by J. V. Jones
Storm clouds parted and sunlight streamed down onto the girl’s face, illuminating her skin with silver light. Raif felt his body cool. One by one the hairs along his spine lifted, and the skin beneath them pulled as tight as if ghost fingers were laid upon it. Even as he shook the chill from him, something hardly important and yet at the same time vital fell into place inside his head.
She was not looking at him.
She was looking at Angus Lok.
Gray eyes drew Angus’ coppery ones to her as surely as if they were connected by a thread. A second hung like dust in warm air as they locked gazes. Everything stopped. Wind and cold and sunlight died. Raif felt like a shadow, like nothing. Angus and the girl were all that counted.
Then he heard his uncle draw breath. A word was spoken—Raif heard it clearly but did not understand its meaning. Hera, Angus said.
Angus Lok drew his sword. Plain it was, steel as gray as sleet. He stepped forward, and as he did so, something shed from him like old skin. He grew larger and taller and more terrible. His eyes stopped being copper and became golden instead.
“Hold the horses,” he murmured without once looking Raif’s way. “Hold them and wait.”
Raif took the bay’s reins instinctively. Fear filled the hollow spaces in his chest. He didn’t understand. Did Angus think he could fight six armed men? What was happening here?
Angus walked forward, his fist curled around the leather grip of his sword. He was shaking intensely, almost vibrating. The girl was still on the ground. Marafice Eye was shoving her with his boot, in the manner of a hunter who wasn’t quite sure whether or not the game he had just brought down was dead. The guard dressed in black leathers noticed Angus first. Raising his red blade, he nudged the Knife.
Marafice Eye looked up. Angus was about thirty paces away from him. Slowly Marafice Eye wiped the spittle from his lips. His eyes brightened. “Drop the gate,” he shouted to some unseen guard in the gate tower. “I think I’ll take this fight inside.” Without once taking his eyes from Angus, he gestured to his men to gather up the girl and carry her into the city. Three men dealt with the girl, while the other two moved to flank their leader. Marafice Eye held his position, watching Angus approach. Above his head, metal gears whined, then the gate shuddered into life.
Raif pulled the horses toward a dead birch and tethered them. His eyes were on the gate, watching as spiked gratings black with mud began to descend with a stop-and-start motion. The moment his hands were free of the reins, he broke into a run.
Angus stepped onto the gate platform. Marafice Eye smiled tightly, then backed away, allowing the two men flanking him to cut first steel. Swords, red as if blood were already upon them, angled upward toward the light. Pulleys screeched overhead, spinning out of control, and the gate began to plummet. Angus leaped forward, dodging the iron spikes by a hair-thin slice of a moment. Raif ran and ran and ran. He had to get to Angus.
Too late. The gate crashed to the ground as he stepped onto the platform. Clumps of greasy snow fell onto his head and shoulders as he grabbed the grille and rattled it with all his might. “Angus!”
Paces away on the other side, five armed men formed a baiting circle around his uncle. Angus’ face was dark and still. His blade edge was already tipped with one man’s blood, and as he cut a defensive circle around his position, he wounded two more.
Three men in black leathers rushed from the gate tower and attended the girl, dragging her back from the fighting. Raif counted nine red blades in all. Marafice Eye stood off to the side, watching. His small lips twitched as Angus took a cut to the ear.
Raif’s heart hammered in his chest. He had to do something. Wildly he looked around. He saw Moose and the bay nosing snow to get at the tufts of fat thistlegrass buried beneath. A wing-shaped piece of leather riding high on the bay’s back caught his eye: Angus’ bowcase.
Raif raced for it. A soft cry sounded at his back: Angus had taken a second hit. Raif took a short breath. He couldn’t risk thinking about that now; it would only slow him. As he fumbled with the brass buckle on the bowcase, his hands had never felt so big or so clumsy. Grease from the gate made everything slippery, and his fingers wouldn’t bend.
Bracing the bow seemed to take hours. The waxed string was cold and stiff; it kept breaking free of the knot. He had to use his teeth in the end, pulling the thread through with a violent snap of his jaw. Running his shaking fingers along the belly of the bow, he tried to calm himself. The bow was exquisitely carved, deeply inset with silver and midnight blue horn. Touching it helped. He had drawn it before; he knew its measure and its hand.
