not ask what business brought father and son to Duff’s.
Will, a somber man with the kind of pale skin that showed many veins, sat on the stool that had just been vacated by Angus. “I see you’re here with your uncle. The ranger.”
It was an invitation to speak, not a question. Raif nodded.
Will made a gesture toward Bron, bidding that he sit. Bron’s mother was a Dhooneswoman, and he had the fair hair and light eyes of the Dhoones. He was known for his swordsmanship, Raif recalled, and, strangely enough, for his fine singing voice. Raif thought he didn’t look much the sort to break into song.
When father and son were settled close, Will took a heavy breath and said, “How did the ambush go, lad?”
Raif worked to keep his face still. He had been expecting the question—as a senior clansman, Will Hawk would have taken part in planning the ambush—yet Raif found it difficult to speak. He had spent the past two days sealing off his memories of the clan, and he did not want to reopen them. Not here. Not now. He glanced into Will Hawk’s eyes. Genuine concern nestled there, along with growing impatience. Raif did not know Will Hawk well, yet he was a full clansman and was therefore owed respect. “The ambush went well. All was as Mace Blackhail said.”
“Who amongst us took hurt?”
“Banron Lye. Toady Walker.”
Both Will and Bron touched their guidestone pouches. Silence followed. After several minutes Will said, “And so you’re heading south to spread the word to Scarpe and Orrl?”
Raif shook his head. He would not lie to a clansman.
Will waited for him to explain himself. Raif breathed and did not speak. After a minute of silence, he could no longer look his clansman in the eye. Bron took a ewe’s heart from a platter and began to chew on it.
In the corner of his vision, Raif saw Angus emerge from the back room of the stovehouse. He was carrying a dainty bundle with exaggerated care, and one of the trappers made jest of him. Angus laughed along with the rest, falling into an easy conversation that grew lower as the minutes passed.
“So you are just traveling with your uncle for a while,” Will said at last.
He knows, Raif thought. Will knows I have broken my oath.
Will stood. His eyes carefully avoided Raif as he said to his son, “Come. There is no company worth keeping here tonight.” Puzzlement shot over Bron’s face, but he obeyed his father, swallowing the last of the heart and standing. Together they walked back to their place at the far side of the room.
Raif did not move. Shame burned him. There were no excuses he could give, nothing he could say to bring Will back to his table. He had broken his oath, and no words could change what that made him.
Blackhail was the oldest of the clans, and there were many who held it was the hardest, too. It had its traitors, Raif knew it must have traitors—three thousand years of wars, successions, and infighting had to produce some men who had broken their oaths—yet their names were never spoken. Their memories died before they did. Once when he was younger, Raif remembered asking Inigar Stoop why there was a deep black pit in the farthest corner of the guidestone, big as a wolf and filled with oil that had hardened over centuries to dark jewels. Inigar had run his stick fingers over the hollow and said, “This is the place where we cut traitors’ hearts from the stone.” Raif felt the shame heat sear him. How long would it be before Inigar picked up a chisel in his name?
Hard footsteps crunched on snow and then the stovehouse door burst open. The temperature dropped immediately as a cold wind circled the room. Raif looked up to see four Bluddsmen enter the stovehouse. Faces hard, bodies weighted with steel, they stopped just beyond the doorway and surveyed the room. Air and space contracted. The Dhoonesmen stood as a single body, swordhands dropping to the hand-and-a-half hilts of their greatswords. In the far corner Will and Bron shifted themselves without seeming to move, making body and weapons ready.
Raif felt the full force of the Bluddsmen’s attention. He watched as their gray and dark blue eyes seized upon the silver piece in his hair and on his tine. He saw them hate.
Hair shaved clean around their faces, braids descending down their backs like rope dipped in tar, they looked like no other clan. Their leathers were tanned in different ways, and their weapons were heavy forged. Seeing them here, at close quarters, Raif realized how little he had learned by fighting them on the Bluddroad. Clan Bludd was a force unto itself.
“Close the door, Chokko. Bring your men to warm their bellies at the stove.” Duff moved into the strip of space separating the Dhoonesmen from the Bluddsmen.
The one named Chokko raised a gloved fist. “Nay, Stovemaster. This is not something to be smoothed over with beer and warming. Our clan bleeds this night.”
“Take it outside, Chokko. No misdeed is greate
r than breaking the law of the stove.”
Chokko shook his massive head. “I have respect for you, Stovemaster. Know that. And I come to pick no fight with the Dhoone.” He and the head Dhoonesman shared a long, bitter glance. “But I will fight this night. I have to. My heart will not let me rest until I have taken Blackhail blood.”