Turning, he slid Angus’ quiver around his waist and sprinted back to the gate. The iron grating was densely woven. Bars as thick as a man’s wrist crossed at right angles, leaving two-inch squares in between. Raif drew an arrow from the quiver. Its leaded head was heavier than he was used to, and in a deep, instinctual part of his brain he knew it would take more pull and height to aim it.
On the other side of the gate, one man was down, floored by a gash to his shoulder, and another two men were bleeding from snipe cuts to the arms and legs. Only one guard looked after the girl now, twisting her arm behind her back to keep her close. The seven remaining red blades were all focused on containing Angus Lok. Angus was clearly frustrated by their baiting tactics. If one or two swordsmen had come forward to engage him, he would have bettered them; Raif saw how swiftly his uncle moved, how certain he was with his plain journeyman’s sword. But the red blades preferred to play a waiting, tiring game. They knew Angus was dangerous. It was easier and safer to wait for a mistake.
Marafice Eye watched from his position on the periphery, jabbing only occasionally with his crab-hilted knife. Unlike the men under him, he chose his moments with care, and his blade always came away wet. A ribbon of blood, dark and slow as molasses, ran down Angus’ right cheek and across his jaw. He kept pushing forward toward the girl, but the red blades kept him back.
Raif swallowed a mouthful of saliva. What had driven Angus to attack? It was madness. Standing back from the gate, he nocked the lead-packed arrowhead and raised the bow to his chest. The stitches across his rib cage burned like new wounds as he drew the string. Fighting the pain and the hot salty tears it brought, he concentrated on picking out a target. He had counted five arrows in Angus’ quiver. Five. None could go astray.
Focusing his gaze beyond the steel-rimmed eyelet, Raif chose the man who presented the most immediate threat to Angus: a thin, dark-haired weasel dressed in sackcloth and stewed leather who had grown impatient with baiting and was gradually working his way under Angus’ arm. He was fast and vicious, and he reminded Raif of a Scarpeman.
Raif aimed for his upper chest, sighting him purely through the notch on the riser. He wanted no heart kills, nothing to sicken or stain him. That was one madness he would not bring to this fight. As he searched for the still line that would lead his arrow home, the blister on his hand cracked open and a line of yellow fluid oozed along his wrist.
He released the string. The arrow shot ahead. The bow recoiled, slamming in his hand like a bird. Thwang. Metal slammed against metal. Orange sparks sprayed through the grille. Raif cried out in frustration as he watched his arrow nosedive into the snow beyond the gate. The arrowhead had hit the iron grating. One of its flight feathers was lodged in the grille like elk hair on a fence.
“Aargh!”
Raif focused his gaze on the fighting beyond the gate. The weasel man jerked his blade free of Angus’ shoulder. Blood pumped from a dark hole in Angus’ buckskin coat. His face was gray and twisted with pain. The red blades needled him, drawing pinpricks of blood. Angus roared. Swinging in a mighty turning circle, he severed one man’s hand and sliced deeply into another’s hip.
Raif glanced down at his quiver. Four arrows left. Seven men. Gods help me, I can’t miss another shot. Cursing his shaking hands, his weeping blister, and the fierce burning in his chest, he drew the second arrow from the quiver. Angus was slow
ing; his left arm was dragging and he was taking hard, frothing breaths. Watching him, watching muscles in his cheeks pulse with anger and some other unknowable emotion that lay between sorrow and dread, Raif knew what he had to do. It wasn’t a matter of choice anymore. It was a matter of shared blood.
The arrow was nocked and primed in less than an instant. Raif held it fast against the plate as he drew the bow. The weasel man grew large in his sights, big as a giant. Raif called him nearer. The space between them contracted, and then suddenly there was no space at all. Raif smelled sweat and the secret scent of blood and waste that lay trapped beneath the skin. Then nothing mattered but the heart.
Engorged with blood, heavy with life force, driven by the one thing that the gods had no power over, the heart filled Raif’s sights like a glance into the sun. Things became known to him, small things about the body that surrounded the vital, pumping core. The weasel man’s blood ran too fast, rushing through his body like hot steam in search of release. His liver was hard and dimpled, dark with disease, and only one testicle hung from his groin.
This and more Raif knew in less time than it took for a used breath to ascend from his lungs. It meant nothing. Nothing. The heart was his.
He kissed the string and released the arrow, and by the time his shoulders had dealt with the recoil, the weasel man was dead. Heart-killed. His legs dropped beneath him, his bladder failed, and he was gone.
Metal flooded Raif’s mouth. A pain, like the sickening wrench of a bone pulled from its socket, worked its way through his chest. Is this what I am? Cold killer of men?
It was a question he had no time for. Another arrow was already in his hand, though he had no memory of drawing it, and he brought it to the plate and pulled once more upon the string. His powers of discrimination had gone—blasted away by pain and madness—and he set his sights on the first red blade who crossed his plate.
The heart came to him, faster than an eye focusing on a distant object. Young and strong, this heart, with a body only lately visited by disease. Something dark grew in the deepest underlevel of the lungs, a lobe of quiet flesh. He spared it no thought as he released the string. The thrum of the arrow merged with the soft gurgle of a stopped breath, and then another faceless body hit the snow.
Raif drew the third arrow. Pain blurred his vision, saliva corroded his gums. On the far side of the gate, Angus was taking advantage of the fear spreading through the remaining men. As Raif pulled his bow, Angus slid his steel into kidney flesh, and a red blade fell to the ground, screaming and clutching at his gut. Behind the circle of armed men, the black-cloaked guard in charge of the girl was beginning to panic. He threw her onto the ground and put the point of his sword against her neck. The girl’s chest rose and fell, rose and fell. Her fingers scratched the snow.
Even before he was aware of what he was doing, Raif called the guard’s heart to his sights. It happened so quickly he barely got an impression of the man before he released the string. The arrowhead shot through a break in the fighting and entered the guard’s heart from behind, pinning his cloak to his spine.
Raif swayed. His head rang with pain. Dimly he was aware of objects hitting the metal grating, as knives and missiles were flung his way. None got through. He could see little now, only sharp edges and glimmers of light. He saw a moving blur that he knew to be his uncle, and three or perhaps four figures surrounding him. His thoughts came slowly, clumsily, floating in his mind like pieces of driftwood. One arrow, that was all he knew. One arrow. One shot. Must take it.
He couldn’t see, but he could feel. As he drew the bow, something within him fastened on to the nearest heart. It happened with the speed and certainty of a stone dropping in a well . . . and it made Raif sick to his gut. His arms adjusted their positions and his bowhand ceased shaking and he knew with utter confidence the exact instant to release the string. Dead, he thought dully, gone the moment I found his heart.
After that, someone else went down: one of the red blades dressed in shabby stripes. Angus landed a blow that made another man squeal like a pig. Raif swayed. Stumbling forward, he grabbed hold of the grille for support. His eyes cleared for a moment, and he saw Marafice Eye looking straight at him. Raif took a breath. The Knife stood apart from his remaining men in the shadow of the east gate tower, his eyes as pale as gristle in a piece of meat. As Raif watched, he turned his gaze first to the girl, then to Angus Lok, deciding what he would do. The girl was thirty paces away from him, and even as Marafice Eye stepped toward her, Angus moved to block his path.
Raif felt himself failing. With his last scrap of strength, he focused his eyes hard on Marafice Eye, holding the man in his sights, willing him to turn and look. When the Knife shifted his gaze and their eyes met, Raif released his hand from the grille and reached down toward the quiver at his waist. In that moment Marafice Eye knew he was going to be shot, heart-killed like four of his men. Raif saw the realization in the man’s eyes, saw the understanding that he could not reach the girl before the arrow reached him and that it was better to withdraw than die. As Raif’s hand closed around fresh air, Marafice Eye barked an order and fled.
Raif’s legs collapsed beneath him, and he slid down to a place where the walls were formed from darkness and the edges creased with pain.