A murmur of cold fear passed through the room. The Dhoonesmen’s faces darkened. The woman from Gnash slid her hand down toward the Three Daggers at her waist. The Scarpemen, war-sworn allies of Clan Blackhail, bristled like hackles on a dog. Will and Bron Hawk shed their oilskins and walked with hard dignity into the center of the room.
Beneath the table, Raif’s fist closed around Tem’s sword. His heart hammered, yet strangely he felt something close to relief. So this is how it would end, fighting Bluddsmen.
“The stove laws work two ways, Chokko,” Duff said, holding his position directly in front of the Bluddsmen, barring them access to the rest of the room. “If men are at my stove, keeping my peace, I will not allow anyone to force them outside against their will.”
“Bravely said, Stovemaster,” said Will Hawk, entering the Bluddsmen’s space. “But we are Clan Blackhail, and we will not cower and we will not hide, and if Bludd wants the chance to best us, then so be it.” The last words were addressed to Chokko, and the stovelight seemed to dim as they were spoken, leaving the two men in a place of their own.
Chokko did not blink—hardly, in fact, seemed to breathe. He spoke, and although his words were said to Will Hawk, he meant the whole room to hear them. “Our chief sent a dog to us—we, who were camped along the Elk Trail—telling of what Blackhail had done. The bitch died even as I took the bale from her collar, so hard had she traveled in two days and one night. The message told of an ambush along the Bluddroad, and how three dozen of our wives and children were hunted like animals and then slain in the snow, in cold blood.”
A hiss, like the sound of trees whipped by high wind, took the room. Duff closed his eyes and touched his lids. The couple from Gnash signed to the Stone Gods. The woman from Bannen touched the black iron pendant containing her measure of powdered guidestone and spoke a single word: “Children.” Even the Dhoonesmen looked down.
Will Hawk shook his head. “You lie, Chokko of Clan Bludd. My clan would never slay wives and children in cold blood.”
The Bluddsman at Chokko’s side pushed forward. “We do not lie. Our chief does not lie. We are Clan Bludd, and even when the truth is hard we speak it.” Chokko gripped his clansman’s arm to stop him from drawing his sword.
“It is the truth, Hailsman,” he cried. “And you will know it soon enough when you receive the swift judgment of our blades.”
A muscle pumped high on Will Hawk’s cheek. His eyes glittered in the stovelight. Raif tensed, his chest as tight as a bow at full draw. Will Hawk turned toward him. “Tell them they lie, Raif Sevrance. That I may carry the pride of my clan to this fight.”
All eyes fell on Raif. The Bluddsmen, realizing straightaway the full implication of Will’s appeal, sent looks filled with such loathing that Raif felt them as blows against his skin. All was quiet for one terrible, unbearable moment. The knowledge Raif held damned them all. Bluddsmen and Hailsmen would fight this night regardless of what he said—that much was clear—but how could he send Will and Bron Hawk into a fight with no honor? Four massive Bluddsmen in their prime, against three Hailsmen, two of them yearmen newly sworn?
They would die. He, Will, and Bron would die.
Raif swallowed hard, gathered himself in. Clan was everything. What he was didn’t matter—his soul was already lost—but he couldn’t send Will and Bron to their deaths on a lie.
He stood. “We did what we had to.”
Gasps erupted. The Bluddsmen drew steel. The expression on Will Hawk’s face was a kind of death for Raif. He knew he would never be forgiven for the words he had spoken.
Will struggled with the truth for only a moment, yet when he turned to face the Bluddsmen he was no longer the same man. “Hold your steel until we are outside,” he said, his voice hard and weary in one. “I will not confound one wrong with another. Bron.” He looked at his son. “Your yearman’s oath to Dhoone still stands. This is not your fight.”
Bron shook his head. “Tonight I am a Hailsman,” he said.
A look of pure pain crossed Will’s face. By the time he spoke it was gone. “Come, then, son. Let us fight for our clan.”
Father and son moved toward to the door.
Raif stepped forward, following them.
Hearing the scrape of his chair and the slap of his footsteps on stone, Will Hawk turned and held up his hand. “Nay, Raif Sevrance. Take your seat. I would rather a Bluddsman cut out my heart than a traitor fight at my side.”
Will held his position for one moment and then walked outside. The Bluddsmen followed. Bron followed. Someone shut the door.
Like a ghost, Raif continued walking. Slowly. Unstoppable.