TWENTY-FOUR
The Gods Lights
There were twelve secret uses for whale blubber, and this night Eloko, widow to Kulahuk and mother to Nolo and Avranna, had promised to show Sadaluk one of them. Eloko was a fine woman, with teeth as tiny as a baby’s and the belly of a fat snow bear. She was not young, but Sadaluk was not fussy about that. When a tribeswoman offered comfort to an old man, it was something to be celebrated, not picked apart like a whale carcass after a kill. Eloko had been widowed for ten months, and it was fitting that she had chosen to break mourning with an elder of the tribe. It showed respect. The Ice God could not fault her for that.
The Listener permitted himself to think about Eloko and her plentiful supply of whale blubber for only a short while longer. Eloko had waited ten months. Sadaluk himself had waited that and more. It would do neither of them much harm to stand at opposite sides of the village, one in a house made of driftwood and clay and the other in a ground dug from hard earth and braced with whalebone, and watch the Gods Lights for a few hours more.
The sky was clear tonight, dark and brilliant as the hole in the center of a man’s eye. The Gods Lights raged to the north like flames from a wildfire burning beyond the horizon. Pink and green, the lights flashed, the colors of all living things. Every winter the Gods Lights unfurled like banners in the clear night sky. Their slow, languid movements reminded Sadaluk of seaweed floating in deep water, limbs unfurling with the grace of weightless things. If you listened very hard, you could hear them. The noise sounded like the cracking and ripping of wind in the sails of a ship. Some said it was the same noise you heard before you died, but Sadaluk did not know about that.
He did know that the lights were a message from the gods. Look at us, they proclaimed. See how beautiful and terrible we are. See how we come to you in full winter, when your sons and daughters need us the most.
It was impossible to look upon the northern lights and deny the presence of the gods. Lootavek, the one who had listened before him, said that the Ice Trappers would know when the end of the world was coming, as the lights would burn red. “The gods will give us warning,” he said one night as they camped on the sea ice, butchering seals. “They will send us a sky filled with blood.”
Sadaluk remembered looking down at his own wet and bloody hands and asking, “How do you know this?”
Lootavek had given him one of his looks. “You ask the wrong question, Sadaluk. How is not important, it is the why that counts.”
“Why, then?”
“So that we will be the first to know.”
Sadaluk had finished the butchering in silence, not really understanding what the Listener meant but unwilling to ask any more questions. He had been young t
hen, in awe of the Listener, as was right and proper for a young hunter in the tribe. Now, tonight, watching the Gods Lights dance in the northern skies, he wished he had asked more. The lights seemed darker than he remembered them, the pinks deeper, the greens flickering and strangely distorted. Sometimes he thought he saw flashes of red in the farthest reaches of the corona. It’s nothing, he told himself. There have always been streaks of red in the lights.
But surely tonight there were more?
Frowning at the wildness of his own thoughts, he turned his back on the sky and entered his ground. Eloko would be getting impatient and might yet close the door in his face. A woman’s pride was a fierce thing, and making her wait was one thing, but making her wait too long was quite another. And it would be good to feel warm arms around his back and the touch of another’s hands on his face.
Why, then, could he not get Lootavek’s voice out of his head? So that we will be the first to know. There had been pride in that statement, Sadaluk realized that now. Ice Trappers were always the first to know. “We live on the edge of the world,” Lootavek had said another time, during summer, when swarms of blackflies formed clouds in the sky and even the dogs stayed indoors. “We pay a great price in hunger and death, and for this we bear the messages of the gods. We are closest to them, Sadaluk. Never forget that. After I am gone, you must listen to your dreams and wait for the messages to come.”
Sadaluk tsked. If he were a sane man, he would be reaching for his bear coat and gloves; he would march across the village and take himself quickly to Eloko’s door. An offer had been made, and a short walk would secure it, and he would be an ice-rotted fool if he let the opportunity pass. But he wasn’t sane, and the Gods Lights worried him, and thirty days and thirty nights had passed and still Black Claws had failed to home. The Listener did not think the raven would be coming back. The thought pained him, for he had loved Black Claws the most, and the idea of the raven lying dead on some glaciated cirque or frozen lake was upsetting in strange new ways. Had he been attacked by other birds or the hand of man? Had he delivered his message before he went down, or had the small strip of spruce bark fallen into unwelcome hands? The Listener shook his unease away. It’s only a raven, he told himself. One less bird to find scraps for through the long winter’s night.