Angus came and fought him, big meaty arms clamping around his chest, knees jabbing at his shins. Duff slid a bar across the door, then came to Angus’ aid. Raif fought back. Hands pushed, feet kicked, chests blocked his way. They slowed but could not stop him. He took great hurt and gave great hurt, yet it all seemed as unreal as any dream. All that mattered was the door. Not once did he doubt that he would reach it. Like game, he had set its oak and iron heart in his sights. It was his, and he would take it. If Angus and Duff had known that, if he could only have explained, they would have let him go. But they didn’t, so he fought them, and all three took harm.
Sometimes he caught glimpses of himself in other men’s eyes. A Dhoonesman held his hand to his tine, as if he were seeing something unspeakable like a Stone God come down for vengeance. The Scarpemen looked afraid.
Hot blood ran down Raif’s nose to his mouth. Yellow fluid slid across his eye. His fists were like machines, up and down they went, smashing flesh, as his feet claimed ground beneath him. Filled with the same inevitable force as an arrow in flight, he had no choice but to move toward the door.
Then, suddenly, Angus spoke a word. He wiped blood from his face and shook his head, and then he and Duff fell away. Raif barely registered their withdrawal. It was nothing to him. He would have reached the door without it. His hands came up and dealt with the bar, and a moment later he stood facing the snow and the night. Cold breezes worked his skin as he took in the last seconds of the fight. One Bluddsman was down. Bron was down. The remaining Bluddsmen delivered long thrusts with their swords, impaling the flopping, powerless form of Will Hawk. Only their blades kept him standing.
Raif lost himself after that. Afterward he would remember things, or perhaps what little Angus Lok told him became memory, but when he stepped through the threshold and into the snow he became something else.
Swords don’t ring when you draw them, yet to Raif it seemed as if his did. His mouth was dry, utterly dry. His raven lore burned like white-hot steel against his skin.
Watcher of the Dead.
That was his last thought before his mind spiraled downward to a place where all that mattered were the Bluddsmen’s beating hearts.
TWENTY-ONE
Sarga Veys
Penthero Iss stood high in the cool marble blackness of the Bight and watched as Sarga Veys entered Mask Fortress. Not for Veys the soldiers’ sparseness of stable gate or the common squalor of north gate. No. Veys took the east gate, whose fine marble columns and wrought-iron gratings were usually reserved for lords, ladies, and those of high office, not second-rate envoys who had knowledge of the old skills. Iss exhaled softly into the shadows. Sarga Veys was an interesting piece of flesh.
As he crossed the quad, Veys kept turning his head toward the Splinter. After a moment he stopped, spun his heels, and spent a full minute contemplating the ice-bound tower. Iss didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all. A small drawing out of himself, like a long sniff or a wet finger thrust into the air to test wind speed, served to assure
him that Veys was studying the Splinter purely with his two own eyes, not probing it with sorcery as he feared.
Withdrawing back into himself, he became aware of the taste of metal in his mouth and a drop of urine sliding down his thigh. It was disgusting to feel the wetness there. He despised his weaknesses. Working the tainted saliva into a wad for spitting, he looked once more upon the white-robed form of Sarga Veys.
Sarga Veys was looking directly at him.
Unsettled, Iss took a step back. I am in shadow, he told himself, and five stories above him. How then does he know I am here? The drawing! Sarga Veys had sensed the drawing. Iss’ face darkened. The power he had drawn to test for sorcery was so slight, a little moth on the wing, it should not have been detectable. Yet there was Sarga Veys, smiling now, raising his arm in greeting. Iss turned and exited the room. Veys would know now, with utter certainty, that something was housed within the Splinter that his Surlord wished him not to see.
Descending the ice-cold stairs of the Bight, Iss prepared himself to meet with Sarga Veys. Although the sun had newly risen above Mount Slain, the day was already little to the Surlord’s liking. Only an hour earlier, beneath the darkly sloping ceiling of the Hall of Trials, the Lady of the Eastern Granges and her besworded son the Whitehog had challenged his right to apportion land along the city’s northern reach.
“My grandfather’s brother owned hunting rights to the Northern Granges,” Lisereth Hews, Lady of the Eastern Granges, had said, her voice rapidly becoming shrewish. “And I claim them here and now for my son.” It was a ridiculously trumped-up claim, of course, but Lisereth Hews was a dangerous woman. The white and the gold of the Hews suited her just as well as it suited any man. She would cause trouble over this. Four of the past ten surlords had come from House Hews, and the good lady was scheming to place her son as the fifth. The matter of the Northern Granges, newly come into dispute owing to the death of its lord, Allock Mure, had provided her with a convenient excuse to show her teeth.